From what I've read of the Rivals article it seems like you'll need 6/8 packs for a draft/sealed event respectively. My FLGS sells packs for $3.20, so that's $19.20 just for the packs, and if you add the draft set on top of that it's an additional $14.95+tax. That's about $35.00+tax for a draft event. That seems pretty costly for a draft event. It seems great for the store, but I have trouble believing that we'll be able to convince 8 people to buy into an event for over $30.00.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm wondering if anyone feels the same?

15 hours ago, Zergonomic said:

From what I've read of the Rivals article it seems like you'll need 6/8 packs for a draft/sealed event respectively. My FLGS sells packs for $3.20, so that's $19.20 just for the packs, and if you add the draft set on top of that it's an additional $14.95+tax. That's about $35.00+tax for a draft event. That seems pretty costly for a draft event. It seems great for the store, but I have trouble believing that we'll be able to convince 8 people to buy into an event for over $30.00.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm wondering if anyone feels the same?

You only need to buy the Draft Pack ONCE. Its designed to be a repeat use item that gives you guaranteed Characters and upgrades to mix in with what you actually pull. In the end a person should have a minimum 4 Characters and 11 Upgrades/Dice cards to choose from, barring getting any characters in your actual packs.

They just poorly spell it out in the article that you dont buy the Pack every single time you Draft.

I actually agree the buy-in seems high. Heroclix sealeds are $30. Magic sealeds/drafts are usually $30 unless THG or pre-release.

Plus there's the issue of having the right expansion on hand at a store level. Let's say there's not an equal number of boosters for the expansion that some people want - how do you divide those up?

I also wouldn't be surprised if the store made you buy the draft pick more than once. Otherwise you would need some tracking/checking system in place that the draft pack someone brings in with them is legit and has all the appropriate cards. I could see people slipping in a card from the expansion into their "draft pack" and hoping no one notices.

Icons are different between Rivals and the other expansions.

Unless i missed something, Rivals doesnt have their own boosters. So you can validate the rivals pack before boosters are messed with by just checking they all have the same icon.

Right, so judges or organizers would have to check each draft Pack to make sure the total number is correct.

I don’t really see a problem here. You buy it once, after the initial cost, it’ll be about 20 dollars for a few hours of entertainment. The cards are also legal for construct play and give lots of flexibility.

It could be as easy as pass your rival cards to another player...count 20 cards, check dice, pass back, done.

40 minutes ago, Hawkman2000 said:

Right, so judges or organizers would have to check each draft Pack to make sure the total number is correct.

In draft, losers can cheat whether they bring their own draft pack or not. All it takes is sneaking in a card from your collection after drafting the packs and before playing your first game. Bringing a previously opened draft pack may make it a little easier, but if someone was gonna cheat, it's already easy for them to do it anyway.

You buy it twice if you want 2 of everything for constructed.

You buy the draft pack once, so $30-40. After that it's $20-25. It's a high quality dice and card game. That's as cheap an entry point to this game we will ever see!

and it's constructed legal, so it's a real entry point. Slap it with a starter and good to go.

I think this draft announcement is nothing but good ?

9 hours ago, Hawkman2000 said:

I actually agree the buy-in seems high. Heroclix sealeds are $30. Magic sealeds/drafts are usually $30 unless THG or pre-release.

You seem to be arguing against yourself here. Those cost $30, and the cost of Destiny's system (after initial purchase) is only $18.

Also no way is any store going to require you to keep buying the draft pack each time, that's dumb. The idea that someone may cheat that way is technically possible but no more so than someone not obeying constructed deck rules and you don't see deck checks at every store casual event, for obvious reasons.

Drafting or Sealed are in my experience a great fun way to play. I have never seen the cost of the boosters to be an issue as I don't hand them back at the end of the day, they go home and get added to my collection. Again, in my experience stores often discounted a little as they were getting sales for the game.

The cost of the Rivals Pack creates a problem and it can be solved in maybe 3-4 ways:

1. Players buy the box every time.
2. Players buy the box once and reuse
3. Players buy the box once and store at the store for reuse
4. The store buys the box and loans the box to a player

Option 1 is great for the first and second time, but if you get 5 Jawa cards and you didn't want to have that many we may have a problem. If you get two Jawa decks, then please seek the advice of a medical professional.

Option 2 is a problem of trust, players can add in a card or two with ease. maybe not Rivals cards but cards from the set being drafted. Simple solution is to pass your pack to the player on your left. Card counting too will help as each player should have 50 cards and 15 dice if they add 6 packs.

Option 3 requires that the store is able to handle the storage of the boxes and that players don't contaminate the box contents at the end of a session.

Option 4 has the advantage of a store being able to run drafts and have different players attend and the players have the least cost. It is good for new players and old, but entry costs may have to cover part of the cost of each box the store bought.

I’m not sure I get why this is being debated - it seems pretty obvious to me that you’ll be allowed to reuse the draft set, and it’ll be on the honor system. I mean, you also are supposedly trusting these people to draft without taking two cards from a pack then adding in a bad card, or set up their deck without adding other stuff from the set being drafted, right? As others have pointed out, it’s easy to cheat even with a brand new draft set, so making people buy a new one each time, rent from the store, or even have their cards checked by their neighbor is ludicrous.

As a store owner, no way I'm making my players buy the Draft Pack more than once. They'll probably buy it twice for constructed, but I think this is great to add variety to the players that are bored with meta and the same decks everytime. Let's just hope I get to buy enough boxes to feed the game nights, whichever way they choose to play.

Acting like you need to ensure draft pack integrity for low level local events that would never dream of deck checking for a constructed event is hilarious.

Everyone in my area will buy into one draft then get a second for normal play. I don't see draft evens doing to well in my area but FFG will still turn a profit.

Well I think most stores will need to offer a 10% discount to get people in the door, so the draft box and 6 boosters for $30. The store is still selling a good amount of product for the event so they should be happy. Now $30 can be a bit much for some people but there seems to be some value in the draft box and buying 6 booster is something most people do anyways.

You buy 6 packs and the first time you do it, you’ll also buy a Rivals pack. This is fine.

I’m more concerned about seeing Anakin in every single game of Draft I play. I wonder how fast that is going to be boring.

Until then I’m excited for this though.

While one time 30+ bucks is not a great issue (lets be honest you gonna buy that anyway), it is kinda bollocks when subsequent drafts costs around 20$ compared to MtGs cost of 10$...and the packs costs the same most of the time.
While the idea of a draft is great, Destiny is not designed to be drafted at all, and heres why:

• only 5 cards in pack...that forces double the amount of packs to buy.
• 1 dice cards per pack - and you are pretty much guaranteed that the pack gonna come to you without that one card. So 99% of the time you will end up with only 6 dice cards that you gonna draft yourself. Draw 6 characters, each not suiting each other and basically you have no chance of getting something usefull from packs that come to you.
• Bigger emphasis on "classes" of cards - (chars, upgrades and so on). In MtG ex. you can draft great common creature (that are the backbone of most drafted decks) that will even make you win. Will you draft a common weapon...?

While im really looking towards sealed deck events, i do not think draft will have warm welcome after initial curiousity.

I agree that Destiny has too few cards per booster to make traditional draft work. As stated the dice card will always be kept, there is usually 1 battlefield, which becomes useless after your first one. Also, with 1 uncommon that will be the second card taken each time. This leaves two commons, which do not add a lot.

I would have preferred if all characters in the draft core set were grey and added up to 30 points exactly. They should also be pretty basic with sub-par dice sides and abilities. This will incentivize players to sub them out for other characters as soon as possible.

We still don't have a complete set of rules, but what he have thus far concerns me:

During a Star Wars: Destiny draft event, every player will open three booster packs and combine the cards into a single pack. Then, every player will select a single card from the pack and pass the remaining cards to their left for the next player to select a single card before passing the pack on again. Once all of these cards have all been selected, the next three packs are opened and players draft cards again, passing in the opposite direction. When the draft is finished, you and each of your fellow players will have thirty cards from the booster packs and the twenty cards featured in their Rivals Draft Set to construct a deck of twenty to thirty cards. In the draft format, you can add as many copies of a card to a deck as you want, even crossing the boundaries of morality to mix hero, villain, and neutral cards in the same deck.

A draft will have two rounds in it, with stacks of cards comprised of 15 cards (3 of those being rare/legendary). Each round you will have the chance to draft a card with a die in your first three picks. There will not be a whole lot of choice involved, meaning these games will be slower and more event/support based.

The real shame is that FFG didn't do anything unique here. They just attempted to cram Destiny into the standard draft format of every other game. I would have loved to have seen a "trading time" after the drafting. I am also concerned that draft play is going to be a year long "who can build the best Anakin deck."

Draft has never been a successful format for FFG. FFG needs to justify why this pack is better than simply letting players bring their own starters to draft or sealed. a $15 needless expense does create a barrier to entry, even if it's one time and even if it's relatively inexpensive. I will say that the pack being legal for constructed and (likely) containing primarily material players don't currently own is a plus unless the materials prove useless in constructed. One of the big failing points of previous FFG draft packs was trying to sell players crap they already have, or making up cards that are pretty cool, but not legal for constructed. I'll go even further and say FFG needs to justify draft as a format for this game. Combining packs is pretty weak. Plus everything Stone said above.

Draft/Sealed isn't really a jumping on point for collectible games.

Why would FFG need to justify draft as a format for this game when people have been consistently complaining about lack of it and creating their own versions of rules, including pseudo draft kits, to play in this format?

The justification is in already present demand.

3 hours ago, ScottieATF said:

Why would FFG need to justify draft as a format for this game when people have been consistently complaining about lack of it and creating their own versions of rules, including pseudo draft kits, to play in this format?

The justification is in already present demand.

Yes there is a demand, but what is this Rivals set bringing that could not have been done with the Starter sets? If FFG's draft answer was going to be this simple, then why not give the yearly Core starter sets a further purpose?

12 minutes ago, Stone37 said:

Yes there is a demand, but what is this Rivals set bringing that could not have been done with the Starter sets? If FFG's draft answer was going to be this simple, then why not give the yearly Core starter sets a further purpose?

Because the starter sets would be much more expensive. You’d have to buy both starters to have enough possible characters to ensure that the draft ran smoothly, which would be $30. A lot of people also don’t like having to keep track of which rules they are allowed to break when deckbuilding, so neutral characters seem a lot better than always having Kylo/Rey/some other character. Finally, there’s four neutral characters in one set, so you don’t have to have every game be the same exact characters.

I'm probably going to forego buying any boxes of Legacies. Instead I'll buy the starters, then try to play in a few drafts or sealed tournaments. Our local store uses packs as prize support, so I should be able to pick up a decent amount between tournaments and prizes.