ADV Draft Baseball League Other

ADV Draft New Player Guide

Updated 11-04-2024

Drafting Philosophy

There are a few ways to get what you need to have a successful draft in this format. The most intuitive approach is to make a checklist and simply cross off every role you need to fulfill. However, knowing what to prioritize in your limited number of slots is quite tricky. There is a surprising amount of complexity to the checklist approach that depends on your playstyle, like what archetype (from stall to hyper offense) your draft intends to fit. The rest of this guide should provide guidelines to approach getting a viable draft (note, these are guidelines, not hard rules). Unlike in modern draft, stall is decently viable in ADV Draft.

The First Pick

The general ensemble of the first six picks in a competitive draft pool will likely include the following:

Metagross, Celebi, Snorlax, Zapdos, Tyranitar, Raikou

In addition, these Pokemon generally get picked late in the first round/early in the second round:

Salamence, Starmie, Skarmory, Aerodactyl, Gengar

If you are in the first six picks, you can't go wrong picking the Pokemon in the first list that best suits your playstyle. Later picks should get a combination of two Pokemon in the second list if nothing in the first list is still up. To elaborate, while Metagross is almost certainly the best Pokemon in the format, this means a whole lot less if you’re not good at playing to its strengths. However, it is worth noting that many of the first round picks are taken so early because of their versatility, and are therefore adaptable to almost any playstyle. At this stage, it’s best practice to pick the most expensive thing on the board and get a clearer plan as more picks materialize. This is not like a fantasy football draft where each piece does not synergize with each other (outside of bye weeks or avoiding drafting players on the same team) -- each piece in the draft contributes to a team's overall structure and style.

"But I Want Something Else!"

You can definitely get it later, but it’s not in contention right now. At the start, people will be taking everything off the top of the board, so get the best Pokemon while you can. The question of when to get a cheaper Pokemon (12 points or below) is an interesting one, but the answer is not before round 4. It is generally good to pick the most expensive thing on the board during the first three rounds that fit with your team structure. Keep in mind the following point for the remainder of this guide: how close you are to a wheel pick determines how you should be strategizing picks in the first few rounds. Wheel and wheel-adjacent picks (picks 1, 2, 7, and 8) should be picking synergistically, while the middle positions should generally grab what’s considered best throughout the first few rounds. Going for a specific combo is obviously not reliable if you are a 4th or 5th pick.

Obviously, picks that synergize are ideal, but understanding how Pokemon synergize is rather difficult. Synergies can get as simple as a Water type and a Steel type, or as specific as two specific Pokemon that work well together that can’t really be replaced, such as the combination of Forretress and Flygon -- two Pokemon that are difficult to make work in isolation but pair quite well together, resisting each other’s weaknesses and both providing utility to a broader team. They fill out different roles for the checklist approach (Forretress: spiker, spinner, exploder, physical stopgap; Flygon: levitator, speed control, rock resist, choice bander). Note that when vulnerabilities to a type are present in your draft, it’s often helpful to cover weaknesses for multiple Pokemon. In this scenario, any Water, Fire, or Thick Fat Pokemon resists the combination of Fire and Ice. Maximizing the amount of coverage your opponent has to run for your team is very valuable.

Second and Third Round

Once securing your high-pointer of choice, it’s time to truly ponder where the draft can go from here. At this point, a draft pool can branch out in exceedingly different ways, so we’ll have to stick to aforementioned guidelines like checklists from here on out. If you’re picking expensive stuff at this point that’s not stacking the same type, you’re going in the right direction. If your Pokemon synergize, that’s great, and if they don’t, that can be patched up later. As we accrue more Pokemon in our draft, the most important part of a coherent draft is avoiding redundancy. Our resources are limited: eight Pokemon slots to face off against any other team, so we can’t afford to pick up multiple of a type or a role. There are two key exceptions to this: having multiple Water types and Psychic types on a team is relatively common (it’s more important that they don’t stack multiple weaknesses at once, such as Quagsire and Swampert's 4x grass weaknesses), as is having multiple of the same offensive role (Dragon Dance or Calm Mind user, for example) if the two Pokemon help break the opposition’s defensive core for each other. Utility moves that aren’t Spikes are also fine to have two Pokemon for; spikers do little else besides setting spikes, and are not worth two slots.

Fourth Round and Onwards

Every pick from around the fourth pick onward in a draft can be determined using the same method: filling in the gaps. It is worth noting that around this time is when you’ll be deciding how you’ll be distributing your points towards the end. While it’s true that you must fill out all eight slots, nothing is stopping you from filling multiple of your slots with one-pointers. As a consequence, this essentially splits the types of draft into six-mon drafts, seven-mon drafts, and eight-mon drafts. It’s up to you to decide (as there is not really a consensus): are more expensive middle slots worth giving up nearly all surprise factor versus my opponent? The most common (and historically most successful) option is a seven-mon draft, having some flexibility while aiming to get a cheap niche Pokemon to help in an otherwise problematic matchup.

The Checklist

Nothing is truly absolutely required on an ADV draft team given the right team and knowledge of why you’re avoiding the common consensus, but this checklist should prove helpful to newer players. Each item on the checklist is sorted by priority, with top priority being required, middle priority being recommended, and low priority being optional. If an item is higher up on the list, it should not be dealt with using a cheap Pokemon (5 points or lower).