Is it just me, or did Wizards suddenly decide to up the ante with this newest set? On all levels, Apocalypse is shaping up to be one of the most influential and powerful expansions ever produced. This set should shake up the entire Magic format as we know it.

Now before you think I’m overstating it, let me clarify: This set does not break any of the fundamental rules of the game. There are no Tolarian Academies, Time Spirals, or Fastbonds to speak of, and I doubt very many combo decks will rise from this set. However, what it does do is give you access to some of the most powerful tools ever printed to function within the boundaries of the game. Phyrexian Arena, Vindicate, Death Grasp, Spirit Monger, Mystic Snake and Pernicious Deed give us some of the most powerful new additions to the type 2 scene since Masticore and Powder Keg raised their broken rusty heads above water. That’s in terms of effect, but... Let’s look at viability.

The most obvious shakeup is going to be in Limited. Where the first two sets encouraged (one might even say forced) us to use allied color combinations, Apocalypse takes up in another direction entirely. Where B/R/u was wonderful in the past, now B/R/w might be much better. In the short run, I think the best decks will be ones which focus mostly on two allied colors (say U/W) and look for highly viable splash cards in the opposing color throughout the first two sets of packs. A U/W mage might want to snap up a Scorching Lava from Invasion and a Magma Burst from Planeshift so that they can make better use of some neat gold cards like Quicksilver Dagger and Captain’s Maneuver in Apocalypse, mixed with the ability to kick-up Volvers and to turn Jilt from an Unsummon into a Barrin’s Spite.

Of course there are going to be a ton of other issues, too — signaling will be next to impossible, and probably pointless; Lord help you in a Rochester draft situation; green will probably be overdrafted for the first few weeks until things settle down, and I would guess that it will take a long time for people to really master the intricacies of it. Personally, from this standpoint my hat is doffed dutifully to R&D for creating the most complex and rich drafting environment I have ever witnessed. On the other hand, let’s look at what this does to some other formats.

The most obvious issue in Apocalypse is how undercosted the cards are. Death Grasp in particular caught my eye:

Death Grasp BWX - Sorcery
Deal X damage to any target, gain X Life.

When I saw this card on the spoiler lists, I immediately dismissed it as a misprint. Drain Life was this powerful, but it required complete dedication to black. This little monstrosity can be splashed in just about any deck using white, or black — or heck, even green. Good Grief. It’s a damn good thing we don’t have anything with the name Necropotence around, hmmm? Oh wait, we do have something similar...

Phyrexian Arena BB1 - Enchantment
During your upkeep, you lose one life and draw one card.

Well, it’s a darn good thing that black can’t handle enchantments — oh. Wait...

Vindicate BW1 - Sorcery
Destroy target permanent.

Sigh... I love Wizards dearly for all of the work that they do, but boy I wish they would stop feeding us our decks on a silver platter. Never mind additions like Gerrard’s Verdict, or the new G/B archetype with Spiritmongers and Deeds. At least B/W will have a shaky mana base to support it, right???

Caves of Koilos — Land
Tap for 1 colorless or Tap for W or B and deals 1 damage to you

Oh yeah... We have those new painlands. Gee, Wizards thinks of everything, don’t they?

Seriously, though, I think that you will see a break out from the traditional R/G and U/W archetypes that have been dominating Standard of late. U/G seems to be pretty solid, as it was already a natural fit for Opposition, and with Mystic Snake in the mix it gets even more tempting. Besides the obvious new W/B or G/B archetypes, Red/Blue may start showing up more, and somebody has got be capable of finding a use for Lightning Angel, who is just too undercosted not to play.

Mike Mason just put up a great piece on the Apocalypse Block deck of choice: A Green/White/Black deck.

Despite the Constructed applications of Apocalypse (that’s a rather odd turn of phrase, isn’t it?), it’s the impact on limited formats that I really want to look into.

Basically, in Limited you have three styles of play: Sealed Deck, Booster Draft, and Rochester Draft. Each has particular strengths and weaknesses. Sealed Deck is basically based upon your available card pool, so I don’t want to go too deeply into that; just use your best judgment. What I want to take a look at it the impact of Apocalypse on Drafting.

Now Gary Wise will do his review pretty soon on The Sideboard, and it will probably be terrific as always. I don’t want to compete with a card-by-card analysis, but what I DO want to talk about is dealing with the ramifications of a third pack that will now be headed in an entirely different direction. How do you set yourself up to take advantage of Apocalypse without shattering your mana base in the process? Also, in Rochester, how in the world are you going to signal your intentions? How can you draft a sealed deck without Green?

Let’s start with a simple question: Are there mono-colored cards in Apocalypse that can help your strategy without worrying too much about an off-color? There are a few; for now, I’m just going to point out some of the commons that can make your life easier if you’re a two-color mage who doesn’t want to splash anything else.

White:
Coalition Honor Guard
Helionaut
Manacles of Decay
Standard Bearer

Okay, so there’s not a whole lot here. Coalition Honor Guard is probably the best common creature in the set, so White does have that going for them; the Helionaut is playable in a two-color deck, as are the Manacles, though you’ll really want splash colors to make them worth it, and the Standard Bearer, while fragile, can be a real pain in the ass with Lashknife Barrier on the table.

Blue:
Coastal Drake
Jaded Response
Jilt

Blue is even weaker from a two-color standpoint. Jilt would barely make the cut in a U/W deck that wasn’t splashing Red, but if they are it’s probably the best overall common in the set. Coastal Drake is nuts in any color combination using U. Most of blue’s commons in this set are oriented around mana fixing and off-color effects, so you’ll almost be forced to splash something for maximum effect.

Black:
Dead Ringers
Last Caress
Phyrexian Rager
Quagmire Druid
Urborg Uprising
Zombie Boa

Black is quite a bit better here, with very few common spells that really require opposing colors. The Druid is a playable Gray Ogre, even without it’s ability; Last Caress is very marginal, but the cycling aspect may allow it to make the cut in some decks; and Dead Ringers only really works in a U/B deck, but when it works it’s nuts. Urborg Uprising is probably the strongest Black common, although the Rager and his big brother are both quite excellent as well. More than the other color combinations, B/R can probably stay two colors and survive, as many of the uncommons and rares in Apocalypse will allow you to stay in color as well.

Red
Bloodfire Dwarf
Bloodfire Infusion

That’s really about it for Red. It’s common base is terrible in this set, with the Bloodfire creatures being the best overall and requiring only mono-red to work well. Even the Infusion is pretty debatable, but Rupture was a game breaker in MBC, and while the Infusion is quite a bit weaker, I can still see it being useful in certain decks. However, when we get to the gold cards and off-color kickers, you’ll start to see where red shines.

Green
Glade Gnarr
Lay of the Land
Penumbra Bobcat
Savage Gorilla

Well... Green, the poor kicked dog of Magic, really gets very little here too (if you’re going two-color). The Gnarrs are more sideboard cards, and poor ones at that; Lay of the Land is okay if you’ve got two or more colors and maybe a Chromatic Sphere, as they will allow you to diversify your mana while cutting down the overall number of lands you need to play. The Bobcat is the star of green’s commons run — and when you think about it, that’s pretty sad. The Gorilla is less than savage without BU in the mix.

Anyway, that’s about it if you’re trying to stick to two colors. Not a very big list, nor do you gain a lot for it. So what strategies would you need to use to make use of the opposing color gold cards and kickers without killing your mana? You’ll want to build a wedge.

"Wedge Spells" are the nickname for the five rares in the set that utilize two allied colors with their enemy color. Lightning Angel is the WU-R split, Overgrown Estate is GW-B, Guided Passage is GR-U, Fervent Charge is the BR-W and the Fungal Shambler is our lovely UB-G prerelease card. The idea behind these cards is that you pick your center colors (one of the allied pairs) and draft heavily in those, with a splash of the off-color. This allows U/W, for example, to pick up a Breath of Darigaaz and Magma Burst in the first two sets, then get a couple of Legionnaires, the kicker on Jilt, and maybe a Lightning Angel to complete the deck in Apocalypse. This concept of a wedge deck can work well as long as a Dragon, Charm, Master or other tri-color effect does not screw up your mana even worse.

When you're setting up for draft, the same basic rules apply; you’ll want to go two prime colors with a splash of a third, unless you’ve got access to a ton of mana fixing (which can then theoretically lower the power count of your deck). Green is typically the best color for mana fixing, as you get one of the best spells in Harrow, and several solid little dorks that can help out as well. Nomadic Elf, Quirion Elves, Quirion Trailblazer, and Sentinel can all help out in Invasion, while Quirion Explorers and Primal Growth in Planeshift can be very useful. In Apocalypse, though, the quality goes downhill. Lay of the Land is not really great, but is adequate filler, and the opposing-color elves are okay. Blue gives you access to Dream Thrush, Sea Snidd, and now Reef Shaman (who is easily the worst of the lot), but if you really need mana fixing they are playable. A few artifacts like Chromatic Sphere, Mana Cylix, and Star Compass are also available. I think the Lair Lands in Planeshift and any of the other splits will prove themselves very valuable.

This emphasis on fixing your color base can actually benefit the dedicated drafter who goes in early with a specific plan in mind. Early on, try and figure out where your prime colors lie and keep and eye out for excellent splash cards of the opposing color. If you can do this early and not waste too many picks, you can focus on the highest-quality cards for your decks instead of the mana fixers.

Occasionally, Green/White decks have splashed Black for Demises, Death Bombs, and the occasional Goham Djinn or Scuta, while ignoring Red or Blue (the more logical splashes) all together. This is a strategy that becomes even more viable now.

I’m probably stating the obvious here, but there is also nothing saying you could not use a more traditional three-color deck with three allied colors. This does give you access to one of the opposing-color gold cards from Apocalypse, but limits your decks to just that one. Most players at the pre-release seemed content to run the traditional R/B/U sealed decks, with an emphasis more on R/U/b than R/B/u or U/B/r. The U/R cards are very strong (as are nearly all of the combinations), and those decks seemed to do just fine.

Basically what I like about this format is where before you could reasonably expect a table to have five to six archetypes, you can now realistically have eleven or more. This is preliminary, but here are the potential draft archetypes as I seem them shaping up.

G/R/W — Rith’s deck.
This is one of the more traditional archetypes, which really values tempo, speed, and Thornscape guys of all sorts. Apocalypse will add in Goblin Legionnaires, Captain’s Maneuver, and some neat bombs. This archetype will be weaker than before, but should still be viable if Planeshift worked out well for you.

G/W/U — Treva’s deck (or the little kid deck)
I really don’t know what to make of this archetype. If possible it gets even worse with Apocalypse, since the G/U spells are all sorceries — making them powerful, but less tricky. The real benefit to this deck is that it should never-ever have mana problems and will be capable of stealing games because of it. Look for this to morph into a fourth or fifth color if the cards support it.

W/U/B — Dromar’s Deck
This looks solid. You get to use the best elements of Manacles, the mix of Confound and the Flag Bearers seems too good to be true, and you get some of Black’s raw power. Dead Ringers should be the bomb common of this set-up, as it is easily splashed, should go fairly late, and is terrific with either Tidal Visionary OR Aurora Griffin.

U/B/R — Crosis’s Deck
Well, it can fully use the best common in the set — Jilt — and it can use Jilt’s rare cousin, Barrin’s Spite, plus some of the most powerful effects in the game. It seems to be just as solid as before, maybe even gaining a bit of ground as the Black commons seem pretty solid, and some of the Red/Blue gold cards such as Quicksilver Dagger and Timmy are very, very good.

B/R/G — Darigaaz’s Deck
Overall, this is solid; the most important card for this deck in Apocalypse (besides the broken rares like Spiritmonger that it now has access to) is the common Consume Strength, which is just incredible at three mana.

W/U-R
This looks to be the strongest of the wedge combinations. U/W has always been a fairly strong color combination, and Red is easy to splash (particularly from Planeshift). When you get to Apocalypse, you get access to most of the best commons, some crazy rares, and really solid synergy with the Flagbearers.

G/W-B
Ahh, the home of the broken rares. The only real problem with this color combination is that the only solid gold common is Consume Strength. The two bears are sub-par, and Soul Link is awful when you compare it to the equally costed Armadillo Cloak. This will be a deck that will make it or break it based on the Rares and Uncommons you’ll see in your final set of packs.

G/R — U
This is a solid, but unspectacular, tempo-based deck. You get a nice mix of spells in the common and uncommon runs, but with the exception of the two rare counters (which are hard to run if U is your splash color), it has very few bombs. Not a color combination I would be happy drafting, but if my Invasion and Planeshift packs had given me a ton of Bears, Boosting, and Bounce, I would run it and hope for the best. Quicksilver Dagger is probably best in this deck, as you tend to peter out of cards rather quickly.

B/R — W
Well, here is a fun choice... But if you’re playing B/R already, do you need to bother with White? That will be answered as time marches on, but it could be a viable archetype. The real problem with this one, over any of the others, is that you will be limited to Land or Artifact mana fixing as Red, Black, AND White are all notably lacking in playable color fixers. The Gray Ogre kavus can help, but not all that much.

B/U — G
Again, lots of broken rares, and U/B gets to shore up its traditional weakness of a crappy creature base. I’m not sure on the best way to play this one, but more than likely it will be a G-U or B-G centered deck that splashes the other allied color and gold cards.

5 Color Green (Or: The archetype that everyone will be drafting for the next few weeks)

Last on the list is the traditional 5 Color Archetype. I honestly don’t know if this will actually work anymore, but I know people will be trying it. 5 Color Green really relies on Harrows, Nomadic Elves, and Quirion Trailblazers and you are only going to get one swing at them this time. If you can get them, you’ll be passing up other quality picks, where before the goal of 5CG was to simply snap up every bomb you see early and then draft the mana fixing late. That’s probably not going to be viable anymore, as mana fixing will be on everyone’s agenda. Try it if you can, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So that’s a basic run through of what I think will appear. As far as Rochester drafting goes, I think that Apocalypse will be the straw that breaks the camels back as far as signals go. Picks that formerly seemed like hate drafts could now easily be justified as splash set-ups for Apocalypse. That means it can actually open the floodgates for hate drafting, and it will be nearly impossible to stay out of your neighbors colors. It may not even be to your benefit to try.

I think Apocalypse could also have the same problem as Planeshift in that you can open packs with thirteen playable cards, while your neighbor opens a pack with nothing. There are a lot of crappy commons and uncommons in this set, so try not to set up your decks to rely on the final packs to save you, as it could very easily backfire.

Now that the picture is complete, we can see that Invasion block may well be the most challenging and rich Limited environment ever created. I think that we will also see a ton of viable decks for both Block and Standard come out of Apocalypse, and it will probably even shake up Extended, too — Lord knows what it will do to"5."

So, are you ready? I’m certainly not, but it will be a fun ride.

Jon Chabot