Players in the Top 8 of the TCG Player 1K Max Point Series Platinum Qualifier Event, please present yourselves at the Side Event Desk for the start of the draft.
Feels like it’s been awhile since I’ve participated in a high-level draft. We’re not talking about thousands of dollars, but drafting for a $400 first place prize is worth taking seriously. Day 1 of Grand Prix Columbus did not go particularly well. I played Jund to a mediocre 6-3 record despite starting with three byes. I could write about that but, while I do think the tournament was a useful learning experience for me personally, Modern doesn’t really seem relevant to most players at the moment. Instead, I’m going to address a question that I get asked fairly frequently: “How can I get better at draft?”
Improving at Magic, or any complex game, is a process that can sort of be described as experiencing a series of epiphanies. One of these, and maybe the most important one, is the realization that consistent success can’t be explained away as a supernatural ability to draw the right card at the right time or avoid mana screw. These things happen, and games are won and lost as a result, but the law of large numbers applies. Raw skill and a deeper understanding of strategy will play out in the long run.
So when someone asks me what they can do to get better results, my first thought is that they’re already on the right track. Instead of blaming luck or circumstance, they’re looking inward and are willing to accept the fact that there is room for improvement. Unfortunately, with respect to draft, the answer is not as simple as telling them to force exalted or prioritize removal.
Please open Pack 1. Remove the basic land and token, and count the cards facedown to verify that there are 14 remaining in the pack…You may now look at the cards. You have 40 seconds.
One of the strategic pitfalls I see a lot of people fall into is the idea that following a single simple rule can take your game to the next level. Draft removal over creatures. Play an extra land in your control decks. Always play two colours. It’s fine to use rules like these as a baseline, but applying them blindly does not actually further your understanding of the game, and probably won’t yield the vast improvement you’re looking for. If you are trying to get better at Magic, you shouldn’t be looking for shortcuts.
When I hear casual players talk about correct draft strategy or emulating pros, they inevitably quote some cliché that they’ve heard mentioned in an article, draft video, or interview. While these often contain nuggets of truth, applying any of them universally is almost certainly incorrect.
The most dangerous aspect of blindly following advice like that is that it prevents you from learning. If you followed the rule and things didn’t work out, what can you blame except luck? The fact is, you need to be able to recognize when certain strategies are viable and, perhaps more importantly, when they are not.
So, while I do want to help people improve, I won’t try to give a comprehensive guide to drafting correctly. Instead, I’ll try to debunk what I think are some of the most common myths that a lot of players erringly subscribe to.
Myth # 1: You should force an archetype from the get-go to minimize the number of wasted picks
While it may very occasionally be correct, this strategy is employed far more than it should be. Advocates usually cite one of the following reasons as justification. Either they feel that there is a single best archetype that you should try to draft whenever possible, or that a particular strategy is significantly underdrafted, allowing you to pick up important commons and uncommons very late.
Recognizing these situations can be a valuable tool, and there’s nothing wrong with having a slight bias towards certain colours or archetypes as long as the reasoning is sound. Forcing an archetype like mono-red in M13, however, would require using early picks on cards like [card]Krenko’s Command[/card] over better cards like [card]Pacifism[/card]. Mono-red might be both underdrafted and one of the best decks when it works out, but this kind of pick is almost certainly an error in judgment.
Sure, there will certainly be times where it works out perfectly and you end up with an extra [card]Krenko’s Command[/card]. However, there will be those times where someone on your right also ends up in red and your overall card quality will suffer tremendously in the first and third packs. Mono-red might be a great archetype when it’s open, but taking the [card]Pacifism[/card] does not preclude that possibility if, say, you get passed a bunch of [card]Arms Dealer[/card]s. The possible wasted [card]Pacifism[/card] will do a lot less harm than the potential train wreck of taking a bunch of worse cards only to find out halfway through the draft that you’re being cut off anyway.
You have 5 seconds…Draft! Please lay out the booster.
When you’re used to the 65 seconds you have for your first pick online or the untimed casual drafts you do with friends or at FNM, 40 seconds feels like a really short time to process all the information contained in a booster pack. I didn’t really have time to memorize the pack or process what I thought might wheel, but I was able to determine that [card]Arctic Aven[/card] was clearly the best card in a fairly weak pack. There was also a [card]Wind Drake[/card], a [card]Giant Scorpion[/card], an [card]Aven Squire[/card], a [card]Farseek[/card], a [card]Scroll Thief[/card], and a few other semi-playables. I took the [card]Arctic Aven[/card].
Myth # 2: You should avoid taking the best card if there’s another good card of the same colour in the pack
There’s a misconception that good players will always send clear signals. They might prioritize this to an extent, but drafting correctly sometimes means risking a fight with your neighbour. You obviously want to avoid that if you can, but it’s not worth taking a much worse black card just to send a blue signal that your neighbour might not even pick up on. What if they first-picked an [card]Essence Drain[/card] and decide to take the [card]Aven Squire[/card] to force a white/black exalted deck? What if they operate on the same wavelength as you and take the [card]Farseek[/card] to avoid a blue fight and keep their options open?
Once again, taking the worse card might work out favourably, but you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position for no reason. Not only are you sort of committing to black, you’re ruling out the possibility of going blue. The idea that you can just cut black for the rest of Pack 1 and be assured of rewards in Pack 2 is not always going to work. What if the next booster contains two black cards and you have to send a black signal despite your best intentions? What if your neighbour ends up picking up all the white exalted creatures in Pack 1 and decides to reap your rewards by drafting all the black in Pack 2? Even if he only has two or three black cards at that point, it’s reasonable for him to assume that black will be open in Pack 2 while white will flow in Pack 3.
You can prioritize signaling when the cards are all of a similar power level. Taking [card]Murder[/card] over [card]Pacifism[/card] and [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] is certainly an option (though possibly still incorrect). But you only have so many chances at top-tier cards that it’s rarely worth giving one up for a signal that might not impact your neighbour’s decision in the way you expect.
Please verify that there are 13 cards remaining in the pack. Gather the booster.
Flip, flip, flip, flip, [card]Attended Knight[/card]. Not bad I guess. Not really what I’d want from my second pick. Flip, flip, [card]Murder[/card]. Another weak pack. There were really only two choices: stay on colour and take the weaker card, or branch out for the removal spell.
Myth # 3: You should always try to stay on colour with your early picks
The oft-stated theory is that you want to cut a colour if possible, and retain flexibility by avoiding a second colour commitment. That’s all fine and dandy, but you have to keep in mind that taking a worse card is tantamount to ignoring a signal. Does the passed [card]Murder[/card] guarantee that my neighbour isn’t black? Not necessarily, but there’s a much higher chance of him being white at this point. If that’s the case and I continue to force myself to take mediocre white cards, I could easily end up with a very weak deck as I’m forced to settle for leftovers in Pack 1 and 3.
Although it’s technically possible to splash a [card]Plains[/card] off an [card]Evolving Wilds[/card], it was pretty clear that taking the [card]Murder[/card] would mean abandoning one of my first two picks. For some reason, a lot of players are loathe to do this. Unless it’s a complete bomb, of which there aren’t that many in M13, giving up a first pick for the sake of being in the right colour combination is a completely reasonable option that players often fail to consider.
I happily took the [card]Murder[/card] knowing that I would almost certainly have either an [card]Arctic Aven[/card] in a really good white/blue deck, or a [card]Murder[/card] in a really good black deck. Only two picks in, there’s no reason to panic or box yourself into specific colours. It’s worth spending some time to read the draft.
Please verify that there are 12 cards remaining in the pack. Gather the booster.
I watched as Brian Kibler laid out the contents of the next pack in neat, easy-to-pick-up rows of three. This was actually a very strong field for a side event. There were a number of pros in the 128-person field, and both Kibler and Matt Costa had made Top 8. Fortunately, Kibler was on my right and I would have avoided him until the finals. Matt Costa was two seats to my left and a potential semifinals opponent. I didn’t recognize any other names, but got the impression that there were other good players at the table. The point is not to name-drop, but to understand that you don’t need to adjust as much as you think you do when there’s a good player on your right.
Myth # 4: Good players will always send good signals
The third booster presented the first real dilemma of the draft. There were two cards in the pack that were head and shoulders above the rest: a second [card]Arctic Aven[/card] and a [card]Mutilate[/card].
Looking at this pack in a vacuum, a lot of players might determine that both the white/blue tempo deck and black control decks were open. Kibler’s a great player who definitely knows how to draft. He would never send a bad signal, right?
Well, I’ve just finished explaining how drafting correctly means you sometimes can’t send a good signal with your early picks. There was an uncommon missing from this pack. What if there was an [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] or a [card]Talrand’s Invocation[/card] in the pack? Would Brian abandon his plans to draft white or blue in favour of a [card]Mutilate[/card] after just passing a [card]Murder[/card]? Unlikely. I’m sure he’d lament the mixed signal, but he’d almost certainly take the Ring or the Invocation. It’s also possible that he was on white or blue, but not both, and took a slightly worse card to avoid committing to two colours.
I agonized over this pick for the entire 35 seconds. By taking the best card of the previous two relatively weak packs, I had not sent a very strong signal to my left and couldn’t accurately predict what my neighbours were doing. Passing either of these at this point could, however, easily send my neighbour into a specific colour combination.
Unfortunately, in my haste, I neglected to consider the possibility that Kibler had been forced to send a bad signal. I assumed that both decks would be open and based my decision on my opinion at the time that the white/blue tempo archetype was stronger than a black-based control deck and took the [card]Arctic Aven[/card]. After playing the format a lot more since then, I now think the control decks are actually better, but that’s not the point.
The point is that the black signal was much stronger. Along with the [card]Mutilate[/card], I had already been passed a [card]Murder[/card] in the previous pack. While the Aven is certainly a signal, there are, as I mentioned, scenarios where Kibler would have passed it in favour of another white or blue card. Because he’s a good player, I put too much faith in the signal I wanted to see, and failed to consider certain distinct possibilities.
Please verify that there are 11 cards remaining in the booster. 10 cards. 9 cards.
The next few packs went by in a blur. Having made my decision, I proceeded to take the best white or blue card with little thought given to signals. With two [card]Arctic Aven[/card]s safely in tuck, I was already mentally preparing to play Costa in the semis and working out how I would sell off my TCG points after the draft. My decision had been made, after all, and all I could do now was hope that the cards fell in my favour. After all, you have to get lucky to win a draft.
Myth # 5: You have to get lucky to win a draft
This is not about semantics. It’s not a question of whether you get lucky or your opponents get unlucky. It’s also not a debate about luck vs. skill. The point I’m trying to make here is that this way of thinking is probably more harmful than all of the other myths combined.
“I opened Primordial Hydra but the guy passing to me opened Garruk. There was nothing I could do.”
“I first-picked a Mind Sculpt because mill is underdrafted, and never saw the right cards.”
“I got a clear signal from Brian Kibler that white/blue was open, and then he switched into it and I got screwed.”
Maybe the speed of the draft had me a little off balance, or perhaps my inexperience in the format prevented me from evaluating certain cards correctly, but after taking [card]Arctic Aven[/card] over [card]Mutilate[/card], I sat back in my chair and allowed myself to go on autopilot.
I had made my decision and now just had to trust in the luck of the draft. The temporary lapse in focus caused me to ignore the fact that the best cards in all of the next three boosters were green. I didn’t even consider what that meant. Instead, I picked up whatever semi-playable white or blue card was in each pack. A [card]Guardians of Akrasa[/card], [card]Scroll Thief[/card], and [card]Safe Passage[/card] I think. I ignored the [card]Deadly Recluse[/card], [card]Centaur Courser[/card], and [card]Spiked Baloth[/card].
It was only after passing a seventh or eighth pick [card]Flinthoof Boar[/card] that I began to wonder. After he passed me the [card]Arctic Aven[/card] and [card]Mutilate[/card], I had pegged Kibler for red/green. How could he be passing such a late boar? I hadn’t seen much red, so maybe he was just picking a lot of [card]Mogg Flunkies[/card]. I crossed my fingers and dared to hope, but I knew that the damage was already done.
If I hadn’t allowed myself to fall victim to the mindset of relying on luck, I would almost certainly have clued in to the problem earlier, and, even after making the incorrect pick of the second [card]Arctic Aven[/card], I would likely have stumbled on to the correct archetype, which would almost certainly have been an excellent green/black control deck. As it turns out, Kibler was white/blue to my right, and there were only two black drafters: my neighbour on the left, and a player a full four seats to my right: my quarterfinals opponent.
As I built my deck, I understood the magnitude of my error. I had a lot of good cards but did not really have enough of them. I would end up having to choose between things like a second [card]Safe Passage[/card], a [card]Glorious Charge[/card] that didn’t really synergize, an [card]Aven Squire[/card] that would almost certainly be nothing more than a 1/1 flier, a [card]Rain of Blades[/card], and a [card]Guardians of Akrasa[/card] in a deck already chock full of 3-drops. I was also conspicuously low on aggressive 2-drops like [card]Welkin Tern[/card] and tempo-based spells like [card]Unsummon[/card]. I could definitely win some games, but this did not look like a 3-0 deck.
In the end, I lost Game 3 of the quarterfinals to an opponent who never played a third land. Instead, he cast three [card]Duty-Bound Dead[/card] and a single [card]Knight of Infamy[/card]. I sat there taking five-a-turn with a completely useless [card]Rain of Blades[/card] in my hand and a bunch of white creatures in play.
The result was disappointing, but not completely unexpected. After cruising through the Swiss with a 6-0-1 record, I had allowed myself to fall into the trap of lazy thinking and had suffered as a result. Instead of carrying home a cool $400, I’m left with only $50 and a reminder never to let my guard down. Improving at draft is not about discovering and blindly applying any number of golden rules. It’s about learning how to read the draft and using as much of the information you’re provided with as possible.
Jon Stern is a grinder who has won over a dozen PTQs in his career. In 2010, he returned to the game after a 4-year hiatus, leading him to win another PTQ in 2012 for Pro Tour Seattle.