General Draft Strategy

vennythekid

vennythekid

So I've started reading through the "Cube Lists" section of this place with more frequency, and have been CubeTutor drafting a lot different lists, when it occured to me: I don't really know what I'm doing when I draft outside my "home cube."

We should start a draft strategy thread!

Can someone teach me how to draft other formats? How to think about limited envioronments? How to read draft signals? Make deckbuilding choices? I would love to get better, I just don't know how or where to start.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
May I heartily recommend the limited resources podcast! :D

Great guys, a lot of really great knowledge there, but here's lessons from old uncle Chris:

-There's (99% of the time) no card powerful enough that it makes your deck better than being in the right colors will (Ie: Grave Titan is good, but the 5th black drafter at a table with grave titan is way worse off than the lone green drafter, even if green's worse)
-Signaling is something that gets talked about a lot and can help in practice, but is less necessary than you think. In essence, if you see a card that's really good late (Say, 5th+ pick) then presumably the deck it goes in probably isn't being drafted. This gives you the information you might need to abandon your early picks. (Really? 5th pick lightning bolt? Maybe I should be in red). This applies less when the card is really Niche (Say, Wildfire. "Nobody's in...red...control?") and less still if the effect is replaceable (Say, if there's 5 lightning bolts in your cube)
-There's a balance between drafting the deck you have in your head and staying open enough to know what to do when those exact cards don't show up. This just takes practice.
-If by some miracle of god you have the choice between two really sweet cards, take the card that leaves you more open, since drafting by nature is based off limited information. The chances that Lightning Bolt makes your maindeck are high as long as people around you don't elbow you out of red. The chances that Bogardan Hellkite makes your maindeck have the same caveots as bolt, but you also have to be ramp. Dragonlord Atarka is just as limited as Hellkite, except in addition to someone on your right being in red, they could also be in green and muscle you out.

In particular, useful episodes of Limited Resources are:
-301: UBER Theory: this is how to draft a control or ramp deck, as they tend to bleed together in limited, since rampant growth aren't that dissimilar in progressing the game towards the later stages.
-296: A Fundamental Approach to Limited: This is the corresponding episode on so called CABS theory (Cards that Affect the Board), ie: How to draft Aggro/Midrange
-286: The Top Traps of Limited: a list of mistakes people make. Don't play 1/1s for 1, don't play anything remotely resembling cranial extraction, etc. Not the most applicable to cube, but certainly useful.
-265: Legacy of Limited Resources: Yes it's the dreaded anime clip show, but there's a lot of useful bookmarks there that I've probably missed in this summary
-248: Quadrant Theory Revisted: Possibly the most important thing here, this is how to figure out how cards preform in their average case (The most important case). If you ever catch me talking about Early/Win/Lose/Even, this is what I'm talking about
-226: ROTTY and Application of Tools: Yeah, more bloody acronyms. Being Rotty is "Results Oriented Thinking", ie basing your decisions on what happened this time, not what should happen. There's a whole podcast here obviously, but it's summed up nicely in weather you should take an even money bet that someone will roll a 1 on a D20. You accept, and they happen to roll a 1. THIS SHOULD NOT CHANGE HOW YOU BET IN THE FUTURE, AND HUMAN BEINGS ARE SHIT AT IT.
-214: Common Mistakes: Similar to the Traps episode, but a bit wider. This is more about drafting general strategy than specific horrible cards to avoid.
-189: Mana bases: I know a bunch of people who agonize over the correct 17 basics, this should help
 
B

blacksmithy

Some pro whose name escapes me (they all look alike to me, sorry) wrote a thing once about how when he's drafting for stakes, he always tries to draft a 2-1 deck instead of trying to draft a 3-0 deck, failing, and going 0-3 or 1-2. His strategy was, in a nutshell, leave yourself as open as possible in pack 1, get a feel for what's available, then narrow in on your deck in packs 2 and 3.
My bastardized version of that is the following priority hierarchy for pack 1 drafting (packs 2 and 3 become increasingly context-dependent):
Conspiracy > colorless bomb > fetchland > mono bomb > mono removal
If none of that's in my pack, i (get up and pour myself a stronger drink) just take the fun card. Of course in our p1p1 forum game i always take the fun card so w/e.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
P1P1 is the least important (Well, almost) pick of the draft, so the forum game (While fun, and a great way to get people exposure) isn't really much help in learning draft :p

I mean, if drafting is about being in the right colors/deck so you get all the cards while everyone else has to fight each other for theirs, P1P1 is a bit mindless given that it's literally the only decision in the draft nobody else has influenced
 
safra

safra

for a while i thought about (but never followed through with) telling my players, once, that instead of BREAD for traditional limited their draft priorities should be PASTA:

Power
Answers
Synergy
Threats
Answers

(why is Answers twice, Saf? because you need different kinds)
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
For those who don't know 10 year old draft Advice, BREAD is thus:

Bombs
Removal
Evasion
Aggro
Dud

It's not a bad little acrostic, but as you'll notice it's a bit old. Recent sets have played around with just how bad removal can get before we'll stop first picking it, (See Rite of the Serpent) and it's rather telling that any aggro card that isn't technically a bomb (Eg: Anointer of Champions) ranks just above chimney imp and mill cards in the grand scheme of things, in accordance with the Goblin Elite Infantry era of magic
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
After todays P1P1 I was wondering whether I should cut Phyrexian Metamorph. You can never go wrong with it p1p1, because it will always end up in your deck, and it will always be a powerful play.

Kitchen Finks is maybe prone to too many shenanigans. It might not be a bad idea to cut that either.

I'm in love with Shelldock Isle, is it really such a wrecking ball?

Jace was never in my cube, I already banned the other cards :) Pretty good list imo CML.
 
T

Tanner K.

I've only banned Karn. I find it's the most "feel bad" of all those cards (though I've never run Treachery, it may be similar).

I've never found Phyrexian Metamorph oppressive, but I have sometimes cut it for being an easy P1P1. It's a card that scales reasonably well to its environment. I currently have it in.
 
safra

safra

Here's my clearest first picks:



I don't think any are ban-worthy except maybe Littlest Jace, who I was phenomenally, incredibly wrong about. And that's just with Snapcaster already in the format, so you know it's good. Still probably not bannable though. I actually did 'ban' Finks from my list for a day or two before I put it back in (no drafts in the intervening time). I've thought about it on and off but jeez that's a sad implication if I have to ban Finks to push format diversity. I've also considered doubling up to reduce how much people feel the need to jump on it. It just does it all and in Cube it's practically colourless. (okay, okay, it doesn't go in Grixis.)

The following cards were already 'banned' from the format during construction on the basis of power level:


Instead I run two-damage and four-damage burn, Path, and Day of Judgment.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

Yeah, so what is up with people not picking Mox Diamond super high? Is that just my play group, or do other people experience that?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Diakonov said:
Yeah, so what is up with people not picking Mox Diamond super high? Is that just my play group, or do other people experience that?
Click to expand...
Yeah, it easily wheeled in my group too. I still cut it for being too powerful (I got to cast Braids on turn two once while on re draw, opponent lucked out of the lock with an Incinerate, but man that was mean). In fact, I went ahead and cut all two-mana rocks as well. Now artifact mana is only there for go big strategies.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Okay, am I the only one that hate's big Elspeth as a card? Every time that card hits the table I'm like "well, this was almost a compelling game of Magic. now we get turn after turn of token spam."

I really hate board spam.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
As far as 6 mana cards that destroy compelling games of Magic go, Wildfire is way worse. Because all your dudes are dead. And you don't have lands to make new dudes. At least you can punch Elspeth in the face with an evasive creature. The counter play to Wildfire is "Already have a 5 toughness creature or planeswalker in play"?

I guess I kinda expect 6 mana cards to destroy otherwise compelling games to some degree, because having a dead card for a bunch of turns and making so many land drops deserves something awesome. The only six drops I really, really don't like is Wurmcoil and Upheaval because they just do a little too much. I'm even fine with Grave Titan (and I know a lot of people on this board despise it). I sort of dislike and keep changing my opinion on are Inferno Titan, Jokulhaups and Wildfire. Red is far and away my favorite color to draft, but Red six drops better then Crater Hellion bug me for some reason. These cards seem to tend towards bad games, but usually I'm running at least one of them (and getting disappointed).
 
CML

CML

Contributor
i guess that post would make sense were wildfire nearly as powerful, less of a draft-around, etc.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
yeah, I'm shying away from planeswalkers that make bodies every turn because even if you can deal with it in the short term it just makes the next few turns a boring slog. Cards like Sun Titan or Cloudgoat Ranger sometimes do the same thing but I find that less offensive (maybe I shouldn't, who knows)
 
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