Do you recognize this situation? It’s a recent booster draft and one of the next cards is supposed to be your twelfth pick: Terashi’s Cry, Joyous Respite, Field of Reality, and a Reweave.

Barring some better pick for your deck, most people will cherry-pick the rare. (Unless they misread Terashi’s Cry and think it’s an instant, of course.*)

But now a question arises: What do you do with Reweave after the draft? Some people would give it to the random scrub who hangs around the draft table because he didn’t have enough money to buy three boosters. Others would put the card in their trade binders, until those binders explode under their own weight.

Finally, you have the best option: The Reject Rare Draft. For those of you who don’t know the concept, the great Mark Gottlieb wrote a couple of articles about the draft. In this article, I’m going to give you a couple of tips and tricks, how to run such a draft, and even a few strategies.

What is a reject rare? Well, basically it can be any rare. Of course not everyone will be eager to give away their Cranial Extraction or Kokusho, the Evening Star, so what you will see are rares that nobody expects to ever use outside of Limited. Expect something along the lines of Mannichi, the Fevered Dream, Shizuko, Caller of Autumn, or Budoka Gardener.

So what is a reject rare draft? Just put fifteen of these reject rares into piles, call them boosters, hand every participant three boosters, and start drafting. Of course, things can get out of hand when you don’t organise a bit, so let's talk about organization.

The first part of the job is to get the rares. Normally, every participant donates forty-five rares of his own collection and this will be added to the card pool. The first thing you have to watch out for when you receive the cards is the number of colored spells. If you don’t enforce certain ratios, you can end up with tons of red cards and receive virtually no blue cards. This will create blue boosters, screwing up the entire draft.

As a guideline, I suggest eight cards of every color and five artifacts / lands. That makes a balanced pool of forty-five cards. The next thing you have to worry about is the creature count; if you've read Gottlieb's articles, it's something he stresses. To solve this problem, each color should contain at least four creatures to a maximum of six. I also recommend including one to three artifact creatures.

I was amazed by the cards I found in my own "reject" card pool: Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, Yosei, the Morning Star, and Bribery were only the tip of the ice-berg. You’ll also notice that there will be certainly some doubles or even triples of the cards. (It won’t surprise you that Turn the Tables is one of them in my collection.) Some people participating complained about that fact, so I traded with the store owner Kurt “dikke Kurten” Basyn all the doubles for other rares. It’s always handy if you know somebody who collects reject rares.

Another problem might be the power level of certain cards. I probably don’t have to say that a Bribery is likely to snag a fat dragon, a beautiful angel with a giant sword, or Freddy Krueger with two chainsaws who tells you that he's gonna rip your guts out of your stomach and then do a dance on your corpse. But as of yet, nothing has been so troublesome that I would tell you to ban it.

Well, that’s everything I have to say on the organization. The following part will contain a strategy that will leave both Nick Eisel and Ken Krouner baffled. No, just kidding; it will be a random selection of tips and tricks that could easily come from someone like Chris Romeo.**

Strategy Tip #1: Look Out For Removal.
Removal is scarce. If you want proof for that just look through your trade binder and count the number of rare removal cards. There isn't much, is there?

Just like in a regular draft, black has most of your removal needs covered. Red doesn’t have the usual plethora of kill, destroy, burn, and electrocute, although I remember one time that someone did have the combo of Bloodshot Cyclops and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. Did I mention he won the draft?

Don’t forget that white has some nice tricks in Tariff, Turn the Tables, and Retaliate.

Now the two colors you don’t want for the removal part in your deck are — surprise, surprise — green and blue. Blue might have some creature stealing, but that’s it. And green is, well, green.

Strategy Tip #2: Green Is Absolutely, Positively The Worst Color.
No removal, no mana acceleration, no exclusive right on fat. This is not Kamigawa Block Constructed.

Why would you ever want to play green? Beats me. Drafting the least popular color can be some sort of strategy — but I still wouldn’t recommend it.

Strategy Tip #3: Little Men Are Useful
In the land of the big, the little smurf can use its stealth to kill the giant. Or something like that. I remember a game that I locked my opponent up with a Cephalid Constable on turn 3. Since he didn’t have three-mana spells, I could just bounce a land until he was dead.

You need to look different at cards that cost less than four mana. Moriok Rigger is a great example of such a creature. It’s only a 2/2 for three mana with no relevant ability, but he fits the role of small beater or stopper of smaller beaters. Also, some defender creatures come to mind, because their high toughness and relative low mana cost keep early beats at bay.

Strategy Tip #4: Pay Attention To Your Creature Count
This really is true if the person who makes the card pool believes in the fact that there is no need for certain amounts of creatures. Even if you think that a creature sucks, you really should consider playing it. Pick your creatures early, people.

(But still, don't take creatures like Leveler or Cephalid Vandal. Those creatures are suicide.)

Strategy Tip #5: Flyers Are The Butter And Cream Of The Draft
Well, it depends on the card pool, but normally there are quite a few flying menaces. If you don’t pay attention to them, you could end up being as dead as the hamster your dad flushed down the toilet.

My advice: draft them, or draft removal — or even better, draft them both! Nothing rains down on an opponent like a Reiver Demon… except for the eight mana part. This brings me to the next two tips.

Strategy Tip #6: Don’t Play Too Much Over-Costed Stuff
The typical reject rare is around five mana. Anything that costs less is cheap, anything that costs more is pricey. Some people can make an argument that the value is four, but that depends on the card pool… and in any case, don't be alarmed when your deck is a bit top-heavy. Reject rare drafts tend to be a lot slower than regular drafts. But try to keep your deck as speedy as possible.

Strategy Tip #7: Watch Out For Colors
There is virtually no mana-fixing in the pool, so you'd can better concentrate on two colors instead of splashing a third color. The games may be somewhat slow paced, but still if your karma is wrong, the mana gods will not allow you to topdeck that swamp to play your life-saving spell. Also watch out for color-intensive cards like Reiver Demon; unless you play a mono-colored deck, I wouldn’t advice playing him.

Strategy Tip #8: Read The Paragraph
Finally, the most important strategy in a reject rare draft: Have fun! That’s what it’s supposed to be. And I believe that every time someone gets frustrated during a reject rare draft, that Mark Gottlieb tears up a little.

It’s certainly a fun and entertaining format - so when you’re bored of the Kabuto Moth or Cage of Hands dilemma, do a little reject rare drafting; it will make you think differently about the mana curve and tempo. Just don’t get the urge to pick a Myojin in the next regular draft. If you have that urge, send me an e-mail and you can join our self-helping group, the A.R.R.D (Anonymous Reject Rare Drafters).

Don’t forget to laugh maniacally when you send the 10/10 elemental tokens of your Budoka Gardener into the red zone.

Piet — that’s pronounced “Pete” — Cordemans
a.k.a. Izben I. Ramirez
DCIRules on the StarCityGames forums
if you want to contact me NOSPAMizbenramirezAThotmailNOSPAMDOTcom

special thanks to Wouter Neyt, who determined the ratios.
and to Ruben Delameilleure, who reread the article and gave useful advice.

* - Don’t laugh; I thought it was a Blinding Beam.

** - No hard feelings, Mister Romeo, I like your articles.