Murders at Karlov Manor draft guide, sealed & archetypes for MTG

Murders At Karlov Manor is the first Standard set of 2024, and the introduction to Play Boosters replacing the old Draft and Set boosters. This shifts Draft formats, as both cards from “The List” and “Special Guests” are now legal in Limited formats. Drafting a set requires knowledge of the archetypes and flow of a Draft, which you won’t need from the best precon Commander decks, and this guide will help you with that. This is the Murders At Karlov Manor Draft Guide for Magic: The Gathering. 

Murders At Karlov Manor Draft Archetypes

Every two-colour pair in a set has a Draft archetype. This is a guide as to what cards to look out for that are in those colours to build a themed strategy around. There are ten different archetypes, which are as follows: 

Azorius (white/blue): Detectives

This archetype is built around the Detective creature type, which often utilizes clues to benefit from their effects. If you can snag a Private Eye, it helps bring the whole archetype together. 

Dimir (blue/black): Clues Control

Dimir’s plan in Murders At Karlov mana is to use removal and counterspells to stall out your opponent. It does so while creating Clue tokens to draw into more cards to out-advantage your opponent to slowly grind to victory. 

Rakdos (black/red): Suspect Aggro

Suspect is a mechanic that gives a creature menace at the trade-off of removing its ability to block. The idea of the archetype is to suspect your own creatures to get in for damage early, or suspecting your opponent’s creatures to get in without having to worry about late-game blockers. 

Gruul (red/green): Big Disguise

Disguise is a mechanic that puts a creature face-down on the battlefield that can later be flipped up at a discounted cost. The idea is to slowly put creatures on the battlefield face-down to flip them into a much stronger creature to surprise your opponent during attacks and blocks. 

Selesnya (green/white): Go-Wide Disguise

Unlike the Gruul archetype, Selesnya’s is built around placing multiple creatures face-down instead of powerful ones. Many of these cards benefit from being flipped face-up, either by growing the stats of other creatures or bringing more creatures onto the battlefield when they are flipped. 

Orzhov (white/black): Pint-Size Disguise

The gimmick of Orzhov is playing cards with power two or less (which disguised cards are 2/2’s), and can later flip them up to transform them into much more threatening attackers to push your advantage. 

Izzet (blue/red): Artifact Sacrifice

Izzet’s archetype is all about creating artifacts to then sacrifice them. Both Treasure and Clue tokens are sacrificed when used, triggering the effects of other cards that benefit from seeing them sacrificed. Gleaming Geardrake is the best payoff for this if you manage to draft it. 

Golgari (black/green): Gravebreak

Gravebreak uses the collect evidence mechanic to exile cards from the graveyard, and triggers abilities that go off when a card leaves the graveyard. There are multiple payoffs for this at the higher rarities, so if you get lucky with rares consider playing into this archetype. 

Boros (red/white): Battalion

Battalion is based on an old archetype where effects trigger when you attack with three or more creatures. The Boros archetype is an Aggro deck that wants to flood the battlefield with creatures and constantly be attacking with them. 

Simic (green/blue): Collect Evidence

Collect Evidence is an effect that wants a full graveyard, as you need to exile a certain amount of cards with a specific mana value to trigger the ability. The Simic cards benefit from this, often by giving you access to more powerful effects by collecting evidence.

✓ Johnny’s Tip:

To Follow Or Not Follow Archetypes:

While archetypes are a great guiding point as to what cards you should draft, they are not required to follow. It is better to focus on strong cards instead of trying to force a specific archetype. Most cards can work well together, and there’s no guarantee you will be able to draft a full archetype. 

Drafting Tips for Murders at Karlov Manor

When you’re drafting, while looking for archetypes is good you also want to look at other cards. One of the things you should always put focus on is removal. Every colour has some form of removal, and since stalling out a gamestate is very common in Draft, it’s a way to push through for damage. In addition, “bombs” exist that are very powerful compared to commons and uncommons, so having removal for them is vital in other to fend against them. 

Of course, you need creatures in your deck. It is important to have a balance of cheap creatures and higher-mana creatures. In Draft, you ideally can always cast a spell every turn, be it a creature or an interaction spell. You don’t want to over-commit to a lot of high-mana cards, as otherwise they may get stuck in your hand since you only want to draw them once you have a lot of land in play. 

As for lands, draftable lands are in Murders At Karlov Manor. There is a full cycle of dual lands that surveil when they enter the battlefield, which is a great ability at controlling your top deck to ensure you don’t draw into something useless for the gamestate. They are rare, so they may be hard to see in your Draft but if you do, they can make your deck much more consistent.

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That is the full Draft guide for Murders At Karlov Manor in MTG. The format has a lot of potential within its archetypes, with a big lean on Aggro decks that can flip the switch to a stall game thanks to the plentiful amount of disguise cards. There is a good bit of removal in every colour, letting players take care of any potential problem card regardless of what colours you wind up in. In general, you always want to draft two colours, and while you can draft more than that (or even just one colour), two is the sweet spot so you are always able to cast your spells while taking advantage of the best cards of both colours.