Ben and the Big Draft Box

[Sammy Dead-O]

Did the rest of you check out Ben Bleiweiss's latest article? On the Big Draft Box? If not, you might wanna: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/bb33

Does anyone else think this might just be the coolest format ever? I'm gonna get started on my own, but I'm gonna have to twist it so my wallet can handle it. I don't even think an all-commons Big Draft Box would be too far out of spirit...

 

[Notepad]

Yes, I was certainly inspired by it! I've always had a big bin of junk cards to play various games with. The latest use of it was a Mirror Sealed tourney. Now, I just went through and got one copy of each card.

Making this more interesting: Make it landless. I tried doing this already and it works great. Instead of drafting 3 "packs" of 15, try 4. Then, no lands except for the nonbasics drafted. Unlike Mental Magic, and more along the lines of YoGiOh, you may play and mono-colored spell card in your hand as a basic land of that color. Definitely adds a HUGE element to drafting. Also makes it interesting when things like Gush return your islands only to be used now as spells.

And unlike the writer, I put in Unglued and Portal (only the non-intrusive Unglued cards. Chickens and Spark fiend...no Volrath Motion Sensor). They make for more added fun.

 

[Spiderman]

(no surprise)... how do you build "random" boosters from such a box? Just pick out 15 cards to make a booster?

 

[Notepad]

Yeah just shuffle random clusters of cards together until the whole dang thing is thoroughly mixed up. Then, just deal out random 15 card piles to be your "packs."

 

[Spiderman]

Shuffle 5000 cards? Wouldn't that take awhile?

I'm thinking you just reach in and pick out the cards... although if you play another game, you'd have to make sure those are mixed in thoroughly...

 

[Notepad]

Since its impossible to shuffle so many cards without a machine, the only option is to just split it into multiple piles and shuffle those, then mix piles and split and keep going. At least that's how I do it. My own "Big Box" is somewhere between 700-900 cards, I haven't counted exactly. All 5000+ I think is only possible for a-holes on WotC staff budgets who have easy access to shuffle-able Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall.

 

[train]

This was a neat idea, and I do think no rare draft boxes would be neat to play from.

 

[NorrYtt]

We once played with random cards from some guy's common box (mostly Rath Cycle). The second time we did it, we took out handfuls of red burn spells because they totally broke the format.

The guy who won was the guy with all the Slivers. He drafted every Sliver he was passed. It was really unfair.

Another format is to draft with only bomb cards. Make packs like Survival of the Fittest, Hypnotic Specter, Anurid Brushhopper, Fact or Fiction, Flametongue Kavu, Necropotence. That gets kinda nuts.