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By: Gardevi, Lee McLeod
Dec 07 2011 12:46pm
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(Turn 1) Me: Island, go.
 
(Turn 1) Him: Mountain, go.
 
(Turn 2) Me: Island, Deranged Assistant, go.
 
(Turn 2) Him: Forest, Darkthicket Wolf
 
Me: "Great, now I have to play around Moonmist all game."
 

 
How did I reach that conclusion? Well, in draft, there's just no reason to draft R/G over another green or red pair. The two color just don't mesh all that well together - red is generally a weaker color than green, and all of the good red cards (Brimstone Volley) are splashable so you can pair green with white or black and splash the red cards you have. Therefore, there's no such thing as an "R/G Goodstuff" deck without an inordinate amount of rares. In order to draft a successful r/g deck, you need some sort of synergy, and the only overlapping theme in the two colors are werewolves.
 

 
Tormented Pariah
 

 
Strengths and Weaknesses
 

 
To be fair, this deck has more weaknesses than strengths; I would avoid drafting it unless it falls directly into my lap (eg, there's literally nothing else coming). Online especially, where you can't look around the table and see what Double-Faced Cards were opened. Basically, werewolves as a whole suck. Green ones are generally good, but the red ones are all very awful. Paying an extra mana for a Boros Recruit or Warpath Ghoul just feels bad. Reckless Waif doesn't even do anything if drawn past turn 3 or so. I'd go so far as to say that the secret to drafting R/G to best maximize your win percentage is to not draft it at all.
 

 
However, sometimes you just end up in R/G despite your good intentions. It usually happens slowly, such as being solidly in green pack 1 and then getting two Brimstone Volleys in pack 2, then getting a relatively late Daybreak Ranger. Other times, you just get cut from a couple colors and end up playing scraps from the weak packs. But going with red and green signals is usually a trap. Sure, you may end up with a decent deck, but your cards don't overlap strongly; your pile of cards will generally lose to any well-constructed and synergistic deck such as U/B Self-Mill or R/b aggro. So, what can we do to help mitigate the weaknesses of red/green? Drafting towards Moonmist is one of the most effective ways I've found
 

 
Kessig Wolf
 

 
Werewolves
 

 
There aren't many werewolves in Innistrad, so we can briefly discuss each of them. Luckily, there's a double faced card in each pack (sometimes two!) and the majority of DFCs are indeed werewolves, so you generally see a decent amount each draft. Werewolves mostly come in three flavors - bad (which are mostly red), good (which are mostly green), and rare (which are all windmill slams).
 

 
Your two drops are Village Ironsmith and Gatstaf Shepherd. Ironsmith is fairly mediocre; it barely has a board presence on its day side. Luckily, you get them pretty late, so you don't have to pick them highly. Shepherd, on the other hand, is probably the best werewolf you'll get. He's a grizzly bear, which are always fine in limited, but also gives you a 3/3 with evasion when he flips - much needed in the evasion-less colors of R/G.
 

 
The next pair is Villagers of Estwald and Tormented Pariah. They're basically clear mirrors of each other - one's a 2/3 that flips into a 4/6, and one's a 3/2 that flips into a 6/4. The main difference is in the mana cost - Villages is 3 and Pariah is 4. This is huge; Villagers on its day side is a fine card, getting virtually unstoppable in combat after it flips. Pariah, on the other hand, trades with just about everything, costs 4, and is one of the easiest flipped werewolves to deal with in combat - even Ironfang has first strike, after all. (Grizzled Outcast) is in the vein of Villagers - reasonable for its cost, but since that cost is five, you don't want to load up on too many of them.
 

 
The two remaining werewolves are both uncommons, and both pretty good. Ulvenwald Mystics is just a hill giant on its flip side, but hill giants always have solid board presence. And when she (they?) flip, it's just far harder to overcome than even a flipped Villagers of Estwald. Hanweir Watchkeep is the best of the red un/common werewolves, but as we've discussed, that's not saying much. Unflipped, Watchkeep isn't very good in an aggressive deck like R/G wants to be. Flipped, it's a giant 5/5 attacker that is hard to slow down. Granted, it does have the drawback of needing to attack every turn, but the times where that's bad for you are much less often than the times you'll just mow down their team.
 

 
Now that we know the werewolves, how do draft around them? The most obvious way is Moonmist.
 

 
Moonmist
 

 
With Moonmist, you can play out every one of your werewolves without worrying about whether you need to skip your turn in order to make them quite threatening. In addition, it's an insane combat trick - you can swing without fear into your opponent's team and then wait and see if you can blow them out with their own blocks.
 
It does have a few downsides - it's global. It will flip _everything_ on the board, even Thraben Sentry and Delver of Secrets (and, funnily enough, both of their flip sides).
 

 
But, it also helps out there werewolf buddies - the wolves. The red werewolves are all so mediocre, you may have wondered where the bulk of your creature base would come from, if not the red werewolves. The answer is Darkthicket Wolf and Kessig Wolf - two creatures that are reasonably costed and hard to deal with in combat. Feral Ridgewolf is also a consideration, but he's not on the level of the other two, and most times I would take just a werewolf over him, if there are any available.
 

 
Full Moon's Rise
 

 
Full Moon's Rise is a card that does not come up often, but it's not actually the worse. For the cost of the card it takes to cast, it automatically makes all of your werewolves actively good cards - 1R for a 2/1 first strike trampler? 2G for a 3/3 trampler? Sure! It gets even better when the werewolves flip (obviously). But it's generally worse than another creature for your deck, so I wouldn't mind picking it up late if I had a critical mass of werewolves, or if there wasn't a card in the pack for my deck. It also makes combat very difficult - since you can just regenerate all of your werewolves at any time, how does your opponent play around that? Not using removal on your creatures?
 

 
But, my favorite use for Full Moon's Rise has come up in exactly one draft, and it's been pretty much my favorite thing that I've done in Innistrad draft. I had about 5 Werewolves out to my opponent's B/W army of tokens. I can attack for a few trample damage per turn, but I'd lose most of my werewolves in the process. I topdeck Blasphemous Act, sacrifice Full Moon's Rise to regenerate all of my werewolves, then Wrath'd the board with Blasphemous Act. Doesn't come up all the time (or ever, really), but it feels *great* when it does.
 

 

 
Pick Orders
 

 
No pick orders this time, as you don't want to go into a draft thinking "time to force R/G". Just remember the respective value of each werewolf and wolf, and keep close watch over how many Moonmists are in the draft - they usually go pretty late.
 

 
Sample Draft
 

 

 
 

 

 
And that's Werewolves for you! Hopefully you won't end up in this archetype, but now you know what to do if things go awry!
 

 

 
Lee McLeod
 
@Gardevi on Twitter
Gard on MTGO

8 Comments

Why RG werewolves? by andreFM at Thu, 12/08/2011 - 07:41
andreFM's picture
2

Thanks for taking the time and effort to write this. I find archetype analysis and primers extremely useful, as I only play online and usually by the time new expansions hit MTGO, everyone else has become an expert in the format.

However, I must say why spend time covering an archetype which you clearly have an extreme dislike for? Why would someone want to read about an archetype that, according to you, is extremely weak? By reading this article I get the impression a primer isn't going to save you anyway, as it seems certain doom will fall on you if you happen to get caught in RG werewolves.

I mean this constructively, and have enjoyed your articles in the past. Keep it up!

unspeakable's picture

I enjoyed this article as well, and thought the approach for a relatively weak archetype was very sensible, with a good analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the common cards for this deck. The fact is, you don't always get the cards you want for one of the stronger archetypes, and it's good to have the skill to be able to make a solid deck with whatever is coming your way. I'm actually a little surprised that WOTC chose to provide relatively weak cards for the archetype that is most based on one of the flagship mechanics for this set - transform.

A couple additional comments on the werewolf deck. First, I'm starting to think that the feral ridgewolf isn't as bad as I first thought. The combination of trample and pump can provide the final, breakthrough damage needed to end a game in your favor with werewolves. That said, it's still definitely a late pick.

Second, one of the few times I ended up playing a R/G werewolf deck, my opponent had essentially the same thing, rendering all of my moonmists completely useless. That was quite irritating, and led to prompt removal of all of them to the sideboard.

Finally, a deck with multiple ironsmiths and reckless waifs is capable of blowing you out fast if you aren't able to play a spell on the first couple turns. This shouldn't happen often, but when it does it is a pretty savage beating.

I've played a few handfuls of by Elbinac at Thu, 12/08/2011 - 14:41
Elbinac's picture

I've played a few handfuls of drafts and so far my best results have been from boros like red/white weenie.
In that it's easy to draft several 2 drops that flip into 3 power beaters and plenty of 2-3 drop evasion.
With a little burn and some tapping/blocker prevention it can prove to be fast enough most of the time.

Blue/black in all forms seems over drafted and hard to build.

Blue/green has potential but seems to always be just one turn too slow, mayor and delver make a nice pair for an aggro start when it works though.

Have yet to have the cards for burning vengence or tokens come my way in draft.
They seem to get snapped up fast.

I would try this,the by BOBBAKAKE at Fri, 12/09/2011 - 01:12
BOBBAKAKE's picture

I would try this,the ironsmiths do work good if early, i just did that but w/ black. the green seems to be the color w/ the power in isd, spiders grasp is solid money because of all those pesky fliers and man there is alot of them. As far as the flip cards being weak that unspeakable said, I think that will change over the next expansions, only time will tell. See you in the future!

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