Each color seemingly has its own dedicated combat trick which keeps things simple when thinking about ways your opponent can manipulate combat. Early on, when you don’t have enough mana, you probably want to lock down a smaller creature, and you can afford to take a hit before you lock it down. This article will definitely help me not have my bottom handed to me. Now blue is really deep this time around, as there are a bunch of other powerful commons, we should talk about. Not only does it help fill the graveyard to activate your passive rogue abilities, but every single resource, even low-value, basic lands, are valuable due to the high relevance of landfall triggers. It faces a similar issue where the vast majority of the card power is “flat” like Theros, but the tension between party and tribal archetypes leads us to find power level through synergy. There’s also one artifact creature, that’s worded the same way. For example, if you’re 3rd picking a Farsight Adept to stay on color, you’re probably doing it wrong. It’s a Sphinx’s Revelation at uncommon rarity which allows you to make up for the low card quality by simply playing more weak cards. Blue has Rogues and Wizards. Brushfire Elemental | Illustration by Campbell White. With ways to bring your creatures back, opt to be more aggressive than not when possible to open up future attacks. As we said, there are 151 creatures in Zendikar Rising. It’s going to be very hard to block, but it will be okay at best when on defense – three toughness really isn’t a lot. Aggressive decks will typically still want to run less lands. Second landfall deck contains red instead of white. While aggressively getting on the board, you’re also trying to slowly mill your opponent to eight cards in their graveyard to activate the passive ability of cards like Nimana Skitter-Sneak and Relic Golem. Finally, there’s Subtle Strike, which is subtly very good. It allows you to add an additional dimension to your deck abusing the powerful ETB effects of cards like Malakir Blood-Priest, Drana’s Silencer, Thundering Sparkmage, and even Pyroclastic Hellion multiple times over the course of a game. But make sure that you don’t get blown out by a pump spell. Second, Resolute Strike is another one of those playable combat tricks, that can be deceptively strong, and it has an additional upside in a Warrior / Equipment deck. Rogues are perhaps the most interesting and the hardest archetype to evaluate. Don’t forget that there are also some synergies with kicked spells, which can make it even better. So what should you take from all of this? Thanks, beautifull article, will help me so much to draft properly. So you won’t count it as a land, because then you’ll be forced to play it as a land more often. As you’ll see in the archetype section, both of those archetypes have a party theme. Want to earn Gems, while drafting on Arena? I’ve done about 20-30 drafts. The presence of both landfall, kicker and modal double-faced cards, should put the default starting land count at 18 lands. Unlocking the full party is going to be both very hard and not much more rewarding then having two different creatures types in play. These games will often go very long, so keep ways to maximize board tension and card quality in mind. Ardent Electromancer will be one of the key cards to explosive aggressive draws as any red deck and incentivizes you to pick up red 2-drops, which you can play off of her bonus mana. Tazeem Raptor | Illustration by Dan Scott. Zendikar is the kind of Magic that gets me out of bed in the morning and away from my bed at night.eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'draftsim_com-medrectangle-4','ezslot_7',129,'0','0'])); I’ve played over a hundred ZNR drafts now and have formulated a very strong opinion of what’s correct in this format. Kicker cards like Tazeem Roilmage and Cunning Geysermage can provide party early, trade off with opposing attackers, push damage, and can also provide extra value in the late game. Some cards also care if you cast a kicked spell, but more about that later – in the blue-green archetype section. That’s all about new Zendikar Rising decks. You’ll need to focus while drafting to understand what your current cards are doing and where those cards want to go.eval(ez_write_tag([[728,90],'draftsim_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_10',161,'0','0'])); Nimana Skitter-Sneak | Illustration by Campbell White. You’ll always get at least 2 life (it’s a Cleric – unless it gets killed in response) which is already good, but often you’ll get four or even more, which can quickly put you in a very favorable position. The cleanup tool can be used with text pasted from sites which uses special markup like "4x" in their numbering, it also removes text that has no card number in front, useful for text containing desriptions like "Enchantments", "Creatures" etc. Tazeem Roilmage | Illustration by Manuel Castañón. Some of the key commons include Gnarlid Colony, Hagra Constrictor, Dauntless Survivor, and Ghastly Gloomhunter. Still don’t use their mana very well in general. Still you have plenty of staying power in the late game with cards like Shatterskull Minotaur and Thwart the Grave to bring it and another creature back for more. It also has Nimana Skydancer, which can really play nicely with both instants and Rogues. You’ll want some amount of removal to deal with pesky threats at times racing you in the sky, but in general, I’ve seen the focus on unexciting removal to be completely overstated in Magic. The key commons to this archetype are Kor Celebrant and Shepherd of Heroes, which are flexible creatures that’ll provide the healing to trigger your lifegain payoffs. Another cool flyer is Ghastly Gloomhunter, although you want to have ways to buff it with +1/+1 counters. Finally, Territorial Scythecat is another landfall creature that can quickly grow out of control. If you’re a veteran player, you might even know that it was a functional reprint of Into the Roil from original Zendikar. But wait, that’s not all. Synchronized Spellcraft | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov. All in all, they all look fun to play, so let’s start examining them. This will unlock a bunch of power-ups for your cards like Soaring Thought-Thief‘s power boost. Speaking of traps…. This was really amazing. So with all that in mind, the formula for land count in Zendikar Rising draft is: Total number of basic lands = 18 – number of “bad” double-faced lands. If I managed to pick up an early Roost of Drakes, one of the most powerful cards in the format, the natural color pair would be green since the UG color combination has access to the most kicker cards. For me that’s enough info for a good starter. Lots of them focus on a mechanic + a creature type. We've also covered many terms that might be unfamiliar to a new player, but which are important for anyone interested in learning more about Magic strategy and theory.. Below is a list of the vocabulary words … In reality, Murder probably wasn’t as good as you thought it was back then, either. When you get a card draw on top of that, they are just incredible. First PSA of Zendikar: If you are viewing the land/spell split cards as 1/x of a land you are viewing it wrong. While I think this color combination is completely playable, I would try to stay away from it if possible because the typical power level of a Selesnya deck is relatively low compared to others. Finally, we’ll examine all archetypes and what they’re trying to do. This spell will often cost 3 or 4 mana, and that’s very good. The general strategy is to use the hard-hitting evasive flying wizards with the value-based wizards in a flexible game plan that can be adapted based on what your opponent is doing. Even in best-of-three, try to leave them out of the starting 40 unless the card is an extremely crucial element of your game plan. In a similar fashion, Seafloor Stalker and Drana’s Silencer are rogues that don’t want to be in rogue decks. Blood Price | Illustration by Antonio José Manzanedo, Part of the amazing thing about Zendikar Rising is that opinions differ greatly on how good MDFCs are. In this sense, let’s give WAR an arbitrary 5/5 in terms of power level. But at that point you have at least four creatures in play, and you’re probably doing well anyways. Focus on having a diverse spread of party creatures. If so, you can read about how to reach Mythic on Arena. It’s yet another mechanic that can promote a higher land count. These are the five most common criteria for how I decide my mana counts: Hyper-aggressive decks which don’t use its mana well in the late game and have a low curve with a low amount of MDFCs. Unless you have a few copies of Fireblade Charger and a Kor Blademaster, you really don’t want to be running bad equipment cards as a way to push through attacks and damage. Possibly paired with a trampler, like another good common Grotag Bug-Catcher. The concept of the deck is to abuse the two most powerful land-returning creatures in the format, Pyroclastic Hellion and Kazandu Stomper, along with a high density of MDFCs in order to grind your opponent out with late-game value. The Deathsie approach tries to solve the above issues by having a more holistic understanding of the implications of MDFCs by stepping back and looking at the deck as a whole. So, how should you build around this mechanic? We talked about most conditional removal spells in the best commons section, but here’s a table, where you can see how much creatures do certain removal spells deal with. I’ve played over a hundred ZNR drafts now and have formulated a very strong opinion of what’s correct in this format. What’s even more exciting, is that it can actually support a mill win condition. Black decks will always want at least one copy, maybe even two. If you’re playing against this deck, try playing around this card, if you can. If you can’t decide between a Rogue or a Cleric, pick the one you have fewer of. Remember that there’s intrinsic value to simply having MDFCs lying dormant on the board. 3. I’ll be imparting my complete wisdom of the format to you to help provide clarity to these complicated aspects. Even though the deck really cares about having party types, don’t be afraid to run copies of Pyroclastic Hellion and Kazandu Stomper for their raw power level and late-game potential. All of those have all four creature types. Other times, it’ll just win you the game on the spot. Finally, here’s Black-Green, the other archetype that doesn’t care much about creature types. Until next time, have fun and may all your Zendikar Rising drafts be fun and successful. Even if it doesn’t – who cares. Uses mana exceptionally well and also has high card quality. First, Prowling Felidar is a bit clunky, but can become a real deal, especially if you have enough landfall support. Even if you play it as a 1/1, just add a single counter to it and you have a real creature in play. Again, think about how well your deck can use its mana. The better the spell side is the more you should view the card as a spell, the worse the spell side is the more you should view the card as a land. I’m curious about the efficiency of lands and splash colors in the set. As a seasoned drafter, your article really helped clear this format up for me by far. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Lagac – or better, multiple Lagacs – can be your top end. Even a random Highborn Vampire as a warrior will do if you need to up that party count for your synergies. I think this is the trend in green/white as opposed to other green decks because of the slow and board stall-y nature of the color combination. I might agree that blue is the best. The moral of the story here is to not be scared of playing tap lands. That’s even before we start to talk about enchantments. The rest of the deck can essentially be built any way possible, but make sure to focus on defense as the first priority. This archetype can optimize this powerful artifact, capitalizing second to only the Izzet Wizards deck. Our Fireblade Chargers like having ways to buff up their attack. First two white commons were amazingly good, and Raptor is somewhat weaker, while still being a very good card. That makes this archetype a perfect home for a party (and a welcome sight from the usual flyers archetype). Even the seemingly bad ones are playable, as they prevent your from flooding out in the late game. Now you’ll either draw actual cards that’ll help you win the game, or lands, which will also finish your opponent, thanks to this Lizard. I don’t think Relic Amulet is a trap. The blue/white color combination, like Rakdos, is an actual dedicated party deck! First off your colour pair order is quit off, I have it at Overall, the flexibility and variance reduction that MDFCs provide vastly outweighs the downside of them coming into play tapped. Find a better card pick to hedge on. The main build-around is definitely Roost of Drakes. If your cards don’t synergize to the max, you’ll quickly feel that your opponents are playing a very different game than you. It makes me really happy that people are still arguing about what’s right over a month into a format! Creatures with good stats that replace themselves like Joraga Visionary and Expedition Diviner are also forms of removal (they trade off well), and they provide card advantage. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. We’ve been a proud part of the Magic community, and will keep providing our customers with great prices, fair grades, and quick and convenient payments for the transactions … Landfall also has various different effects, from tapping opposing creatures to buffing your team and making making tokens. If you’re playing against red, you should always keep this card in mind, especially when your opponent starts making weird attacks, just to get you down to five life points. Not only does it have a perfectly fine body for a five drop, the benefit of burn + getting land back is real. It feels like a core set deck trying to compete in a powerful draft format. A nice budget option to replace Thwart the Grave is Blood Beckoning. If you draw it, you’ll be happy that you still have lands in your hand. The deck will be somewhat more aggressive then Blue-White, by using two drops that can pack a punch, like Grotag Bug-Catcher and Malakir Blood-Priest. Landfall is really the focus of this archetype. This is a deck which you should generally not go for unless you can pick up an early Soaring Thought-Thief or Zareth San, the Trickster. This means it can support a go-wide strategy with mass pump spells like Dauntless Unity – especially if you can get multiple Healers. You’ll try to get quick damage in in the first turns with your red decks. How viable it’ll be is hard to say, but if you can get a couple of Crabs and some Rogues that mill, it definitely seems doable. It’s actually the only way to get two lands into play repeatedly. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. I think this approach is closer to the truth than the first method, but it has some implicit flaws. When you have another Wizard in play it becomes even better – even if your opponent manages to kill it, you’ll get to draw a card. Now you have enough lands and you return it, so you can cast its spell side. Don’t pick creatures just in regard to their creature types. This makes Synchronized Spellcraft a very playable card. This is one of my favorite decks to draft in the format and showcases the crossover potential of archetypes in Zendikar Rising. If your opponent plays Drana, the Last Bloodchief, good luck killing it unless you have Deadly Alliance or Thundering Rebuke on hand. Make sure that you don’t tunnel-vision into that color and pick up other color cards when the difference in card quality is too high, though. You can also cast it for four mana (two must be white) to have it tap two creatures when it comes into play. I recently became very interested in drafts to balance the grind of Standard play. Let’s just say that they’re all at least playable in Zendikar Rising draft. Deadly Alliance is certainly the front-runner for the best common – not only in black, but in whole Zendikar Rising draft. If you’ve been playing Magic for a while, you might remember Blink of an Eye from Dominaria. If you’re wondering when you’ll be able to start drafting this set on your computer, you can find exact Zendikar Rising release time on Arena here. Adventure Awaits | Illustration by Billy Christianeval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'draftsim_com-medrectangle-3','ezslot_9',151,'0','0'])); For the first time in a long time, WotC has given us a draft format that’s elegant in both its drafting and its gameplay. This scenario only needs a common, an uncommon and three lands to work, so your opponent can easily be on ten life – before they even get to play their third land. Shatterskull Minotaur | Illustration by Aleksi Briclot. Rather than an open color, find compatible cards to supplement the game plan of your first color. Green black 3/3 flying lifelinker is nothing to sniff at. There’s a lot going on mechanically. I’m going to lay out the strategies which exist between color combinations a bit further down, so hold onto that. I’ll be imparting my complete … There you’ll find all cards from the set, which will additionally prepare you for the draft. A good example of this is a card like Veteran Adventurer. On the other hand, there are also kicker payoffs, when combined with blue. Spellcraft falls right in the middle of kicked and non-kicked Roil Eruption. Note that you get to bounce any nonland permanent, whether it belongs to your opponent or to you. So when you want to draft Baloth, try to build a more aggressive deck. Prowling Felidar | Illustration by Ilse Gort. You focus on trying to either out-card them or win with evasive threats like Shepherd of Heroes and Seafloor Stalker activations. In case you’re playing Commander in paper, you can check the two new decks and upgrades for them here: Maybe you just want some more strategy content? Blue – White: Party. It fails to take a comprehensive look at the deck as a whole and ultimately doesn’t account for the fact that your draws won’t necessarily understand that you want to play specific MDFCs as lands and others as spells. Think critically about what a card does for your deck. Control-ish midrange decks are still abundant, though. With all that said, let’s take a look at the bigger picture with some general tips for building your Zendikar Rising draft decks. While a 3 mana 4/3 is pretty decent, that alone doesn’t carry a whole archetype. 3/4 flyer for 5 mana is already a good deal, but when it comes with the added bonus of life gain, that pushes it over the top. Expedition Champion can pack a big punch for a three drop, if you manage to constantly have another Warrior in play. Lastly, there’s one more thing to say about lands, thanks to the landfall mechanic. As you can see, most of them are at two and three mana. You’ll have up to five MDFCs and a relatively normal curve. Unconditional removal at instant speed for five mana – that deals with both creatures and planeswalkers. The card’s power variety is essentially decided by how well you can maximize its potential. Oblivion’s Hunger will also do some serious work here. Inordinate Rage might look like another mediocre pump spell, especially when it costs two mana. So if you get it early, and if you cast three appropriate spells, you get to cast Roil Eruption, that your opponent saw coming for four mana? It has a low cost and it isn’t an actual fight card, but more of a punch. It’s a really weird deck that can essentially be Frankenstein-ed with whatever else you can get your hands on. Honestly, though, your deck still probably won’t be great even if you have them. As usual with those rankings the important part is the commentary. The intersectionality of archetypes and modal double-faced cards (MDFC) provide an elegant range of decision making and choice. Well, you should probably change that in Zendikar Rising draft. You’ll try to hit your land drops, curve out, be an aggressor and make your creatures bigger with their landfall abilities. Will you be playing Standard? Should you count them as lands? This cards will probably change how many lands you play in your decks, but more about that a bit later. This balancing act requires a strong mental fortitude during the drafting and deck-building portion. This creates an interesting dynamic in when to play these cards and when a random creature who can contribute to the party will do better work in the given deck slot. The second most common Dimir deck I’ve drafted is, strangely, Dimir Party. Pair them with green efficient creatures and you’re good to go. You’ll often find that you can have a kicker sub-theme as many of the wizard cards naturally have kicker. Landfall is another returning mechanic, that debuted in original Zendikar. You can look at it as a five mana 4/4 hasty creature, or as four mana 4/4 that might come into play tapped. In all areas apart from the battlefield, the card is only the front side. First, it’s a may – you don’t have to return a land, if you don’t want to. Lands enter the battlefield tapped. I’m finding that the format is on the slow side because of a lot of high quality removal and some good card advantage spells in multiple colors. When you compare the options above to removal spells like Synchronized Spellcraft or Nahiri’s Binding, who really cares about a dweeby removal spell? Not only do they inherently reduce mana flood and screw, but they also provide value later on when you need more spells to cast. You can play cards wastefully and defensively or hold onto them for late game kicker value. Zendikar Rising draft archetypes are all pretty interesting. Each pack contains 1 art card, 1 full-art basic land, 6 connected commons or uncommons, 1 showcase or double-faced common/uncommon, 2 cards of any rarity (chance of showcase or … Now with every card you should ask yourself: “Would I played this card if it wasn’t a land on the other side?”. When you have so many good common kicker cards, you should expect that Risen Riptide will be good. Selling to Card Kingdom is easy! It can be played on turn 2 to trade off with an aggressive Boros deck, or it can be held onto to kick for a spell or to activate kicker payoff cards like Risen Riptide or Merfolk Falconer. The ratings are initially created by me, but they may also be updated later with information gleaned from AI-backed analysis.. As always, a list … Second, it’s got two uses: All in all, this Bird should see a lot of play in your white decks. It’s a decent uncommon-rarity bomb in a good green party deck but is vastly underwhelming in a green landfall deck. Because at the time when your opponents play big creatures, you usually have four mana to spend and lock them down before they attack. Usually you just put 17 lands in your deck and that’s it. Above average curve. Red white Now imagine topdecking it in the late game. Finally, green has access to all four creature types, so it can offer a support to any other color that wants to assemble a party. Red green I could see it if you had access to a few copies of Veteran Adventurer, but there’s almost no party incentive in Selesnya otherwise. I’v seen it working in a lot of videos, sometimes even in the combo Into the roil/Roilmage. This is the most common approach that I would not recommend, simply because it fails to acknowledge the quality of the cards as well as the number of lands the deck wants to run as a whole. There are some simple rules to approach how many lands you should be playing in your deck. Zendikar Rising is a format where balance (being able to both block and attack) is key. Their versatility shouldn’t be underrated. You can always find him drafting eccentric decks in high mythic on his channel at, The Ultimate Guide to Zendikar Rising Draft, The Controversial Value of Double-Faced Cards, Time Spiral Remastered Spoilers, Set News, and Information, The Original Dual Lands: History And Where to Find Them. Cards that can return MDFCs later in the game like Pyroclastic Hellion and Kazandu Stomper while also developing a large body to trade or attack is generally a more effective play than trying to remove your opponent’s creatures. Murasa Rootgrazer only works with basic lands, which is a bit sad, as you don’t get to reuse your modal double-faced cards, but it’s still very good. Kicker is already a great mechanic in draft. So let’s take a look at which creatures type belong in which colors. With the best common(roil eruption) in the whole set, first pickable, and some killer synergy I’d rank it in second or third place in colours. An elegant solution to 27 years of Magic players flipping tables because of land variance. You can cast it for one white mana to get a 1/1 flyer. Nahiri’s Binding | Illustration by Magali Villeneuveeval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'draftsim_com-banner-1','ezslot_6',157,'0','0'])); The key to the Zendikar Rising draft format is staying open to as many archetypes as possible. There’s also a couple of cards that want you to have all four different types. Three powered flyer for four is already a fine deal. All of this makes Bubble Snare an amazing blue quasi-removal spell. All have enough good cards and tools to compete and it looks like we’re about to have a pretty balanced set. Even when you have to deal with something bigger you might be happy that you have an option to do so, even if it comes with a bigger life loss. Take Tazeem Roilmage for example. 4. In this deck, the inconspicuous common Mind Drain becomes a powerhouse that’ll greatly upset your opponents. However, it’s very possible that it’ll overpreform. Not great, not terrible, as a certain Soviet scientist would say. Plus, free shipping on orders over $199! Don’t worry too much about finding ways to push damage Instead, attempt to trade off creatures and find ways to bring them back. There are six dual lands plus 30 additional double-faced cards, 6 for each color: All of those have a non-land card on one side and a land card on the other. Speaking of which, Sea Gate Colossus is just an actual strong card. It’s a pretty simple one. They usually won’t remove your other Wizard first, as the big flyers are usually the first targets for removal spells. Try to think outside of the box and find creative paths to what a successful deck could look like. It’s a very linear, non-party archetype that focuses on having things with +1/+1 counters and cards that benefit from said counters. White has Clerics and Warriors. What this means is that Feed the Swarm is probably good enough. Instead you want to mill your opponent, so they have at least 8 cards in the graveyard. The amazing thing about this format is that there’s a lot of crossovers in terms of archetypes. Just watch out, so you don’t get blown out when your opponent kills your only other Warrior mid-combat. That said, both red and green offer a wide assortment of powerful wizards if you’re lucky enough to weasel your way into drafting this incredibly fun combination. While each of these things on their own are fine, our Blade becomes truly powerful once you have multiple reasons to give it a valuable spot in your deck. You can reuse your double-faced spell lands or trigger your landfall effects again. It’s a deck that focuses on incremental lifegain and clerics to play a strange attrition-aggro game. Don’t try to play Relic Amulet. Izzet Wizards will often also have a natural kicker sub-theme as is a nod to the wide flexibility of blue in Zendikar. It fits nicely in the deck, as it can quickly fill your opponent’s graveyard to eight or more cards. Dauntless Survivor and Guul Draz Mucklord might look like nothing much, but they’ll probably be the cards that’ll hold the deck together and make sure that you’ll have enough counters for you synergies to work. White has Clerics and Warriors. Your opponent simply can’t afford to attack into it if you have four mana open, unless they risk getting completely blown out. Zendikar isn’t really about that. You’ll often be able to deal two damage, which can quickly add up, especially since you just removed a blocker out of the way. That’s Cragplate Baloth, may it never appear on your opponent’s side. There are 151 total of them, and 122 have a power of 3 or less. The land you got back, can trigger you landfall effects when you replay it. Want to find out more about Zendikar Rising? Akoum Hellhound into Brushfire Elemental is a really scary curve out. Black white Blue green This deck focuses on Malakir Blood-Priest and Seafloor Stalker to deal bits of chip damage over time in conjunction with ways to bring them back as aforementioned. Cheers! Maybe you have something like Felidar Retreat in your deck? If you’ll also be drafting this set, make sure to check our Zendikar Rising Draft Guide, which features a bunch of useful … Their respective mechanic is life gain. Three damage for two mana to any target is always very strong in limited, even if it comes at sorcery speed. Just in blue, you already have access to 10 Wizards (4 at common), so it should be pretty easy to get a second one in play – even if you aren’t in red, which is the secondary Wizard color. The amount of agency you get in the drafting portion of Zendikar is phenomenal, since your objective is to navigate all the potential ways to bring the best out of the cards. It took me a long time to get a feeling on how to approach the new lands in this format. Either way, it’s a good common and the benefit of getting a land back is good, as we mentioned before. The better the spell side is the more you should view the card as a spell, the worse the spell side is the more you should view the card as a land.— BenS_MTG (@BenS_MTG) September 20, 2020. Note that if you have two Clerics and no other creatures in play, they still only count as one (as Gimli would say). While I and many respectable players dub this format one of the greatest of all time, others believe it to be an unexciting draft that belongs in the same category as M21, a unanimously terrible limited set.