Drafting with Bigemobob

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bigemobob

8 December 2010

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I honestly wish someone had given me a better rundown on drafting and saved the ‘Take a card, pass the rest down’ explanation for someone with a slightly lower intelligence level. My first draft consisted of this conversation pre-draft:
'What’s a draft?'
'You basically build a deck out of 3 or 6 packs of cards.'
'Oh.'
'Yeah, and you don’t keep your rares.'
'Wait, what? Why not?'
'Well, if you win you can pick your rares, if you liked them that much.'
'For the love of God and all that is Holy, be more specific.'
'Just sit next to me and do what I do.'

That night I think I won one match. ...And that was because my opponent drew NO land.

Fortunately, I have very convincing friends who encouraged me to view drafting as another fun, non-competitive way to play and give it another shot. Now, every week my friends and I hold our own little fun draft with whatever packs of cards we want. It sure makes buying a box and opening it’s contents a little more exciting and fun.

Here are some things I’ve learned during my drafting experiences. Click the link for elaborration.

Pre-Draft

• What is Drafting?
• What to Bring
• Know the Cards
• Know the Format’s Mechanics

What is Drafting?

Drafting is a fun, competitive event where you build a deck of cards with only the cards in the packs you are given.

There are two kinds of drafting:

First there is the pass draft which most people are familiar with. With a pass draft, each player comes to the table with 3 booster packs containing 15 cards, of the set that has been decided on, to draft from. Each player then passes each pack down the table, taking one card from each pack every time it comes around to them. These cards will be assembled to create a 40-card deck. In my opinion, this is the most fun of the two draft formats.

The second format is called a sealed draft. This is where each player comes to the table with 6 packs of cards and creates a 60 card deck from those packs. In this format, you do not pass your packs around to each other player; what you have is all you get.

Since the pass draft is the most known, takes the most skill and is the most fun to play, we will focus on this for the rest of the article.

During a pass draft, you are essentially making a deck of your own that you think will be able to counter against the other cards in the set. For example, in the Scars of Mirriodin set, I have been building red decks or U/W decks. Red is nice because it has some nice common cards like Turn to Slag and Shatter that can eternally crush your opponent. White is great for the low cost creatures and sending stuff to exile; Blue is great for the counter/unblockable stuff. Being able to analyze each card and find the strongest ones out of the set will help you be able to create an awesome draft deck.

One thing that a lot of new people to draft find bothersome is that you do not get to keep your rares. This is okay, believe me. It makes you want to get better at drafting so you can keep that Venser, the Sojourner you pulled out of your first pack.

At my local card shop we usually have 3 rounds of Swiss pairings, then each player (ranked in order from first to last) chooses rares from the lot that had been pulled that draft.

Now that we have a basic understanding of the draft, let’s take a closer look at the cards, mechanics, and strategies that make drafting a fantastic alternative way to play Magic: the Gathering.

What to Bring

This is fairly simple, and may be common sense for some, but also something worth noting. The list of items may be small, but also important. Here is my list of items to bring to a draft at your local card shop.

First and foremost is card sleeves. You play your main deck sleeved, why wouldn’t you play a draft deck sleeved? If you are going to be drafting at your local card shop, just bring a dollar or two and get a pack of the penny sleeves. Having your cards sleeved ensures the quality of the cards when you’re done playing. Since most drafts are not keep drafts unless it’s the beginning of a new set, keeping your cards sleeved while playing is a courtesy to other players who may end up getting your rares.

The second most important thing you want to remember is a way to keep track of your life and for counters on your cards. Personally, I have a bag of dice that I bring to every event just in case someone forgets their own (which happens more often than not). In this case, I just end up keeping track of their life and using my dice for +1/+1 counters and such. Just like sleeves, however, you can purchase a set of die from your local card shop.

The third thing you want to think bout bringing is something to store your cards in. When I do a draft at the shop, I usually bring an extra Ultra-Pro deck box for the new cards to go into until I can get them separated and into the correct storage boxes when I get home.

Another important item is a constructed deck. Something you can do while you wait for the other players to finish their games is test out any new ideas you have or practice with your FNM deck. Just like FNM, you’re going to have the players who take forever to finish their games and go right to time. When these people play against each other and are finishing up game 1 when you’ve been done for what seems like an eternity, your type 2 deck can be your best friend.

While you’re waiting for others to finish and you don’t feel like playing your type 2 deck, you can be trading. So, bring your trade binder. Or trade box. Or trade plastic bag (not recommended) so you can trade for those cards you’ve been dying to get. Since drafting sometimes draws a slightly different crowd than FNM, you may find yourself meeting a few new faces who may have some cards you’ve been looking for.

Know the Cards

To some, this may seem like a common sense step, but this is quite possibly the most important step to drafting. If you don’t know the cards then your picks will be spur of the moment. Drafting is based off the professional sports type of drafting where teams pick new players to play in the majors that they’ve been watching for months, maybe even years. Granted this is not professional sports, but the same aspects should be applied.

Scouting is one of the biggest steps to drafting. Studying the cards, which ones will work with your play styles and different combinations you can use, will give your draft deck some sort of focus. A lot of people who draft have decks that have no focus to them. A draft deck with no focus is a last place draft deck for sure.

This begs the question, “How do you scout?” Scouting starts at the very earliest possible moment. When Scars of Mirrodin was announced I started scouring the Internet for card leaks. On of the first cards I found was the Sword of Body and Mind. A fantastic card for a Type 2 deck, but not something I would try to base a draft deck around since it’s a mythic rare card. Would I grab it in a draft? Of course, but it’s not a card I would go into a draft hoping I can pick up a couple of them for my draft deck.

Scouting is essentially looking at all the cards in the set and finding out which cards work well together. Just like a sports team, you’re going to be putting cards in your deck that share the same characteristics and abilities that the other cards have while sharing some sort of goal. This goes well with my next topic and both pretty much intertwine:

Knowing the Format’s Mechanics

To talk about the format’s mechanics, I would like to start with the Infect mechanic from Scars of Mirrodin. Infect is a beautiful mechanic for drafting, however, for the current standard format it’s horrible. It’s strong enough to work with the cards in the set, but when you start throwing in cards from Zendikar, Worldwake, and Rise of the Eldrazi, Infect starts to lose it’s zest.

Knowing that tidbit of information is golden when you draft. Even if you’re going Blue/White/Artifact for this particular draft and pack number 3 reveals Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, you might want to consider at least hate-drafting it. We’ll get into hate-drafting later in The Draft section.

Back to the point. Each recent format has had a few different mechanics introduced. With Zendikar we saw Allies being introduced with the Landfall ability. However, Landfall seems to be better in standard format, where Allies tend to work better in draft. It’s not to say that there is always a mechanic better for draft and one better for standard format, it just so happens to work that way.

Knowing the mechanics of the set also entails knowing the cards that work best with the mechanics. Since we’re taking a look at Infect, then we should know some of the best Infect cards. One of my favorite Infect cards is Plague Stinger. A 2-spot card with flying and Infect, Plague Stinger is a must have for a Scars of Mirrodin Infect deck. Another awesome card is Contagious Nim. A 2/2 creature with Infect for 2B. Fantastic in the early game and great if you can get Blades of the Pinions attached to him.

As with most drafts, flying is always crucial. If you can't get something to get rid of or combat flying, you're doomed. In Scars, Wall of Tanglecord is one of the best anti-anything cards. When I first saw SOM spoilers, I thought I'd see this in a bunch of draft decks, but it seems to be a very underused card in my area. A 0/6 creature that has the ability to gain reach for G? And for 2 colorless mana? How can you go wrong? It stops Plague Stinger six times before it dies. Incredible.

Well, that just about covers it for this chapter. Check back in 2 weeks where we will cover the draft itself and I will go over some cards I would draft but would not put in a Type 2 deck and some drafting methods.