MH1 has been super good to me - I lost in the finals of the Sunday MCQ at GP DC, and went 12-3 in GP Seattle. I wrote this as a primer for people looking to learn about MH1 and as my take on the format for people who have played it a lot.
LESSONS
- There are a lot of two-drops and you get heavily punished for not having enough of them.
- There are very few bomb rares, and the ones that do exist don't completely shift the context of how someone is winning a game whenever they're played (with the exception of Hexdrinker, which still requires a huge mana investment over multiple turns). They're just normal cards that are very good at what they do.
- Hexdrinker is the best card in the set.
- Fixing underperforms, with the exception of Springbloom Druid in sealed, and Arcum's Astrolabe. Three mana and/or a card is too high a commitment for the other fixing to be worth it.
- The snow lands are good, especially in sealed, but there is a significant trade-off in card quality that comes with picking a snow land over a solid playable to enable a snow payoff in draft.
- White is the worst color in both draft and sealed. The other four colors are all fairly close together, though red is worse than the other three in sealed.
- Archetypes that rely on high picks to succeed underperform in draft, while archetypes that can take key cards around picks 5-7 overperform.
- Slivers are bad.
- Cards that overperform include: Answered Prayers (W, C); Irregular Cohort (W, C); Faerie Seer (U, C); Phantasmal Form (U, C); Changeling Outcast (B, C); Ninja of the New Moon (B, C); Sling-Gang Lieutenant (B, U); Smiting Helix (B, U); Alpine Guide (R, U); Bladeback Sliver (R, C); Igneous Elemental (R, C); Ore-Scale Guardian (R, U); Conifer Wurm (G, U); Murasa Behemoth (G, C); Rime Tender (G, C); Soulherder (WU, U); Arcum's Astrolabe (Artifact, C)
- Cards that underperform include: King of the Pride (W, U); Lancer Sliver (W, C); Valiant Changeling (W, U); Crypt Rats (B, U); Gluttonous Slug (B, C); Hollowhead Sliver (R, U); Krosan Tusker (G, C); Etchings of the Chosen (WB, U); Fountain of Ichor (Artifact, C); Talisman cycle (Artifact, U)
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SEALED RANKINGS
1. UGx Snow/Ramp - I am much higher on this archetype in sealed than I am in draft. The format is slower and weaker to UG's tempo/ramp plan, and the moving parts that need to come together - snow lands, good enough mana to splash, the threat base, removal - are much more likely to do so. I like this deck going heavier on G than U. This is the first place I'm trying to build if I see some of the common glue cards: Arcum's Astrolabe, Rime Tender, Springbloom Druid, Mother Bear, and Savage Swipe. Man-o-War and String of Disappearances are great blue commons I'll always play here. If I have the fixing I'll look to splash for good threats or removal, but I don't tend to splash heavily as poor mana can be very punishing. Not having a lot of removal is okay because UG is good at getting games to a point where you're beating down with Conifer Wurm or Murasa Behemoth and they don't have a threat that you need to remove from the board.
2. UB Ninjas - In draft this deck wants high quantities of one-drops and Ninjas, but in sealed you can get away with a looser tempo plan. Fallen Shinobi is super pushed, and Mist-Syndicate Naga and Silent Infiltrator punish stumbles while gaining card advantage. The common glue cards tend to work well together, and Moonblade Shinobi and Ninja of the New Moon can help win in a lot of situations. If I'm not on Gx Ramp, I want to be on Ninjas, as I think these two are a step above the other archetypes in sealed.
3. GW Creaturefall - GW lines up in a way where it can use some of the better white cards (Splicer's Skill, Recruit the Worthy) to fill out a coherent game plan. It curves out extremely well and has some removal and reach to support those curve-outs. Green and white have several bomb rares (Crashing Footfalls, Hexdrinker, Serra, Winds of Abandon, Deep-Forest Hermit) that play well with the big creature aggro plan.
PLAYABLE BUT UNEXCITING
4. RG Aggro - It's hard to build the super-synergistic RG decks that are possible in draft so this often looks similar to UG's ramp/tempo/splashes plan, but UG tends to have better curves when people are going big. I'm still happy with it if UG doesn't line up or if there are a lot of strong red cards in my pool.
5. BG Midrange - The lack of fliers is a big issue for me in Sealed. Rotwidow Pack is a great way to close in board stalls, but aside from that you're a not-super-effective midrange deck that dies to Answered Prayers with your opponent at 5. The upside is that black and green are the two best colors in terms of raw card quality, and if I have a good curve topped off by a lot of proactive (Rotwidow Pack, Feaster of Fools. Webweaver Changeling, Twin-Silk Spider) and reactive (high-quality removal) answers to fliers I'm happy to play BG. It just lines up less often than the color pairs above it because you need to open a generally good deck and solve the inherent issue of being weak to a common type of threat.
6. BR Aggro - Sacrifice and Goblins are both subthemes here, and some BR decks will lean more toward one than the other. Some of them are two-card synergies between reasonably powerful commons, or one uncommon that plays well with the archetype as a whole, so they're still likely to be there if in smaller numbers than draft. I want the end result to be an aggressive deck that can kill the opponent while ignoring some of its defenses.
DECKS I WOULD RATHER NOT END UP ON
7. UR Spells - UR is very synergistic, and works better in draft, where it's more likely to pick up multiple copies of Eyekite and Spinehorn Minotaur. The tools exist, but it would take a lot for a good UR deck to line up. It still has a lot of synergy when it does line up, my issue with it is just being in this weird lane where it might not have the depth to cut cards like Fists of Flame but can't be a dedicated aggro deck either.
8. WU Blink - This deck can theoretically grind with Soulherder and piles of built-in tempo and card advantage. That doesn't actually win games when you don't have access to reach and your opponents have consistent access to two-drops, and the games where you curve Soulherder into Irregular Cohort and just win are much less common than the ones where you play a pile of 2/2s and 3/4s with marginally relevant ETB effects and you lose because you're opponent's threats have relevant bodies and you're not pressuring them at all. I have UW above RW because it has similar synergy advantages but also has ways to get mileage out of white commons like Trustworthy Scout that are filler but not truly awful, while RW has to play some otherwise bad cards for synergy purposes.
9. RW Slivers - The problem with Slivers is that it's hard to get mileage out of the payoffs, and like UW's ETB effect threats the Slivers' bodies are really bad on rate. Hollowhead Sliver and Lancer Sliver are poorly positioned in a format when the opponent can easily play several cards on curve to stabilize, Trying to kill your opponent with a plan that gets blown up by removal when there's so much cheap removal available isn't the best idea either. I'm willing to consider this if I have specifically Cloudshredder Sliver, which is the main reason it's ranked above WB, but even then I still want a lot of payoffs (Slivers) and enablers (Slivers count here too as do Changelings) to consider red and white, the two colors with the lowest card quality, over an archetype where I don't have to play 2 mana 3/1s, or 3 mana 2/2s with first strike.
10. WB Midrange - WB's theme is supposed to be changeling, but there aren't enough Sliver payoffs, King of the Pride is borderline unplayable, and there aren't enough other payoffs to make WB Changelings work consistently. An aggressive color pair without synergy isn't a place I generally want to be, so WB usually has to be more controlling and I've rarely seen 22 good WB cards line up in sealed, without the advantage WB has in draft of being able to reliably wheel cards like Wall of One Thousand Cuts that work well with a control plan.
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DRAFT RANKINGS
FAVORITES
1. UB Ninjas - I haven't quite figured out how to make this deck work and I get the sense that I need a lot more practice to draft it well. The lists I've been most interested in have 5-6 copies of Faerie Seer and Changeling Outcast and lack bombs, which makes me think UB might want to prioritize the one-drops over bombs even early in pack one. Regardless of my personal experience piloting UB, I've seen it do well a lot. Ninjutsu and unblockable creatures give UB the tools to outmaneuver other aggro decks while still going under slower decks.
2. RG Aggro - I originally thought about this as a mediocre ramp deck, but when Ari Lax called it RG Aggro it clicked that you can just beat your opponent up with Treetop Ambusher or curve into Igneous Elemental, Conifer Wurm, Murasa Behemoth, Ore-Scale Guardian, or Excavating Anurid, which are all big common/uncommon threats I'm very happy to have here. If I see a Guardian mid-late pack one and green looks open, I'll consider just veering hard down this lane. I've forced this deck a few times and it's worked out well.
3. BR Aggro - After playing against a bunch of synergistic BR decks, I think it's right to weigh the synergies more heavily than I want to. BR is super aggressive but has a lot of ways to close and take advantage of the sacrifice and Goblin themes. Without doing that, it's just a medium aggressive deck that probably gets run over by a bigger medium aggressive deck like GW.
4. BG Midrange - High card quality and having the tools to grind out ground aggression become more important in draft, while the value of fliers goes down. This is all good news for BG. Without having to answer fliers as much, I'm fine taking a higher-quality card over Twin-Silk Spider. I'm looking to build a pile of good cards that curve well into each other, as there isn't a lot of inherent synergy here.
PLAYABLE BUT UNEXCITING
5. UG Ramp/Snow - A lot of the reasons I love UG in sealed fall apart in draft. Many of the moving parts that need to come together (Astrolabe, Rime Tender, Mother Bear, Conifer Wurm, Abominable Treefolk, Springbloom Druid, splashable removal) are high-ish picks. This issue is compounded by needing to take snow lands mid-pack or risk not having enough ways to make your snow payoffs work out. The aggressive archetypes tend to be more aggressive in draft, so you'll lose to curve-outs more, and again this is compounded because UG needs to take snow lands so it doesn't get as much of a bump in quality as other color pairs. It has a very high ceiling if it's open but it also has a very low floor if it's not, and I have had a difficult time learning how to balance the additional layers the snow lands add while drafting it.
6. GW Creaturefall - GW has a big advantage of higher creature quality in sealed, and in draft there are more decks like synergy-based Ninjas that can get around it. The curve-outs are still there and still better than what most other decks can do on turns 2-5, but it isn't very grindy. If I get a great white rare early I'll heavily consider this as an option, and it's a reasonable aggressive deck if the threats line up.
7. UR Spells - When UR lines up it can be truly scary. I watched Daniel Goetschel kill someone on turn 5 with Spinehorn Minotaur and Fists of Flame in Seattle. Generally, though, it's super synergistic and it's hard to salvage if it doesn't line up well so I want to be careful before I commit to it (while keeping in mind that I might not get the key synergies unless I commit early-ish).
DECKS I WOULD RATHER NOT END UP ON
8. WB Midrange - I drafted WB in both the top 8 of the MCQ and my first pod on day 2 in Seattle. As the format goes on I'm more convinced that it's not a good direction to go and the three decks I beat across those two drafts (RW Slivers, UG Snow with no splash, and GW without a lot of pressure or evasion) just didn't line up well against what I was doing. I like a lot of the WB commons in a control shell so it's hard to go really wrong with WB if it's open, but this is the color pair you jump into so you can cross your fingers for a 2-1 with what would otherwise have been a trainwreck, not the color pair you draft because you want a shot at 3-0.
9. UW Blink - If it's open and you can get some strong cards like Soulherder and Man-o'-War, it could be great. I haven't seen a lot of blink enablers come around in my drafts, though, aside from Ephemerate. I'm not happy to be on this archetype and would need to see multiple great UW cards early to stick with it.
10. RW Slivers - I don't think this deck is a good direction to go if it's completely open with 24 packs' worth of Slivers to work with. There are just so many better things you could be doing in the average draft than curving Enduring Sliver into Lavabelly Sliver. You're still an aggro deck with a reasonable curve, but I don't want to play objectively worse cards than other people.
