If you're like me, you went to your local Scars of Mirrodin Prerelease this weekend. Perhaps you only played Sealed, but you've at least started thinking about what Scars will be like in draft. I certainly have. It seems clear that it will be quite different from the last few draft formats.

Zendikar draft was an aggressive format about two drops and removal. Rise of the Eldrazi draft was about giant creatures, leveling and swarms of tokens. Magic 2011 was about flying, scrying and removal. Scars is obviously about artifacts and Infect.

One of the great things about power drafting is it makes drafting when you are inexperienced with a set so much easier. An artifact heavy set also really lends itself to power drafting. It doesn't matter what colors are being drafted around you, artifacts can be used to fill out your deck when your colors are dried up.

One of the first things I look for when deciding how to power draft a set are obvious synergies between various colors. In Scars my first question was what colors make the best use of artifacts? I checked out the commons in each color to determine how many combine usefully with artifacts:

• Red - 6
• White - 5
• Blue - 4
• Green - 2
• Black - 1

Then I checked to see what colors made the most use of Infect. Black had four commons that directly used Infect, a card that gave poison counters and three others that gave creatures some sort of -X/-X. Green had three commons with Infect. Red, White and Blue had zero.

These pieces of information seem to suggest that if you want to draft Infect, draft Black/Green. If you want to draft a deck based upon artifacts, draft some combination of Red, White and Blue. When power drafting Rise, I drafted two color decks using some combination of Red, Black and Green. All three colors worked well for aggressive token decks. In M11, I power drafted various color combinations that didn't include Green. I generally tried to draft fast decks full of removal, flying and card advantage.

In Scars of Mirrodin, it's even easier to power draft focusing on just a few colors. Red, White and Blue are the obvious colors for this purpose. The issue is you want to have the most powerful deck possible every time, regardless of what the player in front of you is drafting. If you want to draft Black/Green Infect and the player to your right is also doing this, your deck will be much weaker. If you want to draft a deck around artifacts, then it will matter very little what the player to your right is doing. If you draft carefully, you will have a good deck.

I built a sealed deck at the prerelease for gunslinging and I played Red/Green artifact. I played two Red cards, five Green cards, 17 artifacts and 16 land. I built another sealed deck today and it was Red/White artifact with four Red cards, three white cards, 17 artifacts and 16 land. As you can see, colored spells aren't necessarily a big ingredient in a good Scars deck. I played over 20 games at the prerelease and I only lost five. Base artifact is definitely a strong strategy.

The key thing I'm trying to do in sealed or draft with Scars is to play with lots of powerful Metalcraft. This helps me in multiple ways. First, most of my deck is colorless, so I'm rarely color screwed. Second, the colored spells I'm played are way overpowered for their cost. This weekend I played with: a 4/4 for two, an 8/8 Trample for four, a one mana instant that did four damage to a creature or player, a 4/6 for four and a 3/3 for four that was a 6/6 Haste the turn it was played. Cards like these are incredible. Of course they were only that powerful because I was playing with lots of cheap artifacts.

Time for my first Scars of Mirrodin Power Ranking! This week will only include commons. In future weeks, as we get to know the set better, I will include uncommons.

Scars of Mirrodin Power Rankings

1. Lumengrid Drake - Flying and bounce are both excellent in this environment.
2. Galvanic Blast - Four damage for one mana at instant speed, just think about that for a moment.
3. Auriok Sunchaser - 3/3 Flyer for two mana, seriously?
4. Revoke Existence - Cheap, flexible and it exiles, perhaps the best removal in the set.
5. Arrest - Ice Cage without the drawback, nice.
6. Ghalma's Warden - 4/6 for four. Coming through!
7. Blade-Tribe Berserkers - A reason to always leave a random Myr back to block against Red.
8. Shatter - Better than Terror for this set.
9. Glint Hawk Idol - 2/2 Flyer for two colorless. A great way to ramp up to Metalcraft (meaning having three artifacts in play.)
10. Snapsail Glider - Colorless flyer that helps itself get to Metalcraft.
11. Chrome Steed - 4/4 for four that adds to your artifact count.
12. Carapace Forger - Excellent card that would be awesome if it were White or Red.
13. Disperse - Cheap bounce is always good in Limited, but with the amount of equipment and counters in the set, it's especially good.
14. Tumble Magnet - Even if you can't use it more than three times, it's really good.
15. Origin Spellbomb - Cheap artifact that keeps your artifact count the same, even if you draw a card with it.
16. Sylvok Replica - Either adds to your artifact count or lowers theirs, a win/win scenario.
17. Vedalken Certarch - I hear you like Blinding Mage, well you're gonna love this guy!
18. Turn to Slag - Red removal that can often gain you card advantage.
19. Neurok Replica - Cheap artifact that's an excellent blocker and bounce (which we especially like in this set) when you need it.
20. Grasp of Darkness - Excellent removal that would be amazing in most sets.
21. Bleak Coven Vampires - Almost a reason to play Black.
22. Horizon Spellbomb - Card advantage and mana smoothing in a cheap artifact package.
23. Glint Hawk - Cheap flyer that's great for resetting cards like Tumble Magnet.
24. Strider Harness - Imagine if every creature you drew had haste and +1/+1. Feels good, doesn't it?
25. Molder Beast - Trample really helps with all of the random Myr running around.

If we count artifacts with a color specific ability as cards of the relevant color, the list breaks down like this:

• White - 7
• Red - 4
• Blue - 4
• Green - 4
• Black - 2

This suggests that White is like Blue in M11 and Black is like Green in M11, even though it has one of the best removal cards, Grasp of Darkness. While Green has as many ranked cards as Red and Blue, its average ranking is an unimpressive 18.75. Blue's average is 12.5 and Red has an average of 8.75. Admittedly, Green is already hurt by my favoring of the "artifact" colors. If it were Red, Carapace Forger would be multiple spots higher. Also, with this being the first Power Rankings of the new set and not including Uncommons, we should avoid being slaves to this list.

Given the low need for colored cards when drafting Scars, it allows for quite a bit of flexibility when making your picks. For example, if you open Ezuri's Brigade, take it, draft Green. Even if this is your only Green card it's not a big problem. Also drafting mono-color is easier. In a color like White or Red, which has some decent creature control and good artifact synergy, you can draft 5-10 cards of that color and then fill up the rest of your deck with artifacts.

Another thing to consider when power drafting Scars: 16 land will often be the right call. With as many artifacts as land in your deck, you don't have to worry too much about being color screwed. Also, Spell bombs and Myr can help you make it through mana tight draws.

Power drafting Scars requires a big mindset change from drafting other recent sets. In order for a non-artifact card to make the cut in your deck, it needs to be very good. A card like Sky- Eel School would be a relatively high pick in M11, but I have trouble seeing myself playing it over a decent, cheap artifact in this set. In general, when I'm looking for colored cards to make the cut, I want them to do one of the following:

1. Reward me for playing lots of artifacts by synergizing with them and hopefully being overpowered as a result.
2. Remove artifacts or creatures efficiently.
3. Just be really high quality, like Darkslick Drake or Halt Order.

Don't wait for Scars to appear on Magic Online, head to your local game store and get into a Scars draft. With some power drafting, you can clean up while others are still trying to wrap their heads around the new format. Draft lots of cheap powerful artifacts and complimentary cards in some combination of Red, White and Blue. If a card has a Metalcraft ability, you should usually take it. Have you drafted with Scars yet? What seems to work for you? Let us know with your comments. Next week we will take a look at the uncommons, as we continue to unravel the mysteries of Mirrodin.