Rise of the Eldrazi is an incredible Limited format.
Wizards did a great job with this set. No color feels unplayable, most of the cards you will commonly play against are balanced, and the set gives you the tools to draft a good beatdown or control deck. Most of the decisions you make in Rise draft have a significant, noticeable impact on each card after it in a way many other drafts format don’t. Finding the correct play can be similarly complex. Additionally there are a ton of different archetypes to give you options beyond just color combinations, each one a linear strategy which has been given just the right amount of cards.
Today, I’d like to talk about drafting one such strategy: blue-based level up.
Now, I don’t think blue-based level up is necessarily the best strategy Rise has to offer. I think there Rise has several highly competitive deck archetype linears, and blue-based level up is just one of many. However, unlike many of the other linears, this strategy seems severely underdrafted right now despite the fact everyone seems to acknowledge it exists. Draft after draft will go by with all of the pieces floating around, people muttering at the end of the draft about how they probably can’t beat the insane level up deck if somebody drafted it. The problem? Nobody did! Once I started taking those pieces, I quickly found out how strong the strategy is if you’re willing to move in early. And soon you will too.
Let’s get started.
There are a few pieces that make blue the centerpiece of a good level up beatdown deck.
First, Blue has several excellent level up creatures. It’s always great when an archetype wants you to play cards that are just good on their own, and this archetype does just that. At common you have both Halimar Wavewatcher and Skywatcher Adept, both of which are great, and the former of which is significantly underrated. At uncommon things get even better with Hada Spy Patrol and Enclave Cryptologist. I’m happy having multiple copies of all four of those cards in my deck. Plus, if you’re fortunate enough, the blue rare level up creatures are pretty sweet too.
Second, evasion is crucial to the success of beatdown decks in this format. It’s really hard to break through the ground after turn four or five without blowing all your removal spells. Blue let’s you get past their defenses by providing three solid fliers between common and uncommon. Since you’re playing plenty of level up, Champion’s Drake becomes a fourth great flier you can pick up as well that other drafters might not want. Make sure to pick up those Ogre Cleavers; they’re excellent in this strategy.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, blue has access to Venerated Teacher. I have seen this card create a ridiculous number of opening blowouts that most decks just can’t recover from. It puts most level up creatures on their final stage if they have just one or two counters on them, allowing any kind of respectable level up curve just roll your opponent over. You can’t really play him without a critical mass of level up creatures, but when you play him correctly he creates a ton of virtual mana.
Then comes the question of what color to pair Blue with.
Knowing where else to move is all about figuring out what’s open. An individual card ranking doesn’t really do a lot for you in this archetype; it’s all about what you need for your curve and which route is open. (Which is why there isn’t a pick order list in this article.) The bad news is a lot of the strong level up cards people are going to scoop up highly anyway. The good news, though, is that few of the level up cards people are going to aggressively take to splash; most of them don’t work well off a splash. As a result, it is absolutely crucial you can get a handle on what’s going on. You can either try starting off by sticking to blue and then seeing what goodies you are passed in pack two and cut them hard for pack three, or, in a more high risk high reward strategy, you can try to identify what is open right away and move into it.
It can be even trickier that that, though. Sometimes you don’t even need very much of another color. On multiple occasions a nearly mono blue level up deck, usually just splashing for some removal, has come together and pulled out a 2-1 or 3-0 record. This is where starting off by cutting the blue cards for this strategy and then seeing where the draft goes can work to your advantage. In pack two you can just lap up the blue nectar your neighbor is feeding you. (And hopefully all the Ogre Cleavers!)
Eventually you are going to end up paired with another color if you play this strategy enough. Neither green or red is any good for this kind of strategy, so your options are white and black. Both of them are excellent. I personally favor the black pairing just slightly because you gain access to all of the excellent black cards that you can sprinkle throughout your deck, because Cadaver Imp alongside Venerated Teacher can give you some insane play sequences, and because Zulaport Enforcer alongside Venerated Teacher is really hard to beat for most nonblack decks.
Don’t take that as a knock against the white pairing though: white has plenty of good tools. I will happily draft either archetype. Guard Duty shines as a great removal spell for this archetype, and the excellent Caravan Escort and Knight of Cliffhaven are both great level up creatures at common with the gamebreaking Kabira Vindicator at uncommon. (Ikiral Outrider, not so much.) You also have Time of Heroes, which is in a league of its own.
I’ll cover both strategies, starting with the Black pairing.
The black pairing is a little less aggressive than the white pairing. While you do gain access to Gloomhunter, Null Champion often ends up holding back to not trade with a Nest Invader or something, and both Zulaport Enforcer and Nirkana Cutthroat can take some time to get going. Fortunately, that plays into your filthy, black magic casting hands because you gain access to ways of impeding an initial assault.
While Induce Despair is a lot lower pick in this archetype because a lot of your level up creatures are cheaper, Vendetta is still great, and Last Kiss is acceptable. Bala Ged Scorpion is also awesome at making sure your non-fully-leveled Enforcers can bust through any walls they might have. Once Enforcer hits three counters, he closes out the game pretty fast.
White, on the other hand, is all about speed. Knight of Cliffhaven and Caravan Escort are cards you end up leveling up early and then pushing through to their ultimate level with a Teacher. Kabira Vindicator is also solid in this archetype. While unless you chain a couple of teachers hitting level five at a point where it’s going to matter is unlikely, it’s not hard to make him a Glorious Anthem.
Speaking of Glorious Anthem, there’s Time of Heroes. Wow. Not only will this card wheel most of the time, but it’s insane in this deck. As long as you have the critical mass of level up creatures (I’d say at least seven,) Time of Heroes alongside your blue level up fliers puts them on a very fast clock. If you see a couple of these go by in your first few picks, as they often seem to do, and they come back to you at the end of the pack, as they also often seem to do, then I would grab them and go the U/W route.
In addition to Time of Heroes, white gives you other tools and added evasion to help you seal games up. Dawnglare Invoker and Makindi Griffin are both solid creatures to have in this archetype, and Kor-Line Slinger keeps them from racing you or their walls from blocking your early Escorts. Puncturing Light serves a similar purpose. Repel the Darkness is also great in this archetype, both digging you further and making sure you can deal the last few points as they start to stabilize.
On a final note for the U/W version, Hyena Umbra has turned out pretty well in this archetype. I wouldn’t go overboard on them or anything, but, while Mammoth Umbra gets a lot of attention, its hyena brother is ignored. The reason why is simple: resource and tempo protection.
Each level up creature requires more resource expenditure than an additional creature. You can’t afford to spend a couple turns leveling up/crafting a great Venerated Teacher turn just to have them trade two Gloomhunters for your 4/4 vigilant flier. Not only does your Hyena Umbra grant one-time protection from death, but it gives your creature first strike and it’s very hard to kill a fully leveled up creature that also has first strike. Even if they stack a bunch of creatures in front of it, the Umbra will still save it. Unless they have a bounce spell or Induce Despair, Hyena Umbra on a maximally leveled creature can completely dominate a game.
There’s a lot of exploration still to be had in Rise of the Eldrazi. Every few drafts I’ll notice someone playing a new archetype I hadn’t even expected. What’s most important is being able to be flexible and knowledgeable of all the different routes you can take so that you can settle into walking the pathway to a successful draft. But if you see some compelling cards for this strategy early, or end up picking a few good, blue level up creatures in a row, try veering onto this path. It’s been strong for me so far, and I’d love to hear what your experience with level up strategies in Rise of the Eldrazi limited have been. Feel free to send me an e-mail or post in the forums and we can compare experiences. I’m looking forward to talking with you soon, and have fun drafting!
Gavin Verhey
Team Unknown Stars
Rabon on Magic Online, Lesurgo everywhere else