I've got an eerie feeling we've got one of the best Draft formats ever lined up for World Championship 30.
Leading up to the event, the players have two monumental tasks on their hands. They have to build a powerful and optimized Standard deck, and they have to know how to draft Duskmourn: House of Horror.
If you haven't had a chance to dive into Duskmourn: House of Horror Limited, I would suggest you do so at your earliest convenience as the format is great. To give you some insight for either drafting the set yourself and/or watching the World Championship, let's talk about what's going on in the format as of now.
Duskmourn: House of Horror — A Nuanced Draft Format
Duskmourn: House of Horror has a quality that basically all the Limited formats I've really loved have had: archetypes within archetypes.
Normally, for a baseline two-color set like Duskmourn: House of Horror, there are ten possible archetypes, one for each color pair. But sometimes really great sets manage to squeeze in a few extra by having a mix of cards that fit into multiple decks mixed with cards that mostly only fit into one archetype.
When a card's playability changes dramatically from one archetype to the next, the draft itself becomes more dynamic. In some sets, a good card is a good card, and you just take it if you're in that color. But sets like Duskmourn: House of Horror add another layer.
An example of a card from Duskmourn: House of Horror that is great in some archetypes and less effective in others is the red Room,
In red-green delirium and red-white aggro, it's a solid removal spell with some upside, and it's picked and played accordingly. Solid card; nothing to be super excited about.
But in red-black sacrifice and blue-red Rooms, it's a top-tier common. The sacrifice deck has a bunch of ways to sacrifice the Room for value after
Its role in the blue-red Rooms archetype is clear. Any deck that cares about Rooms, how many you have, how many doors are unlocked, and how many Rooms you control will be happy to play any Room that acts as a removal spell as its baseline.
This dynamic is played out over and over again in this set, with
In the Rakdos Sacrifice deck, it's a must-have card. You have so much fodder to sacrifice to it that it's a powerful one-mana removal spell that even exiles its target. But in all of the other black archetypes, it's a mediocre removal spell that you' want one of at most.
Knowing what makes the format work, including which cards go from unplayable, to playable, to outright good based on the archetype is a big key to understanding Duskmourn: House of Horror Booster Draft. The players at the World Championship will have to understand this level of nuance in order to perform well on Day One and Day Two.
What Is Working?
Blue-white eerie has been the best-performing archetype for me. It's one of those decks that, when it comes together, just works and makes your job easy. The power level and synergies are effortless. I sometimes talk about a concept called setup cost. It's the idea that some cards and archetypes have a certain amount of work you have to do to make a thing happen. Threshold has a high setup cost as getting seven cards into your graveyard naturally takes a long time. Delirium has a medium setup cost, as it still takes some work. But if you build your deck correctly, it will happen naturally over the course of a game.
Eerie has a low setup cost. Basically, you just put these cards in your deck, cast them, and boom! Triggers are going on the stack left and right. Two of the best uncommons in the set are not only in these colors but are made for this deck.
An
There are other payoffs beyond these like
As good as the payoffs are, it's how easy it is to trigger them that makes this deck hum.
But then, the surprises start.
Eerie decks tend to play out either like a tempo deck that puts out a few threats and taps down the opposing creatures long enough to attack for the win, or a slower deck that grinds the opponent out by halting their gameplay and then taking over with an eerie-specific win condition or just unlocking some Rooms as a late-game plan.
Either way, this is the best archetype in the room, if you will.
What Isn't Working?
The white-black reanimator archetype hasn't wowed me during testing. It's a difficult thing to pull off in Limited, but you can see the effort here on the part of the designers. They put some ridiculous Demons and other expensive creatures in the set to reanimate, including two at common that naturally go to the graveyard from your hand...
And a bunch of ways to reanimate them.
The problem goes back to the setup cost. Besides the landcyclers above, these creatures have a hard time getting into the graveyard. Even when you find a way to make that happen, you need to have the reanimation spell in hand and the mana to cast it. It's not impossible. I have been on the bad side of
But the truth is that it doesn't happen often enough to justify going for unless it comes together perfectly. Remember how I said that the eerie deck made it easy because it rewarded you for doing things you wanted to do anyway like cast creatures and removal? This is the opposite.
If you end up with Valgavoth or
In Summary
Those are just two of the ten archetypes and, as I pointed out earlier, if understand the archetype you're drafting, you can make most anything work.
The real test is on Day One when the players sit down for the draft. The World Championship nerves will settle in, but it's the hours of practice that will count once the packs are opened.
This is a complex format. The players won't be able to get away with a crash course from a teammate or podcast before the tournament. This format requires preparation on a deeper level.
Whomever our next World Champion will be, they will almost certainly be well prepared for Booster Draft, and they'll have to bring their A-game in both Limited and Constructed to get the job done!
Can't wait to see you there!