With the current focus on Ravnica Sealed Deck, and the ramifications of three new guilds in Guildpact, I thought I would share some thoughts on Ravnica Draft. Many people talk about Draft without acknowledging its impact on Sealed Deck. This article is about the willingness to do the unusual… and so it may spill over into a lesson on maximizing your card pool in Sealed by thinking outside of the box. I’ve been drafting heavily on Magic Online for the past month, as my only “live” preparation time for practicing Sealed Deck. I don’t get nearly as much real-life Magic time as I would like, but like a good neighbor or State Farm, MTGO is there.
Unintentionally, I dedicated yesterday’s MTGO time to drafting the unexpected. I went off-guild completely in three separate drafts, each time ending up with a Blue/Green deck when I’d intended to draft nothing of the sort. My other two drafts started with Hour of Reckoning and flung me toward a G/W Selesnya token deck. The first saw me won the Draft, with double Selesnya Evangel action more times than my opponents would have liked. The second splashed for Red bombs, complementing Hour of Reckoning’s mass-sweeper effect with that of Brightflame and Cleansing Beam. That deck, ridiculous as it was and with mana-fixers abound, didn’t even win a match, though I destroyed my opponent in the single game I won when holding Faith’s Fetters, Brightflame, and Cleansing Beam in reserve. Working with the system, sticking to one of the four archetypes, wasn’t working… but drafting off-guild has been something that’s worked well.
With Ravnica: City of Guilds, it’s easy to go with the flow and do the expected thing. Pick one of the four guilds; Boros, Selesnya, Golgari, or Dimir; choose your speed as fast or slow for winning the game, settle in as the draft progresses, and watch for splash cards or the occasional ability that send you toward R/W/G or W/G/B or G/B/U. There’s already a tremendous amount of variety in what you can do, and that’s just sticking to the perceived guild system. Gold cards are good, so why limit yourself? Sometimes, doing the expected thing isn’t the right thing. I’ve had success with off-guild archetypes, learning how to draft between the color lines, pulling synergy out of thin air. I haven’t drafted every possible combination; I’ve never drafted U/W, or W/B, or B/R for that matter… and I consider myself a pretty experimental individual, looking light-years (or at least –months) ahead to the Dissention release by drafting U/G, and having drafted my first off-guild deck the week after the Ravnica Prerelease.
Having not drafted those three, I can’t really say when it would be appropriate to make that audible given just the Ravnica set to work with. Guildpact will change everything… but two of the three archetypes I’ve succeeded with are present in that expansion, so I expect them to get better from here. Before looking at Guildpact, however, we can discuss what seems to be some good groundwork in Blue/Green, Red/Green, and Red/Blue.
Blue/Black is the best of the four guilds at controlling the game; it’s the only guild with access to countermagic, and it shares a strength from both colors for controlling what the permanents in play. With the focus on milling, it can afford to sacrifice aggressive potential for simple defense. Selective milling, through Thoughtpicker Witch and Lurking Informant, give it the ability to control the opponent’s draw entirely, leaving land after land on top of the deck while the spells go to the graveyard. It’s not hard to win if you can stabilize the board and deny them the ability to draw effective cards. The dirty little secret, though, is that quite a few of the Blue cards have better synergy with Red than with Black, and a lot of the Black removal can be replaced entirely. Blue can control the board by itself, and you can lose the Black and still have the basis for a reasonable deck.
Working with Ravnica, imagine your four-drop to be Viashino Fangtail and your five-drop Tidewater Minion. With every ping effect, each individual ping effect gets stronger, and before long you’re not only reaching for your Sparkmage Apprentices… you’re main-decking your Rain of Embers. Not because you passed Selesnya cards, but because you can put your opponent in “ping hell”, a position of amazing disadvantage locked up by repeating direct damage in small doses. Mark of Eviction is made for Galvanic Arc, as is Drake Familiar. All of this takes advantage of the two colors with the most commons available – Blue and Red – and piles on the synergy. Lock the board with Blue milling cards, deny useful draws with Lurking Informant, and abuse Vedalken Dismisser with Peel from Reality. Aggressively ping the opponent’s creatures with Wojek Embermage, Viashino Fangtail, Rain of Embers, Cleansing Beam, and Sparkmage Apprentice – each working together to eat many fine creatures of small to medium size. Block the rest with Drift of Phantasms; kill things with Fiery Conclusion sacrificing Surveilling Sprite; or just bounce and bounce and bounce while beating down or milling.
Blue/Red can be a difficult bird to handle, but it can be the best way to make use of the Red cards that nobody else is willing to touch. Boros is unpopular in Draft, though I haven’t a clue why since I’ve had excellent success with it. Consequently, others focus on the really powerful Red/White cards while ignoring the rest. A Selesnya deck will hijack your Lightning Helix or Galvanic Arc, but leave Viashino Fangtail untouched. Luckily for you, they can take the Arcs and power Boros cards without hurting Red’s core competency to function, and mapping it into Blue’s ability to control the tempo of the game with Dismisser tricks and countermagic can be quite profitable. This is a Red/Blue deck I drafted a few weeks ago, with some success:
3 Viashino Fangtail
2 Tidewater Minion
1 Wojek Embermage
1 Sparkmage Apprentice
1 Lurking Informant
2 Surveilling Sprite
2 Vedalken Dismisser
1 Vedalken Entrancer
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 Fiery Conclusion
1 Cleansing Beam
1 Rain of Embers
1 Convolute
1 Induce Paranoia
2 Peel from Reality
2 Compulsive Research
1 Dimir Signet
1 Boros Garrison
1 Dimir Aqueduct
7 Mountain
7 Island
This is almost entirely commons, so there’s nothing unusual holding it together; you can’t expect to see Cleansing Beam or Wojek Embermage too often, but they are certifiable bombs in a deck like this. Their intended archetype – a Boros guild deck – doesn’t want them every time. The guiding principle is to take advantage of Red’s pinging effects, while Blue helps with card drawing (to find more Fangtails) and Tidewater Minion (virtual Fangtail). When you’re able to ping three or four times a turn, clearing the opponent’s board is pretty easy. Every new card they draw has a high chance of being useless, as they’re stuck under the “lock.” If they stop playing creatures, trying to evade the lock… the cards we’re discussing are 3/3 and 4/4 creatures, so that’s not exactly a usable plan.
If you think three Fangtails is unreasonable, ask yourself how many times you’ve seen a fourth-pick Fangtail go by in pack one, or how nobody seems to want them by the end of the Draft. I’ve had as many as five Fangtails because nobody wanted a double-Red card, even though they were happy to splash some Galvanic Arcs.
This is clearly a controlling build of U/R, with Peels and Dismissers and a very long outlook on how it’s going to win. It buys as much time as possible, then takes control of the board. It’s also possible to draft a similar concept with a more aggressive focus, taking that kind of control earlier in the game and making blocking impossible. All of this is thanks to another underrated man, War-Torch Goblin.
3 War-Torch Goblin
2 Sell-Sword Brute
1 Dimir Guildmage
1 Sparkmage Apprentice
1 Drake Familiar
1 Terraformer
3 Viashino Fangtail
2 Snapping Drake
1 Tidewater Minion
1 Flight of Fancy
1 Galvanic Arc
1 Mark of Eviction
1 Cleansing Beam
1 Fiery Conclusion
1 Remand
1 Convolute
1 Compulsive Research
1 Boros Garrison
8 Mountain
8 Island
This didn’t work as well as I had hoped, because Blue/Red isn’t meant to beat down as well as Red/White. The pinging suite didn’t gel as well as it can in the controlling strategy, but the beatdown was pretty consistent early on: my opponents took a lot of early damage from Goblins and Brutes because they couldn’t block effectively, and a Fangtail or Snapping Drake sealed the deal once they were able to steady the ship. Without the dedicated control of the slower deck, this one didn’t win its table, as it had to get a little lucky and draw a smooth mana curve to work. It couldn’t do that forever.
It did, however, lead me to realize that another guild combination we’ll be seeing in Guildpact is fairly well set up in Ravnica… Red/Green. R/G is usually a pretty solid combination in a large standalone set, so it’s pretty shocking that it is absent this time, especially since it was so very good in Kamigawa Drafts. Kodama’s Might splicing Glacial Rays, triggering Kami of Fire’s Roar and Soilshaper… In Ravnica, we have White/Green’s Convoke deck, and clearly that can mesh into G/W/R if you spread across the color bridge. Green/Black’s fatties and removal can be pretty powerful too, even though it’s probably my least favorite of the four guilds. Where does Green/Red find an identity?
“Making blocking difficult” sounds like the perfect thing to go with fatties, doesn’t it? Green/White’s Convoke strategy is pretty solid, though a lot of people argue that it means playing awful cards for mana curve reasons, making the best use of your Siege Wurms and Scatter the Seeds and all the other Convoke cards. The new “Affinity” Draft deck? Maybe.
I love Elvish Skysweeper well enough, and Caregiver more than anyone else I know, but Votary of the Conclave is bad beats, and the notion that Courier Hawk is a good card still astounds me. Red’s one-drops are something I have grown to love, thanks to numerous times drafting Boros and attacking mercilessly. Frenzied Goblin and War-Torch Goblin are good friends of mine. I also like Sell-Sword Brute better than anyone else I know. Sitting him next to Transluminant may make him look bad, but why not have both? Both are crucial drops in the early game that lead up to convoked fatties, and getting the beats on early is never a bad thing.
Green/Red isn’t just a simple attack deck, any more than Boros is. Green/Red makes life difficult for the opponent, which can steal tempo, getting in aggressive damage and making it easier to reduce them to zero. Quick Siege Wurms are difficult enough to handle without Galvanic Arcs attached, and near impossible to handle with one. Red is very good at breaking a stalemate, thanks to Incite Hysteria, while Green is very good at making excess creature tokens to put the numbers in your favor. Put these two together and how can you go wrong?
2 War-Torch Goblin
1 Frenzied Goblin
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
2 Sell-Sword Brute
2 Transluminant
2 Sabertooth Alley-Cat
1 Viashino Fangtail
1 Bramble Elemental
1 Root-Kin Ally
2 Siege Wurm
2 Fists of Ironwood
1 Scatter the Seeds
1 Galvanic Arc
1 Gather Courage
1 Fiery Conclusion
2 Incite Hysteria
1 Boros Signet
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
8 Mountain
7 Forest
Admittedly, this is not the hardest strategy to ‘get’, it’s just quick beats, some Goblins to prevent effective trades, cards to turn these cheap drops into one-shot Elves, and token swarms/Falter effects to seal the deal. Sabertooth Alley-Cat is surprisingly solid as an evasion creature. Most people were saying they would sooner scrape him off the bottom of their boot than play him, while I was saying ‘pay two, attack for two’. Honestly, who doesn’t like attacking for two?
Presumably, there will be some added complexity to this deck when they get their own guild-focused cards and their own mechanic. “Complex” may not be the best way of putting it, though, because it seems R/G is anything but, so long as you know how to beat down and not throw away your resources needlessly. Just let us have our Falters without printing any Fogs, and we’ll be happy.
I haven’t drafted this deck often, as Boros has better synergy in triple-Ravnica and a wider variety of crucial two-drops, but it has performed well when required.
The third and final deck I’ve drafted when “on tilt” is the schizophrenic Simbic Combine deck, U/G. Green is good by itself, clearly, and Blue’s ability to control the board with Vedalken Dismissers and Peel from Reality is impressive. It takes what seems to be a helpless situation and turns it into a winning one, so long as you have the mana to afford the high cost of Dismissing. Looking forward to Guildpact this weekend, it’s not hard to peek at Ravnica and see how we can move into the Guildpact guilds when necessary. With seven guilds involved, it’s incredibly complex, and the difficulty will increase when Dissention further muddies the water. As daunting as that dance may be, however, you can get started with the first expansion and find a workable Green/Blue deck from there.
Blue is excellent at controlling the board and surviving until the late game. Most of the time, it’s flying through the air with efficient Blue beaters like Snapping Drake, or using repeating Millstone effects to deck opponents before they break through your defenses. The secret is that it’s so good at setting up, it often doesn’t matter what you win with; the time has been bought, and is yours to use as you see fit. I’ve maneuvered some complex Drafts with Blue/Black enchantment trick decks, locking the board with Blue’s tempo cards and hammering home an advantage with a cycle of Flight of Fancy into Drake Familiar into Peel from Reality, and so on. An army of Terraformers and Dimir Guildmages were ready to beat down for the kill. Green creatures must be better at that, and better targets for Flight of Fancy besides.
Blue/Green is an interesting archetype to wrap your brain around. Green’s core plan doesn’t matter so much, save that token creatures can trade or chump-block to buy you the time you want to seize the initiative. Sooner or later it’s the same cycle of Dismisser, Peel, Dismisser, and your opponent is stumbling to get back to where they started while you crack through with Siege Wurm. Card advantage can come fast and furious if you know what you’re doing, and that’s without the repeating tricks of Drake Familiar.
I recall one Draft deck that started with these seven cards:
3 Civic Wayfinder
2 Vedalken Dismisser
2 Peel from Reality
It was a beautiful, to say the least. Green’s main problem is that it needs to recharge after it’s done its one trick – Scatter the Seeds into Siege Wurm – and Blue can aid that process while shoring up another weakness: removing problem creatures from play long enough for you to win. With efficient fat and continuous card advantage from things like Wayfinders, Dismissers, and Compulsive Research, it’s little wonder that even without a focus on the Simbic Combine in Ravnica, you can still build an effective deck.
The beautiful deck I describe above went further than that, of course… though I’ll admit I “cheated” and added two White cards to go with the triple Wayfinder. It was practically free, after all, and I’ve cheated worse on my mana with far less setup. The greedy voice in my mind whispered “yes, three Terraformers make a wonderfully stable starting mana base for anything you want to splash.”
3 Terraformer
1 Spawnbroker
1 Wizened Snitches
1 Belltower Sphinx
2 Greater Mossdog
1 Dowsing Shaman
1 Elvish Skysweeper
1 Selesnya Guildmage
1 Golgari Guildmage
1 Golgari Rotwurm
1 Disembowel
2 Clinging Darkness
1 Galvanic Arc
1 Flame Fusillade
1 Mark of Eviction
2 Peel from Reality
1 Dizzy Spell
1 Dimir Signet
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
7 Island
6 Forest
Unsurprisingly, the greedy voice in my mind belonged to Brian-David Marshall, who splashed Glare of Subdual into his Blue/Black deck at the Neutral Ground Time Walk Tournament (with a marginal commitment to Green mana and no way to cast anything White without a Terraformer in play). I was drafting in a 4-3-2-2 queue, being fed by Chris Pikula. Despite living less than five miles from each other, we haven’t drafted together in years… but I log into MTGO for an “easy” Draft, and there he is. Pack three, he took Moldervine Cloak and passed Flame Fusillade, since he had no Red in his deck and no easy way to splash. I got it, also with no Red in my deck but with three Terraformers already drafted, and Brian David-Marshall voice sounded in my head telling me to take it. Galvanic Arc followed, and did ludicrous things with Dowsing Shaman. This deck made it to the finals and was just a little bit short of finishing the opponent. It succumbed to a Dimir House Guard fed counters by Shambling Shell when I was already at a distinct disadvantage, eight life to twenty and barely holding on. Flame Fusillade did a lot of the work to get it there… and that’s why we call him GreedDM.
A non-greedy Blue/Green deck uses Blue’s board control mixed with Green’s bruisers, and takes advantage of the enchantment synergy and mana acceleration… plus Green’s ability to more or less splash anything without worries. The ‘typical Simbic Combine deck’ I drafted that I felt showed this off exceptionally well started with those seven cards and continued on to win the table:
3 Civic Wayfinder
2 Vedalken Dismisser
2 Selesnya Evangel (hey, nobody else seemed to want them!)
2 Bramble Elemental
2 Lurking Informant
1 Drake Familiar
1 Elvish Skysweeper
1 Drift of Phantasms
1 Siege Wurm
2 Peel from Reality
2 Flight of Fancy
1 Gather Courage
1 Fists of Ironwood
1 Mark of Eviction
1 Compulsive Research
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
1 Plains
7 Island
8 Forest
The tempo gained with the Blue bounce is truly remarkable, and mostly Vedalken Dismisser’s fault for letting you win lost causes with patience and Peel from Reality. Then again, I took every opportunity to use Mark of Eviction with the Dismisser, and one game saw me prevent my opponent from drawing a new card for seven turns in a row. I read him for having no removal, after a trade with a Bramble Elemental went in my favor and an Evangel died to Fiery Conclusion. A game that looked in his favor saw him beaten by five attacks with Bramble Elemental, while every other card he had was contained.
Mark of Eviction is excellent in many situations, but it’s best used with Flight of Fancy, Vedalken Dismisser, or Civic Wayfinder, or, or, or… you get the idea. What Blue starts with the Dismisser lock it can also ‘sleaze’ with Lurking Informant, a creature capable of turning an equal game to your advantage by denying your opponent a useful draw. If they’re drawing lands and you’re drawing spells, eventually you’ll destroy them. Despite the fact that it’s already rated quite highly, Mark of Eviction is still underrated, being the kind of card that you shouldn’t pass, ever. If you can play it, excellent. If you can’t, think about how you can change that. It’s incredible, and that’s without any shenanigans involving Galvanic Arc or Vedalken Dismisser.
Blue/Green is about high quality and high synergy, drawing extra cards or denying the opponent draws. Green lends mana acceleration, color fixing, and a reasonable creature base, plus all the Civic Wayfinders you can get your grubby hands on. Blue lends board control, more card advantage, and the dirty tricks department, and you can focus on either decking your opponent or attacking with fatties. Once you’re in control, it doesn’t matter how you kill them. Everything works well together, like Wayfinder and Compulsive Research, and everything works better the second time so pick up those Peels like they’re going out of style. Even silly combos can work well, like Flight of Fancy and Elvish Skysweeper, to kill the creature you threw up into the air where the Skysweeper could see it.
Going off-guild is something you should be thinking about now, not just next week. I’ve been talking about Draft so far, and presenting Draft decks I’ve plucked in my many hours of MTGO, experimenting with what others would consider ‘going on tilt’. Sealed Deck is a much more difficult format than Draft, because Draft presents the illusion that you can control your reality: pass strong signals to cut your color, read the right signals so you know what to jump into, value the cards that have the best synergy in your deck… why not focus on something that isn’t quite mainstream?
Sealed Decks have this awful habit of just plopping in your lap, fully formed, so you don’t get the elegant Draft decks that show you seized every initiative. Sealed Decks can be like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to figure what pieces fit to best effect, and not every Ravnica-only Sealed Deck corresponds to a guild for its best build. One would think that the four guilds would dominate, but the weaker card pools can have a Blue/Green deck or Black/Red hiding within…
Frankly, sometimes life gives you everything you want, and for everything else you have to be willing to go on tilt and buck conventional wisdom. Squeeze those lemons for every drop and make Top 8 lemonade. Sometimes you’re the elevator, and other times you get the shaft. Ravnica is already one of the most complex draft formats we’ve ever seen… and we’ve only got one expansion of the three to work with. By the end, the City of Guilds will be a minefield requiring full knowledge of what is possible, what is probable, and what you can get away with in case of emergency. The learning curve may not be steep right now, but we’re standing at the first precipice. Keeping your mind flexible now will help in the upcoming Pro Tour Qualifier season, when trying to make sense of a Sealed Deck that is rife with options. It will help navigate a safe path through the tangled morass that Ravnica drafting is about to become.
It’s an astoundingly complex mess, and that is why I love it. Don’t be afraid to try the road less traveled.
— Sean McKeown
— [email protected]
“In the still and silent dawn another day is born
Washed up by the tireless waves, body bent and torn
In the face of the blinding sun you wake only to find
That heaven is a stranger place than the one I’ve left behind.”
— Sarah McLachlan, “Drawn to the Rhythm”