While on a road trip this past weekend I had a few thoughts concerning Magic theory and my own personal style (yes, I'm so nerdy that I think about Magic on road trips). After putting pen to paper I decided to share my thoughts in hopes of providing something a little more long-lasting than the usual draft walkthroughs. In other words, a theory article! (yay!)

Learning to Love Yourself (not in the sexual way)

The first of the two topics I want to discuss isn’t exactly theory, but something I think is important nonetheless. It is the often overlooked aspect of limited play that is identifying your own style as a drafter and limited player. Every player has their own style; a type of deck or way of playing that they are most comfortable with. This topic comes up in Constructed a lot. Pros highlight the importance of choosing a deck that you are not only comfortable with but enjoy (LSV and Saito have both recently written on this topic). Having fun is actually very important to performing well in Magic, as if you aren’t having fun you’re more likely to become annoyed/frustrated and play sloppily. Personally I certainly find that I do better when enjoying myself.

Part of having fun in Magic is choosing decks that you enjoy playing, and for draft this means drafting a deck you will have fun playing and are comfortable with. Now of course ideally you want to be able to play equally well with any type of deck so that you can take full advantage of the packs you open and signals you receive. However, very few players can actually achieve this if they are being honest with themselves. A lot of it comes down to simply not enough time spent drafting and playing with every archetype. If every player had infinite time to practice then comfort zones wouldn’t be a problem, although fun might still be an issue.

I think that personal preference has a huge impact on the way every person drafts, but rather than embrace this most people see it as a weakness and end up forcing themselves into a style they won’t do well with. I do, however, believe strongly that everyone needs to keep an open mind and jump in to an obviously open strategy even if it’s one they don’t like, but if that doesn’t happen there is nothing wrong with leaning towards personal preference. To use myself as an example I acknowledge that I am a control payer at heart. I have a lot more fun playing control decks which leads me to pilot them better than aggressive ones. I guess I’m just bad at turning dudes sideways!

One important point to note is that you still need to be adaptive to a format, and hopefully you can find your own niche within each format. For example I began Shards block drafting five color control much more often than any other archetype (and loving it). However, with the release of Reborn I quickly realized that the deck was no longer strong and forced myself to let it go. I started forcing GW aggro almost every single draft because it was by far the best deck at that time (in my opinion) and I never looked back. However, luckily for me, Rise is a format tailor-made for control players like myself.

So we’ve established that most players have their own style that they prefer to draft and play, but how can we use this perceived handicap to our advantage? Basically you need to recognize your own style and embrace it. Most drafters have this weird, annoying tension between their preferences and wanting to stay open. This generally results in wasted picks early on. The math is simple: if the majority of your drafts end in a certain color combination or archetype, then taking more of those cards early will result in more early picks played overall. For example in Zendikar I had a strong preference for UBG based decks and early in the format I found myself wasting early picks on RW cards that were technically stronger, but often ended up in my sideboard. Eventually I was able to embrace my own biases and ignore RW unless one of them was very open. This worked wonders on amount of early picks I played, and thus resulted in stronger decks overall. Realizing your own style early on in a draft will usually yield more early picks that actually end up in your deck rather than rot in your sideboard.

Now the point that I mentioned briefly still holds: an ideal drafter is proficient with every archetype. This is why it is important to at least become accustomed to all the draft archetypes in a format, so that when they are open you have the knowledge to take advantage. I personally still have difficulty drafting RB tokens in Rise simply because I don’t have enough experience with it. This is to my detriment when that archetype is open. Still, overall I think it is advantageous to recognize your own preferences and instead of leaning away from them, embrace them. I have learned to accept my addiction to control while still being open to aggro when it comes along strong. I suggest you to do the same with your own particular style.

The Theory of Significance

“Focus on what matters.” Probably the most influential and famous Magic strategy quote of all time, from the greatest player of all time (Jon Finkel). In the past I would constantly remind myself to follow this mantra in every game, but eventually it became ingrained. What I’ve come to notice lately is that I’m not only applying this advice to playing games, but also to drafting and card evaluation in general. My mindset regarding Magic as a whole has become “focus on what matters”. Allow me to explain myself.

First let me explain how I interpret this saying. Focusing on what matters helps you realize your path to victory, or at least your path to not losing. Basically it minimizes unimportant distractions in order to, well, focus on what matters. One classic situation that comes up often is the opportunity to two for one an opponent after they double block or use a pump spell. However this leaves you open to the real threat they are holding while you just wasted one of your few removal spells. Another one is when you are mana screwed or behind on tempo and are resistant to trading your theoretically better utility creature for their vanilla bear (such as Dawnglare Invoker for Glory Seeker). Lastly there are those desperate times when you have only one, small evasive creature while being pounded by your opponent’s army. Here it is vital to realize your potential to still win this game, and that tiny flier is your avenue to victory. No matter how many resources you have to throw away protecting it and staying alive, it'll be worth it if you can just swing in enough times to steal a victory. Focusing on what matters is all about narrowing down your perspective to what will win you the game.

The two most widely accepted theories in Magic are tempo and card advantage. Card advantage is easy to define and understand, but it essentially comes down to providing yourself with more options than your opponent. Tempo is classically difficult to define, but basically means applying constant pressure in order to keep your opponent on their heels and overwhelm them before they have a chance to use all of their cards. Recently I have come to realize that my own strategy incorporates parts of these theories but also sort of ignores them. For simplicities sake I’ll call it the theory of significance.

Instead of focusing on tempo or card advantage I look for cards that provide the highest impact on the game, or have the most significance. I need to remember that it is important to retain a low curve so that I won't be run over, but I want as many cards as possible to be relevant in the late game. I find that this strategy works especially well in slower formats such as Rise and M11 since the late game is more likely to be reached, but it still applies to fast formats like Zendikar. Let's look at a couple examples to see what I'm talking about.

Removal: Especially in Rise I have noticed myself placing more emphasis on removal that can deal with any creature rather than only small ones. For example I take Vendetta over Staggershock every time, and often even Heat Ray over Staggershock simply because the creatures that Staggershock kills won't be nearly as significant. Even if Staggershock often kills two creatures we have to look at the overall impact on the game. A Heat Ray will almost always kill a more significant threat, and often that will be more important to winning even than killing two small, possibly insignificant creatures. And yes, there are plenty of utility creatures that Staggershock kills just fine, but I'm talking about on average. I'm not advocating taking Heat Ray over Staggershock all the time, but definitely consider it if your deck can easily deal with smaller creatures.

Auras: Its funny how early on when learning magic there are some things that we learn are inherently bad and some inherently good, but a real step in improving is going right back to where you started. For instance we learn right from the start that card advantage is king and card disadvantage is terrible, but there are many situations in which you need to throw away a few cards to give yourself a chance to win a game (using three burn spells on one creature for example). Similarly early on we learn that auras are built-in card disadvantage and shouldn't be touched unless obviously insane (like Gigantiform from Zendikar which was somehow still underdrafted). There is still a lot of hate for auras.

However, I've become almost completely turned around on auras, noticing myself losing to them and the massive impact that they can have on the game. The thing I like about auras is that they can turn an almost completely insignificant creature, say a bear, into a real threat and a potentially game winning card. Sure if the opponent has removal this is technically card disadvantage, but consider that you're losing a creature you didn't care about anyway. The potential upside, however, is well worth the risk in my opinion. Take Mammoth Umbra as an example. Placed on a crappy creature like Glory Seeker that will have very little effect on the mid-to-late game you now have a 5/5 Vigilance effectively with Haste, which can be incredibly hard to deal with (Bull Cerodon anyone?). As long as you try to play around removal and you're careful about which creature you place it on auras can be extremely significant game-changers.

Early Creatures: Now I'll turn my theory onto something that is often very insignificant in the mid-to-late game. Early drops are very important in medium or fast formats, and still necessary in slower formats like Rise. I'll certainly admit that in a fast enough format you start caring less and less about significance and more and more about tempo. For instance in Zendikar I found myself playing Mindless Null more often than not simply to fill out my curve, and its obviously less than stellar in the late game. However, there are some cards that are relatively cheap to play but have a high impact on both the early and late game. A perfect example that took a while to catch on was Giant Scorpion. It comes down early to dissuade bears, is quite difficult to remove in that format, and best of all trades for something large later on. I was happy to snap this guy up as early as first pick in Zendikar drafts, and found him considerably underdrafted. An example from Rise is the red and black Invokers, which aren't great early but are worth playing because they become very significant later in the game. This is also why I'm a big fan of levelers; they fill out the bottom of your curve while still being highly relevant in the late game.

All of these examples are meant to clarify and represent the larger outlook I've recently embraced concerning Magic. Now I still love me some card draw and tempo; the new Man o’ War is one of my favourite blue cards from M11. But I've noticed myself more and more shrugging off old instincts in favor of focusing on what matters and what's significant. I want every card in my deck to have some significant impact on the board at any stage of the game(or as many stages as possible). I certainly don't claim to have come up with anything terribly new or innovative, but hopefully my style at least makes you consider another approach to the game and encourages you to evaluate cards with a new angle. As usual comments are always appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Dylan Pratt – Jester123 on MODO

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