With both a unique Block Constructed format and a new draft format being played in San Juan, preparation time was inevitably the limiting factor. Thanks to the requirements of my job, a strange creation I never had to deal with during my first trip to the Pro Tour, time was even more limited. I knew I would not be able to get anywhere near as many drafts under my belt as I would like, either online or in New York.
Those drafts I did get to do were high quality and I learned a lot from them. The closest true Magic store left might be over an hour away in Brooklyn, but there is still a large core of high quality good men willing to draft several times a week. How often I use that resource varies wildly with how much I enjoy drafting the current format and whether I have an upcoming event to prepare for, and in this case I took an active role in creating more drafts and converting as many six man drafts as I could into eight man drafts to capture the correct draft dynamics.
From the start, Brian David-Marshall and I began drafting highly aggressive White/Blue leveler decks, and we both enjoyed great success with them. It is entirely possible that if different cards had been opened in a handful of packs early on my draft philosophy in this format would have taken a decidedly different tone, but I felt I was playing with by far the strongest strategy. Other players were building to cards that cost anywhere from four to eight or occasionally even more mana, introducing a great many things that could Go Horribly Wrong. Instead I was assembling decks whose mana curve peaked at two and often had only a handful of cards that cost more than three. On multiple occasions I could count the cards that cost more than two mana on one hand.
Despite that, it took a great many turns for these decks to feel in any way underpowered, and never would my mana fail to be put to good use. If mana was at a premium, most creatures would remain in their initial or second incarnation and I would get to play a lot of spells. Where other decks would be helpless, it was fine to stall at four lands, and often acceptable to stall at three or sometimes even two. If mana was plentiful, max level creatures would deploy as appropriate to the situation. It would be less mana efficient in terms of total mana spent, but with every mana always spent and the flexibility to bring out whatever abilities were needed and use them immediately, there was almost always a way around whatever ailed you. Gigantic men would rarely pose a problem.
What made good leveler decks cry were a few select bomb cards. The removal cards available to White/Blue are Guard Duty, Regress, and Narcolepsy. Regress and Narcolepsy are excellent, and Guard Duty is strong if the deck gets there, but none of them can deal with the worst offenders such as Guul Draz Assassin or Drana, Kalastria Bloofchief. Cards like that could come down and win the game with little or no assistance, and there was no practical answer to this problem. Other decks can splash for another color at will, but leveler decks are too fast and can’t afford the loss of color. Even Evolving Wilds is a loss of time that I greatly prefer to avoid.
I suspect that those early drafts were dominated by White/Blue and when that failed Blue/Black leveler decks in large part because those decks were easier to draft correctly. Others were drafting decks that put out giant men but likely were not choosing the right mix of cards as they learned what worked and what did not while the leveler drafters hit upon most of the correct choices from the beginning. I knew that often when I tried to draft other colors I had the potential to go into many different subthemes that required radically adjusting card values and I knew it would take a lot of time to develop the proper feel for that. I can only assume the same applied to other players, but I still felt that the Blue/White deck was excellent and the main danger was that it would be overdrafted.
When I started drafting online my jaw dropped on a regular basis. In New York City Time of Heroes was a first pick windmill slam for many players. Online it would regularly go sixth. Knight of Cliffhaven was my favorite common to start off a draft, but I would pick them up late with shocking regularity. Champion’s Drake was coming around the table! I did not understand. When I faced another White/Blue deck in the finals of my first draft, I assumed these players were flat out wrong but I struggled in subsequent online drafts despite cards that I considered high quality. The problem is that online, if you lose the first round, you often only get to play two or three games, and that is not enough time to know if the deck was poor or if you lost to other factors. The sheer volume of drafts one can do is valuable, but if you’re struggling (and you have to draft 8-4 or the opponents are a joke, plus wait times get obscene so the Swiss queues and 4-3-2-2 are not an option) things can rapidly get quite inefficient in terms of both time and money. The contrast between my success in local drafts and failure online had me concerned, as did my lack of experience with many viable strategies, and I wondered whether the Pro Tour drafts would have the same anti-White bias that was so extreme online.
My first draft sat me down at a 4-1 table next to Gabe Walls. I had decided based on what I’d seen online that it was worth the gamble for me to force white in general and the leveler deck in particular. I sent an inquiry to the head judge in advance by email about the possibility of bringing the shirt back, since I was confident I wanted to go this route and we already had plenty of sexy. He asked what it would entail, I told him, and he didn’t reply, which I assumed amounted to him not being able to outright tell me I couldn’t do it but much preferring if I didn’t, so I decided to respect that. I’d mentioned my drafting preferences in conversation with some pros, but I didn’t think Gabe or anyone else at that table had the information.
The first pack gave me a choice between Drake Umbra and Gelatinous Genesis. Genesis is by all reports completely busted and operates a level above Drake Umbra, but it is not one of the cards that you fear. An opponent with a Genesis can win a game that goes long, but those are not the types of games you are looking to play, so in context it is mostly harmless and far easier to pass than a card like Assassin. I took all my time, but the decision was never in doubt, and I held firm. It became clear quickly that the other players were not pondering what I was pondering, as I got a number of late cards that any self respecting leveler deck would have cut off, but my leveler count was quite low. Given I’d passed nothing of any use, I was confident the second pack would reward me, and reward me it did. I lost my deck, so an exact list is impossible. The general scope was that I had excellent position but not that many of my cards were opened, which forced me to scrounge a little, but because no one else wanted the cards I was scrounging for it was easy to find them. A Kor Spiritdancer came back around to me, which allowed me to play a total of five Umbras without giving anything away, and my deck was complete.
When the draft was over, Gabe Walls turned to me and asked me: “So how’s your leveler deck? I’m putting you on 2-1, no more and no less.” My jaw almost dropped that he would be that confident. Later on I would ask him what his logic was, since the cards he passed in no way forced me to go that route. He explained that based on past experience, I would look to find the underdrafted or second best deck that if you drafted it alone became the best deck and force that. Green was the best deck, so of course I would force levelers. There was some scarily strong logic involved in that, whether or not I agree with every step along the way, and we managed to not take a single card away from each other without any pre-draft communication while both drafting what we wanted. That’s as good as it gets, and I managed to dodge him on the way to winning the table by avoiding cards that my deck couldn’t deal with.
I sit down to the second draft as the coverage team gathers round the table to record all our picks. I encourage you to load up the Draft viewer and follow along.
Brian David-Marshall, the man with whom I developed my love of levelers, is behind me ready to record my picks. As I open the first pack and count it, I flip over one card in order to make them all face the same way and reveal Knight of Cliffhaven. Brian goes to his clipboard and writes down Knight of Cliffhaven as my first pick. Josh Bennett gives Brian a strange look and tells him he can’t know I’m going to pick the Knight. Brian replies that it is fine, there’s only three or four cards I would pick over it. That’s probably a few more than that but none of them are commons. I open the pack and start flipping through it. As I pass by the Flame Slash, Josh points to it to say aha, clearly he is going to take the far superior card.
Brian shakes his head, and when the time comes I add the Knight to my pile.
It goes without saying that this is a hyper-aggressive play, or at least that other players would consider it to be one. Chances are that all seven other players at the table would take Flame Slash, and it wouldn’t shock me if no other Day 2 player would have taken the Knight, but in context it wasn’t even close and this pack is illustrative of why it is so easy to corner the market on White. There are no natural ins for the color, and all of the good removal gets taken over every White common and even uncommon, even if players consider themselves indifferent when choosing colors. Rather than being indifferent, most of them actively hate White and it shows. The value of the rest of the draft, together with a top shelf leveler, dwarfs the value of top shelf removal.
Pack 2 was not what I was looking to see. White and Blue together didn’t have a single playable card, an uncommon was missing and the two remaining ones are Green and Red. The good news is that together with the first pack this pack comprises a complete cut of both White and Blue, and while the uncommon is often Blue here, it is rare that it would be White and get taken over Rapacious One. The choice is once again between taking power and staying on target. If I take Null Champion I have a second leveler and have forced Red down the throat of the player to my left. If I take Rapacious One I have a much better card and have still forced my colors but if I try to use it I am sending confusing signals. In the end I decided not to take things a bridge too far, which would have destroyed my draft. I talked to Andres Suarez about what happened in the draft, but I’ll save that conversation for later to avoid giving away information I didn’t have at the time; if you’re curious you can peek at his draft. I will only say that he almost took Umalog’s Crusher out of that pack, and that if he had I would probably have been playing on Sunday.
Pack 3 once again was alarming, as there were no levelers or Blue cards of any kind but Makindi Griffin was a fine pick and I knew I had a good chance at a free Affa Guard Hound. The hardest part of reading a draft in Rise of the Eldazri is that due to the way the print runs work often a pack won’t contain any cards for the lever deck or sometimes even any cards of one color at all, so it takes several packs to be sure that the missing cards aren’t an accident. If it was a coincidence, a future pack will soon make that clear and when that happens it is safe to assume the other packs were abnormal rather than worrying about the pack full of goodies having been extra juicy.
Pack 4 is a case of good news and bad news. Dawnglare Invoker is an excellent card, and at fourth pick it is a strong signal that White is open especially given the lack of other quality cards in the pack, but there are no playable Blue cards in this pack since as we all know Distortion Strike is not Blue. With no Blue cards passed my way in four packs, I know I’ve forced it successfully but I also assume it is probably cut off, and my best guess is that I am going to be drafting behind a Blue/Black leveler deck. That’s the worst case scenario short of an outright war, so it was looking like I would need a backup plan.
Totem-Guide Hartebeest and Emerge Unscathed were easy picks, as they were clearly the best cards in their packs, at which point my suspicions felt confirmed. The next pack sealed the deal as I picked up a seventh pick Time of Heroes! That answered all my questions as I almost had to be drafting behind a Blue/Black deck even if the Bala Ged Scorpion and Essence Feed made me wonder a little bit. It didn’t have to be Suarez, but if it wasn’t him then it was Hayes. The rest of pack one held nothing useful as someone else had taken away my Hounds.
Pack 2 pick 1 is where I have to make my decision. For pack 2, Red is going to be cut and cut hard, but in pack 3 it is going to be open, so is that the right second color for me to use? I decided what I opened was going to be the deciding factor. If I could take a White or Blue card that reinforced my initial plan I could run rampant through pack 2 and then feast on a steady diet of White cards in pack three but with only one leveler and one friend my white was drifting in a different direction. When I didn’t crack anything that would help me get back on target, I had a choice between Staggershock and Wall of Omens. Wall of Omens is excellent, but it tends to be low impact and I felt it would leave me too far behind to catch up. Note that the exact cards opened were the reason for this, especially the secondary white cards. I didn’t have to look to know that I wasn’t being cut off from Ikeda Outrider or even Caravan Escort but if the cards were never opened it was too late to gamble on that changing. I took Staggershock and, barring a strange pass, settled into drafting White/Red.
The next pack cemented that decision as I chose Mammoth Umbra, which was by far the best card for White/Red, over safe pick for the leveler deck Caravan Escort or Geronimo gamble Skywatcher Adept. The concept behind taking Skywatcher Adept is that it allows me to draft a second leveler while passing a trio of white cards the deck is happy to play: Mammoth Umbra, Caravan Escort, and Guard Duty. In a pack of normal strength I could even attempt to long range the Escort, but this pack was weak. While I like Daggerback Basilisk, a lot of Green players don’t like it and it seemed difficult to find seven cards that didn’t take away my best goodies as they only had to leave me with five two of which were going to be Reinforced Bulwark and Glory Seeker. Rather than take the gamble, I decided that giving away the Adept didn’t substantially decrease my chance of getting the Guard Duty and I couldn’t afford to get overly greedy.
Survival Cache was next over Smite and then I took Dawnglare Invoker as I was committed to my path. If I had taken the Adept I would now be forced to take Narcolepsy to go with my Hartebeest, and I still wouldn’t have a third leveler. I then was rewarded with the card I most wanted at this stage which was Lust for War turning on my Hartebeest. The next pack is a difficult decision as I know that Time of Heroes is almost certainly heading to my sideboard while Repel the Darkness could potentially start but I didn’t want to risk giving someone to my right ideas and even this far behind a comeback was still possible. A few meaningless picks later it was time for pack 3.
Venerated Teacher and Champion’s Drake? The cards are taunting me! The good news was that I knew it was way too late for that so I took the excellent Hedron-Field Purists and followed that up with Brimstone Mage. I thought about taking Knight of Cliffhaven over Heat Ray as I’d just picked up two levelers and could probably get back the Outrider so I would be at five levelers which is within striking distance of turning on Time of Heroes but I decided my deck was good enough that I didn’t need to gamble like that. This was a good decision as my deck was solid and the packs would miss the white levelers for several picks but I would have no trouble picking up the white cards that did get opened. If I had stayed on target I would have ended up a little short due to a lack of opened secondary levelers and being cut off hard but the deck would not have been so bad despite being cut off, and while I probably would have done a little better with a first pick Flame Slash into a White/Red deck I’m convinced that if I try to draft anything but white this deck falls apart.
Here is the final decklist:
2 Dawnglare Invoker
1 Emerge Unscathed
1 Guard Duty
1 Hedron-Field Purists
2 Hyena Umbra
1 Knight of Cliffhaven
1 Lone Missionary
2 Makindi Griffin
1 Mammoth Umbra
1 Survival Cache
1 Totem-Guide Hartebeest
1 Wall of Omens
1 Brimstone Mage
1 Heat Ray
1 Lust for War
1 Rapacious One
1 Staggershock
2 Valakut Fireboar
1 Wrap in Flames
I considered playing Soulbound Guardians and I had 2 Demystify in case of emergency. If I had come up short on cards I would have had to resort to Goblin Arsonist or Runed Servitor to fill out the deck. I managed to play the deck to what I felt was a well deserved 2-1 finish. The deck ended up with a lot of good synergy and played well, but note how few times I was able to make a legitimate choice between cards similar in power level. I’d also note that the key to this deck working out was that I did not waste any picks on blue cards I was forced to abandon. If I had done so it would have been better to try and tough it out if I had even a relatively small amount of leveler action in order to try and take advantage of Time of Heroes.
In the draft challenge on Sunday, I continued to pursue my strategy and finished 9th with a 5-2 record after losing a tight match in the last round to Rob Dougherty. I don’t believe I lost a Limited match all weekend that didn’t involve mana problems on my side of the table, and no deck is better able to cope with those problems than levelers, to the extent that I feel most players are playing an average of half a land too many in such decks. If and when I feel like drafting more online, count on me continuing to draft in this way until other players adjust or I get a hankering to experiment with other decks. I heartily recommend this strategy to others, as I did to Noah Shwartz before the Top 8 draft. If you look at how that went you have a good idea how things typically go when you’re willing to call your shot.
Until next time…
Zvi