Beginner's Guide to Draft League: Volume 2

By Rissoux. Released: 2024/03/31.

Art by Alcor.

Drafting Theory and the Importance of Role Compression
Tiering Doctrine
8 versus 9-11 and 9-12 Pokémon Formats
How Smogon Draft is Organized (and why)

Drafting Theory and the Importance of Role Compression

There are three major components to having success while participating in a Draft League: drafting, preparing (prepping), and playing the games. These three components are equally important in my opinion, because you cannot have success with any two while you are failing at the third:

To prep for and play your battles when you drafted a flawed team will not usually yield consistent positive results.
To draft a team and play your battles with prep that does not make sense means you do not have productive pathways to achieving a desired endgame and path to victory.
To draft and prep with insufficient playing experience means you will likely be surprised by creative opposing prep, outplayed during the match, and ultimately are unable to bring the game to a favorable conclusion.

All three play key developmental roles in how a player may compete, and for the purpose of this article, I will mainly be delving into the first of the three—drafting—while preparing and the playing of games I will touch on in a subsequent article in the same way that this is the sequel to the Beginner's Guide to Draft League.

Draft Board Evaluation

Before and during the drafting phase of a tournament or league, it's important to dedicate a chunk of time to looking at the draft board in its entirety with the main objective of doing three things:

Scan for "steals" or desirable Pokémon priced lower than their usual value. After looking at enough draft boards for the same format, trends of acceptable Pokémon values will start to become apparent. You'll subsequently be able to tell when something is misplaced for one reason or another—moderator bias or oversight usually—and be able to take that into account when planning your draft picks—if it's a Pokémon you're even interested in. For instance, Scream Tail in standard SV formats will normally range from 12-13 points. If you should find yourself participating in a league in which Scream Tail is 9 points, it's in your favor to make an earlier than normal attempt to grab it if you're interested in using it. This will be more evident in some leagues rather than others because tiering philosophy really boils down to two trains of thought: traditional and usage based. We'll come back to these points later on in the article.
Deciding your round 1 pick is the most important thing you'll do during the draft. Every draft has an order of some kind, which will usually be in a "snake" style. For example, in tournaments, it will go pick 1 to pick 8, and then from pick 8 to pick 1. This means the first player in the draft order gets any pick they want, while player 8 is the person who picks in round 1 last but also gets first dibs at a second Pokémon to synergize with their round 1 pick. It is perfectly fine to dip down and grab a slightly less expensive Pokémon early if you are not comfortable with any of the available higher-tier picks. While a Pokémon's price point is generally a great measure of its overall potential and worth, players can refrain from drafting the most expensive Pokémon on the board just because they're available if they would be more comfortable using something else. This, however, should be done sparingly, as it is proven method that "top-heavier" drafts perform better in most settings. My official recommendation is to always give the more expensive Pokémon a serious evaluation before looking one or two tiers below Pokémon that are currently being picked. Here's an example:

In the above graphic, it is MTB's turn to pick two Pokémon as "back wheel" or 8th in the draft order. If, for instance, MTB did not want to use any other Pokémon in the 18- or 17-point tiers, it is perfectly reasonable to look in the 16-point column so long as the two drafted Pokémon synergize well with each other. This is additionally true for wheel picks because it is so much longer in-between picks for these individuals, that it's even easier to justify going as low as a 15-point Pokémon because it has a smaller chance of being there when it finally gets back to being MTB's pick again. Dipping any lower than 15 in this instance would be hard to justify because those Pokémon will likely be there in rounds 4-5 when MTB will have two more picks to deliberate on and less top end Pokémon will be available because the other 7 people in this pool are very likely to pick them up given the opportunity.
Consistently check potential future picks for synergy and what I call "opportunity cost evaluation": During the drafting process, it's smart to pay attention to the drafts of other individuals in your pool because those are the individuals that you're competing with to get your "optimal" team and best set yourself up for success in the rest of the tournament. It's also important to be aware of what Pokémon are still on the board and recognize that, depending on the format, you may have a plethora of options available to you as a side-grade substitution (more on this later) should you get sniped of the Pokémon you want to draft. For example, if you really have your heart set on Milotic in round 3, you know that there are 10 other viable Water-types—Blastoise, Toxapex, Slowbro, Suicune, Paldean Tauros-W, to name a few—in around the same price range so that if you get sniped on Milotic, it really isn't the end of the world because there are so many other good choices to pick from. If you understand the general principles that drive most player's drafting habits, you can position your picks to be "snipe-proof" or at least accounting for it as much as possible to insulate yourself from that terrible reality. Here's another example:

It is currently Batzi's pick on wheel, and let's say for the sake of it that they want to get a Fairy-type. If they took the time to be aware of the fact that every other team in their draft pool already has a Fairy-type, they can make a reasonable assumption that the risk of someone taking an additional Fairy-type is very low and save that Fairy-type for a later round in the draft. Another consideration may be the budget the other competitors have left. If Batzi was eyeing Fezendipiti for 12 points, not only does every other team have a Fairy-type and not need Fezendipiti, there is only one team that even has the budget to afford it. These two factors together would help them determine that they could wait until the very last pick to choose Fezendipiti and use earlier round picks to ensure they prioritized other Pokémon that are likely more desired by others in the draft pool.

Snipes and Substitutions

A "snipe" is when you have your heart set on a Pokémon and it's perfect for your squad; it's the right price, fits the types you want, has a bunch of utility and entry hazard options, oh man, it's even a fantastic Terastallization (Tera) Captain choice, but lo and behold, it's taken from you the pick before it was your turn to grab it! What do you do now? You carry on and evaluate new options, and when you do so, keep the following in mind:

Substitutions are back up options you evaluate when your pick is sniped from you before you can pick it. You can choose to find merits with nearly every Pokémon on the draft board. That's the beautiful part of how Draft League is constructed; every legal Pokémon is, in theory, usable because it should be priced correctly in accordance with the allotted budget. Substitutes usually fall into one of three categories:

Direct substitutions are Pokémon that are so near each other in scope and utility that they might as well be the same Pokémon; you wouldn't be hard-pressed to grab one over the other, and they are largely used based on preference. One example would be Uxie and Scream Tail: both are bulky Psychic-types with momentum (U-turn and Baton Pass), possessing Stealth Rock, a plethora of utility support options, setup, and a moderate-to-high Speed tier. Both can be rather passive offensively and should try to not be setup fodder for opposing breakers, utilizing disruption such as Encore and status with Thunder Wave.
Indirect substitutions are Pokémon that may or may not fill roles on a team largely the same way but will normally have at least one correlation with each other that links them. One example is Azumarill and Primarina, where they only really share a unique typing together and are largely different in every other measurable way. Azumarill is normally physically offensive, while Primarina is specially offensive. While they are both wallbreakers, they do it in different ways and possess traits that might make them valuable on someone's team. Primarina can Flip Turn and set dual screens, while Azumarill can use Knock Off, Whirlpool + Perish trap, and use both of its other abilities, Thick Fat and Sap Sipper, for niche situations.
Side-grade substitutions is the catch-all comparison whereby a player can choose to fill a capability gap in their team in any number of ways so long as the task they are trying to accomplish is met. Depending on different team compositions and at different points in a draft, a player has any number of roles and requirements they are looking to obtain: healthy hazard setting and removal, comprehensive Speed tiers without significant gaps, a number of important resistances present, and more. Definitely towards the middle-to-late stage of the draft, players will start patching holes not already covered by their most expensive Pokémon in a strategy that best supports their top picks and enables them to get the most out of their expensive picks. A side-grade substitution can be as close to indirect as Greninja and Meowscarada—both fast Dark-types that set hazards and are potent mixed attackers with some setup but largely operate in different roles on the team depending on the larger team composition—or as far apart as Great Tusk and Rhyperior, both being Ground-types that set Stealth Rock. Another aspect to side-grade substitution is that some Pokémon can be drafted for one specific role. A principle example of this is that many teams can feel weak to strong Ghost-types because of their amazing offensive typing (one immunity in Normal, one resistance in Dark). If a player finds themselves in a position where, late in the draft, they realize they don't have either a Dark- or Normal-type, finding a bulky Pokémon of either type is paramount; a Dudunsparce could be a side-grade substitution for a Bombirdier in this instance.

If you come into a Draft League understanding the basic principles of Draft Theory, you will be able to analyze and make the most out of the draft board that is presented to you. It's important to remember that every other player in the draft with you is playing by the same rules as you and largely will have the same goals in mind in relation to team composition and role compression (especially in 8-Pokémon tournaments where it's oh so important), so learn to take advantage of these situations, and don't be afraid to be adventurous and draft a fun Pokémon that maybe other people don't think is that good.

Role Compression

Role Compression is the idea that because you are limited in the amount of Pokémon you are able to draft, you have to compress as many team roles as possible into those limited slots. With each type you draft, you access a new set of resistances and immunities, which are the ultimate value in your team composition. The idea that "I have to have a Dragon-type!" should be replaced with "my team could really benefit from an Electric / Water / Fire / Grass resistance". You are limited to 16/18 types, for example, because you are only able to draft 8 Pokémon with a maximum of two types each. This usually means you have to give some thought to which types you are not going to have on your team because with each lacking type, there is a corresponding set of resistances and possible immunities to attacks that you will not have access to, and if your opponent is smart, they will see your lack of resistances and immunities to a certain type and work to exploit that. Competitors should strive to compress as many desired roles into each member on their squad for maximum efficiency. This is one such example, but let me enumerate a few more role compression considerations (not exhaustive by any means):

Speed tiers with one big takeaway: you should arrange your Speed tiers so that fast Pokémon have a hard time easily running damage-boosting natures (Modest/Adamant). This is normally accomplished by spacing your Speed tiers no more than 15 Base Speed apart from each other at level 100. Take care to avoid "fake-Speed" Pokémon and counting them for "real" Speed. What I mean by this is that Pokémon like Wugtrio and Raichu are both very fast at base 120 and 110 Speed, respectively, but cannot effectively capitalize on their Speed in most scenarios because they are not offensively threatening enough to make use of their speed.

It's important to highlight that not every draft needs every facet in this list. Some teams function well while being comparably slower (able to reliably defensively check most Pokémon), while others mitigate not having any removal at all by spamming Heavy-Duty Boots (capitalizing on turns that an opponent may waste by setting useless entry hazards). This list is a reference and not an all-inclusive-must-have guide.
A number of resistances for each prominent type: the thought process that dictates that certain types are "necessary" (Fire / Water / Grass core, Fairy / Dragon / Steel core, etc) is outdated and not a competitive benchmark you should strive for your team. Instead, focus on ensuring you have actual 2x and 4x resistances or immunities to the most prominent types and types most commonly seen among the high-tier Pokémon on the draft board.
Entry hazard setters: Stealth Rock for sure, and Spikes are great to have, but Toxic Spikes and Sticky Web are much less required.
Entry hazard removal: Rapid Spin is the premium utility option; however, utilizing Defog has an additional perk in removing dual screens and field effects.
Priority move user(s) (special and physical if possible)
Momentum (Flip Turn, Volt Switch, U-turn, etc.)
Offensive capacity (physical, special, mixed)
Defensive capacity (reliable recovery)
SV: Tera user(s) that can make use of Tera; either a great offensive Tera Captain or one that has the capacity to also make use of defensive Tera

Because every player you will face will more than likely have at least one high-tier Pokémon, you should also be taking this into account when drafting your team to ensure that you do not lose too easily to any one top-tier Pokémon—but that isn't really a role that you can compress). Ensuring that you are drafting with role compression in mind is the #1 way to improve your tournament performance because without the tools listed above, you will run into more situations that you have less outs for and will statistically struggle more to win than if you had the aforementioned tools.

Tiering Doctrine

What I mean when I say "Tiering Doctrine," a term I made up, I mean to describe two main schools of thought when it comes to making a draft board: traditional and usage based. The goal, as I've stated before, is to make every Pokémon viable by way of pricing it affordably so that you aren't being asked for 15 points for a Masquerain. There are two notable things about draft boards:

They are INCREDIBLY subjective, and you will almost certainly find a different draft board in every single league across the community running a similar format. Lots of people are stubborn and will tout that their way is the "right" way and everyone who disagrees with them is bad at the game, etc. This school of thought is more usually associated with "traditional" tiering doctrine, whereby individuals believe a Pokémon has a "correct" price in any given format, and little to no deviation is permitted pending differences in rules, such as those that deal with Tera. This idea maintains that once a metagame is fairly stable, the quest for a "perfect" draft board is such that Pokémon are often locked into a tier regardless of how well they might perform in a previous season. This sort of rigidity insulates a Pokémon's price from fluctuating too much, as it is not at all unheard of people having great one-off showings of Pokémon that are labeled as outlier performances. Pokémon still do shift tiers in this process, but it definitely does not happen often and rarely will shuffle Pokémon more than one or two points up or down. You will rarely see "unbans" in these sort of leagues, as players who generally prefer this tiering methodology shy away from the inherently upward power creep that comes with introducing complex bans or testing new top-tier unbans. "Unban" in this instance refers to leagues allowing Pokémon they normally wouldn't that are usually considered too strong for a given format and are given a complex ban as a result: an example is Kyurem Black being allowed in some Draft Leagues but stipulating that it cannot use the move Dragon Dance in any game it's brought to. Traditional tiering usually is the more stable drafting environment, as prices are steadfast, and experimenting with consistent pairings of familiar Pokémon is normal.
Draft boards will not succeed in making every Pokémon viable. Once you climb all the way down from the top tiers—usually 18 or 19 in an 8-Pokémon tournament with a budget of 90 points—to the depths of the draft boards and start looking at the 1-point Pokémon, you'll understand that not all bad Pokémon were created equal. There is no functional way that Draft Leagues can, or should, attempt to make any point values smaller than 1, so that usually means anything not significant enough to bump up to 2 points (and is legal in the format) gets thrown in the 1 point trash bin. Beldum is a 1-point Pokémon in standard SV play; however, so is Ariados. One is decidedly more useful than the other, but ultimately not much more so. One reason these Pokémon don't get bumped up to 2 points or higher is the opportunity cost of bringing that Pokémon over any of the other 6 better Pokémon you most likely drafted over it, which means you're likely at a decided disadvantage before you've even begun the battle. There are Draft Leagues that routinely shift around Pokémon based on how well or poorly they do in a given Draft League setting, and those subscribe to a "usage-based" tiering approach. Contrary to traditional tiering, usage-based tiering seeks out performance data for each Pokémon and moves them around consistently to accommodate changing trends in drafting habits, ensuring that Pokémon are always competitively priced so as to invite a higher rate of experimenting with team composition. Fearing stagnation and wanting to invite creative team composition are two driving factors that will lead tier list makers to change point values based on usage from previous tournaments and seasons, sometimes not even from their own organization. Especially at the beginning of a generation, leagues will play fast and loose with tiering because there is not any available data to show how a Pokémon may or may not perform in a new meta. This tiering philosophy very much leans itself to more undervalued picks because it incentivizes you to pick up Pokémon not drafted as much in previous seasons and try to make them worth drafting. Depending on how a Pokémon's performance is perceived, it may bump up or down any number of points depending on how grievously it was tiered in the first place. Two examples of this can be easily determined:
- Brambleghast was not rated very highly at the beginning of the generation, and my league (WPF) placed it at 4 points. We thought it was frail and not at all able to use the bunch of cool support moves before its middling Speed stat got it KOed. It also is yet another Grass- / Ghost-type, so it had competition from pretty established Pokémon such as Decidueye. What we didn't account for is that it has great dual STAB options, reliable Speed boosting with Rapid Spin, and a natural immunity to several options Pokémon usually use to deal damage to it—Hurricane and Heat Wave, for example. Brambleghast is currently 7 in my league, and Hisuian Electrode went from 2 points last year to 9 points this year because of its consistent performance.
- Another example is how at the beginning of SV, people did not think that Houndstone was a very good Pokémon at all. Pure Ghost is lackluster so far as typings go, and from the outset, most people took note of Its Body Press and Iron Defense tools to hit Dark-types and wrote it off by placing it in the 3 or 4 point column. Then, we discovered what Last Respects did. Overnight, this Pokémon that was cheaper than Dusknoir is suddenly so potent it has to be complex banned rather than raising it to the highest tier in the format.

Neither traditional nor usage-based tiering are supreme over one another holistically. Both doctrines have their pros and cons and work for different pockets of the community and at different times in a generation's lifespan. There is absolutely no shame in asking an established Draft League owner to share their draft board with you so that you don't have to start from scratch, and there is certainly nothing stopping you from going crazy and making the point values as wild as your heart desires. The customizability of the format is one of the things that people love about Draft League and why it's got such a consistently growing player base.

Some Pokémon can add a lot of utility but fall victim to not falling neatly into a certain playstyle that may not be very potent in a given metagame. Quirky situations arise where, if you look at the usage percentages from our Winter Seasonal Tournament, Iron Hands was drafted 12 times out of 52 drafting pools. Glimmet—not Glimmora—by contrast, was drafted 13 times. Does this mean that Glimmet is going to shoot up to be more expensive than Iron Hands in our next SV tournament? No. Iron Hands may drop a point, and Glimmet may rise up to be 2 or 3 points (it is currently 1). Iron Hands has a bit of a hard time in this format being the bulky breaker it wants to be, as its bulk can only do so much. On the other hand, Glimmet boasts an impressive base 105 Special Attack and sets entry hazards very well for its price point, when it is 12 points cheaper than its evolved form.
Rather than the above example where a Pokémon may just not fit well into a metagame, some Pokémon just fall victim to power creep and losing the ability to keep up in performing any of its roles. When this happens, draft board makers are faced with a hard decision: lower such a Pokémon a lot and risk it being an incredible bargain or keep it relatively where it has historically been and accept that people aren't going to draft it no matter how much it (reasonably) costs. One such example is Clefable. Clefable went from a round 1, 17-18-point Pokémon in ORAS to routinely undrafted in SV, mainly due to the idea that it isn't solely propped up by its three amazing abilities. That, in conjunction with by modern standards mediocre base stats, means that Clefable can no longer function on a team in the same way it used to. It still has great utility, and Tera allows it to capitalize on its abilities and set up more, but 90 HP / 73 Def / 90 SpD cannot keep up in the face of the new wallbreakers continually added to the game (Palafin, Chi-Yu, etc.). Additionally, more distribution of moves like Encore makes Clefable an even lessdesirable pick for the price. This may not be a terrible idea, but you can start to see how a Pokémon's history might play into whether or not a Pokémon gets tiered based on usage.
Finally, there is an entire caste of Pokémon legal on the SV draft board that will not see large utilization. This has to do with the fact that, at least to a higher degree in 8 Pokémon tournament settings, role compression remains the single most important facet that your team must incorporate well.

The last note worth touching on at this time has to do with the management of the Terastallization mechanic itself. Both forms allow for a healthy dose of Tera-banned Pokémon, and that's because there is no alternative tier to banish a Pokémon to if it's deemed too strong (think of a Pokémon too strong for OU—it gets banned to Ubers). It also has to do with the fact that there is one pool of allowed Pokémon (compared with OU, UU, RU, NU, etc), and players want to maximize the number of available Pokémon in the eligible draft pool: thus Tera bans. An idea commonly seen in Draft League compared to Smogon tiers is that "Tera bans" are a fine way to tier Pokémon appropriately when they may be a little too strong with Tera access. These days, there are two schools of thought: Tera tax and Tera-included (several other ways to incorporate Tera exist, such as pre-selecting Tera types, but I won't go into them here):

Tera-included is the format we are currently operating with in our Winter Seasonal tournament, and it's really for one reason: it's much more simple to maintain and tier. We tiered each Pokémon on the board with the understanding that it had the possibility of being selected as a Tera Captain at no additional cost to the competitor and tiered it as such. There is no 13-point Latias in this format; it's much higher to reflect that it could Terastallize.
Tera tax assigns two values to each Pokémon. One value pertains to the base Pokémon, while a second more expensive value is assigned to that same Pokémon but allows it to Terastallize. That "tax," or additional value, is the assessed potential of how much Tera improves the playability of that Pokémon. The lower you go, typically the less tax there will be because of the opportunity cost of choosing to Tera your Sirfetch'd instead of the Ogerpon-H in any given game. This approach, understandably, is significantly more work because you have to tier each Pokémon twice.

8 vs 9-12 Pokémon Formats

If you remember, one topic discussed during my "Beginner's Guide to Draft League" was that different style competitions exist in the Draft League community: singles tournaments, team tournaments, and standard Draft Leagues. There are several key differences between them, and I'd like to expand on them a bit more:

Standard Draft Leagues commonly have anywhere from 9-12 Pokémon on a player's roster and each player tends to have 3-5 free agency transactions—transactions they can make for undrafted Pokémon. This is done so that players can use a larger amount of Pokémon in a given season and be afforded the ability to make free agent transactions to edit as needed without overburdening the Draft League staff. It also ensures that players are able to reach far down and get more middle-to-lower-tier Pokémon without impacting the overall efficacy of their roster at large. Because seasons are typically longer and more of a time investment than tournaments, standard Draft Leagues have more of a vested interest in ensuring players like their teams and won't drop out if things don't quite go their way during drafting. Having a deeper roster and allowing for mid-season transactions is a more forgiving way for players to draft a roster. This usually works in a smaller setting in which only a few divisions of players are playing at a time.
Single and team tournaments largely focus on 8-Pokémon rosters for several reasons:
- It forces more creative building. One easy way to get a leg up on your opponent in tournaments, especially, is by out-prepping them and bringing things to a match that they didn't think to cover for in prep, utilizing double switches, and making aggressive predictions when needed, allowing you to best utilize the creative sets you cooked up and helping put you ahead.
- Drafting is more punishing in tournaments. With only 8 Pokémon on the roster, and no free agent transactions, players have to draft, prep, and play even better than in normal Draft Leagues because of how much more narrow the margin for error is in this format. Our earlier conversation about role compression and its importance should also drive home how difficult it is to get everything you want on one team of 8, so learning how to navigate the snipes and come out the other side of drafting with a usable squad is a skill by itself, not to mention that there are always people who get crazy draft pools and get hyper-inflated teams that you still have to face as a result.
- Speaking from an organizational standpoint, they are SO MUCH easier to run once the details have been formalized. We've got a lot of practice in the subforum at this point in running 8-Pokémon and 8-player draft pools that we've started finally hosting other tournaments such as National Dex Ubers, which features 10-12 Pokémon and 10 players per draft pool (very unusual in a singles tournament setting).

How Smogon Draft is Organized (and why)

The Draft League subforum has had a wildly successful first year. We ran our inaugural kick-off event that featured a $450 prize pool and 1,238 competitors who signed up—the single largest Draft League event in community history. As a result of those efforts, we were awarded a Circuit Ribbon and are still innovating and creating new projects to help facilitate new people getting familiar with and participating in Draft League events. It's important that the community knows how we operate and that we'll continue to put together efforts such as the newly minted Draft C&C section, our reestablished Draft room on PS!, the soon-to-be "Draft Factory" tier on PS!, and more TFP articles aimed at education like this. We have only been able to accomplish the things we have with the help of motivated community members, talented programmers, and dedicated document and forum updaters, and it is in that spirit I'd like to share with you:

Smogon Draft Tournament Hosting Flowchart

This is an internal graphic we use to track the progress of each tournament as it happens according to the 2024 Calendar. At its very basis, this is how we are able to put on the tournaments as efficiently as we do. Another such initiative you see on the glide path is that we worked with the Smogon Translation Team to have our tournament posts translated into as many applicable languages as possible so that individuals can read our rules in their native tongue if preferred and if they so desire.

If you are interested in helping out run tournaments, staffing the PS! room, or becoming a Quality Checker for the C&C section, please reach out to myself or any of the staff listed in the subforum directory. Similarly, if you have any feedback for us or want to drop by and say hi, come do so!

HTML by sparksblade.

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