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PostPosted: Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:01 pm 
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So, talking about limited, I find myself referring to archetypes that might, at the moment, only exist in my head. Here's the first one of them, poured out to the internet. You probably already knew most of this, but I thought a primer might be useful.

What is the Royal Air Force (RAF)?
RAF is an archetype for Limited that is usually available in any limited format. It's an aggressive strategy that uses high concentrations of evasive (Usually flying) creatures in order to win games. It forces opponents to burn their removal more often than trading, even with creatures that are relatively trivial on their own and is somewhat resistant against getting in a locked board state.

What's Important for Royal Air Force?
In a word: Fliers. Other creatures with solid evasion abilities (Intimidate, Can't be Blocked, block mechanics like Shadow) are plenty good and sometimes even better than flying, but they're much harder to find. As such, RAF decks will tend to be in 1-2 of White, Blue, and/or Black, since those are the colors that reliably have the best flying creatures. You'll sometimes support one of the traditional RAF colors with red if a set has particularly good burn spells or if you open red's big, iconic fliers. Green is almost never included in a "True" RAF deck, though RAF principles can apply to partially green decks.

A good RAF deck should have a low to average curve, because you want to be drawing a lot of gas. Flying creatures, however, tend to be a little more expensive so it's not the end of the world if you find yourself wanting to run 18 land. RAF decks can use removal as much as the next deck, but do not critically need as much as decks that try to push through 20 damage primarily on the ground.

If you're trying to archetype draft RAF, you should know what color has the best evasive creatures at common or uncommon and what color comes second. Stake a heavy claim on at least one of those two colors while figuring out your second. All normal drafting principles apply, so don't let a P1P1 bomb slip by just because it does not, itself, evade.

How do you play Royal Air Force?
Limited RAF, I find, plays a little bit like the classic lesson on tempo, Sligh -- at least in as much as you want to start dealing damage early and keep pushing damage through to deny your opponent stabilization. Unlike Sligh, which keeps going by nuking everything in sight and possibly finishes up with face burn, you only need to pick off enemy flying and reach creatures in order to maintain pressure.

One of the biggest weaknesses of playing the most aggressive sort of RAF is that you will be taking a lot of damage in return, since you tend to be turning all your creatures sideways every turn. A couple ground creatures (It's almost inevitable you'll pick up some good ones -- in fact, if half your creatures are fliers, you've done quite well!) can help stem the tide while you grind your opponent down. Don't be afraid to use a removal piece no a very powerful creature if you're going to die -- while you deal damage a lot more consistently than a less evasive deck, you don't necessarily pour it on faster and you don't have any more life.

It's hard to say more than this, because every limited deck is going to be very different. A white-centric RAF deck might be heavier on the aggression (white creatures tend to have better power for cost than blue or black ones) while one that heavily incorporates black is going to have a lot more removal than one that's more focused on blue. Even this varies from set to set: what's consistent is your ability to make progress every time combat comes up on your turn. That's what you ought to strive for - a clock that doesn't stop for anything, however fast or slow it runs.

Royal Air Force in the current format (Born of the Gods)
In Born of the Gods, Royal Air Force wants to be in white, which makes it overlap with W/X heroic -- especially W/U -- seeing as some of the best heroic creatures at low rarity are also some of the best flying creatures: Akroan Skyguard and its big brother Wingsteed Rider. Loyal Pegasus, Ornitharch, Sentry of the Underworld (with black), and to a lesser extent Cavalry Pegasus (which gets non-flying humans off the ground) are also cards to watch for. Blue has Archetype of Imagination alongside Chorus of the Tides, Horizon Scholar, Nimbus Naiad, and Vaporkin plus Aerie Worshippers, Siren of the Fanged Coast and Flitterstep Eidolon on a good day. In addition, Shipwreck Singer and Siren of the Silent Song get to play if you're blue/black... but while blue has a lot of fliers, most of them are expensive, not terribly good (and unlisted), or both: Vaporkin and Nimbus Naiad alone cover the sub-4 bracket, which is trouble for trying to center around blue. Black contributes Blood-Toll Harpy, Cavern Lampad, Insatiable Harpy, the multicolor goodness already mentioned, and maybe Shrike Harpy -- not a whole lot. But, especially with Born of the Gods, black also contributes a fistfull of removal: Asphyxiate, Bile Blight, Drown in Sorrow, Eye Gouge, Lash of the Whip, Necrobite, Pharika's Cure, and Sip of Hemlock! Not all of those are great, but there are a lot of them. Ultimately, you can go with any two of the three and be successful, which leaves your options open for what you, well, open.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 3:35 am 
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I don't think of skies as a sligh deck, but rather as a control deck whose wincon is evasive beats. It's tricky to race people when your guys have p/t below the curve, so I prefer to have a couple of effective blockers to hold off the opposing team while my fliers go to work. However, in Theros, I think it's better to just bestow a crapton onto one evasive guy, then go all-in while chumping with your ground guys.

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 10:37 am 
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Pretty much. Although I often run into a situation where I have one big (4/4?) flyer and one small one and have to decide wether or not to bestow another +2/+2 or whatever onto the big guy or the little guy. Just like Ornitharch, sometimes you want a 6/6 and a 1/1 and some times you want a 4/4 and a 3/3.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 12, 2014 1:25 pm 
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To address something that was brought up and that I mentioned...

Variant: Rank & Flank
Again, my name for what is basically the (even more) control variant. This is a deck type I first encountered in Morningtide draft, a format that I was very successful at archetype drafting. Several times, I scored first with :u::b: Faerie Rogues (essentially a RAF build), but more than once I saw also doing very well :u::g:, using faeries alongside treefolk. This really seemed odd at first, but it worked out marvelously. As with RAF, the primary damage dealers were smallish fliers, but unlike RAF the name of the game wasn't threat saturation, but defense. The treefolk, and in fact the entire green contribution to the deck, came down and just sat there, getting in the way of the opponent making any progress while the fliers slowly ground out 20 life. Speed was not an issue, but inevitability was: a blue/green deck has probably the least common removal access of any two-color pair, but with solid defenders and evasive beats, it could actually get away with Lignify and approximately nothing else. It was still a very creature-focused deck (like the RAF), but the archetype had shifted.

Since then, I've noticed the same thing crop up. Taking a look at Theros, you see three easy versions of :u::w:: A straight-up heroic deck with a ton of combat tricks to get lots of counters on their creatures, a RAF deck that uses a ton of fliers (like Loyal Pegasus), fewer heroic enablers and more creatures, and... this thing, that probably finishes the game with wingsteed rider and akroan skyguard, but in the meantime protects itself with big toughness, possibly non-counter heroic creatures like, and given what Theros has to offer, potentially a good deal of life gain. This sort of deck isn't going to immediately drop an Ordeal of Thassa on an Akroan Skyguard, it might instead drop an Ephara's Radiance on Omenspeaker, which believe me is frustrating to chew through. Oh, the skyguard (or ornitharch, or wingsteed) will come out eventually, but in the meantime they durdle and prevent you from making progress until they can make their own.

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"Enjoy your screams, Sarpadia - they will soon be muffled beneath snow and ice."

I have a blog. I review anime, and sometimes related media, with an analytical focus.

I'm a (self) published author now! You can find my books on Amazon in Paperback or ebook!
The Accursed, a standalone young adult fantasy adventure.
Witch Hunters, book one of a young adult Scifi-fantasy trilogy.


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