General Beta two player draft project

L

lowbudgetbetadreams

I was wondering if anyone had any experience curating a two player draft format. I have a small stack of common and uncommon cards from beta. Nothing ridiculous or expensive, just vanilla spells and creatures. My plan is to continue to scoop up a couple of cards each week and slowly assemble something workable.

I saw an article about grid drafts needing 162 cards, I'm mostly wondering how that could be done with these specific limitations.

My inital thoughts would be to cut to four colors and play around with the three mana spot. Give black a minigame of investing time for multiple Plague Rats versus the random 3 mana 2/2 in other colors. Maybe use Hurloon Minotaur as the best value with his 3 toughness. I want to do silly low-power things like using Flight to breakthrough for damage.

I worry about the games grinding to a halt if everyone is 2/2. I worry about everyone splashing for Fireball and Disintegrate and Terror. Mostly I wonder if this project is even feasible. Any thoughts would be welcome.

Thank you.

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Update: list in progress

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/lowbudgetbetadreams
 
Last edited:
ravnic

ravnic

It sounds sweet. A very different experience, but definitely worth a shot(especially if you already own a bunch of cards). However, I would personally not cut down to four colors. And if you insist on doing so, cut white, it has banding.

Please share a list when you can!
 
L

lowbudgetbetadreams

I will work on getting a list posted. The set is small, at least factoring in my budgetary constraints. Beta only has 80 commons, and that includes basic lands, Circles of Protection, and a few clunkers. There are less than 100 uncommon cards, and some of those are out of my immediate reach.

I will post a link to a rough draft soon. Thank you for the reply!
 
L

lowbudgetbetadreams

I've built a placeholder for the project.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/lowbudgetbetadreams

Current plans include doubling or tripling (or more with Plague Rats) up on the creatures. I like the amount of sorcery speed interactions. Tunnel vs walls seems interesting to me. I'm hoping that some kind of organic aggro vs midrange battles. Not sure if any of this will work out, but I do want to give it an honest shot.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
lowbudgetbetadreams said:
I've built a placeholder for the project.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/lowbudgetbetadreams

Current plans include doubling or tripling (or more with Plague Rats) up on the creatures. I like the amount of sorcery speed interactions. Tunnel vs walls seems interesting to me. I'm hoping that some kind of organic aggro vs midrange battles. Not sure if any of this will work out, but I do want to give it an honest shot.
Click to expand...
Honest take: you should try to draft this as soon as possible. The best feedback you will get is from playtesting, which will point you in the direction of more specific questionq.
 
inscho

inscho

Jason Waddell said:
I'll disagree with Brad here and say that I really like cutting a color if you're designing for Grid Drafting.
Click to expand...

I had an active grid cube for about a year, and 4c definitely felt like the way to go. There was a nice increase in draft tension...you find yourself battling over the same color more often and it was easier to hate draft. It makes the face up draft more interactive and more fun to me.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Word of warning, Beta was atriciously balanced for limited play. I suspect Shandalar is still the best way to enjoy Beta, but I hope you are going to get a lot of fun out of your experiment! At the very least, welcome to these boards! :)
 
sigh

sigh

Onderzeeboot said:
Word of warning, Beta was atriciously balanced for limited play. I suspect Shandalar is still the best way to enjoy Beta, but I hope you are going to get a lot of fun out of your experiment! At the very least, welcome to these boards! :)
Click to expand...
What I'm hearing here is that limited Beta is best played as a deck-building game
 
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