The Ultimate Guide to Drafting on MTG Arena

Last updated on September 25, 2023

Backdraft Hellkite | Illustration by Rudy Siswanto

We here at Draftsim love drafting. It’s in our name, after all! With this in mind, we wanted to share with you everything we know about how to draft on Arena. Our goal is to give you a wide range of information on the topic as well as a guide you can come back to whenever the need arises. So, be sure to bookmark this page so that you can come back if you need to!

We’ll be covering everything, from explaining what Limited and drafting are to tips on how to build a Draft deck on Arena to our own personal tricks and sources. We’ll even show you how you can use our MTG Arena helper, Arena Tutor, to get better at drafting.

We hope this will give you a strong foothold and jumping-off point to become a better drafter on MTG Arena and a better player overall. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in!

What is Limited?

Arcane Flight | Illustration by Steve Prescott

Let’s start at the beginning and go through what drafting is. If you’re new to the term, here’s a quick explanation for you. Drafting is a part of a format called “Limited” that has the following structure:

• You don’t decide what your deck looks like until you sit down to play; the contents of your deck are decided only by the contents of the packs you’ll be using.
• Your deck can be no less than 40 cards. You can build a deck with more than 40 cards, if you really want to.
• Your sideboard consists of anything else you have opened (in Sealed) or drafted (in Draft).
• With the exception of higher-level tournaments, you’re free to reconstruct your deck between matches as you wish using any cards you have opened/drafted for that event.
• You may play any number of cards that you’ve opened or drafted: there is no “4-of” restriction in Limited play, so you can play as many of a single card as you want!
• Basic lands are provided freely during deck construction. As a rule of thumb, never draft a basic land with no other special types or effects. There’s no reason to!

Three Primary Ways to Play Limited

Sealed Deck

You get six booster packs to build a (minimum) 40-card deck from. You open and keep all cards in those packs, which become your “pool.” Any number of players can participate in a Sealed deck event, and prerelease events can have tons of people!

The deck builder on MTG Arena, however, can often times be somewhat tedious to work with, as it can be difficult to see all of your cards or get an idea of what’s open versus what isn’t. If you play a lot of Sealed, or just hate the MTGA deck builder in general, give our Sealed deck builder a try! It’ll be much easier to get a sense of things and put your decks together.

Booster Draft

We have a full breakdown of all the basics to drafting in this article, but here’s the summary:

Ideally played with eight players in a “pod.” Each player received three booster packs, typically of the same set. In past years, though, two or even three similar sets may be involved. Please keep in mind that during the draft you are not allowed to talk, signal, or show your cards to other players*.

Depending on the environment in your Friendly Local Game Store, some idle chit-chat may occur, or celebration when a good/expensive card is opened. Feel it out!

After that, there’s a method all eight players follow:

• You all simultaneously open one pack; remove any tokens, rules cards, advertisements, and/or art cards. Leave in all dual-faced real cards and any cards with a “Card Back” (if the back of the card looks like a real MTG card, leave it in). You may be instructed to remove the basic land, depending on the set.
• Look at your pack and select one card from it.
• Pass the remaining cards to the person sitting to your left. You receive cards from the person sitting to your right. 
• Repeat the above two steps until there are no more cards left in the pack.
• Next, everyone will open a second pack. Again, remove any non-necessary cards.
• Pick one card and pass the remaining cards to the person to your right. You’ll get a pack from the person to your left.
• This continues, again, until all the cards have been picked. 
• Simultaneously you open the last pack, select a card, and pass the rest on to your left again. Rinse and repeat.
• Once the third pack has been drafted, you will now have time to construct a deck of at least 40 cards.

Cube

A special Limited format where someone curates a large, usually singleton, custom draft format. The games are interesting, complicated, and often outright insane.

MTGA now runs Cube events sporadically, much to hardcore limited fans’ delight. Generally there is the primary Cube, the “Historic Cube” and a supplemental combo-based one, the “Tinkerer’s Cube.”

If you really love Cube, MTG Online (MTGA’s much-maligned step-sibling) has Cube fairly regularly.

Limited on Arena

Sealed and Draft are both offered nearly constantly on MTG Arena. The modes consist of All Play Modes and Arena Play Modes. 

You can toggle between one and the other by clicking on the Arena logo in the top right as pictured above. The difference between the two is that All Play Modes offers more options than Arena Play Modes. Check out our events calendar to see what’s currently going on and what’s coming up.

For now, we’ll stick with the three types of drafting you can choose from: Premier Draft, Quick Draft (formerly called Ranked Draft, though it was originally Quick Draft), and Traditional Draft.

If you’re new to Arena, these modes can be a little confusing. Heck, if you’ve been around a while they’re probably confusing because WotC can’t seem to pick something and stick with it.

MTG Arena Limited Play Modes and Rewards

With April 2020’s State of the Game, Wizards announced the introduction of player (human) Draft to Arena with Ikoria‘s drop. All three Arena drafts differ slightly from real life play, and even from each other. So, we’ve compiled an easy list for you of what each mode consists of:

Premier Draft

• Best-of-One matches (BO1)
• Ranked player Draft with humans
• Can be paid for with gold or gems
• Cost: 1,500 gems or 10,000 gold
• Keep playing until you reach 7 wins or 3 losses

Premier Draft gives you the following rewards based on wins:

• 0 wins: 50 gems + 1 pack
• 1 win: 100 gems + 1 pack
• 2 wins: 250 gems + 2 packs
• 3 wins: 1,000 gems + 2 packs
• 4 wins: 1,400 gems + 3 packs
• 5 wins: 1,600 gems + 4 packs
• 6 wins: 1,800 gems + 5 packs
• 7 wins: 2,200 gems + 6 packs

Traditional Draft

• Best-of-Three matches (BO3)
• Unranked player Draft with humans
• Can be paid for with gold or gems
• Cost: 1,500 gems or 10,000 gold
• Keep playing until you’ve finished 3 matches, regardless of wins/losses

For Traditional Draft, your rewards are as follows:

• 0 wins: 100 gems + 1 pack
• 1 win: 250 gems + 1 pack
• 2 wins: 1,000 gems + 3 packs
• 3 wins: 2,500 gems + 6 packs + 2 Play-In points

Quick Draft

• Best-of-One matches (BO1)
• Ranked bot Draft
• Can be paid for with gold or gems
• Cost: 750 gems or 5,000 gold
• Keep playing until you reach 7 wins or 3 losses

For Quick Draft, the winnings are set up like this:

• 0 wins: 50 gems + 1.2 packs
• 1 win: 100 gems + 1.22 packs
• 2 wins: 200 gems + 1.24 packs
• 3 wins: 300 gems + 1.26 packs
• 4 wins: 450 gems + 1.30 packs
• 5 wins: 650 gems + 1.35 packs
• 6 wins: 850 gems + 1.40 packs
• 7 wins: 950 gems + 2 packs

As you can see, there are 1.X fractions of packs for the quick draft. What this means is that you get 1 pack just for playing, regardless of your record. You also have a small chance at randomly getting a second pack, which improves with each match you win, but you’re not guaranteed a second pack until you’ve reached 7 match wins.

Premier Draft vs. Traditional Draft

This one is a matter of preference. While the draft itself (with humans) will take the same amount of time, you’re looking at up to 9 games with Premier Draft (up to 7 wins and 2 losses) and up to 9 games with Traditional Draft (if each match finishes with a 2-1 record).

If you care about ranked play, then you have no choice but to play Premier Draft. If you’re a newer player and want to play an “easier” mode where you don’t have to worry about sideboarding, or if you want to play against more different decks, go with Premier Draft.

If you’re more experienced and want a deeper Magic experience, go with Traditional Draft. Being an older player I may be biased, but Traditional Draft is “real Magic.” The sets are designed with sideboarding in mind, and you get to have a much better battle of wits with your opponent over the course of three games. Plus, best of 3 mathematically has less variance than best of 1.

If you’re not very familiar with sideboarding and want to become an expert, I recommend this course by Hall-of-Famer Seth Manfield.

Quick Draft vs. Premier Draft

Since both of these are ranked best of one formats, I think choosing which to play depends on two things: your preference of draft experience and the current format of each Draft play mode.

Because Quick Draft is against bots instead of humans, that may or may not be a dealbreaker for you. While the exploitability of the bots has been toned down quite a bit, for draft purists who want the highest level of draft experience, Quick Draft is still not the answer.

But if you’re a newer player who is intimidated by the time limits of player/human draft, then Quick Draft is a better fit. You can spend more time looking at Arena Tutor‘s rankings during the draft as well 🙂

Conversely, if you’re in a hurry, Quick Draft could be better too. You don’t have to wait for the Draft pod to fill up, and you can make all the picks as fast as you want to.

But the biggest difference is the format. Very often, Quick Draft and Premier Draft are run with different sets. So which draft format would you have the most fun (or winning edge…) playing? After all, the games matter more than the draft, so you should probably just decide based on which format is better for you.

Now that we have discussed the most common draft formats on Arena, let’s get into detail on some Draft strategy basics.

Drafting Tips and Tricks

First, let’s talk about what you want your 40-card deck to look like. There’s a sweet spot for the ratio of creatures vs spells, the amount of lands in a deck, and for the converted mana costs (CMCs). We’ve got this handy a graph for you:

Source

Your “mana curve,” or simply “curve,” is a depiction of your cards spread out in piles based on their CMC. A typical draft deck should have lots of 2-drops and 3-drops, with fewer and fewer cards on the outside of your curve. Of course, you can play around with it a bit as you become more familiar with the cards, but usually you’ll want your deck to end up looking something like this. 

When you’re preparing for a draft, make sure to look over the set you’re going to be drafting. This will help you get familiar with the cards and what they do. Pay particularly close attention to the commons and uncommons in a set. These are the cards you will encounter the most, so knowing which ones to snap up and which ones to avoid beforehand will definitely pay off.

BREAD and Butter

Murder | Illustration by Allen Williams

A great acronym to remember during a draft is BREAD, which stands for Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, and Duds/Dregs. While BREAD is a very blunt way to view drafting and has fallen somewhat out of favor as the years have gone by, it’s definitely a decent place for a newbie to begin learning how to evaluate cards. Remembering this acronym during your draft might help you make better decisions on what to pick and what not to. Here’s a short and sweet explanation for each part:

• Bombs. These are cards that have to be answered by your opponent. If not, you’ll quickly win the game. They are also cards you’ll want to prioritize picking in a draft. Think of cards like Cavalier of Night, Chandra, Awakened Inferno, Nightpack Ambusher, Voracious Hydra, and Cavalier of Dawn.
• Removal. Your opponents will probably be playing a lot of creatures, so having an answer to them is crucial. Cards like Murder, Shock, Pacifism, Frost Lynx, and Rabid Bite will be your best friends when the time comes to deal with a creature. The key here is for removal to be efficient—i.e., cheap.
• Evasion. These are creatures that are hard to block and/or hard to deal with. Look for keywords such as flying, menace, unblockable, hexproof, double strike, etc. Here’s a few examples: Atemsis, All-Seeing, Yarok, the Desecrated, and Ripscale Predator.
• Aggro. With this, think of cards that are literally beaters. They will often win quick and fast. Think of the following: Scampering Scorcher, Lavakin Brawler, Audacious Thief, and Centaur Courser.
• Duds/Dregs. These are the cards that are usually picked last and are more likely than not going to end up in your deck because they rarely impact the game and are too situational. In this category are cards like Duress, Tale's End, Healer of the Glade, and Disenchant.

Things you also want to be on the lookout for are synergies between cards. For instance, a couple of great synergies in M20 are Lavakin Brawler and Goblin Smuggler, Corpse Knight and Raise the Alarm, or Warden of Evos Isle and Winged Words (or any other flier for that matter). Synergies and combos can be the key to not only building your deck, but also winning you games.

BO1 Draft Strategies

Feather, the Redeemed | Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

With Quick Draft, you’re only going to be playing one game in a match, so your picks have to be consistent with your deck’s main strategy for those BO1 matches. There’s no need to have a sideboard, so making picks based on that won’t get you very far as you’ll never have the opportunity to use them. 

What you should be trying to build is a deck that can be the best it can be for that one game. This usually means you can leave cards like Duress and Tectonic Rift to the side. They’ll more than likely have little impact on the game and are, more often than not, not useful enough often enough.

Also, cards that only work against specific colors like Devout Decree and Aether Gust have a slim chance of being useful. While the cheap costs and strong effects can be tempting, these are often just too narrow to be consistently effective. Of course it can happen that you face an opponent with the right colors, but it’s more likely these types of cards will rot away in your hand with you wishing you had something different to cast.

There are some exceptions to this rule: sometimes a particular format will have a strong enough showing of a certain kind of card that it can be worth it to put something you might otherwise sideboard in your main deck. With the prevalence of enchantments in Theros, cards like Revoke Existence and Natural End are more likely to come in handy.

You really need to have a good idea of what’s common enough in the format to deserve a slot in your deck, though, and occasionally these cards will still be a dead draw.

Instead, try looking for cards like Dread Presence, Warden of Evos Isle, Chandra's Outrage, or Leafkin Druid. These are cards that will almost always be useful regardless of the game state.

You want to prioritize having cards that are strong in a wide variety of decks, something that becomes a little more nuanced when you’re doing a traditional draft.

BO3 Draft Strategies

Risen Reef | Illustration by Johan Grenier

When you’re playing traditional draft, you have to think about picking cards for your sideboard along with building a great deck. You’ll be playing BO3 matches, so cards like Fry and Noxious Grasp can now become much more interesting. After game one, they can be just the push to tip the scales in your favor, because you’ll have the information of what the opponent is playing and can adjust your deck accordingly. 

The same rules still apply for your main deck. You want a deck that is resilient and smooth. This means that cards like Dread Presence and Lavakin Brawler are still great picks as they have a lasting effect on the board and have to be dealt with one way or another. The difficulty becomes balancing your main deck and your sideboard. Sometimes you’ll have to let a great sideboard card slide in favor of a great card your main deck can really use. Or even the opposite!

As you can see, there are a lot of things to consider. A lot of it comes down to practice, and the ability to not give up or abandon your goals to get your grip on drafting. To help you along your path we’ll be giving you a few general tips right now.

How Time and Timers Matter on Arena

Winds of Abandon | Illustration by Noah Bradley

Another important thing to know about Arena is how they deal with time. Time for a draft, time in a match, and length of a match. Let’s start with drafting time. If you’ve drafted in real life or on MTGO, you probably know that there is a time limit (or, in paper, simple pressure) for you to make a pick. This can work a little differently on Arena.

On Quick Draft in Arena you draft against bots, just like on Draftsim. The MTGA bots are patient and don’t mind waiting. They have nowhere to go anyway, so there’s no time limit. Read the cards or read a book, it doesn’t matter. When you’re ready to make your pick, the bot will still be there waiting. This gives you a great opportunity to look through the cards you’ve picked, check for synergies, and weigh your options, so take advantage of it and take your time.

And if you’re really stuck on a pick, you can always ask your friends or the Draftsim Discord for advice.

Within a BO1 match there is also no clock, as there is in MTGO, for instance. Instead they work with an hourglass symbol that shows you how many ‘time-outs’ you have. We talk about this a bit in our reporting players article as well. When you make quick decisions in a game and pass quickly, you’re saving time, literally. You’ll get more hourglasses and have more time to make decisions later when you might need it.

When you’re in a match and you’re taking a long time for the first time, a line will appear in the middle of the playing field. This is one of those hourglass ‘time-outs’ that has started for you. It will keep appearing, even as you pass through phases, for as long as you’re not making decisions quickly. Once you’ve made a certain amount of reasonably quick decisions the line will disappear again.

It looks like a fuse (or rope) that is slowly burning up from right to left. If you have more than one, you can use them all. But when you don’t have any left and it runs out, your turn will auto-pass to your opponent. If you do this again you automatically concede the game. 

As long as you make reasonable decisions and don’t take too long, you should have no trouble completing games. So there’s no need to worry, just play at a decent pace and don’t prolong the game unnecessarily.

Disconnecting During a Draft or a Match

If you happen to not feel like drafting, or disconnect during a draft, don’t worry. Arena remembers where you were in the draft or between matches and once you get back online it should start where you left off. 

This isn’t the case during a match, though. If you happen to experience connectivity problems, you’ll start using your time-outs. Once they’ve run out, you’ll start auto-passing as mentioned above and eventually lose the game and/or match. So, as long as you are in-between matches, you’re safe from anything happening to where you were. But disconnecting during a game does have repercussions e.g., you losing the game or match.

Chess Clocks Introduced for BO3

As of May 2019, you can run out of total match time in a BO3 match. See WotC’s State of the Beta announcement from May 2019 for more details.

Arena Bots and How They Draft (Generally)

Door to Nothingness | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

Now that you know you’re drafting against bots, it seems like a good time to mention that drafting against the Arena bots is very different than drafting against actual humans. This is because bots make different picks and seem to have certain preferences for some cards, or even colors, and disregard others almost always. This allows you to make picks and even build decks that most likely wouldn’t happen in real life. 

The trick is to get to know which cards get past the bots and which always seem to get snapped up by them. With every set this is a new puzzle.

Bots let a lot of the cards that are needed for these decks slip past them, which would not happen in real life. Some of the synergies represented in these is something that people tend to pick up on and will not get passed in the numbers that have been seen on MTG Arena.

The point to all this is that you can take advantage of these weird swings and turn your deck from mediocre to amazing by figuring out the bots’ current defects, so to speak. One way to do this is to try your own hand at it as you draft, another is to keep an eye on the web to what people are posting to get a whiff of what both bots and humans alike are up to on Arena.

Arena Economics 101: The Cost of Drafting

You might have noticed by now that we’ve mentioned both gold and gems as ways to pay for drafts (and other formats) on Arena. So, what does that entail? How do you get gold? How do you get gems? Let’s address this now.

Gold and Gems

Gold is MTG Arena’s way of rewarding you for your achievements. These can be match wins, completing quests, or event prizes.

By collecting gold you can play Arena free of cost, as most normal things can be paid for with gold such as drafts, booster packs, and other events.

If you’re someone who likes to enter special events, gems are your friend. Gems can be collected by buying them in the MTGA store, winning events, or collecting redundant rares and mythic rares in the Vault.

Gems will get you all the things gold can get you plus certain events, called gem-only events. Traditional Draft used to be a gem-only event, but Wizards is trying out a new event structure for these with the addition of player drafts. We may see them return to gem-only, or continue to be payable with gold. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Farming Resources

Villainous Wealth | Illustration by Erica Yang

If you’re planning on collecting gold on Arena to pay for drafts, there’s an optimal system to follow. The first four matches of each new day will get you the most gold, your rewards reduce quite quickly and become less efficient after that. Assuming you win four matches a day and also complete one quest, you will roughly rake in between 1,050 and 1,300 gold. This means you can do a draft about once or twice a week depending on where you land on the gold scale each day.

Be sure to check out our guide on how XP and daily rewards work to get the full rundown.

Purchasing Resources

While you do receive gems for winning matches and events, it’s definitely not as much as gold. So, if you’re a player who wants to participate in more than just one or two drafts a week or any other gem-only events, you have the option to buy gems. Here’s a peek at the current prices:

If you want a pro-tip from us, we suggest buying the $99.99 pack of gems especially if you’re planning on buying gems more often than not. Even if you have to save up to buy the 20,000 gem pack, we recommend you do that. It’ll save you the most money in the long run, both in your wallet and on the events. “Why?” you ask? We’ll show you. 

Here’s a quick calculation of how much gems cost between the 750 pack and the 20,000 one:

At 750 gems: $0.00675 per gem ($4.99 / 750)
At 20,000 gems: $0.00499 per gem ($99.99 / 20,000)

This means that if you buy the 20,000 pack instead of the 750 pack, you save (20,000 / 750) x $4.99 – $99.99 = a little over $33.

With that information, we can now also compare it to the gem prices set for events on Arena. The first price will be the price when you buy 750 packs of gems. The second price will be the price when you buy the 20,000 pack of gems.

Traditional/Premier Draft: 1,500 gems (1,500 x $0.00675 and 1,500 x $0.00499) =  $10.13 – $7.49. You save $2.64
Quick Draft: 750 gems (750 x $0.00675 and 750 x $0.00499) =  $5.06 – $3.74. You save $1.32
Sealed: 2,000 gems (2,000 x $0.00675 and 2,000 x $0.00499) =  $13.50 – $9.98. You save $3.52

Source

Should I Play Limited Events or Just Buy Packs?

As you get more familiar with Arena and are considering building decks and your collection, you’re faced with an interesting question. Should you draft more to get the desired cards, or just buy packs?

A general rule to use is to ask yourself what it is you want. Do you want to build a certain Standard deck requiring certain cards? Then it’s probably better to buy packs and start looking out for wildcards.

If, on the other hand, you just want to collect cards, then drafting is the way to go. You’ll get to see a great variety of cards during one draft and can pick and choose to your heart’s content. You won’t see or earn any Wildcards in a draft, so if you want something specific, you’ll either have to get lucky and open it or get enough gold and gems to convert into packs for Wildcards. 

Where Will Those Cards and Sets Go When Rotation Hits?

Atemsis, All-Seeing | Illustration by Ryan Pancoast

So, what happens on Arena once a set rotates? Great question! It’s fairly simple, as Arena follows the same rules as paper when it comes to Standard rotation. What’s legal in Standard is legal on Arena. As new sets come out, they will be added to Arena as well. Once each year, after the fall set releases, the four oldest sets in Standard rotate out. If you’re not familiar with this, check out our Standard rotation article for the rundown.

This means that when Throne of Eldraine was released, Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, and Core Set 2019 rotated out of Standard. The cards are no longer available in Standard play on Arena, but they are available for a new format type exclusive to Arena: Historic. 

Source

With drafting, it’s a little different in that you can’t draft all the sets in Standard. The three draft events stick with different sets, though. Premier draft and traditional draft both use the current (i.e., most recently released) set, while quick draft rotates its set every two weeks.

Rebalancing in Limited

Recently, Wizards of the Coast have done limited rebalancing for the first time, bringing over a systems feature previously exclusive to constructed. The change came in Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate, an arena-only set, and effected a few under-picked cards in its draft format. These changes only affected limited, and were thus a unique change.

Practice!

Speedway Fanatic | Illustration by Slawomir Maniak

One of the best things you can do for a draft is practice. Now, I know what you’re thinking, that all costs money! We’re here to tell you that that’s not true. We’ve created a draft simulator on our site that lets you draft all the way back to Dragons of Tarkir.

Not only can you draft as much as you want, you can also see example pick orders and tier lists on our site. This can help you improve both your drafting and decision making about which cards are the best picks and build-arounds.

Here’s a list of Arena sets that are available on Draftsim, a link to where you can draft each set, and a link where you can see the pick-order/tier list for each set. May it help you hone your drafting game well!

Current MTGA Standard and Alchemy Sets

March of the Machine

Draft it here

See pick-order/tier list here

Full Limited Set Review

MOM Ultimate Draft Guide

Phyrexia: All Will Be One

Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Full Limited Set Review
ONE Ultimate Draft Guide

The Brothers’ War (BRO)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Full Limited Set Review
BRO Ultimate Draft Guide

Dominaria United (DMU)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Full Limited set review
DMU Ultimate Draft Guide

Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate (HBG)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
HBG Ultimate Draft Guide

Streets of New Capenna (SNC)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Full Limited set review
SNC Ultimate Draft Guide

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (NEO)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Full Limited set review
NEO Ultimate Draft Guide

Innistrad: Crimson Vow (VOW)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Full Limited set review
VOW Ultimate Draft Guide here

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt (MID)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Full Limited set review
MID Ultimate Draft Guide here

Older “Historic” Sets

D&D: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms (AFR)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
AFR Ultimate Draft Guide here

Strixhaven: School of Mages (STX)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Strixhaven Ultimate Draft Guide here

Kaldheim (KHM)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Kaldheim Ultimate Draft Guide here

Zendikar Rising (ZNR)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Zendikar Rising Guide here

Core Set 2021 (M21)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Ultimate Core Set 2021 Guide here

Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths (IKO)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Ultimate Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths Guide here

Theros Beyond Death (THB)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here
Ultimate Theros Beyond Death Draft Guide here

Throne of Eldraine (ELD)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here

Core Set 2020 (M20)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here

War of the Spark (WAR)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier here

Ravnica Allegiance (RNA)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier here

Guilds of Ravnica (GRN)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here

Core Set 2019 (M19)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here 

Dominaria (DOM)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here

Rivals of Ixalan (RIX)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here

Ixalan (XLN)
Draft it here
See pick-order/tier list here

Draftsim also has an extensive library of (very fun) older sets that were released long before Arena was created. You can check out the complete listing here.

Draft Helpers and Other Tips

Another great tool to use are draft assistants for Arena. These are mostly fan-made trackers obtained from in-game logs and external sources. They can help you get more insight into drafting, what choices to make, and become a better player overall.

Of course we’re not exactly impartial, but we say that the best one you can integrate into Arena is Draftsim’s own Arena Tutor. It’s easy to use, turn on or off, and, best of all, it uses Draftsim’s ratings to dynamically guide your picks based on what you’ve already drafted! It’s a great tool to have on during drafting and enables you to make better picks from your packs.

An Arena draft using Arena Tutor

If you want some more help grasping the basics of Magic, you can also check out the Learn More section of Arena itself. It gives you links to great articles especially written for beginning players and can help you get your head around the great game that is Magic.

There are also a couple of great sites to check out and keep on the lookout for whenever a new set releases. These are articles on draft picks and set reviews. Some of my personal favorites come from Channel Fireball. The LSV limited set reviews are a great jumping off point for getting into a new set and can give you an easy and well thought-out first look of newly printed cards.

When it comes to draft picks, I’m very much into Frank Karsten’s articles. His latest one can be found right here. He uses a lot of information from other sites, including our own, to make a great pick-order and tier guide. Like our own pick order and tier guides, this can really help you get to know top cards quickly.

As the format gets more developed and people start to discover deeper draft strategies, Ryan Saxe’s articles on Star City Games are an excellent place to go to get cutting edge draft tech and analysis.

If you want improve both your drafting and deck building, check out Draftsim’s Twitter account, Limited Decklists. The account shares undefeated Draft and Sealed lists from some of the best—and most hardcore—drafters in the world every day. Many people also include their Draft logs so you can follow along pick-by-pick to see what you would have drafted yourself.

Last but not least, we want to touch up on watching other greats in the Draft game. This can also be a great tool in helping you become a better drafter as you can see what the pros pick and usually find out why. Follow MTG streams on Twitch or YouTube channels like Channel Fireball, Magic the Gathering, Ben Stark, and Magic: the Gathering Esports to find great content on Arena drafts to continually up your game. 

Speaking of Ben Stark, if you are really serious about getting better about limited, he has a comprehensive course on the topic at Spikes Academy. You should definitely check it out if you want focused content to help you improve.

Be sure to check out if your favorite players have channels out there that talk about drafting on Arena. If it’s a person you love to see play, you can pick up a lot of things from them on how to get better by watching them do their thing on their channel. Keep exploring and you’ll find there is a lot out there to help you become the best you can be.

Time for the Last Pick

Omniscience | Illustration by Jason Chan

With that, we’ve come to the end of our guide to make you a better drafter on MTG Arena. We hope you enjoyed the read and, most of all, found it helpful. 

If you like this guide and our website, and would like to see more epic content like this in the future, you can support us over on Patreon. We appreciate it a ton, because there’s nothing we like more than providing you with great articles and software for the game we all love to play.

See you next time!