Magic: The Gathering,GO TEAM MS!

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

In draft where you have some level of control over that sort of thing, sure building enemy colors is preferred; but we're talking about sealed pools and in that case you build what you got.

[Thestatusquo]

Not to doubt you guys, since I haven't played, but I've been doing research so I can get in when I have some money, and in limited, wouldn't it be best to try and limit yourself to 2 colors so that you can pick from 2 wedges? It seems that having 2 enemy colors as the base, picking up the best you can from the two wedges that contain the combination, and then maybe splashing some cards from whatever wedge you have extras from should be the best. I'm very open to the possibility that I'm wrong, though.

Yep DDDP nailed this one but I want to emphasize that your strategy is dead right in draft. Generally, you need to be going full pants on head taking all the lands super highly (hoping to end up with 8-11 of them) or trying to be as close to 2 colors or two colors with a splash as possible. It's never a good idea to try to back door a four or five color draft deck.

[Shanba]

I think as a particular addendum to that, since I'm not clear Sudo realised it from his post (apologies if you did), but the enemy colour pairs are better than the ally colour pairs in KTK draft, partly because they overlap two clans and so you get access to the gold cards from two clans on the splash, but also because Wizards realised this and put in lots of "subtle" cues to make you draft that way - notably, there's an uncommon cycle of enemy coloured cards that are pretty universally excellent. (U/G - Icefeather Aven, Secret Plans, B/W - Chief of the edge/scale, R/W - Highspire Mantis, Ride Down, R/U - Winterflame, Master the Way, G/B - Kin-Tree Invocation, Death Frenzy. I think these are also supposed to emphasise the themes of these colours - W/B is warrior, U/G is morphs, R/W is... fuck knows, but I always end up in terrible tokens decks in r/w that can steal games from nowhere but normally just keel over and collapse under their own weight, B/G - toughness matters, U/R - again, fuck knows, but something like spells matter.)

EDIT: Went to have a look at the set to see if my instinct that U/G has more morphs than other colours is correct, turned out it was, so in addition to the morphs matters cards you also just get more morphs in those colours - each colour has 1 morph at uncommon in the reveal a card cycle, but U and G both have an additional uncommon morph (pine walker, Mistfire weaver) in addition to icefeather aven. There are also 2 common morphs in each colour but again U and G have an extra one. Each colour except U has a rare morph, U has 2. U/G has an additional rare morph in Sagu Mauler. There are two mythic morphs - Ashcloud Phoenix and Hooded Hydra. So yeah, consistently up and down the rarities there are extra u/g morphs.

Plus there are commons, a lot of them honestly very mediocre, that have enemy colour activations - not sure if this a cycle, but Smoke Teller, Mardu Hateblade, Kheru Dreadmaw, etc.

I think you can splash multiple on both sides sometimes. The cardinal sin imo is having your filler be in more than 2 colours. Think for example it's roughly acceptable to be base U/G, start picking a few of the sultai tricolour cards, then open a Crater's Claws and splash both R and B. Much worse is having a deck that has Ainok Tracker, Salt Road Patrol and Jeskai Windscout in the same deck. They may all be perfectly fine cards, but you're gonna increase your inconsistency with no payoff, and that's a problem. I would rather be splashing cards from all three non-primary colours than filler from a third.

The Trail of Mystery deck can afford to be a bit more liberal with splashing random morphs.

Colour preference for me is like, B/W>U/G>U/R>B/G>>>>W/R

[Thestatusquo]

Leaping master is the only one of that cycle that is actively good.

[chamber]

I think hateblade is just as good. Both are awful in the wrong deck.

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

I don't think either of those two are that far above Smoke Teller and that all three are better than Bloodfire Mentor which is still massively better than the unplayable nonsense that is Kheru Dreadmaw.

[Thestatusquo]

Evasion is just so good in this format.

[chamber]

Evasion is just so good in this format.

It's for that same reason a 1/1 deathtouch is good though, a lot of the threats are on the ground.

[Shanba]

Archer's parapet is playable in the right deck too.

Think the full list of them is Scaldkin, Bloodfire Mentor, Archer's Parapet, Kheru Dreadmaw, Leaping Master, Firehoof Cavalry, Smoke Teller, Embodiment of Spring, Mardu Hateblade, Unyielding Krumar.

Leaping Master is playable, but I actively dislike R/W so yeah.

[diginova]

Evasion is just so good in

limited

.

FTFY.

[Sudo_Nym]

I've been watching a lot of draft videos, and it seems like the ground tends to get super clogged in limited. Having stuff that can fly or stuff like Singing Bell Strike to impair blockers seems super valuable.

[hasdgfas]

I think Flying is super important in the format. There are way too many big butts that stick on the ground forever. I was having that discussion with a friend I draft with most Tuesdays, and I think because there's seemingly such a limited amount of flying, what is there is far more important.

[Thestatusquo]

Evasion is just so good in

limited

.

FTFY.

More so in this set than in most.

These games devolve into big dumb dudes on the ground more than almost any other format I've played.

[beeboy]

My goal for GP ottawa is too collect all the cards that I don't get for a modern

Should I get birthing pod or U/R/W delver? I am not that good of a blue player but delver seems to be the better deck right now.
I also have played and enjoyed both of the decks

[Thestatusquo]

Pick a deck and stick with it. Modern rewards familiarity more than anything else. Honestly my favorite modern strategy is still splinter twin especially the straight UR version. But just pick something and play it forever. You'll get good with it.

[bv310]

I recently bought into Pod, so I'm biased here, but Pod is the best. The sheer variety and versatility of the deck means that you can adapt it to any meta. There were three in the finals of GP Madrid this weekend, so they're worth checking out. Right now, it looks like Archangel Pod is the way to go.

[Thestatusquo]

3 in the finals seems likely to be incorrect.

[bv310]

Finals meaning top 8 >.>

[beeboy]

I might go delver and build into pod because delver is a lot cheaper and I want to at least have some kind of modern deck i enjoy playing and is able to compete at PTQs and GPTs

[bv310]

The two are pretty far apart though. Buying Hierarchs first means you could play Infect to lead into Pod, since they share a fairly similar manabase, and the deck is pretty cheap besides the Hierarchs.

[beeboy]

The two are pretty far apart though. Buying Hierarchs first means you could play Infect to lead into Pod, since they share a fairly similar manabase, and the deck is pretty cheap besides the Hierarchs.

I just wanted to get something tier 1 as fast as I could but infect seems fun enough where I will sacrifice winning as I assume infect would be bad when everyone is running removal for delver decks

[Thestatusquo]

If you want tier one, burn is like actually pretty close and probably like 120 tix.

[Klazam]

Pick a deck and stick with it. Modern rewards familiarity more than anything else. Honestly my favorite modern strategy is still splinter twin especially the straight UR version. But just pick something and play it forever. You'll get good with it.

This is true for all eternal formats. pick a deck, stick with it forever, you get to be a god at that deck.

[bv310]

If you want tier one, burn is like actually pretty close and probably like 120 tix.

Yep, and if you want it online, I posted a list a few pages back that I'd be happy to sell you.

[Knight of Cydonia]

UR Delver and variants is *the* deck right now, which also means people are packing a lot of hate for it, which will swing it back down towards T2 again swiftly (as we're already seeing). Pod will always be a top tier deck (short of Pod getting banned, which has never been seriously considered) and is, in my experience having played BUG Delver in Legacy & Kiki-Pod in Modern, just a whole bunch more fun and rewarding to learn to play.