Welcome to Ars Arcanum, the MTGO stats-based limited column. My full Return to Ravnica block draft overview is long past due, and it is finally here. I don’t have much of an explanation about the delay; all I can say is that a lot of life happened since the release of DGR. As much as I love writing about Magic, and as seriously as I take the writing of these articles, I also have a lot of things that have to be prioritized higher. Like my family. Or my job. Or visiting the in-laws (that one wasn’t really voluntary (unless you are my in-laws reading this, and in that case, it was an absolute pleasure to see you)). Regardless, I’m back on the horse, and ready to jump in with some analysis.

But before we get started, there are a few things to briefly discuss.

#1 Thank you everyone for nominating me for the community cup. Also, thank you WotC for inviting me. The Magic Online Community Cup will be coming up near the end of August, and I have to say that we have a pretty sick team this year. The list of invitees is in other locations, but I’ll go ahead and link you over to Pete Jahn’s State of the Program, where he lists them all.

#2 M14. Originally, I didn’t intend to do an M14 overview. I don’t really like to draft core set, and I didn’t have any desire to play M14 this year. However, I decided to put together an article anyway. The data collection is all done for that article, so I’ll be doing the number crunching and article writing over the next few days. A lot of people have been asking for the article, but that’s not the main reason I decided to do it. The biggest thing is that I have a sneaky suspicion that WotC is going to be having us play M14 at the community cup, and I think that I’ll need to be ready to play it. In any case, I’ll be saving the M14 discussion for our next article.

#3 Congratulations to Shahar Shenhar on being this year’s Magic World Champion. I was really rooting for Reid Duke through the entire tournament, but that savage mulligan to four just wasn’t enough.

Now that we’ve got all of that out of the way, let’s look at the numbers!

Speed

Ending Turn of DGR Games – Study #1

Ending Turn of DGR Games – Study #2

Ending Turn of DGR Games – Combined and Compared with Other Sets

When Dragon’s Maze first came out, I assumed that it would slow down the full block format significantly. All ten guilds are in the DGM packs, there were a lot of 2/4s, and a ten card cycle of cluestones. I assumed that DGR would be a format where we would spend the first few turns fixing our mana, and then people would start playing powerful spells throughout the rest of the game. I assumed that cards like the Primordials would be amazing, and that we would get to try out all kinds of new strategies as a result of the format slowing down. A lot of other people thought that, and many people still think that DGR is a slow format.

But, that is simply not the case. DGR clocks in at about one turn slower than GTC, and one turn faster than RTR. Not only is DGR not a slow format, it’s actually a fairly fast one. Things slowed down a little bit from GTC, but not nearly as much as I assumed that it would. This has huge implications on the draft format, and it also means that the majority of commentators on the format are approaching it from a very poor angle. This kind of format speed drastically changes the viable strategies and also dictates the kinds of cards that you will be able to play.

The first major implication is that it is not wise to play very man cards costing five or more mana. There is an entire cycle of low-impact, six-mana creatures in Dragon’s Maze, and all of them are pretty poor picks, though Maze Glider and Maze Abomination are still respectable. Whereas things like the Primordials, Ripscale Predator, or even Ruination Wurm seemed like they would get much better in the move from GTC to DGR, it turns out that they are only slightly better. But Return to Ravnica might feel the biggest impact from this. Cards like Courser’s Accord, Trostani’s Judgment, Zanikev Locust, or Isperia’s Skywatch were pretty decent in RTR. In that format, you could reliably cast Courser’s Accord, and while it wouldn’t have too dramatic of an impact on the game, it would usually shift the game in your favor. In DGR, Courser’s Accord is just going to be too little too late. You should be able to make it to six in most games, but the two 3/3s just won’t have a big enough impact on the game by that point. The card is still playable, but it is very important to prioritize cheaper cards much higher.

Secondly, the speed of the format has a big effect on your mana base. In a slow format, it wouldn’t be a big problem to put a gate onto the battlefield tapped on turn two, or take turn three to play a cluestone, but in DGR, those actions can set you far enough behind that you just won’t be able to catch up. Not all of your opponents will be able to reliably cast something aggressive on turn 2, but enough decks are casting three power creatures at that point that you can’t afford to get behind the curve. This has a huge impact on the Dragon’s Maze portion of the draft. Because DGR is a multicolor format, it is very difficult to build straight two color decks. The vast majority of players end up in three colors as their base, but there simply isn’t enough good fixing for you to reliably cast your spells. In some matches, you’ll be fine, but as soon as you face a decent deck with a good curve, you’ll often be crushed simply because you can’t get the right mana to cast your spells in time. This adds a lot of natural variance to the format, and it also means that you have to evaluate cards much differently.

Thirdly, this speed has a huge impact on your playable count. A DGM pack will usually have about 2 cluestones, but many of them have 3, and I’ve even seen a few with 4 cluestones in the pack. However, the cluestones are barely playable. If you can build a deck that is based in two colors and doesn’t need cluestones, then you probably shouldn’t play the cluestones anyway, since you lose so much tempo in casting them. The problem is that they take up such a big portion of the pack. The gatekeepers are actually in kind of the same boat; they just do too little too much.

Just count that for a moment. That is already twenty possible commons in DGM that you should actively avoid if possible, out of 70 commons. If we take out the normal chaff, like Clear a Path, Sinister Possession, Uncovered Clues, Wake the Reflections, and so on, we get somewhere in the range of 36 commons that you should actively avoid in DGM. A little less than 1/3rd of the uncommons are in a similar range, and about 40% of the rares. In other words, the average DGM pack will have around 7-8 cards that you want to actively avoid, because they are simply not good in a fast format. That is a tremendous amount of bad cards, and it has a huge impact on your picks in the draft. Even RTR has quite a few cards that are a little bit too slow for the format, and only GTC really gives you the tools you need to interact early on. Because of this, GTC has a tremendously amplified importance in the draft, since it has all the cards that you need to prioritize in order to compete in the early game.

All of the factors lead me to my first big piece of advice for DGR. You need to prioritize cards that are easy to cast in the early game, but that also make a demonstrable impact on the battlefield when you cast them. I’m not entirely sure which card is the best common in DGM, but I think that it is a pretty close fight between Runner’s Bane, Haazda Snare Squad, Kraul Warrior. Each of these comes down early on, and doesn’t have a heavy color commitment in the cost, but they have a noticeable impact on the early game. After that, I would pick something like Tithe Drinker, Boros Mastiff, Zhur-Taa Druid, or Beetleform Mage, but three of those have two colors in their cost, which can make it difficult to reliably cast them on turns two or three. Cards like Riot Piker, Hired Torturer, or Murmuring Phantasm look pretty bad, but they are actually all important roleplayers that you should almost always take over a cluestone. This advice is also important when you get into the GTC or RTR packs. The best way to find success in DGR is to prioritize cheap things with light color commitment that impact the board.

In the next two sections we’ll start looking at the different color combinations in the set, and how well they performed, but it is important to keep these speed issues in the back of your mind at each point.

Popularity

Shard Popularity in DGR – Study #1

Shard Popularity in DGR – Study #2

(Note: There was a very small but very vocal group of people that didn’t like the way I named the shards. I discussed this in a reddit post, but basically, the names I use are there to be easily distinguishable when I’m collecting data. If you don’t like it, just refer to the colorful bars.)

In the charts above, we see the popularity of the ten three color combinations. There are several interesting things here, and I’ll start with the most obvious, and then work our way down. First, Naya is clearly the most popular deck in the format. In the first study, it was tremendously more popular than all of the other combinations, being played at about 40% more than the next closest deck, and nearly four times as much as the least popular deck. These decks are a big part of the reason why the format is so fast. The Naya decks tend to be playing high powered two and three drops, and if they get a decent start, they will often take over the game before you can start to implement a plan. These colors were also the most popular colors in both GTC and RTR, so it is no surprise that this color combination continues to be a favorite in DGR.

The second important thing that we should notice is the change in popularity for Bant between the first study and the second study. It was already the third most popular deck in the format, but in the second study, it picked up virtually all of the points that Naya lost. I should note that these two decks are actually pretty closely related. They both have a Selesnya core, but pick up some aggressive creatures and useful tempo cards from their tertiary color. Naya does have bigger creatures naturally, but Bant comes with evolve creatures that can get very big easily, while also bringing in some evasion and tempo cards from Azorius. Again, it’s not that hard to see why Bant would be popular.

The third thing is the shift between Esper and Doran. Both of these have an important Orzhov component, but lost a significant amount of its popularity. Again, we don’t have to look too far to see the culprit. Esper needs Azorius in pack three, and with Bant taking a few more Azorius cards, it makes sense that Esper would lose a little bit of popularity, and the people that picked up a lot of Orzhov in GTC would naturally move into Golgari in pack three. But also keep in mind that this is yet another base Selesnya deck that is among the top 3 popular decks in the second study.

Perhaps the most important thing in these graphs is that the top five shards and the bottom five shards have no change between them from study to study. There is a little bit of shift in the exact numbers, but Naya, Bant, Doran, Jund, and Esper make up about 51% of the field, and the other five decks make up 32% of the field, while straight two color decks and five color decks make up the remaining 17%. The important thing that these combinations have in common is that they have a lot of green, a lot of white, and not very much red or blue. This means that there is a heavy emphasis on creatures. Again, this reinforces what we have already seen; this is a format that wants you to play creatures in the early part of the game.

Next, we’ll take a brief look at the popularity of the different guilds in each study. We won’t dwell on this data too long, since it won’t tell us very much that is different from the popularity charts that we’ve already seen, but it will still be useful as we get in to win rates.

Guild Popularity in DGR – Study #1

Guild Popularity in DGR – Study #2

(Note: This includes three color decks that are using these color combinations. There simply isn’t enough data on the two-color guild decks for us to study them all with statistical relevance.)

There really isn’t much to notice here, but there are a few things. First, we see that both Dimir and Rakdos fall a bit, while Golgari and Simic both jump a little bit. This is consistent with what we saw in the changes with Esper, Doran, and Bant. This means that there is a little bit more green in the second study, while there is a little bit less black in the second study. It’s also vitally important to note those changes in Dimir and Rakdos, because it will tell us some interesting things once we look at the win rates in the next section.

Win Rate

Shard Win Rate in DGR – Study #1

Shard Win Rate in DGR – Study #2

There are a lot of differences between these two charts. At first look, it seems like they are totally different, but when we look more closely, we see that there are only a few significant differences, and we’ll talk about what those differences mean. In the first chart, we see that all of the shards are basically balanced, with both Esper and Grixis taking a slightly higher place. In the second study, both of these lost a little bit of their win rate, but they both stayed at 50% or better. These are two of our three Dimir decks, which makes it seem like Dimir did pretty well overall on our list, but I’ve already talked about the strengths of Dimir many times in the Ars Arcanum series, so we don’t need to beat that horse to death.

The next thing we see is that two of our Selesnya decks, Naya and Doran, made some big gains by jumping from just under 50% up to a little bit over 50%. This doesn’t tell us too much since in both cases they were pretty close to the margins. I suspect that as players learned a little bit better how to build the base WG decks, that they started to win a little bit more. Also, I think that as the format has progressed, people have started to drift away from sound strategies, and they have found their way into slower decks that are going for bigger plays. In this format, that is suicide, and the Selesnya decks capitalized on players losing some of their discipline.

There are three more decks that saw radical differences. Jund jumped up nearly 20 points, from about 43% to 63%, while Kaalia decks jumped from 37% up to 50%. In both cases, these are changes from being in a very poor position to being in a strong position. Somehow, these Rakdos decks jumped tremendously in the standings. The other significant change is that Damia fell hard, losing all of the points that Kaalia gained. So what is it that’s going on?

This is dependent on a few important factors. One thing is that Rakdos began to be drafted a little less, with people moving out of all three Rakdos shards, which include Grixis, Jund, and Kaalia. It wasn’t really being overdrafted before, but there were many people moving out of Rakdos into Selesnya. But as I’ve shown in the past, over and underdrafting tends not to have a dramatic effect on win rates. It is much more important for us to look at metagame factors.

The first important thing is that the shift we saw towards more green and white cards. These colors have some decent sized creatures, but their main vulnerability is to solid removal. There really isn’t much removal in this block, but the good removal that is there is mostly located in red and black. The Rakdos shards are the ones that are best able to deal with decently sized creatures. Secondly, since people moved heavier into creature based guilds and away from spell based guilds, they have less ways to deal with auras. This might seem small, but both Jund and Kaalia make good use of Madcap Skills, Deviant Glee, and Pursuit of Flight. Since fewer people have been playing removal, those cards tend to be a little bit safer, and they can absolutely take over a game. Finally, this is another symptom of people approaching the format with less discipline. Since more people are in Selesnya, Boros, and Gruul, those decks got a little bit slower and more inconsistent. They are still faster than the other decks and put a lot of pressure on the environment, but as they slowed down, both Jund and Kaalia were able to speed up. Suddenly, they are the aggro decks that are punishing the greedy players.

Since we are ending this section on the different archetypes, I want to talk about what I think is the most important advice I can give people for DGR limited. In many draft formats, players have been able to pick up on key archetypes that are very powerful in comparison to the rest of the decks. The secret about DGR limited is that there is no secret. There isn’t a metagame killer that will let you dominate the format. Jund had a big spike, but a slight metagame shift would probably bring it back down into normal levels.

There is a huge reason why this is the case. The fact is, there really aren’t any salient archetypes in DGR. Sure, you have your aggro decks, and tempo decks, and attrition decks, and control decks. But there aren’t any really key archetypes in the format. Let me explain this a little better. Let’s compare DGR with GTC. In Gatecrash, the entire format revolved around the five guilds. Each of those guilds had a very distinct personality. Because of this, all the cards in the format had very different values, depending on the archetype in which you ended up. The same thing was also true in RTR. The thing with DGR is that each of those guilds was diluted by adding a third set. For example, it is hard to get a deck that is built almost entirely of Evolve creatures. It is hard to get enough tokens for a populate deck. It is hard to get enough Extort for a real Extort deck. There isn’t enough mill for the mill-based Dimir deck.

Here’s a more specific example. In GTC, Balustrade Spy was a very important card. Having a 2/3 flyer was great, but the milling ability was also very important. It turned on your Death’s Approaches and Wight of Precinct Six, and having enough incidental mill in your deck meant that you would often just win through milling. Furthermore, it was a great body to wear any cipher that you managed to pick up. In DGR, there isn’t enough cipher to make the evasion more important than normal, you can’t rely on enough Death’s Approaches for that card to be good, and there isn’t enough mill for the incidental mill to ever be relevant. In DGR, Balustrade Spy went from being a key roleplayer to being a 2/3 flyer for 4. This is the case with many, many cards.

In DGR, you aren’t looking to draft a specific deck or archetype. The synergies are so diluted that you simply can’t count on picking them up. There aren’t any special recipes for DGR; instead, it is the kind of format that rewards you for solid and disciplined drafting. The best way to draft DGR is to focus on picking cards that are powerful, flexible, and easy to cast, and then putting them together in the most efficient way once you reach deckbuilding. When I do a DGR draft, I tend to just pick the very best cards out of the Dragon’s Maze pack. Once I hit Gatecrash, I try to focus my deck a little bit more, since that is where I need to pick up the bulk of the cards I need at lower mana costs, but it usually takes me two or three picks into GTC to decide what colors my deck is going to be. I don’t try to build cute synergies; I just take powerful and cheap cards, and then slam them together in a deck. The real trick for DGR isn’t in drafting your cards, but in playing them. It is a format that rewards creative gameplay, rather than creative deckbuilding, and as long as you have been disciplined in taking strong and flexible cards, you’ll be much more able to outplay your opponent.

Conclusion

Thanks for joining me in this installment of Ars Arcanum. Hopefully this will give you some insight in how to improve your game in DGR limited. In conclusion, let me reiterate the most important points:

1. DGR is a relatively fast format. Avoid expensive cards, or cards that don’t affect the battlefield in the early game.

2. The Dragon’s Maze pack is going to be light on playables. Be careful not to overcommit to underpowered cards.

3. The majority of the field is made up of decks that can play large creatures early in the game. You need to be able to interact with them.

4. The fixing in DGR is just bad. It is important to take cards that are easy to cast, and also to keep in mind that the format will have a little bit higher level of natural variance.

5. The secret to DGR is that there is no secret. This is not a format about archetypes.

6. The most effective strategy in DGR is to take cards that are cheap, powerful, easy on the colored mana requirements, and flexible, and not worry about how they fit in a particular deck type.

I mentioned earlier that I’ve finished the data collection on M14, so you can expect an article on that format very soon. I also realize that there is a lot more that we could address about this format, so if you have anything else to say, you can tweet at me or leave a comment below the article. Thanks so much for your time!

As always, you can follow me on twitter @oraymw for updates about articles. I’ve also put up a Tumblr account at http://oraymw.tumblr.com/ where I post links to my articles. You can go there and subscribe to the RSS feed, and then you’ll be able to get updates whenever a new article goes live.

Finally, I encourage you to check out the podcast that I do with my buddy Zach Orts, which is called All in the Telling. In it, we look at stories from a professional standpoint in order to get a better understanding of why they are important to the human experience. But mostly, we just talk about what makes awesome stories awesome.