Hello folks! I hope you are having an awesome day today. Y'all know how much I adore draft and other Limited formats. From my adoration of Conspiracy and follow ups to my well-known documentation of Cubes, you know who I be. (I had a Theology professor at my Master's in Theological Studies at a Seminary in Philadelphia who always preferred the incorrect "Who I be" language to, "Who I am," as it was more resonant and cut to the core of the question).

I love fun and exotic drafts in particular. The weirder the better! I created a Crap Cube and a Chaos Cube and Random Gatherer Cube in real life, so you know me. I am drafts.

Let the good drafts roll!

Let's take a look-see at ten super mega crazy drafts that you really want to give a spin to!

10. Unglued, Unhinged, Unstable

The Un- Block! You want a crazy format? Something you'll never forget? No worries, I've got you covered. These cards shouldn't be in print. They should never have been made. And now you can beat your friends with them! Enjoy the fun as you dominate with all three eras of silver-bordered goodness and crazy results! You know you want to...

Summon the Pack!

9. Portal: Second Age x3

Portal: Second Age is the most...traditional....draft format of the various starter formats. That's why it's way back here! It features normal bombs like Air Elemental and Temporal Manipulation, strong early blockers like Temple Acolyte and Angelic Wall, strong cards like Wrath of God and Earthquake, mana fetching like Nature's Lore and Untamed Wilds, and more. Sea Drake! Ogre Arsonist! Predatory Nightstalker! Goblin Matron! Ancient Craving! Archangel! You get it. It's just such a sweet slate of cards, and the format is deep and rich and bizarre in a fun throwback way to when drafts were simpler. Get your Second Age on!

8. Ice Age/Alliances/Cold Snap

While Cold Snap was designed as a triple draft-only format, I find it to be more fun as the third partner with Alliances and Ice Age, rather than Homelands. They all share things like slow-trips and a snow theme and more. A similar setting, cumulative upkeep, snow mana, and such. You get the idea. Now I do think that CS's insular mechanics can be at odds outside of that format - like ripple. It doesn't matter - it's still infinitely better than Homelands for drafting fun times. Now, to be fair, this is probably the most obvious and played draft variant out there. (well, except for #5, but that's because you don't respect it, and it's more of a tease). That's why IA/A/CS is hitting back here at the eight spots. But it's fun! Get your snow boots on!

7. Portal: Three Kingdoms x3

Ah yes, the draft format that can be perfectly summed up with three simple symbols - P3K. Love it. Horsemanship is awesome when you have an entire set of it to chase. It's cool to have lots of Green and Red "flyers" while other colors may not have as much. The legendary matters theme, the ability to chase cards that get better when others are on the battlefield, fun removal that pushes folks around, and powerful cards like Imperial Seal, Imperial Recruiter, and similar fun times. It's a great set to draft, and trust me, you have not lived until you've drafted P3K at last once.

6. Alara Foil Packs x3

Sometimes Wizards has some off-ideas and will try something that never panned out with audiences, and this was one of them. Are you willing to pay a premium to get an in-print set that includes 15 foils from an entire block of cards? It still had the normal common, uncommon, and rare/mythic breakdown. They even retained set symbol. It was a weird experiment, and it flooded the market with Alara block foils, by the by. But if you haven't tried, then you need to do so, because it's pretty cool. When you draft a Block in a standard A-B-C format, then you learn where to look for certain cards. For example, in Onslaught Block, you know that the 2nd set, Legions, had all creatures so you'll get 15 drafted creatures for sure. You'll emphasize non-creatures in the first pack. You'll always prefer removal, tricks or card drawing and such in the first and final set over creatures, unless it's an obvious strong contender like Wirewood Savage or Sparksmith. But when all of the cards from a block at the same time, the draft is much different. You are still aiming for the same archetypes and such, but the way you get there is much different. If your strategy normally has a bomb card in Shards of Alara you needed to draft it early, and if you missed it then you'd be disappointed. But here? You can still get it. It's fun to run a few times. Now on the secondary market, these can be a little pricey, but they aren't nearly as much so as some others on our list today. Alara on!

5. Iconic Masters

I don't know why you never respected Iconic Masters. It was crapped on at the time by the community, and later you could find boxes for mega-cheap for months. After the first Modern Masters back in 2013 did everything they could to have an amazing draft format to show that the Masters idea would work, Masters sets really dropped in cachet. But Iconic Masters remains the second best Masters draft in the series to my mind. Masters 25? Ultimate Masters? Eternal Masters? None of them are as strong, synergetic, and plain ol' fun. Did you forget about fun? It's classic to draft a Dragon deck, and other crazy and cool creature types. There are loads of iconic cards in here too, like Mana Drain. If you haven't Iconic-ed in a while, why not do so this weekend?

4. Random Packs

Lots of folks may be familiar with the idea of drafting booster packs they bring. They may buy three packs at the local card store that are cheap, or just happen to be in stock, from other blocks. They may want to draft sets with similar settings - like one booster from each of the Ravnica blocks, or something similar. That's fun and fine. Welcome to the table. But what's really cool is when you are forced into a random booster pack draft, and you get something like Fifth Dawn, Core Set 2019, and Journey into Nyx. That's enjoyable! And not only is it fun, but you can also get some of these random packs packaged from various stores all ready to go for your drafting amusement. Cool, fun themes for you to try and build around!

If you really want to be a Johnny, try combining sets that have similar draft themes, like artifacts and sorceries/instants matter, and counters matter, which are common archetypes.

3. Ben's Big Box aka Random

Ben Bleweiss famously championed a format where he had a copy off every card ever printed for drafting purposes. I've tried to do something similar with my own Abedraft, although I have one set of every expansion, so cards that appear in multiple expansions, have multiple appearances. Anyways, the cool thing here is that drafting from cards that can include anything from random cards from Standard to the earliest ages can really push your drafting and deck-building skills.

Now, if you want to run a pack of cards, but you are unable to invest in a giant draft box of cards for drafting, that's fine!

Just use Gatherer. Here, let me show you. I am hitting the "random card button" 15 times on Gatherer.

• Warrior's Stand
• Plague Beetle
• Magmatic Force
• Dingus Egg
• Quench
• Eyeblight's Ending
• Scrivener
• Magus of the Wheel
• Pulse of Murasa
• Wolfhunter's Quiver
• Thunderfoot Baloth
• Whitewater Naiads
• Serrated Arrows
• Channel
• The Lady of the Mountain

There you are, 15 random cards! Now, which one would you take? Arrows? Ending? Magus?

Let's say you first picked Magus of the Wheel and built a solid deck, wheeling Beetle.

Here's another random pack for you:

• Akroma, Angel of Wrath
• Regal Bloodlord
• Vibrating Sphere
• Plummet
• Felhide Spiritbinder
• Knight of the Reliquary
• Dimir Signet
• Phantasmal Forces
• Tattermunge Witch
• Comet Storm
• Sandsteppe Citadel
• Crystal Vein
• Rakalite
• Thought Courier
• Hereos' Reunion

There's another fun 15. Which one would you take first? Knight of the Reliquary? Comet Storm? It's just so much fun!

What if you had this as the next ack of your build? Comet Storm? Or Tattermunge Witch? The Spiritbinder?

Now to be fair, Gatherer does have a bias, and you just saw it here. When you hit "random card" you get a specific printing. Something like Akroma, Angel of Wrath will have a chance for hitting for each time it was printed, so cards that were printed a bunch can be random-ized much more likely than something that only appeared once in the history of the game. But it's fun! Random is the best way to do it!

(You'll also note an imbalance of colors that can happen too. The first pack only had a single White card and the latter no Black ones and just one Mono-Green card, although the Witch could be played in Green.)

2. Fallen Empires x5

Unlike many of the other formats today, this is still pretty cheap to come across. A five booster FE pack will give you 40 cards and such for around twenty dollars a person, which is actually pretty feasible for most folks! FE was the first set with a tribal theme, and there are tons of synergies to unlock, with (typically)two tribal themes in each color, which gives you (around) ten archetypes to draft. (Black and White don't have two deep tribal targets, just one that really plays well). We have Merfolk and Trulls, Funguses and Soldiers, Goblins and Dwarves, Elves and Homarids. Fallen Empires is known for its high quality commons - and cards like Order of the Ebon Hand, Order of Leitbur, Hymn to Tourach, Goblin Grenade, and High Tide are all over this set. We have everything from removal to recursion to Fogs. Now, good news for you folks who hate counter-magic. The only counter effect is Vodalian Mage, and you'll see it coming. Since it's only a Force Spike, you can plan around it. FE is just a whole lot of synergetic crazy fun. For a set that wasn't designed for drafting, FE's surprisingly good at it.

All right, number one time. Ready?

1.Portal/Portal/Portal

You are welcome! Portal is a wild and crazy ride in any Limited format, as there are a number of interesting archetypes for you to dig down into. I really enjoy Boros Control, as most people who have never drafted it may miss how powerful and synergetic it is. This is a fun format with Wrath of God and common removal like Path of Peace and Volcanic Hammer with Volcanic Dragon and Alabaster Dragon and such. But the format is much deeper than you may think, and cards like Angelic Blessing, Mind Rot, and such that you might normally eschew are really useful here.

Oh, and a shout out if you do a Portal Block where you draft the first set and then move through the final one. Good job!

And there we are!!! Anything in here that inspired you? Any cool stories you wanna share? Anything I missed? Just let me know, and as always, thanks for reading!