The Ultimate Guide to MTG Arena Remix Draft

Last updated on April 2, 2024

Updraft Elemental – Illustration by Raf Sarmento

Right before a new set drops and you have a fresh Draft environment to play and experiment with, players on Arena often get a little bored of the previous set. Wizards then 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 brand new version of these ‘bonus’ formats coming to Arena with Remix Drafts. What are Remix Drafts, though? And what do you need to know before jumping into one? Let’s find out!

What is MTG Arena Remix Draft?

Remix Draft is a new way to draft 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). This means that when drafting the ‘set’ you get to keep the cards that you draft!

The first Remix draft that we can see is an Artifact themed event, with each of the ten two-color pairs caring about a different aspect of artifact themes (such as Izzet Pirate Artifact aggro or Rakdos Artifact Sacrifice). The cards included are all cards previously available on Arena, and can come from pretty much any set.

The event costs/rewards are virtually identical to that of a normal Premier Draft or Traditional Draft, each costing 1,500 gems or 10,000 coins. You even win some prizes including gems, packs, and play-in points.

Remix Draft Rewards

The rewards for Remix Drafts are pretty much identical to any other Premier or Traditional Draft, 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 BO3 Rewards

Remix Draft BO1 Rewards

There are a few differences to keep in mind here, though. First off, there’s only one rare per pack, so you’re going to get fewer rares from the draft than you would from a format that uses Play Boosters. Also, if you’re mainly a Standard player, there are likely many cards in the set that you’re not interested in.

Of course, there’s 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 might give you some inspiration to brew something new in a format you’ve not played before. And there’s obviously the value from playing a new, fun, format, when other Limited formats may be getting stale.

Versions of Remix Draft

Remix Draft: Artifacts

Remix Draft: Artifacts is the first Remix Draft format, and, you guessed it, cares about Artifacts! It contains 380 cards that care about Artifacts from all sets currently 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 instants/sorceries. But there are other things that would be interesting to explore. How about a draft made up entirely of Multicolor cards? Or only Blue cards? There is a lot of scope to something like this, and the possibilities will only get wider as the card pool on the client grows.

Remix Draft Strategy

We’ve not had an opportunity to draft the Remix Draft yet, but my approach would be the same for any high synergy set/cube. With artifacts in particular I’m going to be making 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 artifact 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.

As ever, it always pays to have something like Arena Tutor active when you’re using the client. It can give you some good data to come back to after 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 you get to keep the cards you draft! Also, in a Cube, usually there’s only one of each card included in any draft pool. I don’t believe this restriction exists in a Remix draft, so you can end up with duplicates of certain cards, particularly at lower rarities.

The power level is also lower than that of a Cube draft, as there are not multiple rare cards in every single pack. You should still be able to put together some sweet synergies, though!

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/coins to allow you to keep your cards from there. Some players were put off from Cube because of this, though, so Wizards introduced this as a solution!

Is Remix Draft Ranked or Unranked?

Premier Drafts of Remix Drafts are ranked, although Traditional Drafts aren’t, just like they would be in a normal draft format. This is a difference to Cube drafts, which weren’t ranked at all.

Remix Review

Tidy Conclusion | Illustration by Bastien L. Deharme

Are Remix Drafts going to be a hit? Well, time will tell, but 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. The article from Wizards says that these formats are designed by a single person, so it’s an individual’s take on a card list using assets that are already programmed into the client, which is cool.

Will you be trying out a Remix Draft? Or can you think of any other cool spins on one of these drafts? Let me know in the comments below your thoughts, and also let us know how you get on in your drafts in the official Draftsim Discord! See you next time.