Best Commons and Uncommons, Hidden Gems, and Trap Cards for Murders at Karlov Manor (MKM) Limited • MTG Arena Zone

We are approaching a week with Murders at Karlov Manor. A week of intensive discovery, intensive drafting, and despite format not being a solved case just yet, we certainly have a better clue on what is good and what lacks power. Wow, that was heavy handed even for my low standards. Anyway, it is the time when we get enough data from 17Lands.com, to get a good impression of what is the format about and armed with that knowledge – get better.

Today I will look at which colors and color pairs win the most in MKM, and at best commons and uncommons from each color – to give you a good impression on where the power in the format can be found.

Color Popularity and Power

In the first days of the new format two colors are played by the 17Lands.com users more than others: White and Red. Both of those were hotly tipped in the preview season to be the strongest and there usually is a strong correlation between what was considered to be strong in the previews and what dominates the early metagame.

However, it is also common that the preview predictions were spot on, so it is hard to disentangle the impact of the predictions and the impact of how the format plays out to be. The third most popular color is Blue, but it already is below what would be expected if colors were picked randomly. Black and Green are even further back, with only 16% of the games registered involving a deck with Black or Green in it.

There is one thing you need to know about 17Lands.com users – they usually know what is worth it. Despite being the most drafted color, White has by far the highest win rate at 57.5%. And Red is next – with 56.7%. This is higher than the average win rate of a 17L user of 56.1%. Green is doing pretty well – decks with Green won 55.6% of their games, this is a solid results, but a question remains if Green can keep up its performance when the word gets out and more people will start drafting it.

On the other hand, Blue has 55.3% win rate, but it is drafted much more heavily than green at the moment. If that changes, those two might flip in terms of win rate. Black on the other hand, looks significantly weaker than the other colors. It is not in the “unplayable” tier, but I would definitely need a good reason to pursue Black in my draft.

In Limited, decks are rarely monocolored. So how do those numbers look like in case of color pairs? Before we dive into it – a word of caution. 17L classifies decks automatically based on presence of cards with a given color in its casting cost and based on availability of mana sources in the deck that let us cast those spells. More than 3 or more spells with a given color + a mana source means that color will be counted as one of the main colors. Normally this works perfectly, but in some formats it is slightly more complicated and MKM is the latter.

Some cards have multicolor mana costs, but are frequently cast face down as disguised creatures and flipped for hybrid mana. There are also several spells that give all 5 colors of mana, example being Buried in the Garden. This quirk means that a Selesnya deck with 3 Dog Walkers, no Mountains, but a copy of Buried in the Garden will be counted as a Naya deck in 17L data. This also means that lots of decks that are pure 2 color, will be counted as 2 color and splash decks, which means you need to be very careful in interpreting the data on how beneficial splashing is in the format.

With that in mind, I clustered two color decks and two color decks with a splash together for any further analyses, to avoid issues with color pairs that have inflated splash rates due to that data qquirk, like Selesnya and Golgari (courtesy of Insidious Roots, which also can give mana of any color).

First days of the format is the stage where opportunistically forcing the most powerful color combination is the best strategy. Early days means lots of players in the pods who don’t know what is the most powerful strategy, and invested players abuse this gap in knowledge to their benefit. Good White and Red cards go late in the draft and many try to capitalise on that, yours truly included, with a couple of Boros trophies. 20.5% is a lot. This is double of what you would expect in a perfectly balanced format. Is it too much? If it is, we will see it in the next graph showing color pair win rates – if a pair is overdrafted, the win rate will suffer. And keep in mind, that the 20% number is based on what 17Lands users are drafting – and most Arena users are not in this group. It is quite possible that if we looked at all Arena users, the color pair preferences are much more balanced – as you will hopefully see later.

The second most drafted color pair is Azorius – detectives archetype was hotly tipped to be strong in the preview period. Similarly, Izzet artifact sacrifice was tipped to be strong (and seems to be an appealing strategy too) and is drafted a lot. Apart from those, only Selesnya is drafted more than 10% of the time. Other color combinations are not favoured by the 17L users as much. Rakdos and Orzhov oscillate around 8-9%, Golgari, Dimir and Gruul are played roughly once every 15 games and Simic, traditionally in the last few sets, is the least played color combination at 5%.

While looking at this data, keep in mind that traditionally some decks are easier to draft from day 1. Aggressive color combinations are typically easier to conceptualise and slower control decks take time to develop strategies, but can become more popular in the later parts of the season, as their builds become more sophisticated and more effective.

So how do the color pair win rates look like? I kept the same order as on the previous graph, so the most popular pairs are on the left, the least popular ones on the right.

Despite being the most drafted, Boros is also the most winning color pair. This means that in the next week the general population of the drafters is going to start catching up. expect to see fewer of the good White commons going late and 1st week drafts where you had problems with deciding which good card to cut, are not going to happen frequently anymore. Boros is carried by its well supported and powerful go-wide theme that naturally makes aggressive starts and overwhelms opponents easily if their game plan requires a slower game.

The other dominant archetype is Selesnya and this has taken even the 17L invested players by surprise in the early days. The color pair is still only 4th most popular, but in the first few days it was drafted much less, and the popularity of Selesnya steadily increased since then showing that 17L user base is actively using the knowledge data provides to adjust their preferences.

Beside the top 2 archetypes, there is a cluster of 4 Tier 2 decks: Azorius, Izzet, Orzhov and, I am happy to announce it – Simic. With 56% win rate they are far behind the top 2 but they all look perfectly draftable – you can get good versions of each of those. Gruul is one level lower with just shy of 55% win rate and Rakdos, Golgari and Dimir – notably all containing Black – close the ranking with roughly 53.5% win rates. Those results just confirm White as the strongest color and Black as the weakest one, with the only decent color pair with Black in terms of win rate being Orzhov.

With that broad image in mind, lets look at the notable cards in each color pair. For every archetype I will look at commons and uncommons, as those are the cards you will see the most in draft, and for each color pair I will look at:

The top win rate card,
A hidden gem – card I selected because it is either surprising, or picked low in the drafts, so you will see it frequently and probably should not ignore, at least when you are drafting this specific color pair. Some of those cards are the ones that do poorly in other color pairs, but in specific pair they do well.
“It’s a trap” card. Usually reserved for cards that are picked highly by Arena users but do poorly in the archetype I am writing about. But in some cases I selected a card that looks like something that you should be doing in the color pair, but underperforms.

Azorius

Commons

Years go by, but Thraben Inspector is still great. In its new incarnation, in a novel context, a 1/2 that has a clue is still amazing. It is the top common in almost every color pair that contains white. If you don’t grasp why, don’t feel bad about it. It doesn’t strike as a powerful card, until you start playing with it. Combination of a useful body and a card you can cash in when you need one is potent. It does so many small things very well – trust me on this if you are still skeptical and give it a try.

The hidden gem I selected for Azorius is Unauthorized Exit – a simple bounce spell with Surveil is great in the tempo game blue white seems to favour. It goes late so you should almost always be able to pick up a copy, which is probably exactly how many you want.

The trap card I selected here is Museum Nightwatch. A solid role player in every white color pair, except from WU, despite technically being on the theme of detectives. Two possible explanations of that: it is not evasive – most good WU commons are evasive creatures and it doesn’t produce Detective up front, you are still dependent on getting a death trigger for the value and that is far less reliable than Enter the Battlefield (ETB) effect.

Uncommons

Top Azorius uncommon is its signpost, Private Eye. Already a 3/3 for 3 mana statline is a great thing in a Morph format. But add the stats boost for most of your creatures and potential of being unblockable – you got yourself a sweet card. Worth moving on into WU if you get one in pack 1.

The hidden gem here is a split card Fuss // Bother. A combination of two diverse effects. If you have a wide board, Fuss is great and will make combat a nightmare for the opponent. If you have an empty board, Bother makes a great impersonation of Imperial Oath – puts 3 bodies on board while allowing you to get some extra card selection to get even more bodies coming.

Karlov Watchdog earned the Trap accolade – card is really good in other pairs, but underperforms in Azorius, probably because it just doesn’t contribute the the plan in this pair.

Orzhov

Commons

Inside Source is the top common at 60% Game in Hand win rate, taking this spot by a whisker from Novice Inspector. Card is just great and you should be picking it frequently and early. Small bodies, ETBs, board presence is everything Orzhov wants to be doing so it is no surprise this card does well.

The hidden gem is Snarling Gorehound. A 1 drop that over the game generates a lot of card selection, allowing you to sculpt your hand as the game progresses. And in the first few turns, it will be largely unblockable. This plays into the strengths of Orzhov in particular as “creatures with power 2 or less” is the main mechanic of the color pair.

The Trap I selected is Murder. 54.8% win rate is not terrible but considering how early do you need to pick Murder to have it in your deck, those are underwhelming stats. Problem Murder has in the format is, it will be bad in the early game – ineficient against 2 mana creatures, inefficient against the Morphs. And once the morphs flip, they usually produce some value, so you will use a card to get rid of only a fraction of opponents card. Murder will be great against large creatures – but not every deck has many of those, so you will frequently have to use it on a suboptimal target.

Uncommons

Turns out Fuss // Bother is even better in WB. Definitely surprising for me how god are this card’s numbers.

Hidden gem for Orzhov is Festerleech – another 1-drop that will get in in the first turns thanks to its threat of activation and with some luck – can generate value through self milling – either as Collect Evidence fodder or to get creatures into the graveyard for recursion. A solid 1-drop.

The trap for Orzhov is the Perimeter Enforcer. A great cards in many archetypes, but Orzhov will often have too few Detectives to fully tap into its power. 55% is not terrible, but like Murder, you need to sacrifice an early pick to get it. A price pretty high for a medium card.

Boros

Commons

Inspector comes on top with incredible 64% win rate. But there is a whole bunch of cards that perform well in Boros, and Person of Interest is among them. This card can be pretty bad if you are playing defence – for 4 mana you put a 2/2 blocker on board, which is a bad rate. But Boros doesn’t really do defence so the card does very well here. Adding more and more bodies to the board is powerful and synergistic for what a color pair wants to do and Boros does it well.

The trap, and one of the most disappointing cards in the whole format for me in the early days is the Sanguine Savior. The flip bonus is too small to make it worth casting face down, so probably should be limited to Orzhov, and even there it is not great, just fine.

Uncommons

It is with great pleasure I can announce the winner in this category. Putting “Neigh” in “Neighborhood”, Guardian is a fantastic 2-drop. On the play it lets you push damage easily by making your creatures bigger. Later in the game it makes combat math almost impossible for the opponents, as there is frequently a threat of putting some bodies on board at instant speed. At every stage of the game it does something and is one of the best reasons to play Shock in your deck to kill it on sight.

The hidden gem for WR is the trap from WU. Karlov Watchdog does very well in Boros decks – as it contributes to the plan very well. Just shows you how context dependent card power can be.

Case of the Pilfered Proof is the exact opposite of what Unicorn is. For it to be effective, you need to cast it on turn 2 – where Boros decks want to cast creatures. WR is not consistently rich in detectives, so solving it won’t be a gimme, and even if, the payoff is not what you are looking for. Result – 47% win rate in an archetype where 7 uncommons have a win rate over 60% – a truly bad result.

Selesnya

Commons

You know number 1 well enough I think? The Hidden Gem on the other hand you might know under a different name from the previous format. Staggering Size is back and is still good despite the name change. Trample pushes damage and combat tricks don’t really care about your opponent’s creature’s Ward 2 – which allows you to double-spell while progressing your board state on turns 4-5. And that is a powerful combination. You will also get Fanatical Strength late, a big boost for Selesnya decks to get such a synergistic and powerful common on the wheel.

Topiary Panther is not a bad card. In fact, spoiler alert, we will still see it in a different role than the Trap. But this tells me Selesnya wants to play a smaller creature plan and probably doesn’t want to splash too often. Again 55% is not terrible, but under par for the archetype for a relatively highly picked card.

Uncommons

Fuss // Bother does it again. Even relying solely on White to cast it, card does very well. Interestingly, it doesn’t get much play – so this might be a fluke in the data. But it can also be an oversight on behalf of players, so I would recommend to test it more thoroughly.

A Killer Among Usis a deceptively good card. Think of it as a 6/6 of stats on 3 bodies for 5 mana – if you start thinking about it like this, you will definitely bump it in the pick orders. And you should – card goes very late in drafts, despite excellent numbers across board.

Sample Collector won the coveted “Trap” award. 54.6% in the 2nd best color pair for a card picked relatively early is not what you want to be drafting.

Dimir

Commons

The weakest color pair for now, but it has some brighter spots. The winner is Extract a Confession. Does what Murder can’t – provides cheap removal that deals with Disguised creatures well and late in the game still deals with the largest threat. Sorcery speed means it will never become incredible, but at least it is credible.

The Hidden Gem is Sanitation Automaton. Small sample size for it but perhaps that is one of the reasons UB does poorly? The color pair lacks great 2-drops that will stop opponent’s aggression and Automaton can do just that while providing some card selection.

The Trap is Dramatic Accusation. Card does well in other color pairs, which makes me think, that despite the Shuffle clause, this type of removal is still worse in slower decks that will be forced to use that extra 2 mana. You probably want the card in more aggressively slanted decks that need to tap down a blocker rather than in the ones that want to switch an attacker off.

Uncommons

The UB signpost delivers. Stealing a creature and turning it into a defensive threat is exactly what you want and the numbers confirm it. In case you doubt – stealing a creature is just so much better than killing it. Coerced to Kill is a real reason to try to play Dimir.

Persuasive Interrogators is big. And that seems to be enough. Some card advantage helps. And the dream of winning with poison, even if it will not come together often, is not completely unrealistic.

Clandestine Meddler is a high pick, and 51.7% win rate does not excuse picking a card early. Probably best to play it in other color combinations. Making one of your creatures unable to block is the opposite of what Dimir wants.

Izzet

Commons

Galvanize and Shock go head to head in the race to become Red’s best common but Galvanize comes out on top here. Not by much, but still. Card is decent, can deal with large threats if you have some Clue action going. All you want from a 2 mana instant.

I had Offender at Large as a solid filler before the set war released, but it looks much better than that based on the numbers. 58% win rate is solid – combining a big body with bonus that you can give to one of the many evasive threats UR can produce is an attractive package deal.

56% is not bad, don’t get me wrong, but there are many better cards for Izzet that you don’t have to prioritize that early so check for those before you pick Dog Walker. Izzet looks like a synergy deck and this card doesn’t contribute towards those synergies.

Uncommons

I love seeing signposts on the top of the standings. This brings me that warm feeling – I can trust the design team on what does this color pair want to do. Gleaming Geardrake comes decisively on top if Izzet uncommons – card is just great. Provides an early threat that grows as you play out your game and do what you are supposed to do. Plus it oozes synergy with your other cards.

And just behind the Drake we get Detective's Satchel, a card that points us towards what Izzet wants to be doing and that’s not being super aggressive, but accruing value and advantage in a more measured way – a welcome change from Izzet in LCI. Mind that the best Izzet Uncommon is most likely the Maverick Thopterist but it doesn’t have high enough numbers of games played to make the list.

Mistway Spy looks like a card that would fit within the Izzet synergies – evasive threat that can put some artifacts on board. Don’t be fooled by it – it is a Trap! 5 mana to produce a 1/1 flyer and a clue or two is just too much. You will be so much better off with the Satchel that fulfils a similar role so much better.

Simic

Commons

The sick man of Limited in recent sets, Simic is actually looking decent in MKM. And one of the cards that enable it is the Projektor Inspector. Getting some card selection on a decently sized 3 drop is great. The fact it plays into some graveyard synergies with Collect Evidence – even better.

I told you Topiary Panther will be back! And in Simic, unlike in Selesnya, it is great. Slower deck that actually likes to splash and wants high MV cards in its graveyard and a good beater to finish the game late and we have a completely different story than is an aggressive deck. Another case study in thinking hard about a role of a card in your game plan.

In other news, my beloved Investi-gator doesn’t deliver in Simic. I have no idea why, but numbers are unappealing.

Uncommons

A Killer Among Us takes the top spot – again in a green archetype. Please pick this card.

The hidden gem I selected is the Evidence Examiner – obviously designed for Simic, but I thought card can look slightly underwhelming so decided to show it’s actually very good. 2-drop that can trade early but late in the game becomes this potent card advantage engine, where you can turn your early game trades into Clues.

Mistway Spy is an even bigger trap here – take note. This card is picked too early – we are not in a 1/1 flyer format anymore.

Rakdos

Commons

Rakdos is not doing great but maybe the look at top cards in the archetype will put you on the right track on how to make it work. Person of Interest as a top card and Gadget Technician as the close second scream: go wide, be aggressive. The problem may be that, unlike WR, Rakdos doesn’t have a powerful finisher like On the Job. Still if you are in Rakdos lane, try to go wide and supplement that plan with good removal and you might give yourself a chance.

I said good removal – and Suspicious Detonation is not in this category without a lot of synergy that Rakdos doesn’t reliably provide.

Uncommons

Long Goodbye is that good, efficient and powerful removal you are looking for. Uncounterability is what provides you a potent weapon against Ward Disguise creatures and lets you deal with them before they can flip and gain some value.

Rune-Brand Juggler is an obvious card for Rakdos, so not really that Hidden of a Gem, but I underestimated its power in the preview season, thinking of it as a filler. It is not though, so I thought to flag it as a good card you actively want in your deck.

The trap at uncommon is the Soul Enervation. Like Suspicious Detonation it falls in that category – too weak to kill real threats, too expensive to be efficient.

Golgari

Commons

Extract a Confession takes the top spot again – and this tells me that Golgari has a similar plan as Dimir did. Slow, controlling, stemming the bleeding early and taking over the game later.

Faerie Snoop as the Hidden Gem further suggests it. Defensive creature that gathers extra value is a signal for slow plans being effective here. Slow but not glacial.

Basilica Stalker is much better when it attacks and in a deck that needs to keep its guard up, a 3/4 blocker costing a lot of mana is not exactly what you are looking for.

Uncommons

Are you even surprised at the number 1? Me neither. And it is picked lower than a two-time It’s a Trap winner – Mistway Spy. The Hidden Gem for Golgari is Glint Weaver. The only 7-drop on the list – this is a great stabiliser. 6/6 of stats and at least 6 life if you need it, if not more. Add some recursion and reanimation into the mix and Weaver can win games.

Something that can’t be said about the Case of the Trampled Garden. The key phrase on this card is “whenever you attack” – if you play defense, this line of text is largely dead and when it matters you should have so much advantage, that it becomes irrelevant. Decent card, but for a completely different game plan.

Gruul

Commons

What better way to smash than with a large trample-giving combat trick? Gruul doesn’t impress in MKM but that card does what is advertises. Pushes damage and neutralises chump blocks, and that is a successful strategy.

Vengeful Creeper is a big surprise for me and I am not sure if the good numbers come from the fact you want to have ways of dealing with Enchantments in your deck or from the fact that a 5/5 vanilla creature for 5 is good. In either case – I thought you want to know the card has decent numbers so you can test it out.

Crowd-Control Warden does relatively bad – perhaps you don’t go wide enough to get sufficient value from it.

Uncommons

First appearance on my list of Torch the Witness, but don’t ignore this card. It has excellent numbers in every red deck. Unlike other X spells – this one is mana efficient and will almost always give you a Clue on top of dealing with a threat. Pick it highly, almost at a bomb level. Gruul doesn’t go wide enough to warrant a 5 mana creature that benefits from your board presence, but a one mana combat trick is a different story. The key here being the “1-mana” part.

Get a Leg Up is also doing well in multiple color pairs, find place for it in your decks, Gruul included.

If there is one thing RG doesn’t want to do it is slowly nickel-and-diming your opponent with 1/1 Thopters. Harried Dronesmith does well in Izzet, but here it is very much out of place.

Openness

With all the archetypes covered – one last thing I wanted to cover is my own metric – color pair openness. It shows how reliably can you get a good deck in each color pair. To measure it I look at how many good cards do you see in each color pair during an average draft. I calculate it by counting cards with win rate of 56% or more in a given archetype you will see on average during the draft.

This is partially tautological – good archetypes will have more good cards, but even with that it gives some potentially interesting insights into the future of the format. Which colors are more open that their win rate would suggest, which are winning more than their openness would suggest? To gain those insights – best to compare the openness with color pair win rate.

As you can see – unsurprisingly Boros and Selesnya are the most open and win the most. Which tells me that they are drafted appropriately to their power – 17L users are drafting them because they see the colors open. What is the most interesting in this graph is the relatively high openness of Izzet and Simic – this suggests that there is potential for those two colors to be more powerful than their win rate indicates if we start drafting them better and building better suited decks.

Traditionally these kind of results is a good indication that a color pair will improve its win rate in the coming weeks so start thinking about best Izzet and Simic builds in advance and track which cards do well in those archetypes. The rest of color pairs correlate well between openness and win rate – this means that their power is probably reflected well in their results.

Conclusion

Hopefully this piece will help you find your footing in the format or rethink some strategies. MKM so far looks like a solid format with plenty of discovery in it still to be made once players will address the Boros/Selesnya dominance correctly and week 1 decks will fade into history.