Back in a Flash: KTK Draft Report

Welcome back to week two of our Flashback Draft Reports! This week we're going to talk about what may be my personal favourite draft format to date, Triple Khans of Tarkir!

Khans of Tarkir was another multicoloured set, which revolved around the Wedges, and gave them new and sometimes hard to pronounce names. Tarkir was a plane ruled by brutal warrior clans, each of which worshiped an aspect of the long dead draconic races. The clans were Mardu (W/B/R), Temur (U/R/G), Abzan (B/G/W), Jeskai (R/W/U), and Sultai (G/B/U).

Like RTR, each clan had its associated mechanic, but there was a lot of synergy in the overlap, and some definite alternate strategies, as you're about to find out.

The real star of Tarkir was the Morph mechanic. This was ostensibly there as a way to smooth mana in a multicoloured set, but the interplay with morph makes games so interesting that it sort of becomes its own thing.

As Morph is kind of hard to wrap your head around unless you've played with it, here's an info dump. Feel free to skip this part if you've played a lot of morph sets.

A card with morph can be played face down from your hand for 3 mana. In this state, it's a 2/2 creature. It can be flipped up at any time for its morph cost. It doesn't enter the battlefield, can't be countered, and a morph trigger doesn't go on the stack, so it can't be responded to. It just happens. All you have to do is pay the cost.

Now, imagine you have two morphs and you attack your opponent. You have enough mana to unmorph both, and all your opponent knows is which one you played first. What do they do? Do they block? Do they not block? Do they cast a removal spell and hope that your morph doesn't survive?

What if you only have enough mana to unmorph one? Do you attack? What does that tell your opponent? With morphs on the field, even basic combat is super interesting.

So drafting. Because morphs can be played for generic mana, and the fixing is plentiful in KTK, the five colour morph deck has become popular in flashback drafts, to the point where sometimes it's really miserable to draft because four people will try for it, and end up ruining everyone's decks. A more interesting strategy, and one which served us well throughout the original run of khans, was picking an enemy colour pair to draft early. That way you leave yourself open to splashing into one of two clans, whereas if you started in an allied pair, you were kind of locked into a single clan from the start.

There was also a (not so) secret, (not so) hidden, two colour deck in the format that I never got a chance to draft, so when I opened Chief of the Edge in my first pack, I decided it was my time to force Black/White Warriors.

The problem with forcing something is that it often just doesn't come together. Right after making my decision, I regretted it. In my next three packs, I took Morphs, because at least it's kind of like staying open. One of them was even a warrior. Then I got a trickle, but it still seemed fragile. It was when I got Raider's Spoils on the wheel that I knew my deck was open, the packs had just been light in playables. Scooping up a pair of lands in my colours late in the pack was also a good sign, although I think people at the table undervalued them in general.

I don't know who out there knows this other than me, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Siege Rhino is a very good magic card. I had been thinking that I'd have to choose a third colour for my deck, and even though I hadn't picked any red in the first pack, I'd seen a lot going by me, but when you open a siege rhino, you go Abzan, and that's what I did. The warriors were flowing, too, and I even got a few pieces of removal.

Speaking of removal, pack three was full of it. I didn't even take it all, though I took the good bits, and just managed to fill out my deck with things to do. I didn't actually recognize how good the deck was looking until I started building it. My warrior count was 12, and a lot of them were morphs to boot. I'll show you the deck laid out a couple of different ways to try to get across the versatility of morph.

Sorted by mana cost, the deck doesn't look bad, but there's a notable hole at 3 mana, and the curve looks fairly high

The curve is much better, ne? And much more aggressive. Of course, the reality is that it's still a slow format, so playing a 3 mana 2/2 can just be fine on its own, because you'll get to six and seven mana and be able to unmorph them all, but evasion and card draw are also unspeakably valuable. In the few games that I drew Raider's Spoils, I often got to draw two or three extra cards, two or three turns in a row, and Abzan Guide having lifelink made the life loss matter even less.

In the end I went 3-0, and I think that was in part due to the fact that I knew the format a little better than the rest of my pod, so my deck was just more focussed. That doesn't make for very interesting round reporting, so I'll just say that it was fun, and if you ever get a chance to draft this set, I highly recommend it. I also highly recommend not going for the 5 colour morph deck, and just drafting one of the sweet clans.

Anyway, that does it for this round of flashback drafts. Soon enough, it'll be time for Dominaria. I'm looking forward to it. Check back soon for some content on that, as soon as it drops!

Thanks for reading,

-Step.