An Analysis of Simic Archetypes

The Simic Draft Archetypes

Welcome back! This is the tenth and final installment of the Current History of Draft Archetypes. The impetus for this series is that 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 (Artifact Sacrifice); I make the final call on a case-by-case basis which it's more representative of, but I also try to address that in the notes.

The Color Pair

To the very last, I like to refresh the goals of the colors as a great way to keep an open eye on what to expect from the draft archetypes. Blue is the slowest color in the game, preferring to be reactive rather than take risks. It uses a decent blocker with bounce spells and counterspells to slow down the opponent long enough to put down a flyer or sea monster to finish the game.

Green is the second slowest, wanting to go big in the late-game and take over from there. It uses some decently costed creatures backed up by pump spells or some mana acceleration to get ahead and land a big monster ahead of schedule. 

Combine the two and you have the slowest color pair of the ten, with both colors content to ride out the early game and try to win with overwhelming force in the late game. This is achieved through different means, sometimes with some decent lifegain in green or extra tempo spells in blue, but a big way to make it happen is to draw cards and play lands at a faster rate than the opponent.

The ongoing "draw and ramp" strategy accelerates the late-game and lets the Simic player get to where they can reasonably win. This problem is borne out of blue and green having the least amount of creature removal, an ongoing problem that has yet to be fully sorted, resulting in odd cards like Monstrous Emergence and Stay Hidden, Stay Silent.

These cards don't necessarily break the color pie (Stay Hidden's shuffle text might), but they toe the line and frequently cause discussion.

The shared creature keywords here are hexproof, vigilance, and flash. Notable that hexproof isn't used as often, thanks to ward. Flash is in most of the colors, although higher here. Vigilance is a recent addition to blue, and a helpful one, but not likely one to benefit the Simic color pair in draft too heavily.

Altogether, these paint the color pair as fairly defensive and tricky, with a recent shift to try and promote aggression with vigilance.

Now let's crack open the themes!

Wildcard Archetype: Ramp

Ramp, five-color, or big spells, they're all accrued here. Let's talk about it.

Born of the Gods

Battle for Zendikar

Oath of the Gatewatch

Amonkhet

Hour of Devastation

Dominaria

Commander Legends

Strixhaven

Adventure in the Forgotten Realms

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty

Wilds of Eldraine

This was one I expected going in, although at a higher rate given the amount of complaints about it. I think this is an archetype which is colored by experiences in the commander format. I mentioned three different "types" of this archetype. Ramp is exactly what we know: focused on using mana acceleration to slam down bigger spells faster.

Five-color is similar, as it requires some amount of mana-fixing (which is often an accelerant) to make it work, but it focuses on being able to use good spells from multiple colors and at least one five-color spell.

The "Big Spell" archetype wants to use ramp, but the big spells are given some type of additional pay-off.

Set Mechanic Archetypes

The secret theme of Simic is "set mechanic". The "Bear With Set Mechanic" and "Cancel With Set Mechanic" is such a known entity that the phrases pop up at least once during each and every spoiler season.

How often does it really happen? ...Take a look.

• Gatecrash: Evolve
• Dragon's Maze: Evolve
• Khans of Tarkir: Morph
• Eldritch Moon: Emerge
• Kaladesh: Energy
• Aether Revolt: Energy
• Ravnica Allegiance: Adapt
• War of the Spark: Proliferate
• Modern Horizons 1: Snow
• Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths: Mutate
• Zendikar Rising: Kicker
• Kaldheim: Snow
• Innistrad: Midnight Hunt: Flashback
• Dominaria United: Domain
• Phyrexia: All Will Be One: Proliferate
• March of the Machine: Transform
• Lost Caverns of Ixalan: Explore
• Murders at Karlov Manor: Collect Evidence
• Outlaws of Thunder Junction: Plot

...Whew.

Out of all the categories, "Simic Set Mechanic" is tied for the highest with "Izzet Spellslinger" at 19 sets in them. These are the most likely parts of any draft set. 

I'll note that a frequent part of new mechanics is the need for a "mana sink," or something to do in the late game with your mana. Cards which give you the flexibility to cast them early on or spend more mana on them later so they're not a "dead card" later is a prime case for this. Mechanics like mutate, morph, or kicker are all great examples of this. Many others also play into this space, like flashback or adapt. Domain, similarly, is a five-color ramp mechanic and plays naturally with what the colors do. 

Quick overview on Simic set mechanics and their likelihood to return in the next five years or so:

• Unlikely: emerge (highly set-specific), snow (weird to balance), mutate (complicated), Domain (unusual draft format), collect evidence (specific flavor), evolve (specific draft format)
• Possible: morph (Tarkir is coming...), energy (this is it's home, but it's been in Jeskai twice now), transform (popular mechanic, needs the right environment), adapt (flexible, but wants specifically +1/+1 counters as a theme), flashback (could come back but not necessarily as Simic), explore (really recent, tied to Ixalan)

My definite returns are proliferate, plot, and kicker. Kicker is the mana-sink mechanic, and placing it in Simic gives the color pair something to click onto. Plot was highly regarded in play design and has a lot of exciting design space. Lastly, proliferate is highly popular and adaptable to multiple kinds of sets.

Creature Type Archetypes

Creature types as a draft archetype is evolving, moving away from the traditional "pick up every creatures with X in their typeline" and more towards "strategies centered on one creature type with some occasional special bonuses". It's a work in progress, but an exciting one. 

In the meantime, Simic has had six creature-themed draft archetypes in our 12-year window, listed here:

• Ixalan: Merfolk
• Rivals of Ixalan: Merfolk
• Core Set 2020: Elementals
• Throne of Eldraine: Non-Humans
• Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate: Dragons
• Modern Horizons 3: Eldrazi

This is the second-lowest showing for creature themes, only beaten by Golgari at 4. There are, of course, good reasons for this. Blue is very strongly not a creature color, while green is more about big creatures. In combination, their strategies are going to be more about powering out one or two big creatures, not about synergistic typelines. 

Of these, I'm not sure what has the best chance of showing up again. Maybe Elementals? Tough question here.

Card Type Archetypes

The only thing less likely for Simic to draft than creature types... is card types. There have only been three sets in my analyzed parameters which had anything to do with types or subtypes. 

• Shadows over Innistrad: Clues
• Theros Beyond Draft: Enchantments
• Brother's War: Powerstones

Truthfully, the only one that is purely a "type matters" is the enchantment theme in Theros Beyond Death. Clues and Powerstones are both tokens created by other cards. The sets both have some synergies with the tokens being made, but they're also good in and of themselves. Clues draw cards, Powestones make mana. Some incidental value out of things like Briarbridge Patrol aren't necessary for you to want these tokens.

Enchantments will certainly be seen again, as will various tokens like Clues. Powerstones are less likely, especially with The Brothers' War not doing as well as hoped. 

Other Archetypes

Blue-green's efforts to find a core gameplan has led to a lot of different attempts at disparate strategies. Let's look it over:

• Theros: Card Draw
• Journey into Nyx: Control
• Magic 2015: Self-Bounce
• Magic Origins: Control
• Core Set 2019: Tempo
• Core Set 2021: Card Draw
• Modern Horizons 2: Noncreature Tokens
• Crimson Vow: Self-Mill
• Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth: Scry
• Bloomburrow: Self-Bounce

The "other" category is a frequent home for the flavorless strategies like "tempo" or "control", which in Simic just means "holding back the opponent long enough to put down a big creature who will end the game in two swings." There are some other odd ducks in the bunch. Noncreature tokens was unusual, for instance, but very refreshing. The scry theme worked well and provided a fun take on the mechanic. Self-mill is great for graveyard sets but shouldn't be too frequent, as it would cause Simic to feel too Dimir. 

Self-bounce is wholly unique and very specific to this color pair. I do think its uniqueness comes down to how much infrastructure it requires to be worth playing without also running into play pattern issues, meaning I can't really see it popping up often. 

Final Analysis

We've reviewed things in-depth, now let's crunch those numbers.

• Card Type: 6.1% (3) 
• Creature Type: 12.2% (6)
• Wildcard (Ramp): 22.5% (11)
• Set Mechanic: 38.8% (19)
• Other: 20.4% (10)

Additional information. Blue-green's preferred "card type" is artifact tokens, although more enchantment sets down the line may change that. The most used set mechanic is proliferate, and the most used creature type is merfolk.

Drafting "Simic Set Mechanic" is a common enough meme that I figured there really was a valid reasoning for it. It turning out to be as common as Izzet Spellslinger did come as a surprise, I'll admit! 

Looking over the set mechanics, there's quite a few that deal with counters in some way, like evolve or energy, which is why I think Simic gets proliferate so often. A few, like Domain and kicker, are essentially "ramp" themes. Others are just strange and unusual, like mutate and transform. 

Conclusion

Simic's identity is, more than anything, about experimentation. Themes of a set don't always fit neatly into a card type or established quantity like graveyard, counters, aggro, or big mana. It's important that these themes can still be felt in the set and played in high density. By making them a full theme of the set writ large, it makes them more visible and distinctive.

All of these disparate sets may not necessarily work together and, frustratingly for some players, themes may move out of this color pair in future sets (such as Gruul getting morph and Azorius getting energy). This makes it harder for Simic to get themes other than "ramp and draw" going in constructed formats, an ongoing source of frustration for players.

All the same, this inherent trend towards uniqueness is a fun feature of the color pair. It's the most likely to be different and strange, and that's clearly intentional. 

Maybe one day Simic will get a honed-in identity and set mechanics will get distributed more evenly throughout the pairs. It's hard to tell. 

I hope very much that you've enjoyed this in-depth analysis of the draft archetypes. It's been a pleasure unearthing the stats and facts. If you have any questions about the process or the data, let me know and I'll do my best.