A Limited View of Limited (Part 1)

Drafting can be one of the best ways to expand your skills as a player for a multitude of reasons. However good experiences come from good practice and you cannot practice things that you don't know about. It is doubtful that those of you reading this are professional Magic players and while I hope you all one day will sit down with 7 other folk and draft at a professional level, I am going to start at the very beginning and talk you through drafting, outlining how good drafting works and pointing out what isn't good drafting. 

So you walk in to your local store and pay approximately $15 to participate in a sanctioned draft. Given that it is a local store, there will be between 6 and 30 other people there for any given draft, depending on how strong your Magic community is and how many people in that community like drafting. The draft will start and you will, hopefully, sit around a table with 7 other people, making a pod of 8. Three packs will be set in front of you. If the store owner sees new faces, he or she will likely ask if everyone knows how to draft. Some people will jokingly say no. If you have questions that are not covered in the words above and below, now would be the perfect time to ask said store owner. After that has resolved, he or she will tell everyone to begin.

Now take a moment and look around. How many people are drafting? Is it just your table or is there another pod or two? How many people are actually at your table? What do the people at your table generally like to play? All of these things are important to note. If this is one of your first drafts, I will understand if you don't know the playstyle and colour preference of every player. Instead just check to see how many people are in your pod and if there is another pod.

Now that you know those seemingly insignificant details, you can open your first pack. Look at all the cards in the pack. Pick the card that seems best. If it is one of your first drafts of your life, or of a new set, you will be tempted to auto pick the rare that is worth 5-10 dollars (I have been guilty of this). Don't do it unless you think you will be playing it. It is pack one, pick one. You have a lot more cards to look at. Generally, taking "removal" effects like Doom Blade or Lightning Bolt are good first picks and even though they are commons, don't feel bad about taking them. You likely will not see another. 

Place your card in front of you and pass the remaining cards face down to the left in one pile. Don't get these piles mixed up and if at all possible try not to back up packs on a person. Just because you know which one they should be picking up doesn't mean that the person you are passing to knows which stack they should be picking up.

The pile that was just passed from your right will now have one fewer cards, clearly. As a general rule, I like to look at the uncommons in packs first as they, more often than not, determine how reliable and solid your deck will turn out to be. Take a card and pass the pack down. We all learned this in 1st grade so hopefully this concept should be easy to grasp. Oh and you must take one card and only one card. Easy enough.

Try and stay in one or two colours in your first pack if possible. Now if you note that there seem to be a lot fewer good cards of one colour or that there are no cards of that colour (Green), you can likely assume that the people to your right are in that colour. Congratulations! You have just read your first signal. Signaling is an important part of drafting as it allows everyone to build functional decks without stepping on anyone's toes. This creates a better experience for everyone over all.

Now that you have picked the last card from your first pack, take a moment to look at the cards you have been drafting. Things you need to look at are the number of creatures you have compared to the number of good solid spells you have and what the average converted mana cost of your picks is so far. That seems like a lot and for the first several times you draft, it will be. Eventually you will do this almost automatically and note that you seem to have a serious lack of creatures or that somehow you only drafted cards with CMC 4 or above. This will let you know what you need to be looking for in this next pack. Keep in mind that you only have about half a minute to really check this over.

Now you are opening your second pack. For the sake of this article, you open a sweet rare that is in your colours. That is called "packing" a card. It is a good feeling. Savor it. Pass the remainder of the pack to the right this time. I know, I switched it up on you. Pick up the pack being passed from your left. Look it over and pick a card. Do it again. And now you are on pick 4 of pack 2. Suddenly you notice that there are no super solid picks for your deck. However there is a super sweet card in another colour (Green). 

Now you will be tempted to "hate draft" that card. Think back to just before the draft. Was there more than one pod? If yes, don't pick that card. Now I know you are thinking "But what if the player to my left takes it then kills me with it?" However you might as well be thinking "What if a player in the other pod has 15 Lightning Bolts?" You cannot control with whom you are being paired to play against and as such, hate drafting loses a lot of its power. Instead take a look at the cards that are in your colours and decide what card, even if you don't intend to place it in your main deck, might benefit you. Take that card instead, pass the pack and check to see if the person to your right smiles or picks a card very quickly. If they do, pat yourself on the back. It means you correctly read that he or she was in Green and you got them a present. 

Look over your cards again and see if you now have a more comfortable amount of creatures to spells and if you have corrected your "curve". The idea of the curve can be difficult to grasp. If you can, think of a line graph. Think of how many cards you have costing one. Then 2, 3, ect. If you make a reasonable hill on this graph then you are doing just fine. However if you again note that you still only have very mana intensive cards, Try to correct this with the upcoming pack. 

Open up that last pack, pick a card and pass it back to the left. Finish out the selection process and proceed to building your deck. Your deck must be a minimum of 40 cards, including land. I personally do not recommend going over this except in very rare circumstances. I suggest you play 23 cards and 17 land, if you are just starting, or the format is new. Once you know that you really like playing an aggressive deck you can go up to 24 cards and 16 land (because generally aggro decks have a lower converted mana cost and thus will require less land). Similarly if your deck has 18 removal spells and 4 sweet dudes that cost 4-7 mana, I would suggest playing 22 cards and 18 land to ensure that when you want to play your "bomb" you will be able to have removal spell mana available to you as well. However these nuances take time to learn in different formats, even for experienced players. 

Now that you have built your deck, you are ready to play some Magic. In the second installment, I will be taking you through some common play mistakes and some secret tech as far as playing and the drafting  process. If you can't get enough of me, you can pester me on Twitter or relax and listen to one of our podcasts. 

Until next time, keep your sleeves clean and your foils flat.