Hey everyone! Welcome back to another edition of Limited Weekend Update, where I somehow continue getting away with writing about whatever Limited nonsense happens to catch my attention each week.

I’ve mostly recovered from my adventures with the plague, although my wife still insists on keeping a line of salt between us for some reason…

In all seriousness, she’s been feeding me copious amounts of chicken soup, which, through the kind of seamless transition only a professional writer could pull off, brings us to this week’s topic: drafting soup decks in Reality Fracture.

No, I haven’t completely run out of Magic topics already. I’m talking about drafting glorious piles of multicolored nonsense that have become a legitimate strategy in Reality Fracture.

Why settle for being some average dude playing one of the ten “normal” archetypes when you can just grab the best cards from all of them?

And you know what?

It’s not just fun. It can actually be the correct strategy, provided you follow the recipe.

So grab your cauldrons, throw on your chef hats, and let’s get cooking!

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What Exactly Is a Soup Deck?

For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, a soup deck is essentially a multicolor good-stuff deck. Instead of focusing on one particular archetype, you’re combining powerful cards from several colors and relying on mana fixing to actually cast them.

Sometimes that means three colors. Sometimes it means four. And sometimes you look at your deck and realize that you’ve somehow managed to convince yourself that playing all five colors is perfectly reasonable.

We’ve all been there.

The important distinction is that there’s a pretty big difference between a well-built soup deck and a pile of cards that you drafted because you couldn’t figure out what colors were open.

One of those can be incredibly powerful.

The other is a wonderful way to spend several turns staring at a hand full of cards you can’t cast while your opponent actually plays Magic.

We’re aiming for the first one.

Cheat Sheet

Now that we’ve got the basics out of the way, let me give you a general pick order before I spend the rest of the article blathering on about why it works.

While the general philosophy applies to pretty much any format where drafting soup is viable, the exact priorities can shift depending on the cards and fixing available. It will even shift as you progress through the draft depending on your current needs.

For Reality Fracture, here’s the recipe:

Bombs (You know what these are) >> Really Good Cards (Premium removal, value creatures, etc.) > Good Fixing (On-color dual lands) >> Good Cards (Solid playables) > Medium Fixing (Murmuring Volume) > Filler (Living Library)

There you go. That’s the whole recipe. You can stop reading now and go draft some soup.

Of course, I’d appreciate it if you stuck around while I spend the next several paragraphs explaining why I just told you to do all of that.

Why Does Soup Work in Reality Fracture?

If you’ve been following my previous articles, you already know that Reality Fracture has turned out to be a considerably slower format than many of us expected.

That changes a lot about how we should approach drafting.

In an aggressive format, spending your early turns setting up your mana can be a death sentence. While you’re busy making sure you can cast your fourth color, your opponent is already turning creatures sideways and wondering why you haven’t conceded yet.

Reality Fracture gives you a lot more breathing room.

That doesn’t mean you can spend the first five turns doing absolutely nothing, but it does mean you can afford to make some investments in your mana without immediately getting run over.

The other major factor is the sheer number of powerful cards in this set.

I’ve talked about this before, but Reality Fracture has some pretty ridiculous bombs. When a format is slower and individual cards can generate enormous advantages, getting access to more of those cards becomes increasingly valuable.

Why settle for playing a mediocre card in your second color when you could potentially splash something that completely takes over the game?

The answer, of course, is that you still need to actually cast the thing.

And that’s where the fixing comes in.

The Secret Ingredient: Mana Fixing

I know, I know.

You opened this article expecting some revolutionary Limited strategy, and here I am telling you that playing five colors requires mana fixing.

Groundbreaking analysis. Truly the kind of insight that keeps the readers coming back.

But there’s a reason I’m emphasizing it.

One of the biggest mistakes players make when drafting these decks is treating fixing as an afterthought. They’ll spend the first two packs picking every flashy card they see and then suddenly realize that their mana base looks like it was assembled by someone who has never seen a Magic card before.

You need to prioritize fixing throughout the draft, not just when you’ve already committed to playing four colors.

Fortunately, Reality Fracture gives us some pretty good tools.

Murmuring Volume

I already talked about this card in last week’s article, but it’s worth mentioning again because it’s exactly the kind of card that makes these strategies possible.

Of course, you still need to evaluate your deck to figure out how much you actually want it. Do you have double pips in your main color? Are you splashing multiple colors? If so, you’re probably going to be pretty happy picking one of these up.

On the other hand, the more reliable fixing and card advantage you already have, the less interested you’re going to be in spending a slot on something like this.

It’s all about figuring out what your deck actually needs rather than blindly jamming every fixing card you see.

See? I told you there was more to drafting soup than just throwing a bunch of busted cards and mana fixing into a pile and hoping for the best.

Although, admittedly, that does work more often than it probably should.

Fblthp, Knows the Way

Here’s another card that people are going to want to slam into their soup decks without giving it a second thought. Unfortunately, our favorite little lost guy comes with a few more considerations than you might expect.

First off, that double-green mana cost is a pretty big deal. If green isn’t one of your primary colors, you probably shouldn’t be playing this in the first place. A card that’s supposed to help fix your mana isn’t doing you much good if you can’t reliably cast it.

You also need to consider whether it’s worth including basic lands for your splash colors just to take advantage of Fblthp. If your dual lands are already handling those colors without disrupting your mana base, adding a bunch of off-color basics might actually make your deck worse.

The goal is to make your mana more consistent, not jump through a bunch of hoops to accommodate a card that’s supposed to be helping you.

Apparently, even when Fblthp knows the way, you still need to figure out where you’re going.

Dual Lands and Basic Landcycling

I know, I know. Nobody is getting excited about picking up a bunch of dual lands, but they’re doing a ton of work in these decks. I really can’t stress enough how important they are to making this strategy work. You should probably be picking them a whole lot higher than you’re used to.

The basic landcyclers are another important piece of the puzzle. Cards like Vinelasher Adept and Awaken the Inferno can find you a land when you need one or give you something useful to do when you’ve already got plenty of mana. That’s a pretty sweet deal when you’re trying to stretch your mana base across half the color pie.

Unfortunately, they also come with the same problem as Fblthp.

Basic landcycling only finds basic lands. I know that sounds incredibly obvious, but it matters quite a bit when you’re building a deck that’s relying heavily on dual lands for its fixing.

You need to consider whether adding an off-color basic land just to support your landcyclers is actually improving your mana base. Sometimes it is, and sometimes you’d be better off just relying on your dual lands. Remember, the whole point is to make your mana more consistent, not screw it up trying to accommodate your fixing.

And for the love of Jace, make sure you actually have the basic land you’re planning to search for in your deck.

Yes, I’ve seen people make that mistake.

No, I’m not naming names. Because it certainly wasn’t me…

Sigh…

Don’t drink and draft, kids.

You Still Need a Base Color and a Game Plan

This is where I think a lot of players go wrong when they start experimenting with soup decks.

Just because you’re playing four or five colors doesn’t mean you should be equally committed to all of them. In fact, that’s generally a pretty terrible idea.

Most successful soup decks still have a solid foundation. You’re primarily playing one or two colors and using your fixing to splash powerful cards from the others. The goal is to have a functional deck that gets to play some extra busted cards, not a pile of nonsense that requires five different lands just to cast a spell.

Green is an especially attractive starting point in Reality Fracture because of the ramp and fixing available to it. That doesn’t mean every soup deck needs to be green, though.

If you start with a strong blue-black control shell and pick up enough dual lands to splash some powerful cards, that’s perfectly reasonable too. You don’t need to force green into every soup deck just because it happens to have some of the better fixing.

The important part is figuring out what your deck is actually trying to accomplish.

Are you controlling the board until your bombs take over? Are you generating enough card advantage that your opponent eventually runs out of things to do? Are you ramping into some enormous monster?

Those are actual game plans.

“I’m playing all the rares I saw during the draft” is not a game plan.

It’s a surefire way to end up 2-3 while wondering how a deck with seven rares could possibly lose to some dude playing commons.

What Should You Actually Be Splashing?

Here’s another important distinction that tends to get lost when people start getting excited about multicolor decks.

Just because you can splash a card doesn’t mean you should.

The entire point of playing additional colors is to increase the overall power level of your deck. You aren’t accomplishing much by replacing a perfectly reasonable card in your main colors with something that’s only slightly better and considerably harder to cast.

If I’m going to make my mana base worse, I want to get something pretty substantial out of it.

Powerful removal spells, card advantage engines, and game-ending threats are exactly what I’m looking for.

Craftwork Crusher is a great example of the kind of card that makes getting greedy worthwhile.

As I mentioned last week, this thing has been performing considerably better than I initially expected. The format gives you enough time to reach seven mana, and the ridiculous amount of value it generates can completely swing a game.

If you’re already based in green or red and have the fixing to support it, Crusher is exactly the kind of payoff that can justify what amounts to a double splash. Sure, it’s going to be awkward to cast sometimes, but the potential payoff is enormous.

The same idea applies to powerful rares that can take over a game by themselves.

For example, I was drafting a Golgari deck that was already splashing red and considering adding Recursive Recruitment as well. Then I opened The Theorist, Jace Beleren in Pack 3.

Did I slam it despite the double-blue mana requirement?

You bet I did.

Was it going to be a pain to cast? Absolutely. But I’d already picked up some fixing along the way, and Jace is the kind of card that can completely take over a game once he hits the battlefield.

That’s a pretty good reason to get greedy.

Now, would I have done the same thing for Lyra, Tolarian Archangel?

Probably not.

Don’t get me wrong, Lyra has great stats and is an excellent Limited card. But there’s a pretty big difference between being a powerful creature and being a card that can single-handedly take over the game.

If Lyra only required a single blue mana, we’d probably be having a different conversation. But asking me to stretch my mana base that far for a card that isn’t quite as impactful? That’s a much tougher sell.

See what I’m getting at here?

You need to evaluate how much you’re sacrificing in consistency compared to how much the card actually improves your deck. You also need to remember that you’re probably going to be casting these cards well behind curve, which changes their value considerably.

A card that’s amazing on turn four might be a whole lot less impressive on turn eight.

On the other hand, a card that completely takes over the game doesn’t particularly care whether you cast it on turn four or turn eight.

That’s the kind of nonsense I’m willing to risk my mana base for.

The goal isn’t to splash every powerful card you see. It’s to splash the cards that are powerful enough to justify the headache.

Don’t Forget That You Still Have to Survive

One of the more dangerous conclusions people have drawn from Reality Fracture being a slower format is that early-game development doesn’t matter.

It absolutely does.

There’s a pretty big difference between a slower format and one where you can spend the first five turns doing absolutely nothing while your opponent kindly waits for you to start playing Magic.

You still need creatures that can block, removal spells to keep things under control, and some way to avoid getting run over before you start casting all your fancy bombs.

And no, filling your deck with nothing but five-drops because you’ve decided you’re now a sophisticated multicolor control player isn’t a particularly good idea.

I’ve said this before, but modern Limited cards generate so much value that falling behind can be incredibly difficult to recover from. Sometimes a boring two-drop that keeps you alive is going to do a whole lot more for your win rate than another expensive bomb rotting in your hand.

This is actually why a card like Living Library can be perfectly reasonable in these decks, despite its absolutely miserable stats.

You get a colorless two-drop that doesn’t care how much of a disaster your mana base looks like. It can hold off a surprising number of early ground creatures while you get your colors sorted out. Later on, you can even dump six mana into it to trade with one of your opponent’s better creatures.

Is that an efficient use of six mana?

Absolutely not.

Is it something most Limited decks are excited to be doing?

Also no.

But if you’re reasonably confident that your deck is going to dominate the late game, who cares? You don’t need Living Library to win the game. You just need it to make sure you don’t lose before your ridiculously powerful cards get a chance to do their thing.

This is also why I want most of my early plays concentrated in my primary colors. You need to be able to cast your cheap spells consistently, while your splash cards should generally be things you’re perfectly happy casting later in the game.

Survive the early turns, get your mana sorted out, and then start dropping bombs until your opponent regrets ever queuing up.

That’s the plan.

Not particularly complicated, but it’s amazing how often people forget the surviving part when they see a shiny rare.

How I Would Approach the Draft

The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to stay flexible.

I wouldn’t recommend sitting down at the start of every Reality Fracture draft and deciding that you’re going to force five-color soup. That’s just replacing one bad drafting habit with another, except now you get the added excitement of not being able to cast your spells.

Instead, start by taking powerful cards and paying attention to what’s being passed. If you’re seeing good fixing alongside powerful cards from multiple colors, that’s a pretty good sign that you should start considering getting a little greedy.

On the other hand, if you’ve got a solid two-color deck with a good curve and plenty of synergy, there’s absolutely no reason to ruin it just because you want to get fancy.

Remember, the goal is to win games, not impress your opponent with how many different basic land types you managed to put in your deck.

As the draft progresses, you should constantly be evaluating whether adding another color is actually making your deck better. Just because you picked up a couple of dual lands doesn’t mean you’re suddenly obligated to play every bomb that comes your way.

You also need to understand opportunity cost.

Taking a dual land over some mediocre creature that probably wasn’t making your deck anyway is a pretty easy decision. Taking that same land over premium removal or an actual bomb? That’s a completely different conversation.

This is where things get interesting.

As you pick up more powerful off-color cards, the value of fixing increases considerably. At some point, that dual land might actually be more important to your deck than another really good spell.

I know, passing a powerful card for a boring land feels terrible. But if your deck is already loaded with bombs that you can’t reliably cast, adding another one isn’t exactly solving your problem.

Sometimes the correct pick is the card that lets you actually play all the busted nonsense you’ve already drafted.

Shocking concept, I know.

The trick is recognizing when you’ve reached that point instead of blindly following the same pick order throughout the entire draft.

After all, the most powerful card in your deck isn’t doing you much good if it spends the entire game sitting in your hand while you desperately search for your third color.

Knowing When to Stop Being Greedy

This is probably the most important lesson in the entire article.

You need to recognize when you’ve pushed things too far.

It’s incredibly tempting to keep adding powerful cards once you’ve already committed to playing three or four colors.

What’s one more splash, right?

Well, sometimes that one extra splash is the difference between having a functional Limited deck and having a 40-card collection of disappointment.

Every additional color introduces another potential source of inconsistency.

You might not draw the right lands.

You might have the correct fixing but not enough time to use it.

You might even end up with a perfectly reasonable opening hand that simply can’t cast its spells in the right order.

Those costs are real, even in a slower format.

This is why I want my soup decks to have a clear identity rather than just being a random assortment of powerful cards.

The best versions are usually decks that could function reasonably well in their primary colors even if they never drew their splashes.

The additional colors take them from good to great.

They shouldn’t be the only thing preventing your deck from being completely terrible.

Where is all the Alchemy draft coverage? — Please God don’t print my name because I don’t want to admit my sin (Yes, that’s actually what they submitted as their name. Or maybe it was a confession. Either way, I’m printing it.)

I know there are a handful of diehards who absolutely LOVE Alchemy and go hard on the drafts whenever they’re available. I also know there are a whole lot of people who immediately lose interest the second the word “Alchemy” appears on their screen.

Let’s just say that the latter group considerably outnumbers the former.

Obviously, I have to take that into consideration when deciding what to write about. But let’s be honest, I’m probably going to write about whatever I feel like anyway. That’s kind of the whole point of this column.

What it really comes down to is that most of the draft strategy for Alchemy is going to be nearly identical to the regular version of the format. You’re still drafting the same archetypes, evaluating the same commons and uncommons, and following the same general principles. The big difference is that you’re getting one Alchemy card per pack.

Now, those Alchemy cards are primarily designed for Constructed, which means they usually fall into one of two categories in Limited: completely busted in half or an unplayable dumpster fire. There’s rarely much middle ground, and it’s usually pretty obvious which pile a card belongs in.

Back when I regularly wrote Limited reviews for Alchemy releases, they were basically an endless parade of 5.0s and 0.5s. Not exactly the most thrilling analysis I’ve ever produced.

Honestly, between that, the relatively small audience, and Alchemy being on its way out altogether, I just can’t justify spending hours writing another review that essentially boils down to “this card is completely broken” or “please don’t put this garbage in your deck.”

I know that’s disappointing for the handful of you who love Alchemy drafts, but I’m sure you’ll survive without me telling you that the ridiculously pushed Mythic is a good Magic card.

Wrap Up

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about Reality Fracture is that it rewards players for thinking beyond the obvious two-color archetypes.

Soup decks are a great example of that.

You can absolutely draft some ridiculous multicolor piles in this format, and the combination of fixing, powerful cards, and a relatively slow environment gives them a legitimate chance to succeed.

Just remember that there’s a difference between being greedy and being irresponsible.

The goal is to play the best cards from several colors while still having a functional deck.

Not to build a beautiful five-color monstrosity that loses to itself before your opponent even has to do anything.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back next week with another Limited Weekend Update and, of course, your next edition of Midweek Magic.

Until then, stay classy, people.