Hi fellow cubers. Here's an idea I had for a new drafting method. My playgroup's been on hard times lately, so I haven't actually gotten to test it, but I wanted to run it by y'all and see what you think.
Auction Drafting
Open one 15 card pack and spread it face-up on the table. Each player then opens one additional 15 card pack each, which becomes his/her hand. The player will end up keeping some of these and using others to bid on cards on the table. The bidding value of a card is its CMC.
To bid, players take turns placing one card from their hand next to a card on the table. (Be sure to differentiate the two players’ bids by having them point towards the player who placed them, marking them with different colored poker chips, etc.) Once a card has been used as a bid, it is no longer draftable by either player. A player can outbid an opponent simply by placing a card of higher CMC over the earlier bid. Players continue in this fashion until each has bid on all the cards s/he wants to bid on. Once both players are satisfied, cards that have been “won” (including those won with 0 CMC bids, e.g. lands) go into their winner’s draft pile. Cards not bid on and cards used as bids are discarded.
Players keep their hands as a second pack is opened on the table, and a second round of bidding commences. (In other words, players may want to keep some higher CMC cards from their initial hand to bid on good stuff in the second round.) Players reverse order, and this round precedes as the previous one did, only now when it’s finished, both cards that were won from the table and whatever cards remain in hand are added to the player’s draft pile.
You’re a third of the way done! Simply repeat everything from the beginning twice more: two fresh packs per player, and four new packs face-up, one at a time.
By the end, each player should have seen 9 packs (of a total 12 used), and drafted around 45 cards, depending on how much competition there was for individual cards.
The thing I worry the most is that it seems to give aggro an unfair advantage (tho perhaps that's a good thing in cubes where aggro struggles). Any thoughts on how to avoid this? One way would be to have the cards used for bidding be completely separate from the cards used for deckbuilding – but that seems, to my mind anyway, to take some of the fun out of it, particularly the challenge of seeing how what's in your hand interacts well with what's on the table. Another possibility might be to switch it up so that low CMCs win cards. The problem there seems to be that there are simply too many cards with low CMCs, and the bidding with get muddled.
The thing I worry the most is that it seems to give aggro an unfair advantage (tho perhaps that's a good thing in cubes where aggro struggles). Any thoughts on how to avoid this? One way would be to have the cards used for bidding be completely separate from the cards used for deckbuilding – but that seems, to my mind anyway, to take some of the fun out of it, particularly the challenge of seeing how what's in your hand interacts well with what's on the table. Another possibility might be to switch it up so that low CMCs win cards. The problem there seems to be that there are simply too many cards with low CMCs, and the bidding with get muddled.
Akrasia, a Custom 360 Cube
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