With the latest rebalance we also got a small refresh of the draft pool. While the number of cards changed was relatively small, the impact of those cards was significant. One of the biggest new players is Death Current. Once strictly a last pick spell, Death Current received a boost in the first round of the rebalance. It can now destroy above level creatures at levels 1 and 2 and has a level 3 effect that is worth leveling for; destroy two enemy creatures at random. Many draft players were tired of losing to giant monsters built with Shardplate Graft or Pummel Pack and are happy to see a good answer added to the draft pool. But Death Current is more than a good answer to voltron creatures. It is a solid underdrop, a way to push damage, and even a way to gain board control later in the game. It’s unusual for a spell with the word “random” so prominently featured in the card text to be so consistently useful. So how do we take this spell down a notch. How do we keep our opponents from getting the ridiculous Death Current value.



For starters, Death Current’s effect is random, so even though we can’t stop it from killing something, we can at least make it harder to kill exactly what our opponent want’s it to. The simplest way is to put more bodies on the field. Creatures like Roaming Warclaw give you essentially free bodies and make it more risky for your opponent to play a Death Current when there’s a good chance it will be killing a 1/1. Ether Hounds has a similar effect and can be useful for protecting big bodies later in the game. (Sorry Hunting Pack, still not picking you.)

Playing creatures with Forge effects rather than spells is another way to get more creatures on the field. If you are debating between playing Countermeasure or Battletech Inventor on a particular turn, Inventor may be the better choice for weakening an opposing Death Current. Even playing creatures in an open lane rather than blocking and trading may be the right play if the creature your trying to protect is especially valuable. Open laning creatures means they won’t die on your opponent’s combat step and makes it harder for them to Death Current accurately.

While at heroic and not seen in every draft, Aetherphage is a potential answer. It’s main weakness is that you have to have it at exactly the right time for it to be effective, but taking a level 3 Death Current late in the game could create a huge swing in your advantage. Vault Intruder can’t actually remove the spell, but can still give you valuable information. If you don’t see a Death Current in hand, you know you can at least get one turn of value out of that Ursine Strength before you have to worry about the creature dying. Given that these creatures already have decent stats, it might be worth picking them a little higher in the current environment.

The decks that will have the hardest time playing around Death Current are pump decks. If you are AU and want to make good use of Ursine Strength and Blood Boon, you may have a hard time going up against Death Current decks. Not only do pump spells invest multiple cards into a single creature (opening you up to a 2-for-1) but they also put fewer bodies in play, making opposing Death Currents more likely to hit their target. The type of play that you most want to avoid is open laning a creature and pumping it in the same turn. You don’t want to play Aetherguard+Blood Boon because if your creature gets hit by a Death Current, you got zero value out of your Blood Boon. Instead, try to use of your pump spells to change combat math, like playing Ursine Strength to turn that losing trade into a winning trade. Not only does it keep more bodies on the field, but it also gets immediate value (killing an enemy creature) from your pump spell. If your pumped creature gets destroyed on the following turn, it’s not as big a blow.

Pump decks might even want to start looking at one of the other new cards added with the refresh, Wildwood Sower. It’s traditionally not a card I want to pick in draft but it synergizes decently with pump spells while at the same time making Death Current worse. Not every Uterra deck will need it, but if you are intending on casting a lot of pump spells in your matches, Wildwood Sower might be a nice little defensive strategy. Sometimes it takes a very specific type of format to really see a card’s value.

The hardest choices to be made around Death Current will be in rank 3. I usually encourage players to open lane their powerful level 3 creatures whenever possible. It puts a lot of pressure on your opponent and if they don’t have a good answer right away, you can start to push damage and close out the game. If there is an unblocked level 1 or 2 creature on the board, it’s usually worth taking some damage from it to set up your own threat.

But if your opponent has leveled two or three Death Currents, the reasoning changes. Now your powerful creature may not even make it to the start of your next turn and regardless of whether or not it blocked. In this case, it may be better to block the smaller attacking creature that you would normally ignore. If your creature gets hit with a Death Current, then at least you’ve gotten some value out of it already. It’s a tough call and I’m not completely sure on when it’s the right time to block and when it’s right to open lane. I’ll try to post some examples in the next few days if I find the right situation.

None of these techniques are going to completely shut down Death Current, and it’s likely to remain a force in draft until the next refresh. The goal is more about slightly shifting the percentages in your favor as often as possible and avoiding situations where Death Current will really hurt you. The degree to which you employ these tactics will vary depending on how many Death Currents you’ve seen or expect to see from your opponent’s deck. It’s not an exact science and players will (and should) debate about which plays are best. But one thing I’m sure of, the question I’ll be frequently asking myself as I’m planning out my turns, “What if they Death Current.”