General Magical Christmas Land (Draft Format)

Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Hey guys, I was thinking of doing something special for the holiday season. Magical Christmas Land (MCL)!

It's not very fleshed out yet, but the basic idea is to let players draft a Tri-Land, and that land comes with a bundle of cards from that Shard / Wedge.

There would be some constraints, like: each player MUST draft a 3+ color deck. I was thinking you can't take your second tri-land until it's 9th pick or later. Or should we draft the tri-land packs up front? After the draft? Secretly assigned to each drafter?

Should the bundles be secret? Like, you take your tri-land, then open your goodies after...

Then you get all sorts of goodies. e.g.



(yeah, sure, Siege Rhino and Anafenza too or something)

I would replace some number of cards in the cube with random other lands to cut down on the number of non-land playables each player gets, so that they run their MCL cards.
 
B

blacksmithy

Love it! You run the risk of certain shards/wedges being REALLY popular/unpopular but like who cares?
My suggestion for Bant's build-around critter:
 
B

blacksmithy

Hmm, well, depending on the number of players, i'd either distribute the "first triland" randomly or let people draft them face-up somehow. It'd work best in person so folks could haggle instead of falling victim to "that mofo autolocking abzan AGAIN."
 
T

Tanner K.

You could have someone be Santa (alternatively, the Grinch). Their pack has a Bolt, Goblin Guide, Grim Lavamancer, Grafted Wargear, Goblin Rabblemaster. They must play mono-red.
 
Lucre

Lucre

my idea was always to give a triland with each 3 colour spell, I'm not sure I'd ever want to give someone a 4th-5th of their playables (make their deck for them) for having picked 1 of ten lands.
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

Maybe limit land-based fixing in the cube, add a lot of tri-color cards and get a tri-land with every card picked, Vivid with every 5-c picked?
 
Lucre

Lucre

Every time you take a tri-land you can take a card from the corresponding shard/wedge prize wall?

You don't want to lock people out of the ascendancy deck just because some 5colour player with a monastary scooped it up first for some reason, it would be kinda mean to make it look like a gimme card for that player and then make his high pick gitax probes and faithless lootings look stupid.

A real problem here will involve finding cards exciting enough to put into these sections.

I do really like prizewall style unlock gimmicks that will give you access to the Trinkets bonus section if you have a trinket mage or a Tezz. You might find weird niches like loam/crucible work better when players aren't going so far out on a limb and you aren't poisoning your draft with so many narrow cards. Hell people might even start including crucible subthemes in midranged or control decks when they are sure they can reliably have something to go with it.

But maybe it doesn't suit your plan to make each player play a different 3 colour combo. I just think the bonus card formula could work really well if you wanted to encourage people to have very strong multicolour decks at the end of the draft.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I think these ideas are too dry and don't have enough spirit of wonder. This isn't supposed to be a serious "every week" format, but a unique ~1 time event.
 
Lucre

Lucre

what do you learn from one execution of an experiment I generally prefer to ease into new environments so I have some controls I can draw upon.

I guess you can figure out that the abzan and jeskai decks are probably gonna beat the bant or naya decks lol
 
Jeff H

Jeff H

What if everyone gets 3 of the same triland, and a few "goodstuff" 3c cards that don't force a specific deck? It's 3c dragon cube!
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Ideally each set would allow the player to go in a couple of different directions, while also kind of inspiring them in some way.

Likely I would change the min deck size for this event to 45 or something.
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
So I found something over at the Balduvian Trading Post, that I posted in the forum here, that could be applicable to this situation.

I mean, you already have a spreadsheet for certain pick slots, why not have a random distribution of 'presents' for specific slots, ie. cards that correlate to another set of cards.

This could go about in a number of ways. So for each tri-land there is a card that you get at the end that matches that card. You have the power in the end as to what cards give what 'presents' and this could be changed each time you want to run 'MCL'.

Some possible correlations/'presents':
Blade Splicer = Momentary Blink
Satyr Wayfinder = Ghoultree
Trinket Mage = Brittle Effigy

Most of these are underplayed cards that are stapled upon cards that give them the support to be run. That seems like the kind of 'present' we should be giving right? It might be hard to throw 3 coloured presents on something that isn't fixing to actually get them played. You could possibly correlate the 2-colour cards with 3-colour cards, as then it is only an extra colour to splash at the end.

I have said all of this assuming the 'presents' are given out at the end. I don't know if there is a way to give people the extra cards while still keeping information secret. Seems like a fun little gimmick for Christmas and hope we find a way to make it work and have the impact you want it to have.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

Ooooh! Do a "White Elephant" gift exchange thingy where all the gifts are pre-seeded packs full of fun goodies, and watch the madness ensue. Then draft as normal (maybe with only 2 packs?), with the requirement that you have to use your pre-seeded cards.

For more funsies/chaos, you could ask your players to bring their own packs for this... but with some powerlevel restriction or something.
 
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