Robin & BYO Draft

Whenever I go to reference this post, I have trouble finding it on GA… because that's not where it was. It was on CoolStuffInc. So I'm reposting this 8 year old article here. With the author credit returned. And edited for modern pronouns.

Meet the Top 8: Alex Werner

I reached out to GDS3 Contestant Alex Werner for a brief interview as we ramp up to the show. Click through to find out a little bit about one of the Top 8 competitors. 

CCDD 021518 - Mechanic "Improvements" and Monocolor Draft

I've been contemplating the problem of mono-color archetypes in draft. The biggest issue is that roughly 20% of a pack will be of that color/usable in your deck, whereas if you're drafting two colors your card selection increases to 40%. Incentivizing at least some of the people sitting around the table to draft mono is a tricky thing for a designer to do.

Live Booster Draft

Love drafting? Love playing Magic? Ever wish you could do both at the same time, rather than one after the other? I have. For ten years. I got a game published trying to make it happen. (Here's a diary of how that led somewhere else fruitful.) Last month, the idea struck me again, this time actually for Magic:

A draft format in which the first seven picks form your starting hand, and each following pick happens when you would draw a card mid-game.

— Jay Treat (@WizardsFamiliar) November 12, 2016

I don't hype my own stuff much. Today is different. This is the good stuff. You want to try Live Draft. Really.

Two-Player Draft Formats

I've been doing a good bit of two-player Limited over lunch the last few weeks, and I thought I'd share the formats we've done and considered, and a new one I'm eager to try. All but the last two work with 3 or 4p too.

Tesla: Playtest Engineering III: Testing Cards

This article is WotC-safe.

Hello again, everybody! Once again, a return from a lengthy break, and this time, we're concluding the series about designing an all-commons playtest. Last time, we designed all the commons for our playtest. In the first part, we talked about the overall structure of a playtest set. Now, we're onto the most important part: playtesting the cards, gathering feedback, and using that feedback to improve both the designs and the set as a whole.

Collaboration Draft

Collaboration Draft
What I love most about drafting Magic is the interaction between myself, the players on either side of me, and the rest of the table. Game like SolForge and Hearthstone that allow you to "draft" without players lack that interaction entirely, which got me thinking about ways to enhance it.

What if your rank at the end of a draft was based not just on your own results, but those of the players next to you? Not necessarily L+C+R, maybe L+2C+R or so, but the formula's not the point. The point is that you now have a very real incentive to coordinate as well as you can with the players you're passing directly to.

Considering Draft Strategies for Dragon's Maze

Drafting Ravnica—Guildpact—Dissension was awesome and there's no indication that Dragon's Maze—Gatecrash—Return to Ravnica won't be awesome too. Drafting the original RGD was also very hard and I'm sure DGR will be an intense challenge as well. Can we predict how it will play out or at least prepare ourselves to hit the ground running?

Let's start at the beginning…

CCDD 040211—Squadron Hawks & Swippy-Swap

Cool Card Design of the Day
4/2/2011 - The game store I draft at each week is building a custom cube for fun. By 'custom' I mean all the cards in the cube are custom designs by the participants for the cube. In this particular case, 'custom' also happens to mean silly. Not silly-terrible, but silly-powerful and/or silly-funny. Before I go any further, let me clear. I love me some silly and a lot of these cards have a lot more than just that going for them.

The reason I bring this up is that I was chatting with one of the owners last night about a fun new vein of design they were thinking about after one of their regulars suggested that whenever you draft a Squadron Hawk, you should get a free copy for your deck.