There's been a lot of debate on what is or isn't a Signal in the BFZ Community Draft. What do you guys think a Signal is? How do you determine one?

~SE++

This is a topic a lot of articles have been written about. It's hard to cover it in a forum post. Here are some things to look out for:

• Don't bother about your left neighbour, worry about the guy passing to you twice.
• in p1p2, is the rare or a powerful uncommon still there? If so, what is missing? Does that tell you anything about your right neighbour color/play style preferences?
• Look for signals in the first half of pack one. Don't just look at colors, look at archetypes. Cards of a color are lately split between two archetypes, and you can be perfectly fine drafting UB control next to somebody drafting UR aggro.
• Don't look too hard at what is left at common, look for what is missing. Did somebody take Skyspawner over Complete Disregard? Token generator over an Ally? A control card over a landfall guy?

Signals are not something you should worry too much about. Sure, it's rewarding if you and your neighbour settle into different colors. But if you are not comfortable with the deck you end up with, you will lose games from being unfamiliar with how a deck should be played. Sets are deep lately. If you prefer certain decks, you can always force it, especially if you opened a powerful rare. The time to look for signals is when your first few picks don't give you a clear direction for the draft. And it's good to note them always, in case your colors dry up and you need to switch.

The important part about a signal (to me) is whether or not I should jump to a different color / color pair / archetype. So there can be negative signals ("no red cards in the pack") and positive ones ('Pick 6 turn against'). You can't really read signals Pick 2-3 because people money draft or take rares or there are 2 very powerful cards in the same color in the pack.

It can be very easy to misread signals because:
a) people don't value cards the same as you
b) (especially in BFZ) cards of higher raw power don't fit in obvious archetypes (Ghostly Sentinel or the white wind drake).
c) (repeat of above) humans (and magic players) usually expect packs to be way more "evenly distributed" in both power and color than they actually are -- even though they are print runs and not really random. In 8 packs I would expect at least 1 pack to be very bad and 1 to have 10 playables. Plus some will have 4+ cards of 1 color and none of a second.

The worst thing about this, is that you can suspect something is a signal, not take it, but then find out 1 pick later you were right.

A signal is receiving, P1P2, an uber-powerful card for a particular archetype with an uncommon missing from the pack (A common could have been a foil rare/mythic of the same archetype, and if the rare's gone heavens know what it is since the biggest bombs are usually rares), as that means the player in question is not interested in that archetype.

If a common is missing, that's not as much of a signal but still a good sign.

If the rare is missing, you might still consider taking archetypal picks in that line, assuming you don't have to throw a bomby P1P1 into the garbage for it, because while it doesn't confirm the player to your right will be kind to you, it does wink knowingly in that direction. The same goes for P1P3 and P1P4 having good archetype cards, since those have cleared greater range (but more is missing)

In the end, I find signalling is pretty use-impaired.

Signaling is just counting. You count the number of rares, uncommons, and commons in the pack, then count the number of cards that represent each color in the pack. Given set information, you can generally decipher what cards have been picked based on what's missing from the pack... like a Theros pack missing a couple of commons probably denotes a lightning strike and a gray merchant pick. This is information you store that you later confirm with the number of colors that show up in a pack... like a lack of black and/or red in the packs following.

This is all contextualized by card quality. Having five cards in a pack that are the same color could mean the color is open, or just that the cards suck.

Let's look at the community draft packs as an example:

p1p1 - irrelevant; however we took a black card

p1p2:
5 green
3 blue
2 black
1 red
1 white
1 land

It's missing an uncommon, which would mean more if i actually drafted this set. None of the cards are very good, which is why I wanted to stick with black. Green is over-represented, which might be good for us, or might mean multiple people on our left will go green making it miserable for us pack 2. Hard to tell.

p1p3:
1 green
1 blue
1 black
4 red
3 white
1 colorless
1 UB

3 uncommons in the pack, meaning a rare and a common is gone. The green pack previously was over-represented, but now the red is very over-represented. This would make me consider it. White going from 1 to 3 would also be worth noting.

p1p4:
2 green
1 blue
2 black
2 red
1 white
1 land
1 GW

2 uncommons in pack. Should've been mentioned, but all the lands so far have been able to produce white mana. At this point I'd say it's safe to say someone to our right is in blue. The other colors seem fairly open, though the red cards being passed are garbage. I'd say white seems fairly open.

p1p5:
2 green
1 blue
2 black
2 red
2 white
1 UG

2 uncommons in the pack. Past few packs have had multi-colored uncommons passed in them, which might point to weaker/newer drafters unfamiliar with 3+ color mana bases. Important to note that across the even spread of colors, blue has the lowest "pure" blue cards. I would just take the best card for the colors I have at this point.

p1p6:
2 green
1 blue
1 black
3 red
1 white
1 land
1 colorless

2 uncommons in pack. Someone's aggressively into blue, and red is wide open because there's a very good card here.

To put this in another context, here's the sequencing of colors in the packs:

Green: 5, 1, 2, 2, 2
Blue: 3, 1, 1, 1, 1
Black: 2, 1, 2, 2, 1
Red: 1, 4, 2, 2, 3
White: 1, 3, 1, 2, 1

From this I would say, based on our position, Red is the least drafted and Blue is the most drafted by drafters on our right. In order from most-to-least drafted by drafters on our right I would speculate it goes: Blue, White, Black, Green, Red.

That's how I read it anyway.

In the draft I argue for being BW because I think the card quality of the cards we're being passed is overall superior (removal, 3-mana 2/2 flyers). I think the green and the red being passed our way are overall of a lower quality. I don't think the blue cards we're picking up are good enough to stay in blue. I am suspicious about the multi-colored cards because we've only seen 1 fixing card (sylvan scrying). I would move forward with black and be OK with any color that is not blue.