General Draft Format Idea: Hatesealed

[Chris]

Edgy name aside, here’s how it works:

Each player gets 4 (3?) packs of 15.

For each pack, they keep 5, pass 5 to their right, and 5 to their left. Then the next pack is drafted.

You end the draft with 20 cards of your own choosing, 20 from the left, and 20 from the right.

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So that’s the idea. It’s sort of half-sealed, with an element of hate drafting.

Things I like about it:
- The decisions feel agonizingly difficult, which is nice! It feels like there’s room for mastery.
- The not-very-noob-friendly elements of draft are not as obvious. It feels new player friendly.
- Scales to any number of players (thought its probably not ideal foor 2).
- You can chat with the folks to your left or right during each round Yay, friends!
- You’re “open” for longer. It takes a while to figure out what’s open to you.
- Each new draft feels totally fresh, even with a tighter cube.
- There’s an element of chaos! Personal preference: I like when drafters have to struggle a little to put their decks together.

Things I don’t like about it:
- Each round seems like it would take a long time (tho perhaps not moreso than with regular drafting).
- Each player sees only a fraction of the cube.
- It somehow feels like a LOT more cards to keep track of than a traditional draft.
- Clever players to your left and right will fuck you over, so there’s an incentive to keep all your cards hidden. While that’s fine, it doesn’t seem like the most fun way to play.

For context, my cube is on the simpler side of low-power and geared towards a friend group who isnt overly entrenched. Nevertheless, I'm interested how more experienced cubers would feel about this format. Thoughts?

 

[Suicufnoc]

Hi is there an element of hate drafting? It seems like if you only get to make 1/3 of your picks, there's even led room for hat drafting than usual.

 

[Chris]

Hi is there an element of hate drafting? It seems like if you only get to make 1/3 of your picks, there's even led room for hat drafting than usual.

Since you decide how to pass the remaining 10 cards to your left and right, you can deny the player to your left a card by passing it to your right, and vice versa. I guess its not technically hate-drafting (you would generally want to spend your 5 picks bolstering your own deck) but it feels hate-drafting adjacent? To me at least. Hope that makes sense

 

[LadyMapi]

Since you're allowed to talk with the people on your left and right, you actually have an advantage if you cooperate with them.

Granted, this involves collusion from the start, but still.

 

[Chris]

Since you're allowed to talk with the people on your left and right, you actually have an advantage if you cooperate with them.

Granted, this involves collusion from the start, but still.

True true. Is this good or bad, though? I genuinely can't tell.

 

[Rusje]

True true. Is this good or bad, though? I genuinely can't tell.

I guess the advantage is in the eye of the beholder... it depends on the playgroup but suppose you have 5 drafters, and 3 players beforehand agree to sit next to each other and help each other out. So 3 players will get great decks, 2 are screwed...

 

[Zoss]

Hatesealed?

No no, this is Hatestart.

Seriously though, I like the idea a lot. As to the collusion issue, randomize them or, hey, play with people who aren't going to be jerks (that is, who will all agree to be on roughly the same level of competitiveness and who care about competition more than winning outright).

The table talk seems like a huge plus here, so I think framing this as either casual or cutthroat will yield drastically different results. You'd probably want to think extra carefully about fixing, because I can foresee a lot of weird things happening there. (Don't pass me fixing? I'm going to pass you ONLY fixing so that you don't actually have a deck to go along with it. And then the attendant mind games--do you only pass fixing in one direction?)

But probably the best way to test this out is to try it, the way Jason has been testing Rectangle drafting! Create a signup and people will probably take to it, especially as there are only four decision points.

 

[Chris]

The table talk seems like a huge plus here, so I think framing this as either casual or cutthroat will yield drastically different results. You'd probably want to think extra carefully about fixing, because I can foresee a lot of weird things happening there. (Don't pass me fixing? I'm going to pass you ONLY fixing so that you don't actually have a deck to go along with it. And then the attendant mind games--do you only pass fixing in one direction?)

But probably the best way to test this out is to try it, the way Jason has been testing Rectangle drafting! Create a signup and people will probably take to it, especially as there are only four decision points.

Fixing is for sure going to be weird. I'm thinking (for my low power cube) of running no lands that produce only 2 colors of mana; just trilands and five-color fixing. I suspect that the less a cube is designed specifically for this draft style, the more the draft will focus on how you split your remaining 10 as opposed to how you choose your initial 5, if that's even a cohesive thought.

I definitely want to try this out, though I'm not too used to forum drafting. Maybe I'll join a rectangle draft before I decide to host something here.