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By: a small child, Ralph Wiggum
Jul 23 2010 2:09am
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Welcome back, everyone. We've discussed most of the main archetypes in Rise draft already (with a few notable exceptions) but I've mostly been neglecting the archetypes that I consider to be "traps" in this format. They seem appealing to some players either because they are classic archetypes across formats or because they appear to do something well on the surface, but in reality they end up being very low value choices because of the nature of the format. What I'm going to do today is explore why you should avoid each of these decks. I know I'm asking to get sprayed down with a super soaker full of haterade here because I'm sure someone out there really wants these archetypes to work and maybe has even managed to win with them once or twice. I want to be perfectly clear that I'm not saying these strategies can't win -- they can. But more often than not that win is going to be due to luck of the draw, disparities in play skill between the drafter and his or her opponents, or lucky bombs. Even in this format if you draft enough "goodstuff" you can win -- but it's just a lot rarer in Rise than elsewhere.

Also, I'd like to clarify that even though I sometimes use the word "deck" to refer to an archetype, I am not referring to a specific decklist. This article is not about constructed and I'm not going to be providing decklists, especially for these stinkers. I actually think that posting winning decklists in an article series like this is actively counterproductive because you can't really copy them in a given draft and trying to derive additional information from just one decklist is really misleading. Every limited decklist contains a few rares and uncommons that you can't count on getting, and more importantly a winning decklist is going to be designed for that particular table and it's success will be partially derived from what everyone else was drafting. The next table you draft at will probably not be the same environment. It will be relatively close, most likely, but substantially different nevertheless.

Without further delay, I present to you:

 

Seven Archetypes to Avoid:

 

U/W Control:

If I'm going to make people angry I might as well just get in there, yeah? So lets start off by slaying a sacred cow. I think this is an archetype that wins matches but does not win drafts. That's a pretty difficult concept for beginning drafters to grasp, so I'm going to dwell on that for a moment. Just like in constructed, matchups are important. It's really common in constructed articles to see people talking about how some deck that they are introducing stacks up against the other important decks in the current metagame, often providing estimated percents based on some mixture of playtesting results and conjecture. In limited, you can't quite go into that much detail because there are many more unknown variables going into a particular draft than there are going into a constructed tournament. Rares and Mythics are extremely important to how the games play out but are also very unpredictable. That said, U/W Control is an excellent example of why talking about matchups in limited does matter.

See, it's not that U/W Control lacks the cards that make the archetype so successful in other draft formats. Good fliers? Check. Playable countermagic? Check. Surprisingly good removal? Check (I'm looking at you, Narcolepsy). The format even introduces the leveler mechanic, which can be played very effectively by a control strategy. After all, a classic problem for control decks has been the need to play creatures that don't really fit well into the game plan but are necessary for curve considerations. Levelers allow you to defend early with the same card that you win the game with late. The set provides some fantastic defensive creatures like Halimar Wavewatch and Guard Gomazoa who can really stop your opponent from being able to attack profitably. So why does this archetype suck? The answer is simple: a single cycle of common cards just shuts you down and there is nothing you can do about it. Of course, I'm talking about the invokers:

 

Lavafume InvokerWildheart InvokerDawnglare InvokerBloodrite Invoker

 

Ok, so Frostwind Invoker isn't actually a big problem but the rest very much are. Bloodrite Invoker may seem to be really expensive and inefficient, but it really doesn't feel that way when you are getting hit with a six point life swing every turn and can't do anything about it. Lavafume Invoker can be controlled by preventing them from building up a critical mass of creatures that can attack, but that isn't an easy task given the incredible token generation that's available in this set. Wildheart Invoker is a huge problem in that it makes combat in the late game impossible for you. You really have to have them on the back foot in order to beat an active Wildheart. To add insult to injury, you can't even use Domestication on this one. Of course, the biggest problem is Dawnglare Invoker, against whom your only real out is going to be to Regress their guy at the end of their turn, untap and attack for lethal. I suppose Reality Spasm could also work but that card is just so bad in this archetype in every other way that it's not likely to happen. Maybe your opponent will be dumb enough to run his invoker into a Puncturing Light but I doubt it.

Against this cycle, your only real recourse is to win before they become active (not easy for a deck that is designed to be a control deck!) or have All Is Dust. Domestication might work against some of them, but not all. Honestly, it's rare to see an archetype be so thoroughly shut down by a cycle of lowly commons like this but that is absolutely the case here.

So that is what I mean by the deck wins matches but doesn't win drafts. It has great game, really. It can probably beat anything... until you run into an invoker. And then you are just screwed. Because these cards are common, you WILL run into them at some point in the draft. I can't tell you how many times I've had what looked to be SICK U/W Control decks on paper (we're talking multiple copies of Narcolepsy, multiples of Hedron-Field Purists, etc.) that drew lots of frightened comments from my opponents only to see those decks absolutely collapse to a single Dawnglare Invoker.

 

B/W "Stuff"

As my label for this archetype implies, there is no real synergy between these two colors. Some people have grasped at the straws of a B/W Leveler deck, but that plan doesn't really work due to the lack of any support cards. You can get plenty of good levelers but the only real support card that you have access to is Time of Heroes, which is actually pretty bad with black levelers. You see, U/W Levelers can run a bunch of dudes out there and level them all up once pretty easily because most of their levelers can +1 for two to three mana. Zulaport Enforcer and Null Champion cost four and three mana respectively, making it much harder to run multiple guys out there and level them to get the most mileage out of the enchantment.

I will give this strategy one credit though: it does solve White's major problem in this format which is the inability to deal with utility creatures (see U/W Control above). Black removal helps a lot on that front. Beyond that, there is really very little to gain by pairing these colors together. Sure, if you open Gideon Jura and Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief you can win with B/W, but even then I think I'd rather just go B/G and "splash" the Gideon.

So in a way, B/W is the polar opposite of U/W Control. U/W Control does a lot well but has some crippling vulnerabilities. B/W doesn't have any particularly obvious vulnerabilities, but it doesn't really do anything special either. The likelihood that you will be totally cut off Blue, Red AND Green is very low. So just pick Black OR White and draft accordingly.

 

R/G Beats

Another classic archetype, R/G Beats is unfortunately obsoleted by Tokens and Ramp. Cards like Beastbreaker of Bala Ged are deceptive in this format because they would be so incredibly good in other formats but are a lot less good here simply because there are better strategies available. I'm not saying big breaks is a bad card -- it's quite good really -- but it would be a hell of a lot better in, say, Zendikar draft than it is here. R/G Beats wants to be aggressive, so it is forced to play cards like Grotag Siege-Runner instead of relying on the more powerful synergies of the Ramp and Tokens archetypes. It's also really, really easy to gum up the ground in this format which further takes the wind out of R/G Beats' sails. It's a shame really because a card like Prey's Vengeance would have a lot of value in a deck like this in most formats, but here it just falls flat.

 

R/W Falter

If you thought R/G Beats was bad, this deck is far worse. At least R/G Beats gets "tricked" into playing some good cards (it's hard to avoid playing good cards if you are in Green) while this just gets roped into maindecking a bunch of stinkers like Lone Missionary and Wrap in Flames. Don't get me wrong, Wrap in Flames is mighty find in the Kiln Fiend deck. But this is not the Kiln Fiend deck. I've seen people try to play a R/W Kiln Fiend deck several times and it's laughably bad. It's true that this format does have really efficient Red removal. You can play out some bears and then Flame Slash and Staggershock away your opponent's blockers. You might even beat them down pretty low -- but eventually they are going to take over with their superior cards. You can only blank so many 3/3's before your opponent sticks one and your 2/1's become completely useless. Or you can just get shut down on turn 3 by Halimar Wavewatch. It might seem like there are enough falter effects with cards like the aforementioned wrap and Emerge Unscathed offering two trips to the red zone, but there really aren't, and the card disadvantage will kill you.

 

R/x Vent Sentinel

This deck is a borderline call. I think that Vent Sentinel can be fine in a few strategies (which I will be discussing next week) but those decks aren't really Vent Sentinel decks. They are decks that just happen to run a fair number of defenders which in turn makes Vent Sentinel a viable but unnecessary finisher. When I talk about a real Vent Sentinel deck I refer to decks that are built explicitly around Vent Sentinel. I've seen a number of attempts to do this, often pairing Red with White and/or Green. The White decks are the most embarrassing -- they play Wall of Omens, which is fine, but then they often end up playing utter trash like (Stalwart Shieldbearers) and Ogre Sentry. Yeah, I thought sentry might be pretty good at first blush, but then when I realized that nobody in their right mind plans to actually swing with two power creatures I realized that he is almost a blank in many games. It gets even more awesome when they run out a Battle Rampart in a deck where nothing actually attacks. Things look grim when your opponent slams his Vent Sentinel down with four other defenders and a plan to end the game in short order ... but then you tap a black for Vendetta and your opponent's entire board goes back to doing absolutely nothing. When the Ulamog's Crushers start swinging in, it's over quickly. Or you could just fly over the defenders and win that way. Either way the archetype has no resilience to speak of and plays a LOT of bad cards in the hopes that by their powers combined they will do... something. Avoid, avoid, avoid! I'm not saying you should never draft a Vent Sentinel... just don't intentionally try to build a deck around it.

 

U/G Tempo

U/G Tempo is in a basket quite similar to R/G Beats. Both are decks that try to play early creatures and win through aggressive attack, the Blue version using bounce and countermagic while the Red version uses removal. Luckily for the U/G version, it doesn't have to compete with better same color archetypes like the R/G version does. You don't see true U/G Ramp decks very often (although it is possible!). Unfortunately, however, the U/G Tempo deck also has some major weaknesses that the R/G version does not have. Most glaringly, it folds to invokers much like U/W decks do. Granted, Leaf Arrow out of the board helps take out Dawnglare Invoker but the other invokers are still very problematic. You can splash for removal here which does help, but splashing in a tempo based deck is very risky as you are hoping to end the game early and are thus more sensitive to mana problems as you are both planning to see fewer cards and can less afford to stumble on mana early or spend time fixing your resources.

 

B/G Auras

The B/G Aura Gnarlid/Bramblesnap special basically just tries to make Demonic Appetite good. I've heard people theorizing about this possibility but never actually seen it tried. Honestly, it does sound at least a little bit plausible to me. Making your gnarlid a 6/6 for one mana is pretty awesome, and you should be able to produce a few spawns to sac away to keep the appetite going. If your opponent doesn't have an answer right away the game will end quickly. The main problem is that this deck has all the same vulnerabilities to removal that other Gnarlid builds have only without the benefit of totem armor. The size bonus is really explosive -- anyone who has seen a gnarlid strapped up with a Boar Umbra can attest to this -- but I really can't pretend that there isn't a huge risk involved. Of all the decks that I've mentioned today I think this one has the most potential although that isn't saying much. I'm not sure why you wouldn't just draft a straight Ramp or Tokens deck instead. But I suppose if you end up with a few gnarlids in your pile and the right cards for those two archetypes aren't coming, you can always snap up a few appetites super late and hope that it works! Just remember -- you will need token support as well. I wouldn't try to hybridize this with Bloodthrone Vampire too much simply because it will place too much strain on your tokens.

 

Wrapup

Given what I've said above, it's important to consider how we end up drafting these piles. I'll readily admit that I've been roped into trying some of these on more than one occasion with almost categorically disastrous results. I think some of these archetypes get tried because people just don't understand the format. R/G Beats, R/W Falter, B/G Auras and R/x Vent Sentinel all end up being drafted either because they look good (or at the very least look interesting) in the abstract or because the drafter doesn't really know what he's doing and tries tto draft something like R/G Ramp but doesn't quite know how to pull it all together. It's easy to avoid this trap just by swearing off drafting these decks and learning to draft other archetypes more precisely.

Other decks -- U/W Control, B/W Stuff, and U/G Tempo end up getting drafted because players get suckered into the relevant color combination with their first few picks. A player might start with a nice bomb like Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief and then get passed a pack that is devoid of playables except for Dawnglare Invoker. This kind of thing happens pretty frequently on MTGO (not sure about paper) simply because of the way the print runs work now. I've seen whole packs without any real playables in them. So the player correctly identifies the Dawnglare Invoker as not only the best card in the pack but the only playable card and takes it. Then he makes the mistake of thinking that he is in White and starts picking more White cards. Before you know it, he's committed himself to drafting B/W Stuff and substantially lowered his chances of winning. Instead, the correct strategy is to keep an open mind and think of the Dawnglare Invoker as a possible splash rather than a real pull into White. You really want to play Drana so you're committed to that -- but losing your second pick of the draft is really not a big deal. I've seen even very good pro players make this mistake, especially with U/W Control. It's hard to break the habit of drafting that deck and sometimes players go into autopilot after taking a Blue card first and a White card second but then not seeing the cards for the Leveler deck. Keep in mind that in some of these situations it's even best to pass a good card in a pack full of unplayables early. If you know you want to be in Black and plan on cutting it hard, passing good White cards can be just as effective as not passing Black if the guy to your left knows what he is doing. He will remember not to pair Black with White and as soon as he starts snapping up a couple of premium White cards he'll probably scramble for Blue and forget about taking any Black cards. It's risky to do this online when you don't know who is to your left and especially in non 8-4 queues which are more likely to have bad players in them, but it can definitely pay off.

So in general, following the draft strategy that I outlined early in this series of articles will help you avoid falling into the traps that are the above-mentioned archetypes. Take forks early but remember to keep your eye on ending up firmly in an archetype. Be willing to either pass better cards or take them and consider them for possible splashes rather than committing yourself to a color combination that lacks a playable archetype. If you can manage this strategy on a consistent basis you should rarely if ever find yourself stuck in a dead-end archetype.

Next week, I'll be discussing the most important of the remaining archetypes: U/x Mnemonic Wall.

1 Comments

The changes of the game has by jeffwedding2016 at Sun, 04/24/2016 - 00:32
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The changes of the game has something to do with the availability of the materials. People tend to seek for it as a matter of change to one on one. - Bobby Price