Metagaming in Limited

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Week one, the majority of players were still trying to figure out the format and most people were drafting typical "Core Set mid-range" decks, the likes of which get destroyed by how over the top the Sultai decks of the format are able to go. I had identified early that Sultai decks had the most raw power as well as tools to slow down the game to the point where no typical mid-range deck had the chance to compete with value engines like Scholar of the Ages getting looped Ad Infinitum or Bloodsoaked Altar plus Sanitarium Skeleton.





I felt like I had a solid grasp on the format at this point. M20 was a medium slow format and the best thing you could be doing was casting Winged Words and 7 drops to out-value your opponent; anyone not trying to do this was doing it wrong.



This strategy worked incredibly well.



Until a week and a half into the format.



With the advent of more and more good limited content being produced, and more places for people to talk about and share their drafts, limited metagames tend to evolve much faster than they did even five years ago. After a week, the first wave of M20 limited content started to emerge. Lords of Limited sang the praises of Sultai in their first impressions episode , the Limited Resources sub-Reddit and the Lords of Limited Discord were full of 3-0 Sultai lists, and several great drafters were tweeting pics of their 3-0 decks that were mainly, you guessed it, Sultai.



The word was out, Sultai was the place to be. No longer was I able to run the MTGO tables with the same strategy, as Green, Blue, and Black would dry up almost immediately. Scholar of the Ages and Mouldervine Reclamation were no longer wheeling, and if you didn't first pick Risen Reef, you weren't getting the card (rightly so, it's one absurd piece of cardboard.) I kept ending up in mediocre Sultai decks that I felt lucky to 2-1 with.





I realized that at this point, we had entered level two of the metagame.











The way that limited metagames operate is different to how constructed metagames do. In a very broad sense, constructed metagames operate as such: Deck A is dominant, so deck B emerges to beat it, leading to people bringing deck C to the table because it beats deck B and so on, sometimes looping back to deck A and sometimes not. This is an extreme simplification, but in general, you build your deck to beat the best deck or the deck that you expect to be a high percentage of the field.



In limited you don't have that luxury of always playing the most powerful colours in the set or the cards that beat the objectively best deck. In limited, successful metagaming is about understanding what the perceived most powerful deck is, trying to get into it if you can, but knowing/figuring out the next best strategy to draft when you recognize the best decks are being over drafted.





Level 1: Figuring out the best deck/decks in the format and draft them as long as you reasonably can



Level 2: Recognizing that everyone else has figured out the level one best deck will be fighting you for it. Your job is to now find the objective "second best deck" which is now the"best deck" in the metagame



The "best deck" in the format, is only the best deck when it's open. In the majority of sets, you'll train-wreck your draft if you try to force the best deck just because you listened to or read a piece of limited content that said it was the best deck in the format. When enough people are fighting for the level 1 best deck, it's very easy for the next best deck to become the best deck because of how open it becomes and how overdrafted the level 1 deck is.