Breaking Fractured Reality Draft

After early access and even on the first couple of release days I was pretty down on this Draft environment. I've come around on it, at least a little, and it's all thanks to one little uncommon.

Fblthp, Impossibly Lost is my favorite card in the format, hands down. Well, if you want to count Splinter Twin, maybe second.

Fblthp has so many on words on it that it was one of those cards I intuited as a conditional two mana Divination. That conditional Divination happens to be a Divination more than I thought it would, and also it has the ability to go over anything because of the words "you win the game if-" on it.

As it turns out, it's not so hard to make that "if" happen when the commons and uncommons support it well enough.

Originally I thought Dimir's plan should be self-mill and set up for a big flashback Recursive Recruitment. Getting two chonky bodies is nice and all, but the format's powerful and it's not a solid plan against some of the great synergies and bombs of the format. It's just too easy to go over the top of that. In Innistrad we made a bunch of Spider Spawning tokens and that was enough because very little went over the top of that so long as you had some other interaction and life gain.

For Reality Fracture we have to go about things a bit differently. Our cards are a lot more powerful as well, so we get to play this two mana Divination that also allows us to win the game in the event we go just long enough, or, make a couple of fliers to sneak one through when we're empty in our library.

All that's really required of the baseline Dimir version of the deck is a solid amount of interaction and the common mill creatures such as Theorix Metamage and Void Extrapolator. Ideally we also get a copy or two of Paradox Shaper but that's not even required. In fact many people will think Shaper is required but as long as you have enough ways to churn through your deck you can easily win without it.

Fblthp can also be splashed in decks like Rakdos as well, and potentially even Golgari so long as your deck can present enough creatures to trigger Fblthp for a game-winning attack. Just make sure to back it up with a counter or protection spell. I'd avoid it in blue without black, though it still can work. We wouldn't get the easy ways to mill ourselves, making it far less reliable without Void Extrapolator. Theorix Metamage makes it possible, still.

The last part of the secret sauce is just any way to get Fblthp back from the graveyard, and most reliable is a single copy of Theoretical Necromancer. This allows you to mill through your deck and even if you hit Fblthp you're bound to mill the Necromancer at some point too. Metamage is really important because it can also close in your aggressive plan as your core commons that you pick up late are both it and Extrapolator which curve nicely together.

Here's an example deck, and this deck would have been just as good with only 2 Fblthp.

While this deck isn't particularly aggressive, it can be, and the 1-drops here facilitate a turn 2 Fblthp trigger to draw 2 cards. On top of that, by putting your opponent at a low life total early they have to play the game really cautiously and usually won't be able to outrace you.

Stingerquill Voxmancer is nice at facilitating that sequence and is also a body in play to swing with when on the final turn you alpha strike with a Fblthp in play and an empty graveyard.

Ideally we don't play expensive cards that aren't super high impact because we're drawing extras off of Fblthp and just want to reload our hand and unload it repeatedly. If you notice, I have literally no Empower Jace cards in this deck, and while that's not a goal or anything it's the mechanic most people are after so we don't have to fight over those cards. We just take the self-mill creatures and play our deck more linearly.

This deck certainly may get worse as more people draft it, and of course, as more people learn how to play around it. I'm sure I caught an opponent or two off guard with Fblthp winning on a turn where I started with 9 cards in my deck. That's the spot where you really want a Paradox Shaper in your deck so you can just draw the best card in your deck repeatedly if they stop spending mana to protect themselves and eventually you'll just grind them out.

This deck easily went 7-1 and the loss was when I kept a hand without a 1 or 2 drop when that's the majority of the deck. I likely should have mulliganed given the deck was very forgiving due to Fblthp letting me draw extra and the deck not being super mana hungry, so it can certainly play well on a six card hand.

Here's another version of the deck that lost no games at all, with the same recipe and far less uncommons. As you can see I didn't even have a Paradox Shaper in this deck, though I did pick up a Sublime Epiphany that got passed to me which won me a lot of games, especially given I saw every card in my deck in every game. I ended up winning every single game with Fblthp's ability.

This deck had the whole recipe: Interaction, Fblthp, a Theoretical Necromancer to bring back a milled Fblthp, and some self-mill. I'd like to note that Fatehold Chronologist plays a nice role in this deck as an early value play that is often ignored because it's not threatening but can trigger Fblthp easily for card advantage as the game develops.

Regardless, this archetype is very replicable and doesn't require anything difficult to pick up except the single copy of Fblthp.

While I always thought Fblthp was good and cool, I didn't realize how often it would be able to win games. It really is a draft-around uncommon despite seeming so innocent.

Right now I'm grinding Arena Directs and Sealed is a completely different animal as it's all about rares and raw power more so than synergy but I'm excited to get back to trying to draft this archetype repeatedly and perfecting it.

Dimir is definitely my early front runner for best archetype in the format but there's a lot more to explore!