Magic Deck Vortex: Shadowmoor First Impressions: Drafting.

So, you’ve taken a look at all the First Impressions articles. You’ve seen what we thought of the set, and you’ve made your own opinions about the cards. You might even be planning to buy a box in order to get a bunch of the cool new rares to put in your newest casual deck. Well, hold the phone, partner. If you’re going to be opening some packs up, perhaps it’s time to do a draft!

Drafts are pretty simple; in fact, there have been a host of articles written about drafting here at MDV. To get an idea of what draft is all about, have a look at my last drafting article, “Drafting Lorwyn For the First Time: A Primer.” It’ll give you the basic idea of how to draft. But, if you’re going to read that article, only read the first half. Just like Shadowmoor has changed the face of Lorwyn completely into this dark, sinister world, Shadowmoor has changed the face of drafting to something completely unlike Lorwyn. Trust me; it’s a welcome change.

Tip #1: Splashing is hard without the right artifacts. Scuttlemutt is a higher pick because it can fix your mana and accelerate you into a larger turn four play, allowing you to play your cards more easily. Elsewhere Flask may be slower than fixing in Lorwyn, but it really powers up Corrupt and Jaws of Stone.

Shadowmoor is a new era of drafting, a new era of Limited play. Hybrid cards allow players extreme flexibility in their color choices, allowing players to step away from the forced tribal color pairings of Lorwyn draft. Drafting cards for their power alone is once again king; now, instead of drafting cards to garner a synergistic effect, you draft powerful cards for the sake of their power (although to say that there aren’t any synergies in Shadowmoor draft would be a gross mistake). The focus now is on color, and on playing the right colors and getting the best effects for your color choices. For this reason, the colors and color combinations in Shadowmoor are what I’d like to focus on with this article (with some tips thrown in for good measure), because undoubtedly, the choice of colors and how you build your deck is crucial to winning games. There are really three different deck builds you can work with in Shadowmoor: decks based on allied color pairs, decks using enemy color pairs, and monochrome decks. Let’s take a look at allied colors first, and see what each of the color pairings have to offer us.

Tip #2: The tap Auras work extremely well with any creature with the untap ability; try to remember if you have taken these Auras to add more emphasis on grabbing creatures like Pili-Pala, Silkbind Faerie, and Leech Bonder.

There are five allied color pairs in Shadowmoor, and each is powerful in its own right. These five color combinations are:

Blue and White together form a potent combo in Shadowmoor Limited, as some of the more powerful evasion creatures, and the best of the five “Demigod” Auras, Steel of the Godhead. Curse of Chains, Biting Tethers, and Prison Term are great removal spells, and the Blue/White scarecrow is a threat that’s far too difficult to handle. Æthertow can be brutal to an opponent’s tempo, and Plumeveil, although oftentimes underrated, is a powerful stopping force that also acts as creature removal. Unfortunately, Blue and White is extremely mana intensive, and it often can’t hold up to larger creatures from Green and Red. In addition, your fliers are very fragile, making powerful Green cards like Raking Canopy and Gloomwidow very difficult to work around.

Tip #3: With the amount of Auras and artifacts in the format, cards like Strip Bare and Gleeful Sabotage are definitely pickable and should be grabbed to give you a bit of a fight in the second game against the powers of Steel of the Godhead and Armored Ascension.

White and Green have a beautiful relationship with each other in this set. Green provides powerful creatures like Crabapple Cohort, while White brings powerful removal into the archetype. Both provide powerful two-drops to the table, making for aggressive starts finished up with spells like Armored Ascension. Shield of the Oversoul is ridiculous, and although indestructible isn’t nearly as good with wither in the format, it’s by no means something to scoff at. Green/White gets the only true pump card, Barkshell Blessing, which is great with conspire. Green and White can make an extremely powerful deck, but unfortunately quite a few of your White commons and uncommons are plain bad. You have to be careful drafting this archetype, because your best removal spells will be first picks for any deck playing White. Try splashing Blue or Red for best effect.

Tip #4: Four toughness and higher is almost a rarity in this format. The main creatures you’ll see all the time will constantly be X/3 and lower. This makes certain picks a lot easier; try to make sure you beat that 3/3 by grabbing creatures like Crabapple Cohort and Ashenmoor Gouger.

Arguably one of the most removal intense builds, Red and Green have an amazing bomb in Firespout, and have the best of both worlds in terms of creatures and removal. Burn Trail is amazing, and so is Jaws of Stone. Boggart Ram-Gang and Morselhoarder are just two on a list of many powerful, deadly creatures that Green and Red has access to. Manamorphose is kind of like playing with a deck that has one less card in it (turning your 40 card deck into a 39 card deck) and it’s potentially one of the best mana fixing commons in the set. Power of Fire and Presence of Gond are both in Green/Red, adding power to any Pili-Pala or other untap creatures. One initial problem with G/R is that I feel it’s going to frequently be the most drafted archetype, spreading some of its power a bit thin.

Tip #5: Green has a lot of strength against fliers in Shadowmoor, because the fliers are uncharacteristically weak in this format. Try to pick up Raking Canopy or Gloomwidow’s Feast in case you have to play against the powerful Blue and Black deck.

While one of the weaker allied pairs in Shadowmoor, Black and Red have access to amazing removal like Incremental Blight as well as powerful effects such as on Kulrath Knight. It also has access to Faerie Macabre, which can be the perfect way to end a game. Black has the most access to wither cards too, which all act like removal. Some of Black/Red’s effects are powerful but rather expensive (like Cultbrand Cinder). In addition, the format is full of 3/3 Hill Giant-esque creatures that are going to set the standard for draft decks; this means Red and Black is at a disadvantage, because its creatures rarely fall beyond the 3/3 mark in power and toughness. Still, with -1/-1 counters in plenty, Red/Black still has a good chance against the field provided you draft the correct cards.

Tip #6: On the flip side of the last tip, fliers may be weak, but there are is an uncharacteristically low number of them in Shadowmoor. The best fliers at common (Faerie Macabre and Silkbind Faerie) should be picked higher than you’d normally pick a 2/2 flier for three mana.

With access to powerful fliers and the set’s best rare (Oona, Queen of the Fae) and the set’s best uncommon (Incremental Blight), Blue/Black has the power to get the job done. Wasp Lancer and Faerie Macabre are very good, and Blue and Black get cards like River’s Grasp and Inkfathom Infiltrator to keep the damage on your opponent’s plate. Black, however, is probably Shadowmoor draft’s worst color, and Blue has its own problems. All in all, it’s probably the most underwhelming of the color combinations, but it’s quick, and can be quite ugly given the right third turn plays.

Tip #7: The color-based Hill Giant cycle (Sootwalkers, Wanderbrine Rootcutters) is a very mixed lot. In colors that normally don’t get 3/3s for four mana, such as Black and Blue, these cards are a blessing. Draft them higher. In colors like Green and Red, you won’t necessarily find that you need these cards as much because your other cards will outclass the classic 3/3 for four.

Allied color decks have a few things going for them. In addition to being able to support the “modular-like” spells (River’s Grasp, Torrent of Souls) with ease, an allied color deck has a greater ability to splash a color, something an enemy colored deck is less likely to do. Allied color decks, without splashing, get to use hybrid cards from three of the five hybrid pairings. Because of the ability to play color specific cards and capitalize on them (such as the Duos or the modular spells like Firespout), playing allied colors is a very attractive option.

Tip #8: Keep your options open and look for signals from your neighbors. This goes for any draft, but in Shadowmoor, it’s especially important that you get the right colors; having two people dipping into the same color pairing right beside each other is a recipe for disaster. Hybrid mana allows you to make picks that might still potentially see play even if your final deck looks nothing like what your initial picks were, so keep an open mind.

Enemy color pairings are a less thought-of feature in Shadowmoor draft. The drafter that goes against the preexisting color pairings does get a bonus for their nonconformity. Decks that use two enemy colors (like a Blue and Red deck, for instance) get access to four of the five hybrid pairings. Therefore, an enemy color deck has access to a wider variety of cards in the set, and has access to more powerful hybrids. The problem with running an enemy color deck is that in order to get the most powerful cards in two enemy colors, you end up forgoing any of the cards that rely on both colors to get their best effect. Sure, Steel of the Godhead is good if it only gives unblockable, but you really want it to also give the enchanted creature lifelink, and that requires it be Blue and White. Cards like Torrent of Souls also want you to pay both colors of mana to get the best effect. This loss of power can be recovered with cards like Scuttlemutt and Pili-Pala, or can be fixed by adding lands of the color you need to get full effect out of your modular spells.

Tip #9: Sometimes a small splash can be very helpful in an allied paired deck too. Getting some White or Red for your Blue and Black deck can often give you the strength for the long game.

The final option you have is the monochrome deck, where you ultimately only play one color. This strategy works much more often in Shadowmoor than any other Limited format before it, because in reality you have three sets of cards to work with (the two hybrids with your chosen color, and the color itself). There are cards that really reward mono-coloredness, such as the Cohorts and the “Corrupt cycle” of cards that can make this archetype fairly attractive. A modification of the monochrome deck is a deck that is mostly one color, but uses a lot of hybrid cards of one pair of colors (like a mono-Blue deck with a lot of Blue/Black hybrids) and a small opposite color splash. So, for example, a Black deck that plays a lot of Blue/Black hybrids and a splash of Blue for Briarberry Cohort and River’s Grasp. Red especially has a good chance with this strategy, although you need to be low on Red drafters at the table for this deck to work itself out.

With all the options available in Shadowmoor, draft is going to be an amazing time this year. I've really enjoyed it so far, and I'm sure that the drafts to come are going to rock just as much as my Prerelease weekend. I've given you my initial insight into the world of Shadowmoor; feel free to talk it up in the forums. Do you agree or disagree? Am I off my rocker, or am I dead on? Only time will tell. And, until next time, this Death_By_Beebles, signing out.

Alex Hoffman has been parading around with the pseudonym of Death_By_Beebles for three years now. He's a writer for Magic Deck Vortex, and can often be found tinkering with his latest decks while working on his Biochemistry homework. He is the author of Raiding the Dollar Bins and Going Blind series at MDV, and the recent startup series Pauper Chronicles. Alex likes kittens, reading, and generally enjoying life. He doesn't like Brussels sprouts. You can send him deck ideas, combos and suggestions at deathbybeebles@yahoo.com.

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