Draft Report: Amonkhet R/G High End (6-5-2017) – The 3-Color Mistake

With so much focus on red-based aggro decks, three color options have been neglected. I think some players are coming around to the interesting interactions that are possible in three color builds, but it may have taken the red card “gold rush” to push us in that direction.

I spoke about three color builds previously in my Temur Midrange and Grixis Cycling Draft Reports. When things work out, going the three color route allows you to play more of the bombs you see in draft. It also opens the path to better utilizing color theme overlaps, like combining red discard with black-blue cycling.

In today’s Draft Report, however, I’d like to discuss the wrong way to build a three color deck.

Amonkhet Draft List: R/G High End (6-5-2017)

Deck Tech

Don’t be fooled – this is no Elvish Piper.

At face value, the list above is likely the highest curve of any Amonkhet limited deck I’ve put together. Even if we shift the high end cards down by their cycling cost, the curve is still a bit top-heavy. Combine the ability to cycle almost all of the cards above 4 CMC with Champion of Rhonas, and it really works.

Champion is a card that has been very medium in my experience. The appeal of cheating in a creature on exert is tempting, but he just does not work well in many decks. At 3G in Amonkhet draft, you typically want to impact the board a bit more, and as a 3/3, Champion of Rhonas does not attack or block as well as you’d like for four mana. The most common sequence I’ve seen is that the Champion attacks, exerts to drop another 4- or 5- drop, then dies to a blocker. Not an amazing exchange, even if you have a mediocre hit in hand for his exert trigger.

Having too many curve-topping hits but not drawing a Champion (and getting an attack in) can lead to a hand full of uncastable cards. Having a Champion with nothing to cheat into play leads to a mediocre, over-costed 3/3 when you need more on the board. However, this deck avoided those situations.

Great at six mana. Greater at zero.

Five 6- or 7- drops meant that if the Champion attacked, I was most likely cheating in a big beater. The turn you get a free Scaled Behemoth feels so good. With all but one of those fatties cycling, they were not dead when Champion was missing. Further, if the game went long enough, I always had more giant creatures to cast than my opponents could deal with in the late game.

Fling and Onward / Victory were actually good in this deck for the same reasons the Champion worked. I have typically valued these two cards relatively lowly, but they both won games when my opponent failed to block. It’s easy for an opponent to think they’re safe taking 7 damage from a Greater Sandwurm, but when that becomes 14 at instant speed, you can really catch them off guard.

The 3-Color Mistake

While the deck above performed very well, it’s not the deck I ran in Round 1. I started the draft picking white-red, and found fairly quickly that it was not going to be open enough to work out. However, I convinced myself I had enough fixing to run a three color deck. Check out the list below.

Amonkhet Draft List: W/R/G Mistake (6-5-2017)

He may be excellent, but he alone can’t carry a color.

I think you can see the logic I was using to include white. I needed low-end creatures in my curve, and I needed removal. Gust Walker is an easy card to fight for, but it’s hard to guarantee you will consistently have the mana you need to cast it on Turn 2. Similarly, my double Impeccable Timings were dead in the early game if my mana wasn’t right. Waiting until later in the game will often mean they just don’t deal enough damage to remove what needs removing. Lastly, Tah-Crop Elite and Trial of Solidarity are not great excuses to run three colors, either – particularly when you’re having difficulty getting out the number of creatures needed to make their triggers valuable.

The result was that I got run over big time in Round 1. By the time I got action on the board, I was basically dead already. After those games, I took another look at my deck with my opponent. We discussed what I was going for, and talking through my picks and decisions gave me a better overall view of what went wrong. I changed the deck to match the list up top, leaving in a single Plains for the opportunity to potentially aftermath Onward / Victory.

Yet another way to steal a game in Amonkhet.

We played an additional two games for fun with my new build, and it absolutely crushed. They were certainly good, interactive games of Magic, but once my top end turned on, there was little my opponent could do. The rest of the draft went the same way, and I learned what exactly was wrong with my three color build.

Fixing the Problem

In the end, the problem was that I tried to build a three color deck to fix what I thought were weaknesses, rather than to reinforce what the majority of my cards were already doing. This deck really cared about getting big creatures onto the board and abusing them. Heaven / Earth is practically a one-sided Wrath of God when you have one or more 7-toughness creatures on the board. Just when your opponent begins to stabilize, Fling and Onward / Victory can steal the game.

When most of the meta is small (sometimes flying) creatures, Heaven / Earth can eat up the competition, and quick.

Rather than adding cards to the deck that would get me to those goals faster, I added in two creatures, a bit of removal and an anthem effect – all of which just served to make my deck less consistent.

The fix was talking about what goals my deck could and could not achieve and why. That’s what the Draft Report is really about, after all. By writing out my experiences, I get the opportunity to think about the decisions I make, why I make them and how I can improve that decision-making process next time. Sometimes, explaining something to another person is the best way to understand the topic yourself, and more importantly, learn about what exactly you understand in the first place.

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