Last updated on April 26, 2025
Updraft Elemental | Illustration by Raf Sarmento
Before a new set drops and you get a fresh Draft environment to play and experiment with, players on Arena often get a little bored of the previous set. Wizards sometimes brings back older draft formats, or a Cube to the Limited play queues on the client in this case, to help tide players over until the release date.
Well, there’s a fresh version of these ‘bonus’ formats on Arena with Remix Drafts. What are Remix Drafts, though? And what do you need to know before you ready up for one? Let’s find out!
What is MTG Arena Remix Draft?
Remix Draft is a draft variant on Arena. It’s a bit like Cube, although packs are more similar to normal draft packs, as they each only have one rare (so more like draft boosters than play boosters). When you draft the curated ‘set’ you get to keep the cards that you draft!
The first-ever Remix draft was an Artifact themed event, with each of the 10 two-color pairs caring about a different aspect of artifact themes (such as Izzet Pirate Artifact aggro, Golgari Food, or Rakdos Artifact Sacrifice). The cards are all previously available on Arena, and can come from pretty much any set. A huge pool to have knowledge about compared to a typical single set you draft on Arena.
The event costs/rewards are virtually identical to that of a normal Premier Draft or Traditional Draft, with entry fees of 1,500 gems or 10,000 gold.
Remix Draft Rewards
Angelic Reward | Illustration by Denman Rooke
The rewards for Remix Drafts are the same as typical Premier Drafts, only you get packs from the Remix Draft ‘set’ instead of other sets. If you’re wondering whether it’s ‘worth it’, thinking about these drafts is probably a good place to start. Do you usually feel the drafts on Arena worth it? Remember that you get to keep the cards you draft in these events, which you don’t in a Cube draft.
Remix Draft BO1 Rewards
| Wins | Gold | Packs |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | 2,200 | 6 |
| 6 | 1,800 | 5 |
| 5 | 1,600 | 4 |
| 4 | 1,400 | 3 |
| 3 | 1,000 | 2 |
| 2 | 250 | 2 |
| 1 | 100 | 1 |
| 0 | 50 | 1 |
There are a few differences to keep in mind here, though. First off, there’s only one rare per pack, so you get fewer rares from the draft than you would from a format that uses play boosters. Also, if you mainly play Standard, there are likely many cards in the set that you’re not interested in.
Of course, there are positives to the wider card pool. You get to try cards that you maybe didn’t know existed, or haven’t gotten to play with before. It is a good source of inspiration to brew something new in a format you’ve not played before. And there’s the value in playing against others that want a unique, fun, format, when other Limited formats may get stale.
Versions of Remix Draft
Remix Draft: Artifacts
Remix Draft: Artifacts was the first Remix Draft format, and, you guessed it, cares about artifacts! It contained 380 cards that care about artifacts from all sets on Arena’s card list, with each color pair themed around them in a different way.
Potential Future Remix Drafts
There is a good amount of space left to widen out Remix Drafts in future. Obvious choices would be something similar to artifacts, such as a draft that cares about enchantments, or sorceries. But there are other things that would be interesting to explore. How about a draft made up entirely of hybrid mana cards? Or only green cards? Or the only non-creature spells are instants? There is a lot of scope to something like this, and the possibilities only get wider as the Timeless card pool on the client grows.
Remix Draft Strategy
Stolen Strategy | Illustration by Wonchun Choi
Each pool of Remix Draft is different, so my approach would be the same for any high synergy set/cube. If the number of unique cards is 290, you'll see cards with consistency more like a Standard set (which have 261 cards). With artifacts in particular, I make sure that I keep an eye on the number of payoff cards I have to go with the artifacts themselves. You don’t want to end up with a bunch of cards that need artifacts without any way to make them in the first place! Other than that, I’d probably stick to two colors for the most part, although with a bunch of colorless cards it may make it easier to make use of a greedier mana base.
It always pays to have something like Arena Tutor active when you use MTGA. Get tips and card ratings while you draft, and aid for during your matches. It can help you It can show you some good data when you return from your draft, allowing you to learn more from each event you enter than you could without it!
Arena Remix Draft vs. Cube
Remix Drafts are very similar to a Cube, although one key difference with these on Arena is that the events aren’t Phantom, meaning the cards you draft are added to your collection. Usually in a Cube, there’s only one of each card included in any draft pool. This doesn't apply in a Remix draft, so you can end up with duplicates of certain cards, particularly at lower rarities, and results in more consistent decks.
The power level is also lower than that of a Cube draft, as there are not multiple rare cards in every single pack. This makes synergies more important to develop rather than rely on raw card power as you draft your deck
Do You Keep Cards From Remix Draft?
Yes! You get to keep the cards from the Remix Draft. Cube is kept as a phantom draft, as there are lots of rares in any pack, so it would have to cost a lot of gems/gold to allow you to keep your cards from there. Some players are put off from Cube because of this, so Wizards introduced this as a solution!
Is Remix Draft Ranked or Unranked?
Premier Drafts of Remix Drafts are ranked, just like they would be in a normal draft format. This is a difference to Cube drafts, which aren’t ranked at all.
Remix Draft Review
Backdraft Hellkite (Commander 2019) | Illustration by Rudy Siswanto
Are Remix Drafts a hit? I love them and it’s nice to see a bit of innovation, especially in a way where it doesn’t look like it’s taking much resources to develop on Arena. Wizards has fun seeing what you all do with their cards, so let's enjoy the cool curated card lists and maybe build some new Timeless decks after the next remix draft.
Will you try out a Remix Draft? Or can you think of any other cool spins on one of these drafts? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and also let us know about your prized pools from your drafts in the official Draftsim Discord! See you next time.
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