Julien Nuijten
7/7/2005
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Today I'm going to talk about the basics of drafting competitively. It's not about the current draft format in particular, but most examples are from that format (Champions block). I've split it up in 5 sections. Card evaluation, the first few picks, getting into the right colors, keeping an eye on your deck, deck building and sideboarding.

Card Evaluation

Before you start, you should make sure that you know most of the cards. The worst thing that can happen in any draft is running out of time to think about your pick. This is especially true for the first 4-5 picks, since these picks will decide your colors and therefore the rest of your draft. You should also have a rough idea of a pick list memorized, so you can make a quick decision between any number of cards without trying to think of which one is better each time.

The First Few Picks

So everybody's ready to start and cracks their first pack open. You recognize the best three or four cards in the pack, but you don't know which one to pick yet. There are a number of things to keep in mind that can help you decide on the right pick.

If you prefer a certain color, because you like it or you think it is the best color in the draft format, you can try to force that color.

You could also “play it safe” and pick a card of a color that there aren't too many good cards of. This prevents you from getting cut off by one of your neighbors who might have chosen to pick another card in that same color. A good example of this concept is white in Champions-block draft. A pack can have Cage of Hands, Mothrider Samurai and Blessed Breath, all of which are great cards, but it can be safer to stay out of white, since there will probably be a lot of white drafters at the table.

There could also be two cards of the same color, a very good one and a reasonable one. This might allow you to pick the very good card, and 'table' the other card, giving you two good picks out of the pack.

A fourth reason to pick one card over another on basis of its color is that the color may be underrated or underdrafted. This means that people are biased about a particular color going into the draft, because they think that it's a bad color. But if nearly everybody in a draft decides this, nearly nobody will be tempted to pick it! This opens an option for you to draft a weaker color along with one other person at the table, instead of a better color with two or three other people at the table. It doesn't always work out though, since there is also a reason why people don't like the color; the card quality and/or quantity is low.

Take a look at this pack:




The best cards of the pack are Hideous Laughter, Kitsune Blademaster and Kabuto Moth, and I personally prefer Kabuto Moth over the other two, but it's very close between that and Hideous Laughter. If you pick the Laughter, the drafter left of you will definitely pick Kabuto Moth, and the other way around, if you pick Kabuto Moth, he will definitely pick Laughter, unless his first pick was a good white card, in that case he can pick the Blademaster safely. You might be able to get Indomitable Will back if you pick Kabuto Moth, but it's very unlikely because there are usually at least three white drafters at a table. Since the card quality is very close, I would pick Hideous Laughter, making sure that the player next to you is white, and maybe also the player after that (picking Kitsune Blademaster).

Getting Into the Right Colors

Very often people try to stick to the color of their first pick. If someone first-picks Yosei, they often tend to go white, it's the same with other colors. This is very logical, but occasionally it doesn't work out as well as you would want it to. People have tried forcing their favorite archetype, and while it works from time to time, it's more often than not an unsuccessful strategy. For me personally, it has almost always worked out better to let the colors come to me instead of locking myself into a fixed archetype. This way you frequently end up not playing some of your early picks, but it's usually a sacrifice I'm willing to make since it reduces the chance that you're being locked out of your colors entirely. With close picks, it's often a deciding factor if one of the cards you're thinking of picking is the same color with an earlier pick (or has another form of synergy with it, such as a spirit when you already have some creatures with soulshift; it doesn't necessarily have to be the same color).

After the first six or so picks, you should have a good idea of what colors you're going to draft. The concept of drafting signals is quite simple. If you get a good card of a certain color later than you would expect it to go, or as a single playable or good card left in a pack, you can see it as a sign that your right-hand (in the first and third pack, the second pack it's the other way around) neighbor (or neighbors) are not in that color, allowing you to pick it up. The same counts for sending signals to your neighbor drafters.

However, this is not a general rule that always counts. It is, as a lot of concepts in Magic are, only a factor in making choices. With sending and receiving color signals, a pack could be “weird” and send out a disrupting signal. An example for this is when there are two good cards of a color reasonably late still in a pack and your neighbor is in that color. He will pick one of the two, and you will get the other one surprisingly late, but your neighbor did not intend to give you this signal. You can only pick up or send a good message from or to your neighbors after a consistent series of signals. Notice that there is a huge difference between the following statements: “You passed that Blessed Breath really late,” and “You never passed a blue card,” because the first one describes a single pack that could be a goof, while the latter one describes a steady series of signals. It is of course possible that a series of three or four picks could be goofs, but it's not very likely.

Keeping an Eye on Your Deck

I believe that while the first few picks are very important to decide your colors, the picks after that are even more important. At this time, which is after about four picks, the packs should be getting low on the really good cards, and you have to start picking up cards that are just playable. You have to end up with 22-23 good cards for your deck, so you have to get about 8 out of each of the three sets. You're not going to make a good deck with only the first four picks of each pack. Once you've settled in the right colors, almost all picks from 5-10 should be at least reasonable for you. If you're not getting the right cards at this time, you're in the wrong colors! (You should keep in mind that this only concerns the first pack of the draft, after the first pack it's usually too late to switch your colors).

Something important that I see a lot of new players do is always picking the card they feel is the best, instead of the best card in their deck, or a card that the deck still needs. You have to focus on drafting a deck, rather than drafting good cards. Therefore, you have to try to stick to a certain 'model' for your decks; with this I mean how a good deck is built up. An example:

Creatures:
4 two-drops
4 three-drops
3-4 four-drops
2 five-drops
1 or 2 six and seven-drops

Other spells:
An assortment of combat tricks, equipment, removal, supporting spells (such as Kodama's Reach or Murmurs from Beyond).

Lands:
16-18 lands, depending on your creature curve and the draft format (in Onslaught block draft, you would usually run 18 lands, while in a block like Mirrodin you would only run 16-17)

You have to make sure that you end up with something similar, it doesn't have to be exactly like this, but it's a fair guideline. If you have too many high casting cost creatures, or too many other spells, or too many supporting spells and not enough creatures, it's usually not very good for your deck.

This is also what you can use the time you have between the packs for. You look at what you have and think of what you need, because you don't want to end up with too many or too little of something.

Another factor to keep in mind is the synergy your possible picks have with other cards you already have. For example, you may want to pick Scuttling Death over Rend Flesh if you already have a Devouring Greed and a couple of spirits. An arcane spell becomes better if you already drafted a Glacial Ray. The card evaluation you decide before the draft starts should not be kept as a strict pick list, rather a guideline that changes after each pick.

Deck Building and Sideboarding

Once you're done drafting, you should have around 24 cards for the main deck. The guideline given above should be somewhat similar to your deck.

For your mana base, there are a number of things to keep in mind:

- How many cards do you have of each color?
- How many mana of a color do they need?
- Do you want to play the spells early in the game? (if you don't necessarily need to play them early, you can play less of that color since you have more time to draw the right mana)
- Do you have color fixers?
- How important are certain spells? (You always want to be able to cast Final Judgement if you draw it)

Another important thing I do during deck building is look at my sideboard options. During the first game of a match, you should pay attention to what his deck is like and what cards he plays. This is the reason that I write down every card my opponent plays, this allows me to see what his deck is like when I'm going through my sideboard again. A couple of examples for good sideboard options include:

- Dripping-Tongue Zubera against black/red decks with Cruel Deceivers and Hearth Kami
- Squelch against a deck with ninjas
- Vine Kami in a slow green-mirror

The same goes for deciding which cards to take out, you look at what cards are bad against your opponent's type of deck and switch them with your sideboard options.

The last thing to decide during deck building is whether you want to play first or draw first. It depends on if your mana base is shaky, how fast your deck is, how fast the draft format usually is, and, especially in the new draft format, if you have a lot of cards that depend on the number of cards in your hand (Savior's main theme).

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope this helps you win that next draft!

- Julien Nuitjen