We’ve been playing semi-regular games of Magic lately, I’m almost sorry to admit. Lately we’ve been doing booster drafts using the two most recent expansions, Time Spiral and Planar Chaos.
We had another one on Sunday, a 7-person draft at Subrata‘s. My goal was to have a better all-around draft than I’ve had recently, drafting a deck with more possibilities and fewer limitations than in the past. For instance, I’ve read up on the color combinations and how they work in a TTP draft (a draft from two Time Spiral packs and one Planar Chaos pack).
Unfortunately, I really flubbed it this time around, and ended up drafting a Black/White deck, which is really one of the weakest combos. Heck, Black is an all-around disappointing color in Time Spiral, and Black/White together lacks both clever tricks to play, and big monsters to crush the opposition with. I ended up drafting a halfway decent deck, but mainly because I sort of backed into a couple of tricks which could lead to victory if I could stall the opponent long enough.
Nonetheless, I ended up drafting a number of cards which just weren’t as useful as they looked: Expensive but underpowered creatures, and some artifacts that look cool, but in practice don’t provide enough bang for the buck. So overall I didn’t have as much flexibility as I’d hoped. Sigh.
Practice makes perfect, I guess. But I still need a lot of practice.
Michael, Michael, Michael. You are descencing into the never-ending pit! 🙂
I’ve dabbled with Magic on-and-off for a decade now. I know you used to play it, but it sounds as if you don’t have much Limited experience, particularly draft. I’m tempted to dump a short lesson here, but I’m sure (a) that you’ve already read up on the basic skills and (b) you probably actually know more about these sets than I do. (I’m not playing actively right now.)
Ah, Magic. Such a lovely little addiction…
I have very little Limited experience. When I last played, Sealed Deck was the main tournament format, and I played very little of that. So yeah, Booster Draft is new to me.
I have a few gameplay deficiencies I’m working on (mechanical things like summoning creatures before I attack, when it’s almost always better to wait until after my attack to do so, assuming what I’m summoning doesn’t have Haste), but my basic issue is learning to draft better, and get a better feel for recognizing which cards are good and which only look good.
That said, I don’t generally have problems with balancing creatures vs. spells vs. land, which helps a little. It also helps that most of the people I’m playing with are not significantly more advanced than I am (though there’s one who’s the player-to-beat in every session).