Hard to share a full draft log of IRL drafting (1/2 pint of Nitro Stout to help lubricate choices though). But here is my pick order (pack 1 on the left, bottom P1p1 to P1p15 on top). Opened a very legit bomb with Finale of Glory and then white was pretty clearly quite open. Did not solidify into green, kept worrying about black, but eventually put together quite a cruel little GW proliferate deck.
The pre-release is upon us! Obviously we’ve done our homework with the LR commons & uncommons review and such, so I’m not going to try and duplicate that. But I will try and make a prognostication on some high-level questions like removal, tricks, ramping. All guesses guaranteed to hold up until your second draw step in the first round.
“Removal” is obviously a very sweeping category. Everything from efficient but conditional, unconditional but expensive, efficient & unconditional but difficult to cast; it’s almost impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison. What I like to do is count the total amount of “playable removal” (and bounce) and compare it to previous sets. So let’s flashback briefly to Ravnica Allegiance.
So that’s 10 pieces of common playable removal, three uncommon. For reference, here is what I considered unplayable or sideboard.
Obviously those five all occasionally have good homes, but by-and-large, you’re not excited to draft them or play with them. They played as D+ or sideboard, at best. So where are we at with War of the Spark? Let’s take a look!
Wow! So there is 12 pieces of uncommon removal and 10 pieces of common removal that look to be at least decent. Four of them are planeswalkers! So, yes, there WILL be removal, and lots of it. Half of it is at instant speed! So be *very cautious* playing into open mana.
By contrast, the combat tricks look to be extremely thin.
Okay, so we have OG Giant Growth. And I think Battlefield Promotion will do some serious work as well. Storm Strike taught us that +1 power and first strike is usually enough. Throw in getting the Proliferate train rolling and incidental lifegain, you have a card. I’m more dubious about Lazotep Plating (sweet art aside) since it looks to be a subpar Dive Down for an extra mana. Unlikely Aid is also unlikely to find a home, but it’s not unplayable on its face. So yes, combat tricks. Not that many. Also nothing in red. Technically there are two tricks, but boy-howdy they look terrible. I’m not even going to link them. That’s how little faith I have.
There aren’t gates, but we have Gateway Plaza at common. There is also the Centaur Nurturer, which is drawing very justified comparisons to the Naga Vitalist from Hour. It’s a single card fulfilling two roles: it stabilizes as a 2/4 blocker and it provides mana fixing. All at common. The uncommon ones look very good too, though keep in mind that the planeswalker does need to be alive to provide the splashing.
In conclusion, this looks to be a high power set. Lots of removal, pretty good splashing tools raises the ceiling. Few combat tricks makes me think that aggro decks are going to be hard to put togethe
First, I learned to reliably spell “Allegiance” without relying on the spellchecker. Two e’s, one a. Got it. Beyond that I had a pretty good run I’d say! Let’s look at the tape:
| Drafts | Wins | Losses | Win % | |
| Azorius | 5 | 7 | 6 | 54% |
| Orzhov | 5 | 11 | 4 | 73% |
| Rakdos | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0% |
| Gruul | 9 | 16 | 10 | 62% |
| Simic | 3 | 7 | 2 | 78% |
| Gates | 4 | 8 | 4 | 67% |
| Other | ||||
| Total | 27 | 49 | 28 | 64% |
I’m honestly pretty happy with a 64% win-rate. Kind of funny that I barely draft Rakdos and a full third of my drafts ended up in Gruul.
I definitely got most comfortable drafting the Gruul deck. It is known that the flexible 2-drops, “good on turn 2; good on turn 10” are solid gold. Sauroform Hybrid is the absolute gold standard here. However I think everyone initially undervalued aggro cards that provide a little bit of card advantage.
The Burning-Tree Vandal did not look great in theory. Three mana for 2/1 haste or 3/2 rarely lines up well (especially with 1/1 Spirits assumed to be floating about). But 2/1 was shockingly good in this format. The lack of 1/3s & 2/3s meant that the 2/1s were every bit as good as the generic 2/2, plus you get to rummage! Having BTVs as built in flood insurance really helped aggro decks prevent one of their surest paths to defeat.
Similar story with Storm Strike. The +1/+0 and first strike was enough to reliably win most combats in this set (real lack of 4 toughness) and the scry 1 was just solid gravy. Add in the flexibility of a 1-mana trick and you had a card that I loved running multiples of.
PS: 1-mana tricks remain the gold standard
This was probably the most I’ve played a single set in a long time. I put a lot of time in! And I still only really learned how to draft one deck! It’s hard to learn decks. Only really got good at Gruul. As much as I like to theorycraft and listen to how to build good decks, there’s really no replacement for playing with the cards, getting a feel, and then getting a feel for what will wheel. Magic is hard.
Three-way tie for most drafted card. Aren’t they pretty? Sauroform Hybrid is a testament to how early I’ll take a card that will go into any deck with forests and be a reliable C+. Savage Smash is a solid removal spell that only really asks that you have a 2/2 in play: pretty manageable. The Axebane Beast is a funny third choice, since I would just scoop them up with my 13th-15th pick and occasionally play them! Obviously there were many better 4-drops in the set, but if the Frenzied Arynx’s never made it, you could throw in ol Axey and not feel too much shame.
So, I added a heuristic: never keep a hand that needs to draw particular color of mana to work. Assuming you have 8 sources, our friendly calculator puts us at 43% to draw one within two draw steps. It goes up to 57% percent with a third draw step added, but that can be dangerously deep into the game, especially if you’re on the play. Keep in mind I define “work” as “get something onto the battlefield”.
The second lesson is for me to aggressively mull hands in an aggro deck that are not exerting pressure. Once I had a hand that had four lands, a 4-drop, and two spells. In a Gruul deck. If this was a control deck, it’s a snap-keep. But I had an aggressive curve and doing nothing for three turns was almost a sure loss for me. Aggro decks often function best with virtual card advantage: killing your opponent while they still have cards left in their hand is the same as if they never drew them. Again, most decks are shades of midrange so don’t get carried away mulling TOO much. But the more you’re hoping to get work out of your 2-drops, the more you should mulligan hands without them.
Very weird draft. Pick 5 Savage Smash, Pick 6 Collision//Colossus cemented into gruul without any real countersignals. Green was dry, but BTV wheeled for me at pick 11 (!) so I was feeling pretty good. Maybe get some green in pack 2. But nay, no green there. Lots of Azorius! But then the Gruul dried up in pack 3 with Esper everywhere. I can’t really spot the missed signal.
The Benalish Daddies are BACK. We’re pioneering a new co-draft, where we draft and just play one game, then the other drafts and plays a game. Maximizes drafting and minimizes being trapped on the draw with a subpar deck. So let’s see how we did. Note how I apparently screwed up the portion of the screen to capture, emphasizing getting Chris’s rugged profile but cutting off about… 25% of the field. I did better on Chris’s draft though!
This was an interesting draft that I think speaks to the power of not overcommitting. It was a very murky first pack with some early gate payoffs and late blue playables, very little in the sense of “signals.” Then late Dovin’s Acuity and a pair of High Alerts put us in Azorius. I disagreed strongly with taking Windstorm Drake over Spirit of the Spires and I feel somewhat vindicated by the outcome.
Kind of a murky draft. The Lawmage’s Binding versus the CCDD Sphinx of New Prahv is an interesting P1p1 decision. I went with the more flexible removal. Then some blue, then a P1p5 Frenzied Arynx and P1p6 Grasping Thrull caused me to veer around a little but running Sphinx’s Insight at both P1p11 and P1p12 solidified in me in Azorius. I eventually pick up both a Dovin’s Acuity and a High Alert for a Azorius deck that is a little generic.
We’ve got two sets out of the return to the return to Ravnica, so it’s time to peer again at the basic land box and see what we want to put in. Neither Guilds nor Allegiance had basic lands in the packs, just guilds. So it’s a little tricky to find “basic lands”. But we have our ways.
First, Ravnica Allegiance had “Guild Weekends”. None of which I’ve ever seen but they do have a basic for each guild!
I’m not sure how I feel about the guild watermark flooding the box. The Gruul looks pretty sweet I admit (and I also like how it’s more than just a city tinted blue/green/etc.). I also badly need new plains that are more than just a flat landscape. Azorius looks good too. I’m not wild about the giant guild watermark in the box (though the ‘flaming tree’ is pretty sweet), might have to see how they look in real–
(record screech)
Whoa, GUILDS of Ravnica had these special basic lands too?
Wow, some of those are spectacular! I particularly like the Selesnya one, since its not just a ‘white-tinted cityscape’. That has always been my gripe with a lot of the Ravnica basic lands: they’re just a color-shaded skyline. But holy ground does often have well manicured lawns, so having that be the ‘plains’ is a pretty neat way of having the land be more than just a building.
Well that was easy.
Easy Bedeck in P1p1, then some good Gruul with a P1p4 Savage Smash and P1p5 Burning Tree Vandal feeling pretty good. I saw a late Slimebind and then was passed a Mass Manipulation in pack 2. Definite “Hmmm” moment where I explored a more of a blue base, but the lack of gates (and continued stream of Savage Smash cards) put me back on the Gruul train.
Interesting draft! Pretty good power cards early: Bedeck//Bedazzle, Consecrate//Consume and then a Skewer the Critics. From there the draft was pretty open. Was Skitter Eel a signal? No… So I veer around, grabbing a couple gates thinking Temur midrange… and then Gates Ablaze wheels at 14. I am… agog.
P2p1 was an interesting pick: Precognitive Preception vs. Troll-Bred Guardian. I think PP is more powerful in the vacuum, but where I was at (questionable mana strewn across three colors) made me pick the more sure-thing in TBG.
Gate payoffs come to me in pack 3, including a free Gateway Sneak. Rakdos was empty at the table, given how the Firewheeler wheeled (no pun intended, I promise) in pack 2, but I can’t see how I could have gotten in there.
A bit of a feels-bad-man draft. A late Depose // Deploy, followed by playable blue & white commons makes me think that Azorius is open. But the Sunder Shaman that I open in pack 2 wheels. It WHEELS. That makes me sad. Azorius feels a little cut on pack 2 but opens back up. Doesn’t feel like this deck got all the way there, though some beef with a Gate Colossus might help.
Benalish Dad 