Drafting Against the Grain

Lorwyn Eclipsed Limited has been a tough nut to crack for many, myself included. Even the best players, as we know them on 17Lands.com, have taken some hits to their win rates in this format.

With that said, my win rate hasn't changed and is still hovering around 65% playing in Mythic. From what my stream viewers say, I'm drafting differently than everyone else.

How am I approaching this format differently than others, you ask? Well, it feels normal to me, but one thing I know I'm doing differently is trying to remain flexible rather than picking and sticking with a creature type.

My most successful decks recently have not been the archetypes laid out by the set's designers. Simply, I try to play the good cards. I suppose you could categorize my decks as vivid, as many have one or two of those keyword cards, but that's not the ultimate plan. The plan is just to play the good cards I see.

What does this mean? A lot of the set's cards ask you to play the same creature type; however, very few of them reward you for having all the same creature type. Some only want you to have some of those types, such as the Champions, which ask you to have a Merfolk or an Elf, but you just need the one, so you don't have to play that specific archetype when you first pick one of these powerful rares.

Additionally, those typal decks tend to be great when you're the only one drafting them. There are a lot of drafts you can see there's no one in a specific archetype. In some cases, you can be the only Elves or Elementals drafter (or whatever other type), and there's not enough benefit to being in those archetypes because the cards aren't opened in a large enough quantity (thanks, play boosters!). Of course, sometimes they are.

My focus is on power, curve, and having enough removal to break apart opponents' synergies. Removal is premium in this format, especially all-encompassing removal like Liminal Hold or Bogslither's Embrace. Both of these will answer any creature, and there are many that need answers, or the game ends on the spot.

Let's take a look at a couple of my off-the-beaten-path decks.

4c Vivid

As you can see, I'm playing a pile of removal and using the set's fixing to facilitate some vivid cards. More importantly, I got to play the Elf rare, the Kithkin rare, and the Merfolk rare that I saw all in the same deck.

These decks generally want to overpower the opponent and stunt them from executing their game plan.

This is one of the worst Winnowing decks you may see, but keeping a Changeling Wayfinder in play is easy if you want.

Giants and Rogues

It's certainly an anomaly to get four of an uncommon and two of the same rare, this deck was a Giant deck more than anything else. I got to take advantage of some lesser-played cards like Boldwyr Aggressor to great effect. Goliath Daydreamer is a strong creature if it stays in play, which is all the better when we have the Aggressors to make them hard to block in combat.

Despite not being one of the typical archetypes, this deck was still one of the best decks I've had in the format. While I have a few rares, it's about the average amount in the play booster era.

There's efficient removal in Cinder Strike, and even though I didn't have removal for larger creatures, Cinder Strike with Daydreamer together could take out anything larger than four toughness that needed to be answered.

This was one of the better-performing decks I had in the format.

Jeskai Giants

This Jeskai deck also has a bunch of Giant rares, as well as several rares in general. You can say, "Siggy, you're just getting lucky opening all these rares," to which I would rebut that I got passed a majority of these and positioned myself to play them all. For this draft, I started with a pick-one-pack-one Bre of Clanstourarm and got my first Goliath Daydreamer pick-four-pack-one. I could have easily played Boros and focused on my rares, but I left myself open to playing more colors as the draft developed.

This was the most challenging deck I've built in quite some time, as there are many arguments to play a lot of the cards in my sideboard. While I didn't play my best at some points, this deck performed well and carried me to another seven wins.

You could classify this deck as vivid because I have a few examples of the keyword in my deck, but I just found a way to play all the rares I was passed and turned it into a non-typal deck.

Goblins and Merfolk and Faeries, Oh My.

Finally, I'll share this deck that focuses on all the potential creature types I could shoehorn into a deck.

This deck was light on removal but made up for it with the ability to draw extra cards and overpower the opponent with Champion of the Weird. In stalled games, which happened often because of my inability to interact well with creatures, I was able to get Maralen in play and steal a couple of spells with the few triggers I had, even leading to a concession at one point, as it was going to deck my Elves opponent.

Once I stopped following the format's guidelines, I started winning more and having more fun in games and drafts because a new world of interactions and possibilities opened. This format tricks you into thinking you want to pick some cookie-cutter archetype and follow it, but you can have success playing all the good cards.

I'm writing this a few short hours before the PT coverage starts, and I can't wait to see whether the PT players draft anything resembling my style or follow the path that's been laid out.