Hi! I'm Beusapu again! So, with the
color primers finished, we're gonna post here archetype guides, with
information about how to draft a deck, when to do it, and which are the best
cards. For my article i've chosen my favorite archetype: GW Heroic.
GW heroic is, in my opinion, the best heroic deck. UW is
faster and more all-in, and RW has better heroic enablers, but being green
gives us the best creatures.
A heroic deck should have, more or less, 14 or 15 creatures.
Counting we have 17 lands, that leaves us with 7 spots for heroic tricks, which
is a lot (and we also have bestow creatures!).
DECK BREAKDOWN:
The heroic guys:
We have the best heroes at common, really big creatures.
Wingsteed Rider is awesome, probably the best of them. It's easy to play this
on turn 3, and be attacking for 4 or 5 on the air next turn. Another great hero
is Staunch-Hearted Hero. It's a bit slower than Rider, and it doesn't have
evasion, but this guy will grow very fast, usually being a 6/6 on turn 5.
At uncommon, we get the all-star Centaur Battlemaster. Play
him on turn 5, swing for 6 (at least) next turn. One of the best options, and a
very high pick. White has Fabled Hero and Phalanx Leader. The first is good if
we have cheap or cantrip auras, while the second gets much better with more
creatures.
The heroic enablers:
To trigger heroic, we have a lot of auras. The bestow nymphs
are great. Leafcrown Dryad is obviously good, but her white sister, Observant
Alseid, is epic. There's nothing better than vigilance when you have a 5/5
flying creature, and this girl is just "kill me or lose".
Chosen by Heliod is also great. An aura that draws and
triggers heroic is great value. We also have two cool uncommon tricks:
Dauntless Onslaught and Warrior's Lesson. The first one can be a 3x1 or even a
4x1, while the other is almost a green Ancestral Recall!
The Support:
Not all our deck can be heros and heroic enablers, and this
is the part where green shines more than blue. White gives us good removal, and
green good beaters. Nessian Asp and Nessian Hunter are very good. Setessan
Griffin, a card that's usually bad, becomes really good in GW colors, being a
5/4 flier on its own.
At uncommon we get the most awesome creature we could get:
Chronicler of Heros. A 3/3 for 3 is already good, but when it draws a card (and
we have heroic and monstrosity for that) it's just one of the best. Also, it's
a very good way to see if someone else is drafting the archetype.
SPLASHING:
Theros is a set where you can easily splash, and blue is the
best option. We get tempo removal (Griptide and Voyage's End), some great
uncommon (like Horizon Chimera), and a lot of evasion: The blue nymph, and
Aqueous Form.
DRAFTING THE DECK:
This deck is quite easy to draft. Try to get all copies you
can of the best heros first, since having a deck with a bunch of heroic
enablers and no heros is lame. Centaur Battlemaster can be picked over other
good cards if you want to go heroic. Try to get the two bestow dryads, they are
really good, and obviously, get the good cards green and white have: Divine
Verdict, Last Breath, Nessian Asp…
We also have the best enchantment removal, perfectly
maindeckable.
You want to have a low curve, and mana fixing like Voyaging
Satyr and Nylea's Presence, to play the Wingsteed Riders on turn 2.
Splashing blue is also easy, if you have one or two
Unicorns, and see blue cards passing, don't doubt to get them.
Another good thing is that there are a lot of rare bombs we
can first pick, and that work very well with the deck, like Boon Satyr,
Celestial Archon, Anthoussa Setessan Hero, or Mistcutter Hydra, and they all
work very well in the deck.
Well, i
hope this helped you, and until next time, have fun drafting!!!
-Beusapu
A small mistake: when i say "to play the Wingsteed Riders on turn 2", i mean turn 3.
ReplyDeletealso fabled hero is a rare. and after many drafts of white i have never played last breath. it does not hit enough in this format to be considered good.
ReplyDeleteLast breath is a very good card. It hits early creatures, it stops heros before they become a threat (or in response, before they get big). I've played it a lot, and it does a lot of work.
ReplyDeleteThis set doesn't have a lot of removal, and it's generally bad and slow removal. Green only has Time to Feed (and the flying one), and this card helps a lot to the deck. It clears blockers to make path for the heros, and many times the opponent leaves a small guy (like the annoying Scorpion) to block our creatures.
It does even trigger Staunch-Hearted and Wingsteed Rider, if you need it.
i cannot support a card that misses 90% of the creature base. this card helps your opponents and does nothing to help you. Maybe the one guy in their entire deck this can hit si annoying then go around it. This is why g/w heroic do not work, they have no playable removal. Blue gives the heroic archtype better removal and better enablers. i have done 50+ drafts and i have yet to even want to consider taking a last breath, much less actually decking the card.
ReplyDeleteDo not work???
ReplyDeleteThe deck DOES a lot of work. Brick and I are planning on posting some sample decklists. I've drafted this deck a bunch of times (heh, maybe not 50, i don't have all that free time, but at least 10) and it is really good
As i said, UW is much more all-in, but the creature base is often bad and low, and you have to play filler or vanilla creatures, or you won't have enough creatures. (i'm not saying it's a bad deck either, today we'll post an article about it, but it's not true it's a better strategy cause the removal is better, when it relies on only 3 cards to be heroic).
For last breath, it hits much more than the 10% of the creature base, and it definitelly doesn't help the opponents. Theros is a set where there can be fast aggro decks, there are heros, and there are bestow cards. This works both defensivelly (a la Pharika's Curse, but in a decent color) and offensivelly. The deck suffers a lot to the Sedge Scorpion and Baleful Eidolon, both common, and it can be stopped by Coastline Chimera.
Sure, it's not a rare bomb or a high pick, but it's an utility card and it's necessary. It's not the awfully useless card you seem to think it is.
without last breath cause it is utterly unplayable. white's removal is basically the same as it is with white/blue or red or black for that matter. what does green offer us? zero removal, but allot of heroic enablers and 2 more heroic guys. maybe the g/w version had more heroic people but green gives us nothing in the line of removal hence why i like the other color heroic combos better except black. black gives us removal but no enablers. I do not mean to say that green/white is the worst archtype of heroics, just not the best.I think green comes in 3rd because it obviously better then black but both blue and red bring more to the table.
ReplyDeleteWell, first, saying "last breath is utterly terrible" without giving any fact or anything doesn't make sense. If you want to tell a card is bad, give reasons. I've given reasons of why i like it. If you're gonna keep making verdicts without explaining anything, just like if you had the absolute truth, then this won't even be a debate.
ReplyDeleteOn another side, and i've drafted UW, GW, RW and UG heroic, the reason i like GW is that, not only you have more heros and some better tricks. You have the raw power of the green commons. Where blue gave you Griptide or Voyage's End, green has Nessian Asp and other efficient common drops.
Staying only heroic, like UW does, is kinda dangerous, much more difficult to draft succesfully (and a disaster when someone else tries to do the same as you), and easier to disrupt. GW heroic is an aggro deck that takes a lot of advantage of the heroic+aura guys, but it can also win with a big dumb beater.
If you look at the article or at any of my comments, i haven't said at any moment GW heroic is the best heroic, cause, unlike constructed, in limited there isn't an universal list for an archetype, so it depends on every draft. But GW can be a good deck without getting many heros or enablers, while UW probably isn't. That's why i meant when i said "UW is more all-in".
We're posting all the best heroic archetypes soon, but, as you'll understand, we can't post them all at the same time. And we didn't post GW first because we thought it was the best.