One

The What-If Draft

A draft in which every spell is free. You pick the best card in the pack twice over — once with mana switched off, once with it back on — and about half the time those are different cards. The gap between them is what mana was doing all along.

From MTG’s Golden Rule.

Two

Casting Speed

A mana cost is not the turn the card arrives, and the gap between them is where tempo lives. Ten questions: the turn you can count on for a real cost — including the two the chapter itself asks you about. The rest ask which of two costs is the better card to own, which of two you can cast first once the colours are counted, and what your own deck does with its mana: how many of its spells you actually cast, what being on the draw is worth, and where on the curve the next card belongs.

From Mana.

Three

The Deck Auction

Four decks go under the hammer, and the only money in the room is your own opening hand and your own life total. You bid by offering to start the game worse off — and a single card outranks every life point you have, which is the whole lesson.

From Cards as a Means of Payment.

Four

Stable or Situational

A sheet of nine cards. For each one, answer the two questions of the stability test — how often the game hands you its best case, and what it is worth when the game does not.

From Stable versus Situational Cards.

Five

Split and Choose

Six boosters opened and shuffled together, and a whole draft out of them against an opponent drafting a plan of its own. Seven cards a round: one of you divides them into two piles, the other takes the pile he wants, and then the roles swap, on until the cards run out. Dividing is the hard half — the two piles have to be worth the same to him and not to you, which is only possible because by the third round you are not building the same deck. At the end you cut what you drafted to forty cards, lands included, and it is read back to you. The opponent is not taking the bigger pile at random: it drafts one of the fourteen archetypes this set was written with — the same ones Sorting a Booster judges synergy by — and the page names the one it has chosen, because you cannot divide a table against a plan you cannot see.

From Creatures as Stable Spells and The Art of Drafting.

Six

Sorting a Booster

A booster of fourteen cards from one of one hundred and twenty-eight sets, Legends to The Hobbit in order of release, and four boxes to put them in: A, B, C, D. Sort every card, then see where the ranking puts it and why it sits there. Players never have to agree on what a card is worth — only on its group, and that agreement is the whole of reading a signal.

From The Art of Drafting, Part I.

Seven

Which Half Fits

Four half-decks a round: one is yours, and at least one of the other three makes a deck with it — sometimes two do. Card quality is not the question here; what the two halves do for each other is.

From Functional Synergy.

Eight

Drafting Mechanics

Twelve pools, each built on one mechanic, and five drafters taking two apiece. Your first pool is a free choice. Your second is whatever the table leaves you, and it has to work with the first.

From Mechanical Synergy.

Nine

The Draft Note

A note drawn before the draft carries one method for each of your two colours: early, late, or one of each. Then three boosters and forty-two picks, and at every one of them the question is what the note takes, not what you want.

From The Art of Drafting, Part II.

Ten

The Points Draft

Every card carries a price that falls as the pile moves: six points, then five, then four, and past zero it starts paying you to take it. Thirty points, three rivals whose rule you are told, and one question — buy it now, or wait for it to get cheaper.

From The Art of Drafting, Part I.

Eleven

Booster Draft, Rochester Draft

Eight packs, drafted twice from the same seat. First as a booster draft, where you see only the pack in front of you and learn what the other seven are taking only from what stops arriving. Then the same eight packs again as a Rochester draft: every pack laid face up, every pick made in the open. At the end the two drafts sit side by side, pick by pick, with what the table held at each Rochester pick — the column a booster draft never shows you. Any of the sets the draft note carries.

From The Art of Drafting, Part II.

Twelve

The Sealed Pool

A pool opened in front of you and the same pool opened across the table. Score the quality of every card, choose the two colours, decide what to do about the cards the pool did not give you, and say whether the seven-drop is in. The reveal judges your pair of colours three ways — quality, strategy and mechanical synergy — and says why quality decides in sealed.

There is a second edition of this one, dealt from a real set you choose (any of one hundred and twenty-eight, Legends to The Hobbit in order of release): the same questions, asked of cards that actually opened in that set.

From The Secrets of Sealed, Part I.

Thirteen

Cutting to Forty

A sealed deck, built and ready: twenty-five spells and seventeen lands, which is two cards too many. Cut two — two spells, or a spell and a land. The question is not which cards are weakest. It is which cards have no part in what this deck is doing, and what its curve says about how much mana it actually needs. The decks are dealt from the same one hundred and twenty-eight sets, a different one each time or the one you choose.

From The Secrets of Sealed, Part II.

Fourteen

Sideboarding

You lost the first game. You are told the colours across the table, what their deck was visibly made of, and what actually beat you — and shown the cards left in your sideboard. Every board carries one card that matches what their deck looked like and answers nothing about what beat you.

From The Secrets of Sealed, Part II.

Fifteen

The Prerelease

Six real boosters of a set you choose, and the whole build after them: sorting into colours, ranking what you opened, reading the depth, two colour pairs worth considering, the curve, the removal, the splash, the cut to forty cards, the mana base, and three cards kept ready for the games that ask for them. It is the exercise that puts the others together.

From The Secrets of Sealed, Part II.

Sixteen

Opening Hands

A hundred opening hands, dealt at random, and every one of them seven cards. Keep it or send it back, then see how the method answers it: the ratio first, the count of safe spells second.

From The Initial Decision.

Seventeen

Bottom One

A hand kept after one mulligan, and one of its seven cards has to go to the bottom of your library. The drill is only that decision: which six do you want, and why is the obvious card not always the one. An advanced mode takes the hand after two mulligans, where you keep five and the question stops being which card is weakest.

From The Initial Decision.

Eighteen

The Ten Principles

A hundred and forty snapshots of a game in progress, seventy of them marked expert: the turn and the phase, both life totals, the libraries and the graveyards, their hand as backs and yours face up. Every land that paid for something is still tapped, every creature that attacked last turn is still tapped, and a creature cast this turn is marked summoning sick — the table is the clue. Find the play: a line to choose, attackers to click, blocks to set; on the expert boards, seven creatures a side and their attack back to count as well. The answer explains itself, shows what they were holding, and only then names which of the ten principles the position turned on. Fourteen puzzles for each principle, in a fresh order every time, and a row of buttons that practises one principle at a time.

There is a second set of positions for this one, ninety-eight more, built independently of the hundred and forty above and sharing not one question with them: the same ten principles, asked of boards you have not seen.

From The Craft of Playing, parts I to III.

Nineteen

The Annotated Game

One whole game instead of a single position. You are on the play with red-green cheap creatures and burn; they are white-blue, with walls, fliers and a counter or two. Seven turns, eight decisions — a line to choose, attackers to declare, blocks to set — each one marked the way the ten-principles positions are marked, with the principle it turned on. The game carries on from what you chose, and at the end it says how many of the eight you had right and whether it was won.

From The Craft of Playing, parts I to III.