From the first Booster Draft Pro Tour (which was the 2nd Pro Tour, PT Los Angeles, the first time) I've always had a special place in my heart for draft. It was a brand new format that I adapted to as if it was created just for me. I used a simple strategy that I call "power drafting" to propel me to a 3rd place finish at that Pro Tour and high finishes in several other major draft events, such as a Top 8 at Pro Tour London, 9th at Pro Tour Chicago, 1st at Grand Prix Manchester, not to mention a couple other Pro Tour Top 16s.

I don't consider power drafting to be the only good strategy. One could make a good case that former champ Kai Budde had the best approach. Kai would spend so much time drafting a set that he would become an expert at every possible archetype in that draft set. This way, he could just carefully read what was being passed to him and just draft the colors that were the best for his seat. Kai could be safe in the knowledge that no matter what colors they were, he would be able to draft them and play them optimally. If you have copious amounts of free time, Magic Online now provides you with the perfect tool to become an expert at every archetype just as Kai Buddhe did. Even so, the weaker archetypes need near perfect drafting and play to be successful. For mere mortals, power drafting is a much better approach.

I use power drafting on both M11 and Rise of the Eldrazi. This week I will talk about how to power draft M11 and next week I will discuss Rise of the Eldrazi. Since M11 is about to be released on Magic Online, I want to make sure you are ready to dive in and start racking up those wins.

The main principles of power drafting are as follows. Eliminate at least one or two colors from consideration. Determine which colors have the best synergy with each other. Based on these decisions, only consider two or three possible archetypes when drafting. Make sure these archetypes have a good amount of similarity and crossover. Become an expert at drafting and playing this small number of archetypes.

The first step when power drafting is for you to determine the relative power level of the five colors when drafting that set. This becomes more complicated with sets that use large amounts of gold cards, but this isn't a problem for M11 (or ROE). One of the best ways to start doing this is to rank the top commons and uncommons for each color and then compare them.

Red

1. Fireball
2. Lightning Bolt
3. Chandra's Outrage
4. Chandra's Spitfire
5. Ember Hauler
6. Pyroclasm
7. Act of Treason
8. Fling
9. Fiery Hellhound
10. Prodigal Pyromancer

Green

1. Cudgel Troll
2. Giant Growth
3. Garruk's Companion
4. Acidic Slime
5. Giant Spider
6. Awakener Druid
7. Garruk's Packleader
8. Sylvan Ranger
9. Sacred Wolf
10. Greater Basilisk

Blue

1. Mind Control
2. Aether Adept
3. Air Servant
4. Foresee
5. Azure Drake
6. Cloud Elemental
7. Augury Owl
8. Jace's Ingenuity
9. Water Servant
10. Unsummon

White

1. Serra Angel
2. Pacifism
3. Blinding Mage
4. Condemn
5. Stormfront Pegasus
6. Cloud Crusader
7. Mighty Leap
8. Wild Griffin
9. Assault Griffin
10. Inspired Charge

Black

1. Doom Blade
2. Assassinate
3. Quag Sickness
4. Liliana's Specter
5. Mind Rot
6. Howling Banshee
7. Gravedigger
8. Rise from the Grave
9. Corrupt
10. Stabbing Pain

Fireball is the best card on any of these lists. Lightning Bolt is possibly next. So Red is the best color for draft, right? Bzzz! Wrong answer... Fireball and Lightning Bolt are so good because they are so easy to splash, that people will regularly draft them even if it would mean adding a new color to their deck in progress. In the event that Red's list might have to start at number three, it gets much worse.

Figuring out the worst color to draft is one of the keys to power drafting. In M11, this is easily Green. The best card is a 4 drop that doesn't fly or do anything when it comes into play. None of the cards are creature removal or evasion. 2 of the best cards are 5 drops that don't fly or do anything when they come into play. Another problem with Green is that one of the things it does do well is help smooth your colors. Since Green itself doesn't bring much to the table, if you want to color smooth your deck... eliminate Green from your deck! These are the types of problems that are pretty common to green in draft. Does this mean Green always sucks in draft? No! It is possible for Green to be good in power drafting, however. Just see my next article when I'm discussing Rise of the Eldrazi draft.

You should also consider the power level of various factors like evasion, removal, permission and combat tricks in a given set. One of the best examples from M11 is flying. Flying is better and more important in M11 than many other sets. For Example, in M11 you can have a 2/1 flyer for 2 mana. In Rise, you need to pay three mana. Also relevant is how good the non-flying creatures are in relative terms. While flying is better than average in M11, non-flying is generally a little weaker. Bloodthrone Vampire is practically a bomb in Rise and it's awful in M11. When paying one specific and one colorless for a two-drop in M11, you generally get a generic 2/2. In Rise, you can get things like Nest Invader, Kiln Fiend, Bramblesnap or cool levelers like Knight of Cliffhaven.

Black, White and Blue have most of the flying in the M11, a better creature curve than Green, better creatures than Red, better creature control than Green and they're not having their top picks being poached like Red. Card drawing and scrying are also very powerful in M11 draft. Blue has a stranglehold on these things. Blue is so good, that I have trouble imagining myself not drafting it in M11. People next to me in draft... you've been warned! When I draft M11 I draft either Blue/White or Blue/Black. I prefer Blue/Black, but it's usually good to have a back-up plan in power drafting.

Occasionally there are sets where it is best to draft three colors and I love to force a three color archetype even with the possibility of the drafter in front of me drafting the same colors. There are just too many playables for them to take so many that it impedes your own draft significantly. When I won GP Manchester, I drafted Red/Blue/Black every table. It was Rochester draft so we could see what colors other people were drafting and yet even if I knew for a fact my colors were being drafted ahead of me, I didn't vary from my course.

Rarely, it may even be the right play to force a specific two-color combination every time. At the PT LA where we drafted Mercadian Masques, I forced Blue/White every time. I finished in the Top 16 and at the one table I know for certain it was drafted by the player to my right, I went 2-1. Blue/White was just that much deeper and more powerful than any other option.

You might argue that everyone will recognize the best colors and draft them, making it more powerful to draft the weaker colors because they are being mostly ignored. At the Draft Challenge at PT San Juan, Zvi Mowshowitz informed me that White was being so underdrafted due to its reputation as the weak color in Rise of the Eldrazi, that he was forcing White at every draft table. But what if someone else at your table does the same thing? What if two do? The consequences for sharing this strategy with other players at your table are much worse than competing for the power colors. Planning on drafting the bad colors and letting others have the good ones is at least helping other players at the table and it may be hurting you. Please, please draft with me! For the record, this strategy can be pretty successful, it's just very risky. (Zvi and I both had winning records in the Draft Challenge, but neither of us made the Top 8.)

Blue is so good, that the last time I drafted M11, I drafted so much of it while trying to decide whether to commit to White or Black, I ended up with a mono-blue deck. I didn't come close to losing a match. I generally felt like I was playing constructed and they were playing sealed deck. When you play an Azure Drake, most creatures that cost less than five don't have a good attack. Cloud Elemental and Air Servant are amazing since the only creatures I'm really worried about are flyers. The combination of bounce and permission make it hard for any single creature to be a problem. Augury Owl is my favorite two drop in the set. Nothing aggravates me more in Magic than mana flood and mana screw. The draw smoothing of the Owl is hard to fully appreciate unless you've played with it many times. The long game smoothing effect of Foresee and Jace's Ingenuity are phenomenal as well. While these things support my assertion that Blue is awesome in M11, I don't recommend planning on playing mono-color in draft.

I like a Blue/Black deck with flyers, scrying, card drawing, creature removal , bounce and perhaps some discard, permission or graveyard recursion. When you draft Blue/White, there is almost no need to have creatures without flying. I recently played against a Blue/White deck that featured two Wall of Ice. I was shocked to see in game two that he hadn't sideboarded them out and I proceeded to play the entire game without playing a non-flyer. Generally the two drop slot is where I load up on non-flyers. Cards like Child of Night, Maritime Guard and Blinding Mage can help ensure I can't be overrun on the ground while I'm rolling out my air force.

The main things I want you to take away from this week's article are: draft blue In M11, don't draft Green in M11, keep the number of archetypes you are considering drafting low and make sure they are the most powerful ones. Next week I will talk about power drafting in Rise of Eldrazi and continue to discuss why power drafting is a good idea in general. Until then, consider this: the messages you send are at least as important as the ones you receive.