Magic Formats, Part II

Limitations as Challenges

Of course, a player can (theoretically) choose the best cards of these formats and make a finely-tuned deck that plays the same (or almost the same) in each game. Because of Magic's rather rapid turnaround time (especially when speaking of duels), this gets boring rather quickly.

An alternative is artificially limiting a card pool through Limited formats. Limited formats can be constructed or drafted and rely heavily on randomized booster packs of 15 cards from a particular set. Ideally, one booster pack from each of a block’s sets, but since a block’s sets are usually released several months apart, it’s rare for a block that’s in vogue to have all of its sets out at once.

None the less, in constructed limited, approximately six boosters from the block are used by a player to put together a constructed deck of sixty cards. Any unused cards are used as sideboard options. This means that powerful rares will rarely ever be duplicated, and even potent uncommons won’t usually have more than one copy in a Limited Constructed deck.

The jewel in the eye of limited is the draft. Drafts are usually held with four to eight players (though two is also possible, see the Solomon Draft and Winston Drafts below), and as a format incorporating multiple players, they provide new and different challenges.

In a regular draft, each player starts with three booster packs. They then open up a booster pack, select a card from it, and pass the remaining cards to their right. They then look at the cards they received from their left, choose another, and pass the remaining cards to their right. Players repeat this process until each player has fifteen cards and all cards from each player’s first pack has been chosen. Then, players open their second pack and repeat this process, passing to the left instead. After the cards from the final packs have been passed (to the right this time) and selected, each player has a pool of roughly 45 cards). From that pool, they can add any number of basic lands to make a deck of at least 40 cards, with any unused cards acting as a sideboard.

The games from that point forward are standard duels, but just like with Limited Constructed, they tend to have fewer rares and uncommons than a non-limited deck.

Variations on even these themes is common.

Rochester Draft is an open variation on a draft. Instead of secretly passing each pack of cards around the table, a Rochester Draft has the first player put their first pack face-up on the table. After a short period of orientation, the first player picks a card, followed by the second, until the eighth player picks a card. Then, the eighth player picks another card, followed by seventh, back up to the second player, who takes the remaining, fifteenth card. After the first pack is opened, the second player’s first pack is opened and the second player makes the first pick, followed by the third. This time, the first player chooses after the eighth, and chooses twice, and the order is reversed from the eighth back to the third, who takes the final card. After each player opens their first pack, the order reverses; the eighth player chooses after the first player, the second player makes two picks in a row, and the eighth player takes the remaining fifteenth card. The third pack is drafted just like the first.

This format is slower than a regular draft, but it’s more open and allows players to see what others are doing. It also makes sure that players who pick later get some compensation. While the player to open a pack will usually get the best card from it, a player who gets the eight pick gets two mid-level cards from it while everyone else gets the leftovers. Rochester can also be more sociable, as normal drafts technically prohibit talking during the draft.

Rotisserie Drafts are like Rochester Drafts, except that instead of laying out one pack, the players lay out one of each card from a set, block, or even all of Magic, and allow players in order from first to last to pick a card. Then, the last player makes a second pick and each player back up to the first makes a second pick, just like Rochester Draft (except with one giant ‘pack’ instead) The process repeats until either all cards or a specific number of cards for each player are chosen. Because there are about as many commons per set as there are rares, but rares only appear with about one tenth of the frequency of commons, Rotisserie Drafts allow players to play with a higher concentration of rares than a normal limited environment. While this defeats some of the purposes of a Limited format, its one-of, or Singleton, quality helps blunt the effect of multiple copies of powerful rare cards.