Building A Booster Draft Deck

Welcome to Undaunted Raid everyone! By now you may know me as Game Designer Jeremy Ray, but I am also Draft Format lover Jeremy Ray! Today I want to share some of my thoughts and tips about playing in a Draft event for Undaunted Raid.

First, I want to share some of my general guidelines I have for myself when I’m building a draft deck in UniVersus. Let’s begin with my deck ratios. Your deck needs to be a minimum of 40 cards and all those cards must match any 1 symbol with your chosen character. I tend to run my deck at around 14-16 attacks and the 22-24 foundations. If I end up with an action or asset I want to play, I usually cut into the foundation count instead of the attack count. In draft it’s okay to lean into a higher attack ratio compared to a constructed deck. The reason is draft decks usually don’t have a polished offense or defense. You may need to land a few more attacks to win, but your opponent won’t be defending as well either.

So, I've got my ratio set. What types of cards do I focus on choosing from my Draft Packs? I have my own sort of “Priority List” that I use when drafting and it looks like this.

1.  Hard Hitting “finisher” attacks that can close games.

2.  Any card type that helps me draw or filter cards.

3. 0 or 1 difficulty foundations, ideally with off-zone blocks.

4. Solid foundations or attacks that contribute to my game plan.

5. Foundations with off-zone blocks.

6. Anything else that works to fill out the desired deck ratios.

So, the most valuable cards to look for are powerful attacks. Closing out games can sometimes be difficult and anything that gives you extra reach is very strong. Next, I want a card draw to improve my consistency in finding the most powerful tools I drafted. After that I want my deck to have LOTS of “spam”(low difficulty) foundations. I’m likely playing a lot of attacks. So I want to have a big stage to help pass those attacks. Lots of low difficulty foundations, even if they don’t do much, are the way to get there. Rounding out the deck I want the best attack quality and foundation quality I can manage. All while covering my block zones and supporting my chosen character.

Speaking of character, how do I decide who to play? There is no easy answer for this. With a little bit of work any character can work in draft, but some character archetypes do work better than others. In draft 5 and 6 hand size characters enjoy a small advantage over 7 hand size characters. Without the ability to build a planned defense to protect their lower health total, 7 handers have less room for mistakes or bad luck. Outside of that, characters with damage pumps can help solve some of the offensive problems draft decks sometimes experience. There is no single “right” answer but there are some choices that will give you an edge.

Let's look at set 5 and some of the cards that I’ll be personally looking to draft. I’m going to focus on common and uncommon rarity cards. The reason for that is they will be the cards you are most likely to see in the draft, maybe even in multiple copies.

Bad Guy Round Up checks multiple boxes for me as a high quality draft card. It has a easy to access card draw ability. It has an off-zone threat and doubles as a finisher via its Powerful keyword ability. To top it off, it even features an off-zone block itself, helping your draft deck have a solid block spread. This is a 10 out of 10 draft card to me.

Knuckle Sandwich is a hammer, gaining quality stats as an off-zone threat with a fairly low bar. If you have the punches to back it up, it’s an excellent option.

Seasoned Brawler is a spam foundation with an excellent off-zone block AND a card draw ability with aggressive costing and a fairly natural trigger. This is another 10/10 draft card for me.

Foresight is a strong 0 diff that gives you insight to your next check, helping you strengthen your build turn or defensive position, and packs a low block that can get in front of Bad Guy Round Up or Knuckle Sandwich!

Claw Stopper offers easy access card draw, and potentially a long term consistency boost. That alone would be enough to make it a strong draft card, but the Breaker keyword adds even more value to the package 10/10.

Takoyaki is the rare Asset card I would recommend highly in draft. The low difficulty paired with the card draw, the off-zone block, and the always used damage modifiers make this card an excellent choice.

Bubble Distraction breaks the mold for my high value draft choices, but there is good reason. This card packs a powerful two way punch. Offering incredible value as an offensive or defensive tool. Getting multiple copies of this card into play can totally warp a match and put your rival in the hot seat.


Those are just a few of my highlight choices for drafting Set 5 Undaunted Raid in your upcoming events! Playing draft is one of my favorite ways to play our game and I can’t wait to see the new cards on the table. I love hearing feedback from the community and you can send me that feedback through the official Discord channel or through my official twitter account. Thank you for reading!

F2K – on the main Discord

@UVS_JRay – on Twitter