Pay money, pull one small ship in a blind draw. You can only use what comes in the box in a 1 vs 1 single elimination competition. What do you hope to pull, what do you equip and how do you play it? Who are your preferred match-ups and who scares you?

Me? I'd hope for a TIE and then I'd run Backstabber with Determination. I'd try to be cagey as hell and only take shots when I was getting bonus dice. My preferred match-ups would be against low agility ships and I would be scared of even them because when you're a TIE pilot, that's just the way it is!

Now you! GO!

I think it might be a fun way to try things and new ships for people who might just be getting into the game, but I dont think it should be the kind of match that ends up going for big prizes, since that would lead to some pretty unbalanced match-ups. That tie is nice, but would you really want to end up flying against maybe a K-Wing with TLT?

For added fun, you could do with upgrade cards what Magic draft does, pass them around until you've got a full hand, though you might have to limit it a little so some cards end up in a 'pot' as not all ships come with the same number of upgrades.

Drafting format...

1) Each player brings four ships and four pilot cards for those ships; no more than one large-base ship per player may be brought.

2) Each player brings upgrade cards of each type their ship can equip, to a total of 16 cards. If a player could go over the limit of 16 or does not have enough slots to reach 16, they may choose which cards they bring as long as that number is achieved.

3) Each player is responsible for handing in a list of which cards and ships they brought to the TO.

4) Seat the players in pods of 4-6; if the TO is fussy about faction, seat Rebel players with Rebels and Empire players with Empire, filling in gaps with Scum players.

5) Shuffle the pilot cards together and deal them evenly. Each player picks one card and passes it to the left until all packs are gone.

6) Shuffle the upgrade cards together and deal them evenly. Each player picks one card and passes it to the left until all packs are gone.

7) The players have 30 minutes to form a 100-point squadron from the cards they drafted, without regard to normal faction restrictions - if one wishes to put Hera Syndulla on an Omicron Group Pilot, they may, for example.

8) Play one fewer round than normal, using MoV to calculate the final brackets.

9) After the tournament, each pod sits back down at their table and using the lists given to the TO returns the ships and cards to their proper owner.

Sound reasonable? Obviously you'd only want to do this with people that you know, and going above 16 people would get unwieldy fast without a lot of assistant TOs.

@OP: I would hope for a TIE Phantom because it's a really good ship that costs a lot of points. I love TIE interceptors, but I would hate pulling that one because NO PUSH THE LIMIT! For that matter, any other ships with "fixes" like the TIE Advanced would be awful.

Rebel HWK's are double bad because 1) certain crew and turret options have given them new life, and 2) what good are support ships with nothing to support?

What do you do about small/large restrictions? B-Wings can't equip Reinforced Deflectors, even though they might draw it.

Or Palpatine, who is a crew but can't fit on a YT-2400?

Or suppose a T-70 draws Extra Munitions. Pretty useless, since they've only got the one torpedo slot.

How do Titles work in drafts?

Pay money, pull one small ship in a blind draw.

Players then have to build a 100-point squad using that ship and other elements of their collection?

For small-small ships, I think I'd like... to pull an A-Wing (Tycho with Push the Limit?) or an E-Wing (Corran) or a TIE Phantom (Whisper + Tactician + ACD + FCS) or a TIE/fo (Omega Leader + Juke + Comm Relay). Whisper might be the most capable solo pilot of that bunch.

For medium-small ships, the K-Wing (Miranda + TLT + Conner Net + AdvSLAM + Bombardier) or Mist Hunter (Zuckuss + 4-LOM + Mist Hunter + Tractor Beam + Adaptability) would be my choice.

OR do what my local shop is doing.

24 person tournament.

£50 entry fee

You get a 'random' box containing roughly 5 small ships or 3 small and a large from the same faction

Build your list from the contents of your box

Play

Normal prize support but you all go home with the entire contents of your box as well.

Boxes are built by the shop before hand (in secret) to avoid ending up with unplayable combinations.

It's the closest thing we can figure out to X-Wing 'Sealed'.

Pay money, pull one small ship in a blind draw. You can only use what comes in the box in a 1 vs 1 single elimination competition. What do you hope to pull, what do you equip and how do you play it? Who are your preferred match-ups and who scares you?

I'd hope for a TIE Defender pack, and run Rexler Brath + Predator + Ion Cannon. He has good matchups against a lot of things, but he's going to start to struggle against high-PS arc-dodgers. (Fortunately, a lot of the nastier options there are pruned away by the requirements of this particular exercise...)

As an alternative, I'd take Echo + Fire Control System + Recon Specialist + Advanced Cloaking Device. She really doesn't want to face turrets, and she'd prefer not to deal with higher-PS ships, but she can take a good run at a lot of things.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1141625559201543/?ti=cl

This is what my store is doing. We did it last year and it was a big hit.

Pay money, pull one small ship in a blind draw. You can only use what comes in the box in a 1 vs 1 single elimination competition. What do you hope to pull, what do you equip and how do you play it? Who are your preferred match-ups and who scares you?

I'd hope for a TIE Defender pack, and run Rexler Brath + Predator + Ion Cannon. He has good matchups against a lot of things, but he's going to start to struggle against high-PS arc-dodgers. (Fortunately, a lot of the nastier options there are pruned away by the requirements of this particular exercise...)

As an alternative, I'd take Echo + Fire Control System + Recon Specialist + Advanced Cloaking Device. She really doesn't want to face turrets, and she'd prefer not to deal with higher-PS ships, but she can take a good run at a lot of things.

i feel like the Tie F/o is the complete package.

in box you can run the 'standard' Omega leader (juke Comms)

and i feel no one i s better in a 1v1, assuming first combat OL starts with a TL, moving at PS 8 only have 9's to worry about really.

Blind draws are great for one-on-one matches.... surprisingly fun.

I love the draft for Mirror matches. All (or most) cards are available from one faction and each player picks until 100 points is used up.

One thing you may want to consider is allowing trades. Could make for some fun times off the table and allow players to feel a little more in control of their card supply.

So, my FLGS is actually running a draft event in 2 months. Here's how it goes;

* £50 fee to enter (bear with me here)

* Pick a faction upon purchasing a ticket

* On the day you will receive a box containing sealed ships for that faction totalling £62 retail value.

* Open your toys and build the best 100pt squad you can using only what was in the box (only the pilots and upgrades within the ships you receive).

* Play 5 rounds of swiss.

* Dish out a Spring OP kit and everyone keeps their ships

* Everyone goes home with new toys, participation prizes and smiles.

OR do what my local shop is doing.

24 person tournament.

£50 entry fee

You get a 'random' box containing roughly 5 small ships or 3 small and a large from the same faction

Build your list from the contents of your box

Play

Normal prize support but you all go home with the entire contents of your box as well.

Boxes are built by the shop before hand (in secret) to avoid ending up with unplayable combinations.

It's the closest thing we can figure out to X-Wing 'Sealed'.

Hmmm... LVL UP?

OR do what my local shop is doing.

24 person tournament.

£50 entry fee

You get a 'random' box containing roughly 5 small ships or 3 small and a large from the same faction

Build your list from the contents of your box

Play

Normal prize support but you all go home with the entire contents of your box as well.

Boxes are built by the shop before hand (in secret) to avoid ending up with unplayable combinations.

It's the closest thing we can figure out to X-Wing 'Sealed'.

Hmmm... LVL UP?

Sir, Yes Sir! Not sure how it will pan out but it feels like it should be a lot of fun. The entry is well worth it but it's perhaps a little steep for some people. Not sure it can be done any cheaper and provide enough product to be viable.

sounds like what STAW does. except you pay your fee AND get a free ship "Blind" which is really blind as you may get some odd ship... but always useful. new ships are always better prizes than a new range ruler or 7th copy of the same alt art card..lol

I should specify. Only small based ships in small packages, so no Punisher, K-Wing, Viper or G1. You can spend up to 50 points on a pilot and legal upgrades that come in the expac. There are no restrictions or ships left out. Maybe you get stuck with an M3-A? What do you do? Maybe you get the Squint. Do you try for Soontir anyways or are you going to chance it with Turr?

What would the build cost for one ship be?

if it was a single ship draft... I'd probably be hoping for a Phantom even though I'm primarily a rebel player. In my opinion it is the most "complete" expansion for a single ship. Too many other expansions seem to rely on others.

Phantom

T-70

A-Wing

would be my hopes. mostly for my familiarity with the ships.

We play 40 point builds Free fo all a lot people jump in and out.

when you are eliminated, you can start on any edge and whom ever has survived the longest has initiative over other Pilots with the same skill lvl, It's a lot of fun... I know that your idea of random draft wouldn't work where I play simply because we have faction pure players.. meaning they only own imperial or only rebel.. They would never invest in a one in three chance of getting something that they could use.

What do you do about small/large restrictions? B-Wings can't equip Reinforced Deflectors, even though they might draw it.

Or Palpatine, who is a crew but can't fit on a YT-2400?

Or suppose a T-70 draws Extra Munitions. Pretty useless, since they've only got the one torpedo slot.

How do Titles work in drafts?

Was this one directed at me?

Because each player drafts 4 pilots and does so before drafting the upgrades, drafting an upgrade their ships can't use would be a matter of last picks or hate drafting. Restrictions other than faction would still apply, so even if you draft multiple Soontirs you can only use one, and if you nab 3 Emperor Palpatines you can still only equip one - and the Reinforced Deflectors example would be a useless card without a large ship.

I dunno. It was just one of those 3 AM ideas. Might not be worth doing except in a friendly environment.

What do you do about small/large restrictions? B-Wings can't equip Reinforced Deflectors, even though they might draw it.

Or Palpatine, who is a crew but can't fit on a YT-2400?

Or suppose a T-70 draws Extra Munitions. Pretty useless, since they've only got the one torpedo slot.

How do Titles work in drafts?

Was this one directed at me?

Because each player drafts 4 pilots and does so before drafting the upgrades, drafting an upgrade their ships can't use would be a matter of last picks or hate drafting. Restrictions other than faction would still apply, so even if you draft multiple Soontirs you can only use one, and if you nab 3 Emperor Palpatines you can still only equip one - and the Reinforced Deflectors example would be a useless card without a large ship.

I dunno. It was just one of those 3 AM ideas. Might not be worth doing except in a friendly environment.

If you bring a Reinforced Deflectors OGP and someone else brings an ACD Phantom, and let's assume that there's nobody else who brings any system ships, then if I was reading correctly those two players would draw from the pool of system upgrades at random and there's a 50/50 that you each draw a system upgrade card that their ship cannot equip.

Was I reading that right? Or did I get the whole concept wrong lol? There's a very real possibility that the point went way over my head.

Ah, sorry, I was assuming a certain amount of familiarity with how Magic: the Gathering drafts work.

There are several steps:

1) shuffle all the upgrade cards in a single 'pod' (group of players) together

2) Create equal-sized packs for each player and hand them to that player

3) That player picks one card from that pack and then passes the rest to the person on their left

4) Repeat until all packs are gone.

That way you can look and see what would be most useful for your pilots or most HARMFUL to your list - as an example, an Emperor Palpatine card would be a top pick regardless of whether you could play it or not, because keeping it out of the hands of the guy who picked the OGP is more important than using it yourself.

Because there are going to be 16 cards in each pack, there's also a decent chance to 'wheel' cards; that is to say, pass a card that you wanted to the person on the left but have a chance to pull it when it comes back around. Titles would be excellent examples of wheel cards; if only one person at a table brought and grabbed the Juno Eclipse pilot, then that's the only person who has use of the TIE/x1 card.

So in your example, the ACD would get shuffled randomly into the packs, and the person who grabbed the Phantom would be on the lookout for the ACD to come around - but someone else might grab it instead to keep it out of the Phantom player's hands, if there was nothing else they needed in that particular pack of upgrades. Yes, that means the hate-drafting player has hurt the Phantom player, but also fewer usable upgrades on their own ships, so it's a balance.

I'm personally debating about going to a 5-pilot card standard instead of 4; that'd give more pilot variety. But hell, how would I know without playtesting it, and the people up here are addicted to 100pt 6 rocks....

12 upgrade cards would probably be enough too.

STAW blind. 90 point build. pay fee pick up blind ship.. add 40 points and that ship to your total. for x-wing scale it back to say 65-70 point build with the rest going to the blind ship..

Herm... How about to simplify it abit - Have people bring 6 fully built pilots, either with all the upgrade slots already filled, or as the person sees fit. Then you shuffle up all of the pilots + upgrades, deal them out, and draft per the normal process. Finally, you put together your 100pt team based off of the 6 pilots you drafted, and choose which upgrades to equip on the pilot that they came with. Therefore everyone's stuff stays together, so you don't have to worry about who's TLT that is. Plus, it can make for some more interesting builds that you would normally not see since the combos are already predetermined.