Limited Understanding: Tips for Drafting Ixalan
After spending a good chunk of a day at Grand Prix Providence last weekend playing nothing but single-elimination draft pods, I feel I'm now an expert on how to draft Ixalan, the latest set in the Magic: the Gathering trading card game created by Richard Garfield. Follow these tips I learned from the only three drafts I've ever done of this set and you'll become a pro cardslinger like me.
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Tribes are a Trap
There's a myth going around that if you're not firmly in dinosaurs, pirates, vampires, or merfolk (and the color combinations associated with them), you're going to have a bad time. Problem is, there are very few cards that actually reward you for "going tribal."
In fact, I've found that many of the cards that are supposed to be payoffs end up being inconsequential. Fell Flagship, for example, seems like a great Pirate "Lord" in theory, but it's rarely worthwhile to crew the thing for an attack. This just leaves you with a poor anthem that rarely allows you to trade up with your weak, fragile Pirates.
Deeproot Waters ostensibly rewards you for having lots of Merfolk, but what exactly are you getting out of it? Is it worth holding off on casting your 1- and 2-drop Merfolks so you can get value from this card? How many Merfolk tokens does this card need to generate to justify the card slot? And even if you reach a critical mass of 1/1 Hexproof Merfolk tokens, there are very few cards in the set that pump your whole team--and none of them are exclusive to the Merfolk tribe.
Instead, you should ignore tribal hype and draft cards on their own merits. Territorial Hammerskull and Raptor Companion are good, common creatures that happen to be Dinosaurs. Ditto Bishop's Soldier and Skymarch Bloodletter, but for Vampires. Outside of creatures, most of the "tribal" spells like Savage Stomp, Lookout's Dispersal, and Dinosaur Stampede are fine even without their corresponding tribes.
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Flyers is the Best Tribe
If you had to pick a "tribe," your best bet is to ignore the creature type line and just go with things with wings. Blue and white are the obvious colors for this, but black has a couple of choice flyers in the common slot and grants you access to some great removal options.
Blue and white have excellent commons for keeping the ground secure, such as Sailor of Means and Looming Altisaur, but really, as long as you have cheap, 2- and 3-power creatures to trade with, you'll be fine. Every color has access to a bunch of 2-power 2-drops at common, so setting up a defense before taking to the skies shouldn't be difficult.
Aside from the obvious evasion benefits, flyers has the most accessible anthem effect in the set: Favorable Winds, at uncommon. One With the Wind is a great Aura for any deck running blue, but Equipment and even Mark of the Vampire become far more viable when your opponent has trouble blocking your team.
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Greed is Good
Thanks to Treasure tokens, there's a ton of mana-fixing in this set. This really opens the doors to taking big risks and getting properly rewarded. Certain cards like Planeswalkers or River's Rebuke can end games on their own, and Treasure tokens let you cast them no matter how off-color they are.
You may notice that adhering strictly to the Pirate tribe has very few payoffs. This may be because the greatest reward for going deep on the Pirate plan has nothing to do with the creatures themselves, but the easy access you have to off-color and expensive bombs.
In green, you have New Horizons and Drover of the Mighty for off-color (and acceleration!) shenanigans. After witnessing how other players have performed in my draft pods, I'm reasonably convinced that the best decks are solidly in two colors and splashing greedily for a third.
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Treat Explore Like Cycling
Explore is definitely not as good at lowering variance and streamlining your deck as Cycling did in Hour of Devastation. However, they share other similarities, first and foremost being that you should not treat it like an archetype.
This was a trap in Hour of Devastation, where cards like Drake Haven and anything that said, "Whenever you cycle or discard a card," gave the appearance that you could build a "Cycling deck." You couldn't. Any card with Cycling was good just by virtue of having the ability, but it was never the case that a deck won because they Cycled a critical mass of cards over the course of the game.
Explore is the same way. Only a small handful of cards (Wildgrowth Walker, Lurking Chupacabra, Shadowed Caravel) trigger off Explores, and only two cards Explore repeatably. Explore, like Cycling, is nice to have, but it's not the foundation of any deck.
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As Always, Remember BREAD
This should be obvious, but no strategy article about how to draft Magic is complete without referencing BREAD. The acronym stands for Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, and Dregs (or Duds, or Dirt, or Doodoo), and refers to the order in which you should prioritize your picks. Every card falls into one or more of these categories, and part of the challenge and fun of drafting is evaluating the cards correctly and making a choice from there.
Other writers have covered this in nauseating detail, so I'm not going to elaborate much further on it. Just remember next time you're drafting Ixalan and have no idea what you're doing to let the good BREAD guide you.
------
Tribes are a Trap
There's a myth going around that if you're not firmly in dinosaurs, pirates, vampires, or merfolk (and the color combinations associated with them), you're going to have a bad time. Problem is, there are very few cards that actually reward you for "going tribal."
 |
| Wrong game, wrong hole. |
Deeproot Waters ostensibly rewards you for having lots of Merfolk, but what exactly are you getting out of it? Is it worth holding off on casting your 1- and 2-drop Merfolks so you can get value from this card? How many Merfolk tokens does this card need to generate to justify the card slot? And even if you reach a critical mass of 1/1 Hexproof Merfolk tokens, there are very few cards in the set that pump your whole team--and none of them are exclusive to the Merfolk tribe.
Instead, you should ignore tribal hype and draft cards on their own merits. Territorial Hammerskull and Raptor Companion are good, common creatures that happen to be Dinosaurs. Ditto Bishop's Soldier and Skymarch Bloodletter, but for Vampires. Outside of creatures, most of the "tribal" spells like Savage Stomp, Lookout's Dispersal, and Dinosaur Stampede are fine even without their corresponding tribes.
------
Flyers is the Best Tribe
If you had to pick a "tribe," your best bet is to ignore the creature type line and just go with things with wings. Blue and white are the obvious colors for this, but black has a couple of choice flyers in the common slot and grants you access to some great removal options.Blue and white have excellent commons for keeping the ground secure, such as Sailor of Means and Looming Altisaur, but really, as long as you have cheap, 2- and 3-power creatures to trade with, you'll be fine. Every color has access to a bunch of 2-power 2-drops at common, so setting up a defense before taking to the skies shouldn't be difficult.
Aside from the obvious evasion benefits, flyers has the most accessible anthem effect in the set: Favorable Winds, at uncommon. One With the Wind is a great Aura for any deck running blue, but Equipment and even Mark of the Vampire become far more viable when your opponent has trouble blocking your team.
------
Greed is Good
Thanks to Treasure tokens, there's a ton of mana-fixing in this set. This really opens the doors to taking big risks and getting properly rewarded. Certain cards like Planeswalkers or River's Rebuke can end games on their own, and Treasure tokens let you cast them no matter how off-color they are.You may notice that adhering strictly to the Pirate tribe has very few payoffs. This may be because the greatest reward for going deep on the Pirate plan has nothing to do with the creatures themselves, but the easy access you have to off-color and expensive bombs.
In green, you have New Horizons and Drover of the Mighty for off-color (and acceleration!) shenanigans. After witnessing how other players have performed in my draft pods, I'm reasonably convinced that the best decks are solidly in two colors and splashing greedily for a third.
------
Treat Explore Like Cycling
Explore is definitely not as good at lowering variance and streamlining your deck as Cycling did in Hour of Devastation. However, they share other similarities, first and foremost being that you should not treat it like an archetype.
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| Doesn't mean we didn't try. |
Explore is the same way. Only a small handful of cards (Wildgrowth Walker, Lurking Chupacabra, Shadowed Caravel) trigger off Explores, and only two cards Explore repeatably. Explore, like Cycling, is nice to have, but it's not the foundation of any deck.
------
As Always, Remember BREAD
This should be obvious, but no strategy article about how to draft Magic is complete without referencing BREAD. The acronym stands for Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, and Dregs (or Duds, or Dirt, or Doodoo), and refers to the order in which you should prioritize your picks. Every card falls into one or more of these categories, and part of the challenge and fun of drafting is evaluating the cards correctly and making a choice from there.
Other writers have covered this in nauseating detail, so I'm not going to elaborate much further on it. Just remember next time you're drafting Ixalan and have no idea what you're doing to let the good BREAD guide you.
 |
| The only dish I know how to make |
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