Hello, there is a booster draft this Saturday and I wanted to know what cards I should look for? We are using MXM. What are the cards to grab and the cards I should stay away from?

ummmm hellfire club is good but you really need to team them up for them to be playable i would try and get x-men things like the x-corps and angle

I'd say focus more on trying to draft a trait for a team or two than just one team. So many of the plot twists are trait stamped... you'll end up with dead cards if you don't plan it out. Mental CHARACTERS are the hardest ones to draft, so keep that in mind should you start drafting mental plot twists. Energy seems to be the best trait in draft/sealed- if you can pull it off. Especially if you manage to pull an 8-drop, since Energy has decent stall effects.

Now, from here on in, I'm going to adress how I personally approached my drafts. I went in looking for X-Men and Morlock energy characters with plot twists to back them. It went pretty well... I lost to someone who "drafted" 4-drop Prof X, Emma, and Jean, but had no problem with other opponents.

Tangent: This is something I also never see talked about. When drafting, I try to get as good an idea as possible what the other people are going for. I get passed a pack with no Morlock cards in it... I may have an idea everyone's doing Morlocks. What? Deadly Game is still in this pack? Someone's not playing Hellfire. I mean, it'll help you to avoid competing with another person to fill out a team the way you want it... and you can also disrupt people. I knew the guy to my right was going Brotherhood, so I'd grab Brotherhood cards I didn't want to go up against...

No, they have ONE decent stall effect (Magnetic Force). Chill Out! and Blow The Man Down are both fairly limited methods of gaining advantage on your attack step by eliminating swingback. And they're rare anyway.

Ignore 8-drops for the most part. Heck, you can safely ignore a lot of sevens. Build your deck to win on turn 6, and you will win XM draft. If you don't, somebody else will build that deck, and THEY will win the draft. It's really that simple.

I draft Physical. Their pumps and huge front ended stats win the game so fast. Not to mention beasts like X-23, Hump, Thornn, ect.

I would say Morloc / Bro (Physical) or
Energy focusing on Xmen as Xmen have alot of good Common/Uncommons that will let you have a better shot at getting them.

I would avoid hellfire as they seem to be resource heavy to play like locations/ptwists that are generally rare.

I like the brotherhood cheracters with the 3 breakthrough abilities as I would think you would have more opertunities to use them with mediocre pumps in draft.

Stuff like silver sable I would think could really hurt up the other side.

Drain Enegy stalls by giving you more life. Common.
Rogue: Anna Marie also gains you some life. Common. (But she isn't incredible)
Iceman: Deep Freeze *significantly* stalls. Common.
Havok: Critical Mass is more board control, but helps stall. Common.
Healer: Life Giver gains life to help stall. Common.
Erg: Electric Eye exhausts characters to stall. Common.

There's a few other cards that offer some stall through energy, but they're not for me, so I'm not listing them. Point being- Energy CAN stall. And yes, in sealed/draft. Energy has the great ability to either slow down or speed up games depending on the way you build. I prefer to slow down and bank on a 7 or 8.

In this format, look at your plots first. I know there are some great characters, but unless it is jaw droppingly good, you probably want a blue card first in many packs. And those first few plots may dictate how you draft your characters.

Normally a trait, or their cost, is more important than their team in this set. And team ups aren't as critical as they have been in the past it seems.

But if you happen to walk your way into 2 or more copies of X-Treme Maneuver or Turnabout... even the worst X-Men character becomes pure gold for you. If you have Special Delivery and a Momentary Distraction, you need to try to have the Physical cards to maximize them.

I think (personal observation only) this set is driven by the plots pretty heavily.

X-Men is a set which is heavily archetype based. This has been something that VS draft has operating under since Avengers. The first pick in X-Men is very hard as there are few easy picks that fit into any of these archetypes - I believe Mutant Massacre is the only first pick card that I would play in any deck.

Your basic archetypes that I've seen/drafted so far are:

Hellfire Club One Visible:

For this you're looking to draft Shaw Industries and Hellfire Club very highly and just keep grabbing Concealed and Concealed - Optional Characters.

Reservists:

This is something of a team-up deck with Brotherhood and Hellfire both sporting great reservist characters.

Physical:

This is a Brotherhood/Morlocks team-up deck that is very aggressive and makes use of the big fronted Morlock characters with some of Brotherhood's strong physical characters. Plot twists like Special Delivery are actually playable in this deck. Also it'll probably run a few Freedom Force characters so late Freedom Force and Windegore Citadels can be picked up if you need them.

Morlock Evasion:

Almost mono-Morlocks with a few splashes, this deck makes use of the Morlock insane common/uncommon pumps and Marrow to smash the enemy to pieces.

X-Men Weenie:

Probably more of an X-Men/Morlocks team-up deck, this deck will use turnabout and Blackbird Blue and can be quite nasty if it goes off.

There are probably more, but no other ones that I've really drafted or seen played with great success.