Doing something a little bit different today! After some comments suggesting we do something a little different than a pack 1 pick 1, I came across a forum-wide draft being led by CprlBeefpants on the reddit cube subforum. (Not sure of his name, frankly I wish I was named CprlBeefpants.) What is happening is that he is posting the packs one by one and whichever card has the most votes is the pick, and then the next pack, and etc. For this pick, these are the cards we have so far:
[mtg_card]Lotus Cobra[/mtg_card] [mtg_card]Batterskull[/mtg_card] [mtg_card]Balance[/mtg_card] [mtg_card]Flooded Strand[/mtg_card]We’re pretty much open with a stronger lean towards white in my opinion.
This is his cube: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/990
This is the thread where the original post was from: http://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/227hiz/beefdraft_pick_six/
And now, this is our current pack:
http://i.imgur.com/pDuzjjq.jpg
[mtg_card]Pernicious Deed[/mtg_card][mtg_card]Carnophage[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Fellwar Stone[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Electrolyze[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Meloku, the Clouded Mirror[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Prismatic Lens[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Polluted Delta[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Grand Coliseum[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Sensei’s Divining Top[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Daze[/mtg_card]
[mtg_card]Temple Garden[/mtg_card] [yop_poll id=”6″]
We don’t really know what we’re doing so far; we have a bunch of good cards, but there are conflicting strategies and there’s a chance we won’t play at least one of these cards. (The only way I see us not playing two is if we go GB after taking deed, but I don’t think jumping into a potential 3rd/4th color is smart.)
I’m really tempted to take one of the mana stones, but they’re pretty underwhelming. Fellwar Stone taps for colorless mostly, though there will be a fair share of games where it taps for one of your colors. Stone is actually really good in 3-5 color decks, since there is rarely a match up where it doesn’t at least produce mana in your deck. Prismatic Lens is fine but paying to fix your mana is asking quite a bit.
I don’t think Temple Garden is actually good here since there’s barely any other green or white in the pack other than the dual which is still pretty color specific and Pernicious Deed which suffers the same issues. Meloku is nice but not a reason for me to jump into blue compared to the other blue cards. I like Daze and kirk put up a convincing argument today about why it should be the pick regarding a UW balance type deck, but I’d rather take Meloku here. Polluted Delta is cool, for sure, but we could be devoid of blue from here on out. (I don’t think it’s a bad pick, but it’s a bit more speculative than what I’m comfortable with.)
Here I like Sensei’s Divining Top. Balance decks are great with Top because there are many times where Balance hurts you as well and you need to dig your way out of the mess. Top does a great job because it survives the Balance and lets us manipulate our deck to find cards. If we were heavier into blue I’d be less inclined to take top since blue pretty naturally does a good job of filtering as is, but a Flooded Strand isn’t enough of a commitment for me to say I’m definitely there. Top is also good if we get shipped green cards from here on out, since Cultivates and such shuffle our deck along with the fetches. After top I like any of the blue cards, and don’t think they’re bad picks at all.
tl;dr Sensei’s Divining Top. What would you choose? Leave a comment and let us know!