Hi all!
I pretty much only play constructed formats, mostly Explorer. I never create my own deck because I suck at it. I play lists made by other people that look fun and engaging. For context, I rank at least Diamond every season.
I tend to play a couple of drafts per set, mostly to get gems for the mastery pass. I also play all free phantom drafts. I find the drafts fun but I’m atrocious at it. I usually go 2-3 and perform pretty terribly. I don’t think I’ve ever gone above the silver rank, but I guess I don’t play that much either.
I’d like to educate myself on how to become a better drafter. I like drafting but as a F2P player, my win-rate is unsustainable. I tend to prioritize removal and “bombs” but my decks always feels like a pile of stuff that don’t interact very well with eachover. I use the free Untapped extension that ranks the cards but I think it just aggravates my problem of getting a pile of nice cards that don’t mesh together that well.
Any resource for a total newbie would be very appreciated. Cheers!
One thing I want to add that I don’t this has been mentioned, is that there are some misconceptions during drafting about which “lane” to be in. Certainly one of the primary skills in draft is to read the picks coming upstream to see which colors or “lanes” are open to draft in. By picking cards of a certain color you can signal that the color is being picked and for others to go elsewhere.
The misconceptions I think are that you have to always adapt to what you see every draft, but really you have much more control over the colors you play than you might think. There is much more control in a Cube draft where the overall card quality is high – every card is pretty good so you end up with playables no matter what color pair you select. However, if the set has a high amount of playable commons or if every color is viable then you can usually play whatever color pair you feel most comfortable in. This is called “forcing” a color or pair or deck archetype.
In short, I think it’s easier to force a color pair in a normal set draft than people think. And by extension, if you have a color pair or archetype that you particularly enjoy playing or are good at, then my recommendation is to force that as much as possible and get good at it and building that type of deck in the draft environment. I personally think that will help a player become better at drafting more than anything else, outside of the basics.
I know someone who just drafts the same color pair in every format. It helps them focus on the relevant subset of each pack, and they don’t actually have long-term aspirations of becoming a high-level Magic drafter. I think it’s a great strategy.
I agree, not everyone has even close to the time needed to fully understand all the cards/mechanics/metagame for a new set. I think that’s a great idea.