Being completely unfamiliar with the competitive side of CCGs and having only played very casually in the past I need some clarification. As a budget player, I see many posts bemoaning the cost of being competitive in any CCG/TCG format and this concerns me. I would assume this is true primarily in "open" or "pro" games. Wouldn't "sealed deck" or "draft" style tournaments limit the cost outlay to everyone essentially buying what you need for a deck at the tournament? I know that FFG hasn't said anything about this type of format but it seems very popular and almost inevitable. Maybe I don't understand the terms. Can someone expand on the how these type tournaments would work and if it is a viable strategy to control costs.

As a comparison, would this type of tournament be similar to competing in the "Stock" or "Limited" divisions in other sports, such as shooting or racing?

Thanks everyone for your help.

Based on 5 card packs with 1 die per pack, and the two factions I think it will be very difficult for a sealed format to exist. I'm sure someone much more creative than I will come up with a cool variant. But I don't see it becoming as popular as other games sealed offerings. IMO constructed will be far and away the most popular way of playing this game.

While it can be done, it wouldn't be a cheap option. The problem is that with a CCG type game there is no guarantee that players will get enough characters from a booster.

In terms of playing on a budget. If you are interested play in the launch party weekend and gets some cards. Just go casually from there and have fun.

If your on a budget, buy enough boosters to get a solid base of commons, see what u commons and rates you have. Buy what you need to make a deck competitive by buying singles from a third party.

I do think they will eventually come out with a sealed deck variant, like maybe after one or two expansions.

Thanks for the quick replies and please keep them coming. More information is always better.

As for the launch parties; I am looking forward to it. I am definitely going to buy into this game. Still working on my exact buying strategy at this point but definitely not a "Gotta collect'em all" philosophy. I was just wondering if a different tourney format would help assuage the concerns of those that say this is just a money pit.

I just posted this on another thread but i'm planning on only playing villains. My friend is playing Hero's and we are going to trade equivalent rarity's with each other. Could be an option for playing on a budget.

I really hope that FFG is coming up with Sealed and Draft formats. I will buy a starter and a few boosters just to get myself playing, but I won't collect all the cards. But I won't say no to a Draft tournament...

We're planning on holding a sealed event where you open (4) boosters and then choose which starter you wish. From looking at the starters it seems like it will work fine.

FFG should have constructed Destiny with these non-constructed formats in mind, as one of the benefits a CCG has over an LCG is those formats. But presently we don't know whether those formats were things built into the game and it's distribution or if FFG is just tacking on rules for it that may or may not work. I hope it us the former and not the latter.

We have seen that this game works with various sizes of decks. While the standard deck will be 30 cards + characters + battlefield, perhaps draft rules will only allow for 20 card decks, making swapping out cars from a starter with a hand full of booster packs more meaningful?

The challenge will be the hero/villain dichotomy. Perhaps you pick up the Ray deck and your 4 booster packs are nothing but villian rares, making it difficult to add extra dice to your deck.

Hopefully something fun will be developed to make drafting feasible.

Well there is no reason in sealed play to have Villian and Hero have to stay separate.

I was thinking maybe they would have the players/store supply any non-unique characters for the draft so that no matter what cards you draft you could build some sort of deck and any unique characters would give you options. 20 cards and 20 pts of characters or something? Would take atleast 6 boosters probably though.

The game is really not designed for it due to the dice mechanic.

I'd really like a sealed and draft format, but I'm not sure how it would work. There's just not enough cards in the packs.

Magic gives you 6 boosters with 14 cards (I'm ignoring lands here). That gives you a pool of 84 cards to eventually choose from.
Out of that you need to make a 40 card deck (including lands)... so really you probably only need to pick like 30ish cards from those 84.

Destiny is 30 cards plus a few characters.

You get 5 cards in a pack. So to get a similar ratio of card choice, you'd need 84 cards or 17 booster packs....
So unless a Destiny Booster costs 1/3rd of a Magic Booster (which it doesn't) then I don't see how it would work.

You could probably reduce this number a bit since Magic has 5 colors and Destiny only has 3 so there's probably less conflict between cards in Destiny. However, that still only brings us back down to 10 or so boosters.
Still a bit high but perhaps possible?

Maybe they'll come out with a "sealed play box" which would be a few set cards and a few boosters? Or maybe there will be another type of booster pack that has 10 cards but no dice... so you can get a few boosters with dice and a few boosters without dice? I dunno

Like Scottie mentioned, you could remove the hero/villain restriction in sealed/draft but then characters like Finn lose their appeal a bit. Smaller decks could work too I guess, but you'd want to make sure that most games don't end up just running out of cards coz that would be boring.

I just posted this on another thread but i'm planning on only playing villains. My friend is playing Hero's and we are going to trade equivalent rarity's with each other. Could be an option for playing on a budget.

I've definitely seen people do that for other games, and have even split boxes with the concept of 'all X cards are mine, Y cards air yours. Keep everything else you pull'. But keep in mind, having a set in stone policy to trade off faction stuff is a bad idea. What if your friend pulls a villian card he wants to include with Finn?

I just posted this on another thread but i'm planning on only playing villains. My friend is playing Hero's and we are going to trade equivalent rarity's with each other. Could be an option for playing on a budget.

I've definitely seen people do that for other games, and have even split boxes with the concept of 'all X cards are mine, Y cards air yours. Keep everything else you pull'. But keep in mind, having a set in stone policy to trade off faction stuff is a bad idea. What if your friend pulls a villian card he wants to include with Finn?

Agreed. We don't have a set in stone policy. We are just buying our own boxes and trading. But it should be a lot easier to trade as he is only planning on playing heros and im playing villains.