Disclaimer: I haven't playtested this or even played magic in years.
How often have you encountered problems where the cube draft slows down as 1 or 2 drafters suffer from indecision?
No more! There is a solution. A solution that maybe breaks several other things, but we'll get to that.
So, drafting is, in some ways, a synchronization problem, that you need the next pack to continue drafting, and that relies on the person to pass you the pack. These problems have been widely studied; mostly with relation to computers.
There is a bandwidth of 1-pack per person, and the latency is pretty much controlled by the slowest drafter in that moment. In a lot of cases, these are moments of strong indecision for 1 drafter that stop everything for everyone, which then causes a cascading problem as further drafters run into slowdown and then the next drafters are also still stuck waiting.
So, what if you could just grab a pack whenever you needed it, from anywhere?
Well, there's an entire problem with how to make sure everyone gets a fair number of cards, and so forth.
Here's also just, how do you prevent someone from unfairly choosing to repeatedly pick from the same pack?
How do you ensure fairness?
How do you make sure someone ends up with the eighth of the 360 cards: 45?
Humans aren't machines; it would seem like many of the strategies for solving this aren't practical.
So let's take a page from the game of magic itself, and give players a limited set of choices at every opportunity, and give them those choices at random.
In other words: a shuffled deck!
Let's call this the "selection deck"
The selection deck should have the cards as such:
And now you make your 24 packs, as in, 3 packs * 8 players, of 15 cards each, as usual, but you put a label on top of each with a number! The label moves with the pack.
So, to start the draft, you draw 3 cards from your selection deck (the number 3 needs tweaking & testing, but that's what my gut instinct says is a good number). You then pick one of the selection cards, and follow its instructions, if the pack with that number is available. You discard the selection card and draw another, and continue choosing.
This leads to a problem: if both players reach for the same pack at nearly the same time, how do you resolve this? Well, there's 3 of each selection card for a pack, right? Let's label the 3 cards of each selection card with rock, paper, and scissors. So now the selection deck really says
Then we use the simple RPS rules to determine who wins based on the card they used. If both players have the same rock, paper or scissors as well, then the players reveal the top card of their selection deck for the rock paper scissors values (and if there are still ties, repeat until someone decks, in which case that person loses).
Now, a few more problems?
Q: Is this fair? What if you get to pick 3 times in a row from the same pack?
Well, everyone now has a equal fair* chance for that to happen, it would seem. Is it that different than getting 3 absurd packs passed to you in a traditional draft?
*For some definitions of fair.
Q: How does signalling and all that work in this format?
Who knows.
Q: So if someone's faster at drafting they get better picks?
This is a tough one. Maybe so? So now time making a pick becomes a resource. You must decide: is my indecision worth giving up better picks from other packs? On the other hand, if you rush yourself in an attempt to get better picks, you may make worse picks.
Perhaps your group will find this is more exciting. Perhaps your group hates being rushed.
Q: Does this work for utility land draft?
Yes! Just add it as another pack, and then add another 3 (or however many) selection cards to the selection deck.
Q: Is this any good?
I don't know, you decide.
edit: whoops, meant to post this on balduvian trading post
edit edit:
it may be wise to use labels for packs instead of numbers; and perhaps even color code them
How often have you encountered problems where the cube draft slows down as 1 or 2 drafters suffer from indecision?
No more! There is a solution. A solution that maybe breaks several other things, but we'll get to that.
So, drafting is, in some ways, a synchronization problem, that you need the next pack to continue drafting, and that relies on the person to pass you the pack. These problems have been widely studied; mostly with relation to computers.
There is a bandwidth of 1-pack per person, and the latency is pretty much controlled by the slowest drafter in that moment. In a lot of cases, these are moments of strong indecision for 1 drafter that stop everything for everyone, which then causes a cascading problem as further drafters run into slowdown and then the next drafters are also still stuck waiting.
So, what if you could just grab a pack whenever you needed it, from anywhere?
Well, there's an entire problem with how to make sure everyone gets a fair number of cards, and so forth.
Here's also just, how do you prevent someone from unfairly choosing to repeatedly pick from the same pack?
How do you ensure fairness?
How do you make sure someone ends up with the eighth of the 360 cards: 45?
Humans aren't machines; it would seem like many of the strategies for solving this aren't practical.
So let's take a page from the game of magic itself, and give players a limited set of choices at every opportunity, and give them those choices at random.
In other words: a shuffled deck!
Let's call this the "selection deck"
The selection deck should have the cards as such:
Code:
Pick a card from pack 1
Pick a card from pack 1
Pick a card from pack 1
Pick a card from pack 2
Pick a card from pack 2
Pick a card from pack 2
Pick a card from pack 3
Pick a card from pack 3
Pick a card from pack 3
...
Pick a card from pack 24
Pick a card from pack 24
Pick a card from pack 24And now you make your 24 packs, as in, 3 packs * 8 players, of 15 cards each, as usual, but you put a label on top of each with a number! The label moves with the pack.
So, to start the draft, you draw 3 cards from your selection deck (the number 3 needs tweaking & testing, but that's what my gut instinct says is a good number). You then pick one of the selection cards, and follow its instructions, if the pack with that number is available. You discard the selection card and draw another, and continue choosing.
This leads to a problem: if both players reach for the same pack at nearly the same time, how do you resolve this? Well, there's 3 of each selection card for a pack, right? Let's label the 3 cards of each selection card with rock, paper, and scissors. So now the selection deck really says
Code:
(Rock) Pick a card from pack 1
(Paper) Pick a card from pack 1
(Scissors) Pick a card from pack 1
(Rock) Pick a card from pack 2
...
(Scissors) Pick a card from pack 24Then we use the simple RPS rules to determine who wins based on the card they used. If both players have the same rock, paper or scissors as well, then the players reveal the top card of their selection deck for the rock paper scissors values (and if there are still ties, repeat until someone decks, in which case that person loses).
Now, a few more problems?
Q: Is this fair? What if you get to pick 3 times in a row from the same pack?
Well, everyone now has a equal fair* chance for that to happen, it would seem. Is it that different than getting 3 absurd packs passed to you in a traditional draft?
*For some definitions of fair.
Q: How does signalling and all that work in this format?
Who knows.
Q: So if someone's faster at drafting they get better picks?
This is a tough one. Maybe so? So now time making a pick becomes a resource. You must decide: is my indecision worth giving up better picks from other packs? On the other hand, if you rush yourself in an attempt to get better picks, you may make worse picks.
Perhaps your group will find this is more exciting. Perhaps your group hates being rushed.
Q: Does this work for utility land draft?
Yes! Just add it as another pack, and then add another 3 (or however many) selection cards to the selection deck.
Q: Is this any good?
I don't know, you decide.
edit: whoops, meant to post this on balduvian trading post
edit edit:
it may be wise to use labels for packs instead of numbers; and perhaps even color code them
See, a veteran player will recognize the cards, and be quicker to recognize archetypes, whereas an inexperienced player will probably have to read at least half the cards in a booster. Under normal draft rules, the experienced player might use the time an inexperienced player is using to thoroughly analyze their pack and make the best pick. If time is of the essence, however, I have no doubt a veteran will be much better equipped to leverage simply their knowledge of existing cards to make quicker picks that an inexperienced player. In addition, the inexperienced player will feel pressure to pick as fast as possible, so after they finally read all the cards, they will be incentivized to make a pick as soon as possible, with minimal time to analyze what the actual best pick is.
