An Analysis of Gruul Draft Archetypes
The Gruul Draft Archetypes
Welcome back! This is the fourth installment of the Current History of Draft Archetypes. I was interested in how often certain archetypes really show up and what kind of variance there tends to be, so I dug in, looked up old draft formats, and crunched some numbers.
I think looking over the archetypes reveals interesting patterns, telling us what tools are most useful in a designer's belt and letting us predict what could be around the corner. It's also a great way to highlight some interesting evolutions and developments over the years.
Summary of caveats:
- I include all premier sets from Return to Ravnica through Bloomburrow.
- I included most, but not all, supplemental sets released during that time.
- I only included sets with a two-color archetype in the analysis of that color pair. No three-color/five-color draft themes included.
- My research on determining an archetype was either a direct statement about the color pair's theme, looking at the gold card in the set, or occasionally looking at some articles talking about the set if it couldn't otherwise be determined.
- Sometimes a theme is part of two categories (e.g., Artifact Sacrifice); I make the final call on a case-by-case basis which it's more representative of, but also try to address that in the notes.
The other articles in the series can be found here:
With that established, let's dive in!
The Color Pair
Red is the fastest color in the game, wanting to spend its turns playing fast weenies and burning face. Green is the second slowest color, often spending its early turns "setting up" before landing haymakers in the mid-game. Combined, they play out as an aggressive mid-range strategy, usually able to get on the board fast but scale up in the late-game either with threats that build or raw, natural stats.
Their shared creature keywords are trample and haste, which signals the kind of aggression going on here. They want to hit fast and hard, with creatures big enough that chump-blocking serves little purpose.
Red-Green Beats/Monsters has been a known quantity for the longest time. I had a blast playing Gruul Adventures in Throne of Eldraine Standard, to be sure. What's not to love about swinging in with 15 power on turn 4? I knew going in that a lot of ramp and aggro strategies would prosper here, but what I didn't foresee was this color pair forcing me to add a new section just to deal with the unusual nature of its archetypes!
Power Matters
It was hard to determine the wild card due to how prevalent certain themes turned out to be. The true wild card of the set is Power 4, which I think is going to become a mainstay of red-green. Just as I feel like Draw 2 is a properly flavored and mechanically consistent version of control for blue-black, Power 4 is the mechanic that most represents red-green's "generic" archetype (Beats/Monsters). Controlling a big creature is what the deck wants to do anyways, and it is innately a wincon, so rewarding the player for doing that lets designers construct a nice track for the set. Plus, it synergizes well with other mechanics that grow creatures, be they Auras, counters, Equipment, or even the Mercenaries from Outlaws of Thunder Junction!
Here's a complete list of Power Matters archetypes from recent sets.
Fate Reforged
Dragons of Tarkir
War of the Spark
Theros Beyond Death
Core Set 2021
Commander Legends
Adventures in the Forgotten Realms
Wilds of Eldraine
Outlaws of Thunder Junction
This brings us to nine. The Ferocious and Formidable mechanics from Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir, respectively, would normally be filed under set mechanic archetypes, but they strike too close to pure power matters to be placed anywhere but here. As noted in the caveat, while Khans of Tarkir had Ferocious in red-blue-green, it was not pure red-green and thus does not get counted (despite originating the Power 4 archetype).
Set Mechanic Archetypes
Every set has a certain number of mechanics which will either tweak a classic strategy or develop a very new-feeling one for a given color pair. Thirteen archetypes in the last twelve years have been steered by being a set mechanic.
Gatecrash: Bloodrush
Dragon's Maze: Bloodrush
Theros: Monstrous
Born of the Gods: Tribute
Battle For Zendikar: Landfall
Kaladesh: Energy
Aether Revolt: Energy
Dominaria: Kicker
Ravnica Allegiance: Riot
Zendikar Rising: Landfall
Phyrexia: All Will Be One: Oil Counters
Murders at Karlov Manor: Disguise
Bloomburrow: Expend
Of these mechanics, energy, oil counters, and disguise are the "odd ones out". Energy and oil counters utilize an extra resource manipulation angle as part of their strategy, which provides a different feel to the colors. Disguise, meanwhile, has some element of trickery and bluffing innate to it that feels contrary to the usual "Gruul smash" mentality. Notably, all of these archetypes leaned into a monsters/beats strategy, albeit giving them a unique flavor. Most of the others play into either monsters or big mana style strategies, something I'll talk more in-depth about later on.
Special shout-out to Landfall for being the only mechanic not part of a block but which showed up twice nonetheless; I foresee it coming back around again. It may have to wait for Zendikar 4, but might not. (We know the story is setting up another conflict between Nahiri and Nissa, so look forward to that sometime after the end of this three-year arc we're in!)
Creature Type Archetypes
Green is primary in "friendly to creatures," so combining it with aggro red and you have a solid reason to lean into kindred strategies when designing the color pair. We've had eleven sets in the range which cared about a particular creature type.
Shadows over Innistrad: Werewolves
Eldritch Moon: Werewolves
Ixalan: Dinosaurs
Rivals of Ixalan: Dinosaurs
Core Set 2020: Elementals
Throne of Eldraine: Non-Humans
Midnight Hunt: Werewolves
Crimson Vow: Werewolves
Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate: Dragons
Lost Caverns of Ixalan: Dinosaurs
Modern Horizons 3: Eldrazi
As usual, the Innistrad effect on the ally colored pairs bends it around their particular monster type. Of the remaining seven, three are Dinosaurs, thanks to that being the only creature type to be an actual draft theme in the return to Ixalan. If Lost Caverns proves to be a successful makeover for the plane, I would still anticipate Dinosaurs in red-green on a third visit.
Of the remaining one-off types, I only expect to see Dragons and Elementals return in Gruul colors any time soon. Dragons are a strong contender for the red-green draft theme in the upcoming Tarkir set, while Elementals are just a solid fit for the colors (and capable of showing up on most planes). They could show up in the upcoming Lorwyn set, but it's uncertain which colors they would be in.
Card Type Archetypes
We have a disagreement in the colors evident here in this section. Green cares about creatures, enchantments, and lands, while red cares about artifacts, instants, and sorceries. No overlap (yet). As such, we have a really odd list.
Hour of Devastation: Deserts
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty: Modified (Auras, Equipments, +1/+1 counters)
Brother's War: Powerstones
March of the Machine: Battles
First up, the arguments regarding this list. Modern Horizons technically had a "lands in graveyard" sort of subtheme going on and could technically count as lands mattering archetype. However, the goal of that was focused on other cards that would help you put the lands there and not necessarily on the lands themselves. Second, the modified mechanic is technically a set mechanic and a batch that doesn't require a card type (in a +1/+1 counter build). However, it does encourage you to pick up Auras and Equipment in draft, so I included it.
With that settled, let's take a look. Deserts were a flavorful card type in Hour of Devastation, and its corresponding draft theme was used to support the beats theme of Amonkhet. Most of its rewards were aggressive, like Ramunap Hydra getting stat boosts or Sand Strangler getting to shoot a creature if you had a Desert. I expect to see another land subtype theme again in red-green in the future.
Powerstones are less likely. The token was tied to the setting of The Brothers' War. Dominaria is likely to crop up again and again, but I don't think the token in particular was loved enough to compel further exploration. Battles, on the other hand, have been guaranteed a comeback. Trample makes the Siege type in particular a desirable pick for red-green decks, but we'll have to see what other battles will look like before determining which colors will eventually pick up "friendly to battles". (I think red would be a great home for that effect, given its mechanical and flavor identity.)
Other Archetypes
Alright, I'm going to try to keep this section brief because it's not the final one for this particular color pair. Certain themes throughout the modern era of draft archetypes don't slot neatly into a given category, though this certainly has some complications that we're about to get into. Let's first outline the remaining archetypes.
Magic 2015: Beats
Magic Origin: Ramp
Oath of the Gatewatch: Ramp
Amonkhet: Beats
Core Set 2019: Ramp
Modern Horizons: Lands in Graveyard
Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths: Trample
Kaldheim: Ramp
Modern Horizons 2: Storm
Streets of New Capenna: 5-Color
Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth: Beats
First, let's cover the outliers. The red-green deck in Streets of New Capenna used Treasures as color-fixing and the three-color environment to go five-color. The storm deck was designed for Modern Horizons 2 explicitly because red-green were ramp colors, which could support a big turn of casting. Trample was part of the "caring about keywords", which was enabled by the keyword counter mechanic.
Once you really dig into the archetypes, though, you notice something. More so than the previous color pairs, a strikingly high number of cards could be placed into one of two buckets, those being...
Beats or Ramp
I want to be clear about my terms here in their respective sections. Ramp decks want to accelerate on mana to cast big spells earlier than normally possible with just land drops, while beats decks want to curve out with creatures that focus on high power. These have some amount of overlap, but a beats/monster deck tends to be aggro while ramp is more midrange.
In total, there are twelve sets which could fall under the ramp/big mana banner, even if they use a set mechanic or card type to do it:
Magic Origins
Battle for Zendikar
Oath of the Gatewatch
Dominaria
Core Set 2019
Modern Horizons
Zendikar Rising
Kaldheim
Modern Horizons 2
Streets of New Capenna
Brother's War
Bloomburrow
As for beats, eleven draft strategies fall very cleanly into this, even when covered by a set mechanic.
Theros
Born of the Gods
Magic 2015
Kaladesh
Aether Revolt
Amonkhet
Hour of Devastation
Ravnica Allegiance
Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths
Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
March of the Machine
This was a weird color pair analysis. I think it would have been less noticeable if it had been one strategy. A lot of white-blue and blue-black archetypes could be distilled to control. I think the fact that beats and ramp are both specific versions of strategies while being distinct lead to this being noticeable. Or I'm making too much out of it! Who knows.
I will note that the pure "beats" strategy aligns very well with the Power 4 strategy and that beats definitely seemed to fall out of favor after Power 4 crept its way into the design toolbelt. (Even The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set used some "power 4 or greater" rules, albeit very little.) I think Power 4 has more of an identity and a cleaner hook to grab onto, so it should prove to be the way forward.
Now let's move on to...
Final Analysis
Number crunch time! There were five central categories as usual, but we had the two "double-up" categories that I'll mention separately.
Set Mechanic: 27.7%
Creature Type: 23.4%
Other: 23.4%
Power Matters: 19.2%
Card Type: 8.5%
This fits in line with color pie expectations and such. I expect the Power Matters category to increase with time. It was only properly "developed" five years ago but has already come to account for nearly a fifth of all the draft archetypes of a twelve year period.
If I were counting ramp and beats as their own categories, these would be the percentages:
Beats: 23.4%
Ramp: 25.5%
As seen, mana acceleration strategies would be the second most commonly used category, while beats would tie third with both creature type and other, if the overlaps were counted in two categories. I think this is still worth noting. Further analysis could dig into how the other 51% of draft archetypes would be divvied out (Pure aggro? Non-ramp midrange? Did I miss some beats/ramp archetypes?) but that's beyond the scope for now!
I am excited to see how red-green ramp stacks against blue-green ramp, but for now...
Conclusion
Red-green has already had an exciting evolution with the development of the Power 4 rules text. Committing to that has been a solid way to make draft strategies that do what red-green wants to do (smash with big creatures) while also clicking with surrounding archetypes in new and potentially unexpected ways. Real paperclip moment!
This has been a color pair that has always known what it wants to do (Gruul Smash!) but still allows for occasional quirks, like the disguise deck or the "lands in graveyard" deck, which I'm hopeful to see return in a future set! Speaking of, which archetype do you most want to see back? Are there any that you've enjoyed the most? Let me know as we get ready for the final ally color pair: Selesnya time!
