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Hello folks!
I hope that you are having a great day today! And furthermore, I hope you have been keeping yourself safe!
Have you heard about the new format over on Magic: the Electronic called Supreme Draft? You can check out the announcement and details here.
Queues have already started firing and we are now in the format's early stages.
What I want to do today is discuss the quick rules of the format, how I have adapted them to an off-line format, and what two lessons we've learned you may want to take with you when you Supreme Draft.
What is Supreme Draft?
Great question!
What's your favorite pick in a booster pack? The first, right? What if every pick in the draft saw you open a brand-new pack and then draft the best card? That's Supreme Draft, you don't pass the pack after picking. Now in order to speed things up you make two picks from each pack rather than one, not unlike Double Masters.
Sounds good!
Now in Supreme Draft what that means is that you see a much deeper card pool. You are seeing 15 cards with each pick rather than fewer each time. It's a slower draft because you have to read more cards. But every (other) pick can be the rare (or mythic) if you want to be!
What is Abedraft?
Great question!
Imagine a draft where you could draft any non-silver bordered card ever printed. They were still separated into commons, uncommons, and rares and you have 11, 3 and 1 in each pack. That's Abedraft, a giant stand of big fat boxes of commons, uncommons, and rares meant to be drafted together with at least one of each card.
Anything could flip up! Mox Jet. White Ward. Aesthir Glider. Force of Will. Any version of Jace including ones from Planeswalker decks through Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Sword of Fire and Ice. Frogmite. Cabal Coffers and Bojuka Bog.
Anything!
You can make your own Abedraft around the cards you have sitting around, and you could make changes. Maybe you want a Standard-legal draft, or use just one of each card (I have one of every printing in an expansion so we have a lot of staples like Naturalize and Cancel).
You could mix yours together in one giant box and then get rares, commons and uncommons all mixed together! You could do anything you wished!
What I did was to try out Supreme Draft by taking Abedraft and making a booster pack for every two picks per player and then having folks draft their top two cards Supreme Draft.
What happened and what two lessons did we learn after a few rounds that you can take with you?
Great question!
Please note that this draft was meant to be played in a two-person pod but we found it works with any number, preferably even. Although that's a lot more prep work in Abedraft, as least you won't be out any money. Other than what you spent on the cards themselves.
Two Lessons Learned
After drafting for a few times we learned two key lessons about Supreme Drafting. Let's look at them!
Lesson #1 - Draft for Consistency, not Power
Our first few drafts we drafted loads of bombs! We wanted to get all the bombs together, since they could dominate a draft. After all, getting a bomb is a great way to dominate a Limited format. And here we double picks you are guaranteed a rare or mythic and the best other card in the pack! How can you not proceed to power? However, after a few drafts we realized that this was too inconsistent. We began drafting for consistency, not power.
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Here's one example. In the first pack of an Abedraft after we learned this lesson, I cracked Favorable Winds and a White flyer (Mesa Falcon) and committed to trying out Azorius flyers. I grabbed them both!
Then in a later pack I had two flyers, Suntail Hawk and Cerulean Wyvern, and no other flyers. But there was a mythic rare bomb in my colors. Do I take the two flyers? Or just one flyer and a Limited rare bomb? I took the flyers!
Here another example in that same draft. Later, I cracked a pack with these three cards:
The Mist Raven is obvious as an enters-the-battlefield bounce flyer. But which is my other pick? The Epiphany is card flow, counter, bounce, and so much more. But six mana is a lot of mana. I took the two commons including the Guildgate. Had this been my first draft I would have gone Raven and Epiphany. But I grabbed the mana-smoothing lands instead. And I never looked back. If I were Azorius Control I would have done the Epiphany, but not in this build.
Cards that make your deck work are more highly valued here. You are regularly taking mana smoothing lands like Guildgates, mana rocks, cheap cards in Blue like Opt and Portent that can help with card flow and loads more. Consistency is king in this format.
Now I didn't do away with bombs altogether. My deck did have a Supreme Verdict in it as well as a few counters and removal, but the deck was more consistent than powerful and yet it won both games.
Lesson #1: Consistency is more important! This deep card pool enables more consistent decks and they will win more reliably than an inconsistent power-laden build. My flying deck had three rare bombs - Yosei, the Morning Star, Supreme Verdict, and Sphinx of the Final Word.
Lesson #2 - Don't Forget Creatures
While exceptions abound, most Limited bombs and powerhouses are not creatures. In any given set, the most powerful and highly targeted cards are targeted removal, game changing cards like sweeping removal, and powerful card drawing options. Cards like Fact or Fiction, Damnation and even a humble Lightning Bolt define the powerful cards available.
This format also tempts you with powerful artifacts and enchantments and even game breaking lands. From Volrath's Stronghold to Dictate of Heliod, there are many tricks and powers out there trying to bring you in.
The problem is that you can easily forget the key part of a Limited deck. Creatures. Sure, you will draft the occasional creature bomb like Frost Titan or Shivan Dragon. And you'll have more game winning dorks in this draft than normal. But you need dorks to win. It's okay to grab Phantom Monster over Counterspell and Furnace Whelp over Incinerate.
I shuffled against someone with 8 creatures and massively powerful spell suite with my Favorable Winds deck featuring 13 flyers. Who won? I did. 2-0. Creatures win Limited games. That's also true of Supreme Draft. Don't allow the lights and fancy smell of more powerful cards to forget that. Creatures win.
Lesson #2: Don't forget your creatures. It's worth passing up great removal such as Lightning Bolt for a solid creature like Air Elemental. Now that value changes based on your color. A removal-light color like Blue may value Dehydration or a similar effect more than a removal-heavy color like Red, Black, or White where removal will happen more regularly. Also be flexible. If it's your penultimate pack and you only have two burn spells in an Izzet control build, then don't pass by the Volcanic Hammer sitting in front of you. But at the end of the day, you don't with the game with removal.
And there you have it! What did you think of my thoughts on Supreme Draft? Have you tried it out yet? What have you thought? Just let me know and have an awesome (and safe) day!
