Hello friend, and welcome to yet another draft guide. Whether you’re here to learn how to draft your favorite heroes and villains or simply to get an edge in the format, you’ve come to the right place!
Our full Super Heroes Draft Guide covers all the big picture stuff you need to know in order to win games in this format. Below you’ll find the best commons, mechanics, archetype overview, power rankings, additional tips, as well as a complete tier list.
So, let’s suit up and start preparing for your battles to come.
Table of Contents
Marvel Super Heroes Draft Mechanics
There are four relevant mechanics for Super Heroes draft:
- Power-up
- Teamwork
- Connive
- Plan
The first two are probably the most defining for this format, while the other two are more limited to specific archetypes.
Let’s take a look at each of them and explore how they affect the format.
Power-Up
Power-up is an activated ability that appears on creatures and can be activated only once. If you activate a creature’s power-up ability on the turn it enters the battlefield, it costs less to activate. (Reduced by its mana cost.)
The ability always adds +1/+1 counters on the creature (serving as a reminder that it’s been activated), but also features a variety of bonuses.
Creatures with power-up can be found in all five colors, and this is the most heavily represented mechanic with 24 cards in total.
Example
You can play Bold Biochemist early and if it survives long enough, you can pay six mana to activate its ability. You put a +1/+1 counter on it and draw two cards.
Of course, you could play it on a later turn. If you also activate its ability on that same turn, you only need to pay four generic mana.
Essentially, these creatures are almost like split cards. On one side there’s a cheaper creature with activated ability, on the other there’s a more expensive creature with ability tacked onto it. Thus, power-up creatures provide both early and late game plays.
Tips for Using Power-Up
For the most part, you’ll just want to play these creatures straight up, without waiting for enough mana to activate them in the same turn. There are a couple of exceptions, though.
If you’re only a mana short to play and activate them on the same turn. If you play Bold Biochemist with five mana, and your opponent destroys it, before your next turn, you aren’t getting the cards. However, if you wait the turn, and activate it right away, you’re still drawing the cards, even if your opponent destroys the creature in response.
The second scenario would be with a powerful effect that you really don’t want to miss. For example Captain Marvel, Earth’s Protector becomes much harder to remove when there’s an indestructible counter on it.
Teamwork
Teamwork is an additional cost that appears on some instants and sorceries. You can pay the teamwork cost by tapping your creatures with high enough total power. If you do so, your spell gets an additional benefit.
There are 12 teamwork cards, spread across all five colors.
Example
Murdock’s Crusade allows you to exile a creature with toughness four or greater or exile an enchantment that costs four or more.
When you cast this spell, you may pay the additional cost of teamwork 4. This means that you may tap any number of creatures you control with total power four or greater. The reward for doing so? You get both effects.
How Useful is Teamwork?
Typically, teamwork cards are good, if they’re playable even without paying the extra cost. Thankfully, that’s the case for most of them.
If you can play a creature and use it to pay for teamwork cost on the same turn, that’s great, as you aren’t “wasting” an attack.
If you want to consistently pay for your teamwork cards, you’ll want to include lots of creatures in your deck. Naturally, the higher the teamwork cost, the harder it will be to enable it.
The biggest payoff for this mechanic is Agent Maria Hill. That’s a great card, even if you only activate it once.
Connive
Whenever your creature connives, you draw a card, then discard a card. If you discard a nonland card this way, you put a +1/+1 counter on that creature.
All cards with connive are in black and blue.
Example
Red Room Recruit is a pretty straightforward card: it enters, it connives. So, you draw a card then discard a card. If you discard a nonland card, you put a +1/+1 counter on Red Room Recruit.
As you can imagine, this allows you to improve the quality of cards in your hand and occasionally also grows your creatures.
If you’re playing with connive cards, you don’t want to play that last land card in your hand if you don’t need it right away. This way, you’ll be able to discard it later to a connive card if you draw something better.
You’ll find more about synergies with this mechanic later, when we discuss the blue-black archetype.
Plan
There’s also a new enchantment subtype called plan. Each plan asks you to do a specific thing for a small bonus and a plan counter. After it acquires enough counters, you sacrifice it and unlock a larger benefit.
There are just 7 plans in the set. Each color gets an uncommon, plus there are two more black rares. While they don’t have a massive effect on the format, it’s still good to know about them.
Example
Claim the Kingdom triggers whenever you play a land. You put a +1/+1 counter on one of your creatures and a plan counter on this enchantment. When it gets the fourth plan counter, you sacrifice it and put an indestructible counter on one of your creatures.
There aren’t many specific interactions with this mechanic, except for The Masters of Evil, which can tutor for a plan. (Albeit that’s probably not the most efficient use of your mana.)
Best Commons for Super Heroes Draft
Knowing which commons are relevant is pretty neat, particularly for your first few drafts. With so many cards in the pack, there’s usually not enough time to read all of them. Knowing what matters at a glance can help with that.
We’ll discuss the higher rarity cards in the later sections, but for now it’s all about commons.
White
1. Hero in Training
If a creature draws a card when it enters, it’s typically very good. The only exceptions would be creatures that are massively understated.
However, Hero in Training isn’t one of those. For three mana, you get a 2/2, a card, and perhaps even a couple of life. All of this makes it for an early front-runner for the best common — not only in white, but in the set as a whole.
2. Web Up
We’ve seen various Oblivion Ring effects over the years, and they’re always at least playable. There’s no reason for this to change in Super Heroes draft. Three mana to remove any problematic permanent is just that good.
3. Helicarrier Strike
The rate of two damage for a single mana is usually very serviceable. It’s a bit annoying that you can only remove a creature that’s participating in combat, but the teamwork bonus makes up for it.
Dealing four damage so cheaply allows you to deal with a bigger creature and cast another spell in the same turn. That’s an excellent way to get ahead in the game.
Honorable Mention
You need two drops, and Agent of Atlas is a nice option for that slot. Prowess allows for some bluff attacks, where your opponent is afraid to block with their 2/3, as you might eat it for free.
Blue
1. S.H.I.E.L.D. Deployment Drone
You can compare this card to aforementioned Hero in Training. Instead of drawing a card, you’re putting an additional creature in play. Drone also flies and is an artifact, both relevant effects in this format.
2. We Say Thee Nay!
Cheap counterspells like Quench are usually quite handy. They are one of the best options to get ahead on tempo, when you’re on the draw. (Allowing you to counter their three drop on turn 3.)
Sometimes they even counter a more expensive card later in the game, and are one of the only ways to cleanly deal with the best cards in the set. For example, removal spells won’t be as useful against cards like Doctor Doom.
The downside is pretty obvious. The longer the game goes, the easier it will be for the opponent to pay the two mana. Furthermore, experienced players will be able to play around it.
Thankfully, the teamwork massively mitigates that. Paying four mana is hard to do even in the late game, so you’ll typically be able to counter something, even if it means you’ll need to tap one of your creatures to do so.
3. Frozen in Ice
A blue removal spell, not as good as the counterspell, you’ve seen above, but still a neat way to deal with creatures that have already resolved.
Honorable Mention
Typically, cards like Trickster’s Stratagem are instants and fairly useful. It being a sorcery significantly hurts it, but at least you get some additional value with connive.
Black
1. Cruel Alliance
This would be a somewhat okay removal spell without the teamwork upgrade. However, once you add the part of dealing with any creature and gaining three life, you’re in for a very desirable effect.
2. Hour of Defeat
Hour of Defeat might seem a bit clunkier, but only because of its higher mana cost. It’s more flexible as an instant, and surveil is also a real benefit at that stage of the game.
3. Widow’s Bite
The top 3 best black commons wrap up with yet another removal spell. This one will mostly be used for the -2/-2 part. If you can set up a scenario, where you’re also benefiting from deathtouch, it’s obviously great, but don’t be too focused on that.
Depending on how the Super Heroes draft plays out, these three removal spells could change their rankings. Most likely, you’ll want a mix of them, as each comes with its own pros and cons.
Honorable Mention
HYDRA Troopers go from whatever to amazing, depending on how easily you can put a couple of creatures in your graveyard. If you can do so consistently, you’ll want to play multiple copies (they also kinda enable themselves). If not, you should avoid them.
Red
1. Lightning Strike
Lightning Strike has appeared in many draft formats, and it’s been passable at worst and amazing at best. It’s a cheap instant that deals with most of the cheap creatures, and can even finish an opponent in a pinch.
It’s not unreasonable to think it will move down in the rankings in the upcoming weeks, but at the start of the format, it’s our pick for the best red common.
2. HULK SMASH!
You’re mostly playing this card for the second effect. It’s a cheap way to deal with potentially even larger creatures, but you’ll want to make sure your opponent can’t remove your thing in response.
The first effect will come up occasionally, and when it does it will feel great. Still, it’s not the main part of the card by any means.
3. Crimson Operative
We talked about how good creatures that draw cards are. Operative doesn’t quite do that, but comes pretty close to it. The fact that you can play the card until the end of your next turn makes it really easy to do so.
Honorable Mention
Repulsor Blast is a fine removal spell, with some additional value tacked onto it. Nothing too special, but still a nice way to deal with most creatures.
Green
1. Go Nuts!
One mana fight spell is quite efficient, but sometimes the lack of buff to your creature makes it weak. Go Nuts! fixes that by giving you a +1/+1 counter, but you’ll need to tap some creatures to do so.
Still, you are getting a massive mana discount and having at least 3 total power among creatures you control shouldn’t be particularly hard in green.
2. Undercover Skrull
Cheap mana dorks are useful, but can become irrelevant, as the game goes long. Skrull deals with that by eventually becoming a 3/3. While that’s not massive, it’s still a relevant upgrade.
3. Pet Avengers
A four mana 4/4 with reach isn’t what it used to be. But there’s another way to look at this card.
If you get a 5/5 and a 3/2 for seven mana, that’s a massive impact on the board. The problem with such card would be that it does nothing before you get to seven mana.
But you get the best of both worlds here. Early, you can put something on the board and get a relevant mana sink later. This is what makes Pet Avengers into a desirable common, when you’re already paying green.
Honorable Mention
One mana creature doesn’t need to do much to be playable. Serpent Specialist is a perfect example of that, as it can easily trade up on blocks with larger creatures. In later stages of the game, it can become a 3/3 and therefore even more relevant board presence. (Plus, it works with some counters synergies.)
Super Heroes Draft Archetypes
As mentioned, there are 10 supported archetypes in this set, one for each color pair. You’ll likely be able to splash a third color, but for the most part the idea is that you stick to two colors.
In some draft sets, you need to lean heavily into the synergies (Lorwyn Eclipsed, Secrets of Strixhaven), while some feel more like a Core Set, and simply play cards that are good on rate.
Early on, it seems that the Super Heroes draft will fall into the latter camp. In most archetypes, there seem to be small pockets of synergies with a few cards working neatly together. So, you don’t need to heavily build your deck around a specific plan.
Instead it suffices to draft powerful cards, play enough interaction and build a deck with a low mana curve. Of course, there are a few exceptions, and we’ll mention those below, as we discuss specific archetypes.
Blue-White: Midrange
The first archetype certainly doesn’t look like one of those exceptions. In theory, this deck should care about tapping your own creatures. To be fair there are a lot of ways to do so, as you can:
- Attack with them.
- Tap them for their activated abilities.
- Tap them to pay for teamwork costs.
However, there aren’t really many rewards for going out of your way to do so.
Yeah, Captain America can untap a creature when it first becomes tapped, but that’s just a good card on its own. You don’t need to do anything to make it work.
There’s just one card that rewards you for doing “the thing” and that’s Agent Maria Hill. If you manage to get multiple copies of her, you’ll want to prioritize strong teamwork cards. Following Maria Hill with We Say Thee Nay! or Helicarrier Strike can be a powerful start.
But overall, you’ll just draft good cards, so stuff like Okoye, Dora Milaje Leader, Spider-Woman, Secret Agent, and Justice, Vance Astrovik. You don’t need to get caught in any particular synergies here.
Black-White: Attack Alone
Black-white’s theme is attacking with a single creature. It’s a bit more supported than whatever blue-white tries to do, but is still not something you need to enable.
First, while there are seven cards that care about attacking alone, most of them are fairly mediocre, such as Luke Cage, Power Man.
Your best reward is Agent 13, Sharon Carter, while Black Widow, Double Agent and Crowd of True Believers can also be useful.
However, none of these cards require you to actually build around them. If you control a payoff and it’s beneficial to attack with a single creature, that’s great. But if you’re able to safely attack with multiple creatures, you’ll just do that instead.
Once again, we end up with an archetype that simply wants to play good cards. As you’ll see this will be a recurring theme with Super Heroes draft.
Green-White: Heroes
This color pair cares about creatures with the Hero subtype and the rewards are significantly better here than with the two previous archetypes. (Although the best ones are at higher rarities.)
There’s Avengers Assemble! and Captain America, Super-Soldier, both at mythic. Regular rares, such as Agent Phil Coulson and Captain America, Wings of Freedom also excel here.
Thankfully, there are some options on lower rarities with Black Panther, Vanguard and Rick Jones, Destined Sidekick.
So is this an archetype where you want to go all-in on the theme when you’ve got multiple payoffs for Hero creatures? Well yes, but you don’t really need to do anything for your deck to end up with a ton of Heroes.
Roughly 80% of creatures that can be found in these two colors are Heroes. Even if you don’t pay attention to which creatures you’re drafting, you’ll naturally end up with a bunch of them.
Still, when you’re deciding between two creatures of a similar power level, picking the one with the Hero type is probably the right choice when drafting green-white.
Red-White: Noncreature Spells
Soft themes continue with red-white, an aggressive deck that also cares a tiny bit about noncreature spells.
There are just four cards that specifically reference noncreature spells. Quake, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Speed, Young Avenger are both fine cards and will work within any aggressive deck. You don’t need a deck full of noncreature spells to make them work. Similar is true for The Vision, although it does provide a massive benefit for enabling it.
The largest build-around effect is certainly Death to Our Enemies, but that one needs an extremely specific deck and doesn’t quite mesh with the whole aggro plan of the deck.
One thing that does fit into this plan are creatures with prowess. You’ve already seen a couple in the Best Commons section with and . Furthermore, and can also be useful flying threats.
Finally, if you manage to open Photon, Living Light, you should try to build around it. The card is completely bonkers.
Still, in order for an aggro deck to work you still need a reasonable amount of creatures to apply pressure. It’s not recommended to go under 14 creatures. You can go lower if you’re using cards that are noncreature creatures: Hire a Crew and Borough Backup.
The other noncreature slots should go to good removal spells, and perhaps a combat trick or two. Given that you’re an aggressive deck, you’re best suited to utilize them.
Blue-Black: Drawing Second Card, Connive
Whereas the white decks tend to be more aggressive, blue-black wants to play a longer game.
Its signature mechanic is connive, which allows you to draw and discard. Sure, that’s not insanely strong, but imagine a long game where you connived four times and your opponent didn’t. It’s very likely that you’ll end up with fewer lands and will be able to pull ahead.
So, you want enough early interaction to stop your opponent from dealing too much damage early. Cheap ways to deal with opponents’ threats (Dark Deed, We Say Thee Nay!), supported by good creatures should do the trick.
Drawing Second Card
There’s also a small subtheme — rewards for drawing a second card in a turn. Of course, an easy way to achieve that is to connive on your turn. Along with the card you draw for the turn, that’s two cards drawn in a turn.
Some of the payoffs are mediocre, but three of them stand out.
Kang, Temporal Tyrant doubles the value of your connive triggers. Not only are you improving the quality of cards in your hand, you’re also draining your opponent. It can connive repeatedly if you can keep attacking with it.
Madame Masque connives only on enters, but that’s enough to get an additional 2/1 Villain out of the deal. That’s already amazing and anything else is just a cherry on the top. Don’t think that this card fits only in this archetype — any black deck will happily play it.
Finally, a rare Construct a Cosmic Cube is harder to deal with and can also provide you with a steady flow of Villains, as long as you can consistently trigger it.
Blue-Red: Artifacts
Whereas most Super Heroes draft archetypes don’t go very deep on their themes, blue-red is an exception. Just like in TMNT draft, it’s all about artifacts. The more of them you can draft, the better.
Here are some of the more useful payoffs for this archetype:
- Hydraulic Helper and Shuri, Wakandan Inventor help you play artifacts ahead of schedule.
- With a high enough artifact count, Iron Lad, Diverging Destiny will be able to draw you cards.
- Bullseye, Death Dealer can turn your artifacts into Shocks.
- Iron Man, Master of Machines can be a massive flyer and a constant source of card advantage.
Even at rare, you’ve got a couple of payoffs that only slot into this archetype. If you’re the only player at the table drafting this deck, you’re very likely to get passed Armor Wars or Vision Quest. Both of which will excel in this shell.
As far as the enablers go, you’ve got a bunch of artifacts in these two colors, so it shouldn’t be too hard to acquire them. Note that Futurist Forge is something that will likely shine here, while not being that amazing elsewhere.
Last, don’t just jam a ton of artifacts in your deck and forget about removal and interaction. You still need to deal with opposing threats.
Blue-Green: +1/+1 Counters
After a rare example of a highly synergistic deck, we’re back to a more vanilla build with blue-green, which somewhat cares about +1/+1 counters.
There aren’t many rewards for doing so, as putting counters on creatures is already a benefit by itself. Nevertheless, here are some relevant payoffs:
- Ant-Man, Colony Commander can create Insects without additional mana investment.
- Kid Loki plays well with instant speed ways to put counters on creatures.
- Beast, Erudite Aerialist can gain flying, making it easier to draw cards with it.
- Training Regimen distributes counters and provides trample.
- Knight of Wundagore is a passable two drop, which can grow further.
There’s also rare The Astonishing Ant-Man, but that one is quite self-contained.
Most of these already include a way to put counters on creatures, but you could also include cards like Claim the Kingdom and Go Nuts!, if you really want to lean into those synergies.
Of course, the power-up mechanic, which uses +1/+1 counters as a part of its effect will also play nicely here.
Black-Red: Villains
This color pair wants you to play a lot of Villains. The more, the merrier. Similarly to blue-white, most of the creatures in these two colors are Villains, so that shouldn’t be too hard to do.
There are quite a few payoffs here, some of the better ones would be:
- The Masters of Evil providing a massive boost.
- Baron Strucker, HYDRA Overlord gives cost reduction and connive triggers.
- Avengers: Under Siege a powerful rare on its own, but even better in a deck full of Villains.
- Yellowjacket, Heartless Marauder is an excellent two drop with enough Villains.
- Evil’s Thrall becomes increasingly annoying for your opponent.
Madame Hydra can also be a source of additional Villains, but it’s really clunky. For better or worse, a four mana 2/3 without immediate effect just isn’t good in the modern era Limited.
You’ll also find some cards that make 2/1 Villain tokens, and those also play well in this shell. It seems like this archetype will be somewhat synergistic, but the synergies will come together almost accidentally.
Black-Green: 2+ Creatures in Graveyard
Black-green is another archetype with a minor theme, which you don’t need to force. Let’s take a look at the only five cards that reference “two-creatures-in-the-graveyard” and explore why that’s the case.
Except the last one, these allow you to hit the threshold later and still benefit from them. Thus, there’s no need to put a couple of creatures in your graveyard as fast as possible.
The only modification you should do with lots of these payoffs is to play a deck with relatively high creature count. Think at least 16 creatures, if not higher.
Then you simply play the game of Magic in which your creatures trade off, your opponents remove them and they naturally end up in the graveyard.
More payoffs you have, the harder you’ll want to lean into that higher creature count. Particularly if you’ve got other cards that work with the graveyard, such as Robot Domination, which will be at its best here.
Red-Green: Power-up
Red-green is the tenth and last archetype and it feels the most basic. In theory, the deck is supposed to be some kind of a power-up shell.
However, there are just a couple of cards that specifically interact with this mechanic with Wonder Man, Hollywood Hero and Hulk, Gamma Goliath. They are fine cards, but not reasons to jam every card you see with power-up in your deck.
You’ll simply play the good power-up cards and avoid the bad ones. Nothing changes if you’ve got a couple of Hulks in your deck.
As such, this is also a fine option for complete beginners, as you don’t need to pay much attention to synergies, but you simply pick the cards that are good on rate.
Additional Tips for Marvel Super Heroes Draft
Now you already know about most of the things going on in this format, but there are still a few things worth mentioning, which we’ll cover in the next few sections.
Power Rankings
These rankings are fairly early and mostly educated guesses, but they might still help you when deciding between two cards of similar power level.
Best Colors
- White
- Black
- Green
- Blue
- Red
There are two main outliers among the five colors: white and red, albeit for different reasons. White offers a ton of solid cards across all rarities. On the other hand, red lags behind other colors, no matter the rarity.
As for the other three colors, black and green seem fairly close in power level, with blue being slightly weaker.
In the early drafts it might be a good idea to avoid red (unless you open some excellent red cards) and slightly favor white. However, don’t feel like you need to force a specific color or anything like that.
Best Archetypes in Super Heroes Draft
- Green-White: Heroes
- Black-White: Attack Alone
- Blue-White: Midrange
- Blue-Black: Drawing Second Card, Connive
- Red-White: Noncreature Spells
- Black-Green: 2+ Creatures in Graveyard
- Blue-Red: Artifacts
- Black-Red: Villains
- Blue-Green: +1/+1 Counters
- Red-Green: Power-up
As you can see, the archetypes mostly correspond to the power level of their colors. The largest outlier would be blue-red. (The weakest two colors but ranked seventh as an archetype.) The reason being that the whole artifact theme might make it better than the sum of its parts.
But for the most part, these should be taken with a grain of salt, as it’s much harder to predict the power level of specific archetypes as opposed to single colors.
Minor Subthemes
Besides the themes we discussed in the Archetypes section, there are some additional subthemes present in the set.
Equipment
Three nonrare black cards care about equipment with
Given that there are six nonrare equipment cards in the set, you might be able to cook something here.
It’s hard to say how powerful this subtheme will be. When you’ll open The Mighty Thor, Jane Foster or Winter Soldier, Icy Assassin and draft around them, it’ll probably be pretty fun if not good.
While you can jam this subtheme in any black deck, it’s probably at its best in black-white with potential blue splash. (U.S.Agent, John Walker also fits nicely here.)
Targeting Your Creatures
In red-white you’ll find three creatures that care about casting spells that target your creatures:
Is there something to be gained by pairing them with various combat tricks such as Blazing Crescendo? Possibly, but it’s likely not too powerful.
The best place for this is in red-white, but you might also try to enable Iron Fist in some other red decks, as it seems the best of the bunch.
Five Color Soup
In some of the previous sets, it was quite easy to play a five-color deck, and there were good reasons to do so.
Now for Super Heroes draft that doesn’t seem to be the case, as there aren’t any payoffs for doing so on lower rarities. However, if you want a deckbuilding challenge and get your hands on either Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Thanos, the Mad Titan, you might go for it.
Thanos is the weaker of the two as it actually needs the sixth color (colorless) for its activation.
Lands & Mana Fixing
Number of Lands
As usual, you can’t really go wrong with playing 17 lands. If you’ve got a powerful deck, with a bunch of mana sinks (such as power-up effects) and some card advantage, you could even go up to 18.
You’d best avoid 16 lands, unless you’re drafting a mono colored deck. There are a couple of rewards for doing so, but the major reason is being able to consistently cast The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.
Mana Fixing
For the fixing, you’ve got quite a few options. The common dual lands (like Birnin Zana Plaza) are a neat option and you’ll happily play up to two copies even in your 2-color decks. Same is true for the rare duals (Gathering Place), which are even better.
If you want even more fixing, green’s got you covered with cards like:
Perhaps it’s not impossible to draft base green, and splashing as many colors as you want in order to play each powerful rare passed to you.
Furthermore, there’s a cycle of basic landcyclers, which can help with splashes. The best of the bunch is probably the white one with Borough Backup.
Super Heroes Draft Tier List
In the Archetype section, we often mentioned how you should just draft the good cards. But what if you don’t know which cards are good?
Our Super Heroes Draft Tier List can help you with that. Inside, you’ll find grades for each card in the set. It should give you a good idea for which are the cards that actually matter and should be a high priority to pick up.
The Endgame
And we’re in the endgame now! Hopefully, you’ve learned enough to get an advantage in the first weeks of the format. But don’t forget to come back in a couple of weeks for updated information about this format.
If you’re planning on organizing a draft for your play group, you can already preorder a Play Booster Box on Amazon. This way, you’ll be able to draft ASAP.
In the meantime, here are some other articles about this set, that might interest you:
- Super Heroes Spoilers (all cards from the main set)
- Marvel Super Heroes Commander Precons (four different decks)
- The Soul Stone Odds (priciest card in the set)
- Super Heroes Classic Comic Cards (Kirby’s art comes to Magic)
Until next time, enjoy Magic, and may you win a ton of games in this brand-new draft format!