Hello, and welcome to the Deck Garage once more.  Today, I’ve decided to deviate a bit from the normal format of this column.  Recently, the powers that be have sent me gracious compensation for my work here, and to show my gratitude I’ve decided to write this little “extra” feature article.  It helps to keep my literary batteries fresh, so to speak, if I write on a variety of topics.

            So what’s the topic?  Well, to explain that I’m going to take you on a little flashback first.  It was over a year ago.  I hadn’t yet begun my writing stint at Pojo, and was basically just another player.  My esteemed colleague Jordan Kronick had just begun his tenure at Pojo, and I was glad that my favorite Magic site had gotten a new writer to do regular articles.  Ravnica: City of Guilds was fairly new on the shelves, and Jordan did quite a captivating article in which he listed every card in the set that could be played for one mana, and what you should do if you see that card first turn.  He was talking about Limited I believe, and whether it was my own proclivities for Limited play, Jordan’s polished and insightful analysis, or the subject matter itself, I loved that article.  It was my hope that Jordan would make an ongoing series about it, analyzing all the one-drops in each new set that came out.  But he didn’t.  So, with respect to him, I have decided to take up the chalice and do an article about one-drops in Limited.

            Now, the most likely set to do such an article about would be Planar Chaos, since that’s what every magic news site has been talking about the past few weeks.  Unfortunately, it isn’t out yet.  I could wait for it to come out, but there’s another issue with it that also stops me from using Time Spiral as my set of choice—suspend.  You see, in Time Spiral, one drops form only a part of what you might do on turn one.  In fact, they’re the less significant part, because most experts agree that suspending a card on turn one is often the strongest turn-one play you can make.  So a Time Spiral one-drop analysis would have to include cards with a mana cost of one, and/or a suspend cost of one.  And that’s quite a lot of cards.  So, I’ll be choosing a simpler yet still relevant set for my analysis—9^th edition.  Ninth will be standard legal for a while yet, and people do draft it.  Incidentally, Core Set Draft is a great way for new drafters to build their skill in Limited, and 9^th drafts are quite a lot of fun.  I’ve played them, and I had a blast.  I also made Top 8, so I think I can provide a pretty solid strategy article for it.

            So, now that the introduction has been made, let’s get down to business: every card in 9^th Edition, sorted by color, that an opponent may play against you in a draft on his or her first turn, and how you should react.  As narrow a topic as that seems, it’s actually a pretty important part of the game.  Turn One is your first look at how your opponent’s strategy works, and so it’s the time to begin analyzing what your opponent wants to do to you and how you can stop them.  Hopefully, this analysis will also give you some insight as to what your own best first move would be in your next draft.  We’ll start with white, the traditional “first color” in the color wheel.

White: Demystify, Eager Cadet, Holy Day, Holy Strength, Honor Guard, Infantry Veteran, Mending Hands, Righteousness, Savannah Lions, Soul Warden, Spirit Link, Suntail Hawk, Weathered Wayfarer.

            That’s quite a list there.  In Ninth, white is the color of quick weenie rush, so it has the most one-mana spells.  However, we can pretty much ignore Demystify, Holy Day, Righteousness, and Spirit Link for this discussion, since there’s very little chance that there would be a target for these on Turn One, or in the case of Mending Hands and Holy Day, enough damage to bother preventing.  If you can deal enough damage that quickly to get them to play one of those cards, you’re going to win.  Theoretically the same can be said for Holy Strength, though I feel obliged to mention that someone could play an Ornithopter and enchant it with Holy Strength on turn one.  If someone pulled that off, it would be a terrific start, but since Ornithopter is going to mess up our math all the way through here, it’s likely best if we ignore it for discussion purposes for now.  That leaves the creatures—all seven of them.  Eager Cadet and Honor Guard should never really pose a threat to you, so there’s no need to worry there; it just implies they didn’t have enough good creatures and fell back on 1/1 dorks.  Infantry Veteran is one notch up for its slight impact on combat math later, but it’s still nothing distressing.  Weathered Wayfarer is a good card, but its power depends a lot on who is on the play and who is on the draw.  If your opponent played second, you might be tempted to miss a land drop in order to deny him a free land.  If you do, you’ll still end up with one fewer land than him, so unless your own hand has plenty of one-drops, don’t bother playing his game of land-chicken.  It’s exactly what he wants you to do.

            Soul Warden, Savannah Lions, and Suntail Hawk are probably the best one-drops in White 9^th.  The Hawk has flying, meaning it’s going to be hard to block.  The Lions will do a lot of damage to you, and probably kill a creature you paid more than one mana for in combat.  And because Limited is so dependant on creatures, Soul Warden will probably give your opponent at least 5 life before you find a way to kill it.  The Soul Warden implies a defensive strategy, so you want to attack as much as you can to keep your opponent on the defensive and minimize their life gain.  The Hawk or Lions are both offensive cards, so you need to either find some defense quick, or start to race.  And winning a race against Lions is quite difficult.

Blue: Flight, Fugitive Wizard, Index, Mind Bend, Sea’s Claim, Sleight of Hand, Telepathy.

            Only seven blue one-drops to white’s thirteen?  Well, blue is a slow color in 9^th.  Again, let’s skip over Flight and Mind Bend due to lack of targets on turn one.  Why aren’t I skipping over Sea’s Claim?  Because if your opponent is on the draw, then he should be able to play it on your first land.  But why do that?  Well, if you see that move on turn one, there are some educated guesses you can make.  The first is that your opponent has Sea Monster or at least River Bear in his deck.  There’s just no other reason to have it in your deck in 9^th Limited, and it is almost definitely true even if the second assumption is true.  The second assumption is that your opponent wants to try and deny you the color of mana that you need.  If you can’t get the right color of mana, and you’re not playing blue, Sea’s Claim could theoretically screw you over for the short-term.  But that’s fairly easy to get out of—you still have the land, it just effectively became colorless.  The third reason a person might play Sea’s Claim so early is if your first land was a Quicksand, dual land, or Urza’s land.  Sea’s Claim robs nonbasics of their extraneous abilities, so your opponent might use it to try and disrupt your plans.  Either way, it’s a fairly weak first turn play.

            The other weak play here would be Telepathy.  Giving away your strategy can be a useful advantage, but not one that is worth spending a card in your deck on.  If your opponent had so few playables that they included this, you can just reveal your hand confident in the notion that your opponent won’t like what they see.

            That leaves Index, Sleight of Hand, and Fugitive Wizard.  It’s been quite some time since 1/1’s with no abilities could pretend to be playable, so the Wizard, like Eager Cadet, is no threat.  Index can be quite useful on the first turn to help establish a strategy into the midgame, but Sleight of Hand is even better since it actually draws you a card.  Either way, the two library manipulation spells are all blue really has going for it off of that first Island.

Black: Blackmail, Festering Goblin, Plague Beetle, Raise Dead, Unholy Strength, Will-o’-the-Wisp

            Only six cards, but they’re all pretty good.  Raise Dead won’t have any targets though, and Unholy Strength won’t either unless it’s Ornithopter.  Although, a first turn Unholy Strength on Ornithopter is probably the greatest first turn any draft deck could ever hope for, and if someone pulls it off against you, unless you have Volcanic Hammer in your opening hand, you are SCREWED.  But let’s move on.

            Blackmail can be a good card, but on the first turn, you should still have plenty of cards in hand.  You could easily pick the three least important ones and be assured a minimal impact, and so a savvy opponent would wait until you got closer to three cards in hand.

            As for the three creatures, it’s either Wisp or Festering Goblin you have to watch out for.  Plague Beetle, against a nonblack deck, is just another Eager Cadet.  Festering Goblin seems no better while in play, but because it can block a 2/2, deal a point of damage, and give the 2/2 -1/-1 to kill it, or block and kill a 1/1 and kill another 1/1 (or any X/1), it essentially must be thought of like a mini-Electrolyze, or at least a 2/2 for B, so it is quite powerful for a one-drop.  Will-o’-the-Wisp, by contrast, is the defensive move—very few creatures can attack into a Wisp and kill it or push damage through, and so the Wisp essentially negates your biggest attacker every turn for the rest of the game.  Even at Turn Ten, your Scaled Wurms will be rendered helpless.  Lasting impact is what you should always look for in a one-drop.

Red: Firebreathing, Goblin Balloon Brigade, Goblin Mountaineer, Kird Ape, Mana Clash, Mogg Sentry, Raging Goblin, Reflexes, Shock.

Again, we start with removing those that make no sense on the first turn—in this case, Firebreathing and Reflexes.  Shock, although targeted, could be used on Turn One to bring the opponent to 18, but this is a play error, since Shock’s value in Limited is its ability to kill creatures.  Playing it early to make your opponent go from 20 to 18 is an awful waste of it.  That leaves five creatures and Mana Clash.  Mana Clash’s random nature make it too unreliable to count on for anything, so no player would include it in their deck unless they thought they were really lucky, or thought that the card was fun enough to play anyway.  Some players like coin flip cards, and are content in the knowledge that they don’t further any strategy because they make the game fun.  Any opponent who busts out one of these on the first turn wants to enjoy the game, even if it means losing.

            So what about the creatures?  Well, they’re all 1/1’s, but each has an additional ability.  Raging Goblin can deal one extra point of damage, and any deck that benefits from playing it is probably also dependant on a lot of little guys doing a lot of swinging.  The Mountaineer is the same way, but is even less useful.  Kird Ape, while only a 1/1 to begin with, will likely become a 2/3 soon enough and will probably cause you problems shortly, so watch out.  It also implies that your opponent is playing green, which means some big tramplers are due before long.

            Mogg Sentry seems like it could be even worse, but because its bonus is dependant upon what you, the opponent, do, it can be easier to deal with.  All you have to do is attack before you play your spells for the turn.  That just leaves Balloon Brigade, who is no real threat but can continue to swing for 1 in the air long after other 1/1’s are no longer relevant.

Green: Elvish Berserker, Giant Growth, Groundskeeper, Llanowar Elves, Norwood Ranger, Reclaim, Tree Monkey, Web

            It’s a pity Giant Growth has to be relegated to the “no targets” list; it’s arguably one of the best one-mana cards in 9^th Edition.  Joining it is Reclaim, another card that gives an incredible effect for only G.  Web is most definitely the weakest card on this list you’ll never see first turn.  That leaves only creatures—a fitting scenario for green, the creature-heavy color.  So, what does each creature suggest?

            Llanowar Elves is probably the only creature here that sees regular play even at Pro Tours, and it should be obvious why.  If your opponent plays Llanowar first turn, he then skips ahead to the third turn against your second, meaning his spells will most likely be more impactful than yours.  Your options?  Hope you can curve out properly and deal with whatever he manages to power out, or hope he leaves mana open to bluff a trick.

            The other four creatures are all quite less threatening than that.  Norwood Ranger seems like a first-turn beating, but in practice a 1/2 doesn’t stay relevant much longer than a 1/1.  Its only job is to sit there and make attacking that much harder for your opponent.  Tree Monkey does a similar job—chump block, or hopefully gang block with something and kill a flier.  Elvish Berserker, on the other hand, is only useful if you’re attacking with it.  If it blocks, it’s a 1/1.  If it attacks and gets blocked, then it’s at least a 2/2, and that’s not too shabby for one mana.  Most savvy players won’t bother to block, though, but then you’re at least getting some damage in.  Elvish Berserker best compliments a beatdown strategy, so it’s likely you’re going to want to find a Lumengrid Warden or something of the like soon.

            Groundskeeper is sort of a wild card—returning lands to your hand from the graveyard has limited use.  It might be a combo with Trade Routes or Seismic Assault, or maybe your opponent is paranoid about land destruction, but either way this doesn’t really send a clear signal.

Other: Ornithopter, Spellbook, Tanglebloom.

            Finally, we get to discuss Ornithopter, the card that actually makes all those one-mana Auras plausible.  Not good, but plausible (except for Unholy Strength).  If your opponent starts off the game with Ornithopter, and no other nonland play, what does that mean?  Well, ‘Thopter’s fame has been built on the back of infinite recurring combos that hinge on sacrificing it, returning it to your hand, and then being able to replay it for free and start the loop over.  These loops are hard to set up in Limited however, so here it is simply a VERY cheap flyer.  Flying creatures are always useful in Limited, even if only to block the opponent’s flier, but be prepared for something that can give it +X/+X so it can start swinging.

            The other zero-mana artifact, Spellbook, has no impact on the board at all.  Why would anyone play it maindeck?  Only two reasons; they have a lot of card drawing spells like Tidings or Counsel of the Soratami, or they have Maro.  Or possibly both.  Maro isn’t really that scary, but if your opponent can draw a lot of cards, then simply those extra cards should scare you.  Card advantage wins games in Limited, folks, and Tidings can mean four new threats to deal with against your one.  It’s time to try and end the game quickly.

            Tanglebloom may not look like much, but it can be.  From now on, every turn where your opponent doesn’t need to tap out, he can gain 1 life.  This probably won’t become significant for at least four more turns, but if the game becomes a race, this could tip the scales.  The fact that it’s 1 life every turn means an incremental advantage that grows with each turn, and it means in the late game where everyone has plenty of lands, he can still optimize his mana while you may not have anything to do with yours.  Just like Spellbook, this is probably a signal that you don’t want the game to drag on.

            I know that this sort of article may seem a bit narrow to be useful, but just like my deck fixes, the real value comes in applying the principles to new situations.  A hard look at Turn One like this can really get you thinking about what your opponent’s strategy, and by extension your own, will be in a game.

            And so, until next time, good luck and never stop thinking.

            ~BMoor