Hi all,

Has anyone experimented or thought about possible limited formats? (draft/sealed)

For a collectible game, this is surely lacking in the possibilities for a limited format: and I've only found two solutions with the current packaging, neither of which I really like.

1) A cube - but that's very narrow use and not really a tournament format. Drafting with the current product is basically impossible (except using #2's character selection as a start point).

2) Sealed with everyone having access to any and all of the non-unique characters. Once you allow people to bring unique characters then this degenerates and the sealed pool becomes less worthwhile. Depending on the sealed pool size, it may be necessary to life the villain/hero restriction.

In the future, and I hope FFG reads this: make your packs 10 cards, 2x dice (1 guaranteed character) to allow for limited play, or create a draft/sealed starter with random characters in them. This has problems with the collectability, of course, and would need to be balanced appropriately. As it stands not being able to do a limited format in a collectable game will probably turn many people off unless the game is balanced perfectly for constructed play. At least if there is some significant constructed imbalance: limited generally levels itself off with the randomness.

Cheers,

--M

Check out how FFG handles Android Netrunner for draft play. They may borrow from this for Destiny if they attempt a draft format.

Right now its hard to imagine anything other than players bringing their own decks without the creation of a new product(s) for Draft play.

Check out how FFG handles Android Netrunner for draft play. They may borrow from this for Destiny if they attempt a draft format.

Right now its hard to imagine anything other than players bringing their own decks without the creation of a new product(s) for Draft play.

The collectible nature of Destiny makes me think that something like Netrunner's draft pack setup won't happen, or will be very limited/secondary release. Further, they make the Netrunner draft starter packs in house, not at their main manufacturing point. I keep up a cube for Netrunner as their draft packs are really uninspired, and you still require a significant core of cards to even start to think about drafting (most Netrunner draft setups have >10 cards, including IDs, as a starting point).

Further, even in a Destiny cube format, I don't entirely know how I'd want to handle elite vs normal unique characters. Should a player be able to pick how many dice for a character or have to pick two of that character to get both dice? After the release dust settles, I may try to get a cube going where the first step is character selection by some limited fashion and leave most of the deck building restrictions (color, hero/villain) in place, but it's a lot more complex than just a simple card draft. I suppose there is a runner and corp difference for netrunner and faction restrictions are generally ignored, so I'll have to try out a few different combinations for destiny to see what works and doesn't.

For draft (cube or from product), I would say you have to pick each die separately and you will pick the same character twice to "build" an elite.

I would say the easiest starting point is say the maximum deck size is 30 rather than making the maximum and minimum 30.

Beyond that, other ideas:

Decrease the max cards to 20.

Decrease the max value for characters to 20.

Remove hero/villain restriction.

Remove color restriction.

Remove unique restriction.

Buy/bring a starter to mix with the packs.

By my estimates, 26 out of 60 (14 of 26 are villains, 12 are heroes) pullable cards with dice are characters and every pack contains at least one card with a die, so 0.43 out of every pack should give you a character. You need minimum 3, maximum 4 characters of the same faction to build as close to 30 points as possible. So, if you buy about 7 packs, you should have at least 3 character dice. So, if you open about 14 packs, you should be able to make a legal group of characters for one faction. If you draft, it only gets to be more likely. So, drafting about 14 packs instead of whatever numbers you were thinking. Or drafting 7 if you remove a bunch of restrictions or less than 14 if you decrease the character points needed.

I´m also looking into making destiny draftable... My general idea is to limit the deck size and the value of characters to 20 each. every other deckbuilding limitation stays the same as in the base rules. I think on average you open one character every 3 packs. Assuming this I wold suggest that each player buys into the draft with 8 packs.

As for the drafting: Each participant opens two packs per round of drafting and adds them together and picks one of the cards and hands the pack to his/her neighbor (alternating left/right each round).

I know this is a very rough first draft of a draft but I haven´t had the opportunity of opening a good sample size of boosters to look at the average content.

I´m also looking into making destiny draftable... My general idea is to limit the deck size and the value of characters to 20 each. every other deckbuilding limitation stays the same as in the base rules. I think on average you open one character every 3 packs. Assuming this I wold suggest that each player buys into the draft with 8 packs.

As for the drafting: Each participant opens two packs per round of drafting and adds them together and picks one of the cards and hands the pack to his/her neighbor (alternating left/right each round).

I know this is a very rough first draft of a draft but I haven´t had the opportunity of opening a good sample size of boosters to look at the average content.

There is still a chance that noone gets a character.

Also, I think that the deck building is very limited at 20 character points. I think that I'm OK with 20 cards/30 char points, but there's just not the permutations available sub-20. Or, you do something like 3-character dice only, and forget the costs. (letting people play 2 or 3 characters). In a cube draft populated by all of the characters everyone will have a chance to get some more powerful characters anyhow.

I´m also looking into making destiny draftable... My general idea is to limit the deck size and the value of characters to 20 each. every other deckbuilding limitation stays the same as in the base rules. I think on average you open one character every 3 packs. Assuming this I wold suggest that each player buys into the draft with 8 packs.

As for the drafting: Each participant opens two packs per round of drafting and adds them together and picks one of the cards and hands the pack to his/her neighbor (alternating left/right each round).

I know this is a very rough first draft of a draft but I haven´t had the opportunity of opening a good sample size of boosters to look at the average content.

There is still a chance that noone gets a character.

Also, I think that the deck building is very limited at 20 character points. I think that I'm OK with 20 cards/30 char points, but there's just not the permutations available sub-20. Or, you do something like 3-character dice only, and forget the costs. (letting people play 2 or 3 characters). In a cube draft populated by all of the characters everyone will have a chance to get some more powerful characters anyhow.

It .... might ... happen, but I think the chances of no one getting a character are very slim.

In my twelf boosters I bought I opened 4 characters, at my preview event I haven´t heared of anyone that hasn´t gotten at least one caracter in his seix boosters he/she was able to buy. As for deckbuilding, Could work could be too limiting that has to be tested. I´m looking for a draft format that doesn´t require a character pool or a cube to draft from. If I can´t figure out a way to do this, my enjoyment of the game will be very limited. (Cube drafting is fun to me when there are at least a couple years of released products and you can make a "power cube")

For sealed play I propose to use the 1 starter + 6 booster format and build your deck with standard deck building rules. Thats pretty much how we played casually in the prerelease event.

I don't see the need to change any core rules for draft play other than to reduce deck size to 20. They could then sell a draft kit that comes with 10 neutral cards (and dice as necessary) that every player must purchase along with a certain number of boosters. Before play begins there is a trade period where players may exchange cards with one another to help build their deck.

I´m also looking into making destiny draftable... My general idea is to limit the deck size and the value of characters to 20 each. every other deckbuilding limitation stays the same as in the base rules. I think on average you open one character every 3 packs. Assuming this I wold suggest that each player buys into the draft with 8 packs.

As for the drafting: Each participant opens two packs per round of drafting and adds them together and picks one of the cards and hands the pack to his/her neighbor (alternating left/right each round).

I know this is a very rough first draft of a draft but I haven´t had the opportunity of opening a good sample size of boosters to look at the average content.

Thinking about this format made me realize that the problem might not be associated as much to the characters, but more with the dice cards in general. You might end up with no dice in the colors your drafted characters have. One way to solve that could be to open all packs first and build a dice d pack you draft from first, afterwards combine the remaining cards of two opened boosters to one new pack hat gets drafted from...

I don't see the need to change any core rules for draft play other than to reduce deck size to 20. They could then sell a draft kit that comes with 10 neutral cards (and dice as necessary) that every player must purchase along with a certain number of boosters. Before play begins there is a trade period where players may exchange cards with one another to help build their deck.

I think he is looking for a draft format with the product we currently have not what might come in the future. I think we will see draft kits in the future, Lukas hinted that they are looking into ways to make draft possible. I think they might be more along the lines of what Decipher did with the Lord of the Rings Draft packs. They were basically characterpacks that included a lot duplicates of the promo (starter) characters. FFG could do a similar base character booster which includes multiples of Rey/Kylo/Finn and all of the non-uniques. In addition to that character booster every participant would have to buy a certain amount of regular boosters. I don´t think these packs will hit the stores soon though...

On the launch day we started out with 4 people 2 Rey starters and 2 Kylo starters and 5 boosters each.

Choose a faction to play and opened up packs to draft from. I passed my first die away (survival gear) because there was no red character available. Still ended up with 5 dice. But it worked OK. it isn't the best draft possibility but it worked out.

They can do what L5R did in a similarly difficult deck situation of trying to tailor their unwieldy game to a draft format, hand out a single "draft pack" of starts-in play cards, and a few copies of basic common actions from the core set, which players are supposed to keep with them from draft to draft, then use normal booster packs for the rest of the draft.

Potential Draft Pack Contents:
1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Red Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Ranged Damage. Not usable in Constructed Play.
1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Blue Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Melee Damage. Not usable in Constructed Play.
1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Yellow Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Mill and resource generation. Not usable in Constructed Play.
2 Aim
2 Block
2 Close-Quarters Assault
2 Dodge
2 Take Cover

Then use 5 packs to draft (20 cards without associated dice, costing ~$15MSRP, a number that's the industry standard for drafts and gives you some room for prize packs), Ignore Hero/Villain Requirements, and everyone should draft enough cards to have a deck, even if they draft 5 character cards. If they don't draft 5 characters, they have some room to tinker with their deck contents. Using a smaller deck-size in limited seems like it'd have an outsized impact on gameplay, since Mill is ostensibly a supported victory condition in these sets, so dropping the # of cards needed for Mill to win might make individual mill cards too strong.

They can do what L5R did in a similarly difficult deck situation of trying to tailor their unwieldy game to a draft format, hand out a single "draft pack" of starts-in play cards, and a few copies of basic common actions from the core set, which players are supposed to keep with them from draft to draft, then use normal booster packs for the rest of the draft.

Potential Draft Pack Contents:

1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Red Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Ranged Damage. Not usable in Constructed Play.

1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Blue Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Melee Damage. Not usable in Constructed Play.

1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Yellow Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Mill and resource generation. Not usable in Constructed Play.

2 Aim

2 Block

2 Close-Quarters Assault

2 Dodge

2 Take Cover

Then use 5 packs to draft (20 cards without associated dice, costing ~$15MSRP, a number that's the industry standard for drafts and gives you some room for prize packs), Ignore Hero/Villain Requirements, and everyone should draft enough cards to have a deck, even if they draft 5 character cards. If they don't draft 5 characters, they have some room to tinker with their deck contents. Using a smaller deck-size in limited seems like it'd have an outsized impact on gameplay, since Mill is ostensibly a supported victory condition in these sets, so dropping the # of cards needed for Mill to win might make individual mill cards too strong.

That draftpack needs a battlefield added into, other than that I could see it. I wouldn´t be very excited about drafting with these set cards, but it makes for a solid base and with the fact that you only would need to draft 10 cards to make a playable deck they could maintain the hero/villain restriction.

The draft format would probably work with Destiny in 6 player pods. Each player gets 6 packs. This is the equivalent of one booster box.

Each draft round, each player opens up a single pack and the cards and dice are organized at the center of the table. One player is chosen randomly to go first in the first round. They select a card, and draft progression moves to the left. After all cards are selected in the first round, another pack is opened, and the first player to pick is the last player from the previous round (first draft pick moves to the right while draft order moves to the left). Each player will then get an opportunity to draft first in each round.

They can do what L5R did in a similarly difficult deck situation of trying to tailor their unwieldy game to a draft format, hand out a single "draft pack" of starts-in play cards, and a few copies of basic common actions from the core set, which players are supposed to keep with them from draft to draft, then use normal booster packs for the rest of the draft.

Potential Draft Pack Contents:

1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Red Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Ranged Damage. Not usable in Constructed Play.

1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Blue Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Melee Damage. Not usable in Constructed Play.

1 10 Health, 10 Point Cost Yellow Character with no ability and a mediocre die. Mill and resource generation. Not usable in Constructed Play.

2 Aim

2 Block

2 Close-Quarters Assault

2 Dodge

2 Take Cover

Then use 5 packs to draft (20 cards without associated dice, costing ~$15MSRP, a number that's the industry standard for drafts and gives you some room for prize packs), Ignore Hero/Villain Requirements, and everyone should draft enough cards to have a deck, even if they draft 5 character cards. If they don't draft 5 characters, they have some room to tinker with their deck contents. Using a smaller deck-size in limited seems like it'd have an outsized impact on gameplay, since Mill is ostensibly a supported victory condition in these sets, so dropping the # of cards needed for Mill to win might make individual mill cards too strong.

In Magic, the standard deck size is 60. Mill cards would in a vacuum be compared against that. But EDH makes the deck size 99, reducing the power of Mill in this format and Limited makes the deck size 40 which increases the power of Mill. It is not a problem that some cards are more powerful in some formats and less powerful in other formats. That is just something that should be expected.

There is still a chance that noone gets a character.

Also, I think that the deck building is very limited at 20 character points. I think that I'm OK with 20 cards/30 char points, but there's just not the permutations available sub-20. Or, you do something like 3-character dice only, and forget the costs. (letting people play 2 or 3 characters). In a cube draft populated by all of the characters everyone will have a chance to get some more powerful characters anyhow.

If you set the number of boosters high enough, this is effectively an unrealistically low percentage chance. Alternatively, if dice cards are drafted separately from non-dice cards, there could be an increased likelihood of being able to draft a character from someone else's pack (if every player has the opportunity to draft good enough decks but elect not to, that's on them, not the format), which further decreases the chances of a player being unable to get characters.