Transition metal systems pose a unique challenge for quantum chemistry due to the neardegeneracy of the d-shell electrons. These near-degeneracies mean that transition metal systems are often ill-described by any single electronic configuration, and thus often require multiconfigurational treatment to obtain accurate results. This is especially true in systems containing multiple transition metals with some degree of interaction. While multiconfigurational methods such as the complete active space self consistent field (CASSCF) method are generally capable of describing a single metal quite well, they are often computationally prohibitive when two or more metal centers are present. However, a large number of configuration state functions (CSFs) (or Slater determinants (SDs) used in some codes) generated in the CAS method usually do not contribute in a substantial way to the final CAS wave function; these determinants are referred to as "deadwood". Efforts to remove the deadwood from the wave function can be sorted broadly into two categories: "automated" strategies such as selected configuration interaction (SCI) and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) which incorporate the elimination of deadwood into the ansatz ; and "manual" strategies such as generalized active space SCF (GASSCF), restricted active space SCF (RASSCF), the cluster mean field (cMF) and localized active space SCF (LASSCF) methods, which utilize chemical knowledge to wisely eliminate deadwood prior to calculation. This latter category is clearly less black box, but comes with the opportunity to be exponentially more efficient prior to even beginning a calculation.