We live in exciting times. Everything is shiny and new. A brand new year, drowning everyone in anticipation, until we realise that every year is the same old nonsense. MagictheGathering.com has a new editor and, in unrelated news, so does some other Magic here site here somewhere. A Scouser at the helm of StarCityGames.com, and Liverpool FC are going to win the Champions League for the second time in a row? When did Liverpool become the centre of the world?
For those Americans among you who haven’t the foggiest what the Champions League is… it’s the big tournament for the best European football — sorry, soccer — clubs. It’s like the World Series, except, y’know, more countries are involved. This is because here in Europe, any headway we make toward a sensible political system — i.e. the United States of Europe — is stifled by petty nationalistic idiots. Oy! Fellow Europeans! Political unity is the only way forward! Even the stupid Americans realized that, and that was more than 200 years ago!
“My passport says passport at the top, United States of America at the bottom, and between it is an eagle decorated with the motto e pluribus unum. That is such a great motto… listen up, Europe! Out of many, one is the way to go!”
I do question why the American national motto is in Latin, considering the average American wouldn’t know the difference between a nominative, a dative, an accusative, and an ablative if they each grabbed a limb and quartered him.
Yeah, I’m much smarter than all of you. I did Latin at school for five years and remember that there are five or so different cases. Of course, I can’t remember anything else and couldn’t say what case “pluribus” or “unum” are… I am still smarter than you because I have a piece of paper that proves I am a Master of Latin™, or something. Latin is, like, hard. It has grammar, and stuff that you need to stick to for things to make sense.
I vaguely remember that I had a New Year’s Resolution of being less negative, sarcastic, and insulting.
Hang on… no, I didn’t. I was just gonna be more to the point, and not fill my articles with too much waffling about politics and football, or unintelligible gibberish about Latin grammar. So, what was I talking about? Right, new things.
When talking about new things, we must ignore everything that came before, so this article will be mostly about old things.
The most important new thing is, of course, not much more than a glint in the milkman’s eye. I will only mention it peripherally. Okay, I will mention it a lot peripherally. There is a new format coming up for a new Pro Tour Qualifier season, for a new Pro Tour in a new Prague. I guess Prague isn’t new — I’ve been there before.
My memories of Prague do not include passing out in a pool of my own vomit, or trying to get on stage at the strip club where that wasn’t part of the program, so that obviously never happened. Otherwise I would remember it, right?
Coming back to the point… a new Limited PTQ season, Sealed and Draft format, to look at, analyse, discuss etc., then go on PTQ binge and fail to qualify miserably like the last time. Optimism is overrated. Let’s look in the mirror and see what was, what is, and what has not yet come to pass.
The Old Format: Sealed
As everyone knows, Green is the top dog in the current Sealed format. It has the best fixers, the best creature base, and loves its neighbours as itself. Black ain’t far behind with the most reliable removal and… um… more good creatures. Discard is rather powerful, even if it isn’t quite Superman’s sausage. White is fairly ubiquitous, being the best complement to Green’s plans for World Domination Through Excessive Reproduction.
Blue and Red are the problem children of the format. They only appear in one guild, and their guilds don’t play nice with others. The Boros just want to smash people, and like most of that persuasion they aren’t good at asking for help, even from their good friends, the pansy Saproling boys. The reason most Boros decks fail is that they have very little mid-game and generally hit hard early. They then need to find a way to finish once control has been lost, but can’t muster much in the meantime. The opponent can hold back removal for the big-hitting creatures, leaving the Boros player fighting to win games by knocking foes into burn range. This doesn’t happen often, because, in contrast to Sealed Deck formats of days gone by, there is a lot of lifegain on playable cards! Most Boros decks can easily deal twenty damage, but few Boros Sealed Decks can deal twenty-four, or twenty-seven or more, before the opponent stabilises.
Half the Dimir cards cry out for a dedicated Mill deck, and are useless in a traditional Sealed Deck that wins by turning monsters sideways. The remaining Blue cards are spread so thinly that they remain, at best, a splash option.
To summarise: most decks are either G/B/x or G/W/x, with the odd U/B/x deck and the odd R/W deck. Occasionally, there’ll be a deck whose main color combination doesn’t follow Ravnica guild lines, such as G/R/w or U/W/b. Sticking to two-color decks rarely pays off, as there are enough mana fixers for the difference in consistency to be marginal, whereas the difference in power is usually pretty overwhelming. Four-color decks with horrible manabases often seem more consistent than two-color decks, simply through the power of the cards.
The Old Format: Draft
In the current Draft format, there are four main archetypes: Boros, Dimir Mill, U/B aggro, and “the Green deck”. One may argue that there is a Selesnya deck and a Golgari deck, or a Saproling and a non-Saproling deck, but I’ve found that the boundaries between them are too fluid to really make them distinct archetypes.
Let’s start by talking about the Blue decks. As I have made abundantly clear in my last article, I don’t like ‘em, and avoid ‘em whenever I can. Fortunately this is very easy, as the Blue cards are not particularly enticing, and most of the first-pick Black cards work just as well in a Green deck.
The only card requiring Blue mana that I would consider a first pick in pack one is Ribbons of Night, and that is still great without Islands — with the added bonus that it feels less like cheating when it doesn’t draw you a card. For those that like these archetypes (freaks!) there should be plenty of goodies, because people don’t pick all your best cards first. Unless they’re in Black, in which case they aren’t really your cards anyway. You don’t deserve them, you scum.
I wrote a whole article about how much U/B bugs me, so I have no idea why I’m still talking about it.
Let’s go to a happier topic… the Deck of Decks, the King of Kings, the Pure Awesome Juice of Awesomeness: the Green deck. I find it amazing how many Black cards there are in this set that shine in a Saproling deck, from Golgari Rotwurm to Thoughtpicker Witch. I have come to regard Fists of Ironwood as a near-bomb and pick it accordingly. It works so well with too many cards. The Green deck is the best in the format by about two miles. Look at how many bomb uncommons there are: Moldervine Cloak, Selesnya Guildmage, Pollenbright Wings, Golgari Guildmage… What does Dimir have? Ribbons of Night? Goes straight in the Green deck. Not to mention that G/B/u and G/W/r are also great options…
There has been a lot of talk lately of “Control Boros” decks. I haven’t come across a decent one to date, but it may show up eventually. I have been drafting a fair bit of Aggro Boros, however, as people realise how good Green is and overdraft accordingly. In this scenario, Aggro Boros is a great back-up plan because it is great at punishing people for having sub-optimal decks.
I love the Green deck because it is so much more flexible than everything else, and flexibility is about to become a lot more important…
Guildpact and Color Combinations
Anyone remember the glory days of Magic, brought about by the incomparable greatness of the Apocalypse? Those were the days… Men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. After many months where all Sealed Decks were U/B/R, and all Drafts stuck to the easy friendly route, the enemy-colored goodness of Apocalyptica threw a whole monkey-wrench into it all, obliterated two-color decks and punished all who failed to build enough flexibility into their drafting endeavour. Rejoice, for those days have returned to we who are not worthy.
There will no longer be three boosters (or a whole Sealed Deck card pool) containing cards from the same guilds: the straightforward, simple guild deck is out of the window. There will be a lot more decks that are true three- or four-color decks, and the manafixers are going to become much more important as a result. Wizards R&D have said that the small sets are going to contain fewer non-guild cards, which will exacerbate this even more.
Archetypes in the New Sealed
As 60% of any Sealed Deck will still consist of Ravnica cards, the new archetypes will be somewhat based on old ones, and we will probably find an evolution. As such, Boros decks will cease to exist, becoming an aggressive version of G/W/R decks. Green decks will still rule the roost, and will likely contain whatever color they want. Blue should be as rare as before. U/B decks will include Red and/or White
W/R/U decks could be interesting, combining the aggressiveness of the Boros legion with the tricksiness and insanity of the Izzet, forming a strange concoction that somehow bears a lot of resemblance to the classic Limited archetype, U/W. Similarly, R/U/B decks will resemble R/B decks of yore, with copious amounts of removal working with the Izzet’s theme of instant and sorcery love. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Of course, these interesting archetypes are likely to be marginal, and the majority of properly built Sealed Decks will feature a jumble of colors thrown onto a green base. Draft, however, is looking at a fundamental shake-up.
Archetypes in the New Draft
Most draft decks in Ravnica/Ravnica/Guildpact will fall into one of the following categories:
1) The Everything Draft (5cG):
What’s the best way to deal with the chaos brought about by the lack of consistent color options across all three boosters? Play the archetype that ignores any color restrictions… mono-brown! This worked well in Mirrodin Invasion block, where first picking Harrow and similar mana-fixers set you up for a potentially awesome draft. So first-pick those Civic Wayfinders, Farseeks and Perilous Forays. Okay, maybe not that last one, although that particular hot chick may soon show up in decklists rather than dirty dreams.
I can’t yet tell whether the format will accelerate, but if it stays comparably slow then drafting 5cG will be fantastic. After picking a few mana fixers you can simply take and play the best card from every pack regardless of color. Powerful stuff. Good times. However, if you don’t get the mana fixers you’ll need to tread carefully, probably sticking to three colors, or your deck will die on you.
All. The. Time.
2) The Take-Your-Money-and-Run Draft:
As the greedy ones have departed to salivate over the potential five-color deck, the rest remain as we approach the more normal draft archetypes of Ravnica/Ravnica/Guildpact. The default number of colors will be three, but often this will be two colors and a small splash. You’ll want to draft most of your deck in the first two boosters following a particular guild, and use the last booster to fill in the gaps or add a splash color. If the first two boosters are kind to you, they’ll give you a complete deck right off the bat.
The most likely color combinations here are B/U/r, U/B/w, W/R/u, R/W/b and B/G/r. If you open good cards you can ignore the third booster and draft as though it was triple Ravnica, spending the last pack simply grabbing whatever you can, hate-drafting, and twiddling your thumbs.
Note that there are two possible U/B decks. I wish I could say the Mill deck is dead, and good riddance… Unfortunately, it’s still alive and kicking, though it won’t torment us quite as much as it used to.
3) The Payoff Draft:
This is the opposite of the previous strategy. Here, you draft as though it was a triple Guildpact draft, diving straight into an appropriate guild in the hope of getting a fat holiday bonus in pack three. This can be a good idea if your early packs are poor, and you might even end up with a two color deck…
This is the riskiest strategy to pursue, since it relies heavily on a better tomorrow. If, however, you can effectively cut the two colors, the payoff can be huge. The color combinations follow the Guildpact guilds: U/R (/w/b), B/W (/g/r/u) and R/G (/w/b). Of these, U/R should be the easiest to pull off as there are more non-guild cards in Ravnica Red and Blue than in any other, and they even share a natural synergy. The ultimate payoff draft, however, is G/R/U. There are no guild cards whatsoever in Ravnica for this, but come Guildpact the World is your oyster.
4) The Have-Your-Cake-and-Eat-It-Too Draft:
This is what you get if you set out to draft three colors that form a triumphant triumvirate, enabling choices from several guilds at all times. Or something. This covers the following color combinationss: G/B/W and G/W/R. If you draft these colors from the outset, you can cherry-pick like a five-color mage without needing to emphasise mana fixers. The downside is that these colors are likely to be overdrafted.
This is one approach to distinguish the archetypes from each another, seeing how they come about, and what drafting mindset creates them. Another way of splitting is by looking at three-color combinations and examining the guilds involved.
- G/W/U includes the G/W guild, found only in Ravnica.
- G/B/U includes the G/B and B/U guilds, found only in Ravnica.
- G/R/U includes the G/R and R/U guilds, found only in Guildpact.
- G/B/R includes the G/B and G/R guilds, found in Ravnica and Guildpact respectively.
- W/B/U includes the B/U and W/B guilds, found in Ravnica and Guildpact respectively.
- B/R/U includes the B/U and R/U guilds, found in Ravnica and Guildpact respectively.
- W/B/R includes the W/R and W/B guilds, found in Ravnica and Guildpact respectively.
- W/R/U includes the W/R and R/U guilds, found in Ravnica and Guildpact respectively.
- G/W/B includes the G/W, G/B, and W/B guilds, found in Ravnica, Ravnica, and Guildpact respectively.
- G/W/R includes the G/W, W/R, and G/R guilds, found in Ravnica, Ravnica, and Guildpact respectively.
From this information, we can see that G/W/U should be impossible to draft, G/R/U is a total gamble that relies completely on the third booster, and G/B/U needs all the action before the third booster. The other seven combinations should be fine, having something to choose from in every booster. The popularity of any archetype is, of course, dependent on the quality of the actual cards.
Land Destruction
Is it time to play all the Seismic Spikes you can find? Probably not, but playing Land Destruction with sideline benefits — like Rolling Spoil and the new uncounterable Pillage — looks like an exceedingly good idea. The question is whether Land Destruction is a viable Draft archetype…
Probably not, but when Seismic Spike becomes a first pick, remember that you heard it here first. R&D probably did a fine job of putting just enough land destruction spells in the set to punish people who rely heavily on double lands, but it ain’t good enough to create the backbone of a successful strategy.
Dissension
When Dissension arrives, everyone will be playing four-color decks that act like two-color decks. So Sayeth the Prophet Martin. This should lead to Seismic Spike being a definite maindeck option.
That’s it for today. Hopefully, I’ve the stage for upcoming articles with added Guildpact experience and more focus, detailing my attempts to qualify for Pro Tour Prague. Will these attempts be more successful than those for Pro Tour London? Who knows?
It should be a lot more fun. Ravnica blows Kamigawa block right out of the water, and it’s gearing up to be a much more complex format.
Have fun, and good luck at the Pre-Release!
Martin
darkheartothorny on SCG forums and MTGO.