Pick Order Power Conflict

Thanks to my newest friend, Clockwork Servant, I've been able to break out of quite a slump in this format.  While I had previously identified that I wanted to be mono-color as often as possible, my pick order wasn't reflecting it as I was trying to take "good cards" early.

What Changes a Pick Order?

In general, a first pick involves taking the best card out of a pack.  The definition you should have of best card should be the card that has the highest correlation between inclusion in your deck and the highest winrate.  Every pick in every draft is spent in the hopes of getting as much equity as possible, culminating into a deck at the end that will win and lose largely based on how strong it is, with your own play often coming secondary.

A few factors will exhibit some sway on what a first pick will look like:

Long Term Factors:

• Cards that require building around, or cards that scale positively with total number of copies.  Good examples of this would be The Magic Mirror, as a powerful card when built around, and Seven Dwarves, as a card that scales with how many copies you can get.  Obviously we'd never first pick Seven Dwarves, but cards of these two classes get much better the more time and picks you have remaining to see more of what they want.
• Cards that are flexible.  Flexible cards often sacrifice a lot of power, but weighed against their odds of actually making the final deck get much better.  Stonecoil Serpent would be a poor example here as it's just too powerful, but Scalding Cauldron works great as it is a relatively average role player in most decks, even shining once in a while, and moves up so much in value because it can go anywhere.
• Color Balance in a given environment.  Although this has its exceptions, generally good cards of a bad color suffer the consequences.  In formats where the worst color is reasonable this can reverse itself, as picking a few powerful cards of a given color becomes like a "license" to draft that color, for example Serra the Benevolent in Modern Horizons. For Magic Arena players, stick to drafting the good colors.

Long term factors make up the vast majority of what influences an early pick.  Time at this point is your largest resource; spend it.

Pack Texture

•  A pack heavy on cards of 1-2 specific colors, which is a pack that will often cause fighting at the draft table, specifically over colors thought to be "strong".  A pack with 5 very strong Black cards and one slightly less strong Blue card should influence you toward taking the slightly less powerful Blue card, to avoid fighting over Black with your neighbors.
• Self-contained combos, such as Witch's Oven and Cauldron Familiar.  Having the ability to take a card that combos with another, with knowledge that you'll likely get the other half back on the wheel, can substantially effect a draft pick.

Pick order changes based on pack texture occur substantially less often than those based on long term factors, likely less than 5% of first picks should be affected.

Effects in Throne of Eldraine

My current philosophy in Throne of Eldraine is that the vast majority of early picks should be non-committal or cards you could reasonably splash in a mono-colored deck off 3 lands.  Epic Downfall, for instance, is a card I previously rated highly but will now first pick out of the vast majority of packs.  Clockwork Servant is a card that has skyrocketed in my pick-order, as despite it sending you toward mono-colored decks, that's exactly where I want to end up, and I don't care at this point which of the 5 colors I get to be.

With this change, I've got to the point where I'm taking Scorching Dragonfire over Bake into a Pie and never taking Syr Konrad the Grim at all.  Black has been largely undraftable for me lately, which has been a huge influence on why I've stopped taking the BB cards early.  I will for example, take Clackbridge Troll first, but it's because I've started to rate it just a touch above Syr Konrad, so it's just too good to pass.  The rares in this set are just better than I've been giving them credit for, and I'd recommend starting with whatever one you open if you're unsure what's best.

My current pick order for my first few picks looks something like this:

1st.  Best Rares/Mythics: Realmcloaked Giant, Stonecoil Serpent, The Great Henge
2nd. Splashable, strong uncommons: Epic Downfall, Order of Midnight, Slaying Fire, Clockwork Servant above all of these.
3rd. Strong Hybrid cards, Rampart Smasher, Loch Dragon, Arcanist Owl
4th. Splashable Removal: Scorching Dragonfire, Outmuscle, Reave Soul, Scalding Cauldron over all of these
5th Strong Uncommons/uncommons: Syr Konrad, Bake into a Pie, etc.  Largely cards with 2 colored symbols in their cost

While there's plenty of cards left to point out in each category, it'd get incredibly hard to read if I was just writing a giant list of cards.  Expect a visual pick-order at some point in the next weeks, and if I get ambitious I might do one for card rankings as well.

I would not even for a second argue that Epic Downfall is better than Syr Konrad, but I would say that when weighed against the odds it makes your deck at the end, you get more equity by taking Epic Downfall higher.  Once I'm past the first few picks and I've gained some information, I'm much more likely to just take the strongest cards I see, which has a weird effect of reverting my pick order to one based on power rather than flexibility.

Before engaging in this strategy, have a good idea of what each mono-colored deck needs to look like to be successful, as the entire point is to end up in mono-colored decks as often as possible.  Ending up consistently mono-color when you don't know how to build them won't be anywhere near as effective than drafting in a more traditional manner.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg