It used to be that we'd get one new limited format a year. The small expansions would change things up a bit, but the overall format was very similar. In the last year, though, we've had three fully new limited formats, and we will get two new formats in the next six months. If you want to do well at your local pre-releases, or even just playing with your friends in the opening weeks of a set, then you need to look at the format as a whole and make some decisions about what will and won't be good. By the time the set has been out on MODO for a week or two, copious pick order articles are available, and people have figured out the set by trial and error. I don't like waiting that long – I like to figure out the format early. If you can get ahead of the curve early on, you can stay ahead of it in the future.

To start off, I'm going to talk about the fundamental values of creatures in the set. If you want to get a feel for the set, focus on the commons. Take a look through the uncommons. Rares and Mythics just don't come up enough to put them into the equation.

I'm going to look at three factors today that you can use to help define the limited format in your head before the set even comes out.

Fundamental Mana Cost – This is the mana cost that you can spend on permanents that actually matter. Every limited format has a number of cards ranging from 1 to 10 mana, but most also have a certain cost where the permanents start to outclass ones of lower ranges. Going all the way back to Mirage, you can see that while 3 casting cost permanents were nice, the ones at 4 casting cost were generally twice as large with a negligible draw back. Onslaught had a fundamental mana cost of between 4 and 5. There weren't many 1 or 2 drops worth mentioning (the notable exception being Sparksmith, who would have been pretty good at twice the cost). Also, everyone had optional 3 drops in the form of Morphs, so it was hard to try and outrace and opponent who kept a hand with no early drops. As a result, the format was much slower.

Zendikar had a fundamental mana cost between 2 and 3. Two drop common cards like Welkin Tern, Plated Geopede and Kor Skyfisher were awesome on turn 2, and could still effect the board on turn 7. The landfall mechanic meant that as long as you were playing a land every turn, you didn't need to be casting cards in the 5-6 range. Your early drops could cope, and you could pay the kicker on spells if you had the mana.

Rise also has a much higher fundamental cost, probably somewhere in 5-6 range. Even though there are a lot of great 1 and 2 drops, they don't do much of anything until you can afford to put a good amount of mana into them with level up. Knight of Cliffhaven may be great as a 2/3 flyer, but that still requires 5 mana, even if he only costs two to play. Everything that happens before you can start spending that fundamental amount of mana is just a precursor to the meat of the limited format.

If you can look at the spoiler and get a rough idea of what the fundamental mana cost is, you can get a good idea of how many lands to play, and how your curve should look. If you looked at the Shards of Alara spoiler the day before they pre-release, you notice that there were very few good 1 and 2 drops outside of the Bant shard. That meant the format was going to be slower. It also had a lot of really good 6 and 7 drops. You want a curve that is tilted towards the upper end of the spectrum if you want to play good spells. All of a sudden, you can tell before you even open your sealed deck that Obelisks are going to be really good. Zendikar, on the other hand, wouldn't have benefited much from the additions of Obelisks. You just don't get a large enough jump in card quality to justify skipping a turn in a format full of very strong 2 and 3 drops.

Key Toughness/'Invulnerablity' – Toughness is a secondary value for constructed. In limited, toughness is a very important value. Creatures tend to be much less efficient, and the majority of removal comes in the form of damage or –x/-x abilities. In Zendikar, the key toughness is 3. Disfigure and Burst Lightning both defaulted to '2' (though Burst could hit 4 at the mid-game). Also, most cheap creatures had a power of 2. That means your 2/3 is going to block really well in the early game and is going to dodge a lot of the removal. The virtual Invulnerability number is the toughness where the majority of the removal in the set can't hit it. For Zendikar again, 5 is the key number. At 5 toughness, you dodge all of the removal except "destroy target creature." You can feel confident playing a bomb with 5 toughness against anything but a black deck. The number for a set like Rise is considerably higher due to the fact that there is a common that does 4 (Flame Slash) and two that do X with Heat Ray and Induce Despair. In addition, there is a lot of removal that will blank most creatures in the form of Narcolepsy and Guard Duty.

It's also important to know at all times exactly how many removal spells in the format will deal with specific bombs. Going back to Onslaught again, Visara the Dreadful was a real pain to play against. None of the red spells did enough damage to kill her by themselves, and the only spell of any other color that could kill her at the common rarity was Cruel Revival. There wasn't a lot of point trying to bait out removal when the odds of your opponent being able to deal with your creature are miniscule.

On the flip side of the coin, when you are looking at your removal, you need to know what you should and shouldn't spend it on. You may be able to use a Hideous End to get an extra few points of damage in for a turn, but if your opponent is playing with creatures that you have no other reasonable way of dealing with, then it may be better to let your opponent block and trade with your creature.

Power/Toughness Ratios – It may seem somewhat inconsequential, but the overall ratio of power to toughness helps to define the aggressiveness of the format.

Tempest, Zendikar, Mirrodin, had creatures with higher power than toughness.

Most core sets, Lorwyn, and Champions of Kamigawa had creatures with equal power and toughness.

Rise of the Eldrazi and Masques had creatures with higher toughness than power.

In general, this will define how good blocking is. When most creatures have higher power than toughness, blocking is really bad. Any plan of turtling and playing late game bombs is going to be risky. Your three or four drop is still going to trade with their two drops. You really have to go out of your way to make this strategy work. These formats often come down to who has more removal, or who can be more aggressive.

When creatures are of about the same size, you generally need to work hard on synergies and tricks to push things through. If those strategies aren't available, these formats often become attrition wars where creatures trade left and right, and the player who can either draw more cards, or get the most card advantage in other ways, will have the upper hand.

When creatures have big butts, you need something to push through stalemates. Evasion in these formats is far stronger than in the more aggressive formats. Since the games go longer, you also tend to be rewarded for having big bombs and using your removal as wisely as possible.

When you have figured out the fundamentals of the format, you can start evaluating cards in context. Glory Seeker was good in Onslaught because it was a slower format, and the average 2/2 was a Grey Ogre and not a bear. Put it in Rise where the bears tend to have level up, and all of a sudden he isn't looking so hot.

Next week I'm going to continue talking about the basics of limited set evaluation and talk about looking for linears, the trick decks of a format, and how to formulate a plan to attack the format with your limited deckbuilding.