I think the world has gone a little bit too far on their hate of the color
green. I know that both myself and many other Limited content creators have
said that green is the worst color, but it’s not unplayable! Draft is
self-correcting. When a color is extremely underdrafted, barring unusual
circumstances, that color becomes much better because you can wheel the
cards that you need.
This is what’s happening in Guilds of Ravnica Draft right now.
People are passing cards like Find//Finality, which is one of the best
cards in the entire set. I even wheeled a Camaraderie yesterday. Just
because it has a green symbol in the top right doesn’t mean you should pass
it. Take powerful cards. Draft what’s open in your seat. And guess what?
Right now that’s probably green.
I’m not advocating for forcing green, but please read the signals.
If you’re in a pod where everybody is avoiding a guild, you can get
immensely rewarded for drafting that guild. Will I end up drafting green
because it’s open in this draft or does another color present itself?
Pack 1, Pick 1
The Pack:
The Pick:
While this pack has a variety of options, Etrata, the Silencer is head and
shoulders above the rest. If you haven’t had the opportunity to play with
this card, you’re missing out. At first glance it may look like a removal
spell with suspend 1 that’s also vulnerable to removal. And if you need to
kill something right away, Etrata isn’t the best card for your troubles.
However, a 3/5 body is a spectacular blocker in this format, and blue decks
churn through their library so fast in this format that the card really can
provide an alternate win condition.
As far as the other options in this pack are concerned, I would say the
next card in line is Crackling Drake, and the other three cards are all
very close together, while being pretty far behind the Drake. Deadly Visit,
Boros Challenger, and District Guide are all solid roleplayers in their
respective decks, but they don’t break open the envelope in terms of what
they allow you to do. Both Crackling Drake and Etrata do this, and hence
are better cards to start your draft with.
Pack 1, Pick 2
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
Unfortunately, this pack doesn’t have anything nice to follow up our Etrata
with. The best card in this pack is Justice Strike, which is pretty far
away from making the same deck as Etrata. Although there’s a multi-color
deck built around Guildgate synergies like Glaive of the Guildpact,
Gatekeeper Gargoyle, and Guild Summit. So, it’s possible the correct pick
is to take Justice Strike and navigate the draft with the desire of being
either Boros, Dimir, or the Guildgate deck.
I think I would follow up Etrata with one of the lands. I think Ochran
Assassin is a very solid card, but not a card I’m looking to take this
early. And so the real question for me is what does my deck look like
assuming I play Etrata and either Overgrown Tomb or Izzet Guildgate? Does
one of these decks look substantially better than the other?
My first observation is that Golgari would rather splash Etrata than Izzet,
although both would do this happily. Golgari looks to have a high creature
count so a removal spell on a creature is premium and why cards like
Plaguecrafter and Kraul Harpooner are very valuable to that strategy. The
other thing to consider is what each color brings to Dimir. A red splash
gives you efficient removal in cards like Lava Coil and Hypothesizzle, but
this isn’t anything that Dimir is lacking. Sometimes Dimir is lacking in
win-conditions though, and while cards like Rhizome Lurcher and Vigorpore
Wurm aren’t fancy, I have played them to success in Dimir when necessary.
I have found myself within the Grixis colors more often than the Sultai
colors, so my gut says to take the Izzet Guildgate, but this logic says to
take Overgrown Tomb. Overall, I think this pick is pretty close, and I
ended up taking Overgrown Tomb (it was also a foil!).
Pack 1, Pick 3
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
Chromatic Lantern is tempting. It’s not all that great, but it can help the
multi-color deck get to the next level. I did take it here, but I don’t
believe it was the correct pick. The fixing is plentiful and using a pick
on a card of low impact is just not where I really want to be. I made this
pick to open up the door to explore the multi-color deck. I’m about 50
drafts into the format at this point, and it’s something I haven’t played
all that much yet. I think it’s valuable to make picks like this to
optimize for learning and that’s just what I did.
I think the correct pick here is Notion Rain. It’s close between Notion
Rain and Hypothesizzle, but there are a couple points that make nice
tie-breakers here. If I had the Izzet Guildgate, I would be more inclined
to take the Hypothesizzle, but I already mentioned that Dimir doesn’t
really need to splash for removal. Dimir will splash Hypothesizzle, as it’s
a powerful card, but it just isn’t as necessary as other splashes tend to
be. Additionally, with Etrata already in the pool, I think there’s value in
not passing Notion Rain. I think the card is good, but I think plenty of
players take it highly, and I want to remove incentive for the people
downstream to be Dimir with a card as powerful as Etrata in my pool. In
general, it’s bad practice to make a pick for the sake of sending signals,
but I find it to be a nice tie-breaker and that’s what I believe to be
correct here.
Pack 1, Pick 4
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
I’m approaching this draft with the goal of ending up in a multi-color deck
and hoping to be base Dimir. In this format, I’ve found the successful
Guildgate decks to only play basics of their main guild and then utilize
Guildgates and sometimes Lockets (or in this case Chromatic Lantern) to
facilitate splashes.
With that in mind, I think this pick is Dimir Informant by a reasonable
margin. It lets me continue with the Dimir strategy of surveil, while also
providing a fantastic defensive body. I’ve found Plaguecrafter to only be
great in Golgari and while both Glaive of the Guildpact and Gateway Plaza
can be important tools for the deck I’m looking to draft, I think it’s more
important to solidify myself as a Dimir drafter before branching out. This
gives me a nice backup plan should the multi-color deck not present itself.
And that’s exactly what happened.
If you’re curious how the full draft went, I actually streamed it last week
and you can watch both the draft and the games here. While
I wanted to try out a five-color Chromatic Lantern deck, it’s just not what
the packs gave me and I ended up with a pretty solid Dimir deck. I’m unsure
if it was correct to play the second copy of Hypothesizzle over the second
copy of Devious Cover-Up to prevent myself from losing to decking.
Regardless, it was a blast to play!