p1p4 baloth is filler and is not even in the discussion. it’s between chronomaton and crippling blight. I’d take chronomaton.

p2p3 corpse. he beats for 2, rather than 1. you have plenty of removal so the shooting effect isn’t that special for you.

p2p5 execution vs. rummaging goblin. I would probably take the execution as well but you should at least mention the goblin for how important it is to decks like this – it provides a source of card advantage and protection from flooding, which can often be the downfall of removal heavy decks. (if you get flooded, or your opponent plays a card that takes you 2 removal spells to kill (talrand’s invocation, a big green guy if you don’t have murder) you can end up losing as _they_ attrition _you_ out. this is a very real danger if their threats are more efficient than your remova.l). I would’ve expected to see another goblin later in the draft though.

p2p6 servant over 2nd cower. cower is just ok in this format. it can be a blowout but it can also be kind of dead. servant is fragile, but it hits hard when the board is clear and trades up on defense.

p3p2 ring of xathrid by about 10 miles. this was huge mistake – you _severely_ underestimate how good the black ring in a deck that can support it. (it’s insane)

p3p9 I think ghoul is what you want. mark is very good but ghoul is a resilient finisher that lets you grind people out once you’ve cleared their board. again, it’s a source of card advantage in a deck with lots of removal (if you know you’re going to be going 1 for 1 with other decks you want to make sure you have a plan for the lategame – either bombs or some type of card advantage (resilient creatures like ghoul), rather than accepting a topdeck war). you seemed like you were aware of this when you talked about fire elemental. mark is great but you probably wouldn’t need the life very much as you’d be able to kill everything they play.

I think you should have least considered taking the dual land over either of those other two very good cards you were considering, simply because your mana was not good (so many double black 3 drops) and you already had a very powerful deck. The land would have made a big difference to your deck. For example, sometimes it can give you the perfect draw or just save you from being colour screwed. These things decide the games so I feel you should at least have looked at the Dragonskull cliff.
Also, the whelp versus the boar pick was correct for your deck, I think, because you had bad fixing and also good removal versus fliers, but in case you had fixing and no removal, I think the flier is much more important. You need some way to deal with blue and white fliers, after all.
I don’t agree with the essence drain versus boar pick in the first pack, because I think the removal was much better, but sometimes you just get all the removal you want and then you can dispense with it to make sure you get the creatures your deck wants.
I think it was bad to pick the Baloth over the black and red spells in pack 1 for signal purposes. It’s just not worth it to do that.
Nice draft. Totally agree with your first pick spear. The card is just the nuts.