Sligh

In drafting 101 I advocated a very specific mana curve for drafts, and I thought that I would explain my reasoning a bit more in this post. But first, a shout out.

Like a lot of players my age, when I was learning to play magic in the late nineties I cut my teeth reading thedojo.com. It is sadly out of commission, but you can read lots of the archived articles at classicdojo.org, and you should read them. The tourney reports may not matter anymore, and you might not get all the Tolarian Academy jokes, but the theory articles are awesome.

Anyways, let’s look at one typical sligh build that I found on Classic Dojo.
The mana curve for this deck is:
           0            4
           1           13
           2           14
           3            7
           4            2
(I’ve counted Fireblast as zero CMC since they will almost always be cast by sacrificing two mountains.)
The Sligh archetype (named after its inventor, apparently) came out of nowhere because it used a lot of cards that were thought to be terrible. Ironclaw Orcs, for example, is a like a grizzly bears that can’t chump block big creatures – making it worse than a card that no one plays. But it fit the mana curve.

The Sligh deck was successful because it focused exclusively on having an efficient mana curve: every mana should be spent every turn until the opponent dies or your attack loses steam. Ironclaw orcs isn’t included based on its merit as a card. Instead, a slot existed in the mana curve and Ironclaw orcs were deemed the best card to fill that slot at the time.

The mana curve I put in drafting 101 isn’t a sligh curve, I don’t think it’s realistic to get enough direct damage or efficient creatures to try for a sligh deck in limited, but I’m taking the same approach when making card choices. Instead of simply picking the best card out of every pack, I’m trying to fill slots in my mana curve with the best options that present themselves.

As an aside, sligh decks are still around. Here’s the mana curve for a vampire deck that recently featured at the Pro Tour Paris.
        1             15
        2             14
        3              8
Does anyone really believe that Viscera Seer is an independently good card? The deck needs a one drop vampire to power Kalastria Highborn and Captivating Vampire. Like ironclaw orcs ten years ago, the seer gets picked up solely because of its mana cost.