Drafting 5cG with Planeshift

Chad Ellis

Imagine you're in a booster draft. Your first pick is Fact or Fiction. In the second pack you take Angel of Mercy over Scorching Lava, looking at drafting U-W. Your third pick of Ordered Migration isn't too exciting, but assuming you pick up a third color it's a fine card. Then the fourth pack comes, with some okay U-W cards and only one really powerful one: Tribal Flames.

Fourth pick Tribal Flames is a pretty powerful signal, suggesting that Red is seriously underdrafted to your right (remember, you were passed a second-pick burn spell, too). With Red being almost insanely powerful in Planeshift, that's a signal well worth paying attention to. But what do you do about your early picks? You could simply play U-W with a splash of whatever Red removal you get, but there's another option: go Green.

When a new set comes out, two things are very noticeable. First, even the best players misevaluate individual cards. Second, archetypes are poorly understood relative to where the top players will be even a few weeks later. When Invasion was first out, I traveled to Grand Prix-Manchester, the first premiere level event that would use the new set. The Your Move Games group had reached a fairly uniform conclusion that Red, Black and Blue were the strongest colors for sealed deck (most people picked up on this quickly and it has since become almost universally accepted). What we couldn't know for sure was what were the best colors for draft.
Equilibrium theory in draft
The best Invasion Block sealed decks are almost always R-B-U

If a set is unbalanced in favor of some colors over others, it will naturally dominate sealed deck since each player is given a set of cards over which they have no control. The best Invasion Block sealed decks are almost always R-B-U, just as the best Urza Block sealed decks tended to be heavy Black. In draft, however, the strength of a particular color is self-correcting, assuming the players at the table have an accurate understanding of the set. The more powerful a color is, the more players will tend to draft it, both because they recognize its strengths or simply because they see the best cards coming in that color or colors. I've been at six-person Invasion Block drafts where everyone had at least some Black spells.

They key assumption, however, is that the players have a good understanding of the set. If not, too many will draft some archetypes while too few draft others. This leads to Zvi's very pragmatic characterization of draft rules for different sets: "Draft color(s) X unless everyone at the table knows the rule."

When Invasion came out, a lot of players were attracted to the five-color archetype. Cards like Harrow, Quirion Elves, Nomadic Elves and Fertile Ground would let a base Green deck play pretty much whatever spells it wanted to. With so many of Invasion's powerful cards being splashable and some of them getting more powerful if you had multiple basic land types out, you could (in theory) make a powerhouse deck simply by taking the best spells out of each pack and then putting them together with green mana fixers.

When I sat down for my first Rochester draft on the Friday night before GP Manchester, I watched an entire table fight over Green. Even Alex Shvartsman taking Harrow as his first card, drafting third, didn't stop either of his neighbors from dabbling in Green.

The trend continued, perhaps not quite as severely, during day two of the Grand Prix. Each table had at least one player trying to force 5cG, and there would often be three or even four Green mages at a given table. Players were overestimating Green and the 5cG archetype, with the result that most did poorly. Darwin Kastle won the event drafting R-B-U, the set's three most powerful colors.

Since then we've had months to learn about the set and Planeshift has been introduced. The result is, I believe, that 5cG is a sensible archetype again.
Archetypes in Draft

Before talking about why 5cG might be a rewarding archetype, it's probably worth talking about archetypes in general. Many intermediate drafters assume that good drafting is simply a question of reading signals to pick the right colors and then understanding which cards are better than which others, taking them accordingly and thus getting the most powerful card pool. That's important, but just as synergy plays a major role in building a constructed deck, it is critical for drafting a powerhouse.

Let's look at an Invasion common, Prison Barricade, and the two color combinations that might play it. The Barricade can be a solid defensive two-drop or a 2/4 for four mana. A 2/4 isn't an efficient attacker, but it can block a Hill Giant all day and, very importantly in Invasion Block, can keep multiple 2/2 and 2/1 creatures at bay.

Who is more likely to want a Barricade, the G-W or U-W mage? The G-W mage is inevitably playing an aggressive deck. Green has more two-power two-drops than any other color and a number of Giant Growth cards to keep pushing through, especially Gerrard's Command in G-W. Evasion will be limited to some 2/2 flyers that cost four mana, so the deck's primary offense will be on the ground.

The G-W mage, therefore, has no interest in casting a wall on turn two and can't get very excited about a 2/4 without evasion on turn four. He or she wants to spend turn four attacking with two or three small creatures, casting Explosive Growth or Aggressive Urge on one that was blocked, maybe keeping White Mana open for a Thornscape Apprentice or maybe adding a new weenie to the assault.

What about the U-W mage? His or her offense is much more likely to come in the air, with the many common and uncommon Blue and White flyers. Like the G-W mage, U-W is short on real removal, but instead of addressing this problem with an overwhelming offense, he/she looks to hold the ground with some solid creatures and support spells (Confound, Pollen Remedy, Repulse) while fighting in the air.

The U-W mage may be quite happy putting out a turn-two 1/3 Wall, following it up with Tower Drake and Razorfoot Griffin. Similarly, a 2/4 ground creature with a tapper and-or a Samite Pilgrim can do wonders at holding the ground against a larger army.

Does Gating affect our assessment of the card's value in the two decks? G-W's gating common, Steel Leaf Paladin, is a slow fattie. The Barricade doesn't make it any better or worse. U-W's common, Silver Drake, is a powerhouse that can be cast as early as turn three (although usually you're better off playing non-gating spells first). A turn-two Barricade that keeps an enemy 2/1 at bay for a turn and then gates in Silver Drake, only to be recast as a 2/4 is a pretty good deal.
Understanding a deck archetype means recognizing what cards you are likely to get, how important they are to your deck, and how highly you have to pick them. Prison Barricade is helpful for U-W not only because it is good in the deck but because it is weak in every other color combination, meaning you can often draft them late, using your early picks on Repulse, Exclude, Shackles, flyers and tappers.
So Why 5cG?
This is a draft strategy that sometimes yielded a killer deck but could also hand you an 0-3 deck without difficulty.

With these concepts in mind, why should 5cG be better now than it was in Manchester? First, fewer players are drafting it. Instead of being taken first, Harrow now sometimes walks around the table. Even Alan Comer had some hard words for 5cG after having very poor results at GP Dallas and concluding that it was a draft strategy that sometimes yielded a killer deck but could also hand you an 0-3 deck without difficulty.

Another change is the introduction of Planeshift. Although slightly less impressive in terms of mana smoothing, Planeshift gives the 5cG mage many powerful new spells that are much less useful to other players that could cast them. Other than Ordered Migration, most of the good non-rare Domain spells in Planeshift are still excellent even if you only run two colors. Exotic Curse and Tribal Flames can be taken as first picks with no regrets, Strength of Unity is an okay semi-Cloak in U-W or G-W (although definitely better if you get a third basic land type into play), and Wandering Stream is what some players like to call a "skill tester" no matter how many land types you're running. In Planeshift, however, the 5cG mage gets Allied Strategies, Samite Pilgrim and Gaea's Might.

Then there are the Battlemages. Each is clearly a potential first pick, but because they are effectively gold cards they will often get passed when the "wrong" person opens them. For you, however, there is no wrong kicker and every Battlemage is playable.

Finally, I think we understand the archetype more. Drafting U-W is fairly instinctive for many Magic players, but knowing how to balance a good 5cG deck in a new format is much more complicated. I wanted to make sure I had 5cG as a backup strategy for Barcelona, so I forced it in nearly every draft, sanctioned or practice, for a month. Here are the rules I came up with for having good results:

1. It's not Five-Color-Green... it's Green.

My most common land configuration with 5cG is something like 9 Forests, 5 Plains or Mountains (depending on which became my main support color) and one each of the other basic land types. Ideally, one or two of my Forests or Plains would be a Lair or dual land. I've run as many as eleven Forests and that deck had two other lands that produced green mana. Admittedly, that was an extreme case, but my best 5cG decks have all been primarily G-w or G-r decks with a handful of off-color cards. That leads us to the second rule, namely:

2. Nomadic Elf is a first pick. Harrow isn't.

When people first drafted 5cG, we tended to assume that Harrows and Fertile Grounds were key to the deck. After all, that's what attracted us to the archetype in the first place. In reality, however, too many 5cG decks have too few business spells, even if the ones they have are very good. A massive Wayfaring Giant still dies to Terminate, and if your other spells of the game were Fertile Ground and Harrow while your opponent put out a Shivan Zombie and a Hooded Kavu, you could be in trouble.

I've actually found that Quirion Trailblazer is better in most 5cG decks than Harrow, and will always play a mana elf over Fertile Ground. Better still are cards like Quirion Sentinel and the mighty Nomadic Elf that let you wash mana as needed while still being efficient beatdown creatures. I've lost count of the number of times I've dropped an early Sunscape or Thunderscape Apprentice without a Plains or Mountain and used its green ability to support my early beatdown. I'm less enamored with Frenzied Tilling than I used to be, but in a R-G deck with a few late game splashes it does a nice job of disrupting the opponent (usually not much but every now and then in a game-altering way) while finding you your missing color.

3. Avoid double-splash cards.

An easy mistake to make when drafting 5cG is simply to take the best card out of each pack. Not only will this lead to confusing signals for your neighbors (or outright battles in a Rochester draft) and give you poor synergy, it will force you either to run too many mana-smoothers or risk holding bombs in your hand while your opponent wins with spells she can actually cast. If your deck is base G-W you can easily splash Agonizing Demise, Tribal Flames or Repulse, but Plague Spores is a lot riskier, just as G-R shouldn't get tempted by Samite Archer or Recoil. Your Elves are only going to give you one mana at a time, and Nomadic Elf makes Plague Spores cost eight mana.
Building and playing the deck

The 5cG archetype I've described here is essentially a beatdown deck that sacrifices a little focus in order to run some powerful cards that either serve as finishers (e.g. Ordered Migration, an off-color Djinn), give the deck removal it might otherwise lack or are simply powerful enough to merit inclusion (Allied Strategies). In general, therefore, it is more an offshoot of the aggressive R-G or W-G archetypes. Efficient creatures and combat tricks put your opponent on the defensive after which a well-timed Demise kills off a key blocker, Allied Strategies refills your hand or Ordered Migration puts four or even five 1/1 flyers into play, supported by a Sunscape Apprentice.

Pure 5cG, with more diverse spells and an accordingly greater commitment to mana smoothing, can certainly be drafted, but in my experience it is generally too fragile. Unless you have a very unusual draft where you are handed multiple Ordered Migrations as well as strong cards in all colors I would avoid it, and even then I would strive for a deck with at least eight Forests, counting on your green to get you your other colors.