After discussing format considerations in my last article, I want to talk about considerations for the actual cards in a format.

People love pick orders for limited, and hold them as gospel, but they only work at a very abstract level, and only for the first few picks. Having the most powerful cards in a vacuum doesn't mean you have the best deck at the table. You need the cards in your deck to work together for the same goal.

There is an economy to drafting. You want to use your picks as efficiently as possible, and that means setting yourself up to take advantage of late pick cards. That means you should find some way of being on a different page than the people around you. You want to figure out a way to sculpt your deck in a way that maximizes the value of middle-pick cards. You need to find as much value in every pack as possible.

Linears

Linears are the most common way that pick orders are shaken up. The basic idea is that you have a strategy that keeps incrementally improving the more of a card type (or in Coldsnap's case - the single card) you have. Oran-Rief Survivalist was not the best green common in Zendikar. If, however, you already had two other Survialists, three Ondu Cleric, and a Kazandu Blademaster, you might take that Survivalist over a far superior common or uncommon. The most common linears for limited are creature types, but just about anything can have a linear progression attached to it.

Even when Linears exist, though they are not always the right way to go. M10 had a few linears (number of Swamps, Soldiers, etc), but in general they were not strong enough, or prevalent enough, to go into the draft looking for. If you had three Veteran Armorsmith after pack one, you should probably have been working on pick up some more soldiers. Opening one in pack 1 doesn't mean you need to draft around that strategy.

Fighting the Metagame

When people think of metagame, they usually think of constructed, but there is a metagame for limited as well. Chances are, the first few drafts of a format are going to be a hot mess. People misread cards, don't take risks, and generally make their decks look a lot like a good deck in the previous format. Once, however, people have begun to figure out what the metagame looks like, and started drafting accordingly, you can begin to draft against that type. That means figuring out a weakness in the most common decks in the format, and exploiting that weakness.

The early general consensus for Shards limited was that 1 and 2 drops were bad, the more colors the merrier, and good decks relied on Obelisks and 4+ drops. How do you get an advantage in that format? By playing the format against itself. Build a quick deck that will put as much pressure on the board between turns 1 and 4 to give a player whose earliest spells are hovering around 3 mana a headache.

This concept works best with sealed deck, since each player has the ability to play the 'best color' if there is one. During the Zendikar PTQ season, you would be hard pressed to find a lot of players who weren't looking to playing B/R Aggro as their sealed deck. With that information, you can adjust your strategy accordingly. Knowing that your opponents deck is going to be full of 2/1 2 drops means that a 1/3 or 2/3 is going to be a higher-value card. In extreme examples, you can even play main deck color-hosers if they are strong enough.

For draft, you also have the option of building trick decks. I use this term to describe the deck in the format that uses 'bad' cards (often cards that usually go 10th, 11th or 12th pick) to dominate through unusual interactions.

Trick Decks

Just about every standalone set has a trick deck. Here are some of the highlights:

• Mirrodin: Disciple/Spellbomb
• Kamigawa: Dampen Thought/Arcane
• Ravnica: Drake Familiar/ETB Enchantments
• Coldsnap: Martyr/Grim Harvest
• Magic 2010: Mill
• Rise of the Eldrazi: Raid Bombardment

A lot of these decks are very handy to remember if your draft starts to go south. You may try and build a R/G Eldrazi ramp deck, only to find in the middle of pack 2, there just aren't any Eldrazi to be found. If you were mindful that Raid Bombardment.dec is a legitimate strategy and picked one up late in pack 1 for value, you can easily make the switch over and salvage your draft.

You should also be mindful of these during your mid-late picks even if you are not in these colors. Passing a 10th pick Tomb Scour for a card that you will not ever have to play is generally a bad idea. If you want to win drafts, it is not a bad idea to try hate draft the deck away from someone else, if you have the picks available to do so.

This is the secret to trick decks – you get a lot of 'first picks' because nobody wants any of the cards that are in your deck. A card like Eerie Procession becomes a first pick card in the Dampen Thought archetype, but because very few other decks would ever want it, you could pick them up in the middle of the draft or even pass one early and get it on the way back. Many of these decks (especially Matyr and Dampen Thought) were the most inherently powerful decks in the format because they tend to work on doing something slightly different than the rest of the format.

The biggest downside to trick decks is that the physical cards need to be opened. In your average 8 man, you will open around 2.3 of each common, 1.2 of each uncommon, .4 of each rare and .2 of each mythic. This makes going into a trick deck blind risky. Taking a Traumatize pick one/pack one hoping to get 4+ Tomb Scours is a bad bet. You need to have an above average number Tomb Scours floating around before the deck becomes an option.

Because of these numbers, trick decks run the risk of being cut off by someone on the opposite side of the table. Trick decks also tend to disappear in subsequent variations of the draft format because the one or two cards that you need are appearing in less and less packs.

As we approach M11 and Scars of Mirrodin, keep these concepts in mind. Try and go into the release events with an open mind, and look for every way to get an advantage that you possibly can. Mastering limited means being as flexible as possible, and being able to look at the game from different angles.