Innistrad Remastered isn’t legal in Standard, but you’re able to still use it for one ofMagic: The Gathering’s most popular formats: Draft! Drafting is a great way to experience a new set, play on even footing with friends, and show off your knowledge of the game.
Innistrad Remastered is an odd set to draft since it’s a collection of cards from previous Innistrad sets rather than a set designed for limited play. Despite lacking keys such as signpost uncommons, it’s still very draftable, and we’ll tell you everything you need to know to brave the horrors of Innistrad.
Flying Spirits (White/Blue)
Creature types are often aligned to specific colors, with some overlap between colors. In Innistrad,each “allied” color pair has an associated creature type.Spirits are most common in white and blue, with only a couple showing up in green and black. Spirits are the ghosts of Innistrad. Sometimes, they’re benign, even helpful, usually airborne, and always creepy.
There are a handful of effects that directly benefit you for playing Spirits, such asBattleground Geist, which gives all of your spirits +1/+0, orSpectral Shepherd, which allows you to bounce a Spirit back to your handto avoid death or get a second use out of its enter effect.
This archetype also gives youaccess to several control options, including Spell Queller, which you can cast to exile a spell that your opponent is in the middle of casting. The combination of control and evasion via flying makes this a solid combination, but one that will struggle to remove threats already in play.
Black is a solid additionto splash into this archetype. It offers removal options to deal with creatures that you were not able to counter or exile, as well as some graveyard interaction, which will feel thematic to your haunting deck.
Zombie Control (Blue/Black)
Zombies usually fall firmly into black’s territory, but Innistrad’s skaabs are blue Zombies stitched together from fresh corpses, much like Frankenstein’s monster.Black and blue also happen to be one of the best combinations for control decks, featuring both counters and removal, as well as robust card draw options.
Some of the interactions are obvious, like Bladestitched Skaab, whichgives all of your Zombies +1/+0just for being in play, or Gisa and Geralf, whichallows you to cast a Zombie from your graveyard each turn. Both will ensure that your Zombies remain a threat.
The control side is a little less obvious but clearly present. Stitched Mangler, for example,taps a creature when it comes into play, removing one of your opponent’s threats from attacking and blocking for a turn. Combined with recurrence like that offered by Gisa and Geralf, and black’s frequent use of sacrifice mechanics, and you cankeep that creature tapped out indefinitely.
Red and white work well to splash into this archetype.Red offers additional discard optionsthat interact favorably with the limited graveyard interaction in the set, as well as capitalizing on the madness cost of some black cards you may already be drafting. Meanwhile,white offers additional control options, as well as graveyard interaction via the disturbed mechanic.
Vampire Madness (Black/Red)
If you’re mad about Vampires, this is the archetype for you.Madnessis an older mechanic, but one that finds a home with the Blood tokens Vampires favor.Whenever you discard a card with madness, you can cast it for its madness coston the way to the discard pile. This allows you to discard cards and still play them, and it gets around timing restrictions so that you can play creatures and sorceries on your opponent’s turn.
Several Vampires create Blood tokens when they come into play, like Bloodtithe Harvester and Gluttonous Guest. These tokens can be sacrificed to discard a card and draw a fresh one, allowing you to trigger madness casts any time you have enough free mana and replace the card in the process.
Meanwhile, there are a fewcards that directly benefit Vampires, either by giving them buffs or by synergizing with the madness theme. Falkenrath Gorger, for example, gives all the Vampires in your hand madness, so that you have even more discard options.
Blue is a great splash option for a madness deck, because it offers several cards withflashbackordisturb, two mechanics that allow you to cast spells from your graveyard. While this isn’t quite as powerful as madness in a discard deck, it does allow you tobranch out a little during the draft phase without losing too much momentumand offers additional effects outside the Rakdos (red/black) wheelhouse.
Werewolf Ramp (red/green)
Innistrad Remastered pulls Werewolves from the original Innistrad block, as well as the Shadows over Innistrad block, but skips Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow to avoid the problematic day/night mechanic. Most of theseWerewolves transform when a whole turn passes without a player casting a single spell, then change back when a player casts two spells in one turn.
The set also contains three Werewolf Horrors, which you’re able to transform by paying their mana cost. These creatures don’t transform back.
Werewolves and Wolves have a handful of synergies so that you can use them together, likeRunebound Wolf’s ability to burn your opponent for damage equal to the combined number of Wolves and Werewolves you control. There are also a few ways to generate Wolf tokens to grow that number.
This color combination also includesthe best ramp package in the set. A couple of Werewolves, including Scorned Villager, can generate mana, and there are several other ways to dig up land from your library or graveyard, to make all of your creatures produce mana, and to increase that made by your lands. Use that mana toplay bigger creatures or flip your Werewolf Horrors.
Since most Werewolves also have the Human type,white splashes easily into this color pair. The Selesnya (green/white) pairing includes plenty of Humans, as well as multiple ways to buff them,all of which can also affect Human Werewolveslike Scorned Villager.
Safety In Numbers (Green/White)
The monsters in the Selesnya pairing are Humans, which are truly the greatest source of conflict in the multiverse (aside from, perhaps,Nicol Bolas). In Innistrad, the color pair representsHumans banding together to survive the horrors of their world, as well as the Angels that protect them.
This color pair isn’t limited to Humans, as this color pair can also make Wolves and Spirits, butthe best synergies are reserved for the Humans. In addition to plenty of Human creature cards, there are alsomultiple ways to make additional Human tokens, like Torens, Fist of the Angels, who will make a 1/1 Human that gets bigger over time each time you cast a creature spell, and Join the Dance, which creates two 1/1 Humans and can be cast again from the graveyard.
Once you have a bunch of Humans (and other creatures), you need to buff them up. Inspiring Captain and similar cards canbuff one or more creatures when they come into play, but there are also a variety of enchantments to rally your forces for the last big push.
Because it adds a little more aggression and has a variety of Humans that can benefit from the buffs,red is a good third color to splash into this archetype. Red provides a handful of targeted buffs that can catch your opponent by surprise, as well as damage-based removal to deal with threats and remove obstacles from the battlefield.
Sacrifice (White/Black)
Black has always been happy to pay any price in order to get ahead, and white tends to make a lot of creatures. Combing the two, you get tomake a bunch of creatures, and then sacrifice themto pay for other effects.
Fleshtaker is a great example: you may sacrifice a creature and pay one mana to give it +2/+2, andany time you sacrifice any creature, you gain life and scry. Falkenrath Torturer is a good sac outlet since you don’t need to tap or pay anything aside from sacrificing one creature to give it flying. If you use a Human as the sacrifice, perhaps one of the many in white, it also gets a +1/+1 counter.
In addition to white giving you a lot of creatures to throw away,black gives you several ways to get them back. Zombies that can be played from your graveyard, Skeletons that return to your hand, and Liesa, Forgotten Archangel, whichallows you to sacrifice creatures to your hand and reuse them.
Green splashes beautifully with this pair, enhancing all aspects of it. With white, green provides creature tokens, and with black it cares about what cards are in your graveyard and gives you bonuses when creatures die, which you’re able to activate freely by sacrificing them.
Spellslinger (Blue/Red)
Izzet (blue/red) seems to be stuck in the spellslinger theme, but it does it so well that it’s hard to complain.Red gives you access to burnspells and creature removal, whileblue keeps your hand fulland stops big threats from seeing play.
The color pair gives youa lot of tools to get the cards you need, like Wandering Mind, which allows you to dig up any noncreature, nonland card from the top of your deck when it enters, as well as some ways to draw and reuse spells in your graveyard. Galvanic Iteration even allows you tocopy one of your more potent spells.
In a limited environment like a draft, burn spells usually aren’t enough. Thankfully,several creatures, like Festival Crasher, get additional benefits whenever you play an instant or sorcery. Use several cheap spells to buff all that you control before attacking, or wait until blockers are declared to cast a few instants for surprise damage.
Since this archetype wants to cast a lot of spells,green’s mana ramp effects are useful to get ahead. White also integrates well, giving you additional combat tricks once it’s time to attack and creating additional blockers to protect you while you set up your big plays.
Life And Death (Black/Green)
Life is in green’s wheelhouse, and death is in black’s, and the two work surprisingly well together, creatinga cycle of death and rebirth. In Innistrad Remastered, they use a combination of death triggers and graveyard interactions to give you an advantage.
Creatures like Grizzly Ghoulcome into play bigger and stronger when creatures have died that turn, whether they’re yours or your opponent’s. You can sacrifice your own creatures, or use spells like Maelstrom Pulse to wipe out a bunch of your opponent’s before casting it.
You can alsosacrifice creatures to pay costs. For example, Eaten Alive either costs five mana (three generic, two black) to exile a creature or planeswalker, or one black mana and one creature. This can fill your graveyard, buff some of your creatures, and remove a threat from the game, all for one mana.
Every color can be splashed into this archetyperelatively easily. White adds a lot of small, token, or disturbable creatures, giving you more options to sacrifice, while blue has a handful of self-mill effects that help if your deck has more of a graveyard focus than a sacrifice one. Red, meanwhile, offers more ways to draw and discard, filling your graveyard to advance your game plan.
Aggro (Red/White)
White wants to build an army, and red wants to start a fight. Put them together, and you’ve gotan aggressive pair that can represent Soldiers going into battle, or a riot in progress. Innistrad Remastered uses the pair to overwhelm your opponents with an army of angry Humans, Vampires, Angels, and others.
Markov Waltzer is a great example of this archetype: The 1/3 Vampire has haste, so it can attack immediately, and flying, to bypass blockers. It alsobuffs two creatures by +1/+0 each combat, allowing it to hit harder or make two other creatures bigger threats. Angelfire Battlements similarly buffs one creature, making itnigh-unstoppable for one turn, and then being reused for Flashbacklater.
Ancestral Anger is particularly useful in Draftsince it’s a common, and Draft decks aren’t limited to four copies of a card. If you can draft five or six, it becomes a potent buff. However, it’s valuable enough in limited formats that other players might also draft it hard.
Splashing in another color can slow this archetype down, butthe additional size offered by green is often worth the sacrifice. A couple of big creatures like the Werewolf Horrors can come in useful if you may’t end the game early. Green also includes some important buffs that you’ll be glad to include.
Self-Mill (Green/Blue)
Green and blue make an odd couple, but one that often works wonders.Both colors include some graveyard interactionin Innistrad Remastered, so together they work together to fill your graveyard with your own cards for fun and profit.
Hermit Druid flips cards from the top of your deck into your graveyard until you find a basic land, which can eitherget you that land immediately or mill away half of your deck. But that isn’t actually a bad thing, since cards like Vilespawn Spiderlook for certain cards in your graveyard and give bigger effects the more they find.
Deranged Assistant leans further into the idea of filling your graveyard in order to ramp, although it’s important tokeep an eye on your library to make sure that you aren’t going to mill yourself to death. The archetype is tough to build and play but has the potential for big payoffs.
Black and white, with their recursion mechanics,make this archetype a little safer. It’s handy to be able to disturb a creature to bring it into play after milling it and to reanimate creatures that are just sitting in your graveyard.
