We can extrapolate a lot from the
team draft chart for the GP Providence finals. All six players stuck to their original colours, to the point where they all maindecked their first four picks of the draft. I shuffled the chart around a bit to see how the decks came together.
Maindeck cards by set:
Alex John and Eric Berger each got only 6 cards out of pack 2 (Gatecrash) -- Berger because he wasn't in a Gatecrash guild, John because his neighbour Andrew Longo cut off UG.
In total, the players maindecked less of Gatecrash than the other sets, even though most of them were aiming for a Gatecrash guild (John for UG, Lax and McCullough for WR, and Phillipps for WB). The high Dragon's Maze count is inflated by the extra dual land in every pack of that set.
Maindeck cards by when they were picked:
Of his 18 "early picks," Longo played 14 -- every other player used 16 or 17. Longo hate-drafted a
Mercurial Chemister, and he early-picked
Steeple Roc, Inspiration, and Azorius Guildgate that all ended up missing the cut for his deck.
The late picks that made Longo's maindeck were
Crosstown Courier,
Deputy of Acquittals,
Runner's Bane,
Totally Lost, and an
Azorius Keyrune -- all aggressive / tempo cards compared to the early picks he cut. Longo went 2-0 in this draft.
Dual lands:
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 11
- The highest-picked land was a 2nd-pick Rakdos Guildgate that Eric Berger took to splash
Toil // Trouble with.
- The lowest-picked land was a Boros Guildgate that went 11th to Ari Lax, after Matt McCullough passed it for a
Towering Thunderfist.
- 3 of the 14 dual lands in the draft were not maindecked -- including the on-colour Azorius Guildgate that stayed in Longo's sideboard.
Mana artifacts:
4, 9, 10, 12, 12, 13, 14, 14, 14
- If we only count Cluestones and Keyrunes, the highest-picked mana artifacts went 4th and 9th to Alex John for his five-colour deck. John also 1st-picked a Prophetic Prism in Gatecrash.
- 5 of the 9 mana artifacts from this draft ended up in people's decks. Longo played the Azorius Keyrune he got as his last pick of the draft.
Out-of-colour picks:
(cards picked 12 or higher that were uncastable in the player's eventual deck)
- 4 of the 6 players ran straight two-colour decks (or two colours plus a split card).
- Even though he was in a Gatecrash guild (BW), Phillipps (2-0) picked up some red cards in Gatecrash while he was in front of the red drafters for a pack. Then he was behind the red drafters again in RTR so he stuck to retreated to his normal colours. Of course, his BW deck beat both the red drafters who had cut him off.
- McCullough (0-2) drafted RGW for pack one, but then he opened all RW cards in Gatecrash and settled in those colours. He also early-picked a Cartel Aristocrat and an Augur Spree, but he never got the black Guildgates or anything else to cast them.
- Lax drafted deep WR first two packs and cut some good anti-WR in the third pack. He had the option of going black after pack one, but he took
Wojek Halberdiers over
Killing Glare first pick of Gatecrash and only saw WR after that.
- Lax's first two picks were red cards, passing a Putrefy and 2
Viashino Firstblades -- presumably he's hoping for RG or RB from here. Then he got passed Viashino Firstblades (which he took over two
Rakdos Drakes), so he and his teammate McCullough nearby both ended up drafting the battalion deck. Their decks were OK but they went 0-3 combined.
- The 3
Druid's Deliverance and 1
Downsize in the draft were all picked off-colour, presumably by people who didn't want to play against them.
- Three of the RtR guilds were basically undrafted (BR, GR, RU), while all five of the GTC guilds were drafted. WR was fought over but ended up supporting two decks. UG was fought over and did not end up supporting two decks.
Alex John's draft:
John (0-1) drafted UG cards for his first four picks, then had to choose between a
Jelenn Sphinx (UW) and
Haunter of Nightveil (UB). He took the UB card and gave his neighbour Longo the Sphinx, which inadvertently turned Longo's GW draft into a GWU draft. John then saw some "big spells" (Beck // Call,
Blast of Genius) and a Cluestone, giving him the option of a multi-colour power deck while passing Longo a bunch of "small spells" in green and blue (Simic Guildgate, 2
Runner's Bane). John also got cut when Eric Phillipps took off-colour blue spells (2 Wind Drake).
Longo then took all the UG in Gatecrash, cutting John off UG completely. John had to take some lands and some black spells. He ended up with only 4 Gatecrash spells in his deck.
John entered pack 3 with a UGBrw deck in progress, without many good spells but with 4 dual lands and a Prophetic Prism. His picks were Mizzium Mortars, Runewing, Voidwielder, a Keyrune, Izzet Charm, and a Guildgate. He ended up with kind of a ramp control deck that ran 17 lands + 3 mana artifacts, needing
Gobbling Ooze and
Spawn of Rix Maadi to boost the creature count.
Probably if there were an RGD draft format, five-colour decks would be built around early
Axebane Guardians and Gatecreeper Vines. In DGR, though, you pick most of your deck before you can see if you get those cards, so a five-colour deck needs you to do stuff like Cluestone over
Ubul Sar Gatekeepers and 1st-pick Prophetic Prism. In this case, those decisions made sense; John needed every Cluestone / Guildgate / Prism he found, but not having Axebane Guardians or Gatecreeper Vines still meant he had an absurdly high creature curve (0/1/2/1/4/4).
Both John's neighbours went 2-0 with fast creature decks.
