I play Magic drafts a lot. And I often end up giving new players a crash course on how to play. So I thought I’d write down what I tell people, figuring it’s useful info to anybody new to drafting, but familiar with Magic.

Drafting your cards

1. Take creatures and creature removal. All else pales in comparison.
2. Try to avoid more than two colors. Don’t bust your balls making a one color deck work. In the first case, your mana will be unpredictable. In the second, you’ll end up putting in too many suboptimal cards just to have smooth mana.
3. Try to know your primary color (or one of your primary colors) after the first pack. Ideally know both colors after the second.
4. Don’t be afraid to change colors in the second pack. Be afraid to change colors in the third.
5. Card valuation is much more generous in draft. Generally it’s a slower format since decks aren’t well-tuned, so a five or six casting cost card is playable. But obviously don’t overdo them.
6. Creatures with evasion (fear, flying, landwalk) are extremely strong.
7. A well-rounded deck is stronger than a weak deck with a couple bombs.
8. It’s not worth hate drafting (picking a card you can’t use just so no one else can) much. A mediocre card you do play with is far more useful to you than a bomb that you may or may not see in one game.
9. Watch which colors are being picked by the people ‘feeding’ you (passing the packs to you). Don’t fight them for those colors. You’ll be rewarded by good picks on the third pack. Neighbors have a vested interest in cooperating for colors so that they all have good decks. Like I said, hate drafting doesn’t pay — just focus on your own problems. You won’t play them first anyway — you’ll be playing the people across the table.
10. Likewise, send consistent signals during the first pack. You’ll regret not doing so during the second. If you get handed two strong black cards and one sorta-strong white card, prefer the white. Your next two downstream neighbers will ideally take a black each and fight over the color. Rather than you taking a black and one of them fighting you for it.

Building your deck

1. Only play with 40 cards.
2. You want about 15 creatures and 17 to 18 lands. 17 is pretty safe if you’re playing with just two colors. Try 18 with three. But really, salt to taste. That leaves around 7 to 8 non-creature cards, or ‘tricks.’
3. To figure out how many lands of each type to use, try the following algorithm. It’s worked very well for me in the past.
   1. For each color in your deck (say, green), go through all your cards, counting how many green mana symbols appear on the card. If a card costs 1GG and has two abilities, each costing G, that counts as four. If there are alternate casting costs, only count the more costly.
   2. Divide by two, rounding up.
   3. Add one.
   4. This is the amount of green mana sources (likely forests) you need to support your green. Of course, fudge with this number as appropriate. It’s just a decent approximation.
4. If you have a non-land source of mana (e.g. some artifact source), it counts as half a land. So you could take out a land slot if you had two of them.
5. If you splash a color (i.e. including a very small amount of a color — say one or two cards) it’s probably best to have at least three mana sources for it.
6. It’s OK to play with more than 40 cards. Generally, you’re going to be stuffing things you ‘need’ into the deck — artifact removal, creature removal, combat tricks — and you don’t always want to remove a creature to do it since it would through off your ratios. Keeping good ratios is probably more important than the 40 card cap. Do this with caution, as my above number-specific advice is targeted at a 40-card deck.

And feel free to break any of the above rules. No rule is hard and fast when it comes to Magic.