Boosterdraft – Quick guide

In the so-called Booster Draft, no pre-constructed decks are used, but decks are put together bit by bit. The aim is not to play with pre-constructed decks, but to focus on putting together a new deck.

Preparation

Ideally, you should play with at least 6-8 people. Each person receives 3 booster packs of a desired series. There can also be many different booster series, but then we are talking about a Chaos Draft. More on this later in another article!

Function

At the beginning, each player opens a booster pack and chooses a card. Do not show the other players what you have chosen. Basic lands and tokens are removed from the Booster. Both are not needed. Then everyone passes the remaining cards from the pack to the player on their left. Each player then chooses another card from the Packs before passing it on again. Repeat this until all the cards from the booster packs have found a drafter. Next, each player opens their second booster pack, but this time the remaining cards are passed to the right. After all the cards have been dealt, the third booster pack is opened and this time passed to the left again.

Here is a short graphic to illustrate the process!

Deck construction

At this point, all Boosters should be empty and each player should have accumulated a pile of cards. Now each participant creates a deck with plus-minus 40 cards. The easiest way to do this is to stick to this 40 card deck rule. As a benchmark, I recommend you choose 23 cards and 17 lands to start with. If you play a fast deck, you can put one less land in your deck and one more non-land card. If you play slowly, the opposite applies.

Once everyone has created their decks, it’s time to start the actual game.

Game

The game is played 1 VS 1 and in “best of three” style. A game therefore has a maximum of 3 rounds and also the whole tournament (3 opponents). In serious tournaments, the choice of opponent is determined by a software algorithm.

If you are playing with friends, you don’t need to go to all this trouble. All you need to do is draw lots at random for the first round and then play the winners against the winners and the losers against other players who also lost the last game. Simple. If you play with an odd number of participants, one person is drawn at random who does not play a round. The so-called “draw” counts as a win, but is inferior to any other win. This has a significant influence on the final score. For a more detailed description of the scoring rules, I recommend that you read the detailed rules on the Magic the Gathering homepage.

Ranking announcement

Once the duels are over, all players place their shiny and/or Rare/Mythic cards together in a pile of cards. All other cards may be kept by the respective participants. Now the winner of the tournament may choose a card first and keep it. You repeat this until it is the last player’s turn. If the worst-placed player in the tournament also has a card of their choice, you repeat this process until there are no more cards to choose from.