Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1206: Draft Archetypes

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Almost every randomized booster product is designed to be drafted. To do that we have to build around what we call draft archetypes. In this podcast, I talk all about them.

I'm pulling away from the curb because the drought must start off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is draft archetypes. What are they? How do we make them? Why do we make them? Everything you ever wanted to know about draft archetypes today on drive to work.

Okay, so what are draft archetypes? Let's begin there. So draft archetypes, normally when we build a set in modern-day magic design, we try to make it sure, we try to make sure that there are at least ten different possible themes for you to draft. The default for the draft archetypes is the 10 two color pairs. So most sets when we say draft archetypes we're designing normally when you draft if a set is not sort of set up for you to draft something beyond the norm, normally what you do is you draft two colors. Without support for a mono color there's not enough to draft just one color. And without support for three color, it's hard to draft three

color. So the default on most sets is drafting two color. So when we talk about draft archetypes, in most sets what that means is what are the two color draft archetypes? Now, when I say there are 10 draft archetypes, there are a couple different ways we can do them. Like I said, the default is that we can do 10 two-color. There are a couple other ways we can build them. One is we can make a set that has a monocolor theme. In order to do that, we have to allow you to access to more colors. And sometimes when we say a monocolor, sometimes that means truly a mono color, but often that means two color, but the majority of what you're doing is one color, you're splashing

the second color. So sometimes when we say, we say mono color, it means you're splashing just because it's really, really hard to play one color. There are some environments where we can play one color color like Shadamor was kind of famous for that because it had so many hybrid cards it was a lot easier to play one color. Heavy colorless sets like Mirden Elijah played one color just because so much of the set was with colorless. Normally when we're doing a monochrome draft theme we so a traditional draft you just think of each card is in one of the five colors.

Normally 20% of the draft is each of the colors. That's the default, obviously. Normally just drafting 20% of the card doesn't quite give you enough choices. That's why two color is the norm. Oh, having access to 40% can do that. Now, like I said, there are tricks to let you draft a larger percentage.

Hybrid lets you have more cards that are relevant. In Shadowmore, for example, half the set was hybrid. So instead of having 20% per color, you ended up having 40% because, well, you had the portion, let's say you were playing one play white. There was white cards, there was white blue cards, and there was white green cards. So that was 30%. Anyway, the other thing we can do is sometimes when there's a heavy colorless component, in Mirrodin about half the cards were colorless.

So the reason you could play one color is you just play a lot of colorless cards. Now we didn't do a lot of colorless, heavy colorless sets these days and we don't do heavy hybrid. So a lot of the tricks we have to really just play one are not something we dip into. So usually these days when we say a one color strategy, often that means you're sort of splashing a second color. And then the other thing that we can do is we have sets where you're playing multicolor. Normally in a multicolor environment either it is geared toward two color or it's geared toward three color. If it's geared toward two color usually it's either ally or enemy and then the idea is if it's ally then the the

you have five sort of main draft archetypes and five secondary draft archetypes in that scenario so let's say it's an ally set the main draft are the ally colors the five ally colors and then the secondary are three color draft archetypes that are what we call shard or arc, meaning it's the color and it's two allies. The reason that is the secondary in an ally is if I draft two ally colors, then I have the ability to then draft a third color in two different things. For example, I'm drafting blue and black. If I draft white as my third color, I'm playing white, blue, black. If I draft red as my third color, I'm

playing blue, black, red. So the idea is in an ally color, multicolor set, the secondary things will be the arcs slash shards. In an enemy color, we're drafting enemies, then the secondary archetypes are the wedge archetypes, the color and the two enemies. Now when we do a three color set, if we're doing an ally, sorry, an arc or shard set, then the secondary is the ally colors, and if we're doing a wedge set, the secondary is the enemy colors. Once again, the reason there is you want to start by drafting enemy in a wedge set because it gives you two

options or shards in an ally set because it gives you two options. The big difference between the two color and three color set is what are the default colors and what are the secondary colors as far as draft archetypes. In a two color set, the two color are the main and the three color are the secondary colors as far as draft archetypes. In a two-color set, the two-color are the main and the three-color are the backup. And in a three-color set, the three-color are the main and the two-color are backup. Again, by the way, when we say three-color,

oftentimes what we mean is two-color plus a splash into a third color. Now, when we build archetypes that have more colors, we have to put more dual lands and more support for playing more colors. But anyway, the idea in a nutshell is that we want to make sure that there are 10 options when you are drafting. There might be more options than that.

It is not as if people can't in a normal environment, every once in a while play monocolor. For example, if you start in one color and realize your color is not being drafted by a lot of players, sometimes you can lean in and draft monocolor. You just can't guarantee, you can't force a monocolor because if people around you are playing that color you just won't have enough cards. That does mean you can't get into drafting monocolor or even in a two-color environment, sometimes, even though the set is not really set up for three-color, sometimes you can flash a third color, especially if you're in green, because green has a little more support for playing an additional color.

Okay, so where did draft archetypes come from? Why do we do draft archetypes? And the answer was, it just makes for a more dynamic draft if we sort of build into the card set the ability to do this. And as I've talked about, I've done limited draft podcasts before, mostly when you're talking about limited, it's a lot to do with what is in common and uncommon. It's not that rare doesn't matter. It's not that you don't think about rare, but rares don't have the consistency.

Commons, when you're drafting, when you're designing for limited, it's all about what we call AsFan. AsFan stands for AsFanned. It's how often does a certain aspect of the set show up in booster packs. An AsFan of one means every pack you open, there's one card dedicated to that theme. And depending how heavy the themes wanna be, it has a lot to do with like

what you raise your ass fans as. So early magic, so the first set that we did that took a limited in mind at all was Mirage. And I think the philosophy back in those early days was, look, we're just gonna give you the tools that you need to play limited, and hey, colors will do what colors do. We'll make cool abilities.

Back in that day, we tended to have two named keywords, and you know what? We put them in most of the colors just because there's only two keywords. Now, we would concentrate those colors, like some of those abilities would be in more one color than others sometimes. So essentially what happened was,

early on we just would kind of make each color its own thing, doing the things that colors do. And then with time what we realized was, Eric Lauer was probably the biggest advocate of this. Even before Eric Lauer, probably the biggest advocate of the, even before Eric Lauer, we would do stuff like invasion, which was ally colored. And then obviously, you know, there were ally color cards in it. Well, that kind of pushed you to are playing ally colors.

So in the early days, a lot of the draft archetypes were sort of like, well, we had themes. Ravnica was another good point where Ravnica like had guilds and like clearly each guild had its own identity. Maybe Ravnica in some ways was the like Ravnica was like oh okay we're going to build original Ravnica had four guilds in it. It had the Boros which is red white. It had Golgari which is black green. It had Damir, which is blue black, and it's Selesny, which is green white. Also, there's a secret fifth sort of guild, in that red and blue, because it had less,

there was only one guild with color in it, there were more red and blue cards. So you also could draft a red and blue deck. So there were five essentially things you could draft, and each color had its own mechanic, right? The Golgari had dredge and so when we built the set for Ravnica just in the idea of giving each set its own identity mechanically we were sort of making archetypes. I don't know if we were consciously thinking of it that way as

much as we were just defining what the colors did. Um, but what we realized was that was very valuable. And Eric Lauer got here, um, in, in Eshrad, he really sorta, um, hammered home each of the archetypes is going to do something that we had defined the archetypes design wise, for example, the ally archetypes, uh, were all played around a creature type of monster or humans. types were all played around a creature type, a monster or humans. White blue was spirits, blue black was zombies, black red was vampires, red green was werewolves and green white was humans. And each one of those had a different feel to them and then Eric built in sort of strategies

for the enemy colors and he built flashback cards around them. Anyway, he really introduced the idea of not only do you wanna have them, eventually he also introduced the gold signposts. Not only is each color combination gonna do something, but we will make a card that uncommon that loudly tells you what that is doing. And that idea sort of got ingrained into what we do.

And nowadays, when you build a set, you build in the draft archetypes. Like one of the things we do when we hand off the file from Vision to Set Design is we take the first stab at the draft archetypes. Now, some of those will change. It depends how much Vision Design's about building factions. The more factiony it is, the more cemented those are.

But Set Design can change things, they can change mechanics. So, Vision Design takes the first stab at archetypes, draft archetypes. are but set design can change things they can change mechanics so visions will take the vision design takes the first stab at archetypes draft archetypes but set design and then play design will do a lot of changing as the set sort of gets built okay so let's talk through the 10 the classic draft archetypes so here's the way we think of draft archetypes. There are 10. First off, we want about a third to be brand new, meaning we're doing something we don't normally do.

We want a third, and normally those new ones are built around new mechanics. We want a third of them to sort of be tweaks, which means things you know, draft archetypes that are sort of the norm, but we're doing something a little bit different. So an archetype, you know, but leaning in a direction, maybe you're not familiar with. And then about a third of them, you want to be, Hey, drafting, as you know, it's just an archetype you're used to, and we're not really deviating too much from the basics. So a third new, a third tweaks, a third existing things, you know. Also, the other way that we like to divide it up is we want about a third of it to be fast,

about a third of it to be medium, and a third of it to be slow. What that means is fast is a more aggressive archetype. You're trying to win the game in, you know, four or five turns usually. Medium is you're taking five, six, maybe seven turns and slow you're taking seven, eight, nine and plus turns. The idea essentially is you want a mix of archetypes. Some are fast and some are medium and some are slow. Just you want to change up on what's going on. But depending upon where your draft archetypes it has a lot to do with where you center mana values and it has a lot of impact on what you're doing Any color combination? Oh the other thing is we have a default for the drafts and then sometimes we have secondary things

For example, let's say we're drafting. It's an ally set about ally colors. Usually there We will have some secondary in the three color archetypes, but it's common also sometimes in the two color archetypes we'll give you two options that we have enough space and we're really focused on a smaller amount of primary. Sometimes we'll give you two different things to do within those archetypes. Okay, so let's get to the default two color archetypes. Okay, we will start with white blue. So white blue by default is a slow archetype, it's a control archetype. White blue sort of by default is, hey white and blue have a lot of ways to stall. Blue has counter spells, blue

has bounce, blue can lock things down, you know blue can steal things. Blue is very much set up that blue is the slowest color and the idea for blue is blue is very reactive. Blue is like I have the tools to win the game if I take control of the game and then white, while white has an aggro element, white also has a very controlling element. White is the color that has the most answers to things. And white also has a lot of, has some delaying things as well as blue. And so a lot of what white and blue do by default is, hey, white and blue, for example, are the flying colors, the primary flying colors. Often it's like, okay, let me get control of the game and then I'll have a big flyer

and my big flyer can win the game for me once I have control. Sometimes if we don't wanna do control, we wanna do a little faster, because white and blue do have flying, we can lead a little bit into flying. You can make white, blue sort of the flying for victory deck where instead of just having a few really big flyers that's more control oriented,

you can have just a lot more flyers. So the idea is I just get out a lot big flyers that's more control oriented. You can have just a lot more flyers. So the idea is I just get out a lot of flyers, some little, some medium, some big, but I get a lot of flyers and just can't deal with my flyers. And eventually I go through that's a little more medium speed. If you want to do a little faster, white blue doesn't drew a fast super well. Most of those blue is just not a fast color. Okay next up is blue and black. Blue and black usually is its default is medium or slow. Blue black is very much all about sort of card advantage. Blue and black are the two

cards that have the most card advantage built into them. The way we try to describe blue black is a blue black deck tries to win in such a way that once it wins, the opponent goes, okay, how did it win? That blue and black do a lot of trading and a lot of incremental advantage that sort of slowly eke advantage over time. Blue and black are definitely a little bit sneaky and they have a lot of their they have the most answers. Black has the most answers as a color as far as number of things. It has weaknesses.

It has areas that it is trouble with, but it has a lot of kill spells, for example. And black also has discard. Black can kill planeswalkers. Black now can kill enchantments. So black has a lot of answers and blue also has a lot of, of card drawing and card filtering that black and blue between them are really big about card advantage. Sometimes if we want to be a little more, a little faster, blue and black also have the colors that have a lot of invasion.

Blue can be unblockable. Blue is number one in flying. Black has menace. So sometimes blue, black will have a lot of creatures that have what we call saboteur abilities. Saboteur abilities are abilities that when you do combat damage to an opponent, do something. Draw cards is a classic example that we call curiosity. So blue, black sometimes will be sort of sneaky where you

have a bunch of creatures that sneak through with saboteur abilities and such. But usually blue and black is about I have I'm going to incrementally win with time is a lot of how blue and black wins. Okay next up is black-red. So black and red have the most permanent destruction although they black can now destroy enchantments for a long time black and red couldn't destroy enchantments red still can't destroy enchantments black can destroy artifacts but between them now they can blow everything up black can destroy enchantments not great third at it but it can red can destroy artifacts something black can't do they're both it's the top two colors that are destroying creatures. Black actually destroys them, Red does direct damage. So Black, Red, if you

want to go fast, it's more about getting out creatures early and then just blowing up everything in the way. And if you want to go slow, it's about just blowing everything up until what you have left out of the creatures you have remaining are what take the game. And so, Black and Red, it really can go fast, Comedian can go slow, depending on what you want. Fast is a little bit trickier just because so much of what Red do is want to blow things up. So, you have to sort of lean into that to make it work. A lot of times you see, after Black and Red decks, there's some reward that's trying to

get you to want to destroy things early. Black and red also another thing we commonly do are sacrifice decks. Black and red are good at sacrificing things, so a lot of the idea is I get a lot of resources, I eat my own resources to get advantage, I use my damage to sort of control the board, and then I get through with my creatures that have been upgraded by my sacrifice. Okay, next up is red green. So red and green are the two colors best at mana production. Green has sort of is best at permanent mana production.

Red is the best at kind of one shot mana production. But red and green tend to be good at a mid rangerange sort of style deck, which is sort of a medium speed. The idea essentially is I get out my small things that help me get mana, they get out my bigger things. And red green likes to do what we call go tall, is I'm going to beat you by getting out a handful of really big creatures that are just going to beat you down. Red and green share trample, red and green share haste. So they are aggressive, but they're not quite as fast as some other

colors mostly because they're trying to build up. They're going tall. So they're building up to the big thing. Red green can be a little faster to be needed. It can go a little bit slower. A very common red green theme is to care about the size of the creatures. Caring about four or more is very common. Oh, the thing I mentioned, I've talked about themes. I forgot in white blue, the another thing we do a lot in white blue is draw two. White and blue have a lot of card advantage. Sometimes blue black does draw two, sometimes white blue.

Anyway, red green likes to do big creatures and caring about big creatures. Okay, that is red green. Green white is the go wide color. The idea is green and white are best at creatures. So white has the highest asphan of creatures. Green is number two. Black is number three. Red is number four. Blue is number five. So green and white just in general have more creatures. They're also the two colors best at getting out tokens, the best token making colors. White is a little bit better making small tokens,

green is a little better making larger tokens, but they're good at just generating creatures. Green and white are the best at buffing creatures. They're the best at putting plus one counters on creatures. So the default strategy for green white is just get out a lot of creatures, boost them, and then attack. And that green white usually is a little bit slower. There is some aggro versions of green white that we can do that makes you be a little more aggressive early on, get creatures but be aggressive and attacking.

But the default way to play green white is more build up, build up, build up, build up till I have enough creatures that I can sort of take you out in one giant swing. But yeah, so like I said, go wide is sort of the default green white. Sometimes there's a little more controlling. You can play green-white where white does a little more controlling and green tries to go tall. The faster version of green-white is you're just getting a lot of creatures out there and you're doing more burst boosting rather than long-term boosting.

But anyway, that is green-white. Okay, now we get into the enemy color. So white and black, it defaults to what we call a bleeder deck, which is I gum up the ground, I sort of stop you from doing things, and then I plink away at you. Green and white have lifelink as an overlap. Oh, I'm sorry, green and white and black have lifelink. Green and white, by the way, the overlap was vigilance. That's why it can sort of, it's good at doing more control-y things, a longer game.

Okay, white, black has lifelink. White, black can make your opponent lose life or can drain the opponent. A lot of the idea of a bleeder deck is I keep you from being able to kill me and then I slowly incrementally have advantage White has fliers white and black both have flying white is primary and flying black is secondary So it can have a flying game Sometimes white black leans a little bit into flying. It's kind of like white blue can do It's kind of like what blue can do. Black also has creature removal.

Black has discard. A lot sometimes of the white black strategy is to nibble away at things and sort of get rid of threats. Now, there can be an aggressive white black. White black can go fast. When white black goes fast, it's more about sort of, like as far as speed, white has the smallest creatures, then red, then black, then, I don't know, green and blue, maybe green and blue, I guess.

Blue doesn't have a lot of creatures. But white black, when it goes aggro is more about a lot of combat tricks. We'll get to white-red in a second, but red, white, and black have the best combat tricks. White and red have the best combat tricks, but black is third after that. Okay, after white-black is blue-red. So, blue and red are the colors that have the least number of creatures. They have the most number of spells. So the most common way to play blue-red is in Instance Sorcerer's Matter.

Blue-red's default is what we call tempo. The idea of tempo is I keep sort of keeping you off guard and keep getting in to hit you with things. And I am able to do that with enough time. I keep sort of keeping you off guard enough that I can get in enough hits to get you. Tempo is sort of medium. There's a slower tempo that we can make as well. Like I said, blue and red, sometimes we'll care about artifacts or the two colors that

have the most artifacts energy with white being third. Blue and red, even blue and red usually spell based. We use stuff like prowess that cares about spells. Yeah. And then even when we're, and there's just in general blue and red permanence that get rewarded when you play spells. So there's a lot of sort of, I play out my creatures, but then I'm using my spells to sort of get incremental advantage and to boost my creatures. That is a lot of a of, I play out my creatures, but then I'm using my spells to sort of get incremental advantage and to boost my creatures. That is a lot of what Blue-Red likes to do. Next up is Black-Green.

Black-Green is king of the graveyard. Black-Green overlapping Death Touch. Black-Green is a lot about churn. It's willing to trade creatures because it has the ability to get creatures back out of the graveyard. And once again, Black another strategy that it can go very slow if you want a slow incremental sort of advantage over time Even when it goes faster, it's more medium. It doesn't do a lot of very fast things mostly because The key idea to black and green is this idea that I'm just gonna churn things

I'm gonna sort of you know, I'm going to trade, I'm going to kill your creatures. I'm willing to lose my creatures. Sometimes there can be a sacrifice thing or black has sacrificed and sacrificed green things. Green sometimes can produce smaller creatures or tokens. Sometimes black will do that. Black will do that strategy. But pretty much black green really, really likes the graveyard. It also has the ability at times to go tall.

Black, I mean green has the biggest creatures, but black also can have some big creatures. Okay, after that is red-white. So red-white is the most aggro of the ten color combinations. So red-white is the most aggro of the 10 color combinations. Most of the time, red-white is fast. Most time. We have done slow electric saving, did the slow red-white, which was more about the graveyard, but that was a very atypical red-white. Red-white has the smallest creatures, the cheapest creatures. White is number one in cheap creatures, red is number two, and white and red have a lot of control elements. Red has direct damage, white has a lot of creature kill.

A lot of the red-white strategy is I get my cheap creatures out, I just aggressively attack, I use my removal to get things out of the way and play it early so that I can get through. Red is best because of direct damage at killing small things, so using its removal early to get rid of blockers is very good. When Red and White want to slow down, like I said, White has some control elements it could use. Red can use its direct damage defensively. Usually there, there's some sort of buildup, but Red and White overlap on first strike

and double strike, which both lead more toward aggression especially because these days we tend to put first strike more on attackers like trigger when you attack there are ways to play a little bit slower red white we don't do that super often then the final one is green blue the problem child green blue is the archetype that is most likely to use the themes of the set. I think the default green blue is kind of a ramping strategy. You'll see ramping in red green and in green blue. The idea is you're using in green blue a lot of green's resources to get up mana fast. And green and blue tend to have the biggest things at small rarity.

Green has giant creatures and blue normally has a couple like serpents and things. Also in an environment where we care about ramping, there's some big effects that we can give blue. So stealing things or bouncing multiple things or there's some larger effects we can give it in blue. So the idea is I'm building up my man I'm playing giant creatures I'm playing giant spells that's the kind of default for green blue green blue is probably the trickiest one to do and so a lot of times like I said a third a third a third as far as new things tweaked things old things green blue is in the new things a lot of the time.

Oh, we're doing a brand new mechanic. Oh, why don't we have green, blue do that? So, green and blue are, so if you look at the draft archetypes, red and white are probably the one, is the one that is most consistent and blue, red is close on its heels. And then red, green, as far as green green white, as far as archetypes that pretty

much do the same thing. You will see green blue is one of the ones we change a lot, white black is one of the ones we change a lot, blue black can change quite a bit. So certain archetypes, they're more often going to fall in that same or tweaked version. And then certain ones more often fall in the, there's a new, they were gonna take it just because of the strategy of how they work. Anyway, the idea is nowadays, and this is, this, as we got more in archetypes, this became more and more true. Nowadays, when you're planning out your mechanics, you usually do not want to put your mechanics

in all the colors. There are exceptions. Sometimes you're doing a brand new fun thing that's flashy that maybe you want every color to have access to another very common thing we'll do is we will lean into it for a draft archetype, meaning at low rarities, red and green are doing this mechanic and exist in high rarities for constructive purposes, but for limited it's more focused, you know, Hey, the set has landfall in it.

Well, we're going to make red, green, more about landfall at low rarities. So yeah, there's landfall at high rarities, but limited red greens, the landfall deck, for example, that's a common thing we do. So we're very conscious when we make our mechanics to figure out what colors they go into. Most mechanics don't want to go in every color just to give different identities to what's going on. Like I say, if we really think there's some constructive potential, we can put certain cards pushed for constructed high rarities.

You don't need a lot to see it play in constructed. And when we talk about limited, it's all about as fan. It's what's at common, it's all about as-fans, what's it common, what's it uncommon. So normally when we're building for a set, the first thing we tend to do, when we're building our archetypes is, what are the new mechanics? Do we want to build archetypes to run those mechanics?

And the question is, is the mechanics sort of what we call linear, meaning, is having more of it good? Sometimes you have mechanics like, Delve is a good example. Delve eats cards out of it good. Sometimes you have mechanics like Delve is a good example. Delve eats cards out of the graveyard. Well, if you have too many Delve cards, then you can't, it fights itself. Where other mechanics, you know, like Toxic or something,

hey, you wanna have a lot of it, that it really plays well together. So what we do is we look at our mechanics, figure out whether they're linear, whether you want to play more of them. Of the ones that are, we lean those into draft archetypes. We pick our novel archetypes first, like what are the cool new things we're doing. We'll cement those in. We'll then figure out what the tweaks, what makes sense of the tweaks. And then what we have remaining, usually we default to our normal stuff. So it's like figure out the new space,

figure out where the tweaks go. And then what's left, we just sort of, that's the more normal stuff. So it's like figure out the new space, figure out where the tweaks go, and then what's left, we just sort of, that's the more normal stuff. And like I say, certain things like green, blue, we will look at early on because we know that they're more problematic. Where other things like red, white, we know the default of what it's going to do. So we're more comfortable pushing that

in certain directions. We do like to mix it up. We, as a general rule of thumb, if something, if a color did something in one set, hey, the next set, we like to change it up. Each set is built in sort of its own biosphere. So sometimes things will repeat a little bit of the basics, but we do try to sort of change them up.

Anyway, guys, that is the draft archetypes. It's something we spend a lot of time on. And for those of you that have never drafted, a real quick plug for drafting. Drafting is something you can do at your local game store, you can do at home. It's a super fun way to play. I did a podcast on different ways to draft.

And what you will find is, as you start, you know, the first time you draft, just draft whatever you happen to get. But as you start drafting more and start learning about the draft and learning what you want to do, one of the cool things about the draft archetypes, it adds a lot of depth to what's going on and that you can start to realize, oh, I'm in these two colors. Well, here's the theme of those colors and here's what I want to prioritize. And these cards work better within this draft environment.

And that one of the things we want is we want your first draft to be exciting. We want your 50th draft to be exciting. And so the draft archetypes build a lot of infrastructure in Delimited to make a lot of fun gameplay. And one of the side effects of doing all that work is a lot of casual play, meaning I'm just going to break open packs and build things out of the new sets. A lot of the work we do for all the draft archetypes also leaves the fun casual play. And even in constructed, some of those packets that we build in limited, they will look at

for constructed and usually they're adding on to that and things that higher rarities. But some of those themes will be pulled out and also applied to constructed when they find them fun. Anyway guys, that is all I have to say about drive truck tips for today, which is good because I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.