
One relatively large difference that will remain between the real-life draft experience and the Arena player draft experience is that games will be played in a “league” style. The details of this reward structure will be revealed in the coming days. Traditional draft now also has a gold entry cost, allowing free-to-play players to participate (albeit at a relatively higher cost).Īccording to Cao, that relatively larger barrier to entry in Premier and Traditional Draft has allowed the Arena team to make the rewards structure more favorable for players who want to make their money back and “go infinite” on drafts. In essence, Quick Draft remains the same as the legacy bot-draft experience on Arena, while traditional drafting with bots has been entirely replaced by a player draft experience. Rotates through different Magic expansions.Cost: 750 gems or 5,000 gold (same as current price).Format: Best-of-Three, rewards based upon three matches.Format: Best-of-One, play until 7 wins or three losses.Rather than two draft queues, a ranked best-of-one and an unranked best-of-three, Arena will now have three types of draft queues which break down as follows: Player drafts are one part of a larger change to Arena‘s draft ecosystem. Player Draft: What you Need to KnowĪccording to Arena‘s executive producer, Chris Cao, who recently spoke with reporters alongside Magic‘s communications manager Steve Sunu, Arena developers worked closely with the development team of Magic‘s other digital platform, Magic Online, to recreate the “most authentic experience we can.” This feature is more important now than ever amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, since players in America have largely lost the ability to draft together in person at local game stores.
#Mtga premier draft vs quick draft full#
However, beginning on April 17th with the release of Magic‘s latest expansion, Ikoria: Land of Behemoths, Magic fans will finally be able to participate in the full draft experience as Arena adds live player draft queues to the mix. And since Magic‘s latest digital platform, Arena, launched several years ago, players have been able to participate in a slightly streamlined version of draft that limits players to picking cards against computer AI. It’s highly variable, leading to a unique experience every time.

More than just the gameplay itself, drafting involves picking cards from a small set of booster packs, and then reading signals from another seven players in the “pod” to determine your optimal deck. Once you get good at it, you can actually get more consistent results.One of the most popular and skill-testing ways to play Magic: the Gathering is to draft.


Whereas the CPUs in a Quick draft would have auto-drafted some of those cleric cards that would slip through the fingers of actual players trying to draft Gruul landfall or Dimir mill.Īs someone else said, You have to get in there and try it out.

You need to be able to create a plan in Pack 1 and then be able to alter that plan as you see which colors aren't being picked and adapt as the draft goes on.īeyond just the draft, you will hit some amazing decks in Premier - because they're drafting against other people, if the other people in their draft are, for example, not drafting clerics then your opponent might have been able to build an amazing cleric deck. That same mindset simply doesn't work in Premier. almost no matter what came up in the packs. When Zendikar first came out, I was able to get 5-6 wins easily by drafting Dimir. which means you need to have a good handle on all the "winning deckstyles" of the set. Premier means you need to be much more flexible.
