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Hello and welcome to the Æther Pool, a new article on MDV. I’m lionden_56, and this article will talk about booster drafting. When most people think of booster drafting, they think of pro players and competitive tournaments. And while it is true that a lot of drafts are competitive, booster drafting can be fun for any type of player, competitive or casual. This article will discuss some of the aspects of a draft, and will hopefully help the players that only draft casually to improve their draft skills. First, here is a quick tutorial for those of you that don’t know what a booster draft is. A booster draft is where 8 or less players (it works best with 8) sit around a table with three unopened booster packs in front of them. Simultaneously, each player opens his or her first pack, looks at it, and chooses a card. Then, they shuffle their packs and pass them to their left. This continues until all the cards in the first pack have been drafted. Then, each player picks up their second booster, drafts, and passes to the right. Again, this goes on until all the cards have been drafted. The last pack is passed to the left again. After the draft, the players build their decks with only the 45 cards they drafted (and lands of course). So why would casual players want to play booster draft? One reason is that it gives a nice change of pace. Say your casual group has one player that has a really good deck that no one can beat. Doing a booster draft levels the playing field, because his good constructed deck can’t be used. Another reason booster draft is fun for casual is the type of games it leads too. Constructed decks often times tend to run like well-oiled machines, which can take the fun out of the game. Draft decks, on the other hand, usually don’t. This leads to games in which really weird, and really fun, stuff can happen. A third reason casual players would want to do a booster draft is it allows you to play with different types of decks. One draft, you may have a quick aggro deck. For a different draft, you may end up playing a slower control-ish style deck. You never know what to expect. So you’ve decided you’d like to do a booster draft, but you are still nervous. Thoughts of, “What if I don’t know what card to pick” run through you mind. It’s time to break down the strategy of selecting cards during draft. Here we go: You sit down in a 4-3-2-2 Champions-Betrayers-Saviors draft on Magic Online. These are generally considered the less competitive draft. The screen opens up, and this is the pack you see (not literally... the card images display differently on MTGO):
Yamabushi’s Storm, Duress (foil), Venerable Kumo, Gibbering Kami, Kami of the Painted Road, Akki Avalanchers, Psychic Puppetry, Joyous Respite, Ashen-Skin Zubera, Yamabushi’s Flame, Soratami Mirror-guard, Guardian of Solitude, Otherworldly Journey, Kumano’s Pupils, Eiganjo Castle So what’s your pick? Before you answer that, let’s break the pack down. The best cards in the pack are Flame and Mirror-Guard. Journey is decent in draft, and I’ve seen people use it effectively, but it isn’t that high on my pick-order, so I dismiss it. Next, you have to look at the rest of the cards that are the same colors as your potential pick. There are 3 other red cards in the pack, while only 2 other blue cards. Since there are more red cards, it means that more people could potentially draft that color. If I draft blue, I’m sending a good signal to my left that blue isn’t open, since there would only be two blue cards in the pack. If I pick red, the signal isn’t as strong, because there are still three red cards in the pack, one of them at uncommon. Since there are only two white cards in the pack, the person on my left may think I went white. However, as I thought about it, I realized that there wasn’t a second-pick red card in the pack; my neighbor would probably take the Mirror-Guard, anyway. Also, all the black cards in this pack are middle pick cards. There is nothing awful in black, but nothing great either. This means that the drafters down the line will probably draft the medium black cards over the so-so red cards left (Storm and Pupils, I think the avalanchers will go slightly higher). With this in mind, I drafted the Yamabushi’s Flame. Ok, everyone take a deep breath. That was an extreme example. I wouldn’t expect casual players to put that much thought into their picks. However, a large amount of thought is required, no matter what level you are drafting at. Hopefully, over the course of this column, I can help all you casual drafters improve your drafting skills. I will be breaking down the above thought process over the next weeks, hopefully helping improve each part of your booster draft decision-making. For starters, lets look at the first thing I thought about: the best cards in the pack. This may be the most important part of draft, because if your card quality is terrible, winning anything will be difficult. If you are going into a draft where you know the boosters, it is best to at least look at the some of the commons and uncommons in the set, so you know what is strong (gatherer.wizards.com is good for this). However, casual players may not know what their packs will be. Death_By_Beebles talked about a draft he did where they bought random packs at a local department store. If this is the case, you can’t really look at your picks ahead of time. So you need to know some things about how to determine good picks in draft. Here is my take:
Secondly, creatures are really good in draft. Because you only get 22-23-maybe 24 non-lands in your deck, and your creatures are almost always your win condition, it’s important to have many. Creatures with removal, now that’s just ridiculous (Kumano, anyone?) Finally, low mana cost is good. I put this one last, because most of the times your better creatures will require a generous mana investment. However, it is important to watch your mana curve in a draft. I won’t get into this now, as I hope to cover it in a future article. Late in a draft, it is important to know what your mana curve looks like, because it can be the deciding factor in taking the decent, but expensive card, or the so-so cheap card. Booster draft is one of my favorite ways to play Magic, because it tests the players ability to play with mediocre cards. I hope that many of you feel the same way. That is all I have to cover in this article. Next time, I’ll continue my discussion of the importance of knowing the best cards in a back, by talking about your draft neighbors. This will also sort of bleed into signaling, which I hope to cover in depth somewhere down the line as well. For now, however, that’s all. Peace, Lionden_56 You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
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Removal is God, and not just “Destroy target creature”
effects (but those are good too). Anything that removes a creature from the
board, or takes a blocker out of your path, or removes one of their creatures
from combat is good. Waxmane Baku is a good example of non-destruction removal.
It taps opponent’s blockers, allowing you to alpha-strike. Or, it can be used
defensively, to tap potential attackers.