How to Draft Flexibly

Today's soundtrack: https://open.spotify.com/track/5qbhVL3vB7HwWvb0042B7y?si=9750d66ec5594ed8

Table of Contents

• The Article

• The Theory

• The Practice (AC5 Draft log review)

• Conclusion

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The Article

11 years ago, Ben Stark wrote Drafting the Hard Way. It was, and still is, considered a seminal piece of MTG Limited theory.

Funny enough, I don't think I had read it until this morning.

Does it hold up? Kind of. I think the single greatest contribution to Limited discourse generated by Drafting the Hard Way comes from its title.

Like all good slogans, it's memorable and succinct. Ben is right! Drafting is hard, and the only way to do it at a high level is difficult. Draft is a classic example of a format where "80%" strategies can be quite teachable, but 100% mastery is the type of skill that is only built over a lifetime.

Still, I was quite surprised by the lack of concrete strategic advice Ben gives. The useful parts of the article can essentially be boiled down to:

• Drafting well requires complexity and nuanced decision making, not prescriptive strategies (this is what's hard)

• You shouldn't be trying to force a strategy based on your preconceived notions or first few picks, but instead try to "read" where the table/seat wants you to be

• Trying to draft the best deck at the table is a foolish goal, you should simply try to draft the best deck possible in your seat, and this will result in more winning than high-risk, high-reward strategies.

These are great tidbits of advice, and even though they are mixed in with things that are at best outdated (pack 2 being different from previous packs because we used to draft different sets together), and at worst, dubious strategy (identifying which keywords, like flying and lifelink, are better in particular formats), the core message is simple and powerfully packaged in the idea of "drafting the hard way".

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The Theory

While the overall lesson that "it's complicated, don't try to simplify it if you want to do it right" is an excellent one, it is very obviously only a starting point.

How does one go about learning "the hard way"? Experience, of course, but I don't think saying "it's hard, go learn it yourself" is as much a useful lesson as it is a helpful cop-out.

We in the Limited community have no shortage of content, but I do think we've failed a little bit when it comes to fleshing out the actual process of drafting as opposed to the specific strategies that work set-by-set. Of course, smart players who consistently engage with limited content will pick up these tools through osmosis as they listen to set-specific content and try their hand in the limited queues - but the lexicon for thinking about drafting itself as a process and a set of generalizable skills is, in my opinion, underdeveloped.

The way I see it, "levels" in Limited come through layers of abstraction in the strategies one employs while drafting...

"Level 0": Drafting Cards

Taking the best cards and putting them together in a deck that can cast them

In my first cube draft, I take Baneslayer Angel p1p1 and Wrath of God p1p2

Alternatively, I take Black Lotus P1P1 and Yawgmoth's Will P1P2, because I know those are some broken old cards and I see streamers take them highly

"Level 1": Drafting Decks

Drafting with a heavy preference towards what you see as the best color / best deck / best strategy in the format

In my second cube draft, I take Goblin Guide P1P1 and Lightning Bolt P1P2, since I've been told mono red is the winningest deck in cube.

Alternatively, I take Volcanic Island P1P1 and Scrubland P1P2 because I've seen an LSV video where he builds a powerful deck by taking lots of lands in pack 1 and then taking whichever spells he wants later on

"Level 2": Drafting a strategy

Utilizing a specific algorithm/philosophy that you believe leads to drafting better decks

In my third cube draft, I prioritize cheap cards like Remand and Thoughtseize because I know that in this environment, threats are plentiful and efficiency is at a premium

Alternatively, I take what I believe through experience to be the best card out of each pack regardless of color/archetype, and somewhere late pack 1/early pack 2, I figure out how to fit all of these cards into a deck, and continue to take cards that facilitate that goal.

"Level 3": Drafting your seat

Trying to identify the range of strategies that are open to you in your seat/in the environment, and navigating into the one that seems the most powerful/consistent

In my fourth cube draft, I take a card P1P1 that fits into a powerful strategy that I know to be draftable in the cube, like Tinker

P1P2 I take a card that fits powerfully into a strategy with my first pick if possible, and if not, I take a card that fits powerfully into a different strategy, like Rofellos

At some point towards the end of pack 1/beginning of pack 2, I have a "critical mass" of cards that work together in a particular strategy (or at least have noticed the availability of these cards in what I've seen so far), and I choose a "path" to go down that I believe is/will be available to me

"Level 4": Simply, "Drafting"

Considering every pick as a unique decision that is informed by all that came before it & all that could come after it, with continuously shifting priorities

In my thousandth cube draft, I begin by taking the card with the highest flexibliity X upside P1P1

For P1P2 , I mostly weigh things similarly to how I weighed P1P1, but with the knowledge that I already have access to the card I picked first, which biases me slightly (but only slightly) towards cards that go well with it

Throughout pack 1, I am noticing the general categories of cards that I am being passed more of, and this informs my expectation for which types of cards will be more available to me as the draft goes on. As my card pool gets larger through pack 2 & 3 and there are fewer and fewer future picks to be made, this slowly becomes a less important part of my decision-making, and my available card pool slowly becomes more important

If at any point I decide employing one of the "lower-level" strategies will lead to a more positive outcome than this nuance-puddle of thinking, I will pivot into that strategy. If the next pick changes my mind about that, I will pivot back into uncertainty

The major thing that makes limited so beautiful is that context is everything -- each set is its own unique world, and even if there are patterns and similarities we can recognize, recognizing them can lead us astray just as often as it can be strategically useful. Cards and strategies that were powerful in a particular context can easily be "red herrings" in a different environment, and vice versa.

This dynamism is the defining feature of limited - We often say draft is "self-correcting", which means that any strategy that becomes sufficiently popular will, by nature of its popularity and contestedness, become less powerful, and open up room for others. This may not be true in MTG Arena queues where the skill gap between the best and worst players is too wide to be closed through the typical format cycle, but it almost always holds true at the higher levels.

Draft is both contextual and reactive, which makes it resilient to brittle and prescriptive strategies (at least, when skill levels are held mostly equal).

The major long-term advantages to be gained in an environment like Limited Magic are not found through identifying better answers, but rather by asking better questions.

As you can see, these "levels" get increasingly fuzzy as they go on, which makes them more difficult to explain and succinctly capture. Still, there are a few patterns we can notice:

It's not possible to "skip levels" here. An inexperienced drafter shouldn't start at level 4, and moreover, it's not even clear what that would mean. Each level relies on the ability to effectively put into practice the levels below it:

• You can't draft the best deck in the format (level 1) unless you have the baseline card evaluation skills to know which cards are most valuable to that deck (level 0)

• You can't use a specific drafting "philosophy" (level 2) unless you understand why the decks that philosophy generates are "better" than others (level 1)

• You can't identify the open lane for your seat (level 3) if you don't have an understanding of the possible lanes available, and how one should draft them when given the opportunity (level 2)

• You can't draft to maximize a balance of flexibility & power (level 4) if you don't understand both what structurally creates flexibility in a draft (level 3) and what strategies & cards are relatively the most powerful (levels 1 & 2).

In fact, it's more accurate to say a "level 4" drafter is drafting at levels 0-3 simultaneously or interchangably rather than that they're drafting at a "higher" level only. The level 4 drafter is choosing the appropriate framework to apply based on the situation, but they need to have the tools in their toolbelt in order to use them.

As levels get higher, they get more generalized and less particular to a given format or opinion about card/archetype quality.

It's important to realize that this doesn't mean high-level theory and nuanced decision-making is enough to succeed in any particular set. If you're wrong about the "facts on the ground", no amount of theory or generalized skill is going to get you out of it.

Still, it does mean that these higher-level skills, when combined with format-specific knowledge, are transferrable, more transferrable than the skills at lower levels.

This is what I mean about asking better questions rather than having better answers. When you know how to make nuanced decisions based on any particular detailed context, it becomes easier to consistently make those decisions in the moment.

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The Practice

This is all well & good, but what does it look like in practice? Don't worry, we'll get to the draft log. Still, I want to make sure not to fall into the typical habits of limited content, where format-specific opinions overshadow the broader patterns of thinking that are being employed.

This is a tricky balance to hit, because like I mentioned above, the thinking patterns of higher levels require knowledge gained at lower levels to operate. In order to explain the higher-order reasoning behind a pick, it's essential to understand the particulars of card evaluation and strategic preferences one has for a particular format & card pool. Since these evaluations can get incredibly deep and interesting on their own, explaining them usually leaves little "room" for diving into the higher-level strategies going on.

But guess what? This is my Patreon, and I can make this shit however long I want. Get ready, because you're about to witness the longest draft log breakdown you've ever seen.

Are we ready?

No seriously. Are we ready? Are we in the right headspace to draft the hard way? This is an important question, especially before a high stakes draft. It can be easy to fall into more narrow and prescriptive thinking, especially when you're worried about results and spending energy thinking about things that aren't the decisions directly in front of you.

As such, I've started a little ritual with myself before every high stakes draft I do. Normally it's verbal, but luckily for the Arena Championship, I was nervous enough to write it down on my notepad so it would be in my field of vision the entire time:

• Draft well, not scared

• Don't need to lock in early

• Take the best card early

• Prioritize cheap creatures

• Don't need to do anything fancy

This is me trying to remind myself to draft the hard way. The only thing that is somewhat format-specific is the "Prioritize cheap creatures" bit, which I both thought was super important in MKM, and particularly important in a pod draft where the supply of 2-drops was zero-sum. Still, I think if there are any "universal" strategic rules to modern drafting, this one is probably the closest.

The first bullet is the most important one.

This was the most important draft of my life.

My heart was racing, my mind was going a million miles a minute wondering what I would open, what my deck would look like, and whether the draws would be there for me. I desperately wanted to 3-0, both as validation of my limited skill at the highest levels, and a result that would put me in a great position to top 8 the tournament, where multiple Worlds invites were on the line.

But that wasn't what I could control, and it wasn't what mattered.

I wanted to draft well (with nuance), not scared (of uncertainty & complexity). That was how I was going to win.

Let's get into it.

https://www.17lands.com/draft/7e8bbee63f8e47a08aef447ed4a6c3d5

(I recommend following along with this draft log open in another window & having the "view picks" option ticked off if possible, trying to evaluate each pack as if you were actually in the draft. This is going to be a very deep dive - It's not meant for skimming.)

A small note: Whenever I use things like A/B/C letter grades, scales 1-10, or percentages, I am *almost never** explicitly thinking in these terms while drafting. These are only writing tools that allow me to communicate the relative strength of my opinions/preferences/beliefs in a particular card/archetype/possible future outcome. I think they are useful tools, but are easy to misuse when applied too literally. Consider them to be "pointing at" my intuitions, but nothing more.*

P1P1 was very interesting. Before we get into the choices though, let's talk about how I'm structuring my thoughts as I look at this pack.

Generally, most players will have developed an intuition about which cards are "first-pickable" in a particular set, scan the pack for those cards, and ignore the rest. I think this is a great method for P1P1s, because you are mostly evaluating cards on pure strength alone. Since there is so much information to consider, anything that narrows down your possibility space to save time & mental effort is a great idea.

Once I have a (hopefully narrow) list of candidates selected, I'm evaluating each card on something like the metric "expected strength in my final deck", which is of course a vague future object influenced mostly right now by my format preferences.

Broadly, this is what I'm doing:

• Identifying the strongest cards in the pack in a vaccum

• Considering the range of decks I'd play each in

• Considering how powerful the card would be in the spots I'm likely to play it

• Considering how likely I am to end up in each of those decks based on my format knowledge and tendencies

• Attempting to consolidate this as best I can into a "preference" that takes into account not just card quality in a vaccum, but the overall value (another way to say this would be "win equity") of taking each candidate P1P1

Noting here that this is my only criteria for a draft where all I care about is winning, but "learning value" might be a factor in lower stakes drafts.

Pick 1

In my opinion, there were 4 cards here that met the threshold for "first-pickable" power level.

Here were my evaluations of them:

Coerced to Kill is the most powerful card in the pack "in a vaccum" - There's a reason they don't print mind control effects anymore in limited, and I had plenty of experience with this card in a variety of decks in the format to confirm that it was just as powerful.

CTK is single-pipped, so it is splashable, but it is multicolor, so it is less flexible than a mono-colored card in some important ways.

It is also in what were considered the two worst colors in MKM, UB. My opinion of UB was that it was one of the weaker color pairs to be in, but that blue and black on their own were perfectly good colors (my least favorite color in the format by a little bit was actually red). Still, I had a slight preference towards not ending up in UB unless it was clearly open (though I was definitely willing to draft it; I lost a close finals match in one of our 2 internal testing drafts with a strong UB deck).

CTK mostly counts in my mind as a "creature slot", which I do care about a decent amount (I have a strong preference in limited & in MKM in particular for my decks to have 14+ creatures), though this is less important for a P1P1 than I might later on in the draft.

I'd estimate I was 75% to play CTK in my final deck if I picked it here, with possible spaces for it in rough priority order:

• UB control (A- power level, 100% to play)

• Multicolor Soup (A- power level, 90% to play)

• Grixis removal control (B+ power level, 100% to play)

• Some sort of UR, RB, GB, UG, BW, etc. aggro deck if I ended up there with some minor fixing (B+ power level, 75% to play)

• A naya-space aggro deck if I happened to get really good fixing (B power level, 10% to play)

Case of the Crimson Pulse is a powerful rare that I had only had a couple of experiences with in the set so far My overall evaluation of the card in red aggro decks was something between a B and an A-, with a large range because of high uncertainty

CCP is a unique effect for aggro decks that is hard to replicate with commons - It adds a dimension to your deck that many aggro decks don't have, which can be very strategically valuable

Still, CCP's power is more strategically specific than the other cards in the pack. You can play it in non-hyper-aggressive decks, but it's not quite as good there (though still somewhat strong).

I'd have probably estimated (based on my slight preference away from red in the format) that I was ~65% to play CCP in my final deck, with the following distribution:

• Red-based aggro deck (A- power level, 100% to play)

• Red midrange deck (B+ power level, 90% to play)

• Grixis-space removal control deck (B+ power level, 90% to play)

• Multicolor soup (B power leve, 75% to playl)

• Nonred deck if I happened to pick up good red fixing (B- power level, 10% to play)

Makeshift Binding is a solid, single-pipped removal spell in one of the best colors in the format. It's probably one of the best commons to first-pick, especially if you trust white to be open.

In a high-level pod draft, I'm less confident in my ability to make whatever color I start out with work if it's being contested. Still, if white isn't contested, it's a place I'd prefer to be, and binding is a strong start into it

I don't think binding is the best common for the white aggressive decks. That would be Novice Inspector, which occupies a unique spot on the curve and allows for explosive starts while always being a good draw throughout the game.

Still, quality removal is probably my second priority next to cheap creatures.

I'd have estimated that I was ~75% to play Binding with the following distribution:

• Base-white deck (B+ power level, 100% to play)

• "Multicolor soup" (B power level, 90% to play)

• Any non-white 2-color deck that needed some removal and had some quality fixing (B power level, 40% to play)

Hard-Hitting Question is a very similar card to Makeshift binding, except it's green rather than white and very slightly lower power level in my perception.

I'm a bit more confident in my ability to end up in green even if it is being contested, though only a bit. This is partially a preference thing and partially a belief that green is an incredibly deep and flexible color in the format that can accommodate multiple drafters/strategies (white is equally powerful, maybe even moreso, but more narrow and drafters will overlap in their assessments of white cards more)

HHQ falls into the category of removal, though it's not as robust of an answer as Binding. The place where it gets its value/power is as an easy way to double-spell, which can be extremely valuable in a pod of good drafters. It doesn't count as highly in the "inevitability" bucket that Makeshift does by being able to remove almost any bomb, but it gets a few additional "tempo/consistency/flexibility in gameplay" points.

I'd have estimated that I was ~80% to play HHQ in my final deck with the following distribution:

• Any green-based deck that doesn't have significant creature count issues (100% to play, B+ power level)

• "Multicolor soup" (B power level, 80% to play)

• Any non-green deck that needs interaction (the card loses a lot of its tempo/flexibility value if you need to wait to draw your source to cast it) (C+ power level, 20% to play)

These are pretty easily the only cards that clear the bar of being viable first picks under this metric. All of this info gets consolidated into my rough "ranking", using a scale of 1-10 to indicate P1P1 value (10: top tier bomb that I could play in any deck, 1: C- level common that I'm not even sure I'd play if I were in its archetype):

• Coerced to Kill: 7

• Makeshift Binding: 6.5-7

• Hard-Hitting Question: 6

• Case of the Crimson Pulse: 5

Then, ONLY once I'm done with that evaluation and have a clear idea of how these cards compare in terms of individual value, do I move on to consider any additional information available. In this case, there is a very small additional amount of information available to us right now as to what could be in that final deck - the contents of the rest of the pack.

I really want to emphasize that this is a VERY small amount of information. I think people often way over-index on this, and unless you are confident you are not doing that, I'd be very careful.

It's easy to have a lot of ideas and recognize a wide range of relevant information, but structuring those details and opinions into a decision-making framework is the "hard" part of drafting.

With that noted, I think there are sort of two categories of information you can glean from the contents of a p1p1 -- Which cards are likely to be taken soon, and which cards may possibly come around the table. Here were my takeaways:

• Whichever card my fist pick is, there is a pretty even balance of colors in the next few viable picks, so I should not factor this in at all (even if there were, I would only factor it in a very tiny amount)

• There are a few viable blue cards that could come around (reasonable doubt and bubble smuggler) - These are also notably 2-drops, which I do highly value having access to (even bad ones) in a pod draft.

• And a few lower-powered disguise creatures (phantom, scoundrel, and hellion) - One of those is extremely likely to still be there. If anything, this would be a very slight point in favor of green, which has a disguise archetype/subtheme.

• There is a Public Thoroughfare, which is very clunky fixing, but fixing that is bad enough that it could conceivably make it back around to me, but playable enough to give me optionality if I open splashable bombs going forward.

In this case, CTK and Binding were close enough that I felt like the rest of the pack could sway things if there was relevant white-favoring information. There wasn't, so I went with CTK, nervous about drafting a multicolor card P1P1, but confident that I was prioritizing the right things and making a sound judgment call through my normal drafting heuristics.

In other words, I was drafting well, not drafting scared.

That's P1P1.

It only gets harder and more nuanced from there in nearly every draft. Let's keep going!

Pick 2

Pick 2 is a bit disappointing. In my opinion, there are no solid B level cards available here, which is what you hope to be picking up in the first ~4 picks. The most viable candidates here in my view are:

Person of Interest, a strong red 4-drop

This is one of the better threats in the format, and an above-replacement-level 4-drop. That being said, I don't value 4-drops particularly highly as I don't think their "value above replacement" is as high as the best 1-and-2-drops in this format.

I'd say I'm:

• 100% to play POI as a B- level card in a white-red go-wide deck, one of the best decks in the format

• 90% to play POI as a C+ level card in any non-white red-based aggressive deck, the only way this wouldn't happen is if I were extremely heavy on quality 4s

• 60% to play POI as a C level card in grixis-space control

• 30% to play POI as a C level card in "multicolor soup" - I'd likely only do this if red were a base color, which it rarely is in this archetype

• 5% to splash POI if I happen to pick up extremely good fixing in a non-base-red deck and need playables

• 50% to be playing POI and CTK in the same deck if I'm playing one of them

Crowd-Control Warden, a flexible and powerful, but nearly always somewhat clunky creature that's best in GW but playable in either green- or white-only decks

I like CCW a lot in this set, and consider it to be an above-replacement-level 5 drop in GW, with some additional upside as a flexible curve-filler in other decks, especially any with a morph subtheme.

That said, it is in a curve slot that is easy to fill, so it's not like I'm desperate to get this kind of effect in my deck

I'd say I'm...

• 95% to play CCW as a B- level card in a GW creature-based deck, only cutting it if I'm extremely 5-heavy

• 75% to play CCW as a C+ level card in a "multicolor soup" deck that has green or white as a base and a significant enough source count of the other. Notably, if this deck has a disguise subtheme, CCW becomes a B- or even possibly a B level card

• 50% to play CCW as a C level card in some type of green or white (but not both) based 2-color aggro deck. This is more likely to happen the lower my curve is and the higher my cheap creature count is (or if I have extremely low creature count and just need bodies)

• 5% to play CCW in any deck that isn't base green or white if I just need a morph

• 30% to be playing CCW and CTK in the same deck if I'm playing one of them

Slice from the Shadows, a medium removal spell that shines when used to fight disguise creatures

I think Slice is only a replacement-level card, but it does count as removal, which can be important, and it is the only card that matches color with my P1P1.

I'd say I'm...

• 80% to play Slice as a C/C+ level card in any black-based 2 color deck, the exceptions coming where I have an abundance of more efficient removal that is also good at dealing with disguised creatures

• 60% to play Slice in "multicolor soup" or "Grixis removal control" if black is a base color

• 30% to play it in "multicolor soup" if black is a secondary color (this is easier to do than for a creature because of Slice's utility in the lategame)

• 10% to play slice in any 2-color non-black based deck, I would only do this if I were desperate for playables/removal and had enough fixing.

• 90% to be playing both Slice and CTK if I'm playing one of them

Lush Portico, a surveil land that is high on flexibility, but low on overlap with my first pick

I like surveil lands a lot in this set, partially because I value fixing quite highly - Part of this is a conscious strategy of trying to navigate pack 1 in a way that allows me maximum ability to pivot towards whichever powerful rares I open in pack 2 (or maybe even pack 3 if I can swing it!)

I am also partial to any way I can engineer consistency in my manabase in limited, which surveil lands do quite well (being fixing as well as card selection). I think of an on-color surveil land in a 2-color deck as about a B- power level card.

I'd say I'm...

- 100% to play Portico as a B- level card in any deck that has both green and white mana requirements, which includes both base GW and maybe 80% of multicolor soup builds

• 70% to play Portico as a C level card in any deck that has only green or only white requirements, the exceptions coming in aggressive decks with a tight curve and enough mana sinks/card selection to not be super worried about flooding out

• 40% to be playing both Portico and CTK if I'm playing one of them

This 40% might seem a little high, so it's important to note that in most of the places where I'm playing both, it's quite likely that at least one is not at its' "best".

Maybe 10% of the time I'm in a true "multicolor soup" deck that is base-green, with either blue or black as a secondary color, and splashing white & blue/black as well.

The rest of the time, either CTK will be on a sketchy splash, or Portico will be being used as a tapped single-color surveil land.

If this were a P1P1, Portico would be my pick. I think it's the most powerful card in the pack in its ideal situation, and also the most flexible in terms of a draft navigation perspective. My "P1P1" ratings for these cards would go something like this:

Lush Portico: 5

Person of Interest: 3

Crowd-Control Warden: 3

Slice from the Shadows: 2

Now, we're not in P1P1, so there is a layer of information to add in here that I do consider relevant: our first pick. That said, I think people tend to overindex on this information, because it is a natural human tendency to swing ourselves away from uncertainty when in high pressure situations and dealing with information-intensive decisions.

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A quick aside on the value of abandoning picks

Let me frame it this way. I'm offering you an opportunity to enter a Magic draft, but with a stipulation:

You will be forced to tear up and discard your first pick, but in exchange, you will get to see the contents of every pack ahead of time, and draft your deck "simultaneously" by taking one card from each (you basically have perfect foresight into how the draft will go).

I think it's pretty clear that this stipulation gives you a significant advantage and you should take it if you want to win. The value of perfect foresight is simply greater than the cost of not getting to play your P1P1.

For a quick illustration, this would be somewhat like building a sealed pool with 252 cards, when the typical sealed pool only has 84. (The cards are to some extent pre-filtered by other players and you can only play 1-2 cards per pack, but the point remains that the amount of selection and optionality would be ridiculous).

Of course, perfect foresight is only something we achieve by the end of the draft, after our decisions have already been made. Still, we do actually have it by the end of the draft. So we start out with 0% knowledge about the cards available in our seat, and end with 100% (I'm assuming you have Proft's Eidetic Memory here)

You might think that this knowledge develops linearly as you see subsequent packs, and while that is true in a deterministic, confirmed sense, I think there is value in "reading signals" as a predictor of what will be available as the draft goes on.

This is a tricky skill and something with a lot of content already, so I'll save the details for another day, but I'd say that by the time the wheel comes around on pack 1, a strong drafter can be maybe 40% of the way towards accurately estimating the general color/archetype contents that will be available to them in the rest of the draft. There is a lot of uncertainty that that 40% is meant to account for, but I don't think the knowledge is worthless.

You know what does make that knowledge almost worthless? Rigidly sticking to your first pick* or forcing your favorite archetype. If I'm not at least considering the possibility that I may not be playing my Coerced to Kill this draft, I'm losing out on significant value that could be gained if the best deck at my seat is not one with CTK in it.*

Also, it's worth noting that while we can't ever realize the full upside of the stipulation presented, we're never taking on the full downside either. You never have to literally rip up your first pick -- You only have to consider the possibility of not playing it. So, we're somewhere between total blindness and perfect foresight, and somewhere between playing one of our best cards and totally ripping it up.

There are real tradeoffs here, and with them, advantage to be gained... but only if you're able to be flexible in your thinking.

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That's the theoretical case for being open to abandoning your first pick "in a vaccum", but of course there are additional factors once we know what that pick actually is. If my first pick is an A level bomb, the cost to abandoning it becomes quite high, but if it's only a slightly good playable, I'm almost drafting as if my P1P2 is my first pick.

Where are we at here? Somewhere in the middle. Coerced to Kill is a very strong card, I'd say it's a rare power level card, but it's not quite one of the bombiest bombs in the set. As a reminder, these were my "P1P1" ratings for the cards available to us right now:

• Lush Portico: 5

• Person of Interest: 3

• Crowd-Control Warden: 2

• Slice from the Shadows: 2

When considering the Coerced to Kill, my ratings shift to:

• Lush Portico: 4

• Person of Interest: 3

• Crowd-Control Warden: 2

• Slice from the Shadows: 3

CTK already being in our pool and being a quite strong card drops Portico and CCW down by a bit, and Slice from Shadows up by a bit due to my estimates of playing both picks in the same deck that I gave above.

Still, Portico still comes out the leader. It's a clear enough winner that I'm not super interested in the "rest of pack" information, but I do note it:

• The color balance of what I'm passing (the other pick options) remains pretty even

• Bubble smuggler and Repeat Offender are mediocre blue and black 2-drops that may come around

• There are a few clunky but workable control finishers here in Conspiracy Unraveler and Polygraph Orb, also in blue and black

• There is a relevant green sideboard card in Pick Your Poison

• There is a Slime Against Humanity in the pack that will almost certainly come around, and almost certainly not end up being relevant, but it is worth noting

This was a lot of info, so stepping back a bit -- How am I structuring my opinions and all the information presented to me in P1P2?

• I'm still mostly treating this like a P1P1, though there is one additional medium-relevant layer of information of what goes best with CTK

• I'm prioritizing a card that gives me high optionality moving forward, including a chance to stay open to splashing powerful cards I may open/be passed in pack 2

Some of this optionality actually comes from Portico being good in decks where CTK is not -- Though I'm losing upside because of a low probability I end up playing both together in their ideal situations, I gain an arguably equal amount of equity by picking a card that will be useful precisely in the situations where I want to abandon my first pick.

Because there is a meaningful enough difference in the value I'm percieving from Portico vs. Person of Interest or Slice From Shadows, I do not consider the "rest-of-pack" information when it comes to making my pick -- I simply register it and move on.

Drafting well, not drafting scared. Where will we end up? What's our deck going to look like? Will we 3-0 the pod? I have no idea. Just keep making the right decisions.

The difficult decisions just don't stop coming. Pick 3 is an entirely different beast from the first two. Let's dive in.

Pick 3

I see only 3 viable options:

Meticulous Archive, a surveil land that I value for similar reasons to the Portico, but with some color overlap with each of my first 2 picks

Archive sort of has "half overlap" with each of my first 2 picks, which is roughly the same as having full overlap with one of them

I'd say I'm...

• 100% to play Archive as a B level card in a UW-based deck (this deck could splash CTK or use Portico to splash green)

• 90% to play Archive as a B- level card in a "multicolor soup" deck (another place I'm also likely to be playing both CTK and Portico)

• 90% to play Archive as a B level card in any esper (base 2 colors, splashing the other) deck

• 70% to play Archive as a C level card in any base-blue or base-white (but not the other) deck

• 30% to play all 3 of these cards together, and 75% to play at least 2 of them, together

Wispdrinker Vampire, a powerful signpost uncommon that again has partial overlap with both of my previous picks WDV is a very strong card in this format, definitely quite a bit above replacement level. In the right deck it can be upwards of a B+, and most of the time, it's at least a B-

Still, it does occupy a 4-drop slot, which are very easy to replace, and being a multicolor card makes it less flexible. It's worth splashing if easy, but not worth making your mana sketchy for.

I'd say I'm...

• 100% to play WDV as a B+ level card in any BW based deck (which could be splashing green or blue)

• 90% to play WDV as a B level card in esper (base 2, splashing one, could play CTK)

• 75% to play WDV as a B- level card in multicolor soup that is base black or base white with enough sources of the other

• 30% to play WDV in a 2-color base-white or base-black (but not the other) deck that has only a small ability to splash

• 25% to play all 3 of these cards together, and 70% to play 2 of them together

Vitu-Ghazi Inspector, a solid 2-drop that fills a role I consider quite important in the format

VGI is a less powerful card than WDV, but it occupies a more valuable slot on the curve

There is a reason I put "prioritize cheap creatures" in my notes... these can dry up extremely quickly in high level pod drafts, and are a crucial part of drafting a viable deck. I take this goal very seriously. If you take 2-drops early, it unlocks a lot more flexibility as the draft goes on, because you aren't forced into lowering your curve.

I'd say I'm...

• 90% to play VGI as a C+ level card in any green based 2 color deck (exceptions for very aggressive decks that have enough 2s)

• 80% to play VGI as a C+ level card in a multicolor soup deck, which are usually green based, but not always

• 10% to play VGI as a D+ level card in a non-base-green deck with great fixing if I am desperate for 2-drops

• 40% to play all 3 of these cards together, and 75% to play 2 of them together

These cards all have very different properties and reasons to be chosen. Again, we find that the difficult part of drafting is not coming up with reasons, information, and ideas about cards (though doing so with reasonable accuracy is very important), but structuring your thinking in a way that allows you to weigh those factors and come to a decision that maximizes power & flexibility.

These would have been my "P1P1" ratings for the 3 candidates:

• Meticulous Archive: 5

• Wispdrinker Vampire: 4

• Vitu-Ghazi Inspector: 3

The overlap factor with my current card pool wasn't a strong enough differentiator between the three, so I went with my "P1P1" ranking and took the Archive.

So far we've got a powerful multicolor card, and two surveil lands. Where are we going?? Idk. Just gotta keep making good decisions.

Pick 4

Okay, we've finally reached a pick that starts to push us clearly in a direction. P1P4 gives us another Coerced to Kill.

My relevance scan turns up 3 cards:

CTK #2, a card we felt was strong enough to P1P1, and has very direct overlap with a card already in our pool

Having 2 CTKs would be the first spot where I feel like I have a strong preference towards drafting a deck that can generate both blue and black mana. One is a gentle tug, two is a strong pull.

Therefore, this is a pick that comes close to "committing" us in a direction, which is very important to note. The bar for this is high - though we're not committing 100%.

I'd say I'm...

• 85% to play both CTKs as somewhere between B and A- quality cards in my final deck beyond this point, in some form of UB 2-color, Grixis/Esper/Sultai control, 2-color with a light splash, or multicolor soup.

The remaining 15% possibility would happen if I am passed a strong 2-color deck in a naya color combination, or a 2-color blue-or-black-but-not-both deck, and don't see good enough fixing.

Extract a Confession, a strong black removal spell

I like Extract a lot in this set, as it is both a removal spell that can hit big creatures and a 2-drop that keeps you at tempo parity.

However, in most decks where I'm playing Extract, I would rather have a CTK, so it is pretty easy to dismiss Extract here without bothering to evaluate how often I'd play it. The overlap is simply too great with another higher power level card in the pack. Notice how I'm identifying a "strict preference" here and using it as a decision-making shortcut!

Vitu Ghazi Inspector, a solid 2-drop

I've already explained the reasons why I like VGI, but picking up B+ and higher level cards is a higher order priority than 2-drops, so it's not a serious consideration either.

This is the first "easy" pick, in my opinion. The reason it is easy is because I have a clear priority order in my thinking - Acquiring cards on the level of CTK, if I am reasonably likely to be able to play them, is more important than filling out curve slots/removal slots with flexible 2-drops.

Just to illustrate, the P1P1 ratings would look something like this:

• CTK: 7

• Extract: 4

• VGI: 3

It would be very hard for "existing card pool information" to swing these, and our actual pool doesn't even prefer the weaker cards.

Moving forward, I am strongly biased in the direction of navigating into a deck that can cast both of these CTKs. Remember, those are...

• Base UB

• Some type of esper/grixis/sultai space control deck (slight bias towards esper because of the two white surveil lands)

• Multicolor soup (this is more easily facilitated by my 2 surveil lands, so I have a slight bias here)

• 2 color blue-or-black decks with a sufficient amount of fixing

Pick 5

We are moving away from the period in the draft where "P1P1" evaluations are going to be a significant help to us. This is another slightly disappointing pick, with no cards above a C power level.

The options that stand out are:

• Vengeful Creeper, a flexible green creature that is good at spots 3, 5, and 6 on the curve (all low priority spots, but the flexibility is nonetheless valuable)

Creeper also lets you add disenchant effects to your deck without sacrificing efficiency or creature count, so I like it quite a bit among the commons.

Still, we already have 2 5-drops, and 5 is the preferred slot for Creeper (it's less efficient in 3/6 mode), which bumps it down a bit

Creeper fits into multicolor soup by being a disguise creature and base-green

• Haazda Vigilante is another strong 5-drop that I like a bit more than the other replacement-level options

Vigilante is very good at winning "fair" boards, where each player curves out but neither has a bomb

I already have 2 white surveil lands, and although I'd never splash Vigilante, this does count as a small pull towards being base-white (think UW splashing the CTKs), which vigilante would be playable in.

• They Went This Way is a very situational card that I don't play in every green deck, but has synergies with my existing card pool

I don't like TWTW in 2-color green decks, unless they have some really powerful cards that need splashing and not a lot of other fixing

I am pretty willing to play it in multicolor soup that's base green, but it's also easily cuttable if I have better fixing options

TWTW occupies a contested slot on the curve in a disguise format, but is stronger if you're trying to curve into 5 mana

Would you look at that... we have two 5-drops that often require splashing, and two surveil lands that bias us towards multicolor nonsense!

This pick felt pretty close at the time, but in retrospect I'm very confident I made the right choice. P1P1 ratings for these cards would look something like:

• Creeper: 3

• Vigilante: 2

• TWTW: 1

However, my existing card pool is definitely a strong enough "swing factor" here. The important thing to recognize is that I don't fundamentally care which cards are more powerful in a vaccum, when all of the cards I'm considering are close to replacement level. In other words,

The relative strength of each piece of information/each decision factor is a critical part of evaluating what to prioritize at different points in your draft

This is a "facilitator" pick, and the card that best facilitates my existing cards is very clearly the rampant growth.

TWTW brings me slightly closer to the "multicolor soup" space, but only slightly. Remember, it's not a very good card. I could easily abandon it for a blue-black control space without much downside.

Process-wise, I now have:

• A medium preference (multicolor green)

• A few viable "backups" (UB control, 2-color GU or GB with light splashes)

• Still holding ~5% of my possibility space for getting passed a strong RW aggro deck or something like that out of the blue.

Pick 6

The next pack is another disappointing one. There are no cards here I consider above replacement level. Options are:

• Murder, a very medium removal spell that is sometimes playable

• Dramatic accusation. Same description.

• Cornered Crook, a playable 5-drop in red decks, but definitely not worth pivoting into red for

• Airtight Alibi, a playable card in green creature decks, especially those with creature bombs they want to protect

I'm almost never splashing any of these cards, so I'm evaluating them as if I'm based in one of their colors.

Murder feels like the best card to me in one of my current "viable" spaces (UB control), so I take it.

Importantly, though:

Because the cards are such low quality, this pick doesn't change my understanding of where I'm at in the draft nearly at all. I'm almost pretending it doesn't exist.

I think the biggest mistake one can make with this pick wouldn't be making the wrong selection, but instead letting whatever they choose have too much influence on their future decisions.

Pick 7

Here is a pack with some genuinely useful options. I register:

• Vitu Ghazi Inspector, already discussed above

VGI fits quite neatly into my preferred space (multicolor green), as well as one of my backup spaces (2 color green splashing CTKs)

It's a 2-drop, which I don't have any of yet

• Undercover Crocodelf, an average "large style" disguise creature that is playable in any green or blue deck

Crocodelf fits with my current preferred space and backup spaces, but it overlaps with my existing 5-drops and 3-drops

• Hotshot Investigators, a surprisingly good 6-drop

Fits in the blue spaces, but is pretty replaceable as common top-end

• On the Job, one of the more popular payoffs for the best deck in the format, white go-wide aggro

This doesn't fit very well with anything I've drafted so far, but there would theoretically be a few ways to make it overlap:

• I could be multicolor green base-GW with some blending between white go-wide and greedy green

• I could be esper with a BW go-wide subtheme

I'm actually one of OTJ's biggest "haters" (ha, prescient) in that I don't prioritize it heavily even when I'm in a white aggressive deck. However, I know it's a card others value pretty highly, and I'm slightly surprised to see it here, so I take it as a signal that white could possibly be more open than I had anticipated

Since we're at the stage of the pack where there are no more top-tier cards available, this is another "facilitator" pick, and the card that best facilitates my current pile is very clearly Vitu-Ghazi Inspector.

VGI starts to fill out my 2-drop slot, in a format where I desperately want to leave the draft with 5+ things to do on turn 2.

I'm actually quite happy to pick it up so late in the pack. As opposed to the Murder pick, this actually does shift my archetype prioritization, now even further into the green space.

Pick 8

The next pack offers a surprising abundance of red cards, which I note, but since red is basically the furthest possible direction from my current preferences, and none of these cards are at the power level where they'd pull me at all towards red, I'm not taking one of them.

I'll save the time here; I like Pompous Gadabout as C- filler, and I'm not too hot on Rakish Scoundrel, I see it as D level filler. I already want to be in green, so I go with the filler single-color green card.

This doesn't shift me hugely towards green, but it is an additional playable, which in a high level pod draft are not guaranteed, so it is a small shift.

Pick 9

Now we're at the wheel. I don't have 17lands showing me what's missing at this point, but I do vaguely remember the cards I had observed as likely to wheel that are still here:

So public throroughfare is gone, which is not super surprising, but the two other predictions held true, and I get to pick up a blue 2-drop here which I'm ecstatic about. I believe a card like Reasonable Doubt, a mediocre but playable 2-drop, coming all the way around the table means blue is very unlikely to be heavily contested.

I'm much more in need of early drops than medium morphs at this stage, so Doubt is the easy pick. It would fit into either UG-based multicolor, or blue-based control.

Pick 10

This seems like a pretty inconsequential pick, but I think it reveals a lot about my mentality and approach to drafting flexibly. Here I take a bad 2-drop in black over a mediocre, but functional blue finisher, or a speculative Slime against Humanity - even though I am not expecting to be black for my final deck.

Why am I doing this? I think this is a pick not many would make at this stage.

I'm trying to keep myself as open as possible to whatever my rare may be for P2P1. If I open a heavy black rare like Massacre Girl, Known Killer, I want to be in a position to shift into being base-black. Having a 2-drop in each of UGB means I am in a much better position to do this than having a clunky blue finisher or a Slime that will only be useful if an unusual amount of them get opened (the likelihood of opening a powerful black rare in a few picks is simply greater than this).

The main takeaway here is that even at this stage, I'm not by any means locking into my deck's colors, or imagining that I know what my final archetype/build will be. I'm still prioritizing flexibility/optionality over power, when I judge that one is higher leverage than the other.

The next 3 picks are relatively meaningless, so we'll skip ahead. I pick up a Behind the Mask which is cheap blue interaction that can be playable in a desperate spot and a Relive the Past which is generally unplayable but I do have the fixing for in case I happen to somehow end up with the right card types + some self-mill and need a finisher.

Pack 2 Pick 1

Some draft picks are devilishly hard, and other times, you open the perfect bomb in your colors. Cryptic Coat is an A level bomb that fits the colors we are already leaning towards. It's at least a 9/10 on the P1P1 scale, and nothing else comes close.

Structurally, how does acquiring Coat change my perception of my likely final deck?

Now I am almost 100% sure that my final deck will be able to produce blue mana. Coat + double Coerced to Kill is just too much power to lose out on at this stage. The easiest way for this to happen is to be base blue, but there's still an outside shot that we could splash the blue in a base-green (probably GB) deck.

Something really out of left field would have to happen for us to not be playing these 3 cards - But notably, I'm still not locking into being base-blue.

It's not super important to think about the cards we're passing here that are likely to be taken early, but of course I note the Fuss/Bother, Extract a confession, Marketwatch Phantom and Loxodon Eavesdropper.

What could come around for us?

• Gravestone Strider is possible, but unlikely. It fills a lot of holes in the format and should be taken pretty highly in pod drafts, because it can make a lot of clunkier decks a lot more consistent. Still, it's possible this makes it back.

• Pick your Poison could come around as a solid green sideboard option

• Hotshot Investigators might come around if blue is as open as we suspect, and it's nothing special, but a genuinely playable option for blue top-end.

Easy pick. Moving on.

Pack 2 Pick 2

Another stroke of luck, we have the opportunity here to pick up an A- level card in one of our preferred colors. This pick is again pretty easy - The only other high quality card in the pack is Reckless Detective, which is just too far from our preferences at this stage to matter.

Ferox is not quite a tippity-top-tier bomb, but it definitely falls in the category of being better than all the commons and most of the uncommons. It's a reason to be in a color.

Importantly too, it's double-green, which means this is the first time in the draft we are more or less "committing" to being based in a certain specific color.

When I say "committing", I mean something on the order of 85%-90%. There is a meaningful difference between rigidly closing off the possibility that you could be pushed off of green still, and acknowledging that you would need a very good reason at this stage to abandon it.

There is real advantage lost when what should be a "strong likelihood" is taken as an absolute.

This is also an opportunity to try and clarify a distinction I think is really important to make. I want everyone reading this to keep in mind that I'm only showing you one particular draft that went a certain way.

Let's pretend that this Ferox wasn't my P2P2, but instead my P1P2. What would change about my process?

If I pick up a bomb-level double-pipped card like Ferox earlier on in the draft, I'm much more likely to strongly bias myself towards a particular color than try and keep my options as open as possible. The entire point of keeping options open is to allow yourself to adapt to being passed powerful cards, so if you already have one, you should focus on being able to play it (and, if possible, as a secondary priority, keep yourself open to opening other ones in different colors).

This is what I meant when I said while describing "level 4" drafting:

If at any point I decide employing one of the "lower-level" strategies will lead to a more positive outcome than this nuance-puddle of thinking, I will pivot into that strategy. If the next pick changes my mind about that, I will pivot back into uncertainty.

In this particular draft, maximizing optionality throughout pack 1 was the strategy with the highest expected return for my final deck's strength. However, this will not always be the case.

Drafting flexibly is not the same thing as drafting to maximize optionality. Drafting flexibly means dynamically finding whichever strategy best maximizes your combined future optionality & power.

Detour done. We're taking Ferox. What's relevant that could come around?

• Fanatical Strength is a solid green combat trick; it doesn't quite count as a 2-drop, but it does count as cheap interaction, which counts for something as it can help regain tempo in a game that has slipped away

• Another Hotshot Investigators

• Another Repeat Offender

• Faerie Snoop, a playable disguise creature

Moving on!

Pack 2 Pick 3

This pick was much more difficult than the first two, and it's the first place in the draft where I'm not very confident I made the right decision.

The options here are:

• Pyrotechnic Performer, a very strong red aggressive creature / disguise payoff

• Eliminate the Impossible, a decent blue combat trick that falls into the same category as fanatical strength (cheap interaction that can catch you back up on tempo, but doesn't count as an early drop)

• Dog Walker, one of the consensus best commons in the set, but unfortunately in the exact opposite space from where I am currently

• Faerie Snoop, a medium disguise creature that fits in my colors

• Gadget Technician, a medium+ disguise creature that only sort of fits in my colors

• Detective's Satchel, a quality lategame option for control decks that doesn't totally fit my colors and isn't good enough to be a pull towards red, but could be splashable if I get good fixing

• Pick your Poison, a strong green sideboard card

• Judith, Carnage Connoisseur, a clunky rare that can be powerful enough to use as a finisher if you find yourself in a very removal-heavy grixis-space deck

You'll notice there are only 4 cards in this pack I'm not considering. This pick sort of short-circuited my brain; there are just so many options, all of them somehow representing truly different prioritizations, and none of them obviously powerful enough to stand out from the rest.

There's also the fact that red, the color I'm furthest from, seems to be the strongest signal coming from this pack (blue might be a close second).

I think the most important thing, structurally, to do here is to not get freaked out.

Pack 2 can give you weird signals like this because of the inverted order -- I didn't pass much red in pack 1, so it somewhat makes sense that the couple people to my left are not heavily in red. Moreover, this may have just been a very red-heavy pack with a couple powerful non-red cards that got snatched up first.

I'm also, no matter what, not coming out of this pack with a card that is strong enough to swing me heavily away from my current most powerful cards. Whatever I do, I shouldn't let this pack sway me in a different direction without even stronger future evidence.

Much like the Murder pick, the best thing to do here is to make a reasonable decision and not let it influence your overall approach to the draft too much.

The thing I was most worried about at this stage wasn't my mana and it wasn't my ability to interact early, it was my creature count. Counting Cryptic Coat and both Coerced to Kills, I only had 6 creatures at this stage, one of which (Pompous Gadabout) I wouldn't be thrilled to be playing.

I decided to take a middling creature that I knew I would be able to put in my deck if things went south from here. I like Gadget Technician a lot more than Faerie Snoop, but I think snoop would have been the better selection if I were correctly implementing my priority of trying to engineer consistency.

I think I allowed the red in the pack to scare me a little too much, and I was envisioning that if red became more open, I might end up in a base-UR space where technician would be quite strong. I don't think this was the correct read.

Still, structurally, I believe I was asking the right questions here:

• Is there enough power to ignore my current color priorities/speculate on a card that may not end up in my final deck, but will be worth it if it does? (no)

• Is there a way to give myself more optionality towards future power? (no)

• If neither of those are available, how can I engineer consistency and raise the "floor" of my final deck?

Pack 2 Pick 4

Next pick was, thankfully, easier. Projector Inspektor is arguably the best blue common, it's a creature, and while it doesn't fit amazingly into our curve, it's the best card in the pack and fits one of our colors. Get in here!

This pick makes me a little more likely to be base blue. So at this stage, I'm ~70% to be base-UG, which means I'm going to make sure to keep an eye out for fixing that helps me splash the Coerced to Kills.

Pack 2 Pick 5

This pick was also pretty easy. Deduce is a solid blue playable, it counts as maybe 1/3 of a "fixing" slot because it digs through your deck, and it has some minor synergy with the Reasonable Doubt I already have. I prefer it over Eliminate the Impossible because I don't have cheap creatures that will represent trades in combat, and I prefer it over Detective's Satchel because I already have enough lategame power for this stage of the draft and don't want to take on additional fixing requirements.

I'm now ~90% to have Blue as a main color, and ~70% to have Green as a main color.

Pack 2 Pick 6

Not much for us here, all these cards are fringe playable at best. I went with the blue removal spell to further stock up on our blue playables - The Mistway Spy was the other consideration, but in what's likely to be a controlling deck, it doesn't really contribute defensive speed, so I don't count it as an "early drop".

Pack 2 Pick 7

This was the pick that absolutely confirmed blue was open at the table for me. 2.5 solid blue playables and nothing else, at this stage of the pack, is as clear a signal as you can get.

I believe the correct question to ask for this pick is, which do I need more, cheap interaction or solid bodies? My answer was bodies, but the important thing is the question.

Pack 2 Pick 8

This was the pick that essentially locked me into Green, and therefore a base-UG deck. Glint Weaver is an above-replacement-level green finisher, and seeing it so late is an indicator to me that at the very least, green is not being actively fought over by multiple other drafters.

So finally, towards the end of pack 2, we are pretty confident (90%+) in our 2 base colors. This was a draft that incentivized optionality, so we "went with the flow" and stayed as flexible as possible until the signals became abundantly clear in the back half of pack 2.

It's also worth noting that the Festerleech is still here, which is a slightly above average black card - but given our current card pool, not enough to pull us in that direction.

Pack 2 Pick 9

Another indicator that Black may be underdrafted with the Extract a Confession wheeling. I could actually see taking Extract here as a nod to opening a Black bomb on the level of Ferox in pack 3, but I went with the solidly playable blue card instead, having essentially just "flipped the switch" in my brain and locked into UG, pivoting towards making sure I'd end up with enough playables and creature count.

Pack 2 Pick 10

Again though, it's important to note I'm not absolutely locked into UG. I still think the Repeat Offender here is a better use of a pick, to give myself that optionality towards opening a Black bomb, than Candlestick, a card that, while blue and marginally playable, is not a fit at all with the blue cards I have.

There is real advantage lost when what should be a "strong likelihood" is taken as an absolute

I pick up a few more playable Black cards in a Rot-Farm Mortipede and a Basilica Stalker to round out the pack.

If I had to summarize the operative questions during each pack of a draft, I'd do it like this:

• Pack 1: How can I set myself up the best for how this draft might go?

• Pack 2: How does this draft need to actually go for us to have the best possible deck?

• Pack 3: What does our deck need?

At this stage, pack 3 has been opened and we've used up ~95% of our bomb equity for the draft. The top-end power is mostly locked in. This means we need to start pivoting towards building out a well-rounded deck that can facilitate our most powerful cards and have a cohesive enough gameplan when it doesn't draw them.

This is what pack 3 is mostly about. Going into this pack, my biggest concerns were:

• Fixing for my Coerced to Kills

• Creature count

• Early drops

Of course, I'd pick up top-end power that came to me for free by virtue of my colors being open, but that part's easy.

Pack 3 Pick 1

For this pick, I'd say there are only two real options:

• Vitu-Ghazi Inspector, 2-drop, Creature, P1P1 rating: 3

• Out Cold, strong interaction & card velocity, P1P1 rating: 4

VGI checks two of my prioritization boxes and Out Cold checks none, so it's a very easy VGI here.

Pack 3 Pick 2

That's what we like to see!! Intrude on the Mind is an A level card in one of our base colors and a no-brainer.

I think most would agree with this pick and not see much issue, but it's important to note here that the raw power of a rare bomb still trumps a card that actually checks ALL 3 boxes in a Gravestone Strider. Remember, we're drafting flexibly, not maximizing optionality. No hard and fast rules.

Pack 3 Pick 3

Here, I prioritize a card that checks our two secondary priorities instead of our top priority. This was a close pick, but the power/card quality of Loxodon Eavesdropper over a clunker like Public Thoroughfare was the tiebreaker.

Note: I don't think I would have been able to make this pick if I had taken Vengeful Creeper over They Went This Way all the way back in pack 1. This is how maximizing optionality in pack 1 can reward you with power in pack 3. I'd much rather have TWTW and Eavesdropper than Creeper and Thoroughfare.

Pack 3 Pick 4

Speaking of Creepers, here we pick one up for free! There's not much else relevant in this pack. I don't think we have nearly enough fixing for the Kraul Whipcracker, a card that's much better when you can cast it early.

Pack 3 Pick 5

This one could have been a mistake. I like Fanatical Strength more than Bubble Smuggler, but I only had 13 playable creatures at this point, including the Cryptic Coat and both Coerced to Kills. I think it was better to lock in having 14 playable creatures and an extra 2-drop that could affect the board early.

I wasn't asking the right question, which in pack 3, is "what does my deck need?"

Pack 3 Pick 6

Here I know I'm running out of opportunities to pick up fixing, which I'd really prefer to have at least one more of if I'm going to comfortably run the Coerced to Kills. While Fugitive Courier is a creature, it's not significantly enough better in this deck than Gadget Technician to be worth picking here when I have the option of Deduce, which counts a small bit towards the fixing bucket, and synergizes with my other 2-mana instants.

Pack 3 Pick 7

I have absolutely zero reason to splash white at this stage, and Fanatical Strength is a strong green card, whereas Meticulous Archive is merely a tapped single-color surveil land.

Pack 3 Pick 8

I'm stoked to see Rubblebelt Maverick here, which hits ~2.5 of my pack 3 priorities - an early creature, and the final third of my pseudo-fixing package with the double Deduces. Now I have enough fixing that I'm definitely comfortable playing the Coerced to Kills. Even though they will be mildly clunky, the power is definitely worth it.

Pack 3 Pick 9

Creature count.

Pack 3 Pick 10

I'm super happy to see Reasonable Doubt here, and while I considered Deduce as additional fixing, I think 3 of them would just have been too much filler and wheel-spinning. Doubt fills the "early interaction/defensive speed" role, as well as being a possible answer to opposing bombs. It also gets slightly better because this was an open decklists tournament.

I ended up not playing both Reasonable Doubts main, but siding the second one in every match. I think it was correct to play both.

There was nothing relevant in my last 3 picks.

Here was the final deck!

https://www.17lands.com/deck/7e8bbee63f8e47a08aef447ed4a6c3d5/1

I played both surveil lands (my P1P2 and P1P3!) as single-color lands because I wanted more card selection to find my black sources. Tiny nudges to help engineer consistency.

I was reasonably happy with this final deck, though not over the moon. It was well balanced, with an acceptable curve, enough power to grind and take over the lategame, and enough disruption and answers to my opponents' most powerful cards.

I'd give this deck a 7/10.

I'd give my draft a 9/10. That's the part I cared most about.

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Conclusions

Before we wrap, I want to return one last time to the abstract stuff.

It's easy to write about format-specific strategies and card evaluations (okay, that's a lie, it's very hard, and the people who do it are brilliant). Writing about high-level drafting as a generalized skill is harder.

You can just give people platitudes like "draft the hard way, stay open, find the right lane for your seat", but this doesn't really teach people the how, just the what.

If you want to teach by example, you need to avoid over-indexing on the particularities of the examples you use. There's so much to talk about when it comes to drafting that it's necessary to include information about the particular format you're in and talk about the particular ways the draft you're showing has gone.

By the time you get through the mountain of context, it's too late to talk about the theory. That's why this article had to be as long as it was, breaking down a single draft.

Still, I don't think high-level drafting is some arcane, un-teachable skill that can only be learned through decades of experience. Don't get me wrong, experience helps, and you won't get anywhere without lots of iteration and putting theories into practice.

However, I do think there are articulable, demonstrable things that the best drafters in the world do which, when understood, will make the learning process to reach the highest levels go significantly faster.

Drafting well obviously requires strong card evaluation and ability to learn the context of a format quickly (this was the subject of my first article on here, How to Learn Any Limited Format).

However, it also requires:

• An intuition around the many different ways a draft can go based on the luck of what's opened and the preferences of other drafters

• An ability to hold multiple competing priorities at once, and weigh those priorities in dynamic and open-minded ways

• An ability to think in different modes depending on context, and come to different conclusions based on the particular details of a situation, not following a prescribed strategy or plan

• A willingness to think in degrees rather than absolutes, along a continuum of how strongly one can hold a preference or an opinion that goes from...

• "It's an outside possibility", to...

• "I really don't know what the right choice is here, it's so close", to...

• "I'm almost certain this will be the case, but I'm still open to some extraordinarily strong evidence convincing me otherwise"

• An ability to consolidate large amounts of information into a useful structure that identifies the most important factors first, and succeeds at "putting aside" information that is not yet useful to think about until it becomes so

You can master these skills. It's not Magic. (well.... uh.... it's not rocket science??). Work on them while you practice. Notice the results, recognize that results are relevant evidence, but remember they are never absolute evidence.

That being said....

3-0ed that shit.