Just in case I can only get 5 people together to open our GTC box on Friday, I was wondering if anyone has figured out any alternatives to standard booster draft that work well for fewer people. I find that 5x3=15 boosters just isn't a deep enough pool for everyone to end up with decent decks using the standard booster draft format.
I know we could Rochester, but it takes a long time and I actually prefer to not know what everyone else is drafting.
If it were a cube we could easily just build packs of different sizes or something, but when opening boosters we don't have that flexibility.
I guess we could open 4 packs each? Has anyone had success with this?
I've drafted with as few as three people (which I wouldn't recommend; one of my most "unique" limited experiences was the day of back-to-back three-person triple Coldsnap drafts), but regular booster draft scales down to 7/6/5 reasonably well. Sure, there's fewer cards in the pool, but there's fewer people taking them.
Biggest differences are:
It's somewhat harder to put together niche archetypes.
The effect of being in an overdrafted or underdrafted color is amplified a bit.
It's much easier to tell what everyone's in because it's way more tractable to check which four cards are gone than which seven are gone when you get a pack back.
There's more planning for wheeling, because a pack still containing good stuff when it returns is a lot more frequent.
If you do want to juice the decks a little you could add a fourth pack, but I suspect that decks built from that will look much less like standard draft decks than decks made from three packs per person.
I do 2v2 team drafts all the time. It isn't quite as good as with 7-8 people, but 4-5 decent to good drafters can still have a great time playing magic.
I do 2v2 team drafts all the time. It isn't quite as good as with 7-8 people, but 4-5 decent to good drafters can still have a great time playing magic.
How do you run these, exactly? Standard booster format, and then 2HG?
How do you run these, exactly? Standard booster format, and then 2HG?
No. You make teams before the draft and then seat people so that you're not passing to a teammate. Then, you play round robin so each player on a team plays both members of the opposing team. So, four total matches are played - the winning team is the first to 3 match wins. In the case of a 2-2 tie, you go to a tiebreak round where each team chooses its strongest deck and you play a final match between those decks to decide the winner.
I normally play 4 man limited live. There isn't an FNM nearby that does limited and we can usually only get 4 together. Normally we just draft with 3 packs going left-right-left, deciding beforehand if we're playing two rounds or three. Roll to see where you sit, roll for first round opponent. Draft rares/uncommons. It plays out pretty well, you'll just have a harder time going the niche archetypes because those 11th pick cards aren't there in abundance
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I know we could Rochester, but it takes a long time and I actually prefer to not know what everyone else is drafting.
If it were a cube we could easily just build packs of different sizes or something, but when opening boosters we don't have that flexibility.
I guess we could open 4 packs each? Has anyone had success with this?
Thanks for your input!
Biggest differences are:
It's somewhat harder to put together niche archetypes.
The effect of being in an overdrafted or underdrafted color is amplified a bit.
It's much easier to tell what everyone's in because it's way more tractable to check which four cards are gone than which seven are gone when you get a pack back.
There's more planning for wheeling, because a pack still containing good stuff when it returns is a lot more frequent.
If you do want to juice the decks a little you could add a fourth pack, but I suspect that decks built from that will look much less like standard draft decks than decks made from three packs per person.
*DCI Rules Advisor*
How do you run these, exactly? Standard booster format, and then 2HG?
No. You make teams before the draft and then seat people so that you're not passing to a teammate. Then, you play round robin so each player on a team plays both members of the opposing team. So, four total matches are played - the winning team is the first to 3 match wins. In the case of a 2-2 tie, you go to a tiebreak round where each team chooses its strongest deck and you play a final match between those decks to decide the winner.
*DCI Rules Advisor*