Pit-Fighter: odd-numbered drafting.
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Posted on May 9, 2015, 2:41 p.m. by casey
So my friends and I like to draft at my house about 1-2 times a week, and we usually end up with anywhere between 4-8 people, depending on how much foresight I have in sending out the texts. We will frequently end up with either 5 or 7 people, and the last thing I want to do is turn away a friend who wants to draft-this leads to frequently drafting with odd numbers of people. I figure some other people are in the same boat sometimes and thought I'd share our solution.
Because of this we've developed a limited format we call Pit-Fighter. It's a little different depending on if it's 5 or 7 people, but it runs basically the same. So to start we roll dice to make pairings. Let's go with the 7-player example. The top two rolls play each other, next two play each other, and the bottom three players start in a 3-man game in the "pit."
So you have two normal matches going, and one 3-person round. The match in the "pit" is decided after just one game, so no sideboarding. What we found is that you have to make it so that game wins don't matter, only match wins. If you don't do this, we found that there could be incentive to actually throw your second match while winning one game, in order to stay out of the pit.
Anyway, after the first round, the two winners from the "upper" matches drop down into the "pit" to play against the winner of the first "pit-fight."
After the second round we usually have the person with two wins stay in the pit and get ganged up on by the two people who are 0-2, and the others play matches based on dice rolls usually. (we're casual like that)
With five people things get a bit jankier, but we usually have the two winners of the first rounds play each other out of the "pit" for the second round, then make pairings from there.
Anyway, it's not the smoothest necessarily, but it's a pretty darn good way to draft with an uneven number and let everyone play each round. The real key is to make the match in the pit decided by one game, instead of best of 3, and to make only match wins count, rather than game wins.
Just figured I'd share this in case anyone else ever runs into this conundrum when drafting with uneven numbers. I highly suggest giving this a try, as we've found it to be very entertaining and a really different experience.
Any thoughts? Suggestions?
@ BlueEyesRedMage Thanks! Y'know, I've never actually drafted with 3 people before. With 4 people, we'll sometimes do 4 packs, in order to get a bit more consistency going on. Truth be told, when we were starting out some of my good friends hadn't drafted really at all, or even played much Magic. Now though, everyone is getting much better and it's become quite a bit more competitive overall. We do a rare redraft at the end, and it's all pretty casual in general-think a bunch of friends sitting around drinking beers, smoking joints, and cracking packs haha. I've done two-man Winchester drafts with my roommate a bunch, and we always have a good time with that.
May 9, 2015 9:31 p.m.
BlueEyesRedMage says... #4
Nice, Winchester draft is good fun. Have you ever tried a Rochester draft before? This is also something that can work interestingly with any amount of drafters. Think redraft rares at the end but for the whole pack. You open each pack individually and open it out on the table face up. You make picks from the one pack in a snake (across the table), until the last person takes 2 picks and it snakes back the way it came. Once a pack is done, open up the next one. It's still intensive as everybody can see what you're taking but you can either play it really serious or really casual,it can go either way.
May 10, 2015 2:43 a.m.
Right on. Might have to give that snake draft a try one of these days. That sounds like a good time. Do you switch up the order with each pack? As far as who picks where and who picks first and such?
May 10, 2015 12:43 p.m.
That's pretty cool! But ill stick to 1v1v1 and 1v1v1v1 because conspiracy is made for multiplayer. Thankc alot tho!
May 10, 2015 8:40 p.m.
Gideon17 ah, I didn't realize you were specifically talking about Conspiracy. I've never actually drafted that yet, though I'd definitely like to at some point. But next time you guys want to draft normal sets with 7, I highly recommend giving this a shot.
May 10, 2015 9:05 p.m.
Yeah i'll try it next time were 7 again. Thanks for the post
May 11, 2015 6:57 a.m.
You betcha. Wish I could join you guys for your Conspiracy draft! Let us know how it goes.
May 11, 2015 10:21 a.m.
Hey casey!
We were 8! Someone joined last minute.
I went abzan and finished 7th because i had like 1 flyer in the deck... It was still a lot of fun and i pulled Swords to Plowshares.
One of my friends pulled Worldknit and made a 5 colored deck... He won ;).
We will try the pit next time if were 7!
Thanks!
May 16, 2015 1:54 p.m.
AngryBearTony says... #11
Have you had problems doing the draft with 4 people, with each person opening 4 packs? I really want to grab a box of Conspiracy and open it with my friends, but only 4 of us consistently play. I figure 36 packs, 4 of us, 4 packs each draft, we can do two whole drafts per box, with 4 leftover. But wasn't sure how great the consistency was...
BlueEyesRedMage says... #2
That sounds sick man, I love the concept. I'm always looking to invent and tweak ways to draft with less that 8 people as my group has a lot of problems with conflicting schedules etc.
The real point to think about...is how do you draft with 4 or even 3 people? Matching up pairings is one thing, that's child's play with that few people, I'm talking about the actual draft. With the same pack flossing around, there are simply less cards to choose from and people decks can become...weird. Not to mention how frustratingly easy it is to know exactly who is in what and after pack 2 basically just hand out the cards because who else is even touching black after this guys picked up literally all black in the first pack? :P
I've tried a few things, sometimes we just "burn" the rest of pack after 5 or 6 picks and start onto a new one, so anything close to the dregs aren't even touched. To increase the card pool, we also do this with as many as 6 packs each. I should mention we normally do this my cube, so acquiring packs is no issue :P
3 person Solomon draft is also really interesting, that's a hell of a draft format.
May 9, 2015 5:08 p.m.