Bloomburrow Draft Guide: Only Fight for 1 Color At Most

Jeremy reviews a tip that got him into the 17lands Top Drafters cohort: Only Fight for 1 Color at Most. We'll discuss how to implement that tip, then review how that tip could've avoided Paul Cheon's (Haumph) Bloomburrow Arena Open draft disaster.

[@jvgchile]

I really like this video. Keep on the good job. Thanks

[@ManaTutorMTGDraft]

Glad you liked it!

[@PoYi-fi1zt]

Force white is like the only choice

[@carlpalacios]

Glad I came across this video, really showing more mid to advance strategies. Also, maybe this is just me, but I tend to do better when I pay for the draft in gems or tokens. It looks like every time I pay the 10k gold the best I can do is 3-3.

[@ManaTutorMTGDraft]

At least a 10k gold 3-3 draft earns you gems you didn't have before! A big takeaway from Paul Chapin's book Next Level Magic is "focus on always playing your best." That tip helped me. I'm not saying it's necessarily what's happening for you, but I imagine some players play their best when they've spent gems for a draft and treat gold drafts a little more casually.

[@nbrisendine457]

Wish you would've made the deck you would have drafted in Arena and then put it side by side to Pauls.

[@ManaTutorMTGDraft]

Yeah, I was thinking just yesterday about how that would've made it clearer on the resulting deck power difference. I'm likely to make similar videos in the future and I'll keep this in mind.

[@JakeGeeksOut]

Good tips! I watched Paul's draft on his channel and honestly I thought it was really just a tough seat overall. As you said, you want to see Top 3 commons preferably in a color and he just wasn't seeing anything at all. That said, I think his hard preference against Blue was his huge mistake here. As he should have perhaps staked his claim a bit earlier as the Blue drafter in the table. But yeah. Miserable Pack 1 for him.

[@ManaTutorMTGDraft]

Yeah, it was a REALLY tough seat, which is what made it interesting to disect. He certainly would've ended in a better position taking blue early instead of moving into blue late. His draft was a few weeks ago before blue was as open as it is today and at that time I shared his strong preference to avoid blue early. Perhaps it's more predictable that the best archetypes won't be as open in an Arena Open draft 2 and so taking the best cards regardless of color preference is better against that level of competition. I still favor my route through the draft and believe it'd result in a pretty good WR deck. That said, Paul was able to take a worse WR deck to the $2k grand prize this past weekend, earning his redemption!

[@damiensena8576]

This is great information. I’ve been struggling with identifying these type of dilemmas and end up with bad decks.

[@ManaTutorMTGDraft]

Glad it's helpful. We're hoping to continue much more of this concrete advice that applies generically to all sets, but in the context of Duskmourn next. Be sure to subscribe to see it!

[@loganjohnson4257]

I guess I don't really understand what the idea behind showing Paul's draft and what you would have picked. You have to take into account peoples drafting preferences. I watch almost every video he makes and I know he does like BW in bloomburrow. Without any gameplay to back up your "mock draft" a I'm just confused what we're supposed to learn from this. Not to mention that a good draft deck is only half the battle if that. Gameplay is probably 60% of winning if not more

[@ManaTutorMTGDraft]

I tried to summarize how my takeaway slides combined with Paul's draft at 20:53. I'll elaborate here to be clearer: 1. Don't be like Paul - Don't take cards that fit into less than 3 archetypes early. Paul took Vinereap Mentor, which only goes into GB, pick 2. Paul took lifecreed duos, which only go into WB, picks 5-6. None of these cards could make his deck unless he lands into exactly that archetype as they are all < 55% winrate in every other archetype. It's better to pick cards that leave you open to finding an open archetype. I also like WB, but I argue if increasing win-rate is your goal, you still shouldn't take secret gold cards (mono-colored cards that only fit into 1 archetype) early since you don't yet know that archetype is open to you. Indeed, WB wasn't open to Paul and he pivoted, which leads me to point 2. 2. Be like Paul - Identify the 2 colors that clearly aren't open to you by EO pack 1 and don't draft them anymore. Paul correctly identified green and black both weren't open to his seat. He didn't see a top 3 common in green or black pack 1 picks 4-13. He pivoted out of black (to blue) because he correctly identified black wasn't open to his seat after picking all those lifecreed duos. He correctly knew he couldn't pick a green bomb Pack 2 Pick 1 because his seat isn't open to getting green in Pack 3. If increasing win-rate is your goal, even if you have archetype preferences, you shouldn't draft the 2 most closed colors to your seat. Instead, pick a preferred archetype amongst the 3 most open colors to your seat (WU, WR, or UR for Paul's seat). Those are the 2 points that are the takeaway from this video. However, there was a third point that applies to Paul's draft, which is the takeaway from a recent prior video I referenced twice. So I'll state that takeaway as point 3. 3. Don't be like Paul - Avoid ending in a bad deck. While Paul correctly refused to be green or black, he landed in UW. He admits it's not a color pair he prefers. In fact, it's by far the worst color pair by win-rate. At his point in the format, I was avoiding UB, UR, UW as they were a clear tier lower than the rest. At today's point in the format, blue is a lot less contested and UB and UR are now in a playable tier. I'd argue UW is still in the unplayable tier. You're better off finding the next most open color pair and drafting that than conceding yourself to ending in the worst archetype. He didn't keep himself open to drafting WR, which turned out to be fairly open to his seat and would've landed him in a deck he'd had felt better with himself. I want to be clear, I'm a fan of Paul's and I think he's a better player than me. But I did think this draft could have gone better for him if he applied these principles. We all make mistakes. He himself wasn't happy with his draft. As for gameplay, it matters a ton, but the focus of this video was only on navigating drafts.

[@loganjohnson4257]

@ManaTutorMTGDraft thank you for a very in-depth explanation!