I wrote this before I was paid to write draft guides, so this particular article has more information about drafting March of the Machine than my usual metagame analysis articles. It was originally published in April 2021 to analyze what was and was not working in a complex draft format. Blue showed itself as the best color in the first week, but after week 1 players found better ways to draft the other colors and combinations. While Blue remained the best color by winrate, Black/Red and Green/White both had sharp jumps in success after this article was published.

Week 1 of Drafting MoM: 

Analyzing 100 Trophy Lists

I collected 100 March of the Machines trophy lists between release and Tuesday April 25th! A trophy list is a deck that achieved 7 wins before 3 losses in the Premier Draft Event game mode in Magic:Arena.

I collected 15 each weekday and 20 each weekend day, from a combination of Discord communities and the fabulous 17lands.com. All lists are from players ranked Diamond or Mythic on Magic Arena.

Here’s the complete raw data, including anonymous decklists, and…

Here’s what I learned:

The Data!

What’s Working?

Blue. Blue is working

All 4 Blue color-pairs are viable, and comprise 48% of the 100 trophies.

However, a closer look reveals a deep diversity of archetypes- (nearly) every other color pair had at least 5 trophy lists, well above the range of outliers!  Blue is definitely the strongest color at common but, with the right uncommons and rares, every strategy has a path to winning the trophy. As a drafter I am ecstatic to announce: for the first time since I started collecting this data, all 226 Common and Uncommon were present in at least one trophy list.

Looking at the most played cards across all trophy lists, Blue outperformed initial expectations due to:

1)Ephara’s Dispersal performing as well as, if not better than, removal in other colors

2)Saiba Cryptomancer and Eyes of Gitaxias overperforming, providing depth to late picks

3)Preening Champion being worth a first pick for every blue archetype

Looking at the pick order, a lot of mythic drafters would take a risky rare, a card for another color, or Preening Champion early when there were a lot of blue cards in a pack, because they could still happily play whichever “Bad” blue common came back around.

34% of the trophy lists splashed a third color, all but 2 of which were for bombs rather than removal/missing pieces. Each color is deep enough to meet a good deck’s needs for removal and creatures, and the format offers enough time to play to the combo of powerful card+colored mana.

4 and 5 color decks were a pleasant surprise, and more common than any 3-color deck. Niv-Mizzet Reborn didn’t seem worth it to most players, but Atraxa, Invasion of Alara, Kenrith, and Omnath were all apparently worth bending a mana base. These were usually accompanied by the heavy fixing packages of Blighted Burgeoning/Portent Tracker or Invasion of Zendikar, and stemmed from players picking the color fixing before the 5-color payoffs.

The uniting archetype of Green/White doesn’t seem to be in +1/+1 counters, but in early creatures that grow over time. All 5 trophy decks had their strength and early picks focused in growing 2MV creatures: Shanna, Botanical Brawler, Norn’s Inquisitor, Daxos, Iridescent Brawler, Herbology Instructor, and Sun-Blessed Guardian make up the whopping SEVEN 2-drops that grow in G/W, alongside Streetwise Negotiator and Wary Thespian. This package just beats every other color’s 2-drops, and continues to do so as the game progresses.

Blue/White nearly always played to an obvious archetype built around key uncommons or rares. Knights, Transform, Counters, Convoke, https://scryfall.com/card/mom/51/chrome-host-seedshark, Battles, and Flash/Fliers all presented at least 2 trophy lists.

Blue/Black was the strongest color-pair overall, with the most similarity in their decklists- just scroll up and look at the top 12 most played cards. Meeting of Minds and Invasion of Amonkhet provide enough card advantage for cheap pieces of interaction to flow, and discard+Counterspells provide clean answers for the many MOM Bombs. All 4 0-rare decks were U/B.

What’s Not?

Red/White feels incredibly weak in MOM and, much like its signature mechanic, the Trophy Data backs that up. Backup is a great mechanic, but the support just isn’t there for a dedicated archetypical deck in the color pair. Without that support, the aggressive creatures simply fold to Blue’s Tempo, Green’s Larger creatures, and Black’s Removal. Both R/W trophy decks had an excessive number of rares and focused on smaller packages of cards rather than overall synergy- Valduk/Beamtown Beatsticks and Scrollshift ETBS were the notable cores of the 2 trophy decks, both of which had a generous helping of rares.

3-color decks were outliers, and consistently outperformed by splash decks that knew the order in which they wanted to draw their colors. This format isn’t fast, but tempo is very important and stuttering on mana in the face of battles is disastrous.

Dense battle-based decks weren’t present, with no single trophy deck containing more than 6. The true R/G battle deck does exist, but there’s always a risk of drawing all the battles in the deck without a good way to flip them or drawing all the flip payoffs without a battle #Pickyourbattles

Black/Red sacrifice as an archetype didn’t really show up, but the color-pair is still strong as a way to pack a deck full of removal. Cards like Marauding Battleship and Stormclaw Rager might seem at first to be archetypical engine pieces, but both operate better as strict sources of additional cards to keep the removal flowing. Sleek targeted removal mixed with clunky 2-for-1s is the goal, and Furnace Reigns is better as a removal spell than a win condition.

Companions are very tough- there was 1 Yorion Companion, 2 Lutri, and 1 Jegantha. I’ll still be trying to make Gyruda and Obosh work, but there’s so much power lost from any given companion that it’s hard to make it up off just one telegraphed card.

In general, avoid cards that require overcommitment. Crystal Carapace, Oculus Whelp, Shivan-Branch Burner, Thunderhead Squadron are all simply disastrous in the face of the tempo of Ephara’s Dispersal  and Protocol Knight.

20 Takeaways for your draft!

1. If your opening pack has a bomb rare, take it. If it doesn’t have a bomb rare, take some green fixing so you can play a bomb rare you get later. If it doesn’t have either, take a blue card.

1. Preening Champion and Ephara’s Dispersal  are absolutely worth a first pick

1. If you’re torn on which of two cards to take, take the cheaper mana value

1. Limit your battles to 3 without a plan, or 6 with a plan

1. If you need the back of your battle for it to be a strong card, know how you’re planning to flip it while you’re building the deck

1. Ramp is strong at common- Portent Tracker+Blighted Burgeoning= 7 mana on turn 4+an extra 2-drop

1. The road to 3,4, and 5 color decks starts with fixing

1. Removal spells are either Sleek or Clunky- You can pass Sleek removal for creatures that outclass other early creatures and take the Clunky removal later.

1. Splashing is great, but know why you’re splashing and what situations it gets you out of

1. Know the 3 sweepers, and think about how you might be able to beat them. If your OP isn’t flipping their incubate tokens then they’re probably about to wipe the board.

1. If your OP is U/W, do your best to figure out their archetype. This will help a lot in how you spend your removal.

1. Every single common and uncommon has a home, if you think you have one, you might be right

1. G/W Decks are built around 2-drops

1. B/R Decks are built around Removal

1. U/B Decks are built around 2-for-1 bodies

1. U/W Decks must be drafted to an archetype 

1. R/W Decks don’t work without crazy rares or powerful small synergies

1. U/G decks need bombs to close out a game, and are the most likely to splash for that bomb

1. When playing more than 2 colors (including splashes), know the order in which you want to draw your colors.  If you don’t know that while building, you need to swap some cards around.

1. If your opponent attacks you instead of a battle while your total is high, do the math to see if you die to Stoke the Flames/Invasion of Regatha

Thanks Scryfall.com for just being a generally great tool for content creation.

Thanks 17lands.com for so much useful data.

Thanks to you for reading~

Scuffle D. Lux, Demon Gambler

If you happened to find this helpful, stop by ScuffleDLux – Twitch some time for a stream!

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You can also find my content on YouTube or join my Discord for general draft help!

Scuffle has been a Mythic drafter on MTGArena for the past 14 months, with a few Mythic Rank #1s, a few Arena Open wins, a few GP top 8s, a few SCG Open top 8s, and 23 years of competitive MTG.