I've been meaning to write down the list I ran with some friends.
Jason Wadell's grid drafting rules
My 180 cube is basically just a grid draft stack, and to combat the problem of people drafting 5 color piles I ran just 4 colors and made some very obvious loud guild identities to help drafters parse the 9 cards they're to choose from.
We ran two drafts with it and all the guild pairing I think got drafted (6 guilds available and we'd produced 8 decks in total). The first draft got won by a UR spells deck, and the second by a GW aura deck (I've since cut mother of runes, way to good in a retail environment).
I just chose some guilds I had in toyed ideas for in my head and ended up cutting black. My players really enjoyed it too, I think having very clear signals during a grid draft helps the excitement. If you see the card you've been waiting for get flipped up for someone else you can easily end up biting your tongue hoping it'll wheel.
Our draft process was (mostly based on the 4-player suggested rule set from the article):
1. Give each player a token (such a poker chip)
2. Shuffle up all the cards in the cube and make a big pile
3. Determine seatings for players (1 through 4)
4. Draft by first flipping up 9 cards for the person in seat 1
5. The player in seat 1 chooses a row or column to put in their card pool
6. 3 cards are picked from the big pile to replace those just picked
7. The player in seat 2 picks a row or column, then replaces their missing cards
8. Player in seat 3 picks from a non-whole grid, but does
not replace their missing cards
9. Player in seat 4 picks from the remaining cards, and then removes their final remainder face up in a trash pile
10. Player in seat 4 then makes a new grid of 9 cards and picks a row or column, passing the turn to the player in seat 3, continuing to player 2 and finally to player 1, who now receives a non-complete grid.
11. Once per game, a player may return their token prior to making a pick. If they do, they get to choose a row or column and reorder the cards as they see fit. This is both a skill check (do you pull the trigger early or late?) and a way to help more synergy based decks no get punished by grids where two important cards are separated.
The pattern is a "snake draft". People in seat 2 and 3 always pick from 9-card grids. Seat 1 and 4 gets to pick two cards back to back, but makes the first pick from a grid with less than 9 cards.
We then randomized the first pairing, then pitched winner vs winner and losers vs losers to determine who placed where. The winner can be rewarded a pat on the back or a vodka shot, to help stimulate more even competition next draft.
