The full M12 spoiler is out, time to (over)analyze!
This weekend is of course the Pre-Release weekend, and I am obligated to concern myself with M12 draft for Nationals, so I’ll focus on limited for the time being.
My apologies in advance for the mostly condescending tone of this article. Think of this article as me talking out loud to a retarded version of myself as I explore the format.
I took all the cards, separated them by rarity and selected out cards that I thought were unplayable / sideboard-only (I.e. [card]Taste of Blood[/card] – Opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life / [card]Plummet[/card] – Destroy target creature with flying.). I threw the term unplayable around pretty generously, including stuff like [card]Goblin Piker[/card] and [card]Runeclaw Bear[/card] which are not genuinely unplayable, but you’d really rather not have to play. I also picked out cards that were combat tricks ([card]Stave off[/card] – Instant – Target creature gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn) and set them aside. You rarely want to have any more than 1 or 2 of these in your limited decks.
I’ll focus my analysis on commons and uncommons. Commons tend to make up the majority of a draft deck. If you were lucky enough to draft a Rare in your colors, 3 Uncommons in your colors, and 10 commons in your colors for all 3 packs (3 Rares, 9 Uncommons, 30 Commons) you would still need 11 commons, or close to half the deck to create a deck with 23 non-land cards.
Color Depth
I’m going to focus on drafting a bit and talk about color depth here. If a color has more playables, it means that that color will give you a higher probability of seeing high quality cards as you go deeper into a draft pack. A deeper color can also support more drafters in the same color. Obviously drafts are self-correcting, so if say Black was the worst color in M12 (don’t worry, it probably isn’t), if you end up being the only black drafter at the table you would have your pick of the best playables in that color and end up with a pretty awesome deck despite the fact that the color is not the best. A good demonstration of this effect is in one of LSV’s M11 draft videos, where he ends up being the only Green drafter at the table (close to the worst color in M11 draft) and essentially builds a constructed deck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPoQfHsqSeA&playnext=1&list=PLD97419AA5BC6F634
Anyway, back to M12. Let’s look at the depth charts!
Common playables:
White – 13
Blue – 14
Black – 16
Red – 10
Green – 11
Black/Blue have the most depth at the common slot, while Red/Green have the least.
Uncommon playables:
White – 6
Blue – 6
Black – 6
Red – 4
Green – 7
Red continues to take a beating in terms of card depth when we switch to the uncommon slot. Green makes up some ground in its uncommon slot, including some bona fide bombs ([card]Overrun[/card], [card]Jade Mage[/card]).
I won’t worry about rares/mythics for now. You open whatever you open and you can’t exactly try to draft in anticipation of opening the right colored Titan in pack 3. If we add the uncommons and commons together it spells it out pretty well in terms of depth:
Black – 22
Blue – 20
White – 19
Green – 18
Red – 14
Interesting to note, there are only about 5 playable Artifacts in common/Uncommon. Guess [card]Manic Vandal[/card] won’t be seeing much play.
Removal
Now it’s time to talk about removal
Common Removal:
White – [card]Pacifism[/card]
Blue – [card]Ice Cage[/card]
Black – [card]Brink of Disaster[/card], [card]Doom Blade[/card], [card]Sorin’s Thirst[/card], [card]Wring Flesh[/card]
Red – [card]Chandra’s Outrage[/card], [card]Incinerate[/card], [card]Shock[/card]
Green – [card]Arachnus Web[/card], [card]Plummet[/card]
Here’s a brief text description of the new cards and older reprints:
[card]Brink of Disaster[/card] is 2BB, Enchant Creature or Land, Destroy it when it becomes tapped.
[card]Sorin’s Thirst[/card] is a BB instant, Deal 2 damage to target creature, gain 2 life.
[card]Wring Flesh[/card] is a 2B instant, Creature gets -3/-1 until end of turn.
[card]Arachnus Web[/card] is 2G and is essentially [card]Arrest[/card] with a drawback. If the enchanted creature has power 4 or greater, [card]Arachnus Web[/card] is sacrificed end of turn.
Limited is often all about bombs and removal for those bombs. [card]Pacifism[/card] and [card]Doom Blade[/card] take first prize for their ability to kill basically any creature of any size right away.
Uncommon Removal:
White – [card]Arbalest Elite[/card], [card]Oblivion Ring[/card]
Blue – [card]Mind Control[/card]
Black – [card]Consume Spirit[/card], [card]Deathmark[/card]
Red – [card]Fireball[/card], [card]Combust[/card], [card]Goblin Grenade[/card]
Green – [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card]
Again a brief text description of the new cards and older reprints
[card]Arbalest Elite[/card] is a 2WW, 2/3 Creature with an activated ability (2W, Tap: Deal 3 damage to target attacking or blocking creature. Arbalest Elite doesn’t untap next untap step).
[card]Goblin Grenade[/card] is R, Sacrifice a Goblin: Deal 5 damage to target creature or player.
[card]Stingerfling Spider[/card] is a 4G, 2/5 Creature with reach. When it enters the battlefield destroy target creature with flying.
Just like for commons, the more generically applicable the removal, the better. [card]Fireball[/card] takes top spot, with [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] and [card]Mind Control[/card] right behind. There is a pretty strong enchantment theme in M12, so there is a possibility that Anti-enchantment cards will be present in post-board games. That said there are only 3 cards in the set that can destroy an enchantment. [card]Naturalize[/card] & [card]Demystify[/card] at Common, and [card]Acidic Slime[/card] at Uncommon.
[card]Consume Spirit[/card], like [card]Fireball[/card], is excellent as it can also go to the face. However Spirit has the caveat that only black mana can be used to pay the X, thus it will only truly shine in a Mono-black deck.
Bombs
Now it’s time to talk about some Uncommon/Common bombs. I’ll define a bomb as a card that causes the entire game to revolve around them, will often result in victory, and are genuinely first-pickable. Common/Uncommon Removal is often first pickable as well of course, but let’s look at bombs right now ok!?
Common ‘Bombs’:
White – [card]Gideon’s Lawkeeper[/card]
Blue – [card]Chasm Drake[/card]
Red – [card]Blood Ogre[/card], [card]Gorehorn Minotaurs[/card]
All of these cards are new (at least to me).
[card]Gideon’s Lawkeeper[/card] is a 1/1 for W, with activated ability W, Tap: Tap target creature
[card]Chasm Drake[/card] is a 3/3 flier for 4U, with Triggered ability: When Chasm Drake attacks, target creature you control gains flying until end of turn.
[card]Blood Ogre[/card] is a 2/2 Creature with Bloodthirst 1 and First Strike for 2R
[card]Gorehorn Minotaurs[/card] is a 3/3 Creature with Bloodthirst 2 for 3R.
The tapper is pretty obvious. Tappers are always great. Last core set had [card]Blinding Mage[/card] and he was a house. It’s too bad that the body on [card]Gideon’s Lawkeeper[/card] is only 1/1, but tapping for a single W is nice. He is especially good in this set as Blue has a solid illusion theme going on, and Lawkeeper wrecks those buggers. [card]Chasm Drake[/card] would actually be at his best in a bad blue deck (A.k.a. Blue/Green). Since in a good blue deck all your creatures already have flying. I may be overvaluing him a little. The bloodthirst guys I like are good if you can reliably get in for damage before you play them (A.k.a. draft an aggressive deck, or have cards like [card]Goblin Fireslinger[/card]). If you can trigger bloodthirst reliably they become well above the creature curve in their quality. [card]Blood Ogre[/card] in particular is pretty insane. A 3/3 first striker for 3 is the nuts.
Uncommon Bombs:
White – [card]Serra Angel[/card], [card]Spirit Mantle[/card]
Blue – [card]Azure Mage[/card], [card]Levitation[/card], [card]Mind Control[/card]
Black – [card]Sengir Vampire[/card], [card]Vampire Outcasts[/card]
Red – [card]Stormblood Berserker[/card], [card]Volcanic Dragon[/card]
Green – [card]Cudgel Troll[/card], [card]Jade Mage[/card], [card]Overrun[/card]
Colorless – [card]Swiftfoot Boots[/card], [card]Thran Golem[/card]
The new cards and older reprints:
[card]Spirit Mantle[/card] is a 1W Enchantment. Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and protection from creatures.
[card]Azure Mage[/card] is a 2/1 creature for 1U with activated ability 3U: Draw a card.
[card]Levitation[/card] is a 2UU Enchantment. Creatures you control have flying.
[card]Vampire Outcasts[/card] is a 2/2 creature with Lifelink and Bloodthirst 2 for 2BB.
[card]Stormblood Berserker[/card] is a 1/1 Creature for 1R with Bloodthirst 2 and the static ability Stormblood Berserker can only be blocked by 2 or more creatures.
[card]Volcanic Dragon[/card] is a 4/4 Creature for 4RR with Flying and Haste.
[card]Jade Mage[/card] is a 2/1 creature for 1G with activated ability 2G: Put a 1/1 Green Saproling Token into play.
[card]Thran Golem[/card] is a 3/3 Artifact Creature for 5, with Static Ability – If Thran Golem is enchanted, it gains +2/+2, First Strike, Flying, and Trample.
Each color ended up with a mid-range fatty just about. The uncommon Blue fatty flier didn’t make my list of bombs, as he is an illusion, and carries the usual illusion drawback of sacrifice if he becomes the target of a spell or ability.
I would rank the quality of colors based on these uncommon ‘bombs’ as:
Green
Blue
White
Black
Red
[card]Overrun[/card] is just so good. The only counters to it are:
a) Kill everything
b) Counter magic – [card]Negate[/card], [card]Cancel[/card], [card]Flashfreeze[/card], and [card]Mana Leak[/card] are all in the set
c) [card]Fog[/card], which is horrible.
I haven’t had to play limited with [card]Overrun[/card] at uncommon ([card]Overwhelming Stampede[/card] was Rare in M11). Apparently it is kind of annoying to lose that way. I cheated a little bit with Blue by double-counting [card]Mind Control[/card] as both removal and a bomb. Suck it up, [card]Mind Control[/card] rules.
Draft Archetypes
Lastly let’s look at some draft archetypes. Core sets don’t usually have draft-around-me themes (a.k.a. Infect) to them, but there are always few synergies to exploit.
Aura Synergy:
Green has 2 common Hexproof creatures which are great targets for enchanting as they cannot be killed in response to the enchant, always a massive blowout. They are [card]Sacred Wolf[/card] (3/1 for 3) and [card]Gladecover Scout[/card] (1/1 for 1). To add to the synergies white has the common [card]Auramancer[/card] (2/2 for 2W, ETB: Bring back an Aura from the graveyard). And of course there is [card]Thran Golem[/card], mentioned earlier, who becomes a beast when he’s enchanted. The fact that the green guys have hexproof gets around some of the inherent card disadvantage of auras, since they are basically impossible to kill except with a Wrath or Pox. However the common ones are also kind of bad creatures, so they go back to creating a little bit of card disadvantage since you are using up 2 cards (Creature + Enchantment) to make one decent creature, rather than just using up 1 card and playing a decent creature in the first place.
W/G or R/G would be the colors to draft for this archetype, as those colors contain the best auras and of course the best targets for those auras.
Fliers:
Combining some evasive creatures with a few grounded defensive creatures with big butts always works well in core set draft. White and Blue each sport 5 different creatures with flying at uncommon/common rarity. There are some truly mean defensive fliers and reach guys, which can be a significant speed bump for an aggressive fliers deck. [card]Peregrine Griffin[/card] is a 2/4 First Strike flier for 4W (Common), and [card]Belltower Sphinx[/card] is a 2/5 Flier for 4U (Uncommon) with an ability that mills you for each damage you did to it. But that’s what Removal is for right?
[card]Act of Treason[/card] + Sacrifice:
[card]Act of Treason[/card] is back at common again, and there are still some common sacrifice outlets. [card]Fling[/card] is still around, and the key black sacrifice outlet got switched around from [card]Bloodthrone Vampire[/card] to [card]Devouring Swarm[/card] which is at the same time both an upgrade in terms of body and a downgrade in terms of his ability. [card]Devouring Swarm[/card] is a 2/1 Flier for 1BB with Sac a Creature: Devouring Swarm gets +1/+1. I am particularly fond of this archetype, and it is not unreasonable to get 3 or so [card]Act of Treason[/card]s in a draft.
Bloodthirst:
The bloodthirst cards fall in Black and Red, and to a lesser extent Green. They also tend to be above the usual curve of power level if their bloodthirst gets activated. Obviously you don’t need to draft an entire deck of bloodthirst creatures, but if you do end up with a large number in your deck it would be prudent to gather up some synergistic fellows to help you out. Black and red have 2 very good cards for ensuring that your bloodthirst gets activated each turn, in the event that you don’t have creatures big enough to get through. Black has [card]Tormented Soul[/card], 1/1 for B with the static ability – Tormented Soul can’t block and is unblockable. Red has [card]Goblin Fireslinger[/card]. 1/1 for R with the activated ability – Tap: Deal 1 damage to target player.
[card]Tormented Soul[/card] is also an excellent target for power boosting enchantments or equipment. A good example is [card]Dark Favor[/card], the new and improved [card]Unholy Strength[/card]. +3/+1, Lose 1 life when it enters the battlefield. I’d be pretty wary of drafting many of these, as auras do suck after all, but it’s worth thinking about.
Overall I think in terms of colors that I would want to draft, I’m pretty sure the order would go something like:
White
Black
Blue
Green
Red
Though with Core set we’re back to a set where signalling is both much more important and significantly more obvious. The real answer of course is to draft whatever is being passed to you. Good luck!