Last week Tuesday I sat down with three students to do a free repack draft. We started passing the packs around. Nine picks in to the first pack, a fifth person showed up. We were expecting them, but to be too late to join in. Technically they were too late, but we really wanted to have a fifth so we could play Star. So... we came up with a quick "patch":
- We let them open two packs immediately and make nine picks from the 30 cards within.
- The remaining 21 cards were shuffled and then six cards were selected to be the remainder of the pack that would be passed around the table.
- We all waited for them to finish before we continued with the draft.
- Monetarily this wasn't a problem because these were repacked cards from a large amount of bulk that had been donated to me.
- Benefits for them:
- They got to make the best few picks from two packs at the same time.
- They could use that information to optimize two good colors.
- Downsides:
- They didn't know what kinds of things had been being passed so they weren't up on any signals that had been made.
- They were limited in the number of cards that fit their color choices in the two packs.
(I'm sure there's a better way to handle this. Let me know what more fair processes you've used! Both for repack and normal-pack drafts.)
Here are my picks:
I got plenty of lands and was able to put together what I thought was a good five-color deck. I had a bit of a token/lifegain theme going. Here's my deck:
We randomized seating and sat down in our circle. To my left was A on Mardu, then B running Izzet, C, also on Izzet, and finally D playing Simic. We play Star with the opponents to our direct left and right (so that we don't have to skip players when switching turns), so the two Izzet players were my teammates. We were also playing with the Cutthroat Combat rule, which is where when a player attacks, both of their opponents are the defenders. They block as normal, but any unblocked creatures damage both defending players.
The game started slow. B went first. On my second turn I played Dawn of Hope, which surprisingly didn't get a lot of interest from the rest of the players. I would have been able to make better use of it, but instead I got stuck behind on land drops. I was two land drops behind on turn 6, but I was fine life-wise because it was a battle of little creatures and some removal had come out early.
A couple times I was spending 4 at the end of my opponent's turn to create a 1/1 lifelinking Soldier, then saving my mana to get the extra card draw. Nevertheless on the seventh turn I didn't draw a land again. Player A followed this up by slamming down a Dawnfeather Eagle and attacked for six in the biggest successful combat so far. Thankfully B helped deal with some of those creatures over the next few turns. (They followed this up by getting mana flooded.) I got lands on turns 8 and 9, but still hadn't grabbed any blue mana sources.
My life dropped to the lowest, but I caught back up with lifelink. I missed the land drop on turn 10 and again on turn 11, but I did get a really well-timed Perilous Predicament to take out three creatures.
That cleared out my opponents' creatures and I swung in for six. On their next (12th) turn, B swung big and dropped A down to 1 while D was at 2. C followed up by attacking for 1 more.
Both of my opponents were at 1. On my 12th turn, I cast Twin Bolt to win!
I was actually afraid of some counterspells that I had seen floating around, so I first swung out with my team. My opponents seemed defeated, so before damage, I cast the Twin Bolt. No counters.
B and C duked it out for a few turns and B won it shortly thereafter.
I'm so glad we got to add our fifth person in because I really enjoy multiplayer formats. (More wackiness is good for me!) It also gave me a chance to remain competitive even when I was stuck on low lands.
If you haven't drafted Star yet, I highly recommend it!
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