Catching Up On Magic - Part 5

Drafting Alara Block

In the spirit of this series, I will assume that you already know basic Limited theory, and move straight to the specifics of this block. In Alara Block, there are too many good multi-colored cards, including the 100% multi-color Alara Reborn, to go two colors. In Alara Block, you want to pick a shard.

There are two schools of thought on the first few picks: one says you should pick a shard by picking a three-color bomb, and stick with it, the other thinks you should avoid committing to a shard for awhile. In my opinion, feel free to take a three-color bomb first pick, but no card is worth a draft, so if you can't get the cards you need, go ahead and switch shards.

My personal preference is to draft Esper, since most people don't draft Esper. The best shards objectively are Jund and Naya, but a lot of people will try to draft them. Choose what you will.

Manafixing should be picked fairly highly, especially tri-lands. If you can get good manafixing in packs 1 and 2, you can splash a fourth color in Alara Reborn if you have to.

In Shards or Shards / Conflux, two colors was fine, but now multicolor is king. You MUST draft a shard. End of story.

Drafting Magic 2010

Magic 2010, as a core set, is fairly classic draft: W/U fliers, U/B control, B/R removal, R/G aggro, G/W midrange are the main archetypes. Instead of telling you how to draft this format, I'll tell you the subtleties of it:

Magic 2010 is a slow format. Evasion is king, since it's very easy for the ground to get gummed up in a sea of 1/4's and 3/5's.

What do all these four cards have in common? They all end creature stalls, and they're all potential first picks.

If you can break a creature stall and they can't, you have the advantage. Make sure you don't get caught on the wrong end of that equation.

M10 is also a bomb driven format, with Sleep, Overrun, Fireball, Howl of the Night Pack and Mind Control all at uncommon, and plenty more at rare. Playing your bombs and stopping your opponent playing his are generally excellent strategies for any M10 draft.

The most important thing to remember in Draft is to keep your mind open as you play so you can learn. A couple of M10 and Alara drafts will teach you more than I can possibly teach you: much of drafting theory is learnt while drafting, hence the short article. I could go in depth into pick orders and that kind of stuff: but that's not what this series is about.

To be continued...

Catching Up On Magic - Part 2

Shards of Alara is a multi-color set, focusing on the allied three-color shards. The shards are:

Bant: Green, white and blue.

Esper: White, blue and black.

Grixis: Blue, black and red.

Jund: Black, red and green.

Naya: Red, green and white.

The mechanics in Shards of Alara are: Exalted, colored artifacts, Unearth, Devour, Cycling

Exalted is an ability that gives any lone attacking creature a +1/+1 bonus. Exalted also stacks, so if you have 2 creatures with exalted, an attacking creature will gain +2/+2. This serves to make a giant creature that's difficult to deal with, in very short order.

Colored artifacts are in Shards of Alara. No more are artifacts strictly colorless: now they can be colored or even multi-colored, and are, as every Esper creature is an artifact.

Unearth is like flashback for creatures. You pay the unearth cost and it comes into play for one turn, with haste. If it would leave the battlefield, it's exiled.

Devour X is a sacrificial mechanic. When you play a Devour creature, you can sacrifice a number of creatures, and put X +1/+1 counters on the Devourer for each creature it devoured. Some creatures also have related abilities.

Shards of Alara also features the oldie but goodie cycling. No explanation needed here for Magic veterans.

Conflux is a five-color set. It has several cards that cost all five colors of mana, and features Domain, a mechanic from Invasion now keyworded, to reference effects that get stronger with each basic land type you control.

The mechanics are: Domain, basic landcycling.

Domain is a loose keyword that references any cards with an effect that scales based on the number of basic land types you control. The mechanic originated in Invasion, but without the Domain keyword itself.

Basic landcycling, as you may have guessed, is discarding a card to search for a basic land of your choice. Very useful in limited to smooth your draws and help Domain.

Alara Reborn is entirely, utterly, 100% multicolor. All 145 cards are gold: they need at least two colors of mana to cast. Most are also quite powerful. The Alara Reborn pack is like Christmas at the end of an Alara block draft.

The Alara Reborn mechanics are:

Plainscycling, Islandcycling, Swampcycling, Mountaincycling, Forestcycling. Like landcycling, but you can only search for the appropriate basic. All cards with this ability however, have two of them, so you can choose which ability to activate and thus which land to search for.

Hybrid: Hybrid appears in small numbers in this set. However, they come in an innovative form: an example is R/W G. The card can be played for RG or GW (and still requires two colors).

Cascade: The big one, this mechanic has powerful, powerful implications in Constructed and Limited alike. When you play a spell with Cascade, you reveal cards until you reveal a non-land with converted mana cost lower than the card you played (so a Cascade spell with CMC 4 would only Cascade into CMC 0, 1, 2 or 3).

Rulings: The Cascade spell resolves first, then the first spell.

Cascade can only be stopped with a Stifle or something similar. It activates before you can counter the card.

Many decks use Cascade to cascade into powerful removal or aggressive creatures. It's a great mechanic though: strong, but not broken.

Magic 2010 is unique. Since Alpha, it is the first set to have brand new cards in it! Half the cards in it are reprinted, and the other half are invented for Magic 2010 alone. You'll have to check out the Visual Spoiler: it's only unique mechanic is PURE AWESOMENESS. And you'll notice a little red spell there that should raise some eyebrows. You'll know it when you see it. (A link to the Visual Spoilers, and other resources will be posted at the end of this series. If you can't wait, go ahead and Google up 'Magic 2010 Visual Spoiler'.)

To be continued....