Scott Johns
7/25/2002
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The main reason I wanted to do this series was that I haven’t really seen archetypes in draft covered very much on the Internet. And yet, I’m convinced that a good understanding of archetypes is one of the most crucial of all keys to improving most players’ results. In the first two parts of this series I went over a number of my favorite archetypes for drafting in general, and in this article I’ll be finishing that up. However, once these articles are finished, I think the way has been cleared for much more specific exploration of this concept, something I plan to start with next week’s article by going over specific picks in specific drafts I’ll be doing for the sole purpose of these articles. In the meantime, here are the final two archetypes I keep an eye out for when I sit down at the draft table.

I Like Big Butts!

One of the places where the importance of archetypes can really show up is when it comes to fatties. Most players will, all other things being equal, take a 5/5 for 5 mana over a 2/2 for 2 mana every time. And yet, a deck with “too many” 5/5s for 5 is likely to have a lot more trouble winning the table than a deck with “too many” 2/2s. The reason is, of course, the importance of the mana curve. Keeping that in mind, when the opportunity presents itself to draft a deck with lots of fat, there are a number of approaches that can allow you to best take advantage of the situation.

One of the most common ways to go about this is by placing an increased emphasis on efficient mana acceleration. If you’ve got a deck with lots of 4 and 5 casting cost spells, you’ll often be very well served by cards like Rampant Growth. Since many draft decks focus so much on the 2 and 3 casting cost slots, cards like Rampant Growth are often strictly worse than other options, since these decks would much rather cast a bear on turn 2 or 3. If your hand is Hill Giant, Gorilla Chieftan, and Spined Worm however, your opinion of turn 2 Rampant Growth is going to be considerably different!

The reason early mana acceleration goes so well with top-heavy decks is actually two-fold, but I think players often only notice the first reason. That first factor is the mana curve of course, and it’s not hard to see why a hand packed with fat is very happy to accelerate to 4 mana on turn 3. However, there’s another, equally important issue here, and it’s one of the main reasons I like this archetype:

Fat guys are more efficient!

The bigger a creature is, the more bang you get for your buck. While a turn 4 Maro isn’t “card advantage” in the strict sense, the effect you get will often be equal to one that would have taken more than just one card to generate. This, in turn, makes it a lot easier to use up some of your slots for mana acceleration, typically giving you a deck with 16 or 17 lands, as well as 2-5 mana accelerators. Now you have a deck which is far less likely to lose to mana trouble, and that’s a very valuable trait in most draft environments. And this only becomes more true when you consider that many acceleration cards (like Rampant Growth) also help fix your color requirements as well, even further improving your deck’s consistency. Finally, having mana acceleration means that going second is a whole lot more attractive, since you’ll often get to offset the half-turn disadvantage by getting an extra mana into play, which lets you play your big spells earlier and get the extra card from going second.

It’s this combination of factors that appeals so much to me. By taking this approach, you get to put out better guys faster, take more advantage of going second, and all while having a much more consistent deck. The downside is that you have less action spells, since you’re typically playing 18-20 mana cards or so (16 lands + 4 acceleration is a common aim for me, depending on the format). But, as I mentioned earlier, the added efficiency that comes from your big guys will help make up for this, particularly when they come out so early that your opponent is hard pressed to get his offense going at all.

Another thing to keep in mind here is tricks. At some point, it is likely that your opponent will have to deal with your avalanche of fat by gang-blocking. By forcing your opponent into this scenario, you make any combat tricks you may have picked up potentially devastating. When one Spined Worm gets to kill three bears and live thanks to a single, well-timed Giant Growth, and you’ve got even more big guys coming from the wings, it’s pretty tough to lose. The good thing here is that you typically won’t need to do this very many times at all per duel, and this will be even more true the more fat you have to muster.

With that in mind, I typically aim for somewhere around three or four combat tricks or instant-speed removal spells (which tend to work similarly) for this archetype. This is considerably lower than the number I tend to look for in more bear-oriented decks, which allows a further emphasis to be placed on the core elements of this strategy. Put simply, I try to assemble as much fat as I can while also picking up four to five turn 1 or 2 mana accelerators and a small handful of removal/tricks (three or four or so).

Some care also needs to be exercised to ensure that you have some additional creatures to fill out the early drops enough that you don’t just sit there doing nothing for 3 turns in games where you don’t draw one of your accelerators. However, that said, I typically find that it’s not too difficult to pick up enough of these cards in the later picks, so I don’t tend to pick them over any of the “core” cards unless it’s getting late and there are still some holes to be patched.

A very special note should be added for bounce – spells like Unsummon can be great tempo-swinging cards in any aggressive deck, but they are often at their best in Blue/Green decks. Since these decks don’t have traditional removal, they can often run into real trouble against even a single Voltron creature, and bounce is one of the best answers you can ask for in that situation. Further, bounce finds its place as a combat trick in this deck perhaps more than any other, allowing you to really punish them for gang-blocking, whether it’s one of their blockers getting returned before damage, or one of your fatties getting returned after damage is on the stack. Either way, your opponent is often just too far behind to stand up to the wall of big butts charging at his face.

As with some of the other archetypes out there, this isn’t one you can just force, but knowing how to recognize the opportunity and truly take advantage of it can make an enormous difference at the draft tables. It’s also considerably more likely to occur (and also work) in some formats over others. Of all the formats being drafted on Magic Online currently, I find that I’m using this archetype far more in Seventh Edition drafting. For reference, the following is a recent 3-0 deck of mine which illustrated the style nicely:

2 Llanowar Elves
1 Wild Growth
2 Rampant Growth
1 Wind Dancer (amazing in decks like this!)
1 Grizzly Bear
1 Coral Merfolk
1 Trained Armadon
1 Lone Wolf
2 Wind Drake
1 Anaconda
1 Gorilla Chieftan
1 Maro
2 Giant Octopus
1 Redwood Treefolk
2 Spined Wurm
1 Vigilant Drake

1 Unsummon
1 Boomerang
1 Giant Growth

9 Forest
7 Island

Everything Must Go!

If the opportunity to draft tons of fat guys is sometimes hard to find, getting the chance to draft tons of removal is even more rare. But, just like with the above archetype, it’s important to know how best to take advantage of this one when the chance presents itself. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s also quite easy to misdraft this kind of deck – just as a deck with too many fat guys without a focus will quickly fall under its own weight, too many removal spells without a deck focus can fall apart equally quickly.

The key to this one lies in your creature selection. Removal is all well and good, but eventually you’re going to need to actually kill your opponent, and that job is normally going to fall to your creature-base, no matter how small it may be. That means that you need to pick your creatures with a much different set of criteria than a more beatdown-minded player. In particular, the fewer creatures you have, the more impact they need to be capable of. Given enough removal, even a Mons Goblin Raider will eventually carry the day, but first it has to survive, and second, you’re going to have to blow every single opposing creature out of its way. What you’re looking for are monsters that are good at staying alive while also killing your opponent. Second, you’re looking for monsters which are good at killing opposing creatures and/or gaining you card advantage.

Of course, this trend is just like the one we find in Constructed – control decks that run only a couple creatures are going to rely on things like Morphling, since he’s able to both hold off an opposing group while smashing the opponent at the same time. This is the same kind of mentality you should be looking for in your heavy-removal deck.

Getting a bit more to specifics, this combination tends to be most likely to occur in Black/Red decks. Your finishers tend to come in the form of a few hand-picked fatties. Your card advantage often comes from using creatures that double as kill (such as Barbarian Lunatic, which can often take out two creatures) in combination with Black’s numerous ways to return those creatures with advantage, such as Gravedigger and Morgue Theft. Just as with nearly any other control deck strategy, your goal is to stop anything threatening that your opponent is trying while gaining enough card advantage to cement a win.

However, like any other control strategy, you need to tailor your approach to be able to handle whatever your opponents may throw at you. And the more removal you end up running, the slower your deck will typically be which, ironically, makes it that much more important that you be able to handle nearly anything that could be thrown at you, since you’re giving your opponent that much more time to find that question that you don’t have an answer for.

Burning Bear

Because of this I tend to shy away from this archetype, though many others actively pursue it. Instead, I’ve found that, for me at least, a more successful strategy has been to combine heavy removal with a very aggressive creature rush. Similar to Angry Little Men, “Burning Bear” seeks to put out early bears and then ride them to victory. Unlike Angry Little Men, this deck often sports somewhere around 12 creatures or so, as opposed to the roughly 18 that the Angry Little Men often field. (Of course, these numbers are merely intended as a guideline.)

However, the focus is still on getting that early bear rush going. The difference is that, with so much removal, you’re willing to bet that you can blow enough guys out of the way to win with only a couple bears. An important point to realize is that any archetype is defined by the ways it seeks to overwhelm the opponent. Angry Little Men seeks to do it through tempo advantage and superior (and faster) numbers. Burning Bear seeks to overcome the opponent by overwhelming his creatures with removal, but only for the 4 or 5 turns it takes to put him away for good.

And it’s that speed which is the real key to this archetype. If you can make a bear on turn 2 and turn 3, your opponent will be at 2 life on turn 7 if you can get your guys through each turn, and that’s a pretty quick kill for draft. Better yet, this deck often has so much burn that you only actually need to bash the opponent for three or four turns instead, and then just start aiming the “removal” straight at their head.

Now, in practice, it won’t typically work exactly like that. Many times, you’ll end up putting another creature or two out in the process or you’ll end up trading one of your bears for there’s while still clearing the way for your remaining minions. Either way though, the goal is to define the game through your opponent’s inability to keep enough blockers out until it’s too late.

This archetype often seems to present itself in Od/Od/To draft, and is currently my favorite approach to drafting that format on Magic Online. In particular, this gets powerful because most of the creatures you’re willing to play, such as Filthy Cur and especially Barbarian Outcast, will come fairly late in the draft, allowing you to spend your efforts on acquiring as much removal as possible. The following ridiculous listing is one that went not only 3-0 in a recent Magic Online draft, but also managed to sweep all three of my (often frustrated) opponents:

2 Barbarian Outcast
2 Filthy Cur
2 Crypt Creeper
2 Mad Dog
1 Dusk Imp
1 Posessed Barbarian
2 Faceless Butcher
1 Soul Scourge

2 Firebolt
1 Flame Burst
1 Engulfing Flames
1 Chainer’s Edict
1 Crippling Fatigue
1 Fiery Temper
2 Afflict
1 Thermal Blast
1 Ghastly Demise

8 Swamps
8 Mountains


Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for actually evaluating these archetypes, it’s time to start drafting them. Beginning next week, my column will begin covering actual drafts, pick by pick, showing you exactly what I took, and (more importantly) why.

Until then,
- Scott Johns