Community

With the lack of mana fixing I agree that splashing Spasm doesn't do enough. You have an Arrest and a Detention Sphere for removal. You'll never get to overload your spasm making it a ground-only single target removal spell that you're sacrificing at least 2 lands for. Going triple mountain for the off chance you get to overload it just seems terrible to me.  Just seems like a mistake. It will hurt more often than it helps.

Way easier to add an inaction injunction and run one of our Rootborn Defenses . Even without a lot of token producers it's still a fine trick. 

I'd go with Lobster667's deck, cut a land, add Inaction Injunction, as well as cut a Dramatic Rescue for a Rootborn Defenses. Reasoning that we don't have a lot of creatures and can use all the blow-out potential we have. Normally I'd cut Mizzium Skin instead, but we have no way of attacking on the ground and all of our air assaults have 1 toughness. I really want to protect either the Soulsworn Spirit or whatever gets the Knightly Valor, and Mizzium Skin lets you do that. If they take out one of those 2 guys then our entire deck is shut down by a single pegasus.

Dec 26, 2012 -- 6:22AM, Alerys wrote:

With the lack of mana fixing I agree that splashing Spasm doesn't do enough. You have an Arrest and a Detention Sphere for removal. You'll never get to overload your spasm making it a ground-only single target removal spell that you're sacrificing at least 2 lands for. Going triple mountain for the off chance you get to overload it just seems terrible to me.  Just seems like a mistake. It will hurt more often than it helps.

Way easier to add an inaction injunction and run one of our Rootborn Defenses . Even without a lot of token producers it's still a fine trick. 

I'd go with Lobster667's deck, cut a land, add Inaction Injunction, as well as cut a Dramatic Rescue for a Rootborn Defenses. Reasoning that we don't have a lot of creatures and can use all the blow-out potential we have. Normally I'd cut Mizzium Skin instead, but we have no way of attacking on the ground and all of our air assaults have 1 toughness. I really want to protect either the Soulsworn Spirit or whatever gets the Knightly Valor, and Mizzium Skin lets you do that. If they take out one of those 2 guys then our entire deck is shut down by a single pegasus.

Good points!

I don't know how crazy i am about cutting Dramatic Rescue though. That card has done so much for me. I think the rescue is better than rootborn at the moment. I like bouncing their big guys and or pumped up creatures when I'm creature light.

One thing I do want to point out is that all of our bounce and detain REALLY helps out Jace!

I count 28 playables..not counting splashes.

You can't NOT count the Azorius Guildgates. Those are playables that were picked over other things with the thought of fixing mana.

@pinky-What's your deck...and why?

Dec 26, 2012 -- 11:45AM, krarks_pinky wrote:

Maybe I was using the term "playable" a bit loosely; it means something in my mind but something else in a forum like this. Let me change that word to "cards that make a cohesive deck without splashing, and not counting lands".  You need about 23 of this kind of card, plus or minus 1, to have a good deck.

I put ** next to each in the list that I consider in this group.

Dec 25, 2012 -- 6:09AM, Urzasapprentice wrote:

Here is your pool:

2x Eyes in the skies  **
2x Azorius Arrester **
Arrest **
Azorius Charm **
2x Dramatic Rescue **
Jace, Architect of Thought **
Soulsworn Spirit **
2x Voidwielder **
Dead Reveler
Street Spasm
Lyev Skyknight **
Rakdos Charm  
Guild Feud
Syncopate **
Detention Sphere **
Search The City
Mizzium Skin **
Azorius Justiciar **
2x Keening Apparition **
Blustersquall **
Faerie Impostor **
Inaction Injunction **
Racecourse fury
Archweaver
Urban Burgeoning
2x Rootborn Defense  
Oak Street Innkeeper
Firemind's Foresight
2x Search Warrant
Rakdos Shred-freak
Pithing Needle FOIL
2x azorius guildgate
Tablet of the Guilds
Trestle Troll
Horncaller's Chant
Survey the Wreckage
Knightly Valor **

Construct your deck and make your argument for the inclusion of cards that aren't obvious.

We will begin shortly...

Okay this time I counted 23, so I guess that's the deck.
To get up to 28 I'm not sure what you're counting. Apparently the 2 guildgates, okay fine, we are using different definitions of the word. They are not helping you get up to 23 non-land cards. Then there's the 2 rootborn defenses which are borderline, in my opinion, for this deck. But yes, they should be considered. And then to get to your 28 number you must be counting street spasm.
 
Regarding street spasm, you could argue for or against splashing it, and for me it's against, because of lack of good fixing. You have to put in mountains to play this 1 card, I don't like that, I think it was well articulated already earlier in the thread.

I don't count lands in the group that I described above because they take the place of basic lands generally. You still need 23 (+/- 1) non-guildgate cards. In every draft I can recall from recent memory, and all the ones you can watch on youtube, one should easily have more than 23 cards (non-lands) that one could play in the deck, and it's always a question of which ones will go in the deck. You have options - should you use this card or that card, which would make the curve smoother, which would help accomplish what the deck is trying to do, etc. This one has 23 (25 if you count rootborn, 26 with spasm, still shockingly low in my opinion), so there's none of that decision process. To me, that is crazy and something didn't go well in this draft.

Pithing Needle -whether you like it or not, IS a playable (I've played it in about six drafts mainboard-low on good cards, and it was never once a dead card.)

I spoke at the beginning about the pools short-comings, the idea is to maximize the deck and play it as best we can.

I was only speaking of the guildgates because they were cards that were picked out of the draft. They don't count towards our 23 but they were definitely picked over other cards in the pool which might have lead to the state of less creature playables.

Your job is to make this pool as solid as possible. Then prepare for the match. Which is against a high level player (not me =  P) who drafted from the SAME pool, and picked the pool he liked best (I choose for US the pool he liked the least).

It looks like everyone is pretty close on build (obviously). The only discrepency being Mizzium Skin versus Rootborn Defense for card number 23.

With this build which card is REALLY better?

I'm interested to hear everyone's ideas...then we will shuffle up!