MTG Drafting, A Crash Course

These are quick instructions and tips I've accumulated to help you draft better. This was all human written.

There are 3 major phases to playing draft:

The "Draft" itself
Construction
Playing/tweaking

Drafting

TLDR: You need to read the full process. Tips can be summarized as draft 1-3 big game winner cards, draft removal, and draft 2 colors and maybe a 3rd as a backup color.

Draft Process

Pre-draft: You will sit down in a large circle of up to 8 people. You will receive 3 packs. Do not open them until instructed. When instructed to open your first pack, then look at all the cards and you can remove the "ad" cards if they are there.

Pack 1: What will happen from here is you will be passing to your LEFT for pack 1. Take your card that will be your first pick and then pass the stack of cards FACE DOWN. Take the pack that will come from your RIGHT and take a card. When passing, it is safest to not queue up more than 1 pack to the player you are passing to. This is because we do not absolutely want to mix up the packs at all. I would suggest holding your pack with your pick ready to remove (but not actually removed). You may look at the cards you have drafted but be VERY careful not to mix the pack and your cards together. I would suggest sleeving your cards you have drafted to remove this ambiguity. This draft pattern will continue until the packs have 0 cards. You should have exactly 15 cards. Count to verify before the next round.

Pack 2: Open pack 2 and you will be passing to your RIGHT for pack 2. Repeat the process as in pack 1, but considering you will ALWAYS be passing RIGHT for the entirety of pack 2.

Pack 3: Open pack 3 and you will be passing to your LEFT for pack 3, just like pack 1. Repeat the process as in the other packs, but considering you will ALWAYS be passing LEFT for the entirety of pack 3.

Draft Tips

I've listed draft tips in the form of "phase: tip" to let you know when a tip applies.

Pre-draft: Consider players 1 or 2 steps away from you to your left and right. They may or may not have announced colors that they're going to force to draft, or what they're known for. Do not assume that's what they are doing, but just keep it in the back of your head.
Pre-draft: Read up about the set, but focus on what are the value (gameplay) cards which can be seen in these articles: [FIN] Draft Super Value, Hidden Gems and Avoid Over Rated Cards in FINAL FANTASY According to 17Lands : r/MagicArena and Final Fantasy Draft Guide - Card Kingdom Blog at the bottom.
Pack 1, Pick 1 (P1P1): This is probably the most important pick as it will most of the time determine what you will be playing. If you have drafted a very "playable" (see the tip for playable) rare or mythic, that's probably going to be what you drafting. If the rare or mythic you see is not very good, you should always consider removal a top pick. Removal is considered anything that will destroy a creature or an enchantment that makes a creature useless in combat. If you possess neither removal or a good rare/mythic, then you've unfortunately probably got a bad pack. I can't give any good general advice, and your next best card will depend on the set.
Pack 1, Pick 1: Observe what other cards are "good" and what colors are they in this pack. Your pack composition in P1P1 is important because these colors will also determine what color(s) people drafting to your left pick. You can use this to your advantage. If you've got a pack with 4 "good" cards and there's 1 blue card and 3 red cards of relatively equal goodness, you should probably draft the blue card. This is because if you leave the 3 red cards up for draft, you know the 1-2 players to your left will at least be playing red. When you go to pack 2, those players to your left will be passing you cards. They're less likely to be playing blue since you gave them red cards.
Continuous through pack 1 drafting: Watch the color combinations. There's always a chance that you picked a very crowded color and you may have to pivot on the fly. I've usually settled on a second color midway through pack 1, but I have pivoted as late as mid pack 2 because I figured out there was just more availability in one color.
Pack 1 and pack 2 drafting: Try to settle on 2 colors early. You can consider a 3rd backup color (especially if you get removal) as a potential pivot or to splash it.
- What is splashable? A card is splashable usually only if it has 1 specific mana color. For example, 1WWW and 2WW are probably not splashable. 3W is splashable due to it's single white mana required. If you are in R and G, want to splash white, and you have a casting cost of WRG, that card is also splashable.
All packs: Make sure you find wincons (win conditions) that will cost usually above or equal to 4 mana. These will almost always be big creatures with some sort of avoidance (flying, first strike & lifelink, etc. keywords) that can win you the game. Most games are won via continuous combat rather than control. You are looking for 1-3 wincons to draft.
All packs: If you really get stuck, just draft 2 colors especially if they look like they are "open" (you see lots of the same colors undrafted late into pack 1 or pack 2.)
All packs: Try to make sure you draft low CMC cards. You can't have only big stuff or people will get free damage for the first 3-4 turns. Something like: 6x 1 CMC, 5x 2 CMC, 4x 3 CMC, 3x 4CMC, and the rest 5+ CMC would be very reasonable.
All packs: Draft removal. There's rare situations where you have too much.

Building

TLDR: 24 cards and 16 land is where you should be at.

Building Process

You must build at minimum a 40 card deck. It can go over, it's highly suggested you don't.

Building Tips

When you build your deck, split by color to see what the breakdown of your lands should be. Cards with double pips like WW will push your deck more into that color than a 1W would. In a 2 color deck, a 1WG would be neutral.
Card sets are designed in a way to synergize well with each other. We are lucky that FF was rather well designed so there's not a strategy you should try to force.
Continuing from drafting CMC cards, build the deck so you gradually ramp up in CMC.
If you have time, goldfish (play solitaire and play a few turns out) your deck to see if you have enough mana or need less mana. You should feel like you curve (be able to play at least 1 card that is not a land per turn) out.
Consider that 3rd color to splash if you have removal spells in that color. If I happened to have 2, I would definitely splash it.

Playing

TLDR: Games are played generally 2/3. You can change your deck with your cards in-between any game, permanently.

Playing Tips

You can go watch your opponent and adjust your deck for them if you know you're playing them next.