I played a G/W aggro deck that blew everyone else out of the water, but it did have Garruk, Primal Hunter, Garruk's Packleader, and Oblivion Ring and a ton of good two-drops. Still, I think green is very strong and very deep in the format, and pairs up with nearly any color.
I've drafted almost every color combination with this set. All of the two color combinations are good. There are a few archetypes.
There's exalted, which is easy to draft, since you just take all the exalted cards. You want to be BW, but being BR or UB or something is fine. There's tokens, which is usally WR. Just generate a lot of creatures (Attended Knight is very good) and then use things like Glorious Charge and Trumpet Blast. Most of the cards you want wheel, so it's really easy to get pieces for it. There's mill, but there's only really one card in the archetype: Veldaken Entrancer. Draft a few in a slow control shell, and it's a pretty good win condition. There's the Archaeomancer deck. I've seen a lot of decks built around having multiples of that card.
Some color combinations support certain cards. For example, UW fliers plays Welkin Tern, but UB control does not. Some Rx decks want Mogg Flunkies, but many don't
The thing with draft metas, of course, is that the best deck is the one you can get good cards for. And that's going to be shaped by people's opinion of what the "best deck is" because if people think something is good they might try to draft it. So while UG was the "best deck" in AVR, once people started overdrafting it, it could be pretty terrible.
Still, in terms of raw potential, the best deck is probably BW exalted but not by a huge margin. this statistical overview is probably a good starting point seeing as it was done when the format was still new, so the meta reflected fundamental strength not people overdrafting what's perceived as the bewst deck.
To be honest, I think an insane deck if you get the cards would be the infinite Timberpack Wolf deck. If you can take them early and get lucky enough to snag 7 or 8 of them they could be pretty insane. I have tried once or twice (when I have taken one early and saw another one as my next pick) but sadly I only saw one more the entire draft.
Dropping those on turn 2, 3 and 4 would be insane.
So while UG was the "best deck" in AVR, once people started overdrafting it, it could be pretty terrible.
I don't know about that..even at the height of GU madness in AVR, I still drafted it all the time, and the finals would be the mirror almost every time. The rest of the colors were basically a joke, outside of some good white rares and homicidal seclusion. The red decks couldn't get past a geist trappers. Green was by far the best color -- so much so that a table could easily support three green drafters.
The thing about M13 is that there isn't really a consensus at all to what deck is best, much unlike AVR. I personally think that black is the best colour, and want to be BR or BU. However, WR tokens is a real deck (Trumpet Blast or no)and so is WB exalted to some degree (I think that people who say you should try to force either are wrong). I know quite a few people who think that UR is the best deck, but it's really pretty open. Blue can also do aggressive decks pretty easily - WU fliers being pretty good as always.
I've had the most success with U/B, W/B, and mono-R, in that specific order. I never like being in green in this format, but if I have to I vastly prefer to pair it with a good color, like black and occasionally blue (I had a sweet U/G control deck with 4 Entrancers the other day, for instance).
I've had the most success with U/B, W/B, and mono-R, in that specific order. I never like being in green in this format, but if I have to I vastly prefer to pair it with a good color, like black and occasionally blue (I had a sweet U/G control deck with 4 Entrancers the other day, for instance).
Yeah, I just won a draft with a pretty sweet UG brew. It's nice when you can get real value out of all of your elvish visionaries and whatever. Also, people need to stop passing me spelltwine. Getting to cast sleep, then sleep + searing spear is probably too good Or switcheroo number two and public execution...it's a sweet card.
To be honest, I think an insane deck if you get the cards would be the infinite Timberpack Wolf deck. If you can take them early and get lucky enough to snag 7 or 8 of them they could be pretty insane. I have tried once or twice (when I have taken one early and saw another one as my next pick) but sadly I only saw one more the entire draft.
Dropping those on turn 2, 3 and 4 would be insane.
The odds of there being seven or eight Timberpack Wolves in the draft is extremely low; on average there's about 2.5 in the entire 8-man draft. I'm sure that somewhere some guy has been in a draft where there really were just a ton of wolves and he managed to get them all, but it's such a longshot that you can't even really hope for it. (The good news is that Timberpack wolves aren't ruinously bad or anything even if you only end up with the one.)
The odds of there being seven or eight Timberpack Wolves in the draft is extremely low; on average there's about 2.5 in the entire 8-man draft. I'm sure that somewhere some guy has been in a draft where there really were just a ton of wolves and he managed to get them all, but it's such a longshot that you can't even really hope for it. (The good news is that Timberpack wolves aren't ruinously bad or anything even if you only end up with the one.)
This. It's a bear with a pretty slight upside, and picking it over an actively good common is pretty bad. Even with 2 other wolves, Sentinel Spider is likely better
Echo the sentiments about Spelltwine. Double sleep just wins games, you hardly need any pressure. It is dead a reasonable portion of the time, so some of the people I draft with have decided that it's a greedy card. I don't agree - free wins are free wins, and they happen pretty often.
UGWB are of equal strength to my knowledge. I try to stay out of R but it's a format where you get rewarded a lot by being monoR (Arm's Dealer (U), Goblin Battle Jester (U), Dragon Hatchling (C), Dragon Whelp (U), Wall of Fire (C), the R ring (U), Phoenix (R), Krenko (R)).
Interesting. I've found UBR to be the best colours, though not by too much. As some other people have said, green has pretty good cards but doesn't really play well. I'm hard pressed to come up with an explanation, but maybe it's just that green has much less play to it. Green can be beaten pretty easily by things like Mark of the Vampire.
White seems to be pretty gimmicky, with most of its good cards not being that great unless they're in a deck that has the cards to abuse them, and even then you have to draw the right mix.
This. It's a bear with a pretty slight upside, and picking it over an actively good common is pretty bad. Even with 2 other wolves, Sentinel Spider is likely better
Echo the sentiments about Spelltwine. Double sleep just wins games, you hardly need any pressure. It is dead a reasonable portion of the time, so some of the people I draft with have decided that it's a greedy card. I don't agree - free wins are free wins, and they happen pretty often.
It's something that *could* happen, but not often, lol.
Primal Huntbeast + Auras is pretty crazy too, green in general can have very nice starts (Arbor Elf -> Centaur Corsair -> 4 drop).
Won a game last night by assembling Voltron (Servant of Nefarox + Mark of the Vampire + +3/+1 Black Enchantment + Black ring), not exactly what I was intending to do but they had no way to remove it and chumpblocking a 13/9 lifelinker with regen is hard to race, lol. Again, certainly don't recommend loading up one creature with auras (unless its a primal huntbeast), but I didn't see any others and figured they would either remove it, or lose.
This format seems pretty well balanced to me with no color combination that's clearly the place to be. The strategies I've had the most success with have been:
-B/W Exalted. This was a bit overdrafted so I didn't get to try it at first but now that the set has been out a while I've got to play it a few times now and it has been very solid for me. Much of the cards you want are commons and it's not too difficult to assemble a halfway decent exalted deck out of those cards. Just watch out for cards like Chandra's Fury and Cower in Fear as they hose this deck badly. Fog Bank is pretty annoying too when you're on the exalted plan but at least B/W offers you a lot of removal options for it.
-B/R Aggro. This deck revolves around Crimson Muckwader. He's so damn good, I think he may even be better than Arctic Aven (which I would have thought would be a ludicrous statement when M13 came out but now I'm not so sure). Mogg Flunkies also fits into this strategy nicely and cards like Furnace Whelp, Bladetusk Boar, and Bloodhunter Bat in addition to red's burn spells give you some nice evasion/reach. This is about the only strategy that makes me actively want to be Red so if I see a Muckwader early I'll be more than happy to move in.
G/X Primadox. I've found white and black to be the best pairings for this deck. Getting a Primadox early makes it very easy to build around, and if you get two you've quite possibly got the best deck in the draft. Even just a single Visionary alongside him will bury your opponent before long. Green decks without Primadox work too though they're significantly better with him.
U/W fliers. I've had mixed results with this deck. Sometimes you just don't seem to get enough fliers to make it work (it seems like White got fewer fliers this time around though that may not actually be true). It's also annoying that your Stormfront Pegasus can't block this time around. Sometimes you get a nutty deck with boatloads of synergies. Switcheroo is at its best in this deck with cards like Attended Knight and Captain's Call available to you and the Call pairs well with Griffin Protector here too. Roaring Primadox has been a huge problem for this deck in my experience with the only actual answers being O-ring and counter spells. If you don't have either of those then U/W typically gets buried under him as the rest of your typical answers are laughable. Sentinel Spider and Deadly Recluse are also annoying though at least more answerable.
I'd consider those the best decks. Black paired with pretty much anything is typically solid and Black is so deep there are often 3+ black decks at a table. Still though I think just about anything can be viable if you draft/build well for your intended strategy. I won a draft today with a U/R durdle control deck that played a bunch of walls (2x Fog Bank, Wall of Fire, Entrancer), card draw, removal, and a few bombs for example and that was something I had never really thought could work before I tried it out.
My only suggestion -- try to stick to ally colors. Then you can take advantage of the Harbor Bandit cycle. They are all game-changing cards.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Some facts of magic:
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
-B/R Aggro. This deck revolves around Crimson Muckwader. He's so damn good, I think he may even be better than Arctic Aven (which I would have thought would be a ludicrous statement when M13 came out but now I'm not so sure).
Interesting that you pointed that out. I was having this exact conversation yesterday. I think you're completely right about that. I would actually give muckwader a slight edge, TBH. That being said, it's pretty close - it's really too close to call. However, those are certainly the two best of those, with probably harbor bandit coming in third.
I cannot believe this is coming from me but I have had the most Success with U/B. Granted everytime I have drafted blue black, I have been loaded with Sleeps, Nighthawks, Faerie Invaders (last U/B draft I had I got Nefarox, 3 Sleeps, 2 Nighthawks, 4 Faerie Invaders and two Talrand Invocation with an Archemance for value, very hard to lose with pulls like that).
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Some call it a Habit, Cardboard Crack Addict
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
Yea, those are MTG Bars. What can I say, I am a dork
I've had some decent success with U/B exalted/aggro ish. If you get a few kill spells and decent creatures it should be good.
I've gotten killed so many times by R/G aggro....There are some really strong creatures in the color and the little burn that red has is actually pretty strong. I'm going to try and make that deck work for me tomorrow ifthe cards are right. It's a really strong deck especially with the right creatures and Rancor...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Sig by myself! If you'd like a banner done, pm me! Avvie by DNC from Hero of the Planes Studio
-B/R Aggro. This deck revolves around Crimson Muckwader. He's so damn good, I think he may even be better than Arctic Aven (which I would have thought would be a ludicrous statement when M13 came out but now I'm not so sure).
Totally agree, I love me some Crimson Muckwader, he is an amazing dude and arguably best of the cycle (which I agree, is surprising). If I see him early I will take him and immediately move in on B/R aggro if I can. If I am in B/R the two creatures I want to see most are Crimson Muckwader and Vampire Nighthawk, if I get both then I know it's going to be a good night.
This format is nothing like AVR. In AVR it was almost always right to be in green. I don't think forcing GU was right but forcing Gx definitely was almost every draft.
ya, in AVR I found myself drafting either G or U every other draft.
I only got back into MTG with AVR so I'm a little behind the curve, but I find M13 to be much harder to read. The bigger variety in archtypes makes signals weirder because you can get passed some good stuff later. It also makes a lot more cards draftable (mind sculpt comes to mind), so while most of the time those will get passed there may be 1 guy looking to pick all those up and passing things like knight of glory or centaur courser.
In AVR the same cards got picked up early every time, so it'd be much easier to figure out what people are doing so you could plan later accordingly.
I'm not sure it's the best per-say, but I have by far the most fun with UB control. It's slow and durdley and feels so weird after the super aggressive last block but once you get into it it's just amazing. Playing control in a draft and having it actually be viable and work is really awesome.
I'd say the real reason it works is because of Archeomancer. Having that card at common lets you draft almost like you've got Snapcaster Mages in your deck. Any instant or sorcery you play becomes a very high cost flashback card when you have an Archeomancer in your hand.
Last night I came dangerously close to living the dream of casting the same Talrand's Invocation three times in the same game. It was swell.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
In Avacyn R/W human aggro and U/G Tempo fatties were the two standout builds and I was just wondering if there was anything comparable?
There's exalted, which is easy to draft, since you just take all the exalted cards. You want to be BW, but being BR or UB or something is fine. There's tokens, which is usally WR. Just generate a lot of creatures (Attended Knight is very good) and then use things like Glorious Charge and Trumpet Blast. Most of the cards you want wheel, so it's really easy to get pieces for it. There's mill, but there's only really one card in the archetype: Veldaken Entrancer. Draft a few in a slow control shell, and it's a pretty good win condition. There's the Archaeomancer deck. I've seen a lot of decks built around having multiples of that card.
Some color combinations support certain cards. For example, UW fliers plays Welkin Tern, but UB control does not. Some Rx decks want Mogg Flunkies, but many don't
Still, in terms of raw potential, the best deck is probably BW exalted but not by a huge margin. this statistical overview is probably a good starting point seeing as it was done when the format was still new, so the meta reflected fundamental strength not people overdrafting what's perceived as the bewst deck.
Dropping those on turn 2, 3 and 4 would be insane.
I don't know about that..even at the height of GU madness in AVR, I still drafted it all the time, and the finals would be the mirror almost every time. The rest of the colors were basically a joke, outside of some good white rares and homicidal seclusion. The red decks couldn't get past a geist trappers. Green was by far the best color -- so much so that a table could easily support three green drafters.
*DCI Rules Advisor*
Draft it on Cubetutor!
Yeah, I just won a draft with a pretty sweet UG brew. It's nice when you can get real value out of all of your elvish visionaries and whatever. Also, people need to stop passing me spelltwine. Getting to cast sleep, then sleep + searing spear is probably too good Or switcheroo number two and public execution...it's a sweet card.
*DCI Rules Advisor*
This. It's a bear with a pretty slight upside, and picking it over an actively good common is pretty bad. Even with 2 other wolves, Sentinel Spider is likely better
Echo the sentiments about Spelltwine. Double sleep just wins games, you hardly need any pressure. It is dead a reasonable portion of the time, so some of the people I draft with have decided that it's a greedy card. I don't agree - free wins are free wins, and they happen pretty often.
Draft it on Cubetutor!
Interesting. I've found UBR to be the best colours, though not by too much. As some other people have said, green has pretty good cards but doesn't really play well. I'm hard pressed to come up with an explanation, but maybe it's just that green has much less play to it. Green can be beaten pretty easily by things like Mark of the Vampire.
White seems to be pretty gimmicky, with most of its good cards not being that great unless they're in a deck that has the cards to abuse them, and even then you have to draw the right mix.
Draft it on Cubetutor!
It's something that *could* happen, but not often, lol.
Primal Huntbeast + Auras is pretty crazy too, green in general can have very nice starts (Arbor Elf -> Centaur Corsair -> 4 drop).
Won a game last night by assembling Voltron (Servant of Nefarox + Mark of the Vampire + +3/+1 Black Enchantment + Black ring), not exactly what I was intending to do but they had no way to remove it and chumpblocking a 13/9 lifelinker with regen is hard to race, lol. Again, certainly don't recommend loading up one creature with auras (unless its a primal huntbeast), but I didn't see any others and figured they would either remove it, or lose.
-B/W Exalted. This was a bit overdrafted so I didn't get to try it at first but now that the set has been out a while I've got to play it a few times now and it has been very solid for me. Much of the cards you want are commons and it's not too difficult to assemble a halfway decent exalted deck out of those cards. Just watch out for cards like Chandra's Fury and Cower in Fear as they hose this deck badly. Fog Bank is pretty annoying too when you're on the exalted plan but at least B/W offers you a lot of removal options for it.
-B/R Aggro. This deck revolves around Crimson Muckwader. He's so damn good, I think he may even be better than Arctic Aven (which I would have thought would be a ludicrous statement when M13 came out but now I'm not so sure). Mogg Flunkies also fits into this strategy nicely and cards like Furnace Whelp, Bladetusk Boar, and Bloodhunter Bat in addition to red's burn spells give you some nice evasion/reach. This is about the only strategy that makes me actively want to be Red so if I see a Muckwader early I'll be more than happy to move in.
G/X Primadox. I've found white and black to be the best pairings for this deck. Getting a Primadox early makes it very easy to build around, and if you get two you've quite possibly got the best deck in the draft. Even just a single Visionary alongside him will bury your opponent before long. Green decks without Primadox work too though they're significantly better with him.
U/W fliers. I've had mixed results with this deck. Sometimes you just don't seem to get enough fliers to make it work (it seems like White got fewer fliers this time around though that may not actually be true). It's also annoying that your Stormfront Pegasus can't block this time around. Sometimes you get a nutty deck with boatloads of synergies. Switcheroo is at its best in this deck with cards like Attended Knight and Captain's Call available to you and the Call pairs well with Griffin Protector here too. Roaring Primadox has been a huge problem for this deck in my experience with the only actual answers being O-ring and counter spells. If you don't have either of those then U/W typically gets buried under him as the rest of your typical answers are laughable. Sentinel Spider and Deadly Recluse are also annoying though at least more answerable.
I'd consider those the best decks. Black paired with pretty much anything is typically solid and Black is so deep there are often 3+ black decks at a table. Still though I think just about anything can be viable if you draft/build well for your intended strategy. I won a draft today with a U/R durdle control deck that played a bunch of walls (2x Fog Bank, Wall of Fire, Entrancer), card draw, removal, and a few bombs for example and that was something I had never really thought could work before I tried it out.
-Terror is an emotion which, when experienced, results in death.
-The pox was a disease notorious for having killed one-third, rounded up, of Europe’s population. Smallpox, on the other hand, killed only a single person.
-A person riding a horse cannot be stopped by foot soldiers, large animals, walls, archers, or even catapults.
More facts of magic
Interesting that you pointed that out. I was having this exact conversation yesterday. I think you're completely right about that. I would actually give muckwader a slight edge, TBH. That being said, it's pretty close - it's really too close to call. However, those are certainly the two best of those, with probably harbor bandit coming in third.
*DCI Rules Advisor*
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
I've gotten killed so many times by R/G aggro....There are some really strong creatures in the color and the little burn that red has is actually pretty strong. I'm going to try and make that deck work for me tomorrow ifthe cards are right. It's a really strong deck especially with the right creatures and Rancor...
Sig by myself! If you'd like a banner done, pm me! Avvie by DNC from Hero of the Planes Studio
Totally agree, I love me some Crimson Muckwader, he is an amazing dude and arguably best of the cycle (which I agree, is surprising). If I see him early I will take him and immediately move in on B/R aggro if I can. If I am in B/R the two creatures I want to see most are Crimson Muckwader and Vampire Nighthawk, if I get both then I know it's going to be a good night.
Dropping 3/3s on turn 2, then 3/3s or 4/4s on turn 3 is insane.
This format is nothing like AVR. In AVR it was almost always right to be in green. I don't think forcing GU was right but forcing Gx definitely was almost every draft.
I only got back into MTG with AVR so I'm a little behind the curve, but I find M13 to be much harder to read. The bigger variety in archtypes makes signals weirder because you can get passed some good stuff later. It also makes a lot more cards draftable (mind sculpt comes to mind), so while most of the time those will get passed there may be 1 guy looking to pick all those up and passing things like knight of glory or centaur courser.
In AVR the same cards got picked up early every time, so it'd be much easier to figure out what people are doing so you could plan later accordingly.
I think that had to do with there being roughly seven playable cards in the entire format
*DCI Rules Advisor*
I'd say the real reason it works is because of Archeomancer. Having that card at common lets you draft almost like you've got Snapcaster Mages in your deck. Any instant or sorcery you play becomes a very high cost flashback card when you have an Archeomancer in your hand.
Last night I came dangerously close to living the dream of casting the same Talrand's Invocation three times in the same game. It was swell.