Initial Thoughts on Shards of Alara
This weekend I played in the Shards of Alara Prerelease in Madison, WI, where we still almost have a traditional prerelease. That meant I was able to play in 3 sealed events and 1 2HG. I've also drafted Shards twice so far. In other words, thanks to the new system I'm way behind where I'd like to be right now.
I'm not exactly sure how to approach this, since I just want to go over my thoughts on the new limited format. This may skip around a bit. I also haven't slept much this weekend.
First off, sealed. 3-4 color seems to be the norm. Four 4 seemed to be the average number of nonbasic lands for a prerelease sealed pool (which means it had one more pack than a PTQ or GP sealed pool will have), so the mana was generally pretty good. Naya (green-white-red for people who haven't learned the names yet) seemed to be the most played shard due to its Abundance of huge creatures and removal. Blue was the least represented color by far. I think this is all pretty correct.
Exalted is awesome. I assumed that going in, but if I hadn't, it would have been the lesson of my first flight. I started off with a red/black/x deck with a ton of removal, lost, and then changed to a dedicated W/G/U exalted deck with Rafiq of the Many. I won three rounds with that deck. Everyone I talked to or overheard on the subject was in agreement that exalted exceeded their expectations (it was the mechanic I was most excited about going in).
Exalted is an extremely unique mechanic. It's nowhere near as straightforward as Bushido or Flanking, the way it may first appear. It has an interesting sliver-like dynamic that rewards having as much exalted as possible. What makes it interesting is that unlike slivers it's directly good against removal. Where a sliver plan falls apart if they kill a few slivers, exalted creatures are generally extremely undercosted as the only creature in play, so against removal heavy decks all your creatures are just insane.
The best strategy against exalted is actually to race. It's extremely hard to come back from behind against exalted decks. They apply a lot of fast pressure and can almost always attack with one creature that's bigger than the largest blocker. The creatures all suck at blocking. A dedicated exalted deck will have few if any sources of virtual card advantage (single creatures that can hold off many creatures), so pushing back will generally be fairly effective. The reason that racing is a functional plan despite the fact that the exalted creatures are generally the fastest and most efficient in the format is that they're so bad against chump blockers or removal spells as a source of tempo. What this means for exalted is that fliers and unblockables are extremely important, and Deft Duelist is extremely powerful as it can hold off a huge number of creatures in some decks.
The deck that most excited me Friday night at the prerelease was an aggressive Grixis deck with a ton of Unearth, fliers, and two Blightnings. Grixis offers an interesting aggro-attrition strategy that's really interesting to me. Two mana 2/1s that are easy to cast or have evasion (Tidehollow Strix) get a lot of early hits in and then mid game creatures trade and Unearth seals the deal. The archetype looked very interesting for draft.
On Saturday my sealed pool was a dedicated power 5 deck with 7 such monsters. The early game was entirely devoted to removal and living to play the monsters, one of which was a Flameblast Dragon. That archetype is one of the few where I'm willing to play obelisks, which in general I think are best avoided. Gift of the Gargantuan was a card that was debated all weekend. My current opinion is that it's good in the power 5 deck, but generally pretty week outside of that. The power 5 deck was extremely good in sealed, with my only loss coming from horrendous mana issues, but I think the archetype is less impressive (though certainly still viable) for draft.
Saturday evening I drafted and my first pick was definitely between several Naya cards, which I narrowed down to Wild Nacatl or Naya Charm. I took the Wild Nacatl because it's going to be good in any green deck (assuming in this format that every green deck will have a reasonable number of plains or mountains, which I consider a fairly safe assumption) and the power level might actually be higher, I'm not sure yet. Second pick I took Topan Ascetic over Resounding Roar, which I'm not entirely certain about, but I think it was correct. Shortly after that I took Jungle Shrine and Akrasan Squire and passed a Hell's Thunder that I strongly considered, but decided to opt for another card that wouldn't stick me in a specific deck as closely. As the draft continued I focused on green/white with as much exalted as possible. I wasn't trying to stay two color, but I wanted a good reason to decide between red and blue as a splash. I ended up with a very good aggressive deck with 3 1 drops, 4, 2 drops, 4 three drops, some bigger guys, and a Branching Bolt and a Naya Charm as my red splash with the Jungle Shrine, a Naya Panorama, a Bant Panorama, and a Druid of the Anima to fix. I would have liked a few more 1, 2, and 3 drops over some big creatures, but it played out well. I lost to double Sphinx Sovereign (these things happen).
Saturday I opened a sick pool with 5 nonbasic lands, 3 Branching Bolts, 3 other burn spells, an Oblivion Ring, a Blightning, and a lot of very unfair creatures including Mycoloth. I lost in the first round to Necrogenesis after stumbling early. The Necrogenesis let him chump my 10/10+ Algae Gharial until he was able to finish me off with a Blightning and a cycled Resounding Thunder. Game 2 I thought there was no way I could possibly lose, and then he cast his splashed Cruel Ultimatum. I won my next 4 rounds and punted round 6. It turns out there's a common Fog effect in this format, unlike the last few. Don't walk into that, especially when there's absolutely no reason to. The other lesson here: Ultimatums of the Cruel, Titanic, and Violent varieties are really, really good. They are worth trying to make work in sealed, and are very reasonable first picks in draft, I think.
After the sealed on Sunday we went back to my place for an 8 man draft. My first pick was between Naya Battlemage, Deft Duelist, Cloudheath Drake, and Scavenger Drake. My housemate Charlie was watching me draft, so I asked him which deck he wanted to see. He said he didn't know what the Scavenger Drake deck was, so I decided to take that to show him. Also, I'd already drafted Naya and I like to avoid 3 mana spells as much as possible, as this format seems to have an unusually high number of them (it also seems to have a low number of 4s, which a friend of mine pointed out may be a result of the obelisks, which might make people want to skip the 4 drop-if obelisks are any good).
I felt that I was getting cut somewhere about half way through the pack and it was clear the Bant, specifically exalted was pretty open, and at one point I almost gave up and I took an Akrasan Squire, but the next few picks after that put me back in red black and I decided to stick it out. It turned out all three players to my right had red and black in their decks, so I think this deck may have been a bit weaker than average, but I think what I ended up with still showcases the archetype I was going for very well:
The deck needed more removal, which was probably a product of getting cut. The one Bone Splinters came 8th pick in pack 3, and that was huge for the deck. I ended up going 2-2, but I attribute that largely to the problem of 2 color aggro decks. If you don't hit both colors by turn 3 you often just lose. The deck felt exactly like a dedicated Rakdos deck in RGD. Skeletal Kathari as probably the card that performed most above my expectations. This is primarily because of how awesome it was to have a Sacrifice outlet. As a sidenote, the deck really could have used some devour, but the person 2 to my right was taking it very aggressively.
My initial impression of this draft format is that I want to be as aggressive as possible, and focusing on 2 colors with a possible light splash in a third really lets that happen. The main reason for this is the cycle of CC common two color creatures (Deft Dualist, Goblin Deathraiders, etc). The reason these push a focus on two color decks is that they have highly unfavorable interactions with the panoramas that dedicated 3 color decks rely heavily on. This means you can often get multiple copies of one of these powerful commons because you can take them much higher than a three color deck.
On the phone today I was explaining to a friend of mine that there are two completely different mindsets that you can be in when drafting this format, and your first few picks will usually put you in one or the other. You can either stay flexible or focus. When you first pick a mono, or to some degree a two color card, if you can stay one or two colors for the next few picks you can try to stay open and avoid committing to a third color as long as possible, which may involve taking slightly weaker one or two color cards over a card that would force you to chose which of the two possible shards you're drafting you're going to lean to. The second option is to commit to a shard early and force it. This will happen most as the result of a first or second pick three color bomb. Once you have a card like that you can just take other cards that share all of its colors, which will usually let you take the most powerful spell you may be able to cast every pick. The first option is safer; the second has a bit more potential. I don't think you can choose one as an approach to every draft, I think it has to be determined by how you start in each draft.
Blue. Blue is interesting in this format. By interesting, I might mean pretty weak, but I'm certainly not convinced that that's true. I think there's a lack of flying and flying defense in this format that blue can really take advantage of, though there is the fairly large problem of regularly getting 2 for 1'd by Branching Bolt if you have fliers. I'm looking forward to trying a dedicated Esper deck sometime soon. The primary incentives to which seem to be Sanctum Gargoyle, Tidehollow Strix, Etherium Sculptor and Windwright Mage. That makes me think that it's probably best to focus on UB and splash white, as consistent early Strix's are amazing and Sanctum Gargoyle is probably more than happy to wait until later in the game.
That leaves Blue/White and Red/Green as the two color combinations that I haven't particularly discussed. Blue/White doesn't have a strong identity for me yet. This might be because the common u/w spell (Hindering Light) is much weaker than the other common two color spells (though admittedly Deft Duelist is better than either red two color common creature). It's possible there's something there, but the lack of a healer and the fact that blue's exalted creatures generally seem a little weaker than green's means the traditional blue/white decks don't make a lot of sense in this format. Red/green suffers from having a relatively week two mana creature that doesn't really have a lot of strategic synergy with the rest of the color pair. Also, a lack green token generation makes red more inclined to lean on black for devour (due to minor synergies with unearth) than green, though that may be underestimating the significance of Elvish Visionary as a devour victim.
That's pretty much where I'm at with the format at the moment. I'm also ridiculously tired after a weekend of gaming, so I'm just going to leave this with a quick note about, you know: talk to the forums, I like answering questions, yada yada, you know how this works. Oh yeah, also, I'm really excited about drafting this set. I'm also very unhappy about wizard's policy regarding no drafts at prereleases and also limited prizes. Prizes were limited to 1.5 packs per player. Prereleases with only 2 boosters instead of three (so that it's the same format as it is for other tournaments) and 2.5 packs per player in the prize pool would have been much more exciting, and then I'd be able to draft closer to the amount I'd like to (~20 times) this week.