Gaming Night: 4 booster Magic the Gathering draft

Let's break this down into parts to build the understanding foundation first before I go and just dive into the event (for fear of scaring people away who don't understand). If you already know about Magic the Gathering and card games, feel free to skip to the section called "That Night."

What Is Magic The Gathering?
It is a collectible card game that pits players against each other in magical warfare. Each player is essentially a wizard that draw upon mana to summon creatures and cast spells in order to eliminate the other wizards.

Wizards typically draw their mana from resources from nature (gameplay-wise from Land cards) and focus it into a spell from their vast library (represented by your draw deck- actually referred to as a "library" in-game).

Victory conditions vary depending on cards, but the primary method of victory is to reduce all opposing Wizards' life to 0 (each player typically starts with 20 life in most formats). Another victory condition is forcing your opponents to draw cards, but if they have none to draw, they lose. There are many other card-specific win conditions, but we won't discuss them here.

What Makes MTG a Collectible Card Game?
There are easily tens of thousands of different cards available throughout the MTG universe. Why? The game originally came out in 1993, and has slowly been releasing cards between then and now.

For those who are not familiar with card game distribution (up until recently), they are generally released in various packages. Varying sized packages are available, but the generally the most common are called "starters decks" and "booster packs." Typically a starter, nowadays, will have enough cards for you to start playing a game right out of the box (trust me, this was not always how it was), and booster packs are smaller, but more randomized cards used to augment your collection.

The Money Machine
Since its inception, MTG became a great hit. Its popularity spread like wildfire. It became something to play, and with everyone playing it, it was there to stay.

Over the years, sanctioned tournaments popped up and it became apparent that the MTG card distribution system was biased in a way that gave some players (the ones who would spend the most money on cards) the best decks because they could get many of the rarest cards. With that... came the advent of limited formats.

MTG Booster Draft
There are several limited formats, but this article will only focus on booster draft. The standard way a MTG booster draft works is that each player sits around a table with 3 booster packs. When a drafting round starts, everyone opens one pack and takes one card from it and passes the pack to the next player (direction alternates, starting with left/clockwise). Each of the players take one card from each subsequent pack until every card is gone. This is done in hopes to make the best deck with the cards "drafted." This format is called "draft" probably because it is akin to drafting in sports teams. The difference between them is that for Magic, you are drafting the best available card to put into your deck instead of drafting the best available player for the team.

This not only puts a little luck into opening booster packs, but the skill comes in trying to use the cards you draft in innovative/creative combinations to assure victory over your opponents.

That Night
Now that I've explained everything you need to know, I can tell you about my night. I had a few people over. We had 6 players- it would have been better to have 8, but 6 was fine. I had many booster packs and no one could agree on which three packs to open out of the 4 available. So instead, we just did a 4 booster pack draft. The expansions included were Eventide, Shadowmoor, Shards of Alara and Alara Reborn. It was quite an interesting metagame because you wouldn't know what to expect from the later boosters being mostly multi-color (Alara Reborn was opened last). It also kept the playing field balanced because no one was familiar with all four expansions.

My basic strategy was draft anything/everything good earlier on, and then get as much mana-fixing in the last pack. Chances are, and good cards I got weren't going to be used. Even with the added pack, we were still playing with a 40 card minimum deckbuilding limit. My deck turned out decently. I went green/white splash blue, with big beefy creatures.

I gave everyone about 40 minutes to build their decks. We didn't really need all that time. Pairings happened, and we played through the rounds. Here's the reason why 6 people isn't too good- because someone always got paired up and paired down. We each played at least 2-3 rounds (best 2 out of 3) and there was a clear winner. Sadly, it wasn't me, but we all had a fun time. I think I was tied for second. Unfortunately he had to leave and we never got to play against each other. It's all right, because I plan on having another one next time.

Conclusion
I really enjoy draft format because it offers a generally fair playing field. There is definitely an element of luck in any card game when drawing a card, but in draft, your position in relation to other particular drafters, which packs you see first and a whole slew of other factors also matter. All one can do is make the most consistent deck- and so it comes down to deck construction. But in the end, drafting Magic still comes down to being a game of luck between people of similar skill; even then, those with a better understand of Magic and draft strategies will prevail over those that do not.