I’ve been willing to tell anyone that would listen (and even some that weren’t) about my dislike for the current limited format. It ranks in the top 5 worst limited formats I’ve ever played. Even though I have no love for the format, I have ended up playing it a bunch. That is for two reasons, firstly I had a GP plus the World Magic Cup to prepare for and secondly I’m an addict and will play any set Wizards release. The GP didn’t go well as anyone following me on Twitter knows but I still have the World Magic Cup to spike with team Ireland. When you aren’t loving the Magic you’re playing you should at least be learning from it and today we are going to look at some of the lessons that can be taken from Ixalan limited.

Pick Order

Years ago Frank Karsten made the famous list, an order in which he would pick cards in rochester draft. Since then it’s what the majority of us do to help us understand a set, we map out the best commons and uncommons and in which order it’s correct to pick them. In older sets it’s been correct to stick very closely to this pick order, especially in pack one, when reading signals and establishing your colours is most important. However, as Magic has developed so has the complexities of draft formats. In fact Ixalan sometimes throws that list right out the window. Synergy and curve are the order of the day in Ixalan and many of our picks are dictated by this. Now this has been the case for many sets in the last few years but it is really accentuated this time around. An example of this recently for me was going into pack 3 I picked a Bishop’s Soldier over Vanquish the Weak. Some might think that’s normal, I was obviously looking out for my curve and solider is an excellent two drop but next pick I chose a Queen’s Bay Soldier over an Imperial Aerosaur. I know this seems a little crazy but I knew what my deck had to look like to be successful at the end of the draft and that meant picking up extra two drops. That brings us to our next point.

Know What You’re Looking For

Ixalan isn’t a set that allows many “good stuff” decks. A player who’s new to the set could draft a solid obvious mixture of creatures, spells and perceived bombs and actually be way off a good deck. In Ixalan each archetype has a certain look, because good stuff decks aren’t what we want to be doing we have a very distinct idea of what our decks should look like at the end of the draft. We know RB is a pirates aggro deck, we know that BW is a vampire deck and while these can be more aggressive or slightly more grindy we know what commons and uncommons we want for them. Synergy heavy, curved based formats are going to bring this out more but knowing what each colour combo wants and how you want the end product of the draft to look is an important lesson we should take into other draft formats.

Be Willing to Adapt

This is one that might have effected me more then others. It boils down to the fact that the best commons and uncommons in this set aren’t removal spells. The best common is likely Pirate’s Cutlass and it could be argued that the second best is One with the Wind, the best uncommon is Charging Monstrosaur. For the longest time I couldn’t accept this, I had Lightning Strike over the Monstrosaur and thought that Firecannon Blast and Vanquish had to be the best commons. I was in fact told very early in the format by English Nationals winner Autumn Burchett to take Cutlass over any common but I couldn’t bring myself to make that sort of pick early in the format. Conventional wisdom says that removal is one of the most important type of cards to pick up in draft and while I can sometimes believe that very good creatures are the best common its very difficult for me to believe that an equipment or enchantment ever is. Looking back on it now though, it seems pretty obvious. The format is super fast, high on synergy and has very few good removal spells. Once you figure out that Cutlass is good in nearly every archetype and the common removal spells are a little clunky it’s not a hard jump to make. It took me until the week before GP Liverpool to really get my mind around this bit and this might have revealed a stubbornness or inability to adapt in me that I’ll need to work on.

The topic of this article might be the most important lesson we can learn from Ixalan, I might not enjoy this set as much as the last one but I’m still learning. This should be taken into all aspects of Magic, it could be a match up you don’t like in constructed, a limited format that doesn’t click for you or even taking losses at a GP, you might not like these things but if we can’t learn from them we can’t grow and develop as players. This format is going to stick around for a while longer. I have the World Magic Cup in Nice about a month from now, so I get to experience the joys of team sealed testing. Hopefully, even though it doesn’t sound like the most fun experience of my life, I will pick up some more valuable MtG related lessons and, who knows, maybe even some wins!