Two keys to becoming a top level drafter are card evaluation and color evaluation. In an effort to help you with this, I have made a list of the top commons and uncommons for draft in Magic 2011. Based on your feedback and constantly doing more drafts, I will periodically update this list.

M11 Power Rankings

1. Fireball
2. Serra Angel
3. Mind Control
4. Air Servant
5. Lightning Bolt
6. Cudgel Troll
7. Foresee
8. Doom Blade
9. Chandra's Outrage
10. Aether Adept
11. Azure Drake
12. Pacifism
13. Blinding Mage
14. Assassinate
15. Water Servant
16. Garruk's Packleader
17. Augury Owl
18. Jace's Ingenuity
19. Prodigal Pyromancer
20. Acidic Slime
21. Cloud Elemental
22. Quag Sickness
23. Stormfront Pegasus
24. Garruk's Companion
25. Howling Banshee

When making this list I tried to be colorblind. I took into account power level, casting cost and power level within the format itself, but not whether they were a color I favored. To be near the top of the list, a card needed to be one that could win entire games all by itself. This is the main reason Doom Blade isn't higher. It kills almost anything, cheaply and at instant speed, but you can't kill your opponent with it and sometimes it can actually be a dead card. As you can tell from the placement of Foresee and Augury Owl, I really like scrying. You can also see from this list that I prioritize flying, removal and card drawing. Cudgel Troll and Water Servant are exceptions because they are ground creatures under five mana that can win games single-handedly, a rare but valuable commodity.

A big reason to make a list like this is to help with color evaluation. While Black, Red, White and Green each have four cards in the top 25, Blue has an impressive nine. This depth of quality is the main reason I almost always draft Blue when power drafting M11. Much to my surprise, Black only has two cards in the top 20 and none in the top seven. This is in part because many of the best cards in Black, such as Corrupt, get much weaker if your deck doesn't have a heavy concentration of Swamps.

This list seems to suggest Red and Blue are the best colors to draft. This is hurt by a couple of factors: they don't have great synergy and Fireball rarely gets passed, no matter what colors someone is playing. Blue likes to set up defenses on the ground with 1/3s and Wall of Frost, while attacking in the air and staying in control with counters and card drawing. Red likes to rush the enemy on the ground and use lots of Mountains, while Blue wants lots of Islands.

This weekend we had a great opportunity to see what other pros think about card, color and archetype evaluation at US Nationals in Minnesota. In addition to playing Standard they were also booster drafting using M11. I took a look at how the draft went at Pod One on Friday and found some interesting results. Here was each player's first pick:

• David Ochoa- Stormfront Pegasus
• Benjamin Lundquist- Steel Overseer
• Matthew Forner- Juggernaut
• Charles Gindy- Doom Blade
• Anthony Eason- Overwhelming Stampede
• Aaron Wilburn- Serra Angel
• Korie McDuffie- Blinding Mage
• Josh Utter-Leyton- Grave Titan

At a glance, I find three things that stand out to me: three players picked White cards, two picked artifacts and none picked Blue cards. First let's take a look at the three White picks. David took Stormfront Pegasus over Magma Phoenix, Pyroclasm and Giant Spider. I have it ranked a little higher than Spider and Pyroclasm, but I doubt it's quite as powerful as the Phoenix. I can think of some very good reasons to take the Pegasus, however. Red is very busy at five mana and M11 decks don't have much trouble getting enough five-drops. In contrast, you can never have enough high quality two drops. In addition, if you take the Phoenix, the next player might think the Pyroclasm means you aren't drafting Red. Also it's likely that David was power drafting and a deck based around cheap White flyers is one of the archetypes he most wants to play.

Aaron took Serra Angel over Obstinate Baloth and Assassinate. On the basis of power level this is the correct pick. Although if I liked Green as much as I like White, it would be very hard to pass on the Baloth. This probably doesn't tell us much other than Aaron isn't focused on forcing either Green and Black and that he appreciates the power of one of Magic's iconic creatures.

Korie took Blinding Mage over Vengeful Archon, Spined Wurm, Prodigal Pyromancer and Augury Owl. I have the Mage ranked higher than these other cards, but I would be tempted to take the Owl. If you take the Mage, many players will take the Archon next. Also, I really like Blue/Black and if I take the Owl, the pack will be bereft of really good Blue or Black cards.

Benjamin took Steel Overseer over Giant Spider, Spined Wurm, Ice Cage, Mind Rot and Nightwing Shade. This is the best pick. None of the other cards are good enough to make me commit to a color, yet this ensured that Benjamin's first pick isn't wasted. No matter what deck he drafts, the Overseer will make the cut as a solid two drop. While I often prefer to use my first pick on a colored card, so I can start sending messages to the drafters behind me as soon as possible, I don't think there are any useful messages to send here.

Matthew took Juggernaut over Chandra's Outrage, Foresee, Aether Adept and Jace's Ingenuity. This is a reasonable pick for many of the same reasons that Benjamin taking the Overseer was. I prefer Chandra's Outrage here. I think it's a much better card and I like being able to cut off a color and it's a color I really like. As much as I like Blue, the depth of Blue here is probably a reason to leave it alone. In contrast, Charles took Doom Blade instead of a Juggernaut. Among his other best options were Ice Cage, Inspired Charge, Mind Rot and Elvish Archdruid. I'm definitely a fan of this pick by the defending champion. It allows you to avoid signaling the next drafter into black and it's a much better card than Juggernaut.

The other two players, Josh and Anthony, both took bomb Rares, hard to argue with that. Apparently their luck continued, as these two faced off against each other in the finals on Sunday. Overall, I found Charles and David's drafts the most interesting. Charles ended up drafting Black/Blue and David White/Blue, two of my favorite archetypes in M11 draft. Among other things, their early picks seemed to suggest the possibility they are both power drafters, not just draft readers. This is especially true of Charles. Every pick in the first pack he took a Black or Blue card, never wavering, never wasting a pick and never counter drafting. While he and I don't always agree on individual card evaluation, it looked very much like how I usually draft M11.

In David's case, he wasn't quite as focused. Even after passing Pyroclasm and Magma Phoenix, he took a 3rd pick Prodigal Pyromancer. He did cut White extremely hard and perhaps was even trying to keep mono-white open as a possibility. By the end of the first pack, he had two playable Red cards, two playable Blue cards and seven White playables. It was a little bit of a surprise in pack two when he passed over a Hoarding Dragon in favor of a Cloud Crusader, since he likes Red/White enough to 3rd pick the Pyromancer after taking two good White cards. However, it was close enough that keeping open his mono-white and Blue/White options by taking the Crusader was quite reasonable.

If David likes aggressive White flyers as much as this draft suggests, I think I might have considered forcing Blue/White from the outset. As I mentioned in a previous article, mono-white aggro can be forced with the expectation of having a reasonable deck. So this leads me to believe forcing Blue/White to be even more realistic given the depth and power of Blue in M11 and the synergy of these two colors.

My lovely assistant Rada eagerly volunteered to force Blue/White online to give us more data. Chance cooperated by giving her a first pick Serra Angel to get things off to a good start. After taking a Pacifism and a Cloud Elemental with her next two picks, things started to dry up for her. Yet I was pretty confident that would mean great things for her in the second set of packs, given how completely cut off from Blue and White the player to her left would be.

Sure enough, the second set of packs gave her Jace Beleren, Assault Griffin, Foresee, Elite Vanguard, Cloud Elemental and a few other solid playables. The bigger surprise came in the third set of packs when she got passed Air Servant, Pacifism, Azure Drake, two Cloud Elementals and Foresee. Her deck ended up as:

[cardlist]1 Serra Angel

2 Pacifism

4 Cloud Elemental

1 Infantry Veteran

1 Diminish

1 Jace Beleren

1 Assault Griffin

2 Foresee

1 Elite Vanguard

1 Augury Owl

2 Silvercoat Lion

2 Unsummon

1 Inspired Charge

1 Mighty Leap

1 Air Servant

1 Azure Drake

1 Terramorphic Expanse

8 Island

8 Plains[/cardlist]

She also had Negate, Palace Guard, two Ice Cage and a Cancel in her sideboard. As is usually the case, if you force an archetype hard enough in M11 draft, you end up with plenty of good playables, especially if you aren't going for mono-color. The main thing that can go wrong is that you will end up without some of the key cards for your archetype. In this case, I think Rada's deck would have greatly benefited from some number of Stormfront Pegasus, Blinding Mage and Aether Adept, but when forcing an archetype, this is a risk you run.

The key commons for Blue/White are:

• Aether Adept
• Augury Owl
• Azure Drake
• Blinding Mage
• Cloud Elemental
• Diminish
• Excommunicate
• Foresee
• Inspired Charge
• Mana Leak
• Mighty Leap
• Pacifism
• Preordain
• Safe Passage
• Stormfront Pegasus
• Wild Griffin

You basically want every flyer possible, pump, scrying and ways to deal with your opponent's creatures. David and Rada both ended up with solid decks along these lines. The key thing to do is to find an archetype that is deep, powerful and get good at both drafting and playing it. Then you always have the option of forcing it. Of course, to be a real power drafter, you need at least one back-up plan, but you are well on your way when you've perfected an archetype like Blue/White.