GDS3 started a few weeks ago, and for many of us, it's already over. Still, if you're like me, the trials have kicked your design brain in gear. One thing that has had me thinking hard since the Essay Test was one specific question:
"Pick your favorite set among those that you've played with. What was its biggest problem?"
My answer was about Return to Ravnica. It was difficult to find a problem with it from a design standpoint, but I eventually landed on something big: it's too safe. While every other set explores new territory, either mechanically (ex: KTK's block structure) or flavorfully (ex: Innistrad's two very different top-down designs), RTR (and GTC) didn't really do anything new at all. RTR took established successes and capitalized on them, refining every concept to a T. It just didn't try anything very experimental.
That got me thinking about how designers could approach Ravnica set design in a more experimental way. The challenge is that Ravnica is so wide open and presents so few actual challenges to design that it's hard to justify doing anything radically different.
To answer the inevitable comment "don't fix what ain't broke," I'll say this: There's a difference between fixing what's broken and pushing Magic design forward. If a set doesn't push Magic forward, then it's only consuming valuable design space and risking making fans bored of successful concepts. That's why I'm doing this.
Anyway, I thought a lot about what Ravnica could do that's new and exploratory. I thought about focusing on Ravica's law magic and how that could be represented. I've thought about handling guild mechanics differently. Nothing seemed all that exciting.
Then, I thought about the 3-and-1 paradigm standard is about to enter, in which the default is one-world-one-set. I thought about how Ravnica might be done in only one set. At first, it seemed impossible, given the typical size of a large set and how much support each guild will need. We don't want another Dragon's Maze, especially since this set would only ever be drafted alone. I was about to go back to the idea of a two-set block for Ravnica, because that would be the only way all 10 guilds could thrive
Then I stopped myself. I found the answer. Typically, a one-set Ravnica wouldn't work because of the size of a normal large set. However, nobody ever said that the size of a large set must always be in the normal range. What if we messed with the very architecture of a draft set? How many cards? What balance of rarity and multicolor-to-monocolor? Could we experiment with the bedrock of draft set design and still succeed?
Having decided on that, I thought about where to begin. My mind immediately went back to the RTR prerelease. Seeded packs. Could those somehow be implemented? What if the set was divided into two subsets: Seeded guildpacks, containing only cards that belonged to one guild; and the universal draft cardpool, made up of cards that could fill out any drafter's cardpool while still leaving room for diverse deckbuilding.
How would this work?
Pack 1, the Guildpack (teehee get it?), would be the baseline for a drafter's deck, offering a strong starting pool that pushes the drafter hard into that guild. But how does that work if the pack is passed around? Well, in this kind of draft, it isn't. Each player keeps the entire first pack. This ensures that, even in a set with all ten guilds, each drafter gets enough support for at least one guild to have a cohesive draft deck.
Packs 2 and 3, passed left, then right, would more closely resemble a normal set, somewhere between RTR and a Ravnica-themed Core set. They would have mostly monocolor cards, but still explore the guild mechanics in more modular ways. That way, these packs serve to fill out and refine the strategy within the drafter's card pool.
How is this different from just drafting with two sets?
The main difference is how certain kinds of cards are distributed between each subset. A large set needs a large enough card pool for a successful draft, meaning it needs a pool of core effects along with enough mechanical variety to enable many different decks. A small set drafted with it needs enough new elements balanced with enough rehashed core elements from the first set that the draft is different, but functional and similar. This balancing act is exactly why small sets are going away.
With the seeded model, one subset is entirely devoted to giving your draft pool a unique mechanical identity and the other is devoted entirely to tying everything together and making the draft functional. The second subset is the only one that needs core elements, and needs minimal expression on the mechanics established in the first. This reduces the size of the overall cardpool and cleanly delegates the role of the first and subsequent packs, rather than each pack fighting for attention and function.
Now the question is how on earth do the logistics work with this sort of thing? Essentially, I'm talking about designing two sets with codependant mechanics and card-pools, all under the umbrella of one set. Let me start with the easiest question to answer:
How is this sold?
Currently, the typical standard set is sold in booster packs of 15(ish) cards, in booster boxes of 36. This still works here. All that would need to happen is that 12 of the packs in each booster box are Guildpacks, completely randomized. The other 24 are the filler cards, also completely randomized like normal boosters. Logistically, this works fine, as the distribution of product would be relatively unaffected. And just to make drafting a bit easier to organize, assuming LGSs sell single packs out of opened boxes, Draft Packs would also be availible, containing one Guildpack and two filler packs. MSRP remains the same for all products.
As the individual packs go, each can still be sold individually withiut issue. Of course, that means that the number of constructed-vialble cards in each subset (Guildpacks vs filler packs) must be roughly equal, to incentivize buying both. In fact, in order to sell a proportionate amount of both, there would need to be slightly more incentive to buy filler packs. One way to do this is to make the filler subset larger and/or make the filler packs a little cheaper. I'm thinking stores could offer some kind of deal that involves a discount for two or more filler packs. But that's just me brainstorming.
Now comes the trickier part. How many cards are in the Guildpack subset? How many in the filler subset? What about the monocolor/multicolor balance? Rarity distribution? How does any of this work?
To be honest, I have no idea what the best distribution of cards will be between the two subsets. This will all come with trial and error, but we can build off of the established defaults of a normal set.
One other thing that I'm unfamiliar with is the restrictions of printing technology. I know that the number of cards in a set is loosely restricted by how many cards can fit on a single sheet, and how many different sheets are required, but I don't know exactly what the numbers are.
So that's my radical idea. What do you guys think? Is this doable? Am I missing any factors that affect this idea? What ideas do you guys have about the design of this set? Any insights into the logistical side of it?
Honestly, my first thoughts after reading this are: Why? What exactly are the benefits of doing this, and how is it better than normal drafting. I believe that this has been done at some prerelease events for sealed, where you get a couple more focused packs and some regular packs, though I don't remember the details. But for draft, one of the elements that I think is really important is being able to navigate myself through the set, evaluating the cards and finding a strategy, not to mention reading what's open. If I had an initial pack that basically told me what cards I have to pick to have a coherent deck, I think it would detract a lot from the experience.
Logistically, my main concern would be that everybody wants to play the same guild, and suddenly everyone's forced into taking the same colored cards even though there's not enough to go around. This is fairly easily worked around by making sure the guilds are equally represented, though.
Pack 1, the Guildpack (teehee get it?), would be the baseline for a drafter's deck, offering a strong starting pool that pushes the drafter hard into that guild. But how does that work if the pack is passed around? Well, in this kind of draft, it isn't. Each player keeps the entire first pack. This ensures that, even in a set with all ten guilds, each drafter gets enough support for at least one guild to have a cohesive draft deck.
Packs 2 and 3, passed left, then right, would more closely resemble a normal set, somewhere between RTR and a Ravnica-themed Core set. They would have mostly monocolor cards, but still explore the guild mechanics in more modular ways. That way, these packs serve to fill out and refine the strategy within the drafter's card pool.
The question you pose is answered incompletely, because the real question of "How would this work?" includes "How exactly is a Guild Pack assigned?" Does the player pick the guild? Are the packs of different guilds even distinguishable or do you just get a pack and don't know what you receive until you open it?
I personally e. g. would prefer to have distinguishable packs (i. e. packed by guild) and be able to choose one fitting to the cards I drafed during the first two packs in round three to assigning a guild early and then being pre-committed before seeing the reswt of the pool.
This would also solve concerns like e. g. one guild being clearly preferable as not every player can force the guild at the same time. During the first two packs some players would just move into open guilds and you get a better spread (if players pick from distinguishable packs).
EDIT: The most exciting idea to me would be to have just ten guildpacks (one per guild) and use a draft variant that uses a bidding mechanic - so even a slight imbalance between guilds can be balanced out. You get some points and use them to bid on guild packs and the ones you don't spend on bidding you can spend on some small boni e. g. cards in the style of hero cards/conspiracy cards.
Though that starts to move into supplemental product territory.
What I would personally do, is instead of having the Guildpack be just one guild, have it be either 3 cards each from 5 different guilds or 5 cards each from 3 different guilds. That way you still have 15 cards per pack, but players have a bit more freedom choosing which guild to draft.
Expanding on this idea, players could choose a guild, then take all, for example, 3 cards of that guild from their pack, then pass it to the next player, who would do the same.
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"Pick your favorite set among those that you've played with. What was its biggest problem?"
My answer was about Return to Ravnica. It was difficult to find a problem with it from a design standpoint, but I eventually landed on something big: it's too safe. While every other set explores new territory, either mechanically (ex: KTK's block structure) or flavorfully (ex: Innistrad's two very different top-down designs), RTR (and GTC) didn't really do anything new at all. RTR took established successes and capitalized on them, refining every concept to a T. It just didn't try anything very experimental.
That got me thinking about how designers could approach Ravnica set design in a more experimental way. The challenge is that Ravnica is so wide open and presents so few actual challenges to design that it's hard to justify doing anything radically different.
To answer the inevitable comment "don't fix what ain't broke," I'll say this: There's a difference between fixing what's broken and pushing Magic design forward. If a set doesn't push Magic forward, then it's only consuming valuable design space and risking making fans bored of successful concepts. That's why I'm doing this.
Anyway, I thought a lot about what Ravnica could do that's new and exploratory. I thought about focusing on Ravica's law magic and how that could be represented. I've thought about handling guild mechanics differently. Nothing seemed all that exciting.
Then, I thought about the 3-and-1 paradigm standard is about to enter, in which the default is one-world-one-set. I thought about how Ravnica might be done in only one set. At first, it seemed impossible, given the typical size of a large set and how much support each guild will need. We don't want another Dragon's Maze, especially since this set would only ever be drafted alone. I was about to go back to the idea of a two-set block for Ravnica, because that would be the only way all 10 guilds could thrive
Then I stopped myself. I found the answer. Typically, a one-set Ravnica wouldn't work because of the size of a normal large set. However, nobody ever said that the size of a large set must always be in the normal range. What if we messed with the very architecture of a draft set? How many cards? What balance of rarity and multicolor-to-monocolor? Could we experiment with the bedrock of draft set design and still succeed?
Having decided on that, I thought about where to begin. My mind immediately went back to the RTR prerelease. Seeded packs. Could those somehow be implemented? What if the set was divided into two subsets: Seeded guildpacks, containing only cards that belonged to one guild; and the universal draft cardpool, made up of cards that could fill out any drafter's cardpool while still leaving room for diverse deckbuilding.
How would this work?
Pack 1, the Guildpack (teehee get it?), would be the baseline for a drafter's deck, offering a strong starting pool that pushes the drafter hard into that guild. But how does that work if the pack is passed around? Well, in this kind of draft, it isn't. Each player keeps the entire first pack. This ensures that, even in a set with all ten guilds, each drafter gets enough support for at least one guild to have a cohesive draft deck.
Packs 2 and 3, passed left, then right, would more closely resemble a normal set, somewhere between RTR and a Ravnica-themed Core set. They would have mostly monocolor cards, but still explore the guild mechanics in more modular ways. That way, these packs serve to fill out and refine the strategy within the drafter's card pool.
How is this different from just drafting with two sets?
The main difference is how certain kinds of cards are distributed between each subset. A large set needs a large enough card pool for a successful draft, meaning it needs a pool of core effects along with enough mechanical variety to enable many different decks. A small set drafted with it needs enough new elements balanced with enough rehashed core elements from the first set that the draft is different, but functional and similar. This balancing act is exactly why small sets are going away.
With the seeded model, one subset is entirely devoted to giving your draft pool a unique mechanical identity and the other is devoted entirely to tying everything together and making the draft functional. The second subset is the only one that needs core elements, and needs minimal expression on the mechanics established in the first. This reduces the size of the overall cardpool and cleanly delegates the role of the first and subsequent packs, rather than each pack fighting for attention and function.
Now the question is how on earth do the logistics work with this sort of thing? Essentially, I'm talking about designing two sets with codependant mechanics and card-pools, all under the umbrella of one set. Let me start with the easiest question to answer:
How is this sold?
Currently, the typical standard set is sold in booster packs of 15(ish) cards, in booster boxes of 36. This still works here. All that would need to happen is that 12 of the packs in each booster box are Guildpacks, completely randomized. The other 24 are the filler cards, also completely randomized like normal boosters. Logistically, this works fine, as the distribution of product would be relatively unaffected. And just to make drafting a bit easier to organize, assuming LGSs sell single packs out of opened boxes, Draft Packs would also be availible, containing one Guildpack and two filler packs. MSRP remains the same for all products.
As the individual packs go, each can still be sold individually withiut issue. Of course, that means that the number of constructed-vialble cards in each subset (Guildpacks vs filler packs) must be roughly equal, to incentivize buying both. In fact, in order to sell a proportionate amount of both, there would need to be slightly more incentive to buy filler packs. One way to do this is to make the filler subset larger and/or make the filler packs a little cheaper. I'm thinking stores could offer some kind of deal that involves a discount for two or more filler packs. But that's just me brainstorming.
Now comes the trickier part. How many cards are in the Guildpack subset? How many in the filler subset? What about the monocolor/multicolor balance? Rarity distribution? How does any of this work?
To be honest, I have no idea what the best distribution of cards will be between the two subsets. This will all come with trial and error, but we can build off of the established defaults of a normal set.
One other thing that I'm unfamiliar with is the restrictions of printing technology. I know that the number of cards in a set is loosely restricted by how many cards can fit on a single sheet, and how many different sheets are required, but I don't know exactly what the numbers are.
So that's my radical idea. What do you guys think? Is this doable? Am I missing any factors that affect this idea? What ideas do you guys have about the design of this set? Any insights into the logistical side of it?
Logistically, my main concern would be that everybody wants to play the same guild, and suddenly everyone's forced into taking the same colored cards even though there's not enough to go around. This is fairly easily worked around by making sure the guilds are equally represented, though.
The question you pose is answered incompletely, because the real question of "How would this work?" includes "How exactly is a Guild Pack assigned?" Does the player pick the guild? Are the packs of different guilds even distinguishable or do you just get a pack and don't know what you receive until you open it?
I personally e. g. would prefer to have distinguishable packs (i. e. packed by guild) and be able to choose one fitting to the cards I drafed during the first two packs in round three to assigning a guild early and then being pre-committed before seeing the reswt of the pool.
This would also solve concerns like e. g. one guild being clearly preferable as not every player can force the guild at the same time. During the first two packs some players would just move into open guilds and you get a better spread (if players pick from distinguishable packs).
EDIT: The most exciting idea to me would be to have just ten guildpacks (one per guild) and use a draft variant that uses a bidding mechanic - so even a slight imbalance between guilds can be balanced out. You get some points and use them to bid on guild packs and the ones you don't spend on bidding you can spend on some small boni e. g. cards in the style of hero cards/conspiracy cards.
Though that starts to move into supplemental product territory.
Finally a good white villain quote: "So, do I ever re-evaluate my life choices? Never, because I know what I'm doing is a righteous cause."
Factions: Sleeping
Remnants: Valheim
Legendary Journey: Heroes & Planeswalkers
Saga: Shards of Rabiah
Legends: The Elder Dragons
Read up on Red Flags & NWO
Expanding on this idea, players could choose a guild, then take all, for example, 3 cards of that guild from their pack, then pass it to the next player, who would do the same.