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Magic Online Draft Pods

For basic information about drafting, please visit the sanctioned formats page .

To help describe how drafts pods work in Magic Online, let's look at a group of 18 players who have joined a Thursday Night Magic Online draft. Once the event starts, the group is divided up into pods. Using the chart below, we find that there will be two pods, Draft Pod A consisting of 8 players and Draft Pod B Consisting of 10 players.

After players are assigned to pods, each pod is then considered its own draft. This means players will only draft with players in their own pod and, after drafting and deck building, players will only be paired for matches with players in their own pod.

Correct pairings:

Player 1 from Draft Pod A versus Player 8 from Draft Pod A

Player 3 from Draft Pod B versus Player 9 from Draft Pod B

Incorrect pairing:

Player 5 from Draft Pod A versus Player 5 from Draft Pod B

It is important to note that while the system tries to reduce the total number of byes when it pods, pods that have more or less than 8 players may have byes or pairing behavior that is unexpected (particularly in single elimination drafts).

For instance, if Player 1 from Draft Pod A and Player 10 from Draft Pod B suddenly drop from our example Thursday Night Magic Online event during drafting, both Draft Pods now have an odd number of players. When pairing matches for the first round, one player in each draft pod will be awarded a bye instead of those two players playing each other (since Draft Pod A players can't play against Draft Pod B players). Though byes will result in less play time, they're considered wins when determining prizes.

While draft pods from the same event are considered separate for both drafting and matchmaking decisions, it is very important to note that they are part of the same event. This means that if Draft Pod A finishes deckbuilding before Draft Pod B, Draft Pod A still has to wait for Draft Pod B to finish deck building before the next first play round will begin.

Another common example of drafts with multiple pods are the 64-player 'Top 8' drafts. These use the standard podding rules, but since there are exactly 64 players for these events, they will be evenly divided into 8 pods containing 8 players. There are two key differences between these events and the Thursday Night Magic Online draft above: 1.) 64-player drafts are single elimination and 2.) the winner of each pod advances to a separate 'Top 8' draft.

Because the byes in single elimination events are automatically assigned to the first round to ensure that the second subsequent rounds do not have byes, single elimination events with an odd number of players can create some confusing bye situations.

For instance, 64 players join a Scars of Mirrodin 64-player draft and are separated into 8 pods of 8. In Draft Pod A, Player 1 drops during drafting leaving 7 players. In the first round of this pod, 1 player will have a bye and the other 6 players will be paired. After the first round 4 players will advance to round two.

In Draft Pod B, Player 1 and Player 2 drop during drafting, leaving 6 players. In the first round of this pod, 2 players will have a bye and the other 4 players will be paired. While this may seem wrong, after the first round 4 players will advance to round two. If the first round had paired all 6 players then only 3 players would advance, requiring a bye in the second round.

The separate 'Top 8' Draft will fire after all draft pods have finished round three. Also, since the first 8 Draft Pods and the 'Top 8' are part of the same event, prizes will not be granted until the entire event (including the 'Top 8' Draft) has completed.

For more information on how draft pods work, there is the DCI floor Rules (Tournament Rules, Page 30). Which Magic Online is created to follow.

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