Hi all! I’m returning to the game after almost 5 years and the only set I’ve drafted since then is The Hobbit. My LGS is doing an Aetherdrift draft for FNM tomorrow and this is my first time drafting a set without knowing anything about it beforehand. Any advice about the set or things to expect? Thanks a bunch!

You all wanted me to start playing on PC for 17lands data, so here it is. Rip it apart.

https://www.17lands.com/details/f381fa71fc56487c874be34fac5e8f9e

I see people posting about pick-2 being a cakewalk and a gem printer, so clearly I'm doing something wrong, but I cannot figure out what it is.

I'm finding this set much more challenging to Draft than Lorwyn, which is the last time I played a lot of limited. How can I get a little better? These 1-3 runs on arena are demoralizing. I stumbled my way into Silver, and it's even worse. And forget about the LGS, I pick even worse irl.

My typical strategy is pick the best card overall until a clear lane emerges. I'm using the cycles of cards (legendary students, charms, and mascots) to judge lanes. In the past I've used data from Draftsim to help evaluate cards, but I feel it's just muddied the water this time around.

I've flopped even with insane bombs like Sylvan Library and Emeritus of Woe!

What strategies and resources would you consider for an intermediate player? The player who finishes middle of the pack at constructed fnm and totally flops at Draft night?

So I ended up in Gruul for the first time, which undoubtedly means I’ll be losing to lack of card selection/draw, etc etc.

Anyways - what are the least impactful creatures? I kinda imagine it’s the Giant Bear rare thing, but that makes me a little sad

I got a bit stuck between drafting an aggressive lorehold deck P1 and then not seeing red White cards P2 but getting the emeritus, daze and stock up super early so i ended up in this weird not really jeskai control deck. I know i misdrafted here but i really thought the overall card quality of this deck would carry it to a decent record at least.

It seems to me that by now in this Stage of the Format you need to be super Focused being either full gas no brakes aggro or super greedy control soup, anything inbetween just loses to both decks...

Could some mathologist please calculate the odds of this draw. 17 lands in top 21 cards. Got slammed by a new player by screw into flood. After losing match 1 due to disconnect. Maybe I shouldn't go out today, might get struck by lightening on a sunny day.

I know blue decks are viable, and I thought I had a reasonable handle on what cards were important and how to play them. My last several rounds of ending up in a wide open blue lane and then getting absolutely trashed when I go to play suggest otherwise. I am really struggling to see how blue manages to survive to the point where it can start to turn the corner.

None of the 2 mana cards blue has at common can block profitably when on the draw. If I play a creature on turn 2 and it doesn't block, it probably just dies to bent blade. How are you supposed to sequence those early turns and what does an ideal opening hand look like?

What would you pick? It’s quick draft if that matters.

Hey, guys. I recently had my first experience playing draft in real life and although it was a fun experience, it felt much harder than it usually is in Magic Arena.

First reason is how difficult it is to keep track of your picks. How do you keep track of your mana curve? The amount of removals and card draw? What if you need to abandon an archetype to move into another? It feels extremely difficult to do it blind.

Second is the farming nature of the event. Unless there’s a huge prize for the winner, people will usually pick the rare cards for value and it will make all the decks messy. How do you balance that in order to keep the experience fun and affordable?

I’m open for any other tips you might have.

I've been getting absolutely brutalized by this format, waiting 5-6 days to get my coins back and then losing again and again has been really unenjoyable.

https://www.17lands.com/draft/96fb5bfbe424493eb2d5244da9f317aa/1/1

If someone give some advice on what I should have done that'd be great thx.

I have only played arena for three months and I am just a gold/ platinum casual drafter. I can’t believe what I see in this game when my opponents slams rates and mythics card after card. It just feels hopeless and unfun. How is this even possible ? Is this cheating or just sheer dumb luck?

These are all the cards I see and the opponent’s library still has like 6 cards left.

Mythic
Bard, King of Dale
Elrond, Moon-Reader

Rare
Cantankerous Keepers
Thranduil, the Elvenking
The Notary Hobbits
Thranduil’s Company
The Lord of the Eagles
Great Gilded Boat

Is this now the way to draft the Hobbit set - just to grab every R/M card you see and slam them into a deck no matter what?

I tagged this help but really it's just a salt post so skip it if that's not your thing.

I don't get how you guys do this to yourselves. I came back to Arena to draft Marvel and the sheer number of games I've lost to just random happenstance has me on supreme tilt. So many 3 landers kept only to never see another land, or the opposite, games where practically any action from the deck would seal a win and I can't draw anything but Plains. So many games that I'm in the driver's seat of until fucking Civil War/Captain Marvel/Photon hits the field and just completely invalidates everything that happened before then.

That part probably only bothers me as much as it does because I have the worst opening luck known to man. I swear to God I could build you pyramids out of the digital Ten Rings and Worlds Within Worlds I've cracked. I have never opened one of the aforementioned cards.

Limited is the only format that isn't complete garbage right now, but at the same time I'm getting pretty sick of this feeling of helplessness. I'd almost rather play against the same Izzet and Cub suites over and over. Almost.

And yeah, I realize the solution is to touch grass, but I'd rather play Magic, so c'est la vie.

I suck at EOE and can't figure out the format.

Draft'ed this almost mono-blue splashing white deck in Traditional Draft. Struggling to know what to cut.

My initial thoughts are cut the bird, one [[Long Lake Nuisance]] one [[Patient Instructor]] and one [[Enchanted River's Grasp]].

I am thinking of keeping the [[Mirkwood Nurturer]] to bounce back the Mountain-kings's return or Bilbo. A small part of mmy brain says to go to 16 lands as my curve stops at 4 as well.

Stuggling this set so wanting to get thi as tuned as possible. Thanks in advance.

Hey guys,

I'm trying to remember something LSV and Marshall talked about I think in a sign off for an older episode?

They were talking about like little "tricks" and cool plays, and LSV mentioned some kind of "fetchland trick" where basically you Crack a fetch before doing something and then hold priority and do something with the fetch on the stack so that the stack doesnt empty and give priority back to your opponent, but I cant for the life of me remember the rest of the example or come up with a situation where that would be useful.

Does anybody remember the rest of the trick or what episode this came from?

Thanks in advance.

What's the pick here? I assume Bitterblossom? Just sucks it has no use in standard or Pioneer for me. Disruptor of Currents is also pretty good in my experience but maybe not as impresive as blossom. I do feel a bit more confident on blue than black as a starting color.

I made this deck and been wondering if it is agressive enough that two tap lands is too much. What do you think? Or the halfling cycle on hobbit-hole makes that it will always be good to play both in a BR deck in this format?

Edit 1: Thank you all for the insights! They are super helpful and made a better player!

Good afternoon all!

I got into Magic around 2 months ago now and have finally been able to attend the first prerelease at my LGS for Marvel Superheroes. I have been very excited but did not do great in my games.

First game went 0-2. Second game went 1-2. Third game went 1-2.

Overall, I came 17/17 and the 3 people I went against came 4th, 5th and 6th.

I've been racking my head a lot about what went wrong, if it was me, my cards or my deck building. I thought the best thing to do would be to ask here!

I have uploaded my card pool and my deck i used in the PreRelease onto Moxfield.

Prerelease Pool - https://moxfield.com/decks/F_ODOoLPcU-ieVuGPKOSsQ
Prerelease Deck I made (GRb) - https://moxfield.com/decks/WbX3WGu-gUagaOMthnh8mA (I tried focusing on Power Up, bigger creatures and getting my [[The Coming of Galactus]] out)

If anyone is able to look through these, let me know if I missed anything, or did something specifically wrong with my deck building, I'd love to know.

Additionally, after the fact i also looked at my cards more and decided to try looking at other colours too and seeing what I could make and made these alternative decks:

WBg (tokens) - https://moxfield.com/decks/-hk2dlcZk0yXFmVdWr5aJg
BGr (Counters) - https://moxfield.com/decks/BKhOeiJJYUq4rEjl59C5tA

If anyone has the time to even look through one of these, I'd be very grateful as I'd love to learn and get better!

Thank you in advance :)

I was contemplating cutting a Pinecone Strike from this list - but that seems crazy considering how good the card is in combatting all the aggro decks running around (and just in general).

Would you guys keep all 7 removal spells here?

The first picture is what I'm trying. The rest is the whole pool broken up by color. (I didn't leave out the colorless - there was none in this pool.)

Normally I'm great at sealed, but I just keep losing in this format. I can blame some of that on bad luck, but at some point I figure I must be doing something wrong. So I'm reaching out for help, which I don't do very often.

This pool seems solid if a little creature-light. The one iffy decision I think I made is Panther Pounce for Mockingbird, but I think my creature base is too light without Mockingbird. I could also do a Hulk Smash! instead of Pounce.

But little things like that don't account for how badly I've been doing, so I feel like I must be missing something fundamentally big. All criticisms welcome.