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Welcome back, fair drafters! Today we’ll be analyzing the subtle art of hate drafting. Yes, there is such a thing and while it’s not suggested to do it heavily, it can help stem the tide of hurt you will encounter during your matches.
To understand hate drafting, you must first understand how to read the table. Reading the table means analyzing the colours of the cards you see after each pack is passed and figuring out if any particular colour is showing up less and less. Usually by the fourth or fifth time a pack is passed, you will begin to see a trend. Maybe you’ll be passed a pack that contains four or five cards of the same colour, but none of the colour you’ve been choosing. This tells you two things: Number one, other people are playing your colour and are taking the cards before you. Number two, there is a colour that nobody is taking and may still have lots of good B.R.E.A.D. cards available for the taking.
Seeing a colour ‘dry up’, as it’s called, is a signal that it is probably wise to stop choosing that colour. If others are seeing these cards before you and they’re picking up all the good ones, you’ll merely be left with the Duds if you continue on that course. What you should consider is whether you can afford to switch colours and begin taking what others are not.
While you’re analyzing colours, you should also keep an eye out for cards that will hinder your deck from working properly. If you’re choosing lots of creatures, you’ll want to look for cards in any colour that can kill off multiple creatures easily or do lots of damage to a big bad bomb. These are the cards you want to hate draft, which denies your opponents the opportunity of taking them and using them against you. This comes, however, with the caveat of choosing to hate draft over drafting a good card. For this, there must be a delicate balance. You can’t hate draft every removal card or Bomb you see go past you because your deck will wind up being clunky and is guaranteed to under-perform.
Ideally, you want to know what your deck is trying to do, and if you see a card go by that will, without question, hamper your ability to execute, then you hate draft it and keep everybody else from stopping your conquest!
I hope this information has been helpful! Next time, we’ll go over how to construct a draft deck once all your cards have been chosen! Thanks for reading!
--David--