Drafting is about getting an advantage before the game even starts. It takes balance and throws it out the air lock.

We disagree here.

Drafting adds another layer to the strategy. It doesn't destroy it. The balance is determined by the players understanding of the game off the table as well as on. If the player doesn't understand what ships are the best and which struggle, then yes, the player will feel the draft was imbalanced, but the imbalance was in their knowledge versus their opponents, not in the drafting format.

If there is any balance being thrown out, it is thrown out before the drafting even begins. That would mean each faction has at max, 2 competitive ships. And when I say 2 competitive ships, I mean they are far and away the best ships and there is no debate about it at all. But if each faction has at least 3 competitive ships, then drafting would be fine (although pretty pointless), as each player would take 1 of the 3 in their first picks. And if the third ship is strictly worse than the ships picked 1 and 2, well it sure is nice that he/she gets the next best ship as they pick back to back.

It is worth noting that your statement is valid in regards to Scum and Villany in its current state. The Aggressor would be regarded by many as the clear best option for scum currently, and the fact that they happen to work best with another Aggressor means they would likely be an auto-first pick. TLT Y-wings, similarly, work well without any other ships. The player picking 3rd seems to be at a pretty nasty disadvantage, but I'm not so sure TLT HWKs w/ Recon Specialist couldn't compete with the previous 2 lists. Here's hoping Wave 8 fleshes out some more competitive options from the scum faction!

Drafting is about getting an advantage before the game even starts. It takes balance and throws it out the air lock.

We disagree here.

Drafting adds another layer to the strategy. It doesn't destroy it. The balance is determined by the players understanding of the game off the table as well as on. If the player doesn't understand what ships are the best and which struggle, then yes, the player will feel the draft was imbalanced, but the imbalance was in their knowledge versus their opponents, not in the drafting format.

If there is any balance being thrown out, it is thrown out before the drafting even begins. That would mean each faction has at max, 2 competitive ships. And when I say 2 competitive ships, I mean they are far and away the best ships and there is no debate about it at all. But if each faction has at least 3 competitive ships, then drafting would be fine (although pretty pointless), as each player would take 1 of the 3 in their first picks. And if the third ship is strictly worse than the ships picked 1 and 2, well it sure is nice that he/she gets the next best ship as they pick back to back.

It is worth noting that your statement is valid in regards to Scum and Villany in its current state. The Aggressor would be regarded by many as the clear best option for scum currently, and the fact that they happen to work best with another Aggressor means they would likely be an auto-first pick. TLT Y-wings, similarly, work well without any other ships. The player picking 3rd seems to be at a pretty nasty disadvantage, but I'm not so sure TLT HWKs w/ Recon Specialist couldn't compete with the previous 2 lists. Here's hoping Wave 8 fleshes out some more competitive options from the scum faction!

I think the issue is that you do need cards/abilities meant for limited play.

We did a store draft with one of each pilot. We provided all the ships but players had to provide their own upgrades. People could mix factions with the ships they drafted. But upgrades stayed within factions. It was fun, I ended up with Biggs, Rear Admiral and a Z Pirate.

Draft order was random. Once everyone had drafted a ship then the player with the lowest squad total drafted next. Then the new lowest squad would draft. That went on until everyone either passed or couldn't fit anymore ships in their 100pt limit. You also had to play every ship you drafted. It was a ton of fun.

My group has run a similar draft in the past where the faction restrictions are removed and you can create some interesting cross-faction squads.

We're actually running a version of it this weekend with a tweak on the format where we restrict the draft to PS 3-6 small ship pilots. The goal is to force players to use pilots that rarely make it to the tabletop.

Here's the rules writeup for those interested in specifics:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByyDERrQdYGdcE9YMGhLeGhtdWM/view

I've thought of a draft I would participate in, because it sounds fun.

Normal squad building rules except:

No unique anything.

Your draft is for unique pilot abilities that you can assign to a generic pilot of equal or greater pilot skill, regardless of the source's faction. No pilot skills above ps 6 will be included. The generics with epts can take vi to get a higher pilot ability,but this does not add more pilot abilities to the draft. These abilities will have a cost of their original ps (guri's ability costs 5pts as that is her PS).

I've thought of a draft I would participate in, because it sounds fun.

Normal squad building rules except:

No unique anything.

Your draft is for unique pilot abilities that you can assign to a generic pilot of equal or greater pilot skill, regardless of the source's faction. No pilot skills above ps 6 will be included. The generics with epts can take vi to get a higher pilot ability,but this does not add more pilot abilities to the draft. These abilities will have a cost of their original ps (guri's ability costs 5pts as that is her PS).

how is that functionally different?

I don't think draft formats work all that well in miniatures form. You don't draft a Space Marine Army in Warhammer 40,000 or a Cyngar Army in Warmachines.

We decided that a change was in order, we are all a little tired of just playing 100 point top tier fleets we decided that would want to go with 50 points to keep it fast and simple. You could only use pilots that you drew and you could not have more than 10 points in upgrade cards.

So we played around with this idea the other day. We put one copy of each card from a faction (Skum to start) shuffled in the middle of the table. We then rolled a dice to randomly determine the order. We each took turns drawing 3 cards, then once the first person had three he could choice to mulligan a card. The card that he wanted to get rid of was then placed face up on the side, and then next person could either take that card, or pull a random. Then chose to mulligan if they wish. And so on until it was back around to the first person, who then chose their third card.

We then built our fleets. Unique upgrades go to the person who had the lowest points in pilots. And crew of pilots in play could not be used. We will be trying this over the next few weeks to see how it plays out. Will force us to try new things and test our pilot abilities