Drafting into the lands of Kaldheim
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We’ve already talked a lot about the Kaldheim release and what changes it brought to the Standard and Modern formats. Kaldheim also shines in Limited, so let’s go deeper on how the Kaldheim Draft works!
KALDHEIM MECHANICS
- BOAST: it’s a new ability that we can find in Kaldheim: once per turn, if a creature with this ability attacked, you can pay the Boast cost to activate the ability.
It’s a pretty aggressive ability that you will find mostly on cheap creatures as Usher of the Fallen, Dragonkin Berserker and Arni Brokenbrow.
- FORETELL: any time in your turn, for two colorless mana, you may exile from your hand face down a card with Foretell and play it on a later turn for its foretell cost.
What is the advantage of playing a card with foretell?
There are many reasons for foretelling a card: the cost will usually be reduced, the card we want to play won’t be discarded in any way and the opponent will have to play around many things.
- SNOW: snow-covered lands and snow permanents are back in Kaldheim. They allow synergies that we’ll focus on later, when we’ll analyze the archetype.
- CHANGELINGS: creatures that are all types of creature at the same time. They are very crucial if we decide to draft tribal archetypes.
- SAGAS: enchantments that come into play with a lore counter that triggers the first ability, and so on for each counter until it gets to the last one, when they are sacrificed.
KALDHEIM DRAFT ARCHETYPES – SNOW
The Snow archetype is definitely the most complex to draft, but at the same time one of the strongest if the format. Figuring out when to pick a snow land over a spell is probably the hardest decision during the draft.
The presence of snow-covered dual lands, helps us a lot during our draft: taking strong cards of different colors won’t be a problem for deck building.
To build a solid deck you need about 10 snow lands, this means taking around 4 for each pack over 12 playable cards, which makes very important to pick the “filler” cards we’ll play to complete the deck.
BEST COMMONS
Priest of the Haunted Edge: it gives us a great 0/4 blocker on the earlier turns that will turns into a removal later. Definitely a versatile card that I always want to have.
Icehide Troll: probably the strongest snow permanent at common. A good, hard to kill, blocker but also great to build a race.
Sculptor of Winter / Glittering Frost: these two cards are very important because they speed us up and this, in a deck where many lands enter tapped, is essential. Glittering Frost also provide us mana fixing that is something we’re always looking for while playing many colors.
Frost Bite: there is not much to say about this card, a snow removal spell that we always want to have in our deck. Doing two damages for one mana is good, doing three is very strong.
BEST UNCOMMONS
Narfi, Betrayer King: with three snow mana it can comes back into play from graveyard, which it makes it really hard to remove. It also gives +1/+1 to all our snow-creatures and Zombies (so all the Changelings). What more could we ask for?
Blizzard Brawl: another snow-removal spell for one mana. It makes two creature fight, with a bonus if we control three or more snow-permanents.
Frost Augur: in a deck where we’re going to playing 20/25 snow-cards, this card has more than 50% chance of making us draw, providing a very substantial card-advantage.
BEST RARES
Jorn, God of Winter: perhaps the coolest rare that we can draf for this archetype as it allows us to untap all snow permanents when he attacks. That means to being able to almost double our mana and have creatures to block after they’ve attacked.
Blood on the Snow: playing mass removals in limited formats is always a winning choice. It often allows us to overturn disastrous situations recovering compromised games. In particular, this card, based on how many snow-mana we spent to cast it, we will bring back a creature/planeswalker to restart our rise!
KALDHEIM DRAFT ARCHETYPES – BOROS AGGRO
My favorite archetype and probably the easiest to build because it’s almost entirely composed by commons that no one picks.
You have to take cheap spells (usually mana value three or less), some equipments/auras, 16 lands and the deck is built, ready to win quickly.
BEST ONE MANA SPELLS
Battlefield Raptor, Fearless Pup and Usher of the Fallen are the best one mana drops we can play: Battlefield Raptor is quite strong as it flies so it’s a good one to be equipped and enchanted, putting a lot of pressure on the board. Fearless Pup has first strike which makes it difficult to kill in combat (especially if you consider that it can boast to get +2/+0). Usher of the Fallen can flood the board by itself.
Valor of the Worthy and Tormentor’s Helm are useful additions for the deck.
BEST TWO MANA SPELLS
Clarion Spirit is definitely the strongest two drop we can find, since all of our cards are very cheap, it’s easy for us to make two spells per turn, putting 1/1 flying very useful to our gameplan. Run Amok is the spell that we always want to play even in multiple copies, a card that allows us both to always attack safely and both to have the last damage when opponents have a lot of blocker on the board.
Goldvein Pick and Raven Wings are two equipement that we are gonna play everytime in our deck.
BEST THREE MANA SPELLS
There are few three mana drops that we want to play. As I previously said the deck has to be very aggressive, so a 3-mana spell has to be very strong to be played in this archetype.
Kaya’s Onslaught is a spell that we want to play in our deck, as giving +1/+1 and double strike to a creature that is not blocked can mean winning the game on the spot.
Shackles of Treachery is another card that I like to have in one copy, it can be very useful especially against slow decks that take a lot of damage initially and then maybe try to control the board with a big creature as Ravenous Lindwurm for example.
KALDHEIM DRAFT ARCHETYPES – UW FORETELL
This archetype gets its name from the new Kaldheim’s mechanic. It presents itself as a very valid alternative to the first two archetypes we have seen. It needs key uncommons like Vega the Watcher or Niko Defies Destiny, but there are also so many common useful to our plan.
BEST COMMONS
Augury Raven: fliers in draft are always nice to have, this one can only be paid two mana which for a 3/3 fly is great. We always want to have it in our deck, even in multiple copies.
Iron Verdict: removal spells are always useful. This one has Foretell and deals five damage to a tapped creature with a single mana.
Behold the Multiverse: card advantage in Magic is important. The fact that you can foretell this card makes this spell much more versatile and good for our deck.
BEST UNCOMMONS
Vega, the Watcher: definitely the most important card for this archetype. In fact, drawing a card every time you use the foretell ability is a big advantage in a deck that aims to stabilize the board and then win in late game.
Niko Defies Destiny: as we said, the card advantage in these kind of archetypes is important. This Saga represents all that we’re looking for: it provides for lifegain, more mana to play spells with Foretell and card advantage.
BEST RARES
Cosmos Charger: this pretty horse is a 3/3 with flash and flying that for three mana (which would already be enough), but it also lowers the Foretell costs by one mana giving us the opportunity to use this ability in the opponent’s turn.
Doomskar: the impact of mass removal in draft is high. In a slow archetype like this, a wrath effect would be to have.
KALDHEIM DRAFT ARCHETYPES – GRUUL FORETELL
The last archetype we are going to analyze is Gruul Midrange, a deck I have drafted many times and that always gave me the impression of being very solid and consistent. Many strong commons make this deck so, such as Sarulf’s Packmate, Ravenous Lindwurm, Craven Hulk and Run Amok; them plus the many removals that these colors provide us with.
Finally, there are very strong uncommons like Svella, Ice Shaper and Arni Slays the Troll that round it all out.
CREATURES PACKAGE
Our deck plan is to alternate between cheap creatures like Axgard Cavalry, Horizon Seeker, Fynn the Fangbear and Sculptor of Winter to handle the first few turns well, and then get control of the board with creatures bigger than our opponent’s, like Ravenous Lindwurm and Grizzled Outrider.
Trading creatures in combat is very important in this archetype, in fact our deck is unlikely to take advantage from cards so getting extra value through blocks or attacks is essential.
REMOVAL PACKAGE
Removals are the most important cards in the deck. My advice is to have between four and six of them, as having less than that would be too few and that would make the early game problematic, and more of them could mean not drawing enough creatures to build board.
Frost Bite is a good cheap removal that can also become useful later if we took some snow-land. Demon Bolt and Squash represent two good options.
Arni Slays the Troll and Struggle for Skemfar are my two favorites because they are more than just removal spells: the Saga provides for +1/+1 counters on one of our creatures and some extra life that always comes in handy.
I’ve found Khaldeim quite interesting to draft as it presentsa wide variety of choices, and all of them are very good. If you like the limited format, I really recommend you try it and you won’t regret it!
That’s all for today, hoping that you liked this article and that it will help your approach to the fantastic format that is Draft!
I’ll see you next week, always here on 95mtg.com with a new article!
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