I've found it to be borderline unplayable and definitely not something I would pick highly. A 2/1 flier is particularly poorly positioned in this format with Vampire Envoy, Aeronaut, and Gravity Negator at common and the format is fairly fast that not being able to block (especially against something like a Saddleback Lagac) is a major drawback. Finally, it effectively is a two "color" commitment for an effect that isn't necessarily that great (especially in a format with Scions). It's context dependent -- on paper, close-to-flying Nekrataal should be great, but this does not seem like the format for it.
I get what you are saying about green and blue, but being able to answer bombs is important in sealed deck, and Ruinous Path and Grip of Desolation both do that (and never mind the opportunities when they are so good that they are bombs themselves, e.g. when you awaken Path or Grip a creature and a land that has been awakened). Your white is so good and deep that it seems like the insurance against bomb creatures with unconditional removal was really important. Those UW and WG decks can't handle troublesome creature nearly as well.
Also, I think you are overthinking Sludge Crawler -- it's good because it can trade early and also trade late, if you need the mana sink and/or get flooded. BW needs a two-drop and Sludge Crawler is better than most two drops in the format. Ondu Greathorn is really meh; I'd cut that for Crawler and be happy with your BW list.
Seems like straight B/W -- there is no question you are playing white and the black gives you two solid pieces of removal (Ruinous Path and [[Grip of Desolation) while also letting you smooth out your curve with a couple of powerful three-drops (Malakir Familiar and Drana's Emissary). Sludge Crawler is a fine early game card, too. I would not play Smothering Abomination -- without token makers, it just seems too high risk/high reward and your deck is so powerful already that I don't want to mess around with it.
I would not have double splashed. In this build, Tide Drifter should absolutely be in your maindeck, and I would play that over the Skyrider Elf. I'm also not a fan of Anticipate, and would probably play Boiling Earth over it.
I would need to layout your deck and look at it more closely, but I feel like this could have just been a really solid R/W build -- I'm not sure what blue is really getting us beyond Drowner of Hope. You have a lot of ally synergy -- Firemantle Mage, Chasm Guide, and good early drops with double Kor Castigator, Expedition Envoy, and Cliffside Lookout. Plus double Courier Griffin and Ghostly Sentinel for evasion. Your build just feels kind of clunky to me; you have defensive early game, some ingestor/processor stuff, but not much of a late game. While I'm not a huge fan of going aggro, the R/W deck seems to have a good curve and decent reach in the late game, too.
I agree both that Blue and White are both weaker than Red and Black (I personally think Green is the worst in this format), but also not so bad that if you are able to lap them up, you can get a decent deck (my anecdotal evidence is I faced three straight B/R decks in an 8/4 draft last night, so we might be at the stage of the draft "meta" where people have recognized the deepest/most powerful colors but are not yet compensating by switching to other colors).
One thing I noticed, Phyrre -- all your decks are 18 lands. Is that because of a decent amount of mana-sinks/morphs, a general conception of this being an 18-land format, or deck building preference?
Yes, the prize support switch over is a welcome change. A bit depressing it took them this long to figure it out (MODO is such a pure supply-and-demand driven market), but this should keep pack prices reasonable for the next month.
I am not a fan. Not being able to block is a serious downside in this format -- too many decks will just Dash right past you if you are playing a 4-drop which doesn't block.
Additionally, while it seems like he'd be synergistic with Exploit, the fact he gets expensive to re-cast (and, again, has no influence on the board the turn he is cast) means he's likely to be outclassed in the late game.
A 7 drop in this format needs to either instantly win the game when played or catch you up when behind. Deathbringer Regent, new Atarka and Volcanic Vision all do this. Old Atarka, Arashin Sovereign don't. I think a good middle ground is a card like Sandsteppe Mastodon or old Ojutai. That's what I consider to be the bottom end of 7 drops I'll play. Foe-Razer Regent is another solid yes. If I had to rank them it would be:
Oh, yeah, Dragonlord Atarka is definitely the best of the 7 CMC cards, not even close.
I'm surprised you'd rank Sandsteppe Mastodon over Ojutai, Soul of Winter. Ojutai is psudeo-removal on a hard to kill 5-power flier; I think it's better than Atarka, World Render since it basically makes it impossible for them to attack while also swinging in for 5 every turn.
However, this argument is getting a bit pedantic (my fault for constantly bringing it up!). The real question is whether or not *any* 7 CMC is even worth it (OK, Dragonlord Atarka is since it's pretty close to "win the game if cast"). We need to know a) average game length of DTK draft (not currently available) and b) the average turn that a 17 or 18 land deck hits its 7th land (which is something that I should know, but don't).
In my view Deathbringer Regent and Volcanic Vision are close to being bombs and I would never pass either of them P1P1 over an uncommon or common. 7 mana is a lot but they will often just win the game when cast.
This is interesting and I think it feeds into the discussion we've been having about Atarka, World Render (though, I do think Deathbringer Regent and Volcanic Vision are both much better than that Atarka because they both have significant impact when you resolve them, but Atarka needs to survive to your next turn).
The bigger question is how good is a 7-drop in this format? Does the average game go long enough that you can expect to cast them? My suspicion is the answer is no, but I have not kept track of my avergae game length. Pure MTGO normally has good stats on this when release events in, so hopefully those will be posted soon.
At the moment I would say B/R is the best colours to draft since Dash is so strong, plus B/R has the best removal in these sets. Some exploit and Formidable helps things too.
However drafting Enemy Colours is the better choice.
B/W - Splash Blue for Ojutai or Silumgar Broods
W/R - Splash Green for Dromoka or Atarka Brood
R/U - Splash Black for Kolaghan or Silumgar Brood
U/G - Splash White for Ojutai or Dromoka Brood
G/B - Splash Red for Atarka or Kolaghan Brood.
So instead of locking yourself to one Brood in Allied pairs, Drafting enemy Colours gives you most options of Clan Abilities, as well as lets you splash one colour for 2 possible Broods of Dragons. The M/R/U or Frf R dragons. It just depends if they get passed or not.
I'm not sure how much splashing I would be doing in this limited format. It's very aggressive and there is only one common fixing in DTK (Evolving Wilds) and then only one pack of FRF lands, where you might just whiff on the fixing you need. I wouldn't say never to splashing, but it's certainly not something I would go into a draft planning to do.
I wouldn't overcomplicate this: draft two colors (any two colors -- enemy and allied pairs are equally strong) and maybe consider splashing if you open a bomb or if the draft goes a bit wonky early on (like if your first three packs are Pacifism, Ultimate Price, and Roast and you settle into R/W, you might want to still play Ultimate Price), which means prioritizing mana-fixing in FRF (which isn't hard to do since FRF is low-quality commons).
Enemy color pairs white-black and green-black have the advantage of being able to pretty reliably get one or two good multi-color commons in pack 3 FRF as Harsh Sustenance and Grim Contest are good cards, the other common multi-color cards are not generally good in my view although War Flare is good in the right deck.
War Flare has gotten a bit better since it is quite good with Dragon Fodder, which often goes around 5th-8th pick. Since War Flare almost always wheels, it's nice to have synergy between late picks.
This card seems worse than Enhanced Awareness, I card I was happy to play in control decks. Forcing you to play them at the end of the turn is ... uh ... not good.
That's not what Commune with Lava does -- you have until your next end step to play the cards. So, if you cast this on your opponent's turn, you have your next turn to play the spells. With that in mind, it is fairly comparable to Enhanced Awareness, which is playable, but not something you really want to be happy to take highly.
I think my main issue with Elusive Spellfist is that it is Blue, which I have been thoroughly underwhelmed by in this format. I agree it's not really a "build around" card and more of an early blocker (though, a 1/3 doesn't block that well for that long) with the upside of getting through board stalls, but I would only be happy taking it on the wheel.
Blood-Chin is fine as a 3/3 for 3 but the warrior deck isn't really a thing anymore so the ability is rarely useful.
I disagree strongly with this and would happily take Blood-Chin Fanatic over any common (especially Pacifism, which I don't think is as good as at least Flatten, Tail Slash, or Sprinting Warbrute -- the drawback of having a creature sacrificed to Exploit or still around to fight is non-negligible).
A 3/3 for 3 is quite good in this format (above the curve in a format with a lot of morphs), and, more importantly, it's not like it requires dedicated drafting of a "warrior deck" -- there are plenty of good common warriors that fit into any B/W deck (and, in general, I like B/W as an underdrafted color combination since you can get Harsh Sustenance late in pack three, but would be happy with Blood-Chin Fanatic in any B/x deck).
Blood-Chin Fanatic's ability is extremely powerful in an aggressive format; it both can seal the game with unblockable damage while also gaining life to keep you ahead in a race.
With regards to a Liliana reprint, I feel like we are a near lock to have an Innistrad flashback draft sometime in the next couple of months. There should be at least a couple of Cube drafts going on (they like to do Cube when paper releases happen, and we've got MM2 and Origins this summer) and, with MM2 hype and WOTC pushing Modern, it only makes sense they would do INN flashback to help make those cards more affordable. I was honestly surprised they did ROE instead of INN last time Cube was around.
With that said, flashback drafts generally only lead to temporary price decreases, so if Lilianas drop to 60 tix or something, it might be worth picking them up then.
Also, I think you are overthinking Sludge Crawler -- it's good because it can trade early and also trade late, if you need the mana sink and/or get flooded. BW needs a two-drop and Sludge Crawler is better than most two drops in the format. Ondu Greathorn is really meh; I'd cut that for Crawler and be happy with your BW list.
10 Plains/8 Swamps seems right.
I would need to layout your deck and look at it more closely, but I feel like this could have just been a really solid R/W build -- I'm not sure what blue is really getting us beyond Drowner of Hope. You have a lot of ally synergy -- Firemantle Mage, Chasm Guide, and good early drops with double Kor Castigator, Expedition Envoy, and Cliffside Lookout. Plus double Courier Griffin and Ghostly Sentinel for evasion. Your build just feels kind of clunky to me; you have defensive early game, some ingestor/processor stuff, but not much of a late game. While I'm not a huge fan of going aggro, the R/W deck seems to have a good curve and decent reach in the late game, too.
One thing I noticed, Phyrre -- all your decks are 18 lands. Is that because of a decent amount of mana-sinks/morphs, a general conception of this being an 18-land format, or deck building preference?
Yes, the prize support switch over is a welcome change. A bit depressing it took them this long to figure it out (MODO is such a pure supply-and-demand driven market), but this should keep pack prices reasonable for the next month.
Additionally, while it seems like he'd be synergistic with Exploit, the fact he gets expensive to re-cast (and, again, has no influence on the board the turn he is cast) means he's likely to be outclassed in the late game.
Oh, yeah, Dragonlord Atarka is definitely the best of the 7 CMC cards, not even close.
I'm surprised you'd rank Sandsteppe Mastodon over Ojutai, Soul of Winter. Ojutai is psudeo-removal on a hard to kill 5-power flier; I think it's better than Atarka, World Render since it basically makes it impossible for them to attack while also swinging in for 5 every turn.
However, this argument is getting a bit pedantic (my fault for constantly bringing it up!). The real question is whether or not *any* 7 CMC is even worth it (OK, Dragonlord Atarka is since it's pretty close to "win the game if cast"). We need to know a) average game length of DTK draft (not currently available) and b) the average turn that a 17 or 18 land deck hits its 7th land (which is something that I should know, but don't).
This is interesting and I think it feeds into the discussion we've been having about Atarka, World Render (though, I do think Deathbringer Regent and Volcanic Vision are both much better than that Atarka because they both have significant impact when you resolve them, but Atarka needs to survive to your next turn).
The bigger question is how good is a 7-drop in this format? Does the average game go long enough that you can expect to cast them? My suspicion is the answer is no, but I have not kept track of my avergae game length. Pure MTGO normally has good stats on this when release events in, so hopefully those will be posted soon.
I'm not sure how much splashing I would be doing in this limited format. It's very aggressive and there is only one common fixing in DTK (Evolving Wilds) and then only one pack of FRF lands, where you might just whiff on the fixing you need. I wouldn't say never to splashing, but it's certainly not something I would go into a draft planning to do.
I wouldn't overcomplicate this: draft two colors (any two colors -- enemy and allied pairs are equally strong) and maybe consider splashing if you open a bomb or if the draft goes a bit wonky early on (like if your first three packs are Pacifism, Ultimate Price, and Roast and you settle into R/W, you might want to still play Ultimate Price), which means prioritizing mana-fixing in FRF (which isn't hard to do since FRF is low-quality commons).
War Flare has gotten a bit better since it is quite good with Dragon Fodder, which often goes around 5th-8th pick. Since War Flare almost always wheels, it's nice to have synergy between late picks.
That's not what Commune with Lava does -- you have until your next end step to play the cards. So, if you cast this on your opponent's turn, you have your next turn to play the spells. With that in mind, it is fairly comparable to Enhanced Awareness, which is playable, but not something you really want to be happy to take highly.
I disagree strongly with this and would happily take Blood-Chin Fanatic over any common (especially Pacifism, which I don't think is as good as at least Flatten, Tail Slash, or Sprinting Warbrute -- the drawback of having a creature sacrificed to Exploit or still around to fight is non-negligible).
A 3/3 for 3 is quite good in this format (above the curve in a format with a lot of morphs), and, more importantly, it's not like it requires dedicated drafting of a "warrior deck" -- there are plenty of good common warriors that fit into any B/W deck (and, in general, I like B/W as an underdrafted color combination since you can get Harsh Sustenance late in pack three, but would be happy with Blood-Chin Fanatic in any B/x deck).
Blood-Chin Fanatic's ability is extremely powerful in an aggressive format; it both can seal the game with unblockable damage while also gaining life to keep you ahead in a race.
[Edits for spelling and spacing.]
With that said, flashback drafts generally only lead to temporary price decreases, so if Lilianas drop to 60 tix or something, it might be worth picking them up then.