I love drafting and I think it's high time x-wing got a draft format.

Here is my pitch

Drafting is done using a new deck of cards called the draft deck.

Each card in the draft deck has three ship choices on it, one ship choice per faction.

Ships on a card are grouped based on their general function. So a "swarm" card would have a tie fighter for imperials a head hunter for rebels and another head hunter for scum.

The deck would be expanded and adapted with each product wave as necessary. Events could specify what waves would be in play for a given event.

The deck would have enough cards for two players to draft from and for large events multiple decks would be used.

A draft deck would be suffled and delt into four "packs" of a four cards each. Extra cards left in the deck would be removed from play so that the actual composition of the remaining packs is unknown and the pack size is consistent no matter how large the decks get.

Players draft one pack taking a card from it and passing it to the player on their right and keep doing this until they have depleted the pack of card. Then players draft the seccond pack of cards.

Once a player has their chosen cards they build a list using only the ship choices on their cards. Each card lets you take a single copy of that ship so if you want a swarm you will have to draft lots of swarm cards. The point is you have to adapt you play based on your drafted cards.

I would also limit the number of upgrade points or cards that could be used and limit the number of named pilots. Not sure what the limits should be just yet but I'm thinking 1-2 named pilots and 3-6 upgrade cards. Tight limits ensure players have to use their drafted ships and cant just sink a bunch of points into a predictable ace combo. (Alternatively draft cards could grant players slots to use upgrades or aces)

I'm going to build a draft deck soon and would love your input!

What ships do you think should be common in the draft deck? Uncommon or rare.

I'm thinking rarety in the deck should mimic players collections.

Here is my first deck I will test. all pairings and card Ratios are guesses.

1x Heavy

Desimator, Ghost, YV-666

1x Middle

Fire spray, YT-2400, Fire spray

1x Control

Shuttle, HWK, HWK

1x Heavy Ordnance

Tie punisher, kwing, punishing one?

2x Mid ordnance

Tie bomber, B-wing, mist hunter

2x Superior fighter

Tie defender, E-wing, star viper

3x Fighter

Tie advanced, x-wing t-65, KIHRAXZ

8x Swarm fighter

Tie fighter /im, head hunter, head hunter

3x Quick fighter

Tie interceptor, A-wing, syik

1x So cool fighter

Tie adv prototype, x wing t-70, IG 2000

3x Some junk

Tie fighter /fo, Y wing, Y-wing

1x odd balls

Tie phantom, attack shuttle, KIHRAXZ?

Interesting idea. Faction option is cool. Are you still limited to ships from one faction?

I think another possibility is to have upgrade card drafts mixed in, but then you have some weirdness like titles and "this ship only" modifications.

Thanks for the feedback!

Mixing factions would be an interesting twistbut not required with this method.

As for drafting upgrades My thought was to keep everyone's actual collection of upgrade and ship cards out of the drafting process given its way too complicated to try and make that work.

Two things.
how many people would be drafting from the same deck?
I think the odd ball card would be better if it just had a point value. Like 27-28, some where in there. If you feel like that's too good you could always say that's the point value for the ship after upgrades, so you couldn't just load out what ever small ship you wanted. I might try If I can get a group to do it.

One deck would be used for every two players. So if you wanted to draft with a single friend you only need one deck. In a larger event you would need one deck for every two players.

If you wanted a greater variance in potential lists you could suffle two or more decks together and remove half of them before drafting.

I'm thinking about ways to limit the actual number of cards players end up with while still allowing for lists like swarm I'm thinking cards for cheap fighters will allow up to two copies of that fighter in your list. Curently I would apply this to the swarm, quick and junk cards.