Archetypes

• Shadowmoor

Roel van Heeswijk is an up-and-coming Dutch proplayer. His pick order lists have been famous in the Netherlands for some time now. Often controversial, his opinions always stir up discussion in the Dutch pro community. Roel has made two limited Grand Prix top 8s and finished 8th with his team at PT Atlanta.

These lists are my average picking orders in Lorwyn draft, given an archetype. When I get passed two cards in a draft, I am more likely to take the card ranked higher on the list. For Sealed Deck, they are also useful, but slightly inaccurate. In Sealed, spells with a lot of impact should be played more, and cards that fit specifically in a certain archetype should be played less often, (for instance, psychotic haze in a madness deck) because sealed decks will never be as focused as draft decks.

Initially, the main reason I made these list was to make it easier to discuss cards. If you ask someone "what do you think of cards X?", people will respond: "it's OK". They could mean "it's playable with the right backup", or they could mean they think "it's the second-best common in the set, but not as good as everyone else thinks it is". With these lists, instead you can ask: "in this list, where would you place this card". This makes it possible to exchange more information much faster this way.

Another reason I made these lists was to speed up my drafts. While making them and discussing them with others, I decide whether I like card A or card B better. That way I don't have to make these decisions during a draft and can focus more on other things (like signals or mana curve).

When I started making them a few years ago, I found that some people started using the lists as drafting guide, especially when drafting Online. So now one of the most important reasons to make them is to help others who don't feel they know the format very well yet. They can use the list as a basic drafting strategy, and by time alter their strategy with their own experience.

Most players and internet writers make common lists at the beginning of the format, and they always do this by color. There are two major drawbacks to this. One, you often still don't know which card to pick, for you will have to chose between cards with different colors most of the time. And two, some cards can't be rated without it's context (i.e. the color combination or archetype you are drafting it in). This is also the reason a lot of pro players don't think much of pickorder-lists at all. I however feel there aren't that many contexts. Because the cards differ so much per color, every color combination plays differently as well. But within a certain color combination, there usually aren't many ways to draft, and mostly one way is clearly the best. Themes play an important role in limited magic. For instance, Waxmane Baku gets a lot better if you have enough cards that trigger it, and skyhunter cub is bad without equipment. Sometimes this makes making a list hard, because cards shift posisition a lot if you decide to go for the mechanic or decide not to. But I think, and most pros agree, that some colors, or at least color combinations, should ALWAYS focus on some mechanic. In Mirrodin, there was no point in playing white without equipment (and in a lesser degree, vise versa as well). I wouldn't go as far as saying it is the same with black and madness in this format, but because of Looter-Il-Kor, I pretty sure this goes for the Blue/Black archtype. So pick Dark Withering very high when you play blue, for even if you don't have any discard yet, you are likely to get some later in the draft. Though I use color combination as a starting point, I move away from them sometimes. Blue/Green is missing because I think it just isn't good, and Green/Black got replaced, for I found out you should end up splashing red more often than not.

People think I always draft according to these static lists, but that is not completely true. Cards move up and down the order all the time during your draft. If you have a lot of removal, I pick carddraw higher than I normally would, and there are a lot of things like that. But I like having a base position to start from. Saying you can't rate a two-drop in comparision to a four-drop because it depends on how your manacurve is doesn't make sense to me, for there will be time where you have none yet, or you have them in an average proportion. (And obviously, if you rank the two-drop higher and you already have a lot of four-drops already, remembering the list helps you speed up the decision).

These lists will be constantly updated as I get more experienced with the set. New archetypes will be added as well. If you do not agree with my decisions, please let me know at r_van_heeswijkAThotmail.com.