In the popular card game Magic: The Gathering, not every tournament involves bringing a pre-built deck. Limited events are where players build their decks after they arrive.

Limited games are often either Booster Draft or Sealed Pool, and the random nature of booster packs can act as a great equalizer. Everyone is at the same starting point: sealed boosters of the same set. After that, skill and insight can take over, and that's how the best and most cunning players can get ahead. Playing Booster Draft is more than luck of the draw.

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Drafting the Cards

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Booster Draft is distinct from Sealed Pool in the sense that a player will actively choose cards from many boosters rather than using whatever cards they open in six boosters assigned to them. To begin, each player in a Draft event is given three booster packs, and all players are organized into one or more pods of six or eight players. Each player will simultaneously open one booster pack and remove any tokens, basic lands and rules insert cards, then choose a single card to add to their personal pools (face-up is allowed, but face-down is best). Once each player has a card, they all pass their boosters to the left and choose another card. After all the cards are gone, players open their second booster and repeat the process, passing to the right this time. For the third and final booster, they return to the left.

This involves some strategy, and not just for choosing which card to take. A Booster Draft novice is urged to know a given set's pre-built archetypes and synergies ahead of time so they know which deck blueprint to use and which cards they should take. For example, there might be a green-white token archetype, a black-red sacrifice aggro archetype or blue-black artifacts. Additionally, players should prioritize good creatures early in each of the three rounds of Draft, since good creatures are central to Limited. It's difficult to make a true control deck, so creatures are a must.

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From there, players can move on to good removal and enchantments, or even planeswalkers. Also, if there are good multicolored or costly card in the player's archetype, they should not choose those cards right away in most cases. Such narrow cards are less likely to be chosen by the other players in the pod, so the player who actually needs them should take other, high-demand cards and let that narrow card get passed back. For example, a player drafting Jund colors should pass up a costly red-black-green creature card in favor of generic, in-demand green or red creatures. That tricky Jund-colored card could be taken by another player, but assuming it'll get passed back is usually a safe bet.

A Draft player can determine which card colors are being taken the most often by other players based on which colors go missing fastest. This sends signals about which colors the other players are using, and a given player can try to compete or switch colors so there's less competition for what they want. If blue cards are vanishing fast and a player wanted to draft blue-green, they can stop drafting blue, keep the green and start adding red instead. The player must keep track of which colors are popular in both directions, left and right.

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Making a Deck

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Once all the cards are drafted, players will make their decks. It's in this stage where Booster Draft and Sealed Pool are similar. Draft player should be clear on which color(s) they are using and organize those cards by type and/or CMC to know what they're working with, setting aside all other cards to become the sideboard. There's a popular acronym to describe how this works: BREAD.

Bombs are powerful cards, often rares or mythic rares, that can decide the game by themselves. Example include huge creatures with fancy abilities or a cool planeswalker. Players should add those to the deck in their colors, and, if possible, the player can even splash in a color just to play one or two off-color bombs. A red-black deck that happened across a powerful Planeswalker card can add a few green mana sources, for example, and use that card.

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Removal cards can take out opposing threats, usually creatures, and can appear in any color. Red has burn, green has "fight," black has creature destruction, blue has bounce or "this card doesn't untap" effects and white has exile and destroying aggressive creatures. Given how creature-heavy Limited is, it's clear why removal is a must.

Evasive creatures can help a player push damage even if the board is stalled, such as a creature with flying or a creature who can become unblockable somehow, or perhaps Menace. Sometimes, enchantments or Equipment can give a creature evasion. Aggro creatures can help a player attack early and take the initiative, but aggro isn't quite as good as evasion or bomb threats. Red and white often use aggro. Finally, Duds are just that: cards that are unlikely to be used except to fill out a deck to 40 cards if nothing else viable is on hand.

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