| tangent --- it is interesting watching highly skilled players navigating draft in magic the gathering. quite different mechanics to how deck building operates in sts. one idea is having a good working understanding of "the format", all the possible cards in that version of the game, which subset of those are potentially playable in draft, and an understanding of different styles of strong deck to steer for. breadth of experience and familiarity helps in both games. another idea is not locking yourself in too early to a particular strategy that depends on cards you haven't got yet -- prefer taking cards that can be good in multiple possible future decks, rather than picking a card that is very strong but only works in a specific kind of deck that might not pan out. there are some major differences to sts. in sts the drafting is interleaved with the rest of the game, so in some scenarios it would be necessary to balance short-term and long-term payoff --- optimising for the best long-term deck might leave you weak and get you killed you in the short run. whereas in mtg the draft is a phase that takes place before any battles, so there's no benefit or downside to having a good partial deck mid way through draft, beyond the ways it might be completed into good final decks. another major difference is mtg's drafting being multiplayer, your draft choices are drawn from packs of cards where other players have already removed cards that they want for their own decks. part of the game is trying to infer what kinds of decks other players in your group are drafting -- so you can avoid drafting the same thing and instead position yourself to go after a style of deck that no one else is competing for. another subtlety is if you are going to play against the other players in your draft group or not. if so, you are incentivized to "hate draft" strong cards you have no intention of playing just so the people you will be playing against cannot field them against you. but if you're not playing against your draft group, it's optimal to let the other players get strong cards you don't want that would be a good fit for their deck, as that encourages them to keep drafting their current style of deck, and not start intruding on your style. another facet of this is that in sts you have to play every card you draft (unless you can find an option to remove it) whereas in mtg you always draft more cards than the minimum deck size, then field a deck containing a subset of them. |