Khans has been a highly anticipated set due to its fetching new flavour as well as the, allegedly, popular returning morph mechanic and the landing of some cool new mechanics to set the clans apart.
Oh, I hear it also has fetch lands in it.
(Personally I rather dislike the morph mechanic but more on this later.)
I got my first taste of Khans at the pre-release where I participated in 4 events, going 4-0 in my first one and 2-2 in the rest.
Pre-releases are always fun but in general sealed is my least favourite format due to the extreme variance and the lack of deck building/card selection nuances that you get in draft.
Still, it did let me get a feel for the new mechanics and confirm that I could not beat a triple Siege Rhino pool... (yay sealed variance!!)
I went undefeated with my Abzan deck even though I had zero bomb rares and even in my Mardu and Jeskai decks, the white outlast creatures were consistently the best parts of my decks.
Flying also seemed to be at a high premium as the boards ended up hugely stalled on the ground very often.
(My pre-release fetch count was 3.)
Yesterday I had the opportunity to get in an early Khans draft with some mates, which I managed to win, and it gave a rather pleasant initial glance at the format.
I first picked a Chief of the Scale as black/white warriors was an archetype I had pegged for being achievable and good.
I pretty quickly settled into Junk colours as I picked up an Abzan Charm and some decent green cards.
The core white warrior cards never came but I did end up with a few in black and white though with no further chiefs, it wasn't really the focus of my deck anyway.
I ended up the draft, as I often do, with no bomb rares (I think I actually played zero rares in my deck) but with a pretty solid core of defensive outlast creatures, triple Abzan Charm, an Armament Corps and a few fliers which I hoped would get me through in the air.
Unfortunately I only ended up with 2 on colour dual lands which made my mana a bit loose but with 7 sources of each colour, it did the job passingly.
I also got to try out Kin-Tree Invocation with 2 Disowned Ancestors in my deck and while I never got to turn 2 make a 4/4, making a 4/4, or often bigger, for 2 mana seemed fine at any stage of the game.
In the end, the Armament Corps and the 3 Abzan Charms were about as excellent as they look and I was able to defeat 3 decent decks to 3-0.
I also cracked a Bloodstained Mire in pack 3, fetch count moves to 4.
Some things that my first draft taught me:
- Agro is definitely achievable, though I'm not sure if it's good yet.
I played against Max in the finals and he had a very aggressive Mardu deck with Pony Back Brigades and Trumpet Blasts in it, as well as 3 Skullhunters which kept my hand empty very well.
I got overrun super fast game 1, got there in game 2 with some sided in Sidisi's Pets (being able to flip these for 2 mana is super brutal against a deck full of 2/1s) and Max never drew a black mana source in game 3.
The deck looked sweet but I feel it's very hard for agro to get through in Khans without going super wide.
- I still don't like morph.
Look, I get why WotC put the no blow outs below 5 mana rule but it leads to super linear game play to me. At below 5 mana you can't bluff with the morphs at all and if you do have 5 mana, no one is going to go anywhere remotely close to your morphs unless they have a kill/bounce spell in hand in which case you get super blown out.
I've been finding that I'd much rather play a decent 3 drop on turn 3 (there are quite a few) than play a generic morph. The exception being the morphs with spells attached, like Icefeather Raven, which are excellent and well worth the durdly process that is the morph mechanic.
Don't get me wrong, there are some very strong morph cards and you should play them, I just am not a fan of the mechanic as a whole.
- Fixing is important, take it.
The should be pretty obvious but it's worth stating again.
I feel I'd like 4-5 pieces of fixing in an ideal world but you're not always going to get it.
That said, there are very few double cost requirement cards in the format so you can get away with a 7 of each source mana base reasonably ok at 2-3 piece of fixing.
- Outlast is strong.
I didn't have any of the premium, namely lifelink and flying, outlast creatures in my deck but even the lowly Disowned Ancestor always felt super strong.
Played on turn 1, the guy was almost always a 3/7 or 4/8 which is nothing to sneeze at.
Early impressions lead me to believe this will be one of my most drafted cards.
Anyway, all things point to Khans being a super sweet draft format and I look forward to getting more of it in this weekend.
Hopefully I'll get passed 3 Abzan Charms again! (In case you were wondering, card's pretty much insane.)
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