General Brainstorming Spatial Draft Formats

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
okay, I have a weird drafting format idea
you lay out cards in a big grid, say, 8x8 or whatever
and give each person a bunch of colored pencils of a given color
and you take turns laying your pencil over two cards, such that they don't touch already claimed cards, or cross other pencils
so if you lay one diagonally, another player can't lay theirs orthogonally on the same corner

Maybe it's dumb, and Grid Drafting already covers it, but it was a thought I had. Probably works best as a 4-player thing. Anybody willing to test / suggest improvements?
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Okay, what if:

Each player is given from a standard chess set:
4 Pawns (one is starting piece, can move one space in any direction)
A Rook
A Knight
A Bishop
A King/Queen (Kings are Queens for movement purposes)

Each player starts by placing a pawn on their starting card (an assigned corner? or should it be one of the 4 center cards? a card of your choice?). Then, you move your pawn to another card by discarding one of your other units. So each round you start with a fresh 8x8 grid and all your units.

Whenever you land on a card, take it and add it to your draft pool. Repeat until all players are out of units, then re-deal another grid and start again.

Each grid a player drafts 8 cards, so you would need to deal out about 5-6 grids (6 * 64 = 384, so sprinkle in utility lands if you need to expand your 360 by 24 cards).
(5 * 8 = 40 cards drafted, 6 * 8 = 48. Alternatively, you could do 3 pawns each and do 6 * 7 = 42)

Meant as a 4-player format. Can be played with a standard chess set. (2 players split the white pieces, 2 split the black pieces).

This sounds really fun, but maybe it's a clusterfuck. Somebody test it.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
How do you use the other chess pieces? Can you take opposing pieces?

Each player has one pawn on the board.

So your first turn, you place it on the board.
On each subsequent turn, you discard another piece to move your pawn with that piece's movement characteristics. So, discard your rook to move like a rook. Discard your knight to move like a knight.

Does that make sense?

You can't your opponent's pawn, but their pawns do block you spatially (like a real chess piece would).
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
But now that I see it laid out, maybe it's a shit idea. Like, imagining picking a deck out of this is pretty challenging, the movement is too restricted.
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
it looks intresting. reminds me of robo rally.

Yeah, I was thinking about if something with simultaneous selection would work too, but then you'd need some method of resolving "ties" or whatnot. It just looks challenging to put together a sensible deck, and not as strategic as I had hoped.
 
Or each card has an assigned "points" value and you have a limited number of points per pack to spend to build a deck.

Or sorta like rotiessiery rotissery roetissery [however the fuck its spelled] but with points
...only trouble would be assigning point values to each card.
 
Sorry for the post spamming but this really got me thinking:

You know those mats that vendors have at GPs where they sort your cards by $1, $5, etc when buying a collection?
SO if you got a pack, then one player sorts the pack onto this kind of mat, and so there's some $1 cards, some $5 cards, etc, and then the other players get to buy the cards off the mat, and then the next guy becomes the dealer for the next pack, and you continue until you have the requisite number of cards for decks.

Rough sketch of gameplay:
Each player starts with something like $20 per pack (except the dealer for the round), and cards can have values of $1, $5, $10, $20 and maybe something else in between. There can be 1 card worth $20, 2 cards worth $10, 3 cards worth $5 and the rest worth $1. Player 1 deals out the pack and players take turns buying the cards out of the packs until nobody wants to make a purchase form the pack. Then player 2 becomes the vendor, the other players get their $20 "go" money for the pack, and you repeat. Money should roll over to the next pack. If two players want the same card, might as well auction it off or something.

Bust out your Monopoly monies boys, this one sounds fun!
 
Sorry for the post spamming but this really got me thinking:

You know those mats that vendors have at GPs where they sort your cards by $1, $5, etc when buying a collection?
SO if you got a pack, then one player sorts the pack onto this kind of mat, and so there's some $1 cards, some $5 cards, etc, and then the other players get to buy the cards off the mat, and then the next guy becomes the dealer for the next pack, and you continue until you have the requisite number of cards for decks.

Rough sketch of gameplay:
Each player starts with something like $20 per pack (except the dealer for the round), and cards can have values of $1, $5, $10, $20 and maybe something else in between. There can be 1 card worth $20, 2 cards worth $10, 3 cards worth $5 and the rest worth $1. Player 1 deals out the pack and players take turns buying the cards out of the packs until nobody wants to make a purchase form the pack. Then player 2 becomes the vendor, the other players get their $20 "go" money for the pack, and you repeat. Money should roll over to the next pack. If two players want the same card, might as well auction it off or something.

Bust out your Monopoly monies boys, this one sounds fun!

I can dig it.
 
How about this:

8 x 8 grid of cards face-down

Each player has x meeples of their own color (let's say x = 6)

On your turn, you can place a meeple from your supply (or from the grid if your supply is empty) on any vertex. This action uncovers any cards around this vertex (1 to 4 cards). After you place a meeple, you may take one card if it has at least two more meeple of your color on its vertices than an opponent. For example: a card which has two purple meeple on its corners and no other meeple can be taken by the purple player. However, if one corner has a blue meeple, the purple player will need to claim three corners to take the card.

OR

You can permanently drop a meeple (lay it down flat; cannot be used for the rest of the draft) directly on a card to take it no matter what.

This should create an interesting territory-claiming mechanic with the following benefits:
  • You can apply pressure in a way that mimics hate-drafting without blatantly stealing their picks;
  • There is a natural tension to condensing your meeple vs. spreading out since you have limited meeple
 
Sorry for the post spamming but this really got me thinking:

You know those mats that vendors have at GPs where they sort your cards by $1, $5, etc when buying a collection?
SO if you got a pack, then one player sorts the pack onto this kind of mat, and so there's some $1 cards, some $5 cards, etc, and then the other players get to buy the cards off the mat, and then the next guy becomes the dealer for the next pack, and you continue until you have the requisite number of cards for decks.

Rough sketch of gameplay:
Each player starts with something like $20 per pack (except the dealer for the round), and cards can have values of $1, $5, $10, $20 and maybe something else in between. There can be 1 card worth $20, 2 cards worth $10, 3 cards worth $5 and the rest worth $1. Player 1 deals out the pack and players take turns buying the cards out of the packs until nobody wants to make a purchase form the pack. Then player 2 becomes the vendor, the other players get their $20 "go" money for the pack, and you repeat. Money should roll over to the next pack. If two players want the same card, might as well auction it off or something.

Bust out your Monopoly monies boys, this one sounds fun!

This sounds similar to the rules of Castles of Mad King Ludwig, where you're taking rooms to add to your castle. One player is the master builder and they decide what all the rooms cost, but they get to choose which room to buy last, so they can't make the one they want too cheap or someone else will get it, but not too expensive that they can't afford it. Master builder changes each round.

So you could have say $100 to start with and you take 5 cards to be worth 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 dollars each (for a four player draft, so one gets discarded) with a master drafter who decides which card is worth how much each round, with picking going clockwise from teh person to the master drafter's left.
 
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