BFZ: Deconstructing W/U skies

November 30, 2015 Leave a comment

There’s been some hype about the W/U skies archetype. However, the fliers in this format are relatively inefficient compared to recent sets and there are no good 2-drop fliers for the deck. Let’s crunch some numbers to determine whether there are enough cards available to support this archetype in a typical 8-person draft, which of these cards you’re competing with other decks for, whether there’s a need to prioritize flyers/defense/removal, and whether we need to focus on any particular converted mana costs while drafting the deck.

Let’s start by looking at all the colorless, white, blue, and W/U cards that I think are good options for this deck. The cards are divided into 4 categories, each with it’s own table: flying/evasion, defense, removal/tempo, and other (primarily cards that help you win faster or survive longer). Within a category, cards are organized by rarity and converted mana cost. The highlight indicates the card’s color(s): gray is used for colorless/artifact cards, yellow is used for white cards, blue is used for blue cards, and light blue is used for W/U cards. Monocolored cards require only one colored mana of their color unless indicated otherwise, so you can determine the mana cost of a card based on its color and converted mana cost. Cards with awaken have both costs indicated but are usually listed in the column for their awaken cost; since they are all in the removal or other categories, they are rarely cast on curve anyway. A thick border indicates that a card is playable by all other archetypes that share this color, a thins border indicates that a card is playable by some but not all of those archetypes, and no border means that the card will usually only be played by W/U skies.


From the table, we see that an 8-person draft has an average of about 17 fliers (plus Angelic Gift and Coralhelm Guide), 19 defensive cards, 20 removal/tempo cards, and 14 other cards. Let’s assume that there are 3 people in each color but that no one else is drafting W/U skies. In that case, we can expect to get roughly a third of the cards with thick borders, roughly half of the cards with thin borders, and most of the cards with no border. Adding up the numbers gives us “E(in final pool)”, the rough number of cards we expect to end up with given our assumptions: 11 fliers (plus 2-3 copies each of Angelic Gift and Coralhelm Guide), 11 defensive creatures, 11 removal/tempo spells, and 7 other spells. So it is possible to draft enough cards for a W/U skies deck, possibly even if you’re competing with another W/U drafter.

There are many flyers and defensive cards that cost 5+ mana, so you should focus on 2-, 3-, and 4-drops when drafting, especially since you want to start casting spells for their awaken cost once you have 5-6 mana available. There are no good 2-mana flyers in this format, so you should try to pick up some defensive 2-drops or, in their absence, any other playable 2-drops.

Why is W/U skies a powerful deck in this format even though the fliers are not that efficient? I think it’s because the deck can take advantage of spells with awaken better than most of the other decks in the format. With an aggressive draw, it can cast them without awaken for tempo. If the games goes longer, the 3/3 or 4/4 bodies are not that impressive on offense, but can gum up the ground long enough for your flyers to finish the job.

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BFZ: W/B lifegain vs. W/B Allies

November 24, 2015 2 Comments

Battle for Zendikar has a number of lifegain cards, as well as cards that get better if you have lifegain, primarily in white and in black. Are there enough such cards for a lifegain archetype in this format? To what extent does the archetype overlap with W/B Allies? And is W/B the only possible color combination for the archetype?

Let’s start by listing the lifegain cards in the set, as well as those that get better with lifegain. Cards in yellow highlight are Allies and cards in bold provide repeatable lifegain. Each card is preceded by its cost and followed by the cost/description of the effect (no cost means the effect occurs when the card is cast).


All the lifegain in the set is either incidental (i.e., it does something besides gain you life) or repeatable. All cards that care about lifegain are creatures, most of which get bigger or gain an ability when you gain life. Kalastria Nightwatch is perhaps the most powerful non-rare among these since it’s essentially a Dragon if you have enough lifegain effects, while Nirkana Assassin is the worst since its lifegain trigger is unimpressive. Felidar Sovereign is the only one that cares about the amount of life gained.

Most of the lifegain cards in the set are white, and most of the cards that care about lifegain are black, so the deck will almost always be W/B. (Green has 3 lifegain cards but none of them are common.) If you draft a powerful white card from the list above, you may want to take a black card over a similarly powered card in another color, and if you draft a powerful black card from the list, you may want to lean towards drafting white as your second color. In a typical draft, white and black will each provide access to about 12 cards across the 2 categories, so the deck is likely to be balanced between the 2 colors and can include cards with WW or BB in their mana cost.

A W/B drafter at an 8-person draft has access to an average of 19.5 lifegain cards and 8.3 cards that care about lifegain. If you exclude the unimpressive Nirkana Assassin, the latter category has only 5.9 cards, making it difficult to reliably draft this deck, so you should only enter this archetype if you already have a couple of cards that care about lifegain, and you should prioritize them when drafting the archetype.

In a typical draft, 28% of lifegain cards and 80% of cards that care about lifegain are Allies, so even if a lifegain deck does not have any rally effects, it will almost certainly have a number of Allies. Conversely, 23% of W/B Allies have lifegain effects and 28% of them get better with lifegain, so a W/B Allies deck will likely have some cards from the list above, even if there are no synergies around lifegain. This means that if you’re drafting either W/B lifegain or W/B Allies, you can take cards for the other deck since you’re likely to have enough support for them. Looking beyond the numbers, Kalastria Healer, Drana’s Emissary, and Zulaport Cutthroat are quite powerful in both decks, so it’s clear that there is a significant overlap between the 2 decks.

Given the small number of cards that get better with lifegain, these cards are more likely to be drafted as a subtheme in a W/B Allies deck rather than as a separate archetype. When a draft has enough cards to support a dedicated lifegain deck, it is likely to look like a Skies deck, with Drana’s Emissary, Malakir Familiar, and Courier Griffin attacking in the air while Stone Haven Medic stalls the ground, and Kalastria Nightwatch switching between these roles as necessary. In that deck, lifegain can also buy you time, while life drain effects provide reach if your opponent manages to neutralize your fliers.

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