General Drafting with 4 players

[MoshiMaro]

Hi guys,

First off I'm new to the forums so thank you for having me
I've been reading for quite a while but this is my first post

I wanted to share with you my preferred draft method since I think everyone should be able to enjoy it
If parts of what I'm sharing have already been discussed here then mea culpa on my side

My playgroup consistently drafts with 4 players only so traditional drafting didn't work for us.
Jason already described some of the main issues in his article "Cube design - Grid drafting and more"
To summarise:
1) Lack of tension
2) Lack of good cards wheeling
3) Lack of good decks - seeing only 4 x 3 x 15 = 180 cards out of a 540-cube

So I took up the Tenchester method and it worked very well for us. In short:
- We make 36 10-card boosters
- Everyone gets 9 boosters to start with
- Everyone drafts only 1 card out of each booster
- The remaining 6 card-boosters get discarded.

In the meantime we're two years further down the road and made some, at least see as we it, improvements:

Instead of drafting open we draft closed (as with regular boosterdrafting) this makes the whole drafting part go a lot faster since everyone picks at the same time. Besides this, there is also a lot less trash talk on hatedrafting etc. (which sometimes is ofcourse less fun but most of the time works better for us )

Because you do want to get an idea what other people draft, the booster you "opened" gets returned to you after everyone has had a pick. You then get a chance to look at what's missing after which you place the leftover cards on a big discard pile (without picking a second card)

Finally we introduced a single wild card for everyone. This means everyone gets to make 1 extra pick during the entire draft from your own booster when it's wheeled.

As for shuffling:
Since drafting 360 cards out of a 540 cube we want to maintain color balance for the 360 cards.
We shuffles as follows:
1) We split the Cube in 8 parts (1 for each color, 1 for multicolor, 1 for artifacts and 1 for lands)
2) Then we make a grid which measures 5 rows and 9 columns
3) We make 8-card piles with 1 card from each part (45 piles)
4) We stack each column (5 x 8 = 40)
5) We shuffle each 40 card stack and divide it into 4 boosters.
6) This way we end up with 36 10 card boosters.

So that's it - my first post

I'm hoping there's at least some useful things in here and I'm looking forward to contributing on these forums in the future!

 

[Jonas]

Seems like an interesting idea.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Useful post

Welcome!

I think this is a good idea. The biggest downside about Tenchester was that it took forever, and this should speed things up by about 4x (roughly), while adding in some of the signaling that you find in normal drafts.


As for your method of making the piles, it seems fine enough, and maybe is really helpful for the smaller packs. I tend to stick to the traditional "fully random" method, but this seems well within the realm of personal preference.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, I really like the adaptation you've made so that you essentially have 10-card boosters, where the weakest six cards are discarded. That should make for some pretty powerful decks, while letting you see a good portion of the cube every draft.

 

[James Stevenson]

This seems excellent, I will try it in the next 4-man for sure. Awesome work! And welcome!

 

[Eric Chan]

How would you modify this concept for a six-man draft? I want higher card quality, more total cards seen, and more powerful decks than a normal six-man; something more akin to an 8-man.

 

[Jason Waddell]

How would you modify this concept for a six-man draft? I want higher card quality, more total cards seen, and more powerful decks than a normal six-man; something more akin to an 8-man.

Just do the same thing with 6 cards taken per pack instead of 4.

You'll get 36 picks, with 6 rounds of 6 packs. (6 x 6 x 10 = 360 cards seen).

Alternatively you could... I started this sentence a while ago and I don't know what it's about anymore.

Oh, make 24 15-card packs and discard the last 3 each time.

 

[shamizy]

That's a great first post.

 

[MoshiMaro]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys!

As for your method of making the piles, it seems fine enough, and maybe is really helpful for the smaller packs. I tend to stick to the traditional "fully random" method, but this seems well within the realm of personal preference.

That's indeed a choice which hasn't anything to do with the draft method itself. We just prefer it to prevent players being color "hosed" - of course it's a bit work beforehand (or after, depending how late in the night it gets).

This seems excellent, I will try it in the next 4-man for sure. Awesome work! And welcome!

I'm curious about your thoughts after you tried it!
What is your current draft method when drafting with 4?

Just do the same thing with 6 cards taken per pack instead of 4.

That would be just fine indeed.
Alternatively you could make 36 packs with 11 cards each (396 cards)

Some other remarks:

On drafting direction
When playing with 4 players (9 packs each) we switch direction after every 3 packs.

On drafting with 5
We make the same amount of packs (36)
Then everyone get's 7 packs each (7x5 = 35)
The remaining booster is opened face up and everyone gets one pick out of it before we start with regular drafting. (a die roll determines who goes first)

 

[vennythekid]

How about with three players?

 

[Jason Waddell]

How about with three players?

The same thing should work with 12 packs per player, instead of 9. You still get 36 picks, taking one from each pack and discarding the remaining ones.

 

[Aston]

If you can find something that works with 3, please let me know. I'd rather not play than play with 3 at this point.

 

[spicewitch]

I was happy with Alfonso Bonso's advice to do 3p Rochester draft - 22 packs, 7 cards per pack, take turns picking, throw out the 7th card of each pack

 

[B8R]

Necro-ing this thread to ask for some opinions on a 4-person draft variant:

It's a form of BURN drafting akin to Glimpse drafting but produces decks of power level more similar to an 8-man draft and involves more cards wheeling than Glimpse provides.

Each player gets 6 packs of 15 cards. In packs 1-3, you PICK 1/BURN 1, then pass. In packs 4-6, you *BURN 1* first off, then pass, then proceed to PICK 1/BURN 1, pass, for the remainder of the pack. This yields 45 cards where you have 3 first picks, 3 second picks, etc., just like an 8 man.

I like wheeling as an element of drafting, and I wanted to find a satisfying way to make that work with 4 people. Any thoughts, opinions, or improvements?

 

[StormEntity]

My group does something very similar except: take the three "extra" packs and put them in a separate pile to your right. That pile of packs "belongs" to a bot, a fictional player who just takes a random card from each pack. Then, for your first pick of each pack, you just select a card as normal. From the second pack you take the Pack One from the bot to your right, burn a random card from it, and proceed as normal. You do this with every pick until pack 2, when you of course make another first pick and pass to the right. I find this gets the "wheeling feeling" pretty accurate, and lets your group see lots of cards without compromising the rate at which cards naturally disappear from packs.

 

[B8R]

I guess it comes down to which is ultimately better for a draft experience: a card randomly chosen or a card "hate" drafted. I like how the hate drafting component adds extra decision making but I'm not sure if it's really better overall.

 

[StormEntity]

I much prefer a randomly chosen card over a hate drafted card (at least in theory; I haven't tried the hate draft method). 4 man drafts are extremely prone to the problem of not getting enough good cards for the players to build decks of appropriate (IMO) power level to the cube, and randomizing the trashed cards is a step that helps in that direction. It also, I think, more closely approximates a real draft, in that robots that randomly select a card have their "incentives" more closely aligned with that of a real drafter, compared to someone who's hate drafting a card (which is behavior completely unlike how real drafters work).

 

[sigh]

Tenchester is still my favorite 4 man drafting method, but if I were to do a burn draft method, I'd probably go for the random burn too.

 

[StormEntity]

If I could ever get my drafters to agree to a Rochester draft method I'd be all over it. In fact I think I'm going to pitch it harder next time, I really appreciate the open information aspect. Only problem is it reduces parallel processing potential, which almost necessarily makes the draft take longer. Maybe if you strongly emphasize that people do a lot of thinking while it's not their pick?

 

[B8R]

Tenchester is still my favorite 4 man drafting method, but if I were to do a burn draft method, I'd probably go for the random burn too.

Do you do 4 packs of 10 for each player? This would incentivize me to build a new 4 person oriented cube at 400 cards...hmm...

 

[sigh]

Do you do 4 packs of 10 for each player? This would incentivize me to build a new 4 person oriented cube at 400 cards...hmm...

10 packs of 10, pick 1 per pack. That ends up at 40 picks per person. I'm thinking of adding in some number of "bonus" picks, maybe 5 to round out at 45, where you can pick 2 cards instead of 1 by cashing in a bonus pick. That should help archetypes stick better.

My cube is basically exactly that, but I haven't cut down to 400 yet.

 

[B8R]

Cool! Yeah I misspoke, I meant 10 packs of 10 for 4 players = 400. I think I'm gonna try this!

 

[B8R]

Do you guys think that a 432 card cube where you Tenchester (Twelvechester?) at 9 packs of 12 cards for each of the 4 players would work well? You still maintain the tension of making a deck happen from only 36 picks, but your packs have a very slight increase in the range of choices. Viable? Does anyone see a downside to this?

 

[NimbusToad]

I have an 180 card cube, so I definitely have fewer options than some. We do 5 packs of 9 and just draft normally. I've done only a few of these drafts with the newest iteration of my cube, but when I was in college and cubing fairly more frequently with a similar ~200 card cube I did it the same way. Most of the time the decks come together well, but I guess if you can expect to see every card you know that it is possible to get enough fixing or enough 2/1s or enough wraths.

I've tried 3 and 4 player Winston drafting too, which is sort of fun.

 

[sigh]

Do you guys think that a 432 card cube where you Tenchester (Twelvechester?) at 9 packs of 12 cards for each of the 4 players would work well? You still maintain the tension of making a deck happen from only 36 picks, but your packs have a very slight increase in the range of choices. Viable? Does anyone see a downside to this?

Less supported archetypes might have a slightly harder time sticking if multiple pieces show up in one pack. Same way with ten card packs, but the chance of that is slightly higher with 12 card packs than with 10. It'd probably work fine though, any particular reason for this method over the 400 card version?