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I'm having the HARDEST time deciding on a main stud for my new draft line. I'm looking for Dun, nd1, and no white markings but nothing I've seen yet has the PIZAZZ I'm looking for. So come with me as I experiment! This is the third stud I've messed with in the lab, maybe I'll just never be satisfied but that's ok it's fun to try new things.
This is a long and image heavy thread, be WARNED :))

I'm starting plain with this pretty girl that I bought from the foundation rescue.


Her starting genes are:
E/e A/A D/D Sty/Sty DP/- p/P

The first thing I wanted to do was change her gender and bone weight. I chose 3.2 since he's now going to be the stud for my Strawberry Drafts:


Next I wanted to change the A/A gene to A/a, I feel that this will bring the ability to give a larger variety of colors to his offspring. As you can see it didn't really change much. I could've left him A/A and he would've stayed the same color, but like I said only be heterozygous for Bay/Agouti means more colored offspring depending on the Mare I pair with him.


Next I added one copy of nd-1


And wanted Homozygous Pangare, he was only het. to start. It's a slight different, but I love the look way better:


Right here was where I started getting experimental, going back and forth with what I wanted to add. I really appreciate Ammit adding the refund option for genes so that I can visibly see what the gene looks like on a particular horse.
I was fairly certain that I wanted het. Silver:


Then decided it wasn't exactly what I wanted and changed him back to no Silver, and added Agouti Promoter (+) to one strand:


Much better! I like the way it lightens his coat up more. I really wanted blue eyes but didn't want to add splash or frame so I'm going to try adding two copies of Tiger-Eye 1 and see if I can get those results that way. Let's try:


No blue eyes yet, that might take a few re-rolls. Who knows though, his genetics might not be set up to get blue eyes either, the description for Tiger Eye does state "Two copies boldy reduced pigment resulting in eyes ranging from orange to blue depending on genetics."
But I do like the lighter eyes and it's a fun thing to pass down to his offspring.
After a few re-rolls I realized I had a few more GMTs so I went back in and changed one strand of TE1 to TE2 because why not? I don't see much TE2 around and I think it'll be fun to experiment with.
Time to do some re-rolling and BC updating to see the final results!

Here's one re-roll I liked:

I liked the leg striping and the green eyes, but I decided to keep going

Here's another interesting one, goes to show how different each horse can be. Even with the same genes. He's much redder here and there's less contrast than what I prefer:


Here's the final result that I chose. I like him, but I'm not sure if I'll use him for my line. I never got any blue eyes, but realized after changing the BC that it's ok because you couldn't even see it anyway :)) :


What do we think?
I have other options. I could do another one of these 'follow alongs' with him and see what we think? (I'd have to refund the GMTs from the first boy but C’est la vie)

Thank you for all coming along! Please leave any suggestions below :)