Sets [KTK] Khans of Tarkir Spoilers

[Chris Taylor]

That was, like, the first card I put on my preorder list.

Between this dude, the keyword giving dudes and Hardened Scales, combined with the stuff we already have, the +1/+1 counter theme has basically everything you could want now and is more or less complete.

Is hardened scales the real deal or win more?

I do like flying keyword mans, but deathtouch/trample/lifelink bros seem a little weak

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Only time will tell, but I think its the real deal. It help eliminate lots of windows of vulnerability. Like, say you go turn 1 Experiment 1, turn 2 scales and a dude. If they don't kill E1 right there, it can regenerate and get back to 3/3 off of almost any creature. Similar situations occur for an ordeal and heroic dude (you get +4/+4 and the sac benefit the same turn). Its surprisingly useful on turn 2 with a fair number of one drops. If your mass removal is super heavy it might not be the best, but if board state escalation is a frequent occurrence, this hard escalates pretty well for a 1 drop.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, we finally have the Ars Arcanum article I've been waiting for: the spoiler analysis for this morph heavy format. Originally article is here, and the parts I found most interesting are quoted below. The charts are in the article, but are not essential to understanding his analysis (though some of the curve charts get pretty funny at around 3CC). Most of this is a story about the interesting ways morph warps a format, but the last exert has some interesting obvervations about Khan's wedges. There are some lessons here about cube design as well (the dangers of focusing on a theme--such as morph--without realizing the way it would warp everything else in your cube); and how one can use mana costs to manipulate the speed and progress of games.

Converted Mana Cost:

For the first graph, we can clearly see that morph is going to have a huge impact on the game. If we just played all the cards as facedown morphs, their basic value, the format has an incredible amount of cards at three mana. This is a fantastic representation of what the early game will look like. Nearly half the creatures in the set cost three mana, and nearly every game of Khans of Tarkir is going to feature morphs from each player on turn 3. This has a few major implications for the format. First, I very much recommend players to play 18 lands in this format. Since so many people are going to be playing 2/2s for 3 on turn 3, it will be a very mana intensive format. You just cannot afford to miss that third land drop, because the tempo cost and morph initiative is just tremendous.

In the second chart, we see what the set looks like if you don’t unmorph your cards. This is a good model of the late game; creatures with 4, 5, and 6 mana costs dominate this chart. There are a lot of things to do in this format once you hit five and six mana, even at common. Again, this strongly supports the idea of playing 18 lands, because there are both a lot of things to do at 3 mana, and a lot of things to do with your mana late in the game. The clan multicolor morphs at common are a great example of this; they are powerful creatures, and when you can just start paying six mana to play them face up, they are still going to have a big impact on the game.

In the third chart, we see a huge spike at five mana. In fact, 51.4% of the morphs in the set have an unmorph cost of 5 mana. That is a very important statistic. A little more than half the morphs in the set only unmorph for 5 mana. One of the things that WotC has been very clear about is that no morphs can unmorph to eat other 2/2s for less than five mana. However, since 51.4% of the morphs have a 5 cmc cost to turn face up, you can go in knowing that most morphs are going to eat something once you get to five mana. In many ways, we have 4 dominant CMC slots in the format. Obviously 3 is important because of morph, 2 is important because it lets you get initiative on the game, but five is critical because it is when you can start flipping morphs for card advantage, and six is when you can start playing the clan morphs face up. Again, this supports the idea of a very mana intensive set.

It also means that turns three and four are going to often be critical for figuring out if you want to trade cards for morphs. A card likeDebilitating Injury is incredibly good in this format because it can kill a morph for only two mana, which is particularly strong if you started first and can play a morph plus Injury on turn five. On top of that, more than half the time that Injury is going to kill something that will eventually turn face up to become a much more threatening card if your opponent hits five mana.

The fourth chart gives us the best comparison with past formats. We see that KTK follows roughly the same model as Theros, though it is weighted a little less heavily towards the early game, and a little more towards the late game. With that said, the Morph mechanic means that you are going to see something come out on turn 3 much more often than you did even in Theros. Overall, this is an indicator that seems to predict a slightly slower format. There are plenty of ways to add to the board in the early game, and plenty of ways to use your mana in the late game, so most players will be rewarded simply for playing things that can trade off early and then just using their mana to power out strong multicolor cards in the late game.

Power and Toughness

One of my major goals in any spoiler analysis is to figure out the approximate speed of the format. There are a lot of tools that I use to do this because any one tool doesn’t perfectly model the format’s speed. However, none of those tools are quite as useful as the creature P/T differential. Over the past couple of years it has been the most reliable method for predicting the speed of the format. P/T Differential represents the difference between the power and the toughness of the creatures in the set. Toughness is usually larger than power, so numbers that are between -0.1 and .1 tend to be the fastest formats. Formats with a differential between -0.3 and -0.1 tend to be medium speed formats, and formats with larger negative differentials tend to be slow. There are many other factors, and Theros wound up being the biggest exception for this rule, but it’s still a great indicator for format speed.

For Khans of Tarkir, it’s hard to pinpoint the P/T differential precisely. When you put a huge number of 2/2s for 3 in the set, you’re going to drive your P/t differential closer to zero. Even then, Khans of Tarkir has one of the slowest P/T differentials that we’ve seen in a long time. Using the Morph model, we see a fairly slow format, but the other models show the greatest negative P/T differential of any format that I’ve analyzed on Ars Arcanum. There are a lot of creatures that block well in this format; there are a surprising amount of 2/3s for 3, there’s a 4 or greater toughness theme, and there seems to be a lot of defenders. It seems like WotC tried to put in tool to slow down the format in order to make it more feasible to play three color decks.

These charts also show us the huge difference that Morph makes on the format. In the first chart, we see a definite glut of creatures at 2 power and 2 toughness. It seems clear that the difference between two and three toughness is going to be tremendous in this set. It means the difference between trading and eating the vast majority of creatures in the set before turn five. Debilitating Injury is significantly better than it looks because it eats a morph that could turn up to become something scary later on.

In the other two charts, we see a little bit different picture. While the early game is going to be dominated by 2/2s, the mid and late games are going to see a lot of creatures come down with three, four, and five toughness. Even with morph creatures counted as only being played faceup, we still see that two is the most common power, though three becomes the most common toughness. These creatures are geared up for defense, and it’s going to be difficult to build a large number of decks that can consistently punch through for 20 damage before the more controlling decks can set up their game plan.

It’s also worth mentioning that this set has a very low return on power compared with the converted mana cost investment, and this is due almost entirely to morph. Three mana for a 2/2 is not an exciting price in today’s limited world, so we are not used to seeing such a low average power per creature relative to the mana costs. Khans of Tarkir is going to be something of a shock to players that started playing Magic in the years since Zendikar.

Tempo

In the first model, we see that the power and toughness for creatures at 2 and 3 mana are incredibly close together, as a result of morph. It’s not hard to figure out what this means. In the early turns of Khans of Tarkir, you are going to see 2/2s facing each other. I know I’ve said this a lot, but it’s important to understand this because it is the most important and defining feature of Khans of Tarkir limited. For example, Highland Game would be a mediocre card in most limited formats. You would rarely cut it from your deck, but you certainly wouldn’t be excited. However, in Khans of Tarkir, this card is actually very strong. In a format with this many morph creatures, you get a great benefit from having morph initiative. If you can start attacking into your opponent’s morphs with open mana sooner, you are at a huge advantage. Highland Game effectively lets you do this a full turn sooner. If you are on the play, this advantage will be tremendously difficult to overcome, and it might get in for a full 8 damage before your opponent can deal with it without spending a more expensive card. If you’re on the draw, Highland Game actually lets you get ahead in the race, rather than being merely stuck behind, and if it goes on defense, it’s often going to hold off several morphs all by itself, since players are going to be hesitant to trade three mana and a powerful late game card for a 2 mana 2/1.

In the second model, we see something else that is fascinating, which is that toughness is a little bit ahead on every step of the mana curve. This is not typical in Magic formats. Usually we’ll see a couple of inflection points where power is higher than toughness, but in Khans of Tarkir you can find a better deal on Toughness than on Power at every step of the mana curve. It will be very typical for players to put out creatures that can stonewall an opponent’s team at just about any stage of the game. This is true of the other two models as well. Furthermore, the Greatest P/T per CMC chart shows us a substantial gap at each step of the game, with Toughness just being a fair pace higher.

The creature stats in Khans of Tarkir have given us a multitude of indicators that the format is going to be a slow format with a lot of trading in the early game and a lot of midgame stalls, with sudden swings in the late game on account of morph surprises. This looks to be the slowest expert level format that we’ve seen since Rise of the Eldrazi, though it probably won’t be quite as slow. However, tempo will still be a key element of the set, since morph initiative is such an important factor.

And I thought this was an interesting observation on the wedges:

The term Shards was coined with the release of Shards of Alara and refers to a color and its two allies. A wedge refers to a color and its two enemies. Wedges are fascinating because they explore the contradictions between enemy colors. Khans of Tarkir has a multicolor theme, and this is the second most important factor of the set. Multicolor sets always create unique strains on a format, especially when we deal with three color multicolor formats. In Shards of Alara, it was just generally accepted that people would spend their first two turns fixing their mana, and then they would throw haymakers for the rest of the game.

Khans of Tarkir is a little different. For one thing, only about 16% of the creatures in the set are Gold. This is a dramatic change from something like Return to Ravnica block where closer to 1/3rd of your creatures were Gold. On top of that, 31.16% of your creatures in Khans of Tarkir have morph, which means that they can be played for colorless mana. That is a dramatic change from most multicolor formats, because you can add presence to the board for a few turns even if you don’t find all of your colors of mana. Finally, Khans of Tarkir has a surprisingly high level of fixing. There are 10 duals lands at common and 5 banners. There is a full cycle of tri lands at uncommon. There is the cycle of fetch lands at rare. Overall, about 14.46% of the cards in any given draft are going to be fixers (just shy of 50 cards per draft). This means that the average player is going to have about 6 fixers per draft. That is a lot of fixing. So we have fewer gold cards, a whole bunch of colorless cards, and abundant fixing.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Good find, Grillo!

 

[Eric Chan]

14.4% fixing! That's really interesting - I wonder if that's higher than any other limited format to date. That's.. that's almost cube-like.

 

[Dom Harvey]

The 6 fixers/draft number hasn't matched my experience so far, and Banners aren't going to count for that purpose a lot of the time. Great read though.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, I'm kind of eager to see how the drafts play out now, for better or for worse, this is very different from what I was expecting.

One other interesting exert, from a multi-color cube design perspectice, was this:

One of the things that I’ll come back to over and over again over the course of this article is the common cycle of multicolor morph cards. In many ways, these are the most defining cards in the set (with the exception of the common dual lands). Those cards are Abomination of Gudul, Abzan Guide, Efreet Weaponmaster, Ponyback Brigade, and Snowhorn Rider. Each of these creatures has morph, they all have a 5 mana unmorph cost that includes all three of the clan colors, and they each cost six mana to play face up using all three of the clan colors. Also, they are all very powerful. For their face up cost, they all seem like fairly powerful common cards. But for each of them the unmorph cost represents a creature that is far more powerful than we would normally expect from a common. For example, Abzan Guide unmorphs for 5 mana and becomes a 4/4 lifelinker. A 5 mana 4/4 lifelinker is the kind of card that would be powerful if it was printed at uncommon, and would not be that surprising to see at rare. Instead, you get that effect when you unmorph the card. These cards are very powerful, they push you into drafting three color decks more than just about any card, and they all have morph. If you take a close look at these graphs, you will see what a pressure each of these cards puts on the format.

This seems very clever. They've included these pushed commons that are a clear incentive to go into the wedges, also push the morph mechanic, and help solidify the slower pace of games that the designers clearly wanted. Very neat way of tying things together with 5 commons.

From a space perspective, by having such pushed multi-color cards at common, they can run a much smaller multi-color contingent than we would expect from a multi-color format. I don't know if thats good or bad, but it certaintly challenges a basic assumption I think most of us have had about multi-color formats; and provides a template on how one could take a traditional cube list, and warp it around a relatively small multi-color section.

It also puts our cube card evaluations in perspective. One common theme throughout this thread is, "xyz card is sweet, but 3 colors" and than disappointment at the power level of the mono colored cards. If they are creating a deliberate power level inbalance between the sets multi-colored and mono-colored cards, in order to push people into 3 color decks, than thats probably how things would be expected to turn out. It should also be an important factor to keep in mind when evaluating the sets mono-colored cards for cube purposes.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Dumb Question: Can you outlast while the creature is summoning sick? I'm 90% sure the answer is no, but...

 

[shamizy]

No, tapping is part of the cost to outlast. So it's basically a two turn investment before you reap any benefits. It gets really out of hand once you bust out a few of those counter lords and all of sudden have multiple first strike deathtouchers.

 

[CML]

Just got back from prereleasing. My initial thought is that Watkins is so interesting when he just sticks to Magic cards.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

No, tapping is part of the cost to outlast. So it's basically a two turn investment before you reap any benefits. It gets really out of hand once you bust out a few of those counter lords and all of sudden have multiple first strike deathtouchers.

Yeah, this. I had the first strike, deathtouch and trample lords, which were pretty powerful. Big gap between outlast for one and two though. Also had herald of anafenza, which was good but three to activate is slow and think its probably unlikely to be good enough for cube.

Sorrin, solemn visitor was absolutely nuts though. With the comparison to other sorrin, overlooked him originally. Didn't realise the +1 and lifelink for all your creatures is until your next turn! Think I might like him better than lord of innistrad.

 

[Diakonov]

Did a couple of prereleases and a draft yesterday. This set seems really fun and interesting so far.

On top of that, 31.16% of your creatures in Khans of Tarkir have morph, which means that they can be played for colorless mana. That is a dramatic change from most multicolor formats, because you can add presence to the board for a few turns even if you don’t find all of your colors of mana.

This had a very noticeable effect on the format yesterday, and it really is genius design. Also, when your opponent has fixing for 4 colors on turn 5, it can be REALLY hard to guess what morph it is, which is another upside IMO.

The pace definitely reminds me of older formats, in a good way.

Also had herald of anafenza, which was good but three to activate is slow and think its probably unlikely to be good enough for cube.

Same exact thing happened to me yesterday, and I had the same thought. The one who grants flying was absurd, however.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

What a weird experience. This set is really hard to build a deck for in sealed. After both Temur (my seeded pack) and Abzan failed, I built a 5-color deck which was base Abzan, splashing for three morphs and Crater's Claw. Went a mediocre 3-3 (after three mana screws with 18 lands in the deck, mana screw mind you, not color screw, though that also happened twice), but I got a Polluted Delta from the single prize booster I won, so it's all good

 

[GenericZero]

Local events sucked for me, with the highlight pre-release experience being a midnight release with 4 rounds and a shit prize pool. Got a rb fetch and a Sarkhan, though.

Also, CML, you selling any rabblemasters? Help a pal out!

Is the 3 mana guy who draws cards for nontokens dying worth investment? He's only like 75 cents but will he go up?

 

[shamizy]

Is the 3 mana guy who draws cards for nontokens dying worth investment? He's only like 75 cents but will he go up?

I'm a big fan of that guy. Found a playset for like $2 on preorder off Ebay a few days back, bought 3 playsets. Not sure if he'll really take off in Standard, but I need one for cube and I play a lot of EDH where he's sure to be awesome as a card and as trade bait.

I'd definitely pick up one, not much risk here with him being so cheap.

 

[Eric Chan]

What a weird experience. This set is really hard to build a deck for sealed.

I got this impression, too. It feels like this set would be a lot better to draft than to crack sealed pools for - you can find and take more relevant fixing, and let the duals that don't match your colours pass on by to the appropriate player. You're probably more likely to wheel late three-colour commons that don't fit in other people's decks.

Despite that, Khans sealed deck was a lot more fun than sealed of last year's format, though, so I'm looking forward to some drafts, where things should only get better.

 

[shamizy]

Draft will be extremely interesting. In sealed, I was more or less scrambling to find pieces that would fit into my strategy since my pool wasn't all that deep (went Abzan). Minimal on-color fixing aside from the tri-land and refuge land I received in my seeded booster.
I feel like the enemy refuges will be pretty high picks in draft, vanilla two drops will be more valuable than ever before, and that we'll see a ton of really interesting and viable strategies arise from draft.

One card that I really loved during prerelease was Archers' Parapet. 0/5 was pretty innocuous, but it stonewalls a ton of stuff early in the game and pinging for 1 at opponent's EOT was so useful. I'm pretty sure I did 12 points of damage to a guy through a grindfest and lost to another one because I just couldn't deal with it. I really wanted to play with Kin-Tree Invocation and make 5/5's for but I didn't have a single one in pool. Hopefully I can live the dream a few times in draft.

 

[Diakonov]

I got this impression, too. It feels like this set would be a lot better to draft than to crack sealed pools for - you can find and take more relevant fixing, and let the duals that don't match your colours pass on by to the appropriate player. You're probably more likely to wheel late three-colour commons that don't fit in other people's decks.

Despite that, Khans sealed deck was a lot more fun than sealed of last year's format, though, so I'm looking forward to some drafts, where things should only get better.

It was definitely easier to build in draft where you can focus your picks. Although, on our first go around, we found the draft decks to be less powerful than the sealed. I believe this is due to the fact that in a more traditional sealed setting there is not nearly enough fixing to give you access to all of your bombs, but in Khans you definitely get to play more of them.

 

[CML]

Local events sucked for me, with the highlight pre-release experience being a midnight release with 4 rounds and a shit prize pool. Got a rb fetch and a Sarkhan, though.

Also, CML, you selling any rabblemasters? Help a pal out!

Is the 3 mana guy who draws cards for nontokens dying worth investment? He's only like 75 cents but will he go up?

yeah sure $8.50 a pop?

 

[GenericZero]

yeah sure $8.50 a pop?

Can I get 3 for 20?

 

[CML]

nope. skype me

 

[GenericZero]

Can't Skype cuz I'm mobile. What's wrong with 3 for 20? That's like 7 bucks each.

 

[Lucre]

Okay guys. I really like 2 colour decks in this draft format. Black seems suuuper solid

2x Chief of the Scale, 2x Abzan Battle Priest 2x Bellowing Saddlebrute 1x Chief of the Edge 1x Abzan Falconer
Ruthless Ripper and debilitating injury and the first strike outlast guys are super sweet cards. Raiders spoils is like crazy nuts with the make 3 warriors spell jesus.

 

[CML]

Can't Skype cuz I'm mobile. What's wrong with 3 for 20? That's like 7 bucks each.

i can get 7.20 from my ell gee ess

 

[Onderzeeboot]

2-power two-drops are eminently playable in this format, including usual duds like Wetland Sambar.

I was especially surprised by how well the cards below performed (for me or my opponents). Some of these I already gauged as playable, but they were much better than that. Others didn't look playable to me but proved to be surprisingly relevant and/or annoying. Obviously mostly uncs and commons.