The two most important words in Scars of Mirrodin draft are Infect and Metalcraft. There are 16 commons/uncommon that make use of Infect. There are 15 commons/uncommon that have Metalcraft. The best Scars draft decks make use of Metalcraft or Infect. The Infect cards breakdown:

• Black - 5
• Green - 5
• Artifact - 6

The Metalcraft cards breakdown:

• White - 4
• Blue - 4
• Red - 2
• Green - 1
• Black - 1
• Artifact - 3

Clearly, if you want to draft an Infect deck, you want to draft Black/Green. Some people think playing either base Green or base Black with a splash of Blue for Proliferate or Red for removal is also a good way to draft Infect. This is rarely ideal. I drafted in a Trial at the 10K in NYC this weekend. I drafted a Blue/Red Metalcraft deck. I played against a mono-black Infect deck in the first round and a mono-green Infect deck in the second round. They both had the same problem: not enough Infect.

The Green deck would put pressure on me with a bunch of Cystbearers and just when I stabilized, he would drop an Alpha Terranax and I would practically breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of the 6/5, because it didn't have Infect and I was at 20 life but had several poison counters. It seemed every game I played against the Green and Black decks, I finished with a few poison counters and several points of damage done to my life total. The point of Infect (in large part) is to make my life total seem like 10 instead of 20, not 30 instead of 20.

I prefer drafting Metalcraft because it's much more flexible and often more powerful as well. Obviously, White and Blue have the most options with Metalcraft, but almost any color combination can work for it. A difference between Metalcraft decks and Infect decks is that you need lots of colored spells to make Infect work, but you don't need many colored spells to have a powerful Metalcraft deck, actually quite the opposite!

If the player to your left is drafting a Black/Green Infect deck in front of you and they pass you a couple Carapace Forgers, you can draft a Green/Red Metalcraft deck with the two Forgers as your only Green cards, a couple Red removal cards and a ton of artifacts. This is perfectly reasonable. If you are drafting Black/Green Infect deck and the player in front of you is doing the same thing, you're going to end up with a miserable deck.

So while I think Black/Green Infect is one of the best possible decks that can be drafted in Scars, it is not an archetype I consider when powerdrafting. This is the deck I drafted this weekend:

[cardlist]

[Spells]

1 Disperse

1 Galvanic Blast

2 Shatter

1 Bladed Pinions

1 Panic Spellbomb

1 Origin Spellbomb

1 Sylvok Lifestaff

1 Glint Hawk Idol

[/Spells]

[Creatures]

1 Embersmith

1 Riddlesmith

1 Trinket Mage

1 Vedalken Certarch

2 Gold Myr

2 Silver Myr

3 Chrome Steed

1 Neurok Replica

1 Memnite

1 Wall of Tanglecord

1 Snapsail Glider

[/Creatures]

[Lands]

8 Island

8 Mountain

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

This deck includes six cards with Metalcraft, 18 cards costing two or less, eight colored cards, 16 artifacts and 16 land. I consider this a successful draft. I like to get at least 4 or 5 good cards with Metalcraft and I like to play with at least 14 or 15 artifacts. I usually play 16 land in Scars limited for these reasons:

• I can usually wait a long time to get both my colors since so much of deck is colorless.
• I try to play with lots of Spellbombs and Myrs, so I rarely get stuck with too little mana.
• I rarely play with more than 2 or 3 cards that cost more than four mana and I usually play with at least 12 or 13 cards costing 2 or less.

I won all three matches at my eight man table and then I lost in the finals of the tournament to a Blue/White Metalcraft deck that won the other table.

So when powerdrafting Scars, we want to draft Metalcraft. A key part of powerdrafting is narrowing down the options we are considering to a relatively tight focus. So now we need to determine what are the best colored cards for a Metalcraft strategy. Let's start by looking at the top commons and uncommons in each color:

Green

1. Carapace Forger
2. Slice in Twain
3. Untamed Might
4. Molder Beast
5. Acid Web Spider
6. Bellowing Tanglewurm
7. Lifesmith

There are several problems with Green. First, as usual, there isn't any creature control. Also typical, there isn't any evasion. Most importantly though, the top Green cards are mostly slow and expensive. Three of the top six cards are five drop creatures. I try to avoid playing five drops in Scars, when I do, they are typically high powered artifacts.

Black

1. Skinrender
2. Grasp of Darkness
3. Painsmith
4. Bleak Coven Vampires
5. Necrogen Scudder
6. Fume Spitter
7. Instill Infection

Skinrender and Grasp of Darkness are some of the best removal in the set, but there is a pretty steep drop off from there. The one Metalcraft card costs five mana. Necrogen Scudder costs more than Auriok Sunchaser and has a drawback!

Red

1. Arc Trail
2. Galvanic Blast
3. Oxidda Scrapmelter
4. Embersmith
5. Shatter
6. Blade-Tribe Berserkers
7. Turn to Slag

Scars Limited is filled with powerful small creatures and there isn't a Pyroclasm or a Prodigal Pyromancer to punish people for it. Arc Trail is one of the best ways to take advantage of this. It will frequently kill the two best creatures your opponent has in play for only two mana! Embersmith is powerful for similar reasons. The fact that Shatter is fifth on this list speaks to the high power level of Red in Scars.

Blue

1. Trinket Mage
2. Lumengrid Drake
3. Riddlesmith
4. Vedalken Certarch
5. Volition Reins
6. Disperse
7. Halt Order

Blue makes a powerful support color. It has strong control cards, but few big threats (relatively speaking.) It also does card advantage well, with things like Trinket Mage, Volition Reins and Halt Order.

White

1. Auriok Sunchaser
2. Razor Hippogriff
3. Ghalma's Warden
4. Glint Hawk
5. Revoke Existence
6. Arrest
7. Myrsmith

Like Red, White is loaded. Arrest is some of the best creature control in the set, and yet it languishes at number six behind an impressive list of huge threats and another great removal card. In order to get a clearer idea what the best colors are for powerdrafting Scars, we need to see what happens when we combine all five colors into one ranking list:

1. Arc Trail
2. Galvanic Blast
3. Skinrender
4. Oxidda Scrapmelter
5. Auriok Sunchaser
6. Embersmith
7. Razor Hippogriff
8. Carapace Forger
9. Ghalma's Warden
10. Trinket Mage
11. Lumengrid Drake
12. Glint Hawk
13. Revoke Existence
14. Grasp of Darkness
15. Arrest
16. Shatter
17. Riddlesmith
18. Vedalken Certarch
19. Slice in Twain
20. Myrsmith
21. Painsmith
22. Bleak Coven Vampires
23. Volition Reins
24. Untamed Might
25. Blade-Tribe Berserkers

The breakdown by color looks like:

• White - 7
• Red - 6
• Blue - 5
• Black - 4
• Green - 3

Further condemning Black and Green is the fact that they each only have one card in the top 13. Red and White each have four cards in the top twelve! This doesn't really surprise me. When I played sealed deck at the 10K this weekend, by far the most common color combination I saw played was Red/White, especially in the winner's bracket.

When powerdrafting Scars of Mirrodin, Red/White is the top color combination to look for. If you're trying to decide which one of two colored cards to take early in the draft and one of them is Red or White and the other isn't, the Red/White card should get the nod. If one of those colors seems completely cut off, then Blue makes for a good back up plan. Given how few colored playables you need for a Metalcraft deck, it's really hard for you to be completely cut off though.

Now that you know what colors to draft and what order to favor colored cards, now you need to know what common/uncommon artifacts you should be favoring when drafting:

1. Glint Hawk Idol
2. Snapsail Glider
3. Rusted Relic
4. Chrome Steed
5. Golem Artisan
6. Tumble Magnet
7. Sylvok Replica
8. Darksteel Axe
9. Origin Spellbomb
10. Contagion Clasp
11. Neurok Replica
12. Palladium Myr
13. Myr Galvanizer
14. Strider Harness
15. Bladed Pinions
16. Horizon Spellbomb
17. Perilous Myr
18. Trigon of Rage
19. Gold Myr
20. Iron Myr
21. Silver Myr
22. Copper Myr
23. Leaden Myr
24. Panic Spellbomb
25. Accorder's Shield

Glint Hawk Idol and Origin Spellbomb are additional reasons to play White, while Sylvok Replica and Horizon Spellbomb score some points for Green. Of course you don't strictly need to play these colors to draft/play these cards, but it definitely helps. The top six cards on this list are all solid first overall picks, because they will be exciting main deck cards no matter what colors you end up playing.

In general, if you know what colors you are playing, then you should take cards from the top twenty of the colored list over anything not in the top seven of this list. That being said, keep in mind, cards like Auriok Sunchaser, Glint Hawk Idol, Carapace Forger, Rusted Relic and Embersmith are much weaker if your deck isn't chock full of cheap artifacts. If you don't have at least seven or eight good artifacts that cost two or less, you need to change how you're powerdrafting Scars of Mirrodin.