Modern Horizons Draft Guide - Part 3 - The Archetypes Pt 1.

The Archetypes

One thing to recognize about MH1 is that there are a bunch of ways to successfully build each colour pair. The paint by numbers “This is what X colour pair is trying to do” approach to the ten colour pairs we see in most sets doesn’t quite pan out in the way seasoned drafters have become accustomed to. Each colour pair still has a WotC prescribed theme that for most colour pairs, is the default deck you’ll fall into, but there are a bunch of options for customization.

I view MH1’s landscape of commons and uncommons as a deep roster of generically good cards with a handful of narrow but powerful archetype specific cards peppered in. The generically good cards (Irregular Cohort for example) have been designed to interact favorably/synergistically with more cards than the average common in a given set would. A higher number of favorable interactions means a higher potential for more archetypes to spawn. One of my keys to success in this format has been realizing that many colour pairs have secondary archetypes that are important to be aware of when you find yourself in a spot where you’re halfway thought the draft and lacking synergy pieces.

For examples, the UB deck based around the Ninjutsu mechanic needs the one drop enablers to be what I would consider to be a “good” version of that deck. If it’s mid to late in pack 3 and I don’t have any Faerie Seers or Changeling Outcasts (other players may have taken them or perhaps the packs just broke unfavorably) I’ll be looking to backdoor into UB’s secondary archetype, UB control. 

When going through each colour pair, ill list the primary archetype that I find myself in for that colour pair, and later go over the secondary or “backdoor” archetype you can audible into when the synergy pieces don’t present themselves. There are a ton of different ways to build each colour pair, the ones I’ll describe are just the ones I’ve encountered most often.

I'll be presenting the archetypes in a rough best to worst order, but take this as a grain of salt as every two-colour pair is playable. The top decks certainly stand out, but it's by no means a landslide. When talking about the “Key cards, above replacement level cards, good filler etc.” Assume that the top commons in each colour belong here unless otherwise stated.

UB Ninjas

Game Plan: UB Ninjas has my vote for best deck in the format. It checks all the boxes of what I want to be doing in this format and is composed of two of the best colours in the format. Your main plan has 3 steps

1.     Play a cheap evasive creature, ideally a one drop

2.     Ninjutsu in a Ninja payoff like Moonblade Shinobi or Ingenious Infiltrator

3.     Keep your opponent off balance with cheap removal and bounce spells as you get repeated value from your Ninjas connecting and picking up good ETB creatures as you Ninjutsu more threats into play

How to get into this deck: Opening one of the two busted Ninja rare’s (Fallen Shinobi and Mist-Syndicate Naga) or Ingenious Infiltrator are the three cards that really draw me into this deck early, but every single card with Ninjutsu is good. One of the common ways I get into this deck is I’ll be in a spot with 2 Moonblade shinobi’s a Man-o-War and some other reasonable blue, notice that some of the black common Ninja’s or Smoke Shroud are wheeling and i'll try to move in

Key Cards

One mana evasive creatures: The first place I look when someone asks me “Is this a good Ninja deck” is the one drop slot and if there are less than 3 Faerie Seers/Changing Outcasts (Cabal Therapist and Carrion feeder are acceptable in a pinch) then generally the answer is not really. I cannot stress how important the cheap enablers are for the Ninja deck. Ninjutsu is an inherently tempo-negative mechanic as you’re sacrificing board presence in order to activate a Ninjutsu ability. If the creatures you pick up are one drops, you sacrifice minimal tempo, and in some cases like with Azra Smokeshaper, you can even “make mana.” “Moving in” to the Ninja deck means valuing these enablers as high picks once you have some payoffs.

Smoke Shroud: The second place I look when someone asks me “Is this a good Ninja deck” is the two-drop slot to see if they have any Smoke Shrouds. Once you’ve gotten your Ninjutsu creatures in once, it can be difficult to get them in a second or third time. Smoke shroud fixes this issue while applying huge amounts of pressure, casting one on a Ninja of the New Moon that’s already gotten a hit in is close to game over.

Other Above Replacement Level Cards:
Anything that has Ninjutsu:  Azra Smokeshaper and Ninja of the New Moon aren’t tradition “value payoffs” for this deck, but they’re still quite good as they enable a the “hit you for large chunks of damage early and continuously” plan.

Watcher for Tomorrow: An excellent card, but even better here as your opponent either blocks and you get your card under it, or doesn’t block and you get to pick it up

Gluttonous slug: Does a decent impression of the one drop enablers while also being a threat itself

Underperformers

Exclude: Exclude being an underperformer is sort of true across most blue decks in the format. MH1 is a format that’s hostile towards strategies that are trying to leave up mana thanks to how punishing the early turns of this format can be.  When playing Ninjas, you’re often tapping out in the first 5 turns of the game so exclude loses an extra chunk of value.

UB’s Plan B/Backdoor Deck: UB Midrange/Control

When you don’t pick up many Ninja’s or notice that the one drop’s enablers aren’t wheeling, you can backdoor into UB midrange/control. This is your classic UB control deck with card draw, removal and whatever random finisher like Oneirophage or Future Sight you find. This deck has legs mostly because both blue and black have a high density of generically good cards, so getting a pile of good cards, while not an optimal strategy in this format, is a fine plan B.

UG Snow

Game Plan: UG snow is a midrange deck whose game plan is easier to describe as a deck building/draft exercise than trying to lay out what an ideal turns 1-5 look like. Your deck is trying to fulfill two basic requirements

1.     Jam as many good snow permanents as you can in your deck to maximize snow payoffs

2.     Play as many powerful off coloured cards as your mana base allows

Some versions of the deck will be more focused on maximizing how much raw power/colours you can fit into the deck and some will lean towards maximizing on the absurd snow payoffs like Conifer Wurm, Abominable Treefolk, and Dead of Winter. The very best UG snow decks are a balance of both, with Arcum’s Astrolabe being the lynchpin that ties together the two subthemes.

How to get into this deck: There are two main ways to get into UG snow:

1.     Opening/getting passed one of the absurd snow payoffs (the aforementioned Conifer Wurm, Abominable Treefolk, and Dead of Winter) and trying to cut snow as hard as you can (e.g., take the snow lands and payoffs over everything but premium/B level cards)

2.     Noticing mid-late pack U and G lands or Arcum’s Astrolabe and speculating that you should move in

      A table can support 3 UG snow drafters at very most (that number is closer to 2 a lot of the time) so you need to be vigilant when you try to move in early and it gets cut.  Likewise, read late U/G lands and Astrolabe as a data point, not a signal that you should jump in.  The snow drafters at your table may not be valuing those cards as highly as they should, leading you to read those cards as false signals.

      

     The nuts “I’m the only drafter at the table” snow deck is probably the actual best deck in the format, but enough people know that the deck is good that that won’t happen very often.

Key Cards

Arcum’s Astrolabe: Astrolabe is the most important card to this deck and getting one late should set off alarm bells that the deck may be open. A deck with 4 Astrolabes allows you to stretch your mana base pretty far and really maximize on your power level while sacrificing a minimal amount of consistency.  Astrolabe also lets you play an amount of off-colour snow lands, which allows you to maximize on how many snow permanents you can jam into your deck if that’s something your deck cares about.

Springbloom Druid: This is the second most important card to the deck and does many of the things that astrolabe does for you. Once you have 3 Astrolabes and 2-3 Druids you can virtually cast anything you draft barring you have enough green sources and snow lands




The Top Tier Snow Payoffs: 

Other Cards Above Replacement Level Cards

The typical cards you’d expect to be good in a midrange/ramp deck: Card draw like Fact or Fiction and Rain of revelation play any amount of incidental lifegain are great.  Glacial Revelation is a standout here, the card is a draw 3-5 in the best snow decks.

Anything that says “snow” on it:  There are virtually no bad snow permanents so when in doubt, take the Chillerpillar over the Pondering Mage so that you can maximize your snow count.

Underperformers

Low impact cards/Synergy reliant cards:  Low impact cards like Twin-Silk Spider or cards that need additional synergies to be good like or Eyekite don’t usually make the cut here. When you’re playing a deck that has mana sources 18-21 in its spell slots, you want each of your action spells to have real, meaningful impact on the game ( side note,  this is a point I’d argue is format agnostic, a common mistake I see in building ramp/midrange decks is too much fluff or defensive speed. This leads to ramping into nothing or flooding more times than not.)

UG’s Plan B/Backdoor Deck: Snow Crab Mill

A somewhat common occurrence when drafting this deck is first picking a great snow payoff, drafting the enablers like Astrolabe and the lands highly, but as you near the end of pack 2, you haven’t seen any more snow payoffs or cards that are worth splashing. My go-to back door plan for UG is crab mill. No one else at the table wants Iceberg Cancrix if you’ve snapped up most of the snow lands so you can pick these up for close to free. Three Cancrix is a comfortable number but there’s not really an upper limit on the number you’ll pay since they trigger each other. Ideally you want 70 percent of your deck to be permanents that trigger Cancrix with the rest being interaction and a few copies of Stream of Thought.

UR “draw two”

Game Plan: This deck’s game plan is pretty straightforward; play one of the payoff creatures (Eyekite, Spinehorn Minotaur, Onierophage, Thundering Djinn) then cast cheap draw spells and cycle cards to trigger the payoff creatures. In classic Izzet fashion, this deck is looking to leverage cheap removal and bounce to get in for massive chunks of damage.

How to get into this deck: The most common way I find myself ending up in this deck is taking an early Thundering Djinn (if you haven’t played with it, this card is absurd) and then picking up the enablers and payoffs to the deck slightly higher than I normally would. The other three payoff creatures are reasonable in other decks, so I don’t mind taking them mid-pack, even if it means I’m pushed to pivot into another deck.

Key Cards:

Thundering Djinn, Eyekite, Oneirophage, SpinehornMinotaur: These are the most important pieces in the deck. Once you know you’re in the deck, prioritize them reasonably highly as there are way more enablers than there are payoffs.

Fist of Flame: This is the deck’s best enabler. It’s cheap, it cycles, and it can deal massive amounts of damage.

Other Cards Above Replacement Level Cards

Cheap Cyclers: Prioritize the cards that cycle for one mana over the ones that cycle for two, they make your deck much leaner. Windcaller Aven is a standout here as it jumps your Spinehorn Minotaur

Hollowhead Sliver: The deck’s second-best enabler. Making sure your common payoffs are always “on” is big game.

Rain of Revelation: Rain of Revelation doesn’t pay you off any more than a cycler does if you only the common payoffs in play, but it’s silly with either of the uncommon payoffs.

Underperformers

Counterspells: This is mostly shorthand for anything that makes you leave mana up on your opponent’s turn. This deck is using its mana on your turn most of the time as the common payoffs aren’t very good on defense. Remember, it only takes one cycler to trigger your payoffs on your turn, but two on your opponent’s turn.

UR’s Plan B/Backdoor Deck:

UR control:

If you start the draft with a bunch of generically good blue and red cards, but none of the good payoffs, UR control has been a reasonable backdoor strategy for me. This deck is analogous to UB’s backdoor plan, the classic combination of removal spells, card draw and a few finishers.

RB Sacrifice

Game Plan:  If you’ve drafted RB in War of the Spark, you’ll be familiar with how this deck operates. RB sacrifice is most commonly an assertive leaning midrange deck. Your goal is to get on board early to pressure your opponent early and push through the mid to late game utilizing sacrifice synergies to press your on-board advantage. With access to cheap interaction and a proactive gameplay RB checks all the boxes of things you want to be doing in this for format.

When drafting this colour pair, I usually end up in an assertive deck, but RB has the outs to be built as aggressive or as grindy as you want. You can be a 16-land deck with multiple Goblin Champions, or you can play the long game, grinding out value with Return from Extinction and First-Sphere Gargantuan

How to get into this deck: RB is a deck that I sort of just fall into most of the time. It usually just starts with generically good red and black cards, and as the draft progresses, I pick up some of the sacrifice synergy cards like Bogardan Dragonheart and Putrid Goblin to start crafting a linear game plan.

Key Cards:

Bogardan Dragonheart: There are a lot of ways to build RB, but Bogardan Dragonheart is great in basically all of them. I mentioned that I wouldn’t list cards in the top 3 commons in this section, but Bogardan Dragonheart is so good in these decks that its worth an additional mention.

Other Cards Above Replacement Level Cards:

Undead Auger: This is a generically powerful card but goes up in value when you can sacrifice your creatures at will. You don’t have to work very hard to make this card good as you usually incidentally end up with random zombies and Changelings



Putrid Goblin/Sling-GangLieutenant/ Goblin War Party: These three are the best sac fodder around. Generally, take Putrid Goblin over the other two because of curve considerations

Goatnap:  When you have 4-5 free sac outlets, Goatnap goes from filler to a card you actively want. Don’t take it highly, but recognize when your deck wants it.

Underperformers

Vengeful Devil: This card looks like it’s right at home is in this deck, but its just too unreliable. Even when you can activate it, there just aren’t that many X/1’s in the format.

Warteye Witch: Not to say this card is a bad card, but its just so aggressively medium. You can do better than this card most of the time.

BR’s Plan B/Backdoor Deck:

Thanks to how many ways you can build this deck, you rarely need to find a backdoor strategy to save yourself from train wrecking. Even if you don’t end up with any Bogardan Dragonhearts, you’ll still have a functioning deck, if black and red are open.

The one variant of this deck to look out for is giving the deck a minor goblin tribal theme. This comes up when you pick up copies of Munitions Expert and/or Goblin Matron. This doesn’t change the core strategy of the deck but may change your pick orders slightly.

GR “Lands in Grave Matter”

Game Plan:  GR is a midrange deck that has a two-step game plan

1.     Get some amount of lands in its grave on turns 1-3 via cycling lands, Winding Way or Springbloom Druid

2.     Cast a fattie payoff like Igneous Elemental, Murasa Behemoth, or Ore-Scale Guardian

How to get into this deck: Getting passed good red and Green Cards early and them picking up mid to late pack Igneous Elementals. There are basically no first pick cards that really push me towards drafting RG, it’s another deck that kind of comes together as you notice mid-late pack enablers and payoffs.

Key Cards

Ingenious Elemental: I mention Igneous Elemental specifically in the “how to get into this deck” section because it’s an excellent card when your deck can consistently enable it, and bad when you can’t. This means that as the GR drafter at the table, you should ostensibly want it more than any of the other red drafters.

The card isn’t quite Flame Tongue Kavu but it sure feels like it with the amount of X/2’s in the set. Being able to kill something on EBT makes up for the fact that your turn two may have just been casting Winding Way

Springbloom Druid//Cycling lands/Winding Way These are your three main enablers in order of importance. For your deck to be able to compete with a deck like Ninja’s or RB sac, you need to see one of these cards in your first 3 turns to start being about to play your payoffs

Other Cards Above Replacement Level Cards:

Murasa Behemoth/Ore-Scale Guardian/ Excavating Anurid: These are your tier two payoffs. They’re still quite good but just a notch below Ingenious Elemental

Lava Dart: Your tier two enabler. This does a good impression of shock, and picking off two Ninja enablers is great, but saccing a land before turn 5 is usually bad unless its specifically to cast Ingenious elemental on turn 4.

Magmatic Sinkhole: This is the one deck I don’t mind playing up to 3 sinkholes because GR can fill up its grave consistently with winding way.

Underperformers

Ruination Rioters: By no means a bad card, but nowhere near as impactful or important as some of the other gold uncommons. It’s a good early play and sometimes domes your opponent for 5 in the late game, but don’t look at this as a high tier card. I’m taking a removal spell over this card in most spots.

GR’s Plan B/Backdoor Deck:

GR Beatdown

A running theme of these backdoor decks is using cards that you can pick up late and make some sort of cohesive deck out of and this one is no different. No enablers for your Ingenious elementals? This deck has you covered. Load up on two’s and threes and beatdown. Cards like Bellowing Elk, Treetop Ambusher, and Orcish hellraiser go late and with enough scrappy beatdown creatures, you have the makings of deck that stands a fighting chance. This isn’t a glamorous place to be, but it's better than being stuck with 3 Ingenious Elementals in your hand on turn 5