Monday, October 13, 2014

5 mistakes during drafting, part 1

Draft is called the most skill intensive format, because you are building a deck on the fly. Standard very quickly becomes net decking even though it changes more frequently. On the other hand, some people say that draft is rather the most luck intensive format. Opening a couple hard to deal with bomb rares in your packs can make your deck good, even with second rate uncommons and commons cards. However, I totally disagree with this statement. If you have skill, you can overcome poor luck. I really lose a lot of respect to people repeatedly complaining about drawing bad hands or got mana screwed or flooded. Yes it happens, every deck is capable of doing that, but if it consistent, then there is a problem with you as a player or your deck in construction. Knowing when to mulligan and what hands to keep is a risk assessment skill that is invaluable to great magic players. With regards to design, if you run into the mana flood problem a lot then maybe its high time to do some math and reconsider the amount of lands you have in your deck. Likewise, color fixing and mana acceleration, and the right number of lands in a deck usually is the remedy for being color screwed. Additionally, for those that would still criticize luck being a factor in the game, there are a number of pro players every season every year with consistent above 66 percent win rates in a variety of formats including limited; thats a 2-1 match win average and these pro tend to repeat those numbers year after year when they are active. Luck is a factor, but only one in a myriad, and certainly not the most demanding of your attention. Some commonly-accepted Limited concepts are faulty, but they persist nonetheless. Skill is crucial in drafting and more about it in next part.

1 comment:

  1. This article needs more work before you publish. You could tie the article content to the title with a better introduction, and don't have a clear progression as you read the article. I'd try reading your articles aloud and give them a couple more edits before publishing.

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