MTG: My First Draft

I, the ever so lousy Magic The Gathering player, decided to go to a draft today. I got invited to come and play by MI, the guy from math class, who I believe i mentioned is an active MTG player. After we finishing playing a little magic after school yesterday, he mentioned that there was a beginners draft today (Saturday), and invited me to join him in playing. He told me that the draft cost less to join in on the first 5 times you play, and that you get to keep the cards you play with in the draft. I figured that it seemed fun, most likely was good practice, wasn't too expensive, and that I could use a few more cards, so I decided to join.

''Hey, want to come and be judged at what you're worst in? Great.

''

Ok, so this whole ''drafting'' thing might seem a bit confusing for those who don't know what it is, so I'm going to try and explain it as easy as I can. You start by putting 8 or so players around the table, and give them all booster packs (a pack of about 15 cards) of matching types. That means they all get a booster pack from a vampire deck, werewolf deck, or similar, and all players get the same types and amounts of the different booster packs.

The players then open up one type of booster pack, and choose a card from the pack they opened. After selecting a card, they keep the card, put it in a pile that is to become their playing deck, and send the remaining approximately 14 cards to their left, and receive 14 from the player to their right. The continue this until the booster packs they opened have been completely selected and moved to playing decks, and the process is repeated two more times, alternating the direction they send the cards in. The first booster was sent to the left, so the next is sent to the right, and the last to the left again.

After this, the players pick and choose from the cards they got to create a deck that's supposed to consist of minimum forty cards. After doing this, the players put land cards into their decks (usually about 17 of them), and then have a deck to play with in a following tournament. The players then face each other off in the tournament, with their newly built decks, and compete for prizes, often being more booster packs. They play ''best out of x rounds'' against each other, swapping opponents every now and then. The more rounds you win, the better the prizes you get. If  you get any prizes.

So. Many. Booster packs. And none of them mine.

With that explained, you should get most of the rest of what happened. I arrived at the store holding the event about 12:45, and decided to look for MI, who had said he'd be there about 12:30. It didn't take me long to find him, and we decided to sit down and play some rounds before the draft started. We found us a table and sat down.

After one or two rounds, two other players sat down besides us. They said they were beginners who had only played about a week, and we chatted with them while playing our respective games. They played against each other, and I faced MI. I don't remember if I won much, but I'll assume I didn't, since MI usually beats me with his deck stuffed with almost only the best of creatures.

After some time, we were wondering about if the draft was going to start soon. We found out it wasn't going to start soon, since almost all the other players were playing a separate event that started 11:00, and was supposed to have ended by 13:00 when our draft was supposed to start, jeopardizing whether our draft was going to be held at all. We asked people if they wanted to join us, since we needed 8 players to start the draft, but not many wanted to.

After a few hours of playing and talking to various people, it didn't look like the draft was going to happen. But then, as some sort of miracle, some of the people from the other event had finished up their thing and decided to join our draft, getting us even more people. After convincing a bit more people to join the draft, we got started, even though it was quite a bit after the point of being fashionably late.

Luckily, time is relative.

We started the draft, and since it was my first time drafting, I only had to pay 70 NKR (about $11). I walked into the store, paid the cost and signed my name up on the player participation list, before going back out to chat with some people outside. Shortly after, we moved to tables beside each other to make room for 8 people around it, and started the draft.

The person responsible for the draft explained how a draft worked, and we started drafting after about 5-10 minutes of explanation. I chose the best card from my booster pack, which I think was the card ''Undead Alchemist'', and decided that the first color I would be playing with was blue. I sent the deck onwards to the next person, and went on with the whole ''take one, pass it on'' process.

I ended up having a blue/white deck, and felt like I had picked out some nice cards. I began selecting out cards I didn't need by removing the ones of wrong color that I had gotten, and then sorted the rest of the cards into piles based on color and if they were creatures or spells. I removed any cards I felt weren't really good, but I still had way too many cards. I then separated the cards once more, this time based on mana cost and if they were creaures/spells, and removed cards from the categories I had too many of.

''Any cards that are of the wrong color or are lacking in ability will be removed.''

I still had too many after that, so I asked for tips on what to keep from the man responsible for the draft, who pointed out what cards I should remove. I removed the cards he had told me, and I were finally done with picking out 24 creature/spell cards. I fetched 16 land cards from inside the store (8 of each color), and added them to my draft deck, leaving me with the 40 cards I needed for the deck.

After everyone were done creating their decks, we turned the tables back, and started facing off against each other. I started out against the guy who had been sitting diagonally across the table for me. I don't remember his colors, but he ended up beating me by keeping my creatures tapped, preventing me from blocking or attacking with them. He won 2 rounds, and since we played for a ''best of 3'', he won against me. We finished rather early, and didn't have much to do, so he went out of the hall the store is in, to take a fresh breath of air, smoke a cigarette or something. I spent the rest of the time watching MI's match, who had been sharing my table.

The next person I was facing was, to my horror, the extremely experienced organizer of the draft, who had been playing since the year I was born. He also beat me rather early, once because I only got the two initial lands I started with on my hand, and I couldn't really do anything. I finished early this time too, and he went out for a smoke. I spent the time watching the girl and guy next to me play, where she won despite being even newer to the game than I am. Topped with that she was playing against the guy who beat me 2-0 the last turn, I can't really say my confidence was anywhere near the top.

''I finish prematurely and I'm weaker than a girl. I seriousily suck.''

My third and last opponent was the woman who MI tied with in the first round, leaving me some fear of whether I'd end up with 0 victories. Luckily for me, she ended up playing a very mana-heavy deck, and I got a good start while she didn't, and I won the first round against her. In the second round, pretty much the same happened, even though the organizer told me she was 1 victory away from winning 2 booster packs, but wouldn't get any if she didn't win this turn. I considered the moral dilemma of losing on purpose, but decided that it would have been impossible for her to win in any way, so I beat her. Shortly after, I learned about ''split'', which would've allowed me to split the booster packs with her against letting her win. But since I beat her, she didn't get anything, and neither did I.

It took about 8 hours from I got there to the draft was finished, even though it usually only takes 2 hours to play through a draft, much because of the trouble from the lacking amount of players, and that the other event hogged so much of the area. I ended up getting a lot of cards, since MI didn't want many of the ones he got and gave them to me, which I am pretty happy with.

After the draft was over, MI had to run over to catch his train, which left in not very long, so I told him goodbye, and hung around about 2 minutes before I went home, ate dinner and did a quick google on drafting in MTG before starting writing this post. The only thing I really regret, is not knowing of the ''split'' thing, since I never had a chance to win any booster packs anyways, but there's not much I really can or could've done about that. I ended up getting a few good cards after the whole thing was done, and I think I'll be attending the next draft, next saturday.