More Thoughts on Crimson Vow Limited
Another week has gone by, and I spent most of my Magic time playing Limited despite the upcoming Set Championships. With incentives so low for the Set Championships, I spent this week playing Limited until I do a late cram session of Standard and Historic this week.
Last week, I went into my initial thoughts on the format. While not a lot has changed since and my reps are still smaller than Midnight Hunt thanks to a couple of Arena malfunctions, here are tips and notes I’ve made while doing drafts of Crimson Vow Limited.
BE AGGRESSIVE
I previously thought the format was quite grindy, and while it can break down into grindy games, early starts and leveraging battlefield presence is huge.
The power level from rares and some uncommons is too hard to deal with in long games if you’re not one of the lucky ones capable of packing that punch yourself. I recommend looking at cards like Lantern Bearer, Drogskol Infantry, and Twinblade Geist that play well both early and late in aggressive decks as cheap plays. These cards don’t go dead deep into the game, and Lantern Bearer can turn a game around in a blink.
I’d caution that I’ve played exclusively best-of-one drafts, which steer aggressive. I’ve tried to make other decks look and feel better than lean curve and aggressive creatures and haven’t had much success.
AVOID GREEN IF POSSIBLE
My green midrange decks have been awful. My green aggressive decks have done reasonably well, especially with my early pick for formats best (Mythic) Uncommon, Dormant Grove.
That said, it’s got a huge identity crisis, with too much support for midrange and too little incentive to go down that path. Outside of Dormant Grove I’ve found the uncommons to be uniquely weak. If I don’t open a rare green or get an early Dormant Grove, I avoid green altogether.
COMBAT TRICKS ARE GOOD!
The games in this format come down to a lot of big combats, and with the format being creature focused, the combat tricks are mostly solid. I’ve been a big fan of both Adamant Will and Massive Might at common, and Sure Strike isn’t too far behind.
I don’t like filling up my decks with combat tricks and try to avoid them in most formats, but this is not one of those formats. I’m willing to play a couple of scrappy tricks to keep pressing an early on-board advantage.
I DRAFT BLUE A LOT
I’ve ended up in blue in a large percentage of drafts. I look through the commons, and none of them are near the top-of-the-pick orders. I tried to figure out why it happens, and all I can come back to while looking through the set is that it’s quite deep at uncommon. Often after the first two or three picks of a pack, the best card left is a blue uncommon, which starts me down that road.
My blue decks have had different approaches ranging from full control to full Lantern Bearer aggro. In formats with softer synergies like this, I like to stay as open as possible and blue provides me with that.
WHITE IS FINALLY GOOD!
White is finally pretty good. I’m sure many will say it was good in Midnight Hunt, but I think it was the weakest color. It had a couple of solid archetypes but only when very open.
This time, however, white is a color I want to draft. There are two good removal spells in common in Sigard’s Imprisonment and Fierce Retribution. Both can break through blockers for damage while being mana-efficient defensively. I’ve also been happy with a copy of Piercing Light in almost every deck as it hits a wide range of creatures and provides a nice tempo boost early. White tends to shine when formats lend themselves to aggressive strategies and that’s not an exception in Crimson Vow. The presence of two quality removal spells will let you play slower, which is why I take them earlier than other good white commons.
I LIKE TO STAY OPEN UNLESS I OPEN A BOMB
I couldn’t think of a better header for this concept, which seems obvious, but I want to try and stay in one color as long as possible to give myself the chance to open a good rare or have a good rare passed to me to find a direction.
The rares and better uncommons are miles better than the best commons, so they determine the overall power level of your deck. This concept isn’t new to this format, but I’m not going to wedge myself into my favorite archetypes early when there is such a huge power level difference. Rather, I focus on one color, such as blue, and see what help the rare slots can give me. In Midnight Hunt, we didn’t have to do this because a good U/B Zombies deck didn’t need rares. In Crimson Vow, there aren’t cohesive strategies that have panned out well for me, so I stay flexible and pick up value where I can.
While I’ll likely put down drafts for a couple of days to focus on the upcoming Set Championships, I might play the upcoming Arena Draft open if I do poorly in the Set Championships. While Crimson Vow isn’t my favorite draft format, it’s nice that we can look forward to a Limited event.
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