Hey guys! Last week I talked about a deck that was designed specifically to beat Caw-Blade right when NPH was released. This article is going to change up the pace because to be honest, Standard has gotten pretty stale at the moment. Instead I’d like to turn your attention to limited and more specifically NPH-MBS-SOM draft. For about 5 months, I’ve been drafting this format about 4-5 times a week. I’m no pro at this format but I feel that I know my way around.

The Draft Tips

1. The Mental Aspect to Drafting

Pros have different strategies walking into a draft. Some like to get a feel for what is being passed around and make decisions on what archetype they want to draft off that. I’m a strong advocate of this, it doesn’t limit your thinking and can really net you crazy decks. However with this limited format, problems can definitely arise with such a strategy. The high artifact count can give the illusion of open colors and the power levels of the color vary from pack to pack. For example, Red is generally nuts in SOM but is only “meh” in NPH. This are things you need to take into account while drafting. An early strategy I adopted when NPH came out was to draft white in anticipation of crazy good cards to come in SOM. It worked well and I 3-0’ed numerous drafts. People have picked up on this and the strategy is not as effective but it is something to keep in mind. Overall, my general strategy is for picks 1-4, I try to just pick the best card in the pack. I place more emphasis on good artifacts since it does not lock me into a color and I pay attention to what is being passed. For example, a fourth pick Enslave is a good indicator that black is open. Afterwards, I’ll look at my cards and try to craft a general strategy.

2. Cards need to fill roles

Look at the draft decks of pros and you’ll notice that the decks that win generally only have a few great cards in them. A lot of decks have main deck Gnathosaurs and other subpar creatures. Obviously when pros draft, they’ll make the correct assessment of a card’s value and seldom let the good stuff go around. However the reason for such cards is because they fill an essential “part” of the deck. Some people will not open a great bomb and thus Gnathosaur comes in as a substitute. It’s a big body that can’t be ignored for long. Obviously a Hellkite Igniter is miles ahead of the card but not everyone can be that lucky. Essentially, don’t feel bad if your play a subpar card as long as it fills a vital role for your deck. A lot of good players fall into this trap where their deck is decent but missing a key role to complete it and ultimately they won’t look at the subpar cards because they are bad.

3. Pick Assessment

After five to seven picks, you should have a general strategy outlined for your deck. Most people refer to these strategies as “Archetypes.” Every card they pick from then on will aid in their strategy. Core sets are a lot easier to draft because the archetypes are very vanilla. A popular M11 archetype was blue/white flyers. As you can guess from the name, you just drafted blue or white flyers and won the game with your evasive creatures. This format is a lot more complex hence archetypes are more important. Also underdrafted archetypes tend to be really powerful because people dismiss the card and you’ll be able to pick up the card easily. A good representative of this is Chained Throatseeker. It is essentially a blue Phyrexian Juggernaut with a different drawback. Instead of being forced to attack every turn, it can only attack if your opponent is poisoned. Since blue infect is seldom drafted, this card is often 6th to 9th in picks while it’s artifact counterpart Phyrexian Juggernaut is first pick-able. Depending on what archetype you’re going to draft, you should decide the importance of each card. Into the Core, a first pick-able card will definitely be worth less to you compared to a virulent wound if you are firmly in the Blue/Black infect archetype.

4. Your Comfort Zone

As you draft, you’ll probably realize that you have certain cards that your gravitate to. For me, I love Blind Souleater because I’ve grown accustomed to cards with his effect due to Blinding Mage from M11 and Rust Tick from SOM. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if your play online. There have been tons of times where people have lost because they have mis-clicked a card since they were unfamiliar with it. If you are playing online, I highly suggest taking the “safe” card that you’re comfortable if you’re deciding between two cards with the same power level. With that said, don’t be afraid to try out new archetypes or whacky ideas. A few weeks ago, I made a crazy hyper aggressive mono-black deck that revolved around Mortis Dogs, Bleakcloven Vampires, Mortar Pod, Blistergrub, Morbid Plunder and Perilous Myr. I had noticed with the exception of Morbid Plunder, Mortar Pod and Perilous Myr that these cards were often being passed around like the plague. I was able to first pick great removal and utility cards with the anticipation that those cards would table. Study the general draft picks and with right first few picks, you can draft a really powerful and rare deck.

5. Money Drafting

My last and quickest tip is that if you’re serious about drafting, don’t rare draft. When NPH was new, my friend was picking up as many Mental Missteps as possible because they were going for $6 a pop. Unsurprisingly, his deck was terrible and ultimately, you need to break the desire to rare draft if you want to improve your game. Passing a good rare signals to your opponent that the rare’s color is open for drafting. For example, if I pass a Mirran Crusader to my opponent, he will know that I’m staying away from White. Hopefully he’ll return the favor next pack with a great card.

I hope these tips helped and please read up on Hugh Kramer (Draftula) for more tips/advice on drafting!

You can check out all the rules in that last link, but for a quick rundown of the differences from normal constructed, I have composed neat bullet points for good happy success.

Deck Construction rules:

• You must choose one Commander (formally known as a general). It must be a legendary creature, and the legendary rule still applies (so don’t build an Adun Oakenshield deck if your friend already has an Adun Oakenshield deck, cause once they are both out, they are immediately both dead).
• Including the commander, your deck must have 100 cards, none of which may have the same name, except basic lands, and none of them may include a color that is not represented in your commander. So if you pick Doran, The Siege Tower for a commander, you cannot put counterspell in your deck. You may only put in cards that include white, black and/or green mana symbols. You may use artifacts and lands as long as they do not contain red or blue mana symbols.
• See the official site for cards banned from Commander. Obviously, in casual circles, you can throw banned lists out the window, however, these cards are banned for a reason. If your goal is to have a good time, these cards may get in the way of that.

Rules of Play:

• Start off by placing your commander in the Command Zone, I like to call it the command center cause it reminds me of Die Hard. This is a spot on the table where nothing else is going to go. Make sure you clean this spot thoroughly because commanders like tidy centers. Your life total starts at 40 and you draw 7 cards.
• You can put your commander onto the battlefield by paying his casting cost when he is in this zone. He can’t be targeted in this zone, think of it as a type of exiled. Once he’s in play, normal rules apply. If he would be put in the graveyard or exiled, you have the option of instead putting him in the command zone. He costs 2 colorless mana more to cast for each time after the first that he was put in the command zone. I like to use “+2″ counters to keep track of this. So if your commander’s casting cost is WW, the first time you play him from the command zone, he costs WW. The second time you play him from the command zone it’s 2WW. Then 4WW and so on.
• If you chose to let him go to the graveyard or exile, he will not get a +2 counter, but you lose the option of whisking him away to the command zone until he would enter the graveyard or get exiled again. Strategy note: I can’t think of a scenario where you’d want to let him go to exile. However, if you have a way of reanimating a creature, say like animate dead, or something that triggers when your guys hit the G-yard, like say a Butcher of Malakir, you can trigger that Butch and avoid the +2 counter by letting your commander go to the graveyard. Just be careful, you don’t want an opponent casting a rise from the grave and ganking your commander!
• You lose when your life drops to, or below, 0. You also lose if you take 21 or more points of combat damage from 1 particular commander. This is called commander damage and you might want to have a piece of paper handy to keep track of how much “commander damage” your commander has done to each opponent. 10 and 11 points of combat damage from two different commanders don’t kill you, and you can’t ping someone with Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind 21 times to kill them by commander damage, because it has to be combat damage.

There you have the rules for the purposes of this article, we can now look at how to start building. I’ve covered almost everything, but I urge you to check out the official rules, or to have them handy when you start playing. Now when cards are printed with certain rules in mind, and then are used with a set if different rules, some of the cards gain or lose value (by value I mean power relative to casting cost). Once you have an understanding of the rules, you’ll start to pick out some of these cards. Below are some examples of these implications and things to consider. This series will continue with 3 more articles about this, outlined below:

1. Your commander is by far your most important card in the deck, as he will be used probably every game, can keep coming back, and determines the colors that your other cards can be. Due to the “commander damage” rule, commanders with evasion abilities (flying, trample, haste, unblockable, intimidate, etc) have greater value in Commander than in normal constructed. The next article will be all about selecting a good commander.
2. The 99 other cards each suffer a loss in value, generally speaking, due to their lack of reliability, though there are some exceptions. The next article will take a look at the non-commander cards in the deck and we will complete our commander deck based around the commander chosen previously.
3. In any multiplayer games, it is important to consider the “politics” of your card choices. This article will take a look at various commanders, cards and entire decks with the focus of multiplayer politics, since a lot of Commander is played in groups. we’ll also wrap up the series.

That’s it for now, hope you’ll tune in next time!

-Anthony “advancing an art form and depantsing a fart storm” JS

Let’s be honest, those aren’t the cards that let Soul Sisters come in 9th place at Starcity Games Louisville. First, the decklist:

Maindeck:

Artifacts
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Body and Mind
1 Sword of War and Peace

Artifact Creatures
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
3 Spellskite

Creatures
4 Ajani’s Pridemate
4 Leonin Relic-Warder
4 Serra Ascendant
4 Soul’s Attendant
3 Squadron Hawk
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Suture Priest

Basic Lands
8 Plains

Lands
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Glimmerpost
4 Kabira Crossroads
1 Seachrome Coast
3 Tectonic Edge

The deck has Squadron Hawks, Stoneforge Mystics, Batterskull, and Swords. Curiously enough those cards are also in another deck in the format. The best deck in the format. The reason why I think Soul Sisters has a chance in the meta is that rather than taking a reactive approach, it is taking the much less seen proactive approach. The two big decks are Caw Blade and Splinter Twin, and Vampires appears to be making a name for itself as well. Looking at a couple other lists we see the way Caw Blade deals with the Splinter combo is with Mana Leak, Spell Pierce, Into the Roil, Dismember, and Spellskite. Spellskite is the only proactive answer Caw Blade has to Splinter Twin, as it’s quite difficult to win by casting Splinter Twin when there is an opposing Spellskite on the board. Reactive answers to Splinter Twin are often not a guaranteed thing either, as Grixis builds will get around them with hand disruption, and UR builds run a good amount of counter-magic. Spell Pierce is also unable to hit Deceiver Exarch so keeping two mana untapped is almost always necessary past turn 3 or 4. Thus, on paper Splinter Twin should have a pretty fair time against Caw Blade. The problem is Caw Blade has had months of tweaking allowed to it so that it could become the monstrosity it is now. Splinter Twin hasn’t existed very long. Over time the list will get tighter and either it will be a deck or it won’t. For now Mike Flores’ first place finish at the TCG event qualifies it as a deck enough to warrant significant testing and consideration while deck building.

Coming back to the proactive elements of Soul Sisters, we have cards like Suture Priest and Soul’s Attendant. Both of these cards stop Splinter Twin from happening and the fact there are four of each gives the deck a lot of insurance against the combo. They both dodge Duress and come down early which are fairly pertinent. Throw in the three Spellskites and you have eleven main deck answers to a deck, not to mention the synergy between Spellskite and, well, all of your more important creatures. At least against Splinter Twin, Soul Sisters is in a good spot, which is impressive for an aggro deck. But what about Caw Blade? Four main decked Leonin Relic-Warders gives outs to Batterskull as well as Swords while also being a combo with Phyrexian Metamorph + Suture Priest/Soul Warden. Once you have infinite life the only thing you have to worry about are those pesky Inkmoth Nexuses, but the three Tectonic Edge (should probably be four?) and the one Mortarpod in the board help against that. I guess you also have to worry about Jace, but then again Jace is that guy you always have to worry about. With Caw Blade players focusing more on the mirror, board sweepers are less prevalent, though that may change given aggro’s recent success in Denver. Lightning Bolt is feeling the same way, but what’s even better is that the decks which still run Lightning Bolt are also the decks you have the best match up against. Soul Sisters is meant to beat aggro. Pumping up an Ajani’s Pridemate while gaining life is brutal for aggro. Add in Batterskull, Sword of War and Peace, and an infinite life gain combo, aggro’s chances are slim.

On paper Soul Sisters looks quite good. Neil Michalares’ 9th place finish at Louisville may prompt greater testing as the meta begins to shape itself, but the deck seems solid enough to at least be Tier 2. If Brian Kibler considers Stoneforge Mystic to be the best white creature in Magic then you have to be doing something right playing it. Batterskull seeing play in Legacy should also hint at its power level, though the hate for the card is far less in the eternal format. However, going only on this logic means you should add Jace and then you arrive at… Caw-Blade. While it may seem I’m trying to sell you on playing “not-Caw-Blade” the synergy the deck has with the developing meta is quite interesting. The deck is not as fluid, since you could take it apart as Stoneforge Package + Squadron Hawks picking up Swords + Gain Life beats + Infinite Life Combo. Basically the deck construction went something like “Hey Suture Priest could be Soul Warden… Yea and there’s also this infinite life gain combo… But there are still some spots where removal used to be… Let’s just add Stoneforge and Squadron Hawk.” While that may not be the best way to build a deck, it managed to survive past the one-weekly-article-by-Conley-Woods-and-then-never-to-see-the-light-of-day-again fate. Hopefully Soul Sisters will be coming to a gauntlet near you, but if it doesn’t, well at least Conley Woods will be famous for other things.

Magic 2012 (M12) Spoilers
Number of Cards: 249
Release Date: July 15, 2011
Prerelease Events: July 9-10, 2011

The buy-a-box promo card for M12 will be Chandra’s Phoenix. What do you guys think?

I would almost say that the reason Caw Blade won Orlando (aside from Edgar Flores being Edgar Flores) was Tectonic Edge. It was already known that Caw Blade had the edge on Darkblade simply because of its ability to wreak havoc with their mana base. With Grixis Twin, RUG Twin, and Valakut being 3 other lists that suffer from Tectonic Edge, there had to be some games where decks flopped over as their pilots looked at their 1 red source, and 2 Splinter Twins in hand. The revival of Darkblade is a concession to the power of Splinter Twin as pre-New Phyrexia Cawblade has a difficult time interacting with the combo except for mana leak, spell pierce, and into the roil. With most of the Splinter Twin lists also running 5-7 hand disruption spells, forcing through the combo is a very real possibility. The appearance of RUG, Valakut, and Vampires in the top 8/16 is a little misleading as well. With only one tournament of results to look at it’s tough to say whether or not the decks are real. If I had to guess, the RUG list managed to win because even if the Deceiver Exarch got countered EoT, untapping and playing Inferno Titan is never bad. RUG’s presence in the meta is a little shaky, simply because its forced to adapt its list to Splinter Twin, and it doesn’t have the flexibility to do so. In fact, looking at the RUG list:

Maindeck:

Creatures
4 Deceiver Exarch
4 Inferno Titan
4 Lotus Cobra
1 Oracle of Mul Daya

Enchantments
3 Splinter Twin

Instants
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Mana Leak

Planeswalkers
2 Jace Beleren
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sorceries
2 Explore
4 Preordain

Basic Lands
2 Forest
4 Island
2 Mountain

Lands
4 Copperline Gorge
3 Halimar Depths
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Raging Ravine
4 Scalding Tarn

The previously sacred numbers in RUG have been butchered by cutting 2 Mana Leaks, 2 Explores, and a Lightning Bolt. The cutting of Precursor Golem is half and half in this meta. On one hand Lightning Bolt and Day of Judgment are not so hot due to Deceiver Exarch’s 4 toughness and Flash, but that just means Into to the Roil, Dismember, and Doom Blade/Go For the Throat are on the rise. Getting blown out by Into the Roil is always an awful feeling. Valakut and Vampires on the other hand are decks that test the meta. With Orlando being the first major tournament after the release of New Phyrexia, there were definitely a number of brews and non-optimal deck lists running around. Those lists are the ones that got crushed by Valakut and Vampires. Cawblade beats Valakut and Valakut beats everything else. It just happens that at Orlando, there was more of “everything else” this time around than at previous recent Starcity events.

With the current meta kind of laid out, where does that leave room for any new deck? My answer would be from the previous Starcity event in Boston. Laurence Suasey’s U/G aggro list went largely unnoticed as it was on the cusp of rotation, but the ideas in it still hold for the new meta.

Artifacts
2 Sword of Feast and Famine

Creatures
3 Acidic Slime
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Consecrated Sphinx
4 Fauna Shaman
2 Frost Titan
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Nest Invader
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Vengevine

Planeswalkers
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Basic Lands
8 Forest
5 Island

Lands
2 Evolving Wilds
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Verdant Catacombs

The benefits of the list include it being 2 colors thus having access to tectonic edge (which I think should be in the list), it’s blue so it can run Jace, and it runs Vengevines so it has an innate advantage against Cawblade. The most important thing that Suasey’s list did though was run 8 two-drops that needed to be answered. Turn 2 Fauna Shaman or Lotus Cobra is huge just as Turn 2 Stoneforge Mystic is. These turn two plays are the defining point of Standard. In RUG vs Cawblade prior to New Phyrexia it was a matter of who had the answer to the other’s turn 2 play. This has not changed post New Phyrexia, and it won’t change until Zendikar block rotates. Now there is a new 2 drop that needs to be addressed as well and that is Spellskite. The reason he just jumped to $10 is because he does everything. He single handedly stops Splinter Twin, he spits on Tumble Magnet, and he gives protection to your more important guys from removal. Thus, the deck idea is born.

The position of U/G aggro in the meta right now could not be better. Day of Judgment is on the down turn as is Condemn due to Splinter Twin as well as Sword of War and Peace. Gideon is becoming more of a liability as Cawblade begins to cut him down to a 1-2 of rather than a 3 of. Valakut is cutting lightning bolts for Nature’s Claims. Basically, the entire meta is shifting because the classic aggro lists such as Boros, RDW, and Vampires have no way to interact with Splinter Twin and fold to Sword of War and Peace allowing decks to cut corners by skimping on answers to aggro. U/G aggro doesn’t fold to the Sword as easily as other decks do since it also gets to run its own Swords while having creatures that can block a turn 2 Stoneforge into turn 4 equip-sword-swing. Spellskite gives the deck protection from Splinter Twin and being able to fetch it up via 4 Fauna Shamans helps immensely. Nest Invader gives more bodies to pick up swords while accelerating into the classic turn 3 Vengevine. Jace is Jace, and Lotus Cobra is Lotus Cobra. Swords allow these junky creatures in the late game to be real threats while also maintain a fast clock in the addition to Vengevines. The answers to this deck are becoming scarcer in the meta and it would definitely be the deck I would runat the upcoming TCGplayer event if I could attend. Here’s a modified list of U/G aggro based on Boston.

Artifacts
2 Sword of War and Peace

Creatures
3 Spellskite
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Consecrated Sphinx
4 Fauna Shaman
2 Frost Titan
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Nest Invader
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Vengevine

Planeswalkers
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Basic Lands
7 Forest
6 Island
4 Tectonic Edge

Lands
1 Evolving Wilds
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Terramorphic Expanse
3 Verdant Catacombs

The list could definitely undergo some changes as I’m not too fond of Oracle of Mul Daya. Garruk Wildspeaker is in there due to his synergy with your small guys and his Overrun, but there might need to be some room for small Jace and Garruk would be the first to cut. I love Consecrated Sphinx as a one of, so Frost Titan could change. The Spellskites are in for Acidic Slimes, so maybe the Frost Titans should change to Acidic Slimes. Keeping the mana curve a little lower isn’t bad, and Acidic Slimes+Tectonic Edge is pretty big versus all the 3 color mana bases running around. Having a maindeck way to deal with Swords is also pretty important. Hopefully, some new lists pop up that are aggro orientated as the current ones aren’t very well positioned against the meta. Maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s something totally different. Either way there seems to be a lot of space in the new meta for development so hopefully someone brews a new deck.