Tower Draft Format for the Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game. – By Tom Capor

An unofficial variant way to split up your collection into new and exciting decks to play against your frienemies!

You begin by shuffling your “collection” into one giant deck face down. Depending on deck size you’ll want about 50-70 cards per draft player. I recommend 60 cards per player to build 35 card decks. Or if you’re operating out of the core set, shuffle all the cards into the tower and draft until you have 55-65 cards and build a 40-50 card deck.

There are 4 “zones.”

The Tower – Contains stack of shuffled face down cards.

The Selection Pool – An area of face up cards that contain cards drawn from the tower that players can buy from.

The Buy Pool – Contains cards bought from the Selection Pool and cards drawn from the tower (if a player choose the option to not buy)

The Deck Pool – Contains cards formally used to buy cards and will be from which players will build their decks from.

What happens when it’s a player’s turn:

1. Reveal 1 card from the tower and put it into the Selection Pool.
2. Then that player may buy a card from the Selection Pool or draw 1 card from the Tower facedown into their Buy Pool.

How to “Buy” a card.

1. The active player chooses 1 face up card in the Selection Pool.
2. Player moves Y cards from their Buy Pool to the Deck Pool. Y is equal to the printed cost of the card. If the printed cost is X, then move all cards (if any) from your Buy Pool to your Deck Pool.
3. Then move the chosen card from the Selection Pool to the player’s Buy Pool.

Player’s take turns until all players have drafted 50 cards. After which, move any remaining cards in your Buy Pool to your Deck Pool. From there, each player chooses a minimum of 35 cards from their Deck Pool to be their deck for the games.

FAQ:

Q: Can I peek at my face down cards?

A: Did I say you could peek!? No! Actually, I would discuss this as a group before playing to decide whether or not peeking is allowed. On one hand, having a mystery can add to the fun while on other would yield more tuned decks.

Q: 35 card decks are poopy, can we play bigger decks?

A: Yes, of course you can. The minimum deck size is 35 feel free to use all the cards you drafted. If you want to increase the minimum deck size I would suggest also increasing the tower size and the cards drafted count.

Q: I want to buy a card with a printed cost of X, how much do I have to pay?

A: All the cards in your Buy Pool. Even if it is only 1. I think this spices things up a bit.

Q: How do I choose the cards for the tower?

A: I would choose a good/random mix from whatever you have. I personally just grab my extra cards from duplicate packs I bought or the excess cards from the “1 of some 3 of others in a pack” era. Or you could have each player choose 60 cards to add to the tower. Doing so will take longer, but adds another level of strategy as players will have to decide between choosing good cards and bad cards to add to the tower.

Q: Can I buy the card that I just put face up into the Selection Pool?

A: Yep.

Q: So let me get this straight, on my turn, I put one card from the big deck into the face up area… face up. Then… I can either buy one of those cards or, since I probably don’t have enough to buy want I want… I have to take card from the tower and put it into my buy face down?

A: Yep, you got it champ.

Q: Can I peek at other player’s cards?

A: Again, talk it out with your group first, but generally no. It kind of takes good bit of the fun when drafting.

Q: What happens if the tower runs out of cards?

A: In this rare occurrence where players hardly bought any cards and when they did, they bought only high or X cost cards… Simply take turns buying cards from the Selection Pool until you can no longer. At which point, you should have enough to break the 35 count barrier. If for some reason you can’t, play with what you have and suffer the consequences! Muwhahaha…

This is how we draft out here. And based on a most recent request I thought I'd share it. (really, I've been meaning to post it for quite some time… but well ya)

I personally like picking which cards go into the draft, but can take a long long time. A sub rule of that we tried was each player could only pick from certain factions to add to the tower. Which, that wasn't too bad.

However, most of the time I'll simply dump the spares (excess cards from packs that never make it into the decks) in. It's fun… and usually Norm Grabowski ends up being a decent pick… cause he has a combat icon… and is probably the only way I've ever seen his ability actually go off in a real game.

Also, I recommend only using 1 person collection so cards don't get lost. Though if you can handle ignoring sleeves or with slips of paper in the card slevees delcaring owner… it's possible for everyone to use their own cards.

But, feel free to tweak to your groups liking.

Hello I'm new to the game, actually I don't have it because no one play here in Chile (where I'm from)

I was looking for a draft variant, I understand how your variant works but I have a question

How the structure of the deck ends? It looks like if you draft a lot of face down cards maybe you end up with a 4 to 6 faction deck? Or is it less?

If so how those decks work? The resources are enough to play all the cards or you end up with cards you cannot play at all?

Thanks for posting this I already decided to buy the game after christmas and another user post other draft variant (more simple actually) and with this one now I have 2 ways to try to add another game to our playgroup in which I am the "provider" (the one that buys the games)

NastyJoan said:

Obvioulsy it usually depends on what cards end up in the tower and selection pool… But, we normally end up with 3 faction decks. Sometimes 2, but a good bit of the time I'll end up splashing a 4th faction if the cards aren't cheap, yet worth playing anyway. IE. I'll splash a few hastur cards for something like.. Infernal Obession.

Even if you did end up with 5+ factions, all cards are playable even as resources and havning "not the most tuned" deck can really make for a fun game.

Great to see a drafting format, I've been looking for one but didn't find it. Thx for posting!

I have 2 questions though. I fear I didn't understand the drafting variant fully, but I'll just ask :-)

The Tower and the Selection Pool are shared pools, but the Buy Pool and the Deck Pool are private pools of which every player has 1 instance of, right?

You said Magnus Arcanis said:

Did you mean that for buying a Y cost card, the player needs to move Y cards from Buy Pool to Selection Pool instead? Because otherwise, there wouldn't be a disadvantage in buying pricy cards, and once a card is in my Buy Pool, it will go into my Deck Pool for sure, so the option for moving cards of unwanted factions back into the Selection Pool is not there… And out-of-faction-cards will be in my Buy Pool, because the only way to get cards into my Buy Pool is to take 1 (randomly) from the top of the Tower.

Kind Regards,
Pete

Sounds interesting but I'm going to have to take out a bunch of cards and try it out to make sure I understand the mechanics of it.

It sounds like (and this may or may not be correct) that the "cost" of picking a desired card is that you have to take a number of un-chosen cards equal to the desired card's cost.

So, if I want Deep One Rising which is in the selection area and it costs 4, then my deck pool gets Deep One Rising plus four random cards that I've previously drawn and may or may not want.

Now, you don't have to keep ALL these random cards at least. At the end, you get to pick a subset of the cards you've ended up with to make your final deck - so that gives you an opportunity to shed some of the dead weight.

Q: The Tower and the Selection Pool are shared pools, but the Buy Pool and the Deck Pool are private pools of which every player has 1 instance of, right?
A: Yep.

Q: Did you mean that for buying a Y cost card, the player needs to move Y cards from Buy Pool to Selection Pool instead?
A: Nope, all cards you get from the "shared' areas are yours and will be what you can build your deck from.

Q: Because otherwise, there wouldn't be a disadvantage in buying pricy cards.
A: The disadvantage is that while you're saving up to buy the "big" card other plays are buying lower cost/efficient cards needed to iron out a strategy that relies less on random cards.

Q: the only way to get cards into my Buy Pool is to take 1 (randomly) from the top of the Tower.
A: Cards you purchase from the selection pool go into your Buy pool as well.

Q: It sounds like (and this may or may not be correct) that the "cost" of picking a desired card is that you have to take a number of un-chosen cards equal to the desired card's cost.
A: Unchosen and Chosen. Cards purchased from the Selection Pool are added to your Buy Pool. So you should always have at least 1 Buy cards to purchase things from the Selection Pool.

Q: So, if I want Deep One Rising which is in the selection area and it costs 4, then my deck pool gets Deep One Rising plus four random cards that I've previously drawn and may or may not want.
A: four random and/or previously purchased cards go to you deck pool. Then Deep One Rising goes into your Buy Pool to use for your future turns.

Q: Now, you don't have to keep ALL these random cards at least. At the end, you get to pick a subset of the cards you've ended up with to make your final deck - so that gives you an opportunity to shed some of the dead weight.
A: Correct! Just like in normal draft with packs you will get stuck with cards you wouldn't normally want, but you aren't forced to play them so long as your deck can reach the agreed upon minimum. If you can't reach the minimum with only cards that you want to play, you will then be forced to include some sub-optimal and possible out of faction choices.

We haven't had this problem yet, but if your card pool continually yeilds basically unplayable decks with 5/6+ factions you could use the unoffical "Neutrality Rule." Which basically says…

Neutrailiy - In the event that you would like to play a Character or Support card from hand that you cannot make a resource match for you may play it as if it were a Neutral card (thus no longer requrieing a resource match). If you do, that card comes into play as an insane character.

This won't allow you to play Events or Conspiracies. During your Refresh phase, if you choose an insane character this a actually a support card it reverts to a now exhasted support card.

Granted, the Neutrality rule doesn't equally affect all cards. Especially cards with "…enters play" abilities or steadfast. However, a being able to play something can be better than simply adding another resource onto an over resourced domain.

Use the above rule at your own risk and I do not recommend it. Of course, feel free to adjust to your playgroup's desire and if you come up with any "fixes" please share.

Magnus Arcanis said:

Ah, I overlooked this. This compensates at least a bit the fact that the average card cost is greater than 1…

I "simulated" a draft with 3 players just now. Is it usual that the Selection Pool grows bigger and bigger?

HilariousPete said:

Most definately.