This is the big one. World Championship 31. And Draft will be a huge part of the tournament.
That's technically the case at all Pro Tours, too, as Booster Draft makes up three rounds on both Day One and Day Two. But the World Championship is different, as there's actually one fewer round each day compared to a Pro Tour. As you may have guessed, it's the Constructed round that gets cut.
That means that drafts make up an even bigger percentage of the rounds, which makes it even more important that the players come in ready to go for what can be a turbulent format.
We are also back to business with the usual brief timeline from when the set releases to when the World Championship begins. World Championship players will be scrambling (like all of us) to try to get familiar with Magic: The Gathering® | Avatar: The Last Airbender™ as quickly as possible. This means that the players have to try to hit their milestones as quickly as possible, with a big edge going to teams that can draft together, as well as the teams that have a Limited master on them.
All the Bending
The good news is that they will be greeted by a very solid format in Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender Draft. I was given a homework assignment by Luis Scott-Vargas to watch the series, and I'm almost all the way through. This means that I now know what the four big powers are in that world: airbending, waterbending, earthbending, and firebending.
The team who designed this set put a lot of care into the design of individual cards, but what really stands out is how well the four mechanics all work. They are interesting, balanced, and evocative. The set is a true home run.
For the World Championship players, this is mostly good news. If we widen our view from individual mechanics to color pairs and draft archetypes, things are pretty even. There isn't a color badly lagging behind or pulling ahead from the rest, and almost all of the color pairs (splashing included) are viable. You guessed right if you pinpointed Simic as the one deck without great results so far, though it's almost always joined by a red splash, which helps. When you do that, it's pretty decent.
The reason this is mostly good news is that it's a bit of a double-edged sword to have a format that is relatively even as far as the archetypes go.
On one hand, it means that if you put in the time and effort, you can stay open in the draft and let your seat dictate what archetype to go for, and with few exceptions you'll be able to craft a competitive deck from that position. On the other hand, if you're concentrating on Constructed and don't have the bandwidth to play as many drafts as you'd like, it means you can't just latch on to one or two archetypes and hope they come in.
Not if you want a real chance at playing on Sunday anyway.
Blue Is Best (Obviously)
Color wise, Blue has led the pack so far. Blessed with some really nice interactive spells plus some good old-fashioned value cards, blue is the deepest color and will be a common place for our drafters to start.
It'll Quench Ya!
Lost Days
Watery Grasp
While it is not normally known for it's great removal, blue gets the goods here with
If you want to start at the top, white-blue has been my favorite in the early running. You get all these great blue commons, but you also get to mix them with a suite of efficient, powerful, and even synergistic commons from white.
Airbending Lesson
Yip Yip!
White's removal and interaction is super solid, with
The white common spells are good, but the creatures might be even better.
Kyoshi Warriors
Glider Kids
Water Tribe Captain
Jeong Jeong's Deserters
Avatar Enthusiasts
This is a solid group of creatures if there ever were one, but you have to look a little closer to see what they all have in common: they are all Allies. Allies are all over the place (there are over 75 of them in the set), and they are powerful and synergistic, especially once you get into the higher rarities where there are some nasty payoffs for the Allies deck.
Notably, white-blue has a "cares about flying" theme, but this deck plays out as an Allies deck with some flyers thrown in for good measure. It's not something you need to focus on when drafting the deck.
If I were to give a player a crash course in this set, it would start with white-blue.
But being realistic, if you're competing at the World Championship and are in the market for a crash course in Draft, you've made some grave scheduling errors leading up to the tournament.
Which means we must go deeper!
To Build Around or Not to Build Around
One of the big milestones you want to get to if you are competing in an event like the World Championship is the ability to figure out which build-around cards are worth going for and which aren't.
Build-around cards are different than normal cards in that they tend to have a higher power ceiling if you can successfully support them. This often means taking cards during the draft that you might not normally take with the idea of supporting your build-around card instead.
The result is a risk, but it also offers plenty of rewards. If you go all in on a certain card and can't find the support pieces, it can be disastrous. But if it does come together, it can end up being the most powerful thing you can do in a given format.
The first stop for build-arounds is easy mode: three-color cards. You have to dedicate some amount of your deck to mana fixing to cast these, but that often isn't that difficult, and the payoff can be big.
Katara, the Fearless [4A1vtuXUb3ufmHf538UrY7]
Iroh, Grand Lotus
Sokka, Tenacious Tactician
Each of these three-color cards can be the best card in your deck and are worth the splash. We will see players stretch their mana base for cards of this quality as the payoff is definitely worth it, and the setup cost isn't too high. The ones where green is part of the mix are even easier to splash since green gets some really nice mana fixing in this set.
The second stop is a bit more out there, but still somewhat in range if it seems like it might be worth it.
Fated Firepower [2BLo6UGijUduGThWLV4XYz]
Sozin's Comet [6URTzMwRUSwsx2ZOjPS1JR]
Avatar Destiny [6C3BQekqM7Hyg3k8ISa77M]
Avatar Aang [6pBb3wo5iUKyx3GXfcKmO7]
Bitter Work
Whether it's trying to get that fourth color for
Finally, there is the "I was built for this" category of build-arounds: the Shrines.
Shrines care about having other Shrines around. The more of them you have, the better they get. There's one for each color, and they are all uncommon cards.
The Spirit Oasis
Northern Air Temple
Crescent Island Temple
Kyoshi Island Plaza
Unfortunately, Shrines don't seem to be a thing in Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender Limited. They just aren't supported well enough, and none of them are playable as standalone cards. I highly doubt we will see anyone go for this strategy at the draft tables, though I would love it if they did!
The Hidden Build-Around Deck: Monocolor
It's kind of funny, but there is one more cycle of build-around payoffs. They are rewards for going monocolor (or close to it).
Waterbending Scroll
Cat-Gator
Solstice Revelations
Rockalanche
These have actually proven really interesting because you can sometimes manage to slip them into a mana base with like 10 or 11 copies of a basic land type, but if you do go all in with all of your lands being that type (usually monocolor decks can get away with 16 lands), the monocolor decks actually perform quite well, especially green and white.
These monocolor build-arounds could be an enticing thing to chase if they come around late enough.
Ambitious deck builders can go for a two-card combo with
Prince, Not Pauper
Hotel lobby draft icon Brian David-Marshall came up with a great term to quickly describe when the rares and mythic rares had a bigger-than-normal impact on a format; he called that a "prince format." A "pauper format" would be one primarily dictated by the commons and uncommons.
For the most part, all sets are functionally "pauper," but some have rares that really hit hard, and Magic: The Gathering | Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of those sets.
United Front [6lW8n5RZYolAUhk2ZDJ9Ay]
The Legend of Kuruk [59eGVoFhssE3g5eqyMQKPa]
Wan Shi Tong, Librarian [1ciGdmwFkTXG8Pfu7fWHAB]
The Fire Nation Drill [2r9xcOiT98lQOgqjSPQQQr]
The Rise of Sozin [6ZNLE4wleiBEMQpBzgZ3u]
Aang, Swift Savior [4MHvDH5Uzj8CZ6s3ZAkKwa]
Just read some of the cards I've shown you here, and you can't help but be impressed. The crazy part is that this is really the tip of the iceberg as the list just keeps going and going.
What does this mean for our World Championship competitors? It means they really hope to open one of these great rares, of course, but it also means they have to be prepared with answers for opposing bombs.
This is part of the reason why
You really want bombs of your own, but you also have to prevent your opponent from landing theirs.
The games can be swingy in this format, so you'll want to tune in and not look away come Friday morning! I'll be there in the booth with Paul Cheon covering the drafts, and I hope you'll join us!