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Bread, or B.R.E.A.D is a general guideline strategy for prioritizing picks and building a deck in sealed formats.

Bread is an acronym for Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, Duds.

  • A Bomb is a card with significant power, which with some certainty would win you a game.
  • A Removal is a card which removes a threat, such as a powerful permanent controlled by an opponent.
  • A card is considered an Evasion pick if it has a chance of getting past natural defenses by your opponent. Examples include spells that can't be countered, or creatures with abilities like Flying or Protection that prohibits them from being blocked.
  • An Aggro card is a card that plays aggressively, by quickly and without much other strategy wears down your opponent's life total or defending creatures.
  • A Dud (also Dreg or Dirt) is a card that is generally not worth playing, either because its mana cost is too high for whatever benefit it gives, or because the benefit it gives isn't particularly advantageous.

The acronym is prolific, but has been considered outdated with modern limited set design and schools of thought. One issue is that the evasion, aggro and duds categories are nebulous, and the value judgements required to properly differentiate between them are beyond the skill level of someone who would be using such a guide to draft. Another is that removal is touted as critical, but modern creatures are now powerful enough that, on average, a high-quality common four-drop creature is better than a poor six-drop removal spell, but this is not captured in the acronym - to a beginner, said four-drop may not even categorise as "aggro" and end up as a "dud" despite being a superior card. Efforts to move away from the acronym have proven difficult from inertia.

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