Future Sight is finally here, and ready to shake up everything from the obvious (Draft!) to the unexpected (Vintage!)
in one fell swoop. While Vintage is more or less out of the purview of Magical Hack, it’s certainly true
that Future Sight has something for everyone, if even Stephen Menendian is looking at the set and realizing that there may be
more than just one or two cards in this set that he’d consider putting into a deck. We can, however, look at
the immediate “formats of relevance” that are on the calendar, and have a look at each of them in turn.
Legacy is the next most immediate “format of interest” for some, with a Grand Prix in Columbus, Ohio on May
19th… but the funny thing there is that the 19th is not the 20th, and so Future Sight will have absolutely no relevance
on the format unless all the tournament players are hit with a bus at the end of Day 1 play, and we start over on Day 2
with fresh deck-lists and all that jazz.
This leaves Standard and the road to Regionals, plus Block Constructed… no sooner do we see a Pro Tour playing the
format letting us figure things out some than the new set comes in and kicks sand all over the sandbox we thought we were
getting to know so well. It also gives us the most immediate format of all, because Future Sight becomes legal
for Limited play the day it is released… and for all of us unsanctioned draft junkies who can’t wait to crack
some Future Sight packs, became legal for draft play the very instant we plucked our first Future Sight prize pack at a
prerelease on Saturday. While it’s true that most players will not encounter TS-PC-FS (“Time Block,”
perhaps?) Draft as a pressing format until a PTQ season uses it… most pairs of players will find it’s
immediately relevant to figure out how less Time Spiral and more Future Sight affects Two-Headed Giant play as the San
Diego PTQ circuit continues rolling onward.
So, today we’ll have a quick look at Individual Limited with Future Sight, and a peek at what Future Sight
cards are especially interesting in Doubles play. Instead of murdering my editor by presenting a thirty-page article
written with my now-patented “propensity for verbosity” (copyright Paul Jordan LOL Industries), I’m
saving Standard and Block Constructed for next week’s article and looking at Legacy the week following. With a
schedule in place for the subject matter, let’s dive in.
Two-Headed Magi of the Future… Sight.
Future Sight presents many interesting things for us to see… and one of those things is a card that actually
specifically affects your team-mate too. This is quite an odd word to find on a Magic card these days, almost
like Wizards of the Coast knew they’d be pushing a Two-Headed Giant Pro Tour during the Time Block Limited season.
Curiouser and curiouser, the peculiar Two-Headed Giant rules again rears its ugly head…s… and turns more than a few
cards we ran into this past weekend on their ears when you play a duel between four players instead of two.
Despite being the anti-Bogardan Hellkite, and generally disrespected on sight for being totally crap because it looks
like Bogardan Hellkite but with “gain five life” instead of “destroy target combat phase”…
it’s a 5/5 flier with Convoke, that comes down at instant speed and has a trick built in. Convoke is even better
in 2HG where you can better afford tapping a few creatures to pay a cost, because the other head can keep defenses up so
that you don’t drop your pants entirely. In individual Limited, this is a strong card (5/5 flier with a price
break, duh!)… in 2HG, this is more like windmill-slam worthy as it comes down cheap, comes down at the right time, and
is bound to do something useful with its comes-into-play ability, either protecting from Red removal or saving multiple
creatures in combat.
This affects both players on the opposing team, and hosing two players is even better than hosing one. This severely
limits the usefulness of Green land searchers, and can take a lot of the punch out of cards like Mystical Teachings or
the new X-cycling creatures. It’s a narrow card, but it’s also a reasonable evasion creature with Flash, so
it’s coming down at the right time and can even be used as sort of a Counterspell while you’re at it.
If Suspend and Storm are key themes for both players on your team, this can kick multiple spells off before they are
due and lead into a very explosive turn indeed. By itself it does nothing, however… so while there will be times
you’ll consider including it, because you have that much Suspend and some good Storm cards to use with it, for the
most part this is better left out. That it can either help you by two turns or hose the opponents by two turns helps,
but 2HG is all about individually good cards working well together, not Janky Card #23 winning the game for you if the
setup is right.
This is considered playable in Individual Limited, if not necessarily amazing. It is absolute garbage in 2HG, as you
have to have fewer creatures than both heads, and just get basically nothing for your trouble. Compare it to
Empty the Warrens, which gets you 10-12 goblins if you do the work right… it doesn’t look pretty.
… Ah yes, the card that says “teammate” on it, finally. This makes both you and the other head
untargetable… but that is not necessarily a good thing, as there are generally very few targeted direct damage spells
worth worrying about (I’d be more worried about Squall Line, or worse yet Molten Disaster, than Disintegrate)…
and a solid strategy in 2HG involves using one head’s cards to draw cards for another. If you don’t
have any effects to share, this might be worth including just to protect against discard and burn, but it’s not an
auto-include by any means. Being untargetable might just be a downside.
This guy is actually surprisingly playable in individual play – there aren’t quite enough Flash creatures
to make attacking with him a lost cause, and any of your own flash creatures now become a combat trick for this here 3/4,
while any creature you play effectively gives him Vigilance. Add a second head on the opposing team, however, and
that’s twice as many Flash guys to have to work around… and a second team-mate full of Suspend creatures trying
to come into play that will push Saltskitter out of the way. While this guy is actually solid in singleton play,
doubling the number of players makes him half as good as he normally is (at best). Since a lot of people are currently
looking at his as sketchy to begin with, despite not being bad at all, that’s not a good sign for the Skitter here.
Citanul Woodreaders is amazing because he gives you a 1/4 body when you need it, and draws two cards while he’s
at it most of the time. Annelid costs one more for the 1/4 body in times of need… but that one extra mana powers his
card-draw effect, which can let you look at up to six cards depending on how the Scyring works out. Looking at cards and
choosing to get rid of some of them can rival actual card drawing if it’s in great enough proportions, and looking
at six to choose from can be much better than drawing two blindly as it gets you to your better cards faster and provides
some high-powered selection. I saw plenty of people not playing this at their prereleases… for the most part, they
were all wrong to exclude him. In 2HG, that is even clearer.
Yes, four-see, four-eyes, we get the joke. Card drawing is better in 2HG than in individual play, and like the
Annelid this can look at up to six cards. You always get two, so it’s always Inspiration and you get (at worst)
the best two of the top four. Good card drawing is even better, and that’s what this is.
In case Slivers weren’t already good enough, now chasing the Sliver theme can give you the ability to stack the
opponents’ deck in order to make sure that they fall to the horde. Yippie-skippy.
2HG makes card advantage, or even card selection, much more relevant than individual play… and gives you more time
to work with and spend as well, even with the 30-life change. The slow, incremental advantage obtained by spending 2U
every other turn or so, or possibly 4UU each turn to dig for a specific bomb, can be absurdly powerful… not to mention
it’s the cheapest buyback spell on the block, for those keeping track of the storm count at home. Singles play is
generally thought of as being too fast for this card… but in doubles, it’s actually quite solid.
No, I don’t know how this card works in 2HG either. But one might presume that with twice as many opponents
this becomes a reasonable creature twice as quickly, and getting some information about what your opponents have is not
to be hated either. It’s only middle of the pack for 2HG play… but that’s still quite a bit higher than
where it stands in Individual Limited, back in the thirteenth-pick neighborhood.
Just like Enslave is much better in 2HG than in individual play, because the format relies more on big effects and
potent expensive bombs… well, this seven-drop is usually too expensive to even consider drafting for individual play,
but is a powerhouse in 2HG. Split Second is already powerful in 2HG, and seven mana is much more affordable in doubles
play than it sounds. A Confiscate that brooks no arguments is a good Confiscate indeed.
Slivers are much more relevant in 2HG, so the hoser ability actually has some relevance here… and there are more
than a few bomby Wizards you can hope to open, from the ridiculous rares like Teferi down to simple stuff like Augur of
Skulls. Either half is reasonable, and getting to choose between the trick and the tutor means this guy isn’t
worth forgetting about entirely.
Gravestorm… is still Storm. With one big attack phase, this card is practically a kill condition by
itself, pulling a large pile of cards out of one opponent’s deck and neutering their ability to play relevant
spells for the rest of the game. Works best with mass-removal effects, even sketchy ones like Subterranean Shambler. Do
remember that token creatures such as from Empty the Warrens still count as permanents, even if something
interesting happens to them the second they hit the graveyard.
You have more time to get to six mana, or more time to find fuel for its cost-reduction mechanic… and two
opponents, making sure there will always be something worthy to hit. This card started good and only gets better as far
as this format is concerned.
I actually consider this card quite playable for most Black decks, as more than a few of them both a) lack speedy
clocks, and b) enjoy discarding cards for fun and profit. Unless you are specifically looking for this guy as a Madness
outlet, turning the discard into a benefit, you’ll find that 50% more life means he’s 50% less relevant (and
thus 50% less likely to be worth spending two cards on… and there are twice as many opponents, meaning you’re
twice as certain to be two-for-one’d at no particularly great cost to the opponent.
100% good to start with – 50% (higher life totals) – 50% (two people working to 2-for-1 you) = 0%
effective in 2HG play. (Yes, the math is atrocious, but so’s trying to get this card to do something reasonable at
a cost you’re willing to pay.)
Unlike the other four re-suspending cards, this one has an effect scaled to 2HG play that makes it worth trying to
maximize the use of it. (I’m loathe to think of just how useless the White one might be, if being unable to attack
“you” doesn’t stop opponents from attacking “your teammate,” which makes it say 2W, wait
three turns: Do nothing, then wait three more turns before you do nothing again.) It’s costed low enough that
casting it the first time is well worth the “extra cost” of just two mana instead of three turns, and the
kind of card that really needs the context of a turn being played out before casting it is really relevant… and the
effect is large, as it can sweep the other side of the table of Goblin tokens and utility creatures alike, being yet
another reason why one-toughness men kind of stink in 2HG. Very solid in 2HG, instead of kind of forgettable like in
Individual Limited.
With a little work, this Gravedigger variant digs up the best of any graveyard, helping you like most Gravediggers
do… or buying back your teammate’s bomb, if that’d hit the spot instead. This Digger takes more work, but
does extra tricksy things as a reward… getting him a gold star for creativity in my book, if still obviously limited by
the quality of your spellshapers and other things letting you discard on demand.
Twice the cost for +1 card is a good option for individual play, and an amazing one for 2HG. While I’d expect
most drafters to pay three for this, I’d expect most 2HG players to not even know this is a Sorcery if you
don’t cast it “the right way.”
Minion’s Murmurs
Card draw is better in 2HG, and more worth spending your time on… consequently, you also have more life to work
with, turning this mediocre to terrible Individual Limited card into a solid 2HG playable you actually want to see
reasonably often. Drawing three cards is worth 2BB and three life; anything better than that is even more worthwhile.
Apply the Tidal Kraken effect: twice as many opponents means un-Suspended twice as quickly. Compare to the
too-slow-in-2HG Corpulent Corpse, and this guy is actually worth having.
This is kind of nice in individual play, and a must-kill in 2HG; anything that comes down and demands a removal spell
before it completely warps the game is quite solid. This can potentially earn a card’s worth of advantage each
turn, before even accounting for gaining 100% accurate information about what your opponent has drawn and what resources
they have to work with for the rest of the game. Absolutely ridiculous… if its two-toughness behind can actually ever
hit a player.
Improvement #1: Two life is much more affordable when you start with 30. Improvement #2: Your opponent will pretty
much always have a Swamp, unless they are actively trying to avoid getting Swampwalked and giving up an entire
color’s worth of removal spells for the right to not get Swampwalked. The already-good Wraith is even better in
2HG play, just like any reasonable Swampwalker (like Viscid Lemures).
This guy requires a bit of setup before he’s really useful… but you tend to be able to work around stuff like
Delve costs better in 2HG play, and need fewer Delve resources before the creature is playable because you’ll have
two heads working to blunt the early offense and thus have more time to get to five or six mana before purging the rest
to get Tombstalker online. 5/5 fliers are good in any Limited format, and ones that cost less if you play your cards
right are even better in 2HG than in Individual Limited formats. (See: Angel of Salvation.)
Grinning Ingus
Storm is good in Two-Headed Giant.
This guy is good with Storm.
Ergo, this guy is good in Two-Headed Giant.
… Look, another powerful Storm spell that can potentially finish the game all by its lonesome. Nothing says
“disgusting” like buying this back twice in a turn after your opponent plays two other spells, attacking with
+7/+0 on each of your creatures. Saprolings look pretty deadly with eight power… and the situation as described here
is not unreasonable as a 2HG end-game.
More ridiculous fun with Slivers. A common Sliver that either tutors for the right Sliver, or lets the rest of your
Slivers tutor for the right combination of Slivers, is a powerful pair of options indeed. I would rarely play
this guy in individual play – the Sliver theme is so inconsistent across three different sets, and so much harder
to shoot for – but Slivers rule the roost in 2HG.
This is the card you most want to open in 2HG. Don’t let anyone lie to you and tell you otherwise.
Its rules-text is “Game over, man, game over…!”
Dragons have more time to swing games in 2HG, and this one leaves more room for the big ones to fight. This Dragon
is a repetitive Wrath effect, and thus well worth the eight-mana cost that you have to sink into getting his 6/6 body
into play. Sorry, this Dragon doesn’t come with a cost reducer built in… just Wrath of God every turn.
The already-unplayable Shah draws the opposing team twice as many cards, and thus is twice as unplayable. 2 x 0 = 0,
however, so there’s not really a net loss of functionality here.
It has the word “Storm” written on it somewhere, it must be ridiculous. Think two-mana 6/6 with
Haste.
As pointed out when previewed by The Ferrett, this guy was designed for interesting interactions in
Multiplayer play. Each non-creature spell played by a team draws the opposing team two cards, basically painting a giant
bulls-eye on this guy’s head before you swarm the opponent entirely with an avalanche of creatures and card
advantage. Cute when it works… and good for a few cards if you can play it intelligently enough to let it sit a turn
or two before you need to play your next non-creature spell, so the opponent has to be the one to blink first.
While Constructed-quality in its risk-reward payout, it’s already pretty poor in Limited… and letting two
opponents benefit from the mana boost before either you or your team-mate is basically the worst plan in the world.
Yes, it only copies the number of creatures controlled by one head of the opposing team… but it probably pushes
two heads worth of attacking creatures through unblocked, making this yet another high-power creature the
opponent needs to crush before it destroys them, and this one’s only an Uncommon instead of a Rare like the last
ones. (The crushing is also much more immediate in this case, making it well worth the six-mana cost.)
This is nice in individual Limited, because it’s a bear and can sometimes do something ridiculous like
interrupt an incoming Errant Ephemeron… but you’ll probably run it out there turn 2 as a bear regardless, just to
not disrupt your overall curve and hold an “answer” to a problem that may never come up. You’re twice
as likely to use this for the full bear on turn 2 while still getting value out of it, and there are twice as many
relevant Suspend cards likely to be played by the opposing team, so waiting to use this to answer the right card is a
much more valid play. While the bear isn’t much in 2HG, it’s enough to let you buy this back repeatedly with
Tolarian Sentinel, and fitting a beatdown curve is still solid overall even if bears are quickly outclassed in 2HG…
doing something worthwhile and attacking for 4-6 life in the early game is well worth noting, and it’s one of a
very few possible answers to Suspend cards like Aeon Chronicler that would otherwise prove devastating.
The kinds of situations in which Sprout Swarm flourish, stalling games where keeping your creatures and mana untapped
each turn isn’t unreasonable, happen much more often than 2HG than in regular Limited play, where this would be
added simply to have something to do with all your late-game mana. Give this to the deck with all the countermagic or
instant-speed removal and you’ll find very quickly that you are not penalized with any “loss of tempo”
for skipping your main phase in order to use spells during your opponents’ turn. This also can help jack up the
Storm count at a very reasonable cost, so watch out… this can do some pretty ridiculous stuff if played properly, and
can only be answered by discard or countermagic, two things that are generally already a little taxed in 2HG due to
plenty of good targets.
Twice as many graveyards means bigger faster, it’s that simple. This is basically a 5/6 or so for 1G, as
it’s reasonable to expect a creature, instant, sorcery, land, and either artifact or enchantment to go to the
graveyard on one side or another at some point.
I saw a 2HG team kill their opponents on turn 4 by playing two of these on the quick in a pair of dedicated Sliver
decks. Poisoning might just be the new milling in 2HG, as two Virulent Slivers mean you only need five Sliver-hits to a
team before the entire team just drops dead. Not bad for a 1/1 for one.
… Speaking of, maybe milling might be the new milling in 2HG. This one’s a Rare but easy enough to
sneak into play around countermagic (who counters morphs, usually?), fits in either head’s deck since it’s
colorless, and can knock a player’s library out entirely in 3-4 turns if the game stalls out. It won’t come
up often, but it’s powerful when it does.
Now you can play your Graft-land and Graft up your one-drop on the same turn… not that the Graft land
isn’t already good, but having a second player whose creatures you would actually be willing to consider Grafting
to does make it “better.”
All in all, 2HG gets a lot more Buyback action, some exciting Scry cards, and a Storm card that works powerfully with
evasion creatures to (again) sculpt yet more turns where your Storm spell resolves and the opponent just dies.
Thankfully, they decided to nip the Storm wackiness in the bud by printing a Common that ups the Storm count for just
one Red mana, which I am sure will piss off Jeroen Remie solve the
problem completely.
Time Spiral – Planar Chaos – Future Sight Draft
One thing that you will note right off the bat is that Future Sight changes the color roles around quite a bit from
the Time Spiral – Planar Chaos draft arena. Where before Blue’s main mechanic was morph, in this set we have
morphs you can play in any color… and of no color… and the best morph isn’t even Blue! Everything
gets a little bit screwy, and you can no longer figure that if your Black/White opponent has a morph, it’s probably
Liege of the Pit or Soul Collector, either way a big flier with at least three Black in the morph cost. Now it could be
Gathan Raiders (Red, but who’s casting it?), Whip-Spine Drake (Blue, but White to unmorph), or even a creature that
will stack damage to become a different class of permanent altogether.
For the most part, morphs were rare or Timeshifted cards from Time Spiral, if they weren’t Blue. With the
third set around, every color has access… and one of the morphs is so good that you should be picking it very highly
(read: probably first) regardless of your color combination.
Gathan Raider, as a common, also makes every other morph more dangerous by association… whenever a morph is on the
board, now, you kind of have to sit down and ask yourself whether that 2/2 might just become a 3/3 if you attack into it
with your 2/2. He’s an amazing aggressive creature, able to deal as much as five in a single swing, and the
possibility that the random morph might just be amazing will mean the morph mechanic as a whole just became a little bit
more dangerous… just like when Zombie Cutthroat came around in Scourge, turning every face-down guy in Onslaught into a
potentially tempo-stealing 3/4.
A few things change with Time Spiral’s card valuations, one of which being Jhoira’s Timebug. The Timebug
was ridiculed, by me and many others, when Time Spiral came out… and rightly so, as for the most part you
wouldn’t get a deck that had more than just a few suspend creatures or spells he could actively help out. Future
Sight however brings a potentially quite strong series of spells along that will let your little Timebug feast on…
um… time and break the “once every three turns” re-suspending sorceries into basically every other
turn, and at instant speed besides. Add to that a second pack of a few decent Vanishing creatures, and some
other weird time-counter interactions besides, and you have more uses for the Bug than before, all without sacrificing a
pack of Suspend spells that got you interested in the Timebug in the first place. Its valuation doesn’t exactly
skyrocket – it’s still a weak creature that does nothing on its own – but it’s now a card you
want to have in your first fifteen rather than one you don’t, as it gives you the ability to develop down that
avenue if you open the right cards later.
Color combinations also get a little bit stranger – everyone’s favorite in Time Spiral, Blue/Red, is now
down to just one pack of Time Spiral… and the color densities overall have sort of evened out now that three different
packs are present. Black is strong in the first set (well, its spells are anyway), mediocre in the second, and
surprisingly solid in the third set, even its creatures. Red is good in all three, how fair; Blue is good in all three,
though one of its best common creatures will be picked off by White decks more often than it will make it into Blue
decks. Green gets a third-pack Rampant Growth, replacing the lost Searches for Tomorrow, and has 50% great creatures and
50% unplayable dreck, with some card advantage men in there and a very potent Buyback spell that starts out as
annoying and can go as far as “downright ridiculous” if you pick up Thallids that turn your tokens into
pseudo-spells. White continues as an aggressive color and gets some aggressive fliers, like Whip-Spine Drake and Knight
of Sursi, and even Mr. 3/1, Blade of the Sixth Pride. I am well known in general for my love of 3/1s for 3, and I can
only smile at such an aggressive move pushing my favorite janky creature stats down to two mana… and while you lose a
pack of Benalish Cavalries, you gain a pack with cheap shadows, fliers, and aggressive plays like Blade #6 here.
And as to how the particular colors change… White’s rebel-searchers are even rarer than before, down to just
one pack out of three, and you can luck your way into a Pacifism you can Rebel-search out if you get the right uncommon
in pack 3. White now has a solid one-mana suspend spell in each pack, plus decent two-drops in each pack, and plenty of
access to solid evasion creatures as well as solid removal in each pack. It has enough removal to get along with Green
if it has to, works very nicely with Black thanks to the shared Rebel mechanic (and gets a second pack of
rebel-searchers if it does so), and can fit with either Blue or Red quite handily… it’s one of the two colors
that doesn’t mind being put with anyone, and it isn’t the one everyone is picking off all the time to splash
into their deck like Red is.
Black now has the opposite of the Torment gambit, because pack 2 is so weak that drafters upstream of you
may very well be forced out of the color due to the sheer dearth of playables coming back their way pack 2. If you are
getting passed strong Black cards, cutting Black off hard under the presumption that nobody will bother jumping in to
your left if you don’t feed them anything can see you moderately well supported through Planar Chaos while anyone
to your right chokes and dies if they try to stick with the color, freeing your color up upstream of you for
pack 3. This maneuver takes nerve, because sometimes Planar Chaos Black is just that bad that it can’t
even support you if you get all of it, but if you play the table right you can see early strong Black cards pack
one leading to more strong Black cards passed during pack 3. Black wants a lot of itself, though, and gets along
reasonably well with both White and Blue, can be very strong with Red so long as you draft a decent creature curve and
keep your eye out for potential card-advantage effects, and more or less wants to avoid buddying up with Green.
Red is the consistently strongest color in all three packs, thanks to powerful cards like Sulfurous Blast and
Pyrohemia in the uncommon slots, but also due to just consistently getting great cards like Rift Bolt, Dead / Gone, and
Ghostfire in all three packs. It has solid creatures across all three packs, many with just single colored mana
requirements, and has a generic 4/4 for five as its “vanilla” creature in pack 3, proving that some flavors
of vanilla taste better than others as a 4/4 for five is just what Red wants to see if it didn’t get some of the
more powerful creatures from the first two packs. Red works great with Blue and Green, passably well with Black, and can
go on hyper-aggressive mode with White, which might explain why Red is the most-desired color in Time Block draft and
also why it is the most over-drafted color in Time Block. When everybody wants some, you start running out of
“some.” Expect your removal to get picked off in every pack, and your best creature to get picked off in the
third pack… that’s just how it works.
Green’s spells frankly stink in the third pack, except for the random buyback token generator, and because
there are no pump spells pack 3 (or at least none worth having…) you’ll find you have to place a higher value on
them during pack 1. You get Strength in Numbers, Might of Old Krosa, Aether Web and Thrill of the Hunt pack 1, and packs
2 and 3 have zero effective pump spells. The middle pack has “a trick” – Healing Leaves – but +0/+3
is not nearly the same as +3/+3. Pump spells have a higher priority in pack 1 than ever before, though you can fudge it
if you are Red because then you do have access to Giant Growth pack 2, literally… and with the high quality of
Green creatures in the third pack you can get away with taking random pump spells over decent to strong creatures because
you can still pick up 5/5s for four and 3/3s for three pretty easily in the last pack. Green is likely to be the
least popular color initially, as people realize they no longer know how to draft a “good” Green
deck and have to learn all over again what makes a Green deck win in this format, but it goes well with Blue and is
amazing with Red. Green can support White reasonably well since the aggressive White decks want stuff like Strength in
Numbers, and don’t mind vanilla 3/3s for 2G so much either, but otherwise aren’t too interested in dipping
into what makes Green decks Green… and so won’t be disappointed by the quality (or lack thereof) of
spells in pack 3. And Green doesn’t really want to be with Black very much from what I’ve seen so far,
though I can’t really see why good Black kill spells and good Green creatures wouldn’t work well together…
Black just wants too much Black from its Green cards, and isn’t interested in generating a 1/1 token with
Sprout Swarm or some generic bears like Kavu Predator. There just isn’t any synergy between Black and
Green, unless you count not needing to draft pump spells packs two and three because you are picking kill spells
instead. B/G most likely fails because both those colors are weak in Planar Chaos except for a few cards, though I would
expect that as we learn to draft Green better we may learn how to draft G/B tolerably well even if it isn’t as
immediately obvious as “a good deck” like most G/R decks.
Everything’s better when you add Red, apparently.
Blue is like Red, always getting its cards picked off to be played for other decks, with a splashed Shaper Parasite
here and Whip-Spine Drakes disappearing into any White or Blue deck with equal ease. Blue is actually quite
solid in pack 3, with fliers everywhere and Scry being used very heavily in the color, plus its Augur is not just a 2/2
flier for four but occasionally one that cashes itself to cast Undo, one of the best cards you could hope to get in the
aggressively tempo-oriented Mirage block. Because it’s consistent, unlike Black or Green, and because it’s
consistently very good like White, Blue is always a favorite at the draft tables… and Blue likes being with
White so it can get best use out of their color-bridging cards like Momentary Blink and Whip-Spine Drake, and aggressive
creatures like the mini-Ephemeron, Infiltrator il-Kor. Blue also likes pairing with Red so it can do silly things with
Tolarian Sentinel, like buy back Shocks in pack 3 with either of Red’s common enchant creature spells, Blue/Red
overall has very powerful synergy and can make best use out of their otherwise middle-of-the-pack cards. Blue and Black
work so-so… it’s powerful when it works but both of their creatures generally stink overall and crowd the
three-mana slot, so while there’s plenty of synergy if it works it generally doesn’t want to hobble itself by
hanging with the weakest color pack 2. While Green wants to hang with Blue for its support, Blue isn’t really very
interested in Green in and of itself. Ground fat plus fliers works fine for Green, but Blue rarely wants
anything to do with Green’s support spells, possibly because Green only really has one pack’s worth of them
before we start looking at Utopia Vow and Healing Leaves as “best Green spell in the pack.” A good
Green/Blue deck has all the good Green cards and uses Blue for fliers, removal and card-draw. If you have all the good
Blue cards anyway, though, they pair more naturally with White or Red than with Green and tend to try and lead you that
way instead of to G/U.
Or at least this is what my experiences with Time Spiral – Planar Chaos – Future Sight draft has told me
so far… your mileage may vary. I haven’t drafted quite enough to report back on how well (or poorly) the
Backwards Torment Gambit works, for example, but what isn’t backed up with solid experience so far is supported at
least in part by looking at everything and intuiting where the moving parts are fitting together and where things just
don’t work right.
See you next week, for a look at the Standard format going into Regionals, and a first look (… for this article
series, anyway…) on the moving parts of Block Constructed and what Future Sight adds to the existing strategies, along
with what among Future Sight’s cards stands alone. (It is not the Cheese, I assure you.)
Sean McKeown
smckeown @ livejournal.com