Magic is credited with bringing trading card games to new heights of popularity.

But it is not the first time people have coveted cardboard. Baseball cards have been a popular collector’s item since the late 1860s. After 100 years, games began to emerge. Strat-o-matic is one such game. It uses statistics based on real baseball players to simulate a game of baseball.

Richard Garfield‘s team was inspired by Strat-o-matic. The “Magic: The Gathering Pocket Players’ Guide” (ISBN-13   1-88099-229-9) called out Strat-o-matic Baseball as an early influence. On page six, he describes introducing Strat-o-matic Baseball players to the playtesting team. “We were particularly anxious to find out if Magic could be adapted for league play.”

In a section titled “Developing Your Deck”, Garfield describes how playgroups become stagnant. Garfield says, “… the better you are at deck construction, the more the skill in the duel itself is overshadowed”. Garfield identifies two key skills in Magic. Deck construction and piloting. Obvious today, but back then, it was a key distinction.

Notice that these drafts do not use sealed booster packs like today. The original draft uses a pile of random cards. The similarity to fantasty sports leagues was not a coincidence. Later, Joel Mick describes running your own multiplayer league. Here, he suggests a draft. A big advantage for Mick is “giving all players the same ability to draft a powerful and versatile deck“. Mick calls out players with experience running Rotisserie or Strat-o-matic leagues. He believes they make good candidates for organizing Magic.

Early Magic players did not share Garfield’s excitement for the format. In episode 346 of his “Drive to Work” podcast, Mark Rosewater discussed Limited. Players saw the format as too random. They needed a lot of sealed products before they were interested in trying the format. Word of mouth is powerful.

If professionals did not want to play sealed, why should you?

1. Decide how many packs you are using (let’s say 8 players with 3 packs each, but you can use as many as you like)
2. Player 1 opens the first booster pack and lays out each card face up for all players to see.
3. Starting with Player 1, take turns picking a card in order.
4. When you reach the last player, they choose two cards. This is compensation for being the last person to choose.
5. Players continue picking now in reverse order. This is called snaking. Repeat until all the cards are taken.
6. Player 2 now opens a pack. Repeat this process, so the starting player is always changing.

In an eight-person draft with 15 cards per pack, it should look like this:

Player 1: 1st card

Player 2: 2nd card

Player 3: 3rd card

Player 4: 4th card

Player 5: 5th card

Player 6: 6th card

Player 7: 7th card

Player 8: 8th card

Player 8: 9th card

Player 7: 10th card

Player 6: 11th card

Player 5: 12th card

Player 4: 13th card

Player 3: 14th card

Player 2: 15th card

Player 1: Nothing

Rochester is a skill testing format.

There is a lot of information on display. This makes for a lot of fun between experienced drafters. If someone drafts Dark Depths, you can steal Thespian Stage form under them. However, this can also create information overload. Tracking everything can be a grueling exercise. To anyone even looking at a Rochester Draft, it is obvious how complex it is. This makes it less approachable for new players. It also takes much longer to Rochester Draft. Open and spread out the pack, track everyone else’s picks; it was exhausting. It makes for a fun evening activity with friends, but it is difficult if time is of the essence.

1. There are no blue cards. One of the three players to our right might be drafting blue.
2. There are three uncommons in every pack. None of the uncommons have been taken. The players to our right have taken the rare/mythic and two commons.
3. What commons are as good as these uncommons?
4. The best commons in this set are removal spells and cards that replace themselves. Knight Luninary and Galactic Wayfinder come to mind.
5. The red removal spells are still here. Red might be open for us.

This sort of analysis is hard. I will admit, I spent longer looking at that booster pack than I normally would. This analysis is possible but not necessary. As you get better, you can start to spot patterns in packs. If you’re a beginner, you don’t need to think about it.

Booster Draft quickly took over Rochester Draft. Stores liked that it took up less time. Established players can go deep, thinking about every micro-decision. New players can pick whatever they want without the social pressure. From here, Booster Draft becomes the norm.

In the early 90s, Wizards of the Coast loved Limited but was not focused on designing sets for Limited. Mirage was the first set with a conscious effort put into the Limited design. There were more creatures, evasion, and a better spread of multicolor options. This was a shock for players coming from Ice Age, a set that lacked good creatures at all mana values. Mirage, by comparison, had real mana curves. A quant idea today, but it was the start of something amazing. Real Limited design.

Booster Draft has existed in every set since then. This doesn’t mean you can’t mix and match sets. One of the best ways to draft is Chaos Draft. Grab an assortment of packs and see what you come up with. Three for One Trading is even selling their very own Chaos Draft experiences in neat little boxes with some goodies!

2014 saw the release of Conspiracy. The set follows the City of Paliano and the various groups vying for political supremacy. With all the city’s secrets, it made sense to tie it into the draft. A format where hidden information and tiny edges make all the difference.

The set had two notable features that set it apart from typical Booster Draft sets.

The new card type adds a new ripple to gameplay. A conspiracy begins the game in your command zone. It is not a spell. It cannot be cast. Instead, it offers some sort of additional effect from the command zone. These are drafted like any other card.  They do not count towards your overall deck size.

Conspiracies are incredibly powerful. A conspiracy gives consistency to an already tiny 40-card draft deck. I will not go through every one of them, but here are some highlights.

Power Play reads “You are the starting player”. Going first is always correct, so set that in stone and give yourself an edge.

Other conspiracies reshape how you build a deck. Advantageous Proclamation reads “Your minimum deck size is reduced by five”. The effect is strong, but do you know how to wield it? A normal draft deck has 17 lands. How many does a 35-card deck have? I wrote a personal article on this topic many years ago.

The maths for Advantageous Proclamation gets weirder when you combine it with Backup Plan. This conspiracy lets you draw two opening hands and choose one to keep.

I wrote an article on Advantageous Proclamation and Backup Plan a couple of years ago on my old personal blog. If you’d like to see a more comprehensive look at these cards, please let us, the folks at Three for One Trading, know!

Conspiracy Draft is described in the comprehensive rules under section 905. Here’s the condensed version:

1. There exist cards that have abilities that function during the draft itself.
2. The games after the draft are multiplayer free-for-alls.
3. Before the game, each player may put any number of conspiracies from their sideboard into the command zone. If any of the conspiracies are ‘hidden agendas’, cards should be secretly named now.

Paliano is skill testing. Just like the draft itself, it can be as deep or shallow as you want. It makes each player choose in order. The right player, then you, then the left player. Let’s say you take Paliano as your pack two pick one. The players to your left and right might have some idea what you are drafting based on the cards they have seen so far. Alternatively, you could just name a random color and hope for the best. Regardless of what colors the opponents pick, you are always happy. Paliano entering untapped makes it a low-risk choice and enables you to splash.

Other draft-matter cards are weak in-game, but have huge potential during the draft. Cogwork Librarian is a combo machine. You draft it face up. Any time you draft from a later pack, you can pick up the Librarian and draft two cards from that pack instead! This is a great way to grab two high-value cards at once or to money draft a good card while also taking a powerful common.

Once the draft is complete, players play a four-player free-for-all. This follows normal Magic rules. Conspiracy makes efforts in its design to work in a multiplayer context. The “Will of the Council” cards instruct each player to vote. This works no matter how many players you have. Meanwhile, Liliana’s Specter mentions “each opponent” to ensure all opponents share the pain.

Both Conspiracy Draft and the card type would make a return two years later in Conspiracy: Take the Crown. This set continued the draft-matters card design and emphasized multiplayer. The biggest addition here was the Monarch mechanic. This encourages players to attack each other for card advantage. It is the first set I ever bought an entire booster box of. It holds a special place in my heart.

Two-Headed Giant has been around since around 2005. It is not a format. Instead, a framework to accommodate 2 vs 2 multiplayer games. In summary, each team consists of two players, each with their own deck. Both players play a simultaneous turn. Teams make their turns together but cannot share resources such as mana or their cards. Section 810 of the comprehensive rules helps tease out all the details.

1. Divide the eight players into teams of two. Each team receives four boosters.
2. Each team opens their booster and picks two cards.
3. Pass the booster to the next team like you would in a typical draft.

This set introduced mechanics that allow for greater teamwork. Assist allowed other players to help you pay the mana cost of spells. To this day, I have never had an opponent help pay for an assist cost. Some day, someone will help me cast Game Plan.

“Partner with” also appeared. The partner was already well established in Commander. This variant specifies named cards. Ley Weaver and Lore Weaver partner with each other. Whenever one of them is cast, the target player may search their deck for the other. I love how they made this mechanic work in free-for-all and team contexts.

This concept was novel, but ultimately has not been returned.

The last major draft experiment is the “one in every pack” idea. This has shown up in various forms. Dominaria featured a legendary creature in every pack. This made for interesting decisions. Legendary is a downside. I cannot have two Danitha Capashen, Paragon in play. We’ve seen this happen with planeswalkers in War of the Spark, too.

Moving away from the vast world of Booster Draft, Jumpstart is another attempt at a new Limited environment. Jumpstart boosters feature mini decks complete with lands. The idea is to shuffle two booster packs together, and now you have a deck. I love the jumpstart concept. It is one of my favorite ways to kill time between matches at a tournament. We have seen Jumpstart come and go over the years. I believe its biggest strength is as a new player tool. The decks are very beginner-friendly. On the other hand, this has led to less interesting gameplay for established players.

Limited has changed over the years. From its early ties to baseball cards to the modern Booster Draft style of play, and all the innovations in between.

The only limitation is how we use these cards. All these ideas have their home. Cube is the number one place to mix these ideas together into something unique. In Cube, you build your own Magic set. A Modern Master of sorts. However, without the shackles of a banlist, you can mix and match ideas from across the multiverse. My Vintage cube is rife with conspiracies, playtesy cards, and everything in between. If you love Limited, get a cube and try out some of these ideas for yourself.

Limited is my favorite way to play Magic.

I hope this article has encouraged you to try it out too!

Ben Guilfoyle started playing Magic in 2015. They love to research the design of Magic. Why was this card banned? Could this silver border card actually see play? Cards that push the limits of design is what excites them. You can usually find them playing cube. This ties into their second passion: numbers. With a background in physics and statistics, they love to get in the weeds when building decks. Crunching numbers is their specialty.