I’d like to try to pick up where Ari Lax left off, and talk about drafting G/B in Battle for Zendikar. Most importantly, I think this should only
be discussed with a disclaimer: G/B is among the worst color combination in the set. When Team UltraPro discussed the Limited format, we split black into
two rows: the “gray” cards, being the black cards with devoid, and the black cards, being the other black cards. We ranked the gray cards in order of how
good they were in B/U or B/R Devoid decks, and we ranked the black cards in order of how good they were in B/W decks. The cards that are specifically
intended to go in B/G were completely ignored. I was the only player on the team at that point who had had any success drafting B/G and offered to try to
talk about what was needed to make the archetype work, but everyone said it wasn’t worth the time, as they weren’t going to draft it anyway. In that
meeting, we essentially skipped ranking green altogether, as most players refused to touch the color.
The reason that I’m writing about a color combination that I think is explicitly bad is that I think it’s a lot more complicated than the other
combinations, which tend to be pretty straightforward, and, if you’re trying to win, I think it can be very hard to get enough experience to understand
G/B, since you should rarely draft them together.
So how did I come across information on the pair that I thought worth sharing? Well, most of my experience drafting this set has been in person, rather
than on Magic Online, and early on, I saw several people draft G/B in various ways, and I watched most of them lose all their matches, so I knew what not
to do. Then I ended up with From Beyond in three drafts in a row, and through drafting a variety of decks around the card, learned what kinds of synergies
work between those colors, and which don’t really. Since then, I’ve considered it a deck I’m willing to draft when nothing else is open, but I still can’t
stress enough that you should look to be somewhere else.
In the comments on his article, Ari says, “Green-Black in
this format is quite possibly the most intricate archetype I’ve ever seen. I skipped it because I still have no clue what the right way to get there or
even how many unique sub-archetypes exist that all have their own signals and relevant picks.”
I think this is a reasonable position, and I only hope I can do it justice.
So why is it so intricate? Well, fundamentally the archetype is about Eldrazi Scions, which are tokens that can be sacrificed to profit with cards like
Bone Splinters, Vampiric Rites, Voracious Null, or Altar’s Reap. They’re creatures with power that can attack in a “go-wide” strategy with support like
Tajuru Warcaller, Tajuru Beastmaster, or Swarm Surge. And they’re Lotus Petals than can be used to cast expensive finishers, like Plated Crusher or Bane of
Bala Ged. The trick is figuring out if those are three different decks, or if you’re trying to use overlapping synergies to do any combination of those
things, and what supports those. Also, what happens if you’re drafting G/B and you just don’t happen to see many of the few cards that are good at making
Eldrazi Scions?
The short answer is that you want to take advantage of the overlap by taking cards that are reliably going to be good early, like Eyeless Watcher, but that
you’ll ultimately want to settle into a primary gameplan, but touching on the other synergies can be acceptable.
So how do you end up in G/B if you’re trying to avoid it? Well, the easiest way is to start with one of the rares that’s best in that archetype, like Brood
Butcher, From Beyond, or Smothering Abomination and then to see good cards in the other color, which you take, because the rare makes you more open to
going in that direction anyway. Alternatively, maybe you started somewhere else, like B/R, but then no red cards were coming, and everyone at your table
got the memo about green, so you see a fifth pick Brood Monitor.
So, let’s assume any of those things happened, and talk about how you should draft the rest of the first pack and the beginning of the second, assuming you
know that you’re looking to be G/B, but that you don’t yet know exactly which version you’re going to settle into.
Let’s start by ranking the cards:
Top Rare Bombs:
Next Tier of Bombs:
Still Great, Less Bomby:
Now for Discussion:
This card is absurd in the right deck, but we don’t want to have to prioritize exiling. A lot the reason this card is this high is the possibility that
we’ll move into a different deck or happen to end up with a few cards that turn it on, and the floor isn’t that bad, especially when the ceiling is so
high.
This color combination is historically clunky, and we’re looking to cast expensive creatures so this is great.
This is the essential common that our deck will probably be built around.
If you’re going to invest Scions in playing a big creature early, this one will reliably end the game if your opponent can’t kill it when you play it on
turn 5.
This is a good card that pushes you in the ramp direction by encouraging you to find two more expensive colorless creatures, but it’s great when you do so.
Trample is great on this card, but it’s still just a big body. It can win games by itself, but it’s not a true bomb.
Similar to Bane of Bala Ged, but an extra mana.
It can be hard to play this if you’re splashing, but the payoff of getting an extra Eyeless Watcher when you’re done with your land is incredible in this
kind of deck.
This is probably the best payoff for prioritizing Eldrazi Scions. Getting a one-mana hard removal spell in this format is absolutely huge, and I might rate
this higher in packs where I’m sure it won’t table.
I’ve loved this card in G/B. I typically don’t like cards that require mana to sacrifice creatures, but this one has massively exceeded my expectations,
and I feel much better about G/B decks that have it than ones that don’t. I think this is the true lynchpin of the strategy, and again, I’d rate it higher,
except I think I might be able to get it very late.
This is great to accelerate into with Scions because hexproof protects your investment, but I have had opponents just win the race against it when I do
that, so I think I like it less than the really high upside finishers.
A cheap threat that gets huge late and threatens to get huge at any moment in useful ways with Eldrazi Scions on the battlefield, clearly designed for this
deck.
It’s easy to splash in green to get three cards off this, and this format is slow enough that paying three mana and three life for three cards is
outstanding. It’s very possible this is underrated here, but I’m concerned about being too slow anyway.
It’s easy for green to splash, so I’m going to take this over anything that isn’t absolutely essential.
Very low cost to put in your deck and makes splashing easier despite being a colorless land as well as supporting the ramp plan you might end up with and
any potential landfall.
Great payoff, but nowhere near Ulamog, and it takes a lot to be able to cast it.
Nowhere near as good as it is in B/W, but B/G can end up with a reasonable Ally package, and the effect still plays well with the black Allies. Just
getting a small body that offers a bit of value plays well enough with this strategy that it takes very little to make this better than most 2/2s for two.
This feels pretty high for this card, but flying is a huge threat against a deck that’s taking time to build up on the ground, and this is a clean answer
to most of it.
Value! Lets you splash, gives you a body that can play to any of the things you’d want a body for, but still low impact enough that I’m not going to take
it over something critical.
This is theoretically a great finisher for the go-wide plan that works with something like a Tajuru Warcaller or Tajuru Beastmaster, but I don’t have a lot
of faith in it because I don’t favor attacking as my strategy with my Scions, and I think the rate on this card just isn’t great.
Very much on plan, but not that high impact. Solid at doing what it does.
Early on, the upside if you’re splashing or ramping is high. As you get dedicated on some of the Scion plans, this might fall below Call the Scions and
Grave Birthing.
Generically powerful card.
I think some people will disagree with this being this high, but I think it’s a generically great card, and you never know when you might end up with a
couple cards that want to process.
Flying defense is great, but I’d rather brick several fliers than trade with one.
High upside and these colors can support it, but there are a lot good colored creatures here too and few reasons to really prioritize colorless, so it’s a
bit of a gamble early on.
You’re not a beatdown deck; you’re a value or ramp deck, and most of the creatures you could play here will get outclassed, so this can be the most
productive way to spend your third turn and get to you synergies.
Once you’ve really gotten there on the right synergies, this can move up a bit.
I love this card, so this ranking is pretty conservative. In reality I probably take it a little higher.
This seems like it should be good in G/B, but it just plays so badly with Scions, so it’s actually better in red or blue decks, oddly enough.
If I’m not splashing, I don’t really want this, but early, it’s very likely I’ll splash, and this will be great.
This might be too low for this card, since the ceiling is very high and the cost of the colorless land is low, but I’m really hoping to see Spawning Bed.
I want this even if I’m two colors because it lets me keep land-light hands, and it gets much better if I’m trying to splash. It’s a good card, and if I’m
doing well on playables, I’ll move this up somewhat, as I would any land.
I like this card a lot, but I don’t think I can prioritize it in a deck where I’m not trying to exile things and I’m prioritizing other big creatures.
This is the best archetype for this card by a wide margin. It’s easy to do something like chump block with an Eyeless Watcher and then return it for more
Scions, and this kind of play becomes outstanding with Vampiric Rites.
I prioritize this card pretty highly because I think it’s a great sideboard card. This deck happens to be able to use it well due to having lots of small
creatures and mana, and maybe even a couple ways to have deathtouch, and this deck is also extremely vulnerable to Pathway Arrows, so you don’t want to
pass it.
I’m just guessing here, I never really take this card
.
If you’re weak against fliers, prioritize cards that are good against them.
A critical payoff card for one direction this deck can go, but it will be unplayable in other versions.
If you can ever make this work, it’s one of the best possible cards, but that’s really hard to do in these colors. This is still probably too low, since
you might be able to prioritize exiling to make it work, but you’d have to go pretty far out of your way and I don’t know if it’s worth it.
I think I want my expensive stuff to be finishers, but this is still a fine card to have access to.
Mediocre but sometimes playable top end.
I want it to be good so badly, but, like Blight Herder, it’s just too hard to pull off.
I’m torn on this card. It doesn’t fit the strategy at all, so it’s just trying to get there on rate. I guess I think the rate puts it about here.
My hope is that I get enough Bone Splinters that I don’t have to use this, but sometimes you just need more removal.
Probably hoping to not play this unless I’m using it to fix or very dedicated to ramping.
Solid rate and good with going wide, especially if you end up with some other Allies, but not great at anything.
I don’t have enough experience with this card. I think the ceiling is high, even or particularly in this archetype where you might have big creatures that
you might want to give trample, and it’s obviously better if you’re splashing. Not all versions of this deck will want this kind of card, but it’s very
good at what it does.
When all else fails, sometimes you can get minor Ally synergies and reasonably large midrange bodies and just attack people with them. I wouldn’t be happy
about it, but it’s capable of winning games.
I don’t think two-drops are important to anything this deck is doing, but this is serviceable as a finisher.
Might not be giving this enough credit, but I like Nightwatch’s Ally synergies, the ability to fight better on defense, and potential to function as a
flying blocker with Vampiric Rites more than landfall here.
If you get enough Vampiric Rites and Bone Splitters, this actually becomes a great card, but it’s unplayable in all but the most dedicated decks. A 1/1 is
just too low impact when you’re playing 18-22 mana sources. You need your cards to matter more than this.
I haven’t played a lot with this, but I think it might actually be a respectable way to buy time with this kind of deck.
This is a very good card, but if you’re not doing anything with the exile, I don’t think it’s at home in a synergy-based deck. If you end up needing to
exile cards, this is a fine way to do it in this color combination, and it’s also good if you end up without Eldrazi Scion makers and have to try to
salvage your draft with random large creatures. This becomes a good way to make sure your opponent can’t go over them.
I lost a couple games to this card at the Pro Tour. I used to think it was unplayable, but there’s a solid role for the one creature that’s bigger than all
the other big stuff, like Woolly Loxodon in Khans of Tarkir.
This is obviously very low for this card, but I’m not sure what it’s really doing for you in this archetype. I think one of the common failure modes for
this color combination is not properly discounting the cards that shine in other archetypes due to their synergies but are really just out of place here
because they don’t play into this pair’s different synergies.
Same thing. Making the opponent discard is good, but we’re not reliably turning it on, and the 3/3 is quite bad.
This blocks a flier and wins in a board stall, but I really don’t like paying four mana for a creature that can’t kill other creatures.
Weak filler, but can get quite good if you have enough rally cards or Vampiric Rites.
Sometimes you end up with a couple Kalastria Healers and/or Vampiric Rites, and sometimes you become an Abzan Ally deck, and then this card is fine to
great. A lot of the time you’re straight B/G you won’t want to play this, but really early on, this ranking is too low.
I don’t like this card at all, but a 4/5 flier can help with the issues of not being able to deal with fliers in Green/Black, and it’s not so expensive
you’ll never cast it, and you might even get to use the ability sometimes.
I only want this when I’m trying to salvage a trainwreck.
I only want this if I ended up with a couple things that really want me to be able to process and I’m hoping to spike an early hit.
I only want this if I’m splashing or if I have Spawning Bed.
I don’t think I want more than one and would hate to play more than two, but it can take over a game in the right version of this deck.
I don’t think this color combination wants a purely aggressive card like this, that’s just not how you’re trying to end games.
I really hate this card, but the version of this deck with Broodhunter Wurm and Kalastria Nightwatch might play it sometimes.
For the most part, I see this as a sideboard card, but this archetype can actually use it well, again, primarily for Vampiric Rites + Eyeless Watcher
shenanigans.
Probably only if I’m splashing or have a couple outstanding bombs.
Maybe in the trainwreck version of this deck.
Sideboard unless you’re on the Blisterpod configuration and it’s correct for you to be very deep on enablers and you don’t have quite enough to sacrifice
them to.
Cards I really don’t want to have to maindeck:
Fundamentally, all of these decks are trying to win big–they’re not trying to come out faster than an opponent; they’re trying to do something more
powerful–grind them out, a combo finish, or just play the biggest creatures. This is why I’m not really prioritizing two-drops or trying to have a
perfectly streamlined curve. I’m trying to take advantage of the fact that the format can be a little slow, and I’m trying to do better slow things.
As with any deck, your pick order will change throughout the draft, but while that will often reflect the needs of your curve, here, it’s going to reflect
missing parts of your gameplan. If you have only a few great finishers, prioritize removal and Giant Mantis to live until you draw them. If you have
several hard to deal with or explosive finishers like Bane of Bala Ged or Plated Crusher, prioritize Call the Scions to cast them. If you have a lot Scions
but can’t find anything great to do with them, prioritize Swarm Surge to end the game. If you pick up some early cards that will make splashing easy, just
snipe any powerful cards you see. There’s a good chance black will fade out of being one of your primary colors if this happens, and that’s fine, you can
easily transition to Abzan Allies or Converge.
So, as to the question about combining archetypes? If you have two Call the Scions, a Grave Birthing, a Catacomb Sifter, and two Eyeless Watchers, you can
expect to make Scions a reasonable amount of the time. If you have a Bane of Bala Ged, a Breaker of Armies, and a Plated Crusher, you can expect to try to
use those Scions to play a monster ahead of schedule. At this point, I wouldn’t want a Swarm Surge in my deck, because too often I’ll draw it after I’ve
sacrificed my tokens to play a single big creature that doesn’t need two extra power, or I’ll draw both and conclude that the Swarm Surge isn’t going to
win the game on turn 5, and I’d rather just play the big creature anyway. On the other hand, if I have a relatively aggressive build of the deck with a
similar number of Scion makers as well as some of the black devoid creatures that I don’t like that much and I’m playing two Swarm Surges, I still might
want to put a single random big creature in my deck because I can always just wait and cast it normally or run it out with the Scions I’ll have anyway in
games where that seems appropriate. The Swarm Surge plan means that I’ll have Scions waiting in play for me to do something with them, and I can include an
off-plan monster, and I’ll always be ready to cash them in, but the monster plan requires an earlier commitment, so it’s harder to back door into using the
Swarm Surge.
Use this kind of thinking to process which sorts cards can strategically fit into your deck when they’re not part of your core strategy.
Think about how your games will play out. You’re trying to generate inevitability and beat all your opponent’s cards, so you need to make sure that your
cards work to build something strong–ask yourself if they really do that, or if they’re necessary for some reason, and if they’re not, try to find
something better.
There’s something here, and these decks can win, but the colors in this set aren’t balanced properly, and the green cards are just independently worse
rates than the cards of other colors. Don’t fight to be in green. If your deck is going to work, you need all the right pieces to come to you freely. Now
that all the data has come out and everyone should know to avoid it, you might be able to capitalize, but it doesn’t take many people going into a draft
looking to do that for them to have a really bad time.
Even if you start Smothering Abomination into Brood Monitor, if there’s a third pick Eldrazi Skyspawner, that’s probably a sign that blue’s open and you
should get into that immediately and try not to look back.