Junkyard Draft--Unsanctioned Format

[Notepad]

I'm in the process of organizing a "junkyard draft" and would like input on running the event or comments/criticisms/questions that y'all might have about it.

Basically, I want to make sure I have the best junkyard draft possible, and have the best ideas possible to pitch when I talk to the store owner in person this saturday.

To describe the format, here's a snippet of what I sent her:

There are 1800+ cards I own (mostly commons but a few hundred uncommons and 40-50 rares mixed in there as well), from Ice Age through Fifth Dawn, that I just can't trade and have put in "junk boxes" to just sit. But rather than just have them sit there, I thought it would be better to give them away--in a draft! Dividing them up into randomly assorted 15-card "packs" would end up with about 120 packs.

The idea for the tournament would be: All the players draft three packs, as per usual drafts, but after each round, there is a quick draft of one more pack. This way players keep getting cards to add to and evolve their decks. Since everyone seems to like ante so much, the games should be for ante (and nobody will go under 40 cards in a deck with a new "pack" per round).

I'd supply all the junk box cards to the store for the tournament, and would even throw in a foil Eighth Edition Birds of Paradise as the first place prize. I don't have any spare basic lands, so that is the only set of cards you'd have to provide.

 

[train]

Sounds good to me - but what do you get for this?...

 

[Killer Joe]

Well, here's what I did for my "Friday Afterschool Magic Club":

I made re-packs from every set from Tempest to Darksteel. Each pack had 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 11 commons. The color distribution was divided up six ways:
Black
Blue
Green
Red
White
Gold/Artifacts/Non-Basic Land

I used actual foil packs that I had cut at the top only with scissors and carefully slide the 15 cards in each of them making 24 packs for an 8 man draft. I hand picked every card and made sure there was a consistant balance of Creatures vs. spells.

Of course, I would only draft with them if they needed me to but otherwise I would help the newbs who'd never drafted before or were clueless about it during the tournament.

Everything always worked out well. Though they never got to KEEP the cards, I felt that in some way I helped launch new players into the field. I've been doing this for five years and TWO of these kids are way better than me now, which is a good thing.

I wonder how the store owner would benefit from this, how does HE make money? Drafting is a store owner's dream.

 

[Oversoul]

We did a draft on the last day of our game club in high school using repacks this guy made. It was pretty cool. Unorganized though as everyone kept playing multiplayer games in small groups instead of setting up a tournament so that we could have a real winner. I think I had the best or second best deck though, despite never having done a draft before...

 

[Notepad]

Cool to know the whole repack thing can work. Colors are even in my box of junk cards, but as for creatures-to-spells ratio, its whatever was crap, so it seems there is an even number of both.

It will be fun to see OLS's morph and cycling go against MD5's artifact love and OTJ's graveyard-heavy themes. There is also a lot of IPA's rainbow stuff. Then, there's a lot of miscellaneous stuff from other sets.

As for how the store owner makes money, I'd imagine she's charge an entry fee.

As for what I get out of the thing? I get to dump a lot of my crap onto unsuspecting suckers (I mean, players) and am only really out a foil BoP. And I was planning on lighting it on fire, anyway. So really, no loss for me.

 

[Oversoul]

I never really had foil cards too much, because when I got them I was able to trade them for better cards, so I did...

So I've never tried burning a foil card before. What does it look like?

 

[train]

a charred foil Magic card...

I've seen one burnt, and it starts to "shrivel", then just chars away...

"great fumes though..."

 

[Killer Joe]

I never liked foils but always traded them as if they were gemstones

Your draft sounds like it'll be lots of fun. As for the store owner, maybe getting people interested in drafting, in general, will generate more people wanting to do a regular draft sponsored by the store. For YOU, I know it always felt good to set up a draft. It's like you're promoting a game you really like, and that would make anyone feel good.

meh. Foil BoP goes up in flames

 

[Notepad]

Actually, I think I'd like to do the games promotion thing Bleiweiss mentioned he did in his blog. It would be fun to work for a card shop and organize casual tournaments. The scavenger hunt looks like it'd be a blast!

But, organizing this junkyard draft is fun for the time being. I'll be sure to write a quasi-tournament report in my POD Casual Chronicler column. If it goes well, hopefully I can get a Mirror Sealed Deck event going. Got tons of OLS and some Torment that would be fun to see in a mirror deck.