I returned from Grand Prix Manila a few days ago, after I placed a nice 32nd money finish… thanks to my unfairly high tiebreakers from my three byes in the earlier rounds. Earning $250 and just one pro point is certainly not the best thing in the world when you have to skip a few days of college, and I didn’t make Top 8 in an Asia Limited Grand Prix. Approximately a week before the tournament, I started to draft in Magic Online – specifically in the triple-Guildpact Draft, because I was so uninformed about Guildpact cards and I no idea how to make a appropriate pick order. A few drafts later, and I felt I had a grip on the Guildpact cards. I proceeded to the RRG draft queues, where I discovered a weird process of practicing. I tended to win when I’m playing with Blue, and tended to lose flat out when I’m playing with other colors. Obviously, this is just my opinion, my own personal preference, and it isn’t 100% fact. There are still people out there winning without even touching Islands. As my drafting continues, I proceeded to draft Blue almost every time (unless I opened something insane like Glare of Subdual). I took the Blue strategy to Grand Prix Manila and formulated a plan… In Manila, I’d only draft three color combinations: U/B/R, U/B/W, or U/R/W.
Blue/Black/Red
This is the strongest archetype you can draft in this current format, and I’m pretty damn sure about it. Thanks to the Izzet guild in Guildpact, this deck is packed with plenty of card advantage and quality spells.
In this archetype, removal always come first, and things look great if you can snag cards like a Keening Banshee, Steamcore Weird, or Ribbons of Night – they provides both removal and card advantage. I’ve tried times to make the deck U/R/b, or U/B/r, but it never seemed to work. Most times, U/B/R is simply the best.
It’s a bad idea to discard raw power for consistency in this archetype. Just grab the best card in the pack, almost regardless of the spell itself, as long as the color is in the U/B/R template. The bouncelands are essential in control decks because you can afford to neglect a solid turn 2 play to lay the karoo instead. U/B/R does not have access to the quality two-drops anyway. Lurking Informant, Surveilling Sprite, and Dimir Infiltrator are the good ones, followed by the Signets, which I don’t value highly in this format. I would take the bouncelands somewhere between fourth and seventh pick, and you shouldn’t be seeing any of them after ninth pick as they deserve a little respect nowadays. You should be able to grab one or two removal spells (on average) per pack, which will mean your deck will end up with four to six removal spells. Try trading creatures for creatures, thus keeping your removal for utility creatures or bombs. Decks will be slow and you can’t win in the short game, which means you’re giving your opponent time to draw his bombs… use your removal wisely. If possible, have a couple of good finishers in the deck. Most of the good ones appear in the uncommon slot, like Moroii, Belltower Sphinx, and Stratozeppelid, and you end up killing with fliers after taking control of the game.
Blue/Black/White
I rate this archetype below U/B/R. The reason is simple: Guildpact offers superb B/W and U/R cards, but the U/R cards outclass the B/W ones. Steamcore Weird, Izzet Chronarch, and Ogre Savant are plain better than Shrieking Grotesque, Blind Hunter, and Ostiary Thrull in the control mirror match, but overall the B/W cards can field a stronger resistance against the beatdown decks like G/B/W or U/W/R. White creatures generally have more defensive abilities – like damage prevention, pump, tap, and first strike – which allow you to survive the board and take control of the game with utility abilities, but they don’t net you card advantage too often. Unlike the U/R cards, they often have card advantage attached but don’t really have utility tricks attached, so there are pros and cons with both archetypes.
Remember, the advantage of playing this archetype is a strong resistance against creature deck, so try drafting utility creatures like Benevolent Ancestor, Ghost Warden, and Ostiary Thrull. Boros Guildmage is surprisingly a good pick in this deck – although it costs two White mana – since first strike allows you to control creature combat. Faith’s Fetters, Douse in Gloom, and Mourning Thrull give you additional life while taking control of the game with fliers and utility creatures. Both U/B/R and U/B/W also have U/B spells, so they don’t differ much in the U/B perspective, but the third color makes all the difference in combating the creature or control matchup. That being said, it is not impossible to combat U/B/R deck. Pick up those late Muddle of Mixtures and Castigates, and they are insanely good in this matchup. Board out those Tidewater Minions and Benevolent Ancestors for these Counterspells and Duresses.
Blue/White/Red
This is definitely the aggressive deck among all the other “Blue decks” in the format. This deck picks up all the aggressive cards in the Boros guild, like Skyknight Legionnaire, Veteran Armorer, Thundersong Trumpeter, and Viashino Fangtail to make the archetype work. It picks up Blue cards like Snapping Drake, Compulsive Research, Peel from Reality, and Veldekan Dismisser from the Ravnica packs, and awaits the rewards of drafting U/R in Guildpact. Overall, it’s a Boros deck that splashes Blue, and you should be very cautious about the mana issue. You have to draw both Red and White mana early to keep up the pressure, and Blue mana by turn four or so.
This deck is the best at utilizing the U/R cards from Guildpact, as it can take advantage of the tempo gain from both Steamcore Weird and Ogre Savant rather then just buying extra time (as does the U/B/R deck). Your amount of removal is slightly lower than in the U/B/R decks, but it should be fine because you have better evasion creatures to make up for it. Again, countermagic works wonders in Blue mirror, so draft at least one Muddle the Mixture for sideboard purposes. Signets work better in this deck because the bouncelands are slow, and you can’t really afford to lose tempo in this deck as you’re looking to win the tempo game. If you didn’t pick up many two-drops, then the bouncelands can be pretty awesome, too.
I don’t draft this too often because I always prefer control archetypes than beatdown, but this one can be very brutal. There’s no way an opponent can come back if you get a god draw, whereas the control deck might lose its control if the build doesn’t have the sufficient and appropriate tools to handle the board.
Keys to Drafting Blue
Card advantage. When your deck has Islands, there is no doubt that your deck should have some form of card advantage. Without, you should forget about playing Blue. I usually started to draft Blue when I get passed a Snapping Drake or a Compulsive Research.
This is one of the biggest exceptions to the “card advantage” rule of playing Blue. This card does not provide any such thing, but it’s probably the best Blue common in Ravnica. Generally, four mana fliers are 2/2 with some ability attached, but this one is simply a vanilla 3/2, which is the best reason to support it. Fliers are meant to break from the ground and race with the Green mages, so an additional point of damage per turn is pretty important compared to any additional ability. Who cares if you don’t block well with this – you just want to attack with it – but do take note of drafting defenders as well, to hold your opponent’s creatures off during combat. Worth a first to third pick.
Compulsive Research is insane. Any one of the three decks above would love to have multiples of these. It nets you real card advantage, drawing you deeper to your three-color deck, and increasing your percentage of having all three colors in the early game. I would say I’m happy picking this up anytime from second to fifth pick. Besides Snapping Drake, nothing really beats Compulsive Research in the common Blue slot, although Peel from Reality is a close one.
Peel From Reality
Vedalken Dismisser, Keening Banshee, Shrieking Grotesque, Steamcore Weird, Ogre Savant, and the obviously good Izzet Chronarch work extremely well with Peel From Reality. You gain tempo by bouncing your opponent’s creature and saving one of yours in combat, and you get to abuse those comes-into-play abilities over and over. It is hard to play around this bounce, simply because it bounces two creatures instead of one (although one has to be yours), but nothing much to complain about. A decent high pick, just slightly below Snapping Drake and Compulsive Research.
A good sideboard card for the mirror-match, and truly awesome if your deck has Last Gasp, Lightning Helix, or Train of Thought. Imagine if your deck has both Last Gasp and Train of Thought… the Muddle suddenly becomes like a tutor which could handle a troublesome Guildmage, draw some cards or even counter a removal which was about to kill your best creature on board. I’m not advocating you to pick this early though, but snap this up if you see it going around eighth to twelfth pick because it warrants a slot in either your sideboard or maindeck.
First I thought that this card was crap. I mean, just compare it with Compulsive Research… but as I tended to battle more and more Blue mages at the Draft table, I realized the importance of having one in the deck. I played U/B/W in both pods in Manila, and I beat one U/B/R deck and drew with another. I definitely deserved to lose the match to the one whom I drew at the Grand Prix, but he played so badly and all the subtle mistakes actually allowed me to come back in the game and manage a draw. The other match was a battle of attrition, with each of us is trying to gain an edge with subtle card advantage. I cast a Shrieking Grotesque, then he cast a Steamcore Weird. The game developed in an incredibly slow pace and soon both of our hands were depleted. Now, cast that Train of Thought for four or five… oops, you just won the game. You have the Stroke of Genius, and your opponent doesn’t. I asked Masashi Oiso opinion on this one, and he said he would pick this third pick, and even higher if he doesn’t have many card drawing spells already. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see it coming back if you decided to take a subpar card over it.
I’m happy to play about three or four card drawing spells in every Blue deck, since you need to keep drawing extra cards to win the game. I’ve played with Blue decks that don’t draw cards, and they are generally the type of Blue deck that never wins.
My Sealed Deck and Draft Portion
I will give a brief summary of my Sealed decks instead of providing you with the whole list, because I think that each Sealed deck differs a lot, so it’s pretty pointless for you to study my “already used” Sealed deck.
I had a Lightning Helix, Galvanic Arc, Pyromatics, Last Gasp, and Douse in Gloom as removal, and obviously I started to get greedy and tried to fit everything into my deck. I finally settled into a four-color Green deck with all of these available removal, with R/G/W as the main colors and two Swamps for the two black removal spells. God, I wished I had thought through of the consequences of being so greedy.
My deck was chunky and the mana was poor. Worst thing, I found out that Green decks have to draw the right mana early in the game to keep up the pressure, or else Blue will overwhelm it with card advantage and removal. I kept a few questionable hands, but really, I can’t mulligan a three land and four spell hand in hope of getting three or four colors at the opening. As I practiced my Sealed portion with Ruud Warmenhoven, Eugene Levin, Jake Hart, and my brother Joe, I realized my Blue cards were pretty good after all. I mean, they looked pretty awful, but I do think there were potential in them rather than the Green deck… first because of the card advantage, and second because the card advantage grants the ability to consistently cast the Black removal that I had splashed in the Green deck. Everyone in the room was saying that the Blue cards were crap and I’m over-fond of card advantage, but I think that’s the right deck. I wrote on a piece of paper how to transform my R/G/W/b deck into a U/B/R deck after sideboard, and I did that every single game after the first. It worked wonders.
I lost most of my first games, but then I transformed into Blue… and I found out opponents were boarding in cards like Ivy Dancer, a vanilla 1/2 for three mana against me after sideboarding. You can imagine how awesome to see that on your opponent’s board when you just took out all your Forests three minutes ago. I usually shuffled the sideboard cards into the deck, and proceeded to take out the Green ones so that people needed to take a wild guess if am I doing that for fun or for a purpose, since everyone knows I love to bluff things out. But building the wrong deck really hurt me on winning the whole match. As I said, losing game 1 is not a huge issue, but it’s still an issue after all. There were times when I just couldn’t win after sideboard, and that spells the end of the match.
I headed to day 2 with a 5-2 record. The draft starts, and I kicked it off with Blue. There was a big dilemma in my first pick: Mark of Eviction versus Gleancrawler, but I took the Blue gambit anyway and drafted a U/B/W deck. I unfortunately went 1-1-1 in the first one, losing both games to Rally the Righteous because I didn’t play around it in one game. If I had I could’ve won comfortably a turn later. I’m was being impatient and stupid. I drew a game with a U/B/R deck because he played so badly. I should have lost easily, but the Train of Thought put me over the edge because he didn’t have one while I did.
I drafted U/B/W once again in pod 2, went 2-0 and lost the last one to a monstrosity G/B/W deck. He drew the correct mana by turn 3 or 4 all three games, so I couldn’t take advantage of the fact that Green decks only draw one card per turn and he couldn’t draw them fast. Overall, I’m pretty dissatisfied with myself for not playing Blue in the Sealed portion. I think things would have been different if I had.
Enough of cards for the moment. End.
The Entertaining Section
I received an email from Ruud Warmenhoven a few weeks ago, and he said he would like to attend the Grand Prix, and he asked if we could stay together. I certainly have no problem with that, so I got a room with two beds. My brother Joe and I shared one, while Ruud took the other. We talked a little and Ruud told me his successful experiences with the ladies when he travels around. Apparently, Ruud was taking a long holiday in Thailand and he’s pretty good at recognizing people’s origin. He would just go up to a lady and say, “ So, you’re Swedish, right?” and the story would end up with a “happy ending” that night.
Ruud ended up not making Day 2 because he was stuck in the last round with a draw and his opponent just wouldn’t concede, so Ruud was the nice guy and conceded. eugene Levin and Tomohiro Kaji did not make it either, so they headed to the local bars to do some boozing.
Terry: Man, enjoy the night. Make sure you get some!
Ruud: Ha ha, okay Terry.
I headed to bed as early as 10pm, since I had a more Magic the next day, but at around 1am, I heard some knocking on the door. It was Ruud.
Actually, it wasn’t just Ruud… it is Ruud with a local chyk. I was too tired to check her out, so I went back to sleep… but it’s just the beginning for Ruud. He did a good job of keeping as quiet as possible, but the girl had a hard time controlling her volume.
You have no idea how strange it feels sleeping in the opposite bed when Ruud Warmenhoven is hard at work.
On the next day, after the GP had ended, Tomohiro and Shuhei Nakamura joined us to head to a disco. Boy, poor Tomohiro was corrupted by the evil Ruud and Eugene the villain, and he demanded more alcohol. Imagine how cool it was seeing Craig Jones tearing up the dance floor, and watching the shy Japanese guys dance oddly with the local girls. That was awesome.
The Amusing Man of the Night Award was won by Eugene Levin. He was the lone hunter at the dance floor, and soon he was tagging onto a local chyk. He was dancing, and staring brutally at the girl as if he were playing some tense games in a Pro Tour Top 8. Two hours passed, and Eugene was still dancing out there, giving the stone-cold stare at the girl, and was still not progressing. I guess he’s playing some sort of control deck and he’s looking to gain further control of the game instead of winning it right away… although time had been called and it was turn 5 of the active player. He even sat at the girl’s table — with her entire family, including all her cousins and small sisters. He came back to our table shortly after.
Eugene: Man, this isn’t gonna work. I’m tired of it. I’m going back to the hotel.
So the GP ended up with a local winning it, and foreign pros ended up tearing the disco dance floor. Nice.
Until next time, may the Malaysian, Japanese, Dutchies, Americans, and the Australians have a chance to get drunk together once again.