Lords of Limited this week went through a lot of card specifics and some drafts (If you enjoy playing Draft and Sealed and haven't checked them out, Lords of Limited is an amazing podcast), but as a companion piece here's the not so easy secret on how to think about the format to win with White.
White in Core Set 2020 is traditional scrappy aggro, but it scraps with the best of them in this format.
What Is the Exploit?
The individual White cards in Core Set 2020 aren't good. Often they don't directly boost each other in obvious ways. What's the plan?
The two drops in Core Set 2020 are uninspiring. They largely just exist to get into combat and don't scale up well to fight larger creatures when you draw then on Turn 8.
As a result, people don't play these cards. They also are lighter on random three cost bodies, because the draw of Sage's Row Denizen is blocking two drops people don't really win games with.
While the four and five drops of Core Set 2020 are good, they aren't cards that massively swing board parity. Even Dawning Angel, which should be a strong four life buffer to catch you up, has two toughness and trades for a two drop.
This the exploit. White's spot in Core Set 2020 is as the color best at making a two drop matter on Turn 5 or Turn 6. White aims to get ahead, push in damage, then keep forcing favorable exchanges where it pushes in even more damage. Your second color answers how you plan on bridging the gap from dealing ten damage to dealing twenty damage.
The Mental Framework
To build a successful White deck in Core Set 2020 draft, think about your cards and plays in these ways.
- How long does this card keep profitably attacking without help? Is it uniquely doing this?
- What specific (or generalized) cards are going to stop me from profitably attacking in the future?
- If I expend something to handle one of these cards, am I getting a tangible extra advantage? Am I dealing damage as a result, or significantly mitigating their future ability to handle attacks, or best yet not actually expending things of value to do this?
Some card specific applications of this theory.
Moorland Inquisitor is a clutch piece of these combat puzzles. Your opponent has to put multiple creatures or a bigger one in front of it to stop profitable attacks due to first strike, allowing you to leverage a pump spell. That combat trick often ends up profitable because you keep Inquisitor through first strike. Once you clear multiple things or a large threat, that opens up a lot of room for your other cards to start providing value again.
I'm evaluating Moorland Inquisitor in the C+ range, aiming to take it in the 5th to 9th range. The fact it often wheels on Arena is a big deal when White is open, and I'm actively looking to fill my deck with cards like this.
Loyal Pegasus is another poster child of this archetype. One mana for a real sized body that often requires unique blockers to stop and works later on represents a large amount of damage. The weeks where Arena let you wheel these were good times for White drafters, I wouldn't count on that happening more.
Raise the Alarm doesn't really ever attack profitably on its own, and I think the card is a bit overrated as a result. You don't get ahead for any reasonable span of time just with Raise the Alarm. The goal of this card is entirely to leverage other good cards in your deck that amplify the power of individual creatures.
Due to bot priorities I value this slightly higher than Moorland Inquisitor, but it requires more work than Inquisitor to make actively good. I wouldn't be excited just because I had a bunch of Raise the Alarms, I would if I have a bunch of ways to use them.
Fencing Ace is in a similar category of low impact but high leverage, but with less synergies and more risk.
Most White decks are proactive. Aerial Assault is very reactive. Unless you are Azorius Fliers often it is not great, and often gets cast once you are already behind to bring you from "losing" to "unable to win but not actively dying". I'll play Aerial Assault but it is cuttable and an incidental pickup in the draft portion.
Equipment is extremely important to this archetype's game plan. All this leveraging smaller creatures, generating spots where you clear a bigger stopping card at low investment? That's Marauder's Axe. There's still cost and lack of independent effect issues, but I want the first Axe and would probably play two.
I have Ancestral Blade as the best White non-rare. It just checks all the boxes. Gets me ahead early and lets me set up profitable attacks later at no cost. I have it on par with some of the best commons, somewhere in the mix between Murder and Rabid Bite.
Inspiring Captain is another great low cost way to push through damage. A common early pattern is your opponent having a 2/2 or 3/3 to your multiple early creatures. Playing Inspiring Captain nets you immediate damage and keeps you progressively ahead on board for the next turn. I'm happy to play multiple copies of this card and its in a similar C+ position to the two drops I mentioned.
I also like Inspiring Charge, but not as an all in card. I'm not aiming to build a deck where my route to victory is make ten idiots, smush sideways, and +2/+1 the squad. You can't get that far ahead on bodies with these cards without already winning.
Inspiring Charge is good when you send multiple things into their multiple things at close to parity, and suddenly all their blocks are terrible or cost a lot of life from your unblocked attackers. I'm not aggressively trying to play multiples of this card as it is a four mana trick that gets better when you draw more bodies and less other tricks, but the first is fine and the second isn't offensive.
Master Splicer is a good card. But it isn't uniquely good.
There aren't incidental flicker effects, Unsummon your own Splicer is just build a 5 mana 4/4. A 4/4 isn't massive for the format. The spare 1/1 doesn't do much.
I'm taking Master Splicer highly, but the delta between it as your four drop and Inspiring Captain is inches not miles. If you want a letter, its B or B- where you might first pick it but aren't attached to it. I think Pacifism just might be better as its less replaceable.
Squad Captain scaling up to larger sizes is an example of a unique effect. A 7/7 or 8/8 wins games other cards don't. The card has downsides of costing five and doing nothing by itself, so I don't take it highly, but I consider this a solid C-level card I want to be casting.
There's a lot of combat tricks in Core Set 2020. On the subject of Pacifism, sometimes you have a thing pop up with assertive decks where removal is lower priority than some creatures because a combat trick you get 10th pick is good enough.
I don't think that's the case in Core Set 2020. The immediate "you aren't blocking" of Pacifism or another kill spell is extremely relevant damage. The tricks aren't much more efficient than removal, with both in the two or three cost bin where double spelling is reasonable on Turn 5 but not on Turn 3 or Turn 4. Outside of Growth Cycle, most only grant two toughness which might still be a trade for a larger creature.
I like green's Feral Invocation since "wasting" that card on a lower exchange leaves a lasting tangible advantage, but other combat tricks are largely replaceable last slot spells. Even the best are in the filler tiers of pick orders.
While I think most white decks fall into this kind of min-maxing combat style, I want to note I think heavy Black Orzhov can pull off a completely different approach.
Black is great at coming out ahead on actual card-for-card exchanges in Core Set 2020. Not on board, but in eventual raw advantage. The issue is if it misses a beat it doesn't have a ton of recovery tools. Dawning Angel is almost exactly what it needs. You don't care that the 3/2 body trades down, just that it trades and buffers your life to give you time for future plays and trades.
I think Dawning Angel is fine in aggro White, but it really shines in Orzhov Control.
The Hidden Upside
The thing I like the most about White in Core Set 2020 is it makes you play good Magic and rewards you for it.
There's a common trap players can fall into where they play a deck that gives them the ability to make choices and feel smart for choosing the right options. Often they are just spewing off win rate relative to a deck that lets them make fewer decisions, because the low decision deck just wins without thinking too hard.
Core Set 2020 isn't that format, especially on Arena. If anything, I've found the flexibility of White decks to be amazing in breaking open games where raw card power doesn't line up your way. Core Set 2020 is a Core Set, with lots of equal cards and some that are just more equal than the rest (usually that's the rares).
When my opponent just has more high power cards than me, I don't want to hope I draw more good cards somehow like I have felt my Simic decks do, I want to already be asking how to make my cards line up against more powerful things like my White decks.
White is the feel smart color in Core Set 2020. It's the work for your wins color. And in the end, if you line stuff up right, it's a pretty good actually get the results color.
