We invented a simple 2-player draft format for cube that replicates many qualities of an 8-man cube draft.
During the draft:
* Both players have access to almost any archetype they'd like
* Both players have near-perfect hidden information from their opponent (so neither player knows what the other is drafting)
* Both players can easily influence the other person's available card pool and draft strategy
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you our favorite 2-player cube drafting format. We have been calling it BURNFOUR or BURNING.
1. You make 24 packs of 15-cards. (12 per player)
2. You take one card face-down from a pack.
3. You remove "BURN" four cards face-down from the draft.
4. You pass that pack (now 10 cards) to your opponent.
Your opponent has done the same thing. Repeat this process with the 10-card pack you just got from your opponent until you run out of cards/packs.
Step 1) Shuffle your cube and make 12 packs of 15-cards for each player. (24 packs total / 360 cards total).
Step 2) Each player looks at a new pack of 15 cards.
Step 3) TAKE ONE, BURN FOUR: Each player adds 1 card from that pack face-down to their deck/card pool, and then removes ("burns") 4 cards face-down from the draft. The burned cards will be completely removed from the pool and will remain hidden.
Step 4) Each player passes the remaining 10 cards from the pack to their opponent.
Step 5) TAKE ONE, BURN FOUR: Repeat Step 3.
Step 6) Each player passes the remaining 5 cards from the pack to their opponent.
Step 7) TAKE ONE, BURN FOUR: Repeat Step 3.
Then you start over again with a new pack until all of your packs are exhausted.
You'll end up getting a high-value card and a low-value card out of each pack you open, and a medium-value card out of the pack your opponent opens, kind of like an 8-player draft. You get an opportunity to wheel a card out of each pack you open, kind of like an 8-player draft. You will be removing "burning" four cards each time you take a card. The goal of burning cards is usually to remove powerful cards your opponent wants. These "burns" simulate other players drafting the cards. Burning THREE would actually simulate six other players beside you and your opponent (most similar to an 8-player draft), but we found Burning FOUR is a better play experience.
-----------------------Step 2) Each player looks at a new pack of 15 cards.
Step 3) TAKE ONE, BURN FOUR: Each player adds 1 card from that pack face-down to their deck/card pool, and then removes ("burns") 4 cards face-down from the draft. The burned cards will be completely removed from the pool and will remain hidden.
Step 4) Each player passes the remaining 10 cards from the pack to their opponent.
Step 5) TAKE ONE, BURN FOUR: Repeat Step 3.
Step 6) Each player passes the remaining 5 cards from the pack to their opponent.
Step 7) TAKE ONE, BURN FOUR: Repeat Step 3.
Then you start over again with a new pack until all of your packs are exhausted.
You'll end up getting a high-value card and a low-value card out of each pack you open, and a medium-value card out of the pack your opponent opens, kind of like an 8-player draft. You get an opportunity to wheel a card out of each pack you open, kind of like an 8-player draft. You will be removing "burning" four cards each time you take a card. The goal of burning cards is usually to remove powerful cards your opponent wants. These "burns" simulate other players drafting the cards. Burning THREE would actually simulate six other players beside you and your opponent (most similar to an 8-player draft), but we found Burning FOUR is a better play experience.
Our playgroup has experimented with probably every 2-man drafting format for cube out there. We drafted with Winston for years before moving to Winchester, Rochester, and Tenchester sprinkled in here and there. In the past six months, we've been using Grid with 180 cards (half the cube) as our drafting format of choice, although we had experimented a bit with Quilting.
We created BURNFOUR about a month and a half ago when trying to figure out how to create a 2-player drafting experience that would be most similar to an 8-player drafting experience. It has quickly become my playgroup's favorite way to draft between two people.
We invented this format to best replicate the drafting experience of a 8 man draft while attempting to keep things as simple as possible. While there are certainly more complex ways to do the burning from pack to pack, I wanted to keep the draft format simple so it was easy to explain to a new player.
We invented this format to best replicate the drafting experience of a 8 man draft while attempting to keep things as simple as possible. While there are certainly more complex ways to do the burning from pack to pack, I wanted to keep the draft format simple so it was easy to explain to a new player.
This format has more strategy and mind games in it compared to any other 2-man drafting format.
Most of the strategy comes in the form of figuring out what you're playing early, and how to burn cards best from your opponent.
DRAFTING STRATEGY:
Because the information is basically completely hidden, you'll have no idea at any point what your opponent is playing. The cards you burn will likely be in multiple archetypes in the pack you open, and the pack of 10 you receive can be very odd burn targets.
I may burn a Eureka, Stoneforge Mystic, Necromancy, and Sulfuric Vortex from my opening pack after selecting my card. I don't know what strategy my opponent is in, but all of those cards are strategies I may not want to play against, or give him access to.
On the other hand, in early packs, I may want to send him a Sulfuric Vortex with very little other incentives, assume he took it, and then make a conscious effort to remove all mono-red cards from any packs I send back to him.
In yet another vein of thought, I may open a pack that has many cards I want to wheel in it (at any point in the draft). I may burn four of the weakest cards from the pack in order to ensure I get at least one card to wheel for me.
36 CARD POOLS INSTEAD OF 45:
The end result is a card pool of 36 total cards. This is smaller than the common 45 from a winston draft, or cube draft with more players (4/6/8/etc). We strongly prefer the smaller card pool, as it allows for easier decisions in what to include in your deck when it comes to deck construction. We've found that nonbasics go very late in this format and are rarely burned, another benefit of having a smaller card pool.
It may sound initially like 36 total cards in your card pool may be too few, but I would recommend doing a draft described exactly as above before making judgments or changes.
Most of the strategy comes in the form of figuring out what you're playing early, and how to burn cards best from your opponent.
DRAFTING STRATEGY:
Because the information is basically completely hidden, you'll have no idea at any point what your opponent is playing. The cards you burn will likely be in multiple archetypes in the pack you open, and the pack of 10 you receive can be very odd burn targets.
I may burn a Eureka, Stoneforge Mystic, Necromancy, and Sulfuric Vortex from my opening pack after selecting my card. I don't know what strategy my opponent is in, but all of those cards are strategies I may not want to play against, or give him access to.
On the other hand, in early packs, I may want to send him a Sulfuric Vortex with very little other incentives, assume he took it, and then make a conscious effort to remove all mono-red cards from any packs I send back to him.
In yet another vein of thought, I may open a pack that has many cards I want to wheel in it (at any point in the draft). I may burn four of the weakest cards from the pack in order to ensure I get at least one card to wheel for me.
36 CARD POOLS INSTEAD OF 45:
The end result is a card pool of 36 total cards. This is smaller than the common 45 from a winston draft, or cube draft with more players (4/6/8/etc). We strongly prefer the smaller card pool, as it allows for easier decisions in what to include in your deck when it comes to deck construction. We've found that nonbasics go very late in this format and are rarely burned, another benefit of having a smaller card pool.
It may sound initially like 36 total cards in your card pool may be too few, but I would recommend doing a draft described exactly as above before making judgments or changes.
If you are planning on using some variations to the format, I would strongly recommend doing a draft described exactly as above before attempting to change things.
You can adjust the amount of cards burned, the amount of packs, and the size of the packs. This may be more desirable if you have a different cube size, or want a different drafting experience. If you have a larger cube size, I would recommend using larger packs, burning more cards, or combining the two. (So, if you have a large cube, use 20 card packs instead of 15, or use 24 card packs and burn seven instead of four). Do the math before hand and make sure people are getting around 36 cards for their card pool. Slightly more (going up to 48) is probably fine, but I wouldn't recommend dropping below 36. Anything in between 36 and 48 should be fine.
You can adjust the amount of cards burned, the amount of packs, and the size of the packs. This may be more desirable if you have a different cube size, or want a different drafting experience. If you have a larger cube size, I would recommend using larger packs, burning more cards, or combining the two. (So, if you have a large cube, use 20 card packs instead of 15, or use 24 card packs and burn seven instead of four). Do the math before hand and make sure people are getting around 36 cards for their card pool. Slightly more (going up to 48) is probably fine, but I wouldn't recommend dropping below 36. Anything in between 36 and 48 should be fine.
GLIMPSE DRAFTING:
(Glimpse drafting is named such because of its similarities with Glimpse the Future)
Quote from wtwlf123 »Crossposted from the Burnfour thread:
Quote fromI have an adaptation of this format that we've been experimenting with. We call it "Glimpse Drafting" (based on Glimpse the Future) and it's essentially a hybrid between my old 9x9 drafting variant and Colby's Burnfour draft.
Each player makes 9 packs of 15. You draft a card and burn 2 cards rather than 4 before you pass the pack to your opponent (the OP advises against this, but we found it much more satisfying). Each player will get 5 cards per pack, and you wind up with 45 cards at the end of the draft. It fixed the three main problems we had with Burnfour when we experimented with the format, and was actually quite a lot of fun.
The three main differences were:
1) The quality of the 2nd and 3rd picks are substantially better, and made them more important to your deck construction. Instead of having the player that opens the pack taking the best card and ripping the next 4 best cards (removing the top 33% of the pack) you have to pass packs with 12 remaining cards in them, only allowing for the top 20% at best to be axed.
2) You still wind up with 45 cards in your pool, like a regular draft. This made drafting fixing lands, utility lands and other cards that replace basics less impactful on your draft (about the same as a normal draft) and it also gave more tools to aggro. A lot of the 4th and 5th picks in the packs are great filler cards for aggro decks, and we found it much easier to draft better manabases and better aggro decks during our Glimpse Drafts.
3) The decisions were harder. When faced with the decision between removing the two most broken cards or the two most functionally important cards for a specific strategy from the pack, you're forced to pass one of the two. We found that in Burnfour we could take what we want and eliminate pretty much every important/broken card that we were afraid of seeing on the other side of the table. Only being able to eliminate two of those cards before passing the pack made it a lot harder to prohibit the opponent from seeing certain cards, and as a result, archetypes became easier to draft.
Less information is hidden this way, but we actually found that to be an upside. It made signaling a thing, and reading what the opponent is doing is more important in a format where they'll be collecting more cards from each individual pack.
Both formats were fun, and I thank Colby for sharing this variant here. I combined what I liked from this format and what I liked from the 9x9 format we'd been experimenting with and came to something we're pretty happy with.
So basically, it's a 2-person draft format that actually drafts packs (allowing the Conspiracy cards to trigger, etc):
1. Shuffle the cube. Each player makes 9 15-card packs at random from the pool.
2. Crack each pack, one at a time.
3. Take 1 card from the pack and add it to your pool.
4. Before passing the pack, remove 2 cards from it, and add them back in the cube box (removing them from the draft entirely).
5. Pass the pack to your opponent, and then repeat steps 3 and 4 until the whole pack is drafted/removed. You should have 5 drafted cards per pack.
6. Do this for all 9 packs. Each player should have a 45 card pool to construct a deck from.
Thanks again to Colby for the Burnfour idea he shared. We merged our favorite parts of that draft with our favorite parts from the 9x9 draft we've been working on and landed on "Glimpse Drafting" as outlined above.
If you're playing a lot of Winston/Sealed deck, I suggest experimenting with both Burnfour and Glimpse Drafting and seeing if you enjoy one of the two more than the old ways of 2-man drafts.
BURNFOUR:
12 packs of 15 cards. (24 packs total, 12 for each player)
Take 1, Burn 4.
GLIMPSE:
9 packs of 15 cards. (18 packs total, 9 for each player)
Take 1, Burn 2.
Everything else is the same.
Note: You can change stuff up however you want according to your preferences.
I'm fine with calling any variant of this GLIMPSE, it's a catchier name, and there's an actual Magic card that models the draft format.
12 packs of 15 cards. (24 packs total, 12 for each player)
Take 1, Burn 4.
GLIMPSE:
9 packs of 15 cards. (18 packs total, 9 for each player)
Take 1, Burn 2.
Everything else is the same.
Note: You can change stuff up however you want according to your preferences.
I'm fine with calling any variant of this GLIMPSE, it's a catchier name, and there's an actual Magic card that models the draft format.
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These are my Oath of Gatewatch Cube additions.
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I'm loving the signed cards and miscut cards you have there, beautiful!
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Below are 6 possible placement spots that I've gotten signatures on my cards from high to low (pictures below)
1) Bottom of artwork
2) On the card type line
3) Top of the text box
4) Over the text box with a thin sharpie
5) Bottom of the text box
6) Over his own name on very bottom of card
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Although technically a downgrade from my P3k one, but i don't care, love my shiny!
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I try to ask artists to not sign over the text box so that our newer players can still read what the cards do.
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1 Library of Alexandria
2 ABU Duals Lands
3 Strip Mine
4 Maze of Ith
5 ONS/ZEN Fetch Lands
6 City of Ass
7 RAV Shock Lands
8 Mana Confluence
9 City of Brass
10 Wasteland
11 Mishra's Factory
12 Mutavault
13 Evolving Wilds / Terramorphic Expanse
14 Rishadan Port
15 Undiscovered Paradise
16 ALA/KTK Triple Lands
17 Grand Coliseum
18 Horizon Canopy
19 LRW Vivid Lands
20 M10/ISD Check Lands