Today we’re going to look a look at some of the draft archetypes which seem to be evolving as more of the cards are spoiled. We only have a few of the commons spoiled thus far. So it’s possible some of the archetypes may be more or less supported than it seems like right now, but I think we can really start to give the format some shape. From what we know, the archetypes built into the set are actually extremely different, and won’t demand a lot of overlap as far as the cards they need. Currently, there are three major archetypes which we can identify just from the cards spoiled, and they all actually look quite solid.

Defenders

I’m going to cover this one first, because I’m definitely the most excited about it. We’ve had multiple very strong commons which support this subtheme spoiled already, but Vent Sentinel is the card which ultimately makes the whole archetype come together. Defenders are great at stopping attacks and keeping you from losing, but you can’t actually win when your team can’t attack. This card not only “attacks,” but is basically unblockable and can potentially dish out huge amounts of damage. The 2/4 body is hardly anything to sneeze at as well, because it can not only block effectively but actually punish attackers. Considering that you actually get to draft three packs of RoE, it would not be difficult to accumulate several copies of the Sentinel if you pick him as a high priority.

Defender is definitely the “ugly duckling” of RoE draft, because it lacks the splashiness of the tremendous Eldrazi/mana ramp decks or the attractive curve-outs of the level up based aggro decks. Despite this, or more likely because of this, defender is going to be a great archetype to be in early in the drafting season. While everyone else is focused on generating mana and dumping huge, colorless monsters on the field or just trying to race the control players with level up creatures, you can be focused on gumming up the board and burning your opponent out with walls which double as unblockable attackers. If you go to a pre-release, consider grabbing this guy if you seem him floating around in the first couple picks. He’s going to be a defining draft card, so snap him up before people realize how good he is.

I’ll be honest that I’m a little worried about how this archetype is positioned in the environment. Against decks which are basically focused on playing Eldrazi, defenders aren’t actually going to be stopping anyone from attacking you. It’s going to come down to a race, whether your Sentinels can gun them down before they can get too many Eldrazi swings in. Also, against the level up aggro archetype, we haven’t actually seen any creatures which the walls can block effectively. Both the Knight of Cliffhaven and Beastbreaker of Bala Ged (because four toughness seems to be the standard for walls in this set) get right past them very quickly, and while we can hope that walls will be able to effectively block some of the creatures we haven’t seen yet, the track record isn’t great with what we know.


Eldrazi Ramp

This archetype is actually extremely simple to build: pick up several Eldrazi and a bunch of mana acceleration. We have quite a few different ways to get Eldrazi in play in several different colors (including colorless) but we’re still somewhat in the dark about how many Eldrazi we’re going to be seeing at each rarity. We currently have Eldrazi at common, uncommon, and legendary (and I feel pretty confident we’ll see them at rare as well), but the accessibility of this archetype will depend somewhat on how many different Eldrazi we actually get at the lower rarities (common and uncommon). You can bet that, at least early on in the drafting season, people are going to be grabbing Eldrazi almost any time they see them, so they might be hard to come by. It may take a while to figure out the right balance between Eldrazi and acceleration, but again that depends a lot on the commons which we don’t know yet.


The big difficulty (and potential blessing) with this archetype is that you’ll be playing some colored cards even if the key cards you’re looking for are colorless. This means that if the person to your right is looking to draft Eldrazi, they’re going to be taking cards you want even if they’re focusing on completely different colors. In a weird way, colorless is almost a color in this draft, and it’s a color you have to play if you intend on picking up Eldrazi. Similarly, no one who’s drafting another archetype is going to be interested in picking up any of the colorless cards we’ve seen so far. On the flipside, if the person to your right is drafting an aggro or defender archetype, you can be guaranteed that you can play any Eldrazi card which comes your way regardless of which supporting colors you intend to play.

This archetype has some potential overlap with the defender archetype, as Walls are quite good at keeping you alive in the early game, especially when they can also produce mana. Regardless, Eldrazi is going to really come down to a race, whether you’re trying to beat them senseless with huge Eldrazi before they can kill you with their level up guys or burn you to death with their Vent Sentinels. So far, we haven’t seen much of the Eldrazi early game. In order to avoid getting overrun by other archetypes make sure you have productive moves at every stage of the game.


Level Up Aggro

Ok, we haven’t seen a ton of support for this deck yet, but the principle is quite easy to see. All the level up guys come in fairly small and at low cost, and then scale up as the game progresses. The two best level up guys we have, Knight of Cliffhaven and Beastbreaker of Bala Ged, put a very good clock on your opponent. An opponent who doesn’t have much to play in the first couple turns of the game is going to lose a fair chunk of their life very fast.

Also, as harsh as I have been on totem armor in the past, Wizards did finally give us a very solid one. Boar Umbra actually seems great in this format, where putting a good clock on your opponent is your key to winning. If breaking through defenders is the order of the day, the Boar Umbra is usually going to give you enough power to swing through whatever Walls they’ve played, where as a normal Grizzly Bear would not.

Anyway, there’s not too much to say about this archetype other than to pick guys who curve well and ideally have evasion. Once your opponent drops an Eldrazi on the board, you want to be able to continue swinging. The Knight is almost better than the Beastbreaker, but the damage you get early probably weighs out the damage the Knight will be able to punch through later. Also, with the cards we’ve seen, it is possible to make some of your level up guys big enough to tangle with the Eldrazi. Slap a Boar Umbra on a fully leveled Beastbreaker and you can get in there and rumble with the big boys.


This is just a glimpse at the new archetypes, and we’ll be keeping tabs on them as more and more cards come out, particularly the vital commons. As always, drafting well is about reading the signals and being able to tell what’s open. It’s going to be difficult, but I guarantee you I’m going to be pushing for either the defender or level up aggro archetypes early while all the other players are indulging in the Eldrazi rush. Perhaps that’s just the Spike in me, but if you understand the archetypes and the key commons before everyone else, it can win you a huge amount of drafts while the others are catching on. Look for commons lists for the different archetypes as the season continues.


As always, head to the forums and let me hear what you think about the article. Am I way off base about the value of defenders in this format? Is the activation cost on Vent Sentinel too much to keep it from really being a defining common? Is playing Eldrazi just going to be better than all the other archetypes, bar none, or do they actually stand a chance?

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