Hey friend - I am here to help you understand some core tenants of limited MTG. Together, we will get a foundation of solid fundamentals around drafting, deck building and gameplay to make you competent, and much more confident when you sit down to draft or play in your next pre-release.
Today - let's talk about limited as a format for playing magic and why it is a great way to enjoy Magic the Gathering. I will introduce you to some key topics at a high level and expand on them individually in future articles. My hope is that by reading these, a newer drafter or a beginner can gain the knowledge they need to become comfortable when they sit down to play. It's always good to review the fundamentals, so even an intermediate or advanced player could gain something from these.
What is Limited?
Limited, means that you are playing with a limited subset of cards. You will opening and playing with cards from individual packs. These could be from the latest set like Reality Fracture, or a variety of packs like in a Chaos Draft. You could also be playing with someone's cube, but for the sake of this article I will keep to traditional formats. If you want to learn more about Cube, I have an article for that here: Cube for a New Player
One of the benefits to limited Magic is accessibility. Anyone can sit down at a draft table or go to a Pre-Release event and play on a level field with everyone else. While it helps, you don't have to have prior knowledge of the set you're drafting. In the case of a pre-release, no one will have a great sense of what the latest cards are and how they will perform, and that is much of the allure/draw to that type of event. People like feeling like they have a valid chance at winning.
Mirror this to constructed. Whether it's Modern, Commander or Pauper, you will need to have built a deck and have an idea of how to play it to be able to participate. The gap between decks in constructed have a greater degree of impact on how you are going to fare at any given event. There are budget constraints, and just a lack of availability for some key cards unless you're willing to shell out a lot of money to buy the list at the shop or order them online. While Pauper mitigates this by only allowing commons, some decks in modern, standard or commander can run well into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And, yes, this does give you an advantage vs the field. While budget decks can perform well with a lot of format knowledge and in the hands of a skilled player, most of the "meta decks" or most popular decks run these key cards and mana-bases for a reason. They're good, and people don't like to lose.
Deck Building
I want to start us off with deck building as this is possibly the most important component of limited Magic.
Limited decks have 40 total cards 99% of the time. This is the minimum amount you can play for a legal deck in limited. You can go over, but I wouldn't suggest it. Ever. The corner cases, the 1% that you feel like is a valid reason, is probably wrong. Over the last 10 years and I have learned that minimizing flaws in your deck give you a much better chance of winning than the slight edge you may feel your 41st or 42nd card will give you.
Magic is a game of both skill and randomness. You have some control over what you keep in an opening hand, but you don't have control over what you will draw from your deck and this is where deck building really impacts the game. I cannot tell you how many matches myself or my opponent have lost due to poor deck building. For the first few years I played limited frequently, I would experiment with an extra card or 2, less or more lands and lose games because of it. You want to stick with recommended ratios as a baseline to improve your chances of drawing a playable hand, and drawing what you need to cast spells in each part of the game.
Out of your 40 card deck, 16-18 lands and 22-24 spells is what you're aiming for. As a baseline, use 23 spells and 17 lands and move up or down from there.
The next important component of your deck is your creature(or cards that create creatures) count. Specifically, your early creatures. Most of your decks should have a minimum of 6 creatures that cost 1-2 mana. This allows you to play a creature on turn one or two in most of your games. The games you don't, you are much more likely to lose. When you are sitting down to draft, or are building your sealed deck; 2 drop creatures often times don't stand out as much as a bomb 6 mana rare, or a sweet build-around enchantment. However, you need a density of early plays to be able to afford to play these impactful late game cards. Think of this as a healthy diet. Eat your vegetables. Broccoli may not be as exciting as a cajun filet biscuit with cheese and honey mustard dipping sauce, but they make sure you live and can function. The same holds true in limited. You need to check off certain boxes to have a functional deck, and early creatures is a sure fire way to make sure you are competitive each game. Your total creature count should be between 12 and 18 with 75% of them being 3 or less mana.
Now let's chat about interaction, which is the 2nd most important component. Being able to remove a threat, counter a spell or change creature combat with combat tricks gets the most out of your creatures. It's odd to think of it this way, but without creatures, your removal is less impactful. Staring down a board of 3 creatures when you have nothing except a removal spell is a tough place to be. Which is the same for your opponent. Now think about having 3 creatures yourself and your opponent plays a 6 mana bomb without anything else in play of any significance. Your removal spell of combat trick can clear the way for you to close out the game. You need to be able to interact in some way with your opponent, so prioritize efficient removal, cards that destroy or exile creatures, deal direct damage or allow your creatures to trade up in combat. Just as in the creature conversation, cost is also very important here. 1 and 2 mana interaction is way way better than 3 or 4 mana interaction. Aim for at least 50% of your interaction at 2 or 3 mana.
You have your creatures and your spells locked in, let's talk about the mana base. Every deck requires to have enough lands to cast spells of each color. However, there are cards in Magic that create mana on creatures and artifacts. Or, like in Reality Fracture, cards that cycle to find a land. These sources that are not untapped lands should count towards your total numbers, but they are NOT 1-for-1 replacements for untapped lands. We talked about how important it is to have early plays, and so having untapped lands/basic lands available in your primary colors will let you curve out 1/2/3 more often and put your opponent on the backfoot. Many intermediate players fall prey to greedy mana-bases. This is so common in fact, that I would attribute 20% of my wins to being able to cast my spells on time while my opponent took a turn off due to tapped lands, or getting color screwed. Your early plays need to be in your base color or colors. The less you ask of your mana-base, the easier it will be to win and to keep your opening hands. In these primary colors, you need a minimum of 8 untapped sources. However, aim for 9-10. If you are doing the math, 9 basics of each would mean you run too many lands. Here is the trick. instead of adding in tapped lands to patch up your mana-base, lean heavily into a single color for your early creatures. I tend to draft and build almost mono-color decks. This takes a lot of practice, but if you can get super heavy into one color, you will be give yourself so much flexibility on the other colors you add in. A great composition to aim for is 80% one color and 20% 2nd or 3rd colors. These tertiary colors should be complimentary, impactful cards. Think of hyper efficient removal, late game threats that are bombs or must answer creatures. Your secondary cards should also be single pipped. A color "pip" is the mana symbol on a card. So if you see a 4 mana spell that requires 2 Red and 2 colorless, this should be played when you have 7+ sources of that color.
These are all broad and nuanced topics. There is so much to dive into, that it would take much more than a few articles to master and each set or format has its own tweaks to general rules like what I laid out here. This is what makes Magic such a fantastic and sometimes daunting game to play. However, with a good foundation, you can better understand how different formats and cards impact the games and make adjustments from there.
