Having discussed the Sealed Deck environment quite thoroughly, and dropped more than a few nuggets of congealed thought on the ground for others to pick up (hi Rizzo!), I’ve been wanting to limit my scope to Draft, to see how specifically it has changed with the addition of Guildpact. Sealed Deck is all well and good, but it’s not a format where you control your destiny; as a skill-testing format it’s certainly excellent with the current set of cards, but nothing tests your skills in quite the same way as sitting down and choosing just one card forty-five times, as there will always be more than forty-five choices to be weighed and navigated correctly.
On one last note about Sealed Deck: I learned this weekend that I had misread Skeletal Vampire. Kind of like how I spent all of Kamigawa Block Constructed playing Godo, Bandit Warlord without ever having read him (and thus realizing you could get one main-deck copy of Manriki-Gusari), instead of seeing a word that wasn’t there (“Legendary”), I didn’t see six little words that turned my opinion of that particular beatstick right around. As anyone who’s been on the giving – or receiving – end of that particular beatdown, those six words are “Sacrifice a Bat: Regenerate Skeletal Vampire.” I wasn’t aware that the damn thing was near-unkillable until my opponent played it on me in round 2, and while I said, “Well, that could have gone worse!” when he blocked and I had Gaze of the Gorgon, it would seem Vigor Mortis‘ flavor text is in fact “You mean like this?”
Enter Skeletal Vampire #2 the following round, in game 3 against a young but reasonably competent opponent, and end the run. At least I lost with better grace than the guy next to me, who lost to an eight-year-old and then cursed a blue streak at the kid, things not repeatable on a family fun web-site like this one here, though the shocked look of fear and horror on the kid’s face would sum it up pretty nicely by itself. In the end I still lost, and when you only have so many tries at Pro Tour Qualifiers, that can be rather annoying.
So yeah… Skeletal Vampire, that’s dumb. It regenerates, and is thus unkillable; who knew? On the topic of Draft, the inclusion of Guildpact offers three real choices that have to be made off the bat: do you accept just two packs and build a Ravnica guild deck; do you aim for the money in the last pack and draft a Guildpact guild deck; or do you try to combine both of these strategies and start with a full-on three color deck? We’ve seen some pretty extreme variants on all of these themes, and even one that goes just that little bit extra further thanks to Raphael Levy and the update to “Drafting Drakes.” This advocates a Blue/Green core (a Dissention guild!) with Red splash, which in pack three can pick up power cards from two of the three guilds.
The benefits of a two-color deck are clear, in terms of mana, but most decks can’t accomplish that with just two boosters of Ravnica to work with… and it’s not likely to work out for an off-guild deck starting in Ravnica. You may come up short on playables going into your guild’s pack – pack three – and even the good guild cards in your chosen colors might not be enough to fill in the gaps. If you can’t play two colors, at all, you have a reason to try and split your colors in such a way that you get a benefit in both Ravnica and Guildpact. Straight out of two consecutive Grand Prix Top 8 drafts, we have the results of Dortmund and Richmond to help steer us in our discussion; the link to the Top Eight decklists can be found here for Richmond and here for Dortmund.
Richmond:
Winner – Rich Hoaen – G/B
Finalist – Jon Sonne – G/W/b
Semifinalist – Adam Chambers – G/W/r
Semifinalist – John Fiorillo – U/B/g
Quarterfinalist – Eugene Harvey – G/R/b
Quarterfinalist – Michael Pinnegar – U/R/w
Quarterfinalist – Taylor Webb – G/W/r
Quarterfinalist – Gerry Thompson – U/R
Number of Karoos in Top Eight decks: 12 (1.5 per deck)
Dortmund:
Winner – David Brucker – G/B/w
Finalist – Julien Goron – W/B/u
Semifinalist – Mathias Wigge – U/B/r
Semifinalist – Marco Rothaupt – G/B/w
Quarterfinalist – Stefan Rentzsch – B/U
Quarterfinalist – Olivier Ruel – U/G/R Drakes
Quarterfinalist – Dennis Grudowski – W/R
Quarterfinalist – Julien Nuitjen – U/B/r
Number of Karoos in Top Eight decks: 9 (1 per deck)
Splitting these up by the three strategies, we see:
Two-color (or with light splash) Ravnica guild decks:
Winner – Rich Hoaen – G/B
Winner – David Brucker – G/B/w
Finalist – Jon Sonne – G/W/b
Semifinalist – John Fiorillo – U/B/g
Quarterfinalist – Stefan Rentzsch – B/U
Quarterfinalist – Dennis Grudowski – W/R
Two-color (or with light splash) Guildpact guild decks:
Quarterfinalist – Eugene Harvey – G/R/b
Quarterfinalist – Gerry Thompson – U/R
Finalist – Julien Goron – W/B/u
Semifinalist – Mathias Wigge – U/B/r
Quarterfinalist – Olivier Ruel – U/G/R Drakes
Quarterfinalist – Julien Nuitjen – U/B/r
Three-color mixed guild decks:
Semifinalist – Adam Chambers – G/W/r
Quarterfinalist – Michael Pinnegar – U/R/w
Quarterfinalist – Taylor Webb – G/W/r
Semifinalist – Marco Rothaupt – G/B/w
For the purposes of assigning these clearly, a “light splash” was considered to be three or fewer cards, none of which required double colored mana of the splash color. With splashed Angels of Despair, Brightflames, Hammerfist Giants, and Followed Footsteps from the mixed guild category it was pretty easy to draw a line between a light splash and a full-blown third color. For purposes of comparison, we’ll treat each match won in the single elimination rounds as worth three points, and see how the average finish looked for each of those three types… not that the numbers are anything more than arbitrary, but with numbers you can weigh and measure the relative success of each deck in a more discerning.
Two-color (or with light splash) Ravnica guild decks:
9 – Rich Hoaen – G/B
9 – David Brucker – G/B/w
6 – Jon Sonne – G/W/b
3 – John Fiorillo – U/B/g
0– Stefan Rentzsch – B/U
0 – Dennis Grudowski – W/R
Average points per player: 27 / 6 = 4.5
Two-color (or with light splash) Guildpact guild decks:
0 – Eugene Harvey – G/R/b
0 – Gerry Thompson – U/R
6 – Julien Goron – W/B/u
3 – Mathias Wigge – U/B/r
0 – Julien Nuitjen – U/B/r
Average points per player: 9 / 5 = 1.8
Three color mixed guild decks:
3 – Adam Chambers – G/W/r
0 – Michael Pinnegar – U/R/w
0 – Taylor Webb – G/W/r
3 – Marco Rothaupt – G/B/w
0 – Olivier Ruel – U/G/R Drakes
Average points per player: 6 / 5 = 1.2
This is of course subject to the fact that we have a “small N” problem, which I’m told can be solved by getting more her.bal? [email protected] in my diet, but I don’t trust every e-mail a fan reader sends me. Without more definitive coverage of the Day Two Draft decks – which frankly is not something that is going to appear at a Grand Prix any time soon (I’ve been the guy entering decks into the computer for coverage, and even I wouldn’t want to do it if I didn’t have to) – we are going to have to go with gross assumptions and overstatements of trends rather than correctly scaling and balancing things to suit a reality where we’ve looked at more than, um, two Drafts.
Taking it with a grain of salt, instead of just trusting the numbers telling us that drafting a Ravnica-centric deck with light splash has a three times higher payoff in match wins than either of the other two options, let’s re-contextualize.
Two-color (or with light splash) Ravnica guild decks:
$2400 – Rich Hoaen – G/B
$2400 – David Brucker – G/B/w
$1700 – Jon Sonne – G/W/b
$1000 – John Fiorillo – U/B/g
$800 – Stefan Rentzsch – B/U
$800 – Dennis Grudowski – W/R
Average or expected value: $9100 / 6 = $1,516.67
Two-color (or with light splash) Guildpact guild decks:
$800 – Eugene Harvey – G/R/b
$800 – Gerry Thompson – U/R
$1700 – Julien Goron – W/B/u
$1200 – Mathias Wigge – U/B/r
$800 – Julien Nuitjen – U/B/r
Average or expected value: $5300 / 5 = $1,060
Three color mixed guild decks:
$1200 – Adam Chambers – G/W/r
$800 – Michael Pinnegar – U/R/w
$800 – Taylor Webb – G/W/r
$1000 – Marco Rothaupt – G/B/w
$800 – Olivier Ruel – U/G/R Drakes
Average or expected value: $4600 / 5 = $920
Looking at it as far as expected value, drafting to utilize your Ravnica cards has a better value than the other strategies, but not one that’s so outrageous by comparison. With sixteen data points we still really want more information, like an entire Grand Prix’s worth if we can get it, but the results follow logic: working with two out of the three packs and not sacrificing mana consistency by playing a “full” three-color deck is the way to go. There will be times when you can go against conventional wisdom, and there are certainly Draft strategies (like the Drake deck) that reward following a card synergy plan rather than a guild synergy plan, but unless you’re reading a strong signal that Blue/Red, Black/White or Red/Green are sorely under-drafted in Ravnica, I’d suggest not aiming to be special and different.
But this is still the City of Guilds after all, and before we had even seen Ravnica I was an advocate of going out of the three-guild system when the situation presented itself. I’m most certainly not saying to just shut up and take one of the three guilds and mash a few off-color removal spells in to spice things up… just that aiming to come into a Draft betting on pack three is a losing bet. So is not committing to a plan and hoping that your mana panned out in the matches, and though it seems that wisdom is telling us that the format is slowing down like we thought it has been, so your chance of “living until you get your third color and stabilizing the board” has a $140 disadvantage to “betting you get shipped the goods in pack three.” That’s at least partly by agreement, what with more players trying to focus on Ravnica guilds and not taking good Guildpact cards for their decks as highly as they could, but more people trying to get in on the pack-three action probably doesn’t help your EV any.
That makes sense: instead of betting your future on some Guildpact that might never come, you can go with something reasonably good by reading signals in Ravnica… and get something extra in your third pack that no-one else can take good advantage of. The lessons about mana consistency and color dependency from our dabblings into Sealed Deck are still true, telling you not to be stupid greedy when it comes to trying to squeeze too much out of your mana base. In all of these decks you just don’t see that extra bit of stretching for a fourth color, just two and maybe three colors trying to work their best off of bouncelands. Things still make sense, even if individual choices are hard as all-get-out to make.
I’ve been on all sides of this argument, trying to figure things out, having recently drafted a U/R/b/w control deck in a winning Draft – splashing the double-colored Hex like it was nothing – as well as having drafted a tight little R/W beatdown deck out of just two packs of Ravnica plus some filler from pack three. At least one other possibility, one that occurred to me while drafting said Boros deck, was to try and get a two-color deck from just two packs and take the allied guild color of your choice from pack three as a backup plan. After Ravnica, I had twenty of my twenty-three Red and White cards already, and unless I opened some real quality it wasn’t going to do very much for me. With a few Blue bounce spells already taken in my pile (when I knew the Sell-Sword Brute I was lusting for was going to come back if I took the Mark of Eviction I didn’t want to play against), it was easy enough to pick nothing but Blue/Red cards plus the three missing cards for my deck. The numbers worked out exactly right: I could swap eleven White and White/Red cards for eleven Blue and Blue/Red cards, to perform a sideboard switcheroo.
This may not be incredibly likely, but it is out there as a possibility, to draft a good deck with your first two packs and supplement it with a second strategy instead of a third color going into Guildpact. It’s especially good for Boros, which can be very nicely rewarded by staying in-color from just the Ravnica packs, but which also has a hard time beating some opponents that might be easier for the more controlling Izzet deck to pick apart. It probably only actually makes sense for Boros into either Orzhov or Izzet, because Boros is the only guild from Ravnica that actively interferes with splashing for off-color cards, simply due to the difficulty of playing Signets and bounce-lands in your strategy and the frequent need for both Red and White on turn 2. It’s certainly a corner case as far as what you can do, not likely to come up all too often, but even corner cases come up once in a while… and a full-on color switch when facing a difficult matchup like a base Selesnya deck can turn a losing strategy (ground pounders) into a winning one (Snapping Drake and friends).
It’s important to note that out of sixteen players, six chose to stick to their Ravnica guns while ten chose to try and work some magic with the Guildpact guild. Those six outperformed the remaining ten by a fair margin. All in all, the benefits of sticking with Ravnica’s guild setup for Draft seems – at least initially – the way to go, as too many people getting tricky in the third pack defeats the purpose of trying to be tricky in the first place. This means the “trick” that is being rewarded is trying to draft Selesnya, Dimir, Boros, or Golgari. It’s probably also worth noting that both Grand Prix were won by Golgari decks, possibly due to the fact that Red and Blue were over-drafted by the tricksters looking to capitalize on Izzet and Gruul tastiness in the third pack, and it’s interesting to see the oft-neglected Rolling Spoil in one of the two winning decks. With Red and Blue over-drafted and cards like Rolling Spoil and Necroplasm played for their extra value against Selesnya in addition to the rest of their good qualities, it’s little surprise that these two have the same guild winning the table, as the same forces were at work in both cases:
1. Off-guild signals are hard to read pack one. The signal to ‘go Guildpact’ may be artificially inflated.
People see drafting Izzet as a viable extension of the Dimir strategy. With the loss of a pack of Dimir milling cards, the Dimir deck is shifting into a three-color strategy, and one that does not need specifically Red or Black as the companion color – just one of the two. Dimir Control style decks are easily lured into the resource-hungry, high-powered Izzet cards like Izzet Chronarch and Leap of Flame, while more aggressive Dimir decks can potentially profit by going off-guild in the first pack and taking aggressive Red cards like War-Torch Goblin and Sell-Sword Brute. In both cases, there are clear power cards in the third pack, like Steamcore Weird and Ogre Savant, that suit their strategy well… and the “signal” that Izzet is open in pack one can be difficult to read accurately.
2. There is not very much of a penalty for trying to “go Guildpact” and failing. Superficially at least, you still look like you’ve gotten a deck so long as your mana is at least somewhat staggered into two major colors and a minor splash.
There is a definite preference for Green and Red together, due to the high power of the swingy Bloodthirst cards and (again) the ability to mesh Green fat with the undervalued Red beatdown cards from Ravnica. With Boros traditionally under-drafted in Ravnica, both Red/Green and Blue/Red can easily seem open, and this reading can force people to swing into Guildpact mode in the middle of Ravnica. Considering that “at the worst” you get a two-color plus splash deck, using your best two colors as your primary colors, there is a common belief that there is a safety net: whatever happens, you can fall back on figuring it out later and just trying to make the mana work.
3. Decisions change throughout the packs. What may be signaled as open in the first few picks will not be open by pack three.
Just because someone chooses Last Gasp over Viashino Fangtail doesn’t mean that person will pass you Savage Twisters. As the Draft develops, signals constantly change to all sides, and as pack two nears completion most players will not have the seventeen to twenty cards they need to consider themselves “settled” into a two-color deck. The decision for a Black/Green deck to splash White over Red may not be made fully until two or three picks into Guildpact itself, so the strong rewards expected by reading signals saying “Red/Green is open” followed up by passing a “you are not getting Red/Green from me!” signal back to them doesn’t change the fact that they are your daddy if they pull Savage Twister. The final outcome of most decks will not be decided until the booster is cracked in pack three, so all the hard work setting something up in Ravnica can’t really change the fact that opening a booster of Guildpact is a random event that you cannot control.
With these three combined together, it seems like there is little wonder that those who stuck to the clear-cut signals of Ravnica guilds instead of getting jiggy with multiple guilds or betting on Guildpact guilds fared well. Reading signals and drafting Ravnica-centric decks like a normal human being gives the element of controlling your destiny. Shooting for a Guildpact-centric deck, or calculating that your mana will work perfectly for three matches, are random elements you cannot control. Controlling your destiny is generally considered to be the good play; leaving your fate to chance decreases the element of playskill in a match by basing your success on things outside of your control: the strength of your deck and the consistency of your mana. Arguably, the strength of your deck is always a random element no matter your color combinations, but simple math tells us that two packs of Ravnica have more on-guild synergy than one pack of Guildpact.
Welcome to the wonderful world of too many choices and more options than you want to consider. It’s a format that rewards good players and good decision-making skills, and that’s a good thing.
Unless you’re the bad player, that is. I for one can’t be that good at Magic; after all, I couldn’t kill a Skeletal Vampire. What do you mean, the damn thing regenerates?!
Until next time,
–Sean McKeown
[email protected]