10 IMPORTANT Tips to Improve Your Draft Game | Magic: The Gathering | Nizzanotes #17 

Honorable mention: don't drastically rearrange your mana base after flooding/getting screwed the previous game. Thanks for the great year, Nizzahon! Here's to another good one!

10. Don't overrate cards because they are good in Constructed - 01:08 09. Don't hate draft (mostly) - 03:56 08. Listen to signals - 06:43 07. Rarity doesn't matter - 08:35 06. Don't rely too much on pick orders (e.g. from set reviews) - 11:36 05. Don't religiously follow B.R.E.A.D. - 13:48 04. Consume Limited content - 17:42 03. Be aware of instants - 18:44 02. Make sure you have a good mana base - 20:12 01. Practice makes perfect - 23:20 You are welcome!

Thanks so much for all of your content. I really appreciate your posts and wishing you and your family a beautiful 2022

Great video with great advise! 😃 I would add one more advise: evaluate cards with the quadrant theory. This theory talks about the game being in one of four possible game states: - Development: the first 5 turns of the game for either player - Winning: the game state where you are ahead and will win the game if nothing changes - Losing: the game state where you are behind and will lose the game if nothing changes - Parity: the game state where both players have (lots of) creatures on the battlefield, but no player can make profitable attacks For any card one can ask themselves in which of these game states (or quadrants, hence the name quadrant theory) this card will be good. For example, a counterspell will be good when winning, because opponent needs to change the game state and you can counter their attempt, while if you are losing opponent doesn't need to change anything. On the other hand, a removal spell will be good at any quadrant (if not too expensive for the development quadrant), but especially when losing because it can remove the reason opponent is winning. The most important cards are the cards that are good when losing, and the least important cards are the cards that are (only) good when winning.

This needed to be said. So many players on Arena haven't drafted enough to know these lessons.

I think it's worth taking rarity into consideration. It affects the likelihood of the card wheeling and/or pulling a replacement for it in another pack. Rares and mythics often have irreplaceable effects, not just power. Not to mention they are often fun to play with and you don't want to miss your only chance if you can't draft a hundred times like Nizz can

I would like to add one more point to your list that this format reminded me of. When there are a lot of bombs in the format lean towards drafting decks that are more aggressive. The less turns your opponents have the less draw steps they have to play their unbeatable card. This is also a decent thing to be doing in BO1 as your opponents cannot be boarding into 1/3s and will be more punished for keeping a hand without a 2 drop.

Thanks for the video Nizza. Some really great tips in the video. Especially tip # 3 about keeping the instant tricks in mind when looking for plays. One thing I would like to add is a caveat about "rare/mythic" drafting on paper. Since if you open a nice expensive card, even outside of your colors, it will most likely pay for subsequent drafts. And that gives you more practice/experience.

To support the "less hate drafting": 1. Your draft potentially helps you every match, a hate draft might help you in 1-3 games total. Maybe, if they'd even draw it. 2. Your hate draft benefits everyone else in your pod at the expense of you and 1 hypothetical opponent. 3. Someone else might be hate drafting as well. 4. A pod full of hate drafting means all of us get to to play a less fun deck, with only first pick bombs and average playables. Basically there's little real advantage (and some real disadvantage) to hate drafting over any playable for you, and it reduces fun for the whole pod when it's done too much. Keep it to a minimum.

First video of the new year right on the dot, Happy New Year everyone!

As somebody who go into drafting this year (thanks to you) I appreciate these videos immensely. Thank you Nizzahon for a wonderful year of content

If you have to pick a card and it's a tough choice between 2 or mayb 3 cards, memorize those cards. Everytime you draw the card you picked there, visualize for yourself if any of the other cards where a better pick in that situation. It is also nice if you are aware that you basicly never play the perfect game. Analyse your losses afterwards to find any miss plays.

Great list Nizzahon! I'm going to share this video with beginner drafters!

Love the advice! I would love to see more videos just like this one about limited. Thanks Nizz happy NYE!

This is a really good video! I usually play with 2 friends that are beginners and they make at least 5 of these mistakes! The other day we were playing Crimson Vow draft and my friend first picked a rare golgari dual land because it was the rare one. After that he thought he HAD to force his deck to be green-black for the sake of fully utilizing his rare pick! Lastly he opened a website and religiously followed a BREAD guide for his remaining picks but without understanding why or what he was looking for (In this case the high toughness G/B deck). He went 1-3 and felt really bad about his picks so I will try to cheer him up and convince to play more with this video!

on the BREAD topic, yeah even from recent sets it seems Wizards is only printing rather powerful 1-2 drops. There isn't a single vanilla creature in Innistrad across either sets, they all have *some* text. During the Decathalon event, I was actually surprised to see some 3/1 3/3s with not text or keywords. Also I love KETO replaces BREAD... cause you don't eat bread when doing keto :P

Thanks for your great content as well! My only inclusion is to be mindful of the importance of a good curve. I believe a key word here is balance and ensuring both early and late plays is critical to a good performance.

Great lessons I appreciate you sharing. You clearly have the experience.

Loved this video, hope you do more tactical and strategic stuff on limited. What are some of the other channels you suggest to watch on limited per your #4?

Your videos have influenced my decks and made me a better player. Thank you. Looking forward to 2050 turn decks.

Sometimes Counter Drafting (Hate Drafting) turns into "Whoa I need this for my main deck!"

I find it funny your number two was to make better mana bases because historically I have stifled myself by not being adventurous enough with my mana. I assume most people do the opposite which is why it's so high on the list. But recently I have tried to embrace the splash as it were and it has helped alot. Thanks for the content though it's always enjoyable.

Yeah the rares are tough. Especially when a rare comes up you want in some constructed deck, you've always gotta make that call if you're willing to pull a useless card just for rare's sake.

I have not done draft since 2020. I am doing draft tomorrow, so hopefully this refresh helps out

Love your content Nizza, I’ve learned a lot from you..

About your 7th statement: We played Ravnica Allegiance draft one month ago and it was especially fun. But in the second pack, at pick...like 4th I see Mass Manipulation(rare card not in my colors) accompanied with nice gruul(my colors) commons. You know It was very tempting to pick rare ahah

Their are also lists online about all instant speed card in the format. So you can check that even during matchs.

Good video man. Do you do any kind of deck (yours or others) structure analysis where you compare specific deck statistics to win rate? For example, how is number of premium removal spells correlated with win rate?

I feel like one practice that I thought was really useful that I myself struggle with is cutting down to 40 cards. In most card games, just having that one or two extra cards can affect your consistency in the long run. Is there maybe a video on this on your channel?

I'm a limited beginner, playing my first limited games in VOW now, and that's very useful, thanks!

Watching this to help me prepare for the baldurs gate prerelease. Thank you for the good content!

I used to be very bad at playing limited because I could not get over the hump of "this card is amazing in constructed" but is fairly weak in limited. Though after watching a ton of drafts from you, I have gotten a ton better going from dead last most of the time to 1st and 2nd place in my store limited events. I am a modern player at heart but drafting is a ton of fun now! And I definitely want to draft the older sets that I missed out on over the years as well.

what I find so often and funny in draft is that the drafts that suck seem to do better then a really good draft.

Happy New Year Nizzahon! Your content has grown on me more and more, and you're now in my top 3 most-watched MTG channels. I think putting yourself on camera was one of your best creative decisions as it humanizes you as the speaker/creator while you deliver mostly data-driven content. I can't wait to see more from you in 2022.

I took a Sigarda that i didn't need the other day but there was no hate involved. It's still a good point and players should be focused on their own deck

Hatedrafting is something you should do all the time please, especially in my pod. 😂

I thought the D in BREAD stood for Defensive cards. I thought it was a given that you don't take duds if you don't have to. :)

Great thumbnail 👌

7 has never been a problem for me lol. A friend got mad because I passed up a card, don't remember which it was gatecrash set, but whatever the card was would have paid for my entry. But I went mono green because I thought numbers were the goal.

Before watching, I'll say my biggest thing on which I know I need to improve would be acknowledging the need to pivot. Too often I find myself far too committed to the route I started drafting and either just continuing the whole way through or pivoting far too late -- either way resulting in a subpar deck. I wonder if that'll be on the list.

Late to this, I think it's a great list, but I think you missed a big one. Prioritize bears. 2 drops are a huge key to limited and in most formats good ones are hard to come by. Until you have 4 or 5 - 2 drops it's typically a wise choice to take them over slightly more valuable cards with higher mana costs because it's usually easier to get similar value in that mana spot. While the 3-6 drop you pick up later isn't as good as what you passed on for the 2 drop, it will almost always be closer in value than the 2 drop you have to settle for later is to the one you pass up.

I feel like rarity (esp uncommon vs common) can matter a bit because you're not as likely to see two of a particular uncommon as you are to see two of a particular common (I guess this only really matters if you value synergy that the uncommon provides)

Won a draft for the first time last night! Beat our most seasoned player in the final round 2-0. It felt good, it’s possible! These steps are all very good.

Does nizza even enjoy doing these videos? Does he even like magic?! Cheer up nizza!

I think the problem with BREAD is that it tried to be an acronym. Really, it should just be BRO. Bombs, Removal, Others.

Can you help on how to build a deck in MTG Arena…thanks.

The D stands for draw. Anything that thins your deck or gives you card advantage is better than anything that isn't BREA

Even if 1 Tip in this video helps you it is 100 percent worth it just saying, thanks for this video!

Hate drafting in arena is specially bad because since you dont play against your pod, you can also send a signal of a color being open by letting a bomb go through. That way you can make your color more open

I would add: Be mindfull of your sideboard options. Many players ignore sideboarding in limited, but you can win many games due to high impact sideboard cards..

1-10: take advice but think for yourself

Instead of BREAD, I'd go with a method more like this, and give each card a rating from 0-1 in each and pick the card with the higher score. I call it PERFECT BS for short. Planewalkers (0 or 1 only) Efficiency (0 to 1, 1 being the most undercost card for what it does) Removal (0 to 1, 1 means it can removal almost anything, 0.5 would be it can only deal with about half of problematic permanents) Flying (0 to 1, really evasion in general but flying is already at least 0.5) Electric (0 to 1, 1 means it is "electric" or has big playmaking potential to do something good. E.g. a boardwipe gets a very high score here) Card advantage (0 to 1, based on how good at drawing cards or making 2 for 1s or 3 for 1s) Tradability (0 to 1, the better of stuff of your opponent's you at least trade this for 1-for-1, the higher.) Bombs - (0 for medium-bad cards, 0.5 for B-, B, or B+ cards, and 1 for A- or higher cards, as a rough approximation, obviously you could do better if you tried)) Synergy - (0 to 1, how well does it work with the rest of my deck?) Now obviously use common sense like is the card in your main colors, splash color, or not in your colors at all and anything else this is missing, but I think this is a much more accurate place to start than something like BREAD.

I think I fall into the "don't rare draft" people more often than I realize. Not with rares and mythics, but with uncommons. I'm sure I've taken a less powerful uncommon than a powerful common because 'this is uncommon so odds are I won't see it as much vs this common which I'm more likely to see again because it's common"

extra tip, if you see a foil tarmogoyf, you take it

Is that a Wings of Liberty hat? looks like someone was at OkieCon.

Counterpicking/hate drafting in commander cube is extremely valuable

Nice

Still following after 2018

The Bread rule is terrible and I stand against it since I started drafting, thanks for pointing it out!

The REAL problem with limited is the "balance" of cards . When a set it's full of filler cards with a bunch of rare bomb and few strong answers that Limited is bad. Crimson vow and Forgotten realms are 2 examples of this .

While I agree with what you said about not prioritizing cards based on rarity, there is a small caveat. If you pass a decent rare to take a good common, you know it is incredibly unlikely you will see another copy of that rare come your way, while you might get one or two more chances to pick that common.

I feel somehow responsible for the creation of this video, since i was pretty vocal in my dislike of this set... I really appreciate the tips. I'll be sure to follow them from now on, even though I still believe my main problem is mostly luck!

BREAD to KETO. I see what you did there

BRDEH Bombs Removal Draw Evasion Hate Works for me

Number two is good, but once i drafted five colors with one piece of fixing and i won my pod (we were drafting kaldheim)

Wooo

Lantern Kami? Were you talking about another card?

My limited skills are.. limited 🤦‍♂️

I was told I should 'git gud" to get better at drapting butt I dunno wat that meens. What's git gud?

Kinda suprising that there was not even a mention about just grabbing expensive cards . Happened to me at the draft one day somebody just took The Meathook Massacre and there is no way you are just splashing that in your white blue deck ..

BREAD is just bad now. Just remove it from your shortcuts. Just remember that Bombs are implied at the top in KETO as it should be obvious. KETO is helpful as a tie breaker in spots or as a good way to approach a format you are unfamiliar with.

If people would stop hate drafting all together (except in team drafts) their win percentage would go up.

I would lose the draft if it meant I could pick the colossus and get $30 after the draft from sellignit

This comment helps the channel

One time when I drafted RTR with friends, I was drafting selesnya and after the draft someone boasted that they 'hate drafted' a Trostani even though they had nothing to do with it after the draft, and that sucked. So personally, the only excuse I'll accept for 'hate drafting' is when it's a card you actually want to play in your constructed decks, and even then I'm not too happy about it since you could just trade for it afterwards. I did open a Worldspine Wurm in my prize pack from that draft though, so it's not all that bad XD

Don't play the Devils manabase

Draft does seem like fun. Too bad you have to be a rich person, as well as have your friends also be rich and into mtg, to afford such hobby.