Sarpadia and the FE Draft

[lujo]

Banter | Open

I was rather glad when you said you reanimated a Deep Spawn at an oldschool tourney Did they finally let FE officially play with the other kids?

We didn't play '93-'94. We went up to Alliances. Up until that point it's all fairly straightforward "Magic as Garfield intended" (including a surprising amount of mana denial.) After that is Mirage/Visions, which introduces combo decks. But that is just how we do it here. We also allowed reprints and up to 10 proxies so that it was more about actual deckbuilding and strategy and not just raw $$$. I think worldwide it's generally a bit more elitist, with no reprints or proxies. I don't like that.

I was rather relieved to hear it, I went out and checked out some recent 93/94 coverage and it seems FE has been allowed most places, but even the Dark had been vehemently protested against as not "pimp" enough Noone was going for reanimator or some kind of red aggro so the cards FE contributed were Hymns in every deck that was black enough, pump knights all over the place and Icatian Javelineers . Fair enough I suppose, the meta was mostly "The Deck" anyway. What's keeping Blood Moon out of the format? Would people moan about all the fly old lands being mountains?

Speaking of mana denial, one of the things which was making the old situation problematic was that it was that blue was dominated by cards which were impossible to one-up. One of those was Power Sink which seems to be completely unknown to too many people who played MtG later. But look at the countermagic roster - Counterspell , Power Sink then Mana Drain and Force Spike. There were also Unstable Mutation , Stasis , Flying Men , Zephyr Falcon , Serendib Efreet , Air Elemental and Mahamoti Djinn and three of the later labeled "power 9" were blue cards. Then those guys declared every set the worst set ever because for them it was, there was nothing they wanted in it. There could have even been a joke "But what would you guys even want? A counterspell which costs no mana?". Cue Alliances.

If you ritual (Armor Thrull) out on turn 1, that's not as bad a move as it looks. Who's gonna remove it?

Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Swords to Plowshares interact favorably. I guess even Unsummon, and you can get blown out by any of these except Chain Lightning if you try to put the counter on something. But a better question is... who needs to remove it? It doesn't really apply any pressure and it only scares off X/1s.

Exactly, exacty. If I put out an Armor Thrull first turn, it's not very likely to get removed. It can get removed, sure, but if he gets removed, I don't mind. If he doesn't get removed, the next guy that comes down will be harder to remove, because you only put a counter on it if it's about to be removed. If another peice of removal gets thrown to try to prevent this from saving the other dude, then yeah, I played 2 guys, they played 2 removal, I'm down a card off ritual but that would've happened anyway.

Second turn can be just about anything, too.

- Black Knight who's covered by Armor Thrull - you now need 2 bolts in your hand to get rid of both or you don't get rid of the knight, and you'll still need 2 bolts to get rid of him.
- Hymn to Tourach - if you didn't blast the Thrull, and this hits the removal, you may not be able to blast the thrull and you'll be less likely to be able to deal with the threat of whatever's coming down on turn 3 because of the Thrull. If you did blast the Thrull - nice, fewer cards in your hand that aren't just reactionary, so it might disrupt you better. And this just evens out the card loss from Dark Ritual.
- Terror/Shatter/Disenchant/Swords to Plowshares on their threat - they see the dopey Thrull and choose to develop their, let's say evasive, board state. This can be anything from Dark Ritual into Hypnotic Specter , Mana Vaulting whatever in , Unstable Mutation on Flying Men , or not a creature but just setting up mana junk and whatever (except the Thrull disrupts a Mishra's Factory a bit just by being there). They let the Thrull "untap" so your threat is safer when you play it, and you chose to undo their own board development a bit. They might develop further or hit the Thrull with their own removal , but you're probably ok with that.

Armor Thrull doesn't have to apply pressure, that's not it's job. It either baits a removal, covers someone else otherwise, makes your guys almost always handily win mirrors (because standout and widely used dudes in the format have at most toughness 1 point higher than power), or block Mishra's Factory / Kird Ape / Black Knight / non-flying x/1.

Again, there certainly are more epic and threatening plays than a turn 1 Armor Thrull off a Dark Ritual , but it's not a terrible play and it can develop into an annoying board state vs. a number of things decks.

40 card decks, Sarpadia, "missing" FE cards, got a bit tired writing so I might have messed up or dropped an argument here or there | Open

I've advocated 60-card decks for the quest worlds I made because I feel quest mode is closer to Constructed (albeit with a beginner's card pool) than Limited, but I remember one of the devs explaining that it should be 40.

Maybe if you make Sarpadia 2.0, you can load it up with 40-card decks.

Whoever was explaining that it should be 40 card decks was more right than they even knew for a large number of reasons. Or they knew all the reasons but here's some anyway, step by step:

1) The sixty card rule minimum for "constructed" (among a few other ones, like 4 of individual card maximum) was instituted because the emerging "constructed" way of building decks was fundamentaly breaking the game as it was envisioned and developed.
2) "Limited" isn't breaking the rules with the 40 card minimum and no limit on individual cards. Those are the original rules, and the way it is played is just meant to simulate the original assumed conditions of play. Limited just kept the game going by the original rules because it (usually) didn't have the problems that caused the rules to be changed.
3) The limitations imposed on tournament "constructed" play (60 card minimum, 4 individual card max) were a result of the rarity system breaking down and also of not-so-well-thought-out system of expansions introducing unintended interactions and conditions.
3.1) What is meant by this is that it was meant to discourage the practice of using moxen in place of basic lands or making decks out of nothing but Shaharazad or Channel and Fireball.
3.2) What it was also meant to prevent is easily drawing what you were meant to draw in general. This makes sense if what you were planning to draw could kill you in one turn. It doesn't if it's just your only sensible two-drop.
3.4) That's more of a problem with a number of jackass cards in the original few sets than anything. The 4-of limit ended up not being harsh enough for them, so most of them got limited to 1 as a rule if not outright banned from play.
3.5) But if you keep the rarity system from breaking down, most of magic plays fine with 40 card decks. It doesn't really need the limitations meant to reign in the primordial chaos, in fact, when things calmed down power wise, the original limitations started actively making constructed more degenerate rather than less degenerate.
4) Since minimum constructed deck size was inflated to 60 cards to make it more difficult to draw a particular card or card combination, players were incentivised to play the max limit of every card they wanted to draw. Even if they don't really need more than one in their deck, or two to make it more likely to draw the one copy that they need.
4.1) This then leads to the rarity system breaking down again, because you have to have an equal ammount of individual cards in the deck regardless of their power or availability just to be able to draw them consistently. Or it leads to the effective deck exploiting trans-block redundancy to cheat the limit.
4.2) So a lot of constructed deckbuilding is actually about how to dodge the 60 card limit by either finding ways to play more then 4 effective copies of something, efficient tutoring, card draw and library trimming.
4.3) There's almost none of the later in the older sets, and if you make a one-set-block like Sarpadia then there's also none of the former. So as long as you don't stuff 4X rares into every deck you're fine with 40 card decks. It's much closer to how it was supposed to be played, all of it, really. It gets bent out of shape with 60 cards decks.

Anway, there's no reson for there to be 2 Sarpadia's. Your decks are mostly mandated by key things not working and by trying to squeeze 40 card themes into 60 card decks. If I make a Sarpadia 2.0 it would just mean someone made the AI able to use a bunch of cards, and that I just slapped together decks which are more compact, play out their themes and there's about double as much of them. What you did is make a list of cards that don't work for the AI, but if you narrow the card pool to just FE and those cards don't work, then most of it objectively can't be anything but nonsense (I haven't checked the challenges out, though).

A possible reason for 2 Sarpadias might be that there's some indication that Fallen Empires was meant to be used with at least a dash of other things. The merfolk all seem to assume core set cards available. Dwarven Soldier is clearly meant to be able to tangle with Ironclaw Orcs. There's reason to believe Thelonite Monk was meant to interact with creatures and cards from The Dark as were, possibly, the orcs and the goblins. Orgg seems to want to be in the same set as Marsh Gas (or the other way around).

Also, there is indication that cards intended for Fallen Empires ended up in other sets. Weatherlight is particularly suspicious, as it seems to have obvious be leftovers from this era + Ice Age slaped together with an unexplored theme. Goblin Grenadiers is a dead giveaway , but there are a bunch of them which aren't as easy to spot. There's some really suspicious Fallen-empiresy Dwarves thereabouts (and in Mirage in general). Fit of Rage is just literally thrown into the set / block with obvious Ice Age art for no reason, but it looks and feels like a Fallen Empires card (play on a saboteur or a big trampler) . Spotting Green and Black ones is tricky because they took a design and changed it's flavor.

I think what happened was that the set was originaly meant to have more cards and that the decision to have multiple arts on stuff came up so a bunch of them were held back and never made it into a set until the "throw it in" pile that was Weatherlight.

4) The strong flavor of the set is misleading, as cards "visually" belonging to one tribe have important interactions where you wouldn't think at first.

For the quest world, I grouped by flavor for the Easy opponents. The Medium opponents have more of a mechanical theme and the Hard opponents don't have any restrictions at all. They just care about winning.

If it was 40 card decks, even the grouping by flavor would be doable in a more operable way. There's a 60 card deck with 28 lands in there.

Black doesn't have any evasion.

Order of the Ebon Hand is pretty hard to block, though.

True.

let's say there's a splash and maybe an Implements of Sacrifice or maybe a Rainbow Vale to support it

Would you really recommend either of those? What am I splashing that I would gladly 2-for-1 myself for?

You're right, I should have started with the splashables before I went to the archetypes! In the Deep Spawn / High Tide deck, you want 4 islands and a blue mana source (Say Svyelunite Temple) out on turn 5, which means that if you're splashing in that particular deck you kinda-sorta don't want to risk compromising that plan. But if the plan is compromised by not enough Deep Spawn available, or you just feel like it, there are highly splashable cards in the format, some of them particularly for that deck.

Fallen Empires Splashables! | Open

Dwarven Catapult - it has only 1 red in the casting cost, and if your deck includes ramp anyway, and Deep Spawn blue is the only deck which is truly likely to play High Tide, then you kinda really want to splash it.

The semi-sorta-ideal play is 4 islands + Svyelunite Temple (or Dwarven Ruins) + Implements of Sacrifice + High Tide + Dwarven Catapult. Sac temple, for UU, use U to get RR, use other U for High tide, get 8 blue out of the islands and use the 2 red to cast a catapult for 9. That's eithe 3 damage to 3 targets, 2 damage to 4 targets, or 1 damage to up to 9 targets, all of which you're kinda fine with, and High Tide can get you a lot more damage if the game goes long.

That's the fiddliest but fastest way to do it, and yeah, it's 4 cards to do something, but a bit later it can be just 2 cards, and it's still quite close to a makeshift Plague Wind .

If it's sounds complicated for a relatively minor effect, well, your main plan is way less complicated, it's just 5 lands and High Tide + Deep Spawn, and the rest of the stuff is always nice to have. You can throw the Dwarven Catapult at their first dude if you feel like it, you dont have to try to get more out of it.

Anway, Dwarven Catapult - you can play it in anything, and considering how small the average creature is, it's not even too difficult to get things done with it.

Goblin Chirurgeon - It's not necessarily worth splashing, but you can play one in any deck at all. He'll save your biggest guy which seriously improves the quality of any big guy.

Goblin War Drums - You can easily play one in anything that intends to swarm. Or, really, anything.

Icatian Phalanx - Costs only 1 white to play, is very hard to kill, and makes other things very hard to kill. It's also uncommon rather than rare, and a curve topper, so you have time to draw your plains / white source if it's a splash.

Derelor - is primarily meant to be played as a splash, and was played that way competitively.

Armor Thrull - is also somewhat splashable and useful in any deck.

Icatian Town - if you can grab it, you can probably play it.

Icatian Scout - having one around if your plan involves any big guy except Ebon Praetor makes the big guy much more useful. Arguably a more useful card in non-white decks than white ones. Icatian Skirmishers were a bit of a dud rare because this guy does what they were meant to do, just better.

Implements of Sacrifice - if you're drafting FE and you want to splash because you scored a Derelor and a Dwarven Catapult or an Icatian town, but are otherwise, idk, mostly green or High Tide blue , then yeah, why not?

I'll write up some archetypes a bit later, did the same mistake of rambling again.

Oh, when I was writing the "used competitively" list it slipped my mind to enumerate that Dwarven Soldier , Dwarven Lieutenant and Orgg were all used in serviceable red decks even without the "have to have cards from all expansions" clause. I mean, it makes sense, one's a standard red cheap beater, the other is a damage boosting mana sink and a third one is a 6/6 trample for 5 (with a drawback, but hey, there's ways around it and he was rather big by any set standards).

[Xyx]

What's keeping Blood Moon out of the format?

Moxen, and Red not being super, I guess. One of the best red cards is Red Elemental Blast. Go figure.

a lot of constructed deckbuilding is actually about how to dodge the 60 card limit by either finding ways to play more then 4 effective copies of something, efficient tutoring, card draw and library trimming.

I don't see how that's different for 40-card decks. Nobody is going to leave their Demonic Tutor or that 4th Lightning Bolt out of their deck because it's only 40 cards.

If it was 40 card decks, even the grouping by flavor would be doable in a more operable way. There's a 60 card deck with 28 lands in there.

I know.

Dwarven Catapult - it has only 1 red in the casting cost, and if your deck includes ramp anyway, and Deep Spawn blue is the only deck which is truly likely to play High Tide, then you kinda really want to splash it.

I've had so many games where I was holding Dwarven Catapult and couldn't even kill anything with it. Do I really want to splash for a card like that? The only reason we're even talking about it at all is because all the other removal in Fallen Empires also requires you to jump through a ton of hoops. It's just bad all around, but you still need removal, so you're forced to settle for the "ideal" 4-cards-to-kill-3-guys combo. There is not even the crappy "kill any guy for 5 mana" spell that we see in recent blocks. The best the set has to offer is a 3-mana Shock (and that's colorless so it's an auto-4-of in every single quest deck .) This is one of the reasons Fallen Empires has the reputation it has.

Icatian Phalanx - Costs only 1 white to play, is very hard to kill, and makes other things very hard to kill.

That I might splash for. If only the AI knew how banding works...

Derelor - is primarily meant to be played as a splash, and was played that way competitively.

True.

Armor Thrull - is also somewhat splashable and useful in any deck.

You really like Armor Thrull! You can't rely on having your splash color on turn 3, though, but I guess a 1/3 body is going to be somewhat relevant in a set full of quasi Gray Ogres even in the late game.

Tell you what, if I ever have to playtest Sarpadia again, I will put that Armor Thrull to work!

Icatian Town - if you can grab it, you can probably play it.

Probably worth it.

Icatian Scout - having one around if your plan involves any big guy except Ebon Praetor makes the big guy much more useful. Arguably a more useful card in non-white decks than white ones. Icatian Skirmishers were a bit of a dud rare because this guy does what they were meant to do, just better.

I dunno if I'd splash for a glorified Lance, but yeah, it's decent. Even Icatian Skirmishers is playable (if you know how banding works.)

[lujo]

Banter | Open

What's keeping Blood Moon out of the format?

Moxen, and Red not being super, I guess. One of the best red cards is Red Elemental Blast. Go figure.

Heheheh, I remember this on guy getting one of them fancy Tolarian academy combo contraptions that killed you on turn one and tried to take advantage of the "let folks play whatever" extended policy to win a tourney with it despite the bans. Walked into a kid with 4 Red Elemental Blast and 4 Pyroblast in the sideboard , a bunch of common gobbos and some Goblin Grenades . Got his ass handed to him post sideboard

Hmmm, 93/94 is before Gorilla Shaman and Goblin Tinkerer , so that's a no go, but off the top of my head... Shatter , Detonate and Shatterstorm (too slow?) are in the format. There's Red Elemental Blast and Blood Moon , Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, Ironclaw Orcs and Dwarven Soldier for semi-quick beats and Orcish Artillery if you can use it to add more punch to the bolts. Ydwen Efreet is a fine old attacker, but Brassclaw Orcs go over the Moat if Goblin Kites are in, and Goblin Kites is also a nice thing to be able to do if there's a need to use Earthquake to wipe black and white weenies. Spinal Villain probably has his place too, and depending on whether there's a point to playing your own Mana Vaults and stuff, so might Orgg . Oh, and if throwing Ashond's Transmogrant into the mix was something you could do, then Mountain Yeti would be imune to Terror, Bolt, Swords to Plowshares and Disenchant (but not the blue stuff, yes, I know).

If buying up some of this stuff didn't cost a fortune I'd give it a casual whirl, after tweaking it as much as is needed to give it a shot if it could even have one. Would be hilarious if it actually did.

a lot of constructed deckbuilding is actually about how to dodge the 60 card limit by either finding ways to play more then 4 effective copies of something, efficient tutoring, card draw and library trimming.

I don't see how that's different for 40-card decks. Nobody is going to leave their Demonic Tutor or that 4th Lightning Bolt out of their deck because it's only 40 cards.

Ofc, the point is that the formats aren't fundamentally different to the point that 60 cards defines "constructed" as opposed to 40 cards defining "limited". Constructed could have been 40 cards, too, had they not arsed up with the power levels of certain things. With a small enough cardpool like FE (and prety much all other early expansions) have, 40 cards is perfectly appropriate for AI decks, especially if the deckbuilder pays a bit of attention to how much of what is given to them.

Dwarven Catapult Q&A | Open

Do I really want to splash for a card like that?

Yes, because not making that card work is part of why people think of FE board states as stalled. And more importantly because it's main purpose is to kill things like Icatian Scout , Spore Flower , Elvish Hunter , pump knights , and other 1 toughness creatures with anything else being extra and if oyu can do it. Otherwise you just chuck it at the first guy the other guy plays or first 2.

The only reason we're even talking about it at all is because all the other removal in Fallen Empires also requires you to jump through a ton of hoops.

Yes, this was a conscious decision on part of the guys who made the set. We are talking about it in context of FE set-constructed and FE draft. You need to get that Spore Flower / Icatian Scout / Elvish Hunter / Homarid Shaman off the table, and it will nail some pump knights and if thrown out fast enough or with enough mana.

The main point of it is to slow the other guy's board development, kill small utility dudes, or follow up on combat damage after some trades. I'd easily play it in any FE deck. If you have a problem with the fact that it's not Pyrotechnics - well, what are you even doing discussing Fallen Empires? I didn't put it on the "kitchen table playables" list, but it's a huge factor in properly played FE draft. We're discussing it because you don't want the other guy's Derelor to be 4/4 first strike, or the other guy's Fungal Bloom to turbo-fog you indefinitely because of a 0/1 guy, or having your Deep Spawn tapped down because of an Elvish Hunter or stolen with Seasinger, or the other guy having a Lobster Shaped Flood that you can't get rid of becuase he did play Dwarven Catapult and killed your Thorn Thalid with it.

It's just bad all around, but you still need removal, so you're forced to settle for the "ideal" 4-cards-to-kill-3-guys combo.

The "ideal" part of it was meant "the fastest way to make it take 3 other guys off the board". You can do plenty with it with just it and high tide, or even without the high tide. If you're playing FE set constructed you're not forced to "settle" for aynthing, as god didn't grant you the right to Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt. But if we were drafting FE and you kept passing Dwarven Catapults to me, I would take them and likely beat you with them, or even beat you with stuff you're supposed to solve with them.

Seriously, you seem to exhude a sense of physical discomfort at the very idea that you would at any point have to play a card that's not as powerful as something else you can think of. You can't approach any limited environment that way, and FE "set constructed" is quite close to that. There's no such thing as "we're only talking about X becaus Y is not in the set" - there's only what's in the set.

And when you say "Hand of Justice deck is the strongest deck" - I say, like hell it is, it needs 3 other white guys on the table, and most of those have just 1 toughness. There is a red card in the set which tends to clear a bunch of those off the board fine enough most of the time.

EDIT: I thought of a stupid and seemingly illogical way of putting it: In this format, Dwarven Catapult is so good, that it manages to still be good despite being obviously bad. (Also, a relevant but easy to forget detail is that it's an instant. The AI doesn't use the card on you, and it doesn't use banding, but being able to cast it as an instant in an environment where banding is relevant is rather lovely.)

Rest of splashing comments | Open

Icatian Phalanx - Costs only 1 white to play, is very hard to kill, and makes other things very hard to kill.

That I might splash for. If only the AI knew how banding works...

Banding not working is a deep, deep problem for old sets in Forge. Banding was an integral part of White identity which is why people who haven't experienced it can't read old white cards right. (And not just white cards or cards which say "banding" on them) This was also the case back in the day, because not all the people got how it works (the designers did, though).

Essentially, every creature with banding is similar to a peice of equipment which adds it's power and toughness to another creature on attack and let's the controller of the band decide who in the band takes any received damage (group blocks are automatically considered bands).

In FE banding is quite key as it's the most common form of pseudo-evasion. The AI not understanding how it works makes me think there's no point even trying to make FE draft work.

Armor Thrull - is also somewhat splashable and useful in any deck.

You really like Armor Thrull! You can't rely on having your splash color on turn 3, though, but I guess a 1/3 body is going to be somewhat relevant in a set full of quasi Gray Ogres even in the late game.

Tell you what, if I ever have to playtest Sarpadia again, I will put that Armor Thrull to work!

I made a mistake in mixing cards that can work in any deck with cards that are actually "worth splashing" I should have divided the two categories.

I don't so much like Armor Thrull (I think it and Basal Thrull really didn't need the (tap) ), as much as he'd be a fine pick in just about any limited environment. Most sets are full of grey ogres and grizzly bears , and it wasn't up until rather recently that a 1/3 with positive ability started costing 1X by default instead of 2X. There are about six or so 2 mana 1/3 toughness creatures in all of black, of which Coumbajj Witches is the most playable, and all the others are rather recent (and mostly not).

Icatian Scout

I dunno if I'd splash for a glorified Lance, but yeah, it's decent. Even Icatian Skirmishers is playable (if you know how banding works.)

It's not a glorified Lance. Lance gets stuck on one guy and if the guy dies you're 2-for-oned, while this guy can give first strike to whomever you want and doesn't die if the guy dies. He + Dwarven Lieutenant make any Dwarf a pump knight at any time , he also lets anyone tangle with actual pump knights, makes Brassclaw Orcs and Homarid Warriors a nuisance and obviously makes big things rather difficult to kill. He's not exactly Knighthood ,but he's annoying enough.

Right, so let me try to do "Red" in a different fashion, and I'll get back to blue in that fasion again.

"I DINT GET NUTTIN" RED | Open

Or what you've got if you're not in red with any particular plan but just scored some commons:

Care about:
Orcish Spy (I think he's meant to be fodder for Raiding Party , which is the only card that's 100% unimplemented and is actually not even a bad card as it can be used as an instant on orcs who would die anway. As it is , there's not that much purpose to him, so avoid him I suppose.)
Goblin Grenade - (There are only two goblins in the set and the common one has a purpose , but if you do play a bunch of them, pick up 1-2 of these , too. In theory it should be possible to draft enough of these and enough goblins to take someone down from 20 - 0 , but in practice people pick your goblins up because any deck can use them)

You will end up using:

Brassclaw Orcs - can't block but trade with just about anything on offense, and can always get flinged with Goblin Kites .
Goblin Chirurgeon - you can play one in any deck at all and not regret it. If you play more than one to help your suicidal troops, you can also score a goblin grenade.
Orcish Veteran - Most things have two toughness, so he's fine.
Dwarven Soldier - Can also be kinda fine all on his own
Goblin War Drums - "menace" used to be called "the Goblin War Drums ability"

These guys are all rather agressive, as they can't block very well. They trade favorably and with Goblin War Drums they trade even better. And Goblin Chirurgeon can make sure he trades instead of the attacker.

The more universal among red uncommons and rares are:

Dwarven Catapult - Make sure you remove Orcish Captain on the other side, and as many chumpers as possible, as well as pump kinghts for Orgg.
Goblin Kites - is the blowout card of the set, but all of these guys are built with it in mind
Goblin Flotilla - is unblockable vs. blue, kites, grenade and chirurgeon fodder otherwise

Orgg - can be rushed out with a sacland. His ability is different than the one on the orcs, he can block 2 powered guys (which makes him an overcosted but scary wall), and he can't attack if the other guy has a creature with power 3 or greater. White's quite vulnerable to it as pump nights can drop to Dwarven Catapult and then it can only have a splashed Derelor or Armor Thrull counter. Black has Armor Thrull, it's own pump knights and Ebon Praetor , Green has Thallid Devourer (if there are saprolings) and Feral Thallid (err, sure, keep it there untapped) and can fog you, but is oterwise fair game. Blue is strangely resistant between Homarid , Tidal Influence , Homarid Warrior , Vodalian War Machine and Deep Spawn (and is very likely to Merseine you if you do attack it). What it boils down to is that sometimes you'll kick ass, sometimes you won't and Dwarven Catapult tends to help with this.

Specific red archetypes:

Dwarves | Open

You don't need Dwarven Armorer - but it helps. In Dwarves he's there to prevent Dwarven Soldier from getting pinged off the table. This is rather nice, as it also lets them tangle with any orcs and live. But you don't want to pump toughness on dwarves beyond that (gotta keep them on the kites), or really dump lands into small stats (in this archetype, as you need them for the pump).

Goblin Kites - DO GET THIS. This has to work for the AI. This is THE Dwarf card.

Dwarven Lieutenant - This guy makes any unblocked (or blocked) dwarf into a pump kinght. Which means that if you send a Dwarven Soldier flying with Goblin Kites, and he dies, but you pumped him 3 times, you threw a Goblin Grenade at the other guy's head.

Dwarven Soldier - No need to explain this.

You can obviously pad it out with any orcs you happen to pick up and a Goblin Chirurgeon and Goblin War Drums, it all works fine.

Dwarven Catapult - Well, you don't want the other guy to have it as it wipes Dwarven Soldier, but the only things you generally want to kill with it are Icatian Javelineers and Thorn Thallid which is both tricky for different reasons. So more of a denial thing in draft.

Orchis Captain - If you went heavily into Dwarves and passed around a lot of orcs, pick him up if it's not a problem. Then if you face the guys who picked the orcs up just kill them all.

Zelyon Sword is an obvious choice , Elven Lyre (or even Balm of Restoration ) are handy to save your Dwarves from random pings and Dwarven Catapult.

With White:

Icatian Lieutenant pumps dwarven soldier, but it's not much.
Icatian Javelieers is rather nice to deny your opponent.
Icatian Scout - you attack with a bunch of stuff and give the right one first strike, V. nice way to have your dwarves effectively be pump kinghts.
Banding - banding with a pumpable dwarf works in obvious ways.
Farrel's Zealot - likes Goblin Kites and chucking him over means 3 damage to a random dude which is nice (and he might even survive).
Combat Medic - Keeps your Dwarves safer from pings.

With Black:

Armor Thrull protects your Dwarves from pings but also makes them too fat for kites, so it's a mixed bag.
Soul Exchange - if you've got a Dwarven Armorer and a Soul Exchange or two , you can play a bit of a reanimator. This generally means picking up a Deep Spawn or Ebon Praetor as Dwarves generally don't need reanimating.
Necrite and Mindstab Thrull - If you're going for black and a Goblin Kites plan, it can't hurt. Initiates of the Ebon Hand become a thing in this case to smooth your mana.


With Green and Blue:

Blue doesn't really offer much.
Green can play off the Elvish Scout and Goblin War Drums sinergy to save the guy who was blocked while the potential unblocked guy does damage. Otherwise nothing in particular comes to mind (although there are standard Spore Cloud shennanigans you can take advantage of).

Orcs | Open

Grabbing some Brassclaw Orcs and Orcish Veteran is easy enough if you are red. What you should do is also pick up Orcish Captain , because you don't want him on the other side killing all your orcs. You also want Goblin Kites , obviously, and a Goblin Chirurgeon and a Goblin War Drums can't hurt.

What you want to have with Orcs is - Dwarven Armorer !

The main thing about Orcs is that if you have Orcish Captain you can still get Orcs onto Goblin Kites even if you pump their toughness. Use the Dwarvn Armorer to give a 2 toughness orc a point of toughness, then use the Orcish Captain on him until you lower it (if you get lucky you'll boost his power in the process).

What it also means is that Orc decks tend to play nice with black as you can use Armor Thrull to pump your orcs toughness and the try to pump them further, same with Thrull Retainer and Tourach's Gate pumps Brassclaw Orcs , Orcish Veteran and Dwarven Armorer on attack if you happen to have it handy.

Spirit Shield is colorless way to boost an Orc's toughness and Elven Lyre is a one-shot one which also provides 2 points of power.

Since Orcs are fairly large and agressive, they are likely to be the agressive bits of Red-Green. Standard Elvish Scout + Goblin War Drums untapping is good, but keep in mind that Orcish Veteran can in fact block (just not white guys), so Elven Fortress + Orcish captain can make him potentially be a 4 powered first-striker.

Goblins | Open

Goblins aren't exactly playable as an archetype in draft, and how viable they are in constructed is good question. So I wouldn't recommend this.

Goblin Chirurgeon can go into any deck. He's more of an enchantment than a creature.

Goblin Grenade requires sacrificing a goblin. You need to cast 4 to kill the opponent.

Goblin Warrens could make tokens to sacrifice to Goblin Grenade, but you have to have it and 2X Goblin Chirurgeon or at least one Goblin Flotilla in play to start, and it's basically just 2 chump blocks and 1 token per turn from there on out.

Goblin Flotilla is rare, and much like Goblin Chirurgeon , can go into every deck due to the islandwalk and Goblin Kites - friendly stats.

So it's not very likely to work, but if you would attempt it then It would take picking up a Goblin Flotilla followed by a goblin Warrens and then picking up every Goblin Chirurgeon and Goblin Grenade you spot over arguably stronger cards. Might be asking for a bit much.

It's 100% an archetype draft and what would possibly help it is Ring of Renewal if it's not too slow, Conch Horn (because digging any ammount of cards deeper looking for Goblin Warrens is good). You also probably want to grab Dwarven Catapult, just to keep it off the table.

For the other color blue would be kind of ok if Vodalian War Machine was more common, but you're allready banking on Goblin rares, so it's not likely to work. Green could buy you time with Spore Cloud and Elvish Hunter , or Black could buy you time with Armor Thrull and Soul Exchange for goblin Chirurgeon. You do need 4+ Goblin Grenade for it to work.

I'm not sure how to pull it off, thruth be told, it never seemed to come together whenever drafting it was being attempted.

After just now giving a Black-Red Orc archetype a whirl, I'm beginning to wonder whether maybe something involving Ironclaw Orcs and Orcish Captain and Orcish Artillery wouldn't be playable in honest-to-god 93-94 constructed. On a side-note, in one of the games I had a turn 4 Ebon Praetor which is nice when you have redundant Orcish Captain to sactifice to him, lol. Also, a turn 4 Dwarven Catapult for 3R vs 3 Order of Leitbur in one game, that was just silly (in another I payed a whooping 7 mana for a Dwarven Catapult vs 6 targets, but 4 died, so I couldn't complain).