Prologue

Every Magic player probably knows the following scene…

Location: Anywhere in the world where Magic is played.
Participants: Hansel and Gretel, two new players.

Hansel: Did you hear? There's a Magic tournament today in the mall.
Gretel: Great! I'll make sure to bring my vicious Cat deck!
Hansel: It's just that… I was told that we can't bring arranged decks from home. If I got it right, they give us boosters and we need to build decks from them on the spot.
Gretel: You must be kidding! It will be like playing Monopoly…

The belief that winning or losing in Limited Magic is determined by luck is typical of almost every new player getting acquainted with this environment. Naturally, it's hard to comprehend right away that the restricted “raw material” at your disposal allows you to build decks that are so different in quality. It's more natural to assume that the card pool, which is governed by blind luck, is what determines the final outcome. The sobering up, however, is fast. Beginners are quick to realize that it's the same players that take the first places over and over – just as it is in Constructed. Gradually, they begin to develop certain skills and make progress: correctly evaluating the strength of cards, signalling and interpreting signals in drafts, building a deck with strategic logic, and generally gaining game skills which are different in many ways from those they knew in Constructed. This is not easy and takes time. In fact, this learning process never ends. Even the most experienced players are forced to admit that they occasionally realize something they hadn't realized before.

This Guide is intended to fill a vacuum, as despite the great popularity of Magic, a complete and coherent guide for the Limited environment – or for any environment – has never been created. Articles have been written by the dozen - some of them very good and enlightening - but articles are only meant to deal with specific issues and not the game as a whole. This Guide will provide a basis for a more complete understanding of the game in Limited environment and its vast number of components.

The Author

Introduction
The goal of this Guide is to help you gain the different skills required for competitive play in the Limited environment. What are these skills, you may ask? This question should not be answered until a more basic question is answered: What are the factors affecting the way the game is determined in the Limited environment? Four such factors can be identified:

Card Quality: The quality of cards in your deck has great significance in the Limited environment. In Magic, not all cards are equal. Some are absolutely (presuming equal costs) better then others. Take, for example, two blue creatures: Air Elemental and Aven Windreader, both of which have exactly the same mana cost. It can be safely said, however, that the first is better then the second: Only in rare conditions will the Windreader's ability be better then the +1/+1 of the Elemental. Obviously, this is a by-product of their rarity, as the Elemental is an “uncommon” while the Windreader is a “common.” But the rarity of cards is only important when the card pool is limited. In Constructed, the rarity of cards is insignificant, since theoretically you can get any card you want in your deck. The differences in the efficiency of Constructed decks are not related to the quality of their cards, but in their synergy and their adjustment to the metagame. In the Limited environment, you are forced to use a restricted card pool, and so the quality of cards will be a significant factor (but only one of many) in determining your chances of success.

Two major skills will allow you to improve the quality of cards in your deck. The more basic one is the skill of how to evaluate cards. Identifying the quality of cards is often not trivial. You can gain the ability to assess the quality of cards through hard work and experience, but these alone will not give you the proper tools. Understanding the principles, which are the basis of ranking cards, or in other words, their usefulness/cost ratio, provides you with an important tool for card evaluation. It is vital to analyze the circumstances under which cards are useful – another tool for evaluating their quality. The first and second chapters in this Guide will provide you with the basics of how to evaluate cards in Limited environment. The fifth chapter will teach you the art of signalling in draft. The ability to convey clear signals, and just as important – to read them, will allow you to choose colors that are underdrafted. This in turn will help you pick better quality cards.

Deck Synergy: Every military academy in the world teaches its future officers that the principles of Cooperation between elements and Power Maximization are no less important then the raw quality of the vessels of war. In Magic, your cards' compatibility with each other will affect the overall quality of your deck no less than the absolute quality of the cards in it. In Constructed this is the most important aspect, along with the player's skill. It is also, you will discover, very important in the Limited environment.

The third chapter deals with deck building strategy. It reviews the main strategic ideas around which decks are built, and elaborates on their main components. The fourth and fifth chapters deal with implementing these principles, in Sealed tournaments and in Drafts, respectively.

Playing Level: What makes one player better than another? Personal characteristics, obviously. Concentration enables you to exploit all your resources, and be on guard against your opponent's visible resources. In addition, it allows you to make complicated calculations in the short time available ("If I attack with all my creatures I will be able to deal seven damage… unless he blocks like that and then I only deal four damage and lose a creature... but what if he blocks like that!?" "Hey, hey! Stop holding up the game!"); good memory, in addition to knowing the cards played in this environment, allows the educated guessing of cards your opponent may have, and results in a more cautious and calculated game; fast grasp of situations allows adjustment to the constantly changing game status (switching from playing defensively to being the aggressor when called for); level-headed players can make clear, rational decisions even when their opponent enjoys a substantial advantage. The problem with personal characteristics is that they're not something you can acquire, even through this Guide. You either have them or you don't. However, there are other factors that affect your playing level... factors that can be learned. Getting to know rules and principles, and internalizing, them will allow you to improve your game play, whether you are a beginner or not. This theme will be treated in the future (a second part of this guide.)

Luck: Has a role in Magic but is not the main role. In the Limited environment it is expressed twice: Once in your available card pool, and then again in the way the cards are arranged in your library each game. The randomness of the card pool affects both the total card quality and the chance of creating a deck with high synergism. This issue becomes a worse problem in Sealed tournaments, where you have no control whatsoever over your card pool. In Drafts, however, you get to see a major bulk of the total card pool, which makes the initial conditions more equal.

There are many theories as to how to harness luck. Some players are willing to swear that deck protectors in a specific color will guarantee better draws. A fascinating anthropological study could be made of different "luck-bringing" ceremonies held by Magic players around the world (pounding twice on the Library and shouting "Top Deck! Please…Top Deck!"). As these things were never empirically proven, I will not take a stand in the matter.

…

Part 1: Theory: Card Evaluation in Limited, and the Components of Synergy

Introduction

The ability to evaluate cards in Magic is one of the foundation stones of Magic strategy. Just as a general in the field of battle can't form an efficient battle plan without a deep understanding of the capabilities and drawbacks of each of the means at his disposal (the state of the different units, armor types, mobility of his troops, etc.), so the Magic player is unable to succeed in a Draft or a Sealed tournament without knowing how to choose the cards which comprise his deck. The first two chapters in this tutorial are dedicated to this important matter and our dual aim:

1. To provide beginner players with the proper tools to assess the power and efficiency of cards in Limited environment. Just as any experienced player knows, these tools are usually acquired through trial and error and this requires much time. Every player has his "rookie year" where he is certain that Craw Wurm is the most amazing creature in the game ("I have four copies in my deck!!! Four!!! Are you sure you still wanna play?"), and that life-gaining cards are the ultimate first picks. Despite the pleasures of this nostalgia, beginners usually do not enjoy serving as cannon fodder to more experienced players, and so they aspire to learn, as quickly as possible, the tools that will enable them to correctly evaluate cards. In this chapter you will be presented with the criteria that one must take into account when evaluating cards, and I'll be giving examples and providing basic guidelines. Please note that I do not presume to save the player the necessary practice required to internalize these guidelines.

2. This chapter can also serve more experienced players who have already developed these analytic and intuitive capabilities. Here I do not only examine how to evaluate, but also focus on the why. In other words, we do not only want to provide pragmatic tools to evaluate the existing cards, but also develop a deeper understanding of the characteristics defining the quality of cards. For example, we do not “make do” with stating that a 3/3 creature for three mana is good. We also want to understand why it is good, and under what circumstances it will be less good. This understanding has practical implications that will also aid more experienced players. The great advantage of thumb-rules is that they are based on the personal experience and insights of experienced players. They are also efficient in 90% of the cases, and so provide an excellent basis for card evaluation. But, there are cases in which these thumb-rules will actually hamper the players from evaluating the cards correctly. For example: on several occasions, cards that are considered good in most environments lose their value in one specific environment. Only an innate understanding of the characteristics defining the value of cards will enable you to identity these situations in advance.

The next two chapters present two criteria through which cards can be evaluated in Limited environments. The first is the cost of the card in relation to its usefulness; is the price worth the gain? The second criterion has to do with the card's stability; how efficient is it in different situations?

Chapter 1: The Cost Factor: The Three Primal Resources

1.1 Introduction
When we ask what the Utility/Cost Ratio (from now on referred to as the UCR) of a card is, we want to know what price we are being asked to pay for a certain gain. Cost is defined as the total resources we need to invest for the card to be played. Utility is the total gain we produce from the card after it is played. An expensive card isn't necessarily bad, and a minor gain isn't necessarily useless. Still, we will later see that there is a mana cost threshold beyond which any possible gain isn't worth the cost… in the Limited format, obviously.

When discussing the costs of cards we are obviously not referring to their trade value, but to the resources that must be invested in order to use them during the game. The primary resource we will be referring to is mana. Additional resources are cards and life. These three are the primal resources at your disposal during the game, but there are others: less conventional ones like game Phases or Turns (I'm not referring to illegitimate resources, such as bribery, begging for mercy, etc.).

1.2 Mana
The defining characteristic of mana as a resource is it's scarcity during the early stages of the game, and it's redundancy during the later stages. At the beginning of the game you will be holding a large number of cards in your hand that you would like to play. The only thing preventing you from doing so is your inability to produce a sufficient amount of mana. Here we come to my main point: when evaluating a card, what should concern you is not the total cost of the card, but rather the speed of the card, meaning the turn on which you will be able to play it. There is a strong correlation between mana cost and speed (cost more = less speed), but it doesn't hold in all circumstances.

Take, for example, the creature Rock Jockey. This is a 3/3 creature for three mana, with the following drawbacks:

You can't play Rock Jockey if you played a land this turn.
You can't play lands if you played Rock Jockey this turn.

Usually, a 3/3 creature for three mana is a great bargain (see Appendix), but not in this case. Rock Jockey is somewhat pathetic, and his disadvantage is that you can't play him before the fourth turn (barring mana acceleration). He is, therefore, just as good as a Hill Giant (3/3 creature for four mana). Rock Jockey, however, is much worse than Hill Giant since he delays the development of your mana base by preventing you from playing a fourth land on your fourth turn (and thus a fifth on your fifth turn, etc.). The fact that he costs three mana is less relevant than the fact that he can only be played on the fourth turn. In later stages of the game you will be able to play him for less mana than a Hill Giant, but with all the spare lands that you will have at that point, this is hardly fair compensation. The value of a three-mana creature is not in the fact that it costs three mana but in the fact that you can play it on the third turn.

An additional example: Echo is an ability that allows you to pay a creature's mana cost over two turns – half on the turn you cast it, and half the turn after. The total cost paid for the creature ends up being rather high for the gain. But the fact that you can play the creature earlier often makes this ability extremely worthwhile. Don't get the wrong impression: the mana cost of a card isn't meaningless, it's just that the turn on which you can play it is more important, especially when certain card types are concerned (creatures, mana acceleration. This principle doesn't apply to finishers). Finishers are excluded because they are much less sensitive to cost increases (in Mana.) Usually, they are not used until the late stage of the game when their effect are much more important than their cost. Therefore, Lava Spike is bad, Lava axe good, and Searing Flesh excellent.

Let us examine what this principle teaches us about card evaluation:

1.21. Hidden costs – the question of mana composition:
Mana composition is the amount and type of colored mana in a spell's casting cost. It is a factor in a spell's mana cost, no less important than the total amount of mana. As the speed principle shows us, the most important thing is the turn on which we can cast our spells. So if a spell costs RRR, but you have only three Mountains in your deck, it should be considered a very "expensive" one. Even if you are playing a two-color deck with eight or nine Mountains, there is a very slim chance that you will be able to cast it on your third turn – very rarely will you be able to cast it before turns 5-6. Of course, you can always hope that Lady Luck will smile on you and you will be able to cast it on turn 3… But putting your faith in such things is often the downfall of beginner players. Effectively, the spell's mana cost is higher than the amount of mana it contains, and should be treated as such when evaluating the UCR of a card.

Here is a more or less accurate guide for evaluating effective mana costs in Limited environments for two color decks with equal amounts of lands of each color, with the option to splash a third color.

* One colored mana spells (U, B2, G5):
If the spell's color is one of your deck's main colors, it is possible that the mana composition will have no effect on the speed of casting that spell. True, it's always possible to be “color screwed” but that would be the exception. In contrast, if a spell's color is of a color you have splashed, it will have implications to be accounted for. A spell that is only good in the early game (a 2/2 creature for two mana, for example) should be excluded, as the chances to cast it early on are slim. Some time ago there was a dispute about whether or not one should add a powerful creature such as Wild Mongrel to a deck that splashes Green. I believed then, as I do today, that this should be avoided.

* Spells with double colored mana cost (WW, GG2, BB1):
In the case of high cost spells (GG4, RR3) there shouldn't be any problem casting them once you have enough mana. In contrast, cheap spells (WW,RR) could very well turn out to be more problematic. Statistically speaking, until the second turn you accumulate an average of four lands. What are the chances that two of them will have the required color? There's a good chance but no guarantee. If this is the case, how can such a card be evaluated? Three factors need to be taken into consideration:

In which part of the game will the spell be efficient? If it is efficient in any stage of the game, the mana composition is not a problem.
How many lands of the appropriate color are in your deck? You will find that six lands may be insufficient to back up such a spell.
How useful is the card (worth enough to take the risk?) If we're speaking of Silver Knight, then the risk is definitely worth it. However, that's not always the case. The Slith Firewalker (RR, 1/1, Haste, When it deals damage to a player put a +1/+1 counter on it) is a borderline case where a successful second turn drop is definitely good, yet the opponent still has several ways to deal with it. In other cases, it loses almost all its efficiency.

Regarding splash: in most cases it's best to avoid two colored mana spells in the splash color, due to the low probability of casting them until the very late stages of the game.

* The cost of three colored mana or more (BBB, WWWW, GGG3):
Imagine a spell with the following text: “While declaring casting the spell, throw a dice. 1-2: the spell costs three mana; 3-4: the spell costs four mana; 5-6: the spell costs five mana.” Sounds unreal? Not at all. In fact, you know dozens of such spells. A spell which costs R2 is very consistent – you can be almost certain that you will have the option to cast it on turn 3, and assess the spell accordingly. However, a spell that costs RRR is like a lottery ticket: in some cases you will be able to cast it on turn three or four and enjoy a considerable advantage (as this color cost usually means more usefulness from the card), and in other cases you will be putting your sixth land into play and still will not be able to cast it. When a good player evaluates a card, he does not trust blind luck but rather tries to identify its realistic cost – on what turn he will actually be able to cast it, most of the time. In this case (RRR), the realistic cost would be five to six mana. Now this is an interesting point: the realistic cost of a spell that costs RRR1 or RRR2 is also five to six mana. In the case of RRR2 you will usually get more usefulness from the spell than in RRR… and since their realistic cost is the same, it's almost always best to choose RRR2 over RRR. That, of course, applies also to any other color.

1.22. The "inflated price" phenomenon:
The emphasis placed on the speed of casting a spell requires serious consideration of another interesting phenomenon. If you scale the mana cost of spells, it may seem as if the difference is always the same (R2 to R3 equals R7 to R8… both equal 1). However, in reality there is a point from which every additional mana in the cost of a spell raises its actual cost significantly. A four-mana spell is usually available to be cast on the fourth turn, but a seven-mana spell is almost never available on the seventh turn. Typically, you will have to wait until the tenth turn at least (if there is a tenth turn…). The reason for this is that you begin the game with seven cards (with the exception of Mulligans), two to four of which are usually lands. Until you play those lands, you will draw another two or three cards, out of which one, statistically, will be a land. Therefore, you need to assume that you will be able to place a land every turn only up until the fifth turn, on average.

For spells that cost up to five mana, every single mana in its cost will delay you by one turn. A two-mana spell could be cast on the second turn, a three-mana spell on the third turn, and so on. However, starting from the five mana cost spells, every additional mana in the cost of the spell will delay the turn when it is cast by more than two turns! That is because there is an approximately 40% chance every turn of drawing another land. This means that you should expect a significant increase in usefulness from a spell that costs six mana or more, and consider casting this spell only in the mid or late game. A six-mana spell should be included in the deck only if we expected it to have a significant impact on the game. A seven or eight mana spell has to have a very high chance of ending the game, or should be excluded. Spells that cost more than eight mana should always be excluded, regardless of their usefulness (unless the deck includes a ridiculous amount of mana acceleration spells).

1.23. The secret of a balanced mana curve:
Most players, when building a deck, tend to place too much importance on the value of cards, and ignore other factors affecting the deck in general. Logically, a good two-mana spell is preferred over a mediocre three-mana spell. But sometimes you should pick the latter. Why? Take, for example, a two mana 2/2 creature and a three mana 2/3 creature. The first creature is pretty good, while the second is average at best. The reason for this is that an addition of +0/+1 on a creature is not worth the extra mana. However, in absolute terms (meaning apart from the cost factor) a 2/3 creature is better than a 2/2 one. Now imagine a deck with many good two-mana spells and only a few three-mana spells. In such a deck you will probably have another spell to cast on the second turn, and on the third turn you would rather use all your mana to cast the 2/3 creature. The obvious presumption is that you will almost never need that extra mana for a spell that costs one mana.

A balanced mana curve allows you to fully exploit the mana resource at your disposal, and that is an important factor in determining the quality of your deck, no less than the total quality of your cards. (It is important to note that the mana curve in itself is not the focus, but rather keeping your unused mana to a minimum.) This rule drives directly from the "speed-cost rather than mana-cost" principle. The fact that you have a good two-drop creature in your hand isn't significant if you can cast it only in the third turn due to your unbalanced mana curve.

Example: If you were lucky to draft during the joyful era of M/M/M, you probably remember the huge amount of mana accelerator Myrs. An average deck included at least two or three of them, and sometimes even more. This led to two major trends: firstly, players tended to exclude other two-mana creatures, as it was obvious they wanted that spot for their Myrs. Secondly, players also tended to exclude three-mana creatures, as there is a measure of waste in it; the mana curve leapt from two to four. It was natural to include four-mana creatures (over the three-mana ones), as they are usually more powerful. A creature that outwardly “enjoyed” these circumstances was the Goblin War Wagon, a rather grey and unexciting creature whose ability to commonly be cast on the third turn made it surprisingly more attractive. When the Darksteel and Fifth Dawn expansions were out, the number of Myrs you could pick in a M/D/F draft was limited, and the Goblin returned to its natural state.

1.3 Cards as a Payment Method
The cost of any card is not only its cost in mana, but also in the loss of the card itself. In other words: The cost of casting one spell is one card, plus some additional costs (mostly in mana.) There are exceptions of course, such as when the card's effect allows you to draw another (cantrip) or to re-use it (flashback, buyback, splice, “pay X during your upkeep and put it back in your hand,” etc.). In these cases the cost in cards is zero. Sometimes casting a card requires paying with more cards, such as when you need as additional cost to discard a card from your hand or sacrifice a permanent. In these cases the cost of the card in cards is higher than one.

1.31. Quantity Matters!
The great importance of cards as a resource is obvious to any experienced player. The vast majority of serious articles written on the basics of the game focus on what is usually referred to as “Card Advantage” and this is no coincidence. There is, however, a tendency among beginners to overlook the importance of this resource and focus mostly on the cost in mana (and life). The reason is that at first glance, cards in Magic may seem totally imbalanced. On one hand, there are some rare cards that can essentially determine the outcome of the game on their own, usually known as “bombs.” On the other hand, there are many cards whose usefulness is very situational, or whose UCR is so low that they are totally unplayable. This creates a double illusion that is characteristic of almost any beginner:

Belief that Magic in the Limited environment is led mostly by blind luck.
Overlooking the importance of card advantage, as they believe that quality is more important than quantity.

However, cards are actually much more balanced than they look at first glance. True, some cards can give a substantial advantage on their own, but these cards are rare so you cannot hope to include more than one or two, if you're lucky, in your deck. In addition, these cards are usually not immune to card removal (such as Dark Banishing, Shock, Reciprocate, etc.). In contrast, the bad, unplayable cards are simply not played. The two accepted formats of Limited are Draft and Sealed, and both offer sufficient cards to avoid playing with these bad cards. So it seems that despite the big difference in cards raw power in Magic, there is in fact a surprising relative equality between cards played in different decks. Let's look at the next two examples:

A: Look at these two creatures – Nezumi Cutthroat (B1, 2/1, fear, can't block) and Cruel Deceiver (B1, 2/1, with a mediocre, more defensive than offensive, ability). Comparing them would conclude that: 1. The rat is usually better then the spirit. 2. There are still several situations when the spirit is better then the rat in your deck (opponent plays Black, you need to play defensively, you're playing with more spirits with soulshift, etc.)
B: Comparing Callous Deceiver (U2, 2/3, gain flying until end of turn under certain conditions) with Soratami Rainshaper (U2, 2/1,flying, negligible ability), two playable cards for the same mana cost with a similar trend: a gap in the cards' value (Rainshaper is obviously better) but not a sufficient gap to overlook several situations when the weaker card is preferred. This is a good place to clarify two points. First, it's important to remember that the value of cards is not absolute, but is a ratio of usefulness/cost. A 2/2 creature is not worse than a 5/5 creature, and it could even be better. Also it's impossible to say in advance that a certain type of card is better then another: Removal from creatures, creatures from combat tricks (CTs), etc. At most you can say that creatures tend to be more stable than CTs, but in some cases CTs are a lot more useful than a creature. The second clarification is that despite what was said about cards being more or less balanced, it's impossible to ignore the fact that there is a divergence in the strength of the played cards. However, this divergence is rather small and the main factor remains card advantage.

1.32. UCR - The Balance of Cards
The great value in gaining card advantage over your opponent raises the importance of asking how much cards really cost in other cards. However, knowing that casting a spell involves giving up one or two or more cards does not necessarily say anything about the spell's value. The real question is how many cards your opponent lost over it, minus how many cards you had to give up to cast it. This is the true meaning of card advantage, and Magic articles tend to deal with that question a good deal. The general rule is that, for a card to be playable, this equation needs to be at least zero (meaning that your opponent will lose one card for every card you lose). This rule has many exceptions, but it needs to be followed as a general guideline. What are the implications of this principle over the way we evaluate different types of cards? Let's look into some examples:

Removal: There is a very high certainty that a removal spell will have the ability to be exchanged for at least one card, and so they are very good in Limited environment. This rule is true as long as the removal spell can remove a wide variety of creatures (or permanents) on its own. Mass removal, which can be traded for several of the opponent's cards, are very good and will be considered in most cases to be Bombs. In contrast, removal which requires the sacrifice of a card - or several cards – is much less attractive. However, it depends on the spell's type (see below).

Combat Tricks – CTs: Just as with most cards, these cards will be worthwhile if there is a good chance of trading a CT for one or more of your opponent's cards. There are two ways this could happen:

A. Removing opponent's creature while saving your own creature during combat.
B. Saving your creature from a removal.

Since the likelihood of a CT to trade for an opponent's card is not as good as a removal's chance to do the same, a CT is usually considered worse (CTs serving as removal are situational).

Are there other ways of using CTs? Of course, but you must bear in mind that you still need to avoid letting go of the card balance principle or use it as a finisher (some players tend to forget that a CT is not a bonus card to be used lightly). If you have an instant giving a creature +3/+3 and you cast it on an attacking unblocked creature of yours, which would be a waste unless it was enough to lower your opponent's life to zero. Another example, which shows this phenomenon from the opposite viewpoint, is when you hesitate when attacking or blocking for fear that your opponent is preparing a “surprise” (CT or removal). If this hesitation is paralyzing your game, then your opponent has gained a substantial board position – your creatures are effectively all Pacified and don't attack or block. It's important to remember that this “surprise” your smug opponent is hiding costs him a card, and even if you lose a creature to it, you still keep the balanced card advantage principle. It's important to play in a reasonable manner while taking calculated risks, and to note that making double blocks could very well cost you card advantage if your opponent is holding a CT or removal.

Auras (Enchant Creatures): This type of card constitutes a fine example of the importance of the cost of cards with cards. In spite of the great usefulness to be gained by enchant creature Auras, experienced players are aware of the risk involved by playing them. The danger is that your opponent gets a chance to trade for two of your cards with a single card (usually by using a removal on the enchanted creature). This is why you have to be more critical when comparing those cards to others. One of two criteria has to be met so that they can be used:

A. The usefulness to be gained by the card is so great that it's worth taking the chance of including it in your deck. Lavamancer's Skill and Armadillo Cloak are both examples of these cards.
B. The enchant creature card enables us to avoid this risk. For example, by providing additional cards (Flight of Fancy), by saving itself (Rancor) or replacing itself with a token (Elephant Guide), etc.

Life Gainers: Life-gaining spells are considered problematic in Limited environment. They do not trade for an opponent's card and thus change the card balance to your detriment. The compensation you are awarded for that is usually not worth the heavy price of losing a card. However, if the life gained is substantially high (for a low mana cost) or if it's possible to replace it with another card (Cycling or Transmute, for example), these cards become usable.

Creatures: Evaluating creatures (and other permanents) according to how much they cost in cards is more complex than in the previous examples. In order to determine whether or not a card maintains a balanced card ratio between you and your opponent, you can't only count the cards you expend (usually just one), but also the number of cards your opponent is forced to give up as a result of the card's effect. But how is it possible for you to know in advance the effect of the creature on the balance of cards in the game? This dilemma has led most writers dealing with the theoretical components of the game to state that creatures being cast from your hand to the table are not “wasted” (meaning no payment of a card), but are rather “invested.” I believe this is a misconception. If you forfeit the option of evaluating the cost of creatures in terms of cards (due to your inability to securely know the effect they will have on the game), you will lose an important tool in evaluating cards in the Limited environment. The meaning of perceiving creatures as “invested” cards rather than “wasted” cards is that as far as card advantage is concerned, all creatures are equal. This is, of course, absurd.

Take a 1/1 creature for one mana, for example. Why is it considered unplayable (assuming it has no other characteristics of course)? It qualifies as far as the following formula goes:

Mana Cost ≤ (Power + Toughness) / 2 (see appendix).

And indeed, its cost in mana is not problematic but rather the fact that the chances to trade it for an opponent's card are slim (so are the chances to neutralize an opponent's creature by the threat of a possible trade between them). Most of the time this 1/1 creature will have one of these effects on the game:

Prevent the next X damage (chump blocking).
Add +1/+1 to a blocking creature (blocks with another creature).

Surely you will agree that this is a very mild effect for a spell. If you get lucky and you play it on the first turn of the game, you will probably be able to deal 1-2 points of damage to your opponent in addition to the abovementioned effects. This still does not make the card attractive.

Now take, for example, a 2/1 creature for two mana. Obviously this is not a great deal, but the chance that it will trade for an opponent's creature is substantially greater (its vulnerability to removal is meaningless, as removal spells are cards just like any other). With an exceptionally large creature there is a good chance that your opponent will have to trade more than one card to deal with it (for example, two creatures, or creature plus removal). A large creature, it seems, tends to be practically card advantage bought with a high price in mana (meaning board disadvantage in the early stages of the game).

Lands and Mana Accelerators: Lands are cards that worsen the card ratio between you and your opponent, as they force you to give up a real card for them. Fortunately, your opponent is also using a similar number of them in his deck, and so the card ratio remains balanced. In every game, each player draws a different ratio of lands/spells, meaning a different ratio of non- spells/spells. When this ratio is higher for you than your opponent, you are at a disadvantage. This is why players do their best to reduce the number of lands in their deck as much as possible.

However, including too few lands in your deck will also, paradoxically, lead to card disadvantage. This is caused because lands are essential to your ability to cast the spells themselves. Players are often not sensitive enough to the problems inherent in “off” cards. “Off” cards are cards in your hand that cannot be used due to mana problems (insufficient mana, or lack of the appropriate colored mana), or special conditions enabling their activation (a legal target, for example). A player playing with an “off” card is effectively playing with one card less until the right conditions are present to allow for its use. The lack of such awareness leads players to include in their deck too large a number of expensive cards, or to flippantly decide to play a third or fourth color, or to use very situational cards – such as artifact removal – which may remain useless. (Another common expression of this phenomenon is seen when players make a faulty decision when deciding on a Mulligan based on a false assessment of the opening hand.) This is why crucial importance is attached to “the point of balance,” or, as it is known, “the right number of lands for a deck.”

Spells whose purpose is to accelerate the mana curve practically reduce the price of spells in mana (remember: the true price of cards in mana is the speed of their casting). This is gained for the price of giving up on a balanced card ratio (since your opponent is not giving up a card of his own). It is true that some of the mana accelerators allow you to look for lands in your library and place them in your hand. However, lands are not spells, and so do not help towards the card ratio (though they can help to maintain it by allowing the casting of more expensive cards).

1.33. Card Costs with Cards
The "card costs with cards" has two components: the amount and properties of cards required as payment; and your control over the payment:

The Amount of Cards Required As Payment and other criteria: Not surprisingly, the quantity of cards required to be sacrificed in order to play a specific card is a dominant factor in assessing the cost of this card. As mentioned, the vast majority of cards in the game only cost one card to play (meaning themselves). However, there are others, such as a requirement to discard one card or more from your hand as an additional cost, or a requirement to sacrifice one permanent or more. Due to the importance of cards as a resource, you should be very critical with such spells. You should ensure that the usefulness you get is worth the high cost. High cost? Yes, but not always. The quality of cards you sacrifice, the type of spell requiring their sacrifice (instant or sorcery as we discuss it above) and the manner of the sacrifice (meaning the method of the payment) may reduce the real cost of these cards.

The quality of the sacrificed cards: It's not always costly to give up a card. Very often, cards that significantly effect the board position at an early stage will remain almost useless later on, making their sacrifice meaningless. Take, for example, a seven-mana creature that requires sacrificing a land when it comes into play. When you have seven lands in play, sacrificing one land will almost never be a problem. Generally, it can be said that expensive cards requiring the sacrifice of lands as part of their costs shouldn't be judged critically. Giving up a cheap creature at a late stage of the game is also an inexpensive price to pay. Just a reminder, the usefulness of most of the cheap creatures is limited to the early stages of the game. Their value decreases substantially the further the game progresses. Sacrificing a 2/2 creature to allow casting a 5/5 creature three or four turns ahead of time – according to what you would have expected from the 5/5's usefulness (for example, three mana instead of six) – is usually considered a good deal. This principle is also relevant to more expensive and powerful cards requiring discarding cards. In the late stage of the game, you will not be giving up much by discarding a land or a cheap creature. In contrast, giving up an expensive spell in the opening hand in order to play a good spell quickly is not considered as good a deal, with the exception of very costly spells. For example, discarding a card to play a 3/3 creature for two mana is a questionable play.

The Spell Type: When evaluating a spell, there is a great difference if it is an instant or a sorcery. For example, if a removal requires sacrificing a creature as an additional cost, with a sorcery we will always be trading two cards for one (sometimes it's worth it, and sometimes not). With an instant it's usually possible to wait for the right circumstances to trade two cards for the opponent's two cards – sacrifice the creature after combat damage is on the stack. In this case, the only cost is having to wait for your creature to die before you can use the removal.

The control over the payment: The extent of control is measured according to the manner of sacrifice and the manner of discard:

Manner of Sacrifice: If the sacrifice is defined as a cost (usually in addition to the mana cost), then the loss of the extra cards is inevitable. If, however, the sacrifice is not a cost but rather defined as part of the card's effect, then it is possible that you can cast it under certain conditions for no extra card cost. For example, Gutwrencher Oni (B4, 5/4) requires that you discard a card every upkeep unless you control an ogre. But what if you don't have a card in your hand? Then you lose nothing! Another example: For the powerful effect of Death Pit Offering (+2/+2 to all your creatures) and the exceptionally cheap mana cost (BB2) you also need to sacrifice all your creatures. But if you don't have any creatures in play to sacrifice, then that cost is spared (of course, there still was a cost… and it was to wait until you could cast the enchantment before casting your creatures).

Manner of Discard: There are three kinds of discard:

1. The discarding player decides which card to discard.
2. His opponent is the one to make that choice.
3. The discard is random.

There is great importance in the kind of discard, and in this case it's the quality, not the quantity, that matters. A card enabling you to look into your opponent's hand and choose one for him to discard is usually better than a card that allows him to choose two cards to discard (unless you can time it so that you discard his last two cards).

1.4 Life Points as a Means of Payment
Life points are often used as an alternate cost to mana. Usually, life points are used as complimentary payment, making the mana cost cheaper, and are a very attractive means of payment. They are, however, a limited resource, just as mana and cards are. Paying with life points as opposed to paying with mana or cards does not involve giving up any board position. A spell which costs X mana makes us wait until turn Y to cast it. In other words – its cost entails sacrificing the board's current position (meaning until you have enough mana to cast it). A spell that costs X cards deprives you of using these cards later and so it also sacrifices the board position, but this time in the future. Life points, however, make no sacrifice at all, as long as you have enough of them. To clarify this point I will use an example:

"The Cure for Trolls" is a 4/4 creature that enjoys several alternate costs. It costs five mana or three cards to be discarded from your hand or ten life points. Suppose you draw this card in the starting hand. If you wish to pay its cost in mana you will need to wait at least five turns to do so. This waiting time is the price you pay for this card, and this waiting time includes not enjoying any benefit from it on the board right away. Now, let us suppose that you do not want to wait, and wish to discard three cards to cast it right now. In this case, you will gain a substantial advantage on the board right away… but deprive yourself of resources in the coming turns. In contrast, paying the creatures cost in life, does not involve any current or future board sacrifice. The life loss is not important, as you are not being threatened. Your opponent, however, will be highly pressured and will take a lot of damage before he succeeds (if he succeeds) in establishing an effective defense.

The abovementioned example illustrates the incredible advantage of paying with life points, but that is not always the case. In the later stages of the game the wheel turns: paying with life points becomes expensive, often too expensive, and in contrast mana cost becomes insignificant. If you draw this creature when you have seven lands in play, 3 cards in hand, and nine life points, you will probably just want to cast it with your mana. The mana is available, and you will most likely not have another use for it. The life cost becomes irrelevant, as it is infinite. Even if you can pay the card's cost with life in a late period in the game without dying, it may yet prove to be too costly.

Suppose you have fourteen life points and you pay ten of them to cast this creature (so that you can use your mana for some other spell, or maybe because you still don't have five mana). Staying on four life puts you in an inferior position in two aspects: Firstly, you are susceptible to spells that cause direct damage (previously they could only be used as creature removal: now they are game finishers). Secondly, you now lack the flexibility required to prevent your opponent from gaining board position and the flexibility to gain board position of your own. The defender's advantage has always been his ability to choose which attacker to block and also when to double block. Wise blocking is a good way to turn the tide of the board: to get rid of your opponent's strong creatures at the price of your own weak creatures. This usually involves allowing one or more of the attacking creatures to remain unblocked. In fact, you transform life points into board position- exactly like the example ahead. If your life is dangerously low, you lose this advantage and you are forced to block every single attacking creature. This also makes attacking more risky (unless your opponent is low on life as well), as every trick in his hand could become lethal should he decide to take the damage and counterattack on the next turn.

This raises an interesting point: If the value of different payment methods (life points, mana, cards) is not absolute but circumstantial (for example, what stage the game is in), then, it may be claimed, it is not really possible to determine that one payment method is better then another. As you have seen, paying with life points is good at the start of the game but becomes less appealing as the game progresses, while with mana-cost the situation is reversed. In spite of this, a 4/4 creature for five mana is common, while there are no such creatures that cost ten life. Why? Once again the importance of the card's hidden cost is apparent; that is, how fast the card can be used in the game. The hidden cost of a 4/4 creature for 10 life points on the first turn is close to zero, as you can cast it with almost no drawback and it will almost always seal the game (unless your opponent does the same, of course). This makes the game too random, and this is why life points are almost always used as payment only in addition to mana.

1.41. Paying with Life Points
How should you evaluate the cost of card in life points? What is considered a “good deal,” and how can you recognize an exaggerated price? Two factors need to be considered:

The number of life points you need to sacrifice: Despite the attraction of this means of payment, the cost is sometimes just too much for the usefulness it brings with it. Death Wish, for example, is a Black spell from the Judgment set, enabling you to pick any card from your sideboard into your hand for the ridiculously low price of three mana. However, the card demands that you sacrifice half of your life points, and this leaves it far from being playable in any format. It is important to mention that evaluating a card's cost in terms of life points is not limited to its casting cost. The payment with life could be a drawback of a permanent, such as losing life every turn or every time a creature comes into play. You have to calculate the total cost in life the spell will demand, and this calculation is not always easy. The cost is usually dependant on the stage you cast the spell.

Extent of Control: The second consideration is the extent of control you have over the loss of life. If there is no control at all, using such a card could very well be a dangerous gamble, even if you get a lot of usefulness from this card. These cards can be separated into three categories:

No Control – life points are lost under certain conditions which involve little or no control: “During your upkeep,” “Whenever you draw a card,” ”Whenever a creature comes into play,” etc. Examples include: Ebon Drake, Grinning Demon, Phyrexian Arena, and Dark Confidant. The fact that there is a degree of risk in these cards does not necessarily make them bad. Phyrexian Arena and Dark Confidant are actually excellent cards, but their speculative aspect requires caution.

Control by loss of the card – Cards in this category grant you control over the loss of life. However, deciding to avoid the loss of life requires that you avoid using its ability or abilities or sacrificing it, or sometimes just not casting it at all. Examples include Takenuma Bleeder and Necropotence. These cards obviously have a less speculative aspect.

Control that does not require the loss of the card – Some cards are mostly used for their life points cost aspect, but can be used with mana when the life loss is not profitable any longer. Take, for example, Zombie Cutthroat. It can be used in several ways: You can cast it as a Morph, and unmorph it at the right moment for five life (usually the best method due to the surprise aspect) or cast it from your hand for five mana or cast as a morph and keep it as such when the life cost is too high. This flexibility raises the value of this card significantly, as it allows you to take advantage of life points payment early in the game without it becoming a burden later on.

Appendix

Here we present a very general and somewhat oversimplify formula who can help to determine the proper Mana cost/Creature abilities ratio.

The Double Standard: A creature is considered good if its mana cost is equal or less than half of its power plus toughness:

Mana Cost ≤ (Power + Toughness) / 2

Mana Cost	Playable	Good	Excellent
One Mana	2/1	2/1	2/1
Two Mana	2/1	2/2	2/2+
Three Mana	2/2	2/3, 3/2	3/3
Four Mana	3/3	3/4, 4/3	4/4
Five Mana	3/4	4/4, 5/4, 4/5	5/5
Six Mana	5/5	6/6	7/7
Seven Mana	7/6, 6/7	7/7	Needs an ability
Eight Mana plus	Needs an ability	Needs an ability	Needs an ability

This table only refers to vanilla creatures with no other characteristics. Obviously, if there are any, it could change the creature's playability. Generally, every regular ability (first strike, trample, haste, vigilance etc) increases the mana cost by half a mana (the only exception is flying, which costs around one mana extra) or complicate the Mana composition by one degree (U1 turns to UU) A more balanced power/toughness in a creature makes it better… I'll deal with this more in chapter two.

As can be observed from the chart, the Double Standard principle is not valid with one-mana creatures (this is explained in Card's Cost in Cards). Regarding creatures that cost six or more mana, this is a symptom of the inflated price phenomenon (see above).

[Editor's Note: Chapter 2 will be appearing tomorrow. Be sure to join us then! - Craig]