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[Draft On]Magic Online Booster Draft

StericaSterica YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
edited October 2006 in Critical Failures
Time for something different. This will be an attempt to get weekly (or scheduled) booster drafts organized for Magic: The Gathering.

What's a Booster Draft?

Magic formats are broken up into two types: Constructed and Limited. Constructed is just as its sounds: you take any of the legal cards available and make a deck.

Limited, however, is...limited. You don't have all the cards available to you. and have to make choices as to what will be in your final deck.

A BOOSTER draft is where you get X players, and they all have three packs each. Each player opens his or her first pack, picks a card from that pack, and passes the rest of those cards to the next player. In turn, they recieve a stack of cards (of course, missing the card the previous player took), pick a second card, pass that particular stack, and repeat until all cards have been selected. Open the next pack, reverse the passing direction, and continue until all three packs are depleted.

With the 45 cards you picked (and infinite basic land at your disposal), you must make at a 40 card (minimum) deck. Leftover cards are your sideboard.

Why Draft?

Do you hate having to keep up with the metagame? Do you dislike a player having the "money deck" loaded with rares? Do you want another layer of mental strategy? Then draft is for you.

Draft is even, as nobody brings any cards with them, you just have the three packs everyone bought. And as you continue to draft, you'll see the mind games that develop. There's also a thrill when you work with limited resources.

Okay, back to PA...

I want to make this thread like a night at the hobby shop. Weekly booster drafts.

We'd be using Wizards of the Coast's official online program for Magic playing. This has the downside of costing money (overpriced, in my opinion), but the benefit of tools to run Drafts. And hey, no rules confusion!

Money? How much?

An account costs a one-time fee of $9.99. Wait, don't go just yet! When you purchase an account, you get a coupon for $9.99 in their online store...so it's technically free.

As I said, Magic Online works just like the real world. You buy booster packs, starter decks, etc. just like at any store.

Even the same price.

Yeah. Wizards likes to boast that this means they have no monthly fee...but it's a lot of horse shit. But, you can keep the online cards and build decks with them, trade them, and so on.

Booster packs cost $3.69, so one Booster Draft will cost $11.07. You can buy the packs ahead of time, or wait until you join the game (a prompt will take you to the place to buy the packs).

The benefit is that the cards after the draft are yours to keep. Make decks, goof off, and so forth.

How Will We Roll?

We'll be playing casual, meaning it has no bearing on your rank or statistics for more organized play that Magic Online offers. Ideally, eight people is the number for this.

So, when you log in, just click on the "Casual Play" bubble and from there, go to "Limited Games". This is likely to be fairly empty, don't worry.

Helpful Image 1
Helpful Image 2

From there, we'll have a game waiting...assuming you aren't early.

Crap, I can't see what you are talking about!

Wizards has a "New Player View", which blocks more advanced formats from being seen. Go to the upper righthand corner of your screen and change it to "Expert". Look at "Helpful Image 1" if you can't find it.

Clan?

There is a Clan option, and it doesn't seem hard to put one together. I was thinking bringing this forum's pun to new levels and call ourselves "John Steindeck"...but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Tips for new Drafters

The Game is More Basic: Do not try complicated combos. You basically want:

-A hard-to-kill or hard-to-block creature that will kill your opponent in a couple turns after being played. Don't grab too many of these, as they tend to be expensive.
-Cheap creatures. Something that will chip away at your opponent, block effectively, or speed up your game via mana acceleration, card drawing, or deck searching. Bonus points if they can be sacrificed for some other benefit after serving their original purpose.
-Answers to threats. Your opponent will have their own threat to kill you. Creature removal, countermagic, damage dealing.

Don't grab something like, say, a cool card that wants goblins in play. You might not get a lot of goblins, or enough of that card to make a difference. If the card is good by itself, then that's cool. Just try to think less of combos and more of having a good creature base and answers to your opponent's creatures.

Think of the set: A card that is good with lots of artifacts is not normally that good to draft...but Mirrodin is half artifacts. Likewise, a card that kills a non-spirit creature for cheap is GREAT in most cases, but Kamigawa has a lot of spirits running around. Make sure you have a basic grasp of the set's themes.

Don't Hate-Draft early on: Hate-Drafting is taking a card that you don't intend to use. Why would you do that? Because the card is good. This is giving up a pick so you can make a single opponent weaker. It's a very difficult thing to understand, so just focus on your deck until you are comfortable with more advanced tactics.

Greed drafting is forbidden: Greed drafting is when you take a card purely for secondary market value (ie, some rare card with good trading value). It's fine if the card has a use, but if you have no plans to put that card in your deck, you won't be playing with us anymore.

Watch your colors: Try to use your early picks to pick your intial colors. In most sets, you want no greater than two colors (maybe splashing a third, but in VERY small amounts). Nothing sucks more than mana issues.

Sideboard: You want to make your main deck good, but if all options seem crappy...think of your sideboard. It can be hard to sideboard effectively in draft, but a color hoser is a better option than a crappy creature.

Don't draft basic lands: The "main" set of a block has a basic land in its boosters. You have infinite basic lands, so don't draft those :P

NON-basic lands are a different story.

Links

Official Magic Site
Official Magic Online Site
Online Store
Magic Online Client Download (includes direct download and torrent options)
Events Calendar for Magic Online (not related to this thread, but you might be interested)

My name on Magic Online is "Rorus Raz". It has a space.

YL9WnCY.png
Sterica on

Posts

  • INeedNoSaltINeedNoSalt with blood on my teeth Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    I recall hearing somewhere that you can take cards you own in MTGO and have them mail you hardcopies.

    Is this true.

    INeedNoSalt on
  • ScooterScooter Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    What I heard is it's only true if you own the whole set.


    Wish I could join in, but I don't have the cash right now for real cards, let alone virtual ones.

    Scooter on
  • DuoDuo Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    I'm in Rorus :)

    I've only used the MtGO cilent a little bit, but it seems ok. And drafting is a lot of fun. Besides, considering my in ability to find anyone (decent) to play cardboard Magic with, this will have to do ;)

    The question now: How many people do we need? I would think at least 8 or so.

    Edit: I heard the same thing, Scooter. Get a full set, and you can trade it in for the real cards.

    Duo on
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited September 2006
    Yes, eight is the magic number.

    Sadly, the tourney options are rather limited, and a password option is missing. Shouldn't be a problem, though.

    Sterica on
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  • TDLTDL ClubPA, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited September 2006
    When I saw the title I was excited, but I can't really sink money into MtGO at this point.

    TDL on
    Meet me on my vast veranda
    My sweet, untouched Miranda
    And while the seagulls are crying
    We fall but our souls are flying
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited September 2006
    Perhaps weekly is the issue. Might it be a bit easier if this was bi-weekly, monthly, or some other measurement of time ending in -ly?

    Sterica on
    YL9WnCY.png
  • TDLTDL ClubPA, __BANNED USERS regular
    edited September 2006
    It's not the frequency of the tournament, it's the fact that I have to start buying MtG cards online. And once I start, I will never stop, regardless of the tournament.

    TDL on
    Meet me on my vast veranda
    My sweet, untouched Miranda
    And while the seagulls are crying
    We fall but our souls are flying
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited September 2006
    Ah, okay. I understand the cost being an issue. That's alright, as all we need is eight (well, I guess seven) people and that might just keep numbers low.

    I will, however, announce any free offers.

    Sterica on
    YL9WnCY.png
  • astrobstrdastrobstrd So full of mercy... Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    I'm in. I'm on MTGO as astrozombie. It might be about a month or so till I'm able to start playing regularly though. I may have enough trade bait to do 1 draft till then.

    astrobstrd on
    Selling the Scream Podcast: https://anchor.fm/jeremy-donaldson
  • XieflowXieflow Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    Weekly is just too much (MTGO cards are retarded expensive compared to a lot of places offer the boosters in paper form for $2.25 - $3.00 each), but monthly sounds entirely doable.

    Xieflow on
  • StericaSterica Yes Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited September 2006
    The timeframe is not set in stone, I just remember my weekly drafts at the card shop and figured that's what people might like.

    Really, the price isn't horrible. It's only slightly more expensive than what my store charged. The competitive shit, now that is some BS with their additional $2.00 fee for event tickets.

    Sterica on
    YL9WnCY.png
  • gilraingilrain Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    Hey, don't let this die! I'd be up for this in a few weeks, once I'm not staggering from my dental bill, anymore.

    gilrain on
  • KiTAKiTA Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    I recovered my old account, havne't touched it since, uh, .... Before the Pyrexia mess occured.

    The newest card I have has two gears as it's set icon. :P

    KiTA on
  • Elbonian ManElbonian Man Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    There's a less integrated but free way to do drafts called Netdraft. This is a decent guide explaining what to do. The program only saves as an apprentice format though.

    Elbonian Man on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited September 2006
    I would be up for this but I have a deep rooted objection to purchasing cards that aren't actually real, for the same price as real cards.

    It's nice that if you buy the whole set they give em to you... but ... hurgh, I'd rather just buy real cards and remake the decks in a freeware program.

    Jasconius on
  • ScooterScooter Registered User regular
    edited September 2006
    Can Apprentice or MWS do matches with more than 2 people?

    Edit: I found a program called MTG Studio that converts deck formats, so even if it only saves as Appentice we could still do MWS.

    Scooter on
  • CmdPromptCmdPrompt Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    I'm going to go ahead and bump this up to see if people are still interested. I was having trouble with the MtgO client installing, but now that I have it working, I'd love to do this.

    CmdPrompt on
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  • JeffHJeffH Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    I'd be down if the draft time made sense for me (drafts are long ;) )

    I'm moontouched on mtgo

    JeffH on
  • 3lwap03lwap0 Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    I'm very much intrested as well. I'd prefer the free way, but honestly, if everyone goes MTGO, then i'd have to go as well. Weekly? Meh, I could be talked into it.

    3lwap0 on
  • astrobstrdastrobstrd So full of mercy... Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    I'd be down for a TS casual draft when it comes out on the 30th. I haven't played the new set yet and it looks ridicu-fun. I just hope I get a white, blue, or red magus :D .

    astrobstrd on
    Selling the Scream Podcast: https://anchor.fm/jeremy-donaldson
  • TheUnsane1TheUnsane1 PhiladelphiaRegistered User regular
    edited October 2006
    I would be down with this as long as it was on a day/ time I can likely play. Normally the best option for me would be Thursday nights starting at about 7:30-8pm eastern. That said I would totally do this on a weekly/bi weekly basis. I also wouldn't be opposed to a sealed deck league.

    TheUnsane1 on
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  • SpawnbrokerSpawnbroker Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    This does perk my interest, but I don't know...Magic Online just seems like a huge Money Sucking Void of Death that Wizards came up with to sodomize me even more with this game than they already do.

    Spawnbroker on
    Steam: Spawnbroker
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