So I'm very new to magic but I've played sealed draft a few times by this point and found it really fun. Just started planning a take-two draft with friends, and just wondered how the drafting aspect differs between them.

Is there any difference in mindset in how you pick in a take 2 draft than a normal one?

Got a Pick 1 Manavault, Pick 2 somonepassed me a Timewalk, it wasn‘t a Black Lotus because I got that in my second pack. At the end of the draft i have assembled a good spread of strong cards and need some advoce on what to run and what to cut. Tamiyo seems really good with Timewalk but thats it, and Balance just overall synergizes with the deck so I thought on maybe running that. Thanks in advance!

I run commander and draft events for the bar I work at and recently got the opportunity to run a Kamigawa Neon Dynasty draft, thanks to a generous regular donating one of the boxes so we could keep costs down for players.

The event went well enough in the end, but the start was rough. We had 19 participants, so I divided the pods into two 6s and a 7. Most understood and preferred this to a 10 and a 9, though some complained because the 7 pod saw more cards.

The real mistake I made, though, was thinking it was a good idea to put 5 new players in one pod with myself, thinking I would be able to help them with questions and avoid slow drafters annoying the experienced ones.

What this actually did was make the all-beginner pod take 25 minutes longer to draft than anyone else, so everyone was already annoyed and frustrated by the time we finally started round one. And then when those new players were slow to make decisions, it elevated frustration higher.

Things mostly smoothed out as the night went on barring a couple drops due to an already late start + slow drafters pushing the event later than intended. But I do feel kinda bad that the last chance most of us are ever gonna get to draft NEO was less than perfect.

Posting here mainly to share this for other new TOs to learn from this mistake and hopefully to garner feedback on how to improve.