Magical Hack – Finally, An Article Not About Goblins (…Sort Of)

Having plunged headfirst into post-Morningtide Extended, and accidentally posted 61-card Goblin decks because I somehow talked about cutting a land but ended up with the same number anyway, it’s time to explore another format that is drastically changing in the wake of Morningtide’s release: draft. With the Pro Tour in Kuala Lumpur just one week away, practice for this Limited format has been fast and furious, without the benefit of Morningtide on Magic Online to enable it in digital form. The local group of drafters and serious Pro Tour players has been focusing pretty strongly on getting as many Lorwyn-Lorwyn-Morningtide drafts in as they can, and the first thing I learned about the format is that it is very different than the triple-Lorwyn drafts we’ve grown so used to playing.

Color balance is the second huge difference you’ll notice when you start drafting Morningtide as that third pack… the first huge difference everyone apparently notes is the interaction of the Prowl mechanic with two packs’ worth of Blue and Black cards, and thus the interesting things that happen when you try to draft the Prowl-based Rogue decks. Color balance is probably the larger of the differences, however, as the color White jumps from being somewhat laughable to downright potent. Of the commons, we see two (of twelve) are more or less unplayable, with Forfend being the kind of cardboard you save for bird cages and Shinewend seeing playability only after sideboarding… small size and a general lack of useful creature types go against the grain with what we’re trying to do with Morningtide White. One other commons is somewhat embarrassing, as Burrenton Shield-Bearers comes across as both too expensive and too misguided for what its special ability is trying to do, but literally the other nine commons are either playable or downright powerful as we add cheap evasive creatures and some cards with Reinforce to the team.

Moving to the White Uncommons you see an embarrasing Enchant Creature spell as the worst of the lot, but literally every other one is solid, from this block’s Momentary Blink or ‘just’ a 4/4 for 5, to Tribal nightmares like Cenn’s Tactician or the power-bomb that is an instant-speed Overrun. I’m told Veteran’s Armaments is pretty solid, too, and is effectively a White card in most peoples’ consideration because there are very few non-White (…non-Changeling) Soldiers between the two sets. While other creature types can use it, it clearly is of higher value when it can be picked up for free, and fits best with White’s game-plan of relentless attacks anyway. Sheer depth gives White about twice as many playables as the other colors in each pack, and suddenly the plan of avoiding White as anything but a splash color gets thrown out the window as ‘the Torment Gambit’ has been reinvented… and this time Zvi’s “And all the drafters say I’m pretty fly for a White guy” T-shirt makes a lot more sense. Learning how to draft a White deck, then, is a necessary skill for drafting LLM as we head into Kuala Lumpur… and I’d imagine critical for after that event as well, for those of us who just like drafting.

Dropping that third pack of Lorwyn has some interesting ramifications as well, it seems, as everyone who’s played in the more banal LLL drafts can attest… either that Wren’s Run Vanquisher gets scooped up early by the Elf player, or it goes around the table looking for a home. Same for Wizened Cenn, same for any tribal card that isn’t particularly useful to anyone else. With one less Lorwyn, you don’t see that “passing gifts” pack after everyone’s neatly settled into their archetypes and put blinders on, and with that one pack now Morningtide with five or ten different tribes of interest, you’ll see the first two packs play out a bit differently than before. Not counting the Archers, Assassins, Knights, Clerics, and Druids of the world, who aren’t really represented in a meaningful fashion that actually demands attention, we do have quite a bit of an interesting twist going on in that first set.

Soldiers are predominantly White… and this remains true in the next set. The next color to have a considerable amount of Soldiering going on, without accounting for Changelings, is actually Blue of all colors… with a pair of Merfolk and a pair of Faeries, though I doubt Scion of Oona is going to be picked based on its Soldier status alone, or passed around for the Soldier player to collect late for that matter. When drafting Soldiers, then, it seems you can expect pretty slim pickings from the first two packs but for the most part will be focusing on the one- and two-mana Kithkin that fit the tribe, Changelings, and removal or tricks as it becomes available. Realistically, then, Soldiers will be at best a sub-theme to a Kithkin deck, as its support in Lorwyn is rather shallow. I would expect a Soldier deck to be White-Blue predominantly, though any color with Changelings and/or removal spells can fit in a pinch so despite these expectations I’ve actually seen a nasty White-Red Soldier deck sporting a few Giants to play up those Kithkin Greathearts and the nice aggressive package of double Lash Out and double Changeling Berserker. Blue-White would be the expected starting point, not the absolute rule, and Kithkin-themed versus Soldier-themed is going to be a key point of consideration that will likely be answered by how the packs play out.

Soldiers as a tribe don’t really shine so much as White in Morningtide as a whole does, pushing what was generally considered the weakest color in Lorwyn into serious contention… after all, if it was behind, it wasn’t very far behind the other colors in playability. While you can’t bet on the third pack of the draft to make Soldiers work as a tribe, you can bank on it being amazing for White as a color overall. While you generally want your draft decks to have distinct tribal synergies, White as a color can have a ‘mixed bag’ tribe approach and still work out fine, because your ability to pay careful attention and draft for a curve gives an aggressive deck that doesn’t really care whether its three-drop flier is Avian Changeling or Burrenton Bombardier aside from the fact that a Bombardier in play can’t be used as a combat trick later. The glue that likely holds the Soldier deck together, though, is Ballyrush Banneret… the only Banneret with two power, and while the Kithkin tribe aren’t great at following it up with multiple spells made cheaper on the following turns, it does help to accelerate quality creatures like Plover Knights into play and attacking even faster than before.

If Soldiers was the White tribe, then Wizards is the Blue tribe. Many of your Wizards are Merfolk as well, giving an immediate overlap into White/Blue right off the bat and basically being a third-pack offshoot of the pre-existing Merfolk strategies. That the third pack winnows down from eight creature types of interest to focus on just five seems to help amplify the power of the Merfolk strategy overall in the third pack, and while it’s sad to lose a potential full pack’s worth of Drowners of Secrets, Summoned Schools, and Merrow Reejerii, to get an action-filled third pack with hits that still advance the goals of the Merfolk tribe and complement them quite well is pretty exciting. Because both Merfolk-Wizards and Kithkin-Soldiers thematically compete for the same color combination (White-Blue), it’s not unusual to see the Soldiers look elsewhere, following the removal or picking up Green pump spells and Kithkin Daggerdares.

Despite my repeated attempts, I still haven’t succeeded in drafting a Merfolk deck in LLM draft, as I find they are being aggressively fought for so far. I imagine this would be due to the fact that they were one of the strongest tribes before and the Wizard overlap in the third set, plus just the existence of power commons like Stonybrook Schoolmaster, means they have at least maintained their power if not actively improved with the addition of Morningtide. That you also get to pick up on the White cards in the third pack, taking your Burrenton Bombardiers, Weight of Conscience and let’s not forget Swell of Courage to go with the now-common Merfolk token producers… well, let’s just say the Merfolk Wizards are a clear winner if you can get them.

Warriors are clearly evenly divided between Red and Green, which otherwise are rather lacking in tribal synergies outside of the “Handservant” draft deck that won Grand Prix: Brisbane among other splashes it’s made in the format. Where that deck was reliant upon Changelings at least conceptually to pull off aggressive starts, now it gets a shot in the arm with Warriors in the new set to tie it all together, including Ambassador Oak and Winnower Patrol in the common slot, Bramblewood Paragon, Hunting Triad, and the ridiculous Obsidian Battle-Axe in the Uncommon slot, and potent rares like Unstoppable Ash and Countryside Crusher. Of course, short of at the Pro Tour level anyone who opens a Crusher is going to take that Crusher, so this might not be much help when card economics are allowed to interfere at all with your draft format.

Generally, your Warrior deck is probably going to be an Elf Warrior deck, and that second color is arguable. Some would say that Red’s the natural pair for Warriors, while others point to Black as the natural companion of Elves, and the argument for Black isn’t exactly weak as it also shares the Treefolk tribe, perhaps offering a Warrior Elf/Treefolk hybrid that mixes tribes for interesting strength. But if the concept is “don’t bet on Pack Three”, Warriors frankly don’t add an awful lot to the table… there’s very little you’ll want to take advantage outside of Bramblewood Paragon or Obsidian Battle-Axe, and as Uncommons you can’t try and rely on those. The most successful Warrior deck I’ve encountered lately was a Black-Green Elf/Treefolk Warrior/Assassin build, with a fair chunk of the Black and Green Changelings (Ghostly, Woodland, and now Game-Trail) and one very saucy Scarblade Elite combining those Changelings, a Nameless Inversion, and some Weed-Pruner Poplar action to contain the opponent’s board. When you have to stretch that far to make “Warriors” work, it seems pretty clear that as a tribe overall its benefits are low. Sometimes it will work… and sometimes, the Giants beat the 18-0 Patriots and win the Super Bowl. (Speaking of… which is classier, that the Patriots went and trademarked “19-0, The Perfect Season,” or that the New York Post trademarked “18-1″… then gave it to the Patriots after the Super Bowl?)

Shamans are even harder than Warriors to make work right, looking at this disparate card-pool… for Lorwyn at least you’d have to have a mixed-tribe Black-Red deck, which by the way has been the best-looking bad deck I’ve drafted on numerous occasions: it just doesn’t hang well together. Sunflare Shaman works well but asks for an Elemental theme; Pyroclast Consul works well, or as well as any Kinship card does, while simultaneously killing most of the creatures you’d expect to be in your deck at least as far as Lorwyn’s Shamans are concerned. Other than the fact that Rage Forger is ridiculously powerful, there is actually very little tying the Shaman tribe together as a tribe, meaning they are at best overlaid on top of whatever else you are doing to begin with. Sadly, much like Warriors you can’t pin yourself on these guys, because there is very little working within the Shaman tribe in Lorwyn.

And then there were Rogues. They don’t look like too much here, but they actually are a tribe you can pin yourself on for the next set as you get clear benefits from the Prowl mechanic and an assortment of creatures with abilities that make them harder to block in the first place. And where the disappointing (read: so far, the non-White) Class-based “tribes” of Morningtide failed before, due to thin commons support and too-diverse colors, here the Rogue tribe succeeds because everything is Blue and Black. Which is not to say your Blue/Black decks have to be Rogue decks… but everything can change in the span of just that one pack, and you can turbo-charge some potent cards like Latchkey Faerie and Morsel Theft just at common alone. Jumping into the Uncommons gives us Stinkdrinker Bandit… making those unblocked, evasive Rogues deal more damage… Cloak and Dagger, same… Oona’s Blackguard, same… and hey look, Noggin Whack, one of the best Limited cards in the set even when you pay full price for it.

For figuring out how to best play with Rogues, it’s worth noting there are a few more options than just trying to get Prowl-happy and seeing how well it works. Tales of third-pick (or higher!) Nightshade Stingers aside, Rogues are also a tribe as well as a means to make Prowl cards cheaper, and sometimes you’ll see tribal interactions as the key to making the deck work instead of ‘just’ going for the discounts on Latchkey Faerie. I drafted the following this week in a 3-on-3 to my first undefeated record with an LLM draft deck, which goes to show that a little outside help on Tribal synergy can go a long way:

1 Mulldrifter
1 Turtleshell Changeling
2 Warren Pilferers
2 Prickly Boggart
1 Boggart Loggers
1 Frogtosser Banneret
1 Oona’s Blackguard
1 Stinkdrinker Bandit
1 Thieving Sprite
3 Moonglove Changeling
1 Dreamspoiler Witches
2 Nameless Inversion
2 Weed Strangle
1 Eyeblight’s Ending
1 Pack’s Disdain
1 Cloak and Dagger
1 Door of Destinies

11 Swamp
6 Island

As a whole, Rogues like to go unblocked. That’s why they have Fear, Flying, or even Forestwalk or other oddities from time to time. It’s what they do, their reason for being, and it happens to also be quite aggressive… while also providing the Prowl option, should any of your cards allow for that. This particular draft deck started with Nameless Inversion, Warren Pilferers, Nameless Inversion, Warren Pilferers and just kind of ran from there, picking up Rogues like Thieving Sprite and Boggart Loggers at a premium then filling the slots with removal and whatever else was good and available. Strangely enough it ended up almost mono-Black, though there were a few more Blue cards that could have been played but just weren’t quite up to really wanting if I could avoid the double-Blue costs on Dewdrop Spy in order to ‘just’ play Dreamspoiler Witches. And it showed off what the Rogues do well, as well as the potency of Moonglove Changeling as a third-pack role-player to fill whatever shoes need filling, since Moonglove Changeling is about a hundred times better than Moonglove Winnower even if you are a dedicated Elf (or as we call it now, “just Elf”) deck.

Cloak and Dagger is the second-most aggressive piece of equipment, as it is the least situation (sorry, Veteran’s Armaments) but doesn’t happen to give Haste like the Battle-Axe. It suits the Rogues quite well, and being passed around for free from evasive creature to evasive creature is pretty impressive actually. Admittedly I had a huge gift here in that I was the first person able to use that Door of Destinies, but to be fair I took it second, it’s not something you should expect to see coming around a table very often. 4/4 Prickly Boggarts are more impressive than 1/1 ones, and 4/4 Prickly Boggarts were what I had to work with.

The Rogues’ ability to pump their own power, between the actually-synergistic New Lord, their piece of Equipment, and other cards like Stinkdrinker Bandit means that there is enough overlap between these effects that it’s actually worth keeping to Tribal lines even without counting the benefits of Prowl. Add in the fact that Prowl makes great cards stupidly cheap and often does stuff like throws on “Draw a card!” as a benefit, and it’s no surprise that the already-popular Faeries draft archetype is worth thinking twice about as you find yourself in those colors anyway. Rogues are incredibly deep and don’t require too many sacrifices to set up, a lot of the good Blue and Black picks like Pestermite and Warren Pilferers happen to fit in anyway. It’s not like we’re asking you to pass Mulldrifters because they’re not a Rogue, but it is worth noting that there are obvious benefits for Rogues in the third pack because there will be Blue and Black cards, so this particular “Class overlay” on the Faerie/Goblin tribes is well worth considering. Squeaking Pie Sneak is a perfect Rogue card, considering how many Rogues are also Goblins and how well the double-sized Prickly Boggart fits both an aggressive plan and a Prowl-based plan, and is the #1 Rogue uncommon to have jumped in value between LLL and LLM in my opinion. Previously it would fit in with the Goblins but not really impress, but hanging out with the Rogues he is a perfect member of the Rogues’ Gallery.

We’ve already examined the implications of Morningtide’s White being as deep as it is, let’s have another look at the surface of things to see how the different colors fit in overall.

White very clearly has the most bang for its buck, while Red has the least worthwhile cards at least as far as sheer quantity goes. White, Green and Black all lead the pack on number of playables, but the Blue playables are split right down the middle in somewhat schizophrenic fashion so either you’ll want the Merfolk half or the Faerie half and leave the rest, giving you effectively access to about 60% of the Blue. Black is likewise torn between Goblin Rogues and miscellaneous others; we’re counting Blightsoil Druid as playable, not jumping for joy that we have one… and Final-Sting Faerie has a hard time fitting in with the rest of the Morningtide Black, being an Assassin instead of a Rogue and a Faerie that works best in a more Goblin-y or even Shaman-y deck. Green has numbers but not real strength; sure, Winnower Patrol is playable, but that’s at his base stats as the Kinship mechanic doesn’t really benefit him here even if you are largely Elf Warriors. The Green is divided, much like Blue, between Elf Warriors and Treefolk Shaman, and you’re very unlikely to want both sides. Red can’t make up its mind with what it wants either, but really what it wants is to get from 17 to 23 playables without getting massacred in this pack and it can’t really be certain it is going to get there at least just with the Red cards in the set.

Here again we are using a loose definition of “Playable”, as a lot of things are the wrong tribe but still theoretically worth having, like Offalsnout. Once again the White is just more potent than the other colors save perhaps Black, and with the Black all focusing on being Rogues we can see why it was up above that I’d noted there was a distinct Rogues-versus-White Cards split with how people were acclimating themselves to Morningtide as the third pack. White more or less functions as a full color with all of the commons working towards the same goal, and Black-Blue splits half of each color into a tasty Rogue surprise so you effectively get a solid “color” out of them as well. Merfolk split the difference between the rest of the Blue and get a shot at whatever White it wants, shared with everyone else, leaving us half of Black and all of Red and Green to contend with. And frankly the Red is shallow and deeply at odds with itself, split between Warriors and Shamans, Elementals and Goblins and Giants into a mish-mash where War-Spike Changeling is probably the best common and Spitebellows the best Uncommon simply because they stay out of that fight and always do what they’re asked. Green isn’t much better, splitting Elves and Treefolk, Warriors and Shamans… or worse yet, Druids and Archers. Green’s most potent mechanic is the “So are you lucky?” Kinship mechanic, ineffective in a world where your tribe affiliations are torn every which way to begin with.

It’s little wonder, then, that White cards and Rogues are earning the most attention… Rogues are strong, and the White-centric Soldier tribe feels about twice as deep as any other color and probably three times deeper than Red on its best day. Wizards corresponds with Merfolk or perhaps Faeries, and thus gets to build on either past strengths (Lorwyn’s Faerie tribe) or new strengths (all that tasty White your Merfolk now have access to), making them an acceptable tribe because frankly neither of the Blue tribes were going to stink. And meanwhile the other two classes, Warriors and Shamans, are actively a detriment to their Lorwyn parent tribes in most cases, as you can’t rely on getting anything really useful from them and thus need to rely on them more as Elves than as those new-fangled Morningtide classes. If either of them had picked a color and stuck with it, like Soldiers did, they’d have likely had more success… but as it is, the two of them sharing the same color combination more-or-less (Red-Green) just dilutes any hope of either truly succeeding as a draft archetype you can aim for and plan on.

… Or at least, that is how it looks going into Kuala Lumpur. Whether there is more subtle interplay to these unloved classes, or whether they are a viable alternative in a world gone mad for White cards and Rogues, remains to be seen. We already know there is a subtle level of play to the act of drafting the set, as it takes many of the same lessons from the surprisingly subtle Lorwyn set and adds new layers of complexity and an entirely new rationale for your decision-making process, so it should be interesting to see just what comes out of Kuala Lumpur to perhaps prove us all wrong. Skipping out on classes and drafting new tribes, like the Blue-Red Elementals tribe, has started to crop up as something that demands attention, and we may see stranger things yet as new toys bash into each other in an unexpected fashion.

Sean McKeown
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