We've been drafting a lot of Two Headed Giant over at Casa de Bondage Goth lately. Fugie's teaser post alluded to a deck in such a tourney, but I won't spoil his story for you. I am here to talk about some guidelines for 2HG that have proven to be true yet again. These are things that most of you competent players have a vague idea of, but may not have thought about in a while. So as you start to integrate 2HG into your Lorwyn Limited experience, consider a few truisms.
#1 Removal is (still) better than a body.
Lorwyn block gave us some interesting tension when it comes to drafting. Unlike past formats, getting your 13th Kithkin can be critical to the way your deck plays. You shouldn't be looking for 12-19 bodies, you should look for an equivalent number of synergistic creatures types and abilities. There are some formats where having the dudes is more important (admittedly I can only think of ChKChKChK draft, which was super aggressive and weenie-based, and possibly Coldsnap draft, because of the inherent synergies in that good old set) and some where you have to take removal over nearly everything else (XthXthXth draft skews closer to this side, more examples of either format are welcome in comments). It seems to be the rule that in 2HG the removal becomes even more important because the low end of your creature curve gets obsoleted mid-game and and everyone has plenty more time to find and play their respective bombs. Since we all know bombs win games, having removal (and knowing when to use it, obv) gets you back into things before you are smashed to a pulp. HOWEVER, one of the things I was most interested in when playing 2HG Lorwyn Limited was whether or not the need for creature type synergies would overmaster the need for decent removal. If your dedicated Merfolk deck, in the last pack of a 2HG draft, has a choice between a third pick (technically 5th and 6th picks, you know what I mean) Neck Snap and Summon the School which do you take? (Let's assume you other pick in that pack was, uh, Mad Auntie for your other head's half-built Goblin deck, whatever.) The Merfolk Sorcery makes your deck all kinds of awesome in the late game- which you will usually get to in 2HG. But the removal is also really good. It appears, after some experience, that removal still trumps the majority of creatures, even if it means diluting the internal synergy of your deck's creature base. In 2HG, if you see no guys that need to be gotten rid of on the other side of the board, you are winning. There will be targets for removal. Your Summon the School only gets ridiculous if you are able to reach a critical mass of Merfolk (quick aside; Summon the School is not as good in 2HG as regular draft. 30 life plus many more chump blockers = far less effective at ending the game). Getting to that critical mass may take the whole game, or not even happen at all. So keep on taking those Weed Strangles and Tarfires when they come. Now, sometimes you are going to need to kill more than one monster at a time in order to stay in the game. This leads us to our second Rule You Already Know.
#2 Card Advantage Wins 2HG Games
You know how to destroy an opponent in 2HG? Cast Mournwhelk, forcing player A (let's call him "Lajor Muck") to ditch two of the three cards he still has in hand. Then, next turn, counter player B's Footbottom Feast with Familiar's Ruse, returning your Mournwhelk only to recast it again to strip the last two cards from player B's hand. Yeah, TooSarcastic's team won that one (sorry, Major Luck). It's really hard to fight through that much card disadvantage. Likewise, CBG and I ended up drawing the round prior, partly because we are bad players, but mostly because we passed a (foily!) Final Revels in the draft that ended up making it to our opponents, who then used it wreck us on card advantage, along with a second Revels later in the game that mopped up all the 2-butts we had cast after the first Revels resolved. Casting a Hoarder's Greed to draw four cards wasn't bad for the other team either. I mean, who cares about losing four life in this format? The only way my Gothy Captain partner and I were even still in that game was the fact that we also cast our own copy of Final Revels to four-for-one their board as well. In regular draft, getting tempoed out while waiting to reap the rewards of your card advantage is a fairly common concern. This is less so in 2HG. Weenie rushes are less good. Play the 7-casting cost spell that gets two of their cards. You will (almost) always be able to play it. Having said that...
#3 Curving Out Still Wins Games
Last night I was again paired with CBG playing against Fugie and his roommate. I kept a hand with 2 Plains, an Island, Summon the School, Merfolk Harbinger, Inkfathom Divers, and Faerie Trickery. CBG looked at me like I was crazy, but I said, "It's 2HG, I'll get the 4th land eventually. We've got time." Turn two (we were on the play) I drew Moonglove Extract. Just fine. Meanwhile, Fugie had played a 2/1 elemental turn one. Turn three I drew Fallowsage and cast the Extract. Fugie's team had four dudes out to our one, but we had on-board removal so it was fine, right? No it wasn't. Wort, Boggart Auntie comes down next turn with a board full of Gobs for them. Also, my extract can't even kill the Elemental because of Wings of Velis Vel from Fugie. Suddenly half our life is gone. This is the turn. I need to draw a land to continue play spells. I rip... Fallowsage number two! I guess this is a bad beats story. Also, the match prior, I dug through all but the last three cards of my library looking for the game-winning planeswalker Ajani. After the match, I flip over the deck to reveal Ajani as the bottom card. Bad. Beats. But I digress. The whole point is playing land number four (on turn four) and casting Merfolk Harbinger for Stonybrook Angler might not have won the game, but it sure as hell would have made it closer than playing my fourth land on turn six, which is what ended up happening. Build your deck with a curve in mind. Consider mulligans with a curve in mind. You curve may start at three (or maybe even four) instead of one, but 2HG still needs a curve. There are some beatdown strategies out there. They may not be the strongest archetypes, but if people discount them and don't build to protect against an early rush, Kithkin, Elemental and Goblin synergies can overwhelm an opposing team pretty quickly. Also, 90% of the time it's right to play 18 land. I've heard "official" columnists make the argument that you should run fewer lands in 2HG because you get a free mulligan, you have a partner to help you if you stumble, and the games go longer so you draw more cards. It has been my experience that the games I win come from casting Mournwhelk on turn seven, preferably with Aethersnipe either the turn before (to get the bomb into their hand so they discard it) or the turn after (to return Mourwhelk so as to destroy the second opponent's hand). It's hard to lose games when you hit the top end of your curve on schedule. And you know your curve will end higher than your average individual draft deck. Run more land than normal, not less. Getting flooded sucks, but at least when you do draw your business spells you can cast them.
That's it kids. Go play some 2HG.
T
2 comments:
So was it your experience that hard casting the evoke creatures happened more frequently that using the evoke ability? The cost of those creatures, 7 for mournwhelk, seems a bit high.
Evoke creatures are obviously great if you can get both the effect and the guy. Some, like Mulldrifter, are almost preferably cast with evoke, especially if you can curve out by evoking them. Others, like Shriekmaw and Aethersnipe, have bodies that are of significant consequence when they hit the board. Keep in mind I am writing about 2HG. 7 mana is not only reachable, but only slightly expensive in this format. Would I play Mournwhelk in a normal draft? Doubtful. But it might make a slower format like sealed, depending on the build and how abusable it could be.
One thing to take into account when deckbuilding and drafting evoke creatures is reusability. Any 187 ability can potentially be abused with some sort of recycling. If you are in black with some recursion, Foottbottom Feast for example, then I would be much less concerned with burning a Shriekmaw or Mounrwhelk early for its evoke. Just get it back then cast it as a dude. But let's say you're in blue or white, which have bounce and blink effects. In order to bounce your evoke guy it has to hit play. Same thing with the Champion mechanic. I want to wait until five mana to hardcast Shriekmaw if I also have a Changling Hero. You can just be aggressive with the Hero, knowing that if it ends up dying, your Shreikmaw hits again, removing another non-black creature you opponent controls.
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