

Well, let’s get to that now.ĭraft is among MTG's most popular formats due to its low cost and ease of entry. These often end up in the hands of people who are good at learning when a mana colour is open.

There are plenty of excellent Draft decks that don’t end up using rares at all, and instead opt for a solid base of both common and uncommon cards. In those cases, you’re better off either not picking it, or picking it and not using it. Unfortunately, though, sometimes it also ends up either being not very good or only useful in certain circumstances. Sometimes that’s a great idea because playing that one card will single-handedly win you the game. Each of these tips can be taken on their own to help improve your drafting game in general - if you can master all of them, you’ll be in with an excellent chance of winning every draft you play in.Ī lot of MTG players will want to build their deck around the rares or mythic rares they open up in each pack. Right then, that’s all of the basics covered, so let’s dig into some extra advice.
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Image: Sarah Jarvis How to get better at drafting in MTG It might be tempting to simply pick the most powerful cards, but drafting some cheaper cards is crucial too. Any cards you choose not to include in the main deck can be in your sideboard, which allows you to keep more specialised cards out of your main game plan and use them for emergencies if they’re good against a particular strategy an opponent is using. The only rule is that you have to have at least 40 cards in your deck. To do this, you can use any number of basic lands and any of the cards you drafted. Once you’ve finished actually drafting, you’ll have to build your deck. This keeps proceedings moving, but also forces the more indecisive among us to choose a card under pressure. Also, in a competitive event, you’ll be doing all of this with a time limit, and you get less and less time to pick each card the further into each pack you get. We’ll get more into that in a minute, but it’s important to know. That means you need to keep track of the cards you’ve chosen. You’ll be unable to look at the cards you’ve picked unless you’re in-between packs. Finally, you open the third pack and pass to your left once more. Once the first booster is done, you repeat the process with the second pack, but you pass to your right this time. You continue to do this until the entire pack is gone. As a result, you’ll be handed a pack of cards (minus one) from your right. To start off, everyone has to open their first booster, pick a card and then pass the remaining cards to the player on their left. Normally these will all be from the same set, but there is an alternative format called Chaos Draft where everyone has booster packs from different sets to make things even more interesting. Each player starts with three booster packs in front of them. Ideally, Draft is played with a group of eight players. You don’t have to spend hundreds of pounds on a viable deck - you’ve just got to pay for entry to the event, or three booster packs (around £10) if you’re playing more casually.Īs well as the crads you draft from boosters, you can add as many land cards as you like to your deck. That means that nobody enters with better cards than anyone else, which makes Draft one of the cheapest competitive formats around. In short: instead of building a deck ahead of time, you construct one from cards you get during the event itself by opening booster packs.

How to get better at drafting in MTG: Knowing how to draft is half the challenge - now it's time to perfect you technique with some top tips.How to draft in MTG: Pop open those booster packs as we teach you how to draft.What is the Draft format?: Learn about Limited Draft, and what makes it one of MTG's most popular formats.It’s not as daunting as it sounds - and once you know how to draft in MTG, you’ll never want to stop. In order to play Draft, you do need to know a bit about it: not just what drafting is, but what to look out for when drafting and how you can become better by learning some advanced techniques. It’s also one of the best ways to experience a new set, which makes it perfect for release events or reliving older expansions you never had a chance to mess around with. The format has a completely different feel to the kind of MTG you’ll typically play thanks to its innately chaotic nature, and the types of mind games that factor into every decision make for an intense and enjoyable experience. Drafting is one of the best ways to play Magic: The Gathering.
