Rough Drafts: All the Blightbelly Rats | Phyrexia: All Will Be One

What happens if you pick every Blightbelly Rat in your Phyrexia: All Will Be One draft? Let's find out on today's Rough Drafts!

Thoughts

Record-wise, we finished 2-3 with our WB Toxic deck, which isn't great, although I still think it had more to do with variance than with the deck being that bad. We didn't really open many playable rares. In fact, we only ended up with one in our deck in Skrelv's Hive, and we never drew it. We also had a couple of color-screw losses, which shouldn't happen all that often in a two-color deck. While I don't think our deck is busted or anything like that, I do think it's a solid B that could have won at least a couple more matches with better running or play.

The good news is we did get to see Blightbelly Rat essentially lock our opponent out of the game, making it so if our opponent blocks, they die to the proliferation of poison counters, but if they don't block, they die to toxic combat damage. Getting six of any one card is pretty rare in limited, and I would run all six Rats again—I think they are really good in a toxic deck thanks to having passable starts and a powerful proliferate death trigger. Basically, whatever issues the deck had weren't the Blightbelly Rats' fault.

One broader thought on the format: it seems super aggressive. Every deck we played against was either a very aggro Toxic deck or a very aggro Equipment deck, which is probably exactly what Wizards was going for since it really felt like Mirrans fighting Phyrexians. My first impression of the format is that you don't want to be blocking—you want to have an aggressive, proactive strategy that is focused on killing opponents quickly. Toxic creatures don't really play defense since it wastes their toxic ability. Mite tokens can't block at all, and even on the Mirran side, several of their best creatures and For Mirrodin! equipment have abilities that only work on your turn, which again forces you to be aggressive. Basically, #MTGONE limited feels like the kind of format where you are losing if you are blocking, so aim for aggression as you make your picks!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.