(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, this is Sam Black with Drafting Archetypes. And today I'm going to be talking about white black in MH3. As always, the notes are available to follow along at patreon.com/draftingarchitects. White black has a below average win rate only ahead of green black and blue green. And it's also drafted not that often. There are a lot of issues with white black. It's deeply into what I would consider the trap space in terms of set design. What I mean by that is the white black gold cards, specifically the common gargoyle, the tutu persists that has flying if it's modified, and the uncommon adventure spell on do not master. Are both very bad. When I say they're very bad, I mean, they have like a 52-ish percent game in hand win rate in white black, which is to say that most white black decks don't want to play either one. Like even if you draft them, even if you like get them for free in the draft or you could add them as additional cards to your doc without drafting them, you would generally not want to do that. So often the gold cards are the cards that reward you for being in an archetype because other people don't want them and they go to you late. But white black doesn't have those. So without those, you're left to look for other synergies in the color to figure out cards that you want more than other people such that they will go to you late and be worth more than an average card that you would get that late are. So an easy way to identify those is to look for the sets theme and find cards that support that theme. White blacks stated theme, according to like The Wizard's material, is modified creatures dying, question mark, question mark, question mark. There's not a lot of support for this theme. Specifically, there are three uncommons, lethal throwdown, the black bone splinters variant that lets you sacrifice a creature where you can sacrifice a modified creature, take a little creature and draw a card. Guardian of the Forgotten, the four mana for four vigilance, that whenever a modified creature you control dies, you manifest the top card of your library and the aforementioned Undo not master, the white black gold adventure card. Like the white black gold cards, all of these cards have substantially below average win rates even in white black. So both the non gold buildarounds and the gold cards in white black are traps that you should generally try not to play. So my conclusion from that is this whole theme is a trap and you should ignore it entirely. That means because the archetype has no good gold cards and no clear mechanical ties, you're not getting as much late pick equity as other decks, like you're just looking for good white and black cards and the draw to your deck is basically going to be just good rarers. There's not really another reason to get into white and black. So that's why the deck's not drafted very much. There's really just not much going on here. I suspect that when people voted for white black as the poll or is the topic for this week, they're hoping for like insight into how to draft white black well and like what the good deck here is. And this is a space where overall I'd say the best thing I can tell you is the deck's not very good and if you find yourself in a seat where you should be drafting white and black, the best thing you can do is avoid the traps. This is reminiscent of like green white in Crimson Vow and to a lesser extent Midnight Hunt, but now I'm getting into what I suspect are pretty old references. Basically the color combination is a failure from a design standpoint. Like they aimed a little bit too low on the gold cards and the payoffs and stuff and whatever was seated here isn't happening. And so you're just kind of looking for good white and black cards. So the best thing you can do at that point is figure out are there any individual black cards or black mechanics? Are there any black cards that play well with individual white cards or white mechanics? Or what else might this color combination do particularly well? One thing that I can figure out about white and black cards is that they are both firmly not Eldrazi. How much that does for you is hard to say, but you pretty clearly are not doing the Eldrazi thing. Similarly, you're most likely not energy. Like there are white energy cards and there is relevantly Cathonian Nightmare in black, which could make you care about energy. But for the most part, you're not really looking for like the white energy cards. You're most looking for the not energy, not Eldrazi cards. You are hoping that the rest of the pod is fighting over energy and Eldrazi and that they are not caring about more just like generic, slightly above rate cards and efficient removal. And you can take functional cards that are not like deeply in themes that other people are pursuing. You're a little bit above average at gaining life and you are a little bit above average at having fodder. These themes support a couple of like pretty niche mythics and rares. Cards like Cathonian Nightmare, maybe Warren Soltrader, Marionette Apprentice isn't exactly a rare, but it is a powerful uncommon that likes the fact that you can kind of go wide. Some things like the life gain element, like Soren and Necro dominance. You're not like all that exceptional at most of these cards. They're mostly just like generically pretty good except in Necro dominance's case where it's mostly like a monoblock build around that Kim's Flash colors and it needs some kind of specific life gain cards, even when that happens. This stuff where you're like, oh, I can go a little bit wide 'cause I have some like fabricate type stuff, like either actual fabricate on Apprentice or the pseudo fabricate from the white three drop that can make three energy, put up a plus and plus from count or something or make a one one. Like you have that, you have spawns from your living weapons, or not spawns, germs from your living weapons. So like you have some tokens, but like so does anyone who's making Eldrazi spawns. So like you're not a better black token deck than the Jund token deck. So that's more like a thing that you can do and less a thing that you're exceptional at. Put a different way, Marionette Apprentice doesn't push you toward white in particular. So again, there are some things that you can find, but overall they work here, but also in other places and it's just maybe your seat works well here. So another card that I would call special attention to is Essence Reliquary. I like Essence Reliquary a lot and it plays well with a lot of the black cards that you would want in this deck. Like at Common, it's good with the Marauder that makes both players sacrifice a creature and it's good with the familiar that makes your opponent discard a card or draws a card if they can't. And then you also have a sorted other ETV abilities on some of the cards that I've mentioned. It's good with the 3.3 flyer that puts two counters on things, which is another generically good, like a generally good white card and a good white black card. So the other thing about Essence Reliquary is that it is a slow grindy card advantage engine that pairs well with having a bunch of removal so that you can extend the game so that you can grind people out with Reliquary and white black is pretty good at having like a bunch of cheaper removal. So to me, it seems like Reliquary would be one of the biggest draws to playing white black and one of the most relevant buildarounds. Admittedly, Reliquary has very bad stats on 17 lands, even when adjusting for only looking at top players, which might suggest that even if it's played in the correct decks and draft around properly, that it still doesn't do well. Personally, I'm skeptical. I have had some good experiences with Essence Reliquary and continue to believe in it after playing with it, but it might be dangerous if you're not comfortable drafting it at the very least. So if you don't believe in Reliquary as the thing to be doing in white black, Essence Reliquary, I should have said, is the two in a white artifact that you can tap to return a permanent to your hand during your turn. If that's not what you're going to do, you could potentially build a white black modified aggro or evasive aggro deck. Like you have a number of creatures available that have flying or menace and you can curve out, you can put counters on them, you can have some efficient removal to back your aggressive creatures. Like there's a very, very, very kind of like nuts and bolts baseline limited aggressive white black deck with some evasion and some removal that is functional, you can draft a curve and normal kind of like low level synergies and there are some cards that are going to make that deck perform a lot better like Ajani, the Mythic Flip White Plains Walker. Overall, I think that's usually going to be worse than white red aggro would be or maybe competitive with like what red black aggro is going to be, but if red's not open and these colors are, that would be a reasonable lane to find yourself in maybe up out on par with like green white aggro, which seems like it's there in theory but I really basically never see it come together. Personally, all of my successful white black decks have been absandex. I'm thinking of this as a control deck so it doesn't hurt me very much to play a third color and most of the synergies that I'm looking for are like modified synergies and green is very much in that space. And I think you kind of need green and the green gold cards to get to an appropriate density of modified synergies for like the stuff to actually matter and for your deck to be having an identity where the purpose of the identity again is just to be able to get value from cards being better for you than there are for other people that you can get late in the draft. So synergy, basically like the broad concept here is one of the values of synergy is that it makes your late picks in the draft better and green gives you access to above replacement late picks. Now it's an addition to your white black deck not that there's something unique about green that does that in general. So that kind of ties into like, should this deck be splashing? Sure, there's not much here. You might as well splash to find something and if you're drafting it as a control deck then it's pretty easy to splash into it. And I think green is the most natural fit for what you're doing, but it certainly doesn't have to be green. So overall I'd say there's nothing to see here. There are some specific like good rares you can get and some synergies with those rares. Cribomination for example, the six mana, five, five crab that exiles the top card of your opponent's library, a random card from their graveyard and a random card from your hand. And let's see cast one of them is a card that is very, very fun and very powerful to pair with essence reliquary. You could also pair it with the conjurer, the white uncommon that gains life on a creature enters and lets you tap it in five mana to flicker a creature. You can pair the conjurer with any of the assorted good black ETB creatures. Theonian Nightmare again plays really well here but also in many other places. And like kind of the most important thing to know when drafting white black is to avoid the white and black gold cards because they're gonna be available to you, they're gonna be appealing because they're gold cards. I know most white and black decks play them. People would probably be better off if they just knew not to do that. That's, I genuinely think the most important message is like, really do not try to make any of that stuff work. Don't play the gold cards. Don't play the like any of the theme stuff. This isn't like, don't do it unless it's clearly open and you happen to get a lot of it. It's just a full don't do it. Oh, one other card that I should mention, I guess, is Master the Departed, the three mana enchantment that makes a one one spirit and populates in your end step if something died. This is a difficult card to play because you basically can't cast it unless more of it has happened because by default in that spot, you make a one one flying spirit for three mana. And then the idea is if any following turns, something dies, you get to make another one one spirit. But that only works if you still have your one one spirit and so you're making a three mana one one flyer and then if it dies, you just have nothing unless you are making more tokens and can find something else to populate. That makes this card very difficult to use and you mostly shouldn't. However, it is good with Eldrazi spawns because when you sacrifice them, you proliferate, your morbid is triggered and you get to proliferate, you can make more spawns or more flyers. You can make sure that the turn that you cast it, you're gonna get a proliferate by sacking a spawn. Basically, the problem is white black doesn't really have Eldrazi spawns. I think that that's mostly an abzan thing. I had one abzan deck with a few of them that did some kind of cool stuff with it. Like, if you get multiples, you can kind of like make more flyers and make more spawns and then the spawns can help keep the chain going a little neat, but mostly not a good card, kind of like more work for less payoff than Essence Reliquary, but can do some cool stuff. I wouldn't totally write it off. That's what I have to say about white black. So I'm going to turn it over to chat for questions after thanking the newest patrons. So thank you very much, Eric and Adam. Really appreciate the support. If anyone else is interested in joining the Patreon, check out patreon.com/draftingarchitipes. So do you have any general tips on drafting and playing with Reliquary, picking up a second copy, sequencing your plays around it, et cetera? Yeah, I do think that you want a second copy because when you're drafting around it, you'll take a bunch of cards that like support the plan and you need to actually drop that to work. And later in the game, you will get to a point where the second one's not totally redundant. You can like pick up and replay a card multiple times. General tips, it's very easy to forget that it can pick up lands. That comes up both with picking up DFCs that you can cast them as spells and more commonly just tapping your land, picking it up and playing it again, either as like fixing to get another mana of that color or just for quantity, if like you need, if you miss your fifth land drop and you have a five drop, you can use Reliquary to play it. You can also use it in combat. It can only be played used on your turn, but it can be used at instant speed on your turn. So you can like attack with all your creatures and then if your opponent has a big blocker and they block a small creature, you can tap it and pick up the creature and then kind of, you know, save it in that way. Reliquary is powerful, but very slow. So you want to support it with cheap removal to make sure the game goes long enough. Reliquary is particularly exceptional with sagas. You need to be careful doing this on arena. I set a stop in my upkeep and then in my upkeep, I turn on hold full control so that I can move to my main phase with full control on and then I get a stop after the third chapter from the sagas on the stack and then I can pick up the saga with the Reliquary and get full value out of it and play it again. In particular, Ajani, a slay is the God's Eye or whatever, the white five mana saga is something that I really, really want to have in all of my Essence Reliquary decks. A lot of the stuff that you're looking for in the Reliquary decks are artifacts and enchantments. So Rose Cottnite can be a decent card that kind of glues everything together both by finding your payoffs and finding Reliquary. I think those are most of my general Reliquary tips. Reliquary is good with utter insignificance. That's also true and you could do that in an Asperdac or Splash Blue or whatever. The idea there is you enchant a creature with utter insignificance. You activate utter insignificance's co-illisability to exhale the creature and in response, you pick up the Reliquary and in that way you can kill all of your bonus creatures slowly, but it's a pretty hard lock. It's also very good with Static Prison. You can use that to kill tokens or to generate energy while killing tokens or to switch which creature you have or to generate energy to keep the creature gone forever. The Persist Gargoyle is also relevantly good with nesting grounds. I think nesting grounds in the Persist Gargoyle is a relevant synergy that you can look for that is good enough in white-black that I to justify playing some Gargoyles if you can support having ideally multiple nesting grounds. Nesting grounds is the land that lets you move counters. You have to move from something that you control but you can move on to anything. So especially if you have a way to sacrifice the Gargoyle, you can make minus one minus one counters and then move them onto your opponent's stuff to kill it. This would be a particularly good direction to go if you, for example, started to interact with war and soul trader, then you can sack your Gargoyle to get a treasure and a minus one minus one counter that you can move onto your opponent's stuff and then the treasure helps deal with the fact that this is somewhat mana intensive and the nesting grounds is a close land. So like your colored mana might be a little bit worse but that's mitigated by the treasure from the soul trader. Gargoyle's also good with Cuthonian nightmare. That would be another reason to lead you to look into like Gargoyle nightmare stuff. So I suppose I should amend the position on Gargoyle from don't play Gargoyle, don't try to get synergies with Gargoyle to, there are some meaningful synergies with Gargoyle and if you have enough of them, you can lean into it. Don't play it generically in white black and the synergies are pretty niche so don't necessarily expect them but there is some real value here if you're paying attention to it. White Black traditionally supports the token slash sac outlet strategy. I think there are some pieces for that strategy in image three but never explored much. Comes to mind the white enchantment that populate decree of justice, et cetera. Yes. Yeah, this is more in the like, you know, using the black cards from the John sacrifice stuff. So you get your like Warren soul trader and Marionette apprentice and then support it with white tokens like the morbid enchantment and decree of justice and stuff. I do think that that's a direction to go. I mentioned that one of the available strengths is the fact that you're pretty good at making fodder and tokens and stuff. So I do think that that's a thing that can come up and like the stuff that it's doing is real. It's just again white blacks not uniquely suited to do it and you're mostly limited by like the fact that the black cards that make this a thing are high pick and not low rarity. Like Marionette apprentice is a card that doesn't go late. Warren soul trader is a rare that might go a little bit later, but you know, you certainly can't expect to see it. And you kind of have less redundancy for payoffs for this than like if you pair it with red and you also get the two, three that damages your opponent when it creates your enters. So it's a thing that you can do. Like there are a few different micro synergies that are available in white black that should be included as features of DAX, but that it's hard to really draft a full deck around. I think is like my take on all this stuff, but I will say that between the discussion of tokens in SAC and the interaction between RAM and Gargoyle, I'm a little bit more interested in Mardu than I was as a like sacrifice plus tokens plus equipment strategy. Okay, I think that's gonna wrap it up. So short, pretty simple episode this week. I don't know if the kind of like warning episodes are disappointing or useful, but that's really I think the most important thing to say about this archetype. And I do think that, you know, it's valuable to differentiate like where there is like hidden value versus where there isn't and why. So that'll do it for this week. And I will be back next week for more. Have a good week everyone and I'll see you then. - Prepare for light speed. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
