Drafting "True" 5cG Chad Ellis Shortly after finishing an article on 5cG, I broke several of my rules and drafted what could be called "true" 5cG, a deck with a broader spread of spells and trickier mana issues as a result. This type of deck tends to be very powerful when it works, but can be very fragile. I'll use this draft as an example. The draft in question was a Barcelona practice draft-the third and final draft last Saturday. Steve OMS had put in an appearance at Your Move Games and the final draft also had Dave Humpherys, Rob Dougherty, Michelle Bush and Peter Fabulous (one of the strongest players never to have been on the Tour). I opened Smoldering Tar and Exclude and took the Exclude, figuring I would draft U-W (currently my favorite archetype) and put Steve O into R-B. My pack had a number of solid but unamazing Blue cards in it, and since this draft was just six players I knew I'd get something good as a second pick out of the pack. I took Faerie Squadron second and, I think, Ordered Migration third. Fourth pick was nothing special and in the fifth pack the only good card was a Thornscape Apprentice. Thornscape Apprentice is one of those cards you can't ignore. It's a very good card, but more importantly it is widely regarded as one of Green's best commons, if not the best. Getting one fifth is, in terms of signals, about equivalent to getting Agonizing Demise third or fourth. It means Green almost certainly isn't heavily drafted to your right. I also knew that I'd seen a Collective Restraint (I think in my second pack), which had a small chance of getting back to me. So, I took the Apprentice, giving myself two options-either U-W with a possible Green splash, or shifting into 5cG. I took Galina's Knight next, followed by Kavu Climber and a Chromatic Sphere. Here's what I ended up playing: 1cc: Chromatic Sphere, Thornscape Apprentice, Stormscape Apprentice 2cc: Quirion Elves, Quirion Sentinel, Angelic Shield, Samite Pilgrim, Dream Thrush, Galina's Knight, Aggressive Urge 3cc: Shackles, 2x Exclude, Hobble, Harrow, Shoreline Raider 4cc: Quirion Trailblazer, Ardent Soldier 5cc: Ordered Migration, Allied Strategies, Faerie Squadron 6cc+: Goham Djinn, Draco, Stormscape Battlemage 1 Mountain 1 Swamp 1 Dromar's Cavern 1 Terminal Moraine 3 Plains 5 Island 5 Forest The deck certainly has the tools to win. The Domain spells-Ordered Migration, Allied Strategies and Draco on offense and Samite Pilgrim on defense-are at their maximum power. Two Excludes, Hobble, Shackles, two tappers and the Battlemage offer more creature control than most U-W decks can realistically hope for. Goham Djinn will pretty much always be a 5/5 Black regenerator. The deck also has a lot of potential for card advantage, with several powerful cantrips and the very real potential to draw 4-5 cards or get 4-5 1/1 flyers off of a single five-mana spell. The obvious problem lies in the mana. Unlike the base-Green approach I outlined above, Green is a secondary color here, consisting of one business spell (the Apprentice), one trick (Aggressive Urge) and some mana smoothing. Blue is the color I need most, and I can't really do without any of my three main colors for too long. I need to run a Swamp for the Djinn and the Battlemage but is it worth running a Mountain for the domain effects and first strike on the Apprentice? I think the extra bird, card and two mana less for Draco is definitely worth it. The solution, it seems to me, is the broad mix of color smoothers, both temporary and permanent. Chromatic Sphere will let me cast almost any spell and Terminal Moraine can become any land. Green has the Sentinel, Elves, Harrow and Trailblazer, while Blue has Dream Thrush. All together, my mana smoothers make it very likely that I can cast other mana smoothers as well as my business spells. Put another way, with two colorless mana smoothers (the Moraine and the Sphere), I have seven cards that can give me my first Green Mana and eight that can give me my first Blue Mana. I can't count on casting Quirion Sentinel on turn two, but I have a very good chance to Harrow early if I draw it, or to play my Trailblazer on turn three or four. The results were probably better than the deck deserved, with my opponents ironically having mana issues, but in every game my mana smoothers were up to the task. I cast Draco multiple times, drew five cards twice off of Allied Strategies and five Bird tokens and a Samite Pilgrim were able to keep a large enemy air force at bay until I could find my Dragon. Drafting a deck like this is risky. It's not easy to get the right balance of mana smoothers without wasting your early picks on them, and you can't count on being handed Draco and Allied Strategies in the last pack. I would never start out an important draft with this type of deck in mind, but it can be a useful fallback strategy. I would only do it if you've already drafted some cards like Ordered Migration or you're having one of those drafts where each pack has one good card but they are never in the same colors. If you do, don't be afraid to leave good cards out (or better still, not draft them) because they'll stretch your mana too much. In this deck I left Kavu Climber in the board when it became clear that I hadn't been able to shift my base to Green, and didn't run Crosis's Charm because of the double splash.