This weekend I spent all my time Magic-wise drafting Tenth Edition. Unfortunately, this means I don’t have a heck of a lot new to say on Block or Standard. To top that off, my original article got corrupted, which meant I lost most of it, so instead of a shorter (and worse) version of that, I’ll be breaking my normal Constructed roots and giving you a Tenth Edition Limited article.
Tenth Edition draft is a bit like Ninth Edition draft, and most other base set drafts before it. The format is slower, less complicated, fat is far more impressive than in normal expansion draft, and color reads are generally easier to follow than in other formats. This is especially true when comparing Tenth Edition to Ravnica or Time Spiral block drafting. It also means card evaluations tend to matter a lot, because of the fewer ways you can bait or trap someone in this format. There are fewer bluffs to pull, since everything is more or less expected, and it’s easier to evaluate board positions to determine strength or weakness.
Against your typical U/R deck in TSP block, even against a meek board position you won’t go diving straight in, because it only takes a few tricks like Riddle of Lightning, various morphs, etc. to make your life miserable. In Tenth Edition draft you can quickly evaluate against a weak board position and go, “okay, worst he can do is bounce so and so and pump for a good trade here,” quickly due to the nature of the combat tricks in the format, especially at common.
This weekend I played about half-a-dozen or so drafts, so it gave me a pretty good idea of the format, at least right now as people are getting used to it. Playing with friends can help a lot with post-draft analysis, since you can basically recreate the pools and easily see where or why colors got cut, or where there was a fat/removal/trick run. I ended up winning three of the drafts and going 2-1, 3-2, and 0-3 scrub in the other three.
The four basic points of Tenth Edition draft seems to be as follows:
Card advantage is king
Nearly everything smaller than a Hill Giant is cannon fodder or annoying
There is a ton of removal in Red and Black
You don’t want to miss your first five land drops
This part hasn’t changed from Ninth Edition draft at all. Almost every archetype is going to fall under one of two categories in Tenth Edition draft; those that want to have a dominating board position by turn 8 at the cost of cards, or those that want can control the board and want 4-5 cards and options at board expense. Ideally you’d go U/G every draft, and be able to have fat, card draw, and a couple of tricks thrown in.
There aren’t any elaborate long term plans to pull off in this format, or cute engines to set-up and wipe people out. Many times the matches will simply come down to tight play and winning long attrition wars. Naturally, the Blue deck has an edge here, but many times how much fat you can keep in play will determine the winner. This means Red pretty much becomes the #1 or #2 color in the format, because of its ridiculously deep pool of cards that can kill off Hill Giants, and reusable removal in general.
Speaking of removal and Hill Giants, if you run anything smaller than a 3/3 that doesn’t fly and plan on using it in combat, you can expect it to die. This means the majority of 2/2 dorks that get taken are going far higher than they should. It also means many of these utility dorks are going to be taken over huge men like Earth Elemental, Spined Wurm, and Craw Wurm, because people like to feel like their really smart when they spend a first-to-third pick on something. I’m not saying this is necessarily wrong, simply that the big dumb 5/4 or vice versa is going to be doing a lot of the winning for you over the course of the draft.
I’ve noticed people tend to either underrate or overrate a lot of the fat available. Some people love nothing more than to windmill-slam Craw Wurm (also known as a land dragon in this format) over everything, whereas others get way too greedy, sticking with 2/2 evasion men. Tricks only buy you so much time against Green and Red players before you have to deal with the 3/3s and bigger. The top Blue common may be a 3/3 flyer, but that doesn’t actually mean anything if it has to play blocking duty against Bloodrock Cyclops because you fell too low on life.
The upside to drafting next to somebody who basically focuses around taking the Green fat is you usually get a bunch of Black and Red removal shipped to you. In one of the drafts, the guy in front of me took Aven Windreader, Craw Wurm, and some other Hill Giant; I took two Orcish Artillery and a Bogardan Firefiend. As much as I love me some Craw Wurm, Artillery is a bomb in this format considering how many 1/1 annoyances they kill, while also giving me a tidy option to kill half the Blue fliers in the format. Obviously this is an extreme example, but the basic idea is that some people take the fact that fat is very important a little too far, sacrificing card quality for sheer bulk.
This leads me into the removal bit: Red is ridiculously deep in removal. A shortlist of awesome Red removal includes Shock, Incinerate (best common in the set, for my money), Pyroclasm, Orcish Artillery, Prodigal Pyromancer, Spitting Earth, etc… and that’s not even the full list! Basically, even if you end up sharing the color with the guy next to you, odds are there will still be a decent amount of removal coming your way if you’re heavy Red. The other plus is that stuff like Artillery, Cone of Flame, and Earth goes a bit later, because it’s not easily splashable, which is a huge boon if you’re going heavy Red.
Black has less removal, but it’s still pretty effective considering half of it doesn’t care how big the victim is. Terror and Assassinate are both great, and Essence Drain has proven itself to be quite solid, better than Consume Spirit and Afflict (albeit expensive). Blue and White both have their single really good cheap removal spells in Pacifism and Unsummon, but that’s as far as they go depth-wise until you look at the uncommons. If you get Hail of Arrows, you’re a dirty sack and it should win you at least one game entirely on its back.
The “first five land drops” thing has been sort of a “duh” for seasoned drafters for a while now in slow formats like these. However, I mention it because I see a lot of people skimp on the mana and run 16-17 land, when they really want to be running 18, or in a few cases 19, since they have enough draw to get out of gluts and enough expensive quality to justify it. Also, don’t be scared to run a couple of vanilla dorks that are cheap if you feel the deck is too weighted towards the backside. It’s one thing to have a lot of good draw and fat along with a few tricks, but if you fall too far behind on tempo, a good aggressive deck can hit your first few drops and put you in do-or-die mode by turn 6 or so.
Top 5 Commons for each color:
Blue
1) Aven Windreader
2) Sift
3) Merfolk Looter
4) Snapping Drake
5) Unsummon
Honorable Mentions: Remove Soul, Aven Fisher, and Counsel of the Soratami
Blue is a top color on the back of Sift and Counsel of the Soratami, along with its natural affinity towards flying creatures. The color is very deep in Tenth, though the creatures themselves aren’t quite as strong as they were in Ninth. That said, the evasion creature base does gain Snapping Drake and Cloud Elemental as cheap flying beaters, and Merfolk Looter is excellent at maintaining card quality.
Aven Windreader and Sift as the top two should surprise nobody, and Snapping Drake is just a great beater. After those three I had a debate about Looter, Counsel, and Unsummon and where they fit on the list. Ultimately I decided I’d pick Looter over almost anything, purely because cycling for free every turn in such a slow format is only a little worse than actually drawing the cards outright. Unsummon is the cheapest “deals with anything” creature removal in the format, and that gives it a slight edge over Counsel, which is just a weaker Sift.
Blue’s commons have a lot of depth, and they’ve got four very playable fliers and three very efficient draw effects to work with. Not to mention Unsummon and Boomerang work as functional removal, and heavily knock down the effectiveness of tricks like Giant Growth, Aggressive Urge, and Uncontrollable Anger. You can’t really go wrong if you draft Blue, though it’s a bit weaker from the previous incarnation of the color. You actually have to pair it with some decent cards so you don’t get run over in the interim.
Black
1) Terror
2) Essence Drain
3) Assassinate
4) Mass of Ghouls
5) Gravedigger
Honorable Mentions: Highway Robber and Afflict
Three removal spells, one of which you can make an argument for being the best common removal spell in the set. I personally prefer Drain over Assassinate just because there’s always going to be something to kill with it, and the gain three essentially negates an early attack to boot. In aggressive decks, you can combine it with some burn as a finisher, as it’s one of the few good spells you can play that still goes to the head.
After that I’ll probably get mocked, but for my money Mass of Ghouls is the best Black creature at common. He’s big enough to take down the Craw/Spined/Elemental trio, and is only slightly worse than them as far as going to war is concerned. Besides, if Black is your main color, who else are you going to roll out? Dross Crocodile? Scathe Zombies? Yeah, that’s what I figured. Gravedigger fills the need for some creature recovery while providing a warm body to double-block Hill Giants.
Black doesn’t have a whole lot for common depth outside a few specific archetypes. B/R and B/G aggressive builds can take advantage of the more aggressive drops like Ravenous Rats and Phyrexian Rager. For other color combinations, the creature quality is so low they’re practically worthless to use over commons in the other main color.
Red
1) Incinerate
2) Prodigal Pyromancer
3) Shock
4) Bogardan Firefiend
5) Bloodrock Cyclops
Honorable Mention: Uncontrollable Anger, Spitting Earth, Hill Giant
The removal in this color is insane. You’ve got three solid removal spells at common, and plenty more at the uncommon and rare slots. To top it off you have two solid removal creatures and some of the most cost efficient creatures in the format. And of course, Hill Giant, the man whose P/T is the staple for the format. Really, there’s nothing much to say that isn’t obvious.
Two cards I think that are being underrated at the moment are Uncontrollable Anger and Earth Elemental. Anger… I think people are just treating it like a pump enchantment versus an effective combat trick, which is what it is. Anything after that should be gravy for a Red deck. For some reason I see Earth Elemental lasting longer than Spined Wurm or similar creatures in draft, and that just shouldn’t be. If anything, the extra toughness is more relevant than the point of power in this format.
Green
1) Spined Wurm
2) Llanowar Elves
3) Craw Wurm
4) Aggressive Urge
5) Treetop Bracers
Honorable Mentions: Rampant Growth, Civic Wayfinder, Giant Growth, Giant Spider, and Kavu Climber
Green has so many good cards in the format… it’s pretty sick. Not only do they get two common fatties (bigger than Hill Giant), they get a Hill Giant that cantrips, plenty of acceleration and color fixing, and two very efficient combat tricks. I’m sure that Giant Growth outside of the Top 5 – and Craw Wurm in there – is going to raise a lot of eyebrows and cause an outright rejection of these rankings. That said, I don’t think GG is first-pickable in the format, and definitely not if you have the choice to take some quality fat in its place. Obviously that might change by pack 3, but I’m thinking in fresh pack terms.
Think about the commons that can rumble with Spined and Craw Wurm in combat. It’s a very short list, and even when you add uncommons there are practically none that are winning in a straight fight. In fact, realistically, only a couple of rares are going to be able outright kill either Wurm and survive without help. Anyway, considering the size of everything else in the format, the extra bulk comes in handy enough that I prefer just taking the fat instead of pumping my stuff down the road.
The reason for Aggressive Urge over Giant Growth comes from two things. One is that there are far fewer ways to get damage through chump blockers, and this is one of the few cards that gets that done. The second part is that usually +1/+1 is going to be just as good as +3/+3 in a Hill Giant fight, unless your fighting another trick; plus you get a replacement card out of the deal.
The depth is pretty ridiculous as far as Green goes. It’s got two good mana accelerators and a great mana fixer, Treetop Bracers is one of the few creature enchantments you’ll pretty much always play, and it’s got a bunch of solid fat. It’s pretty much one of the top choices to build a deck around, and is also the only base color you can safely go three colors with outside of a one- or two-card addition. The only real downside is the lack of non-Hurricane solutions to fliers, which means Canopy and Giant Spider need to help out and play D to back up the secondary color’s removal options.
White
1) Pacifism
2) Skyhunter Patrol
3) Ghost Warden
4) Benalish Knight
5) There’s a fifth? Wild Griffin or Youthful Knight, I guess?
Honorable Mentions: None
I pretty much hate White in Tenth Edition draft. I think the overall power of the White cards is in the dumper, except for a few like Ballista Squad and Hail of Arrows. The commons have no depth, and even he Top 5 are pretty weak other than Skyhunter Patrol and Pacifism. I’m going to admit I’m probably missing the boat here, but White has been straight up awful for me and nobody* fared well with it in the drafts I was in. There doesn’t seem to be enough effective ground pounders to compete with the other colors, the flying guys are just worse than Blue’s, and Ghost Warden pales in comparison to a bunch of the other utility men.
* The exception was a W/R Jank type of deck that combined some of the later White drops with what ended up being a treasure trove of Red removal. I think White in this format is much more suited to these types of aggressive decks since it can get the two- and three-drops pretty late. For control though, even a W/U combo, it seems like you can just do better unless you’re the only White drafter at the table.
I haven’t played enough Tenth Edition draft to have a clue about the absolute best archetypes, but at the moment my choices for best are U/G and G/R. Both colors combos combine two things you value highly along with fat. For G/R that would be acceleration, removal, and more removal, along with Hill Giants and Wurms to fill out the back end. For U/G you’ve got evasion, mana acceleration, card draw and those lovable Wurms. In addition, my draft decks tend to skew towards aggression so many of the archetypes I prefer will be built in that vein.
Archetypes
Green/Red
This is one of the best archetypes in the format, because it’s nearly impossible to get cut out of both colors. By going into the two deepest colors, you basically insure you’ll get a certain amount of quality out of the first five or six picks or so, while not getting left with unplayable junk later. More expensive Hill Giants like Rock Badger become surprisingly effective when powered out by mana elves and Rampant Growth. Basically, in pack 1 you’ll go heavy Red for removal or heavy fat from Green to fill out your deck and mark your territory to an extent. After that you can focus on filling out the holes, and usually you’ll be getting hooked up in one of the colors.
The fun part about this color combination is that you stay aggressive at all times, and have the drops to do so. In addition you’ve got enough removal that you can take care of the usual Green weakness of flyers without too many issues.
Green/Blue
Um, reread the first half of this article if you need me to tell you why this color combo is pretty amazing. The only downside is lack of true removal, instead using Unsummon, Remove Soul, and Boomerang to get the job done. The upside is the rest of your deck is typically good enough to cover this up; or you can draft enough mana fixing to play some splashed black or red removal. This archetype gives you a large amount of options while keeping the best non-rare finisher type creatures the format allows.
Blue/Red
Combine the parts from the G/R and G/U sections and you have this. Theoretically, this color combination should be amazing, but I have yet to see it work out very well. I mean you’d keep the evasion and draw from Blue, but now you have a way to kill blockers for good.. The main issue is actually coming up with worthwhile early drops, because your men are less likely to want to block, let alone survive. The lack of worthwhile combat tricks is another drawback, but you’ll have issues finding those outside of Green period.
Black/Red
This is the first of the aggro archetypes where you get to play a bunch of mid-to-late pick cards and take advantage of being in the two main removal colors. You get to play normally unplayable crap like Spineless Thug and Goblin Piker, because it gives you a two-power drop on turn 2. You’ll also be using some efficient men that don’t have real homes yet like Phyrexian Rager, Dusk Imp, and Bogardan Firefiend, and you can pick up between picks 5-8 when you can’t just grab all the removal you want. You also can use some underrated combat tricks like Uncontrollable Anger to wipe out Hill Giants, and the attacking “drawback” really doesn’t matter in this type of deck. The curve stops around five, i.e. Mass of Ghouls range, and mostly floats around two and three typically.
You want to hit your drops on turns 2-4, blow away a couple of blockers, and then just force through the last few points of damage. The upside about this type of strategy is people aren’t playing relevant early drops many times, and some will just balk at trading their quality creature with one of your silly 2/2 bad dorks. In addition you can actually take advantage of late pick finishers like Soul Feast and Lava Axe, which everyone feels dirty about if they make your maindeck. For you, it just means the life total you want your opponent to burn them out is five instead of two.
Red/White
This only works because White is terrible, and even if you don’t believe it is, the cards that go into this archetype are. You build your offense around Youthful Knight, Steadfast Guard, Goblin Piker, and dirt-cheap creatures to which you wouldn’t normally give a second thought. You want to devote your first five picks grabbing anything that resembles bombs, removal, or really efficient evasion men. After that, start grabbing all the garbage men you can, along with not so good pump spells like Angelic Blessing and Fists of the Anvil that fit perfectly in this archetype.
It’s not out of the question to see the opponent at single digits by turn 5, because of these pump spells and the dearth of good defensive creatures. Plus you’ve got a bit more of a late-game since you’ll be high picking the White evasion guys like Wild Griffin and Skyhunter Patrol to team up with the burn.
Both the R/B and R/W combinations have the potential to simply be insane and sweep the slower decks to the side, but if you don’t get enough removal, or even just draw badly in a game, it’s easily possible to drop the match. These decks are really all or nothing as far results go – a successful version of these decks mean you’ve got a great shot at wiping everyone out, or going 0-X thanks for playing.
That concludes the draft section of our article. Now onto the Constructed section of the piece.
Through the Looking Glass: Vintage
Originally, I was going to do a full piece on Vintage, but it was destroyed in a terrible walrus accident, and I don’t want to get into the gory details. However, for all two of you that still think I’m going to talk about Vintage sometime, this part of the article is for you. My number one piece of advice for tournaments right now is…
Play Flash and don’t lose. Win. On turn 1. Like, every match.
See you next week folks! Oh and I might be at PTQ in LA this weekend, if I show up (mainly going to LA to play in the OC3 Super Smash Bros Melee tournament). Say hi, and be sure to scoop to me so I can get back to SSBM sooner.
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom
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Bonus Section: The Rest of the Vintage Article
In all seriousness, the main point of my article was that Flash is amazing, so I’ll cut to the chase here. I’d play Flash if I had a Vintage tournament tomorrow, and wouldn’t think twice about the decision. I mean, I might care if the deck didn’t destroy everything that ever existed, but since it does I’ll take my chances. Yes, you’ll lose to yourself sometimes. Guess what? If you play GAT, you’ll lose to yourself as well at more or less the same clip. It’s called inherent risk when you play a deck with twenty mana sources or less.
On that note, may I never hear a GAT player complaining about draws again. Seriously, run a real manabase if you don’t want to lose because “wah wah, I couldn’t hit one of thirteen remaining lands off Brainstorm, cry cry.”
Creatures (10)
Lands (13)
Spells (37)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 1 Vampiric Tutor
- 2 Duress
- 4 Force of Will
- 1 Demonic Tutor
- 1 Ancestral Recall
- 4 Merchant Scroll
- 1 Chain of Vapor
- 4 Flash
- 2 Misdirection
- 1 Black Lotus
- 1 Lotus Petal
- 1 Mox Emerald
- 1 Mox Jet
- 1 Mox Ruby
- 1 Mox Sapphire
- 3 Pact of Negation
- 4 Summoner's Pact
Sideboard
This is like pretty much every Flash list ever, except I got sick of Daze being awful and I added two Duress maindeck for those rare games that I don’t win turn 1. Shockingly, that happens often enough that they’re fine to run. The REB and extra Duress in the board are there for pretty much the same reason, so you can board out terrible Pact of Negation and run counters that’ll do something to prepared opponents when you aren’t trying to just sack them out.
Oxidize is there, because odds are you won’t be able to resolve anything more expensive against a Stax deck, and a turn 1 Sphere of Resistance is just painful to think about. It costs the same as Repeal to take care of Chalice at zero, and just does more (usually).
The matches are basically like this:
GAT: If they don’t have Duress, you’ll win by turn 2 with any sort of decent hand. If they play a turn 1 Duress then we have a real game, tutoring for extra Flash with Merchant Scroll is a great bait spell that they can’t just Misdirection. If you get stuck playing a long game, there really isn’t much you can do except try to leverage your Pacts against them.
Post-board you can shut them down with REB and Duress, just shoot for turn 3 since you can easily overload and control them with disruption. You’re running more one mana “counters” in Duress and REB, so you can basically control what they want to Scroll for, and even when they Gush (to some degree). On that note, any game you can control when GAT plays Gush means you’ve got the dominant position. It’s a nice barometer.
Fair decks like Fish, Bomberman and Stax: Win on turn 1. If that doesn’t work, win on turn 2. There’s no strategy to follow except leveraging all your free cards into a win. Pick the turns you feel is best and go for it.
Control decks like CS and Drains: Game 1 comes down to opening hands, the longer you wait the less chance you have of beating a competent Drain player unless they’ve been bluffing you with a subpar hand. Games 2 and 3 are actually kind of interesting. Play around Blood Moon and keep them scared at all times that you’ll Flash at end of turn, since they have no answer to it unless they have multiple Fire/Ice. Your goal is to hit three mana so you can go REB / Duress and Flash on the same turn backed by Pact / Mis-D. Ideally, this would also be after a test Flash or Ancestral at their end of turn, but that’s an ideal scenario. Optimally you want to “go for it” when it’ll take them three counters to stop you, but you can also weigh the turn 1 win against double Force of Will since you typically win that fight.
If you want a more “unique” Flash deck, then try this.
Creatures (9)
Lands (14)
Spells (37)
Yes, it’s a blatant rip of the Legacy model and no, it’s not as good as the one above it. The only reason I post it is because the Counterbalance engine is insane in this deck, and if somebody can make a more compact version of it, they’ll win every Flash and GAT match from here to oblivion since the plan B is only slightly worse than winning.