From new player to gold rank in limited

Drafting is an interesting beast. It requires a different approach compared to constructed and a special set of skills. The guide on improving the limited skills will be split into two part. The first will be focused on providing you with a solid foundation. If you read up on the BREAD principles, the tier lists and have an understanding of the main drafting elements that should be sufficient for you to reach the gold rank in Magic Arena.

The next chapter (under construction) will be focused on more advanced concepts that will allow you to up your game up to mythic rank.

Justlolaman who is a nearly infinite mythic ranked limited player in Magic Arena has provided lots of feedback and has helped write both of the chapters. Apart from his stream you can find his draft deck on his Discord. He also logs his picks with MTGA tool so you can check if you would have picked the same cards as he did.

Drafting tests your skills in reading signals, sending signals, picking the correct cards, constructing a cohesive deck and figuring out the metagame of the currently drafted set.

In MTGA bo1 and bo3 drafts you’re currently drafting against bots. This has its own pros and cons. The advantage is that you can close MTGA after you had started the picks, ask for advice, drink a cup of coffee and return to the same pick afterwards. The disadvantage is that bots have different personalities and pick based on the data from MTGO drafts. This leads to certain predictability of their signaling and experienced players can use this to their advantage constructing very powerful and synergetic decks.

However, the bot personalities and their picks are bound to change and that may lead to major changes in drafting picks. After patches you usually have to adjust to different colors because developers have data on how strong certain colors of the drafted deck become (e.g. Dimir and Boros in GRN drafts) and nerf it. Bot picks patterns change and you need to be ready for it.

Picking the correct cards is a little more straightforward. There are tier lists that are prepared by some of the best players in the world that discuss each new card and rank it in limited. Tier lists are there to help you pick in the vacuum, meaning they’re made for pick one, pack one.

The currently updated tier-list for RNA by Sjow, Deathsie and M0bieus can be found here and should be very useful for you as a starting point.

There are also streamers and content creators that make those for MTGA. There are also two theories on how to pick the cards – BREAD and QUADRANT that we’ll be discussing.

Finally, there’s a point of constructing a cohesive deck. Simply picking the cards according to the tier list may not be enough. Do you have the colors to support your resulting deck? Two or three colors? Is the format you’re drafting in fast or slow? What are the decks to beat? What are the synergies in the deck? There are always reviews of the set after the spoilers have been released, so do check them out.

Let’s jump into the known theories that govern the picks. BREAD stands for Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, Duds.

Bombs

These are the cards that are the best of the best in this environment. Picking them is almost always a good idea for drafting. Sometimes they’re evident from the first glance, e.g. Lyra that can win the games all on her own in limited. Sometimes they’re format specific, like patient rebuilding that is a bomb in M19. Knowing the bombs in each format is one of the first things you want to look at in the tier lists.

Bombs are usualy the cards that can win you the game on their own because of their huge power level.

Try to understand why they were listed as bombs and what are the winning strategies for that draft format!

Removal

You cannot really go bad with removal. Your opponents are humans and will draft accordingly. They will likely try to win with creatures and removal helps you get rid of those threats. The BREAD theory of pick orders tells us to value removal high and pick it if no bombs are available. Cards like Eviscerate and Luminous bonds may not see much play in constructed, but they’re prime picks in limited formats. Also do note that in limited you can pick more than four copies of a card, so you can have 6 Luminous bonds in your deck if you’d like.

It is important to have a way to deal with enemy bombs or enchanted creatures while you are waiting to draw your own bombs

Keep in mind that removal doesn’t have to have ‘destroy something’ in the text. It can tap the creature permanently, be attached to a creature, exile and even a creature can be close to a removal spell if it can be flashed it.

Evasion

Cards with evasion are limited staples. It’s not uncommon for a board stall to form in any of the drafting formats where attacking is unfavorable for any side. In this case creatures with flying, unblockable and creatures that can tap opponent’s blockers become extremely valuable as they’re able to close out the game.

It is not uncommon to have a board stall because most of limited decks will have a lot of ground creatures, so you need a way to break the stall before the opponent does, and evasion is one way to do it.

In some formats you might even encounter flyer decks that rely on evasion as their main win condition.

Aggro

Drafting is about more than picking only bombs and removal. What if you’re unlucky and didn’t get any? The way to win this is to try to be aggressive, when offence is the best defense. You need to play creatures early on turns 2, 3 and 4. You need to have a smooth mana curve and have somewhere between 13 to 17 creatures in your deck.

Tricks are important in aggro since you will be the one pressuring the opponent and they usualy will not have many mana open so when you are curving out, you want your smaller creatures (that were played on the first few turns) to go through their bigger, deffensive creatures.

Tricks are a great way to do this because they are usualy cheap and you can play another small creature to put up even more pressure. In aggro, every point of damage matters! Optimal number of tricks for an aggro deck is 3-5. The less removal you have, the more tricks you want to act as a pseudo removal.

Aggro decks can play 16 lands and even 15 lands since you want your curve to be low. But don't be afraid of picking 4-5 CMC removal because that is exactly what aggro decks love! You play your small creatures in the early turns and then you play your big removal for their problematic big blockers to let your babyboys go through.

An aggro draft with a few removal spells and bombs is viable in many formats.

Duds

Cards that you don’t want in a draft deck. Do note that this might include high rarity cards. You don’t want low power and no impact cards in your deck. Cards like Skirk prospector and Scapeshift are not something you want, but will pick if BREA is not available for you. Please note that since there are no sideboards in bo1 the utility of some cards like Naturalise is close to zero.

Use duds to fill out your manacurve. They’re not pretty, but they fulfill their purpose of either improving your manacurve of feeding your collection.

This rounds up the BREAD theory. Consulting the tier lists and following it in practice can lead to decent limited results. Watch the videos of people drafting to get a sense of how this process happens.

For draft tier lists at the release of the sets the sources to watch out for are Marshall and LSV. They're some of the best limited players in the world and highly respected.

Do note, that most of those reviews are made before anyone had drafted! This means that they're a good reference material but you should not rely solely on them on your picks. When you get better at drafting you will be comparing your thoughts and experience with those lists as a reference point, so try to adjust your picks towards what you learned about the set and toward synergies with your already picked cards.

If you want to practice picking cards without the risk, use draftsim or any other simulator. Lotus tracker (link in the tools section)

To break into the platinum ranks from gold it’ll require more that simple application of any theory and a few days of practice.

• You need to know not only the individual power of a card, but focus on flexible picks that can work in a broad variety of deck
• You need to know which archetypes are the strongest in the draft
• There’s little place for raredrafting if you are pushing for the top. A good common will be much more preferred to a mythic rare if it helps you win the draft
• Your deckbuilding skills should be up to par. Smooth manacurve, optimal number of creatures, spells and lands

A decent source of listed archetypes may be found on mtgsalvation and channel fireball. Read them through before heading into the draft. GRN, XLN, RIX 1, RIX 2, RIX 3, M19, DOM. And remember - practice makes perfect. The theories can help you understand how to play and what to improve, but the more drafts you play the better you understand the environment.

For new players I’d recommend streamers who go into details of their picks and don’t hurry:

Justlolaman

LegenVD

For people who are more experienced and wish to up their drafting game I’d recommend

BenStark

Ryan Spain - going optimal (he had also participated in the development of MTGA in closed beta) +1 for this podcast.

Go back a few episodes to where Ben Stark talks about "Drafting the hard way". Here's the link:

http://lrcast.com/limited-resources-470-unlimited-resources-with-ben-stark/

​

The following resources are a work in progress that's bound to be overhauled in the near future:

Some more articles that may be incorporated into the guide regarding drafting. Quadrant 1, Quadrant 2

Do note that this section will be updated and reworked in the near future with both getting to the gold rank and to the mythic rank. Meanwhile, there are Magic Arena specific tricks to using the interface and hotkeys to your advantage