In my last article, I indicated that this article would be about drafting for people who haven't drafted. Now, I have to say that I don't have a lot of experience in drafting. I only started drafting this year after being coerced into it by a friend of mine (thanks!). Since I haven't got years of experience on it, I'm still not a great drafter. So the draft bit of the article will not be about card lists and whether it's better to draft a Thornscape Apprentice over a Thunderscape Apprentice or other such decisions; there are many other more experienced drafters out there who have written articles on just those things. I suggest that you look them up if you're looking for that kind of help.

This is going to be an article for all the people who've never drafted, or who have just started drafting. I'll be pointing out fairly general things, which took me some time to discover on my own. Since I haven't done any Rochester drafting, I'm going to focus entirely on Booster drafting.

Let's get started.

It's my experience that newer players tend to avoid draft. I avoided drafting because draft looked so much harder than Constructed Magic. My impression of draft was that you ended up with a random assortment of cards, threw land in, and then tried hard not to lose. Building a usable deck on the spot seemed ludicrous at the very least. After all, it took me a few hours to build something from my collection, and that still did terribly. Building a winning deck from random cards just seemed impossible.

But that's not how draft is. It's true that you won't know which cards you're going to get in draft... But the set of cards that you end up with is not a random pile. You make the choices out of the available cards, so you don't have to end up with a mash of cards of all different strengths, colours, and costs (unless you want to).

The reason that most people give about not wanting to draft is that"they could just buy three packs and have all the cards." Yes, that's true. But you're not going to take those three packs, add land, and then bring it to a tournament, right? And that's what draft is about. Playing the game against other players with an"even" playing field.

Okay, just in case there's someone reading who's never played any kind of draft, and has no idea about what to expect, here's a rundown of how booster drafting works (other kinds of drafting will be different). I'll be using Invasion Block drafting as an example, since I'm most familiar with that set. In booster draft, each player gets three unopened packs of cards. Invasion block draft is one Invasion, one Planeshift, and one Apocalypse booster for each player. (If you're drafting Odyssey, incidentally, you'd draft three boosters of Odyssey, because the other two expansions haven't been released yet.) At the same time all players open the first pack (usually Invasion first). Each player privately reviews the cards in their pack, picks (or drafts) one, and then passes the pack to the right (or the left, but all players pass in the same direction). You take the remaining cards from the pack from the left, choose a card, and pass again. Keep going till there are no cards left in the pack. Then all players open the next pack. This time you pass left (or right, if you passed left the first time). The third pack is passed back to the right.

When you're all finished, you'll have drafted forty-five cards. You don't need all of them, since you only need a forty-card deck, and you'll be adding basic lands.

Depending on where (and what) you're drafting, there are a lot of different ideas on just which cards you should pick. Sometimes, the best card in a pack is a common, but in most cases it will be the rare or an uncommon.

There is some thought that it's best to take the rare card, whether you need it or not. This is called"rare drafting" and it's generally frowned on. However, you should remember that you will have the best chance of getting a rare card during the first four picks of any pack. Why only the first four? There is one rare and three uncommons. Most of these are more powerful and playable than the commons of the same pack, so they tend to be drafted first. (I have to interject here - that's actually untrue. Often they are, but pro players frequently will take a high-powered common or uncommon first - like Flametongue Kavu, Repulse, or Agonizing Demise. Rare drafting is actually a very poor strategy if you want to win - The Ferrett) Usually, a rare or uncommon will not make it further than four picks unless it is especially bad. And if you do get the opportunity to take a rare that you can use, by all means, do take it.

In FNM and other casual drafts, it's not uncommon for people to take the rares that they get, even if they're out of colour - but in more professional Magic, players will pass a rare if it doesn't fit their colours and cannot be easily splashed.

The hardest part about drafting is thinking about the final deck while you draft. It's a lot easier to build a deck if you concentrate on one or two colours. The more colours that you draft, the harder it will be to make a deck that is effective and useful. When I draft, I try to keep to two main colours with maybe a splash of a third colour. Of course, it is almost inevitable that you will be passed cards that aren't in your main or splash colours. That's fine, and one or two cards out of 45 won't matter. As I said above, you won't be using all the cards you drafted anyway.

Okay, let's take a look at building a deck.

The key things to remember when building a deck are:

1. Focus - a deck has to be focused on doing something to win. All winning decks have a way to win and focus on that method.

In Constructed decks, this can be a trick, or combo, which nets you the win (like decking the opponent with Millstones, etc). In Draft, you won't often have the luxury of doing something like that. More often than not, you will need to rely on creatures to give you a win condition, and also to keep your opponent from overrunning you with their creatures.

While drafting, keep track of how many creatures you've drafted. You don't want to have too few (a simple Rout will ruin your chances), and you don't want to have too many (spells can be very, very useful, even if you only have one copy in the deck).

2. Efficiency - use only the most effective cards which support the focus. Cards that support the focus but are more cost or resource-intensive are not good. Permanent sources of effects tend to beat out temporary sources of effects if both are available.

If you have one card more to add to the deck (a Green/Red deck) and it's down to adding a Thornscape Battlemage or a Scorching Lava in, I'd go with the Thornscape Battlemage any day. Not only does he give you the two damage, he sticks around to help beat up or fend off the opponent.

Of course, while drafting, you won't know if a better card is coming along. So if you see an effective card, you have to take it.

3. Synergy - cards that interact with other cards while supporting the focus may boost the efficiency of a sub-par or lackluster card.

A good trick that can be pulled off in Invasion Block is Arctic Merfolk and Flametongue Kavu. These work together wonderfully (assuming you play the Kavu first). There's lots of ways that cards can work together, and if you can see the potential interaction between two cards, then you should at least consider putting them in the deck.

Okay; let's talk about general deckbuilding advice for draft. We'll start with land. In general, when you build a deck, you want about one-third land. Since we only need forty cards to play, that's about thirteen lands. Now thirteen lands are nowhere near enough to ensure that you get consistent land draws. Generally, you'll need between sixteen to eighteen lands. That leaves twenty-four to twenty-two spells and creatures. If you can, it's better to play just one colour and one type of land. This means that you'll always be able to cast your spells, and you won't get colour screwed - but that doesn't happen in draft. Keep in mind that the more colours you add, the more likely it is that you won't draw the colour of land needed, or won't have enough of that colour.

Since you will probably be playing with more than one colour, you'll need to determine the number of each type of land to play. There are a lot of ideas how to do this. A simple method is to count the number of cards that are of a colour, let's say Red, and then add half as many Mountains. This will give you a reasonable starting point, but can be problematic when considering multi-coloured cards and artifacts. Some people suggest that you count the number of mana symbols of a colour and then add half as many lands. This is probably more accurate and removes guessing with Gold cards.

The method that I use is fairly arbitrary, but I start with counting the number of cards of a colour. I call Gold cards one of their colours, and fill in gaps with artifacts (to give me even counts or boost a splash colour so that I remember to add more than 1 land of that type). If I don't have enough land, I'll support whichever colour has the most double-mana spells and creatures, or add more cards to a splash or primary colour. As I said, it's fairly arbitrary.

On to Mana Curve. Again, for the newer players, I'm going to give the definition (older player's forget that from the new player's perspective, all these terms look like a foreign language). If you know what this means, skip to the next paragraph. The Mana Curve is just an idea that you should have more low casting-cost creatures than you do high casting-cost creatures. This means that you'll have more to do in your early turns, and will be much more likely to survive to play those big casting cost spells.

If you have 24 spells, it's a lot better to have casting costs like this:

1 cost: 12

2 cost: 6

3 cost: 3

4 cost: 2

5 cost: 1

Than this:

1 cost: 4

2 cost: 4

3 cost: 5

4 cost: 5

5 cost: 6

Even though the second list is balanced, you're much less likely to get a first or second-turn spell or creature. Of course, Mana Curve is more of a guideline than a rule, and the cards that you drafted and the effectiveness of those cards will dictate what the Curve looks like in the end. You should try, however, to minimize the number of expensive to cast cards in your deck.

Next up, you need to think about flexibility. Some absolutely devastating cards are colour-specific, or require specific types of permanents to be in play. You probably won't have a good idea of who is playing with what colours in booster draft, so colour-hosing spells should probably be relegated to the sideboard. With them go most spells that are very specific in their triggers or need a certain type of permanent to be on the opponent's side. The only spell that this doesn't apply to is if it targets creatures (unless it's a certain type of creature, then its back to the sideboard). It really doesn't need saying, but a spell that is good in more than one situation is better than a more limited spell. This is especially true in Draft.

Okay, we're reaching the limit of what I can say about Drafting for Beginners. I encourage you to try a draft tournament sometime and see if you don't enjoy it. It is challenging, but it's a lot of fun too.

With any luck, my next article will be a tournament report on the Odyssey Prerelease. Until then, I encourage you to send your comments and put-downs to trafuse@hotmail.com.