Hey everyone! Your eyes do not deceive you and you haven’t stepped into a time machine, I am actually writing a limited article. You have no idea what kind of promises were made to me in exchange for dipping my toes in the water again. I am, of course, not being serious there. I do miss writing all those articles, but have to settle for what I can get done in the limited time that I have.
With that out of the way, I should probably get started on actually talking about Magic. Today I’ll be going over the limited archetypes of Aetherdrift as well as providing you with archetype skeletons to give you a visual example of what you should be looking to do with each one.
For those of you unfamiliar with what an archetype skeleton is, it is basically what an average “good” deck would be in that archetype. One that could trophy, but isn’t a slam dunk to do so. It doesn’t really help to look at a totally busted hypothetical deck because it should be really obvious when that lane presents itself.
The building limitations that I am setting for this are two rares, five uncommons, and not more than two of any common. No mythics or special guests are included because it’s far less likely that you’ll see them.
For simplicities sake, the mana bases will be static throughout the exercise. They will be eight of each basic land and a Night Market. I am aware this isn’t always the proper mana ratio for the decks and you will often have more than one nonbasic land. I am mostly adding this part because every time I get a few messages saying that my colored sources were off on a deck.
Azorius is based around artifact value which is quite a bit different from the usual aggressive flyers decks that we get. The goal is to overwhelm them with a pile of critters so basically the same plan without as much evasion.
Orzhov is the Ricky Bobby deck because it wants to go fast. These piles are built around quickly achieving max speed and taking advantage of the results.
Getting your engines going on turn one or two along with cheap ways to poke in are essential to maximizing everything you have going on here.
The plan for Boros is to crew your vehicles and mount up to smash your opponents face in. This is a slight departure from the normal go wide Boros approach and is more in line with the plan from our previous visits to Kaladesh.
The problem with vehicles (that mounts don’t really have since they are their own creature) is that you are limited on how many you play since can’t really count them as a creature and you would also like to have space for other relevant noncreature spells. So that’s why you may see a minimum amount of vehicles in the vehicle archetype.
Selesnya is also on the mounts and vehicles game plan. According to WotC, it is more of a midrange attempt at that while Boros is the aggressive version. Similar to Boros, I almost always prefer mounts over vehicles here. Avoiding sorcery speed removal doesn’t seem as relevant in this set and there is artifact kill being played in the main.
Dimir is an artifact-based deck with the subtheme of draining your opponent out. Pactdoll Terror looks unimpressive in most decks, but can cause massive swings in the game when you are this loaded up on artifacts.
Izzet a spells deck again? It actually is not. I was almost tired of making that same dad joke every time
It is considered the “discard aggro” deck or as we like to call it the cycling deck. This is one of the decks where the building restrictions mess with it the most because I wouldn’t be playing 17 lands with all of these cycling cards. You still get the general idea though.
This feels like one of those decks that is absurd when it is open, but will have enough people fighting over the key pieces to keep it in check.
Simic is doing its usual ramp thing with the side gig into exhaust. You have to do something with all that mana. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many good ramp cards to support it. Guidelight Optimizer might seem out of place with a low artifact count, but it also lets you pay for abilities so it can do the thing when it comes to exhaust.
Similar to Orzhov, Rakdos wants to get up to max speed ASAP. Clearing the way and bashing the face is what Rakdos does best which just happens to line up with that plan. What can I say other than Rakdos is going to Rakdos.
Gruul is it’s usual beatdown self with some exhaust thrown in to give you some reach when you can’t quite get across the finish line. It’s a nice way to keep the pressure on when your opponent thinks they’ve stabilized.
Josh is a member of the elite limited team The Draft Lab as well as the host of The Draft Lab Podcast. He was qualifying for Pro Tours, Nationals, and Worlds literally before some of you were born. After a Magic hiatus to play poker and go to medical school, he has been dominating Arena with over an 80% win percentage in Bo3 as well as making #1 rank in Mythic.
