How To Play Magic The Gathering | Passing & Reading Signals

If you read my previous article in this series, you should know all about how to evaluate cards, or if you’ve not had much time to practice, know all about how to know all about how to evaluate cards.  This, however, is only half the puzzle.  Once you know which cards you want, you need to know how to make sure you get those cards in your decks.  In this installment we’ll take a look at how you should figure out what colors and cards to be drafting for maximum impact once you actually start playing, as well as how to know when to avoid certain cards and colors.

There are two major things to take into account when you make your decisions while drafting.  There is what you are trying to do and what the people immediately to your left and, especially, your right are trying to do. I will begin my explanation of pick-making with one truth:

If you co-operate (mostly) with the people to your left and right, you all have a fighting chance at winning the draft, but if you do not, all of you will be at a crippling disadvantage to the people across the table who do co-operate.

This is a counterintuitive concept to many magic-players when they first start out.  “They’ll be my opponents,” they say, “why should I do anything to help them?” The answer is that it is better than the alternative, in that it is impossible to sabotage your opponents in any real way without also sabotaging yourself, and because, in a standard three round 8-man draft queue, you will only face three out of the seven other drafters at the table. It is much more important that your deck perform well than the decks of the two or three other drafters you have control over perform poorly.  If sabotage is your objective, as I have already said but will repeat for emphasis, then the players who do learn to play nicely while they draft will simply run the bickerers over.

In this installment I’ll focus on the first aspect of figuring out what you’re opponents are trying to do, and in the next we’ll move onto figuring out exactly what it is that you’re trying to accomplish.

When drafting, you are trying to create both a powerful and consistent deck; they are the ying and yang of drafting.  I saw a deck at the last FNM  I attended that lost despite the presence of a Sun Titan, an Inferno Titan, and a (foil, even) Grave Titan.  At that same FNM I saw a top caliber player; one of the all-time greats, lose with a very smooth mono black deck to a good, but lower caliber, player with a Garruk Wildspeaker drawn twice consecutively.

How then, do you achieve both power and consistency?  You can be consistently powerful by determing which cards your opponents will take, and therefore start taking cards that they won’t, so they’ll give the good ones.  That’s what we’ll cover this week.  Next week we’ll figure out how to achieve consistency by building decks with specific purposes, in other words, building archetypes.

Part 1 – Decision Making in Color-Choice

The only pure decision in a draft comes during the first pick of the first pack.  Your options are still seemingly limitless, though in reality they are not, and you are free to just take whichever card seems the best to you.  You are inhibited only by your preferences, and that’s hardly an inhibition at all.  This is when the BREAD method I referenced in my previous article is most effective, and when there are very few times when you take anything but the best card.

From then on, you must make your decisions based on a variety of factors, and we’ll try to isolate each one to illustrate a point.  For now, think only of what cards you think the people who pass to you are taking and the colors of the cards you’ve taken so far.  We will also make these decisions under the assumption that if you are drafting colors your opponent is not, then you will be passed, on average, the most powerful cards.

So out of your first pack you pick an Air Servant, one of my favorite cards.

The second pack looks like this: Island, Sign in Blood, Doom Blade, Liliana’s Specter, Gravedigger, Foresee, Azure Drake, Sylvan Ranger, Garruks Packleader, Yavimaya Wurm, Lightning Bolt, Chandra’s Outrage, Fireball, Crystal Ball.

Obviously I have stacked this pack.  Any and all of these cards are possible first-picks, so how do you decide?  Well, it is much better to second pick a card that is the same color as the card you first picked (or is colorless) because it leaves your options much more open.  If you were to jump on a fireball or a doom blade because they’re such good cards you are now stuck to two colors, and if either of those two colors dries up as the packs keep moving, you’re very stuck.  If you’re only in one color, then you can jump around with a little more liberty into a second color once you’ve noticed it’s open, because you will still be dual-colored, which is much better than tri-colored all other things being equal.

So here is a good way to start looking at this pack, and slowly eliminating the cards that you will or will not pick.  First look for powerful cards in your color, there are two: Foresee and Azure Drake,  in addition to the colorless Crystal Ball.  In my mind, both Foresee and Crystal Ball are more powerful than Azure Drake, so we can eliminate the flyer.  Then look for cards that are so powerful that it is worth straying into a second color for them.  Keep in mind they must be significantly stronger than the cards in your color.  In this pack I count 2 cards that I consider more powerful than our on-color cards: Fireball and Doom Blade, although they are not much more powerful, and of them, I think that Fireball is best.  This gives you an idea of how much card evaluation matters in these scenarios.  Even in a pack full of the best uncommons and commons, a few always rise to the top, and the more formed and informed your opinions are about which are the best and brightest of the set, the easier and stronger your picks will be.

But there is actually not as much information in this pack as their could have been.  A lot of times, new players, when trying to figure out what the people passing to them have been taking, will simply count how many cards of certain colors are coming around.  This is not the worst plan in the world, but it isn’t the most accurate.  A little bit of critical thinking can make your information a lot more complete.  There are, as you may have noticed, 4 1^st pick black cards in that pack.  A Full four cards that anyone would be happy to pick as the first card.  But what you didn’t know was that the rare was a Grave Titan.  This is the first lesson about reading the person to your left: the more common the card they first pick, and the higher the quality of the cards left, the narrower the subset of cards your opponents would have taken before them.  This stems from the fact that there are plenty of rares that are more powerful than even the most powerful commons, but the converse is not true.

Lets say we changed the rare in that pack to a Phylactery Lich (an almost unplayable card).  The player would have then almost certainly taken either the doom blade or the fireball.  Had they taken the Fireball, it would have looked like this, with an uncommon missing:

The second pack looks like this: Island, Sign in Blood, Doom Blade, Liliana’s Specter, Gravedigger, Foresee, Azure Drake, Sylvan Ranger, Garruks Packleader, Yavimaya Wurm, Lightning Bolt, Chandra’s Outrage, Crystal Ball, Phylactery Lich.

I would have seen that and said to myself, “… hmm, there are a lot of good cards in here.  What uncommon is better than Foresee, Lightning Bolt, Doom Blade, and Crystal Ball?” In my mind, there are only two answers: Fireball and Mind Control (and I’d entertain debate about Serra Angel and Air Servant). As a general statement:

All things equal, people will not take less powerful cards over more powerful ones, especially in the early picks, and therefore the cards you see in the first few picks should be less powerful than the cards you could have seen but don’t.  This can be a very valuable tool in narrowing down what your opponents are taking.

By the same token, had the pack contained a fireball still, and the doom blade instead taken out of it, I would have to guess that either my opponent is not experienced enough to properly evaluate fireball’s power (less likely) or that my opponent has a strong preference against playing red decks (more likely).  Either way, seeing a very powerful uncommon in a pack with the rare still present should be a shining beacon saying, “You will see more of my friends later! Take me with you!”

Generally I find that it’s around pick four or five that I can get a good sense of what the people to my left are taking.  If you were to see a pack with an Assassinate, a Gravedigger, and a Lilianas Specter in them, it may imply that black is available, but it’s also possible the person who passed them took a Doom Blade or Howling Banshee and will now pass you only a paucity of black cards.  On the other hand, there is sometimes just a color conspicuously missing from a few packs in a row.  For instance if you saw a few packs in a row missing red cards completely, then were handed a 4^th pick Lightning Bolt, you might consider hopping on the red train, if you don’t mind playing red.  There are no commons in red to take over Bolt and only Fireball at uncommon and a couple of rares and mythics (Chandra Nalaar, Inferno Titan, Hoarding Dragon, or maybe, but not likely, Cyclops Gladiator) that warrant picking over a Lightning Bolt.  Unless the person 3 or 4 to your left opened a pack with Chandra at rare and Fireball at uncommon, or something really stupid like foil inferno titan and non-foil hoarding dragon, you’ll probably be alright with your lightning bolt.  What likely happened was that these packs simply had no red, the person who opened the lightning bolt took a rare and two to your left took on-color cards not wanting to branch out in the first few picks, which is very reasonable and generally correct.  On the other hand if you get something like a lonely Bolt, or even worse, a Chandras Outrage sitting in a pack after 7 picks (the last pack you’ll receive before getting your original one back), you should actually be more skeptical, because the chances that 8 packs in a row were bereft of red are slim and that lightning bolt may have been nestled amongst 2 or 3 red bombs and now the people to your left are all fighting over the color.  It should also be noted that branching out for high-powered,  easily splashable cards like Bolt, Pacifism, Doom Blade is a much lower-risk proposition than branching out for something like an Ember Hauler or a Corrupt.

As important as what you do see is what you do not see.  If you first pick a Garruks Packleader and second pick a Sylvan Ranger, then are given the choice between an Aether Adept and a Llanowar Elves pick 3, you should be a little (but only a little) wary about taking the elf.  Something a lot of players like to do is assign a number value to each card in a set, not always perfectly specific but close enough.  Something like a Sun Titan would receive a 1, meaning you would first pick it every time you saw it. Doom blade and Pacifism might get a 1.5.  Aether Adept would probably be a 2.5 or 3.  Llanowar Elves is probably something like a 5 or 6 for me.  Keep in mind these ratings are mine and you are free to disagree.  Anyhow, as for the Elves, I don’t love them, especially because they’re generally not quite as good as Cultivate and Sylvan Ranger, which both help your mana as well.  Aether Adept, on the other hand, is a card I rate quite highly, and I find are fairly hard to get out of the first few picks because many other people are also fond of them, so they snatch them away from me.  The fact that we are seeing only a Llanowar Elves could be a signal that a few more powerful green cards may have been skimmed off the top.  However, there are only a few commons to take over an Adept and therefore it’s less likely that the people to our left are in blue.  It is possible the pack was stacked in blue, but you have no choice to play the odds here.

Another thing to take into account is that if I take the Aether Adept (a top 3 pick) and don’t play it, I’ve only lost a Llanowar Elves (a 6+ pick).  If I take the Llanowar Elves and then am passed a Foresee, Jace’s Ingenuity, or a second Adept, and missed out on what has become a pretty strong blue signal and gained only a Llanowar Elves.  Analyzing risk vs. reward when you branch out is crucial, and you should be very cognizant of what cards you will need at the end of the day (and by “the day”, I mean “three Magic:The Gathering Booster Packs”).

These two concepts are the essence of to what you should reduce your color switching decisions.  Is the risk you’re exposing yourself to multiplied by the probability your pick will backfire greater than the (always lesser) power of the on-color card you’re passing?  For instance, I’d not take that Aether Adept over a Cultivate or Spined Wurm, and even something like a Garruk’s Companion would make it a tough sell.  That is because those cards are much more powerful than the elf, making the chances people are taking other green cards over them less likely, and though still less powerful than the adept, I’d be potentially depriving myself of a good card that I’ll certainly play for a slightly more powerful card that’d I’d only possibly play.

Part 2 – Sending and Receiving Signals

Sometimes your fellow drafters will present you with a gift.  Something like a Fireball is a tremendous gift, and will go far to warm the heart, while Foresee is the perfect gesture for the drafter who’s already got everything.  Your opponents do not give you these gifts because they like you, in fact they want to crush your face into the plastic folding table upon which you’re playing.  No, these selfish BASTARDS give you these gifts with a closed heart because they expect something in return.

“If I give him this Fireball, that I don’t even really like or need that much, he’ll certainly snap it up,” says the drafter with the heart two sizes too small, “Then when he sees a Serra Angel next pack, he’ll have no use for it, and I’ll get an even better gift!”

This is a tricky subject, because it seems to go against, at times, the table-reading concepts introduced in the last segment.  Just know that if you are sitting next to somebody who is an experienced player and knows the value of co-operation, they will be more likely to think on this level than a little kid who’s just going to take whatever he thinks is best.  The more experienced your neighbors, the more valuable reading signals can be.

The same is true of trying to send signals.  If you are sitting next to someone who will read your signal, jump into that color, and leave your colors alone, then you should be more likely to send signals.  If the neighbor who will pass back to you is more likely to be erratic and jump colors, it becomes less valuable.

Just for clarity, a signal is:

A card passed early, of much higher value than the rest of the pack, in order to communicate to your neighbor that they should jump into that color and, by extension, leave your colors undisturbed.

Signaling can be a dicey proposition, because if the person does not read the signal well, then you’re generally out a powerful card you could have included in your forty.  However, if you are paid off in the later packs, it’s almost always worth it.  When making the decision you should think to yourself about the power of the signal, how you will follow it up, the alternative cards to pick, and the color preferences of you and the people around you.

The power of the signal refers simply to how strong a case the card presents into committing to that color.  You must take into account both the strength of the card, and the color commitment it represents to the player you passed it to.  For something like a Fireball to be a signal, you will likely have to follow it up with some more good red cards because it’s so easily and powerfully splashed.  Something a Doom Blade is generally a great signal because a lot of black’s other cards require a pretty heavy color-commitment and if you pass a Sign in Blood or Quag Sickness behind it you’ll be saying “Take a lot of black cards so you’ll have enough swamps to make this good”.  An Assassinate is clearly a lower-powered card and therefore a much weaker signal; in fact, barely a signal at all.

You should also take into account your own color preferences, and what cards are left over when you send your signal.  It’s not right to take a Fiery Hellhound and pass a Foresee as a signal, because you’re taking an inferior card in an (in my opinion) inferior color.  But if you really liked Blue, which I do, it’d be proper to take a Foresee over a Lightning Bolt or Garruks Packleader, especially if there are no other great blue cards in the pack.

I’ll digress from my serious teaching to teach you a silly, but sometimes effective trick to pick up tells on your opponents color preferences (disclaimer: you should probably only try this at FNMs or other more casual events).  While you’re sitting at the table, before the packs are opened, joke around with the people sitting to either side of you about “colluding”, which is obviously against the rules.  Just joke about giving yourself the best colors and them the worst, or vice-versa.  Or say you’ll give them one good color if they give you another.  They’ll generally betray their preferences in subtle ways, and you can then make more informed decisions based upon that.

When reading signals, just try to get into the head of the person passing to you, I’ve already given you a number of tools to do so, and remember this.  It is, non-subjectively, 200% as important to read signals as it is to send them.  This is because of simple mathematics.  You will take 30 cards from the player to your right, and only 15 from the player to your left.  If you send the best signals in the world pack 1, you’ll only have one pack to capitalize on it.  But if you read the person to your right properly, you’ll get two full packs (almost) to reap the rewards.

The last thing to remember about signaling is that when you make your signal you have to, HAVE TO, stick to your guns.  I can’t emphasize this enough.  If you start sending a blue signal then start taking blue cards in the middle of your first pack, you’ll not only confuse the person to your left, you’ll have started a fight you didn’t have to start in the first place.  This is the risk of signaling, you occasionally try to give and then subsequently receive the same signal.  In this case, it is better to simply keep shipping those good cards and then reap the rewards pack 2.

I will wrap up what is becoming a characteristically long segment by contradicting myself.  These analytical tools are all well and good, and you should certainly never completely ignore them, but when deciding whether to switch colors and reading signals, you should also follow your instincts.  If it feels like green is open, your subconscious is sometimes more intelligent than your higher brain.  I make a number of my drafting decisions with a combination of analysis and feeling, cognition and precognition.  And it’s not the worst thing in the world.  You should, however, be trying to frequently guess, no, educatedly patchwork together, what the people to each side of you are doing, ’cause if you figure out how to work with them, you’ll end up with a much stronger deck than the people across the table who were fighting.  The opposite is also true.

So thanks for reading.  Until next time, happy drafting!