Many casual players, when they run out to get their latest fix of the addiction we all call Magic: the Gathering from their local gaming or hobby store, buy a few packs, and then either open them (or crack them, as I like to say) right in the store, or take them home and open them with their friends. I’ve known players to open entire boxes worth of packs at Pre-Releases and on casual Fridays, just because they wanted to get to all the rares.

While this is one way of getting enjoyment out of your Magic budget, it’s definitely not my cup of tea. At nearly 4.00 USD a pack, this little hobby is getting more and more expensive. If I’m going to pay the cash for the packs, then I’m going to try and get my money’s worth out of them, and that may mean saving money to do something with the packs instead of just opening them. One of my favorite options is a booster draft.

Booster drafting is no new thing here at MDV, but in case you don’t know anything about drafting, let me steer you towards Lionden_56’s “AEther Pools” articles in the articles archive. You can read all of those later, but let’s have a quick recap about how you do a booster draft.

1. A booster draft is where players take three packs of Magic: the Gathering cards and open them, one pack at a time. Normal drafts have 8 players, but you can have a draft with as many as 12 and as few as four people. Players pick their favorite card from the pack they’ve opened and pass the pack to their opponent on the left, who then takes their favorite card, and passes the pack to the player on their left. This cycle continues until each player has 15 cards.

2. The process is repeated, passing opened packs to the right on the second pack (30 cards total), and then the left on the final pack (45 cards total).

3. After drafting is completed, players then attempt to make a 40-card deck out of the 45 cards that they drafted (using a total of about 23 to 24 of the cards drafted).

4. Finally, players play best of 3 matches against their fellow drafters, and the winners go on to face each other in a final round; the winner of the tournament wins the draft!

Booster drafts are one of my favorite parts of Magic. The ability to create your own deck on the fly, react to other people’s decisions midway through the drafting process, and reading and understanding signals all appeal to my core Magic gamer. It’s a combination of skillful decision-making and sheer luck that helps you decide what to play, and it’s that decision-making that helps you decide what cards you drafted should make it to the final build of your 40-card deck.

But it’s not just drafting that we’re talking about here; with the latest addition to Magic’s multiverse, now with it's latest set open for public consumption, Lorwyn Block is what is on everyone's mind. Drafting Lorwyn is different from drafting Time Spiral or Champions of Kamigawa. Like Ravnica, Lorwyn brings all sorts of new concepts to the drafting table; what color pairings have tribes? What tribes are strongest? How can I get two tribes to work well together and create synergy? Stick with me, and hopefully I’ll be able to at the very least set your feet on the right path.

Drafting Lorwyn: Some Basic Concepts

Instead of telling you which cards are best in the format, and which cards are worst, or telling you the best cards to draft if you want to play Elves, Merfolk, or Goblins, I’m going to direct you to Quentin Martin’s articles on www.magicthegathering.com. He’s written some great lists for players to use, and I’m not going to belabor the point. Instead, what I’d like to do is to give you some guidelines, and some things to keep in mind as you begin a draft of Lorwyn.

1) Understand the tribes of Lorwyn and how they interact internally. One of the most important things about drafting Lorwyn is making sure you have the right kind of creatures to build a solid deck. A lot of the most powerful interactions of cards in Draft are only possible if you have many of a certain tribe; Silvergill Adept, for instance, is really good when it costs 1U and draws you a card, but it’s not that great when you have to pay five mana for it. You need to have more than one Merfolk to play Silvergill Adept effectively. The same could be said for cards like Jagged Scar Archers; for the card to be effective, you have to have more than one Elf in play. Let me use an example to illustrate my point.

In Lorwyn Draft, there are two popular Merfolk deck builds; you can take the aggressive route and use cards like Aquitect’s Will along with Deeptread Merrow, Inkfathom Divers, and Streambed Aquitects to swim across your opponent’s new Islands and crush him. Combine that with some tempo cards like Whirlpool Whelm, a few tricks, maybe a Veteran of the Depths and a Silvergill Douser, some removal, and you’ve got a deck. The other form of Merfolk deck hinges on and around Drowner of Secrets. It uses control elements like Harpoon Sniper, Silvergill Douser, and Stoneybrook Angler; abuses Merfolk tap effects with Merrow Commerce and Judge of Currents; and eventually finds itself a Drowner and keeps it alive long enough to mill your opponent to death.

There are quite a few good Merfolk cards, however it’s a fairly safe assumption that you don’t want to be playing certain Merfolk cards in the wrong deck; certainly it’s not bad to have a Merrow Commerce in an aggressive Merfolk build, but to be honest I’d rather have a creature or a piece of removal. You should only be using about 40 cards, so a smaller deck limits your options, and while in the right decks Merrow Commerce is a good card, in others it sinks like a rock.

As a slight caveat, there are some Merfolk cards that are so powerful you always want them in either deck; Fallowsage and Silvergill Douser are a good example of this. These creatures can break an opponent’s back, and they’re an essential part of any Merfolk deck.

To recap, use creatures that interact with each other, and understand how those interactions work. If you understand how each of the deck possibilities works, you’ll be better able to make decisions about what cards are good to take early in the packs, and what cards are better saved for last.

2) Understand the different tribes of Lorwyn and how they interact with each other. One of the most important things you have to realize when you draft Lorwyn is that you’re probably going to be in more than one color; sometimes you’ll have two main colors and be splashing a third color for one or two cards. In Time Spiral this wasn’t a problem, but in Lorwyn, splashing a color, or even having just two colors can be tricky, because in Lorwyn draft, some colors just don’t work well together. Why is that, you ask? It’s because there isn’t any tribal interaction between those colors.

For example, Green, which I feel is fairly good in this set, probably shouldn’t be played as a second color with Blue; there is no tribe in Green/Blue, and you lose some of your potency if you aren’t playing with all of your tribal interactions. To give you an example, a deck that plays White and Red as it's main colors can play Kithkin along with Giants, and with cards like Kithkin Greatheart you can make some amazing second and third turn plays. Red and Black together are the colors of Goblins, but you can also get some good Faerie cards like Marsh Flitter and good Giant cards like Lowland Oaf to interact with your powerful Goblin cards.

Another thing to watch out for is to make sure you play tribes that do have good interactions; while there are some cards that work very well between tribes, such as Silvergill Douser, others, like Nectar Faerie, are less successful. Here’s a little chart to help you figure out who goes with whom.

The main point here is, while you’re drafting, try to think about everything you’ve taken, and try to build synergy between your two main colors; the more synergy you have, the stronger your final deck build is going to be, and the more potential you have to win.

3) Many of the best cards in Lorwyn Draft are splashable. This is especially true for some Elemental cards like Mulldrifter, Briarhorn, and Shriekmaw. Many of your pieces of removal, like Crib Swap, Lash Out, Oblivion Ring, Nameless Inversion, and Eyeblight’s Ending all need only one colored mana to play. This is a great thing, especially with all the mana fixing in Lorwyn.

The mana fixing is great in Lorwyn, and it’s mostly because of the cycle of uncommon lands. The Vivid lands all come into play tapped, and they make it so you can play any color two times in a game without a drawback (other than coming into play tapped). Along with the Vivid lands, Shimmering Grotto, Wanderer’s Twig, and Springleaf Drum are all potent fixers. If you jump into colored mana producers, you can also use Tideshaper Mystic and the fixing/acceleration of Fertile Ground.

With this kind of fixing in the format, don’t be afraid to splash for a third color, especially if you get a rare like Cairn Wanderer or manage to get a Changeling Hero that you wouldn’t normally play; in a draft format that’s bomb-centric, these cards are a must. Powerful game ending creatures like Cairn Wanderer and Nath of the Gilt Leaf are key to winning games, which leads me to my next point.

4) Lorwyn draft is a bomb-centric format. Like I said in the previous paragraph, large, game-changing creatures are the keys to the format. Creatures like Immaculate Magistrate, Hamletback Goliath, Cairn Wanderer, Changeling Titan, and Mirror Entity are all amazing cards that always change the game when they come into play. Planeswalkers are also huge game-changers. Ajani Goldmane is ridiculously good for his -1 effect, Chandra can be up to 2 removal spells with her –X ability, and Jace can be a game breaker with his -10 ultimate ability.

It’s this bomb-centricity that makes removal such a key component of any Draft; Oblivion Ring, Weed Strangle, Crib Swap, and Eyeblight’s Ending are all cards that you should be taking fairly high because of how good they are at taking care of those large, unanswerable threats. Counterspells are good against many of the more game-breaking threats; Scattering Stroke and Faerie Trickery provide relief for a color with little removal. Creature enchantments like Lignify and Glimmerdust Nap can also prove effective.

I cannot stress how good some of these cards are. If your tribe is Elves, and an Immaculate Magistrate comes by, you should be hard pressed not to take it. These cards are game winners, but one word of caution: you need a solid tribe for some creatures to be remarkable. A turn four Immaculate Magistrate is good, but if you don’t play Elves on your turns before that, you could be in a world of hurt, since his ability won’t be any good.

5) Remember the card advantage! For whatever reason, there are not many cards in Lorwyn that can generate card advantage, but the few that do are cards you should be taking high. Final Revels is an excellent board sweeper, and can at times be the Fortify you need to push through enough damage to win the game. Thundercloud Shaman is an amazing first-pick Giant that loves Giant decks (and not much else). Cards like Warren Pilferers and Mulldrifter are common, but they get scooped up fairly quickly. The rest of your card advantage is in rare spells, such as Profane Command, Incendiary Command, Austere Command, and Fathom Trawl. Take advantage of these cards if you can play them; they’re what take an even battle and make it a one-sided thrashing.

6) Changelings are the tribal glue of Lorwyn. Tribes don’t necessarily always come together. Sometimes, you need one more Giant to make Blind-Spot Giant playable, and it just won’t happen. In this situation, Changeling creatures are just what the doctor prescribed. Changelings are all fairly good. Try and take them earlier than you think they're worth; they won't disappoint you.

In a tribe-based block, Changelings are a huge part of building a deck that is cohesive and powerful. Changelings are good because they increase the amount of any given tribal creatures you have (which comes in useful for the Merfolk, for example, with both Harpoon Sniper and Silvergill Douser hanging about). They also interact with tribal themes (like not being able to be killed by Eyeblight’s Ending, or being able to be launched into the air by Lowland Oaf). Along with all the type-based abilities of Changelings, many Changelings also have powerful abilities. Amoeboid Changeling, a consistently under-drafted card, can kill a lonely Jagged-Scar Archers, can make an additional Faerie for Scion of Oona, and generally cause headaches for your opponent.

Overall, because of how important building a good deck with tribal interactions is, Changelings are a great way to supplement the tribal cards you do have, and give them that extra Changeling kick.

Hopefully, these six points will get you moving in the right direction. Drafting is a fun, competitive, and thriving part of Magic, and drafting Lorwyn is no exception. So the next time you think about going out and buying and opening packs, stop yourself and ask; have I drafted lately?

Until next time, this Death_By_Beebles, signing out.

Alex Hoffman has been parading around with the pseudonym of Death_By_Beebles for three years now. He’s a writer for Magic Deck Vortex, and can often be found tinkering with his latest decks while working on his Biochemistry homework. He is the author of Raiding the Dollar Bins and Going Blind series at MDV, and the recent startup series Pauper Chronicles. Alex likes kittens, reading, and generally enjoying life. He doesn’t like Brussels sprouts. You can send him deck ideas, combos and suggestions at deathbybeebles@yahoo.com.

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Articles Spotlights from 2008:
How to Win with Milling: A Guide to a Slow Painful Death
Memories of an Old Magic Player 10: The Outsiders Journal #3.
The Apprentice Magician, Part Three.
Class-Wars Deckbuilding Contest Results!
Tribal Coffee: The Smaller Tribes.
[Mini-Article] Controlling the Game: Without Blue.
Raiding the Dollar Bins: Return of the Vault Ninja.
A Fresh Perspective: Stasis - Part One.
More Evil Than Evil.
Memories of a Jarhead.