My Favorite and Least Favorite Archetype of Final Fantasy Draft

I've said before that I was looking forward to the Final Fantasy set. The set looked fantastic for Limited, and admittedly, the flavor appeals to me as someone who spent countless hours playing Final Fantasy XI.

This format has been tricky. I've generally been more focused on exploring what's going on inside the format rather than maximizing my win rate, but I still find the games and the drafts challenging. While my goal isn't to win the most games during the format's first week, I also don't want to just lose games in the pursuit of knowledge.

At the time of writing, I've played over 350 games of the format with a win percentage of approximately 64%. I'm far from completing a full exploration of the format. I've tried everything I can within reason of how I've opened and what I'm being passed. I'm often pushing to extremes, but needless to say, I have a reasonable grasp of the format. In fact, I have almost 40 deck images saved on my computer in the format's first week. That's close to the most reps I've had of any format this early. You might say I'm enjoying it.

I'll share first with you what hasn't worked. The archetype that stands out to me as a clear loser is Rakdos. Rakdos has consistently underperformed and is by far the biggest loser of decks I find myself in often. My win rate with Rakdos at 44% is the only negative win rate over archetypes I've drafted more than once.

What is making me lose with Rakdos? Well, Rakdos has this fundamental issue where it looks cool when you end up with several wizards in play and chain some cantrips to deal a bunch of damage in a turn. The issue is that your wizard tokens don't block effectively, and cards like Cornered by Black Mages are a lot worse when the opponent curves out well. If your opponent can put an extra token in play or play a one-drop, then the card becomes awkward the entire game. Your wizard tokens don't attack or block well, and individually do little damage.

Best-of-one is not a suitable place for this because people rarely miss plays. The hand smoother insists that people spend all their mana each turn. That's not to say Cornered by Black Mages is a bad card, but it is a bit higher variance than I'd like when it's the core identity of your deck.

Rakdos also has this issue with flooding out. Because of how the black mage tokens work, it's necessary to cast spells and get a critical mass of triggers. Even when things are going well, you're usually playing this nickel-and-dime game of making small, positive exchanges and dealing incremental bits of damage over time. You can play a card like Black Mage's Rod on turn two, but you're often reluctant to trade because you'll lose your triggers, and it's too expensive to equip later to continue to accrue triggers.

This leads Rakdos to play a slightly slower game, which makes you more vulnerable to explosive draw steps from the opponent. The format is high-powered, so you don't want to approach it in a small-ball manner.

Rakdos

Equipment is one of the format's most punishing mechanics. This format's equipment is mostly attached to creatures, and after those trade in combat, you're left with a game piece to spend excess mana on. Rakdos, however, can't utilize this as well because the creatures are generally too small to win a combat even when equipped, or the creatures are off-plan and don't trigger the wizard theme. If you spend your mana equipping or casting creatures, then your wizards aren't triggering, leaving you behind in the life race, and generally still with smaller creatures than your opponent.

Rakdos is plagued by consistency issues, creature sizing, and overall seems to be playing behind on almost every turn. There's limited card draw to pull ahead and keep the spells flowing when you are ahead. If your clock is slow, you're often hoping your opponent gets unlucky in their draw step because you're not likely winning by enough to fade a strong draw. As of right now, I've all but sworn off Rakdos. I'm training myself to ignore Garland, Knight of Cornelia when I see it in packs after taking a couple of red or black cards because I know it's going to end up going poorly.

As for my favorite or best performing archetype of the format, it may be surprising to some, but it's been Golgari-based decks. The talk of the Starting Town is definitely Izzet, but Golgari has been my comfort zone.

Golgari is one of the most consistent archetypes in the format, if not the most consistent. As a premium common for the archetype, Town Greeter lets you get deep into your deck, find your mana, and black cards, such as Fight On! and Evil Reawakened, allow you access to your graveyard.

Additionally, both of Golgari's uncommon signpost gold cards range from good to excellent. Cloud of Darkness is one of the better gold uncommons, and one of the set's best uncommons at its ceiling. You want to get through your deck, find your best cards, and constantly play large creatures while accumulating value. Free flashback stuff is nice, and as much as I want Final Days to be broken, it's not, but it is solid in these decks.

Golgari Self-Mill

Golgari's most important attribute is its flexibility. You can be a typical Golgari self-mill deck, which is how the archetype was designed, but Golgari's card pool lends itself to splashing quite easily. Mana fixing is readily available in green, which lets us take powerful cards and throw them in our decks.

Jund Midrange

Here's a picture of a Jund deck I drafted and trophied with, but it's more of a straight Jund value deck. Regardless, it's using the core of green fixing and green-based gold cards to play good cards every turn and avoid playing filler.

I've also had Golgari aggro decks that push tempo and leverage a fast start using removal and combat tricks to push damage and close games early.

Fast Car Golgari

Golgari can brick off the opponent's offense and play enough removal to keep the battlefield empty, but also close the door when needed, unlike Rakdos, where you lose access to giant green creatures. This Golgari aggro deck looked like a complete car wreck, but it played out quite well. If I recall correctly, I lost playing for the trophy in the last match, but I expected not to win any games, and the deck played out better than I anticipated.

One thing I have noticed is that while my win rate isn't as high with Izzet as it is with Golgari, that is likely a metagame issue. Izzet is widely considered the strongest or one of the strongest archetypes, which means you will have lower-quality Izzet decks when you're contested for the cards.

As of right now, Golgari is underdrafted, and I'm still seeing Cloud of Darkness deep into pack one, which is no longer the case for cards like Shantotto. As long as I find holes in the armor, I'll keep drafting what's coming and learning how to draft each archetype to the best of its capabilities. This format has been fast and punishing, where I feel like every few games, I lose to a card I've never seen before on the bonus sheet.

That's it for me this week, but I will continue my exploration of this format through the Pro Tour this weekend and compete in the Arena Direct. I'm looking forward to enjoying a weekend of playing and watching Magic and further exploring the Limited metagame.