u/wormhole222

#Quick background

There's a Magic Arena draft overlay that runs alongside Arena and shows you live win rate data and pick suggestions while you draft. I created a new version that also adds a two-card-combo alerter and an archetype tracker to it. To make those actually work I had to comb through the entire set card by card and catalogue which cards feed into each archetype and catalogue out every two-card combo I could find. Since I'd already done all that legwork, I figured I'd turn it into a written guide to the set's archetypes and two-card combos. It's all here to read through, but if you'd rather have access to it automatically while you're drafting along with 17 lands data you can download the tool here: https://github.com/wormhole2222/MTGA_Draft_17Lands/releases

#Archetype Explanations:

So to clarify this will mostly be information based on the data I collected. Stuff like pointing out for the archetype if there is more of a scarcity in getting payoffs or the actual cards in that archetype. Or point out if there are payoffs in other colors besides the two advertised colors. I tried to limit the subjective advice since it's very early in the format.

Green/White Heroes: So there are a lot of heroes, but most of the great payoffs are at rare so there is definitely a potential issue of having a ton of heroes but no real reason to be so locked into heroes. Notably most of the great payoffs are white only (not green) and about half the creatures in blue and rare are also heroes (along with their multicolor white uncommons) so I definitely think it's possible to be a blue/white or red/white hero deck (which would also allow you to double up with teamwork and noncreature synergies). Additionally Avengers Tower is very interesting as a potential splash land. If the cards you are splashing are only heroes Avengers Tower can be used to splash multiple colors. I could definitely see picking up 2 Avengers Towers and being a mostly white deck "splashing" green, blue and red heroes. Overall though I think this is a deck where you need to see some payoffs before you really go all in.

Black/Red Villains: This I think is the opposite of above. There are a lot of very good payoffs at common and uncommon, but it might be difficult to play all villains. Black is mostly villains but red is split about 50/50. Overall though there are some very good payoffs including quite a few burn payoffs. This deck could end up looking somewhat similar to the Red/Black goblins deck from ECL where you grinded them out with a bunch of life drain cards. There is notably also a Villains land (Villainous Hideout) which you could use to splash in a similar way I mentioned above, but there are less villains in the other colors to splash. The one exception are the other black multicolor uncommons (Kang, Temporal Tyrant and Killmonger, Scourge of Wakanda specifically) which both fit right into a black/red grindy burn deck.

White/Black Equipment/Attack Alone: Despite officially being attack alone theme this color pair also has quite a bit of equipment and equipment payoffs too. Which works fairly well with a deck already trying to beef up 1 creature to attack. Support for this is pretty good with plenty of equipment, vigilance creatures, and ways to get value from attacking alone. However, this kind of theme often doesn't succeed and so there will be questions of how powerful a synergistic deck like this will be, and further questions on whether it will be an aggressive or controlling deck. My guess is this actually ends up being an attrition midrange/control deck that won't be afraid to splash especially some of the powerful blue cards.

Green/Black graveyard: There is a ton of support both for filling up the graveyard and for taking advantage of it. But if you are trying to turbo fill the graveyard to get 2 creatures by turn 3-4 though you need to play specific mill cards or the land cyclers. Notably if you are playing and cycling the land cyclers this makes green/black an excellent splash deck. Also while the 2 creatures in the graveyard is a big synergy there is also just quite a bit of regular old graveyard recursion cards which is a little more forgiving in how quickly you fill up the graveyard.

Green/Blue counters: Between power-up, connive, and other abilities there are a ton of ways to gain +1/+1 counters. Unfortunately there are only 11 cards in the whole set that have a payoff for putting counters on something. If you happen to get enough of these cards then the synergies might be worth building around, but most of the time I think this will be a pocket of synergy you can use, while playing blue/green tempo or soup. Separately I think Green/White can be a reasonable home for counters as well. There are some counter payoffs in white and there are also a lot of creatures that have a lot of keywords that are a good target for counters.

Green/Red Power-Up: Power-Up is a ramp and mana sink payoff in and of itself, but beyond that there are only two cards that really pay you off for powering up specifically (beyond the +1/+1 counter payoffs). Overall I think Green/Red can succeed as a stompy deck that splashes, but don't try and build around specifically powering up.

Blue/Black Draw Two and Connive: There are only 10 actual payoffs for drawing two/conniving, but notably two of them are at common, and both of these do provide inherent value and graveyard synergy. There might be some kind of hyper synergistic draw two deck with a bunch of Atlantean Cavalry, Roxxon Brutes and Construct a Cosmic Cube, but overall blue/black might just be a control deck most of the time.

Blue/Red Artifacts: So this is a weird one. There are plenty of artifacts, and artifact payoffs, but most of the red payoffs involve sacrificing artifacts, and outside of a black 1 drop creature (Project Deathlok Soldier) and maybe treasure tokens created by the Stark Industries Executive there aren't really any good artifacts to sacrifice. In the past we have had tons of artifact tokens or artifacts that draw you a card when sacrificed. There isn't much support for that though. Furthermore the blue payoffs mostly involve having a lot of artifacts in play which doesn't fit very well with sacrificing artifacts. So yeah there is support, but I don't know how the deck will work out.

Blue/White teamwork: So teamwork spells are split pretty evenly across all the colors as are creatures that tap. Blue and white do have a few strong tap abilities on creatures, and a few different ways to untap creatures. These could perhaps be combined with some teamwork spells and vehicles to create some synergy. It's possible this kind of deck can splash red for some more strong tapping creatures and cards like Hawkeye's Bow which could trigger multiple times a turn. Also this can be a home for hero synergies as well.

Red/White noncreatures: Reasonable amount of payoffs including prowess creatures at common, and some better effects at uncommon and rare. Also there are some self target payoffs for combat tricks and auras. This also bleeds into blue. So you could splash blue or perhaps do a blue/white version.

##Common Archetype bleeds:

So as mentioned above I think there are a few archetype where the payoffs and cards are really split among a bunch of colors. Here are the ones that I think most diverge into more than just the 2 colors.

1. Heroes in White/Green/Red/Blue

2. Counters in Green/Blue/White

3. Artifacts in Blue/Red/Black

4. Noncreatures in Red/White/Blue

#Two Card Combos: So as listed above these are the current two card combos I have found in the MSH set. These combos weren't just synergistic cards. I only included them if I thought the cards really played well together and gave you a major power boost from having both in your deck without any additional build arounds required. If you know of any other combos not listed here please comment, and I will update the app with them.

1. Super Intelligence + Monica Rambeau or Atlantis Attacks or Speedball, New Warrior: Hexproof creature plus an aura that draws you a card every turn. Removes all downside of aura based ability.

2. Ronin, Shadow Stalker + Stolen Stark Tech or Super Suit : Ronin is good with all equipment, but these equipment are pseudo combat tricks and so with Ronin's mana ability both of these equipment can be played at instant speed when you are tapped out of otherwise usable mana just by tapping Ronin.

3. Hawkeye, Young Avenger + Avengers Disassembled or Bullseye, Death Dealer or Hawkeye's Bow or Human Torch, Johnny Storm or Photon Blast Barrage : With Avengers Disassembled Hawkeye turns it into deal 5+ to all opponents creatures, but still only 3 to yours (also making it so Hawkeye survives the damage). With Bullseye she turns his ability into deal 4+ damage. With Hawkeye's Bow she combos exceptionally well because it not only causes the bow to deal extra damage, but when equipped to her it increases her power and causes the extra damage to increase too (since it increases damage by her current power). So if you tap Hawkeye with a bow equipped the bow does 4 damage to the opponent. With 2 bows equipped she will deal 10 to the opponent, and with 3 bows she will deal 18. With Human Torch she is a hero to turn on his damage ability and with her every draw does 3+ damage to the opponent. Finally Photon Blast Barrage her ability triggers with each copy causing every copy to deal 3+ damage instead of just 1.

4. Photon Blast Barrage + Red Hulk : Particularly nasty combo here. You have every copy of Photon Blast Barrage target Red Hulk. Each copy causes him to gain a +1/+1 counter and do an increasingly high amount of damage. So if you used barrage with x = 5 (which is one more mana than it takes to play Red Hulk) than Red Hulk becomes a 12/13 and deals 21 damage to any target (divided as 1+2+3+4+5+6).

5. Wonder Man, Hollywood Hero + Hulk, Gamma Goliath : These naturally combo with other power up creatures. But if you play Wonder Man after Hulk you can power up Wonder Man for free twice making him essentially ETB as a 8/8 flyer for 5 mana.

6. Captain Mar-Vell, Space-Born + Captain America, Super-Soldier or Justice, Vance Astrovik : Mar-Vell allows you to play creatures at instant speed in response to your opponents removal (because your opponents removal is a spell). Both these creatures can then be played to avoid the removal either by giving Hexproof to your creatures or returning the targeted creature to your hand.

7. Viv Vision, Teen Synthezoid + Avengers Assemble! or Iron Man Armor or Patriot, Shield Wielder or Super-Soldier Serum or Vibranium Energy Daggers : All easier ways to make Viv Vision strong enough to activate her draw a card ability than her overpriced time sensitive Power Up.

8. Captain America's Shield + Captain America, Wings of Freedom or The Kingpin of Crime : Both cards do very well with the +8 toughness. With Kingpin he makes it so that the shield essentially gives +8/+8 to the attacking creature. Captain America pairs even better. When equipped with the shield and attacking he gives all your other heroes +9/+9 which with even a couple other heroes should be game over.

9. Fin Fang Foom + Avengers Disassembled or Atlantis Attacks : Fin combos with a couple other cards too, but these are the best. With Atlantis Attacks the initial copy has to target an artifact to bounce (which could be your own), but if you do the 2nd copy will be able to target anything and will create ANOTHER 6/5 hexproof kraken (assuming you used teamwork on the initial spell. Avengers Disassembled doesn't even need an artifact because there will always be targetable lands. This combo will deal 6 damage to all creatures, but Fin Fang Foom will still survive because he gains two +1/+1 counters in response to the copy.

10. Human Torch, Johnny Storm + The Thing, Ben Grimm : Part of a larger 4 card combo, but this combo is decent too and much easier to achieve. The Thing provides the hero for Johnny Storm to trigger, and each card draw gives The Thing two +1/+1 counters.

11. Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards + Mole Man, Moloid Master or Stark Industries Executive : Ironic that Mister Fantastic works better with these cards than the rest of the Fantastic Four. Mole Man turns every land drop into a card draw, and the card draw makes it so you have a land to play every turn. With Stark Industries Executive it creates a situation where her ability essentially becomes 1 mana tap to draw a card.

12. Arc Reactor + Giant-Sized Flying Ant : Giant Ant can untap the Reactor upon ETB making it so the Ant essentially only costs 1 mana.

13. Widow's Bite + Iron Fist, Living Weapon or The Serpent Society : Not only does Widow's Bite provide the self target that Iron Fist needs, but by giving Iron Fist deathtouch you turn his ability into tap kill target creature. You do need to use a different creature to activate the teamwork ability though for this to work. With Serpent Society if you target a dying creature it will cause the Society's ability to trigger.

14. Super-Adaptoid + Hercules, Prince of Power or Take Up the Shield : Super-Adaptoid will permanently get the abilities that are temporarily granted to Hercules or whatever creature you save with Take Up the Shield. This will also work with other abilities like [[Spider-Man, To the Rescue]] and [[Stolen Stark Tech]], but keep in mind you will need to play those pre-combat for Super-Adaptoid to be able to get those abilities by attacking.

15. Mister Hyde, Monster Within + Thunderbolts Conspiracy or The Astonishing Ant-Man or Kid Loki : With Astonishing Ant-Man when Hyde removes a counter and draws the card it instantly puts a counter on Astonishing Ant-Man. So Hyde's second ability essentially becomes draw a card. Same with Kid Loki except it also gives him hexproof. Thunderbolts Conspiracy might be the nastiest combo. You can remove the finality counter (it just says a counter not a +1/+1 counter) so it allows your villains to come back indefinitely. It also protects Hyde from non exile/aura removal because HE is also a villain.

I've been using the MTGA_Draft_17Lands overlay to draft for a while now and love it, but there were a couple things I wanted to add for my own use.

The big one for me was a two card combo alert. I was finding that I'd overlook otherwise mediocre cards even when they comboed with something I had already picked. I think my brain had just trained itself to filter those cards out entirely, so I'd glance past them in the pack without giving them a thought. I wanted something that would flag and show me when a combo piece was in the pack.

The other was an archetype tracker. This is a panel where I could pick a target archetype and see live counts of how many key cards (removal, fixing, build arounds, payoffs, etc.) I'd drafted toward it so I would be able to more appropriately build a good deck while drafting.

I built both, they worked really well for me, so I figured I'd put them out there in case anyone else wants to try them.

Here's my version with the added panels (Windows, macOS, Linux): https://github.com/wormhole2222/MTGA_Draft_17Lands/releases

Here's what they look like in action: Combo Panel and Archetype Panel.

All credit for the underlying tool goes to unrealities and bstaple1. I just bolted on these two panels. The whole thing is open source on GitHub, so if anyone wants to take what I added and extend it, fix it, or build on it further, you of course can, and if it matters to you, you have my blessing.

Heads up: right now both features only have data for Secrets of Strixhaven since it's the current set and I have to include all the combo pieces and decide what each archetype wants manually. I plan to update them for new sets as they release and as I play them. If there's enough interest I might also go back and add data for past sets too.

Like if you watch the highlights here he looks totally dominant. He's able to score in the post against Allen. He's able to face up guys. He's able to dominate on the offensive glass. He's even able to hit open cutters. What has changed so dramatically that he suddenly can't do all this in the playoffs?