MtG Draft Guide - 5 important tips from a mythic-ranked drafter

[@javierurena212]

I like these types of videos, you learn a lot to improve your collection. Personally, the draft is the most fun format, but it is frustrating not having the resources to play more often. I only have 5000 coins and 800 gems after buying the master pass and I don't know how to play more draft. I'll settle for watching you play.

[@Padishar7]

Sadly drafts are such a moneymaker for WotC that they'll never make them available for cheap. At least people can grind gold for the occasional free draft, but that's not going to work for any frequent drafting, unless managing to win a lot of gems to fuel new drafts.

[@csudab]

Build a paper "pauper" or "peasant" cube and draft forever at a reasonable price :)

[@narkfly]

To get in more draft practice, create a second or even a third Arena account - and prioritize getting daily wins 1-4 on each account, until you have enough to get in some draft practice. Between multiple accounts, fewer daily wins go a lot further toward more drafts.

[@PiFsc2]

Literally just watched this video, paid attention to everything and got a nice 7 win draft! Thank you!

[@Padishar7]

That's very nice to hear, thank you for letting me know!

[@KangaroujacK]

Super interesting for starting the drafting world in arena. Let’s see how it goes. Also, it may be interesting to analyze how the new play boosters affect the general approach?

[@Padishar7]

It's a good idea, but I haven't noticed that big of a difference, so I wouldn't really know what to say about it. The bonus sheets have already introduced multi-rare packs in the past, and the drop to 13 cards per pack is not that notable.

[@dafore_]

Best draft lesson I seen on KZbin!

[@Padishar7]

Thank you dafore! I notice your tweet got a little bit of traffic to my chanel, thank you for that. Sadly I've been on a draft hiatus recently due to other interests taking up my time, and I'm not sure about how I want to proceed with making videos. But this was a nice moment regardless :)

[@dafore_]

@@Padishar7 luckily this sort of videos will always be relevant. Hope you are enjoying what you are doing. There are always bigger things than drafting in life

[@NUMSKUL_TX]

I'd love to see more videos like this!!

[@Padishar7]

Thank you Logan for the nice feedback! Unfortunately though I have no further plans for making other videos than draft playthroughs. In addition to not having a topic in my mind, videos like this one take a lot more time to script and produce than just simply recording a draft, and I sadly don't have time for such commitment.

[@jackie6174]

I’ll make sure to send newer players to this video!

[@Padishar7]

Thank you Jackie, I appreciate it!

[@TonyonFireHouston]

Wow lots of good tips crammed into less than 20 minutes. The biggest one that should help me is picking the best cards in the first 5 picks, regardless of color. I've never tried that.

[@Padishar7]

Thank you Tony for the feedback! Being flexible and allowing yourself to pick cards from different colors at first pays off because it's quite easy to end up with a good amount of decent quality playables if you just find colors that are sufficiently open for you in the draft.

[@TonyonFireHouston]

@@Padishar7 Do you have any videos that cover the topic on reading signals?

[@Padishar7]

@@TonyonFireHouston I haven't covered that topic. I mostly post draft videos because those come sort of naturally. I'd like to make more strategy content but those videos take a lot more time to prepare and create, so I don't know when I can do more because of work and life stuff. This is just a hobby channel so sadly I cannot commit much more time on it than I already do. But I'm sure there can be found strategy regarding signals in draft made by others, either in written or video form!

[@odbo255]

Thank you! Great video, very clear. Earned a sub w/notification!

[@Padishar7]

Thank you! I'm glad to hear you found the video useful :)

[@FiboSai]

I'm not sure whether I can agree with your point about splashing multiple cards. Is your argument that splashing one card doesn't increase your deck quality enough, but 2-4 cards do to make the risk worth it? In my mind, splashing 2-4 card requires at least 4-5 sources of that color, at which point you are close to playing a straight three color deck already. Splashing a single bomb using 3 sources seems more reasonable in most formats.

[@Padishar7]

Well, like I said there somewhere, nothing is set in stone. In a recent draft of mine I did splash just one card (Zagras), but I was able to do it by playing only one swamp and having a couple of ways to search for a basic land. The main idea is that if splashing stretches your mana base a lot, for example it would reduce two mana sources from your main colors, then doing it for just one card is probably not worth the risk given how likely it is that you don't even see the card, and the reduced mana base consistency can hurt more often. I can accept playing with a shakier mana base if I have 2-4 clearly stronger cards from another color that I can I use to replace the 2-4 weakest cards in my main colors. If you can splash one card with just like tap duals etc. that don't reduce the color sources of your main colors, that is completely acceptable. I didn't want to dwell into every exception in this video because it's already pretty lengthy, and that's the reason I said these guidelines should be ignored when circumstances clearly dictate otherwise. I'd say that 2-3 cards with 3 sources is still acceptable (of course it depends on the deck always, for example if one has card draw or card selection to dig deeper). With four splashed cards I'd really want to run four sources minimum, like you said.

[@Peter-qe1yh]

this was super helpful, thank you so much! Throwing a sub your way

[@Padishar7]

Thank you, Peter! I intended this video to be sort of permanently relevant, so I am happy you found it useful after 2+ years of publishing it :)

[@benlangford7545]

Thank you for this these videos! I appreciate the clarity and organization of these. You mention card evaluation as a difficult thing to generalize between releases, still, do you have specific things you look for when you first look at a set as a way to establish your bearings?

[@Padishar7]

Indeed, sets are pretty synergy-driven nowadays for draft. That's why it takes a little bit time for me to learn what is actually good. To get going, specific things I look for in a set's spoiler are the common and uncommon mana curve of creatures, and how many common removal spells can deal with them and at what mana cost. I also like to organize said creature curves with color pairs to get a feeling how an archetype could usually curve out and how to value power and toughness stats. Two power two-drops without utility abilities become a bit worse if there are a lot of playable 3+ tougnhess three-drops for instance, and they're better if there are good 3/2s for three.

[@benlangford7545]

@@Padishar7 That's really good information, thank you. I've definitely noticed just playing things on curve can get "free" wins sometimes if the opponent's deck misfires. Thank you again and keep the videos coming!

[@Padishar7]

@@benlangford7545 No problem Ben!

[@betomaze4954]

Thank you so much for this!

[@Padishar7]

I'm glad if you found the video useful!

[@toddschulman7941]

Do you have any strategy for a new set since it is coming up? Such as do you wait a week or two or do you start right away since most players don't know what is as good? Thanks

[@Padishar7]

I will start right away, because the best way to learn the set's true nature and to become proficient at drafting it is to just play it. The fact how tough or easy the opposition might be is not important to me. And, well, I just wouldn't wait drafting a new set either way :) But indeed, it's quite hard to otherwise learn what are the truly good cards, how fast the format is, and if there are some non-obvious synergies. That said, I have my initial impressions of the cards themselves and will post a full set review rating each card. The full spoiler released yesterday, so the part 1 of 3 will in fact publish in about five hours from writing this, next ones in the following two days. Once I have a better grasp about the draft format, I might make a video about its intricacies when I'm confident I know what I'm talking about. I didn't do that for ZNR because the format was already pretty well explored when I started making content on this channel.

[@barryswigart1432]

Any advice on composition in sets with many planeswalkers (such as WAR)? I'm drafting a cube for the first time that has aprox. 15% planeswalkers, all 5 mana or less, and I'm struggling to figure out how to evaluate how good/bad they are as opposed to just packing more removal or fixing. (Ex. 16 creatures, 4 removals, 2 planeswalkers. What does that last card usually need to be?) Ik planeswalkers can sub for some of the types of noncreature spells (removal, card draw, synergy) but I'm still having trouble with the balance.

[@Padishar7]

From the perspective of limited play, PWs can range from powerhouses to barely playable. The most often seen PWs in WAR were uncommons, and those lacked abilities that increased their loyalty. Therefore they acted more like instants/sorceries or artifacts/enchantments, depending on what their abilities did. But if a planeswalker makes creature tokens, you can safely count them as creatures. If their most used ability is one that destroys something, then you can consider it as a removal spell. But cubes are a whole different thing and this video is not that good advice for a lot of them. People build so different cubes that you cannot really give all-around good advice for all of them. Many cubes rely on synergy for instance, and that means some first-pickable grade A+ bombs can be 10th+ picks in a cube.

[@manadad]

I love your videos! I would love to do a team-up draft video with you some time.

[@Padishar7]

Thank you for the feedback! Although I'm not sure about the team-up thing (or what it would mean in practise). I am quite busy with work, and recording the content as-is currently, so extra "hassle" might be a bit difficult to arrange.

[@manadad]

@@Padishar7 I hear you. I would love to introduce you to my subscribers if you ever change your mind.