by Mark Kelso
M11, like any other core set, simplifies what we can do inside of a draft. There aren’t many insane combos, there aren’t any overpowered archetypes, and there certainly aren’t any format-defining interactions (i.e. powering out levelers with Venerated Teacher or ramping from Emrakuls Hatcher into Artisan of Kozilek). What we have instead is a set that some would consider boring or “bad.” I’m not one that falls into either category just yet, but I can see some reasoning behind it being a bad format.
Some people think bombs define this format so much that play skill is at an all-time low in importance (especially in sealed, which I will talk about next time around). I say bombs are the same as they’ve always been, if not a bit more fair. Titans are titans, they’re this set’s “Elder Dragons” or “Tribal Overlords.” They’re much more efficient than previous incarnations, but I would call them all relatively balanced. They all are dealt with after a simple Pacifism, if not already creating at least a smidgen of card advantage. Umezawas Jitte or Meloku, The Clouded Mirror they are not. With all that being said, M11; to me; is a set defined by its different archetypes. Here I want to talk about the potential archetypes that can be drafted and their power-levels, among other things. I will use the same system I used last time, between one and ten, one being crap, ten being not crap. As will be the norm with me, I will very rarely talk about bomb rares in draft. You open one, you play it. Simple. Some decks want some rares more than others, but it’ll be obvious to you when the situation arises.
UW Skies (base power level – NINE)
UW skies is always an archetype in Core set. Some people swear to its power and will force it no matter what. I’m not one of those people, but I can’t really blame them for the logic. In this set, however, some things have changed. Blue and white have flipped a little bit, with white having more fliers than blue. Not really a big deal, but it does make for some awkward packs (i.e. Deciding between Assault Griffin and Azure Drake… though I’d take drake 85% of the time). All the great stuff from both colors fits right in here which makes this one of the most dangerous combinations in my opinion. Blue and white are overpowered a little bit as it is, but to combine them AND set an emphasis on evasive creatures… very dangerous. Oh, didn’t I mention? No Windstorm in this set, either. Giant Spider might be a 2nd overall pick like I mentioned before after all…
Gxx (base power level – SEVEN – NINE)
Playing something as broad as Green with two other splashes really depends on what else you get. Splashing blue and white with green isn’t something that you can usually do, but if you could pull it off I would assume it would be pretty powerful. Usually I end up going GWb or GRb with this archetype in mind, and it worked out for me the last draft I did this in. Green is pretty fairly costed (with little other than Garruks Companion demanding double green before turn four) and it has two of the best mana fixers you could ask for in Sylvan Ranger and Cultivate. What you’re looking to do in this archetype is take the fixing cards picks 3-4-5-6 after opening whatever bombs you can, leaving you open to build around whatever other bombs you can pick up. I would say this archetype has a few things going for it that it didn’t in previous Core sets, though also some against it. While Red has RR costed removal and black has “swamps matter” removal, the green fixing is broad and easy to get early and can make splashing for either color possible. I would say this is the second most powerful archetype that I can put together in my brain right now, but it has more upside than UW Skies based on the fact that you can take bombs from almost any color and use them.
BR Vampire-Treason-Skeleton-Fling…Thing (Base power level FIVE)
I mention this before others because so many people mention it. Is this a viable strategy? Of course it is! Act of Treason with any of the many sac outlets results in the strength level of Slave of Bolas[card], while cards like [card]Fling can make this even more powerful. There is also another combo in the form of Bloodthrone Vampire with Reassembling Skeleton. Not a good combo, but a combo nonetheless. If damage stacked I might move this archetype up three points in base power level, but alas… it does not. If you can net yourself somewhere in the vicinity of eight combo pieces and six pieces of removal among other cards, you could likely play this to some success. And adding cards like Chandras Spitfire, Lava Axe, Sign in Blood, and Corrupt to this strategy makes it all fit together nicely. Finding a home for Spitfire is tough, but this might be the place. Anything that hits that hard should be taken note of.
GR or GW Quick Beats (Base power level THREE – SIX)
Sometimes you curve out and win. It happens to drafters every day. But if you’re good enough to draft with a curve in mind while also picking color coordinated cards and interactions, you should be drafting a much broader deck. I personally like both archetypes for one thing and one thing only… Sacred Wolf. Both support colors have a four mana uncommon enchantment (Red with Shivs Embrace and White with Armored Ascension) that turns Sacred Wolf into an immediate clock. White also has Mighty Leap, while Red has Thunder Strike, both of which also work with the wolf pretty well. I would say white is better than red in general, but when paired with green it becomes a crapshoot. Red has uber-aggro cards like Arc Runner and Fling while white tends to lean towards the defensive, though obviously cards like Stormfront Pegasus and Mighty Leap are meant to be aggressive. The reason I rate this archetype so low is because cards like Crystal Ball and Cudgel Troll make strategies like this pretty hard to pull off due to their more broad power level. You can’t win a fight against bigger green with smaller green if bigger green can close the gap with acceleration and deck manipulation. Plus with cards like Elixir of Immortality floating into main decks at an alarming rate, I just don’t think this will be a strong strategy as the set develops. By all means, if you’re new to the set or new to Magic, draft aggro. But if you’re a seasoned drafter with a good head on your shoulders, you should be looking elsewhere if at all possible. Sometimes you just get passed pick seven Sacred Wolf. I know how it is. Fight the urge!
UB Control (Base power level FIVE – SEVEN)
I like this archetype. Any time you can combine swamp-count removal with evasive creatures and card drawing, you’re entering into solid ground for a good deck. In this format, at least for the time being, however, this is not a safe archetype to draft. As long as people think drafting Gx bear aggro is a good idea, this archetype doesn’t have a lot of breathing room. I know this first hand, of course. I draft the Crystal Ball/2 x Quag Sickness/Corrupt/Stormtide Leviathan/2x Foresee/2x Mana Leak/Cancel etc, etc, etc… Then my first round opponent has turn two Garruks Companion, turn three Sacred Wolf and turn four Armored Ascension. Oh well! In a month or so when the format makes itself known, I think UB Control is going to skyrocket in popularity. It simply has a lot of game against UW skies and Gxx when it can get the cards it would need. This is also the premier home for Cancel and Mana Leak.
Mono Red… Aggro? Big red? I don’t know! (Base power level TWO – FIVE)
“Trying to get there” with mono red in this set is not a good idea, but I can see it happening once in a while. So many of the red spells require a big commitment in red that it seems like a viable way to do things, but the power level is ridiculously low. I will say this deck, when built well, can curve out and kill you pretty fast. If you can manage to make Bloodcrazed Goblin, Arc Runner, and Chandras Spitfire valid inclusions in your deck, then maybe you can win some games. If you get ALL theChandras Outrages and ALL the Shivs Embraces…I think good things can happen…
Ux Mill Deck (Base power level FOUR – SIX)
I guess I HAVE to talk about rares now, right? This is an archetype that relies on them the most, if not completely. I can see maybe getting Jaces Erasure and Tome Scour in the double digits and trying to get there, but that seems slightly unlikely. What you’re looking for are cards like Temple Bell, Call to Mind, Traumatize, and Crystal Ball. If you can get about ten cards that commit to decking your opponent including these rares, this can become a good archetype to be in. You could probably include stuff like Voltaic Key if you get the bell, or card draw like Foresee to help out the Ingenuities. As a note, if you get lots of Jaces Erasures or other mill, value cards Rise from the Grave as a bomb, even if forced to splash it. You never know what you’re going to mill into their yards. As far as what colors I like to go along with this strategy, I guess it would depend on what you think would give it the most problems. I obviously think this is a feasting ground for GR or GW bear-beats, and so I think the best color to pair it with would be white. Blinding Mage, Cloud Crusader, Condemn[/card] and even Safe Passage playing the Fog role seem like the best to combat these decks. Oh yeah, Ice Cage is also at its best here, slowing them down as best it can.
Rare Drafting (Base Power Level SEVEN)
This set has some good money in it. Two different titans range into the $30′s, Fauna Shaman is climbing every day, and stuff like Time Reversal and Knight Exemplar rounding up the “Unplayable but worth more than the pack they came in” category. There are, by my count, twenty rares worth more than $4 in this set. No uncommons at all, but I think the amount of rares (or mythics, apparently) being high is solid enough to give rare drafting a shot. Stuff like the Leylines table all the time, but they go for at least $2, and a couple go for $5. If you’re the type of person who only cares about making sound decisions, then I think a sound decision would be to rare draft. I guess this article is about two to three weeks too late, but oh well. As far as MTGO M11 drafting goes, I would say the Base Power Level for rare drafting is closer to three. Stuff that isn’t mythic isn’t too expensive there. Happy Hunting!
In conclusion, I think M11 has something for everybody and nobody should shun it right ‘out the gate. It’s obviously a flawed environment for sealed, but I think booster-draft remains untainted for the most part and is fair enough for even the most hardened anti-core drafters to partake. Thank you for taking the time to read my shenanigans. Please feel free to leave multiple comments and bash me, or at least leave multiple comments to comment on my good looks. Which you are probably unaware of.
-Mark Kelso
Hi man i really like what you say about M11 decks archetypes, think UW Flyers its powerfull, but its hard to goes in because some times appears everyone does the same.
I like more Gxx for my draft style.
And some times i does really good drafting UG using blue for card draw and tricks and sometimes drakes in place of spiders and green gives me the best creatures for beat opponent.
Thanks for the text again.
UW is so popoular that it’s annoying. I actually get excited when i play against someone who isnt playing it….
So I think you’ve definitely mis-named base power level. It should be “Normal Power level” aka what most people pull out of it. Here’s my reasoning:
UW Skies: White is the deepest color by far and so if you are remotely sent into this archetype (Serra Angel/Air Servant/Sleep) then you will HAVE A GOOD DECK. UW can always win a draft. The problem with UW is that everyone knows this and will sometimes force into the archetype (taking every Squadron Hawk, etc) and you end up with an average ‘UW Skies’ deck.
I’ll continue with examples but in the article it seems like your ‘base power level’ is where you expect to build the deck without bombs. UW that only plays Cloud Crusader and Azure Drake is NOT a “9″… it’s barely a 5.
I personally HATE Gxx. Usually you play it when you have bombs in different colors (Say you open Inferno Titan and Mind Control but neither U or R is open… GUR) You can’t go in to a draft PLANNING to GXX… it needs to come at you. Green is there to make it available because there’s 3 common fixers.
BR Combo… 3-5? OK so most people’s playskill and draftskill make this deck a 2. But good players making good decisions KNOWING WHEN ITS OPEN can draft BR to 3-0 6-0 with as much certainty as the Yankees signing the biggest names in Baseball.
Lastly you have severely mislabeled UB Control. It’s the best deck. Obstinate Baloth wins more drafts as a pick #1 than any other rare besides Conundrum Sphynx and it’s because it’s a direct counter to Liliana’s Specter. UB is amazing because 3/2 and 2/1 and 4/2 spin all day in black while the bombs in this archetype CRUSH the Serra Angel in UW. Mind Control, Air Servant, Corrupt, Reassembling Skeletons… all Uncommons that make this deck SO GOOD. Diabolic Tutor also shines. The key is that UB has 2-for-1s all day. Specter, MindRot, Foresee, JacesIngenuity, SigninBlood, MindControl, Gravedigger, etc.
P.S. Why did you rate rare-drafting? I draft to win always but i understand going for rares but it doesn’t have a power level! In truth the rares will depreciate very quickly. If you are rare-drafting do it for cards you want to play (say you need a Leyline of Sanctity) but still try to get a deck. You never know when you get 2 wins out of nowhere.
Knight Exemplr is not worth a pack.
Robert: Base and normal are really the same thing. An insane version of the archtypes would obviously shadow what a “base power level” would be. If you get 4 act of treasons, 3 bloodtrhone vampires, 2 skeletons, 2 flings, 2 rise from the graves, etc etc… Then your deck is much higher than a 5 out of 10.
I’m merely stating what the average build of each type looks like, and how good I think it is. And for that, I think the word “Base” is fine.
Even an average UW skies deck is better than almost every other deck at the table.
UB strictly loses to GR and GW beats (or, now, mono white) most of the time. UW Skies can beat anything else without exception given the right combination of cards, so it’s the best deck. 2 for 1′s are great against decks that aren’t purposely dropping their hand by turn 5 to kill you.
Robert… Any color combination can win any draft. Obviously…
I wrote this article at least 2 weeks ago, and at that time Knight Exemplar was worth 3.50.
Rare drafting works. All you SHOULD care about is profiting from your draft. That is literally all that matters. This is a set in which you can do that.
also thanks jefferson and Rise_above for the comments. I think I did a pretty good job with this article considering it was 2 weeks ago and I cover almost every archtype that is common in a draft. Obviously people try to play mono red lava-ox dot deck and stuff like that, but its not common. If i had 2 month worth of research into this, some things might be different, but for just an overview and having done about 40 drafts, I think it’s pretty good.
I’m pretty new to drafting and magic in general.. but are you saying here that people are going into a draft with definite “decks” and card compositions in mind….
So like you are kind of expecting variants of these decks.. and thus give you a better idea of what cards to pick based on what cards are already picked?
Is that what you are getting at with this article?
@extraplanar – There are some definite decks you can aim for when drafting. For instance, you could go into a draft and simply end up RB as a matter of happenstance, though you can often craft a stronger deck if you know that within RB, you could go for the Sac Outlet shenanigans deck, with multiple Act of Treasons, Flings and other such cards.
To clarify using Rb as an example… There are lots of cards in RB that use sacrificing as an engine. Most colors don’t have anything fun to do with the mechanic but in RB you find 2 great cards: Reassembling Skeletons and Act of Treason. Once you see that you may be heading into the sac-aggro RB deck you need to value those 2 cards higher. Once you are thinking with RB lens you will take Act of Treason over Fiery Hellhound as second nature. You’ll take Skeletons over MindRot. That’s what archetypical drafting is about; Take good cards because of their synergies.
RB is even more powerful then it is considered as. You don’t happen to have anything to do with moc pages do you?