From: ZZanman@aol.com [SMTP:ZZanman@aol.com]
 Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 1998 6:26 AM
 Subject: Re: Why Bad Things Happen to Good Players

 Nedling Imp -
      Glad you thought the Limited environment tips were somewhat useful.  The
 "rules" for how many creatures/non-creatures are a little different between
 different sets of cards used, and even a little different for the same set of
 cards used between sealed deck and draft.  For example, back in
 Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight, the story was simply CREATURES, CREATURES,
 CREATURES, and you absolutely needed to field a minimum of seventeen
 creatures, and the other 1-6 cards better be simple creature removal. (23
 non-land and 17 land has remained pretty standard for limited decks for the
 last year).  Qualifying for Mainz, 5th Edition/Visions required you to deal
 with having fewer creatures in your deck, but offered a wide array of good
 non-creature "tech" to round out your deck.  Flood, Fireball, Disentegrate,
 Dwarven Catapult (no kidding).  In any set of cards, however, there are
 differences in the decks created by sealed deck as opposed to drafts. Sealed
 deck produces three color decks, with a bit fewer creatures than any other
 type.  Sealed is the slowest of the three limited events, and can support
 long-term game strategies like Flood or Gossamer Chains, or, for that matter,
 Circles of Protection.  Booster draft is the middle ground of limited,
 yielding (among the good decks) primarily two color, or two color with just
 the tiniest hint of a third color.  The creature count raises by a couple, and
 the game speeds up, making fast creature elimination more important, and long-
 term strategies less valuable.  In Rochester draft, the average good deck is
 definately two color, and a few mono-colors will even appear, the
 creatures/non-creature cards in the decks will go together better, a lot more
 like constructed deck than limited.  Rochester decks are the fastest possible
 decks in limited, and long-term game strategies are chancey, at best, and
 probably impossible to set up.  Even the lower level player at a Rochester
 table is likely to end up with a much better deck, on average, than that same
 player would have in sealed or booster draft.  This is true even though
 Rochester seems to require the most skill of any limited event.  The reason is
 probably because while drafting well remains as important in Rochester as in
 booster draft, the skilled Rochester player is also memorizing the most
 powerful cards that exist at his table and who is playing them.  A Rochester
 player doesn't get faked out during a match worrying about a powerful spell
 that his opponent might or might not have in his deck, because he already
 knows what spells are possible in his opponents' decks.

      Another long letter!
      Peace, -ZZanman