Amonkhet Limited [MTG]

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Username17
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Amonkhet Limited [MTG]

Post by Username17 »

So there's a new set, and that means a new draft season. This one is Egyptian themed, and features some mechanics that are returning and now have a name when they didn't before(Exert), some mechanics that are returning but aren't given a name (Wither), some mechanics that are returning with the same name they had last time (Cycling), and some mechanics that are new (Embalm).

For constructed play there are obviously a lot of cards that improve or attack previously established powerful decks and could really shake the format up. But unfortunately WotC doesn't let people report archetype versus archetype winrates, so despite that fact that there are now seven sets going into Standard and probably 20 playable Tier 1 decks, what is actually going to happen is that in the next couple of tournaments a few popular decks are going to fill up the Top 8s because of the nature of survivor bias and then the entire community is going to converge on 3 decks or so. Because that is what mathematically has to happen if you only report top decks rather than winrates for archetypes. Sad!

This is especially infuriating because there are some decks that can be configured in pretty radically different ways. Blue/Red Spells can run Fevered Visions, Thermo Alchemist, Bedlam Reveler, Harness the Storm, Dynavolt Tower, Thing in the Ice, or Torrential Gearhulk/Dark Dwellers - all of which are not in fact spells but give incremental advantage to the spells you do run. It wouldn't take a massive portion of the Magic community working on this deck to get some pretty spicy brews together, but that isn't going to happen because it's going to be represented by only a few players at big tournaments and it won't ever get more than one copy into the Top 8 of a major tournament.

Anyway, we're actually here to talk about Draft. Because while the current method of information distribution naturally causes the vast majority of playable decks to become ignored and thus fall behind in deck building technology, the 10 basic Draft decks are all going to be played. Amonkhet is a two color format with mana fixing that is generally speaking infrequent and also not good. Don't try to play some 3 color monstrosity, it is unlikely to work. Every color combination gets a gold card that's supposed to point the door to what you're supposed to be doing and also has an Aftermath split card that may or may not have anything to do with anything. The Gold uncommon is always a key part of the deck, but some of the split cards are pretty useless. On to the archetypes.

Red Green Stompy

Key Uncommons:
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The synergy here isn't really very deep. You play medium sized creatures with aggressive stats and you turn them sideways. Sometimes you give them evasion or play combat tricks. You can do an exert theme and there are a few things you can do with wither tokens, but mostly you just play medium sized aggressive creatures and turn them sideways.

Black Green Wither

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Now this is a deck that goes deep. You bring out creatures that are overstatted that have the drawback that you have to put -1/-1 counters on your own guys, but then you also run cards that remove -1/-1 counters and you run cards that straight up give you bonuses for having -1/-1 counters put on creatures. The dream of course is to pour all your -1/-1 counters on a Soulstinger after you have the Scarab nest and then kill an enemy creature and put 10 (seriously ten) 1/1 creature tokens into play on turn 5. If you don't get enough synergy pieces the Scarab Nest won't be worth running and then you'll just be running a Green Black deck with midrange creatures and removal. But that is fine too.

Blue Green Ramp

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So you put together a whole lot of mana and then you play really big things. There's an alternate strategy where you make tiny things unblockable and draw a lot of cards, but the better deck is the one where you ramp yourself into giant crocodiles and sandwurms and shit. While mostly a 16-17 land format, Blue Green Ramp is an easy slam as an 18 land deck, so you are only looking for 22 playables instead of 23 but you do have to get both ramp and payoff cards or you're gonna have a bad time.

White Green Recursion

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You have a lot of smallish creatures and pump spells, and tricks to untap creatures and ways to trade and recur creatures and I don't know if it all goes together into anything. You have means of putting creatures back into play after they've been tapped and exerted or killed, and you means of trading your creatures up, and if it all comes together you have an aggressive value train. There's certainly worse places to be than a deck full of recursive weenies and combat tricks. But aggressive weenie strategies are punished in drafts because other players are competing with you for the 2 drops because they need to fill out a curve.

Black Red Empty Hand

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The payoffs for emptying your hand quickly aren't spectacular. On the other hand, emptying your hand quickly in Red Black means you dumped a lot of aggro on the table quickly. Turn it sideways and win the game! They don't call the deck "Red Deck Does OK." You're a card quality deck rather than a synergy deck, but the quality is often there. Cheap red and black crap is generally pretty good, and the game plan isn't reliant on getting specific cards. Basically similar to White Green except you have an easier time filling up the decks with random 3/2s and shit so I think the deck will come together a bit easier.

Blue Red Spells

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This is essentially similar to Blue/Red Spells in Eldritch Moon, except with different cards. The "with different cards" part is really important, because Blue/Red Spells was pretty much the same in Eldritch Moon and in vanilla Innistrad except it was awesome in Eldritch Moon and hot garbage in Innistrad. The exact ratio between spells and payoffs is really important. In Amonkhet, there are 15 Red or Blue Instants and Sorceries at common. That's out of 108 common cards total, and there are 264 commons in a draft pod. That means that each of those Commons is going to have about 2 and half copies on the table. Unfortunately, not all of those are worth playing (you probably don't want Decision Paralysis or Violent Impact), and the spells you do want are going to be high priority for other Red or Blue players - so you may not see Electrify or Essence Scatter even though those are yours by right. I think there are enough replacement level spells that you can get there and the Blue creature list is bad enough that you might not be fighting for Blue spells as hard as you might think. This archetype is going to be a massive winner or a dud, but back of the envelope it looks closer to Moony goodness.

White Red Overrun

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So the concept is that you put out a bunch of creatures that all get bigger when attacking and then you attack with them. This is the most aggressive archetype except maybe Red/Black. You are pretty uninterested in cards that aren't either a potential attacker or something to remove a blocker. I should probably talk about the Monuments here, because only two of them are going to see constructed play (Red and White), and only one of them is good in Limited (the White one). The White monument makes little bullshit dudes every time you make a dude the normal way, and is therefore at its best in Red/White and Blue/White. So while to a first approximation the statement "don't run Monuments" is correct, the counter example is Oketra's Monument is a fine card for Red/White specifically.

Blue Black Cycling

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This deck is weird as fuck and you probably aren't going to play it. There are 10 common cycling cards in Black and Blue, but realistically you are not going to want to Cycle your Scorpions or Horrors very often. The payoff for going deep on this mechanic is pretty high, and you're probably in here because you pulled Drake Haven in pack 1 and now shit's going to go crazy.

The idea is simply that you have cards that you can discard to draw cards and other cards that do cool shit when you discard cards. If you have like 2 Cycling Payoffs in play, cycling cards starts being better than playing cards. The tension is that you're playing a deck with big creatures in it that is only running 16 lands because you are going to draw a shit tonne of cards and do not wish to flood.

Blue White Tokens

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You play medium creatures and then you bring them back and you buff them. And sometimes they come back with evasion. You're looking for ways to prolong the game because you can play a lot of your creatures twice. Most Embalm creatures are built to come back on a few more mana than they came in with, so you have a pre-built curve that goes up to "a lot" and a lot of incentive to trade. You are thus able to support a few cards with stupidly high mana costs - you'll probably play that stupid 7 mana indestructible angel. Also you're going to drag things out long enough that your opponent is going to draw their own bombs, so you should prioritize unconditional removal and counterspells even higher than you normally would. Beware of timing out, because you are the slowest fucking deck in the format. So get gud and play fast.

Black White Zombies

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It's the Tribal deck in this format, and it's... Black/White Zombies? Sure. Why not?

The synergies here are much blunter than the other decks. Things pretty much have the Zombie keyword or they do not. Some of the Zombie cards are still pretty bad, and a lot of zombie synergy cards require you to hit some critical mass of zombies before they are good. Liliana's Mastery is good even if it's the only Zombie in your deck, the Lord of the Accursed is only good if you have like 8 other Zombies (or embalmable potential zombies), and Embalmer's Tools are unplayable unless you have like 15 Zombies or Return of the Second Sun. With enough zombies and zombie synergy cards, this deck can go into turbo insanity, but it's also possible for everything to fall apart. Time to Reflect is stone cold useless if you don't hit Critical Zombie Mass, and Blighted Bats are not weak replacement level creatures if you don't have the zombie power-ups.

-Username17
Last edited by Username17 on Mon Apr 24, 2017 2:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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maglag
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Re: Amonkhet Limited [MTG]

Post by maglag »

FrankTrollman wrote: Blue White Tokens

Key Uncommons:
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You play medium creatures and then you bring them back and you buff them. And sometimes they come back with evasion. You're looking for ways to prolong the game because you can play a lot of your creatures twice. And you can embalm at the end of your opponent's turn so Counterspells are way better for you than other blue decks.
At the end of the Embalm ability says it can only be used when you could play as a Sorcery, so I believe that means you can't do it at the end of your opponent's turn.

Otherwise another great review from you, thanks! I haven't played MTG for years but it's nice to check on its new editions.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 »

Good point. Fixed the Blue/White Tokens description to more accurately reflect play patterns.

-Username17
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