IPA Draft Guide: Crash Course in One of the Best Limited Formats of All Time

Hello, and welcome to the Ultimate Guard blog! Today, I’m going to give you a crash course in one of the best Limited formats of all time - Invasion, Planeshift, Apocalypse draft, which is up live now on MTGO! And it will be so until June 23rd!

Be warned - the format looks very different from modern ones, but it truly was a trailblazer when it came out, and it still lets you play with some incredible spells from ages past (and a lot of extremely bad creatures). Let’s dive in!

Things To Know Going In

• The mana is not nearly as good as what you are used to now.

This is a format that pushes you to play 3 colors (or more), with tons of tempting gold cards and powerful splash options. However, the land cycles at common and uncommon are pretty weak, and overall there is MUCH less fixing than sets have now, even sets that are just built around playing two colors. While you should try and pick up some fixing, you will just have a manabase that looks atrocious to you, and that’s ok thanks to the next point.

• The format is way slower than any set in the last 10 years (and probably more)

You can keep hands that have no plays until turn four, you can stumble on lands some, and you can still win those games just fine. Sets nowadays punish you hard for not having a 2-drop, much less missing a land drop in the first four turns, but IPA is played at a slower pace, a more refined cadence. Keeping a hand without multiple colors of mana totally plays, and slow hands are more than fine. You have some breathing room here, so don’t get too worried if you come out the gates slowly.

• The creature quality is low, but the spell quality is high.

This is the format where you get to play incredible spells like Repulse, Magma Burst, Recoil, Fire//Ice, or Armadillo Cloak!

Look at these - card advantage, removal, tempo, all easily available (even at common). Let’s see what awesome creatures accompany them! We've got Ancient Kavu, Razorfoot Griffin, Duskwalker, and Stone Kavu!

Well, isn’t that a sharp contrast. Also, lest you think I’m cherry-picking bad creatures, these are not only playable creatures, but solid ones. You will play these cards, and even some creatures worse, because the creature quality across the board just isn’t high. Anything with a pulse is playable, and you should keep that in mind when drafting and playing.

Invasion and Planeshift are allied color sets and Apocalypse is enemy

The five supported color pairs in terms of gold cards in Invasion and Planeshift are the allied ones (UB, UW, WG, GR, RB), but that switches in Apocalypse to enemy colors (UR, UG, GB, BW, WR). What that means is that you need to be ready for your will (and manabase) to be tested once you go into pack three. You could be drafting RB or UW just fine through two packs, but all of a sudden all those nice gold cards are going to be replaced by tempting UR or WB ones. Sometimes you should dive into a third color with open arms, and sometimes you should resist and try and stick to a more streamlined two colors (or two and a splash). This is the hardest part about drafting IPA, and I just want you to be ready for it, even if there is no hard and fast answer.

Now that we have our baseline, let’s take a look at the top commons of each color (by set)

Invasion

Planeshift

Apocalypse

In general, the Grixis colors (blue, black, and red, in that order) are the strongest, because they have the strongest spells. Apocalypse really throws everything for a loop though, and the gold cards are easily the strongest.

Cards That Are Easy To Overlook

Here are some cards you wouldn’t necessarily think are great, but are certified bangers.

So much in this format is about creature color, including tons of the removal, protection, you name it. Tidal Visionary really messes with that, and I take this card highly. It can protect your creatures from removal, let you kill creatures with your narrow removal, and tons of other interactions.

Flagbearer is just broken. These blank all their pump spells, targeted abilities, and removal that can’t kill the Flagbearer (most often Coalition Honor Guard). At worst, it eats a removal spell, and playing against these is just infuriating. Splashing the Honor Guard is a totally fine move, it really is that powerful.

The format is really slow, so any creature with an expensive activated ability is probably good, with the Heralds being great.

Protection is absurdly strong, and this impacts both combat and opposing removal spells. I’d happily maindeck a copy of either/both.

This card is not only worse than it seems but incredibly hard to actually understand. It kills two creatures IF they are both exactly the same color / colors - they both need to be blue or blue/white, with any deviation causing the spell to fail. It will still let you cast it, because it’s just a check, which is especially diabolical.

I mentioned that the fixing was bad, right? All of these are playable, with the Thrush being the best, in part because they fix your mana. They can also mess with the opponent’s mana, so setting an upkeep stop is worth doing. Turning their only Plains into a fourth Mountain can be great sometimes.

Not that there’s any risk of this being underrated, but I think it may be the literal best card in the format.

This is one of my favorite ways to grind the opponent out, and as a 3 for 1, you should be taking it highly.

Archetypes

Let’s close things out by talking about archetypes. There really aren’t any as you’d see them today, as the themes in this block aren’t nearly as defined as they are in modern sets. Mostly, you’re trying to find the open colors, and drafting an allied color pair the first two sets before slotting in a third is pretty typical. My favorite decks to draft are Grixis Control (ie, all the best removal and card draw, with some weak creatures as finishers) and UW Fliers (ideally with no splash, aiming to curve out with flying threats and bounce spells). I rarely draft green unless its 5-color, since the main thing green has going for it is a lot of decent fixing.

Overall, I just love how value-centric and intricate the games are, with a healthy dash of nostalgia for these sets. They are very different from modern limited, and a lot of fun if you’ve never tried them. Good luck, and I hope you open a Flametongue Kavu (unless you are playing me, of course).

LSV