MTG Draft Night: War of the Spark

We’ve been putting off MTG draft nights for too long, so last week we just put an ultimatum out: draft was going to happen that week for sure.

Because we had short notice, a number of the regular crew weren’t able to make it. That was, in essence, fine because we were going to try to limit it to 8 people anyway. As of late, the numbers have ballooned to as many as 12 people at a draft night, which makes logistics and seating in my house quite difficult. So, by limiting it to eight players, we figured to make it a little more reasonable.

We talked about how to equitably reduce the player count down to eight though, and came up with a number of possibilities. Do we draw names from a hat? Give priority to some players based upon pre-determined qualifications? Make it a free-for-all? After much deliberation, we opted for a combination of the latter two.

First, we gave prioritization to those who come to game nights at least somewhat regularly. Five of the most common people that play at draft nights come to game night as well. I like the idea of rewarding those who come on the regular, so we started there. For the last three spots, we had six people leftover (based upon who attended last time). To make it fair to all of them, I sent out an email blast and just made it first come, first serve.

To my surprise, a number of people just couldn’t make it on short notice. In fact, of the six people, only one was able to attend, leaving us with two extra spots to fill. I wound up opening it up to a former co-worker of mine, and his girlfriend, and the happily accepted. We also had a last minute cancellation the night of the draft, and absolutely scrambled to fill that spot. I personally asked at least half a dozen people, none of which were available. We ultimately found two people that could fill the spot, and settled on Sam’s friend: Dison.

MTG Draft Night: Battlebond

This quarter’s installment of MTG Draft Night has been brought to you by Battlebond.

Unlike many of the previous events, this one was far less planned out. Granted, we set the time long in advance and still had surveys to help decide what to do, but it just didn’t feel well planned (which I can say because I’m the guy whose responsible for planning them). Frankly, I feel like I dropped the ball on it, and I think it showed in the end result.

I think it was largely to do with a lack of follow-up emails. Back in May we did a draft of Ixalan, and promptly sent out surveys to review what worked and what didn’t, along with setting tentative dates for the next event. We all (sort of) agreed on July 27th. By that, I mean that it was the only proposed date where nobody seemed to have any conflicts–though it’s worth noting that many a person checked the “I can probably make it, but check with me closer to the date.”

I didn’t bother checking until about two weeks prior, and that meant that a couple of folks had made other plans. So, rather than have the fourteen people show up that we did previously, we were scheduled to have eight.

MTG Ixalan Draft Night

I used to be so good about blogging. Rather than bemoan things that get in the way, how about I just get back on track?

Last month, we held another draft night (our second of the year, for those that are counting). Our draft covered Ixalan & Rivals of Ixalan based upon a community vote. It was the first draft where we had done more than just crack a box and open it, because we had two packs from each set to play with. It was also one of the first drafts where we expanded to include more than 8 players.

Changes to Scoring

Scoring worked a little differently because of the number of players. We had initially slotted it to 8 players, per usual, but then opened it up to a previous player who had attended draft nights before. That meant we had to invite a 10th player (to make things even), and eventually expanded the scope to include an 11th and 12th player as well.

MTG Draft Night: Conspiracy 2 – Take the Crown

To prepare for our most recent MTG Draft Night, as with most of our groups events, we started off with a survey. We asked about what kinds of sets people would like to draft, what the food should be like, what the venue should be, etc.

The results of the survey in many instances were the same. People all seemed content to keep having the draft at my place, and were fine with whatever as far as food goes. The important part seemed to revolve around having a good bunch of guys show up and draft cards. That’s where the real fun is (even more so than the actual games).

The only real differing opinions came when we talked about what sets to draft. The most preferable solutions seem divided into Unstable, Conspiracy, whatever the latest set is (we’ve not yet done a “new set” around release time), Dinosaurs & Pirates (eg. Ixalan), or a Chaos Draft. Truth be told, when you’re only talking eight people voting, all of them came out relatively close in the rankings.

I would’ve thought that Unstable would win, because it basically met two qualifications. First, it was an UN set, so that appealed to the casual players in the group (and we’re all pretty casual). Secondly, our draft night just so happened to be scheduled for the same night that the set released. That made for a pretty convincing argument.

However, we went by raw numbers. And by raw numbers, Conspiracy 2 won out.

We’ve had a number of draft nights so far (five I believe), which were (in chronological order):

• Dark Ascension
• Return to Ravnica
• Conspiracy
• Weatherlight
• 5th Edition

I never did a blog post on Conspiracy. If I think back, I might’ve been swamped at the time, or I more likely just didn’t know how to write-up a game which had no clear winner.

MTG Weatherlight Draft

We do an occassional MTG draft night with the local gaming group. The most recent one I’ve blogged about was the old-school 5th edition night. At the end of last month, we also revisited the “old school” theme with another set: Weatherlight.

Like 5th edition, Weatherlight was a set that most of us hadn’t played. One of the guys said that this was the set that made him stop playing magic, and I certainly remember some of the cards–but I didn’t remember a bunch of them. I’m not sure if that means I ever opened these packs or, maybe I just played with the reprints?

Whatever the case, it was fairly new to most of us, and we had prepared it as a blind draft so nobody had time to prepare strategies for it. So, the draft themes that had come out of it were pretty varied.

My first pack had an Empyrial Armor in it, and that card is a complete house, so I was fully into white. Later, there wasn’t alot of good white cards passed my way, but I did wind up picking up a few more armors. Red, however, was fairly available. I picked up five bogarden firefiends, and that card should be a 2 for 1 in many instances (or at least a solid 1 for 1). I rounded it out with a single “lightning bolt” and a Thundermare as a finisher, plus a Thran Tome for card advantage.

My deck looked a little something like this: