What makes a good limited deck?

Table of Contents

• Core Set or Linear Synergy Set?

• Properties of a Strong Limited Deck

• Universal Necessities

• Source Counts

• Cheap Cards

• Creatures

• Strategic Advantages

• Bombs

• Removal

• Variety vs. Consistency

• Flexibility is King

• Synergy

• Bringing us Back to the Mana

• Continuing to have Gas

• Bringing it all Together

I've written a lot about the drafting/pool-building process, but I wanted to take some time today to look more abstractly at limited deckbuilding. I also thought this would be a good chance to look at some of my Bloomburrow decks and give a bit of an update on how I'm approaching the format as a side benefit.

First, I want to explain why I think this is a good format for exploring this topic (though it's incredibly important in any format!)

Core Set or Linear Synergy Set?

On one hand, Bloomburrow is a "kindred" set, where creature types matter and not only is each color pair defined as belonging to a very specific mechanic/synergy space, each color has multiple creature types within it that are also meant to play as a specific strategy/deck.

These sets, traditionally, tend to be very "on rails" where synergy matters above all else, and finding your open lane is more important than picking up the most powerful cards. In fact, there aren't that many cards in BLB that are significantly ahead of the power curve. Especially at common, most cards are remarkably flat in power level, which means that synergy will be how you squeeze more out of your deck.

However, BLB is also a summer release, pretty clearly geared towards new players, and WOTC design is aware of the limitations of the more straightforward, linear kindred sets they've done in the past and how those can lead to boring, predictable draft environments. These two factors push in the opposite direction - Making cards more simplistic and concretely useful in multiple contexts, rather than only belonging to a particular "lane". In a lot of ways, it feels like BLB has been designed like a "Core Set", though one with a significant emphasis on kindred synergies.

This tension is a great place to explore what makes limited decks tick, and what you should prioritize in different contexts. If we can identify universal factors that make limited decks successful, it shouldn't matter whether we achieve those properties through explicit synergies or through more "fundamental" aspects of deckbuilding. I hope that this piece will help more folks recognize the why behind the interactions, whether they're explicit or structural, that make limited decks powerful.

**I do want to note here that how to balance linear synergies vs. structural ones IS a very relevant factor when it comes to the drafting process. Today, I'm trying to focus on the ability to identify a good deck when you see one, or to compare between different decks and come to an evaluation about which one is stronger overall, or to see a deck and identify what makes it strong and what's missing. This is a skill worth cultivating in and of itself - After all, if we don't know what we're trying to achieve, we'll never be able to figure out the path to getting there.*

Properties of a Strong Limited Deck

What makes a limited deck "good"?

There are SO many answers to this question. We have a ton of frameworks for understanding aspects of limited, many of them overlapping. Here's a short list off the top of my head of what people might say makes a limited deck strong:

• High power level individual cards (bombs and build-around uncommons, or multiples of the strongest common)

• Speed (attacking or defensive)

• Removal

• Redundant "A+B" synergies

• Ways to pressure the opponent

• Ways to spend mana late into the game

• Ways to gain card advantage

• Ways to go "wide" or go "tall"

• Ways to finish off the game once the opponent is at low life

• Ways to slow the opponent down and stall the board

• Ways to break through a board stall

• Having lots of flexible cards

• Being able to play many mana sources/have consistent fixing

• All of its cards being "on plan" and pulling in the same direction

• Being in the strongest colors in a format and having access to all the good commons in those colors

• Having a flexible sideboard that allows you to change configurations in a bad matchup

• Having a diverse set of threats and answers, so your opponents likely won't be able to contend with everything you're doing, but you will with them

So how do we boil this all down into something manageable? Each of these properties is something to strive for, and while a truly excellent limited deck will have many or most of them, trying to prioritize a thousand different things isn't going to help clarify decisions while drafting or deckbuilding. We need a simpler framework.

My best attempt at boiling this all down is:

The best limited decks are good at spending their mana on things that affect the board consistently throughout a game.

I'm going to call this "Mana Utilization" or "MU" for short.

This property applies to control decks, aggro decks, and everything in between (which is most limited decks). It can be accomplished through synergies or through fundamentals. Of course, it's a bit simplistic, but I do think this is the correct "big metric" to prioritize when you're playing limited, 99% of the time.

It's the "what matters" in "focus on what you can control, focus on what matters" when it comes to limited deckbuilding.

Even if it might feel a bit obvious, I do really think keeping our "eyes on the prize" is very important.

Since this is a bit of a tautological metric, it's important to break down how different strategies go about achieving it. Some of this will feel like review if you're familiar with limited theory, but I think applying this framework to traditional theories helps explain the why a little bit more, so that you can identify which metaphors to apply where.

Let's start by looking at the things that every deck needs to have, and then we'll get more specific from there.

Universal Necessities

What are the things we always need to make sure we're able to spend mana on things that affect the board consistently throughout a game? Let's eat our vegetables first here. This is going to start out pretty basic, but we're going to get more nuanced as things go on.

Source Counts

Color Consistency is THE most important factor in determining whether your deck can always spend its mana. Having dead cards in hand because you don't have access to a color is near-deadly for the ability to spend mana.

To illustrate the importance of this metric, if we took two copies of the same 9/8 manabase, 2-color limited deck, and then gave one of them the ability to swap their basics out for untapped dual lands, and then had them face off, I'd expect the deck with perfect source counts to win about 65% of the games. That's the winrate of an elite (like top 100) Arena player.

Of course, you're never making this tradeoff in a vaccum - you obviously need to sacrifice power level in order to get consistent mana sometimes, and the tradeoff won't always be worth it. But color is the PRIMARY gatekeeper for MU. If you can't cast your spells, it simply Does Not Matter how good they are.

I also want to point out that while there are certainly diminishing returns, consistency is a valuable thing to add to your deck no matter what. Adding a 10th, 11th, and 12th source of your main color are each worth something, and so is adding a 5th, 6th, and 7th source for your splash.

Here is a Bloomburrow deck that shows both the importance of good mana and the downsides of playing 3 colors:

I have some medium- blue and green cards in the board that I could be playing, but I'm choosing to play the higher impact black cards, and I'm trying really hard to make sure I have enough sources for them. I'm effectively playing 18 lands with fountainport bell, and a couple ramp spells with the banner and the heaped harvest. I'm also playing three-tree mascot to add some consistency. If you count the spells as sources, this deck has 10 G, 10 U, and 8 B sources. That's essentially the manabase of a pure 3-color deck.

I'm only playing 3 black cards! Why so many sources? Well, for one, more is always better, and I thought the diminishing returns on green and blue justified some more black. Two of the cards are also very cheap, and higher impact when played early. Given that, we shouldn't really count either of the 3-drops as sources, so it's really more like 6 sources for early impact.

Still, this deck lost to mana troubles. I ended up falling behind in a game because I couldn't cast my removal early. This is not to say the deck had bad mana, but just to highlight that color access is almost always going to be one of the main ways to fail to spend your mana, so every inch of advantage you can gain towards minimizing this outcome is valuable:

If there's one thing you can achieve with your limited deck, make sure it's consistent mana.

Cheap Cards

Let's look at cheap cards vs. expensive cards under the framework of MU.

The average limited game lasts until about turn 8 or 9.

How many 5-and-6-drops do you think you'll be able to cast in that game?

Keep in mind that playing a lot of them makes your deck clunkier, and means the games will likely be shorter.

1? 2? 3 is pushing it. In most limited decks, you shouldn't be expecting to draw more than 1-2 "expensive" cards (whatever that means for the format you're playing) throughout the entire game. That usually means playing ~2-5 of them total.

How many 2-drops do you think you'll be able to cast in an 8-9 turn game?

Pretty much as many as you fucking want (other things permitting that we'll talk about later).

I checked my recent draft history, and I don't think I've played a deck with less than 8 cards that cost 1-2 mana yet in BLB. Most of the time I'm over 10. That's almost half my cards costing 2 or less! If you're consistently clocking in under 10, I'm willing to bet this is a major leak in your drafting.

I also want to make a small note here in favor of cost diversity. Usually this is what people mean when they say having a good "mana curve", but in reality, having cheaper cards is almost always going to be more important for MU than having a "balanced" curve. However, diversity can matter on the margins. It's much better to have 7 2-drops and 3 1-drops than to have 10 2-drops, because 1-drops are much easier to fit into turns where you otherwise wouldn't be able to use that mana.

It's also probably better to have 4 4-drops and 2 5-drops than 6 4-drops - of course, assuming that the 5s are actually fairly costed and slightly better in terms of "effect" than the 4s, because at a certain point, you won't be able to cast your 4s when you exactly have 4 mana, you'll probably be casting the extra ones when you have 5 mana, and in that case, you'd rather have a 5-drop.

Still, this is a relatively minor factor, and you're probably over-indexing on it. Focus on cheap cards more.

Creatures

This is more limited fundamentals, but I think it's important to cover why creatures are crucial for effective MU in a limited deck.

Remember, we're trying to spend our mana in ways that relevantly affect the board. Creatures are the default way to do this! If you're casting a creature, assuming it's fairly statted for the format, you're checking this box by default. For spells, it's a little more tricky...

• Combat tricks and auras can only affect the board if you already have creatures present

• Removal almost always affects the board, but it'll affect it more if you have creatures out that can now attack, or if you used it during combat to stop a trick or change the math.

• Card advantage spells will only have the time to be effective and turn into board advantage if you're not already behind on board, which creatures help you accomplish (though removal does do the same thing; this is why creature-light decks that are heavy on card advantage usually have cheap removal)

Most spells fall into these 3 categories, and the ones that don't also tend to rely on the presence of creatures to maximize their effectiveness. Creatures are the "skeleton" of your limited deck, and it's not very useful to put organs and muscles and tissue on nothing.

Important caveat: Not all creatures are full creatures, and some noncreatures are creatures. What I mean by "creatures" is "cards that produce a critical mass of board-relevant bodies".

An otherwise standard limited deck with 10 creatures and 13 spells is going to be worse than a deck with 15 creatures and 8 spells. If you're deviating from this deck composition without significant synergistic reason to do so, you're making your deck worse!!

I really want to emphasize this: The fundamentals are important at all levels of limited skill.

If you follow the three rules above, and all your limited decks have enough source counts to comfortably cast your spells, enough cheap cards that you can almost always be spending all your mana on turns 2-4, and 14-17+ creatures, you are probably going to win more than your "fair share" of limited games, because most people fail to fulfill these deck properties too often.

These are rules that many people know, but I think a lot of people see them as "basics" that more experienced players should deviate from a lot.

I have the opposite perspective, I think more experienced players would do well to dive deeper into understanding why these are the "fundamentals".

If you take nothing away from this piece beyond noticing the fundamentals of your draft decks more, I think you will have meaningfully improved your limited game, even if you were already a highly competent limited player.

Strategic Advantages

Beyond the fundamentals though, what takes a deck from solid / acceptable to truly good? We don't just want to cast spells and put creatures on the board consistently, we want our deck to have a dynamic gameplan capable of triumphing over our opponents who are doing the same thing. How can we accomplish that?

Bombs

I'd be shirking my duty if I didn't address power level differences in limited. Every deck wants to have at least a few cards that are significantly more powerful than the rest of the format.

Why does this matter from a MU standpoint? The answer is sort of obvious, but I do think analyzing it from this perspective leads us to a more accurate understanding of what makes a card a bomb.

Bombs are good because they are efficient. They generate more board advantage for their mana than other cards at the same cost. They let you get ahead on board in the easiest way possible: just casting your spell on curve.

Notably, bombs are not just the highest-impact cards in the format. I'm not talking about your 6-mana 5/5 flying dragons anymore. Those used to clean up games of limited, and they definitely still can, but efficiency is the name of the game now. Did you know that Manifold Mouse has a better game-in-hand winrate on 17lands right now than Season of Gathering?

One of these reads a lot more like a traditional "bomb" than the other, and is in a stronger color, but there's just no guarantee that the person who does the biggest thing wins in limited anymore. Overwhelming your opponent with efficiency and pressure is just as "bomby" as casting a devastating over-the-top 6-drop. Maybe it always was.

Removal

Of course, there is always going to be an asymmetrical distribution of power level among cards in our own deck, and the same goes for our opponents. This means that removal, which lets us choose (with varying amounts of flexibility) which cards to negate on our opponent's side of the board, is almost always going to allow us to choose a board-relevant target. Next to creatures, removal spells have the highest "board impact consistency", and are therefore the best ways to spend mana in your limited deck (as an abstract category of card, when we control for specifics).

Decks without removal can win in limited. If you are just better at putting out board presence than your opponent, and especially if that board presence can come in many resilient forms.

Here is an example of a deck without much high-quality removal that was one of the best decks I've had yet in this format. It is simply an excellent aggro deck that consistently puts out massive, difficult-to-answer board presence, and is good at refilling that board presence and continuing to push.

Still, I'm playing a copy of Conduct Electricity in this deck. The typical reasoning behind this goes like "well, I need a way to deal with a bomb". And this is partially true, but I think not quite right.

I'm playing Conduct Electricity in this deck specifically because it is likely to be a reasonably efficient use of mana to affect the board.

The reason for this is that I don't have a lot of other unconditional removal, so any big, tempting targets on the other side of the board are more likely to still be around by the time I'm ready to cast it. You could say it fills a hole in my deck, but the fact is, I'd play a more efficient card like another Intrepid Rabbit over it if I had access to one of those - even though that card wouldn't "fill any holes". I'm playing Conduct because the structure of my deck (and the holes it has) turns a relatively mana-inefficient card into a reasonably mana-efficient one, and this makes the card clear the bar of being one of my 23 best. It's not about making sure your deck can do everything - It's about making sure your deck can do one thing (spending its mana) in the best way possible.

The reason that having a variety of effects in your deck is useful is that it opens up opportunities for different cards to accomplish that goal efficiently.

I don't use this example to argue against the utility of removal in limited - I just want people to understand at a better theoretical level why removal is good. Most of my best limited decks have multiple efficient removal spells that can deal with a variety of threats on the other side of the board. There is a good reason for this -- Removal is very good at accomplishing board-affecting mana efficiency.

Variety vs. Consistency

I think one of the biggest weaknesses in my limited game for a long time was overvaluing theoretical consistency over dynamism and variety. It's hard to give specific examples of this, but what it would look like in practice is things like trying quite hard to have multiple copies of the same common (or pair of commons), which would give me a "safe" feeling that I'd be able to sequence specific threats together on curve in a certain high % of games.

Moving between thinking of individual cards and thinking of cards in groups that fill a certain "category" or "role" in my deck has helped me shift away from this type of thinking. Now, instead of going out of my way to pick up multiple Warren Elders while passing potentially higher-power-level cards early in the draft so that I can be sure I'll have enough go-wide payoffs that I'm happy with as efficient cards on their own, I will be fine with picking up a single Elder along with a copy of Rabbit Response later in the draft, a card that I'm less excited about power-level-wise, but is an acceptable way to fill the same role in a deck with that hole without spending an early pick that could be spent on an efficient card that produces a different category of effect.

Most limited decks should have cards that fill each of the following roles (vibes-based numbers in parentheses):

• Early threat (4-8)

• Early answer (1-3)

• Larger, harder-to-deal-with threat (2-4)

• Over-the-top threat that must be answered (0-2)

• Universal (or at least very flexible) answer (2-5)

• Card advantage generator (1-3)

• Lategame mana sink (1-5)

• Way to trade up on mana (1-4)

• Way to break through a board stall (2-4)

• Mana consistency boosters (1-4)

• Synergy facilitator (contextual, but if you have a lot that needs to be enabled, 5-10)

When viewed from this lens, the dichotomy between making your deck flexible and making it consistent sort of dissolves. What we want is to make our deck consistently flexible, ensuring that we're covering our bases at roughly the rates we expect them to come up. It's both important to have enough duplicative effects to have access to the types of effects we want as consistently as possible, and to make sure we're checking as many of these boxes as possible. Not either/or.

Flexibility is King

So we want to both cover our bases and do so with enough redundancy that each base is covered consistently and we always have a way to spend our mana efficiently. This seems like an almost impossible task! You're asking me to be able to do everything well without making tradeoffs.

Yeah, kinda. I'm describing what makes a limited deck good, and the best limited decks have these properties. It might seem like a trivial thing to just say "the best limited decks have every effect they want to have, in the correct ratio of how often they expect those effects to be needed", but this would only be trivial if there weren't concrete things that were possible to prioritize in the drafting & deckbuilding process that can help us accomplish this goal. Luckily, there are.

Flexible cards are your lifesaver when it comes to building a well-rounded limited deck that is good at spending its mana to affect the board at all stages of the game. The key to figuring out how to check all the boxes, but also to get enough redundancy in each is to realize that we can lean on cards that fall in multiple categories!

Here is a deck that I think makes great use of modal cards to enhance its consistency and flexibility at the same time.

This deck has...

• 4 early threats

• 3 early answers

• 6 larger, harder-to-deal-with threats

• 1 over-the-top threat that must be answered

• 3 universal/very flexible answers

• 4 card-advantage-generators

• 4 lategame mana sinks

• 3 ways to trade up on mana

• Admittedly, not many ways to break through a board stall

• 4 mana consistency boosters

• 7 synergy facilitators

Those numbers add up to 34, not 23. That's because most cards are counting in multiple categories. Bushy Bodyguard is both an early threat and a larger, harder-to-deal-with threat. Hunter's talent is both an early answer, a very flexible answer, and a card advantage generator. Thornplate intimidator is both a larger, harder-to-deal-with threat and a lategame mana sink. Longstalk brawl is both an early answer and a way to trade up on mana. Bonebind orator is both an early threat and a card advantage generator. Cache Grab is a synergy facilitator, a mana consistency booster, and a lategame mana sink.

Now, of course most of these cards don't count as full cards in each of their respective categories. Bushy Bodyguard is a full larger, harder-to-deal-with threat but probably only half of an early threat. Treetop sentries is a full card advantage generator, but only half of a larger, harder-to-deal-with threat. Cache Grab is a full synergy facilitator, but only half of a lategame mana sink and half of a mana consistency booster.

Still, the best cards can easily add up to more than one full card when it comes to covering categories. Pawpatch Recruit is a full early threat and a full larger, harder-to-deal-with threat. Hunter's talent is a full removal spell (half flexible, half universal) and a full card advantage generator.

This category-covering ability is a HUGE reason these cards are as powerful as they are.

Yes, it's the efficiency, but it's the flexibility too. The reason these cards are efficient is not only their rate, but the fact that they have rates that are competitive in multiple different contexts.

Synergy

It's time we talked about synergy. So far, I've been mainly talking about cards filling universal roles and having effects that they accomplish on their own, but obviously, a big part of a limited deck is having your cards work well together. Synergy is a way to accomplish that goal by having cards that help each other become more effective when combined together.

Except, what if I told you that we've already been talking about synergy?

Here's my definition of synergy in limited:

Synergy is the ability of the cards in your limited deck to create gamestates where the other cards in your limited deck can efficiently affect the board.

The classic example of this is an "A+B" synergy -- Two cards that work better when combined than on their own, usually because of some explicit text on the cards that links them. for example, Head of the Homestead and Rabbit Response.

There are two different ways these cards are synergistic with each other. The first is what most new players will see - One is a rabbit (and generates rabbits), and the other has text saying "if you have a rabbit, you get a bonus effect!". The other reason is one most players will also see quite easily, which is that a creature that generates 3 bodies for one card is good with an effect that multiplies with each body you have in play.

How about a slightly harder one -- Are these cards synergistic with each other?

On one hand, you wouldn't think so. One is a squirrel and a graveyard card, and the other is a lizard and a bloodthirst (damaging your opponent) card. Sure, they're in the same color, but they seem to be meant for different decks. There is definitely no explicit text linking these cards together, saying one is more effective when you have the other.

But what happens when you attack with your Bonebind Orator into your opponent's 2-drop that doesn't do anything after it dies?

Does that create a game state where Thought-Stalker Warlock is more effective?

How about when lategame, your opponent wants to attack you with a big creature, but you've got a Thought-Stalker Warlock in play, an Orator in the yard, 4 mana up during their turn, and they kinda want to keep all the cards they have in hand?

Is that a gamestate where both cards are effective?

How about these cards?

This one's more tricky. On one hand, when you pass the turn with 2 mana up, you have the ability to use either of these cards. If your opponent casts a spell, you can counter it, but if they don't, you get to Cache Grab without wasting your mana. That's synergy!

On the other hand, the Dazzling Denial gets less effective as the game goes on, and wants you to be ahead on board and forcing your opponent to try and spend all their mana to catch up in order to be effective, whereas Cache Grab is explicitly not trying to get out to an early board advantage, instead using that time to set up and smooth out your draws.

Dazzling Denial also dilutes your deck in terms of permanent count, which makes your Cache Grabs less effective.

Finally, both when combined are in a color pair that generally doesn't want many non-frog-synergy-based cards.

The larger point I'm trying to make here is that synergy is highly contextual, and is about much more than A+B interactions. Your goal in building a limited deck should be to make your cards "work together", yes, but it's equally important to avoid ways they clash, and always important to look at the full range of interactions between them, not just the most obvious positives or negatives. Explicit interactions are important, but so are questions like "what kind of game is this card trying to play, and do the rest of my cards play that type of game too?"

As a small note, this is where things like evasion and board-stall-breakers tend to land in terms of helping us towards our MU goals, and I think of these cards as mostly synergy-based. If our deck is well set up to play into stalls, cards that can still have a consistent effect during those stalls become more valuable because they are efficient uses of mana in those games. Similarly with ways to finish off your opponent from a low life total -- It's often a very good use of your mana to Lava Axe your opponent from 7->2 life, but much less useful to take them from 20->15.

Bringing us back to the mana

Again, we're back in a nuance-puddle of "yes, this matters, but so does that, and so does everything, so you should just do the best thing and account for all factors holistically". That's not a very helpful framework, so I want to re-center on one of the synergies in the green-black deck above, and why it ends up mattering (spoiler alert, it comes back to mana utilization).

Daggerfang Duois a highly synergistic card in the deck above. It's a squirrel for purposes of growing our Honored Dreyleader and getting back with our Cache Grabs, it mills cards to fuel our foraging, and it's one of our more solid cards to fill the "medium threat" role, but the synergy I want to focus on right now is the deathtouch that we get to use with our fight spells.

You'll notice that I said the deck has "3" universal/very flexible answers, despite the only card that can realistically kill a large creature on its own being Polliwallop. I'm saying this because I get to count the following cards fractionally:

• Downwind Ambusher (~0.25)

• Thought-Stalker Warlock (~0.5)

• Hunter's Talent (~0.75)

• Longstalk Brawl (~0.25)

Ambusher and Warlock are both sort of self-explanatory; both have the ability to deal with a bomb in a certain hard-but-realistic-to-generate board state (my numbers on each are roughly informed by how difficult I think that board state is to generate).

The fight spells are different. These are only able to be used as "universal/highly flexible" removal in my deck because I have a critical mass of creatures that can kill almost anything with them. The Daggerfang Duos are a big part of that. Synergy!

But that's not the end of the reasoning. Why do we care about the synergy between deathtouch and fight spells. What if this deck also had 2 copies of Nocturnal Hunger? How about 3?

This particular synergy is valuable in my deck because I otherwise have very few ways to unconditionally remove a creature from my opponent's side of the board.

Why is unconditionally removing a creature from your opponent's board valuable?

Because the first time you do this, it is usually a very mana-efficient way to affect the board state. The second time, it gets a little less effective, but is still quite valuable. The third time, usually playing your own medium creature would be about equally effective.

In other words, the synergy is valuable because it is likely to give you more opportunities to use your mana efficiently.  

Continuing to have Gas

Before wrapping up, I would be remiss to not mention another pretty key aspect of limited deckbuilding that I've only addressed tangentially so far. We've talked a lot about being able to make efficient plays and ensuring our cards are affecting the board in relevant ways as much of the time as possible, but one of the ways we can run out of ways to affect the board is to run out of cards entirely!

This is a very real concern, and of course the best limited decks incorporate "card engines" and ways to mitigate against mana flood and drawing too many cheap, ineffective cards late into the game. I haven't addressed it directly yet because I think the theory of card advantage is well baked into most Magic players' understandings of the game at this point - and in fact, a lot of modern design tries to give players a variety of tools to accomplish this goal, even with commons, in their limited decks.

Still, this is what I mean when I talk about things like card-advantage-generators, mana sinks, and flexibility. The goal is not early efficiency at all costs, but robust efficiency throughout the game, which includes ways to continue spending all your mana as time goes on. Missing opportunities to spend mana in the early turns is costly, but so is missing ways to use the 8 you have in play later in the game.

Here is an example of a deck that I think somewhat fails at accomplishing this goal.

Most of the cards in this deck cost mana, do their thing, and then do not give you any further opportunities to use mana as the game goes on. Yes, the deck has a couple expensive cards that let you spend a turn using 5-6 mana efficiently, but it doesn't have many. The only card that is an exception to this rule is the 1-of Warren Elder, and maybe the Intrepid Rabbit and Harvestrite host if you really squint.

Note that with further synergies, some cards that currently don't count as "mana sinks" would start to count. Stickytongue Sentinel is often a really effective way to give yourself opportunities to spend mana for relevant on-board value later in the game, but it needs synergies to be able to play this role, and this deck has almost none. A Treetop Sentries, a Carrot Cake, or a Feather of Flight would go a long way in this deck to alleviate that problem, not just by being card advantage/filtering on their own (Sentries/Cake), but also by "activating" the Sentinels' latent mana-utilization abilities. As is, the Sentinels are mostly just on-rate bodies for us.

Bringing it all Together

So today we've been over some important lessons for limited:

• Have cheap cards and consistent mana

• Have enough creatures

• Have bombs and removal

• Have flexible cards

• Have synergies

• Have ways to generate card advantage and mana sinks

YAWN. You probably already knew these things. But understanding the "why" behind each of them is important if we are going to weigh these goals against each other in drafting and in deckbuilding. Sure, it's important to have powerful, efficient cards and to have those cards produce a wide variety of flexible effects, but that's easy to say and much harder to actually do when you're trying to prioritize all of these things at once. To level up, it's crucial to break through the different frameworks and understand the fundamental goal, the thing we are actually trying to accomplish:

The best limited decks are good at spending their mana on things that affect the board consistently throughout a game.

Before we go, I want to leave you guys with an example of a limited deck and player that breaks many of the "rules" we've talked about here, but sticks to the main goal of mana utilization, and is successful as a result.

I think a lot of people reading this will know Dafore (@dafore3 on Twitter), but for those who don't, he's a limited content creator who is known for drafting the "worst" color pairs in a format and doing exceptionally well with them. Recently he's been doing this with blue-red in Bloomburrow draft, widely considered to be the "worst" color pair.

https://x.com/Dafore3/status/1826853945555173435/photo/2

This deck has some alchemy cards, but we can mostly ignore those and focus on how it accomplishes its' MU effectively. Not only is Dafore only playing 10 creatures, well below the 14-17 I put in the "universal necessity" category for a limited deck, he's also playing quite a few cards considered "bad" (Long River's Pull, Mind Drill Assailant, Wildfire Howl, Fountainport Bell in a 2-color deck).

He's also playing only 15 lands, something that newer players are often excited to find reasons to do, but more experienced players will tell you is usually a mistake - but here is being done very intentionally.

There are tons of micro-decisions in this deckbuild that I love. Cutting a land for a fountainport bell improves all of the spell synergies. Playing two Uncharted Havens in your 15-land deck helps alleviate the source-count concerns when you play fewer than 17. Playing lots of instant and sorceries helps your Eddymurk Crabs be castable on as few as 2-3 lands a lot of the time, which again helps us operate on low land counts (this deck really only has 4 spells that cost more than 3 mana).

This deck has plenty of cheap removal and ways to trade up on mana with the 1-mana tricks (whose synergy with the prowess creatures helps offset their generally small board impact). It has ways to mitigate against flood with Flamecache Gecko and Mindwhisker, as well as the previously-mentioned 15 lands. It even has some universal answers to hard-to-kill threats in the counterspells, Sugar Coat, and Conduct Electricity. It can deal with a wide board (Wildfire Howl) or a tall board (Into the Flood Maw, Eddymurk Crab).

Does this deck have weaknesses? Sure. It probably struggles with an opponent who immediately fires off a Savor on its Stormcatch Mentor and then proceeds to only play 3/4s and 4/4s for the rest of the game (still, the crabs help there). But fundamentally this is a deck designed to make sure it will always, or at least, as much of the time as possible, have ways to use its mana to relevantly affect the board - both early on, and well into the lategame. Looking at the subtle details (playing both havens, playing the flamecache gecko outside of its' typical lizards home, playing the wildfire howl to cover a go-wide base) reveals just how much thought and effort is being put into proper MU to accomodate for the fact that many of these cards are the "bad" ones in the format.

When you understand Mana Utilization as the goal, you will start to recognize more and more what makes a limited deck "good", what makes some decks that you thought were full of "the good cards" actually quite bad, and what makes a deck full of "bad cards" better than expected. You will start to have an actual metric to weigh each of the myriad factors that make a deck "Good" by, and come to appropriate conclusions about what to prioritize in your drafts, in your sealed builds, and in your choices for 20th-23rd cards.

You'll be on your way to mastering Limited.