[DTT]Limited 101: An Introduction to Drafting

[NightLoki]

Greetings everybody, and welcome back to DTT. Now, today's article is an instructional for anyone who's ever been interested in drafting, but never quite knew how. I taught some people at our local FNM location how to draft about a week ago, so I thought it'd be a good idea to bring that to the Vault. First, an overview:


Format Overview: Booster Draft
Booster Draft requires 6-8 people and 3+ Boosters per person. Each person much receive the same type of product (i.e. each person needs 3 packs of Scars of Mirrodin, or 1 pack of Zendikar, 1 pack of Worldwake, 1 pack of M10, etc.) Players sit down at a table and open the first pack (usually newest first). They each pick a card secretly, then send the remainder of the pack to the person to their left. Repeat until the pack is completely distributed. Do this with the remaining packs in Left Right Left style (i.e. Pack 1 goes Left, Pack 2 goes Right, etc.) The cards each player has drafted form their maindeck and sideboard, plus any basic lands required. The minimum deck size is 40 in Limited, so any leftover cards are your sideboard. Decks drafted and built, go play with your drafters.
End Overview


Alright, pretty simple huh? I do something this basic because I plan on doing some draft strategy in the near future and I'd like to be able to point to a nice simple tutorial. If you've got any questions or advice on draft, let me know, I'm happy to help (or just listen). Alright everybody, thanks for reading and I'll see you soon.

[mtglord]

lets talk some general strategies for draft.
first never ever go mono color, you cant exoect to get enough cards of that one color to make a real deck...well thats all i know other than that check your fundamentals

[NightLoki]

Okay, we can start with that. First off, we have a giant statement to make. Advice isn't always right, merely usually. Sometimes with different draft formats, things change. Scars of Mirrodin versus Rise of the Eldrazi is a great example of this. Rise was a slower format (kind of) with plenty of mana sinks, so you could afford to play 17 land every time unless you had the rare super-aggressive deck (even UW Levelers wanted 17 lands most of the time). However, here in Scars land we play 16-land decks because we have access to 7 myr plus Sphere of the suns, in addition to curves being generally lower than RoE. Plus, since most of the cards in this set are not actually manasinks, you want to be able to run more action to not only get to the late game, but to be able to keep up in a topdeck war. Moral: Different strategies apply to different things, and strategies have been wrong before. Keep an open mind. With that in mind, my next post will be about basic things you want to keep in mind while drafting, using M11 as an example (scars is not a typical draft format, and it has its own little quirks that we'll go over later).

[DedWards]

lets talk some general strategies for draft.
first never ever go mono color, you cant exoect to get enough cards of that one color to make a real deck...well thats all i know other than that check your fundamentals

Although I agree that going mono coloured is a bad idea, I have once done it (I took blue). Although I didn't place in the top 3, my deck was consistant. So what I'm trying to say is that although it's not a good idea, it can still be done :p