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Mono-Blue Control In A Draft?

I like Limited a lot. Generally it is more fun than constructed and is a bit more fair as the guy with the most overpriced, broken cards (this is a generalization, I don’t believe it is a fact) does not always win. That said, depending on the skill of your opponents you can end up with a stupidly broken deck as they pass you bombs and removal that you should never see in later picks. This can also allow for some members of a pod to have ridiculous decks while the rest of the pod has garbage.

I make no claims that I am a good drafter (admittedly my first drafts were triple Saviors of Kamigawa which did not help), though I do know that I am improving. So today I thought that I should talk about my thoughts on M11 drafting from my great vantage of one draft. 10th edition was an amazing core set, possibly the first core set that I was actually excited about. M10 took tenth edition and removed legends but added a ton of awesome. M11 continues this trend by removing some of the crap and adding even more fun reprints like Voltaic Key, Nantuko Shade and Mana Leak, while making awesome new cards like Phylactery Lich and Grave Titan. Plus they make a number of references to past power cards with things like Mystifying Maze, Fauna Shaman, and Dark Tutelage. If you have not noted my enthusiasm, I like M11 a lot. And how does it rate in drafting? It is one of the more fun sets to draft in my experience (the only set I can think of that was more fun to draft was Alara Reborn, if you have not drafted REB-REB-REB you should, it is ridiculous).

Before I give my report of my draft I want to point out a few cards that I have used effectively or have had used against me that may not be the most obvious cards that are amazing in limited. I feel these cards have been ignored by the limited reviews I have seen for M11.

Elixir of Immortality
This card is bad. It is completely useless in constructed but is completely insane in limited. Why? Because it shuffles your graveyard into your deck, the life gain is simply a bonus. Being able to get removal and solid creatures back into your deck while your opponent has to topdeck for an answer is very scary. Having been on both sides of this card, I can’t not see picking this card fairly early unless you are not running removal or decent creatures. In Sealed I had my opponent shuffle a Baneslayer Angel back into his deck after I had run of removal; topdecking for Baneslayer answers is not easy to do. The fact that you have also probably played land by then helps you make it far more likely that you draw into the non-land cards you need. Combine with card draw, the Elixir lets you find the Elixir again to make a loop sifting through your deck as you reuse spells. Multiples make this even more stupid as you reuse your deck and gain tons of life.

Air Servant
I really have not heard a lot of talk about this card in various limited discussions but having played it both in sealed and draft I can only say one thing about it: it is amazing. Flying is an amazing ability in limited, being able to lock down opposing fliers while having an essentially unblockable 4/3 is scary. I am really happy to never have faced against one of these so far but I am sure that I will if I keep drafting the set. Dieing to Bolt is a pain but most people don’t get too many Bolts in a draft to make that argument worthwhile.

Liliana’s Specter
2/1 fliers for three in black are good in limited. If those same fliers have awesome CIPT abilities that makes them incredibly scary. Being immune to bounce based removal is annoying when nsummon and Aether Adept are some of the better blue removal. While not too common simply being immune to Mystifying Maze is similarly annoying. Tying a disruption effect to a decent flier is amazingly solid, especially on a common.

Building a rogue deck is easier in Constructed as you know what the main decks are. In Limited you know the elements needed to make a decent deck but things like removal and bombs exist in every color so you can’t guarantee which matchups are going to be the most difficult. While many sets have a few draft archetypes that are “the best”, strange combinations of solid cards can pop up making a sub-optimal color combination better than the power archetypes. Core sets are a little more difficult to judge as the colors are relatively balanced and no new mechanics are printed to abuse. How do you make a rogue deck then? I think I built something pretty unexpected from the draft, mono-blue control.

Here was my list:

2 Elixir of Immortality
2 Unsummon
1 Preordain
1 Mana Leak
1 Negate
1 Augury Owl
1 Call to Mind
2 Aether Adept
1 Scroll Thief
1 Cloud Elemental
2 Cancel
2 Foresee
1 Azure Drake
2 Mind Control
1 Armored Canrix
1 Air Servant
18 islands

From the start I did not intend to draft a mono-blue deck. In fact, until I laid out my cards for making a deck, I thought that I was going to be running G/U. I feel confidant that I made the right picks for my first booster, with a first pick Mind Control followed by some bounce and card draw in blue. My green in the first pack gave me a Sylvan Ranger, a Sacred Wolf, and a pair of Yavimaya Wurms. After that green dried up for the last two boosters. I kept getting more solid blue cards. A ton of black was going around with the last picks of each pack containing solid black cards. I hate drafted some but figured I would get more green the third booster so did not commit to black. I ended up hate drafting a lot of creature recursion but I really did not have enough creatures to abuse it with. So I ended up with the strange concoction you see above.

Match 1 had me face against a G/R deck that ran a ton of average creatures. I was pummeled repeatedly with Runeclaw Bears and Giant Spiders. My deck did not really have a win condition apart from mind control, and he had nothing worth stealing. The saddest thing about this match was that game 1 I was killed not by creatures but by a Hornet Sting (the agony of an insect sting apparently kills planeswalkers).

Match 2 had me faced against a Bant deck. I was stomped game 1 by solid creatures as I tried to stall. Game 2 was long and drawn out with me eventually winning after playing at least 4 mind controls and using Air Servant for great effect. Game three was won on his third turn when I Negated his Cultivate. He was stuck at three mana for the entire game with a hand full of bombs.

Match 3 was against a R/W deck. He really did not have any quality weenies or much removal (apart from multiple Chandra’s Outrage) so I could clean up in the late game stealing his Serra Angel or his Hoarding Dragon. Mind Control was his bane and gave me the win.

In match 4 I was paired up to a 3-0 player who eventually won the tournament. His B/W deck was obscene as it was full of CIPT effects and he had something like 3 gravediggers plus a ton of other annoying creatures to recur. I lost the first game fairly quickly against a swarm of two and three-drops. Game 2 was a victory for me as I drew the game out and eventually won the creature war with fliers. Game 3 was just plain stupid. I kept gaining life, I think I ended up gaining at least 20 life over the course of the game. I lost eventually as I ran out of answers for all his creatures.

Perry Grosch

Tags: control, drafting, Goblin Secret Agent, limited, m11