Sealed Away MTG Episode 10: Throne of Eldraine Build Arounds

In a great twist of irony, I had to learn a few things with Audacity so that I could actually release this.  The audio from minute 5~ to minute 15~ is pretty shaky, and was previously too quiet.  I must have moved my mic away from my face really far, and then fixed it around the 15 minute mark.

Anyway, here's the show.

As promised, here's a link to Zvi's article about the London Mulligan, which is definitely worth a look.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg

Not Even in Limited; Go Back to Vancouver

First, the article that inspired this one, here.

 Zvi's been a famed Magic writer longer than I've been effectively playing the game.  To very briefly summarize the above linked article, Zvi advocates for a reversal of the London Mulligan, citing repetitive gameplay, while laying out some of the benefits but mostly the many drawbacks it provides.

The London Mulligan refers to the current mulligan rules, where you put back cards from your hand to the bottom of your library equal to how many mulligans you've taken.  Mulliganing to 6, for example, leads to drawing a new hand of 7, and placing 1 chosen card to the bottom, 1 being equivalent to times mulliganed.  I've been a naysayer of the London Mulligan since it's debut; I despise anything that increases idle time in Magic, such as shuffling and major complexity.  The London Mulligan makes it better to mulligan, meaning more shuffling and thus, more idle time.

Initially I was somewhat swayed to the prevailing opinion, that this would increase skill, increase agency, and by extension make Magic a better, more fun game for myself.  Whenever presenting my thoughts on the matter, I always prefaced it with "I know I'm in the minority" or some other mitigating statement.  It's tough to go against everyone else, especially when you're not even confident that your thoughts have merit.

Again from Zvi's article, and from many others I've seen discussing the matter, such as LSV in a recent stream; people seem to find the issue in constructed formats, and don't take issue with it in Limited.  As someone who barely touches constructed, most of my London Mulligan experience is in Limited, and I see it as a net negative.

Hand Comparison Contest

Sit yourself down at a fictional table, playing a deck you've just theoretically drafted against a phantom opponent.  You draw your opening hand; it's an acceptable 4 land and 3 mediocre spell hand, and you decide to ship it back.  Your opponent does the same, shrugging briefly before shipping their 7 back.  On 6 now you've got much better options, 4 land again but our spells represent a perfect, backbreaking curve, with our 4 drop bomb rare supported by our best turn 2 and turn 3 plays.  As we intelligently won the die roll, we rub our hands together, expecting to make short work of our opponent. It turns out that our opponent also has a great one, but as we're up first and have that 4 mana rare, we crush them before they can really get going.

Obviously this isn't the most common of scenarios, but I think it illustrates a few of my problems with London Mulligans.  When Mulligans are less punishing, we see better hands more often, and when comparing good to great hands there's often not much of a game being played.  The best hands in Limited often allow for no real agency from the other side; you kill everything they play, you curve great cards into your great rare, you pull off some powerful combination, maybe a Lucky Clover and Harvest Fear.  Your opponent lines up the right interaction? Great, now they're the winner.  They don't? A crushing and swift defeat.  I believe there's some exacerbation of the play/draw difference at play as well, an awful thing when being on the play is generally such a large and free advantage.

• Less punishing mulligans lead to games disproportionately about opening hands, reducing agency.
• Being on the play is in part balanced by more punishing mulligans.  As being on the play is advantageous, there's no reason to make it more so.

Reduced Novelty

 

If I was to define Limited in an abstract way, it'd be a competition at who can maneuver novel scenarios best.  Limited is a format where redundancy is a big investment; most decks will only have duplicates of a few cards and basic lands.  Despite the format having a small cardpool, usually in the 250 card range, you might go 4 or 5 matches without seeing some of the good common cards, and many more without seeing more conditional ones, or let alone rares and mythics.  For a Throne of Eldraine example, I've only had one Outlaw's Merriment cast against me in at least 200 matches played.  The sense of mystery, where I never really know what I'm going to play with or play against always keeps me coming back, and has fueled my passion for Limited over the years.

The London Mulligan represents an uncomfortable amount of erosion of this novelty.  I could honestly do with more variance, as the adapting is what makes Limited interesting, and having more draws that are more centered around whatever each player's best few cards are makes things less interesting. Someone I follow on Twitter, who I'll credit in this article later on if I can identify them, said something to the effect of "[The London Mulligan leads to less scrappy games]".  Limited is all about scrappy games, and piecing together victory with a bunch of semi-random puzzle pieces.  I'm against anything that reduces what I think is the best thing about Magic Limited.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg

Shape of the Throne

After over a month of release time, Throne of Eldraine's Limited metagame has nearly settled.  Expect some more shake-ups after the coming Mythic Championship in Richmond, as many of the best players in the world will debut strategies that have been kept under wraps in preparation.  Since release I've heard it all; descriptions of Throne of Eldraine's relative speed or metagame ranging from incredibly fast to incredibly slow and everything in between.  Despite the huge variance in perceived speed, Throne of Eldraine is defined by slow and grindy cards, and the current metagame only represents how the playerbase is choosing to attack them.

Not Format Warping, Format Shaping

Amidst all of the speculation and opinions strongly presented, the format has some hard facts that have a huge influence on the format.  Defensive creatures are generally X/3s and X/4s, and offensive creatures generally have 2 or 3 power.  In general, a cheap defensive creature will hold a comparable cheap offensive creature at bay.  Removal spells are strong, enabling positive trades on mana and often have bonuses, such as Bake into a Pie's Food or Searing Barrage's 3 damage to the player.  Card draw is plentiful, existing at good rates on multiple commons.  Combat tricks are also strong, but weak and expensive to compensate for attached creatures, and not just strong as combat tricks.

If we can take all of the above for granted, we already know a lot about what our decks need to look like in a broad sense.  Aggressive decks can't just get invalidated by a few high-toughness blockers, meaning we should seek evasive creatures, and cheap ways to push through them such as Rimrock Knight and Outflank.  We can also attack slower decks with Brimestone Trebuchet and Tempting Witch, as they can't be blocked.  Folding to a removal spell or two is also not an option, raising the stock of Order of Midnight and Forever Young.

Defensive deckbuilding now builds off this aggressive blueprint.  We want lifegain to beat cards we can't block, and instant speed removal to beat out combat tricks that get past our high toughness blockers.  Beating evasive creatures has obvious importance now, so we'll need fliers of our own or lots of removal to stop them from getting past us.  Aggressive decks now must function in a world where opponents know and compensate for their ways of getting an edge. This is how the metagame forms, as players try to beat the strategies that are beating them, having the higher level strategy to both beat out opposing counter play while keeping intact whatever made the initial strategy functional.

The Suspects

As in any Limited format, lots of cards have an influence on how good one another are, so I'm not going to try to highlight them all, just the biggest ones.  These aren't the necessarily the strongest cards in the format, but the ones decks must be able to beat.

Merfolk Secretkeeper

The bane Arena players everywhere, Merfolk Secretkeeper is the defining defensive creature of the format, playing double duty as early defense and win condition for a cheap price.  Merfolk Secretkeeper pressures slow decks to have a way of not decking out, such as Forever Young, and faster decks to have cheap tricks to get through it, such as Barge In.

Biggest Influence on...
Rimrock Knight.  Boulder Rush is the most effective way to beat out a Merfolk Secretkeeper based strategy, as there's a huge punishment for blocking, the only thing Merfolk Secretkeeper can do.

Edgewall Innkeeper

Keeping the keeper theme intact, Edgewall Innkeeper forces decks to have removal spells.  Not effective removal spells, but actual ways to send creatures from the battlefield to the graveyard or exile.  No deck no matter how aggressive or defensive is immune to an opponent up a billion cards, putting a premium on killing this powerful uncommon.

Biggest Influence on...
Scalding Cauldron.  White, Blue, and to a lesser extent Green really struggle to actually kill something dead, and Scalding Cauldron insures that your deck has a way of not just losing to Edgewall Innkeeper.

Revenge of Ravens

Small creatures really suffer against Revenge of Ravens, such as the tokens from Improbable Alliance, and defensive creatures like Corridor Monitor or Tempting Witch suffer a similar fate.  Even 2 power creatures aren't effective facing down Revenge of Ravens, as you're effectively paying life to reduce your opponent's at a 1/1 rate.  Every deck needs some way of beating this, whether it's mill, a disenchant, or big creatures.

Biggest Influence on...
Turn into a Pumpkin.  Improbable Alliance decks generally have the toughest time beating Revenge of Ravens, so you can use Turn into a Pumpkin to kill your opponent in one swing, or bounce it to counter it later on.

In the face of a constantly functioning format speed, keep in mind the powerful cards that the format is swinging around, rather than the metagame of the day.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg

Sealed Away MTG Episode 8

Podcast here.

As promised, here's my mono-Black deck.

I'm much happier just posting a few articles and the podcast each week, so expect the current schedule to continue for the foreseeable future.

I hope you all have a great week.

Kevin
@sealed awaymtg

Back in Black

By far my most literal title yet, as today's topic is how I started to draft Black again in Throne of Eldraine.

To recap, I started to ignore good black cards, as I had so many experiences getting cut off Black after trying to get into it in the first 2-5 picks.  While I'd still take Epic Downfall and Order of Midnight, I started to ignore Bake into a Pie and Syr Konrad, and the metagame I faced, devoid of Black decks, seemed to support my decision.  It doesn't matter how good a color in a format is if it's overdrafted, generally it's best to seek other strategies.  While avoiding Black, I was happy to draft any of the Temur colors, and to a slightly lesser extent White, so I felt like I could afford to avoid drafting Black unless it was comically open.

There were a lot of benefits to this overall strategy, but quite a few drawbacks as well. As you might expect, you can lose out on a lot of strong decks intentionally avoiding the best color, but I found the lack of fighting during drafts, especially in the League system, made my decks better on average.  I've lost out on valuable experience playing with Syr Konrad and Revenge of Ravens, but I believe the end result to be worth it.  All the while I've been paying attention to trends on Magic Online, as I always knew this avoidance had a shelf life; it expired this week.  While I felt as if I made corrections at the right time, looking back there was more I could do even earlier that I'd missed.

Strategy Revamp

Identifying your own "hot takes" is just as important as fixing them.  For myself, I knew my unwillingness to draft Black fell under this category, but as I had a strong justification for it, and was posting a very positive record, I knew it was something to keep in check, but not fix.  As I've really kept an eye on this behavior, once I noticed more Black cards coming around than usual early this week, I knew it was time to change my perspective.  There's nothing wrong with having opinions or contrarian thoughts, just know when they've become outdated.

Repeatedly drafting the same "good archetypes" repeatedly is good practice, but exploration will give you the biggest edge on a given Limited environment.  Throne of Eldraine has really rewarded my exploration; I have various mono-color and two color decks available to me every time I sit down for a draft that I have lots of experience with.  Avoiding Black was certainly exploring, as I was looking at all of the things I was less confident were worth doing instead. 

Black has its own nuances despite being the best.  Knowing the best self-contained strategy to lean in to is not obvious, be it Knights or drain, and finding out where we ideally exist on the aggressive to controlling spectrum matters, too.  As I'd been avoiding the color altogether, I only could speculate on all of these factors, so getting real experience was the only way I'd ever learn.

Steps to Change

1. Identify the problem.  Is there a repeated mistake you're making?
2. Why is that problem the way it is? Are you getting distracted? Are your views fundamentally flawed?
3. Figure out how to address the problem (much easier said than done) and enact a plan to fix that problem.

My decision not to draft Black might have been conscious with good logic backing it up, but I was doing it to a degree that I was missing out on strong decks.  I was never dipping my toe into the pool in fear of cold water, regardless of if I knew if the water was actually cold or not.  In retrospect, I think my learning experience should have been to speculate on strong Black cards but avoid committing too early, instead I was just avoiding Black, assuming every future experience would be like my last.  I have a real good idea why I felt this way though...

Drafting Ninjas and failing was almost a sport for me.  I would aggressively take Changeling Outcasts and Faerie Seers hoping to see future pay-offs, or I would engage in the opposite and draft pay-offs aggressively like Ingenious Infiltrator above in hopes of being the only person in the market for the enablers.  For weeks at at time, I would end up with a few good Ninja decks and a gigantic pile of awful ones.  Back then I was making the same mistake as I was recently, as I wasn't willing to just speculate on strong cards, it was either avoidance or total commitment.  These situations make it really tough to course correct in Magic, as you can identify a problem but find the wrong solution and get tricked by statistics and inherent biases we all share.

Quick Tips Drafting Black

• Dip your toe in, but don't commit too hard.  It's totally OK to first pick Bake into a Pie, but recognize that your odds of playing it won't be high.
• Look to use a diverse array of Black cards.  Food decks will want Giant's Skewer, Cauldron Familiar and Witch's Oven go great together, Mill wants Forever Young and Revenge of Ravens.  While there's a lot of individual power in Black, know where each card ideally ends up to maximize your chance of cooperating with the table.
• Value easy to cast cards highly.  This is a place I haven't changed my opinion on; cards like Epic Downfall and to a lesser extent Reave Soul gain a lot of ground off their ability to be splashed.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg