MTG Salvation

This is the first pick that actually requires some thought. Upon first glace we have, Perilous Myr, Shatter, and Bloodshot Trainee. With two crush already taking a shatter this high seems like a waste. We are also still pretty low on creatures, so avoiding the spell right now has to be done.

Both creatures have great synergy with our deck, one being on color the other being neutral. I don't like passing red here, but the trainee usually will table unless someone else is heavy into red with equipment which seems unlikely given what we have already picked up. In the end that's going to be the right choice, to take the myr and hope the trainee tables. There is just more synergy with what we have in the deck already with the myr versus the trainee.

Myr please. Dispense Justice just doesn't have enough power to warrant taking it here. And we are very light on dudes right now, so the myr is definitely the winner.

I had a U/W Matchup where those were sided in and I really couldn't do much of anything, between my ember haulers, chandra, burn, and inferno titans ETB ability there wasn't much I could do. It's definitely something to think about when that drops and then you have to deal with jace and gideon back to back turns...

The leyline is pretty rough against certain builds. It completely shuts off Chandra, and makes it very hard to beat a jace without being able to land and stick a fatty. I wouldn't splash white, rather just use rachet bombs instead.

Cut the red take the bolt. The Loxodon is tempting but not really worth it since we know we won't be in white.

Metallic mastery is just not worth the pick, it's most likely not going to make the final cut of cards, and it's not like red doesn't have a trillion different ways to destroy artifacts that don't involve needing a sac outlet. It's pick seven, kinda early for the cute stuff.

As for that religion analogy, like jeaok said vivisection isn't even the clear cut best card in the pack. It's not like we are passing up some crazy good removal spell that's easy to splash. Why force yourself into a second color when we are still in the first pack? We have another 37 picks to go, no need to be in two colors already.

This is a tough pick between the slasher and the skimmer. I don't like vivsection right now because we are low on actual creatures and it's off color. The slasher is the more powerful card, but the skimmer is the safer pick. With the way the draft is headed I think we can get away with picking the slasher and seeing what we get out of the scars packs. If we see a furnace celebration we have the makings of an extremely synergistic deck that will be hard to disrupt.

In my testing of RSZ I've liked it a lot as a two of. It's nice to just have one in your hand in case things get crazy on the board and you need to take care of a creature. The exile effect is also key against emeria/sun titan. Plus it is always a good card to side out in match ups where you don't need the heat.

Pretty bad pack for us, nothing we want. So when that's the case you always take the best card right? Well that's gotta be the sledge. While the priest is a fine card we keep passing more and more white, probably need to avoid it at this point. Unless a sunblast angel is ripped pack 2 of course.

For the first pack it's imp. You can have Imp in a non infect deck and just use it as a finisher. All it takes is one tapped out turn and you swing and win. I had him and a viridian corrupter in a non infect BG dino deck and won a few games just of the imp.

The second pack is tougher but I'd got with the flamefiend because of how rediculous it really is.

I've updated the list after playing it at the local sunday T2 tourney. I only lost to Caw-go due to sideboard Leyline of Sanctity. The other three matches were against a weird mono white deck that I didn't really know what it was trying to do; another mono white control deck that focused on lifegain with lone missionary, baneslayers, and the mystic sword package; and finally a RW battlecry deck that ran bladehold instead of oxid ridge. None of those other decks won a game from me. If I had rachet bombs in the side I probably would have beat caw-go since I took game one. Live and learn...

Here's the updated list with sideboard:

That's another good point to stay in red. If both colors are likely spoken for down the table shouldn't we stick with the color that works best with what we have versus what we might get? If we weren't in red I'd probably snap pick the DO but because we have so many options for artifact removal coming up not only in te rest of this pack but in the next two I just don't really see the need to jump into the second color this early. It's not like we'll splash the DO if we end up not going white. It just makes more logical sense to stick with red unless proven otherwise. Plus taking a second color early is more dissuasion to pick an off color bomb in the second pack.

I threw a build together after reading through some of the later pages of the thread and came up with this after some testing.



I haven't finalized the sideboard but something with act of treason, arc trail, pryoclasm, slagstorm, and manic vandal. Nothing techy. I will probably try out galvanic blast along with adding another crystal ball and see if they are better. I may also move the Effigys to the side and have 4 chalices.

Nope it sure isn't, but it's another reason why shaman is the pick.

I didn't say they were amazing, but the master's call is a pretty solid early pick as well as the Leonin. If the guy two to our left opened mediocre or great white it's not out of the question that they would be in that color since black is obviously gone to our direct left.