I am quite deep into the format, approaching 80 drafts now, and I used to play 3-4 color piles based around rares and bombs just as everyone else. But I got curious if red and BR in particular was as bad as people were saying.

So I started by tentatively dipping into red, and later started straight up forcing BR unless it was very clear I couldn't. And the results weren't terrible! I would say I am performing at my usual winrate around 60%, so I didn't feel bad for doing so, and the games are much more enjoyable and drafts go much faster for me now.

Here is the latest example of me taking [[Grim Repriser]] p1p1 and going 7-1 (granted I was passed some very good cards, but that's part of the deal with BR, people don't draft it often):
https://www.17lands.com/draft/3b246a012b014907824ced82fad213ef/1/1

If you are curious, my own personal opinion is that the most important components to a good BR deck are, in roughly that order:

- Good 1-drops. Red Maywen and Voxmancer are the best, but I play Mabel and even Ghoul sometimes. Playing a 1-drop on turn one can easily amount to 4-8 damage over the course of the game.
- Enough 2-drops, with at least some premium ones. For me the best are [[Skilled Battlecarver]], black Gallia and Grim Repriser, but I will play Gargoyles, Eardrum Rattlers, red Gallias, basically anything with 2+ attack. You need 6+ for the deck to function. Note that Stingerquill Charms double as 2-drops, and not bad ones either.
- Removal and combat tricks to push through big blockers. This is very important, but it's not that important whether you have Extended Absence or [[Blazing Crescendo]]. They both do the same job of getting you through an Undulating Witness or something. Even Ferocity of the Hunt is good enough (have you ever put it on the Battlecarver when they doubleblocked it with 11 mana worth of creatures? I have, it feels good).
- Some card advantage/selection. It can come in many different forms, but you won't be able to just aggro down all your opponents every game, you need something for the long games. [[Hallway Heckler]]s that rummage, Reprisers that come back from the grave, Marwyns that chop down lands, Blazing Crescendos are all CA. I like having a copy of [[Cast Away Doubt]], it draws you cards and hits them for 2 (3 with red Tomik, great card in this deck). I usually don't play Twinned Visions unless I have 3+ cards that mill, it's too mana intensive, you don't want to spend so much mana and not affect the board in this deck. Almost forgot [[Command the Stage]], it's a gameplan in a bottle, especially if you have Voxmancers and Koths in your deck. This card can outgrind anything besides the bombs, also combos great with Heckler.
- Reach. This is optional, but decks with good reach win more often in my experience. Charms and No Admittances are the most direct ones, but also Stingerquill Voxmancers, Hecklers, Whiplashers, Cast Away Doubt and Blazing Crescendos. I especially like Whiplashers as they can finish the game out of nowhere, that's the reason I prefer them over Heartstring Pullers for my very few 4 drop slots. Extended Absence and Koth also work, every point of damage counts.

What I try to avoid:

- Heavy curve. I usually stop at 4 for creatures, sometimes at 3, unless I get a Kiora or something equally bomby. Even then, I wouldn't want to play 2 of them probably.
- Low creature count. I am counting things like Command the Stage and Stingerquill Charm here, but I want no less than 15, up to 17-18 creatures. You probably don't want 20, as you still need ways to interact. The ideal scenario is having 15 real creatures and 2-3 Charms, then you both have a lot of creatures and a lot of interaction. And a lot of reach! Stingerquill Charm, what a card.
- Splashes. I don't think I splashed anything even once, the deck isn't built for that.
- Landcyclers. I may play a copy of Awaken the Inferno if I'm low on big creature removal, but I am never happy when I have to cycle it. And I would never play Apex Witchstalker.
- Tapped lands. There is nothing worse than having Marwyn in your opener and not being able to play it because you have an annex instead of a Mountain. I may play one Annex if I don't have any 1-drops, but that already sounds like a failed draft. For the same reason I don't play Room of Refuge. What I do prioritize is specifically Haunted Ridge, it is awesome and I will take it over any filler, even stuff like Last Gasp. Normally I just play 8-8 split of basics and it works, and when it doesn't I mulligan.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on BR and the place of aggro in the format in general!

Absolutely doing tricks on it with this one; one win was pinging a bunch of Nadu creatures intentionally and then recalling opponent into wheeling for game

Oh my god, this deck was sooooo much fun. I had the most insane comebacks with the boardwipe. The fixing was just the right amount to get the engines going! Sooo many combos 😍

I would play this deck for 3 more drafts.

So in M21 there was an entire archetype built around the card [[Teferi's Tutelage]]:

This card was very good! It turned out that you could play an entire deck that was just removal and card draw and mill your opponents out with Tutelage. Now, in Aetherdrift there is a card called [[Aether Syphon]]:

It's a Tutelage if you have max speed, which you get by... playing creatures and hitting your opponent in the face? Making this work requires what we in the business call an "aggro control" deck:

Aether Syphon Mill: The Speediest Deck in Amonkhet

Big WOTC will say that BW is the speed deck in Amonkhet. This is a bald-faced lie. BW tries desperately to get max speed and then their opponent plays a [[Migrating Ketradon]] and their entire deck is useless. You are Amonkhet's only true speed deck because if you get an Aether Syphon in play with max speed your opponent will die in 2-3 turns. This means that any decent aether syphon deck wants to get max speed and quickly before the board clogs up and you have to make sketchy life/card trades to get speed. This "aggro" part of your aggro-control deck wants two things:

• A turn 2 evasive creature: [[Skystreak Engineer]], [[Diversion Unit]], [[Skyserpent Seeker]], [[Scrounging Skyray]], [[Wreckage Wickerfolk]], [[Engine Rat]]
• A turn 1 or 3 source of Start Your Engines!: [[Starting Column]], [[Glitch Ghost Surveyor]] and equivalents, [[Point the Way]] (yes, really), [[Aether Syphon]]

Aether syphon itself is technically a turn 3 source of Start your Engines!, but it's hard to reliably cast at 1UU, and you really need to actually do something on both t2 and t3 so you don't just die. As a rule of thumb, if you are repeatedly activating aether siphon prior to max speed, you are building your deck wrong (exceptions: your opponent's deck is very slow, you drew a lot of cheap removal).

There are several cards that badly fill both roles here: [[Slick Imitator]], [[Glitch Ghost Surveyor]], and I guess [[Walking Sarcophagus]]. Of the three, I have found [[Slick Imitator]] to be the best because it helps you kill faster (and get past artifact removal) with Aether Syphon, and because a 1/3 body is better than a 2/1 or 2/2 (you're not actually trying to beat them up!) Generally, you will need to prioritize evasive 2 drops much more than early sources of speed, but you want both because the best 2 drops don't Start Your Engines!

As that card list probably shows you are going to be playing allllllll the shithead cards in this deck. [[Slick imitator]] (D+)? Get in there. [[Stall out]]? (F)? With Aether Syphon in play it's basically 4 mana kill a creature draw a card! And it can help your aggro plan! [[Point the Way]] (43.7% GIH WR, F-)? Look, it says Start your Engines! on it for just one mana, and you can actually use all the lands to tap your Aether Siphon. (see appendix for a start your engines rant). You are basically playing 2026 limited in 2025 at this point, everything draws you a fucking card.

The Control Half of Aggro-Control: Card Draw and Removal

From here we will assume that you have played your dudes and fired out your removal and taken maybe 5-7 damage to get max speed. That's a lot of hoops! Fortunately, if you can actually play an Aether Syphon with max speed your opponent will die much faster than with Teferi's Tutelage in M21 because the card draw in this set is absurd. Your mana rock ([[Starting Column]]) is card draw. Your removal ([[Trip Up]], [[Stall Out]]) is card draw. There is a cycle of cards that exile from your graveyard to draw a card at max speed. And Aether Syphon, unlike Tutelage, can always keep drawing you cards! All this means that while you do need to keep an eye on your card draw (especially to prevent flood, which cycling cannot solve), it's not very difficult to cycle through ~12 cards across the 3 turns after you play Aether Syphon, which will kill your opponent very quickly.

This means that after you sort out your aggro plan, the main thing to figure out is removal, which will hopefully mostly be [[Bounce Off]] and [[Flood the Engine]] and [[Trip Up]]. These are all pretty fine, but you will need more permanent removal to not just die to a bomb. Your aggro cards determine the main two colors of your deck (U + G or B, usually), but your removal will determine if and how much you splash. Despite the fact that this deck picks [[Starting Column]], splashing has a real cost because we need to hit our 2 drops and [[Aether Syphon]] is a 1UU card.

The best colors for removal in this format are U and B, which both have good, cheap interaction. R is next because it has a lot of sort of clunky 1 for 1s that nobody likes. W has [[Ride's End]], which is excellent, and a whole lot of nothing else. Green has no removal at all; it doesn't contribute a ton to this deck's gameplan, but half of your aether syphon decks will probably end up part green because the color is so good in DFT. This isn't really that complicated, though: removal is removal. Just remember that you can take [[Bounce Off]] a bit more aggressively, and that you can definitely play 1-2 [[Stall Out]] as well (less with more Bounce Offs). Even when games go long, you're often playing weirdly aggressively with your little dorky fliers.

In a Nutshell

So:

• Get evasive two drops
• Get a critical mass of early Start your Engines!
• Fill the gaps with removal
• And don't completely ignore card draw, but you'll probably have enough because everything cycles in this set.

You are most vulnerable to the fast mount decks that play stuff like [[Saddleback Lagac]], but the deck does very well against all the chunky green creatures out there, and that just so happens to be the name of the game in DFT! Have fun!

Appendix / notes

[[Guidelight Pathfinder]] and [[Riverchurn Monument]] are sort of bad Aether Syphons. I suppose [[Hour of Victory]] could also work, but that seems really slow.

If you play these decks for a while, you will start to get into really weird situations where your opponent is at 5 life and can't attack because they will die on the backswing. This is an excellent control strategy and will give you time to durdle and mill them out. Doing this to people feels like I am [[The Rack]] IRL online.

POINT THE WAY FOOTNOTE: Okay [[Point the Way]] isn't actually very good in this deck, it's barely above replacement, but it's so fucking funny that it is actually sort of playable here. It has the exact weird combination of effects you need for this deck: Start your Engines on turn 1, and unlike the beefy green decks in this set we can get max speed for turn 4 and then actually use the mana because we /love/ card draw. One thing that always surprises me with Point the Way is that it thins your deck quite a lot; it doesn't make it impossible to flood, but 4 lands is around 1/3 to 1/2 of your lands gone, which means that even if you topdeck it lategame it's sort of [[Murmuring Volume]] coded. Also Loot is the cutest thing ever and now I get to put his fucking bobblehead face all over my opponent's monitor.

In this format, I feel like mana flooding accounts for the largest share of my losses. Since I'm usually running like 3 or more landcyclers if I can find and afford to pick them, I'm often in a spot when building my deck where I'm not sure how many lands I should be running.

In cycling-heavy decks, I found that you can be putting yourself in a really bad/awkward spot during a game if you run a "normal" land count and you're forced to cycle like twice in the early game. Looking back at some replays, it looked like I was setting myself up to getting flooded later.

So I'm interested, what are your heuristics? How do you factor in other mana sources like Heartwood Tokens and Tomes? How often do you run off color cyclers? How highly do you prioritize picking up cyclers in the first place - especially if you have to choose between a Planeswalker Dual and a Cycler?

I feel like I could have won the last game (game 4) but I can't really identify where I went wrong with the play (well besides trying to remove Liliana). Was I holding onto my bombs for too long (trying to play around an Icy Reception? Any insight would be helpful - thanks!

https://www.17lands.com/details/89bf8832fe0d496aa99b32416df7b1ff

Feels like when I have some bombs it can be awesome but I don't trophy lol when I have an extremely functional deck with good cards - it works ridiculously.

I unfortunately didn't find any baubles or spellbomb etc, but I feel like I was on the right track. Should I be playing anything from side or cut, or land count? Thank you guys

Reality Fracture has an abundance of quality removal, so this week I'm talking about the ramifications of that and how to build your decks accordingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3572pe_zQk

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1thURTW3gDgSO8nTOB2QM0

https://linktr.ee/roughdrafts

A bit of fresh air with all the grindy blue soup decks running around.

Initially didn't put the mono black removals, but they really proved their worth.

Kinda funny we're like back to TDM with soup vs mardu

Pick 2 draft. Felt I had my open lane but im realizing my interaction is scarce. Any changes or advice on play?

I have the R/G tapland too but I don't think I want it.

Hey guys. I'm not really sure if I built this deck correctly, given the pool. I went through the draft again, and I think I'd make the same picks. I would appreciate some tips for the future deck building and picks. Thanks.

https://www.17lands.com/deck/e857345b7d8348379e26deb2b6c5d5be/0?view=deck

Long story short, I needed the surveil bird to be my 8th attacker to their 7 blockers to win with Fblthp. I activated its ability (surveiling nothing obviously due to the empty library) and then full swung. I guess I should've double checked, but I figured the game was over and I was shocked to see the bird not swinging. Is this an Arena bug, or is that actually how this would work in the rules in paper? Does an ability that interacts with the top of your library (such as surveil or scry) not happen at all if the library is empty?

Only loss was to a deck that won with Fblthp before I could kill them. Deck felt awesome, though. I actually had two more [[Something Worth Saving]] in my sideboard, but I was a little concerned about milling myself in longer games. Overall, though, this deck played very aggressive and put a lot of pressure on the dirdly blue decks. I think there are a lot of pieces that need to fit right to get this archetype to work, but when it does, it can really pop off.

P1P2 - is Mindseeker Oculus really the best card in the pack?

I realise it’s not at 40 yet; I think my last cut will be one of the irrelevant 2 drops - either Tetsuko or the Adept.

Can I get away with playing 1 swamp here, considering I don’t have any self mill; and I kinda want to run another mountain?

Ocelot Pride is obviously a strong card, Glimmer Lense would be great card draw, and Chromatic Star is fixing plus recurring card draw with Lurrus.

What would be the cuts?

Some side bullshit, the app glitched out and I didn’t get a first pick and it auto picked Ketria Triome pick two. You can see in the second picture I’m on pick three with only one card.

Never drafted VOW before and could not figure out what the seat was, picked up some white, some blue, a black bomb and [[Bleed Dry]], then saw a [[Wandering Mind]] late and figured I might as well see if UR was open and ended up with a very meh-looking deck that went all the way! Never saw a [[Lantern Bearer]] or [[Kessig Flamebreather]]. Basically won off of evasion, card advantage and removal.

Am I crazy to treat the games decision of play/draw like a fair coin toss? I'm on a 10x streak of being on the draw in premier draft. The odds of this occurring should be 1/1024 or 0.0977%. For some reason 17L didn't track my last game of the first draft.

I don't know that I have much desire to see how long I can continue this streak. If I go to 11, that's 1/2048. Does the game have a pity timer for people that run this cold? Lol.

Curious if anyone has similar outliers in their 17L data. Talk me off the tilt ledge.

4 power, good removals, counters and 12 instant speed cards. I always had counter + menace open in opponents turns

Probably the worst card was Hero of Bladehold, but I wanted to try it, having a lot of token makers. Never had the chance to use it

Cosmogrand Zenith with Sol Ring, Mox, Vault, a lot of 1 drops and Skullclamp was incredible.

Unfortunately I had the chance to play this deck only for 7 matches

I have been drafting for a long time but I am stuck on Platinum for a while now, never got very good on it and never really tried too much but I believe now I am getting a little better and I would like to keep improving in a set that I am enjoying a lot. However, since I do not have friends playing that could guide me, it is tough to understand where are my main struggles. I think the main issue is how I am playing but I cannot be sure.

I have uploaded an image of the last draft which I think was a very good deck that went 1-3. Is it a good deck? Was the result more linked to my play or variance?

It did feel a little too slow, not sure if I should have added Phytomedic to have a body on board early, or if I should have a few of the tapped lands taken out. I believe maybe 2 cards with double red would be a little to far to push but it was tough to have Splinter Twin and not try to combo hahaha

I do not think I usually draft decks that I would rate better than this.

I am not sure if I would be able to upload games to be evaluated, but understanding if the deck building is good or not would already help.

Thank you a lot for all your help! :)