The thing about R/W, though, is that you Just. It’s no secret that two-drops are good in this format. However, the deck employs two principles that are important to a successful R/W draft which are easy to miss. With only 11 creatures (12 including the Conqueror’s Pledge I never cast) the deck looks fairly unassuming. Take a look at this recent draft deck, which didn’t drop a game: I’m sure you all have an idea of what a “good” R/W deck looks like, Sanctifiers, Skyfishers, and Shortcutters (oh my!), but something particularly notable about Boros is often the decks can be unassuming the sum of the cards is much better than each individually. While eight drafts is a small sample size certainly prone to variance, both my success and the success of others with R/W is worthy of discussion.
I began to keep track of how often drafting Boros would lead me to victory, and after a week and a half of recording my finishes, the results are compelling: out of eight times drafting R/W, six of them led to 8-4 wins, with one of the other two losing in the finals. I first noticed this trend when Jonathon Loucks mentioned how he kept winning 8-4s with R/W early last week, then, upon reminiscing, realized that the same was true for me. However, an archetype which is deep, seems to be consistently open, and powerful offensively while having a good mix of removal and tricks is Boros. Forcing in a format where speed is everything and the average card quality has such a steep drop-off is a suicidal choice.
That’s not to say that I won’t draft other archetypes analogous to what I just said, I’ll draft just about anything if it’s open. So, how does this all tie into drafting R/W? R/W (Boros) is one of the best and simultaneously underrated draft combinations in the format, and I have found tremendous success by drafting it whenever possible. In a battle of having a consistent curve, the aspect you can control is not your ability to directly draw your curve, which is governed by the fickle deity of the draw step, but to build a curve during the drafting process that will give you the best chance to curve out. The skill in Zendikar lies less in the play (though I think people underestimate how much playskill is necessary if the game becomes interactive) and more in the drafting process. Sure, Mostodon was no Rakeclaw Gargantuan, but it would fill the same slot without a significant drop-off in power. The games took enough time to develop that you had more time for skill to directly impact each game (assuming you drew the right colors, of course), and so slightly worse cards could hold roughly the same value. In Shards of Alara, you could pass on a Cavern Thoctar to take a chance on another card because you knew that a similar fatty would be just a few packs around the corner. In a slower format, you can afford to bungle some picks. While that statement is partially true, a quicker format puts the skill emphasis not on play, but on drafting. While initially popular, a lot of players have began to bemoan its speed, saying games are over too quick and, as a result, there is a smaller chance for skill to impact each game.
Zendikar is an extremely fast draft format.
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