In yesterday’s article, I discussed the Finkel Effect, and the various manifestations of it. When I described my own Finkel Effect style flaw, the public (by that I mean the online forums of StarCityGames.com, as opposed to the actual public) seemed to think that my flaw wasn’t taking the Moss Kami, but either locking myself into a bad color combination or making incorrect picks. Certainly those last two items didn’t help me, but I still think selecting the Moss Kami was a mistake. Maybe not for everyone, but for me at least, the pick was bad.

A lot of people didn’t seem to understand the concept of having a plan, or at least to the extent that a player would be willing to take a card of significantly lower power (in an abstraction) to follow their pre-determined course. One person on the forums asked (I’m paraphrasing here) “I can’t understand players on the Pro Tour wouldn’t be familiar with all the colors and archetypes, to the point that they would just not draft certain colors or force certain colors”. A few people seemed to think that just forcing in general is a bad idea for just the reasons in the article, that you end up getting trapped in terrible situations like the above. However, I think just having a plan in Limited and forcing, barring some absurd openings, has some merits, which I’d like to discuss so I can get flamed again.

Not everyone is created equal, not even Pro Tour Players

Not everyone has the time and commitment to do nearly unlimited drafts (Sam Gomersall), and not everyone has nearly unlimited talent (Anton, Oiso, etc). For the rest of us that live in reality, you can’t expect to become knowledgeable in every archetype to the extent that you need to be to be successful at the Pro Tour. Of course I know that Kodama’s Might is good, but I’m certainly not experienced/knowledgeable enough with Green, or the various Green archetypes, to run a Green draft perfectly even if I am in a good Green seat. As such, it would seem like the best plan is to try to force myself into situations (R/B, U/B and W/B) where my comfort and knowledge is the highest. When you are in a tournament where a large number of people are better than you are, you have to maximize your advantages and try to minimize your disadvantages. Pro Tour drafts aren’t 4-3-2-2s on MODO - your draft deck will often be short on cards, and will also often lack every single thing that you need. In those sorts of surroundings, knowledge and expertise is critical, and you often don’t have that level of knowledge with every single archetype unless you spend an absurd amount of time testing. For example, Eugene Harvey wanted to draft Green, felt it was the best, or best for him, or whatever. Drafting Green, he started off a perfect 7-0. Next draft, he doesn’t draft Green, and he shows me his deck. His deck was basically fine in terms of power, but the noticeable thing was that he misbuilt it by about two or three cards. When even someone like Eugene is capable of something like that outside of his element, having a plan looks more and more desirable.

Focus, Focus, Focus

Drafting is pretty complicated, if you look at the whole picture. Usually, you’ll be offered numerous viable choices starting with pack one, with multiple opportunities to switch colors, change plans, and so forth. Often, entire drafts can be flushed down the toilet early on with a lack of focus, as early picks end up getting wasted, synergies don’t get maximized, and a general lack of cohesion overwhelms your draft. When you force, you minimize the number of decisions you have to make, allowing you to focus on the things that are most important: making your deck playable, getting the right late picks to fill out your deck, reading signals to find the appropriate second color, and so on. When you try to grab the goods, you have to take into account many more things that you can simply ignore when you have a plan laid out for yourself. Keep in mind that in drafts of this level, you don’t have infinite time to make your picks, and you can’t pick up your deck mid draft to see if you need the fatty or the pump spell. Minimizing the amount of information you have to take in leads to better drafting, even if you have to take less powerful cards in order to do it (like in the event that your fighting over colors with your neighbor, which is much more likely when you force).

Reputation

Of course, this doesn’t translate well to an environment like Magic Online, where you are just doing one draft with people who you’ve never drafted with before, or wouldn’t even remember if you had. But in any environment from FNM to the Pro Tour, people remember the other people they are drafting with. This can obviously be worked to your advantage if you try to do the same thing whenever possible. For example, let’s say the person feeding you is going to force a certain color no matter what. Let’s say it’s black. Now you open up your following pack, and the two best cards are (one of these is made up, obviously)

Kabuto Moth

Awesome Kabuto Moth (exact same card, but Black)

Which one of these cards are you going to take? Almost certainly the White one, because you know you’ll be fighting over Black with the person feeding you. The cards are exactly the same in terms of power level, it’s just that one is in a color that you’ll have to battle for. This sort of thing works in the favor of the person feeding, as in the interest of smart drafting they are going to try to stay away from the very color that you are forcing. With this kind of knowledge, Steve Sadin and I were able to draft absurd decks next to each other without having to say a word or signaling or anything. This put us at a tremendous advantage compared to the rest of the table, which lead to me getting Nezumi Shortfang third from Steve, and Steve getting Kira third from me, and Waxmane Baku sixth. Your reputation for forcing will manifest itself into a signal far more powerful than one you could ever send in a pack (barring something like purely out of fiction like shipping Meloku).

Some of the very best drafters in the game have succeeded time and time again through forcing. At Pro Tour: Yokohama, Rich Hoaen, who decided to force Clerics, took Battlefield Medic second over Barkhide Mauler after kicking of the draft with an Infest. To me, this seems completely insane, but Rich had a plan, and it worked for him, as his Top 8 appearance can prove (in fact, I don’t know if he lost a round in the swiss with his Cleric decks, but I’m sure Rich will chime in on this one). The very same Limited master decided to force Affinity in Amsterdam. This lead to Rich coming outside to show me his deck after one draft, which featured Chrome Mox in his deck and Platinum Angel and Mindslaver in his sideboard. Are these cards more powerful than Chrome Mox? Did he have to sacrifice some powerful cards in the abstraction to draft this deck? I’m sure he did. All I do know is that if I was sitting next to Rich during a draft, I certainly wouldn’t have first picked a Myr Enforcer, and that once again Rich did extremely well for himself at this PT.

While the decision to take a inferior card over a superior card because “I like the color” seems like something directly out of a multi-player game in someone’s basement, forcing a color is certainly a valid strategy. My example from yesterday drew a lot of stunned responses, but I hope that this article provided a little more insight into the advantages of pursuing this sort of strategy. While I wouldn’t advise it for everyone, a good old-fashioned forcing is a lot better than some of the other options available, including at times, just taking the best card.