General Absurd idea: Integrated 1v1 Drafting and Playing

Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Okay, so I was thinking about the other thread where people are talking about Starcraft. In that game you start off with a seedling of a plan, and you change and evolve as the game progresses. Often this isn't super present in Magic because you make your deck before the game starts and can't really change its contents mid-game.

What if that wasn't the case? What if you started the game with some basic deck, and each turn you draft new cards from some mechanism. Maybe it's grid drafting, maybe it's something new. Your priorities change as the board state evolves.

Obviously this is super vague but I think there's something there.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Maybe with a rotating row of cards that both players may draw from instead of drawing a card in their draw step?
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

Onderzeeboot said:
Maybe with a rotating row of cards that both players may draw from instead of drawing a card in their draw step?
Click to expand...

This seems like a good start. You don't want to have too many choices or your game will be crippled by decision paralysis.

Three cards face up at a time in the Command Zone. Optional replacement effect for your draw step, pay 2 colorless and choose one of those to draw instead, which is then replaced. If both players consecutively do not draw from the group, they get replaced by a new three.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Or, instead of a deck and a hand, you share a central deck. Replace the draw step with the following action: "You may put a basic land of your choice onto the battlefield." Provide a pile of basics to the side for this. At all times there are six cards turned open in the middle (like with Ascension), your shared hand. At any time a player has priority, he may play a card in the center row, following normal timing rules. During the end step the active player whose turn it is may pay a cumulative {1} mana to put any number of cards in the center row on the bottom of the deck. This ability does not use the stack and can not be responded to, much like a mana ability. A card that is played goes onto the stack and is immediately replaced by the top card of the deck. This may yield a counterspell ;)

How does that sound?
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Wow. This actually sounds really cool.

I like the grid draft idea. Instead of taking a card from your library, maybe you can take one from the grid instead (something along the lines of you can take a card on the perimeter which exposes more cards - this can be strategy in and of itself - do you take Go for the Throat but expose Jace that your opponent can then take and use)? So you still build decks, but now there's another source to draw from as the game develops. Sounds like it would be pretty complicated with a lot of decision points, but I'm down for that sort of thing as I feel it would be a lot of fun and very challenging to navigate.

I think it would have to be some mechanism (like a grid or sorts) where you could see exactly what you were going to get though. Otherwise, it is unlikely a card from some other random pile is going to help you more than a card from your own library. You'd think anyway.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

To build the grid, maybe each player chooses a color at the start and then you take a random selection of cards of those two colors from the undrafted cube and make a small grid with them that are then available for drafting during the game.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Ascension and its style of deckbuilding came to mind for me, too. I think Onderzeeboot's idea of roughly six face-up cards would work well as a starting point.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I wanted to test this tonight with a friend who came over, but instead we ended up doing a winston draft and I ended up with the sweetest limited deck I had shuffled up in ages. Good times :)
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah, there are some questions here. Where does the initial deck come from? How do we deal with color restrictions / mana? Is there any hidden information? I really like playing without knowing everything about my opponent's game plan.

Maybe utopia lands but you can only use 3-colors in your deck?
 
anotak

anotak

this is a cool space to put custom cards probably

Unexplored Wilderness
Land
{T}: Add {1} to your mana pool.
{T}, Put ~ into your sideboard: You may choose a basic land card you own from outside the game, and put it into play tapped.
 
anotak

anotak

thought:
grid draft 3 x 3 except you start with the following pattern:
D U U
U D U
U U D

D are face down, U are face up. you can take a row or a column. when you do, you put them into your sideboard, and then you must put one of the cards from your sideboard on the bottom of your deck. once you've taken a pick, the remaining 6 cards are turned facedown, and 3 facedown cards are added, and then you shuffle them. then you deal them back out in a 3x3 grid with the diagonal cards facedown again.

you make 2 draft picks before you even begin the game,
you make 1 draft pick every one of your turns as a special action similar to playing a land, with the same timing restrictions as playing a land (main phase while the stack is empty, like a sorcery). draft picks do not use the stack. you are required to pick once every turn.

a problem here is the drawing order isn't random because putting on bottom but shuffling every turn seems so tedious. also what about lands
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I'm wondering if the initial decks can come from some sort of pseudo-sealed. I'd actually like to have pre-made 15-card "core" decks.

I'm also not against a rule that lets you pay 1 life to shuffle your library.

When you add a card to your deck I think you should have the option to add a basic land.
 
anotak

anotak

hows this for a 15 card deck
Alloy Myr {3}
Artifact Creature — Myr
{T}: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
2/2

Artificial Transmuter {3}
Artifact Creature — Construct
{T}: Draw a card, then discard a card
2/2

Aspiring Walker {1}
Artifact Creature — Golem
When Aspiring Walker dies, shuffle a card from your sideboard into your library.
1/1

Brittle Walker {2}
Artifact Creature — Golem
{4}, {T}, Put Brittle Walker into your sideboard: Put target creature into its owner’s sideboard.
2/1

Eternal Walker {1}
Artifact Creature — Golem
When Eternal Walker enters the battlefield, target player shuffles his or her graveyard into his or her library.
1/1

Rusted Spy {2}
Artifact Creature — Golem
Sacrifice Rusted Spy: Look at the face down cards in the grid draft. Activate this ability only during your turn.
1/2

Scrap Golem {4}
Artifact Creature — Golem
When Scrap Golem enters the battlefield, search your library for a card, and put it into your sideboard. Then shuffle a card from your sideboard into your library.
4/4

Sylvan Construct {2}
Artifact Creature — Construct
When Sylvan Construct enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a land card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.
1/1

Comet Crater
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{T}: Choose a color of a permanent you control. Add one mana of that color to your mana pool.

Shimmering Grotto
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{1}, {T}: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

Tarnished Citadel
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{T}: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Tarnished Citadel deals 3 damage to you.

Unexplored Wilderness
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{T}, Put Unexplored Wilderness into your sideboard: You may choose a basic land card you own from outside the game, and put it into play tapped.

Unexplored Wilderness
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{T}, Put Unexplored Wilderness into your sideboard: You may choose a basic land card you own from outside the game, and put it into play tapped.

Unexplored Wilderness
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{T}, Put Unexplored Wilderness into your sideboard: You may choose a basic land card you own from outside the game, and put it into play tapped.

Unexplored Wilderness
Land
{T}: Add 1 to your mana pool.
{T}, Put Unexplored Wilderness into your sideboard: You may choose a basic land card you own from outside the game, and put it into play tapped.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
What if you open six boosters like normal, build a 15 card deck (no basic lands), then have to donate the rest of your cards to the center decks. Wasn't there an article on microsealed somewhere? Hey man, that was an article by you Jason! That seems like a nice starting point for a 15 card sealed deck. Instead of rebuilding from your own pool you keep adding cards through drafting from that grid anotak suggested.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Oh jesus, I was thinking, uh, like, 5 monocolor decks or 10 two-color decks. I appreciate the design effort, but I want to make a format people can play with minimal changes to their cube. It'd be hard for me to push a super custom-card format.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Edit: No irony involved in my last post by the way. I vaguely remembered a cool article on a microsealed variant, googled it, and was surprised you had written it. Nice work!

I also remember thinking, man, I love the look of this format but I hate custom cards, so I see what you mean :) You don't need the custom cards though, you could just as easily have a pile of basics and have the "instead of drawing a card you may draw a basic land of your choice, then shuffle your library" rule in effect, or something like that.
 
anotak

anotak

Jason Waddell said:
Oh jesus, I was thinking, uh, like, 5 monocolor decks or 10 two-color decks. I appreciate the design effort, but I want to make a format people can play with minimal changes to their cube. It'd be hard for me to push a super custom-card format.
Click to expand...
you dont need custom cards, i was just trying to think of a good colorless base to go from that lets you go into any archetype, and for that to be possible you pretty much do need custom cards
 
anotak

anotak

i tried it today as i describe a few posts above w/ my existing cube, we only played 1 game
we started out w/ just 15 cards + any number of basics to build a 15 card total deck and then draw. we had a relatively close game that he eventually won.
i had an esper deck w/ like jace architect, sensei's top, sweepers, etc
he had a rug ramp deck that also played thassa and nylea

the game definitely went long enough for us to see sideboard cards due to shuffling and scry/dig effects, but perhaps this could be more

perhaps it took too long but drafting normally takes a while too.

his feedback was variations on stuff "it is interesting but complicated" and also "perhaps this needs custom cards specifically for it, a bit more shuffle effects would make it more interesting" which kind of echoes my thoughts.

i think the idea of a fixed starting deck is much better. ideally this would be something you play over a 2/3 or something.
 
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