MTG Salvation

This was a FKK draft. While I freely admit that this deck is all kinds of crazy good--the mana base was not. I don't feel I constructed that part of the deck correctly...white is obviously the main color, but my early drops are in black/green. What combination of lands would you have used for this? (I'll post my base after I get an idea of what others would have done.)

Well, you certainly made mistakes at the drafting stage...you don't have nearly enough fixing to be fully three colors like you are with any consistency. If you had other options, I would cut the Ancestor, Emissary, Despise, Bitter Revelation, and maybe harsh sustenance. If you're not getting fixing, you really should be build 2 color + splash.

That said, given the situation I'd 6 plains, and 5 each of swamp and forest. I'd expect to lose a few games along the way due to not being able to cast all of my spells.

I agree with each of Dorvan's points.

To go along with Dorvan's point, you really don't want early drops in three different colors. Having Disowned Ancestor, Sultai Emissary, Ainok Bond-Kin, Heir of the Wilds and Highland Game will make it hard for any deck to get a consistent start, let alone one that only has two duals. This format can make it easier to splash some powerful spells at the top end of your curve, but you still want to stick to two colors (with one main one if you can) at the low end of the curve.

All of your best cards are in white by far. It's not even remotely close. That said, you aren't super deep in terms of card quality in white after Citadel Siege, Elite Scaleguard and Abzan Falconer. I do wonder how your draft went. My guess, and I could be wrong about this considering I don't know the decisions you had to make, is that you should have focused much more sharply on picking up white and one other color. It looks like you waffled between black and green and ended up to spread out.

How did the deck do? Other than a couple power cards it doesn't look to me like it's all kinds of crazy good. You have only 13 creatures, some of which you might not have the mana to cast on time, which makes it much harder to use Harsh Sustenance and your pump spells.

Quote from DSF »

To go along with Dorvan's point, you really don't want early drops in three different colors. Having Disowned Ancestor, Sultai Emissary, Ainok Bond-Kin, Heir of the Wilds and Highland Game will make it hard for any deck to get a consistent start, let alone one that only has two duals. This format can make it easier to splash some powerful spells at the top end of your curve, but you still want to stick to two colors (with one main one if you can) at the low end of the curve.

All of your best cards are in white by far. It's not even remotely close. That said, you aren't super deep in terms of card quality in white after Citadel Siege, Elite Scaleguard and Abzan Falconer. I do wonder how your draft went. My guess, and I could be wrong about this considering I don't know the decisions you had to make, is that you should have focused much more sharply on picking up white and one other color. It looks like you waffled between black and green and ended up to spread out.

How did the deck do? Other than a couple power cards it doesn't look to me like it's all kinds of crazy good. You have only 13 creatures, some of which you might not have the mana to cast on time, which makes it much harder to use Harsh Sustenance and your pump spells.

I agree on everybody's point that better fixing would have been optimal, but most people had trouble fixing...because one drafter at the table prioritized non-basics first (taking 9 of them). I actually played that guy in the finals and won, though it wasn't easy. Turns out 5-color good stuff with fixing is pretty powerful. I may have exaggerated a bit saying "all kinds of crazy good", but Citadel Siege, Abzan Falconer, Abzan Guide, and Elite Scaleguard did most of the work. I wouldn't main-deck Despise again and taking Kill Shots over Smite the Monstrous wasn't that good a decision in hindsight. Still, somehow, I got there. I went 4 Swamp/6 Forest/5 Plains...perhaps it wasn't so much the mana base, but my drafting. Something I had not considered given my record.

Yeah, the big problem this deck has is it is running Disowned Ancestor, Sultai Emissary and Despise when ideally black would be a light splash only.

What white and green sideboard cards did you have? Because the manabase I'm wanting to run is this

Quote from magicmerl »

Yeah, the big problem this deck has is it is running Disowned Ancestor, Sultai Emissary and Despise when ideally black would be a light splash only.

What white and green sideboard cards did you have? Because the manabase I'm wanting to run is this

TheArchitect's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
1x Blossoming Sands 1x Scoured Barrens 3x Swamp 6x Plains 7x Forest

On-color cards: Arashin War Beast, Abzan Advantage, Tusked Colossodon
Off-color cards: Bathe in Dragonfire

I had about 20 playables...but picked up a Wooded Foothills. Decided against splashing the Dragonfire on account of the fact that my mana base was already in bad shape.

Pretty sad. I'd probably run the manabase I suggested, along with Despise, Arashin War Beast and Tusked Colossodon.

I'd play Abzan Advantage over any of those and even some of the things he's mainboarding. It has solid synergy with a handful of his cards, can sometimes trade for a creature as a weak combat trick and will at some point save you from something like a Jeskai Runemark or Citadel Siege. It's certainly not a good maindeck card, but some of these other options just aren't good cards at all and don't work with his strategy (Arashin War Beast, Tusked Colossodon, Cached Defenses, Sagu Archer, etc.).