I’ve now completed about twelve Drafts in the new format, and I’m not going to lie to you; I haven’t quite figured it out yet. The reason for this is simply because it’s a new format; everyone needs time to explore the new possibilities, as it’s usually fairly easy to recognize the new options but quite hard to predict which ones are better than others. Today, I won’t tell you about what works in the new format; I’m going to give you an overview of the new options and the observations I have made.
The first thing I’d like to point out is that it seems very hard to optimize all three of the boosters. To explain this; you could see the pre-constructed color combinations (the Guilds) as separate “colors” that are often deep enough to support an entire deck, and not only half of it like in other formats. If you look at it this way, it explains why triple-Ravnica draft seemed to be a relatively easy (and sometimes boring) format: there were only four colors, and these colors supported an entire deck by themselves most of the time. Therefore it was often unnecessary to splash anything and very few deck archetypes existed. What happens when you replace a pack containing these “colors” with a pack of Guildpact, presenting three new “colors”?
One option is to sacrifice the majority of pack three by sticking to the old decks, and only pick up the very few cards that are both castable (so not the gold cards) and fit in the deck’s strategy, but there are few cards that meet these requirements. Obviously, this is not quite what you’re looking for; you’re basically throwing away about a sixth of possible drafted cards that could have been in your deck. The other option with which I’ve had some success is to draft a full three colors (one or two Guilds from Ravnica and one from Guildpact), and not a Ravnica Guild splashing only a few cards from Guildpact. If it would be a splash, you’re actually back at the first option because you won’t be able to pick up the best cards. Instead, you’ll end up with the consistently castable cards, and won’t maximize a lot of your picks.
With this thought in mind I made a list of Ravnica Guilds and linked them to the new Guilds, to see which Ravnica Guild has the most options in the third pack, and which new Guild might be the most drafted.
Black/Green — Green/Red, Black/White
White/Green — Green/Red, Black/White
White/Red — Green/Red, Black/White, Blue/Red
Blue/Black — Black/White, Blue/Red
Listing the Guild combinations like this shows us that the deepest two of the four Ravnica Guilds don’t commonly cooperate with Guildpact’s Izzet Guild. This means that (perhaps) the Izzet cards will not be drafted by the same amount of people as say, the Orzhov Guild, which combines with all four of Ravnica’s Guilds. Boros was also widely underdrafted in the triple-Ravnica format, and with this thought in my mind I tried to draft Boros if the Draft would allow me to, and then try to convert to Izzet for the Guildpact booster.
After the Draft I was pretty confident in my card pool, as it had doubles of the best Red/White cards of Ravnica, as well as two Sunhome lands and two Ogre Savant, and a high card quality average. Ogre Savant seemed like a great card for a Boros deck, as you can cast it even when you don’t have the Blue mana for it… but when you do, it gives you great tempo-advantage. I decided I had to play eighteen lands, as my deck would have double Sunhome and only one Terrarion to fix the mana. My Guildpact cards were double Ogre Savant, double Withstand, Torch Drake, Steamcore Weird, and Skarrgan Firebird, but when I looked at the projected mana base I quickly cut the two Blue cards.
Creatures (16)
- 1 Boros Guildmage
- 1 Centaur Safeguard
- 1 Conclave Equenaut
- 1 Frenzied Goblin
- 1 Greater Forgeling
- 1 Ordruun Commando
- 1 Sabertooth Alley Cat
- 1 Screeching Griffin
- 2 Skyknight Legionnaire
- 2 Thundersong Trumpeter
- 1 Veteran Armorer
- 2 Ogre Savant
- 1 Skarrgan Firebird
Lands (18)
Spells (6)
Sideboard
At that point the mana was double Sunhome, two Islands, 7 Plains and 7 Mountains, and one Terrarion; not exactly what you’re looking for when you’ve got doubles of both Thundersong Trumpeter and Skyknight Legionnaire. The Ogre Savants were now the only cards requiring Blue mana, and I wanted to cut them but I wanted to try and see if it would work out, so I ran them and the mana base described above. It quickly proved that I was right in not wanting to run the Ogres, just for the mana base, as beatdown decks (and especially Boros decks) need mana of both of their main colors as early as turn 3.
This draft led me to adjust my prior view on the newly opened options: the power level of each three-color combination must be evaluated individually to re-evaluate the power of the four Ravnica “starting-Guilds”. To do this I could try every combination a bunch of times, but it’s also very useful to analyze what each Guild is about and why the combination would be good or bad. I’ll list each Guild, tell you what I think is the Guild’s main game plan, and show you what I think of the mana requirements: that too is often a major factor in determining whether or not a Guild can combine properly with another. Please note that the main game plans are the “R&D-prescribed” plans; by this, I mean that that’s what R&D thought the Guild should do. In reality, we might do very different things with the same cards, work towards a different game plan, but it is useful to compare the Guild’s game plan to another Guild’s plan. The cards probably won’t work well together if the game plans don’t have enough overlap.
Golgari (Black/Green)
Most common game plan: Accelerate into big creatures, and make sure your opponent has a hard time getting rid of them, with the help of combat tricks and removal spells.
Mana requirements: A Golgari deck usually has a few color fixers of its own in Signets, Civic Wayfinder, Farseek, and Elves of Deep Shadow, so the Guild is open for a third color.
Selesnya (Green/White)
Most common game plan: Use early drops and token generators to boost out Convoke-fatties. Put the tokens and early drops to use with a card like Sandsower or Overwhelm.
Mana requirements: Green mana is usually enough for the first few turns. After that, White mana is needed for fatties such as Conclave Equenaut or Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi. Convoke helps to fix your mana, as you’ll probably need only one creature or mana of each color; hybrid creatures are a particular help with this.
Boros (Red/White)
Most common game plan: Curve out a few monsters and deal as much damage as possible, to finish the job with a card like Rally the Righteous or Incite Hysteria.
Mana requirements: You’ll want both Red and White as early as possible, since your best creatures in the common slot are Thundersong Trumpeter and Skyknight Legionnaire; Viashino Fangtail has a double-mana requirement to consider.
Dimir (Blue/Black)
Most common game plan: There are two sides of this Guild: the Aggro variant wants to play some early flying creatures and ground defenders, forcing their opponent into a race, and finish it off with tempo-oriented spells like Vedalken Dismisser and Clutch from Reality. The Control variant wants to obtain board control with defensive creatures like Stinkweed Imp and Drift of Phantasms, and maintain the board control with card advantage or a Lurking Informant while finishing it off with millstone-effects.
Mana requirements: You’ll often pass Signets for other spells in the Draft, as most Dimir decks have access to many other decent two-drops. You’ll like to have Black and Blue early, but Blue is more important as the Black removal spells are still very good after the early game.
Orzhov (Black/White)
Most common game plan: Take care of the bigger monsters with the Black removal spells, stall the game, and slowly damage the opponent with smaller creatures and life-drain effects.
Mana requirements: Decks containing the Orzhov Guild will want their White mana for early creatures and Black mana for the mid-late game removal spells.
Gruul (Red/Green)
Most common game plan: Curve out some early beaters to make your bloodthirsty creatures bigger, and round it out with some combat tricks. Or, of course, open Savage Twister.
Mana requirements: Red and Green are both needed as early as possible to enable a smooth curve; if you’re missing one of the two, you probably won’t have a drop for each turn in the early game, and you’ll allow your opponent to stabilize.
Izzet (Blue/Red)
Most common game plan: Try to obtain board control with early defensive creatures, and maintain control by abusing the synergy of bounce-spells and comes-into-play effects. Finish the job with a good flying creature.
Mana requirements: Signets are essential, as the Guild revolves around re-triggering comes-into-play effects; to do that you’ll need a lot of mana. They also fix your mana, as a few of the better spells in Guildpact can be cast with only one of the two colors, but are a lot better when you have both.
Now that I’ve described each Guild separately, it’s time to combine them into two or three-Guild combinations. As a starting point for each combination I’ll use a Ravnica Guild, as that’s where you should place your focus; it’s not only two-thirds of the Draft, but also the first part of the process. It’s quite hard to tell what your right-hand side neighbors will be drafting in the third pack, but you can still try to prepare for the third pack by picking some powerful cards that might be of the third color you’re going to pick up in Guildpact. For example, if you’re drafting Dimir you could pick up a Galvanic Arc, because you might pick up Izzet cards in the last pack. Don’t force yourself into a Guildpact guild already, though; it might not work out, as it’s hard to tell what your neighbors will be drafting, and you’ll waste too many picks.
I won’t take into consideration cards that don’t require you to be in a specific Guildpact Guild. For example, Wildsize is amazing in Golgari, but you don’t need to be drafting Gruul to be able to play it.
B/G/r
Black/Green’s early drops are usually mana accelerators, while Gruul wants to put on the pressure as early as possible, hopefully with two mana 3/3s. You can’t do both, and Gruul’s mana requirements are hard to realize in a three-color deck, but Gruul has some great cards that work well in Golgari’s game plan. The necessary fatties are available in the form of Gruul Nodorog, Streetbreaker Wurm, and Skarrgan Skybreaker, but that’s about all for the exciting stuff. Gruul Scrapper and Burning-Tree Bloodscale are both fine cards, but not as exciting in a deck that will start to play its offensive creatures later than these two. Overall, Red has some good creatures for a Golgari deck but it’s nothing exciting.
B/G/W
I listed this archetype as B/G/W, rather than B/G/w or G/W/b, because you’ll be in all three colors from Ravnica onwards. Selesnya and Golgari’s game plans are similar: survive the early game with some smaller creatures or by accelerating, and then play some fatties. Orzhov gives this deck great defense against flying creatures in Blind Hunter and Shrieking Grotesque, which are both also very good in Green-on-Green matchups. You’re usually full three-colors with this archetype (all three of the colors are your main colors), but it’s not often a problem as you have three Guilds to pick mana fixers from as well. This archetype’s power is its depth; as I mentioned before it’s one of only two three-color archetypes that can pick up cards from three Guilds, and the gold cards are usually the better cards.
W/G/r and W/R/g
As with B/G/r, there is little overlap between the Gruul’s strategy and Selesnya’s strategy, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing good left to pick up for W/G/r. Apart from the fatties already mentioned in the paragraph about BG/r, Red offers a great uncommon for the deck: Rabble-Rouser. Original Selesnya decks were often already splashing Red, meaning that if you think you might draft Gruul in the third pack, you could pick cards like Fiery Conclusion and Rally the Righteous. Then again, you’re likely to have fewer token generators than before since you’re losing a pack of Ravnica, and the only token generator in Guildpact is Belfry Sprite.
W/R/g is an entirely different deck as it’s the aggressive variant, picking up mainly Boros cards in packs one and two, and then Gruul cards in the Guildpact booster. However, the problem with three-color beatdown decks is that when you don’t draw your mana right very early, and get a nice creature curve, most of your creatures become obsolete. You don’t want to play the common dual-lands either, as they slow you down too much, and playing too many Signets makes your two-drops less effective. Terrarion helps you to realize such a demanding mana base, but you can’t pick that too highly and you won’t see many of them in any case. Unless I’m feeling lucky, I try not to get myself into an aggressive three-color deck, but instead pick the less aggressive Boros cards to convert to R/W/b or R/W/u for the third pack.
Tomorrow I’ll finish looking at the three-color combinations, give you an overview of all the changes, and give you some tips on how to find an optimal build for your Sealed Deck. I’ve found it hard to know the right color combination with so many options available.
-Julien