Draft Report! 2-13-16

Heading down to the Gamma Ray! After some frantic trading for lands (closing in on two more sheets: red/green and black/white) we cracked some packs.

Pick 1

  

A perfect encapsulation of what people are complaining about with Oath. Ruins and Seed Guardian are both fantastic cards that you can do interesting things with... but they aren't unconditional removal good! I take the strike

The bigger, colorless colors (BG, BU, UG)

I'm lumping these three together because these are the colors that will speak to you when you land a sweet colorless rare. Perhaps one of these

 

But also note that the larger colored-colorless also tend to be in these colors. Namely:

  

So on and so forth. These are the decks that will prioritize Wastes, colorless mana symbols, and grinding out the win with some sort of longer term win condition (often a dumb big creature, card advantage, or something similar)

Manafixing (colorless-fixing)

    

Colorless Payoff

     

Traditional Ramp Payoff

 

Increased Value in BFZ
  

Archetype: blue-white

Blue/white was in/famous in BFZ for being just a pile of cards and working really well. Gum up the ground, have some bounce, and let your sweet sweet fliers take care of business for you. Has anything changed?



Nope!

Archetype: black red

Remember the Clue

We have an on-curve, aggressive killer that appears to care about other colorless creature. You got it boss! Looking to build a 2-3-4 CABS curve out and smash through those pesky 2/3 defenses. Let's see what we have to work with.

Two Drop

    

Three Drop

     

Four Drop

  

Look at all that early colorless mana requirement! This is not a splash, you're rocking colorless as a full-on, third "color". You want to have access to repeatable colorless early and often for sure. I think this will be a huge priority:

Gets you the color you need to cast it and then switches to colorless to activate abilities.

Quality Non Devoid Options

    

Note the tension

BFZ Targets

Like before, but here you may want to fill out your four-slot.

       

Beware the double red:

 
Normally this would be a great four drop but I think the double-red is a little more prohibitive due to the colorless requirement. Note that if you have a strong ally subtheme (and correspondingly less early colorless) then it might be an advantage.The stress point is going to be a healthy mana base while still having enough early pressure. There is an interesting tension to having enough colorless to reliably trigger the 2-3 drops but really cool cards with a double-casting cost (remember, any surge card functionally has a double-mana symbol on it). I dunno.

I drafted a TERRIBLE black red deck at my first go around. Didn't have the early pressure and any way to reliably handle their early blockers. So I just sat there and lost. So maybe don't listen to me.

Oathwatch Tokens

Plant (0/1 edition)

(Nissa, Voice of Zendikar)
Dammit Nissa, would it kill you to make a useful 1/1 plant instead? It's just on one mythic, so we'll survive but it still seems needless to have both 0/1 plants and 1/1 plants in the same block. It's a reprint of Worldwake so whatever.