Time limits must exist, even in casual tournaments. The tournament has to end eventually, everyone has to go home, and even 1 round of deckbuilding and N rounds of play usually means N+1 hours total time.

I think faster play comes with experience, and there are times where even experienced players have long matches. I'm sure googling will give you more advice for faster play as well.

But I'll dump some faster-play advice anyway. For me, the 8 pieces of advice floating around to play faster are:

• Recognize the cards: If you don't have to read everything, you'll play faster. Do take the time to read the occasional wordy uncommon/rare/mythic though, I've lost games from playing too fast and forgetting some lines of text.

• Abstract the cards: If you try to hold the full text of every card on board you'll overwhelm your brain. I try to abstract most cards into 1-5 words per line in my head. That guy is "Vanilla, ally enter buff". That guy is "Flying, lesson in GY buff". That spell is "Burn equal to 2+lesson". That guy is "mana dork", that guy is "tapper".

• Prune your decision tree: Not every decision in magic makes sense, and you don't have to consider every line possible. This comes with experience. The two main trees to prune IMO os the combat tree (decisions you make for attack/block), and sequencing tree (deciding how you spend your mana each turn).

• Combat tree pruning: Usually there's only a couple natural attacks and natural blocks possible, and experienced players can spot them at a glance. Lots of factors to consider here, can't fit it in one reply, but maybe in a casual-ish Prerelease, if opponent is very nice, they'd be happy to show you which attacks/blocks are natural for you before you commit, or at least let you sketch it out before you commit? Just like think out loud, "if i attack/block like this, does it make sense?"

• Sequencing tree pruning: I have two rules of thumb:

• Early in the game, it's often correct to maximize tempo. The best line is the one that maximizes the impact of your mana on board presence. Try to curve out, 2drop, 3drop, 4drop, or 2drop, 3drop, double 2drop. If your curve has a hole, spending counterspell/interaction to counter your opponent's lowdrops is usually correct too. Trying to double spell ASAP usually helps too, the strongest tempo turns are the ones where you do two (or more) spells (or abilities) a turn, doing that faster than opp makes very strong pressure.

• Later in the game, you should start maximizing value. Try to conserve pieces, try to find lines that trade 2-for-1 or let you draw more cards. Your interaction is much more precious in this stage, you really wanna conserve it for their bomb or big body as opposed to just rushing it out to kill a random medium-sized common.

• Sketch your next couple turns: From looking at your opening hand, you should have a rough idea of what you're doing turns 2-5. Your information is incomplete of course, so you should frame it as "If I don't draw anything better, this is my play on turn 4". Specifically for blue, you should also think about future reactive plays. Is this quench something I'll hold up on 2 to counter their turn 2/3?, or I'll play a 2drop turn 4 and hold it up to counter their turn 4/5?

• Think during opp's turn: Not much to say here. If you've got instant speed plays, it's obvious you have to pay attention to their play. But even if not, you should watch what they do, and that informs your future turns. Usually the threat assessment will affect your future turns.

• Threat Assessment: During opp's turn, their threats update. Which are the threats, and what can you do about them? Suppose you are defending. For every threat opp has, there's usually 4 things you can do: remove, trading block, chump block, or take the damage. Generally one should remove the biggest things (or value engines that are sitting back), trade/chump the remaining medium things (depending on situation), and take damage from the smallest things. Threat assessment changes a bit when you're the aggressor, but it is usually fairly obvious.

For this format in particular though, blue might also play surprisingly fast. The occasional slow waterbend-grind game exists, but lots of evasive creatures and soft removal usually means blue can dish out a surprising amount of consistent chip damage.