(upbeat music) Hi everyone, this is Sam Black with Drafting Architects. And today we're going to be discussing Blue Green in Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Or as the title says, Blue Green Bonnie Paul, which I will explain shortly. First of all, so always the notes are available to follow along at patreon.com/draftingarchotypes. And looking at Blue Green stats wise, Blue Green is the least drafted color pair, but it only has a little bit below average win rate. But a few things stopped me from saying that suggests that it's under drafted. First, it still does have a below average win rate. So it's not like there's a lot of value to be gained there. And second, I suspect most of its win rate is coming from exactly Bonnie Paul. And the reason that I suspect that is I suppose twofold. First, I spent some time looking at recent trophy decks on 17 lands. And I'm pretty sure that over 75% of the trophy decks that I looked at, I think like more than that, kind of rounding down, that were Blue Green had Bonnie Paul. And the other reason is kind of the reason for that, which is outside of Oco, there are very few cards in the set that would make someone want to draft Blue Green in particular. None of the uncommons are particularly good or really like a draw to play Blue Green. Doc Orlock is debatable, whether you would want to put it in a Blue Green deck at the end of the draft if you drafted it. And it's certainly not worth trying to draft around. Decisive denial is similarly mediocre. And make your own luck is a strong card, but not like a great card to take early. It's not like a bomb. And it's very easy to splash. So it's not like a strong pull to draft dedicated Blue Green deck. So that means that you could draft Blue Green if you just happen to see good Blue and Green cards, but most likely there's gonna be like some kind of gold card that's gonna pull you towards something else. Because there are three gold uncommons in each color pair in this set because of the prosperity sheet and many of them are good and the Blue Green ones aren't. So to get pulled into Blue Green by a single card, it has to be rare or mythic. And there are two different docos that could both theoretically do it, but Bonnie Paul is rare and better than both of them. And so Bonnie Paul also, while it's technically like it's good enough to splash, even if you're like trying to splash the double Blue, I've tried to splash Bonnie Paul off of some ways to make treasures and stuff, and I would do that again. But it's not an easy splash because it's Blue Blue. You can splash the Green, especially in like a Blue Black Control deck or something. But often if you're gonna play Green, it wants to be a base color 'cause Green offers fixing and stuff. So it makes sense to try to draft Blue Green if you have Bonnie Paul. And it makes very little sense to try to draft Blue Green otherwise, especially because looking past the signpost or maybe not even looking past them, maybe kind of because of them, Blue Green is a very low synergy deck. So you're not gonna find like some, like the theoretical theme of Blue Green is plot. Dot, dot, dot, there's no real payoff for plot. There's theoretically like Doc Orlock is a plot enabler, but it's very difficult to get like a sufficient density of plot cards that Doc is really doing anything that matters. And so Blue Green is just extremely low synergy. So you're not gonna find some cards that like make sense, like you're not gonna discover that like the Blue Green lane is open because you can make your cards better than the sum of their parts by doing the Blue Green thing. 'Cause if there are cards that get better than the sum of their parts when they're combined in that way, they don't reach good. They reach adequate when you combine them 'cause they're bad at like baseline cards like Gen of Fools Fall and even some better looking ones like Outlaw Stitcher, Gen of Fools Fall is the five mana for three flyer that plots for four. Outlaw Stitcher is the one for that plots for five, otherwise cost four and makes a zombie with two plus one plus one counters or maybe just two bigger. I don't remember if it's counters or it gets a size based on the number of spells cast, Visage Bandit, the clone that plots. Even Canyon Crab, which seems like a kind of good card has like very unimpressive stats. Incidentally, Outlaw Stitcher, Canyon Crab and Visage Bandit are all basically the same at like 53.7% win rate in Blue Green, which is to say they're all below average cards in Blue Green. So there's not really a dream to chase here. There's nothing that's gonna pull someone into this lane. There's not really even a lane to be in. It's just some colors and some cards. So most of the time I suspect that anyone ends up with an actual Blue Green deck, it's because of Bonnie Paul, maybe Bonnie Paul by itself doesn't account for over 50% of Blue Green decks, but it does account for that many trophies because you're so much more likely to win if you have Bonnie Paul than if you don't. So that's, I mean, that's kind of what's going on is you're playing Blue Green because you got a Blue Green bomb and then you need to support it. So the question is, if Blue Green is so bad, are you even supposed to take Bonnie Paul? Yes, of course, are you even supposed to draft Blue Green rather than playing something else and splashing Bonnie Paul if you open it? So the win rate for Blue Green decks that contain Bonnie Paul is 57.9%, which is better than every archetype except for Green White, which is a little bit above that. And the win rate for a game is played with Bonnie Paul that are in Blue Green decks is like half a percent better than the aggregate win rate for a game is played by decks with Bonnie Paul that are not necessarily like specifically Blue Green decks, which is to say, given that your deck has Bonnie Paul, it is an above average deck and it's better if you're Blue Green than if you're something else. And the only like better start would be if you somehow knew that Green White was open and so you could have an average Green White deck, but like you can't just go into a draft, choosing to have any average Green White deck because most people who draft Green White aren't forcing it, they're in a seat where something puts them into Green White for some reason. So you can't just be like, I'm gonna pass this Bonnie Paul 'cause Green White wins more, obviously. So yes, you should take Bonnie Paul from there, you should preferentially try to be Blue Green but it's not a big deal. And then the question is, so what is the Blue Green deck? What cards do you play? And the answer is you're a low synergy deck with a bomb. And that's everything you need to know in a certain way of looking at it. You're not trying to become high synergy and you are trying to cast your bomb, which means that you want to be playing defensive cards. You wanna try to extend the game to find your bomb and you wanna be prepared to make the most of your bomb. Like if someone answers it, you would like to be able to get it back. For that reason, well, for a lot of reasons, splashing is good and common in Blue Green. That's normal, like in almost every set, splashing is common in Blue Green. This set is certainly not an exception. Blue has a bunch of card draw, Green has fixing, the lands fixed really well. And given that you're most likely drafting around Bonnie Paul, every single Green Black uncommon, all three of them, allows you to return Bonnie Paul from your graveyard to your hand or to play. So to get it back to play it again. So all of those are among the best cards you could have in your deck. So you're very likely to wanna splash black for recursion, maybe a little bit of removal, white for removal, red for removal or maybe other bombs, or maybe even cheap defensive cards, like you could splash red removal. I mean, I guess that's just red removal. So also, Chrome is like a reasonable card to splash. But the big picture here is most importantly, don't try to do the plot thing. Lone Shark is playable, but not great. Free Strider Commando, the three mana three three that plots for four and has two plus one plus one counters if you didn't spend mana for it is extremely overplayed. Lone Shark is the most played common in Blue Green and is very far from the best. Lone Shark is a heavily overplayed playable card. Free Strider Commando is as much overplayed but not as played, but considerably worse. And then Jennifer Fools Fall is still like appreciably played and pretty actively bad. The only reason I don't say don't play any of the plot stuff is that Spinewood's Paladin, the five mana four five that gains five four trample the games three life and plots for four is very good. It's one of the best commons in the archetype. It's just like good stats. The life gain is important for your defensive deck. So that one's good. The others are not really where you want to be. So what you do want is any common removal that doesn't cost like black black or whatever, like you don't really want to try to like splash double pip removal. But any other common removal spell would be fine. Any of the good big creatures like Spinewood Paladin and Kak Tarantula and Fixing like Dance the Tumbleweeds, which is kind of also a big creature and Patient Naturalist, the two three that mills three cards and puts land from among them into your hand or makes a treasure if there isn't a land. And Hard Bristle Bandit, the one one that taps for a man of any color. So cards that ramp you to your big creatures and enable your splash, big creatures removal. There's some kind of weird like low sample size data that supports this. Like for example, the red white desert has the highest win rate among all of the common deserts in blue green, which is probably mostly just noise but also suggests that like maybe blue green does well when it's like double splashing and like mystical tether has the highest game and hand win rate of any common higher than throw from the saddle, which again, probably mostly just noise. I personally wouldn't expect to generally take mystical tether over throw from the saddle in a blue green deck, but really points to how little punishment there is for cards of other colors. And how much you just like want to splash and take the cards that work in your deck, which is to say, you know, the removal, card advantage, good blockers. Speaking of card advantage, plan the heist and metamorphic blast. So the uncommon draw three and the uncommon spree that draws to and makes a creature in 01 both perform very well. You are looking to draw cards. Again, you're looking to make land drops to cast big creatures and you're looking to trade one for one a lot with the removal and you're looking to make sure that you actually draw your bomb, which is to say Bonnie Paul. So you're definitely looking for those things. Another card that is worth thinking about is ankle blighter. Ankle blighters, not a card I'm generally looking to put in my decks. Most green decks are pretty aggressive and don't benefit very much from 011 Death Touch. But because blue green is pretty solidly defensive that you can have some aggressive starts with like grizzlies and repulse and jailbreak scheme. So the card that like the time out, the card that puts a card creature from there to the creature out of the top or about them in your opponent's deck. And like bounce spells and stuff, like you can end up having aggressive draws, but you're not ever, like I don't think you want to draft your deck as an aggro deck, even if sometimes you'll be able to like take advantage of like tempo when you curve out. Mostly you're going to be blocking and ankle blighter does that very well. And spending one mana for a creature that's going to prevent some damage and probably trade up on mana is really good when you have these draw two and draw three cards in your deck. So because of pairing it with blue card draw, ankle blighter fits really well here. Not a card I'm looking to play anywhere else, but it's nice. It's also a cheap card to like draw a card off your loan shark or whatever. If you, you know, you might not want to plot loan shark on four, maybe you need to play something to the board then and then on five, you can maybe play like ankle bighter plus loan shark. If for some reason you haven't already played your ankle bighter, maybe on turn three, you drew it and wanted to set that up or whatever. The only other thing I wanted to mention was just pointing out the top performing blue and green on commons. I think that if you've been paying attention to the win rates of cards in general, it's, you know, basically what you'd expect because, you know, blue, green being low synergy, there aren't going to be cards that perform much better in blue green than they do in general. So the good blue and green on commons for blue green are basically just the good blue and green on commons. So like outcaster green blade, incidentally, I think outcaster green blade specifically might be part of the reason that the red white desert has a high win rate in blue green because most of the time you don't play the red white desert if you're blue green, but outcaster green blade would be a reason to, just 'cause you're a lot more likely to look for random deserts and to splash and stuff and outcaster green blade being one of the best cards. If you're deck, like if you're playing the red white desert, it might point to there being multiple outcaster green blades in your deck, which would point to your deck being stronger overall. So outcaster green blade followed by spine woods armadillo, the seven, seven reach ward three that you can discard for a land and gain three life repulse that bounce spell that draws a card for three, marauding sphinx, the three five vigilance ward to that surveils when you commit a crime, metamorphic blast and play on the highest, the card draw spells that I already mentioned and clear shot, the instant plus one plus one and then a creature deal damage equal to its power to another creature for two and a green. So yeah, those are the cards that I think are noteworthy again, the main points here are, no, there's no trick. There really just isn't much of a reason to draft blue green if you don't have blue green bombs. The blue green uncommons do not count. You shouldn't worry about any of the plot stuff ever, like don't try to draft the dock or a lock deck. I've done that before. I ended up, with a pretty good deck, I ended up cutting all the blue cards and playing mono green with a bunch of relatively synergistic plot cards. Like because I was mono green, I had a bunch of big creatures and so I was playing tumbleweed risings that ended up pretty good. But the dock or a lock part of it didn't end up mattering since I didn't even put it in my deck. So yeah, I have tried dock or a lock for science a little bit kind of, I've looked at the stats, I've looked at the trophy decks, there's nothing there. Don't try to do the plot thing. Just draft a normal, like control deck with some splashes and some bombs. Be prepared to block. Don't fall behind. Play your two mana three, three defenders. They can only attack if you have a four power creature. You'll probably have a four power creature. Probably try to get some, you know, creatures with reach and stuff in there because you're playing a defensive deck and draw cards until you find your bomb. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to chat for any other questions or discussion. And as always, I wanna thank the newest patron. So thank you very much, Matthew. If anyone else is interested in becoming a patron, supporting the podcast, check out patreon.com/ drafting archetypes to do that. My experience failed fording is better in blue-green than other color combos. That makes sense. You are a little bit more interested in buying time. Your creatures are bigger than your opponent's creatures. So sometimes they're gonna like try to, I mean, there aren't really that many like combat tricks that let big creatures, little creatures beat big creatures, but like block plus bounce is generally good against combat tricks. Again, that doesn't, not really a thing in this set, but you have like some good creatures to bounce and say if a tempo player is kind of important when you have like a bunch of like card advantage and stuff, I'm not like super high on failed fording, but I could see it being better a little bit here than other color combos. I think you're also more likely to have like high power creature heavy draws that can like put your opponent on the back foot and then you can like punish them when they're trying to stabilize with failed fording. Does this deck want graveyard recursion to replay rescue big stuff? Yes, very, very much so. The mourner surprise is one of the more splashable black commons and all of the black uncommon are extremely high priorities. Is blue-green the best shell for splashing the format or could other color combinations like green, black? I mean, at a certain point, it's kind of like, what are we really asking about, right? Like multicolor green is the best place for being multicolor 'cause it's green. So you get like your patient naturalists and your hard bristle bandits and your dance the tumbleweeds. And so like, but like once you're like sufficiently like reveling in the fact that you're good at splashing, like what's the difference between a blue-green deck splashing black, a black-green deck splashing blue, green red deck splashing blue and black. Like, well, once you're splashing enough, you're kind of just green X. If you make something a cactarantula with hexproof, would you draw a card? If your opponent has targeted a cactarantula and you go at hexproof, you'll still draw a card for the cactarantula and your cactarantula won't die. If you turn something else into a cactarantula, at the moment that it became targeted, it was not a cactarantula, so no trigger was generated. And if you make it a cactarantula, it's, there's not a moment where the trigger would become, where it's gonna become targeted 'cause it has expert. So there's no way to like draw a card and save a creature there. Do I value voracious varmint a little higher to remove oblivion rings? Yes, a little bit higher. Like, it's a nice teardrop to have you have Bonnie Paul to get Bonnie Paul back if it gets exiled, especially if you have like black recursion and the thing that you're afraid of is it getting exiled. Are there bombs and other colors that go in a blue-green base particularly well? I mean, the honest answer here is just gonna be anything that only costs a single pip that isn't blue or green. So, I mean, like a bomb that would be a particularly poor splash for blue-green would be like lactose the muscle 'cause it costs three non-blue or green pips where a bomb that would, or like a card that would be a very good fit would be like Roxanne 'cause it only needs a single non-blue or green pip. You can cast it like at the optimal time if you tumbleweeds for your like missing red and it like is gonna play really well with your game plan. It's gonna, you know, give you mana to use on drawing additional cards and playing more big stuff. So, I guess Roxanne would be my example of bomb that plays particularly well here and, you know, stuff that's like hard to cast like gold cards where neither side is blue or green would be the ones that like don't fit particularly well here. Also, things like the great train heist that want you to be like wide aggressive when you're neither of those things wouldn't fit very well here, Helsper Plosse boss would not be a card. I'd be excited about splashing and blue-green, for example. All right, I think I'm gonna wrap it up here. You know, I think it's valuable to know. Not to, like it's always important to know which traps to avoid and the easiest traps to fall into are pursuing set themes that like aren't supported enough to really be worth pursuing. So, you know, I say this as someone who has a few times been tempted to like try to pursue Doc Orlock. I've seen people say that they've like seen it do impressive things at once or twice. I've also seen a lot of people say that it's been bad and it doesn't do anything. But at the same time that it's useful to know that, there's not a lot to say about there's nothing here, stay away and, you know, this isn't like, again, blue-green has a below average win rate but not very much below. It's not one of the like bad archetypes. It's not terrible to be in blue-green. It's just that it's drafted very rarely for the reason that there's not much of a reason to draft it. And so, mostly this is just saying if you see like a blue-green gold card sixth pick and pack one, that doesn't mean anything. Don't like pivot into blue-green because blue-green is a lane is open because blue-green is a lane isn't a lane. It's just like not something that you should really consider without a bomb pulling you there. And then the details are just draft good cards. This is actually an interesting note to pick up real quick. What about intimidation campaign? Is that something that you would want in blue-green? And the answer is no. Similarly, Nimble-Briggan does a card that I like a lot but it doesn't perform very well in blue-green. And the reason for this is both of these cards are best when you fill your deck with really, really cheap spells, especially intimidation campaign 'cause it costs so much mana to draw the card. And blue-green more than any other deck is not looking to be filled with cheap cards. Blue-green is probably going to have the highest curve in the format by a considerable margin on average. And you're not going to be very good at committing crimes. With the exception that you do want some removal, you do want some deserts, you could go a little bit out of your way and end up with a decent number of crime triggers. But you're just like general deck composition isn't going to be such that intimidation campaign makes sense. You're not going to have time to use it very much. You're not like small ball enough to really value the drain ones. Like the point where you're winning, you're attacking with huge creatures and it doesn't matter if your opponent has like taken for extra damage from your intimidation campaign triggers. And you don't care about the fact that it like gives you some kind of an inevitability 'cause you're getting that from the bigger numbers on your creatures. And you don't really need the like life game that it's offering 'cause you're just planning to like kill their evasive creatures and block most of their guys. And like you just don't really need life totals to be changing very much throughout the course of the game. So campaign is offering much less to blue green and synergizes much less well with what it's doing. And brigand is kind of like the same thing, but much less so. And with that, I'm going to wrap it up. So thanks everyone for listening. We are, I suppose, getting very close to the end of coverage of Outlaws of Thunder Junction as we get into Modern Horizons three previews. I'm not sure, I haven't thought through the schedule. I either, I think I have one more week of Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Maybe it's two, but that seems unlikely. Maybe it's zero, but I think that's also unlikely. So I'll update on that as needed, but MH3 is coming soon. MH3 will be the set that I'm focusing on once it comes out. So like OTJ or not, we are wrapping it up shortly and moving on as per the release schedule. So that's all for now, and I'll see you next week. Bye. - Prepare for light speed. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
