General 1-vs-1 Drafting Variant

[Diakonov]

Hello everyone! This is my first thread on these boards.

My friend and I really enjoy 1-vs-1 cube drafting, and we're always trying to come up with fun new ways to make it work. After this weekend I came up with an idea that I haven't had a chance to test, so I was hoping to get your input:

Make a stack of 140 cards. Deal 7 cards face down to each player. Both players look at their 7 and choose a card to keep, then shuffle the remaining 6 and randomly discard a card from it face down. Both players hand each other the 5 cards that are left, choose one of the 5 to keep, then randomly discard another face down. Both players hand each other the remaining 3 cards, choose one to keep, and discard face down the remaining 2. Repeat with new packs of 7 until all are gone.

This way, you receive a lot of options while still having interaction with your opponent. If you fail to wheel a second card from a pack, it will be difficult to know for certain whether your opponent took that card or whether it was randomly discarded (66% chance that it was discarded).

What do you guys think?

 

[DreamPaint]

Sounds sweet, Ill test this out this weekend.

 

[James Stevenson]

Sounds worth trying! Out of all the 2-player draft formats I've played I still like grid drafting the most, but there might be something better out there.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Disclaimer: My cube is a 540 so its small pools can be a lot worse than small cubes.

Tried this over the weekend a few times. I'm ok with only seeing your opponent's pack once, but random discards can be extremely annoying. We talked about it during and after the first time, and multiple times we'd take something and our two "wheel" cards would get discarded, leaving us with effectively nothing. It can be very hard, thanks to random, to stay in-colors with both discards and small pack size. I remember these two packs quite clearly:

This was maybe pack 3, and I was already white weenie with a battlefield forge and godless shrine to splash with, so I took the sorin to wheel the lands. Neither came back, and both had been discarded while my opponent, who first-picked Thassa, took Teferi. Another pack:

This was a bit later, but I was still Wx aggro, and needing bodies I took lingering souls. Neither skyjek nor honor came back, both again to discards.

Very frustrating, and if we weren't discussing as we went I would've snap-assumed he was playing the exact same thing at least a few times when he was almost the opposite. My experience may have been drastic but with it in mind I'm of the opinion that pick signals don't exist in this draft, only wheels. And even then...

 

[Diakonov]

Hmm, interesting. How about skipping the first discard? Your opponent still won't have any major clues as to what your first pick was, but it will allow for one more card to wheel.

EDIT: Another idea would be to keep drafting the original way, but then when the discard pile is 14 cards deep, shuffle them up and do a round with the discarded cards. That would give you another shot at a card you may have missed while also having the wow factor of seeing what your opponent didn't pick.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Not discarding on the first pass is probably ok but re-using the discarded cards almost completely destroys the "did he take that or was it discarded" bit.