Hello everyone! The full spoiler for Amonkhet is out and I have decided to share some of my initial observations with you guys. I obviously didn’t play a single game with any of these cards, so everything I say here is just based on assumption and experience and a lot of it will probably play out differently. That being said something is always better than nothing and I hope that this article can help you with your first Amonkhet tournaments like the prerelease.

The first thing I would like to mention is not about Amonkhet specifically, but more about how limited works in general nowadays; it used to be that they just printed a bunch of random cards, so all you had to do was to just pick the most individually powerful card and you were golden. Of course, which color is the best and some other factors still existed, but you get the point. Magic has come a long way and Wizards are making a good job of trying to make the limited environment a new experience every time and therefor more entertaining. What this means is that there are usually several archetypes and you get rewarded for picking up synergies. You should still take the most powerful card out of the pack, but the most powerful card in context and not in vacuum.

For example, the implements in the last set are awful cards if you throw them in a Lorwyn block deck, but they help you with improvise and revolt and as such they were relatively high picks. Don’t get me wrong, you should still take that 4 mana 6/6, just be aware of this. It’s usually a lot better to take a potentially important role-player over some random replaceable card (even though it’s better in a vacuum).

Another thing I noticed in the latest sets is the lack of truly horrible cards (unplayables), which means that you should draft a little differently. You can stay open for longer and you can speculate on multicolor (or cards from another color completely) more easily, because the upside is huge and if it doesn’t work you just replace the card you would have taken instead with another card with similar power level – it doesn’t really matter, you usually have enough playables – what matters is to get the power.

I am mentioning all this, because I think Amonkhet is going to be exactly like that – with lots of synergy rewards and lots of playables (with certain cards being exceptionally strong compared to the average cards).

I obviously have no idea which archetypes or which colors will turn out to be the best and I think the best approach is to just force the most obvious archetypes and go from there. What I mean by forcing them here is that, when you have a close pick, you should probably take an archetype-specific cards (most notably rares) to get the feeling for it. Everyone knows that 4 mana 4/4 is a fine card, but there are plenty of cards/mechanics that we all haven’t tried yet, so it’s important to start experimenting with those.

These are the themes in Amonkhet: Cycling, Embalm, Exert, spells, zombies (it’s very possible that there are more and I just missed them).

Note: there is also the cartouche/trial cycle, but that’s a little different. I think that the interaction between cartouches and trials is very powerful and the cards (for the most part) are going to be very high picks (mostly the trials – I assume you can get the cartouches later and also you don’t know if you will be able to get any of the trials and the cartouches are mediocre without them).

There are a lot of possibilities, but I will list the color combinations that seem the most obvious to me.

UB Cycling

UB seems like the most natural home for the dedicated cycling deck (any deck will play the cycling cards) as it has the highest number of cards that give you a Payoff for cycling.
Rares: 《Curator of Mysteries》, 《Drake Haven》, 《Archfiend of Ifnir》, 《Shadow of the Grave》
Uncommons: 《Sacred Excavation》, 《Zenith Seeker》, 《Faith of the Devoted》, 《Ruthless Sniper》, 《Vizier of Tumbling Sands》, 《Shadowstorm Vizier》
Commons: 《Hekma Sentinels》, 《Horror of the Broken Lands》, 《Pitiless Vizier》

This archetype is my personal favorite just for how sweet it is, but it’s going to be challenging to learn how to draft it correctly. I like that you can use the cycling cards to dig deeper for the payoff cards. As such you probably need only a small amount of payoff cards (3-4?) and get as many of the good cyclers as you can. The cycling cost is exceptionally strong on narrow cards like the new mind rot – sometimes the effect is extremely powerful, but other times it doesn’t do anything – but that doesn’t really matter if you can just cycle the card. You obviously still can’t have too many cards like this, because then you will be forced to cycle way too often instead of actually playing spells with an impact on the game.

Another important thing is how many lands do you play in these decks. I think it will be somewhere between 13-15. You are running the risk of not having lands in your opening hand, but I don’t think you can really play the usual 17. I am aware that you can just play the cards and not cycle them, but often times, the game-scenario is going to be bad for a certain card or you will have the payoff card out and then you will cycle, which means that if you play too many lands you will just flood out. Another thing is that if you have few lands, you can just cycle a bunch and hopefully find one.

Card selection is going to be worse, because cycling kind off gives you that already and a problem with paying mana for drawing a card is losing some tempo, so you don’t really want to spend more time sculpting your hand. It’s apparent from the above sentence that having cheap ways to get back tempo is going to be very important, so look for those.

Embalm

I don’t think that embalm will have a dedicated deck just to abuse embalm. I think it’s way more likely that you will just jam the embalm cards into another deck, because they are good cards on their own and you will have some minor synergies with it; 《Tormenting Voice》, 《Seeker of Insight》, 《Winds of Rebuke》 etc. Embalm works the exact opposite way from cycling – it encourages you to play more lands – it doesn’t hurt that much if you draw more lands, because you will mostly have plenty of gas left from embalm, not to mention all the discard spells you will play – you can just discard lands to those. All in all, it’s way worse for you to get screwed than flooded, so you just play more lands – probably about 18. I really like they put two contradicting mechanics like cycling and embalm into the same set, because most blue decks will just play both and it will be interesting to see how many lands ends up being the right amount to play in any given deck.

UR Spells

This archetype takes advantage of you playing spells (I think that these decks will want the embalm cards the most, because a lot of the cards accidentally work with it as well) and there is not really that much to it – play draw spells, removal spells and win with your payoff card. These decks tend to have a problem with heavy removal decks, because your game plan usually revolvs around sticking a powerful threat and play a bunch of spells to back it up – make sure you have a plan to counter that.
Rares: 《Soul-Scar Mage》
Uncommons: 《Cryptic Serpent》, 《Warfire Javelineer》, 《Enigma Drake》
Commons: 《River Serpent》, 《Scribe of the Mindful》, 《Nimble-Blade Khenra》

BW Zombies

This is one of those archetypes, where it’s unlikely that you will have the entire deck built around this theme – it works more like you start with some random zombies and once you have a certain amount, the cards like 《Lord of the Accursed》 or Time to reflect spike tremendously in value.

RW Exert

This is still just going to be the classic boros deck and getting the right curve and the right mix of creatures and tricks is going to be the most important think. Yeah, a lot of your guys are going to have Exert, but I don’t think that that should be your main concern – just play those for being good cards on their own and get some minor upsides now and then with cards like: 《Supply Caravan》 or untap effects, but I wouldn’t go too far – it’s just not really worth the effort.

BG -1/-1 counters

Similarly to the boros deck, I would expect this deck to be the classic good stuff BG deck with cards good on their own – big guys and removal spells with occasional synergies. I do think though that if you can get the right cards like 《Decimator Beetle》 this is going to be one of the strongest archetypes out there. In the end, I would like to mention one common misconception. People often take a worse card to make the other cards worth it/better or something like that, because it feels and looks way better if you have a deck like that, but that is just a bad approach.

Let’s say that a card is 5, but it works really well with the rest of your deck and it’s powerlevel and impact on the game turns to be 7.5. Well you should still take the 8 over it – it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t have a synergy with your deck if the effect is better when you play the card. Yeah people will complain more, because they lost to a rare and it would probably feel better to outsmart them, but who cares? In the end giving yourself the best chance to win is the only important thing, you should be looking for in a competitive Magic.

Thanks for reading,

Petr Sochurek

P.S: Invocations are awesome.