General Tavish Draft

D

DreamPaint

I thought i'd share this draft format that was mentioned on McTavish's twitch stream. It's a 1v1 draft format that he developed with his roommate. Here's how it works: each player makes 12 packs of 16 cards. Each player opens one of his/her packs and drafts four cards from it. These four cards are then put into four separate decks. The pack is then passed to your opponent who then selects four more cards from the pack, then passes it back. Repeat until the pack is empty then continue on until all packs are drafted. Afterwards you run the gauntlet of 16 matches.

As you might imagine, this is quite time consuming, but it's tons of fun. Since my cube is only 360 cards, I altered this format slightly when playing with my buddy. We made 10 packs of 12 and drafted three decks simultaneously. Then, we only had to play out nine matches instead of sixteen. This still took about five-six hours to complete in total, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. It's nice being able to see how your decks perform in a variety of matches as opposed to just playing against one deck before re-drafting. I encourage everyone to give it a try and report back.

Here is the link to his stream for any of those interested: http://www.twitch.tv/mctavish_/profile
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
I always like new ways to draft so this seems interesting enough to try out.
A couple of questions though:
  • Would there be any difference drafting packs face up? I would prefer this way, like quilt or grid drafting just because it save on time by passing a pack back and forth. You lose some minor hidden information (which cards have gone into which stack) but otherwise, everything else would be the same.
  • You mention that your cube is 'only 360 cards', but I don't see why that would make a difference with the 12 packs of 16 cards. As 16*12=192 (32 cards per deck); so you use only just over half of the cube. Was this just more of a time thing to do the 10 *12=120 (40 cards per deck); which is only 1/3 of your cube. Would you get enough archetype support with that percentage?
  • Gauntlet seems a bit overboard, I mean I don't really want to play 16, or even 9 matches (with your smaller version). Why not do something similar to Jason's Microsealed? If a deck loses or wins twice it is retired and the person with, let's say 5 game wins (3 match wins instead?). Plus you can always play again with the decks you like/want to try again for fun, at least then there isn't any unfinished satisfaction if you (or your opponent) can't finish the entire gauntlet.
Actually, you could probably solve/improve a lot of the 2-person draft formats by multidecking. Like grid drafting. Why not up the pack count by double-2 (so instead of let's say 14 packs you have 26 packs) then have to make 2 decks afterwards?
Could help make archetype focused decks better. It is just the time consumption that makes these ideas not as popular as the quicker options. Sure if I had all night I could do this with my friend, but what if he is just over for the afternoon? A quick 1-2 hour grid draft is a sure fire hit.
 
Aston

Aston

I want to find someone else as insane as me to do a full 8 person team rotisserie draft, except each team is just one person and they have to draft 4 decks each.

Alternatively, 1v1 team rochester draft.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Aston said:
I want to find someone else as insane as me to do a full 8 person team rotisserie draft, except each team is just one person and they have to draft 4 decks each.

Alternatively, 1v1 team rochester draft.
Click to expand...

I've actually done Rochester with 4 people, where each person was building 2 decks. Maybe it's different for you guys (because they clearly enjoyed it), but I found it to be a MASSIVE headache. I had difficulty caring about two decks simultaneously, and I can't imagine 4. It's possible, I just think it takes a certain personality type.

Even when I do 1v1 Team Sealed, a format I really like, I feel I favor one deck more than the other. Either way, I like the puzzle of "here are some cards, divide it into two decks" better than the "oh man, I'm drafting two decks simultaneously, what do I do". Maybe it's something you get used to, but my picks were very conservative when doing double deck Rochester.
 
D

DreamPaint

Kirblinx said:
I always like new ways to draft so this seems interesting enough to try out.
  • You mention that your cube is 'only 360 cards', but I don't see why that would make a difference with the 12 packs of 16 cards. As 16*12=192 (32 cards per deck); so you use only just over half of the cube. Was this just more of a time thing to do the 10 *12=120 (40 cards per deck); which is only 1/3 of your cube. Would you get enough archetype support with that percentage?
Click to expand...

Each player makes that many packs. So each of us made 10x12 packs, 240 cards in total. With 12x16 (essentially 24x16) it would be 384 cards which is too many.
 
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