4x11 is pretty awful for a 4-person draft. At the very least, why not do 5x9? Do you really want to see the same pack 3rd, 7th, 11th?
We usually do 5x13 or someting similar, but only draft the first eight cards. The last five are 'burnt', but it's just whatever's left at the end so much less of a complicated decision than doing it in the middle of a pack, repeatedly.
You see almost 50% more cards total in the draft, which just makes it vastly less likely for the Shuffle Monster to screw up the draft by having your packs contain, say, only two red 1-drops or two green ramp payoffs, or weird mana fixing, etc etc etc.
For 4 mans I typically do 5x9, as anything higher than that makes dead packs for you feel really bad. I've found Glimpse makes for really powerful decks because of all the first picks, but no one really wants to memorize every card in the pack for a casual draft, so the information you get is minimal.
Isn't the majority of the signalling you get in a standard draft later in the pack? Seeing no* red cards pick 2 doesn't give you a ton of information; seeing no red cards picks 4-8 gives a lot. Similarly, seeing a 5th or later pick FTK is a really strong signal. It feels bad when an early pack is a dud for you, but it's not typically a signal.
Isn't the majority of the signalling you get in a standard draft later in the pack? Seeing red cards pick 2 doesn't give you a ton of information; seeing no red cards picks 4-8 gives a lot. Similarly, seeing a 5th or later pick FTK is a really strong signal. It feels bad when an early pack is a dud for you, but it's not typically a signal.
Every 2nd pick is a virtual pick 4, since 3 cards are gone. Again, it's def not the same, but a lot of the same principles are there considering you're only doing 2-4 players. Different signals, but signals none the less considering how many cards are removed and how many still remain.
As a 180 peasant cube owner, definitely use 5x9 for 4 people. It keeps packs fresh and picks become more competitive. Also gives 5 first picks.
Just saying, a first pick with 9 cards in the pack is not nearly as good as a first pick from a pack with 15 cards in it.
I have fallen back on the larger packs with burns at the end like Io said.
//
Salmo, I have no idea how you can tell which signals are which. You can't tell why the three cards are gone. Without burning, you have a reasonable expectation that the large majority of cards were chosen for decks. With burning, 2/3s of cards that are missing are missing for an unknowable reason (from the perspective of the person being passed to). It could be to prevent someone from moving into your color, because a card is 1st pickable, or to throw up a smokescreen.
Every 2nd pick is a virtual pick 4, since 3 cards are gone. Again, it's def not the same, but a lot of the same principles are there considering you're only doing 2-4 players. Different signals, but signals none the less considering how many cards are removed and how many still remain.
Talking about a standard pick 1 and pass draft. The chance you get a FTK or another strong signal passed seems incredibly low in Glimpse, considering there's close to no reason to pass it.
A lot of good discussion here. What works for each group is probably different.
Leelue: you said that with 4x11 four man's that one person often gets a colour alone, but isn't this to be expected in any four-man draft? 4 players in two colours each means each 8 "half-decks" on which to divide the 5 colours--> means that three colours are in two decks and two colours are in one deck each? So for 0-1 three colour decks, then >0 people will have a colour to themselves.
Did I just argue for more fixing if you are mostly cubing with few players?
The issue gets more pronounced because cards nobody wants cycle around at the end of packs in that draft style. These unwanted cards just funnel to the guy by himself.
If you do larger packs and burn the last bunch of cards in the pack, then you have fewer picks where only one person has cards they want in the pack while everyone else is doing nothing
Salmo, I have no idea how you can tell which signals are which. You can't tell why the three cards are gone. Without burning, you have a reasonable expectation that the large majority of cards were chosen for decks. With burning, 2/3s of cards that are missing are missing for an unknowable reason (from the perspective of the person being passed to). It could be to prevent someone from moving into your color, because a card is 1st pickable, or to throw up a smokescreen.
You can't always tell every pack, but you have 9 packs of those signals. Unless my brain is so dead that Im just focusing on the cards, I've never had a draft where I didn't figure out something from what was being passed in those 12 cards during those 9 packs. Between that and the human aspect of things (we don't draft in silence, people react to things, even a 'what the **** are you doing' is information about what they expect) I'm more shocked that there's so much push back about the signals. It seemed like a given to me that in the course of 9 packs, you're going to figure something out about your opponent(s) and what's being passed.
Yes, obviously in the first 1-3 packs I'm not going 'ding ding ding' every time like I cracked the code I'm not Watson over here or anything, but you see so many packs and the results of so many of your opponents decision that it seems almost impossible to me to miss everything that is happening in my opponent's piles.
What do you guys normally do for 3-player drafts? I couldn't find any cool variants online that weren't strangely complicated, so I made up my own. I may not be the first to do it, but it's worked great for me.
Essentially, it's a 3-player Grid Draft. So you have 3 players, A, B, C. Then you go two at a time, and pick a line each from the 9 cards face up, and discard the rest. Each pair will have a person pick first one time, and second the next. So, the order goes AB, BC, CA, then BA, CB, AC (The first letter denotes the player who gets first pick). Each player has 9 packs of 9 cards. I think this format is really fun, while a little slow. You see a lot of hate drafting, and it's easier for newer players to see the draft signals and talk about their picks.
Sometimes, 3 of us will draft, and a 4th person will come in time to make a sealed deck so we can play with 4 players. This usually works because my friends are always late, and because this draft format takes like an hour haha.
2 player: phat 120-180 sealed depending on how we feel
3 player: Winchester but with 3 piles because with more things get out of hand
4 player: 5 packs, 9 cards each (does make people complain about the Lore Seekers)
5-6: either Winchester pools or just normal 3x15 depending on how competitive people feel
Also, Unstable might be the first set I ever buy a box of. 8-man Unstable here we come!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
~400 Peasant++ : List : Draft
Warning: Not for the durdly-hearted!
Let's wait and see how useable those tokens actually are for us. There are plenty of tokens our cards can't produce.
I'd be shocked if they didn't have the standard soldier/goblin/etc tokens, especially since they mentioned that the tokens aren't restricted to ones printed in Unstable. They might not have, like, Seed Guardian or back-end of Penumbra Spider, but it seems like they're going to go with the ones which are generally popular/most used.
We usually do 5x13 or someting similar, but only draft the first eight cards. The last five are 'burnt', but it's just whatever's left at the end so much less of a complicated decision than doing it in the middle of a pack, repeatedly.
You see almost 50% more cards total in the draft, which just makes it vastly less likely for the Shuffle Monster to screw up the draft by having your packs contain, say, only two red 1-drops or two green ramp payoffs, or weird mana fixing, etc etc etc.
Isn't the majority of the signalling you get in a standard draft later in the pack? Seeing no* red cards pick 2 doesn't give you a ton of information; seeing no red cards picks 4-8 gives a lot. Similarly, seeing a 5th or later pick FTK is a really strong signal. It feels bad when an early pack is a dud for you, but it's not typically a signal.
*=edit.
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
Every 2nd pick is a virtual pick 4, since 3 cards are gone. Again, it's def not the same, but a lot of the same principles are there considering you're only doing 2-4 players. Different signals, but signals none the less considering how many cards are removed and how many still remain.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Just saying, a first pick with 9 cards in the pack is not nearly as good as a first pick from a pack with 15 cards in it.
I have fallen back on the larger packs with burns at the end like Io said.
//
Salmo, I have no idea how you can tell which signals are which. You can't tell why the three cards are gone. Without burning, you have a reasonable expectation that the large majority of cards were chosen for decks. With burning, 2/3s of cards that are missing are missing for an unknowable reason (from the perspective of the person being passed to). It could be to prevent someone from moving into your color, because a card is 1st pickable, or to throw up a smokescreen.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Talking about a standard pick 1 and pass draft. The chance you get a FTK or another strong signal passed seems incredibly low in Glimpse, considering there's close to no reason to pass it.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Leelue: you said that with 4x11 four man's that one person often gets a colour alone, but isn't this to be expected in any four-man draft? 4 players in two colours each means each 8 "half-decks" on which to divide the 5 colours--> means that three colours are in two decks and two colours are in one deck each? So for 0-1 three colour decks, then >0 people will have a colour to themselves.
Did I just argue for more fixing if you are mostly cubing with few players?
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
If you do larger packs and burn the last bunch of cards in the pack, then you have fewer picks where only one person has cards they want in the pack while everyone else is doing nothing
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
You can't always tell every pack, but you have 9 packs of those signals. Unless my brain is so dead that Im just focusing on the cards, I've never had a draft where I didn't figure out something from what was being passed in those 12 cards during those 9 packs. Between that and the human aspect of things (we don't draft in silence, people react to things, even a 'what the **** are you doing' is information about what they expect) I'm more shocked that there's so much push back about the signals. It seemed like a given to me that in the course of 9 packs, you're going to figure something out about your opponent(s) and what's being passed.
Yes, obviously in the first 1-3 packs I'm not going 'ding ding ding' every time like I cracked the code I'm not Watson over here or anything, but you see so many packs and the results of so many of your opponents decision that it seems almost impossible to me to miss everything that is happening in my opponent's piles.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Essentially, it's a 3-player Grid Draft. So you have 3 players, A, B, C. Then you go two at a time, and pick a line each from the 9 cards face up, and discard the rest. Each pair will have a person pick first one time, and second the next. So, the order goes AB, BC, CA, then BA, CB, AC (The first letter denotes the player who gets first pick). Each player has 9 packs of 9 cards. I think this format is really fun, while a little slow. You see a lot of hate drafting, and it's easier for newer players to see the draft signals and talk about their picks.
Sometimes, 3 of us will draft, and a 4th person will come in time to make a sealed deck so we can play with 4 players. This usually works because my friends are always late, and because this draft format takes like an hour haha.
Let me know what you guys think!
Burn drafting, it's the last thing talked about in this thread.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Feeling good about Unstable.
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
2 player: phat 120-180 sealed depending on how we feel
3 player: Winchester but with 3 piles because with more things get out of hand
4 player: 5 packs, 9 cards each (does make people complain about the Lore Seekers)
5-6: either Winchester pools or just normal 3x15 depending on how competitive people feel
Also, Unstable might be the first set I ever buy a box of. 8-man Unstable here we come!
Warning: Not for the durdly-hearted!
Just another way to pimp out my cube... Not a good thing for my wallet...
My Peasant Cube thread !!! (380 cards)
Draft my Peasant Cube on Cube Cobra !!!
I'd be shocked if they didn't have the standard soldier/goblin/etc tokens, especially since they mentioned that the tokens aren't restricted to ones printed in Unstable. They might not have, like, Seed Guardian or back-end of Penumbra Spider, but it seems like they're going to go with the ones which are generally popular/most used.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
Quite a few good ones in there. Elementals in particular were unreasonably expensive for a token last time I checked.
My cube discussion thread
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.