Drafting is one of my favorite aspects of Magic. I first discovered the format around Time Spiral block. The additional layers of complexity and difficulty have always intrigued me. Every draft feels different, so matches tend to be less redundant than, say, Standard. The convenience of Arena makes it easy to jump into a Draft whenever I want, and it's my favorite way to experience Magic on the platform.

Despite my affinity for Drafting, I must say I’ve been slow to learn how to succeed in The Brothers’ War drafts. The first couple I attempted did not work out well. I won maybe two or three games out of the few drafts I’ve tried. This isn’t a great record, not to mention it eroded all my gold and gems.

After grinding Standard for a week or two, I finally scraped enough gold together to try another Draft. At this point, after barely drafting last month, my ranking had fallen all the way down to silver. This hopefully meant my opponents would be equally inexperienced, offering a level playing field. Without hesitation, I jumped in.

Pack 1 Pick 1

As you’ll see in the video, my pack one pick one was pretty much a no-brainer. When I saw my mythic rare was the Standard staple Phyrexian Fleshgorger, I had to slam it down. The rest of the draft, however, did not flow quite as smoothly. I had to make some tough choices. I even pivoted on colors at one point in pack two. This kind of flexibility is vital when navigating a draft format, and I’d like to think I did a decent job keeping an open mind.

The Draft and Deckbuilding

At the end of the draft, I ended up with an Orzhov deck, splashing green for two Skyfisher Spider, one of the most powerful uncommons in the format. Here's the list:

Gameplay

Technical Difficulties

I’m relatively new to recording Arena videos. While I had a lot of fun jamming these games and talking out loud (something I do naturally), I must confess I had a small technology SNAFU towards the very end. I accidentally started the recording for what was supposed to be the last video while I had a web browser open. Even though I switched over immediately to the Arena client to play my final few games, the damage was done. The entire video recorded only that idle web browser—so I've omitted it from the playthrough list above. You can hear me talking over it, but I suspect it won’t do justice to the games themselves.

That said, I can proudly state that I did finish this draft with a trophy! After starting with a hot 6-0 streak, I lost games seven and eight before winning the final game and notching a 7-2 victory. Here’s all I can offer as proof: a screenshot underlining my gem count, 2200 higher than it was at the beginning of the first video.

The main highlight from the missing video worth mentioning came during my second loss—I faced a grueling match where my opponent leveraged creatures that put cards from their graveyard to the bottom of their library, ensuring they didn’t deck themselves. I had them down to one or two cards left in their deck, but I drew one too many lands in a row, my luck ran out, and I couldn’t keep sufficient pressure.

Despite the technical hiccup, I had a great time recording this draft and I hope to create more Magic video content in the future. I hope you enjoyed watching it. please leave comments or contact me on social media (@sigfig8) to share your thoughts on how I drafted and played. I’m sure I made some mistakes here and there, but I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much with these videos.