Because most of the decks running Champion of the Parish were decks like Boros (ie. weenie decks) which had a bad matchup against the midrange aggro decks like Naya. People quickly realized that control was overall pretty weak in the format and the result was that people were free to play midrange in an effort to combat the weenie decks.

Dear Paul Ritzl,

"Tough ****."

I spelled his name wrong.
Sorry Paul Rietzl.

An interesting draft I just played. White/Blue, but without any of the typical 4-drop players like Mist Raven and Seraph of Dawn (who I passed). Two opponents had Jubilation Angel, who I would have liked to see, but I got my own fair share.

http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=3a4bk

And for the visually inclined:

seems strong. Don't like geist snatch much, but seems fine in this deck

Double nearheath pilgrim + tripple latchseeker is gross.


side note: I have seen conjurer's closet well over 10 times first pick (that rare follows me everywhere) and have seen cavern of souls 0 times.
/random complaint

God damn Red/White is so insane if packs are red saturated/ not too many red drafters (bad red/white is REALLY bad tho).
Just had the close to the nut draw in AVR (minus a 1 drop)

Turn 1: Blank
Turn 2: Kruin Striker
Turn 3: Riot Ringleader
Turn 4: Thatchers Revolt + Banners raised

Guy had 17 life, made the mistake of not blocking, trying to go for the alpha strike next turn. He was on the play 17 to -3, turn 4 on the draw :P

His line was
Turn 1: Vexing Devil (took 4 damage)
Turn 2: Lightning Mauler
Turn 3: Fervant Cathar
Turn 4: Stoneright + Cryptkeeper

Pretty epic game

Lol.. Red white is the best in the AVR. you can win like turn 6/5. Even so you have a lot of ways to win . And they are always in defense trying to stabelize.

At least from my experience.

You just need to construct the deck the humans and all the senergy .

I drafted a pretty nice UG deck with triple Mist Raven. It was really good. I had no problem with the two WR decks I faced.

Yeah, problem with WR is you really need ALL the components to be very good, or be facing slow decks that don't have multiple ways to stabalize.

If the components don't come together the deck is pretty weak, and you really have no way of knowing that the components will come together when you decide to draft red. It's really about having 9+ interactive playables than having 3-4 very strong cards + good support, so it's not really the color to go into later in the draft.

If you routinely played 4-3-2-2 I would be very aprehensive about going into red. 8-4, the gamble for having the nut deck is worth it.

White/Blue/Green all have multiple ways of making your deck competitive.
Although, a lot of the 4 drops are overrated by the simple fact that there are so many solid 4 drops at common in these color combos. Especially blue.

I feel green is overdrafted too. The color is pretty much Forcemage, Ranger and... nothing.

don't forget the wolfirs

The 2-drop? Sure, he is fine but nothing special. Not a huge fan of X/1 in format, black has ghoulflesh and executioner, red has +1/-1, aggravate (def. underrated, I have 5-1'd with the card) and 2R aura that makes a guy prodical, while has combat shock. Ofc I still play all 2/1's I have most of the time since there aren't very make 2-drops in format.

Sure, every color has good rares and uncommons and Wolfir is ridiculous. But it actually makes you less likely to go green, as anyone who opens one will go green. My point is, green is not very lucrative color to go to with commons only.

I feel the same way about the black decks. You really need Homicidal Seclusion and Barter In Blood to make your deck competitive. And counting on uncommons is really risky.

Yeah agree green is overdrafted and the premium commons are pretty thin.

That being said I think random big ground creatures are pretty decent in this format due to poor removal and tempo/agro isn't really too much of a deck.

I've been really surprised how many games I've won from cards like nettleswine, yew spirit and wildwood geist.

My main experience drafting has been with M12 and INN, and in both those formats, those cards are borderline 22/23 card and disliked having to put them in my deck. Could just have a biased sample (a big problem when assessing magic cards), but they all have performed decently well.. Especially the nettleswine.