Greetings, regular Judges.

For MaDraCa'Dabra, the project aimed at creating an app for perfectly called computerized Drafts, the Team would like to gather up all known traps for players who are new to the draft experience. We'd like to create the perfect speech to them, in easy words, so that most of them can avoid falling in.
Our program shall provide guidance until the first round, so known problems about deck building would be included.

We will draw inspiration from the JAR and Tournament Rules, but are looking for additional common failures newer players (or first-time draft-offering store owners) might stumble upon. Please feel free to share your experiences, and if you're interested in the project itself, take a look at the alpha version of the MaDraCa'Dabra.

Thanks, guys and gals!
Christian Mueller

We actually had two first-time drafters at this past FNM. When we're about to start, I pull unfamiliar faces together and tell them,

Dudes win this format, don't underdraft creatures. Try to stay in one or two colors, if you see one color wide open during the first pack, you might consider making that one of them; if you have to splash a third color, try to find some mana fixing. We will have plenty of basic land for you, so don't worry about trying to get enough for your deck. During the draft, once a card is face-down in front of you, it's the card you've chosen; don't look at the cards you've drafted until I (or your draft leader) tell you to. Pay attention to your mana curve, you don't want to only have six-drops in your deck and be unable to do things for the first half of the game; it will be really difficult to recover from that. If you have any questions, anyone at the table will be happy to help you tonight, or you can call me over for any reason you want.

The trap that I see most new drafters fall into is not taking creatures. I strongly recommend to brand new players to this format that they take 17 dudes, 6 not-dudes and let them know we will provide the basic land they will need. I still seem to forget this about once per year and forget to get enough creatures, so I often speak from experience that playing without enough dudes is frustrating.

My group prefers to keep the basic land in the pack while drafting, which started with Zendikar. So occasionally we have people try to get enough basics to field a deck. Not an issue so long as I remember to say, “we've got your mana over here.”

At one of the other stores, the players are free to look though their selected cards during a draft, so I tell the players at our store that it's not permitted. Keeping in mind what you've already got is part of the skill of drafting well.

Perhaps this will be beneficial.

Alan, at Regular REL keeping in mind what cards you have drafted is not so
important and it is explicitly allowed in the MTR section 7.7, although the
HJ can disallow this as it is written.

*Players and teams may not look at their drafted cards between or during
picks at Competitive and Professional RELs. At Regular REL, players are
allowed to review their drafted cards between or during picks as long as
they are holding no other cards at the same time. The Head Judge may choose
to disallow this provided he or she announces it before the first draft.
Between boosters there is a review period in which players may review their
picks.*

When I judge FNMs and other Regular events I prefer that players can look
at their cards because unexperienced players will not be so skilled in
drafts.



2013/10/6 Alan Cleaver <forum-6234-4954@apps.magicjudges.org>

That brings up 2 other notes that are helpful.

People need to keep their pool in one single pile. When there are multiple piles, it becomes too easy to accidentally pass the wrong pile, or have the person to your side take the wrong pile.

And in order to avoid confusion, since for a new drafter this whole thing gets pretty intimidating, just before the “go”, I like to confirm that we're using zone drafting and then explain briefly what that is (“when you passing stacks, don't let them pile up. If someone still has one sitting there, just hang on to yours.”).

It's not hard for a new place to get a rep for not knowing how to run events when people end up with 13 cards or lose their pool.

Before we had a store here, I ran the events for our playgroup. At one event, a new player thought he needed to draft the basic lands for his deck. He ended up with very few actual cards so I gave him a refund and made sure to explain that whenever there was someone new.

Is this aimed at first time limited or specifically first time draft, played sealed before?


If you take out the basic lands from the pack, be sure to mention foil basics need to stay in or one day it will bite you halfway through the draft =)

Generally, do NOT switch colors in pack 2 if you notice a color that wasn't open in pack 1 is suddenly open…

Let the packs decide what colors you draft, don't decide this before the draft starts (this happens a LOT in my experience, newer players have favorite colors)

Some constructed staples (like 1-drops, counterspells, etc) simply aren't that good in limited

When figuring out which color to play the most lands of, do not just count mana symbols but also take CMC in consideration. A 1WW card weights much more in favor of white than a 4BB card does of black.

BREAD: Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Anti-cards, Dudes. Although with not every removal being auto first pick anymore, this acronym is less useful than before… Still, the value of removal should be communicated.

You are allowed to change your deck between matches (starting round 2 with a different deck than round 1) unless the HJ states otherwise. This is very helpful after their experienced round 1 opponent goes through their cards and makes recommendations.

More towards the experienced drafters: if those noobs are rare-drafting, let them. They might be very happy with those bulk rares and if that means they come back more often, great. They'll develop better draft mindsets in time. Unless they don't feel welcome anymore (because they're berated for their draft picks for example) and don't come back of course.

Edited Toby Hazes (Oct. 14, 2013 11:51:27 AM)

Thanks for all your input!

MaDraCa'dabra is an automated MagicDraftCalling program. It will be available for both regular and competitive environments and thus we asked for the known traps to new drafters. I appreciate all posters inputs and will help to translate your solutions to our program. Feel free to take a look into our Project, we still look for help in several languages and would appreciate testers for our soon to be released beta-test version. ( Project MaDraCa'dabra ).

Again, thank you, and I hope you profit from the insights in this topic, privately, too.

Christian Mueller