Oh thank god. This week I have been running about 20% winrate at OTJ due to a combination of poor play, poor drafting, multitasking and shocking luck.
To answer your questions, I posted this about a month ago regarding TPF sealed. Draft is pretty similar in this format so the advice is the same.
Basic rules:
1. Color rankings in sealed are probably
U>R=G>>W>>B. You need a good reason to
play white in sealed, and multiple good
reasons to play black. I personally wouldn't
play black in TPF sealed without multiple
rare bombs, as your filler will always be
awful.
2. Removal is amazing, and the critical
toughness is 4. The format is slow and
powerful enough that vanilla two-drops are
basically unplayable. A surprise hit (ie it's
not unplayable) is Fomori Nomad, as it is
exactly the right size to tangle with the
creatures in the format while surviving
removal.
3. There are many many many sources of
card advantage in the format, from cantrips
to flashback to buyback to kicker to morph
effects to straight up card draw in both blue
and green (!). If your deck is slow, make sure
you have enough card advantage or you'll
get ground out by people that do.
4. Splash all your Sprout Swarms. The card
is a less-powerful Pack Rat at common. In
the same vein, remember all your answers to
a Swarm ( Venarian Glimmer, counterspells,
etc.) and side them in if you see a Swarm.
5. If a TPF card appeared in MM it's
significantly better than it was in MM. Errant
Ephemeron in particular is an excellent
reason to be blue rather than just a good
card.
6. It's often hard to evaluate the rares if you
haven't seen them before. Barely any of
them are simple enough to evaluate
correctly on the first try. One useful rule of
thumb is that the Future Sight rares are all
worse than a removal spell except Venser,
Shaper Savant and Take Possession, no
matter how cool the text box seems.
To specifically answer:
1. See above
2. Any combination of URG is good because it will have all the good cards. UR specifically gets to abuse the synergy between suspend and storm. Both white and black are significantly worse than the other colors, and both pair best with blue. WB appears to have surface synergy because of rebels, but it in fact sucks because both the good white cards and the good black cards are color intensive, and because your card quality will be low even if you aren't cut. White is the aggro color; take that into account when drafting if you pick up early white.
3. R>U>G>B>W. Blue and green have all the fixing, and blue and red are the best splash removal colors. The best black removal spell is Tendrils, which is unsplashable, and a lot of good white cards are WW.
4. Splashing is fine if you are blue or green. The format has enough artifact fixing that you can splash in any nonwhite deck. Don't splash in white decks unless you like not casting spells. It's worth mentioning that Tromp the Domains is the best green card in pack 1 and very strongly wants you to splash.
5. Akroma is playable but not exactly a rock star. Passing it for a suspend guy or removal spell p1p1 is correct.
Expect to be thoroughly confused in your first couple of drafts, there are something like 40 mechanics in total in the block, with some cards having multiple mechanics on them.
I don't remember there being a massive amount of synergy (other than between mechanics), there were some off colour flashback cards to take into account but yeah, as above, URG were the best colours.
Thanks for the tips! I played maybe 15 TSP drafts before on Cockatrice, but this is my first time doing it "for keeps" on MTGO.
As for the Akroma pick, I ended up choosing Griffin Guide over it. Attached is the RW aggro deck I built. It was mainly white, and Gaze of Justice was a rock star. Ended up 6-1, out-racing most of my opponents, including UR in the finals I believe. I felt that had someone made a good green deck, though, I would've had difficulty.
Griffin Guide is about the only nonrare way you can convince me to go white in TPF, it's miles better than Akroma.
FYI Gaze of Justice and Ghost Tactician are typically considered to be unplayable. These cards should have been any two of Arc Blade (which is pretty good), Fomori Nomad (larger than the format) and Emberwilde Augur (which is perfectly reasonable in aggro).
Congrats on the 3-0. It looks as though you were the only white drafter.
On a more serious note, how do people feel about Dash Hopes? Either its two mana for five damage, or you count a spell that could have been problematic. Either way, in a draft that seems very powerful.
I have never had anyone play Dash Hopes against me, I have never played Dash Hopes against anyone. I don't believe I've ever seen it in anyone's maindeck. It is not really a card.
I'll answer the OP's questions when I get back home (on my way out now); I have a great deal to say about this format (and will probably not get much sleep this week...)
Last night I wheeled 2 Saltfield Recluses, a Prodigal Pyromancer and a Ghostfire. I do not expect such luck to continue.
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Original quote byTacosnape "All ideas that give me knowledge without any effort involved on my part are good ideas. Chop chop, my dear fellow."
DCI L2 Judge GP:Madrid 2010 45th GP:Amsterdam 2011 74th GP:London 2013 67th Bazaar of Moxen 2013 32nd
I had a decent U/W fliers deck last night backed up by a 5th pick Magus of the Moat. My early game was a bit sketchy with little removal. My only early drops had shadow. One thing to note, I assumed Dust Elemental would be an ok finisher, but I rarely had 3 other creatures to play. If I did, I was ahead and didn't need it. Maelstrom Djinn is amazing with Momentary Blink and I'm assuming several morph cards are as well.
I lost round 3 to a U/R deck with several 1 toughness fliers with great card advantage.
Take removal where you can find it. There is a high amount of evasion in this block.
I'm not sure why you wouldn't play Gaze in an almost mono-white, creature heavy deck. Once they clog the ground, this deck isn't going to be swinging with everything every turn anyway.
I'm not sure why you wouldn't play Gaze in an almost mono-white, creature heavy deck. Once they clog the ground, this deck isn't going to be swinging with everything every turn anyway.
Yea, that was my thought. I know Gaze of Justice is usually a last pick and unplayable in a balanced 2-color deck. But with 11 white creatures, plus two Griffin Guides that could become white creatures, my deck definitely could play and could enjoy Gaze. It saved me several times against things I couldn't beat otherwise, including the Akroma Angel of Wrath that I passed P1P1.
By the way, I definitely agree with the assessment that black is by far the most difficult color to win with. Other than its removal (which is not much better, if better at all, than blue and red), its creatures just aren't up to snuff. I attempted two black decks, one UB and one RB, both with a good deal of madness creatures and discard outlets and removal. Still got beat badly in round 1's against average decks.
Is straight-up MMA-style rebels (as opposed to individually good rebels like Saltfield Recluse) any good if black is so weak?
No, rebels aren't as good in TSP block as they were in MMA. The pieces are a little too scattered for the deck to quite come together like in MMA. You don't get three packs of rebel searchers for 1 thing (Amrou Scout in pack 1, Blightspeaker pack two as opposed to both for three packs), and Bound in Silence is uncommon in TSP block, common in MMA. That said, the rebel searchers can be ok card advantage engines, especially compared to other two drops in the format.
Here's some medium to low strength commons that I'm curious how you guys would evaluate. Please say how playable they are, how many you would run if you have multiples, etc. I'll start with red and black. My comments are below.
Time Spiral:
1) Orcish Cannonade - Playable because removal is removal and card advantage is good, but the color intense cost and 3 damage to self can be bad.
2) Mindstab - Marginally playable and high variance. Great on turn 1, pretty bad elsewhere.
3) Empty the Warrens - Marginally playable, surprisingly, I've found. Playing just 1 spell before storming, through a suspend or a cheap removal, gets you 4 goblins, which isn't bad.
4) Grapeshot - Marginally unplayable, unless they have a lot of 1 toughness dudes and you can 2-for-1 them. But if the creatures are saprolings, you're really not accomplishing much.
5) Gorgon Recluse - Marginally unplayable, despite the cheap madness cost. Living the dream is discarding it to madness and blocking, but I haven't found this happening often.
6) Skulking Knight - Unplayable. Way too many targeting abilities means this guy won't even eat a card most times, despite his strong stats.
Planar Chaos:
1) Brain Gorgers - Unplayable. Despite cheap madness cost, the ability to nix it with by sacrificing anything means it sucks.
2) Vampiric Link - Unplayable? I always want to play this as cheap pseudo-removal for their big creatures, but does that work? They still get a big blocker, and they can deal lethal damage with the enchanted creature before the life-gain kicks in.
3) Stingscourger - Clearly playable, but how many would you include? 2 at max seems right to me.
4) Fury Charm - Marginally unplayable, even though the +1/+1 and trample is marginally useful
Future Sight
1) Augur of Skulls - Marginally playable. Can be used as a bad Drudge Skeletons, and opponent may have to play around the potential discard 2 effect.
2) Riddle of Lightning - ??? This puzzles me. I've been killed a few times now by a big Riddle, but it just seems like a bad and uncertain and expensive spell. I would say it's marginally unplayable.
3) Grinning Ignus - Marginal. The ramp ability has actually worked out well in the few times I included this, but then again I was desperate for creatures.
4) Putrid Cyclops - Marginally unplayable? I've gotten lucky and scry-ed lands the two times I've included this, but the real possibility of paying 3 for nothing sucks.
5) Fomori Nomad - Playable, but nothing to write home about.
6) Grave Scrabbler - Clearly playable IF you have the right deck. How many discard outlets would you say you would need to include this? At least 3? 4?
While black is the worst color (much thanks to an abysmal Planar Chaos pack for black), it's not horrendous or unplayable. I've had decent success with Madness, Rebels and Grixis in the past (I'm actually 2-0 in a queue with U/B Madness right now, waiting for the final). The 19-land Mystical Teachings/Sprout Swarm deck was also an old favorite of mine.
But yes, R/G/U are the three best colors & the colors I look to draft when I open the first pack. I don't love white in this format, but it's not bad either, and blue/white skies is certainly a deck. Green/white can also be really good; Thrill of the Hunt and Hedge Troll in particular are good reasons to be G/W. But my most drafted decks are almost certainly U/R and R/G. Red is packed to the brim with excellent removal, and both blue and green have plenty of card advantage and strong late game plays, so pairing red with either of those is a solid strategy.
As for Sprout Swarm, this card is extremely obnoxious but good, and you will, as toodumbtopost pointed out, need to keep it in mind during the entire draft and in the games. Throughout the draft, unless you are drafting an aggressive deck, you should keep yourself open to splashing green should the Mythic Common present itself in the third pack. Terramorphic Expanse, Fungal Reaches, Dreamscape Artist, etc - you should try to pick these up. Also, Pongify almost counts as a fixer for Sprout Swarm, don't forget! And yes, also pick up answers to opposing Swarms. Counterspells are the best, but also Festering March, Psychotic Episode, etc.
Anyway, I'll return to my draft - final is starting! I've always hoped that I'd be asked this question in a top 8 questionnaire: "How much do you play Magic Online in an average week?" so that I could answer "Normal weeks: about 2-3. Time Spiral flashback draft weeks: 50+"
1) Orcish Cannonade I remember being surprisingly playable, in the average range.
2) Mindstab was definitely a sleeper when the set first came out, by sleeper I mean upgraded from "total garbage" -> "I'd play 1"
3) Empty the Warrens & 4) Grapeshot - these are both totally reasonable to really good cards - in triple Timespiral draft. I don't remember how they survived the transition to full block. I think I remember them being very good.
5) Gorgon Recluse - a card I hardly remember, which can't be a good sign.
6) Knight - Garbage.
1) Brain Gorgers - I've played them, but you really had to be piling on the pressure to make this good.
2) Vampiric Link - The one situation I remember playing against this the exact scenario you described happened. I hit him for lethal, trigger on stack, game over.
3) Stingscourger - I'm not sure what my ceiling on this guy is, higher than 2. I really liked him.
4) Fury Charm - Ugh.
5) Brute Force - This card is awesome.
1) Augur of Skulls - Above average for black common creatures.
2) Riddle of Lightning - A card I really, really liked.
3) Grinning Ignus - More cute than good. I thought the storm cards in TSP were good though, so I wouldn't mind playing this as filler for the possibility of going big.
4) Putrid Cyclops - Totally unplayable.
5) Fomori Nomad - Strangely, surprisingly good. Bashes right through all the cute things people are trying to do.
6) Grave Scrabbler - I tried playing these more than I should have, I don't think it's very good.
Took down Olivier Ruel in the final (& he was really nice about it)
Anyway, card evaluations.
Time Spiral:
1) Orcish Cannonade - it's a 2-for-1. What more can you ask for? Solid card in my book, always happy to run a couple, though if you have more it starts to become sketchy. I really like them in conjunction with Essence Warden in my R/G decks.
2) Mindstab - I like it a lot. The format is very grindy, and this often does rob them for three cards even when cast on turn 6 or 7.
3) Empty the Warrens - it's decent, but I'm not an enormous fan of drafting around it. 1/1 Goblins are answered pretty easily, so I prefer taking them late-ish and only get storm of the odd suspend card or whatnot. I'm not playing stupid Grinning Ignuses for this, anyway.
4) Grapeshot - solid removal, behind Rift Bolt and Lightning Axe but on par with or better than Orcish Cannonade (see how much removal there is? I love it!).
5) Gorgon Recluse - I love it in U/B or B/R madness, otherwise I try to stay away.
6) Skulking Knight - I will never play this guy.
Planar Chaos:
1) Brain Gorgers - okay if you have a lot of good meaningful madness outlets (Looter il-Kor, Trespasser il-Vec, Lightning Axe, Dreamscape Artist...), otherwise unplayable.
2) Vampiric Link - I do not consider this playable, but you might want to watch the final of Pro Tour Geneva '07
3) Stingscourger - very good card, and I could easily be persuaded into playing 3 or more in an aggressive deck.
4) Fury Charm - if you somehow end up short on playables (should be difficult in this format), it's not the literal worst, but I am very unhappy if I have to play this.
5) Brute Force - strong trick, better than Giant Growth not least because they won't necessarily expect a pump spell. Red is sometimes a very controlling color, though, so some decks should actually leave it on the sidelines. It's not unusual that I only have 8-9 creatures in my control decks in this format.
Future Sight:
1) Augur of Skulls - I hate playing against this. Should tell you enough! He does something on the board & is a constant headache for your opponent. Solid value guy.
2) Riddle of Lightning - always happy to run a couple of these. They may be slightly unreliable, but as long as you're not too ambitious you should be able to find something & get some nice scry action. Often works as a finisher.
3) Grinning Ignus - I feel I've done something wrong if I'm playing this.
4) Putrid Cyclops - it says "putrid" right there in the name.
5) Fomori Nomad - 4 toughness is a lot. Many removal spells only deal 3, so a 4/4 vanilla guy is very big. Granted, he's not an exciting card or anything, but he's a bit more than he might look like at first glance.
6) Grave Scrabbler - excellent if you're madness, horribly unplayable if you aren't.
In my last draft, I ended up going red-black, with two Tendrils of Corruption and two Urborg Syphon Mages and some madness cards and a few burn/kill spells. Round 1, faced a U/R/W deck with Lightning Angel, Serra Avenger, and Numot, along with two Bonded Fetches to find them. Managed to win 2-1 anyway. Round 2, got defeated 2-1 by the nut G/W sliver deck, featuring multiple Might, Sinew, Gemhide, Watcher, Lymph, etc. slivers. Stole one game with a Dunemantle Rider, or whatever it's called, the BB 1/1 that has pro-green and grows. But in the end, the smaller size of my creatures, plus the fact that in six games I never once had Stronghold Overseer in my hand (it was in my deck though, I checked), meant I couldn't keep up. Tendrils doesn't do enough against 6 or 8 toughness slivers. Oh well.
I agree with Sene's card evaluations for the most part. Riddle especially is really good - scry 3 is worth maybe 75% of a card by itself, and you can generally count on it for 3 in most decks. @HornOfAmmon: I think you are rating the black creatures as though they were another color. Black's creatures are ass in this format, so you have to put up with some number of Brain Gorgers and whatnot or you just don't end up with 23 playables.
I dislike black more than Sene, I think - I actively try to avoid black unless I'm splashing for Soot or Teachings or suchlike. I would, for example, happily take a premium URG common over Stronghold Overseer in the sure and certain knowledge that I'll end up with a better creature base that way. That's doubly true in these flashback drafts - there's always too many "worst color" drafters and not enough "best color" drafters in these things because not everyone knows the format in depth.
I'll start off with some questions:
1) Generally, what is the order of colors in terms of power?
2) What are some good 2-color archetypes, and why are they good?
3) What is the order of colors in terms of how easy they are to splash?
4) How advisable or not advisable is it to go more than 2 colors?
5) If I open P1P1 Akroma like I did just now, should I take it (I did not)?
To answer your questions, I posted this about a month ago regarding TPF sealed. Draft is pretty similar in this format so the advice is the same.
To specifically answer:
1. See above
2. Any combination of URG is good because it will have all the good cards. UR specifically gets to abuse the synergy between suspend and storm. Both white and black are significantly worse than the other colors, and both pair best with blue. WB appears to have surface synergy because of rebels, but it in fact sucks because both the good white cards and the good black cards are color intensive, and because your card quality will be low even if you aren't cut. White is the aggro color; take that into account when drafting if you pick up early white.
3. R>U>G>B>W. Blue and green have all the fixing, and blue and red are the best splash removal colors. The best black removal spell is Tendrils, which is unsplashable, and a lot of good white cards are WW.
4. Splashing is fine if you are blue or green. The format has enough artifact fixing that you can splash in any nonwhite deck. Don't splash in white decks unless you like not casting spells. It's worth mentioning that Tromp the Domains is the best green card in pack 1 and very strongly wants you to splash.
5. Akroma is playable but not exactly a rock star. Passing it for a suspend guy or removal spell p1p1 is correct.
I don't remember there being a massive amount of synergy (other than between mechanics), there were some off colour flashback cards to take into account but yeah, as above, URG were the best colours.
As for the Akroma pick, I ended up choosing Griffin Guide over it. Attached is the RW aggro deck I built. It was mainly white, and Gaze of Justice was a rock star. Ended up 6-1, out-racing most of my opponents, including UR in the finals I believe. I felt that had someone made a good green deck, though, I would've had difficulty.
FYI Gaze of Justice and Ghost Tactician are typically considered to be unplayable. These cards should have been any two of Arc Blade (which is pretty good), Fomori Nomad (larger than the format) and Emberwilde Augur (which is perfectly reasonable in aggro).
Congrats on the 3-0. It looks as though you were the only white drafter.
On a more serious note, how do people feel about Dash Hopes? Either its two mana for five damage, or you count a spell that could have been problematic. Either way, in a draft that seems very powerful.
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I'll answer the OP's questions when I get back home (on my way out now); I have a great deal to say about this format (and will probably not get much sleep this week...)
DCI L2 Judge
GP:Madrid 2010 45th
GP:Amsterdam 2011 74th
GP:London 2013 67th
Bazaar of Moxen 2013 32nd
I had a decent U/W fliers deck last night backed up by a 5th pick Magus of the Moat. My early game was a bit sketchy with little removal. My only early drops had shadow. One thing to note, I assumed Dust Elemental would be an ok finisher, but I rarely had 3 other creatures to play. If I did, I was ahead and didn't need it. Maelstrom Djinn is amazing with Momentary Blink and I'm assuming several morph cards are as well.
I lost round 3 to a U/R deck with several 1 toughness fliers with great card advantage.
Take removal where you can find it. There is a high amount of evasion in this block.
Yea, that was my thought. I know Gaze of Justice is usually a last pick and unplayable in a balanced 2-color deck. But with 11 white creatures, plus two Griffin Guides that could become white creatures, my deck definitely could play and could enjoy Gaze. It saved me several times against things I couldn't beat otherwise, including the Akroma Angel of Wrath that I passed P1P1.
No, rebels aren't as good in TSP block as they were in MMA. The pieces are a little too scattered for the deck to quite come together like in MMA. You don't get three packs of rebel searchers for 1 thing (Amrou Scout in pack 1, Blightspeaker pack two as opposed to both for three packs), and Bound in Silence is uncommon in TSP block, common in MMA. That said, the rebel searchers can be ok card advantage engines, especially compared to other two drops in the format.
Time Spiral:
1) Orcish Cannonade - Playable because removal is removal and card advantage is good, but the color intense cost and 3 damage to self can be bad.
2) Mindstab - Marginally playable and high variance. Great on turn 1, pretty bad elsewhere.
3) Empty the Warrens - Marginally playable, surprisingly, I've found. Playing just 1 spell before storming, through a suspend or a cheap removal, gets you 4 goblins, which isn't bad.
4) Grapeshot - Marginally unplayable, unless they have a lot of 1 toughness dudes and you can 2-for-1 them. But if the creatures are saprolings, you're really not accomplishing much.
5) Gorgon Recluse - Marginally unplayable, despite the cheap madness cost. Living the dream is discarding it to madness and blocking, but I haven't found this happening often.
6) Skulking Knight - Unplayable. Way too many targeting abilities means this guy won't even eat a card most times, despite his strong stats.
Planar Chaos:
1) Brain Gorgers - Unplayable. Despite cheap madness cost, the ability to nix it with by sacrificing anything means it sucks.
2) Vampiric Link - Unplayable? I always want to play this as cheap pseudo-removal for their big creatures, but does that work? They still get a big blocker, and they can deal lethal damage with the enchanted creature before the life-gain kicks in.
3) Stingscourger - Clearly playable, but how many would you include? 2 at max seems right to me.
4) Fury Charm - Marginally unplayable, even though the +1/+1 and trample is marginally useful
5) Brute Force - Very playable, OTOH.
Future Sight
1) Augur of Skulls - Marginally playable. Can be used as a bad Drudge Skeletons, and opponent may have to play around the potential discard 2 effect.
2) Riddle of Lightning - ??? This puzzles me. I've been killed a few times now by a big Riddle, but it just seems like a bad and uncertain and expensive spell. I would say it's marginally unplayable.
3) Grinning Ignus - Marginal. The ramp ability has actually worked out well in the few times I included this, but then again I was desperate for creatures.
4) Putrid Cyclops - Marginally unplayable? I've gotten lucky and scry-ed lands the two times I've included this, but the real possibility of paying 3 for nothing sucks.
5) Fomori Nomad - Playable, but nothing to write home about.
6) Grave Scrabbler - Clearly playable IF you have the right deck. How many discard outlets would you say you would need to include this? At least 3? 4?
But yes, R/G/U are the three best colors & the colors I look to draft when I open the first pack. I don't love white in this format, but it's not bad either, and blue/white skies is certainly a deck. Green/white can also be really good; Thrill of the Hunt and Hedge Troll in particular are good reasons to be G/W. But my most drafted decks are almost certainly U/R and R/G. Red is packed to the brim with excellent removal, and both blue and green have plenty of card advantage and strong late game plays, so pairing red with either of those is a solid strategy.
As for Sprout Swarm, this card is extremely obnoxious but good, and you will, as toodumbtopost pointed out, need to keep it in mind during the entire draft and in the games. Throughout the draft, unless you are drafting an aggressive deck, you should keep yourself open to splashing green should the Mythic Common present itself in the third pack. Terramorphic Expanse, Fungal Reaches, Dreamscape Artist, etc - you should try to pick these up. Also, Pongify almost counts as a fixer for Sprout Swarm, don't forget! And yes, also pick up answers to opposing Swarms. Counterspells are the best, but also Festering March, Psychotic Episode, etc.
Anyway, I'll return to my draft - final is starting! I've always hoped that I'd be asked this question in a top 8 questionnaire: "How much do you play Magic Online in an average week?" so that I could answer "Normal weeks: about 2-3. Time Spiral flashback draft weeks: 50+"
2) Mindstab was definitely a sleeper when the set first came out, by sleeper I mean upgraded from "total garbage" -> "I'd play 1"
3) Empty the Warrens & 4) Grapeshot - these are both totally reasonable to really good cards - in triple Timespiral draft. I don't remember how they survived the transition to full block. I think I remember them being very good.
5) Gorgon Recluse - a card I hardly remember, which can't be a good sign.
6) Knight - Garbage.
1) Brain Gorgers - I've played them, but you really had to be piling on the pressure to make this good.
2) Vampiric Link - The one situation I remember playing against this the exact scenario you described happened. I hit him for lethal, trigger on stack, game over.
3) Stingscourger - I'm not sure what my ceiling on this guy is, higher than 2. I really liked him.
4) Fury Charm - Ugh.
5) Brute Force - This card is awesome.
1) Augur of Skulls - Above average for black common creatures.
2) Riddle of Lightning - A card I really, really liked.
3) Grinning Ignus - More cute than good. I thought the storm cards in TSP were good though, so I wouldn't mind playing this as filler for the possibility of going big.
4) Putrid Cyclops - Totally unplayable.
5) Fomori Nomad - Strangely, surprisingly good. Bashes right through all the cute things people are trying to do.
6) Grave Scrabbler - I tried playing these more than I should have, I don't think it's very good.
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Anyway, card evaluations.
Time Spiral:
1) Orcish Cannonade - it's a 2-for-1. What more can you ask for? Solid card in my book, always happy to run a couple, though if you have more it starts to become sketchy. I really like them in conjunction with Essence Warden in my R/G decks.
2) Mindstab - I like it a lot. The format is very grindy, and this often does rob them for three cards even when cast on turn 6 or 7.
3) Empty the Warrens - it's decent, but I'm not an enormous fan of drafting around it. 1/1 Goblins are answered pretty easily, so I prefer taking them late-ish and only get storm of the odd suspend card or whatnot. I'm not playing stupid Grinning Ignuses for this, anyway.
4) Grapeshot - solid removal, behind Rift Bolt and Lightning Axe but on par with or better than Orcish Cannonade (see how much removal there is? I love it!).
5) Gorgon Recluse - I love it in U/B or B/R madness, otherwise I try to stay away.
6) Skulking Knight - I will never play this guy.
Planar Chaos:
1) Brain Gorgers - okay if you have a lot of good meaningful madness outlets (Looter il-Kor, Trespasser il-Vec, Lightning Axe, Dreamscape Artist...), otherwise unplayable.
2) Vampiric Link - I do not consider this playable, but you might want to watch the final of Pro Tour Geneva '07
3) Stingscourger - very good card, and I could easily be persuaded into playing 3 or more in an aggressive deck.
4) Fury Charm - if you somehow end up short on playables (should be difficult in this format), it's not the literal worst, but I am very unhappy if I have to play this.
5) Brute Force - strong trick, better than Giant Growth not least because they won't necessarily expect a pump spell. Red is sometimes a very controlling color, though, so some decks should actually leave it on the sidelines. It's not unusual that I only have 8-9 creatures in my control decks in this format.
Future Sight:
1) Augur of Skulls - I hate playing against this. Should tell you enough! He does something on the board & is a constant headache for your opponent. Solid value guy.
2) Riddle of Lightning - always happy to run a couple of these. They may be slightly unreliable, but as long as you're not too ambitious you should be able to find something & get some nice scry action. Often works as a finisher.
3) Grinning Ignus - I feel I've done something wrong if I'm playing this.
4) Putrid Cyclops - it says "putrid" right there in the name.
5) Fomori Nomad - 4 toughness is a lot. Many removal spells only deal 3, so a 4/4 vanilla guy is very big. Granted, he's not an exciting card or anything, but he's a bit more than he might look like at first glance.
6) Grave Scrabbler - excellent if you're madness, horribly unplayable if you aren't.
In my last draft, I ended up going red-black, with two Tendrils of Corruption and two Urborg Syphon Mages and some madness cards and a few burn/kill spells. Round 1, faced a U/R/W deck with Lightning Angel, Serra Avenger, and Numot, along with two Bonded Fetches to find them. Managed to win 2-1 anyway. Round 2, got defeated 2-1 by the nut G/W sliver deck, featuring multiple Might, Sinew, Gemhide, Watcher, Lymph, etc. slivers. Stole one game with a Dunemantle Rider, or whatever it's called, the BB 1/1 that has pro-green and grows. But in the end, the smaller size of my creatures, plus the fact that in six games I never once had Stronghold Overseer in my hand (it was in my deck though, I checked), meant I couldn't keep up. Tendrils doesn't do enough against 6 or 8 toughness slivers. Oh well.
I dislike black more than Sene, I think - I actively try to avoid black unless I'm splashing for Soot or Teachings or suchlike. I would, for example, happily take a premium URG common over Stronghold Overseer in the sure and certain knowledge that I'll end up with a better creature base that way. That's doubly true in these flashback drafts - there's always too many "worst color" drafters and not enough "best color" drafters in these things because not everyone knows the format in depth.