Innistrad: Double Feature Draft Guide

Welcome to our Double Feature Draft Guide! If you’re our regular reader, you’ll notice that this article is a bit different from our regular ones. This format is somewhat special, and so is this draft guide. Nevertheless, you’ll still be able to learn how to win in this format, albeit in a bit different way.

UPDATE: If you’re looking forward to drafting the newest set, you should read our Brothers’ War Draft Guide.

What is Double Feature?

So what’s so special about the Innistrad: Double Feature Draft?

Wizards basically took all the cards from both Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow, and combined them together. They didn’t curate the cards in any way, they just mashed them together.

We’re usually writing draft guides when the set is brand new, and we don’t know much about them. As you see this time, it’s different. We already know everything about Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow, and while the new format will be different, we can still draw fairly accurate conclusions from the past.

That’s why we’ll only focus on the archetype breakdown. We’ll examine how the archetypes preformed in previous draft formats, and what that means for Double Feature draft.

If you want to know more about the best commons, how the mechanics work, and so on, check out our previous two Innistrad draft guides:

• Midnight Hunt Draft Guide
• Crimson Vow Draft Guide

Before we start with the archetype breakdown, let’s break down some differences between Double Feature draft in paper and on MTG Arena.

Paper

When drafting in paper, each card in the pack comes in a black-white style. Furthermore, there will be two rares in every pack.

The Double Feature booster boxes are exclusive to WPN stores, and are therefore unavailable on Amazon, Walmart etc. What if you don’t have a WPN store around? You can “play around” that by getting a booster box of Midnight Hunt, and Crimson Vow on Amazon. Then you’d distribute 12 packs of each in an 8-player draft pod.

However, that is quite clunky, and you wouldn’t get black-white cards. You can find the nearest WPN with the Wizards’ Store Locator.

MTG Arena

If you want to play in the comfort of your home, then Arena is the way to go. The biggest difference, however, is that all card will be regular, so no black-white shenanigans there. You still get two rares in every pack, plus there’s an additional reward for entry, a special style, the so-called Dracula card!

You can learn more about the event on the official MTG website.

Double Feature Draft Archetypes

With that said, let’s talk about the archetypes. There are 10 of them, one for each color. Sometimes you’ll splash a third color, but you’ll mostly play two colors. In the following table, you can see which themes were present in each archetype.

We’ll take a closer look at each of them, and how they performed in the previous draft formats. (Shout-out to 17lands data.) The archetypes are ordered based on how we think they’ll do in Double Feature draft. We’re starting with the very best:

#1 White-Blue: Disturb

• Midnight Hunt: The best archetype
• Crimson Vow: One of the best archetypes

White-Blue used the disturb mechanic in both sets. In Midnight Hunt, the disturb creatures were creatures on both sides, while in Crimson Vow, the back-side was an Aura.

As it turns out, having a whole deck of two-for-ones is quite good. So we have a deck that was very good in both formats, in which it used pretty much the same mechanic. There’s absolutely no reason for disturb archetype to stop doing well, and it’s easily one of the best decks you can draft.

#2 Black-Red: Vampires

• Midnight Hunt: Under average
• Crimson Vow: The best archetype

Vampires were quite mediocre in Midnight Hunt, but were appropriately the best deck in Crimson Vow. Certainly, that was due to the fact, that they had a lot of Blood tokens, which smoothed out your draws.

Now, even though half the cards are from the first set, we expect Vampires to still be good. Once again, they’ll have access to Blood tokens in both of their colors, so you’ll be able to discard the situationally-good Vampires from Midnight Hunt, when you won’t need them.

So, the important part with this archetype is to highly prioritize Blood tokens. Almost every card that makes them is good, and there will be less of them than in Crimson Vow.

#3 Blue-Black: Exploit Decayed Zombies

• Midnight Hunt: One of the best archetypes
• Crimson Vow: Under average

Blue-Black was a machine in Midnight Hunt. It made plenty of decayed Zombie tokens, with the best token maker being Diregraf Horde. It had plenty of ways to use them with cards like Siege Zombie.

Now, in Crimson Vow, the archetype was certainly weaker. It was focused on the exploit mechanic and while you could win with the deck, it was hard to consistently draft a good version of it.

However, once you pair exploit creatures with decayed Zombies, it makes it much easier to have a good exploit deck. So both themes work pretty well together, which makes Blue-Black a real deck in Double Feature draft.

#4 White-Black: Sacrifice / Lifegain

• Midnight Hunt: Average
• Crimson Vow: Average

White-Black was somewhere in the middle in both sets. First they had a small sacrifice theme going in Hunt, and then there was a lifegain theme in Vow. Both were fine, and most of the cards worked well on their own. There was no need to go all-in on the synergies.

We expect that to stay the same in the Double Feature draft. There are plenty of good cards in these two colors, and any incidental synergies will work here as well. You’ll notice that the themes work quite nicely together. For example, Fleshtaker is a great card that works well for both themes.

If the previous three archetypes were clearly Tier 1, this one is somewhere between Tier 1, and Tier 2, which begins with White-Green.

#5 White-Green: Tokens, Coven, Training, Humans

• Midnight Hunt: Above average
• Crimson Vow: One of the worst archetypes

This archetype was doing fine in Midnight Hunt. In Crimson Vow, on the other hand, not so much. As you saw from the title, it has many themes. Thankfully, they all mash quite well together.

While the deck is not one of the best, there are certainly worse options. The best thing in this format is that you’ll have an easier time enabling training, as you get some good cheap attackers, as compared to Crimson Vow. Don’t forget that this deck wants to be aggressive, since both coven and training only work on attacks.

#6 Blue-Red: Instants & Sorceries

• Midnight Hunt: One of the worst archetypes
• Crimson Vow: Above average

Blue-Red used its traditional themes in both formats, with a little twist. First it focused only on instants and sorceries, in the second set on all noncreature spells. So for both of your payoffs to work you should prefer instants and sorceries.

We’d imagine that the deck will be hard to pull off, as was already the case even in Crimson Vow, however with some luck, you could do well with Blue-Red.

#7 Red-White: Aggro

• Midnight Hunt: Under average
• Crimson Vow: Average

Red-White wasn’t very original, it was your classic aggressive draft deck. It didn’t do spectacularly well, but it wasn’t totally bad either. So if you end up in this archetype, keep a low curve of aggressive creature, pair them with good combat tricks, and you should do fine.

If you want, you can also check an article on how to draft aggressive decks.

#8 Red-Green: Werewolves

• Midnight Hunt: The worst archetype
• Crimson Vow: Above average

Werewolves were a big disappointed in Midnight Hunt for such a popular tribe. Thankfully, in Crimson Vow, the deck was much better. Nevertheless, the quality of the deck will certainly be worse now that the pool is diluted by Midnight Hunt Werevolves.

You might still be able to pull it off, but it will be hard to find against so many decks with lots of two-for-ones. This archetype just doesn’t have so many ways to get value in the late game, which significantly hurts it. That’s why the deck is somewhere on the bottom of Tier 2, or the top of Tier 3, depending on how you look at it.

#9 Green-Blue: Flashback / Self-Mill

• Midnight Hunt: Above average
• Crimson Vow: The worst archetype

Blue-Green was very bad in Crimson Vow, but it performed better in Midnight Hunt. Nevertheless, it’s still a clunky deck, and you’ll have a hard time winning with it. Sure, it’s possible to do so, just less likely than with other archetypes, which are higher on this list.

#10 Black-Green: Creatures Dying / Big Toughness

• Midnight Hunt: One of the worst archetypes
• Crimson Vow: One of the worst archetypes

Black-Green was one of the wort archetypes in both Innistrad draft formats. The themes of creatures dying and big toughness don’t mash together particularly well. That’s why we expect this archetype to be quite bad in Double Feature draft as well.

You might still be able to win with it, but if you’re doing only one or two drafts of this format, you better stick with something else.

Conclusion

Anyway, that’s it for our Double Feature draft guide. If you’re disappointed, since this wasn’t a full draft guide, don’t worry. Kamigawa is just around the corner, and with it another long draft guide, in the format you like and know.

Speaking of Kamigawa, here are some articles that might interest you if you’re looking forward to the newest Magic’s set:

• Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Spoilers
• Kamigawa Commander Decks
• Full Art Japanese Kamigawa Lands
• List of All Neon Dynasty Products

Until next time, have fun, and good luck with your Double Feature drafts!