How to Draft a Deck, Not a Pile of Good Cards

I love magic coaching.  

It’s the perfect marriage of my two passions, teaching, and playing with 63 x 88 mm pieces of cardboard. 

Having the past few weeks off work, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to sneak in more coaching sessions than I usually can during the school year. At the beginning of each session, I like to ask the coachee a little bit about their magic background in order to set a baseline of who they are as a player. The questions vary from session to session, but to ensure I can give can  give actionable advice, there’s one question that I make sure to ask to every person: 

“What do you think your biggest leak or weakness is when it comes to limited?”  

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the answer that I receive is something along the lines of:

“Well, I think I have a pretty good grasp on card evaluation, but I feel like at the end of the draft I end up with a pile of  good cards rather than a deck.” 

If you can relate to that statement, I can promise you aren’t alone.  

On virtually every outlet where you can consume magic content (Discord, Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, Tinder? etc.) you can find similar sentiments:

“Draft started out strong, but fell apart by the end”  

“P1P1 took X bomb rare, but not sure where to take the draft now”  

“Middle of pack two and I have no idea how to salvage the rest of this draft, pls send help”

Today I want to explore why I think this is a commonly shared experience, and what you can do to bridge the gap between good card evaluation skills and good drafting/deck building skills. 

In short, I want to explore how to draft a deck, not a pile of good cards.

Content Creation and Our Focus on Card Evaluation 

For the most part, limited content and community discussion revolves around baseline card evaluation, card grading. Week 0 of a format is when content producers put out set reviews grading each card, week 1-2 is when the info dump of over/under-performers start to trickle in, week 3 is about the time when people have figured out where the rares and mythics sit in relation to the commons and uncommons and at week 4+ there is still no slowdown of “P1P1 which card is better” on Twitter and Reddit

Is it bad that content creation and community discussion is mostly focused on baseline card evaluation and card grading?  

No! In fact, I think it’s great.

  

There was time when access to accurate card evaluation information was semi-restricted to people who had the time to put in 30 drafts in the first two weeks or were in the know with people who had. Without a prior of accurate baseline card evaluations, its near impossible to draft anywhere close to optimally or to construct an accurate idea of what is important in each format. Card evaluation is one of the pillars of limited and without set reviews and endless online discussion, we may still be in the dark ages of people passing cards like Bag of Holding or Rotting Regisaur on day two of a GP because they look like weird cards to someone who hasn’t the time for 30 drafts before the first competitive event of a format.  

As a community in the year 2019, we have a great collective grasp on card evaluation. Anyone who wants to double check their own baseline card evaluations/card rankings can listen to the latest episode of their favorite podcast, tweet at their favorite limited specialist, or tune into an MPL member’s stream. We live in a time where access to accurate card gradings are available on demand to anyone who wants them. 

So where is the disconnect?  

In a world where card learning evaluations skills are part of limited 101 and you can crowd-source opinions from the literal best players in the world, what makes picks 2 through 45 seemingly infinitely harder than pick 1? 

I believe that due to the sheer volume of content and discussion around baseline card evaluations/ card grading, a lot of players get bogged down in the minutia of it all. There seem to be endless “is this B- card better than this B- card?” conversations, and while yes, there is usually a correct and incorrect answer, the real answer is early in the draft the cards are probably close enough that its hard to go wrong and later in the draft it depends on the context of your previous picks.

Teaching how to adjust or contextualize baseline evaluations to facilitate drafting a functional deck is a skill that doesn’t get it’s time in the sun.

Let’s Revisit Our Initial Question: How do you Draft a Deck, Not a Pile of Good Cards? 

For me, drafting a deck instead of a pile of good cards can be distilled down to two things: 

1. Understanding baseline card grades/evaluations  

2. Modifying those grades/evaluations based on context for every pick of the draft  

You must internalize that card grades, baseline card evaluations are just that. Baselines. After you’ve begun to carve out/ find your lane, your goal is no longer to identify the best card in the pack, it’s to make picks that serve the deck you’re drafting.

This isn’t a new concept but it may be for some readers, but I think it certainly bears repeating. After P1P1, sometimes as early as P1P2, grades and pick orders change based on your previous picks.

Sometimes this change is by just a hair, sometimes more dramatically. Early in the draft you should weight your picks towards the best cards in the pack until you can find your lane, but once that lane is found every pick you make should be informed by your previous picks and should contribute towards filling a role in your deck. There are times when you’re going to take Reduce to Ashes over Glint-Horn Buccaneer and Sleep Paralysis over Atemsis because that’s what your deck needs to function. If you catch your self auto-picking the best card in the pack for all of pack 2, you’re probably losing some amount of percentage points.

Using Pick Orders/Card Grades 

1. Using pick orders or card grades to take the best card from every pack in the first few picks is totally fine and helps alleviate decision paralysis. Rely on them less later in the draft when context is more important than ranking each card in a vacuum.

2. Before you can use context to modify your baseline card evaluations, you need to be confident that you have solid estimation of where every card in the set stands. This is the easy part. As previously mentioned, there are  countless outlets for you to cross reference you own card evaluations. Talk to players whose opinions you trust, send a tweet to your favorite content creator if you are unsure how good a card is in each format, ask the best player at your LGS. Don’t be shy about double checking, if there’s anything magic players love, it’s telling other people their opinions.

3. Make sure your baseline evaluations are up to date and are from informed sources. When I say “informed sources” I don’t mean “don’t ask bad players”, I mean consult sources that have of experience playing with the cards and know how the cards play in context.

LSV’s set reviews are great as starting points, but even he will tell you that 3 months into the format you shouldn’t treat them as gospel. Any set review put out before a set’s is going to be obsoleted to some degree after people get their hands on the cards. The only place to get contextually accurate card evaluations is from sources who have had hands on experience with the cards.

4. It’s ok to have a dissenting opinion on a card evaluation when compared to the masses. Drafting with preferences is something I strongly advocate for and as long as you can verbalize and rationalize why you disagree on the consensus of a card, there is no issue.

As an example, I’m a notch lower than the rest of the world on Leafkin Druid. I recognize the card is great and green is a colour that wants to ramp most times,  but I don’t take it as highly as most people because my green decks tend to lean towards aggression. This causes my baseline evaluation of Leafkin Druid  to be lower than most other people and it takes additional incentive for me to take Leafkin Druid over Rabid bite.

  

Modifiers to Your Baseline Card Evaluations

Here’s where the grading cards in context comes in. Ideally you are incrementally modifying your picks based on the context of each pack and your picks but be aware that you will mostly want to modify your evaluations:

A: Later in the draft when you have an idea what your deck needs
B: Early in the draft when a pick is close (as a basic example, you first pick Cavalier of Flame so you take Chandra’s Outrage over Murder P1P2)

Here are some common pick order modifiers that you can put into practice.

Modifying Grades Based on Archetypes

It's important to know what cards each archetypes want and what cards they don't. Many formats have "secret gold cards" cards, mono-colored cards that really only belong in one or two colour pairs. This is more common in high synergy formats that have decks that want to be linear or more streamlined. Most Ravnica sets are a pretty good example of this. 

It's early in pack 2 and you're solidly in Izzet

You're faced with the choice between these two cards so you check their grades

                                   

               C+                                                                            C

If you took bodyguard in this spot because its "the best card in your colors" you'd be making a reasonably bad pick. Most Izzet decks in GRN ended up with sub-13 creatures making Wojek Bodyguard a liability. While a worse card early in the draft, Command the Storm is a better pick in this spot because of how linear GRN archetypes were.

This concept applies to low-medium synergy sets as well, but picking the "wrong" card won't be as punishing.

We're in the middle of pack 2 of a M20 draft and you're solidly in UB control




You're faced with the pick between these two cards

                                            

                C+                                                                                  C+

I consider Audacious Thief to be the slightly better card P1P1 but would take Vampire in this spot. With the cards I have in my pile, i'm less likely to include cards in my deck that facilitate attacking profitably with the Thief .  However, unlike the GRN example, I don't think it would be an egregious mistake to take Thief. While your UB deck has a generalized plan, M20 decks usually aren't so focused that they can't make uses of generically good cards that don't quite fit their plan.

The takeaway here is that you should have a good understanding of how synergistic/linear decks in a given format are and know how heavily to weigh picks based on what archetype you're in. In high synergy formats slight discrepancies in grades between cards can be amplified and taking a card that is not conducive to what your deck wants to do can be punishing.

Modifying Grades Based on Pockets of Synergy 

"Pockets of synergy" is a term I like to use to describe groups of cards that have high synergy with each other in an otherwise low synergy deck. Drafting pockets of synergy is a way to boost the overall power-level of your deck when you don't get the nuts GR elemental deck or don't end up with 3 great rares.

M20 is home to one of my favorite pockets that I affectionately call the Fantastic 4

Most of these cards are fine on their own, but when you have say two copies of each in your deck, they give your deck a dimension other than "good cards in my colour."  Drafting pocket of synergy is one of the key ways that you can draft a deck, not just a pile of good cards.



Renowned Weaponsmith + Bow/vial is another great example of a pocket of synergy, but with I challenge you to look even further than the obvious synergies written on the card. With enough copies of Weaponsmith, you can extend this (make you pocket bigger??) by including cards that normally wouldn't make your main deck but become actively good when you can reliably have a Weaponsmith.



Let's say its Pack 3 and you're an aggressive red black with three Chandra's Outrages and two Lavakin Brawlers among your other cards.




You're faced with this pick, Outrage vs your first Chandra's Ember cat


                                                                     

               B+                                                                                            C


There is a huge discrepancy in P1P1 power-level here, but I'm just taking Embercat almost every time here.  You just don't need to take the Outrage here, the fourth copy doesn't facilitate your aggressive plan better than Embercat potentially casting turn three Lavakin Brawler. Removal is great but there is 100% a such thing as too much removal, and you want to draft a deck that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Modifying Grades Based on Two-Card Interactions 

This is similar to pockets of synergy, just on a smaller scale. When you have Destructive Digger or maybe Renowned Weaponsmith in your pile, consider picking up that 10th pick Retributive wand, as it's worth putting slightly conditional cards in your deck in exchange for powerful two card interactions.

   

Mask of Immolation and Act of Treason is another good example of this

 

Knowing a formal rather intimately is rewarded here. Getting familiar with the cards in each format means you'll be more aware of interactions like this, and you'll have a good sense of when it's worth putting a card like Wand or Act of Treason in your deck. There are times when you see cards that may look like they fit this description but just end up being traps.

Filling in Holes in Your Deck 

The two most common holes that need to be filled are a need for interaction, and a need to lower your curve. Once you're late into pack 2 or opening pack 3, baseline grades nearly go out the window if you have holes in your deck that needs to be filled.  As I mentioned before, there are times when you’re going to take Reduce to Ashes over Glint-Horn Buccaneer and Sleep Paralysis over Atemsis because that’s what your deck needs to function.

Let's look at this pick from pack 3 of this aggressive RW draft



Both Lavakin Brawler and Scampering Scorcher are markedly better cards than Chandra's Embercat but in this spot I'm taking the cat. We already have a ton of 4's already and would like to enable turn three Lavakin Brawler.

Here's another example except this time, we're choosing between a removal spell and a great creature.



If I was leaning towards UB early in the draft and was faced with this pick, I'd take Tomebound Lich over Murder. However, at this point in the draft we've already got a bunch of quality creatures and are in desperate need of another piece of interaction. I honestly think if the pick here were between Murder and Cavalier of Gales, I'd take the Murder. We have good top end and upgrading our finishers doesn't do as much for this deck as adding another removal spell.


Takeaways

• To successfully draft a deck and not a pile of good cards, you need to keep your pick order fluid
• Always be re-evaluating your picks and contextualizing cards based on what you already have
• Be smart about pick orders, they're a great tool, but use them as baselines, not absolutes
• Look for pockets of synergy to draft a deck that's greater than the sum of its parts
• To make the most informed picks, educate yourself about the format so that you are cognizant about archetypes and card interactions
• You should be deck building as you draft. You don't want to end up in a spot where at the end of the draft you have a pool of cards and go "ok now how do I build this?" outside of  changing cards 20-23

Thanks for reading !