The Limited formats, Sealed and Draft, are something that remain a mystery to many World of Warcraft Minis players. They're never the main event in tournaments, relegated instead to the qualifiers or side events. But they can be just as useful to be good at as Constructed: who doesn't want to spend a few hours on Sunday for an iPod? Who doesn't want to keep their Constructed team a secret and smash a few people in Sealed to get qualified for that DMF?

The other big advantage Limited formats have over Constructed is their value if you don't do well. Even if you bomb out of the tournament, you still have the minis you opened!

But that's not the point of this article. This is going to be an intro to Limited, I'm going to run through Sealed and Draft basic strategy. Then I’ll build an example Sealed team from a recent Sealed tournament I played in.

Sealed Rules:

You open two packs, currently two Spoils of War, and build a three-character team out of them. You don't have to match factions, and you pick any two legal cards for each character before each game.

The first thing to do when analyzing your Sealed pool is look at classes. If you have two or more characters of one class, you want to play one of them, almost always, to stack all the Action Bar cards of that class on a single model. There are exceptions to this, like opening both Harnum Firebelly and Anchorite Cristia, but it is a very good idea to try and fit them in if possible.

The next big thing is to mix attack types. You want at least 1 attacker of each type. My favorite is a Hunter and a Mage, as it solves nearly all of your sniping problems. You never want to let that guy with 1 armor or resist go unmolested, and you only want to focus a character down if he's fairly weak to all of your attacks.  Running opposite your attack types, you want to bunch up your armor and resist values. You want your guys to have similar numbers written there, to prevent your opponent doing what you want to do and sniping at your 1 armor character with his Hunter and your 1 resist character with his magical attacker.

Finally, you want to look at honor totals, and consider how many points you need to get. First rule: you want an even number. Yes, it's odd, but it is also good. Here is why:

12 — You will probably never see a 12 point team. If you do, you got insanely lucky.

14 — 3 kills and 2 points sounds good, but this also forces your opponent to feel threatened if you get 3 points at the end of tick 5. They now have to prevent you getting another 3.

16 — Here is the best number to have! 4 kills, or 3 kills and 2 on 5, 2 on 10. You can force your opponents into the center using VPs, and 16 is the best number to do it with.

This continues on: 18 is a repeat of 14, 20 a repeat of 16, etc.

The reason odd numbers doesn't work as well is because it forces you to threaten 7 points to shave a kill off, and 3 points to get the win. 7 is almost unattainable, so you can never really threaten to jump a kill. 3 is, of course, very solid and attainable, but we'd rather force the opponent to react.

That's enough about victory points, though. Let's move onto draft.

The rules:

Open a pack, do not remove the Minis, but remove the 3 character "packs." Open them, and remove the 3 cards from each. You should now have 9 cards. Look at them and pick one, then pass the remaining 8 to your left. Receive 8 from your right, take 1, pass 7, etc. Then, when none remain, open the second pack and do the same, except passing to the right. You have to then construct a 3 character party mixing models of any faction. Each character can play all Action Bar cards they can legally play, in every game.

The first rule of draft is: take characters. I cannot stress this enough, as it is by far the most important thing to know. Every time someone talks to me about their draft, and says they second picked an ABC, I get a bit sad, except in very rare situations. (First pick Kaustron, second pick Old Bones). If you have the 4th pick through a pack, and there is a character left, you should definitely be concerned with what got taken over the character, unless it's a lemon. Aside from this one crucial point, the same points as Sealed preside here: mix attack types, solidarity in defensive values, keep careful track of your point totals. That last one is especially important with decent, multi-class equipment like Soulseeker and Bulwark of Azzinoth going around. Cards like Signet of Eternal Life and X-51 Rocket Helm should also be at a premium, as they confer a powerful bonus, but don't at half their normal price. Remember how you get to play all the ABCs you want to. Yes, Signet of Eternal Life is flat out amazing in this format.

Finally, here's a quick analysis of a Sealed pool I had, and what I built out of it, (and thoughts on what I should've done differently!).

Magdeline Prideheart

-Blessing of Might

-Signet of Eternal Life

Elanna Starbreeze

-Master Tactician

-Call Blinky

Harnum Firebelly

-Doomfinger

-Lesser Prayer of Healing

Illiana Sunshield

-Blessing of Kings

-Crusader Aura

Najan Spiritbinder

-Magma Totem

-Healing Stream Totem

Za'zu the Grizzled

-Call Old Bones

-Serpent Sting

Two Hunters, 2 Paladins, a gimp, and a Shaman. Both of our Hunters are quite good, though I prefer Elanna, and both of our Paladins are quite good. Very, very good in fact. Najan Spiritbinder could provide us a 3rd sturdy model, but also brings a magic attack and a bit of healing. Finally, Harnum is a model I try and avoid playing, and he fails to mesh well with the crew: you'll see that everyone except him and Elanna have 3 or more armor, and Elanna has a reroll to make up for it.

The first choice is pretty obvious: we want one of the Hunters. I'll take Elanna, both for Master Tacticiany goodness and for a better attack.

Elanna Starbreeze

-Call Old Bones

-Call Blinky

-Serpent Sting

-Master Tactician

Second, we're going to play Magdeline Prideheart. She is far too good a model not to play. Far, far too good. Behind Kael and Jaina, she is my absolute favorite model to open, (yes, much more than Vashj).

Magdeline Prideheart

-Signet of Primal Life

-Blessing of Might

(possibly the other two Paladin cards)

The final choice is a bit of a problem. We've eliminated Za'zu because he no longer has particularly good cards. Harnum is out because of his cloth, so we have Illiana and Najan left. Najan gives us a magic attack . . . but so do Illiana and Magdeline, in a way. How, you might ask? Well, with 6 dice and crits on 9s, Magdeline should expect her crit most rolls. In addition, Illiana has a crit effect that makes a 4 die magic attack, and we have a Master of Tactics! The final question is honor: 16 with Najan would be great, but Illiana still puts us at 18, a very good number. The big tilt really comes from Illiana's Protector effect, and Magdeline's propensity to fall over at inopportune times, such as before she gets into combat. As you might have guessed, Illiana made the cut, but I would've been quite happy with Najan also. Maybe I should've just let Mags get dropped repeatedly? What do you think?

The team:

Illiana Sunshield

-Blessing of Kings

-Crusader Aura

Magdeline Prideheart

-Signet of Primal Life

-Blessing of Might

Elanna Starbreeze

-Call Old Bones

-Call Blinky

-Serpent Sting

-Master Tactician

I hope you all enjoyed this brief display of my unlimited skillz, and hope to see your feedback on the forums!