Eight-player booster draft is by far my favorite format in Magic: the Gathering. While I started as more of a Standard-Constructed player, in recent years I've gained an affinity for Limited. I've had some success as a Limited gamer in various events, in 2021 I placed in the top 8 of the Magic Las Vegas Crimson Vow Grand Prix, out of 1,000 players. In more casual settings I've won a handful of local Team Draft Leagues. Once in a while, if I don't play horribly, I even win a FNM here and there.

Draft has taught me many lessons as a Magic player, and as a person. It's a game of resource management, and being able to make the "right" decisions in a short amount of town. Draft requires you to be quick, artful, and above all else, creatively precise. It offers a new challenge each time you sit down at the table, in front of your booster packs, and one that I keep coming back to over and over again.

I wanted to write this article as a way to identify some of the recurring mistakes I see myself and others making while drafting. Draft is a weird intersection of competitive and casual play for me. On one hand, as a competitive player, I like to win! Because of this, one side of me wants to draft as cleanly and tightly as possible. However, on the other side, I'm an artist, and one that derives joy from thinking outside the box - which leads me to drafting 42-45 five-color piles. Sometimes they 3-0, and sometimes they flame out, tragically. Such is Draft.

On the flipside, I've had drafts where I've aimed to stay in a lane and be two-color, and still fall short. You might do everything "right" in the draft (stay open, be disciplined in your picks, play tight), but you can end up with an 0-3 record. While that may be discouraging at times I find Draft the perfect place to hone your skills as a Magic player, and identify the areas you need the most work in. Now without further ado, let's jump into what I think are the four biggest mistakes I make while drafting!

Failing to Flesh Out my Deck

An interesting aspect of Booster Draft is that you're building your entire deck from the ground up, meaning you'll need to acquire the key components of what makes a draft deck, well, good! This acronym is probably outdated by now in the era of play booster and fire design, but I think it still holds strong:

B - Bombs

R - Removal

E - Evasion

A - Attackers

D- Defenders

Bread! Bread was my introduction to Draft, and it's an easy to remember acronym that basically explains the skeleton of your draft deck. You want to have some good cards in "bombs," removal spells like Go for the Throat in "removal," evasive creatures like flyers or unblockable creatures in "evasion," creatures that attack well in "attackers," and finally, creatures with high toughness or reach in "defenders."

A mistake I find myself making when I turn up my pool at the end of a draft is that I'll be missing a key component of my deck. For example, while removal is important, if your deck is lacking ways to win the game you can't actually win well with your deck, just stall out until your opponent beats you with some random creature.

The solution: I've moved to organize my draft picks by what my deck would look like at the end, sorted by mana cost. This way I'll be able to quickly sift through my "deck" and see what I'm missing, especially by cost. If I have four four-drops by the end of pack two, chances are I probably don't need another one any time soon.

Trying too Hard to Draft the "Best Deck"

Another mistake I see players make that I've been guilty of myself is trying too hard to draft the "best deck" in the format. While not every Draft format is like this, there are some sets where one archetype or color combination is way more powerful than anything else. Examples of this are Rakdos in The Lord of the Rings, Azorius/Bant in Streets of New Capenna, and Dimir in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt. The issue becomes if three players are all vying for the premium cards from two colors then your deck might end up more middling than synergistic.

During Battle for Zendikar, Grixis colors were by far the best in the set, with Green being pretty bad in comparison. I remember drafts being very lopsided because while players would fight for these colors you'd leave a lot of White and Green cards floating in the aether. A good friend of mine, Colin Bevis, relished in taking the Green cards no one wanted. While some players would end up with weakened Grixis-colored decks, Colin would have a fully fleshed out Green deck that splashed for multicolor bombs due to his good fixing. It was a joy to watch Colin defeat players with the "superior" colors with his cobbled together masterpiece.

In Midnight Hunt I ended up drafting a lot of five-color decks for a similar reason. With Dimir Zombies being the best deck in the format, it was sometimes hard to draft the archetype due to its popularity. Instead, I made use out of fixing, like Path to the Festival, Evolving Wilds, Eccentric Farmer, and Dawnhart Rejuvenator. This allowed me to basically play whatever cards I wanted, and I'd get to cherry pick my removal and bomb cards, not caring about the colors of the cards I picked. I won many FNM drafts with this strategy.

Overall, I think if you're in the hot seat to draft whatever the best two-color pair is, then go for it. However, an important skill to learn is how to assemble the deck less drafted when you have no other choice. It's important to learn the intricacies of the set because you'll be able to pinpoint when it's right to be in the best deck, or abandon it for cards people will ignore.

Drafting Cards not Coherent with my Deck's Plan

While drafting you may see a lot of cards in your colors, but it's vital to sort out the ones that fit your deck's theme. Recently, my friend Jared made the finals of an Edge of Eternities Mox Sealed, just barely missing a Pro Tour invite.

In top 8 he drafted Azorius, which was very open as he got passed not one, but two Station Monitors. Reflecting on his picks he mentioned to me that there was one instance that definitely had an effect on his matches - drafting a Mouth of the Storm over a Cryoshatter.

Mouth of the Storm is one of the best uncommons in Edge of Eternities Limited, a giant haymaker that invalidates your opponent's next attack. However, Jared's deck was based around cards that give you a bonus for casting your second spell in a turn. Cryoshatter is not only a cheap removal spell, but it nets you value off cards like Station Monitor.

Mouth of the Storm is more situated for decks like Simic Ramp or perhaps Dimir Control, decks that either have Green ramp spells or All-Fates Scroll to ramp it out faster than turn 7. Jared inevitably played against Boros aggro in the finals, a match where the Cryoshatter would've been much better situated.

You can watch Jared's play through the top 8 here.

The lesson here is that even though you might be in the right seat at the table with cards in your colors flowing freely, it's important to know which better serve the purpose of your deck. In Chaos Drafts I love drafting Dimir Control decks, and I make an effort to highly pick removal spells and card draw, basically any way I can stop my opponents' game plan while being up on cards.

Draft is an incredibly tough but rewarding way to play Magic. There are so many micro-decisions that snowball over the course of an event, giving you lots of opportunities to analyze when you made the correct decision or when you failed to cobble together a plan. While there aren't that many opportunities to draft at a competitive level, I still wholeheartedly believe becoming a better drafter will help you mentally shortcut faster as a player.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Roman Fusco