Faerie Squadron or Duskwalker?

Matthew Vienneau

In Monday's Wise Words column, Gary Wise described a Booster Draft situation where he had first picked a Tsabo's Decree and passed a Thornscape Apprentice. Gary was passed a choice between Faerie Squadron, Duskwalker and twelve other cards that weren't considered including a Hate Weaver.

He picked the Faerie Squadron (as would Chris Pikula) with the justification that:

a) it was the better card;
b) it still left his color options open a bit (Blue/White/black or Blue/Black) as the Decree is easily splashed;
c) Invasion Block Draft is all about two-color combinations, so picking the better blue card is valid as way of declaring that you're playing Black/Blue, especially if the drafter ahead of you appears to be taking Red;
d) Black/Blue was his preferred deck style and he plays it well so he might as well try and aim for those colors right from the beginning especially since he was likely to end up that way anyway; and
e) If you're not good at a particular deck archetype, don't try and draft it unless you're just practicing;
The biggest mistake that people make is the assumption that the first pick from the first pack should dictate the remainder of the draft.

These are all good reasons, but some of the people on IRC disagreed saying that it was more important to keep your options and to stay in one color. By bouncing all over the place, you're more likely to waste some of your early picks by the time you've settled in the colors you want. They also didn't agree with drafting to particular style, which was the point of Mr. Wise's article.

But when it comes to the drafting decision itself, I think the people on IRC were missing some key points. I'm going to attempt to illustrate various aspects of drafting that I feel were overlooked in the analysis of Mr. Wise's picks in his draft as well as some tips for the next time you're in a draft and faced with a difficult choice. I hope you'll come to appreciate the surprising amount of thought has to go into what appears to be relatively simple decisions!

The biggest mistake that people make is the assumption that the first pick from the first pack should dictate the remainder of the draft. This is an extremely common misconception and many a draft has gone totally for wrong for a person when they're determined to force the colors of their opening card. Trying to force blue for Distorting Wake isn't going to work well if players to both sides are blue mages. Picking a 4th to 7th pick Duskwalker in order to stick with decent first pick Tsabo's Decree over a 1st to 3rd pick Faerie Squadron is ludicrous.

I recently read a good article by Randy Buehler on whether you want to be a "dominant" drafter and force colors upon the person to your left, or whether you want to be a "submissive" drafter and draft whatever the person your right passes to you. The reality is that good players make a decision in each draft whether they want to be dominant or submissive and you have to be prepared to be either.

If your first pick is so good that it is worth playing those colors no matter how horrible the rest of your deck is, then you become a dominant drafter. These sort of "forcing" picks are such cards as Dragon Legends, Pyre Zombie and Rout. The sort of cards that say "whenever you've drawn me, I'm going to win the game for you, even if you're losing." In the first draft at Grand Prix Boston, I opened Crosis, the Purger in the first pack. Even though I eventually realized that the person on my right was playing Black/Red or Black/Blue and the person on my left was playing Black/Red/Blue I forced Black/Red/Blue for Crosis as I knew I would just win games when I got him into play. I went 2-0-1 and won almost half my games purely by drawing and playing Crosis despite many of the other cards in my deck being "second string." Different people have different ideas of what is a "Forcing Card," but the Dragons are on almost everyone's list.

If you're first pick isn't a "Forcing Card," then you should be a submissive drafter and take whatever is passed to you. If you have choices, attempt to match your colors with your first pick, but if they don't match, just abandon it. This is incredibly difficult to do, but the best drafters in the world will often point to their first pick Spinal Embrace or Nightscape Master that's sitting in their sideboard because those colors just didn't come to them after the first few packs.
We want more information than just the obvious. What else can we figure out from the pack that was passed to us?

So in Mr. Wise's situation above, the first question we have to ask ourselves is "is Tsabo's Decree a forcing pick?" I think the answer is "no." While the Decree is good, it's hardly the sort of card that we want to screw up our draft over. And even more importantly, it only has a single black in the casting cost, so it's easy to splash, unlike a card such as Reckless Spite. There is no allied color combination that doesn't allow you to splash the Decree, as any Green/X deck should have the ability to play one powerful black spell and blue/white has a couple of easy options for splashing a third allied color. This gives us lots of room to maneuver and clearly makes us a submissive drafter so we should follow the signals sent to us by the player on our right.

So what are the signals being sent by Faerie Squadron, Duskwalker, Hate Weaver and no decent red cards?

The obvious answer is "draft blue and avoid red". But if it were that easy, everyone would be winning money at Limited events. In many situations, that may be all the information that can be accurately gathered. So we should draft away from red cards and take the Squadron. The player on our right, knowing they passed us a good blue card, will probably avoid blue unless their first pick was an even better blue card. In that case we're not likely to see another good blue card in the first set of packs and we'll (hopefully) realize what is happening and switch colors. And if they're in red, we should looking for blue and white cards so they can go red/green or red/black and still not interfere with our draft.

But we want more information than just the obvious. What else can we figure out from the pack that was passed to us?

Often it can be extremely helpful to check the rarity of the missing card. You have to ask yourself "is there a better card in that rarity in these colors that they might have taken?" If there is an Agonizing Demise in the pack and a common card has been drafted, you can be 100% sure that the player on your right isn't playing black as Agonizing Demise is by far the best black common card as a first pick. If a Breath of Darigaaz is in the pack and there is a missing uncommon card, you can assume that they're not playing red. After a while you get a feel for what cards are first picks and which cards are not.

We don't know the rarity of the missing card in Mr. Wise's situation, so I'm going to cover all three situations:

The missing card is rare. In this situation, we don't know anything! Every single color has rare cards that are just better than any common or uncommon. And the gold cards are full of them, including Dragons. So if a rare is missing we can't really determine a thing. The only information we may be able to gather is if there are multiple good cards remaining in the pack of one color then there's a better chance that the player on our right didn't draft that color as they didn't want the competition. Many players will take a Jade Leech over choosing between Spite/Malice, Agonizing Demise and Exotic Curse because they don't want two of the three players on their right sharing their colors. And in Invasion Cycle draft they know that with the three players to their left taking black, they're probably not going to be taking green, an unallied color, so they'll get lots of good green picks later. But in our situation we don't have a run of good cards in any color, so this doesn't apply to us;

The missing card is Uncommon. What uncommon blue cards are better than Faerie Squadron and Duskwalker? Zanam Djinn definitely, with Fact or Fiction and Wash Out being the only other competitors in blue. Benalish Heralds is white but it requires blue and is also considered by some to be better than the Squadron. That leaves us with four "blue" cards that aren't black but are better than Faerie Squadron out of the approximately 30-40 uncommons in the set that are better than our 3/3 flying friend. Not very good odds. But the list of black uncommons that are better than Faerie Squadron is much longer: Annihilate, Plague Spitter, Reckless Spite and Urborg Shambler (for some) as well as Shivan Emissary, Spite/Malice, Cinder Shade, Sleeper's Robe (for some) and Smoldering Tar in off-colors. This means, all other things being equal, that with an uncommon missing it is more than twice as likely that the person on our right is playing Black or Black/Blue over Blue. So we should take the blue card - Faerie Squadron. The other thing to look for is the colors of the two remaining uncommons. If both remaining uncommons are black, then the person did not take a black card as I do not believe I've ever seen a pack with three uncommons of the same color.

I expect two points of dissension within the Magic community. First of all, many will claim that there are other Blue uncommons that are better than Faerie Squadron. Samite Archer and Angelic Shield come to mind immediately as potential offerings. My counter to this is that most players, when picking a so-so first pick, choose to go mono-color over multi-color as it leaves their options open. Samite Archer isn't so much better than Faerie Squadron that it justifies trying to go Blue/White, especially as you're the submissive drafter at this point. The probability of getting the exact two-color combination that you want as the submissive drafter is much lower than the chance of getting a single color so it's always best to draft one color until you know for sure what other colors are under-drafted. And by passing a Blue/White card you know you can go Blue/Black safely if the players to your left are submissive, while passing a blue card gives them options.

Another area of disagreement is my supposition that if the person to the right of you goes Black/Blue with Sleeper's Robe or Spite/Malice that you want to take the Squadron instead of supporting your first-pick black card. But the player on your right knows they've passed Faerie Squadron and no red cards so they will expect you will go Blue and not Black/Red. So even if they're Black/Blue, if they want to splash they're going to take pains to go Black/Blue/Red over Black/Blue/White as eventually you will realize that there are no black cards coming and move into white. And since you'll eventually be in Blue/White anyway (presuming you realize no black or blue cards are coming but you want to hang on to early blue picks), you should take the Squadron. And the reality is that Faerie Squadron is superior enough to Duskwalker that it is better to risk the 5% chance that they took the Black/Blue card than to harm your deck by taking the Duskwalker and attempting to go Black/Red when you've already seen that there are no good red cards in the pack. With no good red cards remaining, the chance that the player on your right is playing black and/or red is much higher than 5% - just count all the good uncommon cards in those colors.

The missing card is Common. This is very similar to situation b) above though the information it gives us is much murkier in our situation. In "black," Agonizing Demise and Probe are definitely better than Duskwalker and Faerie Squadron, though many people would avoid taking Probe and passing a Squadron. Soul Burn and Plague Spores are also common first picks and many players will take them over Faerie Squadron in hopes of going into the powerful Black/Red combination, though I personally disagree with this choice. In blue, it depends on personal preference as many players prefer Repulse and Exclude over the Squadron (as well as Recoil). Stormscape Apprentice may well be a better card, but is it sufficiently better to try and push two colors from the opening pick? In this situation, the information provided by a missing common is indeterminate unless we know the person on our right. If I'm the person on your right, for example, you can be assured that I didn't take any blue commons over Faerie Squadron! Missing commons are most useful when the remaining cards are the best in that color or color combination such as Agonizing Demise, Benalish Trapper or Armadillo Cloak.

That is about as much information as we can get from the 14 cards that have been passed to us, but there are several other things to consider when deciding what card to pick. Let's consider the deck that we are trying to draft. Our options at this point are wide open because remember, we're ignoring our first pick. But if we can work our first pick into a valid color selection, then that's even better. So with that in mind, our best options are Blue/White with a black splash (traditionally shown as "UWb"), Black/Blue or Black/Red. How good are Duskwalker and Faerie Squadron in each of these decks?
Faerie Squadron is extremely important in Invasion Block Blue/White decks as it dominates the skies that are full of 2/2 creatures and can at least trade with most non-rare fliers out there. Dominating the skies is critical to the success of Blue/White as it stalls up the ground with high toughness creatures. If we end up Blue/White, we will really miss not having this card in our deck. In Black/Blue the Squadron is better than the Duskwalker as flying is superior to a fear effect, but we're pretty content with either one. In Black/Red, traditionally an aggressive beatdown deck or a deck with lots of kill and few creatures of questionable quality, the Duskwalker is a decent card, but by no means critical to the deck's success. With these alternatives open to us, the Faerie Squadron covers our options much better as there's a decent chance we'll really regret not having the Squadron, but it's not that likely that our deck would have put us over the top if we had had one more Duskwalker in it. And, quite frankly, there's a good possibility that more Duskwalkers will come around later, but it's very unlikely we'll get a Faerie Squadron after the first three or four packs.

With that same logic, it's unlikely that the player to our right is playing Blue/White and passed the Squadron unless they opened a much better card in that color combination. But it is certainly possible that the person ahead of us could be playing Black/Red or Black/Blue and didn't mind passing a Duskwalker. So Blue/White is looking better and better as a color combination.

Another very important factor to consider in the draft is the signals that we're sending to the person on our left by picking the Faerie Squadron or the Duskwalker as we'll be getting fourteen picks from that direction and we want to make the most of them.

We've already passed a Thornscape Apprentice, but since we took a rare that's no guarantee that we're not green or white. But that's all the person on our left has to work with. If we pass them a blue card, then they can be pretty sure we're not green, white or blue and will assume we're Black/Red. While this definitely helps the person on our right who is likely in red, it doesn't help us at all to see a bunch of good red cards in the second pack as we're planning on Black/Blue or Blue/White and we're trying to avoid red.

By passing the Duskwalker and Hate Weaver, we're saying that we haven't passed any good blue cards or red cards but we've passing a bunch of black stuff and one green card with a white splash. This is a confusing set of signals especially when our first pick was a rare and they may conclude that we're aiming for three colors. The poor drafter to our left is stuck picking the best cards available until we can send better signals. But it is better to send no signal at all then to send an incorrect signal indicating Black/Red. Good drafters understand that the signals in the first packs can be a bit hazy but get very annoyed when the discover the person beside them is drafting the same colors and signaled badly.

And a very important aspect of our draft choice is the ability to cut off blue, as the value of this cannot be underrated. If we can draft every playable blue card for several consecutive packs then we can almost guarantee that we will be richly rewarded in the second set of packs. By taking the Duskwalker, we take that option away with little benefit to ourselves. And the Faerie Squadron is a sufficiently strong card that seeing it in the third or fourth pack is often a signal to me as a drafter that I should go Blue which is not what we want the people on our left to do. Heck, if I'm on your left and I've already picked a Thornscape Apprentice and Angel of Mercy, the Faerie Squadron will likely take me out of Green/White and put me into Blue/White (with potential for a green splash) which is the worst possible situation for us! Duskwalker, while a strong card, is not at that level of quality and if I have to choose a second color I will rarely go black because of a third or fourth pick 3/3 creature with fear.

So what have we gleaned from this lengthy analysis of a simple two card decision in the second pack? Hopefully a greater understanding of the thought processes that should be going through your head as you're spending your 30 seconds looking through the pack in your next Booster Draft. As one can imagine, as the possible card selections increases to three, four or even five good cards, the possible permutations and options become increasingly difficult to go through within the allotted time. This is what makes practice so important, as you begin making these decisions without having to think about it. And to make things worse, if the drafter on your right reads this article and obeys, then they may totally ignore their first pick so all our second pick signals are useless! They may have picked Sabertooth Nishoba first and passed Faerie Squadron and Duskwalker, but then have gotten passed a Stormscape Master followed by Fact or Fiction. This will put them into Blue/White/Black and you could end up fighting for the exact same colors. And every so often their first pick will be Distorting Wake or Zanam Djinn and you're totally screwed by taking the Squadron, but that's an article for another day!

In the end, the evidence clearly indicates that your odds are better if you select the Faerie Squadron. After the first pack, your colors should be "anything, hoping to splash black" and after the second pack you're expecting Blue/White but if it appears that black is available, so much the better. The key things to remember are:

    All the things summarized at the top of this article from Mr. Wise's article;
    Be able to ignore your first pick, unless it's so good it can't be ignored (and there aren't that many like that);
    Be aware of the signals that are being sent to you;
    Use the rarity of the missing card(s) to your advantage;
    Always try and pick the better overall card where possible both in general and for the deck or deck archetype that you plan on playing.
    Be aware of what cards are key to what deck archetypes and realize when they should or shouldn't still be in a pack;
    Be aware of what signals you are sending;
    Try and block off colors whenever possible;

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me at mattv99@hotmail.com.