Transcription
If you want to improve the level of success you're having with your quick drafting or Premier drafting on Magic Arena, then stick around for these 10 top tips that have taken me from my very, very bad win rate up to 60%, which I'm pretty happy with. These are really going to help you get better at drafting, especially if you're just starting out. So stick around.
[Applause]
Welcome back to Game School Dad with me, Martin. Today, we are looking at how to improve your drafting in Magic Arena because I asked people how their current drafting was going with Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and this was their response: not particularly good. It's kind of skewing to kind of okay, but or not very good. So we can definitely do better with that. We can definitely do something to help improve your quick draft results. Don't want to see people not drafting or just getting really bad results from the draft and wasting their gold. We don't want that to happen.
So here are my top 10 tips that have actually taken me from a 40 to 45% win rate. I really didn't like draft. I usually won one or two games if I was lucky. Now, getting a 60% win rate in my quick drafts. I've got seven wins twice. I've got six wins three times out of the 13 different quick draft events, or including some Premier draft events that I've done. It's obviously working pretty well for me. If you're just starting out, this is definitely going to help you too.
Tip number one: If you see my previous video on making a second account, which goes into a bit more detail about what to do, then you'll already know this, but I need to repeat it here because it is really important. If you're just getting started out with drafting, it would really, really benefit you to start a second account on Magic Arena. A free-to-play account. All you do on that account is earn your daily gold from your wins and your quests and put that gold into doing quick draft events. You'll win some gems from the events, which you can put into doing more quick drafts. And it doesn't matter what your collection is. You just want to try and get as much practice doing quick drafts as possible.
And if you're thinking, maybe this is going to take up loads of my time running a second account, it really doesn't have to. All you want to do is get a couple of wins on that account every day that you want to. Doesn't have to be every single day, just as often as you can, and you'll start building out that gold pretty quickly and get another quick draft, maybe two quick drafts every week at the most. My other video goes into a lot more depth about how to manage this and all the details. All of these other tips rely on you having some practice with drafting to start with because you don't want to risk the gold and the gems from your main account on your drafting practice because you're going to end up losing some of your valuable resources. I don't want that to happen.
Tip number two: It's really important to know the archetypes for the event that you're doing, for the set that you're playing. So here, it does actually give us a breakdown of the different archetypes, the two-color archetypes in Phyrexia: All Will Be One, which is really useful to know. So obviously, red and black is really good for sacrifice. It cares about oil counters. Red and black does not care about toxic. But if you're doing white and black, then maybe you do care about toxic. You care about poison counters, but only to enable corrupted, because you only need three poison counters to enable corrupted, which will activate extra abilities for your creatures. So you're probably not going to try to get 10 poison counters on your opponent if you're doing white and black. But if you're doing green and white, maybe you are, because you'll have lots of extra toxic creatures.
So depending on what archetype you're going for, what two-color archetype you fit into, it's going to make a difference to the type of cards that you want. You're going to pick red and green, you don't want to get green creatures that benefit mostly from having toxic damage because the toxic damage isn't going to help you at all. So there's no point. So get to know these archetypes. They're easily listed there for you, so it doesn't even have to take much research. You don't have to go looking anywhere else for it. You can have a look here, and it will tell you what kind of strategies you want for a two-color combination, and then that will help you pick cards that work well with that strategy. So if you know the archetypes, you're going to make better choices when you're picking your draft cards.
Tip number three: Watch other people doing drafts, especially people that really know what they're doing. So this really helped me. I watched, in particular, Nikolai Bolas. I found was really, really helpful explaining how he's, uh, how he picks each of his cards, the different options that are available to him. If you want to have a look at some of his videos that he's made on Phyrexia drafting, they're really good, they're really funny. And have a look. I'll put a link to his, uh, his channel in the description of the video. And what you'll get from that is the virtual experience of having done the draft yourself. You can see the different options that come up without you having to risk your gold or gems on doing a draft and panicking because you didn't know what to pick.
And after you've watched a few, you could even pause the video every time a new pack comes up and there's different cards to choose from, and you could think through what you would pick and why you would pick it, and then play the video again and see what the person drafting has said about the different cards in the pack. So you'll get to see the difference between what you think and what they think about the cards, and that will help you develop your thoughts a bit deeper about how the, uh, how the cards work together and what cards are better to pick than others. I have a few videos that are going to be coming out looking at how to pick the cards that come up in a draft, and if it matters to you about the value as well, because you might sometimes want to pick the rare, sometimes you want to pick different cards depending on lots of different factors, whereas people who only draft for the most wins in limited games will often not pick the rares because they don't help them in their deck. So it depends if you want to try and get as many rares and mythics from draft as possible, or just get the most wins and potentially more gems as a reward.
Speaking of which, tip number four is: What should you pick in a pack? Should you pick the rare? Well, if you're trying to build a collection, if you're trying to get as many rares and mythics as possible, then yes, you should pretty much always pick the rare or mythic from the pack that you open. This works especially well if that rare or mythic is a decent card for limited, if it works really well with the other cards that you can pick up. But sometimes it might be a card that really doesn't do much for the deck that you want to make. If that's the case, still, the majority of the time, I think you probably want to pick the rare anyway because out of 42 picks you get in a draft, you only need 23 non-land cards, or around 23 non-land cards that work well together to make your deck, which means you have 17 other cards you're likely to pick that won't actually make it into your deck. So picking a rare over another common or uncommon that you might not need in the actual deck in the end, or might get swapped out for something else, means you're actually going to get more value by picking the rare or mythics.
But on the other hand, if there is a common or uncommon that works really well with your deck, then you really need it to make the deck work, or it's just a really high-value creature, but not the rare or mythic, you sometimes might want to skip the rare or mythic. It's up to personal preference. I think the majority of the time you do want to take it. And obviously, if you're working on your second account and getting practice at drafting, it doesn't make any difference picking the rare or mythic. I would probably just avoid them unless they work very well in your deck, if they're going to be actually used. If you're just picking another card that's in different colors or you're not going to use, there's no point doing that in your second account because we don't care about the collection on the second account. So that only really applies if you're doing this on your main account, building a collection.
Tip number five: Don't just take the best card from a pack and then move on immediately. You want to have a look at the rest of the pack and pick up signals from what other people are picking and look at what else is available in the pack because it might influence the choices that you make. If there's lots of good green cards in one particular pack that work well together, then you might be better off taking one of those and seeing what cards might come back to you when the pack comes back around because there are eight people in drafting, which means if you have nine or more cards in the pack that you're looking at, then you will get cards coming back to you from that pack. So you might pick the best card in the pack, but you might get the very last card come back to you as well.
So have a look at what other colors are in the pack. Have a look at what other cards are missing from a pack. So if a pack comes to you and there are no white cards in it at all, there's a good chance that someone else is picking the white cards out of the pack, and white might not be a very open color, so you're going to struggle to pick up any good white cards if someone else is grabbing them before you get a chance. There's a lot more detail you could go into with signaling and reading signals, but the basic tip is just to have a look at what else is in the pack and get a feel for what other cards might be available rather than just picking whichever card you happen to like in a pack and moving on.
Tip number six is: What kind of cards you want to pick and prioritize. So the biggest priority should be on creatures because you're not going to win a draft game with some cool combination of instants and sorceries or reanimating and discarding huge creatures. You're going to win by having more creatures on the board and doing more damage to the opponent. So you want to prioritize creatures first of all. Obviously, creatures that are really good value, creatures with extra abilities or flexible options that you can choose when they enter or when they die. Creatures with evasion tactics like flying, menace, even trample, or anything else that makes them unblockable. They can really help you get damage through. And then you also have things that give you two-for-one value, so cards with disturb or flashback that can come back from the graveyard or create a token when they die. This should be the majority of the cards that you pick, and you probably want something like 15 or more creatures in your final deck.
Then you need to have some removal. You can't forget about removal because your opponent's focusing on creatures, you want to have something to remove their creatures too, otherwise you're just going to have a stalemate of you both putting out creatures and no one wanting to attack and lose their creature. So you can have removal in the form of damage or direct removal, exile effects, or enchantments that pacify your opponent's creatures and take them out so they can't attack or block. I recommend having probably four or five different options of removal in a deck because it's going to give you the flexibility to decide when you want to use them. Sometimes you might want to use them near the beginning, and sometimes you might want to save them later on for when your opponent puts out their big creatures.
Then you have cards with recurring value, so cards that make a token every turn, cards that grow like Evolving Wilds or Trawler Drake. If you get these cards out early and then you continue to grow, then there's a good chance you're going to quickly outpace your opponent and you'll get the win for that one. It's also good sometimes to have some amount of card selection and combat tricks. So look at the top so many cards of your library and pick one, put it in your hand. It's good if you're kind of stuck, but not something you want to have lots of. And combat tricks like giving your creature plus two plus two when it's blocked are basically a form of removal, but they're conditional. They're only good when you actually have a creature out there. There's no point having a, um, a bite effect where your creature does damage to your opponent's creature equal to your power if you don't have any creatures. That card is basically wasted. So it's much better to have direct damage spells. But the occasional combat trick will win you a game by taking out an opponent's creature that they're not expecting. So I normally have a few of these in the deck as well.
And I would avoid cards that are highly conditional, so cards like "destroy creature with flying" are good if the opponent has lots of flying creatures or if there are lots of flying creatures in the particular set, but possibly not so great otherwise. Or counter spells might seem really good, but if you draw a counter spell and you can't use it at the right time, then it's really not going to help you. It's just going to be a dead card in your hand. So if you do want any highly conditional cards like this, I would keep it to one or two at the absolute most because there's a good chance it's just going to be a card in your hand that you can't do anything with. And don't be afraid to pick lands from the draft as well sometimes, because you'll find some lands, maybe lands that come out tapped, they might give you some life, they might help you draw extra cards. You might have an Evolving Wilds style card where you can sacrifice a land to pick a different land, a basic land of any color from your deck and put that one out onto the battlefield. Like I said, there's 23 non-land cards you're likely to be able to put into a deck out of 42 picks, so there's 17 other picks you won't necessarily use. If you've already got 23 good cards that could make a deck and you've still got some more cards to pick, if you pick some lands that might help you improve your mana, it's actually going to have an impact on your deck. Any other cards that aren't going to go into the deck are just affecting your collection, which is nice, but the lands are probably going to help you win more games as well.
Tip number seven is: When you're picking cards, I think about the colors that you want, but you don't have to commit to one color to start with or one color pair to start with. If you find some really good red and green cards and you start putting them in, and you find that actually, maybe the red cards work better with blue cards, and you find other good blue creatures and blue spells that you can add to that, maybe it's better to pivot and ignore the green. Or maybe you want to just spend your first five picks just picking the best card you can, and then after that, trying to figure out what decks you can build around the cards you've already picked. It's fine to pick cards that are in different colors that you're not actually going to use, just to give you the flexibility to pivot later on. So opening or keeping that flexibility open is going to help you make sure you can actually build a usable deck by the end of the draft.
And I find that decks that use two colors tend to work the best because it gives you the greater flexibility in what cards you can choose from different packs. But if you happen to find lots of really good red cards that work together, then by all means, stick with one color. If you can find 23 good playable cards that work together, you can sometimes go the other way if you want and open it up to three colors, but I wouldn't do that unless you really know what you're doing. You probably only want your third color to be on one or two of other cards, maybe bigger cards that come in later, and then you'll probably also want some cards that give you access to one mana of any color to help fix things in case you draw a card that you don't have the mana for. But that's a bit more complicated. But sticking to two colors generally works pretty well.
Tip number eight is: The mana curve of your deck. You want to make sure you're sticking to a pretty nice curve where you have the majority of your creatures and spells are two or three mana. It's nice to have some ones as well. You don't want to have too many things that are over five or six because you're probably not going to get a chance to cast them. But having those big powerful spells is really good because they might be good for late-game finishes. So by all means, have some. You definitely want to focus on two and three-drop creatures so you can start building up your board in the first few turns. And when you're drafting on Arena, you can even click the button in the top right corner so you can change the way your deck is viewed and lay out all the cards, and it'll also show you the mana curve of your deck as you're building it. So it's much easier to see where you have any gaps. If you suddenly realize you don't have any three-drop creatures at all, you can change priorities maybe when you're picking cards and start filling in that gap so you don't miss out on your turn three play.
Tip number nine: You can use draft helper apps like MTGA Assistant or Untapped, and they can open up access for individual card ratings so you can see which cards tend to be rated higher by people who really know what they're talking about. So it might help you pick one card over the other. But I haven't used these ones myself. This is kind of an extra tip. I think it's probably better in general just to develop the skills to be able to identify the stronger cards and how they will work well with your deck because there's a lot of things that these apps won't know, like if you're thinking of pivoting from one color to another. So I think it's fine to start trying them out and see if they help you at all, but I've never used one and I don't think you need to, but at least the option's there if you think you want to do that.
And tip number 10 is for the actual gameplay of the draft event, not the, not the picking of the cards, but when you're actually playing, how do you want to prioritize how you're using your cards? Well, you want to make sure you're getting your creatures out as early as possible and to save cards for when they're going to have the maximum impact. Don't use a really flexible combat trick just to kill the opponent's 1/1 at the beginning. And I wouldn't use three damage to any target to hit the opponent in the face at the beginning unless that damage is going to be lethal. It's just going to be a waste. So you've used it up and there's no reason why. And if you have some unconditional removal, like you have a "destroy target creature," and you use it on the opponent's two-drop creature, and suddenly they put out a five-drop later on, but you really wish you could deal with, you might find it's better just to save those unconditional removal or disable spells for when the opponent has a big thing you can't deal with otherwise. So in general, it's just using your cards when they're going to have the biggest impact, which might require some patience and waiting to see what happens before you start using them all.
So there you go. There's my 10 tips that literally took me from 40 to 45% win rate to my current 60% win rate. I've learned more about the archetypes. I've watched some other people doing drafts. I've been much more careful about the cards I pick and knowing what works well together, making sure I've got a good mana curve and the majority of creatures, and being patient when I'm playing those games and making sure those cards have the biggest impact rather than just using everything up immediately as soon as I can afford it.
So let me know in the comments below how your drafting is going for Phyrexia currently, if you're doing that, or any set that you're drafting for as well. Let me know if there's any other tips you have that are really good for beginners that I've left out, or if you've learned something new and I've told you a tip that you hadn't even thought of before. Put it in the comments below as well so I can see which tips have been the most useful for people. Don't forget you can like this video and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on any future content going to help you build your collection faster. Thanks for watching this one to the end. I will see you in the next video.
[Applause]