How to Draft in MTG: Booster Draft and Pick-Two Draft

To draft in Magic: The Gathering, each player opens a booster pack, takes one card and passes the rest until the pack is empty, three times over. Then you build a 40-card deck from your picks plus basic lands, usually about 17 of them. A Pick-Two Draft works the same way for four players, taking two cards at a time.

How a Booster Draft works

A Booster Draft follows a fixed pattern that Wizards of the Coast sets out on its format page:

1. Sit in a circle. Up to eight players sit around a table.
2. Open pack one and pass left. Each player opens a booster pack, picks one card without showing anyone, and passes the rest to the left. Keep picking from the packs that arrive from your right until all the cards are taken.
3. Open pack two and pass right. Same again, but the packs travel the other way.
4. Open pack three and pass left. The last round goes left again.
5. Build a deck. You end with about 45 cards. Build a deck of at least 40 cards from them, adding as many basic lands as you need.

Then you play one-on-one games against the other drafters. Wizards’ page plans about two hours for the whole event.

How a Pick-Two Draft works

Pick-Two Draft is Wizards’ draft for a small group, built for four players and listed for four to seven. Each player still opens three packs, passing left, then right, then left. The difference is that you take two cards from each pack before passing it, which keeps a small table moving.

Each player ends with about 42 cards to build a 40-card deck. Wizards suggests two rounds of one-on-one games for four players: the two first-round winners play each other, and so do the other two players.

Draft Night boxes for a four-player draft

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Drafting Magic at home with Draft Night

Drafting at home is what Wizards’ Draft Night box is for. The Reality Fracture Draft Night contains:

Wizards suggests keeping the Collector Booster for yourself or giving it to the winner. For a larger group, a Play Booster box of 30 packs covers a full table of eight; what is in a booster box has the details.

How to build a 40-card draft deck

Building a 40-card draft deck starts with sorting. Wizards’ Prerelease guide, written for the same 40-card Limited decks, suggests this order:

• Sort your picks by color, with piles for multicolor cards, colorless artifacts and lands.
• Find your two best colors. Three or more colors stretch your mana and can lock you out of a game.
• Look for threats first: the strongest creatures and spells, often your rares, that can win on their own.
• Add removal, the spells that deal with your opponent’s threats.
• Balance the mana curve, so you have cheap spells for the first turns and a few expensive ones to finish.
• Add 17 lands, Wizards’ basic template. Wizards calls it a starting point: a slow, controlling deck plays more expensive spells, and an aggressive deck leans on cheap creatures.

Where to find a Magic draft

Magic drafts run at many local game stores, and Wizards’ store and event locator lists the ones near you. A Prerelease is a close cousin: you build from six packs instead of drafting, but the 40-card deck building is the same. What an MTG Prerelease is explains it, and how many lands a deck needs covers land counts for every deck size.

Play Booster boxes for a full draft table

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More guides to Magic formats

Draft is one of the Limited formats, where everyone builds from the same kind of sealed product. The rest of Magic’s formats, from Commander to Modern, are compared in Magic formats explained. The current set’s draft products are listed in Reality Fracture products.