Iterating on Stoneforge Mystic

A lot has happened in a short few days with my new best friend, Stoneforge Mystic.  The value of the deck I posted the other day alone went from 260~ tickets to 340~ in the span of less than 24 hours.  I also managed to 5-0 my first league with the deck, and then ran it back with a 4-1 on Thursday as well, winning 9 consecutive matches against a wide swath of decks in the process.  My confidence level that a deck like this is good is very high.

I made a few tweaks between the firs two leagues I played to account for some lessons learned.  To start, here's the updated list.

Previous list here.

Changes

I added another Field of Ruin, and Eldrazi Displacer, and cut Ephemerate to make space.  While playing the deck I was never unhappy to draw lands, and I was hoping to gains some percentage against decks like Tron.  Field of Ruin being a colorless source was important too, as when adding another Displacer I was interested in adding a bit of consistency activating it.  Ephemerate wasn't bad, but it's awful with a Thalia in play as you get taxed twice.  Displacer was incredible, especially against the numerous other Stoneforge Mystic decks I played against.  Blinking Batterskull created Germ tokens put me ahead in a lot of games that would have been tough otherwise, and I think if the metagame remains heavy on Stoneforge Mystic I want to max out on this card.

Sideboard Swaps

After playing with the sideboard I had some spots where I felt great about my choices, as Gideon Blackblade enormously overperformed, and some places where I couldn't believe how I came to my conclusions, like when I boarded in my one Stony Silence, drew it, and it was worse than useless.

Surgical Extraction felt more adorable than anything else, and got cut to make room for Damping Sphere, another card against Tron but also an effective card vs. the Twiddle Storm deck.  I added another Fragmentize to beat various Ensnaring Bridge/Karn decks, although I think I'm going to have to diversify this later for something that can also hit Batterskull.  Archangel Avacyn proved to be far too adorable, so I cut her for Serra the Benevolent, a card that was reasonable for me when I brought it in vs. Jund, but not one I'm particularly confident shouldn't be Gideon, Ally of Zendikar instead.  Despite overperforming, I shaved a Gideon as I was adding a 3rd Fragmentize for Bridge decks and I felt like I didn't need the help vs. U/W control and other decks.

Results of My 2nd League

I managed to continue my run all the way until the last round where I lost to a Jeskai Saheeli deck in the finals.  I definitely got a lot of equity from my opponents not knowing my decklist, as I played against an opponent who cast a Blood Moon against me that was totally irrelevant, and I likely would have lost that match if it was a remotely relevant card instead.  Walking Ballista was a very valuable tutor target, as my opponents generally didn't expect that I could have any reach, and often let themselves fall to 3 and less when they didn't necessarily have to.

I really missed having access to some sort of answer to Batterskull, as I was often short a good card to board in against other Stoneforge Mystic decks.  I think going forward a Fragmentize should become a Disenchant or some allegory, with Batterskull in mind, but also as an answer to Chalice of the Void.

The Falling off Wheels

 

After some successful leagues, I continued to iterate on the deck and try things out.  I played a Shattering Blow in my sideboard, I swapped my Sword of Fire and Ice to a Sword of Light and Shadow, and I even tried Nevermore, which I drew two of against Scapeshift, never drew a 3rd land to cast them, but won anyway as my opponents draw was awful and they died to Batterskull.

It was certainly nice to have some beginner's luck as well as what I still feel like have been good ideas, but this deck definitely has some real flaws, as it has a lot points of vulnerability for our opponents to exploit.  We're relatively weak to sweepers, land hate cards, and binary combo decks like Scapeshift and Ad Nauseum.  My opponents drew pretty well in general across my 3 weak leagues (I went 2-3, 2-3, 3-2); I got killed by a topdecked Scapeshift, a Linvala the Preserver out of a very similar deck, and an Amulet Titan player who drew running Titans, but with that said I never put enough pressure on anyone to really mitigate any of that. My draws in general were relatively poor as well, but as you'd expect my draws were great in my first two leagues.  Even my wins in my last few leagues felt lucky; I played against Mardu Death's Shadow twice while testing out maindeck Sword of Light and Shadow, and it killed them singlehandedly in both matches.

Takeaways

While I still feel like this deck idea has legs, it's going to take a lot of iterating and learning on my own part to really perfect.  I have numerous avenues left to explore, and I'm likely going to try out the best version I can come up with in an upcoming MTGO MCQ.  This deck has a ton of play and sequencing tricks to learn, and I expect to improve my record just with experience.  I was using Thalia to effectively make spells uncounterable against a few opponents just by casting it first, and I decided in general it wasn't good to cast turn 2 Thought-Knot Seer in my deck in my double Eldrazi Temple draws at the expense of casting a 1 mana spell into a two mana spell into Seer instead, which came up a few times and mattered a lot.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter

Brewing in new Modern, Mono White Eldrazi

Unless you've been living in a cave (especially one with no Wi-fi or cell service) you may know that Stoneforge Mystic has been unbanned.

For the uninitiated, Stoneforge Mystic is an incredibly powerful card; it was even banned in Standard in its era.  The unintuitive thing about Stoneforge Mystic is that you don't need to play with a whole lot of equipment to make it good, once you've tutored for a Sword of Fire and Ice it's alright to play some 2 mana 1/2s just to equip it to.  Enter Batterskull, and it also allows you to take advantage of an incredibly cheap oversized lifelinker that's incredibly hard to kill.

I've wanted to figure out cool homes for Stoneforge Mystic since the unbanning, and this is the first place I've ended up.  I started off with a Soulherder shell, but the mana was awful. Too many three drops and not enough to do early on in addition forced me to move on.  While this is an incredibly rough early list, I think that there's a lot of power here.

Well Positioned Modern Horizons Cards

 

I really wanted to include Ephemerate and Ranger-Captain of Eos, as they give this deck resilience and a way to generate value over a long game.  I've included a tutor package for Ranger-Captain in the form of Weathered Wayfayer, Walking Ballista, and Giver of Runes, which all have their own powerful but narrow circumstances.  Walking Ballista also combines with Archangel Avacyn out of the sideboard for creature mirrors just like Hangarback Walker did in Standard of years past.  Thraben Inspector really ties the room together, as in any value oriented match-up it can be tutored for and blinked repeatedly, and it's a lot easier to spend mana cracking clues with an active Aether Vial.

Mana Base

 

I believe that Prismatic Vista makes this deck possible, as it allows for much more consistent access to Wingding (colorless) mana and won't deal you much damage in the long run.  The deck thinning element is realistically a negative as this deck is already land light, but shouldn't matter often.  Shefet Dunes and Field of Ruin provide utility and can be tutored for with Weatherd Wayfayer, but are primarily here to make it easy to cast all of your spells.  Silent Clearing can occasionally cast our sideboard Surgical Extraction for a 1 life discount, so it beats out running a split of random White Canopy lands to beat out Pithing Needle.  The numbers are pretty up in the air, but at 12 Wingding 16 White with Vials, we should be able to consistently cast things.

Gameplan

 

This deck has a relatively fast goldfish against combo decks, and leans on Thought-Knot Seer and Thalia for disruption.  Against burn our plan is to buy time with Ranger Captain of Eos until we can get Batterskull into play.  Against other creature decks, we aim to play a grindy game, leaning on Thraben Inspector and Vial to generate a lot advantage over time, and to also do lots of blocking.  Control decks like U/W aren't great against our Thalia and Thought-Knot Seer plan, although we're not effective against cards like Jace the Mindsculptor and Teferi unless we have an active Vial.  Lastly against various Ensnaring Bridge decks like Urza, we hope to get them low enough early so that we can burn them out with Walking Ballista, but we realistically lean on Gideon/Fragmentize out of the sideboard.

Notable Omissions

 

Reality Smasher: We're simply not running enough lands to cast this card, and it's not great with Aether Vial to compensate.  It feels criminal not to play this, but I'm not sure how to fit them in.

Hex Parasite: We're a bit soft to Planeswalkers, but I don't feel like this card is good enough in comparison to other tutor targets, and we already have too many of those.

Cavern of Souls: I don't think we have enough creature type overlap for this to be effective, and it doesn't cast our White spells like Path to Exile.  There almost certainly should be one of these in the deck at least for the utility, I'm just not sure what to change.

Eiganjo Castle, Flagstones of Trokair, etc: This deck is already relatively weak to cards like Blood Moon considering we're a 1.5 color deck, and I don't want to exacerbate that any further.  Maybe one of these cards could be included, but I'm more concerned with fitting in Cavern of Souls.

Sideboarding

Burn
In: 3 Gideon 1 Burrenton Forge Tender
Out: 3 Eldrazi Displacer 1 Weathered Wayfayer

If you see Ensnaring Bridge, fit in Fragmentize as a way to beat it.  Walking Ballista and Thraben Inspector are your worst cards, look to shave those.

U/W Control
In: 3 Gideon 1 Selfless Spirit 1 Archangel Avacyn
Out: 3 Eldrazi Displacer 1 Weathered Wayfayer 1 Walking Ballista

Our primary concern is sweepers like Supreme Verdict, so beating those is paramount.  We hope to grind them out with Thraben Inspector and can give them fits with Ephemerate, Ranger-Captain, and Thalia.

Urza Whir
In: 3 Gideon 2 Fragmentize 1 Stony Silence 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel
2 Rest in Peace 1 Surgical Extraction
Out: 2 Thraben Inspector 1 Giver of Runes 1 Weathered Wayfayer 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Eldrazi Displacer 2 Ephemerate

Not as confident on this one.  Stony Silence really hurts us as well so boarding out our Clue making machines is intended to compensate.  Rest in Peace is intended to beat the Thopter/Sword combo, although there's a possibility we end up too reactive and slow as a result.

Tron
In: 2 Fragmentize 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel 1 Stony Silence 1 Selfless Spirit
Out: 1 Sword of Fire and Ice 1 Eldrazi Displacer 2 Ephemerate 1 Giver of Runes

This doesn't look like a great match-up for us, although timely Ranger-Captains and Thought-Knot Seers should slow down various pay-offs.

Humans:
In: 1 Archangel Avacyn 1 Winds of Abandon 1 Selfless Spirit
Out: 1 Weathered Wayfayer 2 Thalia

Thalia is almost a liability in this match-up. there's a possibility we should board them all out but Gideon seems too fragile and he's the only reasonable swap.  Might be OK to bring in Burrenton Forge Tender as largely a tutorable 1 mana 1/1 instead, but I'm not sure.

Jund:
In: 1 Burrenton Forge Tender 1 Archangel Avacyn 1 Sword of Sinew and Steel 1 Selfless Spirit, 1 Gideon (play)
Out: 1 Weathered Wayfayer 1 Walking Ballista 2 Aether Vial, 1 Eldrazi Displacer (play)

Kolaghan's Command is a real concern here, it's incredibly good against us.  We're almost certainly going to play very grindy games vs. Jund as we're not fast or resilient enough to aggro them out, so Vial really suffers when there's going to be so many cards traded back and forth.  Gideon is OK  in this match-up I'd imagine, but he's incredibly weak in multiples and on the draw.

This is a pretty large deviation from what I'd normally write about, but as we're still in a bit of a dead zone for Limited until Throne of Eldraine spoilers, I'm going to explore writing about non-Limited subjects until then.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
Podcast has been recorded for this week, although I need to learn how to use my editing software before I can put this one out.

Team Fight Tactics has my Attention

As you've maybe noticed, I've only written a single article this week, the one about Chaos Draft, and there's been no podcast this week.  I've found it very difficult to find something I'm knowledgeable enough on to write about, with Modern Horizons going down, M20 having almost no relevancy, and no tournaments or new sets to play.  Expect things around here to go back to normal once Throne of Eldraine spoilers start to drop.

Enter my latest infatuation, Team Fight Tactics.

For those unaware, the current hot trend in gaming is "Autobattlers", starting with Autochess and inspiring Teamfight Tactics and Dota: Underlords.  Autobattlers are reminiscent of Tower Defense games anyone who's played Flash games on sites like Kongregate will be familiar with, and in the case of Teamfight Tactics have the League of Legends IP to provide the story and art elements.  For myself, I grew up playing huge amounts of League of Legends, and I only started playing Magic because of a wrist injury I sustained playing it almost six years ago now.

Teamfight Tactics is as also a relative of games like Magic.  There's a lot of variance, from what champions you see to what items you receive, and managing this variance makes up the vast majority of gameplay, just like it does in Magic.  The ability to think on your feet in given situations is rewarded heavily, so the game is quite skill intensive even with lots of variance.  There's also drafting just like taking cards out of packs, although in this game it is either simultaneous with everyone else at the start, or simultaneous with one other player as players draft in pairs later in the game.

At the risk out sound like an ad, the game is free and making an account isn't difficult.  Monetization comes purely from cosmetics, so as long as you're OK with a boring avatar, it'll never cost you a cent. You're effectively the product for sale here, as someone to play with people willing to put in money.

 If you've decided to give Team Fight Tactics a try, here's a few quick tips to help you get started and not feel too lost.

Don't take a 1 cost unit, or Negatron Cloak from the first Carosel.

The drafting rounds are called "the Carosel" in reference to the slow rotation of the champions to pick from.  You're generally not left with much choice at the first one, so don't take a unit with a grey circle under them, or the cloak item that gives Magic Resistance.  As you're almost always selling the first unit you get for money in order to try to put pairs of units together later, the unit you have is largely irrelevant

Saving money wins games.

The most basic strategy you can have is to be frugal with your money, as each increment of 10 gold you hold onto (up to a maximum of 50) will give one gold in interest each round.  This doesn't generally mean to never spend gold, but be mindful of holding onto the nearest interest generating point when you're choosing what to spend your money on.

Be at peace with bugs.

I really enjoy this game, but it is probably the buggiest game I've ever played.  Champions frequently stop moving entirely, cast spells without the proper mana to cast them, go on random nature walks, just to name a few things that frequently happen.  Riot games has been hard at work making the game better each week, so this will improve over time.  Just like you need to be at peace with never hitting your 3rd land in games of Magic, you will lose games of Teamfight Tactics entirely to bugs and there's not much you can do about it.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter

Chaos Draft Lessons

Chaos draft is a format based around using a variety of packs during a draft, rather than drafting a set on it's own or with its usual partners.  For a short while longer, Chaos Draft will be available on MTGO, although if you miss it it'll be back soon enough, as it's in a similar rotation to the various MTGO cubes. 

Click on the image above to see it in a bigger view.

Excuse the lack of card images on this one, I forgot to take a screenshot of the deck when I had a good chance to.  This is an example of  a Chaos Draft deck that I played, a strategy that's pretty repeatable I'd call "Nonsense".  This deck is based around sitting around and countering your opponents spells, and using draw spells when they can't do anything.  This deck in particular posted an exciting 1-2 finish, which isn't far off of what I'd expect; it's short a dual land/Evolving Wilds and a couple of cheap interactive cards.

Chaos Draft forces creativity in some facet, as the general draft archetypes sets are built around are universally unavailable. Decks are often clunky to very clunky, as older sets like Judgement, Urza's Saga, Mirage, etc. lack the density of good on curve creatures we generally see today.  As decks in general are clunky, you should try to build a deck with a good curve, that generally tops out a tad higher than normal, similar to what you might do in Sealed.

Card types that improve:

• Counterspells.  Decks in general are slow and clunky, and have trouble applying too much pressure.  They also are powerful when you never really know what kind of cards your opponents have, as generalist answers
• Mana fixing.  Splashing is less punished because the format is slow, and as you're more interested in power over anything else, the ability to play more powerful cards is ideal.
• Easy to play around cards.  Cards like Turn Against, from Battle for Zendikar which would be very telegraphed in their respective formats, get much better when there's such an enormous pool of cards.
• Broad synergy cards.  Cards like Inspired Charge, which incentivize having a lot of creatures in play, are a lot stronger when other decks will lack real synergies. Artifact, +1/+1 counter, and spells matter synergies are good examples of broad synergies.

Card types that get worse:

•  Synergistic cards.  Cards that rely on specific synergies get a lot worse here.  Creatures that care about specific set mechanics, for example, are rarely going to be strong in Chaos draft.
• Low power cards.  Cards like Grizzly Bear, that don't stand on their own well, especially in a longer game, really suffer in Chaos Draft.  Sometimes you can build a deck full of these cards and have a strong deck, but it can be tough to do so with lots of old sets in the pool.
• Parasitic Cards.  Cards like Gray Merchant of Asphodel that really want you to be heavy on a specific color, are often worse in Chaos Draft.  I've found it difficult to not either be evenly split between two colors or playing more than two colors, where cards like this suffer.  The exception to this rule for me has been Mono Red, a deck I've drafted quite a few times with limited all-stars like Rock Jockey, who's picture is intentionally left out so that you're forced to Google it.

 

Deck Building and Drafting Tips

I stick to 17 lands pretty often, but I'm a lot more likely to play 18 lands than I am 16, as your curve often hits 6 and hitting land drops is important.  Bad mana is a lot more acceptable here than it would be in a normal draft, as people trying to curve out will often cast 2 mana 2/2 into 3 mana 2/2, leading to less punishment when you stumble.

Keep an eye on broad synergies in each pack.  If you start with Kaladesh for example, don't be shy about taking  a card that cares about Artifacts if it's powerful, as Artifacts have existed for all of Magic so you're likely to see quite a few of them throughout the draft.

The biggest choice to make is generally between casting Grizzly Bears, or playing a long game.  These are the two extreme ends of the spectrum, and the two places I prefer to end up the most, rather than playing a more midrange style deck like you often have in normal limited formats.  Try to figure out where you'll end up as soon as possible, as having a strong plan for your deck is going to inform each pick.  Unless you're an incredibly enfranchised player, there's going to be a lot of reading cards during each draft, so make sure you manage your time effectively.

Until next time,
Kevin

@sealedawaymtg on Twitter

Podcast is late this week, but it's coming!

One More Thing...

Because I can't resist a self-imposed challenge, here's how to draft Snow.

Despite my best efforts, I knew I couldn't end my series on Modern Horizons without explaining how to draft Snow.  There's a pile of different strategies to assert yourself into this deck, from taking every snow basic you see starting on pick one, to watching certain cards in packs move around the table.

Drafting Snow, with Good Draft Strategy.

Be observant.  Without good observational skills, this deck will never be available to you unless everyone at the table is actively avoiding it.  You're going to take a step-by-step approach each and every pick until things get to 3 cards or less, in order to determine if Snow is draftable in you seat.  Some important rules.

Rule #1: Always predict what will come back.

While this is a good strategy for drafting in general, looking at packs and evaluating what you'll get after a trip around the table has never been as important as it is here.  At pack one, things are easy, as you'll almost always be looking to draft snow after taking a strong snow affiliated card first, so you can try to plan on the basic land coming back for you eight picks later.  Things already get complicated here, as you need to have a rough idea on where every card in the pack will get taken, which means having a good amount of experience drafting the format.  In a weak pack for example, you might take Abominable Treefolk first, hoping to get the snow Island back, but in the absence of standout uncommons or commons, it's likely someone else will speculate on the land before it makes it back.  Can we hope to get a Frostwalla or Icehide Golem back around the table here?  If not, taking the Treefolk gets complicated, as we might not be able to get something back if we do.  Remember, in this strategy you'll need to use 30-33 of your picks on average for cards in your deck, as you're going to be spending numerous picks on basic lands, and you need 22-23 spells just like everyone else.  Abominable Treefolk, as an example, is a strong enough card that I'm not going too worry to much about getting something back.  Replace it with Winter's Rest or Rime Tender, and it becomes a lot more pivotal to see something out of that same pack later.

Rule #2: Account for other drafter's opinions.

Assuming a pod of strangers, the only thing you can really expect out of a given draft pod is that people will make decisions based off of some reasoning; especially at a GP day 2 people are rarely taking cards at random or rare drafting.  Especially if you're really experienced at a format, you're going to see consistent faulty reasoning take shape among other drafters.  For an example on this format, I often see The First Sliver go 8th and later, and while I don't think it is the best rare in the set by any stretch, there is no pack strong enough that no one should have speculated on it in the previous seven picks.  Despite this observation, I have no incentive to break this trend.  If other people consistently undervalue certain cards, my goal is to very slightly value them over where other people do.  If for example, The First Sliver is generally taken 4th-6th pick, we can start taking it 3rd-5th. We'll end up with the powerful overvalued card more often than other people, but we don't have to make a big sacrifice to get into that position.  As this is more general draft strategy than specific strategy for snow, we look to exploit that knowledge here by asking ourselves a few small questions.  For example, we ask ourselves, "What is the best deck?" if we answer "Snow", then that means that we should value cards that are good in the snow strategy.  Applying this rule, we should aim to take snow cards slightly higher than other people are willing, in order to end up in this deck more often and increase our win percentage.

Rule #3:  Keep track of incentives, and have an exit strategy.

Continuing our theme of "draft good", drafting snow is never going to be a simple as just reading the signals and calling it a day.  As snow decks can take a large variety of shapes, watching for patterns among cards is much more important that what colors of spells you're seeing.  If you see lots of mana fixing, you can take it and draft any powerful cards you see, and despite Snow's U/G basis you're only tied to Green in the absence of Arcum's Astrolabe.  Pay attention to cards like Icehide Golem and Winter's Rest, as both are the opposite ends of the snow spectrum.  Icehide Golem asks you to play a lot of snow lands, and shines when you have lots of cards that care about snow permanents.  Winter's Rest really only needs a few snow lands.  If you're not seeing cards like Icehide Golem and Glacial Revelation relatively late, but you saw them initially in packs, snow as a strategy is unlikely to be open for you, and you should look elsewhere as soon as possible so that you can still end up with a good deck.  Color signaling matters a lot more when you've decided snow is no longer an option.  You can assume that Blue and Green are open if you're seeing lots of snow cards, even if you're not seeing lots of good cards of either color.

The best way to have an exit strategy is to not commit to early.  It's always an option to take every snow land you see, but if snow ends up not open enough you're going to end up a pile of useless basic lands and nothing to cast with them.  Cards like Rime Tender, Winter's Rest, and Frostwalla can function effectively when you don't have many snow lands, but Iceberg Cancrix and friends will not, making it a much bigger commitment.

Types of Snow Decks

In general, every snow deck will equal out to one or a combination of the following subtypes.  Keep these end points in mind when you're drafting.

5C Snow

If you can get multiple copies of Springbloom Druid or Arcum's Astrolabe, as well as powerful cards worth splashing, this is an ideal place to end up.  The First Sliver is your absolute best card here for the amount of work it takes, although sometimes the Abominable Treefolks and Conifer Wurms of the world will be stronger.

Mill

Once you have your 2nd copy of Iceberg Cancrix this is the deck to work towards.  Unlike your multicolor cousins you're going to be splashing less and prioritizing cheap snow cards and snow lands.  Stream of Thought is great in this deck, sometimes in multiples, but this deck will only be as good as your Crabs.

Snow Aggro

Snow is open but you are mainly seeing Icehide Golems, Rime Tenders, Frostwallas, and Savage Swipes.  Curving out and attacking is generally a plan C or D for this deck, but if you can back up early aggression with an enormous Abominable Treefolk to end the game, this strategy can be quite appealing.  Smoke Shroud gets massively better here, as casting it on turn 2 on Icehide Golem is very difficult to stop, but more so that this deck will almost always have Moonblade Shinobi or Mist-Syndicate Naga.

Snow Control

Most likely the "I have Future Sight" deck, you're going to want a low curve of cheap interaction, and multiple copies of Stream of Thought as Elixir of Immortalitys that enable a combo finish.  Snow control decks are almost always going to splash as well as win by milling the opponent, and as such are more of a combination of the above types than it's own individual deck type.

Closing

The last thing I can say about drafting snow in Modern Horizons is to check Twitter, specifically current trophy leader AlphaFrog's twitter, linked here.
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have, as this is a complicated subject that I feel like I could write 10 more articles about but lack the time.

Here's an example image of a snow control deck I 3-0ed with not too long ago.  Click to enlarge.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
Podcast here.

Goodbye, Modern Horizons Part 5: R/B and G/B

This is the last installment of my 5 part series on the 10 Modern Horizons color pairs, and today we're finishing off by going over R/B and G/B. 

R/B "Sacrifice"

R/B Sacrifice, or alternatively R/B Goblins is a deck based around cheap aggressive creatures that accrue value over the course of games, usually reaching a high point around turn 4-6.  There's a lot of different looks to this deck, as it often assumes a "Jund" playstyle, and is the most midrange looking deck in the format.  All of your cards are functional in an aggressive gameplan, but you can assume a more controlling or even combo role in various match-ups.  None of your cards are particular stand-outs, but every card is flexible, from the lowly Goblin Champion, which will chip in for a few points early, count toward Munitions Expert or Return from Extinction mid game, and get sacrificed to Sling-Gang Lieutenant or Bogarden Dragonheart at the end of the game.  B/R decks can often be quite controlling, where you lean on Ransack the Lab and Igneous Elemental to accrue a steady advantage that can crush aggressive decks easily.  This deck definitely wants diversity, as cards like Goblin Matron lend themselves to having lots of options, and cards like Warteye Witch don't scale as well in multiples as the first copy often is.

Key Commons: Return from Extinction, Rank Officer, Goblin War Party (enablers)
Bogarden Dragonheart, Goatnap (Pay-offs)

This deck will generally take the shape of whatever class of cards you end up seeing a lot of.  Sometimes you'll be R/B Tokens, with a bunch of Goblin War Parties and Sling-Gang Lieutenants, and others you'll be graveyard focused, or sacrifice focused.  R/B rarely will lead to an amazing deck unless you're fortunate enough to have a fleshed out Goblin deck, but will consistently lead to decks that are above average.  It's important here to pay attention to what specific cards you're seeing in order to correctly draft a good R/B deck, rather than just to know that R/B is the open color combination.  Lots of Goblins will be self explanatory, but things get off the rails easily if you find yourself flooded with good common removal spells, as that'll move you toward a more controlling deck with numerous Phyrexian Gargantuas and Igneous Elementals.

General Pick Order For R/B:  Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Seasoned Pyromancer, Pashalik Mons, Plague Engineer, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Sling-Gang Lieutenant, Endling, Lightning Skelemental, Firebolt, Graveshifter, Munitions Expert, Goblin Matron, Crypt Rats, Cordial Vampire, Mob, Defile, Pyrophobia, Magmatic Sinkhole, Bogarden Dragonheart, Gluttonous Slug, Undead Auger, Vengeful Devil, Putrid Goblin, Force of Rage, Hollowhead Sliver, Carrion Feeder, Goblin War Party, Changeling Outcast, Unearth, Cheap Filler Creatures (Orcish Hellraiser/Warteye Witch, etc.)

This deck has a long and inaccurate pick order, as card evaluations change so rapidly throughout the draft  that it's more important to know your general theme and to make a cohesive deck based around it, rather than to take cards off raw powerlevel.  Goatnap is good once you have two sacrifice outlets, and becomes fantastic once you have any more.  Feaster of Fools is really powerful once you have lots of cheap creatures, as it's as powerful as the amount of risk you're capable of taking on.  Ransack the Lab, Gluttonous Slug, Phyrexian Gargantua, and Rank Officer all form the same 4 card core that they do in Mono-Black.  Aside from Snow, I believe this to be the most difficult deck in the format to draft, although unlike Snow I think this deck is substantially more forgiving as you're not forced to spend numerous picks on basic lands.

Takeaways

This deck largely takes shape as a very typical "good" limited deck, made of mostly good cards but with smaller overarching synergies.  Sure, sometimes you were R/B Goblin tribal, but that deck very rarely came together compared to how often R/B cards came together.  This is the consensus 3rd place deck in this format, but unlike any other strategy there could be tables where 2-3 people draft R/B and all have good decks, just based off of what bundles of cards each is interested in.  Commons in Red and Black are strong in general, with only Shenanigans, Umezawa's Charm, and Mindrake as real duds.  I've done lots of transitioning into this deck when it seemed like I had no good options, and although it rarely led to anything great I salvaged an awful lot of 2-1s from the jaws of 0-3 with random mixtures of Red and Black cards.  The weird thing about R/B is that it led to a lot of decks that looked like Rube-Goldberg Machines, where you'd sacrifice a Goblin to Sling-Gang Lieutenant, scry off of Warteye Witch, and ping something with Vengeful Devil until your opponent just died, much like Slivers with Bladeback Sliver.

G/B "Graveyard"

G/B Graveyard is very similar to R/G, and it could have its name changed to G/B Winding Way instead.  As this is another deck heavily based off of Winding Way, the same incentives apply: high creature count, 16 lands, and spell slots reserved for removal.  Unlike, G/R, however, here we have access to Ransack the Lab as a less powerful but less constrictive Winding Way.  Also present here is the ability to kill big creatures thanks to Mob, something G/R really suffers at without access to it's own 8/8 Murasa Behemoth.  The name of the game is to fill the graveyard for value, either with cards like Return from Extinction to build a resource advantage, or to mill over cards like First-Sphere Gargantua and Dregscape Sliver to build incremental advantage alongside Rank Officer.  If you've read my earlier article about Mono Black in Modern Horizons, this deck really uses the same strategies, with the advantage of the Winding Way draw engine and green mana fixing to splash off.

Key Commons:  Winding Way, Ransack the Lab, Rank Officer (Enablers)
Return from Extinction, First-Sphere Gargantua, Gluttonous Slug (Pay-offs)

I'm not going to repeat everything I've said about Winding Way, you can find that here. This deck cares a lot more about putting certain cards in the graveyard as opposed to R/G which only really wants lands there.  This deck is very consistent thanks to Ranksack the Lab and Winding Way, but can struggle against more powerful slow decks that feature counterspells or a certain snow crab.  If you have powerful cards, such as Yawgmoth or Hogaak, finding them with your Winding Ways and Ransack the Labs is trivial, as it having enough random creatures in play to maximize them.

General Pick Order for G/B Graveyard:  Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Deep Forest Hermit, Hexdrinker, Genesis, Crashing Footfalls, Endling, Cordial Vampire, Ayula, Queen Among Bears, Plague Engineer, Sling-Gang Lieutenant, Graveshifter, Mob, Crypt Rats, Defile, Springbloom Druid, Saddled Rimestag, Rotwidow Pack, Gluttonous Slug, Savage Swipe, Mother Bear, Webweaver Changeling, Wall of Blossoms, Krosan Tusker, Putrid Goblin, Rank Officer, Twin-Silk Spider, Winding Way, Ransack the Lab.

Just like in R/G, Trumpeting Herd is incredible in this deck but only if you have the spell slots to spare, which in general you won't.  Creatures, especially ones that facilitate grinding go massively up in value in this deck, and creatures and spells with aggressive slants go down quite a bit.  This is one of the best decks for various Changeling synergies, as unlike with W/B you have much better mana, but also cards like Ayula that aren't tough to make good in your deck just by playing cards you already want.  You always want some number of Murasa Behemoths or First-Sphere Gargantuas, often 1-2 of each, but they're relatively replaceable and you should expect to get them late.  Gluttonous Slug scales incredibly well in multiples here, as you have big green creatures to get them to incredible 4/7 and 5/8 sizes.  Hogaak is the absolute best card you can get in this strategy, very slightly edging out the almighty Yawgmoth and often impersonating his Modern self.

Takeaways

Personally, I struggled harder with this deck than any other in the format, and it took me by far the longest to get a handle on what I was supposed to do.  The problems was that I was skimping on enablers like Ransack the Lab and Winding Way, in favor of just playing a pile of mopey creatures and spells.  This deck is largely as consistent as R/B, as you have access to numerous good commons that work well together, and you're interested in cards no one else wants.  The problem here is that the ceiling of this deck isn't much higher than the floor, as when you're not fortunate to pick up cards like Yawgmoth or Hogaak this deck is often too slow against aggressive decks with lots of fliers, and too clunky against decks with crabs and counterspells.  Don't be too unhappy to end up here, but don't expect to 3-0 your draft pod, either.

On Modern Horizons

I'd really like to give my thanks to Wizards of the Coast and the amazing team that put this set together.  It was an absolute joy to play and I hope to see something along the same lines in the future.  Thanks to you(yes you), for taking the time to read these articles.  I hope I can help someone playing in GP Vegas next weekend, but also anyone who plays in a Modern Horizons draft in the future, maybe from a saved up box or a flashback MTGO league.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
Podcast here.

Goodbye, Modern Horizons Part 4: G/W and R/G

In today's installment of this 5 part series, we're going to finish off White in preparation for tomorrow, where we'll end the series with R/B and G/B.  Let's get into it.

G/W "Tokens"

G/W Tokens looks to win games by having a large amount of creatures in play, using cards like Irregular Cohort, Battle Screech, and Twin-Silk Spider, and taking advantage of that with mass pump spells like Scale-up and Stirring Address, and anthems like Force of Virtue and Good-Fortune Unicorn.  In general, you'll be getting  in for some early damage with cheap creatures, and you'll transition into the late game with ways to pump the team after a bit of setting up.  It's very important to have around a 2/1 ratio of creatures to pump effects, as without having a bunch of creatures in play your spells often don't function.  Cards that do double duty, like Good-Fortune Unicorn and to a lesser extent Knight of Old Benalia, shine in this deck as they add consistency.  This is also where you'll find various cards that care about other creatures entering the battlefield, such as Saddled Rimestag, Answered Prayers, and Zhalfirin Decoy, and to a lesser extent, Bellowing Elk (Father Chelk).  To repeatedly turn on all of these cards, you'll generally want 1-2 copies of Recruit the Worthy, which will consistently enable you to have creatures enter play whenever you want once you can afford the buy back cost.

Key Commons:  Irregular Cohort, Twin-Silk Spider, Trumpeting Herd (Enablers)
Rhox Veteran, Stirring Address, Knight of Old Benalia (Pay-offs)

Unlike in R/W Slivers, you are going to want a bunch of copies of the same cards, which means as many Trumpeting Herds, Twin-Silk Spiders, and Irregular Cohorts as you can find, and about half as many pay-off cards, with the best at common being Rhox Veteran.  As 3/4 of the aforementioned cards are 4 mana, you're going to have to be mindful about adding other 4 mana cards to this deck, as you're inherently aggressive and need to come out of the gate at a reasonable speed.  This deck in general gets better the more copies of Trumpeting Herd you have, so prioritize it highly and plan accordingly.  Unlike other White decks which all have bad mana, G/W benefits off of Krosan Tusker and more importantly Springbloom Druid to help smooth out potential issues at a relatively low cost. Scale-Up is your best pay-off, but is often easier to come by than the first Good-Fortune Unicorn, which works a lot better in multiples and should be picked accordingly.

General Pick Order for Tokens Decks:  Serra the Benevolent, Deep Forest Hermit, Winds of Abandon, Hexdrinker, Crashing Footfalls, Force of Virtue, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Giver of Runes, Battle Screech, Trumpeting Herd, Savage Swipe, Springbloom Druid, Good-Fortune Unicorn, Ranger Captain of Eos, Scale-Up, Mother Bear, Irregular Cohort, Twin-Silk Spider, Rhox Veteran, Zhalfirin Decoy, Treetop Ambusher/Imposter of the Sixth Pride/Trustworthy Scout/Enduring Sliver, Stirring Address, Recruit the Worthy, Knight of Old Benalia, Winding Way.

Two mana creatures are all fairly interchangeable in this strategy, but you're going to want at least 4 of them and ideally 6+ as they'll work well with your pay-off cards in the mid-game.  This deck is all about transitioning a good start into a really powerful mid-game, so a good curve is going to be essential to your success.  Don't worry about killing your opponent straight away with your various go-wide pay-off cards, just set yourself up to end up with a larger advantage than you started the turn with and you can generally build up a cascading advantage from there.  I am not a fan of Squirrel Nest as I think it's too slow against other aggressive strategies, and not high impact enough against slower decks, but if you have snow lands to put it on and Rime Tenders to untap them, go nuts.  Remember with Squirrel Nest that you're effectively sacrificing a land when you cast it, so keep that in mind when building your mana base.  Of White decks, Tokens and Slivers are the two best strategies, so don't be shy about committing early just remember to take Green cards early and expect White cards to come back later.

This deck can splash easily, as long as you have a Springbloom Druid or two, and I find my most commonly splashed card here is Mob, as this deck lacks a way to kill creatures at instant speed, and with the Tokens you already want it often costs 1 mana.

Takeaways

This deck was an important lesson in paying attention to what other people are doing for me, as I ended up in good versions of this deck and liked this deck much more than other people.  The answer was Trumpeting Herd, a card I was not only picking highly but more importantly valuing above what others drafters were.  While I don't think I was in the wrong, it drastically affected what decks I liked and cards I valued, and for just a singular differing valuation of one common, the fact that it led me down such different paths than others really shocked me.  Over time I started taking Springbloom Druid above Trumpeting Herd, which led to me getting into G/W less but into Snow more, increasing the amount I was winning.  Sometimes it's easy to see something strong, only to not see the card that's clearly stronger and leads to winning more often.

This deck was both fun to draft and to play for me, and I think the "creature entering the battlefield" mechanic present over Green and White led to some interesting gameplay, where you could combine Recruit the Worthy and Zhalfirin Decoy to bog down grindy games, or use Squirrel Nest to make Bellowing Elk indestructible whenever you wanted.

G/R "Lands in Graveyard"

G/R Lands in Graveyard, easily the most bizarre archetype in Modern Horizons, is a deck based around playing nothing but creatures and copies of Winding Way.  Winding Way always draws you 3-4 cards for 2 mana, and all of your cards get benefits from the lands you'll mill over when you name creature.  Sarcasm aside, the theme manifests itself more as G/R Land in Graveyard, as the key card, Igneous Elemental, only ever asks that you get a single land in there to enable the cost reduction.  While Winding Way is certainly important here, it's generally going to be pretty high variance.  There are plenty of games where it'll consistently act as 2 mana draw 4 with selection, and other times where it repeatedly fails to do anything other than make you sad.  This deck is aggressive, so you'll want lots of cheap creatures, but as you're going to be playing games that last a tad longer than R/W for example, and you'll have access to Springbloom Druid, your curve will often end up at 6, topping out with Murasa Behemoth, rather than stopping at 4-5.

Key Commons: Winding Way, Springbloom Druid (enablers)
Igneous Elemental, Magmatic Sinkhole (pay-offs)

I can't possibly emphasize enough how important Winding Way is here.  Every R/G deck should have at least 2, and that means keeping the spell count low and the creature/land count high.  Ideally, you should have 14 creatures for the first Winding way, 16 for the 2nd, 18 for 3+, and I don't recommend playing more than 4.  I'd also advise playing 16 lands if you have 2 or more Winding Ways, as you can easily name Land and either Scry 4 towards the next land or be set with lands for the rest of the game.  Lastly, as Winding Way will often draw 2 or more cards, don't cast it with 6-7 cards in hand unless you're looking for lands or some specific creature that you need immediately. This card is deceptively complicated and leveraging it the best will be key to winning in R/G.

Magmatic Sinkhole is often the best removal spell here, as it's much easier to pay for when you're actively milling yourself with Winding Way.

General Pick Order for R/G Lands in Graveyards:  Hexdrinker, Seasoned Pyromancer, Deep Forest Hermit, Crashing Footfalls, Genesis, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Wren and Six (Cha-ching!), Prismatic Vista, Firebolt, Reap the Past, Saddled Rimestag, Hollowhead Sliver, Green or Red Horizon Lands, Tranquil Thicket/Forgotten Cave, Springbloom Druid, Savage Swipe, Magmatic Sinkhole, Pyrophobia, Mother Bear, Igneous Elemental, Wall of Blossoms, Bogarden Dragonheart, Ruination Rioter, R/G Filler Creatures (Spinehorn Minotaur, Treetop Ambusher, Orcish Hellraiser, etc.), Winding Way

Winding Way is largely last on this list as no one else will value it nearly as highly as you, and you should be always looking to take it when a pack makes it around the table.  If you find you can't wheel Winding Way in pack 1, or you haven't seen other copies yet and you're in pack 2 or 3, you should be taking it over any common/uncommon.  Nantuko Cultivator and Ore-Scale Guardian are weird here, the Cultivator you only ever want one of, and that singular copy will either be a 10/10 or 2/10 and nothing in between.  Ore-Scale Guardian is an incredible sideboard card, but will only be a good maindeck card in already incredible decks with a bunch of Winding Ways, Cycling Lands, and a good curve to support them.  Spells in general need to really drop in your pick order once you have a few, as the first to second copy of the removal spells are great but more copies interfere with Winding Way.  Trumpeting Herd is great in this deck, and if you're playing a non-Winding Way version you should jam as many in as you can.

Takeaways

I love this deck to death, I always enjoyed drafting it, as I found lots of hidden depth in the ways the cards worked in general especially Winding Way but also cards like Murasa Behemoth, where sometimes you could use a Cycling Land as surprise +3/+3, or Spinehorn Minotaur which could often consistently gain double strike off of Cycling and cards like Excavating Anurid.  Mechanically, cards that only required one land in the graveyard such as Murasa Behemoth, functioned consistently, and cards like Ore-Scale Guardian took too much work and often still didn't work appropriately.  Often your game plan involved setting cards on fire with Bogarden Dragonheat, and I found success combining it with Wall of Blossoms and Goblin Champion to repeatedly attack my opponent for 5 in the air until they died.  Sideboarding here could be unbelievably important, as often the only way to have game vs. Snow decks was with multiple Ore-Scale Guardians, or you'd sideboard in a pile of Lava Darts to beat Ninjas.  On the other end, smart opponents could beat this deck by attaching Treefolk Umbra to anything with keyword: big on it, and watch as the damage based removal didn't help.

Until Next Time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
Podcast

Goodbye, Modern Horizons Part 3: R/W and W/B

Today we're going to talk about W/B Changelings and R/W Slivers, both tribal based decks that try to make the best of having White cards in your deck.

R/W "Slivers"

R/W Slivers is a deck based around the "Sliver" mechanic, where all of your creatures provide some bonus to all slivers.  This deck hopes to assemble a few different groups of Slivers in order to enable a specific strategy.  I would describe the two groups as beatdown and boardstall. The beatdown Sliver curve involves any 2 mana "Sliver" on turn two, Lancer Sliver on 3, and Cleaving Sliver on 4.  This curve enables a difficult block for 8 on turn 4, and unless your opponent can get rid of Cleaving Sliver or Lancer Sliver, and often both, it's pretty easy to secure victory from here by just attacking every turn.  The boardstall curve involves Blackback Sliver on 2, Lancer Sliver on 3, and Irregular Cohort on 4.  With this curve, rather than attack the opponent your hoping to keep their creatures at bay with a wall of First Strike creatures.  As the game drags on and you finish deploying your hand, you can just never attack the opponent and ping them to death with Bladeback Sliver's ability.  Ideally, any Sliver deck should be able to take advantage of both gameplans, which is what makes the deck powerful.  Lancer Sliver is easily the most important common in any Slivers deck, as while it is nearly useless on its own it enables everything the deck wants to do.

Key Commons: Lancer Sliver, Cleaving Sliver, Bladeback Sliver
Important Roleplayers: Irregular Cohort, Imposter of the Sixth Pride

Every card in a Slivers deck does double duty as both a pay-off card and enabler all at once; this deck thrives on having as many Slivers in play as physically possible so that they'll all become stronger as a result.  Diversity is going to be the name of the game here, as having one of each different Sliver is going to be a lot more powerful than having multiples of any, as only Lavabelly Sliver and Cleaving Sliver scale well in multiples.

General Pick Order for Sliver Decks: Winds of Abandon, Serra the Benevolent, Force of Virtue, Cloudshredder Sliver, Giver of Runes, Battle Screech, Firebolt, Sunbaked Canyon, Hollowhead Sliver, Pyrophobia, Magmatic Sinkhole, Cleaving Sliver, Irregular Cohort, Striking Sliver, Bladeback Sliver, Enduring Sliver, Lavabelly Sliver, Spiteful Sliver, First Sliver's Chosen, Valiant Changeling, Answered Prayers, Rhox Veteran, Imposter of the Sixth Pride, Fists of Flame, Settle Beyond Reality

Winds of Abandon is at it's absolute best here, as with Hollowhead Sliver and Striking Sliver in play you can easily churn through your deck until you find it while your opponent has no profitable attacks, and you can often instantly win the turn you cast it as well.  If I first pick Winds of Abandon, I generally want to end up here although I know I can be happy to end up in any White deck.  Cloudshredder Sliver is also unbelievably strong in this deck, it acts as a must answer threat if cast early and an Overrun type effect when cast later on, it's only lower in the order than Winds and the other White rares as it's so much more committal.  Remember that you're generally a base White deck, and as such build your deck around being 9/8 or 9/7 in favor of White, or 8/8.  Every non-Sliver card you play comes at a real cost, so keep your creature count high and avoid playing too many Rhox Veterans and Answered Prayers, although the first of each will be strong.  Lavabelly Sliver is pretty mediocre in this deck despite being your gold uncommon, it facilitates the "ping you to death" plan enabled by Bladeback Sliver a bit, but it just doesn't stand on its own as a hard to cast 2/2 for 3.

Don't splash here, as your deck is so inherently aggressive you can never afford to stumble even if your end goal is to force a board stall.  16 Lands is my norm although if your curve is high (multiple 5s, usually) or if you have a few Cycling lands, play 17.  At the risk of being a broken record, if you're playing cards with WW in their cost, bias toward playing more Plains so that your deck functions effectively.

Takeaways

Slivers was a real homerun in this format; it had multiple distinctive gameplans that worked well together, and played like no other Limited aggressive deck that I've ever seen.  This deck is not particularly resilient to removal or it'd be a much bigger player in the format, as is it's just a middle of the pack archetype that you never hope to get into but don't want to avoid, either.  Lavabelly Sliver is a weirdly underpowered gold card, especially in the context of this format, as it wouldn't do anything without Bladeback Sliver to incentivize pinging the opponent to death.  My first game of this format involved losing to a very diverse Slivers deck although I still initially wrote this deck off as it was incredibly overdrafted in the first few weeks Modern Horizons was available on Magic Online.  I really hope Wizards looks at this deck when they design future Limited aggressive strategies, as it's a lot more interesting than the combo of cheap creatures and combat tricks.

W/B "Changeling"

This is the worst deck in the entire format, and calling it supported or an archetype is incredibly generous.  Avoid ending up here without knowing White and Black are both incredibly open, as there aren't any real pay-offs for putting these two colors together.  In general, White Black decks will be combinations of Battle Screech, Mob, and Rares. The Changeling theme is reliant on a pile of specific uncommons that you want one of, and in general lead down the road of having awful mana.  Unlike in U/R and R/W where the Horizon Canopy land is awesome to have, this deck is a lot less capable of taking damage from its lands as it's often playing a much slower game.  B/W wants to play Defile but be base White, and wants to cast Changeling Outcast on turn 1 and Answered Prayers on turn 3.

In order to succeed with this deck, your best bet is to watch how your mana base will end up during the entirety of the draft.  This means that if you decide you want to play Defile, Answered Prayers is out of the question, as is Irregular Cohor.  Alternately, if you want to try to play Valiant Changeling early in the game, cheap Black cards can't make the final cut, especially cards like Cordial Vampire and Undead Auger.  Pick a base color here and stick to it, your deck is wildly inconsistent otherwise.

Key Commons: Mob, Irregular Cohort

As the synergies in this deck don't pan out, you're looking for cards that are good on their own with a small nod to wanting a bunch of creatures in play.  Cards that make multiple bodies are important, and Mob is great when you have cards that generate multiple bodies

General Pick Order: White/Black Mythics and Rares, Battle Screech, Graveshifter, Mob, Changeling Lords (King of the Pride, Undead Auger, Throat Seeker, etc), Changelings

As I advocate for avoiding this deck entirely, I would bias myself toward only taking strong generic White/Black cards early, and only deciding to be this deck after I know I have no other real options.  Putting together King of the Pride and Changeling Outcast can be worthwhile, but you're not going to want to do it without seeing King of the Pride 9th+ and essentially getting it for free.  Drafting this deck feels like resisting arrest, as you're going to fight to do anything else the entire time, only to ultimately succumb to playing with King of the Pride.

As with any other White deck, try to end up base White as a concession to hard to cast, time sensitive cards like Answered Prayers and Irregular Cohort.  These decks are typically slow but have relatively low curves, despite this try to play 17 lands here as a concession to how bad the mana often is.

Takeaways

I regret glossing over this deck in Episode 3 of the podcast, as it's really unfortunate to have such an unusable combination of colors in any draft format.  White and Black are both very self-serving in Modern Horizons, and as such they're the hardest colors to put together.  Defile, Crypt Rats, and Changeling Outcast just can't easily coexist with Answered Prayers, Segovian Angel, and Irregular Cohort, and that's where this deck generally falls flat.  This deck generally takes shape as two separate mono-color decks, which both work great but are hard to draft as they require their respective color to be wide open at the table.  Etchings of the Chosen is an interesting card to be sure, but in this format it's rarely strong enough to play unless you're lucky enough to name Bird.  This deck is so bad that I'd rather fight over Snow or Ninjas with two other players at the table than know for a fact I was the only Whie/Black drafter at the table.

Until next time, where we cover G/W and R/G!

Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
podcast
Episode 3 available now!

Sealed Away MTG Podcast Episode 3

It's Monday and that means another episode of Sealed Away MTG!  In today's podcast we send off Modern Horizons, complementing the article series here on the blog.

Of note this week, I've swapped back to Soundcloud as Podbean has a 100 MB upload limit, which I hit with this episode.  So in the future, you can find the podcast here.

Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
and now on Soundcloud in podcast form.
https://soundcloud.com/sealedawaymtg-506204095

Goodbye, Modern Horizons Part 2, U/G and U/W

 

Welcome back to the second part of this Modern Horizons send-off. We're continuing with the rest of the Blue color pairs, as it's always right to start with the best color in Magic.

U/G "Snow"

U/G Snow revolves around picking up snow basic lands and cards that care about them.  Your snow decks will either care about snow a little (to turn on Winter's Rest) or a lot (to make the biggest Abominable Treefolk).  Which side we're on will have a big influence on our draft, but as we're U/G in general we're going to be in the camp that wants to play every single snow land it can.  This deck wins by playing a bunch of efficient cards like Rime Tender as it's general filler, in order to enable very powerful cards like Abominable Treefolk or Conifer Wurm.  Snow decks are often mill decks, as Iceberg Cancrix can deck the opponent very quickly if you have a lot of snow permanents, especially more Cancrix.  Ideally you'll have a Plan A of milling the opponent quickly with Iceberg Cancrix, and a plan B of casting Conifer Wurm and killing the opponent in 1-2 hits.  This deck requires lots of snow lands; 7 minimum but 10 is the sweet spot.  Another subtheme of the deck is "5 color" as with cards we want anyways like Arcum's Astrolabe and Springbloom Druid, we can cast any powerful cards we see.

Key Commons: Iceberg Cancrix, Rime Tender, Springbloom Druid
Arcum's Astrolabe, Snow Lands but especially Forest/Island

Snow decks want a bunch of individual pieces in multiples, a bunch of snow lands and a bunch of each good common listed above as well.  Unlike in other sections of this series where I noted cards as pay-offs or enablers, in snow decks only the snow lands are strict "enablers" while everything else is some sort of pay-off/enabler hybrid.  While Rime Tender is much better when it has lands to untap, it'll also give Abominable Treefolk +1/+/1 and trigger an Iceberg Cancrix.  Ideally, stick to the theme and take as many snow cards as you can, as they all work well with each other in some way or another.  Generally you're a mill deck, a goodstuff deck, or something in between, so try to lean into your strengths.  If your deck is trying to mill the opponent as its primary gameplan, don't be shy about playing Stream of Thought, for example.

General Pick Order for Snow Decks: Hexdrinker, Dead of Winter, Powerful rares (Genesis, Future Sight, others), Abominable Treefolk, Conifer Wurm, Blizzard Strix, Arcum's Astrolabe, Springbloom Druid, Iceberg Cancrix, Good Splashable Removal (Magmatic Sinkhole, others), Snow Forest/Island, Savage Swipe, Winter's Rest, Rime Tender, Draw Spells, Mother Bear, Frostwalla

Notably absent from the above are Glacial Revelation, Icehide Golem, and Chillerpillar.  Chillerpillar just isn't powerful, you never want it but often play it to make other snow cards better.  Icehide Golem is in a similar boat, but once you have a lot of cards that care about snow and a lot of snow lands 1cmc snow cards can become quite strong.  Glacial Revelation is only a reasonable card once it has 14+ hits, and I aim for 18+ if I'm going to be happy playing it.  I generally try to leave it in packs as a future signal that snow is open, as you have to be very heavy on snow permanents in order to ever make use of it.  Forcing snow is easy but risky, as you can just take every snow land out of all of the packs, but if someone at the pod fights you or snow pay-off cards like Abominable Treefolk don't get opened, you'll be left with a pile of useless lands and nothing to cast.  I generally will speculate on early snow Forests/Islands, and always try to make a note of what snow lands are in each pack as I draft.  Good rares are often what make good snow decks, as any card without a heavy White, Red, or Black commitment can be cast easily.

This deck is relatively complicated to construct, and the only consistent advice I can give is to play 16 lands if you have 2-3 Astrolabe's but don't be shy on running a few extra lands if you can't get enough colored sources to cast your spells.  You don't need that 3rd snow Mountain at the expense of ever casting Iceberg Cancrix on turn two, as that defeats the whole purpose of playing cards like that in your deck.

Takeaways

I feel like I've suckered myself into another article on how to properly draft this deck, as I feel like I'm only scratching the surface here.  With that said, snow as a theme worked out well in this set, but similarly to Ninjas maybe a bit too well for its own good.  Good snow decks were often "Mill/Aggro/Control/5 Color/Ramp" with no discernible weaknesses.  They could grind with any other decks in the format, and had multiple angles of attack due to Iceberg Cancrixes and some enormous, under costed creatures.  The main issue I have with draft strategies like this, is that often the games played with these decks lack meaningful decision making.  Once you've finished drafting a snow deck, you should have a really good idea what your record will be, and you only have real agency during the other "not playing" time of sideboarding.  I've certainly milled myself to fuel Magmatic Sinkhole Delve, or strapped a Treefolk Umbra to an Iceberg Cancrix to catch an opponent off guard, but generally this deck is super complicated to draft but braindead to play, almost like you're constructing your own robot.  I don't have as much real life experience drafting this set as I'd like, but I know people really don't enjoy getting decked by Iceberg Cancrix or killed in one hit by a 20/20 Conifer Wurm from experience.

U/W "Blink"

U/W Blink is a deck based around creatures with enter the battlefield abilities and the ability to reuse them in the future.  These decks are built around cards like Ephemerate and Moonblade Shinobi, which are the most efficient way to abuse enter the battlefield effects at common.  Where this deck really shines is once Soulherder is in play, as if it survives you can expect to generate an advantage on it for as long as it survives, often with a good array of choices whether you blink Man-o-War, Pondering Mage, or a snow creature for Iceberg Cancrix.  This is one of the most poorly supported decks in the entire format, and I want to harp on that as if you don't have the first copy of Soulherder, you most likely shouldn't draft this strategy.  Soulherder is the best card in this strategy, so ways to find it, protect it, and combine with it should be high priorities.  As a result of this, cards like Vesperlark and Shelter gain a lot of value, as your gameplan often involves protecting Soulherder and riding it to victory.  There are other ways to build U/W that have some power, such as using 1 mana flying creatures to enable Moonblade Shinobi, or building around Future Sight and other draw spells to play longer games.

Key Commons: Man-O-War, Moonblade Shinobi, Irregular Cohort, Pondering Mage (Pay-offs)
Ephemerate, Settle Beyond Reality (Enablers)

Ideally, U/W Blink decks should have a few copies of Ephemerate and a few copies of Settle Beyond Reality, but both have major diminishing returns in multiples.  The more Man-o-Wars your deck has, the more time you'll have to enable your slower cards, especially in the absence of Soulherder.  Your aggressive draws get pretty obviously better, too, as you'll be able to generate a mana advantage over your opponent very easily by casting Man-o-War multiple times in sequence.   One of the common ways this deck suffers is a lack of good things to do on turn two, as Reprobation doesn't cut the mustard in just about any main decks.  As such, after Soulherder you're really looking for Watcher for Tomorrow, and you'll often want to build in support for Eyekite as well for lack of other effective 2 mana spells.  Good versions of this deck will often be either piles of Man-o-War, piles of good uncommons/rares, or something in between.

General Pick Order for Blink:  Serra the Benevolent, Winds of Abandon, Mist-Syndincate Naga, Soulherder, Bazaar Trader, Giver of Runes, Future Sight, Force of Virtue, Watcher for Tomorrow, Blizzard Strix, Battle Screech, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Man-o-War, Moonblade Shinobi, Faerier Seer, Fact of Fiction, Rain of Revelation, String of Dissapearences, Versperlark, Irregular Cohort/Settle Beyond Reality, Eyekite, Imposter of the Sixth Pride

Answered Prayers and Rhox Veteran can be pretty reasonable in these decks as well, but mainly if you're more aggressively slanted.  Segovian Angel and Smoke Shroud as well get much better if you have a bunch of Moonblade Shinobis, but that should be pretty clear.  Once you know you're this deck, only Serra and Winds take precedence over Soulherder, as without at least the first copy your deck really suffers.  Like in U/R in the previous article, you shouldn't plan on getting into this deck unless you start with good cards that happen to be Blue or White, which will mean always biasing toward the good rares, uncommons, and good generic commons like Man-o-War.

Keep the creature count high, as Ephemerate as a value spell wants plenty of creatures to work with it.  You're generally going to play 17 lands, base Blue with either Faerie Seers and draw spells, or base White as a concession to Irregular Cohorts 2WW casting cost.  This deck will often have mana problems, as the vast majority of White decks will in this format, so generally play 8/9 as you'll want multiple of each mana to function properly.

Takeaways

Along with W/B, which we'll go over on a later day, this deck represents a huge miss for this format.  As with every White deck in this format, you'll generally run into problems with heavy color commitments during most games, and that often represents a major lack of consistency to the archetype as a whole.  Like in BFZ/Oath where Wizards powered up Reflector Mage to compensate for an underperforming U/W, Soulherder is an incredibly powerful card and a good U/W deck with multiple copies feels incredibly powerful and oppressive.  Getting your creatures repeatedly bounced by Man-o-War quickly pressures the opponent to either have a removal spell that can kill Soulherder, or lose the game quickly.  A real lack of good 2 drops at common really hurts this strategy, as you don't want any of the White ones and Eyekite and Iceberg Cancrix are mopey at best in this deck.  Largely this deck lost out on all of the care that went to other archetypes, as you have a single powerful enabler spell in Ephemerate, Soulherder, and largely nothing else in terms of support.

Stayed Tuned for next time, where we cover two White pairs, W/B and W/R

Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
sealedawaymtg.podbean.com in podcast form.

Sealed Away MTG: Meta Post

This is just a quick break from my schedule, and won't replace a normal Tuesday-Friday article.  Today I just want to quickly talk about some of my goals with this blog, and what I'm trying to accomplish with these articles.

• To teach the mid to high-level Limited player while providing something for every level.  Each article has a basis in something I'm trying to learn myself as I try to improve as a player, and I hope it'll translate to others.
• Respect the reader.  I never aim to talk down to the reader, we all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and often something one of us shines at the rest of us don't.  Everything is written with assumption that anyone can become a great Limited player.
• To learn from mistakes.  I expect to hold myself to a high standard here, as any learning process is going to lead to lots of missteps along the way.  I expect to be accountable to you, the reader, to both provide high quality content and consistently improve along the way.
• Consistently provide things that aren't readily available elsewhere, for free.  I aim not to copy what other people are already doing,  and when I take inspiration from something I'll always give due credit while giving my own spin.  I will never expect anything in return, and am very appreciative to anyone who gives my work a look.
• Provide something to come back for, every week.  I aim to consistently have something here as often as I can, and you can always expect to see something new every week.
• Stay Current. Currently I'm doing a lot of writing about Modern Horizons as it's a subject I have a lot of experience with, but as new sets release I'm going to continually come back with my findings and experiences.  Expect something related to Chaos Draft when that rolls out on Magic Online, and Sealed and Draft strategies for Throne of Eldraine as soon as we start to see new cards.

I heavily appreciate anyone who takes time out of their busy life to read this blog, and I'm always happy to respond to any feedback.  Feel free to send me an e-mail, at sealedawaymtg@gmail.com, or hit me up on Twitter.

My current schedule looks like this:

Mondays: Podcast
Tuesday-Friday: Daily Article

I'm trying to get used to consistent writing, so I can't promise I'm going to have something every day forever.  I'll definitely say something once the schedule changes in a meta-post.

Signing Off,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
sealedawaymtg.podbean.com in podcast form.

Goodbye, Modern Horizons Part 1, U/B and U/R

A Modern Horizons Retrospective and Definitive Primer.

Modern Horizons will go down as my favorite Limited environment of all time, something I think a big segment of the Limited community shares.  In somewhere around 250+ drafts (I lost my stats to MTGO deleting my data, something I'm going to account for in the future), I only got to do 90% of what I think was really possible in the format.  I drafted every mono-color deck multiple times each, and every supported archetype each in the double digits.  Sometimes I milled my opponents, sometimes I milled myself for value.  Cats, Goblins, Zombies, Angels, Slivers, Crabs, Vampires and even Soldiers; I drafted piles of different tribal decks.

Missing for me were a real deck based on Urza, Lord High Artificer, the Good-Fortune Unicorn/Persist/Sacrifice outlet combo deck, an aura deck based around Face of Divinity, and a Sisay, Weatherlight Captain deck; maybe some things I couldn't even have dreamed of, too.  All things I'll keep in mind when flashback drafts role around someday.  I can't possibly overstate how many possibilities existed in this set, even if some of the grandiose vision from the designers never got realized, the possibilities weren't endless but damn close.

In today's article, I'm going to talk about how two of the ten color pair based decks come together, what synergies drive them, and what cards might shine in them that aren't obvious at first glance.   As we look back, I want to reflect on what worked for each archetype and what didn't.  Keep an eye out for four more parts to this series, where I'll get to every color pair in the set.

U/B "Ninjas"

U/B Ninjas is a deck based around cheap, evasive creatures with an end goal of generating value off various combat focused abilities.  Sometimes you'll survive an opposing blocker with an Azra Smokeshaper, or create an Illusion army with Moonblade Shinobi.  When the deck is firing on all cylinders, you might swap a Ninjitsu creature for another, only to put that original Ninja in place of something else.  Your opponents are rarely left with good options aside from sweeping your board with Crypt Rats, Winds of Abandon, or Dead of Winter, all cards that have a large deck building cost.  In general your opponents could stabilize against your cards that are weak on their surface, but they'll be at 0 life before that would happen.  Repeated hits for 3 damage add up quickly, and this deck can easily finish off a low life opponent with its numerous evasive creatures and tempo oriented spells.

Key Commons: Changeling Outcast, Faerie Seer, Gluttonous Slug (Enablers)
Moonblade Shinobi, Azra Smokeshaper, Ninja of the New Moon (Pay-offs)

If you take a look at my pick-order list from a few days ago, one thing you might notice is how high Changeling Outcast and Faerie Seer are listed.  This deck is the reason for that high placement, as Ninja decks with multiple copies of these cards are substantially more powerful than those without.  Not only are these the cheapest evasive creatures in the set at common, but Changeling Outcast is a Ninja for the various cards that care and Faerie Seer will repeatedly set up your future draws with the Scry 2, something that is a nice bonus on turn 1 that turns into a huge consistency advantage as it gets repeatedly returned to hand and recast.  Gluttonous Slug is at it's best here, as having creatures repeatedly enter play will grow it to an enormous size, and an 0/3 menace on turn 2 can put in Moonblade Shinobi on turn 3 in a pinch to get things rolling.  The Ninja pay-offs are relatively self explanatory, as once you have a bunch of enablers your game plan is to repeatedly put them into play with Ninjitsu to generate bonuses and persistent, big hits of damage.

General Pick Order for Ninja Decks: Rare Ninjas (Fallen Shinobi/Mist Syndicate Naga), Ingenious Infiltrator,  Watcher for Tomorrow, Twisted Reflection, Mob, Man-o-War, Changeling Outcast/Faerie Seer, Defile, Moonblade Shinobi, Gluttonous Slug, Azra Smokeshaper, Ninja of the New Moon.

Other common cheap creatures will often be filled in as needed, like Eyekite, Pondering Mage, and Putrid Goblin. Smokeshroud can generally be picked up late and it's pretty great to have the 1st/2nd copy.  Phantom Ninja is awful, avoid playing it unless you have multiple Ingenious Infiltrators or you're short creatures in general.

Avoid splashing in this deck, and expect to play 16-17 lands with 9 sources of whatever color you have more one drop creatures in.  Bad spells like Umezawa's Charm are acceptable in this deck if your spell count ends up really low, as opponents are put under so much pressure to constantly block.

Takeaways

This deck works, but too well for the format's own good.  Playing this deck gives a feeling of constantly deceiving and tricking the opponent unlike any limited deck I've ever played, but being on the receiving end has led to some of the most unfun and tedious feeling games of Magic I've ever played as well.  Any game in which you get to put in Ingenious Infiltrator turn 2 on the play, victory is nearly assured, the snowballing advantage accrued from this point is almost insurmountable barring astronomically poor draws or an insane series of draws from the opponent.  Right after the London Mulligan was introduced, I nearly won a game off of a mulligan to 3 where the hand I kept was Island, Swamp, Ingenious Infiltrator, and if I had just played a bit better I would have gotten there.  The only thing that ended up hurting this deck was its own success, as it remained consistently over drafted for the formats entire life cycle.  With no Infest style sweeper in the format, you often have to kill every single creature this deck plays, or run them over when they have one of their weaker draws.  I'd rate this deck's existence as the biggest blemish on a perfect format, as if the cards here were just a touch weaker it wouldn't suck to play against so much.

U/R "Draw Two"

 

U/R Draw Two is a deck based on cards that get more powerful for each card drawn in a given turn, such as Fists of Flame and Thundering Djinn, and cards that gain an ability once the 2nd card of a turn is drawn, such as Eyekite and Spinehorn Minotaur.  This deck is best defined as an "Aggro/Combo" deck similar to Modern's Infect, as you're generally trying to use pump spells to kill your opponent on an early turn.  Eyekite is your consistent damage source, as it's easy to turn on repeatedly and attack for 3 over and over, while Spinehorn Minotaur excels when going for a quick kill with Fists of Flame.  You'll want both together in multiples as different combinations of draws will ask for different facilitators.  This deck should be made up of as many Eyekites and Spinehorn Minotaurs as you can get with some random aggressive creatures like Orcish Hellraiser and Mooblade Shinobi to round things out.  You're going to want Fists of Flame, Phantasmal Form, and a healthy amount of cards with Cycling as well as cheap removal spells like Pyrophobia and Magmatic Sinkhole.  This deck is generally weak to removal spells, as you're not going to have a lot of threats in your deck in general, and you're very reliant on pump spells to actually kill the opponent.

Key Commons: Eyekite, Spinehorn Minotaur (Enablers)
Fists of Flame, Phantasmal Form, Reckless Charge, Cycling Cards (Pay-offs)

The general gameplan for U/R is to combine Spinehorn Minotaur and Eyekite with Phantasmal Form to kill the opponent quickly over the course of two turns.  Phantasmal Form interacts incredibly well with these creatures, as Eyekite will become a 5/3 and Spinehorn Minotaur a 3/3 Doublestrike with Flying, adding up to an easy 11 damage as early as turn 4.  You'll want to supplement this with cards like Reckless Charge for quicker kills, especially with Spinehorn Minotaur, and as many Cycling cards like Windcaller Aven and Viashino Sandsprinter as you can afford to keep the "draw a card" metric enabled every turn. U/R Draw Two is less reliant on individual pieces than U/B, like one mana creatures, but is never as powerful or resilient.

General Pick Order for Draw Two Decks: Seasoned Pyromancer/Bazaar Trademage, Fiery Islet, Firebolt, Man-o-War, Thundering Djinn, Magmatic Sinkhole(first copy), Oneirophage, Pyrophobia, Eyekite, Spinehorn Minotaur, Red then Blue Cycling Lands, Phantasmal Form/Fists of Flame, Windcaller Aven.

As U/R can struggle with big creatures like Murasa Behemoth or even a large Abominable Treefolk, picking up some snow lands to turn on Winter's Rest is more important here than in other blue decks.  Like U/B, any creatures that are cheap will often find a home here, like Orcish Hellraiser and Bladeback Sliver, and you'll want Pondering Mage in any version of this deck that's less combo oriented and slower.  Rain of Revelation is much better than Fact or Fiction in this deck, so keep that in mind as well.  Generally, take removal highly and stay open, and move in once you start seeing Eyekite/Spinehorn Minotaur late and Fists of Flame/Phantasmal Form late.

You should almost always play 16 lands, as many of your cards will say "Draw a Card" on them somewhere, and flooding out can be pretty disastrous as these decks often lack staying power.  Fiery Islet is unbelievably strong in this deck, as it fixes your mana, turns on your theme, and you're in a great position to not care about your life total too much.  Like U/B, don't splash here unless your playing a controlling version of U/R, as your mana is being stretched to the limit already.

Takeaways

"Draw Two"'s existence is a testament to how flexible Magic can be as a game.  This is the first set where this has been a major draft theme, and not only does it have a lot of built-in support but it plays great as well.  The subtext of this mechanic is that it's trivial to activate during your own turn, but takes a lot more work during the opponent's.  You'll certainly be able to generate some blow-outs with Rain of Revelation after blocks, but it's a rarity.  U/R was my favorite deck in the format, as there was no greater feeling then assembling a creative kill combining Fists of Flame and Spinehorn Minotaur and some other random piece to get an unexpected turn 5 kill.  I certainly wish this deck had access to a card like Dive Down or even Negate, but I think that would have further exacerbated the problems that U/B Ninjas already have and thusly understand the exclusion of a good protection effect.  Admittedly, this deck was a tad tougher to get into than I would have liked, as aside from taking an early Thundering Djinn and praying, only Fiery Islet consistently let me end up in this deck.

Signing Off,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
sealedawaymtg.podbean.com in Podcast form, with Episode 2 out now!