I don't think it's controversial in any way that knowing the rules is the basis to play any game correctly. MTG is no exception to this rules about rules. That said, knowing all of the 265-page MTG comprehensive rules book (number of pages at the time of writing) can feel more than daunting (is useless more than daunting?). There are summarised versions of the rules but that's not good enough either. The most practical option is to know where to find the comprehensive rules and how to trail through them to find our answers; and to challenge ours and others' interpretation of the rules when some unconventional case comes up during a game.

We often hear some "Judge!" calls during events, even at FNM. There's no shame in calling for advice or clarification. But knowing the rules ourselves can help us find unusual paths to victory. For example, giving deathtouch to our trampler by surprise will let face damage through. Or bouncing back our permanent that, when it ETBs, sends a target in exile until our permanent leaves the battlefield, when this effects resolves, would leave the target in exile for the rest of the game. Sequencing and the use of the stack more generally is another endless source of examples. We get screwed over once with these tricks, we learn them (and why they're legal), and we're able to reproduce them. The more games we play, with unusual cases, with fellow players who are on top of the rules, with the will to learn and to find any way to win these games, the more rules we know and can make use of. In summary, practice makes perfect.

How to improve? If we can't stop thinking at challenging ourselves, and can't wait to randomly stumble on a specific rule point, puzzles can help too. If a lot are about counting damage and optimal blocking options, some make use of advanced notions of gameplay. Check a list here!

Before even having a chance to look at the cards of a set, we usually get teased with new keywords, special mechanics and a different flavour of the basics - such as planeswalkers at uncommon and rare for WAR; legendary types in DOM; or Mystical Archive cards, preponderance of instants and sorceries and limitation to 5 enemy "official" colour pairs for STX. We can consider these as extensions to the basic rules of the game. The way they build on the rules sometimes test our mastery. But most of the time, they significantly affect the rating of a card's characteristics. For example, cycling makes higher mana value cards more playable. By extension, any mechanic resembling cycling, such as Blood tokens in VOW, would have a similar effect.

A good example can be found in the mechanics of SNC - let's pick Casualty and Blitz, at the intersect of red and black colours. As a first check, Casualty, which allows to duplicate our spells by sacrificing a creature, feels like a good recycling of low power critters which become irrelevant in mid- to late game. But if Casualty appears on an instant-speed spell, then it opens a much wider array of opportunities, including response to chump blocking or our opponent's removal. In this case, we're closer to enabling 2-for-1 value. Combining with Blitz, we get even more value. Blitz imposes to sacrifice our creature at the next end step - and not at the end of combat, as the design was made for MID's Decayed Zombie tokens - and allows the creature to be cycled by getting us a card. Now, combining Blitz with Casualty (in this case, even at sorcery speed), we've got a way of drawing a card off Blitz and copying our spell off Casualty. Reading between the lines of the design took probably a few minutes to content creators, but if we had missed the news, playing a couple of drafts would have made all the above fairly obvious.

How to improve? There's some value in studying these mechanics and ask ourselves what they look like (e.g. like similar mechanics from past sets), what was the influence of these mechanics in these past sets, and how the evaluation of which card characteristics were affected. However, deciphering how these set specifics will translate in play will pale in front of the experience gathered from actually practicing. The first few weeks of the set lifecycle will tell how they play out. All this reflexion will provide us with is a temporary edge - at best. WotC always provides an overiew of the new mechanics before the spoiler season. The keyword list is update regularly in the comprehensive rules book, or you can find a list of the keywords on MTG Wiki, but the clearest explanation, specific for the set, is provided by WotC in the set's release notes (there's no fixed place where the release notes are stored, so the best place to find them is on your favourite internet search engine).

The proper prep for the set starts with the spoilers. Now we're talking about practical, applicable insights! There's so much to look at, so I suggest going through an itemised list. Please note as well that not everything about the set lies in that layer - we might well see a lot going on about micro-synergies and archetypes by just looking at individual cards, but we'll get into this later.

• know the cards: we'll set aside the fun of discovering the set on the day of the prerelease - I fully understand that following the spoilers can deprive us of it. However, if we want to fare well early, a bit of prep helps. Getting to know the cards' text seems obvious, but let's look at 4 things: new shapes of old friends, traps and tricks.
  The first of the list comes from the fact that sets always have updated flavours of the basic cards: counterspell, unsummon, disenchant, black removal, shock, act of treason, green fight or bite spell, etc. Finding these disguised old friends and looking at how their design was twisted for the sake of the set is often telling about how to play with the set's mechanics - but as well, it helps to avoid being surprised when playing - casting cost, sorcery/instant, forgetting part of the rule text of the card, etc. A good address, amongst others, to get acquainted with the cards is scryfall.com, with loads of way to filter queries, and a slick interface.
  That leads us to looking at traps, which are these painfully overlooked characteristics of a card that can cost us a game. Does any of these ring a bell: "well, ok then, I block your little flyer on my big reach guy", or "this is a sorcery, you can't bounce my guy with that during my turn - anything else before damage?" Reading the cards well gets a long way to minimise misplay.
  The last bit are tricks. Our opponent has 2 untapped lands at the time of our combat phase, what can happen? Knowing instant-speed tricks, especially the ones at common, helps a lot to read our opponent's moves. MTGPrimer.com provides a very polished interfaced to get the list and play with it a bit to learn about it.

• card evaluation and ranking lists: although it follows a well-known grid, the rating of cards at the early stage of a set's lifecycle is a bit of a dark art. As cards get seen for the first time, without having seen play, this evaluation "in a vacuum" (which actually means against a fairly blurry benchmark defined by the last few years) is only an initial working draft. Everyone has their own take at it, and Frank Karsten used to openly share rankings blended from various sources (at the time of writing, his rankings are behind ChannelFireball's paywall), including the always widely expected ratings from hall-of-famer Luis Scott-Vargas, and rankings from Limited Resources, Draftsim and the Draftaholics Anonymous. Lords of Limited provide ratings too, including a more qualitative categorisation of the cards in the "4 R's" framework (reason, reward, roleplayer and replaceable) - which is definitely worth a check. Let's have a look at what there is to take out of this initial work.
  First, cards won't be fully appreciated until they're played out in the context of the set. Comparing cards from a set needs more than just confronting their face value: we'll see what micro- and macro-synergies may or may not add to a card's performance. This initial ranking is therefore bound to evolve, with good and bad surprises. However, we can use it for what it's worth: it gives a rough base to start playing.
  Second, it's somehow subjective, especially at the early stage of the set's lifecycle (hence the blending operated by Frank Karsten, as mentioned earlier). In practice, at the top of the rankings, it doesn't matter which mythic rare is better than this other mythic rare - we'll very rarely have a chance to choose between two mythic rares in a single pack. It starts to matter further down the list where uncommons and commons start to appear - we are likely to be confronted with a choice there. And whatever others think (be them ranking websites, pros, talented content creators or friends) - when we're facing the choice, it's down to us to make the call. At that point, having a clear ranking in mind does help making tough choices, and quickly.
  So, all in all, ranking does matter, and whether it's preliminary or not, we need to be comfortable with it. To get there, we can have a look at others' evaluation and rankings with a critical eye. My recommendation is Draftaholics Anonymous, since you can test yourself with the pairs they provide. The ranking evolves quite a bit throughout the life of the set as users' practice of the cards sheds light on their performance. And to have a more definite, data-backed view, each card's performance comes out a couple of weeks into the set's lifecycle on 17lands.com.

• colour strength: the strength of a colour is how good the cards of that colour are in comparison to the cards from other colours. It's of course relative, within the boundaries of a given set. A way of evaluating a colour's strength is by adding the individual ratings of each card at each rarity for each colour, and then comparing them. The initial ranking can be used as an initial guidance to favour/avoid a colour more than others. Once again, before having played with the set, it is not possible to make a final statement: the prevalence of micro-synergies and of archetypes will affect it, but only time will tell how and how much.
  I wanted to test that: I've been through the exercise for ZNR and KHM and the results are actually misleading as compared to the final conclusions (here, ZNR) at the end of the sets' respective lifecycles! Colour strength ranking can therefore vary significantly as time goes by.

• colour depth: the depth of a colour can be defined by the quality of the cards at the bottom of the rankings, and their usefulness in multiples in a deck. A colour can be strong with some high quality commons, but if most of the other commons are actually weak and/or offer fringe uses only, it'll translate into fewer drafters being able to be on that colour. The spot will be more contested, potentially leaving players with weaker decks. On the contrary, if the weakest cards of a colour are actually playable, they'll allow several drafters at the table to be using it.

• theme/mechanic support/dependency: as Mike Sigrist points out very accurately, micro-synergies and mechanics are fine, as long as the cards that are using them are still good in their own right. Having dependencies in a deck can indeed feel bad when either piece of the puzzle is missing. How well a theme or a mechanic is supported determines how likely it is to bring value. The power level and rarity of enablers and payoffs are the main criteria to estimate that. For example, immediate payoffs around Treasures tokens in SNC aren't enough for red-green to be attractive as a colour combination. Sometimes as well, the keyword isn't spelled out, but it is a synergy with the mechanic: for example, Body Dropper, the red-black signature common in SNC, doesn't read any of the set keywords, but would trigger on use of Blitz and Casualty, making it a premium card.

• build-around potential: now writing about everything and its opposite... identifying build-arounds and starting scheming grand plans for an unbeatable deck feels so good - for as long as it stays under control (I'd argue that there's a lot of truth in being boring in Limited!). Without talking about game-winning card combos, some cards can lead to archetypes of their own. Clear the Mind is an example: it is the pivotal card of a winning strategy. Either way (combo or pivotal card), it still recoups what we said previously: if the cards don't stand by themselves individually, we shouldn't pick them highly. If they do, then let's start dreaming!

• purpose of each card: over the years, the design of sets improved so that there are now much fewer unplayable cards. Another way of saying it is that colour depth has increased overall. It's not by just making Gray Ogres larger, but instead by creating cards which have a role to play, a niche to occupy, in one or more of the set's archetypes. It's worth giving each card a thought about how they place in the big picture of the set - a practice at the heart of Mystical Dispute podcast, where targeted cards are analysed; and an exercise that I attempted to exhaustively solve with my micro-synergy evaluator.

• resilience and consistency: going further on the previous concepts exposed here, winning at MTG often involves resilience and consistency. Identifying in the cards of a set how they help us achieve that is key to playing better, winning more often, enjoying ourselves more, or any combination of the 3. Arguably, a card's ratings will already reflect how it improves a deck's consistency (and sometimes it explains why some apparently average cards are rated highly), but power level can get in the way and mix up the signals. These consistency-enabling cards may seem to have lower face value, but they help smoothing draws (e.g. with Scry or Cycling), finding lands, replacing themselves at some point, enabling recursion, etc. Just another lens to use when the spoilers are out.

• prince or pauper: a set is said prince when disproportionately powerful rares are more frequent than usual, hence favouring removals or aggro strategies to either manage our opponent's bombs or win before they show up. Pauper sets stand out by the strength and depth of commons in all colours, allowing to build efficient decks without relying on rares. For example, THB and VOW were prince sets. Pauper sets are less often coined as such.

• power creep: vast subject, which saw the decline of common Gray Ogres in favour of Onakke Ogres. Jokes aside, and more specifically at a set level, it is about resetting our benchmark to evaluate each card in the context of the whole set, with different (higher?) average power/toughness creature for each given mana value and colour, or generally power level.

• various other statistics: there's quite a bit of telling statistics on a set that can give clues about how it is going to play out. For example, the average creature toughness in WAR was higher than usual. Blocking was made easier, allowing to protect planeswalkers (not a luxury in a set where they come at uncommon), and favouring flyers and controlling decks. All these turned out to be true when the set started to play out. Lords of Limited, for their initial set reviews, provide various statistics. Everything is relative to previous sets - there's no benchmark for "normality". Here are a sample that I find relevant:

• Average power/toughness of creatures at common - that helps to figure out whether aggro or defensive strategies are favoured

• Average number of creatures per colour - to estimate how valuable and contested creature picks will be during drafts

• Number and quality of 2-drops: creatures at 2 mana value are so important for curving out and double-spelling that it's worth checking what they are at each colour. A gap there might mean trouble.

• Quality of 5/6-drops: the top end of the curve should help close games. What do we have at common? KHM's Ravenous Lindwurm was has big hitter for a set in which such a large body mattered and slower control multicolour decks prevailed.

• Average casting cost of creatures per colour - it'll influence the edge of aggro of some colours versus others

• Number of removals in each colour - fewer removals than usual means more leeway to support precise strategies and invest in expensive creatures

• • Removal suite: what is the reach of each removal card? 17lands.com's Sierkovitz's removal guide, shared on Twitter such as the one for SNC, sheds light on how much coverage each piece of toughness-based removal provides, i.e. how to value the cheap red burn, whether it's safer to board in a copy of the expensive (and sometimes slow) one, and how to figure out the circumstantiated value of black versions.

How to improve? This whole list is certainly not exhaustive, and there might be more specific things to look at for any given set. A good way to get acquainted with the cards is to follow the spoilers, for example on scryfall.com's spoiler list, where each card has a caption that redirects to the content creators who give their first thoughts. Specific rulings from the set's release notes are provided there too; sometimes, rule clarifications highlight specific cases that uncover unconventional ways to play the card - and give some ideas, if not testing our understanding of the rules. When rankings come out, we can challenge ourselves to evaluate the cards in our own way. And once all that is done, why not testing our understanding on Draftaholics Anonymous?

Regardless of the influence they may or may not have on drafting and playing, micro-synergies are of the highest interest to me. I've been drilling in the topic at length for ZNR, and again for KHM, leading to results which actually got some attention. I'll let readers judge by themselves...!

Micro-synergies are basically synergies between cards. Starting with a simple case, given 2 cards, micro-synergies are made possible by one of the cards, the enabler, which trigger beneficial effects off the other card - the benefit is called payoff, and by extension, this other card is called this way too. The extent of the payoff can widely vary - from giving 1 life to winning us the game outright (at this stage we can call this a combo, a rare thing in Limited). You'll find some examples of each category from ZNR here. Sometimes, micro-synergies require more than 2 cards to work, or both cards can mutually improve each other. In any case, what differentiate micro-synergies from macro-synergies is this enabler/payoff relationship.

Synergy clusters are defined by a group of cards in the set that are enabled and provide payoffs in the same way. While looking at the set as a whole, synergy clusters can be quite large, sometimes as large as an actual archetype (i.e. all the cards of the archetypes are either enablers and/or payoffs based on the micro-synergy). They can span across colours, even those where they aren't initially designed to be (such as in ZNR, where lifegain triggers in green, a typical feature for that colour, would support a mostly WB lifegain synergy cluster). In a draft pool or in a deck, on the contrary, we might find only a few synergy clusters. They can be fairly independent from each others (i.e. payoffs and enablers from each cluster are irrelated with each other).

Micro-synergies present different level of relevance for any given set. Sometimes, macro-synergies actually prevail. Sometimes, like in CABS formats, neither matter. When micro-synergies do, however, they can make a massive difference both in pick orders during our drafts and during matchups. Let's look into this case more in details.

Ultimately, at deck building stage, but as well while drafting, the question that we need to ask ourselves is: "does this cluster has the critical mass to actually reliably enable payoffs, and are the quality and the number of the payoffs high enough, to justify including cards whose respective face values are below other ones in our pool, but which could be better than them if they could synergise with the rest of their cluster?" Mike Sigrist would tell us to check whether the cards in question are good enough in their own right, which is certainly a sound advice.

However, if we try to look at what underpin this statement, we can actually figure out what criteria are at work. We - optimistically-biased humans - often see the upside over the downside in any forecast, and downplay adverse risks. The same goes with micro-synergies: we often overestimate how often they trigger and how much of an impact the payoffs are going to have. In practice, to revert back to hard data and deliberate methods, we should dynamically adjust our card ranking while drafting, minding micro-synergies (amongst other things of course). The reasons are explained later here, but to focus on the influence of micro-synergies specifically, when a card improves one or more from our pool, it should get a bump in value and maybe climb up some ranks in our dynamic pick order list. The size of the bump depends on how many cards it improves, by how much respectively, weighted by the probability to have them in hand or in play at the same time. The evaluation of the improvement requires some rules, just like evaluating a card at the full release of the set. Once again, it's admittedly subjective, but not more subjective than the initial card ratings at the release of the set. More importantly, it allows us to evaluate more practically the density and quality of a micro-synergy cluster, and therefore getting prepared to draft and play.

How to improve? To understand the density of a synergy cluster, a tool like my micro-synergy evaluator gets users to think about the topic quite in depth. The exercise being quite tedious, it would have gained at getting a critical mass of raters - but until it's there, we'll have to just look at card lists on scryfall.com, using keyword filters, and to try to make sense of it all.

Sets are usually designed around archetypes, either "official" - as announced by WotC when the set comes out, or embodied by the set's "signpost gold uncommons" - or less official, i.e. emerging as the set is out and players find ways to combine cards together. It can be from a single colour, like in ELD was pushing players to go for; from any colour pair, as usual; from dedicated colour pairs, like in "guild sets" such as in GRN, RNA or STX; from a triome, like (unofficially) in STX for URG colour combinations, but more officially for IKO or SNC. Finally, archetypes can stem out from a specific enabling card, like Clear the Mind in RNA or Teleportation Circle in AFR.

Macro-synergies are somehow blurrier than archetypes. They are roughly the same thing, just that archetypes are quite clearly defined, whereas macro-synergies are whatever points to a particular high-level strategy to win.

It's worth mentioning another subtle difference - between archetypes and "themes". An archetype would have multiple aspects which lead to a game plan, some draft objectives, etc. A theme would merely relate to a mechanic, or a tribe, which is one of the aspect of the archetype. WotC give us clues which are more akin to themes than complete archetypes. Sometimes, "themed" cards can be misleadingly looking like they belong to a given archetype, but they actually don't support it much. It's up to us to figure it out - considering the micro- and macro-synergies that these cards bring (or actually, don't bring) to that archetype. Archetype-defining cards are the complete opposite: "themed" or not, they contribute to make the archetype work.

Important to mention at this level are the usual categories of deck: aggro, midrange and control. Some say that in Limited, you only have flavours of midrange - read "as compared to Constructed". Rather than getting into an argument about what aggro or control exactly means, we can use these concepts in their "relative" versions. In Limited, an aggro deck will tend "more" to close games before the opponent can play out their threats. A control deck will look at exhausting "most of" the opponent's resources and take over the game with a few win-con cards. Midrange decks will "rather" aim a casting spells with a good ratio of power vs. mana value. All archetypes of a set will ultimately be earmarked with either of the 3 labels. The categorisation is either obvious, or needs to be established in practice during the first few weeks of a set's lifecycle. It supports our approach to playing each of the archetypes (e.g. we should maintain your life total when playing control, rather than using potential blockers to attack even if we have the opportunity, as our late game is what matters).

Across sets, in line with each "colour identity", WotC design provide us with recurrent archetypes across colours. For example, sac archetype is most often black and red; tempo flyers is white and blue; go-wide is white and green. I've put a long list of archetypes in this section. It can be used to think beyond the "official" archetypes and look for ways to combine the cards or clusters into alternative winning strategies - just by asking ourselves for example "what would a tempo deck look like in this set? what can I use as basic building blocks?"

Arguably, getting an official archetype to hum is already no mean feat. But working out viable strategies using left over cards, these "sleeping commons" that can be wheeled around the table consistently and picked in multiples, can open the door to smooth draft sailing and good match results - while everyone else will be competing for the cards from the best archetypes.

Speaking of specific cards, and coming back to looking at each particular card of the set as we did a few sections earlier: defining archetypes, and their winning strategies, clarifies which cards are pivotal for them to be effective. Gold commons and uncommons are most often at least useful, if not indispensable; some commons constitute the bulk of the strategy; some of them should even be in multiples in our decks. Some monocoloured cards have a home in more than one archetype - either for their sheer quality, or because they do something that several archetypes want. For example, I remember seeing a lot of Otherwordly Gaze wheeling around tables until the composition of the WU Disturb archetype settled as one of the best in MID. Identifying these to bump them up in our adjusted pick orders (which should depend both on their rarity and our estimate of the "community"'s general card's ranking, influenced by each archetype's perceived power ranking) will help us prioritising our picks while drafting. Or, we can look at the data (once it is available) to evaluate the Isolated Win Rate of each card, depending on which archetype they are included in.

This leads us to our next section, where we'll look into how archetypes' rankings fluctuate with time, and how this ripples down all the way to the rankings of each individual card.

How to improve? To sum it up here on archetypes, a good exercise is to first ensure that we understand well the official ones - they are the most likely to be viable. Putting together all the commons from a pair of colours, looking at what's the overall direction, which cards matter, which don't, which could be used in multiples, etc. to serve the archetype's official purpose. Another round of thinking coming out of the first one, would get us to identify alternative pathways; once again, looking at which common are likely to support the strategy. This time however, identifying key cards of higher rarity would help us understanding when we should get the trigger to branch off to the beaten paths. Finally, the last stage would be looking for any card-defining archetypes.

One of the key to a good understanding of a set in Limited is figuring out how archetype rank in power level - and, importantly, in easiness to reach that power level. Indeed, if we need stars from all rarities to align before pulling a good version of an archetype, we might be better off putting our bet on strategies which rely on solid common-based clusters to maximise chances of getting a playable deck (we'll look at this later). Still, taking both parameters in account, as much as design aims at a balance between archetypes, practice will always reveal differences.

Aside of power, the good old rock-paper-scissor of aggro / midrange / control rules in Limited too. Aggro will keep control in check, but risks being outvalued by midrange, which itself isn't fast enough to gain an edge before control locks the game. We've seen in the previous sections that each archetype belongs to one of these 3 categories. To some extent, it'll affect rankings. Similarly, some archetypes are better matchups against some than against others, for mechanical reasons. For example, lifegain is pretty much useless against mill. But it's very effective against aggro strategies which run out of steam after having dealt 20 damage or so. Conversely, a well-made aggro deck will go under the mill strategy, dealing the fatal 20 damage long before getting milled out.

Nevertheless, unless there is a glaring design mistake, the set should be balanced enough to allow for fair games to take place whichever archetype you go for. One of the beauty of draft is that it's self-correcting: an archetype which performs worse than others will attract fewer drafters, hence the pool of available cards for this archetype will be less disputed, so pools will be of better quality. How well we manage to pull our deck together during the draft has far more influence on win rate than on how archetypes rank - an opinion I share with Ben Stark and Carl Chase (from 8:52 onwards, in the specific case of the gross imbalance of power levels between archetypes in SNC) - as long as we indeed know how to pull these decks together, whatever they are. Therefore, mastering both drafting and playing out each and every archetype, including the weaker ones, is key to winning more.

While forcing a specific archetype no matter what can definitely lead to proper train wrecks, I'm not saying it's impossible or bad practice to draft with preferences. It gets quite a bit of reflection and practice to get to be comfortable in all the possible archetypes of a set. They aren't all as easy to pull together. We might not see a signal that a colour or an archetype is open. Rankings are subjective anyway. Our own playstyle can be a bit unconscious and make us lean towards some archetypes rather than others. There are quite a number of reasons for not being willing or able to draft an archetype, or even just a colour, even when the opportunity presents itself. What I'm saying is that being able to detect our line and jump on that opportunity will lead to better results in the long term.

A final note on niche strategies: for as long as they stay niche, knowing about them and being able to use them helps widening the range of our options. It's another type of line to detect, and therefore another opportunity to improve our win rate.

How to improve? It requires a fair bit of practice to know about the archetypes' ranking, aside of being able to build good archetypal decks. If we don't have the time or the luxury to play a lot and often, looking at data helps a lot. Usually, 17lands.com provides data 2 weeks after the set is released on MTGA. That data provides a view on both the individual cards and the archetypes. There are as well plenty of content creators providing that information, anywhere from data-backed argumentation to more empirical views.

There are several broad periods in a set's life. At first, most players figure out how to draft and play the official archetypes. From prognostics, to first impressions, to data-backed analysis, we get closer and closer to the actual power ranking. This period can last some time, as not all the archetypes are equally easy to pull together. It is during this stabilisation period that we may have fast archetypes winning more against slower ones, until control players figure out how to build resilience against aggro decks. At some point, less obvious, but still efficient archetypes surface - can we be the ones figuring them out first? They usually disturb the Limited meta, as most players playing against them don't know what to expect and lose more often. After a while, the meta stabilises again and the power ranking becomes somewhat more stable.

The variations in power ranking at archetypes level affect the power rankings of each card - at least in our drafters' mind. Back to the beginning: "what's the pick?" It changes all the time! But less and less widely as time goes by. The widest change in meta I can remember were in KHM, as it took longer than usual for the player community to realise that 5-colour snow was the optimal option. It's usually sorted out in less than a month's time.

In practical terms, it does mean that the archetypes which get under- or over-drafted change (if we're playing amongst communities who actually mind the meta!), especially for players drafting with preferences. It'll require more attention to find our line (if we're looking for one), and forcing a specific line might feel different each time if we don't play as often as the meta evolves.

How to improve? Keeping track of these evolutions requires to play a lot and often. Even taking the necessary step back to appreciate it needs time. At that point, the only way for a non-full-time drafter to keep abreast of the news is to stay connected with content creators and communities - the same ones who provide set reviews. There's so much additional benefit to chat on Discord or Reddit, watch Twitch, read articles and listen to podcasts - we can't invent all the tips and tricks that daily practice brings!

official / unofficial

official archetypes can be misleading: UB and URG in STX, colour pairs in SNC

Just before we move on: in Mystery Booster draft or in a chaos draft, archetypes are much more loosely defined, defaulting back to the typical focus of colour pairs e.g. WU fliers, UB value, WG go-wide, etc. In this case, this very question is mostly irrelevant - and the other ones become more so! Now, using a similar mindset when approaching a standalone set for the first time: could we find some of the archetype staples in that set, irrespective of what the "official" archetypes are? For example, what would a flier deck look like in this set? What colours would it be based on? What could make a low-mana-value, go-wide strategy snowball? Is there any way to reliably build a playable multicolour pile? Any "generic" archetype usually have supporting cards in any set (during my deep dive on IKO, I found 30 different archetypes, above the 15 "official" ones). All combinations of colours (or monocolour! e.g. M21 mono-white aggro) could lead to an archetype. The question is more about whether this non-"official" archetype can compete with the "official" ones. And to answer it, we'll look into what the commons of a set have to offer - that's a few questions down the line.

The answer to this question depends a lot on the context of your draft - with whom are you playing? - but as well on how easy it is to get the building blocks of an archetype.

To answer the first question quickly: if you're drafting with friends, you'll know better where they stand in their understanding of the set, and what drafts well. On XMage or Untap, players' ratings or experience levels are displayed. At your LGS, at MagicFests, or online on MTGA or Cockatrice, we get a mix of levels at the draft table, we can't really tell at the moment of drafting. On MTGO or on competitive events, we can be sure that players are well aware. From that, from your own level of understanding of the set, and from the period of its lifecycle, you have the variables at play on what is going to be potentially over- or under-drafted. Once again, on top of being contextual, heavily dependent on what people are going to open, and overall quite blurry, it is more efficient to focus on drafting a good deck than to preselect a seemingly-more-powerful archetype before even opening packs.

Remains the second question, about archetypes' building blocks. It deserves a separate focus - let's read on.

...or, put differently, "how does each archetype's strategy wins?"

The question might seem obvious - at least for the "official" archetypes whose game plans are given away at the time of the release - but it is not as straightforward as it seems to put that very plan into practice. Powerful cards, pricey ones, shiny ones... all distract us from the actual goal of the game, which is to get to 3-0 or 7 wins (on top of having fun, I'll give you that). More legitimately, we often can ask ourselves "if that bomb spell is passing in front of me, isn't its lane open, shouldn't I pick it?" - but that's for a bit later. What is certain, is that it's not easy to keep the direction in mind while drafting.

A good way of mitigating the risk of being side-tracked is to develop the understanding of what each "official" archetype does to win - the winning condition, "wincon". I'm not talking about lifegain synergies which payoffs include pumping a creature until it's a giant, or creating tokens all over the place, or drawing cards all the time. I'm talking about getting that giant to connect consistently, or making profitable repetitive attacks while following a go-wide strategy, or getting the opponent to exhaust all their resources and get your evasive threat grind them to the win, respectively. Therefore, new questions arise on how many potential giants the deck needs, how to make them connect, how to protect the investment in them from removal or tempo effects. All means to an end, and even before talking about the balance to strike between all of the elements (which is covered later), the first thing to do is understand that end game.

First of all, the exercise is only possible if we know the archetypes themselves (see above). In e.g. a chaos draft, we'll have to make it up along the way, and this is a different question, with a different answer (provided below).

Let's assume that we're talking about the "official" archetypes of a set, to make things easier. The synergies are often made clear, but the way to win is less so. In addition, there are often different ways to get there, which lead to different flavours of each of the archetypes. Fortunately, by the way - otherwise it'd get boring pretty quickly.

There are so many ways to win at MTG - and in Limited, while it is mostly about getting life total to 0, it can sometimes be about milling or pulling off a "you win the game" condition. It'd be tedious to list them all down, if not impossible. But, as always, asking ourselves the question is already a good step forward - we can then figure out the answer.

The other side of the same coin. At a high level, archetypes on the control side of the spectrum will be put in check by aggro ones. Aggro will be stonewalled by midrange. Midrange will get outvalued by control. Do we have the right defense? And conversely, are the aggro archetypes fast enough, or do they snowball fast enough, to close out the game before the slower archetypes set up their defenses and take control?

The mechanics of an archetype give clues as well. For example, a ramp deck will be suffering from an aggro matchup, but as well from drawing only either end of the spectrum of its curve (i.e. only mana dorks or only big expensive threats). At that point, following the game plan scrupulously becomes high-variance, especially in Bo1. To be kept in mind when going for an archetype or another.

At a lower level, there are typical concepts, such as green usually having a weak spot against fliers, red having damage-based removal only, white struggling with card selection, etc. Edging our bet with the relevant complementary cards can be thought about while looking at the set in advance, as much as minding that during the draft.

This question is absolutely crucial. It is about knowing what good looks like at several levels: what type of cards are needed, from bulk commons to specific synergistic pieces that make an archetype hum. And from there, we can deduct the probabilities of pulling the archetype together into a plan vs. ending up with a weak, loosely-connected pile of cards.

As said above, archetypes are defined by a game plan. The sharper the focus, the more likely the game plan is to succeed - although it might suffer from a bad matchup against the specific anti-deck, but let's leave that aside for now. This game plan relies on one or a few but targeted types of cards, for example 2-drops and immediate - although short-term - pump spells for fast archetypes, efficiently-stated creatures and card advantage for midrange ones, or defensive speed for control ones.

Sets are designed so that cards of the specific types are available in every archetype, often with cards that can serve the purpose for several archetypes. The cards which have either a sharp focus, or those which are on the contrary broader but multi-purpose, are highly looked-after. This is were competition at the draft table starts.

To know what to pick highly, the thinking begins right at the time of the cards of the set are revealed. The questions that follow now can be asked during that period of time, but as well when the set has been played out for a bit: some cards turn out to play better or worse than expected after some practice, and their contribution to each archetype is then adjusted.

A great reference to evaluate key cards is Lords of Limited's Reasons vs. Reward framework. Ben Werne and Ethan Saks will explain that better than anyone else, so to sum up in their terms, card evaluations and grades can be broken down under the lens of the "four R’s": Reasons, Rewards, Roleplayers and Replaceables. These R's are ranked by decreasing influence on the archetypes/colours they belong to. So, giving a thought about the framework and/or listening to Lords of Limited podcast to evaluate which card goes in which category gets useful when looking at cards from the set - let alone from our draft packs.

Why are we talking about commons right away? What about the archetype-defining uncommons and rares? Well, as much as some rares can win you a game outright, you can't rely on any to be in your draft packs or being passed on to you. And even if you got one, you can't be sure you're going to see it during your matches. Uncommons are more likely to find their way to your pool, especially if you find an open lane in the draft. However, you still can't base an archetype on uncommons as you might not consistently see them at all during the draft.

So, better focus on the bulk of what you're going to get: commons.

WotC design say that a set's theme isn't really a theme unless it shows at common rarity. In practical terms, that means that albeit it is at low power level, you can still see some synergies from a set's pool of commons. Sometimes even, commons actually define archetypes (e.g. Clear the Mind in Ravnica Allegiance, as mentioned earlier, or Sailor of Means or Sun-Crested Pterodon in Rivals of Ixalan).

Focusing on the basic case rather than the exception of archetype-defining commons, there are several things to look at in a set's pool of commons:

• what are the payoffs of being in a specific archetype? At common, payoffs rarely turn a game around, but they do support your game plan by pushing in the right direction. How to make the most of them? How do they combine together? How to make them snowball? And, from another point of view, how do they define the various flavours of each archetype?

• how are the archetypes supported? It has been a fair few years that we get sets where very few commons are plainly useless whichever way you look at them. Most of them have a home in an archetype or another, be it as a one-of. So, looking at the set's pool, what do these commons enable, and how? Which common is more affiliated to an archetype than another? And building up on the first question: are there synergies at common that are worth pulling together?

• what are the good removal spells, and how to make the most of them? Aside of the traditional unconditional black removal spell, most of the removal spells have conditions: amount of damage dealt in white or red, fight or bite spells in green, conditions on pacifism-effect auras in white and blue, additional costs in red and black... Making sure that these conditions are enabled consistently in your deck is essential (again, relying on commons). Respectively, from the list above: first-strikers to complement damage-based removal and threaten your opponent's high-toughness creatures, large creatures or deathtouchers for fight or bite spells, flicker or recursion effects for your auras (arguably a bit thin as a contingency plan...), fodder to sacrifice when a removal request you to. Again, "consistency" is the key word.

• what are the most crucial filling points from a curve point of view? An aggro deck without a good number of 1 and 2-drops isn't going to be really aggro. Common 2-drops should go up in your pick order list if you go down that route. Similarly, a plain bulky common might just do the job we need as a control finisher.

• what are the clusters of commons which support each uncommon / rare / mythic? Here it's going to sound like I'm reverting on my initial statement. But I never said these weren't useful! I just said you couldn't rely on drafting them or seeing them during a match to win. There is absolutely value in knowing which are the commons which are going to best support your bombs, for 2 reasons: first they might be much less of a bomb if they come out doing stuff that doesn't match with anything else that your deck does; and second, it'll help slanting your pick order towards the subgroup of an archetype's typical commons that will really make that bomb shine.

• what are the mitigation options for an archetype's known weaknesses? You tend to find solutions well worth considering at common for this kind of problem, especially in Bo1. That ranges from artifact or flier hate, to flash blockers to slow down aggro decks. I always tell myself that some cards are there for a reason - see the statement above about how the usefulness floor of commons is higher nowadays.

Developing from the question above: some commons are so important that an archetype couldn't work without them (or a couple of them, let's say). I'm not even going into the archetype-defining commons, without which there's no archetype at all. I'm talking about the commons that make the archetype tick by triggering the payoffs, or by having a powerful enough payoff themselves to really make a difference. Here's a great example based on data from Kaladesh Remastered: Sierocinski highlights the top commons and uncommons of each archetype, which can improve your win rate by up to 30 percentage points! It might be as well a matter of critical mass, like having 3 or 4 of them to be sure to see at least a copy during any matchup, and if possible in your opening hand. Conversely, some commons get much worse in multiples.

The top questions to ask ourselves are therefore, for each archetype:

• what's the best common - in absolute term?

• what's the best common - for the archetype specifically?

• what's the best 2-drop?

• what's the best removal spell?

• what are the payoffs worth paying attention to?

• what are the best support cards?

At that point, we can identify the same commons falling in any given category for different archetypes - or the other way around, commons being so narrow that they serve only one archetype efficiently. Competition for the former builds up at the draft table - that's another important consideration that we'll have to cover here, but a bit later.

Similarly to commons, some uncommons, albeit less reliably accessible in draft, are crucial for an archetype to function. But in this case, the approach is fairly different.

Again, I'm not saying that uncommons aren't powerful, let alone serviceable for an archetype. But since we're not guaranteed to get any more than one (assuming a table of 8 players and a set with 80 uncommons - as it is steadily the case since Ixalan - the ca. 72 uncommons which will be opened won't even possibly provide a copy of each), an archetype relying on specific uncommons to be efficient is going to be hard to piece together.

We'll have to look into this if the review of the commons leaves gaps which need to be filled to make the archetype work. If there are indeed gaps, finding out which uncommons fill them is essential. There is an iterative process to go through: first, checking the commons, and identifying the gaps. Second, finding the uncommons that fill these gaps. Third, revert back on the list of commons and find the ones competing for the same slots on the curve, and unless it is the 1 or 2-drop slots, thinking about de-prioritising these commons - the higher the mana value, the more important it is. The rest takes place during the draft: how to approach these archetypes, knowing that assembling a deck based on them can't be guaranteed? That's a question for the last subsection.

"Power density" is a arguably ugly expression that relates to the quality of the individual contribution of each card to an archetype's game plan. We reviewed earlier the relative power level of each archetype. We had a look at the hard dependency of some archetypes on a limited number of cards. Checking for power density is about evaluating how much each of the components of an archetype affect the game, and therefore how consistently our draws are going to make an impact during the game.

For example, a typical RG ramp deck involves mana dorks (Llanowar Elves or similar, the 2G land aura that makes land produce 1 more mana, etc.) and large creatures expensive to cast. The density is quite uneven, and we pray to avoid drawing only one or the other part of the deck (especially only the mana dork part). On the opposite end of the spectrum, a mono-white deck has mostly small but cheap creatures, that hopefully synergise a bit with one another and give you some late game options. Very even density, hopefully not too low. In a given set, how would these archetypes compare?

Another consideration is the power density per colour at uncommon, as it influence the behaviour of drafters significantly. Robert Conroy from 17lands.com observed that black, in Theros Beyond Death, was oversubscribed as a colour at the beginning of the set lifecycle. Players were actually lured into it by the high power density of its uncommons. Something to keep in mind too when committing to a colour early in the draft: if higher rarities cards are "pulls" into a specific colour while this colour's common pool is a bit dry, there won't be enough at the table for everyone to feed on it.

There are a couple of sub-questions to think about:

• what are the cards which are needed for support, but intrinsically are low power? These cards might not be of much use for other archetype, and be easy grabs during the draft. They are as well a bit of a dangerous investment as on their own, they're not getting us anywhere.

• what are the cards which are making a real difference to our deck? We discussed earlier about the must-have commons or uncommons - there's an obvious overlap.

• what is the right proportion of each type of cards? Put another way, which balance do we need between support and payoffs? We spoke about RG ramp, but BR sacrifice is one of these tricky archetypes too. It's not easy to guess the right balance before playing, but giving it some thoughts in advance may save us from ending up with impasses at deck building time.

• what is the overall absolute power value of a typical archetype's card pool? A bit of a theoretical exercise, but with a few interesting takeaways still: what if we added the 0-to-5 rating attributed to each card which composed an archetype (from e.g. Limited Resources set reviews), attaching a weight related to the rarity of that card to the rating, and taking a weighted average? It'd give a view about both the raw power level of the archetype and about how coveted the constitutive elements this archetype would be.

• what is the overall power value of a typical deck, taking synergies into account? Now, looking at the same type of exercise than before, but taking in account the synergies between cards - each single card with all of the others of the pool - and looking at pools of ca. 23 cards (rather than all possible cards related to the archetype). The improvement in the rating due to the synergy would follow similar evaluation "rules" than for the absolute power level evaluation. We could have a fairly objective base for comparing archetypes power level and density, and get into the set already clued up on power rankings, top synergies, must-have cards, etc. That's what I attempted to do with the micro-synergy evaluator. I'm sure there's something there!

It's quite obvious when only comparing M20 and M21 that not all sets conclude in the same number of turns in average. How should this affect our approach to drafting?

We can indeed define the speed of a set by the number turns it takes in average for a matchup to conclude, across all possible archetypes, without, before and after sideboarding. At the early stages of the life of the set, including during the spoilers, evaluating its speed is quite difficult and not very reliable. A few elements however can provide some information:

• how much aggro archetypes can snowball? The mechanics we reviewed earlier help to answer this question. Winning aggro strategies rely on pressuring the opponent early and consistently while their mana availability increases and allow them to cast larger and larger blockers, or more and more efficient tempo effects. It requires well-stated low drops, repetitive ways to make them bigger - if possible permanently -, to give them evasion if they don't already have it, and/or to clear the way for them. And, if all of that is available at common, then we might have a fast aggro deck to end games early.

• how much defensive speed do we have available? Control-slanted archetypes need efficient ways to stabilise as early as possible in the game to start investing mana into their own threats - defensive speed. Lifegain, tempo spells, cheap removals and high toughness creatures support this strategy. Is there anything useful at common there, without losing too much card advantage? How does it compare to the aggro archetypes strategies?

• how fast are the specific mechanics of the set? War of the Spark involved a lot of planeswalkers, which had to be protected to do anything meaningful. The set was designed to be more "controlly". Conversely, Amonkhet brought in Exert, an ability that would bring more value in the short term when a creature attacks. War of the Spark ended up being on the slow end of the spectrum, while Amonkhet on the faster end.

It might be tricky to evaluate this in absolute terms, so comparing "benchmark" cards with the previous sets helps. Typically, the 2/2s or the 3/1s for a mana value of 2 might have different additional abilities. Same for the 2/2 flier for a mana value of 3.

Then, there is a case for reverting back on each archetype's game plan. Having thought of how fast the set might be, it's worth giving some consideration on the viability of how an archetype wins games. Archetypes which require a lot of setup might be put in check by the more aggressive archetypes if they are well supported. Once again, the proof is in the pudding, so until the set gets played a bit, there's little way to know.

Going one step further than the speed of the set: each set has its own dynamics, and knowing what they are defines how good cards are (i.e. there's no vacuum, and a Drowsing Tyrannodon can only be better than an Elvish Visionary in a super fast, micro-synergy set like M21!), how archetypes should be built and how they rank. Here are a few dynamics:

• Micro-synergy-based (e.g. Kaladesh): it's where building the best decks relies on making the most of combinations between cards. It can be about value, e.g. getting cards or tokens out of these combos. Or it can be about snowballing faster thanks to other combos, i.e. getting to attack more quickly with larger threats. In these sets, our curve and what we play at each of its slots are crucial. A payoff which comes before an enabler would be awkward; ideally, our 2-drop should give our 3-drop a boost, and lay the ground for our 4-drop, etc. To evaluate cards here, raw power doesn't do everything: their ceiling matter, as they give a better idea of the "total which is more than the sum of its parts".

• Macro-synergy-based (e.g. Zendikar Rising): this is where individual cards are actually interchangeable, but archetype are well-defined and having the right proportions of enablers and payoffs matters. In ZNR, modular dual-faced cards (MDFCs) generated card advantage in the late game when bounced back to their owner's hands (a few cards, including at common, were doing that). It didn't matter as much which card these were, as whether and how much we got to do it during a game. Milling to our opponent to 8 to enable the 8-or-more-cards-in-any-opponent's-graveyard abilities would make average fillers become decent or strong cards, and our deck would suddenly turn into a pile of threats.

• Card that Affects the Board State (CABS) (e.g. Adventures in the Forgotten Realms): the less synergistic end of the spectrum, where raw stats matter the most, and combat tricks and triggers make the bulk of the interaction we have with our opponents. The idea was exposed by Marshall Sutcliffe, well worth a read - especially for its 7 commandments. Here, picking the largest creatures for the cheapest cost matters more than fancy card management. Having a stompy and/or evasive top-end on our curve would win games. Curves are heavier, games tend to stall.

• Bombs (e.g. THB, VOW): the set is defined by the power level of hardly answerable rares - this is a "prince" set. Aggressive strategies try to win before these bombs come out; removal is highly coveted. But when you're on the bomb side, you want to control the game until you can cast it and end the matchup.

It takes a few weeks before the community of players coins what dynamics a set is based on (apart maybe for the "Bombs" category). However, the summer set is more likely to be easier to grasp than the other ones. Modern Horizon sets are usually on the deeper and more complex end of the spectrum.

We come to the end of the section, to cover again a concept highlighted several times above: it takes some time before the definitive ranking of archetypes and cards stabilises.

It is certain that gathering knowledge about the set prior to playing is beneficial. It saves us from making gross mistakes ("doh, this removal is sorcery-speed..." or "now I know this dude has reach..."), support faster decision-making at the draft table, helps identifying pivot cards and building a deck rather than a pile of cards. On a longer-term view, it helps having an edge at the beginning of the life of the set - and for those of us grinders, climbing the ranks faster.

This advantage evens out in a couple of weeks after the release. And, even for pros, only playing can't be enough to develop the knowledge of the format as fast as the community - in particular the competitive part of it. The sample size is just too small to put all possible mythics at play, and to cover all the possible archetypes and combos.

We need other sources of information. And that's great: there's plenty! From your LGS buddies to online content, from chat groups to reddit, podcasts, streaming and videos - there's more out there than we could ever consume. So, before plateauing and asking ourselves why, humbly listening to other's point of views will work wonders.

A last consideration for a specific type of content: data. There has been a lot of data crunching going on since MTGA is out. 17lands.com is one of these platforms that not only collects and analyses, but shares the database with us. Going past some learning curve to master the concept and the user interface, or even making peace with it (it's not science at war versus art!) it's a great way to check a specific data point.

That's it, this draft session started! We opened our first pack and... bugga, a useless rare. A good uncommon, but it's gold. Yes, there are some OK commons, but isn't that sad to first pick a common...?

Well, we shouldn't lose faith (and no, it's not sad!). Decks are strong not because of an odd bomb, but because of consistency. Is consistency boring? Some say yes, but that's at the drafting stage only, and I'd argue that it's still hard work to make it happen. And it's not boring any more when we get to actually play the matchups. At that point, it's just more fun: we can actually play, have spells to cast pretty much every turn, impact the board, and get a good game. So, let's not be sad about that first pack. Let's start thinking.

The first pick is mostly about raw power, we can use P1P1 ranking lists for example. Some (very respectable players) argue that we could draft with preferences and pick good cards only in colours or archetypes that we like playing with, or are comfortable with in a specific set. Some others (very respectable too) include exploring the set in these preferences - i.e. preferring to test new archetypes over just going for the obvious. I'm not arguing that these aren't possible options, it's up to us. But if we're here reading this, it's as well because we want to find ways to get better at drafting. Limiting the options by having preferences (which already assumes that we have our opinion about the set), or starting exploring tangents while we're questioning whether we have the basics right - this is either restricting the thinking or running before being able to walk. Let's first look at all the options with fresh eyes (including having never played with the set before). And then we'll decide on what works best for ourselves.

However, let's put a caveat on selecting our first pick on pure raw power only: we know from the previous subsection that all archetypes aren't equally powerful, and aren't equally easy to pull together. We could therefore be influenced by these factors too. Here comes our first draft decision outside of the obvious, and it's where it starts paying off to have had a look at the archetypes in advance! And to have had a thought about the "unofficial" ones, the synergy pockets, the speed of the set, etc.

So here are a few cases to consider when deciding for our first pick. To begin with, if there's an obvious bomb, we should certainly go for it! At this point in the draft, anything is possible. The archetypes are designed to be balanced in power. So, if we've started with a strong card in one of the weakest archetypes, that card's power will make up for at least some of the difference. And most importantly: better have a strong deck in the weakest archetype, than a weak deck in the strongest one. A previously mentioned article from Pawel Sierocinski exposes the reversal in relative rankings when a player of a less favourite archetypes draws a key common (in concrete terms: in Kaladesh Remastered, RG fares better in average than UR by a couple of percentage points, but when a UR players draws Reckless Fireweaver, they actually do better than RG). And to be able to draw that key common during the game, we'd better pick one during the draft...

Another good problem to have is to have 2 or more good cards of similar power level in the pack - give or take a few ranks in our favourite P1P1 order list. We may open a foil bomb rare aside of our non-foil one. Or we may get a "mythic uncommon". In this case, we can get back to preferences. Or to trying the one we've never got to play with before. Or roll a die... But what about thinking of all the good preparation work we've done before? With that in mind, here are the relevant questions to ask ourselves - in order of increasing importance:

• which archetype is the most likely to come together? Considerations about the external influences of our specific seat set aside (since it's P1P1, we don't know much about that anyway), we can infer some of the answer from the review of each archetype's pool of commons. Archetypes well-supported at common are going to be easier to make work.

• what's the easiest card to cast? Here come 2 aspects: colour requirements and mana value. Gold cards are committing most of the time. If we move to another colour later in the draft - let alone both - we might end up not playing that first pick. Double (let alone triple) colour are as well more difficult to cast, especially on curve a low mana value. They aren't as committing as gold cards, but still they start pointing at what would be our main colour (it will have implication on our mana base, as we'll see later). Lastly, higher mana costs cards are competing from slots in our curve (again a concept for the next subsection), while 1, 2 and 3-drops much less so. Nothing more painful than losing a game with good cards in hand. There is value in low mana value cards, especially bombs. All that said, the P1P1 order list should take these casting cost constraints in account.

But in any case, even if there aren't any tiebreakers, don't sweat too much about it! It doesn't matter too much.

Finally, if there's no obvious bomb, well, there's still a P1P1 ranking, so we can start there. We are getting into the same considerations as mentioned above: key cards, probability of being able to pull the archetype together, and casting cost requirements. It's just that the consequences of picking one of the lower-powered card are less significant than if a bomb was at stake.

Now - pre-empting considerations to be looked into in a later subsection - after all that hardship of choosing our first pick, we shouldn't feel too attached to it: it might not make it to our deck at all in the end!

The strict answer to this question is : from pack 1 pick 2...!

There's a concept that's worth having in mind when evaluating the influence of our the cards we already picked on our current pick: archetype aggregated scores. It measures the contribution of each pick to the power level of our pool for each archetype of the set. Each set enabling the existence of archetypes - official or unofficial, known or unknown to us yet, it doesn't matter -, each card of the set may contribute to some of them. Furthermore, cards which synergise within these archetypes contribute even more when brought together - this is when our decks become more than the sum of their parts. Drafting is a lot about making the right choice of archetype or archetypes to "invest" picks into.

To clarify how this concept works with an example from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms: if we first-pick a Battle Cry Goblin (a "mythic" uncommon, very first-pickable), then our score for the RG pack tactics archetypes goes nicely up, as this card supports it so well; similar score increase for the WR equip archetype as it likes this aggressively-slanted creature; scores for UR dice and BR treasures go up too, but to a lesser extent as these archetypes don't necessarily make use of this 2-drop as well as RG and WR do; scores for WU, WB, WG, UB, UG and BG don't change, since the Goblin is a red card; finally, the score for the Rb goblin micro-synergy pocket (it is too narrow to be called an archetype) jumps significantly.

For pick 2, the rare is gone from the pack, and we have the choice (amongst cards of much lower relevance) between a Grim Bounty, a Reaper's Talisman and a Red Dragon - all very relevant picks. The Bounty is one of the best removal of the set, in a combination of colours which is as well one of the best there, but doesn't necessarily pair well with the Goblin, imposes to be heavy on black, and the Goblin isn't that relevant to BR archetypes (Treasure and Steal & Sac) anyway. The Reaper's Talisman is an amazing card too, a win con by itself, but again, same remark on colour pairing. Both these cards improve as well the scores of other combinations of colours than those including red, spreading more widely (but more thinly) the bet on where to go in this draft. The Red Dragon, on the contrary, improves only the scores related to all archetypes including red, in particular RG pack tactics, WR equip and BR treasure, and allows to stay open to other colours.

At this stage, amongst these 3 options, the pick is quite close. So much so that PV would maybe advise to not lose sleep over it. Now, archetype aggregated scores work in 2 ways: they go up at every pick (or worst case, if the picked card is irrelevant, they just stay at the same level), but their respective potential maximum go down too. You have 45 picks in a draft, and only so many are likely to be powerful rares and uncommons. If, pick after pick, we leave a colour aside, the respective scores of the archetypes relying on this colour are going to grow quite slowly, if at all, until we just won't possibly have enough playables to even play them. So, doubling down on one or a couple of colours is necessary.

In the previous, we looked at 2 main considerations when first-picking a card: which archetypes are the most likely to come together, and what criteria to use as tiebreakers. BR is by far the best combination of colours in AFR and the Red Dragon is the most expensive of the cards under consideration. Grim Bounty is more expensive than the Talisman and has more constraining mana base requirements. Picking the Talisman now, while it doesn't synergise extremely well with the Goblin, will allow us to look for ways of building a more appropriate deck using our remaining 43 picks to make the most of it. We could even splash for it. Let's go for the Talisman.

In the end, we chose raw power level over colour consistency, taking the risk of dismissing either of our cards if our seat at the draft table turns out to be open to only one - or none - of our selected colours. Still, it is a deliberate choice that took in consideration that we had picked a red card to begin with. We're in the colours of the best archetype of the set. Minding about previous picks starts sooner than later in a draft, and often from the second pick.

The more we get into the draft, the more the aggregated scores of each of the potential archetypes playable given our pool are going to point to a few options, until 1 only remains. Similarly, the potential maxima of left-aside archetypes are going to decline so much that they won't be options any more. Keeping our options open at a minimal opportunity cost, identifying potential turning points and acknowledging the point of no return are further crucial concepts to master - to be developed in the next section.

So, we've already picked a few good cards basing ourselves mostly on raw power in a vacuum, and a bit on the archetypes' power ranking. Maybe there's a colour, if not an archetype, that stands out of these early picks. Where is this going?

If we're homing in on a colour, because maybe we've got a couple of good first picks in it, then we're already narrowing down the possible strategies our deck will follow. Some of the must-have cards might be the same between archetypes - these would be going up in our dynamically-updating pick order.

After a few picks, most of the time, it feels way too early though to focus on a specific strategy. However, broadly, we should be able to see what comes our way, pack after pack, and balancing the consistency of our growing pool with the raw power level of our picks.

The more the draft goes on, the more this balance needs to tilt towards consistency / focus. Mostly, once we've locked in on the colours that feel open (more on that in the next section), we need to think about what are these colours supposed to do, when together. In other terms, what's their archetype.

Arguably, there are different flavours of each archetype, and there's no single recipe of a good deck for each flavour. So, when the strategy is locked in, we need a specific plan.

LSV and Marhall Sutcliffe will say it better than I do: Have a plan! Note that there's a difference between a win condition (especially at a single card level) and a plan: Ben Stark would argue that a deck don't necessarily need a wincon - and again - but still it needs a plan. For example, winning by card advantage is a plan.

This question echoes to a great concept, Lords of Limited's Reasons vs. Reward framework, mentioned earlier on this page. Amongst the "four R’s" (Reasons, Rewards, Roleplayers and Replaceables) this is the last one we're talking about - with a twist.

power density at uncommon in some colours might drive several players at the table to them.

• How Many Colored Mana Sources Do You Need to Consistently Cast Your Spells? An update of Frank Karsten's reference article, which aims at answering questions around playing spells on curves given their mana requirements, and about splashing.

• Great article on mana base and consistency here, explained with just the conceptual maths you need and a lot of concrete examples.

• Another article, more focused on the coding methodology, but deep-diving too on the specific case of CCDD casting costs - which complements nicely Frank Karsten's article

A lot of the content on this page has been influenced by the following podcasts - alongside all the other pieces of content that you'll find on the commented bibliography:

• Mystical Dispute (Carl Chase and Garrett Gardner)

• draft lab (Dafore, Ekil)

• Limited Level-Ups (Chord_O_calls)

• Lords of Limited (Ethan Saks and Ben Werne)

• Limited Resources (Marshall Sutcliffe and Luis Scott-Vargas)

• Draft_punks_mtg (Youtube) (@Calm_Mirror on Twitter)

• Drafting Archetypes (Sam Black)

• MythicSpoiler: to get the overview of the set

• Scryfall: with an efficient filter and convenient interface (use is:booster in the query to get only draftable cards) to follow the previews or make specific queries

• Archidekt: to pull together the common shells and make your mind up about what could work, at an early stage of the set lifecycle

• Amongst many other things, the Limited section of MTGAZone provides a review of the set

• MTGPrimer.com provides a very helpful set of tools, in particular the removal arsenal and instant-speed tricks

A lot of rating lists are available online, so here are only a few of the most prominent ones.

• Draftaholics Anonymous: for P1P1

• Limited Resources: Marshall Sutcliffe and LSV giving their views on the set. Infamous. Available in podcast too.

• Lords of Limited: Ethan Saks and Ben Werne have put together a useful evaluation framework, putting cards in 2 categories: reasons vs. rewards. Always good to think about that in this way; it answers the question above "How replaceable is this card?", and feeds into multiple other ones, about e.g. signals.

• Amongst many other things, the Limited section of MTGAZone provides a tier list.\

Once the set has lived for a bit, we get ranked lists based on actual data from MTGO or MTGA:

• Limited Grades provides a very clear view per colour, based on data from 17lands.com (which is itself based data from MTGA players)

• Pekka Pulli and Sierkovitz's Archetypist provides amazing views of the composition of a set's archetypes, once that set has been played for some time.

• Amongst many other things, the Limited section of MTGAZone provides a review of the archetypes

• Another page of this website gives a list of the archetypes for some sets. It may be used as a checklist when approaching a new set, trying to figure out alternative, "unofficial" archetypes behind the official ones.

Micro-synergy evaluator (Beta): to review micro-synergies randomly and ask yourself the question "what could I do with this pair of cards", and get access to the list of most synergistic pairs of the set. Work done on ZNR and KHM, waiting to see the appetite for more sets.

Frank Karsten's Limited Bucket List: now behind CFB's pay wall, but if you have the access, worth a read

Carl Chase and Garrett Gardner's Mystical Dispute: short form limited MTG debate podcast where cards and quick topics about the latest draft format are debated.

r/spikes subreddit: one of the most active space where screenshots of 7-x Limited decks are shared and talked over. At the earliest stage of a set's lifecycle, this sample data points is as much as we can get. Obviously, r/spikes is about much more than just that.

After pick 6-8, a good card passing by may be the signal that an archetype or a colour is open.

• a section of Quantifying the Card Evaluation Metagame by Robert Conroy warns against making conclusions too early about what we think to be a signal, while the rest of the table wouldn't - some cards like Drowsing Tyrannodon (from Core Set 2021) are key commons, but they aren't considered as such until some time into the life of the set. It depends a lot on whom we draft with!

• MtG Hypergeometric Card Probability Calculator: kudos to Kelvin Liu-Huang who put this website together ages ago, which calculates the odds of getting a set number of cards amongst your first n draws. Useful to check land counts when you splash. A link on the page leads to the actual combo calculator to evaluate the chances of pulling out a combo in Limited. For example, 1 rare combo'ing with 3 copies of a common has only 33% chances of coming together by turn 10 - you shouldn't count on it too much on a Swiss bracket of 8 players. If you have only 1 copy of each, you'll pull the combo less than once every 8 matches by turn 10.

• MTGA Card Evaluation Metagame: absolutely edifying resource from a thousand and one points of view: giving us a practical ranking of commons; showing its evolution over time; providing us with food for thoughts about our own ranking at a given moment; making us think about our initial estimates - whether we're wrong, a bit all over the place, quite within the pack, or absolute visionaries in estimating the quality of cards... But first and foremost, letting you know how likely you're going to be to see a particular card wheel.

• MTG rules: for everyone to enjoy on wizards.com - not only judges! You can find a more interactive flavour of them on MTG Wiki, in particular the keywords.

• Puzzles: Possibility Storm provides a good database of tricky questions to challenge your command of MTG rules, based on PC. Another good area is MTG Puzzle Quest, on smartphones. Some more from Channelfireball - it doesn't matter whether they're old, all the needed info is self-contained. It's possible to find puzzles elsewhere but not as reliably. Agreed that there's a limit to what puzzles can give you in terms of gameplay, so don't spend too much time on them. But do the minimum to try yourself on rules - and on what puzzles can look like in your own games, most importantly the most open ones, as Pierre Dagen suggests.

There's an extensive list! By no means exhaustively provided here.

• 17lands.com: so much more available, such as personal records, draft and game replays, card stats, and even a leaderboard!

• Draftsim: interesting articles provided additionally

• Cardsphere: card trading provided additionally

• Cockatrice: free, installation needed, no rule enforcement, no draft UI, no bracket management

• MTGA: fremium, installation needed, rule enforcement, draft UI, no bracket management. Bots are a special case there.

• MTGO: pay-for, installation needed, rule enforcement, draft UI, bracket management

• Untap: free, web-based, no rule enforcement, draft UI, no bracket management

• XMage: free, installation needed, rule enforcement, draft UI, bracket management

• Dr4ft.info: to draft with other players

• MTGADraft.tk: to draft with other players. It facilitates the export to MTGA.

• 17lands.com: great spirit of drilling into MTGA data and sharing findings, on top of providing the essentials to improve your draft and gameplay skills

• untapped.gg: very slick interface, works as well for constructed, some of it being behind a paywall