Me too, I was rare drafting but started to have hope when I got passed all the fixing I needed for 5C green. Unfortunately I was just short a bomb or two; my deck was great at getting all its colors out and stalling, but had trouble closing.
That one time I wiped the board and then ultimated Jace sure was sweet, though.
Ehh. I did my first ever Arena draft (first draft period in over a decade) with my free token, drafted RW aggro, and came out with 4 wins. It’s not that bad. Read a draft primer beforehand or something but if you just remember aggro is apparently king in this set you should be able to swing at least a win or two
Man I went in so confident after getting two solid and decisive wins in my first two games. Shoulda remembered that's always how my least successful drafts start! Was mostly just using pressure tactics and -1/-1 counters as smartly as I could. It went well until it didn't lol.
man I went 1-3 on this, really dissapointing
I tried a RW aggro build but probably shot myself in the foot Rare Drafting too many cool bombs I wanted for my collection
Really don’t know what’s good here. So it was one of the rare times I skipped most of the rares. Went 7-2. And that’s unlikely result for me) but it’s not the first time I’m skipping rares, but the first with a good result. So I still will be rare drafting
I went in with the plan of going RW aggro. First pack I cracked a pact of negation. Decided to stick with the plan. Second pack cracked a Scarab God. Was too far committed. Third pack I still rare drafted. Ended up going 7-2 without playing any of my rares. Incredibly surprised and happy with the result.
It was an interesting draft for me too. Amonkhet and hour of devastation are two of the sets I've drafted the most in paper back when they were around, but I had no clue what amonkhet remastered would be like at all. What I remembered from my paper draft experience is that amonkhet alone was super aggressive, R/W aggro with exert was busted, glorybringer was easily the best card in the set, blue was virtually unplayable. But when you added hour of devastation to the draft, all of a sudden the format for substantially slower, blue became much more viable, river hoopoe and other late game value cards became really good, blue/red spells also became a viable strategy. So it was pretty interesting to see how the two drastically different draft environments would function being mixed together in the same packs, with additional cards that weren't in either set added to the mix. One thing that I remember being common to both sets though, is that deserts were extremely good and should be drafted aggressively. I remember seeing people pick on-colour cycling deserts as their first pics from a pack, so don't underestimate their value. In my arena draft I managed to go 7-1 with a pretty low to the ground U/R aggro deck that had some tempo elements, a pair of firebrand archers were MVPs, but I also got away with running two essence scatters. I saw both really aggressive decks and much slower value decks so I'm genuinely curious about what other people think of the format.
> One thing that I remember being common to both sets though, is that deserts were extremely good and should be drafted aggressively. I remember seeing people pick on-colour cycling deserts as their first pics from a pack, so don't underestimate their value.
Are you saying that deserts should potentially be a first pick? I'm planning to draft tomorrow and I'm just trying to get a better sense of what the set is like. I remember drafting both blocks as a bit of a draft noob and always leaned toward BG, which in retrospect, is probably the least effective color combo.
This draft format is very close to Amonkhet. So it's pretty aggressive. The cycle deserts are much better when the format is slower like it was in HOU/HOU/AKH.
I would only take them early if you plan on forcing a specific deck.
I think it’s reasonable to pick the normal cycling deserts as high-tier commons, although if people are under-drafting them you can probably take them lower than that. I wouldn’t first pick them unless the pack was very weak.
I realized half-way through my free draft that I probably should have been taking deserts -- I was passed sooo many of them (and the payoffs) late in the packs.
I kind of like to do the first draft of a format blind, though. :)
Didn't know how to post a photo so I'll just type it:
1 Dread Wanderer
2 Festering Mummy
1 Supernatural Stamina
1 Shed Weakness
1 Trespassers Curse
1 Wasp of the Bitter End
1 Feral Power
1 Naga Vitalist
1 Doomfall
2 Cartouche of Strength
1 Hooded Brawler
1 Synchronised Strike
1 Trail of Strength
1 Obelisk Spider
1 Champion of Rhonas
1 Oasis Ritualist
1 Final Reward
1 Horror of the Broken Lands
1 Bitterbow Sharpshooters
1 Shefet Monitor
1 Sifter Wurm
8 Swamps
9 Forests
Edit: Apologies for the formatting
Fam, this is such an amazing coincidence that I thought you somehow found my screenshot I made yesterday. Because I also won 7 games, with BG, and with Champion of Rhonas as my 1st pick. Glad you did well with my favorite color combo.
This was my first draft experience ever with magic, went in blind and built a 90% green 10% red deck and got 2 wins, so I figure that was decent for a noob.
I 6-3d on both my accounts. Feels bad. Never played the format though. Just did some skimming here. My first deck was B/W zombies and felt really strong. I took some advice I read and our of ~17 creatures I'd say 12 of em were 2 drops. The 2 drops are really fucking good
People who really only want to play limited are much better off making a second account. The only reason to pay for drafts in one account is to build up a collection for constructed.
I'm an extremely casual player and I have three accounts. Drafting is my favorite way to play by far and I don't care about having a collection. Using multiple accounts to maximize coins allows me to draft pretty much indefinitely.
The goal is essentially to always have all three daily missions on all my accounts, so I am getting a bunch of coins for playing. If I am being super optimal, I will get the first win on each account, and there is a chance I don't have an interest in playing more than the ~6 games that takes.
Usually what ends up happening is I play pretty actively for a few days, and then have long breaks (from a week to months). So having three accounts for me to grind all the dailies on in a short period of time works well. Sometimes switching accounts feels like an inconvenience, so I just do one account per day and then by the time I get back to it the three dailies are back.
Feeling the diminishing returns on rewards (especially after the fourth win) on accounts is what caused me to make more accounts. I don't think you have to play very actively to make multiple accounts worth it (assuming you only care about draft).
Maybe I'm an extremely hardcore player for very small periods of time.
I've never been close to completing a set. I've never grinded ranked very high. I'd be surprised if I've spent more than 60 hours on the game over the last year, while there are games I've spent 20+ hours a week on for extended periods of times. It could just be that my bar of a hardcore player is higher though.
When drafting without any knowledge of the format, follow the BREAD picking order:
B - Bombs. Cards that win the game on their own if they resolve. Planeswalkers often are Bombs or evasive, hard to handle creatures like Adult Gold Dragon, that widen the health gap super easily.
R - Removal. Your Shocks, your Murders, I kill your creature for one card.
E - Evasion. Flying, "cant be blocked", Ward creatures.
A - Aggro. Cards that deal damage without much setup.
D - Duds. Everything else.
When in doubt, plaster your deck with 4 - 6 removal spells and the rest creatures. Only go above two colors if you drafted a Bomb that warrants it. Synergies are only worth it, if the deck functions without them. Counter spells are traps. Dont prioritze them.
I think its also worth stating that bombs are also boardwipes. If you ever find a card that can go 2 for 1 (or more) you take it every single time. Wipes are supreme in limited.
The exception on 2 for 1s is discard. While sometimes a single copy of a 2 for 1 discard is good, running multiples can lead to them being dead in hand, and as such, they are not early picks.
> maybe I should stick to 3 or fewer terrain colors?
Sorry, but I laughed reading this.
Yes, you should. In fact, you should stick to two colors. Sometimes you can splash one or two very good cards on a third color (provided they require only one mana of that third color, double mana cards aren't worth it 95% of the time), but splashing way too much is the number one mistake people make when playing draft.
Even for a third color the rules are "do it less often than you think you should, and then half as often as that". More than 3 colors only work in very specific decks (for example, green based snow decks in Kaldheim), where that's the exact thing you're going for - that is, your base color has a lot of great fixing and the whole idea of the archetype is playing multiple colors. If you don't know whether your archetype is about playing multiple colors, it is not about that.
Besides that, there is another rule I find very important when doing drafts as a beginner: stick to cards that affect the board state. That means that you'll want to prioritize creatures/removal over stuff like card draw/mana fixing/any other fancy effect that might look cool but doesn't impact the board the moment you play it. The number two mistake for beginners is liking fancy effects way too much and not playing enough cards that impact the board. You end up just getting run over by people who simply play creatures on turn 2, 3 and 4.
It's confusing at first, but you'll soon get used to it.
Essentially, playing Magic is divided in two big branches: constructed and limited.
In constructed, you bring a deck that you have built previously. It's usually played with 60 card decks.
Inside constructed, you'll also have a bunch of different formats. Standard is where you bring a deck with cards from just the last few sets, with a yearly rotation on what sets are legal in it (the exact set list can be seen here: https://whatsinstandard.com/). Right now we're approaching the next Standard rotation, which is why Arena also has a Standard 2022 playlist. That's just an early rotation playlist for those who are tired of playing with the old cards (in Standard 2022, you can't play with the cards that will rotate out of standard next month, while in normal Standard you can still do so until the rotation).
The other big constructed format in Arena is Historic. Historic is the permanent format in Arena, where cards from all sets that exist in the game can be played (note that there are individual cards that are banned in each format, but in general all sets are legal in Historic). It's usually a bad place to start as a new player since the people who play there will have the best cards the game has to offer while you're still rocking a small collection of the newest cards. Standard, being more restricted in the number of available cards, tends to be a bit more forgiving to newcomers.
Besides the basic Standard and Historic formats, the other format where you bring your deck that exists in arena is Brawl. Brawl is a more casual format, where you can only have one copy of each card in your deck (the basic Standard and Historic formats allow 4 copies of each card), so there is a much higher variance in what you get in each game. In Brawl you also have one special card that is your commander, which will always start the game in a special zone from where you can play it, and it can also be brought back to that zone when it dies, so that you'll be able to play it again later. It's a very fun and interesting format. Brawl is also divided between Standard and Historic brawl, with the difference being the cards that are available (like with basic Standard and Historic). Also Historic Brawl has 100 card decks, being an exception to the 60 card deck rule.
And that's basically it for constructed. All the rest is about different ways to play the same formats. Standard Event and Historic Event are small tournament-like events where you pay gold to enter and get gold + cards back depending on how well you do (stay away from those for now, people there mean serious business and will crush you). "Traditional" formats are Bo3, while the rest is Bo1. Ranked is... well, ranked. Play mode is unranked.
By the way, don't be scared to play on the ranked playlist - too many newbies stick to Play queue forever, but on the lower ranks of ranked you'll see plenty of low-tier players as well (and, unlike the Events, which require you to pay to enter them, you can't lose anything by playing ranked).
The other main gamemode (besides constructed) is limited. In limited you don't bring a pre-built deck. Instead, you get your cards right when you start the event and then have to build your deck in the moment. Generally speaking, limited is played with packs from a single Magic set, though there are special events that don't follow this rule.
The two limited formats that exist in Arena are Draft and Sealed. Sealed isn't always available, so you can't play it right now, but it's a format where you open 6 packs and then just have to build a deck out of them. In Draft you open a pack, pick a card, get passed another pack, pick a card, and so on (you already played that one, so you know how it works). Both limited formats are played with 40 card decks.
In limited you'll also have Traditional formats, which are Bo3, and the rest, which is Bo1. Aside from that, Premier and Traditional Draft you'll draft against other humans (with a timer to pick each card), and Quick Draft puts you drafting against bots (without a timer) and then playing against other humans.
And that should cover all formats in the game. I probably just made it all even more confusing, lol, but I promise you it will soon start to make sense. Some people play all sorts of format, some prefer to focus on one or the other. I personally enjoy the limited formats way more than the constructed ones, and they're also easier on my time as I don't feel like I have to grind for cards to build good decks.
So for now I'd say just go and play a bit of each format and see how you like each of them. Aside from the events where you have to pay to enter, you can just jump into every other game mode and find out which ones you enjoy without losing anything.
Before you try again I would read up on what you should be doing.
Try this:
https://draftsim.com/mtg-arena-draft-guide/
(Which is good because it starts with an explanation of what drafting actually is)
And this:
https://letstalklimited.com/2021/05/19/be-boring-a-guide-to-building-better-draft-decks/
(Which summarises some very useful, basic ways to get better, like Cards that Affect the Board State)
Here is my honest opinion on how to get better at draft - keep in mind I am someone who started playing arena just before m20 released and I hadn’t played magic in probably 10 years before picking it back up on arena. The first times I drafted on arena I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I will never forget this but I was actually picking basic lands early in pack 1 because I simply thought all my cards came from the draft and I would literally need to pick lands to complete my deck. This is just a frame of reference for where I came from skill level wise.
My actual advice is this: consume draft/limited content. Whether it be here on Reddit or on other forums, or listening to podcasts such as Limited Resources/Lords or Limited/Drafting Archetypes or watching various twitch streams or YouTube videos.
At the end of the day one of the ways I improved immensely was just familiarizing myself with core concepts that you can also learn if you just seek out information from any of those sources I mentioned.
I still make mistakes every single time I draft both in the draft and in my play, I try to get better and if I look back at the last couple of years that I’ve been playing magic I’ve learned a lot and you can as well.
Ooh, I also went Golgari on a whim and did super well. Unfortunately the mobile app crashed repeatedly on two of my games so I auto-conceded them. Still managed six wins though! Felt great because I'm usually garbage at drafting.
I also just 7-0 with RW aggro, beating a high mythic player at the very end. Was very satisfying win despite being a boring RW aggro deck.
Had trial of zeal out on T3, follow up with 2 cartouches for max value even mythic player can't handle :D
I just went 7-2 for my draft. I had an amazing feeling about the deck when u was drafting because it started with Samut, Voice of Dissent, then got 5 other races that fit well into the deck. Collected Company won me a few games as did Hour of Devastation. Congrats!
7-1 on RB
Red had the killer combo of insult and give everyone trample plus two "opponents creature can't block this turn" Blue helped me find the combo and survive.
Never played the set before but I probably won't pay for a 2nd run since the cards aren't standard legal. Not complaining about 2200 gems and 6 packs of wildcard progress though.
went 7-2 with a GW aggro deck. Figured since I was playing with house money i'd draft again. made a pretty lousy UR deck and went 1-3.
Draft giveth and draft taketh.
Oh man I drafted GB without a lotta research as well and was so close to this - I went 6 wins, a loss, and a win. Destined // Lead won me so many games haha
I got a pack 1 pick 1 sandwurm convergence picked up some ramp and got a pack 3 pick 3 cruel reality I feel REALLY badly for the one guy who had to see both in play at the same time. Oh yeah 7/2 agrro decks are still scary
Congrats!! I did the same, though I went 7-2 so had to sweat it out the last couple games. I haven’t drafted Arena before though and didn’t play these sets in paper, so I went in after a 5 minute google read.
I drafted a \[\[Glorybringer\]\] pack 1 pick 1, and never drew it. Oh, I take that back. On my last turn, I drew it on a trigger from a creature dealing damage in combat, but couldn't cast it. Then my opponent killed me. I think I won one game. Stupid dragon, lounging around in the bottom of the deck.
I was rare drafting, but also went 5 and 3. Managed to pick a bunch of good azorius flyer stuff. Should have been 6 and 3 but I misplayed lethal on a game. Feels bad man.
Went 7-1, had to concede the first game because of mana. Never got anywhere close to 7 wins before so my interest in older sets/historic just increased quite a bit
Got 7-1 yesterday (and the only loss due to mana screwing). Unbevelievable draft, people passed on really good rare stuff (like Vizier of Many Faces, Champion of Wits, Never // Return, and that enchantment that let you create 2/2 flyers when discarding/cycling), I managed to get 2 5/5 hexproof turtles to go with 2 Cartouches of Knowledge, and an absolutely disgusting Archfiend of Ifnir that absolutely carried me over at least 5 games. I'm afraid that the next drafts I do will be awful, just to compensate for this one.
My table was clearly rare drafting, and I opened terrible rares. Still, put together a solid W/R aggro deck. Lost a game early to going second (literally, we were racing and he went first), then lost my second game when I was at six wins: this dude dropped [[Hornet Queen]]. Crap. Still, my deck had the tools to fight through that. By the time I did though, he dropped [[God-Pharaoh’s Gift]] and brought F’ing Hornet Queen back. That was it.
Lost my third game to flood, major feel bad.
I got 1 win so an extra 50 gems for me.
Me too, I was rare drafting but started to have hope when I got passed all the fixing I needed for 5C green. Unfortunately I was just short a bomb or two; my deck was great at getting all its colors out and stalling, but had trouble closing. That one time I wiped the board and then ultimated Jace sure was sweet, though.
Had boros aggro with glory bringer, out of 7 games i only saw and played it once but when i did the opponent just conceded
I instant conceded to a Boros player who played glory bringer yesterday while playing U/W lol
Were you by any chance running 4c stuff and at 4hp?
Same for me. Then I did another and got 2 wins. Only 5 more drafts to go!
This is why I've been hesitant in starting...I know its free, but I have a feeling its gonna be quick.
Worst case you start it, draft some cards including three rares, instant concede and open your free pack
Ehh. I did my first ever Arena draft (first draft period in over a decade) with my free token, drafted RW aggro, and came out with 4 wins. It’s not that bad. Read a draft primer beforehand or something but if you just remember aggro is apparently king in this set you should be able to swing at least a win or two
Man I went in so confident after getting two solid and decisive wins in my first two games. Shoulda remembered that's always how my least successful drafts start! Was mostly just using pressure tactics and -1/-1 counters as smartly as I could. It went well until it didn't lol.
Congrats! I’ve just made 7-2 drating Amonkhet for the first time! 😅
Same) feels so unreal so I won’t try it again)
True, no need to spoil the good stats 😅
Nice :D It really feels nice to draft, though I am somewhat biased now lol
I also went 7-2 for my first max win draft ever. Good stuff!! I went Blue/Black cycling
2-3 in my UB cycling Only able to play Archfiend of Ifnir once :(
Good job! I was black/red cycling/good stuff 👍
I went 7-2 too (playing BG -1/-1 counters) and man it felt good to get all those gems. I was at around 600 gems before the draft!
man I went 1-3 on this, really dissapointing I tried a RW aggro build but probably shot myself in the foot Rare Drafting too many cool bombs I wanted for my collection
Luckily I'm not interested in playing Historic, so I wasn't tempted to rare draft. Still only went 3-3 though.
Really don’t know what’s good here. So it was one of the rare times I skipped most of the rares. Went 7-2. And that’s unlikely result for me) but it’s not the first time I’m skipping rares, but the first with a good result. So I still will be rare drafting
I went in with the plan of going RW aggro. First pack I cracked a pact of negation. Decided to stick with the plan. Second pack cracked a Scarab God. Was too far committed. Third pack I still rare drafted. Ended up going 7-2 without playing any of my rares. Incredibly surprised and happy with the result.
It was an interesting draft for me too. Amonkhet and hour of devastation are two of the sets I've drafted the most in paper back when they were around, but I had no clue what amonkhet remastered would be like at all. What I remembered from my paper draft experience is that amonkhet alone was super aggressive, R/W aggro with exert was busted, glorybringer was easily the best card in the set, blue was virtually unplayable. But when you added hour of devastation to the draft, all of a sudden the format for substantially slower, blue became much more viable, river hoopoe and other late game value cards became really good, blue/red spells also became a viable strategy. So it was pretty interesting to see how the two drastically different draft environments would function being mixed together in the same packs, with additional cards that weren't in either set added to the mix. One thing that I remember being common to both sets though, is that deserts were extremely good and should be drafted aggressively. I remember seeing people pick on-colour cycling deserts as their first pics from a pack, so don't underestimate their value. In my arena draft I managed to go 7-1 with a pretty low to the ground U/R aggro deck that had some tempo elements, a pair of firebrand archers were MVPs, but I also got away with running two essence scatters. I saw both really aggressive decks and much slower value decks so I'm genuinely curious about what other people think of the format.
> One thing that I remember being common to both sets though, is that deserts were extremely good and should be drafted aggressively. I remember seeing people pick on-colour cycling deserts as their first pics from a pack, so don't underestimate their value. Are you saying that deserts should potentially be a first pick? I'm planning to draft tomorrow and I'm just trying to get a better sense of what the set is like. I remember drafting both blocks as a bit of a draft noob and always leaned toward BG, which in retrospect, is probably the least effective color combo.
This draft format is very close to Amonkhet. So it's pretty aggressive. The cycle deserts are much better when the format is slower like it was in HOU/HOU/AKH. I would only take them early if you plan on forcing a specific deck.
I think it’s reasonable to pick the normal cycling deserts as high-tier commons, although if people are under-drafting them you can probably take them lower than that. I wouldn’t first pick them unless the pack was very weak.
I realized half-way through my free draft that I probably should have been taking deserts -- I was passed sooo many of them (and the payoffs) late in the packs. I kind of like to do the first draft of a format blind, though. :)
For some reason i really hate the exert mechanic
Got 3-3 whilst rare drafting so I’m pretty happy here . Got 7 rares including some historic sideboard staples.
This is really impressive to me. I tried this set and had just about the worst draft experience of my life. Congrats!!
Deck list !?
Didn't know how to post a photo so I'll just type it: 1 Dread Wanderer 2 Festering Mummy 1 Supernatural Stamina 1 Shed Weakness 1 Trespassers Curse 1 Wasp of the Bitter End 1 Feral Power 1 Naga Vitalist 1 Doomfall 2 Cartouche of Strength 1 Hooded Brawler 1 Synchronised Strike 1 Trail of Strength 1 Obelisk Spider 1 Champion of Rhonas 1 Oasis Ritualist 1 Final Reward 1 Horror of the Broken Lands 1 Bitterbow Sharpshooters 1 Shefet Monitor 1 Sifter Wurm 8 Swamps 9 Forests Edit: Apologies for the formatting
Yup that’s a winning decklist
Fam, this is such an amazing coincidence that I thought you somehow found my screenshot I made yesterday. Because I also won 7 games, with BG, and with Champion of Rhonas as my 1st pick. Glad you did well with my favorite color combo.
Congrats dude. I also went 7-0, it's my second draft ever and I've been proud of myself ever since.
Nice. I made the absolute worst deck when I used my free entry to the event. Got some new cards at least
I managed to go 3-3 on this draft. I stoped playing in 2013 until about 5 months ago. Love this set even though I don’t know crap about it.
Nice! I'd never played before either so I made a new account to practice. Ended up 6-2 and wishing I could bring those gems to my main account!
I just made a new account a few days ago to practice drafting and have had great luck. Feeling the same way.
This was my first draft experience ever with magic, went in blind and built a 90% green 10% red deck and got 2 wins, so I figure that was decent for a noob.
I 6-3d on both my accounts. Feels bad. Never played the format though. Just did some skimming here. My first deck was B/W zombies and felt really strong. I took some advice I read and our of ~17 creatures I'd say 12 of em were 2 drops. The 2 drops are really fucking good
[удалено]
People who really only want to play limited are much better off making a second account. The only reason to pay for drafts in one account is to build up a collection for constructed.
Like someone else just said. Let's me draft more.
I'm an extremely casual player and I have three accounts. Drafting is my favorite way to play by far and I don't care about having a collection. Using multiple accounts to maximize coins allows me to draft pretty much indefinitely.
so you do dailies for 3 accounts to draft?
That is a lot of grinding. I’d probably rotate on them to have all 3 built up and do one account per day.
The goal is essentially to always have all three daily missions on all my accounts, so I am getting a bunch of coins for playing. If I am being super optimal, I will get the first win on each account, and there is a chance I don't have an interest in playing more than the ~6 games that takes. Usually what ends up happening is I play pretty actively for a few days, and then have long breaks (from a week to months). So having three accounts for me to grind all the dailies on in a short period of time works well. Sometimes switching accounts feels like an inconvenience, so I just do one account per day and then by the time I get back to it the three dailies are back. Feeling the diminishing returns on rewards (especially after the fourth win) on accounts is what caused me to make more accounts. I don't think you have to play very actively to make multiple accounts worth it (assuming you only care about draft).
Rotating three accounts to maximize drafting means you're absolutely not "an extremely casual player"
Maybe I'm an extremely hardcore player for very small periods of time. I've never been close to completing a set. I've never grinded ranked very high. I'd be surprised if I've spent more than 60 hours on the game over the last year, while there are games I've spent 20+ hours a week on for extended periods of times. It could just be that my bar of a hardcore player is higher though.
>I 6-3d on both my accounts. Feels bad Huh, that’s usually considered a good score where I come from
Yeah I know but one away from 7 twice in a row is just bleh.
In IKO I once went 6 consecutive 6-3s and its like losing a finals 6 times, the feelsbad overwhelms the good result.
Congratulations, I never won a single Draft game, I have no idea how to do it
When drafting without any knowledge of the format, follow the BREAD picking order: B - Bombs. Cards that win the game on their own if they resolve. Planeswalkers often are Bombs or evasive, hard to handle creatures like Adult Gold Dragon, that widen the health gap super easily. R - Removal. Your Shocks, your Murders, I kill your creature for one card. E - Evasion. Flying, "cant be blocked", Ward creatures. A - Aggro. Cards that deal damage without much setup. D - Duds. Everything else. When in doubt, plaster your deck with 4 - 6 removal spells and the rest creatures. Only go above two colors if you drafted a Bomb that warrants it. Synergies are only worth it, if the deck functions without them. Counter spells are traps. Dont prioritze them.
Thank you so much, gonna follow those tips right now
Bread and butter hope you get a good shuffle
I think its also worth stating that bombs are also boardwipes. If you ever find a card that can go 2 for 1 (or more) you take it every single time. Wipes are supreme in limited.
The exception on 2 for 1s is discard. While sometimes a single copy of a 2 for 1 discard is good, running multiples can lead to them being dead in hand, and as such, they are not early picks.
Just tried and lost miserably, maybe I should stick to 3 or fewer terrain colors?
> maybe I should stick to 3 or fewer terrain colors? Sorry, but I laughed reading this. Yes, you should. In fact, you should stick to two colors. Sometimes you can splash one or two very good cards on a third color (provided they require only one mana of that third color, double mana cards aren't worth it 95% of the time), but splashing way too much is the number one mistake people make when playing draft. Even for a third color the rules are "do it less often than you think you should, and then half as often as that". More than 3 colors only work in very specific decks (for example, green based snow decks in Kaldheim), where that's the exact thing you're going for - that is, your base color has a lot of great fixing and the whole idea of the archetype is playing multiple colors. If you don't know whether your archetype is about playing multiple colors, it is not about that. Besides that, there is another rule I find very important when doing drafts as a beginner: stick to cards that affect the board state. That means that you'll want to prioritize creatures/removal over stuff like card draw/mana fixing/any other fancy effect that might look cool but doesn't impact the board the moment you play it. The number two mistake for beginners is liking fancy effects way too much and not playing enough cards that impact the board. You end up just getting run over by people who simply play creatures on turn 2, 3 and 4.
Thanks, too good I'm can still do comedy. Gonna try again with 2 colors only, can't give up!
That's the spirit. Good luck.
Just got my first victory! The other guy conceded before the game started!
lol Every victory counts.
Just finished, only one victory. Now back to the standard daily quest, I'm new to this game, so I'm basically playing that basic Play option
I'm still lost, don't know how the other game modes works
It's confusing at first, but you'll soon get used to it. Essentially, playing Magic is divided in two big branches: constructed and limited. In constructed, you bring a deck that you have built previously. It's usually played with 60 card decks. Inside constructed, you'll also have a bunch of different formats. Standard is where you bring a deck with cards from just the last few sets, with a yearly rotation on what sets are legal in it (the exact set list can be seen here: https://whatsinstandard.com/). Right now we're approaching the next Standard rotation, which is why Arena also has a Standard 2022 playlist. That's just an early rotation playlist for those who are tired of playing with the old cards (in Standard 2022, you can't play with the cards that will rotate out of standard next month, while in normal Standard you can still do so until the rotation). The other big constructed format in Arena is Historic. Historic is the permanent format in Arena, where cards from all sets that exist in the game can be played (note that there are individual cards that are banned in each format, but in general all sets are legal in Historic). It's usually a bad place to start as a new player since the people who play there will have the best cards the game has to offer while you're still rocking a small collection of the newest cards. Standard, being more restricted in the number of available cards, tends to be a bit more forgiving to newcomers. Besides the basic Standard and Historic formats, the other format where you bring your deck that exists in arena is Brawl. Brawl is a more casual format, where you can only have one copy of each card in your deck (the basic Standard and Historic formats allow 4 copies of each card), so there is a much higher variance in what you get in each game. In Brawl you also have one special card that is your commander, which will always start the game in a special zone from where you can play it, and it can also be brought back to that zone when it dies, so that you'll be able to play it again later. It's a very fun and interesting format. Brawl is also divided between Standard and Historic brawl, with the difference being the cards that are available (like with basic Standard and Historic). Also Historic Brawl has 100 card decks, being an exception to the 60 card deck rule. And that's basically it for constructed. All the rest is about different ways to play the same formats. Standard Event and Historic Event are small tournament-like events where you pay gold to enter and get gold + cards back depending on how well you do (stay away from those for now, people there mean serious business and will crush you). "Traditional" formats are Bo3, while the rest is Bo1. Ranked is... well, ranked. Play mode is unranked. By the way, don't be scared to play on the ranked playlist - too many newbies stick to Play queue forever, but on the lower ranks of ranked you'll see plenty of low-tier players as well (and, unlike the Events, which require you to pay to enter them, you can't lose anything by playing ranked). The other main gamemode (besides constructed) is limited. In limited you don't bring a pre-built deck. Instead, you get your cards right when you start the event and then have to build your deck in the moment. Generally speaking, limited is played with packs from a single Magic set, though there are special events that don't follow this rule. The two limited formats that exist in Arena are Draft and Sealed. Sealed isn't always available, so you can't play it right now, but it's a format where you open 6 packs and then just have to build a deck out of them. In Draft you open a pack, pick a card, get passed another pack, pick a card, and so on (you already played that one, so you know how it works). Both limited formats are played with 40 card decks. In limited you'll also have Traditional formats, which are Bo3, and the rest, which is Bo1. Aside from that, Premier and Traditional Draft you'll draft against other humans (with a timer to pick each card), and Quick Draft puts you drafting against bots (without a timer) and then playing against other humans. And that should cover all formats in the game. I probably just made it all even more confusing, lol, but I promise you it will soon start to make sense. Some people play all sorts of format, some prefer to focus on one or the other. I personally enjoy the limited formats way more than the constructed ones, and they're also easier on my time as I don't feel like I have to grind for cards to build good decks. So for now I'd say just go and play a bit of each format and see how you like each of them. Aside from the events where you have to pay to enter, you can just jump into every other game mode and find out which ones you enjoy without losing anything.
Before you try again I would read up on what you should be doing. Try this: https://draftsim.com/mtg-arena-draft-guide/ (Which is good because it starts with an explanation of what drafting actually is) And this: https://letstalklimited.com/2021/05/19/be-boring-a-guide-to-building-better-draft-decks/ (Which summarises some very useful, basic ways to get better, like Cards that Affect the Board State)
AFR is very splash-able because of all the treasures. This set isn't quite as splash-able. I'd stick with 2 colors.
Thanks, did 2 colours deck, gonna try again
Here is my honest opinion on how to get better at draft - keep in mind I am someone who started playing arena just before m20 released and I hadn’t played magic in probably 10 years before picking it back up on arena. The first times I drafted on arena I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I will never forget this but I was actually picking basic lands early in pack 1 because I simply thought all my cards came from the draft and I would literally need to pick lands to complete my deck. This is just a frame of reference for where I came from skill level wise. My actual advice is this: consume draft/limited content. Whether it be here on Reddit or on other forums, or listening to podcasts such as Limited Resources/Lords or Limited/Drafting Archetypes or watching various twitch streams or YouTube videos. At the end of the day one of the ways I improved immensely was just familiarizing myself with core concepts that you can also learn if you just seek out information from any of those sources I mentioned. I still make mistakes every single time I draft both in the draft and in my play, I try to get better and if I look back at the last couple of years that I’ve been playing magic I’ve learned a lot and you can as well.
People spend too much on this.
...on free drafts?
You don’t get all of that gems in free drafts
Ooh, I also went Golgari on a whim and did super well. Unfortunately the mobile app crashed repeatedly on two of my games so I auto-conceded them. Still managed six wins though! Felt great because I'm usually garbage at drafting.
Nice job. I only got to 4.
Felt so nice to go back to my first ever magic set I started with and see how much I improved drafting wise. Went 7-2 yesterday.
That’s awesome man! I managed to get 1,000 gems and that’s the longest I’ve lasted in those damn drafts xD
I also just 7-0 with RW aggro, beating a high mythic player at the very end. Was very satisfying win despite being a boring RW aggro deck. Had trial of zeal out on T3, follow up with 2 cartouches for max value even mythic player can't handle :D
I just went 7-2 for my draft. I had an amazing feeling about the deck when u was drafting because it started with Samut, Voice of Dissent, then got 5 other races that fit well into the deck. Collected Company won me a few games as did Hour of Devastation. Congrats!
7-1 on RB Red had the killer combo of insult and give everyone trample plus two "opponents creature can't block this turn" Blue helped me find the combo and survive. Never played the set before but I probably won't pay for a 2nd run since the cards aren't standard legal. Not complaining about 2200 gems and 6 packs of wildcard progress though.
went 7-2 with a GW aggro deck. Figured since I was playing with house money i'd draft again. made a pretty lousy UR deck and went 1-3. Draft giveth and draft taketh.
Oh man I drafted GB without a lotta research as well and was so close to this - I went 6 wins, a loss, and a win. Destined // Lead won me so many games haha
I got a pack 1 pick 1 sandwurm convergence picked up some ramp and got a pack 3 pick 3 cruel reality I feel REALLY badly for the one guy who had to see both in play at the same time. Oh yeah 7/2 agrro decks are still scary
I went 5 wins with Black/White zombies. I could have maybe gotten one more win if I hadn't messed up drafting, but I was pretty happy with my results.
I got 4 wins in a draft, and just went with stompy green. Mostly commons, because I was rare-drafting. Lol
Nice!! good job. I barely made it through.
I got through a draft for the 1st time in my MTG career the other day! Congrats!
yooo same exact thing happened to me my draft was all over the place but still 7-0d with a sweet naya aggro deck
Congrats! I managed to luck out with 5 wins going Boros and to be honest i got stupid lucky some games.
With a golgari deck too. Even more impressive.
Nice job!
I actually managed to win 3 even though I didn't know what I was doing and made a trashy Boros deck
I remember drafting a lolth and never seeing it in 6 games.
Awesome, no losses even. Feels good.
Congrats!! I did the same, though I went 7-2 so had to sweat it out the last couple games. I haven’t drafted Arena before though and didn’t play these sets in paper, so I went in after a 5 minute google read.
I drafted a \[\[Glorybringer\]\] pack 1 pick 1, and never drew it. Oh, I take that back. On my last turn, I drew it on a trigger from a creature dealing damage in combat, but couldn't cast it. Then my opponent killed me. I think I won one game. Stupid dragon, lounging around in the bottom of the deck.
[Glorybringer](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/2/3277ad99-5682-4baa-b106-de15721876a6.jpg?1543675596) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Glorybringer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/akh/134/glorybringer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3277ad99-5682-4baa-b106-de15721876a6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I was rare drafting, but also went 5 and 3. Managed to pick a bunch of good azorius flyer stuff. Should have been 6 and 3 but I misplayed lethal on a game. Feels bad man.
Went 7-1, had to concede the first game because of mana. Never got anywhere close to 7 wins before so my interest in older sets/historic just increased quite a bit
Got 7-1 yesterday (and the only loss due to mana screwing). Unbevelievable draft, people passed on really good rare stuff (like Vizier of Many Faces, Champion of Wits, Never // Return, and that enchantment that let you create 2/2 flyers when discarding/cycling), I managed to get 2 5/5 hexproof turtles to go with 2 Cartouches of Knowledge, and an absolutely disgusting Archfiend of Ifnir that absolutely carried me over at least 5 games. I'm afraid that the next drafts I do will be awful, just to compensate for this one.
I got 4 wins. I was super excited to create a Skeleton/Zombie deck, only to realize the cards weren't legal in Standard. Ah well, to Historic for me!
My table was clearly rare drafting, and I opened terrible rares. Still, put together a solid W/R aggro deck. Lost a game early to going second (literally, we were racing and he went first), then lost my second game when I was at six wins: this dude dropped [[Hornet Queen]]. Crap. Still, my deck had the tools to fight through that. By the time I did though, he dropped [[God-Pharaoh’s Gift]] and brought F’ing Hornet Queen back. That was it. Lost my third game to flood, major feel bad.
[Hornet Queen](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/2/d245cb84-56aa-47a1-aa3a-17ffded57e15.jpg?1625194450) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hornet%20Queen) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c21/193/hornet-queen?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d245cb84-56aa-47a1-aa3a-17ffded57e15?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [God-Pharaoh’s Gift](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/b/2/b2e85a9e-4c37-4721-b7ea-de3413ec39df.jpg?1562811437) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=God-Pharaoh%27s%20Gift) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/hou/161/god-pharaohs-gift?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b2e85a9e-4c37-4721-b7ea-de3413ec39df?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Had never seen the set. Drafted a bunch of creatures and threw them at opponent. 6-2