The fundamental rules of drafting - #3

By Jim Marlow

Hey everyone,

Well i really hope this series of articles is useful for anyone looking to improve their drafting skills, and this article will address the last of my 7 fundamental rules of drafting and give a brief summary.

If you have any questions or comments about this series of articles, i would really appreciate your thoughts, either at the end of the article, or emailed to me at ss07jm@leeds.ac.uk, or even just talk to me at a WNM.

So these final pieces of advice about drafting are really just some final thoughts that should help cover all elements of how to become a successful limited player. Although these final 2 rules are aimed at a less experianced level of player, i believe the points raised in this article are often overlooked by people who are more experianced.

Rule 6) Building your deck and manabase

A draft deck, in my opinion, should never, ever, be over 40 cards. I have once or twice played the elusive 41st card or more, but in reality it is never worthwhile, throws the amount of mana needed off balance, and reduces the chances of you drawing the best card(s) in your deck.

Most of you will know the basic rules of deckbuilding, but here they are in case you dont know/have forgotten or are unsure. (all are subject to some change, it will be explained later)

- a draft deck should have 17 lands and 23 spells
- around 14-15 creatures, with 8-9 non creature spells
- try to draft on a mana curve, with a range of spells with different converted mana costs.

Obviously these are not set in stone, but if you remember these basic guidelines it should stop you from diverging too far from this.

However, it is fine to play a deck with 15 or 16 lands in it, if all of your spells have a very low converted mana cost, or if you have lots of mana accelerants. Also, you may wish to play 18 or more if you have lots of spells with high converted mana costs, or if you a lot of different colours in your deck.

The same rule applies with the creature/non creature spells. I tend to aim for around 15 creatures, but sometimes when playing a 5 colour deck, for instance, my deck may only have 8 or 9 creatures, but plenty of removal, cantrip or accelerants.

Building your manabase is almost as important as picking the mana fixing for your deck during the actual draft, because of course if you dont have the land, you cant play the spells. There are a lot of considerations to make when building your manabase.

Some people have very serious mathematical ways in which they choose the number of each type of lands to play, but i do not. Im probably building my decks slightly wrong but i will go through the processes of how i determine my manabases.

1) count the number of mana symbols in each card.

I count each mana symbol in the corner, plus those in the activated abilities i intend to use (you may only plan to use 1 of a battlemage's abilities to avoid a splash for example).

This gives you the a basic proportion for the number of lands you need of each type.

for example 10 white symbols, 4 blue symbols, 3 green symbols can roughly translate to 10 plains, 4 island, 3 forests.

After this i then look at when i need the man for these spells, meaning that despite having the 10 white symbols, these might all be for 5 and 6 mana spells, with all my green and blue requirements being for 2 and 3 mana spells. I would then adjust the numbers of lands to suit the costs of my spells and the colours based on costs, although i still need a high number of plains, i will have drawn more cards by the time i will be looking to play the spells with higher converted mana costs.

After this i factor in the mana fixing i have picked up in the draft, for example my panorama's might fetch 2 of my colours, meaning i can count it as a blue and white source, but i may need an extra forest for example.

This is a pretty rough guide, but once you have a basic proportion of the lands you need you just need to tweak it based upon the time at which you intend to play each spell, and the fixing you have, and you cant go far wrong.

Rule 7) Hate Drafting

I thought i would mention hate drafting because it is certainly relevent in certain, very isolated occasions, but on the whole i do not really advocate hate drafting cards.

Hate drafting is basically taking a pick out of a pack which you do not want someone else to have, over choosing a card for yourself.

The only time i really see hate drafting as relevent is round about the time of the 9th to 11th picks, where an elusive good card may have stuck in a deep booster and which you may take over the random other chaff in there because your not going to play it anyway.

However, even in this situation, especially in pack 1 where you hope to solidify a draft strategy, i would prefer to take an on colour card in order to not send mixed signals to the person drafting to my left.

Say for example that around 12th pick i am drafting naya and get a pack with a cloudhearth drake, an obelisk of naya and a load of other off colour chaff. The obelisk is semi-playable, but it will probably be in my sideboard. The drake is much better, and i dont want to get beaten around the noggin with it by an esper guy, but if the guy to my left sees the obelisk, particularly if he is in jund, he might question whether i am in naya and may pick some of the white green or other naya cards i would otherwise recieve in pack 2.

Of course, you may not want to pass it if you have put the person to your left into esper, but still, you have to question how strong you think your signals have been through the first pack, because the drake is only 1 card, but if you get a further 2 packs of solid, above value picks through the draft, your deck will end up better.

Another question is hatedrafting bombs, for example what does the esper drafter do with his pack 2 flameblast dragon or broodmate dragon etc. In my opinion, unless there is anything at all relevent in the pack (very unlikely), just ship it. There is always an answer for any problem you pass to your left, and most likely in the same pack, so it really doesnt matter if you pass the broodmate if you take the resounding silence, or the flameblast if you pocket the oblivion ring. Even though its pack 2, it doesnt mean people know what shard both you and they are in yet, so you still need to signal, and passing these bombs reinforces your signals and, assuming you get passed good cards too, means everyone will have better decks, which is always awesome.

So basically hate drafting is something to consider doing, but for me its really a last resort, because i always think there is something more productive to be done with each draft pick.

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Well those are the fundamental rules of drafting. Hopefully armed with these people will be able to improve their level of drafting and their overall game. Of course, these are only the basics, and as i have found, there is a huge number of articles and other writings across the web, and i would reccomend reading as many as possible if you wish to become a better drafter.

Drafting is after all, a very relative excercise, and there are many ways to be successfull at it.

I hope you have enjoyed these articles, sorry for the length of each one, i tried to be concise but there is sadly to say quite a lot to learn, particularly for the more advanced techniques.

If you have any questions, queries, alternative opinions, or anything you would like to say about the 7 rules i would love to hear it.

I hope to see everyone at the next WNM, i just hope i dont do really badly because then i would look like a massive tit.

Anyway, hope to see everyone at the nationals qualifier this saturday, so see you then and next week will be the report from the tournament and the beginnings of my judging career, including some questions i asked riki hayashi about judging

Until then,

Jim

As always, feel free to comment on anything about this article, or anything unrelated to magic whatsoever. If you would like to contribute to the TLM blog, please email any ideas, articles, pictures or anything else to ss07jm@leeds.ac.uk