Every time a new Limited format rolls around, people are eager to start exploring the new mechanics and the new interactions between the cards. Gradually, once the initial stages of research have gone past, a settling of archetypes begins, with each player jockeying for position at what they think works best, trying to explore stuff on their own, but at the same time trying to fit within a common frame.
Since every new set these days is an entirely different experience, adapting is not an easy process. This article will give you an overview of a draft archetype in Scars of Mirrodin that I believe is a strong contender at any draft table.
Normally when you first say ‘draft archetype,’ two things immediately spring to mind. One is ‘color combination.’ Color combination is as important in Scars of Mirrodin as in other formats. Not only 88 out of the 229 cards are artifacts, but the colored cards tend to have non-intensive mana costs. Of course having common colorless fixers in all five colors (the Myr cycle) makes splashing and playing more than two colors easy as well, but even if you don’t splash and play just two colors, the format is a lot more forgiving. You could start the game with a triple-Swamp hand in your R/B deck, and the odds are that you’ll still have plays that meaningfully interact with the board or draw a card you can still cast even if you never draw a land in your other color.
Because many of the decks seem to require at least 10-12 artifacts in order to function well (not only because of artifacts being colorless, but also because of their power level, which at times surpasses the power level of colored cards), the number of colored spells you could and would like to play over their colorless counterparts is somewhat limited. In another format, your draft strategy would be significantly hurt if you shared a color with your neighbors. In Scars of Mirrodin your strategy suffers much more if you share the archetype of your neighbors, and most of the time colored spells aren’t involved in this.
The second thing that comes to mind is ‘card evaluation in context.’ This idea revolves around playability of cards that require you to play specific card subtypes in order to be good. Auriok Sunchaser, for example, wouldn’t see play as a two-mana 1/1 creature. But as a 3/3 creature with flying for just two mana, you would definitely play it. So this is where the whole evaluation thing kicks in. How much do you value this card? Would you be willing to take it early? Would the power level of the card be enough to warrant a risk that you may not draft enough artifacts or not have enough artifacts in play to make this guy a 3/3 flier?
This dilemma isn’t one that could be easily solved, and it’s mostly through your own experience in drafting and playing a specific Scars of Mirrodin archetype that you’ll learn to execute it appropriately. In order to prepare for this article, I’ve spent many hours playing on MTGO (and a bit less playing with paper cards) and trying different things out. I partly succeeded and partly failed at the same time, reiterating each mistake and dwelling on each pick and each play, until I was able to figure out ‘what works.’ ‘What works’ is a definition that changes all the time and what was valid at the beginning of this format is now not as valid, as people seem to have started catching wind of the format.
However some of the fundamentals don’t change, and it’s those fundamentals that I address below.
So, our culprit today — our ‘spotlight’ archetype — is
control.
I wish I could tell you what colors you should be looking at in order to execute this draft strategy, but right now I can only tell you what colors you should
not
be looking at (*cough* green *cough*).
Why control? It is simple enough — control is about card advantage. Getting card advantage in this format isn’t easy. There are almost no spells that allow you to draw cards. There are some that offer two-for-one effects and some that have an effect, but cycle at the same time. And there are the Trigons — artifacts which tap for two colorless mana and have a colored, repetitive effect. Let us summarize the card advantage spells in the format (which aren’t rares or mythic rares):
Obvious card advantage spells:
White: Dispense Justice, Myrsmith, Razor Hippogriff (all uncommons)
Blue: Darkslick Drake, Halt Order, Trinket Mage, Volition Reins (all uncommons again)
Black: Instill Infection, Skinrender (a surprise common)
Red: Arc Trail, Embersmith, Oxidda Scrapmelter, Turn to Slag (one common and three uncommons)
Green: Acid Web Spider, Slice in Twain (all uncommons)
Artifacts: Corpse Cur, Heavy Arbalest, Infiltration Lens, Palladium Myr, Moriok Replica, Necropede, Trigon of Corruption, Trigon of Thought, Trigon of Infestation, Trigon of Rage (two commons — the Moriok Replica and the Corpse Cur — and many uncommons)
At this point I could just tell you to always prioritize picking those cards before other cards and call it a day. And you won’t go wrong with those, too. Most of the time it’s correct to pick them and just for example — if you’ve already decided that you’ll be playing red, then that Turn to Slag will make it to your deck anyway.
There’s a bit more to that, however. And there might very well be, because we’re just getting started now. Before we move on any of the specific cards, we need to stop and ask ourselves what we’re doing and how.
Playing control in this format means that we’re trying to run our opponents into a bunch of 2-for-1 situations, while at the same time not losing to tempo or to some unexpected strategy or a card with some bizarre application (I’m currently wondering how likely I am to lose if I have an active Tower of Calamities against my opponent’s empty board and hanging in there on a healthy eight life). This means having spells that give you card advantage, spells that deal with your opponents’ cards, and spells that win you the game directly, if your opponent has a game plan that you’re not likely to be able to interfere with.
Mana Myr
So let us continue with those lists. What else could be a 2-for-1? Well, how about the Myr cycle? Iron Myr and friends are much better in a control deck. First — they fix your splashes. You could easily be splashing white or red removal with a couple of Iron Myr or Gold Myr respectively. Second — they fight. Myr are much better at killing opposing creatures than killing opposing players, and it’s important for decks that want to take control first and then just finish the game with a big threat because the opponent has no cards. So while in an aggro approach, drawing your Myr will almost feel like you’ve drawn a land, in control decks your Myr are far more likely to matter. Now the question is — how many Myr? Five is probably too many, and four is just fine. You really want all that mana.
Proliferate
Then there is proliferate — a hidden source of card advantage or at least resource conversion. If you’re proliferating with an active Trigon of Rage and an active Tumble Magnet, it will feel like you’re drawing a card for four mana. Every turn! If it’s the Trigon of Infestation, you’ll almost feel like you’re drawing two cards for the same cost (and winning the game at the same time, because those 1/1 infect guys are bound to connect at least once, and then you’ll continue to proliferate the poison counters). So if we can set up our deck to gain proliferate cards as sources of card advantage, we’re gaining a whole new subset of card advantage spells that other people at the draft table may not necessarily want to use. Everyone can see how good Skinrender or Oxidda Scrapmelter is. Not necessarily so with a Steady Progress.
So what is the subset of cards with proliferate that the control archetype would require? First the ‘engine’ (cards with counters):
Culling Dais — in most control decks it won’t be a high pick. There’s a subset of cards that you may play (like Kuldotha Rebirth), which will make this card better, but if you don’t have at least twelve creatures and at least two ways to proliferate (best if you have a permanent way of proliferating, but we’ll discuss this below), avoid playing this in the main, as it’s too slow. It’s a good option in the sideboard against removal-heavy decks or decks with Volition Reins.
Golem Foundry — Avoid playing without at least fourteen artifacts and two ways to proliferate counters. In any deck that doesn’t satisfy this requirement, it’s a swing-and-miss card — if you’re desperate, play it, and hope to draw it at the right time (in your opening hand with a stream of artifacts, preferably Spellbombs to not only create Golems, but to draw more cards that create Golems).
Trigon of Corruption — This is one of the best picks in the format and is especially nasty with proliferate. Proliferate charges not only the counters on the Trigon but also the counters you’ve put on creatures. With this, Steady Progress almost becomes instant-speed Thirst for Knowledge without the discard clause.
Trigon of Mending — Often underrated and running circles around draft tables, this Trigon ensures you won’t lose the game to a tempo non-infect deck (such as B/R or R/W metalcraft aggro).
Trigon of Infestation — This is also an overlooked card with lots of potential. Unless the opponents have access to first strike or flying, this is a slower and slightly worse version of Trigon of Corruption, now with 100% more blocking.
Trigon of Rage — The upside to this in a control deck is that it’s so cheap. Your mana Myr now trade with everything and can kill players, too. Sometimes you’ve taken control for a while, until the opponent recoups (usually through some bomb). You’d be surprised how many games play out like this. Having this Trigon out gives them less time to recoup.
Trigon of Thought — in a vacuum, this would be the best Trigon. I mean — you draw three cards, and you start charging it? Where do I sign up? But unfortunately harsh reality kicks in, and this thing costs DI mana. You still want to have access to it, though, and the more Myr you have, the more you want it.
Tumble Magnet — one of the best cards to have on the board when you’re proliferating. Free tap effect (taps non-creature artifacts, which shuts down some of the Trigons or opposing Tumble Magnet) cannot be bad, ever, and the mana cost is tempo-friendly. Early, this allows you to not die to tempo, and late, it allows you to contain the single most dangerous threat the opponent has. There’s no context in which this card is bad, so you should be taking it high and playing it.
Instill Infection — I feel like this should be in a class of its own. I’ve seen this card go really late. I know why — the infect deck’s curve is so jammed with good cards on four that they can’t really play one more, even if it is that good. Well, all the better for you, because you want to be playing as many mana Myr as you can get and also don’t mind if you play two or even three copies of Instill Infection. As I said in one of my previous articles — starting first and playing an Instill Infection on their second-turn mana Myr off of your own mana Myr feels almost like you’re cheating.
Creatures with infect — out of those, Necropede and Tangle Angler are the ones that see play in any deck because of how good they are at what they do. Fume Spitter gets an honorable mention as well, because it does get the job done — i.e. puts a -1/-1 counter on a creature. What I’m implying is that when you go the control route, you wouldn’t mind having a creature with infect in your deck. Sure enough — odds are that it doesn’t win you the game by itself (unless it’s a hard-to-pronounce, black hasted Dragon, and in that case feel free to go and win a Grand Prix with it). But simply having it there is a threat that your opponent has to be very careful against.
Say you have a 2/2 creature, and the opponent has a Chrome Steed out. He wouldn’t hesitate to attack into your creature with his 4/4. But what if that creature had infect? I know I said ‘avoid green,’ but if you can’t — Blight Mamba is fine. Corpse Cur is more than fine, especially if you can get two of those and start a block-return-block-return cycle. Sometimes even Contagious Nim isn’t that bad. I’ve seen people say that mixing regular creatures and infect creatures is bad for when you’re trying to win the game, but with a control deck, you’re not trying to win the game as quickly, and there’s relatively lower pressure on you in that department. Feel free to win with two hits from a Corpse Cur and six proliferate activations, though.
And now the ‘fuel’ (cards that put proliferate counters on permanents):
Contagion Clasp — this card does it all. The undisputable first pick, the king of Scars of Mirrodin. If you’re going to play control, pick this over anything but the bomb rares. I’m not going to waste your time explaining how awesome this card is. If you’ve read my article up to this point, you’ll know the insanity this card could create. Instead I urge you to look at the Grand Prix Bochum undefeated Sealed decklists. Nine decks total
undefeated. Four of them don’t have Contagion Clasp. But one has Contagion Engine.
Our editor recently tweeted
about first-picking Necrotic Ooze or Contagion Clasp. I answered within two minutes, but four other people had already answered. Every single reply to his tweet? Contagion Clasp.
Contagion Engine — I have a strict policy of almost never mentioning rares. In this case I’ll make an exception, though. You know what is better than one Contagion Clasp? Yup. You guessed it. Two of them!
Throne of Geth — now this is where it gets interesting. Proliferating without having to sacrifice cards is easy. You just do it, and that’s that. But for the Throne of Geth, you cannot. You have to sacrifice an artifact. The best artifacts to sacrifice are Spellbombs, as they replace themselves immediately. Other options include blocking Myr (they were going to die anyway), tokens from Myrsmith (yeah, right, give it a go for wishful thinking), and of course a Corpse Cur if you have another one in hand, or Perilous Myr if you want to get rid of something at instant speed. Or an artifact that has been Arrested. Or the Throne of Geth itself, if you no longer need it or have a Razor Hippogriff to re-buy it. Infect decks pick Throne of Geth, because it’s a sort of pinger that pings players for two damage a turn. Using Throne of Geth in a control deck requires a bit more setup, but you’re rewarded for setting it up, because you wanted to play cheap artifacts in this format anyway.
Inexorable Tide — this is an underrated rare. Sure, it costs five. It requires setup. But in the right deck, you untap with it, and the game is virtually over. Your opponent doesn’t know this, of course, but it is. And control is the right deck for this card.
Steady Progress — it would go around the table as late as pick 12. Don’t worry about getting two of those cards (you’ll probably need them). If any have been open, you’ll get them.
Thrummingbird — The cat is out of the bag on this one, and you shouldn’t see it after pick 6-7. If you do, feel free to jump in on it; the card is awesome in control (funny how a 1/1 flier for two can be awesome, but it’s true — proliferate is so strong).
Trigons — surprise, surprise. Trigons fuel themselves (if you’re in the right color combination for this, of course). We could also stretch it a bit further and add Glint Hawk and Glimmerpoint Stag to this list (as they reset Trigons and Tumble Magnet).
Removal
I’ve often said it, but people have a hard time believing it. Removal spells are actually card advantage. Why so? Well, first of all, you get to pick what you remove with them. Your opponent has good and not-so-good cards in his deck, and you have the choice of neutralizing his better cards, while you spend other type of resources neutralizing his worse cards (for example — your own creatures). Because of land density, having a removal spell to kill 2-3 creatures and blocking/trading with your own means that your opponent will have a hard time winning the game quickly (he has to draw lands at some point).
When you’re playing control, you don’t mind the game going long. In fact it’s quite the opposite — you want it to go long. I’m not going to make a list of removal spells and say, “Well, this card is good, this card is also good, we-ell, this card isn’t bad at all,” etc., because anyone knows how removal is quite often the best pick.
Okay, now that we’ve discussed what the deck wants to do, it’s time to see how we go around building it (we want to have a plan for a decklist in mind before we start drafting, so that we know what we should pick and when we can go for this deck).
Your deck ideally consists of 20+ mana sources. Seventeen lands is the bare minimum, but if you cannot get three or four Myr, play eighteen. If you can get to three or four Myr, feel free to play seventeen lands. Seventeen lands, two Myr, and a Horizon Spellbomb are probably also fine, but you really want at least three mana Myr.
Your colors don’t matter as much (we discussed it earlier), but if you can do it, avoid having green as your main color. Slice in Twain and Tangle Angler are reasons to go base-green, but there are many better options in the other colors. Usually early you would pick either a removal spell or a bomb. It is very likely that you will end up playing something like 7-8 colored spells, so don’t worry if you think you’ll only get colored spells in a specific color in pack 2. If you take a Grasp of Darkness and then never see another black card in pack 1, it only means you’ll be seeing more good black cards in pack 2. If you have two of those and an Instill Infection, you’re almost not interested in playing other black spells. The person next to you is still in black, but you couldn’t care less.
Optimally you want about 3-4 proliferate fuel cards (Contagion Clasp, Thrummingbird, Throne of Geth, Steady Progress) to go with 6-7 proliferate engine cards (Trigons, etc.). Don’t play Throne of Geth for just two proliferate engine cards. Steady Progress at least replaces itself, and Contagion Clasp is a removal spell, so you safely play those anyway. Of course sometimes your creatures and your proliferate engine cards overlap (which is great). On the other hand, if you don’t have enough proliferate fuel cards, you may want to not include some of the proliferate engine cards.
Also if you don’t have enough of the cards in each group, put Spellbombs in. They cycle and give you another draw to find your missing cards. A Golem Foundry with eleven artifacts and a single Contagion Clasp isn’t worth playing. So with twenty cards dedicated to mana and ten slots dedicated to proliferate (if you have a good proliferate version of control, that is), you only have about ten slots for creatures and/or removal. Luckily, most of the proliferate engine/fuel cards overlap with creatures/removal slots, so the actual number is about fourteen, not ten. And of course mana Myr are creatures, too.
So there you have to put at least ten solid win conditions and — worse comes to worse — a big creature will have to do as a win condition. You really want to close the game. Don’t play three Hellions just because you fear you won’t be able to win the game in due time. Some of the good cards you’ve taken will also be able to execute this role really well, so if possible, play good cards as win conditions. Then add some solid (possibly defensive) creatures and all the removal spells you can get your hands on.
Here’s a sample decklist:
Mana: (20 cards)
8 Swamp
9 Mountain
2 Gold Myr
1 Iron Myr
Proliferate engine: (7 cards)
2 Trigon of Corruption
1 Trigon of Infestation
1 Fume Spitter
1 Necropede
2 Tumble Magnet
Proliferate fuel: (2 cards)
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Throne of Geth
(+2 Trigon of Corruption)
Removal spells: (8 cards)
1 Skinrender
1 Oxidda Scrapmelter
1 Spikeshot Elder
1 Grasp of Darkness
1 Instill Infection
1 Shatter
1 Galvanic Blast
1 Turn to Slag
Creatures: (3 cards)
1 Flameborn Hellion
1 Saberclaw Golem
1 Necrotic Ooze
(+8 other, listed previously)
This list (unsurprisingly) won the draft. Most of the time, I was attacking with the Hellion for the win.
So now for some
pick orders:
Pick Contagion Clasp first, then good removal spells, then a two-for-one spell (if it isn’t a removal spell, too), then mana Myr, then proliferate fuel/engine cards — you take the better one of each type, then bad removal spells, then good creatures. You may want to reprioritize this pick order if you feel like you have taken enough mana Myr or that more mana Myr would wheel or if you feel like one of the proliferate components (engine or fuel) is being cut and you need to take those earlier. Creatures you win the game with aren’t a great concern. You can safely win with a Flameborn Hellion.
Please take this pick order with a grain of salt. Some draft tables won’t want anything to do with a mana Myr, and you’ll be able to wheel those. Other tables will mysteriously sucker all Golem Foundries, and you won’t be able to take even one if you don’t first-pick it!
Okay, so far — so good. We know the archetype exists. When should we go into it? Are there no better decks open for drafting? What is the reason to go into this archetype specifically?
First thing is opening a Contagion Clasp or — even better — getting passed a Contagion Clasp. The Clasp is so good in this archetype and in infect and so bad in almost any other archetype, but it still gets picked because of its power level even if you’re not doing insane things with it.
Next is getting passed a lot of removal spells early. Yeah, this happens. People go overboard on these Chrome Steeds and Myrsmiths. Or infect. An infect player is almost your best neighbor! This is the reason why red is so good in this format. The removal spells are awesome, but some of the players are simply in G/B and don’t want them. Well, thanks a bunch. We do want them.
Then there’s seeing Thrummingbird going late or multiple copies of Golem Foundry wheeling or seventh-pick Inexorable Tide. Multiple trigons in boosters. Blue seems to be the natural home of more proliferate-oriented builds of this deck, but the second color is up for grabs, and there are also monocolor control decks splashing for two other colors. Be creative with your mana base, and be careful which off-color mana Myr you’re picking up.
Playing the games
With control decks, most of the time you want to be on the play. You have a stable mana base, and most of your cards offer you an advantage. At the same time, those cards tend to be a bit on the slow side. If you don’t have ‘tempo killers’ in your deck (i.e. direct removal spells), you should choose to start first. It has gone full circle for me. I was drawing with every deck but infect (and sometimes with infect, too), but now I feel that in control, I want to go first so that I develop my strategy and not be under great pressure and be forced to make card-disadvantageous plays just because I’m behind on tempo.
Happy drafting everyone, and I’ll (hopefully) see you next time.