Anytime something unexpected happens in a given draft, you have not only a new piece of knowledge going forward, but more importantly something else other people might not have seen before. Personally I've had Dregscape Sliver go up pretty massively in my rankings after seeing it perform all sorts of random functions, from acting as an Overrun to cheating out Hogaak just like in Modern. I still frequently see that card late, which I've derived as evidence that other people haven't seen all the powerful things that innocuous 2/2 can do.
Getting an edge in today's limited is really tough. Access to information has never been better, from multiple high quality podcasts, endless draft stream and video content, and a decent amount of articles recommending various things. You have set reviews often before any given set has been released, from some of the best in the game, and that means that the information arms race is both blisteringly fast and competitive.
Thinking Critically
A knowledge edge in Limited can be gained a variety of ways, but it's tough to know the best way. There's always playing as much as you possibly can, a noble effort in the pursuit of improvement but one that almost always ends in bad habits and burnout. You can read every article, consume every piece of content, do some watching and some learning, but how do we really know how good our sources of information actually are, especially when they inevitably conflict. Do we listen to Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa's words without deviation, just off his results and informative writing? The grinder with a billion MTGO trophies who does nothing but play the format all day and night? The authoritative voice on our favorite limited podcast?Always keeping a critical eye can be tough, as our brain naturally looks for any shortcuts it can find. In general, I'd recommend that you evaluate everything you consume for good inherent logic and consistency, but as an individual you'll always look at things through the lens of your own experience too.
With that critical eye, we're going to want to consistently evaluate our own experiences with the same scrutiny we evaluate outside information. If you think Changeling Outcast is the best black common (it's not, but I certainly thought so for a few weeks), but casting it doesn't often correlate with winning games of Magic, you're facing your own logical inconsistencies that are holding you back as a player. Magic is a game with lots of variables, and it can be hard to see where we're wrong when we remember our 1/1 unblockable buddy magically transforming into a 6/3 that kills our opponent on the spot, vs. when that same card sits there idly while we getting attacked for lethal by our opponent's Quakefoot Cyclops. Constantly evaluate the information you're abiding by, especially as it gets challenged in various ways. There's a nearly unlimited amount of information out there, but the vast majority of it is noise that you'll have to cut through.
Evaluating for Incentives
Back to our topic for today, we're looking for ways to identify information other players won't have, in order to gain a competitive edge. Information in Limited will always represent more options, and more options is going to lead to winning more often. Knowing about that strange, mediocre deck that's easy to construct can turn a trainwreck draft into one where you steal a match win or two instead. Above anything else, we want to look an incentives that any given card gives us. Some are easy to identify, like on Return from Extinction. All Return from Extinction asks you to do is put overlapping creature types in your deck, in order to get an extra creature out of the graveyard. I see a lot of people refer to this as a synergy, but I prefer to use incentive in these instances as we're looking to fulfill conditions cards are asking of us.Just like with Return from Extinction, the vast majority of cards are telling you something. If you saw Stirring Address and knew nothing about Magic but could read English, you could probably discern that there are creatures in Magic, and that you can have more than one at the same. That's all it really takes to pick up on what the various incentives are, and how you should build a deck accordingly. A combat trick like Stirring Address not only requires a creature, but rewards us for having a bunch in play with the overload effect. So the primary incentive for Stirring Address is to play a bunch of creatures in your deck. It's that easy to pick up on the various incentives in Magic.
The loudest incentives in Magic are typically the tribal ones. You'll often have some fairly ineffective looking cards at first glance that ask you to play a specific creature type, and in theory they get stronger for each extra member of that tribe in your deck. Goblin Matron is an alright card if it can go looking for that one Putrid Goblin, but it can be a powerful tutor that can bail you out of a pile of different situations if you have a Munitions Expert, Graveshifter, and Sling-Gang Lieutenant in your deck. When you're looking at what a certain card incentivizes, always imagine what would happen if you really pushed your deck to maximize that factor. In Goblin Matron's case, imagine if you exclusively put Goblins in your deck; you'd have a 3 man 1/1 that could go looking for any creature in your entire deck, giving you massive influence over how each game plays out, and allowing you to choose the best creature for any given situation. Cards get really strong when built around in general, excluding only the most vanilla of creatures and spells.
Building for Synergy
Decks where lots of cards overlap in incentives or provide each others incentives can be said to be synergy decks or synergistic. Unlike cards like Goblin Matron, however, the vast majority of cards in the game aren't going to be that loud about what they want from you. If we look at a card like Ingenious Infiltrator, for example, we can see something similar in that it asks us specifically to put Ninja cards in our deck, but will reward us for hitting the opponent with them with cards as well. Once we're here, we can ask ourselves, how can we hit the opponent with our Ingenious Infiltrator or other Ninjas? If we have removal spells, we can destroy opposing blockers and get through that way. Alternately, if we had some way of granting out Ninjas some sort of evasive ability, we could consistently hit our opponent for both consistent damage and a constant stream of cards for our self. From here, we can take a quick step into our opponents shoes to think about how our card might play out better. What if we're facing down Ingenious Infiltrator? We're not going to want our opponent to draw a bunch of easy cards, so we'll block whenever possible, or destroy it with a removal spell. With this information in mind, we can discern that if our card incentivizes our opponent to block, combat tricks might become more effective, or ways of rebuying our Ninjas when they're repeatedly targeted by our opponents removal.
Just like at the beginning of this post, we're at a point where Windcaller Aven and Return from Extinction combine really well together, as Windcaller Aven is very easy to get into the graveyard with value attached, and is a Wizard like many of the blue creatures in this set. Getting to the point where we understand how to play with powerful cards like Ingenious Infiltrator is great, but getting to that next step is where you can get a real edge over everyone else. Always looks for the places that you can get to that next step.
Stealing Secrets
I'd put the percent of decks and strategies I come up with myself in the 10-20% range vs. my opponents 80-90%. My last article about Mono Black was very much informed by an opponent I wish I could credit, as despite my extreme skepticism initially that I was "losing to bad cards of one color", the poweful interactions that player showed off in that match spokes for themselves, and I got beaten pretty badly. Anytime your opponent does something strange, it's pretty easy and natural to write them off. Resist this urge and you'll be better off, as there's often tons of things to learn from other people, especially things you never ran into the circumstances to try for yourself. Some general questions to ask yourself when you're opponent shows you something weird but powerful- Is this repeatable? Is our opponent pulling off some crazy combo full of premium Uncommons, Rares or Mythics? You're likely just playing against one of those 1 of 1,000 crazy decks. All commons, especially ones that make it around the table late? Take a closer look, the odds of the strategy being repeatable are high.
- Is there real power here? Is our opponent's Rime Tender + Squirrel Nest making an overwhelming amount of tokens for any deck to deal with, or is it our complete lack of evasion and slow start that's causing us to lose this game?
- Is this resilient? Our opponent who managed to put 3 Auras on their Segovian Angel destroyed our deck with no removal spells, but would they have won so easily if we had the ability to interact?
Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg
https://sealedawaymtg.podbean.com/ in podcast form.
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