MTG Salvation

Fredo's first Team Rochester Cube draft has ended!

Visual overview of all picks in Googledoc here.


Seats & picks

Seat ArmageddonSeat BitterblossomSeat CapsizeSeat Damnation Seat Electrolyze Seat Fireball

Uhh - I'm looking forward to this. Thanks for your great work Fredo.

I'm in!

This seems like a good idea, until you realize that one pick a day will mean this will take 360 days to complete if nothing stalls this (won't happen).

Are you willing to do this project for a year?

Quote from Pringlesman

This seems like a good idea, until you realize that one pick a day will mean this will take 360 days to complete if nothing stalls this (won't happen).

Are you willing to do this project for a year?

You might want to read the rules again. I'm going for a pack a day - meaning this should take about a month all told.

Just to clear out any confusion, the idea is to vote for each of the 8 seats. A vote consists of a list of preferred picks as long as you wish it to be, and the card a seat gets will be the card with the most votes still present in the pack at that time.

First pack is coming up...

Pack 1 (Timestamp: 2011-01-12 20:13:09 UTC) is up in the OP. If there's still any confusion about how to vote or how this draft will work, let me know.

So we have to choose picks for all players before we know who takes what? Wouldn't the second person be influenced by what the first person takes? Or am I confused about how this works?

Quote from porpoise921

So we have to choose picks for all players before we know who takes what? Wouldn't the second person be influenced by what the first person takes? Or am I confused about how this works?

You got it exactly right. As for influences, just try to choose the best option for each seat. Once each 'virtual person' has a direction in the draft, this will become easier. And anyway, in the beginning it's more about simply taking the most powerful cards than anything else.

EDIT:

Quote from grimreaper

I think the idea is that you choose pick 1. Your second choice is then effected by what you listed above it, I believe

Not exactly, since the actual first pick will depend on other people's votes, too. A quirk of the first and second picks is that you don't need to take the wheel into account, so the vote list can be shorter.

EDIT 2: Just to make sure everyone understands how this will work, a few examples.

Let's say that for the current pack, Seat Armageddon, Squee gets the most votes. This means seat A gets Squee, and any Squee votes for other seats are now disregarded. Suppose that for seat Bitterblossom, disregarding the Squee votes, Survival of the Fittest wins. Seat B gets Survival, any Squee or Survival votes for the other seats are disregarded. And so on. The votes need to be in list form to allow for the possibility that some picks will be taken before that seat can take it.

So basically I just submit a ranked order of this pack?

Picks 1-7
1 Survival of the Fittest
2 Flametongue Kavu
3 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Wasteland
5 Squee, Goblin Nabob
6 Celestial Colonnade
7 Horizon Canopy
8 Living Death
9 Wildfire
Picks 8 & 9
1 Survival of the Fittest
2 Flametongue Kavu
3 Knight of Meadowgrain
4 Mistral Charger
5 Braids, Cabal Minion
6 Wasteland
7 Squee, Goblin Nabob
8 Celestial Colonnade
9 Horizon Canopy
10 Living Death
11 Wildfire

Picks 10 plus
Whatever remaining card goes best with whatever card was took earlier.


Is something like that an acceptable vote?

I apologize this isn't exactly what I thought it was. I thought we just go to the google doc, pick a card and move on. Sorry I'm out man. I thought we would just get called up, I would pick a card remaining and go on. not vote on a bunch of cards. It sounds fun but a little to involved for something I can't be constantly focused on each day

I think that we post rankings for the first booster, and then post for the wheel as well, right? Surely the 'back' 7 cards need to be sensibly drafted by a single person rather than silly rankings?

Anyway, here's my crack at the first pack:

1 Survival of the Fittest
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Braids, Cabal Minion
1 Wildfire
1 Wasteland
1 Knight of Meadowgrain
1 Living Death
1 Celestial Colonnade
--
1 All Is Dust
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Mistral Charger
1 Ice Storm
1 Void
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Captain of the Watch

With the seat as number:

1 Survival of the Fittest
2 Flametongue Kavu
3 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Knight of Meadowgrain
5 Wasteland
6 Wildfire
7 Celestial Colonnade
8 All Is Dust
-----------
8 Living Death
7 Captain of the Watch
6 Ice Storm
5 Horizon Canopy
4 Mistral Charger
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Void

For this pack at least and probably a few after that, votes as posted up till now will be fine. I'm going to follow Magicmerl's suggestion and let only the first pick for each seat be determined by the votes, and distribute the wheel picks myself, as fair and logical as possible.

Once the seats have some direction, it will be easier to post votes per seat as was my intention (I'll try to make the rules even more clear as plainly I failed so far). This will give voters perfect control over which picks they want each seat to receive.

The reason for this system is that with votes as posted so far, you lose your vote if the card is no longer available. For example, let's say you voted Wasteland as a pick for seat D, but other people rated the card higher than you and it's actually seat C that gets the Wasteland. In this case, unless you have backup votes, your vote for seat D is lost as your only vote is no longer in the pack when it's Seat D's turn. This effect gets stronger with the later picks.

So the idea was to post your votes like this :









...etc.

Voting for every seat is not compulsory if that would be too time-consuming for you.

So, for now votes can be entered as a simple power ranking of the cards - this is pretty much how rochester actually begin anyway. A couple of packs into the draft we'll switch to the more sophisticated voting system.

Alright, I'm not sure if this is going anywhere but I guess we'll see.

Pack 2 is up with some juicy goodies: timestamp 2011-01-13 20:37:31 UTC

Quote from Fredo

Alright, I'm not sure if this is going anywhere but I guess we'll see.

Pack 2 is up with some juicy goodies: timestamp 2011-01-13 20:37:31 UTC

It's a bit complicated. No one likes fake drafting more than me, but keeping track of all the seats, what they've drafted and what's left in the pack is a hassle. Additionally, not drafting against anyone else is unsatisfying. My suggestion would be to run it similar to the rotisserie drafts, except have multiple people on each team, and the first person to respond from the team makes the pick (with you stepping in and making the pick if no one from that team picks in a few hours). That way you can get some good competition, while still keeping the packs coming fast.

Just my $.02

Quote from Phantizle

It's a bit complicated. No one likes fake drafting more than me, but keeping track of all the seats, what they've drafted and what's left in the pack is a hassle. Additionally, not drafting against anyone else is unsatisfying. My suggestion would be to run it similar to the rotisserie drafts, except have multiple people on each team, and the first person to respond from the team makes the pick (with you stepping in and making the pick if no one from that team picks in a few hours). That way you can get some good competition, while still keeping the packs coming fast.

Just my $.02

You're probably right. So that would make it a team rochester draft, of course then I'd need 8 teams of about 4 or 5 people each. If there's enough interest in this formula I'm willing to set it up and host it. Let me know.

Nah, just make 2 teams of drafters, drafting a 3-on-3 rochester.

Like this:

I'm happy to be in one of the teams.

sure id be interested

Quote from magicmerl

Nah, just make 2 teams of drafters, drafting a 3-on-3 rochester.

With only 2 teams, the concept of 'first to post decides' becomes a bit rough, don't you think?

I suppose we could just see how many people we have and decide upon the number of teams then.

So far, we seem to have:

kcolloran
killem2
magicmerl
bondafong
Vol

So, with a simpler and zippier approach, who else is on board for a team rochester cube draft?

<-----

I'll have to join this being my Cube too and all that:)

I'm in but will probably be inactive while I'm in France.

Definitely in.

So that's 10 people. If we have 5 people on each 'team', then let's say that in making picks, when a pick gets 2 votes, it gets 'locked in' for a team. That way everyone can contribute but you aren't waiting for people who are awol to cast deciding votes.

e.g. If the draft started off with PlayerA starting from the currently listed booster, I might suggest that PlayerA takes Black Lotus, Player B takes Ancestral and Player C takes Liliana Vess. Phantizle might suggest that Player A takes Ancestral, B takes Lotus and C takes Phyrexian Processor. Then kcolloran chimes in and picks Ancestral-Lotus-Processor.

All the votes have at least two people agreeing on them, so it's on to Team 2 to make the next 6 picks in the pack.

Make sense? In the event of a tie, discussion ensues....

If we split people up based on the order they 'joined' the draft in, the teams could be

Team 1
kcolloran
magicmerl
Vol
sexyindiancurry
Dragoon

Team 2
killem2
bondafong
Phantizle
Hicham

.....

Magicmerl, using that system, wouldn't 12 card boosters be a bit more balanced? 3-6-3 instead of 3-6-6?

More participants are still very welcome, it would give us more options.