Welcome all to the Daily Dose of Amonkhet, where today I’m going to be going over three more of the best archetypes to be playing in Amonkhet Limited.
To recap from yesterday, an archetype in Magic is a strategy, usually involving a set of colours within which you can build your deck. What’s great about a large set like Amonkhet is that there are so many different options for players. The six archetypes that I’m talking about over these two days are some of the major and most obvious archetypes, but there are more that you'll find over time once you’ve played with the set a few times.
Remember when building that you don’t want to be solely focused on having to build your deck within one of these archetypes. A lot of the time, it depends on where the cards fall and you should be prepared to adapt if necessary. What I do like about knowing these archetypes in advance is that they often provide great synergy between cards that provide more value than a card will offer just by itself. So, let’s have a look at three more archetypes for Amonkhet Limited play.
Red/Black Discard
Rares/Mythics for this Archetype
Uncommons to Look for
Commons to Look for
It's not very often that you go into a game with the mindset of wanting to get as few as cards in your hand as possible, but that's one of the strategies behind this archetype. There are cards that help you discard cards, like Bloodrage Brawler, and there are cards that take advantage of you discarding cards, like Flameblade Adept. If you can’t tell already, this is a very aggressive deck. You want to deal damage early and often. If you run out of cards though, don’t worry, this can be to your advantage. If you can get the great God Hazoret the Fervent, you'll be happy with little to no cards in your hand. If you can get Neheb, the Worthy and make it so both players discard cards, even better! This is a risky deck to play, but if you can out race your opponent it can be quite effective.
Red/Blue Spells
Rares/Mythics for this Archetype
Uncommons to Look for
Commons to Look for
This deck is all about taking advantage of the larger than usual number of instants and sorceries that you'll have inside it. Having removal and disruption is always strong in Limited, but when combined with cards that want you to have a high number of them they become even better. There are so many cards that have great synergy with casting instants and sorceries like Enigma Drake that get bigger for each one you send to the graveyard. You'll be able to cast Cryptic Serpent earlier in the game if you’ve already cast some instant and sorcery cards.
The great thing is that red and blue usually have the best spells to begin with, so it shouldn’t be too hard to fill your deck with instant and sorcery spells. If you can get rares like Sweltering Suns and Pull from Tomorrow it will go a long way towards helping your game plan. Soul-Scar Mage will also allow you to get in extra damage with prowess and deal some major pain to your opponent’s creatures.
White/blue embalm
Rares/Mythics for this Archetype
Uncommons to Look for
Commons to Look for
This deck could also be called a Zombie deck because of all the White Zombie tokens you'll be creating thanks to Embalm. This works well as you can also add cards that have a Zombie synergy to your deck and enhance its power as well. I think that this could be one of the most powerful archetypes that you can play. The value that you'll be getting from being able to cast all your creatures twice thanks to Embalm is huge. There's also a larger subset of cards for this archetype than any other one in Amonkhet, giving you a higher chance to put cards in your deck that will fit into this archetype. Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun is one of the best rares that you could get for this deck. It makes all your Embalm creatures that much better and will allow you to get in some unblockable damage. Angel of Sanctions and Glyph Keeper are Limited bombs that are hard to deal with and even if your opponent can destroy them, you can bring them back!
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over the set and review these deck archetypes, which one do you think will best suit your style of play? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for joining me over the past two days to review some of the many deck archetypes you want to be looking for this upcoming prerelease weekend. Join me tomorrow as we finish off prerelease week on the Daily Dose of Amonkhet.
