none of us use thrower. Thats just insanely boring. And we all live in Arizona where tournaments will never happen.

Aren't you jealous?

You are making my case that it should be banned or savagely nerfed (e.g. restricted to 1/turn activation). Thanks.

In my group, I am the best chess player in the world because we disregard everyone better than me. Man, it feels good to be the champ and not have to practice or get any better because I'm always on top!

...get the point? Sure you can pretend it doesnt exist, but then you are solving a different problem than we are. I'm sure its fun for you, and yeah, I wish I could do that, but I'm not wired that way, sorry.

So edgy, that guy.

In my games group the meta is fine, because.. it's just me making the decks

in MY local area we play the draft so thrower sucks. in our neck of the woods you can buy as many cards as you want...we draft. Drafting requires skill and not meta gaming. This is how we play all card games. Maybe the kiddies don't, but then again they play pokemon and yugioh.

ddm5182 said:

The world isn't fair and predictable so why should gaming? The draft rules were added to this game to prevent people like you and other power gamers from being able to totally wreck it. Too bad FFG is afraid to sanction draft as the official Tourney system.

You just made a buddy....Friend.

Harlock said:

Fair point. Clamatius and I drafted a while ago and had a good time. Format seemed pretty shallow with just the core set (and to be fair we were worse at the game then) so maybe its time to dust it off and do a full card pool draft. Could be good times - initial impression is that I really like a lot of W:I's draft rules.

Might be a reasonable way to avoid having to play thrower.

FWIW, in my view drafting doesn't avoid "metagaming" per se... you need to be extremely aware of the cardpool when building your deck (IE you should be able to discern from your opponent's picks what strategy they are employing, then change your valuations of counter-strategies accordingly). But its true that the existence of a possible archetype won't dissuade you from playing an otherwise powerful deck - the cards and combinations in a limited format just don't allow for those kind of swings.

Why are you so hostile to "powergamers" btw? Isn't that just another way of saying "someone who cares about winning"?

Powergame ist not about winning all times, (at least for me) it is about playing on high levels of understanding the game, if I loose in the end it is not that bad. A powergame can build powergame fun decks too.

Draft is cool, but a bit exploitable I think. When I can confirm the flaw again, I will post it.

TBH I think we agree man... notice I didn't say "someone who only has fun when they win", I said "someone who cares about winning". For my part, I want to play at a high level against opponents playing their best, with the best versions of the best decks. I guess a more apt description of a "powergamer" would be "someone who primarily cares about winning", but its important to note the distinction between winning as victory in a specific game and winning as a state of mind when approaching a card pool or matchup.

Whereas Curator makes it sound like "powergamer" means "someone who wants to destroy the game", which I don't get. I respect completely the school that views games as fun first and foremost, but I don't agree that an understanding of the game is anathema to fun. (Indeed, in my case, and I'm sure I'm not alone here, an understanding of the game and fun are practically synonymous).

Curator,

What draft rules are you using? I am intrested in a worthwhile way to introduce cards outside of the core set into the draft format.

ddm5182 said:

Vitamin T said:

Thanks for asking I forgot there are no official rules...guess it just developed into habitual customs for us.

Each player is required to bring at least one core set of Warhammer: Invasion and no more than 3.
Each player may bring up to 3 copies of Assault on Ulthuan.
Each player is allowed to bring up to 3 copies of any Adventure Packs.

Before the tourney, the Host rolls one die for each player. Odds they play Destruction and evens they play Order. Players have yet to complain about one side being better than the other. We make sure this doesn't happen by forcing the player to play the other side for next tourney. I should add our tourneys are played with very little prize support but that doesn't stop the 24-30 players on average showing up weekend after weekend.

Each player forms a Destruction or Order Draft Deck, based on the side they are assigned. If a player chooses to use Assault they MAY choose to swap the High Elf deck with either Dwarfs' or Empire's. Or swap the Dark Elf deck with Orcs' or Chaos'. If they choose to do either then they must remove all of the High Elf or Dark Elf cards from Core. They replace the 5 cards removed for the Core set with the 5 cards that came with Assault that match the faction that the High Elf Deck replaced.

Eg: I find out I am to play Order. I have brought my copy of Assault. I choose to use the High Elves. I replace the Dwarf starter deck with the High Elf starter deck. Next I remove the 5 High Elf cards that came with the Core set and replace them with the 5 Dwarf cards that came with the Assault set. I now have my foundation for my Draft Deck.

The next part is tricky to explain in text.
Any players that brought Assault or Adventure Packs now are allowed to swap cards from the Draft Deck with cards from their collection.

Rules for swapping:
First choose a card from the foundation Draft Deck. Remove all copies of it and place them in a Removed from Tourney Deck/Pile. Then replace those copies with the same number of copies of a card from your collection that matches the faction belonging to the card(s) removed. All copies of one card MUST be replaced by the same number of copies of the other card. Once you have replaced the removed cards then remove from your collection all copies of the card used to replace and add then to the Removed from Tourney Deck. Players may continue swapping cards in this fashion until Draft Deck construction time runs out or they are finished forming their Draft Decks foundation. Host sets time.

Eg: I have 6 copies of Repeater Bolt Thrower in my collection. I want to add 3 of them to my Draft Deck's foundation. First I need to a High Elf card that I have 3 copies of to replace for the Bolt Throwers. I choose the 3 Shadow Warriors to be replaced. I form my Out of Tourney Deck by adding the 3 Shadow Warriors to it and also the 2 remaining Bolt Throwers from my collection.
I could also choose to replace 3 dwarf cards with the 3 Troll Slayers I had to remove when I replaced the dwarf deck for the High Elf.

Next each player chooses10 neutral cards from their collection to add to their Draft Deck's foundation.

Then each player adds the 3 treaty cards belonging to their side to their Draft Deck's foundation.

Finally each player adds the 10 Draft Cards from the Core set to the Draft Deck's foundation and adds all cards not in the Draft Deck to their Out of Tourney Deck.

In the end a legal and properly made Draft Deck will have exactly 108 cards and no more than 3 copies of a single card.

Now just follow the rules for drafting (found in core rules) beginning with Shuffling Draft Deck.

This takes 30 secs to explain, bu tI wanted to make sure it was clear for newbies, so I may have added too much detail.

A boardgame/cardgame powergamer is differnt to a rpg one.
A b/c powergamer thinks about everything but only does his limited moves.
A r powergamer thinks about everything and will talk 10 minutes to the gm because his moves are unlimited. So if you want to hinder r powers, introduce sand clocks for player moves, they work quite well.

jogo said:

or you can just needle him/her until he/she rage quits.

ty curator for the detail. we've been thinking of doing this, but whenever it comes up we've realized that we've forgotten to figure out just how to beforehand lol

this certainly sounds like it requires a lot more skill than the draft with just the core set cards

Artemus Maximus said:

Well yeah I should have explained it as we adapted instead of using a mini gun that propels words.
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Try playing with just Core Set to get people use to the style and mechanics like you would for a game of heroclix. Use draft rules from Core Set.
Hopefully each player has their own copy of a core set. It helps to make this a requirement so that players can be randomly assigned Destruction or Order for the tourney. The most successful way my store encourages people to own a copy of the game for themselves is by offering free snacks and drinks and eliminating a door fee. The game pays for 40 bucks worth of snacks and drinks and better yet, after that, the food is free.
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I would have a few special weeks that allow the introduction of Assault on Ulthuan before it becomes habit. Introducing Assault of Ulthuan basically just allows them to swap a Core Set's starter deck of 40 cards with the 40 card starter deck for High Elves or Dark Elves (depending on the side the player is bound to). Then explain how ratio is a big part of draft, so to keep it equal, if a player swaps a starter deck then the deck they swapped out must take the 5 cards belonging to the removed faction from Assault on Ulthuan and replace them for the 5 High Elf or Dark Elf cards that were included with the Core Set.

You want to stress these swapping out rules are to insure that the ratio of cards stays the same. This will make everything clearer for the players.

Also, players are no longer limited to only using 10 neutral cards from the 24 that came with the Core Set. Instead that step is replaced with a ruling that allows them to use any 10 neutral cards from their collection (limited to 3 copies per card).
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Once the use of Assault as an option has become customary then hold special tourneys that allow the use of Battle Packs. The only thing new here isThat once a player has gone through the above steps they are allowed to swap cards in the draft deck with cards from their collection AS LONG AS THEY MEET ALL RATIO REQUIREMENTS.

A few LEGAL Examples:

A player can swap up to 3 copies of one card in the draft deck with the same number of copies from collection. Such as 2 Dwarf Units for 2 other Dwarf Units. 2:2 of same card type and faction type.

A player can replace a dark elf hero card with another dark elf hero card. 1:1 Hero Unit Dark Elf.

NOTES:

A card being replaced must match same card type as a card replacing it. As seen above, a heru can only be replaced by another hero. Disregard these requirements for neutral cards as a players only limit when choosing the 10 neutral cards is the rule of 3.

Once a card has been added to the draft deck no more copies of that card can be added to it. This prevents a player from removing 2 copies of one card and a single copy of another in order to add 3 copies of a single card.

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Once all of the swapping is complete the players add the 3 treaties and 10 draft format cards from the Core Set to their draft deck and shuffle it. They will use this draft deck for the entire tourney. Players will draft using the draft rules from Core Set for each opponent, rather than keep same drafted deck for the rest of the tourney. In other words, a player will most likely have a different deck played against each opponent.

Opponents are paired randomly for first match and then follows a Swiss format between 3-5 rounds played for 50 mins. Tie breakers for matching opponents are broken based on the number of zones each player has burned total from all matches played so far. If still tied then the Win-Loss records of all previous opponents that played the tying players are used. If still tied then used the total number of zones burned by the previous opponents of tied players.

A Bye for uneven number of participants counts as a win with zero burned zones

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I hope this is clears up any confusion.


I might edit later, but for now I need sleep....had to pull an all nighter 8 pm - 7 am

I think your method is well thought out and pretty intresting. It seems like it might be slightly time consuming and confusing if you had a lot of players, but you must not be having these problems?

I have thought about just trying to do something like make 100 card decks and then add the draft packs to them. I may see if I can get anyone to help me try this out. My fear with this idea is that it may almost be to much like constructed and not enough like limited. This might need the added restriction of the ratios enforced by the method you have been using.

Thanks a lot for sharing this, I'm going to see if I can give some drafting a try.

TL