More Return to Ravnica Strategy: Tri-Color
First off, I’d like to let everybody know that I have UPDATED the Magic the Gathering Japanese vocabulary tab at the top of the page with words from Return to Ravnica. If you need to know how to say Populate, Unleash, or any other of the new keywords from RtR, please check it out!
Also . . .
30,000 views!!!
I want to thank all of my readers again for their continued readership! I started this blog less than a year ago in November 2011, and I’ve already reached this milestone. When I originally started this blog, I would have been happy with 10,000 views a year, but I’ve managed to get that almost each month since the release of M13. I will continue to post articles about the Japanese metagame, drafting ideas, and other Japanese related things and I hope you can help me to hit 50,000 hits by the end of the year! Thanks again and look forward to some big updates in the future!
Tri-Color Strategies
A few posts ago I talked a little bit about each of the guilds and what their strengths and weaknesses are. But what if you could overlap some colors and cover for your weaknesses? Today I’d like to talk about how you can add in a third color to your deck and how it will add another layer of strategy to your deck.
- Izzet/Azorius – What you get: Control, card draw, burn, and flying. In limited, the right combination of cards could make these colors extremely powerful. Azorius will really slow down your opponent’s deck by detaining their creatures and other permanents, and the Izzet side will supply a lot of burn spells that can quickly drain your opponent to nothing. Card draw is definitely useful and these colors’ strongest point, but the focus of this combo should be to lock down your opponent and burn their face while attacking with fliers. This would have to be a fast deck, because once you run out of Detain effects and burn spells, you’d pretty much lose the game. Blocking big creature would also be troublesome for this deck. If you choose these colors, hit hard and hit fast.
- Azorius/Selesnya – What you get: Control, card draw, life gain, tokens, big creatures. This could be a potentially powerful deck if you get the right cards. You’ll have a lot of powerful Selesnya creatures, plus access to token producers and flying creatures. Drawing cards fast will ensure that you can keep the creatures coming and Detain will take away any dangerous blockers your opponent has. There is also a lot of life gain between Azorius and Selesnya, so you could definitely stay in the game long enough to overwhelm your opponent with beasts and birds. The draw back to this kind of deck would be that it’s a little slow at the beginning, and faster decks like Rakdos could kill you before you had a chance to lock the game down. Long games should go in your favor, but be careful of the early game against fast decks.
- Selesnya/Golgari – What you get: Life gain, tokens, big creatures, graveyard manipulation, removal spells. I’m actually thinking of running this color combination during the pre-release if I get good cards. Selesnya will supply the fodder for your sacrificial spells in Golgari (unless it says non-token creature), and in return Golgari can supply scavenged bodies to power up your big creatures. This deck has the potential to create some big creatures while at the same time setting up a large army of tokens to chump block against your opponent. It lacks in evasion (aside from trample), and might have problems against flyers however. Black does allow you to slip in some removal, but you’ll have to hold onto those spells until they are absolutely necessary to use. This color combo is good as a midrange deck and should be able to fight against even the biggest creatures coming your way.
- Golgari/Rakdos – What you get: Haste, removal, burn, graveyard destruction, big creatures, graveyard manipulation. This combination has the ability to be the most POWERFUL deck in limited. You have access to tons of removal in black and red and Rakdos’ creatures are some of the most dangerous in the set. You can keep sacrificing Golgari creatures to make your Rakdos’ creatures bigger, and then scavenge them afterwards to make them even scarier. A strategy for this type of deck would be to cause as much pain as posssible as quickly as possibly. Burn your opponents with red spells. Attack relentlessly with your Rakdos’ (BR) creatures. Destroy their creatures . . . just beat, beat, and beat them again. A big drawback to this combination would be its lack of fliers and any evasion. A lot of the creatures also have very low toughness, so if you were go up against a lot of token creatures they could easily team up and take out all of your creatures while beating you down with their own army of tiny creatures.
- Rakdos/Izzet – What you get: Card draw, burn, control, haste, removal, graveyard destruction. I don’t think this color combination is bad either. With it you get evasion (flying creatures), burn spells and removal, and you also get access to counterspells. Card draw would also have really good synergy with the Unleash mechanic, allowing you to continue unleashing aggressive creatures each turn while you burn their blockers. Izzet also gives you access to cards that make your spells cheaper to play (Goblin Electromancer) as well as damaging them whenever you cast a spell (Guttersnipe). Timing will be key with this type of deck, you have the cards to deal with all of the other types, but you’ll only get once chance. You could overload your spells and take out legions of Selesnya Tokens. You could take out a Golgari graveyard with one play of a Rakdos Charm. You could also counter almost any spell that Azorius throws at you. If you want a good mix of direct and indirect damage, go with this combination.