Cube Draft Stockholm #1

Finally! The first test of our ”draft cube” has been played, and there was much rejoicing.

The cube isn´t really a cube in the traditional M:TG-style, but a collection of cards that can be used for booster draft. It currently look like this:

Vampire the Eternal Struggle: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

Ancient Hearts: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

The Sabbat: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

Sabbat Wars: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

Final Nights: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

Camarilla Edition: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

Third Edition: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

Lords of the Night: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

Keepers of Tradition: All rares x1, all uncommons x2, all vampires x2, all commons x3

The draft works like this:

1) Choose which sets that will be drafted. Choose minimum deck and crypt size, and if recursion will be used (we played with 7 boosters, deck size 45, crypt size 7 and 1 recursion)

2) Seat the players. If you are 8+ players, use multiple pods if you like.

3) Pick a set.

4) Shuffle all rares. Deal 1 rare per player.

5) Shuffle all uncommons. Deal the appropriate number of uncommons (see list below) for each player.

6) Shuffle all vamps. Deal the appropriate number of vamps (see list below) for each player.

7) Shuffle all commons. Deal the appropriate number of commons (see list below) for each player.

8) Now each player has a “booster” in front of him. Draft! (as per §7.5 in the tournament rules)

9) Repeat step 4-5, or step 3-5 if you swap sets.

10) Build decks.

11) Do table seatings and play!

Card distriution in boosters:

VTES: 11C, 4V, 3U, 1R

AH: 6C, 4V, 2U/R

Sabbat: 16C, 5V, 5U, 2R

Sabbat War: 4C, 3V, 3U, 1R

Final Nights: 7C, 3U, 1R

Camarilla Edition: 5C, 3V, 2U, 1R

Third Edition: 5C, 3V, 2U, 1R

Lords of the Night: 7C, 3V, 1R

Keepers of Tradition: 5C, 3V, 2U, 1R

(numbers from Wikipedia)

Note: The method used here can result in duplicates of a card in a single booster. If you think this is stupid (it is!), just swap the duplicate for the appropriate card type from the cube stacks. This problem can be avoided by keeping separate stacks of cards (ie, 3 stacks with one of each common etc) to deal from, but this makes it a bit more complex to sort the cards after each draft.

We tried a Camarilla-exclusive variant this first time, with 3 boosters of Vampire the Eternal Struggle, 2 boosters of Camarilla Edition and 2 boosters of Keepers of Tradition. In hindsight I can say it might have been smarter to use 3 KoT and 2 VtES, as KoT has draftferior effects. 

When we drafted now, everybody sleeved their cards with cheap ass-sleaves, that after the draft are left on the cards. Eventually all cards in the “cube” will be sleaved.

We played only one game + final this time, because it got late. Of course you can choose freely how many games you want to play in each draft. You might even just play one game per draft if you like the draft moment a lot!

First game:

Ober (Toreador with votes and Cel-combat and stuff) > Jens (Nosferatu wall with lots of Potence and stuff) > Randy (Ventrue and other titled vamps and stuff) > Henrik (Malkavian sb and stuff) > Donk (Toreador with votes and stuff)

Donk got first turn Zillah´s Valley and Anson + second turn Information Highway and Sir Walter Nash, looked kind of constructed.

Henrik (me) got first turn Powerbase Montreal and Normal and Dieter Kleist, second turn Muddled Vampire Hunter, Vast Wealth and Deer Rifle on Dieter, and a bit later the hunter got Jackie Therman and Dieter the (sadly errated!) Hawg. 

No one bothered to take the Powerbase from Henrik, so he emtied his crypt and swept the table.

Henrik 5 vp, 1 gw

Final:

Ober > Jens > Donk > Henrik > Randy (This seating was based on the result of the first game)

This game wasn´t that funny for Henrik as the first one. His prey Randy got Maris Streck (broken!) and his predator Donk Fame:d his first weenie, so his second weenie had to eat the Fame:d one in torpor = bad start. Yet the game stalled out almost to full time – Jens managed to oust Donk with just a couple of seconds left on the clock.

Jens 1 vp and tournament victory!

Draft cube pros: Vampire is a BRILLIANT game, and at least in my personal opinion it´s even better when you don´t get the typical decks that´s in tournaments and in our regular Wednesday games. It´s always more interesting to play when it´s superhard to guess what cards your opponents has on hand.

Draft cube cons: It´s of course rather expensive, or at least kind of difficult, to gather cards for complete sets. But as a long time player, I already had most of the junk in storage, and traded and bought the rest. I have spent about $150 on completing this cube, not including a handful of cards which I “borrow” from my other collection (Enkil Cog, Monastery of Shadows, etc). Of course you don´t have to have exactely all cards, especially not all rares, to be able to draft like this – just assume those cards didn´t appear in the drafted boosters.

Of course you can also "cube-draft" in other ways, for example just my taking a bunch of cards and draft them, or trying to construct your own "sets", as was done at the very nice draft tournament at the swedish nationals 2012.

Also, it´s a bit boring to sort the cards after each draft, but I think it´s worth it :)

All in all the draft was nice experience. I hope doing it again soon, perhaps with other players, or the same :) The current cube holds cards to play as much as 10 players, perhaps even more if we don´t use that many boosters of each set.