to Killer Joe
[First of all, I think drafting is THEE best way to play Magic. It challenges your Deck building skills, your playing skills and puts everyone at the same starting point.]
I agree with what you said. I think drafting is the best way to play magic too. I usually draft only when I go to big tournamnts, ptq's, and pre-releases. I usually play in 2 drafts each day. I usually lose in the first round, no matter who I play, and I usually have the best deck in the entire draft. When I walked up to a pro player one day, at the fifth dawn pre-release, I showed him my draft deck, and he thoght it was really, really good.
So theres the problem, I can draft awesome, but I really can't play with cards that I havn't played with before.
So, drafting tips. You need to have bombs. Bombs are game breaking cards, something that will totally give you the advantage, like barter in blood, or grap the reins, or molder slug.
You also need mana acceleration. Talismans, myrs, anything to let you play your big creatures.
Big creatrues, also known as fatties (Jamie Wakefield said, that fatties will win you the game. Who ever has more fatties, wins. This is esspecially true in draft. If you think you will never play that 4/4 for 5 mana, and that he sucks,(fangreen hunter), you are horibble mistaken, because those big creatures you couldn't normally play in consturcted, are very playable in draft.
Removal is a must when playing draft. Your opponent may have 2 fatties on the board, all you need is that 1 barter in blood, and its game over for him.
A deck with a good combination of removal and fatties should fair well in draft.
The colors that do the best in draft are usually B/R. Mostly because of its removal. Red has burn, and burn if very good in draft. When you draft I suggest usually 2 colors. In some cases 3, and in even more cases, 1.
When you are actually drafting, you should look always look at your rare first, and see if it will pay for your draft. If you get a chrome mox, I would always take it because then, you just played a draft for free. If its not that good money wise, but reallly good play wise, you should look at every single card in the pack. You should look for the bombs, I was talking about earlier, because they will always be taken first. You can usually rely on myrs to go around the table, and you can take it next.
You should know what you are drafting after you have taken the first card from you first pack. Unless its an artifact of course, but then you usually have a good chance of knowing what colors, or type of deck you want to draft.
You should also pay attention to what is going around. If you are playing a draft where there is all 3 boosters from the same set, you can usually rely on cards that are being passed around in the first pack, and you can rely on those cards being passed around again. So you can decide which card is better than the others. Which is essentailly what you do in draft. You look at is this card better than this card?
Well, I think this is a bit random, but if anyone has questions cuz i'm not clear on something, go for it.
good luck drafting