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In today's video, I'm playing my favorite deck in the game: Azorius Control in Explorer/Pioneer. This is a deck that I'm currently 13-4 with. That includes this video, a weekly tournament, playing on Arena, and going 4-2 in a 66-player RCQ (good enough for tenth place). Let's get go through the deck and break down the card selections.
Spot Removal and Sweepers
The hallmark of any good control deck is its removal suite. Our only spot removal spell other than Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is March of Otherworldly Light an excellent way to deal with Tokens as well as a way to get Fable of the Mirror Breaker's that slip through the cracks.
Supreme Verdict is the gold standard of sweepers in any Pioneer/Explorer Azorius Control deck. It is the best Wrath of God in the format. Honestly, this is one of those kinds of cards that doesn't need much explanation.
Farewell is an amazing sweeper because it can exile all Creatures, Artifacts, Enchantments, and Graveyards. It's Excellent against Rakdos Midrange and Mono-Green Devotion—the two most popular decks in the format. It's the kind of card you want to top deck to slam the door and win the game.
There was an error retrieving a chart for Farewell
On Temporary Lockdown
The newest inclusion in this deck is Temporary Lockdown. It's a sweeper that allows for so much flexibility. Against Rakdos Midrange, it hits a ton of permanents including Reckoner Bankbuster, Bloodtithe Harvester, Blood Tokens, Treasure Tokens, and Goblin Shaman Tokens created off of Fable of the Mirror Breaker. Needless to say, it's sensational against Rakdos but it's good in other matchups as well.
Against Rona Combo it hits almost every relevant permanent including Mox Amber, Rona, Herald of Invasion, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy // Jace, Telepath Unbound, and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy. In fact, in my RCQ I absolutely demolished my buddy Ben who was on Rona Combo. I cast Temporary Lockdown against him five times. Sorry, Ben... Additionally, it's incredible against Mono-White Humans. It hits nearly all of their creatures. It only misses Adeline, Resplendent Cathar and Brutal Cathar.
Lastly, and possibly most importantly right now, it is a slam dunk against the newest hot deck in Pioneer, Boros Convoke. It legitimately gets rid of every permanent other than their two big payoffs, Knight-Errant of Eos and Venerated Loxodon. This is the whole reason I switched to this version of Azorius Control.
Absorb is a card frequently mocked and ridiculed by Pioneer players. Yes, it's a Cancel but gaining three life isn't nothing. Not to mention it's an actual hard counter, which late game is invaluable.
Dovin's Veto is great against all the blue decks including the mirror and Izzet Creativity. It also has game against the most popular decks hitting Fable of the Mirror Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki in Rakdos Midrange and the Storm the Festivals and Planeswalkers of Mono-Green Devotion.
Lastly, Make Disappear is a card that is excellent early game and has some great synergies with Shark Typhoon and The Wandering Emperor. Being able to use the Casualty ability can make this a 'better' Mana Leak, and give it more use in the late game. You trim these on the draw but they certainly serve their purpose.
There was an error retrieving a chart for Make Disappear
The Draw Spells
Every Azorius Control Deck needs to have draw spells and typically card advantage spells. In this deck, we have four Memory Deluges this card is one of the best four mana 'draw' two cards we've seen in quite some time. It can catch us up when we're behind and it can slam the door if we're ahead. If you ever get to use the Flashback on it you get to look at the top seven cards. At that point, it almost always finds you what you need to stabilize or end the game. This is in my opinion the best option in the card advantage slot in the format.
There was an error retrieving a chart for Memory Deluge
Shark Typhoon is as good as it looks. Ever since this card was printed it has been a staple in not only Pioneer but also in Modern so you know this card is pushed. If you get to resolve it against a Rakdos Midrange opponent you are so far ahead...assuming you can cast a few non-creature spells that is. Typically though, this is a card that bridges you from the early to late game. Ultimately, it's a powerhouse and I could see the argument for adding another one to the main deck.
There was an error retrieving a chart for Shark Typhoon
The Planeswalkers
The Wandering Emporer is a card that from the day it was previewed I was excited to play in Azorius Control. Turns out I was right because this card does everything you want a white planeswalker to do in Control. It pressures opposing Planeswalkers, protects our life total while gaining us life, and does it all at instant speed. Absolute perfection!
Last, but certainly not least, is the face that runs the place—the best five-mana planeswalker ever printed: Teferi, Hero of Dominaria! Simply put this card is the reason to play the deck. It is the one card that opponents don't want to see resolve more than any other. Pairing this with a two-mana counterspell on turn five is exactly where you want to be in most cases. If you ever get to untap with it on the Battlefield you feel as if the hypothetical advantage bar slams in your favor. It's great in every match-up and one of my favorite cards of all time.
If you're looking to play a deck that rewards tight gameplay, knowledge of the format, and has amazing upside if you practice and learn your deck I couldn't recommend this Azorius Control deck in Pioneer or Explorer more. If you tune your sideboard for the anticipated meta I think this deck is a contender for the best deck in the format! Check out the gameplay video and don't forget to Like and Subscribe to the Quiet Speculation YouTube Channel!
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The hammer has dropped, and Standard will never again be the same. Good riddance, I say.
It would appear Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty was a touch too powerful, resulting in a clean sweep—all three newly banned cards are from this beloved set. Obviously, the announcement will have far-reaching effects on the Standard metagame. There will be a measurable impact on card prices as well. In fact, some of these moves have already begun…
Early Data Suggests You Should Sell the News
Before the banning, these three cards were dominant (and/or unfun to play against) in Standard. Reckoner Bankbuster was the most played card in Standard according to MTGStocks. Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki and Invoke Despair were number three and number eleven, respectively, on the list. Clearly, these cards were everywhere in Standard.
Just like that (*snaps fingers*), demand for these cards has dropped considerably. While Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki and Reckoner Bankbuster still see play in other formats like Pioneer and Modern, I still suspect there will be a measurable price decline for these three cards.
There was an error retrieving a chart for Invoke Despair
The decline in the price of Invoke Despair won’t be that significant, because its price was already low. The same cannot be said for the other two cards. Their price decline, especially Fable's will be more substantial.
Had you owned these cards on the day of the banning, the best course of action in the short term would have been to sell them immediately. Granted, that’s not easy to do right after a banning announcement because it's what everyone is trying to do. Card Kingdom still doesn’t have Fable on their buylist, and ABUGames dropped their buy price all the way to just a few bucks.
There’s little that can be done in this case. Unless you want to gamble and sell cards the day before a B&R announcement, at the risk of having to buy cards back that aren’t banned, you’re kind of stuck holding the bag. Even still, I suspect the price on these three cards will be even lower in another couple of weeks. At that point, we’ll see how much Pioneer and Modern demand hold up the prices of these competitive cards.
Neon Dynasty Ripple Effects
Fable of the Mirror Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki was one of the best cards to pull out of a booster pack of Neon Dynasty. I suspect it’ll remain one of the more popular pulls, but the EV will take a small hit from this banning. Reckoner Bankbuster’s decline will have a smaller impact, but it will also bring down the set’s EV a tad.
According to the EV calculations over at Dawnglare, the EV for Neon Dynasty was already dropping before the announcement.
The set’s expected value peaked around $111 back in mid-May and then started to decline. Could this decline reflect people selling cards in anticipation of them getting banned in Standard? It’s possible. Now the EV is down around $103, a 7.2% decline. $8 may not seem like a lot, but a 7% decline in EV over the course of just a few weeks is a noteworthy move.
Speaking of noteworthy moves, sealed booster boxes of Neon Dynasty have also retreated in price. These peaked at over $100 for a moment before dropping back down into the $90s. Beginning May 31st, however, booster boxes became available on TCGplayer for under $90. I don’t remember them ever being this cheap.
As a major fan of the Neon Dynasty Draft format, I welcome the chance to acquire another box or two at this discounted price. However, I am admittedly a little nervous that the sell-off isn’t over yet. I’ll be watching these listings closely to see what direction the price goes from here.
B&R Announcement Winners
The price moves above come as no surprise to the seasoned Magic player. Cards have been banned in sixty-card formats many times over the years. Every time it happens we see a short-term shock to the market as players react. Bannings spawn a boatload of selling as players race to unload their now-unplayable cards (in the given format they were banned in), leading to price declines (as seen above).
However, not every card is a loser when a banning announcement is made. Opportunity lies in the ability to anticipate which direction the Standard metagame will go next and to speculate on the staples of those decks accordingly.
I’m not going to boast any expertise in this area—once upon a time I was a mythic player on Arena and battled with the best of them, but this hasn’t been the case for a couple of years now.
One obvious winner is Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. At $65, however, it’s hard to see much upside for the card.
It doesn’t help that, while she dodged the ban hammer, Sheoldred lost a couple of good friends in Invoke Despair and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki. I don’t know if Rakdos, or black-based strategies in general, will be as dominant going forward. It’s hard to recommend buying copies of the most expensive card in Standard.
Scrolling through the lower portion of the most played cards list, you eventually get past the Rakdos cards and see some other possible contenders.
Atraxa, Grand Unifier was a popular choice at the last Pro Tour. The strategy paled in comparison to Rakdos, but perhaps the deck will become more popular going forward.
Leyline Binding may see more play if players eschew Rakdos for other colors, including white. If ramp strategies become more popular, Topiary Stomper could see more play. At just over a buck, these have little downside, to say the least. With the new, slower rotation schedule, the card will have more chances to impact Standard and climb in price.
Perhaps the best strategy would be to trade out of Blackcleave Cliffs and pick up other reprinted fast lands, such as Darkslick Shores or Seachrome Coast. These will all be playable in Standard for a couple of years now and may get harder to find when Phyrexia: All Will Be One packs aren’t opened as much.
Lands are often a safe play—their upside may be capped, but so is their downside. While we’re at it, all the tri-lands (e.g. Spara's Headquarters et al.) are also worth keeping an eye on.
My Feelings On Bannings
People have conflicting feelings about Standard bannings. On the one hand, it’s a reflection of some oversights made by Wizards of the Coast. It also likely represents an imbalance in the format. I for one believe we've been in a rather stale Standard environment for a while.
On the other hand, a shakeup of Standard leads to hope and excitement that things will be better going forward. We can all hope for greater diversity in the metagame, leading to a more enjoyable play experience overall.
Since I do play Standard on Arena on occasion, I would be lying if I said I didn’t care about these impacts. What I can say, however, is that the financial implications of a banning often excites me even more than the gameplay implications. With such a significant shakeup as the recent banning—three cards being banned simultaneously—the door has been opened for a shift in the metagame. This shift in the metagame will naturally lead to a shift in prices.
Shifting prices means an opportunity for financial gain.
While those who were holding the three banned cards into the announcement may have seen some depreciation, hopefully, that can be balanced by an increase in prices for other cards. For those who are intimately familiar with the Standard format, I suspect they’re the best people to follow for speculation suggestions.
Wrapping It Up
Transparently, the best I can do is review the most played cards list on MTGStocks and identify those that aren’t in Rakdos colors for their potential to climb in popularity. The tri-lands and the fast lands are probably the easiest targets for their low-risk / moderate reward potential. If I were to speculate on Standard (which I do very little these days), I’d start with those lands and then closely watch the metagame unfold for other potential ideas.
Things are about to get really dynamic for the next couple of weeks—no matter what happens, at least Standard will be interesting again!
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Blue and UB can be a great place to navigate our draft. When we start there, however, it is tempting to ignore other paths. A first pick is often hard to cast away, when it's a first pick in the best color, we're not just worried about losing the early rare, but the powerful commons we might see later.
While March of the Machine (MOM) has generally been kind to me, I have not been immune to one of Limited's most insidious traps: clinging to the best color.
Because there are so many good blue cards, we can tell ourselves that blue is open when really we're just seeing the debris breaking off from a good color. Pivoting is an essential skill for navigating draft, and pivoting off of the format's best color or archetype intensifies that struggle.
Best Red Deck vs. Decent Blue Deck
There's a case to be made that it's better to be one of the many blue decks than the open red (or non-blue) deck. The top commons seem to support this idea.
However, this doesn't take into account the context for this data. These cards contribute to winning decks. These numbers are averages, not promises of performance. This means that when players are picking these cards, there's a good chance they're playing them side by side with powerful rares and uncommons that help boost the overall win rates of the decks. If the color is overcrowded, we won't have access to those higher powered cards. So no, we shouldn't take Saiba Cryptomancer over Volcanic Spite and Final Flourish simply on the merits of GIH WR%.
Conversely, there might be good reasons to fight for a color. Say we're having success with a given archetype, particularly in the opening weeks of a format. If we know something they don't know, we'd be wise to leverage that advantage. Still, formats evolve because players learn, either from experience or other resources.
In the early days of MOM, we could collect Ephara's Dispersal and Invasion of Amonkhet // Lazotep Convert in multiples. Those days have mostly come and gone. If I'm drafting blue in MOM today, I'm expecting to fight over the color. So how do we know whether the fight is worth it?
The Reach and the Pull
In my most recent draft, I first-picked Hidetsugu and Kairi. It's a powerful card in the best color combination. What could go wrong? Second pick I took a Meeting of Minds. Third pick I took Eyes of Gitaxias. I wanted to stay in UB, so I tried to corner the market.
While both of these cards have a suitable win rate, they're not really cards I want to draft this early. I wasn't being pulled into blue; I was reaching. I wasn't responding to the signals of the draft. This was an attempt to protect my rare. Because blue is so deep, there's plenty to hold onto, but I wasn't building a strong deck. I was taking pieces and hoping things would open up later on.
The pieces I ended up takng weren't ideal. Had I seen strong uncommons or premium commons like Preening Champion, Ephara's Dispersal, or Deadly Derision, then staying in UB would make sense. Instead, I took second-tier commons. While all these cards have good win rates, the drop off between them is real. Meeting of Minds and Temporal Cleansing are a far cry from the actual best commons in the set.
Early Game and Synergy
It's hard to develop a clear plan when we're scrounging for scraps. When we look at a pack and see an abundance of options, we have the privilege of identifying the one that best fits our needs. Contested colors don't provide those options. You get what you get, and you (hopefully) don't get upset.
I drafted a lot of convoke early on. I hoped to see Ichor Drinker, Omen Hawker, and Captive Weird // Compleated Conjurer. But hope is hardly a plan. I ended up playing a reasonable, but clunky, UB deck with a middling power level.
Because of the inherent strength of the color pair, and because I opened an on-color bomb in pack three, I was able to build a competent deck. Still, it was clear that the colors weren't open. I needed to make adjustments based on some of the early data seen, and didn't because I was too eager to be UB.
Ambition the Angel?
When it comes to draft, we always have three options. We can stay the course, we can pivot, or we can absorb. The first major decision point I saw in the draft was an unconventional one. It came in pack three.
Phyrexian Awakening is a card that has played very well for me. A 4/4 vigilance is an extremely powerful body, and spreading that vigilance lets us pressure our opponents while still looking to play a long game. Instead of snapping up the enchantment,, I stayed the course with a good but not great blue card, Eyes of Gitaxias.
Even after that pick, I felt challenged by an even less conventional choice.
Alabaster Host Intercessor is a fine card. It's not as good as the card I selected, Eyes of Gitaxias, but it represents something much greater. While black had yet to yield a realistic option, white had shown multiple reasonable selections in picks three and four. Had I taken the Alabaster Host Intercessor, I would have given myself a chance to remain blue, but with more flexibility to incorporate the seemingly open white cards later on. While UW is primarily seen as a tempo archetype in this format, it can certainly play a more controlling strategy with counterspells, Cut Short, answers, and bigger threats.
While the white cards wouldn't have been committal it would have given me more flexibility. Hopefully I could still splash the bomb, but if not I'd at least be in an open color.
Sight Beyond Sight
Part of navigating drafts late in a format involves knowing the possibilities. The slower UW deck is not a common off-road, but UR Convoke is. Pack two offered us something I missed in the moment.
I was overjoyed to see my first premium black card, Deadly Derision, here in pack two. This would give me the support I needed to continue my dream of building a functional UB deck. Good ol' four-drops. Nothing beats four-drops.
But what else do we see? (Hint: It's another four-drop... sort of). In retrospect, I wish I'd considered Stoke the Flames. It's an off-color card, but it's not off-plan.
At this point, we already have three convoke cards. We haven't seen any premium blue cards, so it's unlikely we'll get Captive Weird; Ichor Drinker has been, thus far, MIA. Pivoting into UR opens up the possibility of leveraging Ral's Reinforcements as a high-value card available late in packs two and three. While we currently have little to support these convoke cards, red gives us the best option to do so. We can still try to splash our rare, but we don't have any real reason to be black besides the first pick.
Conclusions
Hindsight is 20/20. While I think staying blue in my seat may have been justifiable, staying black was clearly wrong. While I potentially could have splashed the rare, which I was lucky enough to open a second copy of, I should have been more ambitious and open-minded when it comes to navigating this draft. However, that can be a big ask when the winds of fate blow you towards the best archetype.
I could have supplemented the deck with a third color or pivoted into a different archetype had I not failed to read the signs. As my mediocre deck got to five wins, I think this represents an above-average outcome based on the controllable factors. I don't think it's a disaster to be UB. It's a powerful archetype for a reason. Both colors are deep, and though neither seemed particularly open, this pair offers a puncher's chance. Still, I wish I had been more ambitious. I think I could have done better.
I wanted to end with a note on the following graph. Noted MTG data analyst Sierkovitz tracked the changes in win percentages over each week. While UB has been the boogeyman of the format, in recent weeks it has experienced a severe drop-off.
The color has not gotten less powerful. The format has just evolved. The word is out on UB, and while the color is deep, it's a known quantity. People want these cards. The archetype has fallen closer to the rest of the pack as players fight over its pieces. So, make sure to read the draft, and not just assume that the deep colors will provide. The format is still evolving. Are you?
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My last article focused on the financial ramifications of Wizards of the Coast extending the life of Standard sets by an additional year. While digging for potential speculation targets I noticed many Innistrad: Midnight Hunt mythics were selling at bulk prices (defined as less than $1). This led me to look at all the Standard-legal sets and the price values of their mythics. Here's what I found:
Breakdown Of Mythic Value of Standard Sets
Mythic Valued Between
Set
Total # Of Mythics
$0-$1
$1.01-$2
$2.01-$3
$3.01-$4
$4.01-$5
$5+
Innistrad : Midnight Hunt
20
11
1
1
3
1
3
Innistrad : Crimson Vow
20
6
3
3
0
1
7
Kamigawa : Neon Dynasty
18
5
6
2
0
2
3
Streets of New Capenna
20
5
4
3
2
2
4
Dominaria United
20
6
4
2
1
1
6
The Brother's War
23
9
3
0
0
0
11
Phyrexia : All Will Be One
20
3
0
0
1
3
13
March of the Machine
20
3
2
1
2
0
12
This breakdown shows us that for all but the two latest sets, the majority of the mythics in each set are worth less than $5—in many cases, over half of a set's mythics are less than $3.
Mythic Valuations vs Expected Value
Now that we have broken down the Mythic valuations for each set, one would expect each set's estimated Return on Investment (ROI) to parallel this evaluation—given that mythics often carry the most value due to being a higher scarcity and higher power level. This means that if you have one set's mythics averaging $3 and another set's mythics averaging $15, it's logical to assume that the ROI for the first set would be lower than that of the second, (Note that none of this takes into account the fact that pull rates of a specific mythic are low).
Interestingly, the mythic valuations of each set do not correlate with the set's ROI. In fact, the boxes with the highest ROI are from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (of which 72% of its mythics are $3 or less). So what's going on here? Here's the expected value (EV) for every set currently in Standard:
Standard Set EV Breakdown (data taken from Dawnglare)
Set
Set EV
Innistrad : Crimson Vow
$68.84
Streets of New Capenna
$69.69
Innistrad : Midnight Hunt
$71.14
Dominaria United
$76.22
The Brother's War
$76.43
Phyrexia : All Will Be One
$77.53
March of the Machine
$104.12
Kamigawa : Neon Dynasty
$111.08
These Set EV calculations were done at TCGMarket pricing, incorporating the probability of each card opened in a given box of cards, and are not the cumulative valuation of the set as a whole. If mythic values are not what is determining set ROI, what is?
Breaking Down Standard
To figure out what is determining set ROI, I decided to take a look at the top six decks in Standard, and see which sets have the most played rares and mythics in the format. For this breakdown, I looked at the Standard Metagame breakdown for the top six decks in the format which account for 78.3% of the overall metagame off of MTG Goldfish. these decks are:
Rakdos Midrange
Grixis Midrange
Azorius Soldiers
4c Ramp
Mono-Red Aggro
Orzhov Midrange
I counted the number of rares and mythics from each deck per set and kept a cumulative tally. For the last two columns, I took the total number of rares from each set one could play; i.e. the total number of rares or mythics in the set multiplied by 4, and then divided that number by the rares or mythics that were shown in the first few columns. Here's the full breakdown of the rares and mythics in the top six decks in Standard:
Standard Metagame Breakdown
% Of Possible Played in Format
Set
Rares
Mythics
Total
Rares
Mythics
Innistrad : Crimson Vow
8
2
10
3.13%
2.50%
Streets of New Capenna
26
0
26
10.83%
0.00%
Innistrad : Midnight Hunt
24
4
28
9.38%
5.00%
Dominaria United
29
9
38
12.08%
11.25%
Phyrexia : All Will Be One
27
6
33
11.25%
7.50%
March of the Machine
18
4
22
7.50%
5.00%
Kamigawa : Neon Dynasty
48
4
52
20.34%
5.56%
The Brother's War
31
0
31
12.30%
0.00%
An interesting takeaway from this breakdown is the relatively small number of mythics being heavily played. I remember a lot of past Standard formats with a much higher mythic count in the top decks than this. Given the higher scarcity of mythics, those decks tended to cost more.
The number of rares in this breakdown which are mana-fixing lands, many of them reprints, is also interesting. Even including new lands like the SNC tri-lands, only a small handful have prices above $7. while this allows players the flexibility of playing top-tier decks without breaking the bank, which is a goal of Wizards of the Coast, I'm not sure that's the entire story. It's likely that part of the reason the cost is low is the lack of demand for staples due to the player base's limited interest in playing the format in paper. Whatever the reason, it is something else to take into account as we look at what sets are worth buying.
Set By Set Analysis
Now that we've looked at Standard as a whole, let's look at each of the Standard sets individually, and anything of note that might influence the decision to crack packs of the set.
Innistrad: Crimson Vow
This set has one of the lowest set EVs of any in Standard right now and the most valuable mythic is Toxrill, the Corrosive whose value is heavily tied to Commander. Toxrill aside, the set's only other valuable rare is Wedding Invitation. This is a set to avoid picking up packs or boxes of unless I desperately need to lose money quickly. This set has almost no representation in Standard. The only three rares I found in the top decks were Howlpack Pipers, a speculation target I called out a while ago, but that was only in the sideboard of the Naya Ramp deck.
SNC sports a whopping four mythics valued above $5. Despite this, the set's EV is only slightly better than Innstrad: Crimson Vow. It's another set I'm hesitant to pick up any sealed product from. The saving grace is that it completes the tri-land cycle, all of which are valued above $6.50 currently. If we look at the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoth triomes, all of those have a market price of over $12, which bodes well for the SNC Tri-land price floor.
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt
Of the two, Innistrad-based sets, this one has by far the most representation in Standard. That said, it has the lowest set EV currently in Standard and many bulk mythics. The slow land cycle is about the only thing propping up the value. Apart from the slow lands, Few cards in the set have found a home in Standard. There are some good Commander cards like Unnatural Growth, but all in all, I'm steering clear of picking up any of this set moving forward.
Dominaria United
Dominaria United only has two rares worth more than $5, Leyline Binding and Plaza of Heroes. Normally, I'd expect a set that has a lot of low-value mythics but a middle-of-the-pack set EV to include a few valuable rares. Obviously, this set does not. Instead, it looks like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is unfortunately single-handedly carrying the value of the set. Any box we open with her in it is a good box—any without her is atrocious. The set's rares and mythics are quite playable, and DMU has the highest representation of mythics in the Standard format. To be fair though, a good number of those were just copies of Sheoldred.
I'll be honest I almost forgot this set even existed until I got to the Standard Metagame breakdown. There is little of note outside of a few big splashy mythics like Portal to Phyrexia. The set EV is tied heavily to the mythics which are about 50/50 when it comes to being worth the price of the pack. There are very few rares of note from this set and many bulk rares. I'm not risking playing this pack lottery.
This set demonstrates the importance of having value in the regular rare slot. 65% of Phyrexia: All Will Be One's mythics are valued above $5, with two above $25 and two above $15. Despite these numbers, the Set EV is still under $80. This means that opening ONE packs is quite a gamble. You have to hit a high-value mythic or rarer variant to "make your money back." The set is well represented in playability, but it doesn't translate into value. Set EV-wise ONE compares well with Dominaria United which ironically has the inverse problem, with 70% of its mythics valued under $5.
March of the Machine
I think it's worth noting that while MOM has the second-highest set EV on this list and a substantial number of mythics above $5 in value, it is also very recent. It's the set that is currently part of a lot of local game store (LGS) drafts, meaning a lot of product will continue to flood the market over the next few months. This means the values of almost everything in the set will trend downward. MOM also has few cards in the current top decks, which doesn't bode well for long-term value.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
As mentioned earlier, this set has the highest set EV of any in Standard while also having a very low average mythic value. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone given this set brought us Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and the channel lands like Boseiju, Who Endures. In fact, if choosing packs to buy or pick up as prize support, I'm taking NEO. It's the set most likely to give me bang for my buck. Given what's been said it isn't that surprising to see that NEO has a significant amount of rares showing up in Standard but was tied for third regarding mythics. The only one of note was The Wandering Emperor.
Conclusions
I am never one to promote "cracking packs," as it is almost always a losing strategy. That said, if one were determined to buy packs to do so or had prize support packs to choose, the only set in Standard I would touch is Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. The set has a number of decent value rares, and the chances of getting something worth money are a lot higher than in every other set currently in Standard. I wouldn't fault anyone for buying up boxes of it at the current rate. There is a lot of value in the set and most of those valuable cards are playable in eternal formats. Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty feels like it's going to be one of those sets whose boxes go for $150+ a year or two after it rotates out of Standard.
NEO aside, it's important to note the other big takeaway of this exploration, which is just how bad the value is in most Standard boxes. Even stores that can likely get boxes between $76-$86 each can't justify cracking Standard-legal set boxes for single card inventory. I've been playing for a long time and I am having a hard time remembering a time when this many sets had EV values this low.
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Writer’s Note: According to my count, this week’s column marks my 600thMagic article! I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for nearly 12 years. Thank you all for continuing to read and appreciate my weekly content at Quiet Speculation!
“There’s no such thing as too much of a good thing.”
This quote must be pinned up all over Wizards of the Coast’s office, because they tend to create a brilliant, new product, sell through it, and then repeat the process numerous times over.
Remember when a masters set like Modern Masters was limited print run, difficult to find, and expensive to purchase? Holding booster boxes of the original set was easy money… until we saw a printing of Modern Masters 2, Modern Masters 3, Eternal Masters, Masters 25, etc. The concept of Masterpieces in sets helped fuel booster box sales... until they became a little too commonplace.
This week, I want to talk briefly about another concept that was hugely successful upon launch, but has since been done to excess: the Secret Lair series.
How many of these things actually exist? Are there any that grip my interest, and are possibly worth holding onto? Let’s dive in and find out!
Wait…There are How Many?!
The first thing I did as I began researching the Secret Lair series was looked up how many have been printed so far. My jaw dropped as I saw the final count, now totaling over 1000 cards!
By TCGplayer’s count, there are in fact over 1200 cards printed as part of a Secret Lair series of some kind. This is astronomically high—I was expecting the number to be like 100, but apparently there are many more of these than I could have possibly imagined!
Inspired by the Unhinged card R&D's Secret Lair, these products are Wizards’s foray into selling individual cards directly to consumers, thus enabling them to tap into the secondary market. I know there’s significant cost involved in developing these—they must pay artists to generate (gorgeous) artwork, develop the artwork files, and print the cards. However, once all this is said and done, they are left with minimal operating costs as they churn the printing presses and sell just a few individual cards for upwards of $30-$40.
In other words, their margins on these must be fantastic, a takeaway consistent with the fact that they continue to make so many of them!
I made an amusing observation about the collector card numbers associated with this product. It looks like when the earlier Secret Lairs came out (e.g., Bitterblossom Dreams and Eldraine Wonderland, in 2019), the collector numbers were three digits. Just three years later, however, a fourth digit had to be introduced, as Wizards of the Coast knew they would be exceeding the 1,000 mark.
By the end of the decade, I bet these have five digits.
Finding the Most Valuable Drops
Much like previously overdone product themes, the Secret Lair drop series has proliferated beyond what would be considered “rare.” At this point, with a few noteworthy exceptions, these products are fairly easy to track down on the secondary market.
At first, the special nature of this product may have commanded a hefty premium. But nowadays a particular Secret Lair’s price point depends on the contents within. I tried to search through TCGplayer and eBay to identify the most valuable Secret Lair drops, but the reality is the numbers are all over the place, and the product is so spread out that it’s difficult to be sure I’ve got all the data I need.
For example, a sort by price on TCGplayer indicates the OMG KITTIES! product is the most expensive, regularly selling for north of $200.
Okay, that seems reasonable; everyone loves a cute kitten.
Then I sorted by sold price on eBay and discovered there are other products, such as the From Cute to Brute Commander deck and The World’s Bundliest Bundle, that sell for even more.
Part of my confusion, I think, is that there is a difference between the traditional Secret Lair Drop and the Secret Lair Commander Series. This makes it even more complicated to search for particular sets or cards from this series, and I’m thoroughly confused by all the variants. To stay on top of all these products, you really have to be a major Secret Lair fan!
As for individual singles, MTG Stocks (a reflection of TCGplayer) shows the serial numbered Shivan Dragon Secret Lair drop to be the most valuable, with a market price of $2400! EBay corroborates this data point.
This Secret Lair product isn’t the same as the others, though—I believe this Shivan Dragon special was only given out at the large convention in Philadelphia some months ago. I don’t think this was a product that could be purchased directly from Wizards of the Coast’s website like their other Secret Lair drops.
That's just another layer mystifying the product lineup.
Majority vs. Minority
Navigating to the Secret Lair page on MTG Stocks and sorting by price will sort every card from most to least expensive. Doing this reveals the same result as observed above: the numbered Shivan Dragon rises to the top.
Following this card, the Secret Lair printing of Jace, the Mind Sculptor appears to be second-most expensive, with a market price of over $600. Number three on the list hits a paltry 10% of that, the Kodama's Reach card selling for around $60.
Talk about a steep drop!
Granted, there are some foil-only Secret Lair drops that can only be found when sorting by foil market price. Shadowborn Apostle falls into this category, with some variants (that’s right, there are multiple) selling for $100-$200. Even including these foils, only a couple are worth significant money.
In fact, as far as individual singles go, the vast majority are relatively inexpensive. Sure, there are plenty over $30 and still even more north of $20. Then there are pages and pages of Secret Lair cards worth $3-$20. Consider, for instance, the Secret Lair printing of Goblin Settler.
This card launched at a $10 price point, which is not too surprising. When brand new, these cards all carry a certain allure to them for their special artwork and exclusive nature. Once the secondary market gets ahold of them, however, market forces of supply and demand take over, and prices adjust rapidly. These can now be purchased for just a couple bucks.
Many of the Secret Lair singles follow a similar price trajectory. They may start strong at first, but if a card has lower demand and a lower power level, it’s very difficult for it to maintain the higher price point. Since there are tons of these “special” Secret Lair printings, any individual one isn’t really all that unique.
Again, it seems Wizards of the Coast may have printed too much of a good thing.
Wrapping It Up
What started out as a rarified group of cards, obtainable only for a limited time and from a certain website, has once again been overdone. I know I’m not the target audience for these cards, so my opinion is biased. (I do appreciate some of the creative artwork that accompanies some of these Secret Lair printings.)
Unfortunately, the novelty has lost its luster. Much like other special cards printed by Wizards of the Coast, these Secret Lair drops have become so numerous that it’s become impossible to keep track of them all. This means that many will be lost in the shuffle, leading to abysmal prices on those deemed most underwhelming.
If you’re in the market for such cards, then perhaps this excess is a boon—many such cards will become dirt cheap. For example, die-hard Rebecca Guay fans may rejoice that her beautifully done Muddle the Mixture has plummeted from $20 at release to a mere $2 on the secondary market.
It’s unlikely these fall much further, and at some point, they could gradually climb in price. But when it comes to speculating, my recommendation is to focus on the Secret Lair cards that resonate with you most, and ignore the financial side of the equation. As long as you’re focusing on some of the less-powerful cards, you can probably take your time and pick these up after their price settles lower, just like in the graph above.
I want to believe that these will become more collectible (read: valuable) in time. It may be worth dabbling here or there, but you’ll have to pick your spots very carefully. I suspect the vast majority of these cards will remain worth just a couple bucks for years to come. With how frequently new Secret Lair sets are printed, there will likely be many more of these over the coming years.
Do you have an all-time favorite Secret Lair drop? Or maybe one of those great artworks? Let me know in the comments!
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Normally, I don't pay attention to bannings outside Pioneer and Modern. I've got a brand to maintain. However, Monday's Standard ban is special because it comes with policy changes. Abandoning its current, highly flexible system, Wizards has decided to move to a structured system for its Banned and Restricted Announcements. This change carries huge implications for every format, and I'm not certain it will work as intended. The worst-case scenario looks like months on end of being stuck in formats as bad as... well, Standard.
Before diving into that, here's a Public Service Announcement: MTGO is having an All-Access Pass event for the next two weeks. $25 gets you access to almost every card in Magic until June 14. This is the best tool available for testing new decks or playing formats you'd otherwise never consider. I'm not being paid for this announcement; I just want more players to know so they can try Vintage. That room really needs some new blood.
The Context
This is not the first time Wizards has changed the timing on bannings. To the best of my knowledge, from the first banlist until 2017, there were four ban windows per year, one for each financial quarter. Then came Eldrazi Winter, where the problem cards were printed just after the winter window and Wizards had to wait until spring.
To avoid this problem, in January 2017, Wizards added a ban window after each set expansion and each Pro Tour. This was quickly revised that June, after Wizards had to emergency ban Felidar Guardian in April. For the next two years, Wizards's bannings could happen every few months as needed. By December 2019, the system was untenable, and Wizards went to bans happening whenever necessary.
The policy as of Monday is that there is one and only one officially scheduled ban announcement per year. It will be in early August, before the fall set's previews start. The intention is to have a big splash before the Standard rotation. There will also be emergency ban windows the third Monday after each set release. All of this is framed with Standard in mind, but affects all formats.
Why Now? Why Standard?
There was nothing inherently wrong with the fully flexible schedule that led to this change. I never heard anyone complain about it unless it was their deck getting banned unexpectedly. For some reason, some announcements were telegraphed in advance, and some weren't. I never knew why. No, Wizards is changing the ban timings to try and save Standard.
For those that don't know, paper Standard has been drying up for some time now. Once upon a time, Standard was the format for Friday Night Magic. Today, if I wanted to play Standard, there's only one Standard FNM in the entire Denver Metro Area. Aaron Forsythe asked Twitter about this problem back in November, and my response was typical of those given:
Standard's been dying at my LGS since 2018. Most common reasons are: 1. Why play in person when I can play Arena? 2. Standard is significantly more expensive over time than Modern or Pioneer. 3. Standard's gameplay has been mediocre at best for a while now.
Wizards can't just jettison Arena (even if it was the #1 reason respondents gave Aaron), and improving gameplay is always their goal, so they're working on problem #2. To address this, they've lengthened Standard's lifespan from two years to three and will be using regular ban data in place of rotation to refresh Standard every year. Now, the experiment begins.
Everyone Else
Wizards didn't address anything for non-Standard formats beyond this brief section:
Our goal is to make most of our format changes once a year for greater consistency. This announcement will happen annually before fall previews begin. This will not only include Standard but also Modern, Pioneer, Legacy, and Vintage.
In short, this is all being done with Standard in mind, and every other format Wizards manages (hi, Pauper) is just along for the ride. Wizards talked extensively about wanted to use the fall banning to get rid of strategies that dominate Standard for two years, to have a kind of soft rotation in addition to the actual rotation each fall. Whether that kind of philosophical change applies to other formats was left unsaid. We'll have to wait for the first of these scheduled ban days, August 7, to find out.
Gut Reaction
Standard isn't my specialty. I don't even play it anymore, so my opinion about the impact of those changes isn't really valid. Those more attuned to that world have been mostly positive about the changes. What's not being talked about are the impacts on the non-rotating formats. Most of that is Wizards being tight-lipped about any change in philosophy.
All of this could change once Wizards specifies how these changes impact not-Standard. However, given the stated policy change, I don't think this will work out as expected. It won't work out badly, necessarily, but there are problems with the stated plan that will have unexpected consequences should something happen outside of Standard. Non-rotating formats are quite complicated, and problems might not always be obvious in the planned timeframe.
The Pros
As with all new things, the pros and cons should be assessed. The biggest pro is the predictability of the new system. As I always have to stress in my Ban Watchlist articles, under the fully flexible system there was no way to know when or if a ban would happen. Sometimes, Wizards would give notice that a ban was incoming, but frequently we would just wake up to a ban on Monday.
Now, everyone knows or should know that nothing is planned to happen before August. Thus, players can have confidence that their cards will be playable and hold value for a certain period of time. This should increase both player confidence and investor confidence in the secondary market, which translates into more sales and interest in formats, which are good things.
The biggest effect will be on August 7. Under the current system, a card escaping an unannounced banning was no guarantee it wouldn't be banned in a month or two. Now, if a deck isn't banned in August, it's (presumably) safe for a whole year. That would cause more sales and deck building, so I'd have inventory ready well in advance for some big sales.
Mostly Normal
The other positive is that for the most part, this change in timing doesn't impact the cards that will actually be banned. For most of Modern's, Pioneer's, and Legacy's history, it has been obvious that cards will need to be banned. The only question was when. Think of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, Expressive Iteration, Lurrus of the Dream-Den, or Golgari Grave-Troll, all cards that had established themselves as clear problems well before the actual hammer dropped.
This also isn't going to affect the power-level bans. These are the cards that aren't exactly problems, but have been on top the metagame long enough to start feeling oppressive. The sort of ban that's Wizards saying, "You've had a good run, let someone else have a turn." The Splinter Twin, Birthing Pod, and Inverter of Truth bans. These tended to happen on a schedule anyway (for Modern it was January/February), so the day has moved, but not the run-up.
The Cons
The biggest con that I can see is that the inflexibility will lead to Wizards having to rush decisions. Contrary to what some online communities think, Wizards never wants to ban cards. The tale of their ban announcements has always been the desire to affect as few decks as possible and ban as few cards as possible. To accomplish this, Wizards has always had a "wait and see" approach while they gathered data and didn't act until the final hour.
Now, we run the risk of Wizards getting trigger happy (or gun-shy, depending) on the timing. If a problem emerges in late July, Wizards only has a few weeks to decide on a ban. If they don't, they'll either have to wait a year to ban it or use the emergency window, that they stated is for new cards causing problems on the level of Felidar. If it's not that level, but more like Arcum's Astrolabe, do they make us suffer longer take early, perhaps premature, action?
For example, Pioneer saw Boros Convoke explode last weekend. The deck is explosive and powerful and capable of building absurd boards on turn two. The comparisons to Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis were immediate and loud. Had this happened right before ban day, there'd have been enormous pressure to ban the deck, even though things are cooling off now. We've seen a similar spike and decline cycle with Death's Shadow in Modern, which became a healthy part of the metagame as soon as players learned how to deal with it.
The Emergency Window
The stated goal with the post-release window is to see if anything really broke Standard. They didn't say anything about other formats, so we have to assume that the philosophy will remain the same. The problem is that it takes longer for problems to emerge in non-Standard formats than in Standard because of the larger cardpool.
To continue my example, the card that made Convoke possible is Knight-Errant of Eos, printed in March of the Machines. It was released on April 21, almost exactly a whole month before Convoke emerged, and outside the emergency window. Had it been as dangerous as the initial takes suggested, would Wizards have simply waited and made Pioneer suffer because of their rigid policy?
Then there's the issue of cards emerging as problems after Ban Day. Is Wizards going to pull the trigger on a problem or just wait and see? They have a whole year to wait, and corporate culture tends to push towards waiting over action. Would Wizards wait a year on an Astrolabe-type problem card because it emerged as a problem in September and isn't Guardian-level busted?
For example, Krark-Clan Ironworks got the final piece of its puzzle with Aether Revolt in January 2017. The deck that would eventually get it banned didn't show up until April 2018 at GP Hartford. It wouldn't actually be banned until January 2019. That there was a problem was never clear thanks to lack of player adoption, not the usual data. How does the new system handle an Ironworks scenario?
Hogaak: A Case Study
Since Hogaak gets thrown around a lot, let's use the experience with that card to test how well the new system would have worked back then. Modern Horizons released on June 14, 2019. The first action taken against it was on July 8, when Bridge From Below was banned. Wizards didn't want to ban the new card, but the ridiculous combo had to go.
Initially, it looked like that was enough, and that Hogaak had died without Bridge. However, two weeks later, the beatdown version arrived and started taking over. For the rest of the summer, Modern players had to endure Hogaak, which wasn't banned until August 26.
The initial Bridge ban was three weeks and three days after Horizons released, or just outside the stated ban window. Whether Wizards would have acted earlier given the new system is unknowable. The final nail in the coffin wasn't delivered until well after the stated window for Ban Day. They waited that long to gather more data. The question Wizards needs to answer, therefore, is how their new policy will affect their predilection for waiting for data.
Bottom Line
I understand why Wizards is making this move. They need to do something to rescue paper Standard, and this might work. It certainly ticks all the boxes for a Standard-specific solution. However, they've left all the questions about non-Standard formats unanswered. If they have a different vision in mind for those formats, then all may be well. However, if they intend to treat them the same as Standard, there will be problems. As illustrated above, there are just too many possible fail cases for the new system in larger formats, and indeed examples of each from recent years jump to mind.
It's not that the change is inherently bad. Rather, it creates a lot of odd pressure on Wizards regarding ban timings. The structured emergency windows are targeted towards previous Standard problems, which tend to emerge quickly. In older formats, that isn't the case, and problems can easily, and frequently do, arise outside the intended windows. One size does not fit all.
The New Era
Wizards is choosing to end the era of uncertainty around banning windows for Standard's sake. That's fine, but it opens up the possibility of harming the non-Standard formats. Unless this new policy is accompanied by new policies and attitudes within Wizards, things could get complicated and ugly quickly. Hopefully, they've already thought this through and have a plan.
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In today's video, I play the newest addition to a deck that is already strongly positioned in the Pioneer and Explorer metagame: Mono-White Humans. Coppercoat Vanguard adds a new layer of aggression and protection to your band of aggressive Humans.
Starting things off we have Dauntless Bodyguard. While it's mostly here to protect our other more impactful creatures, it's a nice Savannah Lions with upside on turn one. Then we have Hopeful Initiate, an excellent card that is possibly our best play on turn one. It not only grows as you attack with creatures that are more powerful than it, but it can also remove counters from itself and others to destroy pesky enchantments such as Fable of the Mirror Breaker and slain Old-Growth Troll's. Lastly, in the one-drop suite of creatures, we have Recruitment Officer. Much like Dauntless Bodyguard, it is a fine Savannah Lions on turn one but shines in the late game against Control and Midrange strategies. Paying four mana to grab a creature that is three mana or less is massive for any beatdown deck. Giving the deck a late-game reach on a power level similar strategies haven't had access to in the game's history.
The Two-Drops
The two's are where things get spicy. Leading the charge, we have our newest addition and the reason I wanted to play the deck: Coppercoat Vanguard. It's the perfect card in this slot. It punishes slow starts and greedy mana bases playing lots of tapped lands while also protecting your team. Not to brag, but I really think I nailed it on the head saying in my Top 5 Cards from Aftermath piece that this is the best card in the set. Next up is Luminarch Aspirant. This card is so flexible. Playing it on turn two when you got to play a one-drop on turn one is everything you want to be doing in this deck. It's also among the better top decks late-game, giving you an extra point of attacking power to finish off those close games.
What hasn't been said about Thalia, Guardian of Thraben? It's one of the most powerful two-mana white creatures in the game. It is an absolute nightmare for Azorius Control pilots, and quite strong in any matchup where they want to resolve expensive Planeswalkers or big game-ending instants and sorceries. Overall, Thalia is the G.O.A.T. when it comes to White Beatdown decks. Lastly, we have the absolute best top deck in most situations Thalia's Lieutenant. This card is amazing, period. It grows your team and grows itself every time another Human enters the battlefield. It truly is an absolute All-Star in this deck.
So if the two drops are the spice in this deck the three drops are certainly the hammer that can slam the door in most matchups. Brutal Cathar // Moonrage Brute is exactly that, absolutely brutal. It can use its enters the battlefield ability multiple times if you can switch between night and day in a single game. It also flips into Moonrage Brute which can be punishing for opponents to deal with.
Lastly the biggest and best attacker in the deck, Adeline, Resplendent Cathar. This card grows as your team does. It makes your opponents attacking more difficult thanks to having Vigilance. Something small, but comes up more often than you would imagine, is attacking with Thalia's Lieutenant while Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is on the Battlefield. It puts a +1/+1 Counter on Thalia's Lieutenant at instant speed which can mess up combat math for your opponent. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is pound-for-pound the most powerful card in the deck and can swing a game singlehandedly.
In my opinion, this deck has become a significant player in Pioneer and Explorer thanks to the addition of Coppercoat Vanguard. Not to say that it wasn't powerful before, but with Vanguard, this deck can now roll with the other big dogs in the format like Mono-Green Devotion and Rakdos Midrange. It's a deck that you should consider if have an RCQ or big paper tournament coming up.
Looking to play a great deck with a fast clock that has the staying power to grind close games? You should give Mono-White Humans a spin! Check out the gameplay video and don't forget to Like and Subscribe to the YouTube Channel!
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Today Wizards of the Coast announced a series of bans affecting Standard and a change in philosophy regarding how bannings are enacted. Three cards were banned from Standard today as part of the announcement including Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, Invoke Despair, and Reckoner Bankbuster. The bans will take effect for tabletop and MTGO on May 29, 2023, and for Arena on May 30, 2023.
In addition to the Standard bans, Wizards also announced a change to their philosophy behind how bannings are enacted.
Beyond Today's Bannings
The first annual banned and restricted announcement under the new system is set to take place August 7, 2023, just prior to the start of Wilds of Eldraine preview season. For more info on today's bannings and the changes to Wizards' policies surrounding bannings, check out the full announcement. What do you think of today's bans? The changes to Wizards' ban philosophy? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.
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I've had my Arena account for over four years. I've put money into it twice. The first time was the five-dollar Welcome Bundle. The second time was to purchase gems before 2019's GP New Jersey, so I could squeeze in a little extra Ravnica Allegiance Sealed practice. The secret to playing free Magic isn't just collecting trophies. Rather, it's playing Par Magic.
What Is Par Magic?
While our gold supply will increase through Daily Quests, getting four wins (1400 gems) or five wins (1600 gems) represents a break-even point for entering a draft (1500 gems). In my circles, we refer to these parity drafts as playing Par Magic. It's how I grind to Mythic each month, and how we manage to continue playing Arena without investing a cent. It's how we go infinite.
This week, rather than dedicating an article to one specific observation , I wanted to take a broader approach. We'll focus on my most recent decks and the lessons and observations that naturally come from them. This is a new approach for me, and I look forward to hearing feedback on the value it provides or interest it generates.
Red Runs Rampant
In the first deck of our session, I was presented with an interesting pick.
A month ago, I would have leaned into the power. Borborygmos and Fblthp wins games by itself. This reflected the mentality that first defined the format. Instead, I selected Xerex Strobe-Knight. This is still a Prince Format, but we need to approach drafts with discipline if we're going to win consistently.
With the legend, I would have tried to get deep into blue, preferably leaning towards green's natural ability to splash and adding in some other cards worth splashing for. If all things went according to plan, the deck would've been powerful, albeit messy. However, this requires good fixing and cards worth splashing.
These types of high-risk, high-reward lines run antithesis to the concept of Par Magic. That idealized image of a draft would be a strong contender for a trophy. But the odds of a trainwreck are equally realistic. The Knight puts me in the format's deepest color, with particularly powerful uses in both UW Knights and Hopper Aggro. These reflect strong fundamentals that are easy to abandon when we lazily label a format "Prince" and forsake all agency that a given draft offers.
For pick three, I was given an absolute gift: Voldaren Thrillseeker. While red has struggled in the format, this is a card I would gladly snap up first pick. It's a powerful and dynamic tool, and even better than that, it's an enormous sign that red is open. Spoiler alert: it was.
In the draft I bobbed between different Jeskai configurations, but the flow of red cards in pack three made UR an easy choice.
Avoiding Red Is a Mistake
We want to be in the open color. This often remains true even if the color is significantly weaker than other options. This is the case in March of the Machine (MOM) for two major reasons.
First, the format is dense with higher-rarity cards. The Multiverse Legends and Battle slots offer more rares, which can warp the power-level of our draft. If we're the only red drafter, we're going to get all of those. In this draft I got a pack three, pick five Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer into a pick six Rampaging Raptor and a pick eight Khenra Spellspear // Gitaxian Spellstalker. I was willing to splash the Thrillseeker, but with these pickups a more streamlined build became optimal.
Secondly, this format is slow enough to accommodate splashing. If we put feelers into red and identify a few powerful cards, but simply don't see enough powerful red cards, we have outs to splash. I considered this option, but settled on a clean UR deck that used convoke to leverage aggressive threats.
Ultimately, the deck proved a little torn between being aggressive, utilizing convoke synergy pieces, and just playing a bigger gameplan. It had a muddy gameplan offset by high card quality. Still, it was able to get to six wins, with what I think represents a pretty well-navigated par draft.
Between pressuring opponents with a fast start and generating advantage in the late-game with Jin-Gitaxis and Compleation of Towashi, the deck went 6-1 into losing double boss battles, first to a Polukranos Reborn // Polukranos, Engine of Ruin and then to a busted GW counters. Still, that's great Par Magic, baby!
Building Around a Mythic
In the next draft, I opened a P1P1 bomb.
Elesh Norn is independently a strong card, but optimizing it requires some deliberate deck building. It's definitely a strong top-end threat in Hopper Aggro, as that deck has a ton of cheap creatures. Additionally, a WB build offers Unseal the Necropolis and Ichor Drinker to fuel and protect this engine. Yes, basically any white deck would make good use of it, but I wanted to draft with optimization in mind. While the 3/5 vigilance is a good body and the static is powerful, especially in aggressive decks, I wanted to "do the thing."
Second pick was more difficult than it looked. While Umori, the Collector was clearly the most powerful option, Ichor Drinker, Unseal the Necropolis, and even Aerial Boost were all closer to what I envisioned for the deck. Still, this early in the draft, it felt like poor judgement to overlook such a clear gap in power. I took the Umori, and remain confident it was the right pick.
Following the pick, I made selections that drove us towards one of those two ideal homes for Elesh Norn and ultimately WB seemed to be reasonably open. I was able to secure Unseal the Necropolis, and even got a late Halo Hopper which struck me as an interesting card for the deck, as both white and black have one-drops I wanted to play. Knowing what I know now, I could have leaned towards splashing blue and moved away from some of the aggressive cards. While optimizing Elesh Norn makes sense, I think I could have accommodated the Halo Forager and Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths. Chalk it up to overcommitting.
I would argue that it's a bad sign when a deck is running both Aerial Boost and Unseal the Necropolis. They point in two very different directions. Aggressive decks are going to lean towards certain card choices in hopes that more of those cards will be available. More value-driven strategies do the same thing. Here, I found myself caught between what white is trying to do in the format and what black is trying to do in the format. There's not a lot of overlap, and that's why WB is the worst-performing color pair.
As a result, I tried to make some interesting pieces work. Horobi, Death's Wail turned all of our back-up creatures into Ravenous Chupacabra. The cheap creatures fueled Firja, Judge of Valor, but too often I found myself grinding into a late-game where I was the underdog. Ultimately, the draft didn't come together. Many synergies, while somewhat mismatched, were able to pull me to Par Magic. Plus, when it came to Elesh Norn, I definitely got to do the thing, in one game even grinding out an opponent with multiple flips.
Ugh... Gruul
Gruul is easily my least-favorite color pair in the format. It's not the worst, but it's the one I work hardest to avoid. Is there a single interesting green common in the entire set? When paired with Red, you're often just beating down without the upside of the aggression you get in RW. Still, if we're going to play Par Magic, we have to know when it's time to go RG. My feelings made this pick more difficult than it should have been:
There are definitely some strong blue cards in this pack, but Kogla and Yidaro is completely busted. It's often the most important spell cast in any game. It's a 7/7 that comes with the modality of being a burn spell or a removal spell, or even a Slice in Twain if the situation calls for it. The blue options are nice, but in my opinion wrong.
After the pick, I tried to navigate towards Jund. I hoped that black would let me grind and provide access to removal. I wanted more versatility than RG would offer, but the cards just weren't there.
I wasn't able to generate a fast enough start to dominate all the matchups. When I fell behind it became very difficult to overcome our opponents' card advantage, except via Kogla and Yidaro. Kogla and Yidaro don't really care about card advantage.
However, in games where I did get ahead, the onslaught of triple Chomping Kavu and double Fearless Skald pressured opponents winningly. Opponents could generate value, but this deck made the game about life totals.
I punted one game because I forgot to Volcanic Spite a Portent Tracker on my turn. As a result, it was able to untap Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle, allowing them to triple spell on turn four. I knew immediately that missing that play would lead to a loss.
While I dislike the colors, they were the natural landing spot for this draft. Sometimes maximizing our wins means taking what the table has to give. In this case it yielded a very powerful RG deck and I got to bully some opponents for wins.
Lessons from Par Magic
We can't always trophy our drafts, and while I would never suggest one should lower their expectations, learning to appreciate our accomplishments is extremely valuable. More pragmatic than that, if we can maintain Par Magic, our drafts will pay for themselves as our rank moves us towards Mythic.
But playing Par Magic demands that we handle the draft with both a plan and flexibility. Once I draft my first card, a plan starts to form. What colors do I want to pair this card with? How committed am I to these visions I'm starting to form? We answer these questions based on data points that flow through the draft. Each choice helps us guide towards the eventual landing point, but also helps us envision our realities with increasing clarity while we disqualify other options. That's how any good drafter approaches deck-building, but if our goal is to consistently achieve high results, we need to make each decision with fidelity.
So until next time, I'll be doing my best to optimize each decision, and continuing to play Par Magic. And hopefully snagging some trophies along the way.
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Pioneer, I need to level with you. While I have never actually understood what you're supposed to be, I thought I had a handle on what you actually were. The metagame data seemed to back up my assessment. However, as another Pioneer RCQ season kicks off and I'm watching other players preparing for the Dallas RC, I'm getting increasingly frustrated by all the curveballs being thrown to me. Pioneer, you have an identity problem, and one deck is a huge beneficiary of that fact.
Format Frustration
Look, I've tried to be on Pioneer's side, but it's getting harder and harder the more I play the format. I know that it isn't Modern and accept that it isn't even Modern-lite. Pioneer is closer to Standard-plus, which isn't a pro for me as I don't like Standard. However, understanding that made me more tolerant of what Pioneer has to offer. However, as testing progresses, the experience is increasingly just this Tweet:
The search for any human being who likes any single Pioneer deck continues. Will they ever be found?
Other than the odd player playing some off-meta jank, nobody I talk to ever gives a full-throated defense of their deck or Pioneer, never mind an exaltation. I've repeatedly asked players why they play Pioneer, but it's always 1) It's cheaper than Modern or 2) Because that's what the RCQ season is. I never get anyone saying they actually like Pioneer for its own sake anymore.
There used to be some at my LGS, but they've stopped showing up to weekly Pioneer events. I don't know why, but this does seem to be a trend:
Do players not like pioneer? NRG had 20 less players for Saturday's 10k vs Sunday's 5k. Maybe players really love modern? Just find itvreally interesting.
I know there are many confounding variables surrounding tournament attendance, but I do consistently hear the same thing. Given a choice between Pioneer and anything else, most players pick anything else. Which further contributes to Pioneer's stagnation from lack of new ideas and brews.
The Off-Metagame
To make things worse, I don't see anyone winning in paper with the supposed "good decks" of Pioneer. I realize that this is selection bias, but I've never been to a Pioneer RCQ in the past year where an ostensible "best deck" won. It's either been off-meta decks like Enigmatic Incarnation or on-meta but supposedly ill-positioned deck like UW Control and at my most recent RCQ, Humans.
While this can happen in any format and for any event, it happens regularly enough in my Pioneer experience that it's starting to feel more like a feature than a bug. I vividly remember one player who entered a Pioneer RCQ I atteneded with Izzet Phoenix, confidently stating that his deck was favored against the expected meta. He proceeded to hit nothing but, and I quote "terrible off-metagame jank" (meaning decks he wasn't expecting) and dropped at 1-3.
I've had similar experiences of entering a room full of control, combo, and midrange and hitting nothing but aggro decks. That's just the Pairings God hating you. However, again, there does appear to be a theme of local RCQs having an expressed metagame, and then an actual one made of unexpected decks.
The Coin-Flip Problem
The really big frustration has been playing on the draw. It is well established that being on the play is better than the draw 99% of the time because tempo advantage is better than card advantage. However, I constantly hear that the disparity is worse in Pioneer than other formats. I constantly hear complaints from players testing for Dallas is that their deck is phenomenal on the play and worthless on the draw.
I don't know if the claim is true, or even provable. I do know that the removal available to Pioneer is worse than other non-rotating formats. This coupled with mana being relatively worse means that stumbles are punished more severely. Pioneer is also a format where threats are generally more powerful than spells. Thus, it makes sense that the active players have a large advantage, and that's frustrating.
The Consistency Problem
On the note of mana being worse, decks are a lot more inconsistent in Pioneer than elsewhere. No format can match Legacy's deck smoothing, but Wizards has been freer with cantrips than they used to be. Look at Modern today versus five years ago. That said, I've heard from actual Standard players that they think Pioneer is less consistent than Standard, which makes everything feel worse.
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I can't really explain why this is the case. However, I have seen it in action. The Izzet Phoenix player I mentioned a few paragraphs ago had claimed that much of his deck's power came from it being more consistent than other decks thanks to all the cantrips he played. The problem was that while the deck did filter through itself well, the initial starts were always slow, and he couldn't catch up after falling behind.
There seems to be something in how Pioneer decks are built compared to Standard or Modern where the delta between their best games, average games, and their worst. I definitely feel the difference between Pioneer and Modern, but I just have to take Standard's word on the subject. Given that it seems widespread (or at least is about complained to me universally), this seems to be a feature of Pioneer.
The Matchup Spread
The final, nearly universal complaint I've heard and felt in testing Pioneer is matchups are extremely polarized. Decks don't appear to have a normal matchup spread. Instead, they seem to wax from very good to very bad. For example, I haven't lost to UW Control playing UW Spirits since adopting [card]Invasion of Gobakhan // Lightshield Array/card]. However, I'm a complete dog to any aggro deck.
I've experienced this with other decks, and had many others complained about to me. Sideboard cards are generally weaker in Pioneer than Modern or Legacy because Wizards consciously powered down hate cards over the past five years. Thus, there are few silver bullets that can turn a matchup around by themselves, meaning that the matchup doesn't change as much between games 1 and 2.
Along with weaker hate cards comes better answers to the hate that exists. Theoretically, Archon of Emeria and Deafening Silence kill Lotus Field combo. However, Otawara, Soaring City is maindeckable and dodges both cards restrictions while answering them. It being harder to hate decks out means that bad matchups stay bad which makes pairings more deterministic of outcome.
The Exception
For all those reasons, I and a lot of players I know are getting really frustrated with Pioneer. It feels like everything is bad and there's no way to fix things if the pairings are against you. However, there is an exception. I've never heard anyone say that Rakdos Rock is a bad deck. Plenty have said it's a mediocre deck in a field of bad decks, but never that it's bad itself. Which probably explains why it's top deck in the metagame.
It's strange to consider, but Rock has just been sitting on top of Pioneer's metagame since last summer. I remember everyone freaking out about Mono-Green Devotion, but the bottom line is that every site's stats have Rakdos on top by a wide margin. I finally put it together after seeing a Discord post saying, "Pioneer wants me to play Rakdos, so fine, so I'll just play Rakdos!"
It feels obvious, and I even mentioned this in another article, but Rakdos just seems to be exempt from the usual complaints about Pioneer decks. Blood tokens and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki smooth out draws better than other decks, the matchup delta seems lower, and it has game against everything. When everything's bad, the least bad is by default good.
Beating the System
The biggest key to this status is that Rakdos doesn't have any deck that it's truly bad against. Thoughtseize is live in any matchup, after all. It's been said repeatedly that it's a 50% against everything deck and I've no evidence to contradict the claim. In a format where decks are mostly 80/20 in one matchup and 20/80 in another, 50/50 means that every matchup is actually winnable.
This solves not only the matchup spread problem but the off-meta problem. It doesn't matter what deck it hits, Rakdos will always be in the game. Its cards aren't especially specialized or context specific, they're just the best available cards at their mana points. The only times that Rakdos will have dead cards are late-game discard or removal against Lotus Field. Again, that's better than most decks can say.
That isn't to say that Rakdos is perfectly 50/50 against everything. I'm told that Enigmatic Incarnation and Gruul Vehicles are very bad matchups. Thing is, neither deck are big players in the metagame. Meanwhile, Rakdos has even to good matchups against the more popular decks, which is all that's really needed.
Play/Draw Defied
In my experience, Rakdos is also the deck least affected by the play/draw disparity in Pioneer. Obviously, it still wants to play first, but it does play better from behind than most other Pioneer decks. On the play it wants to curve Thoughtseize into Bloodtithe Harvester and Fable. On the draw, that is still a solid curve against control or combo. If instead it's against aggro, Rakdos can happily play Fatal Push, Stomp, and Kolaghan's Command.
I don't know of another deck as comfortable on the draw as Rakdos. Every other deck really feels the missing tempo, but Rakdos can tweak its role better than any other deck. Consequently, it has no issue starting out behind. It will just play out removal and eventually its card quality and card advantage will pull it through. In a format that many claim is coin-flip dependent, Rakdos' defiance is a huge advantage.
Sounds Familiar
All of this sounds really familiar. It's almost exactly what players used to say about Modern Jund. From when Modern was new up untilDeath's Shadow became a thing, Jund was a fixture of Modern, and it played the same way as Pioneer Rakdos now does. Jund never did the most powerful thing in Modern. It just did something decent every game and could play against anything.
Jund's entire gameplan was to overpower its opponents by simply being more efficient. Its card quality was slightly better than every other deck, so it just traded up until the opponent couldn't anymore and then won. That is essentially all that Rakdos is doing now. The format composition was also similar in that the power was fairly low across the board and so individual cardpower was critical.
Disconcerting Realization
So, if pre-2017 Jund and current Pioneer Rakdos are similar, what does that say about their respective formats? The implication here is that this style of deck thrives in an environment where it's just slightly better than everything else rather than being good itself. Looking at how Modern's powerlevel started to spread out and get more good cards after 2017 where Jund declined certainly lends credence.
Pioneer is still in its relative infancy, so it makes sense that card power is all over the place. It also makes sense that playing the deck where card power is concentrated would be a strong strategy. However, I'm now having to deal with the implication that Modern was kinda bad for a long time and that freaks me out.
Pushing on Ahead
What that means for my RCQ testing and others RC testing is that it's time to adjust expectations. I used to deal with the Jund-defined Modern by going off-metagame and wonky, so maybe it's time to do that again. Certainly, I'll be applying lessons from old Modern to Pioneer testing to test out my theory. If it works, then I'll finally be satisfied that I understand Pioneer. Otherwise, back to the drawing board.
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In today's video I try to play Narset, Enlightened Exile in Izzet Pyro, an established deck in Explorer. Izzet Pyro is already a pretty good deck in the format. Is stretching the manabase from Izzet colors to Jeskai colors worth it?
In addition to Narset, adding a third color also gives us access to a card that has incredible synergy with the deck. Monastery Mentor is a card that I revere. In a Pre-Modern Horizons 2 format, it saw a fair share of play in Modern Azorius Control sideboards. I'm hopeful in this deck it can be an all-star. Additionally, I'm trying Secluded Courtyard as the deck doesn't play any white spells other than Divine Smite which is in the sideboard.
The rest of the decklist is pretty stock. The philosophy is a classic strategy: play Young Pyromancers and/or Third Path Iconoclasts and cheap spells to amass an overwhelming board and get your opponent's life to zero.
Is Narset Actually Good?
Well, that's what I want to find out. In testing with this deck this week for this video it seems that Narset, Enlightened Exile is extremely good when you're ahead. Getting to Power Word Kill your opponent's blockers before they get a chance to block is pretty amazing. Additionally getting to cast Canoptek Scarab Swarms and Considers for free to grow your attackers only to draw into removal or Meeting of Minds which you can immediately cast off of the Tokens that your Young Pyromancers created off of the free Canoptek Scarab Swarm you just cast is extremely strong.
If you want to play a fun take on an already established deck this might be the deck for you! Check out the gameplay video and don't forget to Like and Subscribe to the YouTube Channel!
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I've dedicated most of my content for QS over the years to topics related to Magic finance. It's no surprise—given the focus of this website when I first started writing here—and my own mindset when approaching the game. When I engage with this hobby, card values, pricing fluctuations, reprints, the Reserved List, and a myriad of similar things are always on my mind.
One subject I’ve virtually never written about though, is one of my favorite ways to actually play Magic: Limited (Draft, in particular).
That changes today! After a bumpy start, I've grown to enjoy March of the Machine Draft. Through a little practice, some podcast listening, and a deliberate desire to win more games, I’ve slowly improved my MOM Draft performance.
This week, I wanted to touch on a few changes I’ve made to my strategy/thought process, harvesting my 17lands.com play data to showcase a couple of board-state examples. These changes helped me go from multiple dismal Draft performances to trophying in Platinum.
Let Your Counterspells Be Good
I’ve seen all sorts of Counterspell variants in Limited over the years. Some are particularly strong in their respective formats like Make Disappear in Streets of New Capenna (SNC), and now Artistic Refusal in MOM. In other formats like The Brothers' War (BRO), counterspells were more lukewarm in power. No matter the format, an unexpected counterspell used at the right time can be backbreaking in a best-of-one game. Up until recently, the part I struggled with was figuring out when was “the right time.”
In some cases, I would tap out too frequently, leaving myself vulnerable to opposing bombs while sitting there with an uncastable counter in my hand. This is especially important in formats like March of the Machine with its numerous bombs. Holding a counterspell and being unable to cast it on my opponent’s Boon-Bringer Valkyrie or Sunfall is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in this format.
Here’s the deck I trophied with recently, jamming a basic UW Knights build with very little as far as bombs go. Lurrus of the Dream-Den was more powerful for what it threatened to do, rather than anything it actually did in my games.
Because my deck was so low-to-the-ground, I often found myself slightly ahead in the early turns. Once I had even the slightest edge, I deliberately left up two mana for my Assimilate Essence and Negate to protect my advantage. Being selective in what I countered and didn’t counter, allowed me to maximize the power of these cards.
An Aside on Negate
This was the first time I included Negate in my deck and it was an absolute all-star.
The reason Negate was so instrumental to this deck’s success is twofold. First, I believe this format has enough powerful non-creature cards to merit main decking. Between battles, convoking combat tricks, powerful removal spells, card draw spells, etc., having a Negate in hand gives a warm and fuzzy feeling throughout the game.
Second, I had ample creatures to gum up the board. I wasn’t as concerned with most creatures my opponents could put into play. If my opponent did have a creature bomb, I had the two Assimilate Essence to hopefully counter them. The non-creature spells were what concerned me most, and that’s where Negate came into play.
In one game, I was pressing an advantage in the air when my opponent put Kitesail on the stack. I negated the spell and proceeded to win with flying creatures.
My favorite play, however, came in my fifth game against BG. I had the chance to add to my board presence and cast Stasis Field to hinder my opponent and press my advantage. Instead, I held up Negate as a precaution.
It didn’t pay out immediately, but just two turns later I was handsomely rewarded for my clever play.
My opponent cast an end-of-turn Vanquish the Weak on my Marshal of Zhalfir and I nearly countered it. I reminded myself that, while the Marshal was pumping some of my team, it wasn’t the reason I was winning the game. My flying creatures were the key to victory. I let the removal spell resolve.
I tend to get a little trigger-happy in Limited games of Magic. If I have a removal spell, I tend to fire it off on the first juicy target I see. I cast combat tricks as soon as I have the chance to generate a favorable attack. As I mentioned before, I tend to cast my countermagic as soon as I have a viable target.
I’m convinced these behaviors have been a detriment to my win rate. Recently, I've tried making improvements in my decision process.
The example above is one case where I exercised some discipline and saved my interactive spells for the truly problematic cards—cards I wouldn’t be able to deal with otherwise.
I was able to identify exactly what cards I needed to worry about because I had developed a strategy for my deck, and then stuck to it. In the case of this UW deck, I knew flying creatures, partnered with some strategically cast counterspells, were my primary method of winning. Therefore, I maintained the discipline to worry less about cards my opponents cast that didn’t hinder my goals.
My most recent deck is a well-tuned UB build with two copies of Invasion of Amonkhet and one Invasion of Kamigawa. I don’t have any rare bombs, but I did manage to draft two copies of Grafted Butcher. Here’s the list:
My primary strategy for this deck is leveraging unblockable abilities in Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive and Expedition Lookout to flip my powerful battles, generate card advantage, and eventually push through lethal damage. The list is light on removal, so I’m leaning pretty heavily on the two Temporal Cleansing and Wicked Slumber to provide sufficient tempo against my opponent to further the battle-flipping goal.
In one game I had with this deck, I made multiple tough blocking decisions in early turns in order to achieve my goals. I knew that if I could get this game to go into double-digit turns, I’d be able to turn my battles into card advantage. As a result, I made some necessary chump-blocking decisions to keep things from running away from me.
While this block looked clunky, I knew I’d soon be flipping my own battle and harnessing some card advantage shortly thereafter. I also had a disruption spell in Temporal Cleansing should I need to buy more time.
The game remained close until the end, but a blunder on my opponent’s behalf led to their ultimate defeat.
Slowing Down The Pace of Play
The last strategy I’ve begun implementing is more about general play style than a Magic-specific idea. For the most part, I’ve done my best to slow my pace of play in order to allow myself more time to think through my decisions.
There’s no reward for playing as quickly as possible. I'll admit that often, my first inclination isn’t the best in-game decision. By deliberately slowing my pace, I’ve allowed myself more time to think through components of a decision that I historically would not have considered.
For example, I’ve begun thinking through what my opponents could have in their hands as far as interaction goes. Do they have that Ephara's Dispersal in hand? Will I mind if they do use the bounce spell on my creature? Could they have Cut Short? Should I play around that?
I’ve also given myself more time to plan my reactions to opponent decisions. This is showcased in my Negate example, where I thoroughly scrutinized the impact my opponent’s play would have on the game before choosing to respond. If an opponent puts a spell on the stack that is more annoying than problematic, I’m more inclined to let it resolve—especially if I have sufficient power in my hand to respond on a subsequent turn.
This brings me to another benefit of slowing down: improving my ability to plan multiple turns out. Instead of just firing off the best creature in my hand each turn, I have chosen to hold certain resources back when I need to keep up the option to interact. This format is slow enough that holding up countermagic or other interactive spells (thereby not maximizing your mana each turn) isn’t overly punishing. By recognizing this, I’ve been able to make wiser decisions throughout my games.
In the example below, I recognized that an aggressive use of Wicked Slumber meant I could flip my Invasion of Amonkhet on turn four, leading to a 5/5 flying Oculus Whelp for my opponent to deal with.
It turns out they did have a way to deal with the creature, but not until after I cast the second Invasion of Amonkhet and flipped it into a second 5/5 flying Oculus Whelp. By then it was too much for my opponent. My plan had been successfully enacted, leading to victory.
Wrapping It Up
I don’t claim to be a top-tier Limited player—far from it. I do love the format though, and I try to spend my gold and gems on drafts whenever I have enough to spend.
Unfortunately, I quickly ran out of said resources this month when I recklessly barged into a couple of drafts, ill-prepared. I don’t think I was drafting bad decks—rather, I suspect my gameplay needed some desperate sharpening. After listening to more Limited podcasts (I enjoy Lords of Limited and Limited Resources in particular), and deliberately transforming my gameplay, I started seeing more success.
Some of these strategic decisions may be obvious to a season Limited player. To a newer player, or to an experienced player who is struggling, these actions may prove highly beneficial. For me, learning the strength of countermagic, learning how to maximize these interactive spells (including Negate), knowing my strategy up front, and making gameplay decisions that align specifically with this strategy have all led me to an increased win rate.
Perhaps the overarching theme around it all is simply my decision to slow down my pace of play and think more carefully about my in-game decisions. It’s this move to a more deliberate play style that could be boosting my win rate most of all.
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March of the Machine (MOM) will be remembered for its bombs. We've talked about it as a Prince Format for the last few weeks, and while that definition shouldn't evoke the abominations of decades past, the high quantity of rares make it hard to label it anything but.
That said, this is a format where synergies still thrive. Early on, we labeled UW Knights as the most supported archetype. It probably still is. However, UW Convoke, hereafter lovingly referred to as Hopper Aggro, is another great way to approach the format when we're not seeing a stream of broken rares.
I first discovered the deck watching Twitch Streamer and Pro Tour Competitor The Ham pilot it to success. Having long considered the namesake card Halo Hopper unplayable, I needed to know more. To say this card goes late is an understatement. With an ALSA of 8.78, 17Lands has it a mere eight spots from the last picked card in the entire format. If we want the frog, it's ours. But making the frog hop is another thing all together.
What is Hopper Aggro?
Hopper Aggro is a UW Convoke deck that utilizes an aggressive start to manufacture a big board presence. With combat tricks and tempo plays, it's easy to finish off unexpected opponents. The removal in the format is not well set up to defend against this. The removal spells in the most commonly played colors are great for eliminating the huge bombs that have defined the meta. Good for them. We got Frogs.
Taking turn four off to kill a 3/2 that cost us zero mana after we first resolved a Preening Champion in the same turn is not a winning play. It is, however, one opponents may need to make if they're on the backfoot against this deck.
While this deck doesn't have the highest power level in the format, it provides pressure that many decks are too slow to combat.
One-Drops Wanted
One-drops are essential to this strategy. If we want to play Halo Hopper before turn three, we need a one-drop, and any one drop will get that done. There is, however, a hierarchy to which ones we want.
Tarkir Duneshaper // Burnished Dunestomper and Captive Weird // Compleated Conjurer are by far our best options. When I'm in this deck, there is usually an early Weird that got me on the path. The synergy with Weird is nice because we don't lose damage when we tap it for mana, and when it flips, it offers us a reasonable creature and a card to boot.
The more of these flipping one-drops we have, the better Omen Hawker gets. We don't really want to play any Incubate tokens because they're just too slow. If we get dragged into a midrange configuration, we're likely to get wiped out. We're not against playing a copy or two of Order of the Mirror // Order of the Alabaster Host, and this helps there as well, but ultimately there's a cap on its usefulness.
In my less-successful ventures with this deck, I've been forced to settle on Enduring Bondwarden. It's a necessary evil and a really bad top-deck, but it is a one-drop.
These are the kind of starts that make the deck feel great. We can't do any of this without one-drops.
Of Jetpacks and Flying Rhinos
Aerial Boost is not a card I ranked highly when the set released. It's currently white's top-performing common, and this deck loves a jetpack. Because we're playing such a high creature count in these decks, this card provides reliable burst damage. Occasionally it's the reach we're looking for to close out a game, but sometimes we just draw three and we can jump creatures over for consecutive turns and that's game.
Originally when building this deck, I was leaning on Thunderhead Squadron as a finisher. It's important to remember that this is an aggressive deck, and while we're good at ramping, we don't want a clunky card to eventually close out the game. We want to push damage without losing tempo.
Astral Wingspan is powerful, but probably worse than Aerial Boost. It replaces itself, which is nice, but the five mana is restrictive. I'm probably taking Boost number four or five over the first Wings. This can change if our deck leans slower, but that's probably not a great sign for us.
Four-Warned
The four-drops pack a punch, but we don't want too many. Bola Slinger is a very nice option. Growing a frog into a 4/3 or a Preening Champion into a Phantom Monster while tapping down a creature for an attack, and still knowing we get to disrupt blocks again, next turn, is a good way to finish off opponents if we don't have the top finishers we want.
Putting blockers on skates
Protocol Knight can be even better but needs support. If it's just a 3/4 Frost Lynx it's excellent, but because none of the knights cost one mana, we need to have a good number of two-drops or Preening Champion to help this card perform at its best. Fortunately, a lot of our filler two-drops are likely to be knights just by the nature of the color-pair.
Knight of the New Coalition hasn't lived up to my expectations. A couple of 2/2s just don't matter as we move into the mid-game. However, the vigilance can be nice for convoke, especially if we're heavy on Aerial Boosts. Because the jetpack ignores blockers, it invalidates the ability of the other two options.
Discounted evasion, though, will always have a place in this deck. This card plays in a nice package with Raff, Weatherlight Stalwart and Temporal Cleansing. If we see the deck heading in that direction, we might want to prioritize the Knight, although it's much worse in the more aggressive builds.
My personal favorite four-drop for this deck, however, is not a creature at all.
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This card often feels like a nail in the coffin against slower decks. Casting this end step to neutralize blockers usually just means you win. Still, there does need to be a balance between creature count and these types of spells. The heavier we are on Aerial Boost, the less we want Wicked Slumber.
Prioritize Good Cards
Preening Champion is one of the best cards for this deck. It lets us double spell on turn three with the Frog very easily. A couple weeks ago I said I would take Deadly Derision over the Bird. This deck reminded me how powerful convoke can be, and I've audibled back to Preening Champion over every common. Hopper Aggro is one of its best homes.
There are some rares that are excellent in this deck. Archangel Elspeth and Zephyr Singer are two stand outs. We shouldn't eschew great rares because we want to catch frogs. However, once we're in the deck, those are two nice grabs.
Captive Weird // Compleated Conjurer, Artistic Refusal, and Xerex Strobe-Knight are three great uncommons. This is probably the best home for Strobe-Knight, and that's including UW Knights. Skyclave Aerialist // Skyclave Invader is another great option. These are the cards that everyone wants, so we need to fight for them.
After that, we need to make sure we have sufficient one-drops. If we don't have the one-drops, we want to pivot into UW Knights. Again: this deck does not work without one-drops.
We want to wheel Halo Hopper, but the card is valuable. While it often wheels, if it's clearly the best card for you in the pack, then you should take it. The extra pressure it provides is one of the incentives to being aggressive in this format.
Hopper Aggro
Here's the version of the deck I'm currently playing.
This deck has good one-drops, but it's definitely playing a few cards I wish had been left out. The Golden-Scale Aeronaut is pretty mediocre, as is the Kithkin Billyrider. I really wanted another Halo Hopper. I'm going to cut Sunder the Gateway for another land. While this deck can probably afford to cut a 17th land, a below-average spell is just not worth the spot. This is, however, a good representation of what this deck usually looks like for me.
The above build definitely wants a little more interaction, and could stand for a slight uptick in card quality, but it's been blessed with a couple of bombs and should do just fine.
Hopper Aggro vs. Convoke Midrange
My best version of this deck went a little bigger. This version played like more of a midrange deck, and we can definitely leverage our card selection to build the deck this way as well.
This is not really Hopper Aggro, but it operates with a lot of the same principles. It's just not as aggressive. Still, the early game allows us to get a decent Halo Hopper, though we only play one. Our high card quality was accelerated by the same principles that make Hopper Aggro work; we were just settling in for a longer game. Besides, how can you say no to hands like these?
When life give you lemons, make lemonade. And when life gives you a pallet like this, make some weird art. Typically, Hopper Aggro has served as a great place to go when I'm no opening bomb rares. Some of those archetypes are hard to come by.
Credit Where Credit's Due
This deck is a lot of fun and uses some of the format's most overlooked cards. It's very easy to get access to and in my previous articles, I've had a lot of follow up, specifically about this deck. If you want to know more about it, visit TheHamTV on Twitch. Or follow his podcast, The Art of Draft.
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