Four Daily Wins

Premier, Traditional, Quick Draft, or Sealed?

The Bottom Line: 

You can't go wrong if you play in Premier Drafts, regardless of your skill level. 

If you know that your play skill is very low and you want to practice, or if your currency level is low, you might consider Quick Drafts. 

If you know that your play skill is especially high, you might consider Traditional Draft, but remember that your Limited Rank won't increase this way.

Sealed can be a nice change of pace sometimes, but it's not a great way to develop your collection.

But Why?

Premier Drafts cost 10,000 gold or 1,500 Gems to join, and you’re drafting in real time with real players. Matches are best-of-one (so no sideboards). The break-even point in a Premier Draft is around 3.5 wins. There are always Premier Drafts of the most recent set available.

Quick Drafts cost 5,000 gold or 750 gems to join, and you draft with seven bots. You have unlimited time to make picks. Matches are best-of-one. The break-even point in a Quick Draft is 5 wins. Quick Drafts are only available sometimes, and they often are not using the current set. Because these drafts use bots, sometimes they are not programmed to properly value certain cards or archetypes, resulting in blind spots that savvy players can exploit. This means that if you encounter a player who knows the exploits, their deck will likely be better on average, so watch out (or learn the exploits yourself, and profit).

Traditional Drafts cost 10,000 gold or 1,500 gems. The drafting is in real time, with real humans. The matches are best-of-3, so there is less variance in the actual games, but you need to have a higher win rate than in Premier if you want to break even, and for some reason these drafts are not ranked. 

Tobi Henke released an article on Cardmarket at the end of 2023, Inside the New Arena Economy, that goes into much deeper detail about Expected Value and the optimal formats to play based on your win rate. If that's your thing, you should go read it, but for our purposes, the short version is that the way the reward structure works, Quick Drafts have been found to be kinder to users with low win percentages, while Traditional Drafts have been found to reap bigger rewards for players with high win rates. It's reasonable to ignore this and stick with Premier Draft, but if you don't mind tracking your win rate closely, you might do better on the margins by following this advice.

Sealed events can only be paid for with 2,000 gems (not with gold), are unranked, and are best-of-1. The break-even point is less clear, but it’s somewhere between 3 and 5 wins. While it is a different play experience, which can occasionally be fun, it’s not the best use of your time from a free-to-play standpoint.

So, if you're not sure what to play, start with Premier Draft, and only delve into the others if you think it makes sense based on the above.