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My Favorite Archetypes in MH1 Draft

Jun 20, 2019891 VIEWS

Hey everyone! I’m back fresh off a Top 8 at Grand Prix DC, here to talk about Modern Horizons Limited. I’m going to spend some time talking about my favorite archetypes and how to draft them, but first let’s talk a little bit about the format as a whole. Modern Horizons, like most Masters sets, is a synergy-driven Limited format. If your deck is not exploiting cards in a way that makes them more powerful than the sum of their parts, it should generally be considered a weak deck. There are exceptions, but generally you want to try to find the open lane and settle in, rather than get married to your first pick. If you can find the open synergy, you can put together decks that can do really broken things really quickly. Because the highly synergistic decks are so powerful, you’ll find that rares and mythics are less important in this set than they were in War of the Spark, for example. They are certainly good, but they will not save you from a poor draft. The good commons can often trade with them at a reasonable rate, so it’s even more important to find the open archetype. That said, not all archetypes are created equal. These are my favorite archetypes, and I lean towards these when I have a close draft pick.

5c Green

This is my favorite deck, and I drafted it twice on Day 2 at the Grand Prix. This archetype casts the most powerful removal spells and bombs available by using the excellent fixing available at common: Springbloom Druid, Krosan Tusker, and Fountain of Ichor. Because two of these cards find basic lands, this deck typically employs the snow-matters cards available in green as well, especially Rime Tender. My favorite versions of these decks are mostly mono-green, only splashing for removal spells and rares of other colors, but it is not that uncommon to have Blue or Black as a secondary base. If Blue is your secondary color, you should typically prioritize snow lands and snow-matters cards even higher, as they are more common in Blue and all the UG gold cards care about snow. When drafting this deck, I will prioritize removal, bombs, and Trumpeting Herd at the highest tier, but you need to keep in mind that you need a little bit of everything. There may come a time when you have to take Springbloom Druid over Mob because you just need the mana-fixing. After those premium cards, I will take Druid and Tusker. I typically don’t like playing more than one copy of Fountain of Ichor, so I don’t mind delaying that until much later. After these I will take Snow lands and Snow-matters cards like Rime Tender or Cancrix. Finally, I’ll take replacement-level commons like Excavating Anurid or Twin-Silk Spider. I have found myself to be pretty indifferent to the Snow lands I receive. Unlike the UG Snow deck, you are happy to play Snow-covered Mountains, Swamps, and Plains as your splash basics. Indeed, sometimes it’s better to have those over Forests because your Druids need to find your splash colors but you still want them to find Snow lands, and this kills two birds with one stone. Because of this, I often find myself with lots of these off-color Snow lands, since the UG drafters snatch up the Forests and Islands as high picks. I should note that even if you don’t see rares, the uncommons like Rotwidow Pack or Abominable Treefolk going around the table are high enough power that they feel like rares. Here's an example:

When playing this archetype, most games play out grindy but you have the potential to put on a fast beatdown with Frostwalla and Trumpeting Herd. This is part of the reason I like this deck so much. It has the capability to play both roles extremely well, just based on the raw power of the cards you draw. Be wary of fast starts from evasive creatures. At one point I picked Firebolt over On Thin Ice because I knew the main way I could lose would be to cheap evasive creatures, and I had other, more expensive removal to handle big creatures unconditionally. Firebolt kills two such creatures, and On Thin Ice deals with only one.

UR Draw-a-card

I have not gotten the chance to draft this archetype that often, but I have really liked it when I have. It’s a very tricky deck which ends up bursting a lot of damage all at once. The key commons for this deck are Eyekite, Spirehorn Minotaur, and Fists of Flame. These cards allow you to deal a large amount of damage pretty fast, and there are tons and tons of ways to push them through in UR. A good deck typically has some good red removal, some draw-a-card payoffs, some draw-a-card enablers that cycle, a few enablers that push through your payoffs. When drafting this deck, I prioritize the good removal first and foremost. Magmatic Sinkhole and Pyrophobia are the best commons, and after that it’s really about just making sure that you have the right proportions of everything else. I think the creature payoffs should be taken first, since they have the highest ceiling, and after that Fists of Flame is the best enabler/payoff split card. Once you have a good number of those in your pool, the other cyclers are pretty much interchangeable: Aven Windcaller, Choking Tethers, Quakefoot Giant, and Phantasmal Form are all about as good as each other. I like to have one Form because it is the best at pushing through damage, but it is also more expensive than the others so you should not have too many of them. I don’t mind playing a Reckless Charge or two if you have enough Minotaurs because the potential for damage is just so high. For uncommons, the UR gold card is obviously absurd, and Firebolt is the best removal spell, but after that I like Oneirophage as a payoff and Hollowhead Sliver as an enabler. Here's an example:

When playing this archetype, you should try to poke in for incidental damage as often as you can. Minotaur is pretty hard to block profitably, and you have a lot of tricky nonsense when your opponent finally assembles a board that can actually block it. Once you whittle them down, you can use removal spells or Choking Tethers to stall until you assemble a Fists of Flame combo to kill. This deck is capable of a big burst of damage, but it is pretty threat-light so try not to trade off your creatures when you can avoid it. Use your tricks and removal aggressively.

BR Sacrifice

I love this kind of deck in every format it is legal in. I loved it in War of the Spark, I love it in Modern Horizons. This deck is a grindy deck with an aggressive slant. There are a lot of ways to create multiple creatures in BR: Goblin War Party, Sling-gang Lieutenant, Graveshifter, Putrid Goblin, Goblin Matron, etc. One thing you’ll notice about the cards I named: They’re mostly uncommon. I love this deck, but I do think it is pretty uncommon-based. You need to open them or get them passed to you (i.e. you are in an open lane) for it to truly come together. The multiple bodies you present can slowly chip in damage or grind with the opponent until all of a sudden they are at a low life total and you have a Bogardan Dragonheart at the ready to finish them off. When drafting this deck I prioritize the grindy uncommons as I mentioned earlier. Sling-gang Lieutenant is the best, but Graveshifter, Undead Augur, etc are high picks as well. After those, I like the sacrifice payoffs of Bogardan Dragonheart, Carrion Feeder, and Silumgar Scavenger, in roughly that order. Bogardan Dragonheart is your key common, and if I know I’m in BR I will pick it over Pyrophobia, but probably not Mob. Goblin War Party is another key common for you that most other people don’t want, so you should be able to pick them up late. This deck is also the one that makes the best use of Unearth. Your key common costs three, and bringing back a Putrid Goblin can do in a pinch, giving you two bodies to sacrifice for the cost of a single mana. Here's an example:

When playing this archetype I like to try to chip in damage where I can, but I also play somewhat defensively and trade. The presence of Bogardan Dragonheart often forces the opponent to trade when they may not otherwise want to. It is very dangerous to go to eight or below against decks containing that card. Also, as BR has the best removal, you will typically be able to put up a defensive posture and remove your opponents key creatures that would otherwise allow them to attack you without trading for your grindy creatures.

These are my favorite archetypes from Modern Horizons, but the simple truth is that every color pair is playable if it’s open. The most important thing by far is to find the open lane, but having a good understanding of how to draft each of these decks can help you understand when that lane is open. Seeing Bogardan Dragonheart may not mean that UR is open, but it is a good sign for BR. Wizards has been really knocking it out of the park with the recent Limited sets, and this is one of the best to date!

(Edited)

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