Ho ho ho!
Now you’ve all had your Christmas presents and best wishes, it’s time to focus on what’s next: the Ravnica Limited season! I’m not sure about you, but I’m always glad when I can stop to test endlessly for a couple of events and start drafting instead. That’s what Limited is mostly about: practice, practice, practice, practice… Not only practice how to build sealed decks, because that should be the easy part of the event. Once you’ve reached Day 2 of the GP or Top 8 of the PTQ, you’ll have so much more influence on your deck than before that it has to be harder. Today I’ll discuss a deck which is widely considered among the best few archetypes: the Selesnya Conclave decks.
If you’ve competed in a couple of drafts in this format, you’ll certainly have recognized moments when Selesnya is at its best; it’s usually harder to spot the worse side of an archetype rather than the better one when you’re not playing it yourself, as you’ll see the better side out on the table quickly while the worse side is usually too slow and gets stuck in their hand. I’ve drafted Selesnya many times and I agree that it is among the better archetypes of the format, but I’ve also experienced a few problems with drafting this deck, usually concerning the drafting process itself. I like to keep my options open early in the draft, meaning that when I’m Selesnya I want to try and be open to switch to Boros or Golgari when the draft requires me to, but it’s not always so easy as these three archetypes are each quite different from another, and many draft picks make you choose between drafting the best card for the deck you’re currently in, or drafting a card which is also good in a deck you’re possibly switching to.
A problem with drafting this deck is that most of the important Green commons for the deck are very good in Selesnya but not as good in the Golgari guild and the same goes for the White commons and Boros decks. A few examples: Scatter the Seeds and Fists of Ironwood aren’t nearly as good in Golgari as they are in Selesnya. The same is true for Benevolent Ancestor in Boros. Also, Selesnya is a very popular archetype, so it’s hard to get a good deck if you’re not sure that you’re in the right colors and that your neighbors aren’t taking your good spells. It’s not as much of a problem if they’re Golgari and taking Bramble Elemental or Greater Mossdog, but if they take away your Fists of Ironwood and Scatter the Seeds, you’re in trouble. This is why I always like to have my options open early on; the first few picks could have been fluke signals, and you don’t want to waste too many picks on switching to Boros or Golgari. The archetype is quite popular for a reason though: if you’re one of around three players drafting Selesnya, your deck will probably be good, but you should only draft it if the packs allow you to.
It’s important to keep in mind how the mana curve works out when you’re drafting Selesnya. The likes of Siege Wurm, Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi or Conclave Equenaut aren’t nearly as good as they should be when you don’t have creatures early on, and that’s where the token-generators come in. If your deck consists of a fair amount of Convoke-cards, Fists will turn into a double Llanowar Elves generator and Scatter the Seeds will give you three. These tokens (and smaller creatures) will give you mana in the early game to boost out the fatties, but in order not to get mana-flooded, you need to be able to put them to good use in the late-game. The cards that realize this most effectively are all uncommons and rares, but there are a lot of them so you should be able to get your hands on some in most drafts. I’ll list the uncommons that fill out this function for you in a general order of how good they’ve been to me. This isn’t very useful as it’s unlikely that you’ll encounter two of them in the same pack, but it is something you should have though about before having to make such a choice.
Selesnya Guildmage
The best of the Guildmage cycle as it wins so many games on its own. It’s a good creature to power-up your Convoke guys early on, and after that he prevents you from being flooded (you always have something to do now) and kills your opponent in only a few turns. It’s better than most rares; the only Selesnya-rares I’d pick over it would be Glare of Subdual, Tolsimir Wolfblood, Hour of Reckoning and Ursapine.
Moldervine Cloak
It’s great in any deck, but especially in Selesnya as all of your tokens are now 4/4s or the little flying creatures you have are now that much scarier. It’s like Kabuto Moth in the deck: suddenly your opponent has to trade his Bramble Elementals for your 1/1 tokens. This is only in the late game though; in the early game, if you can put it onto a 2/2 on turn 3, your opponent is on a very short clock and it’s very hard to get rid of as you can just dredge the Cloak back.
Sandsower
At the first glimpse I wasn’t so impressed by this guy, but he’s been a great late-game winner for me every time I had it. It takes care of so many problems at once; any opposing fatty or flying creature you couldn’t block before is no longer a problem and your bigger guys can now attack again through your opponent’s defense as their bigger guys got tapped in their controller’s attack step.
Root-Kin Ally
It might not look so good in the early game, but even then it’s close to a 3/3 unblockable (or a very big wall). With Selesnya, you’ll often find that if you don’t get an insane draw early on, the game will take quite a while to complete because you’re easily locked into a creature-stall. This guy just breaks situations like that; if you both have, say, 10 creatures, your opponent can’t really block it, but he probably can’t take it either, forcing a chump-block. What happens if you have Fists of Ironwood on him is probably best left unsaid for fear of unwanted traumatic flashbacks.
Oathsworn Giant
This one makes it a lot easier to “rush” into your opponent with lots of tokens in situations where he has few creatures and you have many but his are a bit bigger. Apart from this it solves some problems as well, especially with the stats of the flying creatures in the format. Courier Hawk, Screeching Griffin, and Conclave Equenaut can now block most flyers the Dimir guild has to offer, which can often be a problem as you’re easily locked into creature stalls and you don’t usually have a lot of fliers available to trade for other fliers.
Overwhelm
As I mentioned several times before, the Selesnya player will often find himself in a creature stand-off, and Overwhelm wins those kinds of games. It does virtually nothing in the early game though, and it’s just a bad finisher if you’re in a late game without many creatures, that’s why I don’t like it as much as some people do. It is a card which can turn around a deck completely though; sometimes you need a way to win the late-game stalls and this is just the card to do that with. This said, if it’s late in the draft and you don’t have a way to win in those situations yet (examples are the cards listed above this one), you should not be afraid to pick this over anything; sometimes your deck just needs it.
In order to get the right mix of early drops, fatties, tricks and finishers you should know when you’ll be able to pick up certain cards, so you won’t pick up a specific card too early, miss out on the other card you could have picked, and get too many similar cards later in the draft. I’ll list the commons for the deck in an order of how late in the pack you can expect to get them. This is not a pick order; it’s just an indication of how late in the draft these cards come culled from my experiences on Magic Online. When you have to decide between two cards, you can keep a list like this in the back of your head and base your choice on the assumption that you’ll get enough cards with that function later on. You should also keep in mind that once it’s already late in the draft, there is no “later on”, and you should pick what your deck needs at that point. I’m not listing uncommons and rares because I don’t think that it’s reasonable to “expect” a card of this rarity. So, the pick list of “the average MODO-player”:
Faith’s Fetters
Selesnya Evangel
Siege Wurm
Bramble Elemental
Fists of Ironwood
Conclave Equenaut
Scatter the Seeds
Veteran Armorer
Civic Wayfinder
Greater Mossdog
Elves of Deep Shadow
Screeching Griffin
Farseek
Transluminant
Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi
Signets
Seeds of Strength
Gather Courage
Benevolent Ancestor
Nightguard Patrol
Elvish Skysweeper
Gaze of the Gorgon
Golgari Brownscale
Centaur Safeguard
Courier Hawk
Votary of the Conclave
Caregiver
Wojek Siren
An example pick that could be reasoned with a list like this when you’re in the middle of a draft (say, second pack 6th pick), and you have to decide between Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi and Selesnya Signet. Your deck already has a Bramble Elemental, Siege Wurm and Conclave Equenaut as fatties, but only three 3-drops and a Courier Hawk in the two-slot (and 2 Scatter the Seeds to accelerate into Convoke creatures). It also has a Greater Mossdog, Screeching Griffin and Sandsower as four-drops to accelerate into. Apart from the Guardian, all of the big creatures for the deck are fairly high picks, so you can’t expect to get too many of them in the upcoming pack. You do need another fatty though, but you also need many more early drops. In this case you could argue that many early drops are usual late picks while you won’t see the fatties too often. If you have a look at the bottom half of my list, you’ll see nine early drops, all of which I think are fine in the deck because you already have four Convoke-spells, and the Guardian would be the fifth.
Signets
Benevolent Ancestor
Nightguard Patrol
Elvish Skysweeper
Golgari Brownscale
Centaur Safeguard
Courier Hawk
Votary of the Conclave
Caregiver
Obviously it still depends a lot on circumstances (how many fatties did you see in this pack already, will they come back, is your deck still good without another fatty, etc.), but it is a factor to take into consideration when you make such a pick. Again I want to emphasize that you should not use this as a pick list, as I encourage everyone to evaluate cards based on their own experience with them and interpret the current situation correctly and don’t have a definitive pick list to draft with. My list is (or should be) a list which displays the card evaluation of everyman, and you want to have an edge on your opponents, so you should probably not have the same card evaluation as them (unless the format has been “solved” and everyone knows what it’s about). It’s not necessary to try and perfect your list – if you can use your experience to argue that you want to pick this card over that one because you’ll most likely see more of the same later in the draft, that’s great and all you need from it.
I’d also like to add that I don’t expect you to agree with the order of cards in my list as it’s based on my own experience and yours could be very different as we might not be drafting in the same place and at the same time (a different metagame, so to speak). This isn’t just a difference between your experience and mine; it’s also a difference between low-level and high-level events: at a PTQ Top 8, Day 2 of a Grand Prix or Pro Tour your thoughts on the availability of certain cards are probably different from those on any lower-level event (for example, at higher-level events people are more likely to hate-draft rather than be friendly). I hope my explanation will help you in your events and more importantly will encourage you to adjust your choices to your current circumstances.
2006 will be the year of (and remember, you heard it here first!):
- The Japanese still winning a lot, but not as much as last season because of the comeback of…
- The Dutch. We now have more people than ever before on the gravy train (level 3+), and will have multiple Top 8 finishes again
- Go Anan winning United States nationals, beating Antonino De Rosa in the finals
- Adam Chambers getting excited (alright, not the first, but it’s true!)
- Randy Buehler still saying “fair enough” thirty times per hour on the podcast
- Gerard Fabiano and Osyp Lebedowicz becoming millionaires on television
- Gerard Fabiano becoming a TV-personality with his appearances on “The Price is Right”, “Amazing Race” and “The Real World.” “Good Man or Bag” will air, though it may only show on public access.
- Billy Moreno getting his player card printed
- Happy palm trees
Good luck in 2006,
Julien