CardsplainPick and pass. In a draft, everyone opens a pack, takes one card and passes the rest on. Everyone keeps taking one card from each pack that reaches them until the packs are empty. Then you build a deck from the cards you took and play it against the other drafters.
The packs. The Hobbit (set code HOB) comes in Play Boosters of 14 cards: seven to nine commons, three uncommons, at least one rare or mythic rare, and a land slot (a basic land, or a common dual land that makes either of two colors).
A card's rarity is the color of its set symbol, on the right side of the card between the art and the text box: black for common, silver for uncommon, gold for rare and orange-red for mythic rare. Commons are the cards you'll see again and again. With eight players, each common turns up about three times in the whole draft. You'll seldom see the same rare or mythic twice in one draft.
Packs go left, right, left. Everyone gets three packs and opens them one at a time.
- Pack 1: take one card and pass the rest to your left. Then take one card from the pack your right-hand neighbor passed you, pass that one on, and keep going until the packs are empty. That's 14 picks.
- Pack 2: the same, but pass to your right.
- Pack 3: pass to your left again.
Three packs of 14 give you 42 cards. Keep your picks in a face-down pile. Many tables let you look through your picks between packs but not during one, so ask the organizer what yours allows.
The . With eight players, the pack you opened comes back to you at pick 9 with six cards left, after each of the eight players has taken one card from it. Drafters call this the wheel. With fewer players it comes back sooner (with six players, at pick 7). Remember what you passed. If a good card is still in the pack when it comes back, every other player passed it, so probably nobody else at the table is in that color.