It’s also meant to emulate a draft at your LGS: you’ll play a total of three matches, win or lose, and receive rewards based on how many matches you won. It’s still BO3, of course, but this will now be an unranked player draft. Traditional draft is going through some pretty significant changes, on its end. This is the new ranked, BO1, player draft event, which will also always use the current set. The new addition to draft events is “premier draft.” The entry fee and rewards are much higher than quick draft, following traditional draft’s old model. Entry fee, win/loss structure, and rewards all also stay the same. It’s still BO1, still a bot draft, still ranked, and the set rotates every two weeks. Ranked draft is being renamed to quick draft, but other than that, it’s staying pretty much the same. There are some other changes to take note of, so let’s go through those for you. Rare drafting won’t be an option in player drafts, but thankfully you won’t need to pay attention to what the other players in your pod are drafting since you’ll be playing against players from different pods when you’re done. If you’ve never participated in a real-person draft before, you’ll notice quite a difference in card picks. This means that you’ll need to think a bit differently when picking cards in these new drafts, since you’ll be part of an 8-player pod instead of picking against bots. The most important change is the arrival of player drafts. So, the release of Ikoriabrought some significant changes to draft with it, so let’s talk about that. So take a look at what’s going on now and what’s coming up so that you can save up your gold and gems to participate. Take a look at our ultimate guide to drafting for a more in-depth analysis. You should also be aware of the match structure: traditional drafts are played in best-of-three (BO3) format, so you’ll have to spend a much longer time on those compared to ranked drafts which are best-of-one (BO1). They’re usually around either 1000 gold or 100 to 200 gems and if you can manage to get some wins, you’ll have the chance to add more cards to your collection. Granted, most of the events don’t cost that much. This might sound like too much of a hassle, but you’ll have to manage your resources if you want to expand your collection. It’s also wise to think ahead while building your decks, because there’s something called “ Standard rotation” that you should keep in mind. The best way to do this is to join the right drafts that have the cards you need to add to your collection. If you’re trying to climb the ranked ladder, it’s important to have cards that have synergy.

For a casual player who won around 3 to 4 games every day, it would take about 3 to 4 days to save up 5,000 gold even if you got 750 gold quests all the time. The cost of these events varies, but if we take the Quick Draft (formerly known as Ranked Draft, in case you haven’t seen the April State of the Game) as an example, you’ll have to spend 5,000 gold to participate. You might be asking yourself, “why bother?” Well, the reason is simple: unless you spend a lot of money, you’ll have to manage your gold carefully while playing different game modes. Once Upon a Time | Illustration by Matt Stewart

Quick draft zendikar