How to Learn any Limited Format (including OTJ!)

How it feels to draft a new set

Table of Contents

• Slow Down

• The Beginning

• Limited Experimentation 101

• Limited Data 101

• Getting Help (The Power of Friendship)

• In the End, Go With What Works

• Putting it All Together

Resources I reference in this article

• 17lands.com (Absolutely essential resource)

• Draftsim.com

• Limited Level Ups Discord (Awesome limited community)

• Lords of Limited podcast

• The concept of public libraries

Welcome to my first 'deep dive' article!

I've been a consumer of Limited content for a long time, and while I think there's some amazing stuff out there, I also think I have some perspectives that will be valuable to contribute. We've got a new format coming to Arena in less than 24 hours, so it's the perfect time to talk about one of my favorite skills: Going from 0-100 in a new limited format as efficiently & effectively as possible. I'm hoping this article will be useful for navigating the first few days of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, but also abstract enough to revisit for any new format.

Where should we start? At the beginning?

Slow Down

I have a post-it note above my desk that just has these two words written on it. I originally put it up because I was rushing through tasks at work and noticing I became more effective if I removed the pressure to finish multiple things in a day, but I've been starting to realize recently that I, personally at least, could be applying it in many areas of my life - Magic included. As such, we're actually going to take a quick step back here and start somewhere BEFORE the beginning. For us, this means reflecting on our process from the previous format.

It's not the sexiest thing, but reviewing your past choices and opinions in Magic is a tremendous tool for improvement. Luckily, I have some records of my journey with MKM, as this was the format my team was preparing for drafting at the Arena Championship (and for some of us, at PT Chicago):

Here are the first long-ish-form thoughts I gave in our discord during preview season. Some of this ended up right (graveyard filling being valuable, lots of ways to spend mana), and some of it was laughably wrong (format being slow, clues being bad, Demand Answers being anything more than a fringe playable)!

It would be easy to try and claim I "was right" about the things I saw early and ignore the ways I was totally off, but that's not our goal here, we're trying to learn. These were mainly guesses, and I went about 50/50 on them. Without gameplay to test them, it's hard to advance much further beyond this point if you're only reading spoilers and listening to set reviews.

Still, the point I want to drive home here is this:

It's better to have your own ideas going in, even if those ideas are half wrong.

Part of learning is confirming your good ideas, but part of it is also sorting out your bad ones. It's much harder to learn things from scratch than it is to already have a notion of what might be true, and let the evidence sway you from there. I will also say, I think it's easier to "disprove" or quickly discard your own ideas than the ideas of a content creator you respect or a Magic pro you look up to. Come up with your own ideas, then be willing to abandon them quickly!

Here's where I had gotten to after some actual gameplay with the set:

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A quick aside:

I got this gameplay with MKM before the set came out on Arena by going to my local library (shoutout libraries!), printing out crappy black-and-white proxies of every card in the set, doing drafts on draftsim.com, then building & battling them against each other with my roommate/Magic soulmate Mora. This is a high-effort thing you can do to get a leg up in a format if you have a time-sensitive, high-stakes tournament to prepare for, or simply a lot of time on your hands. I used to do it for team sealed Grand Prixs, and here it was so we could be helpful for people on our team competing in the PT. This is not a necessary part of learning a limited set, but if you're a sicko like me, it can help you get ahead of the competition!

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You can tell in this discord message that I'm getting a better grip on what the format feels like. Gameplay will do that more effectively than any theory can. I'm already shifting away from the idea that the format is slow, and that clues aren't a valuable resource.

I'm not batting 100% here by any means. Knife, Case of the Gorgon's Kiss, and Toxin Analysis all ended up being playable, but unimpressive cards who happened to shine in the small sample size of games I had played. Moreover, I was only playing against other decks that I had built. Still, I think this is about as good as you can do before battling with the set online (similar takeaways someone else might've had after attending a prerelease).

The main point here is that even a small sample of gameplay was enough to improve my ideas about the format by quite a lot. I have lots of experience with limited and am generally good at learning from the Magic I play (this is a skill I'm hoping to be able to help people get better at), but I think this will hold true for just about anyone:

You need to let yourself have original ideas, then you need to challenge them by playing actual Magic.

The Beginning

Okay, we've reached the beginning! That exciting time where we all finally get our hands on a new set and can draft it to our hearts' content. OTJ drops tomorrow!!! How (besides having fun) should we engage with it if our goal is to learn it well, and quickly?

In general, my opinion on the first few weeks of a format is that people index far too heavily towards trying to win over trying to learn. Here's typically how the dynamic goes:

• Arena queues get flooded with new & experienced players alike, and experienced players get fed all the cards they've learned through consuming content should be powerful

• Typically, one deck stands out when everyone good can essentially draft whatever they want. Often this is some form of linear aggro that can pressure opponents while also competing into the lategame (RW go-wide in MKM, UW artifacts in LCI, RW in WOE, UR convoke in MOM... I think this will be the color green in OTJ, but we'll have to wait and see!)

• Content creators latch onto this archetype (as they should!) and start to inform everyone that this is the way to trophy your drafts right now. They're right, and people have success with it! 17lands data reflects the dominance of this archetype

• Consensus forms around the "best deck" in the format, and most good players who are in the loop of limited content know this is the place they ideally want to be. They continue winning with this strategy as time goes on, because:

• They are good players and there will always be a gap between them and the rest of the Arena field

• The deck is good for a reason! If you can get the right cards or at least utilize the depth of the stronger colors well, it's hard to go too wrong with this strategy

• High stakes tournaments (Pro Tours, Arena Opens, etc) happen, and most of the best players are employing this strategy in them. Sample sizes are too low to show any kind of meaningful signals that there could be a better way

• Rinse, repeat

Obviously, this is a dramatic oversimplification. Usually there is a ton of content on different limited archetypes and format development, and you should seek out this type of content if you want to succeed later on in a format. But I think this does hold true at least for the cycle of high-level limited competition. Most pros don't have time to dive deeper into a limited format beyond "what's the best deck or set of decks, and can I learn to draft those competently?"

I think there's significant edge to be gained here - Not just in professional level tournaments, but on Arena ladder & even at things like local store drafts as well. Focusing on learning to draft the best deck is a GREAT "80% strategy", because it's an efficient way to get 80% of the way towards high-level success in a format. In the first weeks on ladder, I'd even say it's the optimal strategy. However...

Focusing on the best deck is not the best way to learn. If you want to get as good as you can get in a format, you've got to let yourself experiment.

Here's what I was doing early on in MKM:

This approach of trying to map out the full space of a format and figure out what works & what doesn't is what allowed me to write this format breakdown just a week into the format, with successful sample drafts for almost every archetype I talked about. I think it's also what allowed me to 3-0 my Arena Championship 5 pod by taking a coerced to kill over a makeshift binding P1P1 despite the consensus of most pros being that white is the best color and UB was an unplayable color pair (of course, I second picked a surveil land because I do prefer multicolor green as a home for coerced instead of straight UB, and opened a Cryptic coat p2p1, but those are minor and unimportant details 🤪).

I should also note: It's fun!!!!! Of course, it's a lot more fun when you can expect to keep a reasonable winning % even when trying out lots of underdrafted archetypes, but in general, trying interesting strategies is part of what we all enjoy about Magic, right?

I won't pretend there isn't a real difficulty to losing a lot early on in a format while everyone else is forcing the best deck and winning more than you (you can see me complaining about this in the screenshot). But if you can allow yourself to take the ego hit to the chest and carry on experimenting, I think you gain some really important things:

• You set yourself up better than everyone else for the stage of the format where everyone knows the best deck & the inexperienced players have left the queues

• You are preparing yourself for high-level drafts where the best cards are fought over and you'll have to make whatever's available work as hard as it possibly can for you

• You're improving your general limited skills, and therefore your long-term winrate far more than forcing the best deck will let you do

Limited Experimentation 101

Let's get a little more in-depth as to what I mean when I say you should be experimenting early on in a format. What does that mean during a draft? During gameplay? How can we maximize our learning curve while continuing to win as much as (reasonably) possible?

I should throw in a small acknowledgement here that this approach is generally for people who have the time, the gems, and the drive to play a lot and "maximize" their skill in a limited format. I don't think you need to be preparing for a Pro Tour for this approach to be effective, but it does take a lot of those precious resources, and not everyone has those - so if your goal is to draft a couple times a week and win as many of those games as you can, take the 80% approach and have fun with it! If you're interested in diving deeper and achieving your potential as a limited player (whatever that means for you), let's get into it.

The early days of a format are where having preconceived ideas about a set before you start drafting it comes in handy. Some of these theories can even be contradictory, that's fine! You want to have as much stuff to try as possible.

Why is breadth of theories important? Counterintuitively, I think this is what you can use to guide yourself towards winning strategies. Most people when drafting a new set will default to pick orders/card grades/baseline card evaluations given to them by content creators or their own Magic experience. I think these are useful tools -- but I want to combine them with a strategy that is optimized towards learning, rather than just winning. Having a wide range of theories I want to try lets me bias towards the ones that also seem the strongest in a particular draft.

What this looks like is roughly:

• I will take whatever seems like the most powerful card out of my P1P1 early on in a draft format

• Exception here is if there is a rare that I think could be very powerful, but am not sure about -- I will sometimes take this even over a common I know to be very strong, just to capitalize on the chance to learn through experience about this rare

• As the draft goes on, I'll continue taking cards that seem powerful that fit into a strategy with my previous picks, but I'll bias slightly towards strategies and cards I haven't been able to play with yet

• I may go with choices during deckbuilding that I think could be slightly suboptimal, if it lets me test out some theories I have about certain cards (ex: Niv Mizzet is worth splashing in MKM even if you can't consistently cast it early)

• If I feel like certain cards/choices are holding me back, I allow myself to adjust away from them during the games or in future drafts

• I pay attention to what strategies my opponents are trying and what feels "scary" to face (tons of relevant data to collect here!)

• In particular, if I'm consistently finding myself scared of certain common creature curves or particular removal spells, I try to note that

Here is an example of a draft I did early on in MKM where I was making some intentionally suboptimal choices in the name of learning.

• P1P1, I take a Cease//Desist over a Reckless Detective. This is not me trying to learn, this is simply me being wrong. I thought the split cards were good at this point, and underrated the detective. Even good players like me get these things laughably wrong sometimes -- But we make up for it by how quickly we learn from our mistakes!

• P1P2, I see a Chalk Outline and decide I'm going for it if the space is at all open. This is an example of an intentional choice that I know is probably "incorrect" from a standpoint of maximizing my short-term winrate, but is "correct" when I'm trying to take convenient opportunities to learn about the format as they come

• I end up with a deck that doesn't have enough power to compete with bombs, but I'm attempting to validate the idea that a low-to-the-ground graveyard deck can work if it gets the uncommon build-arounds. (Result: False)

This approach typically gets me through the first few days of a format online with plenty of interesting games & drafts, lots of new ideas about what to try next, and a certain low-level comfort drafting any color/archetype I might be confronted with. Then the data starts to trickle in.

Limited Data 101

You might think from what I've said so far that I'm not a fan of limited data. QUITE the opposite! In my opinion, 17lands.com has been a quantum leap in terms of limited theory & lifting the quality of play across the board. Go support them on Patreon, they're incredible!!

In a way, having card game-in-hand winrate data "levels the playing field", because everyone now gets easy access to the 80% strategy of drafting the winningest cards above everything else. However, to mine more than that 80% out of the numbers requires a lot of skill. I'm planning to write a more in-depth dive into how to use Magic data in the future, but for now I'll just touch on how to use it in the early days of a format. (If anyone's interested in a more longform, more personal piece about this, check this one out!).

I strongly believe that the best way to use data is not as a proactive guide for how to draft, but rather a reactive "check" on your own intuitions and theories.

Using data as a crutch to justify your existing opinions is usually what limited experts are railing against when they call themselves "Magicians against Data" (hi Lords of Limited!), but numbers are actually useful when they're able to knock down your own ideas instead of propping them up.

After a few days of data have been collected in a format, I try to always have the 17lands card performance table pulled up in a separate window while I'm drafting. I won't look at it until I've decided on a pick (come to your own conclusions first!), but once I have, I'll check any of the cards I was also considering to see if they have a significantly higher winrate, or if the card I selected has a winrate that is suprisingly low to me. If either of those things is true, it serves as a flag that I need to search for a different story about this card (and sometimes, if the signal is strong enough, I will adjust my pick accordingly).

Here's an example of what my thought process looks like for a card I'm high on but has a low winrate:

I liked most of the hybrid-split cards early on in the format because of their flexibility early on in the draft, but I had to adjust down on several of them once my gameplay experience started to match what I was seeing in the data. Notice here how I'm not by any means immediately discarding the card just because of the low winrate; if I'm having success with something, it's likely because I'm doing something that makes the card "tick" in ways the general population isn't. But it's also easy to coast on strong drafting skill and miss cards that you should be "pruning" out of your habits. 17Lands makes this significantly easier.

One thing that I'll do a few weeks into a format is run a check for cards that I personally have a much lower winrate than the average player with. 17Lands lets their Patrons filter to their own data in the card performance table, but I believe everyone still can see what are their own most drafted cards. This can be a great sanity check for what you are actually doing in a format (which can sometimes be quite different from what you think you're doing!).

Ideally, you should have the highest counts of cards that are known to be strong but might be underdrafted by the general population - For me in MKM, this was Escape Tunnel and Gravestone Strider. If you have access to your personal winrate data, you can also look for cards that you have a much lower winrate with than the rest of the population. Big caveat here to be careful with small sample sizes, but this can be a really interesting indicator of something in your playstyle that is preventing you from having success with a particular card. For me in MKM, I had a crazy low winrate with Inside Source, and I think the reason was that I was using it in a lot of multicolor decks as a "good card" instead of a card whose strength (and 17L winrate) comes from dominating in the format's best deck, RW go-wide aggro.

Getting Help (The Power of Friendship)

So you've tested some theories and listened to some data, but invariably there are going to be areas you struggle with. For me, as indicated above, this was drafting the best deck, RW. I felt like I was doing all the right things, but couldn't seem to get a trophy with it. Could it be variance? Absolutely! Most anything in ones' personal Magic results can be explained by variance in a way that is hard to disprove. Sometimes it's correct to conclude that you're taking the right approach and it just hasn't worked out yet, but other times this can hold us back from learning. How do we tell the difference?

I'm lucky enough to have friends who are extremely good at Magic, one of whom lives with me (hi Mora!). I can ask them while making dinner whether they've been having success with RW and if so, whether they can look at my drafts with it and tell me if they'd have done things differently. But even if you don't have a MOCS competitor for a roommate, there are still resources out there! In particular I'd like to recommend the Limited Level Ups Discord, which is full of lovely future friends and Magic collaborators if you're a limited junkie like myself. I found my team for the AC5 largely through them (to give a sense of the quality of player in there, 4 of us qualified through Limited!). For MKM, they were my testing team, so I could ask them:

This is the other superpower of 17lands: It gives you high-quality replays of all your drafts & games.

If you're not using 17lands replays heavily, you're missing out on a huge part of growing as a limited player.

Asking friends for feedback on areas you want to improve is a huge tool, so cultivating or finding a community you can do this with is absolutely essential if you want to get better at Magic. In this case, Inflamed came to the rescue:

As well as GlosuU:

(The rest of his reply was way too long to include in a screenshot 😂)

It might be difficult to hear direct criticisms of your choices at first, but quickly you adapt to it and start recognizing the tremendous value of hearing other perspectives. You definitely don't have to listen to anything you don't feel is right! In fact, I would recommend not adjusting your opinions too aggressively in response to feedback. It's enough to just dig for pieces of advice that seem obviously right, and incorporate those into your approach the next time.

In the End, Go With What Works

I've put a heavy emphasis on challenging your own theories throughout this process, but at the end of the day our time is still finite, and we are usually alone when playing the Magic that we care about most.

The goal of collecting all this feedback is not to come to an external "group" consensus about what is the objectively best strategy in any given format, but instead to hone what ends up working for you into the most effective strategy it can be

The most effective versions of this in a limited format, at least for me, aren't forcing a single archetype, but rather finding a set of "spaces" that I'm confident in my ability to navigate into and draft effectively.

For me in MKM, this looked like a preference towards multicolor green, with a recognition of blue tempo, white go-wide aggro, red "tricks and burn" aggro, and black control as spaces I knew how to get into if they seemed open or I had a powerful card that was best utilized in one of those decks. I also found that heavily prioritizing 2-drops and having a high creature count led to me winning more -- The last two definitely being notable for my more "meta" journey of becoming a better limited theorist & player.

Putting it All Together

Hopefully people are starting to get a sense here of my overall Magic philosophy - come to your own conclusions, aggressively seek out feedback to adjust them, and then slowly/iteratively alchemize it all into a format-specific approach that works for you. The feedback can come in the form of playing, reading data, or listening to fellow players, but the important thing is to keep yourself in this cycle throughout whatever you're trying to improve in.

Today was a tour of how I think folks should be approaching the process of learning new limited formats if they intend to play them at a high level, but I think this approach is useful for developing a variety of skills that I intend to write about going forward.

I hope y'all will stick around for more!