(upbeat music) - Hi everyone. This is Sam Black with Drafting Archetypes. And today we're going to be discussing white black in Blumborough. As always, the notes are available to follow along at patreon.com/draftingarchotypes. And once again, this podcast episode is sponsored by Untapped. Untapped has entered the limited data arena with what I consider a pretty strong offering. It has most of the stats that you'd be used to seeing with a lot of options about how to present the layout. You can look at traditional spreadsheets or you can look at graphic views organized by convenient data-generated tier lists and you can even set which data you want it to base the tier lists on. You can view recent trophy decks and filter the trophy decks in a variety of fun new ways such as by number of rares and presence of certain cards or accommodations of cards. So I've been personally, I was involved in consulting regarding how some of this stuff should look and what features it should include. And I've switched to using it for a lot of my data studying for both my personal drafting and podcast preparation. So if you're interested in data, I recommend checking it out. I think they offer both freely available stats that cover all the most important stuff and most things you would need as well as premium offerings that give you access to a few extra features and a little bit of extra data. So check out Untapped's step into limited data presentation in addition to their constructed offerings. So, what that understood, White Black is according to Untapped. The third most played and fourth most winning archetype. It's pretty similar to the other top performing archetypes. It's very much in the tier of successful archetypes. Widely drafted performs well. The life gain theme in White Black is very much real, very supported. This is not a trap. You should take things that gain life and take things that pay you for having your life total change. They're good. The synergies are deep readily available. It's a real thing that's going on. I say this because in most sets, there end up being some limited themes that don't really get there, where it presents this thing that you might want to chase and it will rarely or never be worth it. In almost all cases, White Black in this format, I think will want to have some amount of synergy in the life changing mechanics. And I think a lot of the best White Blackjacks will go heavily into that though. There is a range of how much you're doing that versus how much you're doing other stuff. Relatedly, Life Creed Duo, the one in a white one to bird bat that gains a life when another creature enters the battlefield under your control, is the top performing common in the archetype. It is the common that I'm drafting most highly once I know that I'm in White Black. And I'm basically just always taking it over all the other commons because it gets better in multiples rather than worse because as you have more of them, you can expect to have them in your games and more highly prioritize the payoffs for gaining life, knowing that you'll have the best enabler so they're going to work well. The only exception would be if I feel like I'm in a spot where my deck is just too low impact in total and I need a higher impact card or if we're late in the draft and I know that for some reason the life gain thing isn't coming together. It's not what it acts about. I could see taking a card that's more in line with my deck is about, but in like pack one and two, if I know that I'm White Black, I'm probably taking Life Creed Duo over any other common. Starscape Cleric and Moonstone Hunter, those are Black Uncommons. Starscape Cleric is one in a black for a two one flyer that can't block non-fliers and you can spend two in a black extra to offspring it and make a one one copy of it. And Moonstone Hunter is the one three flying death touch that pumps your bats and gives them death touch when you gain life. Those are the top common or uncommon payoffs for gaining life. They perform even better than Life Creed Duo. They both are much better than more Life Creed Duo as you have, but they should both be prioritized pretty highly. I'm gonna be talking about a lot of individual cards 'cause I think that the broad strokes about what the deck is looking for are pretty straightforward 'cause you're just doing the thing that it says that you're doing. So Intrepid Rabbit is notable because it's really not in line with like anything that deck is doing in terms of it doesn't gain life, it doesn't care about gaining life. It doesn't fit what the deck's doing in any particularly direct way, but it's just a strong enough card that you should prioritize it anyway. It's still gonna be one of the top performing comments. For most people, I think that that is what they would naturally do. They would say, I know Intrepid Rabbit's good either because of the data or because it's been good for me. It's in this pack, so I'm going to take it. It's just for other people like me who maybe go a little too far on pursuing synergies and might ignore Intrepid Rabbit. I want to be sure to note, nope, it's really good. You should put it in your deck. Also, as someone who is not very into wind drapes and cards that bear a passing resemblance to wind drapes, I'm not very naturally inclined toward cards like Moonrise, Cleric, and Starlet, Soothsayer. Moonrise, Cleric is the white-black hybrid, white-black hybrid one, two-three flyer that gains life when it attacks, and Starlet, Soothsayer is the two and a black two-two that surveils the end of your turn if your life total has changed. These two cards are actually not similar. I'm, my natural inclination is right both of them off, but the third toughness on Moonrise, Cleric, is a very big deal. Moonrise, Cleric actually performs quite well, while Starlet, Soothsayer performs very poorly. Notably, there's a big difference between dying and not dying to savor, but also just like being able to block assorted two-power two drops is very important. And in general, I think that you're more hungry for a card that gains you life to trigger your other stuff than a relatively low impact trigger for gaining life. So do prioritize the two-three flyer, do not prioritize the two-two flyer is my takeaway from the data there and makes total sense to me. Star charter and wax-wayne witness are an uncommon and common, respectively, that both cost three and a white. Star charter is a three-one flyer. Wax-wayne witnesses a two-four flyer of vigilance. Star charter, at the end of your turn, if you've gained life, you look at the top some cards in your deck and put a creature from them in your hand with some condition about the number three and wax-wayne witness gets plus one power whenever you gain or lose life. They're both solid cards in the archetype. It's like you will generally play them once you've drafted them, but you should not take them very early or see them as a reason to move into the archetype. They both perform fine. They are reasonable payoffs for having the setup cards, but they're not outstanding cards themselves. Those are kind of the quick hits on how some cards that might not be obvious perform with just a bit of my own opinion thrown in. Now I wanna talk about cards that perform poorly, but that I think have a place in your deck depending on how it's constructed. This is not a segment that I've done before, at least not frequently, but because this set has kind of a lot of these weird niche build-arounds and cards that I kind of believe in, despite the fact that they generally have bad stats. I wanna try to talk about some of the cards in that space that I like and how I would try to use them. So in general, all the cards that perform poorly are cards that don't necessarily work well in a streamlined, aggressive version of whatever deck you have. Those are the simplest decks to draft in the format and perform pretty well. They are not the only effective decks in the format. I have actually had a decent amount of success with some of the slower build-arounds in the format. I do think they can work. So some of the cards that I like despite their stats and will continue to play when it seems appropriate and draft around when the opportunity presents itself, but which I think that you need to be careful about when you include. Hazel's Nocturne, Formanna Instant, return up to creatures from your graveyard to your hand, gain two life, opponent loses two life. This is on the slower side and it has some bad matchups. Certain opponents will not be interested in trying to put your creatures in your graveyard all that often. So this is better if you're more defensive, better if your bombs are creatures and better if you're playing cards that put cards directly into your graveyard, like Daggerfang Duo and Direcite. Daggerfang Duo being the 3-2 Death Touch that mills two on ETB if you want, and Direcite being the three mana surveils who draw two lose two life. Neither of those cards are generally very good in White Black, but depending on what kind of graveyard synergies and stuff you end up having, can potentially be playable if unexciting. If you end up in that direction, Hazel's Nocturne's better. And again, way, way, way better if you have like, you know, must answer bomb rare type creatures. Not all that great if your creatures are all generally about as good as each other and you could just play another creature instead. Builder's Talent. This is a card that you always need to build around if you're going to play it. It is a very, very high synergy card with pretty high payoffs, but it is tricky 'cause you do need to have a lot of non-creature permanence and non-creature, like there aren't that many non-creature permanence that you generically want to play. The most important is carrot cake because it's the generically best and it helps you dig to find your other non-creature permanence and it naturally puts itself in your graveyard so that you can use the third chapter of Builder's Talent as compared to something like banishing light, which is nice to trigger a Builder's Talent and get a counter, but it's pretty rare you're going to be able to use a Builder's Talent to get it back. So you're going to want something else that's more reliably going to be able to let you use the final chapter on Builder's Talent is the final chapter on Builder's Talent is a very important part of the package that it's offering. So basically, you almost need some number of carrot cakes to get you into trying to do Builder's Talent and then once you have that, you can support it with other cards like Fountainport Bell, assorted talents, banishing light, the Share Pot. Notably, the Share Pot is even more powerful with the Builder's Talent than a carrot cake in terms of the strength of the synergy. However, Share Pot is a bad card and carrot cake is a good card. So you don't really want to be trying to build your Builder's Talent deck entirely around Share Pot's because Share Pot's not really better in multiples because it's too expensive to use and you don't want to have a whole bunch of cards that you don't want to draw unless you have your Builder's Talent unless you have multiple Builder's talents. So what you want is some carrot cakes to get you started, have a strong foundation and then you can support with your Share Pot's, your banishing lights, your Fountainport Bells, your random on-color talents, your honored heirlooms, if you have a lot of carrot cakes to give you the tokens to use the honored heirlooms, stuff like that. I think that you generally should not draft Builder's Talent if you have fewer than one carrot cakes per pack you've already seen in the draft. So like if it's pack three, I'd want to have two or three other carrot cakes depending on how far into pack three. If it's pack two, I'd want to have one or two. If it's the beginning of pack one, I'd want to have zero carrot cakes as acceptable. If it's toward the end of pack one, I'd want to have one carrot cake if I'm going to take a Builders Talent. You know, if you have an unusually high number of like Fountainport Bells and banishing lights or something and a Share Pot or believe you'll like table a Share Pot or whatever, you could do it, but really pay attention to carrot cakes specifically for Builders Talent. Up next, Sinister Monolith. This is three in a black artifact at the beginning of combat during your opponent for one. You can tap and sack as a sorcery to draw two cards. This is good in defensive decks that are not great at ending the game and have a lot of game life triggers. It's not good when your deck just like has big creatures that are going to end the game anyway, and it doesn't matter if your opponent has been losing one life, and it's not good if you don't care about the one life you're gaining. But if you're generally set up to play a defensive game where gaining a life is going to meaningfully buy you time and meaningfully trigger your cards, maybe you'll sack this to your cards at some point, maybe not. But if you're using all the parts of this, it's okay. But if you're not already very good at defending yourself, then playing a format of permanent that doesn't stop your opponent from attacking you isn't great. If you're going to be behind trying to play creatures to stabilize, this won't do that. So you need to make sure that you have a pretty robust curve of creatures to be playing to have like a board established before you cast this. But in the right deck, I do think that what it offers is pretty good. Heirloom Epic. Similar to Sinister Monolith in terms of the setup that it wants kind of, it's better with cheap cards. It's better when you have a lot of early creatures. The difference is it matters a lot more how many tokens you have. I've had really good experiences with Heirloom Epic. If my deck has a lot of one ones and one twos and O twos and stuff like that. Heirloom Epic plays really, really well in decks with lots of carrot cakes and life creed duos and head of the homesteads. But if you either aren't making a lot of tokens or you're very committed to attacking with your tokens and not necessarily set up to play a long grindy game, you do want to have like, if all you're doing is drawing into more aggressive creatures with your Heirloom Epic, you should probably be prioritizing trying to get damage with your creatures. And then as far as payoffs for having those creatures, you'd rather have something like a rabbit response. But if your deck is a mix of like removal and tokens and you can play a grindy game, I mentioned earlier that Builders Town and Heirloom Epic can play well together if you have a bunch of carrot cakes. Heirloom Epic can work really well in some of those decks. It does, this is another card that has really bad stats but that I've had a good amount of success with when you play with it correctly. Those are the not super highly performing cards that I thought like, you know, even knowing this card has bad stats, I'm going to play it again kind of often. So yeah, moving on. I think that White Black structurally is positioned such that it's reasonable to splash. Like you're generally playing a bit of a longer game since you have like the life gain and you're not the fastest at closing and you're not directly trying to race. Despite the fact that it's not hard to build it with the ability to splash, I don't think it's all that common that you actually want to splash. Your synergies are very tightly constrained to your colors and you kind of have access to everything you would want because you can get card advantage pretty easily. You can get removal. The creatures that you want are the creatures that are in White and Black. There aren't a lot of creatures from other colors that you would be really excited about. The cards that are most commonly and successfully splashed according to the data that I could find are gold rares like Vren, the blue-black rat rare and Castrol, the white-blue bird rare. The reason that it's gold cards then I'm getting splashed most often is fewer other people want them and a lot of the best rares are double-pip. So like the seasons, for example, all cost two mana of their color. So a lot of the strong rares aren't splashable and you're really not looking to splash or removal spell, like a common removal spell in this archetype. That'd be very weird since you should generally be able to find better options in White and Black. So for the most part, you're not going to be splashing in White Black. But if White Black's not very open, you might want to pivot into a third color. And there, I think it's worth knowing that this deck can pretty cleanly pivot into Abzan with some combination of food, squirrel, life gain, tokens, synergies. In fact, right before recording this podcast, I drafted such an Abzan deck. I'm in the middle of that run now. Notably, Barkform Harvester. My favorite's changeling and most overrated card in this set has truly heinous stats in White Black. And I don't even think it's good in White Black. Not a bold claim. I don't think White Black is very good at decking itself. But I will take Barkform Harvester over cards that I don't care about late in pack one, to position myself for a possible Abzan pivot because if I end up with multiple cash grabs, the one in a green mill four that puts a permanent from on the mill cards in your hand and makes a food if you have or choose from it a squirrel, then I do want Barkform Harvester. And I potentially want it quite a bit if I have multiple cash grabs. So in general, you should not draft or play Barkform Harvester in White Black, but if you are inclined to position yourself to pivot into a grindy Abzan deck, then you might wanna think about taking it speculatively just in case that happens. There are certainly a wide variety of balances of the colors in Abzan and focus on the respective synergies that you can successfully include or integrate with each other. All of the themes in these two color pairs play pretty well together. And there are a lot of very strong cross-energies. Most specifically, the interaction between any forage card and carrot cake is very, very good. Carrot cake is a cheap food that pays you to sacrifice it. And the forage cards are all looking for food to sacrifice. So I think carrot cake is kind of the best bridge in these three colors and definitely, like I mentioned that like Creed Duo is the common that I'm gonna value most highly in black white, but if I'm Abzan instead of black white, then I'm value in carrot cake more highly than life creed duo though I still like life creed duo. So you wanna pay attention to where, like how likely you think the pivots are where you're gonna end up, but I'm often asked about, you know, especially in this format where finding the open lane is so important and where it can be very easy for people to feel like they're trapped in their archetype as they start to realize that it might not be as open as they want it. I think it's very important to know about how to get off of the sinking ship and find an appropriate life raft. And green is the color that I'm going to be most hoping to move into from white black if possible. Though I think blue is reasonable and red is possible in a pinch if it's open. And that covers it. So I am now going to turn it over to Twitch chat for follow up questions. For I do that, I do wanna thank the newest patron at patreon.com/draftingarchitects. So Owen, thank you very much for the support. And if anyone else would like to support draftingarchitects, be sure to check out patreon.com/draftingarchitects for the full list of benefits and details about how to do that. All right, so first question, in white black, how hard, if at all, do you try for loss of life triggers, dire sight, stargaze, and nocturnal hunger, et cetera? I maybe pay a little bit less attention to it than I should because life loss does trigger most of the stuff that life gain cares about. But for obvious reasons, like having more life gain is good and having more life loss is bad. And in general, life going up is more likely to be good for you than life going down. I think dire sight is a playable card here in some versions of the deck, like in the more defensive higher removal count versions, especially with more life gain. But like to enable the life loss stuff, you kinda need life gain stuff or you're just killing yourself. And once you have the life gain stuff, you're kind of already there on supporting the other cards, which I guess is why it's like hardest to try to use the life loss stuff as enablers. I think like nocturnal hunger is very good, but again, mostly just because the downside doesn't matter very much if you have a lot of life gain to support it and like I've seen builds of white black that use the gerbil very well with mostly nocturnal hunger and crumb and get it. But there are a few other gift cards that you can play that work well there. So like it's nice to be able to get some triggers from losing life, but I think that because playing a lot of that is so dependent on having a lot of the life gain stuff, you can kind of safely shortcut to, I'm trying to prioritize ways to gain life and then just be aware that the life loss stuff can trigger your things while you're playing but don't really draft very differently based on it. Why does lunar convocation have a negative improvement when drawn? It has a negative improvement when drawn because it doesn't perform well. It's interesting specifically that it has a negative improvement when drawn rather than just a low win rate because in general cards that perform well in long games are morally, they have a positive improvement when drawn. But the reason that it doesn't have a very good win rate is the format in general is pretty fast and spending mana to lose life, spending both mana and life for cards is hard to get away with. It's not easy to set up deck and game state where you can afford to do that. And it's also just the kind of card being anything other than a directly aggressive card that is going to perform poorly in aggregate stats even if it does have some potential with the right support. But for the most part, it is a tricky card to use well and not very powerful. Does the black hand disruption package really fit into white black? Well, usually no. So that the hand disruption package is builders, or I mean bandits talent, the one mana target player exiles a card with flashback and the target player discards to surveil, to if you control our rats. That package doesn't perform very well in general and doesn't really have synergies with what white black is trying to do. You should basically ignore those cards. I think like bandits talent is like an okay card if you need a playable, especially if you have like builders talent and you're looking for more non-creature permanence or whatever, but all of those cards independently have pretty weak stats and trying to play a bunch of them to improve them, I think is not a very effective strategy. Is this archetype a non-starter if you manage to see zero carrot cakes? No, life creed duo is a lot more important than carrot cakes to this archetype. The carrot cakes are more important to pivots and to supporting some of the more narrow cards, but no matter how many carrot cakes I have or where in the draft we are or whatever, I would rather have a life creed duo than a carrot cake if I'm like a standard white black deck with a bunch of flyers and life gain triggers and stuff. It's closer to a non-starter if you don't see life creed duos than if you don't see carrot cakes, but there are certainly enough other ways to gain life that you can make it work without either. How do you like the double black thought sees in durable gift decks? Cruelclaws, heist, black, black, look at your opponent's hand, make them just cart a card. You can gift them a card and if you do, then when you make them just cart a card, you can use it. This card has very bad stats. I haven't played with it. If you have some gerbils, I'd be fine trying it out. I don't think it's like very far from being good. Like, it's not surprising to me that it has bad stats because like, I think it's a bad card, but you know, only barely a bad card, right? Like, if it cost one mana, it would be a great card. So yeah, I think if you have synergies with it, it's fine to put it in your deck. Given life creed duos, the most important card is this the small number of decks in the format interested in do drop cure. I wouldn't imagine so just because, like, that might be relevant in best of three or if you have a lot of cash grabs. But for the same reason that Hazel's Nocturne isn't generally great, I would just be worried that not enough of my opponents are going to be able to kill my life creed duos. Or, you know, if I play a life creed duo and they kill it and then they don't kill another thing that, like, I could do drop cure back. Then, like, I end up spending three mana for it. Duo, but, like, maybe after trying to wait to, like, get more value out of it, it's very awkward. So, in general, I would not be looking to put do drop cure in my white black decks. Do drop cure is the three mana put multiple small preachers from your graveyard in the battlefield. If they can't kill your life creed duos, aren't you in any way? No, it is possible to beat someone who has life creed duos. Like, not all that, like, the thing that I was saying about how your opponent isn't always invested in putting your creature in the graveyard, like, that's not necessarily because their decks not working or, like, what you're doing isn't necessarily more powerful than what they're doing. Like, if your opponent has, you know, a bunch of mice and a good mix of valiant triggers and things that target them, or, like, a bunch of frogs that they're, like, repeatedly flickering because they're, like, going off with climate or whatever. Like, you having a life creed duo so that you're gaining a couple life of turn and maybe triggering some of your things to get an extra power or whatever is not necessarily going to beat whatever synergy your opponent's generated. And so, stuff that gets your creatures back when they're killed is important against the, like, decks that are trying to stop your deck from functioning by breaking up your engines, but not necessarily, you know, it's not a given that the output of your engine is stronger than the output of your opponent's engine when their deck is, like, designed to, you know, go nuts when they have, like, theirs energies together. How do the lizard payoffs play out with all the fliers in white black? If whites cut off a bit, would there be a red black possible pivot? So I did mention that personally, I'm least inclined to pivot into red from here, but as far as the overlap between, like, the lizard cards and the white black cards, notably, the one-three that gains life in your opponent loses life when it attacks, the agate-played guy is just a very reasonable to drop in white black. You know, if you don't have life-creed duo, it's much worse but a card that can enable a lot of the same payoffs. And sometimes your white black deck doesn't want it because you don't want to try to invest in being able to attack on the ground. But, you know, if you're a little bit higher on removal while still looking for some of those life-change setup-type cards, that can work. Also, scales of shale is much better if you have a lizard just to make it cheaper, but it does, you know, gain life and it is a strong card. So it can work in white black. And as far as, like, lizard payoffs, like the stuff that cares about having damaged your opponent, so stuff like Fireglass Mentor does play well with flyers. I could certainly imagine like Fireglass Mentor specifically as a card that you might be interested in splashing in a white black deck where you have a lot of flyers or other ways to like make your opponent lose life, maybe like a Star Escape Cleric, which is a flyer that can probably attack, but also maybe there will be a board where it can't attack, but you, you know, trigger your life-free duo to trigger your Star Escape Cleric to make your opponent lose life to trigger your Fireglass Mentor. So yeah, I mean, lizards is a less drafted but not very much less successful archetype than the other top archetypes. I think that there are reasons for why it's less drafted, even though it can be very good. I think that it kind of hinges on like a smaller number of cards is my guess without having extensively studied it. So I don't know. I think there's something there, but I think it comes up a bit less frequently, I suppose. Plume Creed Mentor, the blue-white gold uncommon, works well with bats. This is true. Plume Creed Mentor triggers on any flying creature, not just birds entering, and needs you to have some non-flying creatures, which your white-black deck often will. So like Plume Creed Mentor is also a reasonable card to splash in white-black. All right, I'm going to wrap it up there. Thanks for listening, everyone. And I will be back next week with another archetype chosen via Patreon poll, we're pretty firmly into the swing of things now with Gloombro. I'm feeling less behind after needing to get a bit of a slower start with this set than usual. And I think we still have a ways to go before we're thinking about another set. So we'll just keep doing our normal thing here. So have a good week and I will be back next week. Bye for now. Prepare for light speed. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
