M14: The lifegain deck

July 25, 2013 Leave a comment

I tend to place fairly low value on cards that gain me life. Even if a card provides incidental lifegain, I won’t usually play it unless I would also play it if it didn’t have lifegain. However, M14 has a number of white, black, and green cards that benefit from lifegain. Are those cards powerful enough that they are worth playing? If so, what lifegain cards should you play to go with them?

M14 has 6 cards that benefit from lifegain: 4 in white, and 1 each in black and green:

  • Ajani Caller of the Pride (mythic): This is a bomb even if you don’t have any lifegain in your deck.
  • Angelic Accord (uncommon): Requires evaluation.
  • Archangel of Thune (mythic): This is a bomb even if you don’t have any lifegain in your deck.
  • Path of Bravery (rare): This seems very playable to me in aggressive decks. It forces your opponent to decide whether to attack you to reduce your life total so you don’t get the bonus, but that opens them up to a return strike that also gains you life. If they hold back, they have to block creatures with +1/+1, either immediately or when you have enough creatures and are ready to alpha strike. It seems less impressive in defensive decks, which are often willing to take hits early until they’re able to stabilize the board, and which win with fliers or large bombs and care less about Crusade effects.
  • Sanguine Bond (rare): Requires evaluation.
  • Voracious Wurm (uncommon): This is always at least a 2/2 for 2, so it’s definitely playable and probably exceptional since it can get very large if you have any lifegain to go with it.

Note that none of these cards are common, so if you’re building a deck that cares about lifegain, it’s because you already have one or more of these cards and not because you get passed Congregate. There are 2 cards each at uncommon, rare, and mythic, so the average draft will have 3.6 cards that care about lifegain.

Now let’s look at the cards that gain you life. This spreadsheet lists all the cards that allow you to gain life (including creatures with lifelink) and care about lifegain. The Cares About Lifegain column indicates whether the card cares about lifegain; if it contains a specific condition, then the card cares about how much life you gain or your life total, otherwise you get some effect regardless of your life total. The Lifegain column indicates how much life the cards allows you to gain; usually that’s a fixed number, but sometimes it depends on some other variable such as the number of creatures (#C) or the power of an enchanted creature (P+2). (The abbreviations used here are the same as the ones I used in my post on instant-speed tricks.) Highlighted cells indicate recurring lifegain: green highlight means there is no cost other than perhaps tapping the card, yellow highlight means a creature needs to attack (usually indicating lifelink), orange highlight means you need to put in a small effort (usually a mana cost, sometimes in addition to attacking), and red highlight means you need to sacrifice a creature or discard a card.

Pivoting by color, rarity, and quality, and looking at all common and uncommons that are not marked as sideboard/unplayable shows that black has the best lifegain cards, followed by white and then green:

  • Black: Child of Night and Mark of the Vampire at common are both playable. At uncommon, Corrupt is very playable in a heavy black deck but is a one-time effect and Gnawing Zombie is also quite good but not a reliable source of lifegain since you don’t usually want to sacrifice creatures just to trigger the cards above.
  • White: At common, Divine Favor is playable, but Soulmender and Dawnstrike Paladin are less exciting. At uncommon, we have Stonehorn Chanter and Congregate. White Stonehorn Chanter is occasionally playable just because it’s a 4/4 for 6 mana, I don’t really consider it a lifegain card because you have to pay an additional 6 mana to give it lifelink, which doesn’t usually make sense if you have any other options. Congregate doesn’t excite me either since it doesn’t affect the board, even though it has the potential to gain a lot of life. However, it will almost certainly trigger Angelic Accord, bring you above your starting life total for Path of Bravery, can result in huge Voracious Wurms, and is likely to kill your opponent if you have Sanguine Bond in play, so it might be playable if you have enough cards that care about lifegain.
  • Green: Verdant Haven is playable and Brindle Boar is filler.
  • Artifact: None. However, Bubbling Cauldron and Elixir of Immortality may be playable if you have enough cards that care about lifegain since both of them gain you enough life to trigger Angelic Accord.

Based on this, it looks like any lifegain deck would have to be W/B, since white has the cards that care about lifegain and black has the best lifegain cards. A W/G or B/G deck might be possible if you get the right mix of cards, but it seems unlikely. Also, Verdant Haven, Brindle Boar, and Scavenging Ooze (a rare) are not cards you usually want to splash, but you might be able to splash Voracious Wurm or Primeval Bounty (a mythic). If you’re not building a lifegain deck, you can still play the better green lifegain cards on their own merits in a G/X deck and just treat your occasional 4/4 Voracious Wurm as gravy. (Mmm, wurm gravy. :))

Now let’s consider whether Angelic Accord is playable. Here are the commons and uncommons that allow you to gain 4+ life on their own:

  • White: Solemn Offering (common), Congregate (uncommon), Stonehorn Chanter (uncommon, recurring)
  • Black: Mark of the Vampire (common, recurring), Corrupt (uncommon)
  • Green: Brindle Boar (common)
  • Artifact: Bubbling Cauldron (uncommon, recurring), Elixir of Immortality (uncommon)

Of these, Mark of the Vampire and Corrupt and the only ones I’d be happy to have in my maindeck. (I’ll do another analysis later to determine whether Solemn Offering is maindeckable, but I’m going to assume it’s not for now.) I’d only play the others if I had at least 4 cards that care about lifegain, and that seems unlikely since we’ve already determined that an average draft will contain 3.6 of these cards. So, having an Angelic Accord or two won’t cause me to value the other lifegain cards any more than I usually would, because I don’t want to draw them if I don’t draw any cards that care about lifegain.

Finally, let’s talk about Sanguine Bond. It can be pretty insane with either Corrupt or Congregate, which both become win-the-game spells in many cases if Sanguine Bond stays on the table. Also, there are only 2 enchantment removal spells in the set, Solemn Offering and Naturalize, and neither of them are incidental (like Kami of Ancient Law), so people are unlikely to maindeck them unless the enchantments in the format are particularly scary. If I draft a Sanguine Bond early, I would start looking to pick up Congregate, Bubbling Cauldron, and Elixir of Immortality in the second half of the pack, but never over cards that care about lifegain and only rarely above other good cards.

To summarize, focused lifegain decks will usually be W/B, possibly splashing Voracious Wurm or Primeval Bounty. You want to go in that direction only if you are being passed the cards that care about lifegain, not because you’re being passed good lifegain cards (although you can still draft and play ones that are playable on their own merits), since there are fewer cards that care about lifegain. If you manage to get 4+ cards that care about lifegain, you can start picking up cards like Congregate, Bubbling Cauldron, Elixir of Immortality, and Trading Post which you would not normally want to play. (And, of course, you can pick some of them up if it’s early in the draft and you already have 2-3 of these cards.)

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with , , , ,

M14: Dragons

July 24, 2013 Leave a comment

The only other tribal effect in M14 is Scourge of Valkas, which is a bomb even if it is the only Dragon in your deck, so let’s focus on whether it’s worth trying to draft additional Dragons if you already have a Scourge of Valkas.

M14 has 4 Dragons, 1 at each rarity: Dragon Hatchling at common, Dragon Egg at uncommon (note that it also triggers Scourge of Valkas’s ability when it dies), Shivan Dragon at rare, and Scourge of Valkas at mythic. Obviously, you take all the rare and mythic Dragons you see if you are in red. The uncommon is also great if your deck is not particularly aggressive since it can buy you time to draw and play your rare/mythic Dragon(s), and can serve as a threat if your opponent attacks into it or if you have a sacrifice effect. It is also great in the aggro mirror since it either stops their ground offense or fogs their largest creature for a turn and gives you another threat.

The common is less exciting since it doesn’t do any damage in combat unless you have red mana to spare, and since all the other Dragons in the format (and any creatures enchanted with Shiv’s Embrace) also have firebreathing. Also, every color other than red has multiple flyers or creatures with reach that can trade with it in combat. While it can be scary if enchanted with Lightning Talons, there are several removal spells that can kill 1-toughness creatures, so I consider Dragon Hatchling filler and will only play it if I really need additional creatures or a potential finisher. While it is better if you also draw Scourge of Valkas, I prefer to play creatures that are good on their own even if I don’t draw Scourge of Valkas since I should already be in good shape in most cases where I draw and play a bomb.

While an average 8-person draft will have 4.2 Dragons, 2.4 of those will typically be Dragon Hatchlings and the rare/mythic Dragons are unlikely to get passed very far, so it’s not likely that you will have multiple other Dragons to go with a Scourge of Valkas. But he’s still a bomb so you should draft him and hope you get to kill a Dragon Hatchling on the other side of the table when he comes into play.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with , , ,

M14: Humans

July 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Humans are interesting as a tribe in M14 for 2 reasons: Door of Destinies (dicussed in my last post) and Xathrid Necromancer. While both cards are rare, you want to know if they’re sufficiently powerful in the right deck that they’re worth drafting early as a speculative pick.

Gatherer shows that most of the Humans in M14 are in white and black. Blue and red each have only one Human at common and another at uncommon/rare, and there are no green or artifact Humans. (Before you laugh, Magic actually has 16 artifact Humans, all but one from the Shards of Alara block.)

Of white’s 8 Humans, 5 are common, 1 is uncommon, and 2 are rare. Of black’s 5 Humans, 2 are common, 1 is uncommon, and 2 are rare. This spreadsheet sorts them by mana cost and lists my prior evaluation of them (I’ve changed my evaluation of Capashen Knight from unplayable to filler). Unfortunately, we have yet to determine how good several of the cards are because we have yet to determine how good enchantments and lifegain effects in M14 are. I will get to that in my next few posts. Meanwhile, I’m going to assume that Soulmender and Dawnstrike Paladin are filler, that Auramancer is playable (it works especially well with Quag Sickness, also a common), and that Blightcaster is exceptional (most colors have several good common/uncommon enchantments).

We can see that the common white and black Humans are either playable or filler, with only Shadowborn Apostle being completely unplayable. While you wouldn’t be excited if those were the only creatures in your deck, you’d probably do quite well if you had a couple of the uncommon/rare Humans and some removal. So I believe Xathrid Necromancer is quite playable and worth spending an early pick on. However, I would probably take most white or black removal spells over it since those would be exceptional in any W/B deck and not just a W/B Humans deck. Also, a sizeable amount of the removal in this set is in the form of enchantments, which makes any future Blightcasters, Auramancers, and Ajani’s Chosens you draft better.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with , , , , ,

M14: Door of Destinies

July 22, 2013 Leave a comment

Okay, let’s figure out if Door of Destinies is worth drafting early, and if so, what tribes it should be drafted with. First, let’s figure out how tribal a deck needs to be in order for this card to be playable. If you play Door of Destinies on turn 4, play a creature of the named creaure type on turn 5, and never have any other creatures of that type in play, you give a creature +1/+1, which is not worth 4 mana and a card. If you had played another creature of that type previously or if you play a card that generates a token creature of that type, you give 2 creatures +1/+1 which is still not worth it. If you are able to get 3 creatures +1/+1 or 2 creatures +2/+2, the card is reasonable, but you’d really like to get a bit more to compensate for the risk of topdecking the card late or getting blown out by an instant-speed artifact removal spell.

For this analysis, I determined the number of cards of each creature type at each rarity, and used that to compute the expected number of each creature type in an 8-person draft. I also compiled a separate list of all cards that produce creature tokens. Token creatures do not add a charge counter to Door of Destinies, but the tokens do receive a bonus if they are of the chosen creature type. This list is a bit more complicated since several cards only produce tokens under certain conditions, e.g., Angelic Accord. However, some conditions are relatively easy to meet, e.g., Devout Invocation only requires that you have a creature in play. Cards that produce a token without conditions or with a condition that’s easy to meet are listed normally, otherwise I use a “c” to indicate that a card does not reliably produce token(s) of that type. (Dragon Egg is not included since it produces a token of the same creature type when the original creature dies.)

The results are in this spreadsheet. Summarizing:

  • An average 8-person draft will have 27 Humans, 20 Slivers, and fewer than 10 of each other creature type. (While a particular draft may have more than the expected number, you won’t know this if you’re picking Door of Destinies early in the draft, and the purpose of this analysis is to determine whether it’s worth picking this card early.) A Humans deck will usually be W/B, and a Slivers deck will usually be G/R, G/W, or R/W.
  • Even if you get all 9 Warriors in a draft, you will only draw about 3 in a typical game unless you have card draw or tutoring, and you may not draw Door of Destinies, or you may draw it after you have already cast some of the creatures. You also have to consider whether these 9 Warriors are playable on their own (in case you don’t draw Door of Destinies), whether they are spread across too many colors, and whether they are are sufficiently spread across the mana curve. That doesn’t seem promising. However, it may still be possible to use Door of Destinies with creature types other than Humans and Slivers if most of your creatures fall into 2-3 races/classes.
  • Most token producers are rare/mythic or conditional and so don’t make Door of Destinies more playable, even when they produce multiple tokens. The only potential exceptions are Zombies (Vile Rebirth, Xathrid Necromancer, and Liliana’s Reaver can complement the expected 7 Zombies/draft) and Elementals (Young Pyromancer and Molten Birth can complement the expected 6 Elementals/draft). Note that Door of Destinies does not work with Saprolings or Goats; while Sporemound and Trading Post allow you to produce tokens of these types, there are no Saproling or Goat (or Changeling) creature cards in M14, so Door of Destinies would never accumulate any charge counters.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with , ,

M14: Beasts

July 19, 2013 Leave a comment

Let’s look at another possible tribal deck in M14, namely Beasts. I drafted that deck recently after getting passed a few Advocates of the Beast, but only ended up with 3 Beasts to go with my 5 Advocates (I did pass a 4th Beast for a Chandra’s Outrage since I only had one other removal spell). Are there enough Beasts in M14 that I should have tried to draft that deck? Let’s crunch some numbers.

Gatherer lists 5 cards in M14 that are Beasts or produce them: Garruk’s Horde, Kalonian Tusker, Marauding Maulhorn, Primeval Bounty, and Rumbling Baloth.

  • Garruk’s Horde and Primeval Bounty are rare, so you can’t really expect to get either of them, plus they hit the table sufficiently late in the game that if you don’t already have another Beast before them, your Advocate is just a 2/3 for 3 mana until turn 7.
  • Kalonian Tusker is the best complement to Advocate of the Beast because it gets a counter at the end of turn 3 if you play it on turn 2 followed by Advocate on turn 3. Unfortunately, it’s an uncommon and is likely to be drafted highly by any green player, so you shouldn’t expect to see too many of them.
  • Marauding Maulhorn and Rumbling Baloth are commons, but both cost 4, which means you have to wait an extra turn to get a counter. They are also both quite playable in non-Beast decks, especially Rumbling Baloth, so you should not expect to pick them up late.

With 2 commons, 1 uncommon, and 2 rares, an average 8-person M14 draft will have about 7 Beasts, some of which we expect will be drafted by non-Beast players. So, G/R Beasts is a feasible deck but can only support one player at a table. Moreover, you should draft it only if you are being passed Beasts rather than because you’re being passed Advocates, as I did. Advocates are good in a Beasts deck, but they’ll come around late because non-Beast decks have better commons at 3 mana, such as Rootwalla and Verdant Haven.

Admittedly, I’d already drafted 2 Doors of Destinies, so I was looking to draft a tribal deck. I wanted to draft Slivers, but didn’t see any good Slivers until late in pack 2, although with 2 Doors I could have tried to force Slivers and hoped to reap the rewards in pack 2. In my next post, I’ll examine whether there are any other good tribes in M14 besides Slivers and Beasts that would have allowed me to play the Doors instead of having to leave them in my sideboard.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with , , , , , ,

M14: Slivers

July 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Okay, now that we have the preliminaries out of the way, let’s see if we can use that information to figure out whether Slivers is a good deck to draft in M14. Here’s a list of all the Slivers in the set along with their rarity, mana cost, and my prior evaluation of them:

  • White: Sentinel Sliver (C, 2, good), Hive Stirrings (C, 3, filler), Steelform Sliver (U, 3, good), Bonescythe Sliver (R, 4, bomb)
  • Blue: Galerider Sliver (R, 1, exceptional)
  • Black: Syphon Sliver (R, 3, good)
  • Red: Striking Sliver (C, 1, good), Blur Sliver (C, 3, good), Battle Sliver (U, 5, exceptional), Thorncaster Sliver (R, 5, bomb)
  • Green: Predatory Sliver (C, 2, exceptional), Groundshaker Sliver (C, 7, unplayable), Manaweft Sliver (U, 2, exceptional), Megantic Sliver (R, 6, bomb)
  • Artifact: Sliver Construct (C, 3, filler)

White, red, and green have the most and best Slivers. There is relatively little manafixing in M14 — only Verdant Haven at common, and Darksteel Ingot, Manaweft Sliver, and Shimmering Grotto at uncommon — so we probably want to stick to a 2-color Sliver deck (possibly with a third splash color) unless we get multiple Manaweft Slivers, which is unlikely since it’s an uncommon and is playable in non-Sliver decks. How do we decide whether to aim for W/R, W/G, or R/G?

We can start by looking at the quality of the Slivers in each color. In my opinion, green has the best Slivers across all rarities, followed by red, and then white. By this measure, G/R is the best color pair for Slivers, followed by G/W and then R/W.

Another thing to keep in mind is the mana costs of the Slivers in each color. Green and red may have the best Slivers, but if they all fall at the same spot in the mana curve, we may be better off drafting a different color pair. This spreadsheet shows the number and quality of Slivers at each mana cost and rarity for the 3 color pairs being considered (Sliver Construct is listed for each of them). From this, it seems like G/R has the best distribution of Slivers across the mana curve, while R/W has a bit of a glut at 3.

A third thing to consider is whether any of the common/uncommon Slivers in a color pair have particular synergy. The main synergy that stands out to me is that power-enhancing Slivers — Predatory Sliver (G) and Battle Sliver (R) — work well with Striking Sliver (R), Steelform Sliver (W), and Hive Stirrings (W). While W/R has the most creatures in the list above, Battle Sliver is an uncommon, and first strike, +0/+1, and 2 1/1 Slivers are all less exciting if you don’t have a way to increase their power. This suggests that most Sliver decks should run green if possible so they have access to power enhancement at common.

Finally, let’s look at is which Slivers are most likely to be drafted by non-Sliver players. In my estimate, Predatory Sliver, Manaweft Sliver, and Bonescythe Sliver are most likely to be poached by non-Sliver players. (I had 2 Predatory Slivers and 1 Battle Sliver in a G/R Beast deck recently, and they were great — my deck really needed 2-drops, and there was more than one game where I had 2 3/3 Predatory Slivers attacking on turn 4.) This is unfortunate for green Sliver players, and may lead to Sliver decks having to go R/W in some cases.

Two more things to consider. First, Slivers are likely to be very popular at casual drafts, especially early in the format where other archetypes are less known, so it may be worth staying away for a bit unless you find yourself being passed Predatory Slivers. Also, I haven’t considered other non-Sliver cards in green, red, and white that may work particularly well with Slivers, such as Hunt the Weak if you have some power/toughness enhancing Slivers. Look for such cards and keep them in mind when figuring out what color pair you want to be in when drafting Slivers.

EDIT: I forgot one other piece of analysis I sometimes do. M14 has 101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythics. Of the playable Slivers, there are 6 commons, 3 uncommons, and 5 rares. That means than an average 8-person draft will have about 20 playable Slivers, which is probably enough to support 1-2 Sliver decks per table.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

M14: Evaluations

July 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Magic 2014 Evaluations

This is an initial set of evaluations of the cards in Magic 2014. Here’re what my various evaluations mean:

  • Bomb (B): Will usually win the game if not dealt with and also difficult to deal with, e.g., mass removal or large flyers.
  • Exceptional (+): A superior card that will turn the tide in your favor, e.g., most unconditional removal that isn’t overcosted or a 3/3 flyer for 4 mana.
  • Good (/): The bread and butter of most decks, e.g., a 4/4 for 4 mana or a 2/2 flyer for 3 mana.
  • Situational/Filler (~): Good in the right deck, filler in most others, e.g., a vanilla 2/1 in a deck that is not particularly aggressive.
  • Sideboard (S): Useful to have in your sideboard, but not usually playable maindeck, e.g., artifact/enchantment destruction or color hosers that aren’t good if you’re not playing against those colors.
  • Unplayable (x): Should not be played except in the right deck or under exceptional circumstances, e.g., mill effects or a vanilla 1/1 for 1 mana. Some unplayable creatures can be sided in against the right deck, e.g., a vanilla 2/4 for 4 mana.
  • TBD (?): Requires more analysis or more experience with the format to evaluate, e.g., a card that depends on how many playable enchantments there are in the format.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with

M14: Creatures

July 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Magic 2014 Creatures

This is a list of all creatures in M14 broken down along the following axes:

  • Flyers vs. non-flyers (defenders are listed separately, regardless of whether or not they fly).
  • Must-kill vs. other. I use “must-kill” to mean that the creature needs to be dispatched if it is controlled by an opponent, otherwise you are unlikely to win the game. This helps determine the value of removal in the format, especially removal that kills/exiles creatures or turns off activated abilities. Powerful creatures that must attack in order to be problematic are usually not categorized as must-kill since they can potentially be blocked, e.g., Serra Angel and Liliana’s Reaver. Creatures with other kinds of evasion (e.g., intimidate, unblockable) are usually listed as must-kill if they have power >= 2. This is necessarily a subjective evaluation — for instance, I categorized Advocate of the Beast as must-kill, but not Warden of Evos Isle and Banisher Priest.
  • Power/toughness.
  • Color/rarity.

This list includes all creatures, including those that are unlikely to see play (such as a vanilla 1/1 for 1 mana), since the playability of a creature is determined in large part by the power/toughness of other creatures in the format, and by how much removal the set has and how good it is.

Some initial thoughts:

  • With 2 exceptions, all common/uncommon must-kill creatures have toughness <= 3.
  • 3 is the most common toughness among common flyers, but none have toughness > 3 (other than Angelic Wall, which is listed under defenders and not flyers). 2 uncommon flyers have a toughness of 4, but none have a toughness > 4.
  • Among common non-flyers, the most common power is 2 and the most common toughness is 1. Among uncommon non-flyers, the most common power is 2 and the most common toughness is 3. Only 3 common/uncommon creatures have power > 4 and only 4 have toughness > 4.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with

M14: Commentary on removal

July 15, 2013 Leave a comment

White, Blue, and Black all have removal spells at common and uncommon that don’t care about a creature’s toughness:

  • White: Pacifism; Celestial Flare; Banisher Priest; (Master of Diversion)
  • Blue: Claustrophobia; (Time Ebb; Disperse; Frost Breath)
  • Black: Liturgy of Blood; Doom Blade

Of the common/uncommon removal spells that can only kill creatures with a certain toughness, 5 kill 1-toughness creatures, 3 kill 2-toughness creatures, 2 kill 3-toughness creatures, and 1 kills 4-toughness creatures. So creatures with 5+ toughness are safe against R/G decks unless they have multiple removal spells, Act of Treason + Barrage of Expendables, Hunt the Weak + a sufficiently large creature, or Plummet against a flyer.

There are 4 mass removal spells: Planar Cleansing; Shrivel; Windstorm; and Rachet Bomb.  The only spell that kills multiple creatures without being mass removal is Flames of the Firebrand.  And the only reusable removal spells at common/uncommon are Blightcaster, Barrage of Expendables (sort of), and Rod of Ruin.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with

M14: List of removal spells

July 12, 2013 Leave a comment

Magic 2014 Removal

This is a list of all the removal in the set, divided into permanent creature removal, temporary creature removal (such as bounce, tap, and falter effects), non-creature removal, and not on battlefield removal (hand, stack, graveyard). The column labeled T (to the right of the permanent creature removal column) indicates how tough a creature the removal can handle; if there is no number in that column, the removal is independent of the creature’s toughness. Conditional removal is indicated after the spell name in most cases.

This list uses most of the same abbreviations used by the list of instant-speed tricks. Italics indicates that the spell is a creature that has to remain in play for the effect to occur. Bold indicates reusable removal or removal that can kill multiple permanents. Highlight cells indicate mass removal that you should be careful to not overextend into.

Filed under Magic 2014 Tagged with

← Older posts

Newer posts →