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That's "Limited" in the sense that you have a very limited cardpool to build your deck from, and you do so as part of the event.  And then play your "limited" deck (normally 40-card minimum compared to Constructed's 60) against someone else who's done the same

This page will have particular reference to various things which could be run in Cambridge during term time if we feel like it.



See also:

Silly Formats:


Reject Rare Drafting


See http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mg72 for rules and initial thoughts.
AlexChurchill thinks this looks like great fun.  However, it has the significant disadvantage (for our group) that it requires people to have 45 rares they don't mind surrendering (knowing that they're going to get another 45 potentially-bad rares out of it).  This shuts out most of the newer players in Cambridge, which is rather unfortunate.
You could always drop back to reject uncommon drafting.  Or, say, 15 rares, 30 uncommons.  I'd be interested.  --Angoel   
Can anyone other than AlexChurchill and StuartFraser manage the 45 rares required to do this properly? --SF
I can manage the 45 rares.  It's just that to get them up to 45, I have to start taking rares that I wouldn't classify as rejects.  Although given how much I play magic these days, I may as well just break the decks up to get the rares out anyway - they're not going to get used otherwise... --Angoel (who last played magic at one of the games evenings about three years ago)
Instead of taking you decks apart, you can play more Magic! -ColinLeung
I could, but this doesn't help the Reject Rares thingy, and it raises the question 'who with'. --Angoel
Just. -ColinLeung

Requiem thinks this looks fun, but would need a ridiculous amount of time to sort his rares out from the rest given that they're mainly Ice Age to Tempest, with the greatest number of them being Mirage.

OK, StuartFraser is going to attempt to ressurrect this as an idea. SF has at least 55 such rejects and could definitely play. Anyone else?
AlexChurchill: I'm in.
qqzm can currently only muster maybe 25-30 reject rares.
CH can only get about 25 as well. This is at least partially due to the inner Johnny going "But that's not Reject!". On which note, MTG: Grim Reminder and MTG: The Card With No Name.
If it's relevant, AC isn't planning to bring along his worst 45 rares by any stretch. I won't be bringing any money rares, but quite a number of them are likely to be usable by those who take them away. So although the level of cards is likely to be roughly opposite to what we'd trade for, there are a number of fun usable cards that can qualify. (I traded for MTG: Mannichi, the Fevered Dream fairly recently! And read what some people brought along in his article...!) So I think it should more be billed as "45 rares you could stand to lose if you got back 45 other rares". (For example, probably quite a few that I've put into a Johnny deck before, and so feel like I have at least used.) --AC
Mm, true. On those grounds, I may be able to pull 45 or so together. OTOH, this is mostly just idle speculation from me, on the grounds of not being in Cambridge even more than previously. --CH
SF made the above comment ages ago, when he actually had an interest in Magic. Given his current status, (see the top of ToothyWiki: StuartFraser/MtGTrades, his entire binder could be considered reject; currently at work and can't count them, but suspect this is close to 200 cards... --SF
Requiem could probably muster 45 interesting and vaguely reject rares, given time and spoiler.

Backdraft


See http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/aa27 for rules and initial thoughts.
This could be silly and fun.  But the f2f normal drafts we've done have been fun and not-entirely-serious anyway, so I think people might just prefer a normal draft.

Limited Infinity


See http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/198. Looks very silly. But hey, why not? Doesn't even need additional product, just needs folk to go through binders and find hideously expensive cards!

The Cube!


Step 1: Somehow decide upon the 300-500 most powerful magic cards ever printed. (Maybe 80 of each colour, then 80 artifacts + gold cards, and 20 non-basic lands?)
Step 2: Assemble a pile containing 1 of each of the chosen cards (probably proxying many of the cards, or else only using the most powerful you can easily get hold of, although this obviously reduces the point somewhat.)
Step 3: Shuffle the cube.
Step 4: Each player takes 45 cards and splits them into 3 boosters of 15.
Step 5: Draft normally.
Boggle. The purpose being? To teach people what card development is for, and why the DCI ban cards? And where does the name come from? --AC

Individual Events (sensible):


Rochester Draft


Which is drafting from one pack at a time, with the pack face up on the table. Main advantage: proven format. Main disadvantage: very slow.

Sealed Deck


PeterTaylor reckons that he prefers this to draft (on the basis of one try at each).
Really?  I've only played sealed, but I thought that draft was created to make up for its shortcoming (that there is a huge amount of luck involved and a bad starting deck dooms you)  --Vitenka  Don't mind me though, I'm not here.
ISTM there's a lot of luck involved in draft as well. I suppose at least in Rochester you know what other people are after, so you can change plans if you're next to someone who wants the same things as you. In whatever the draft format I've been involved in is called, there always seem to be one or two people who find out after the event that the person to their right was taking all the best cards in their colour / creature type / whatever. I suppose someone with a lot of draft experience might spot what's going on and switch strategy, but sealed deck seems like it might be more of a leveler.
For AlexChurchill's opinion, draft has much less luck than sealed.  There is a certain amount, of course: if you open MTG: Silvos, Rogue Elemental in your first pack then there's not much your opponents can do about that. 
Indeed. *mutters* -StuartFraser
But choosing what priority to pick removal vs creatures vs tricks, and so on, in your particular circumstances, is what really makes the format IMNSHO.  There are very few hard and fast rules: it's a series of judgment calls.
For example, if you see removal in black and none in red, and you've been drafting blue-red so far, then odds are someone next to you is taking the good red burn.  So you have to choose between playing with little removal, or drafting a 3rd colour, with the associated choices between making one of them a splash, or dropping one of your initial two colours.  And so on, and so on.  There is some luck, but I think draft is one of the most interesting and skilled MtG formats there is.
Agreed. I seem to recall Kai Budde making a similar comment on sideboard.com a while back, so you're in good company. It's debatable whether Rochester is more or less skilled than standard draft; personally, I'd just like to try it for the novelty value. An additional problem with sealed is that it requires more cards than does draft. -RA
Sure, but you end up with more cards (and with some basic land!)  -PT
AC: Basic land is really cheap to acquire.  The cards you get at the end of a draft will have decent synergy with each other, whereas sealed is purely what you pull out of the box.  You're always free to buy a tournament pack as well as the boosters you draft with - you'd end up with the same, without forcing the other drafters to buy a tournament pack they might not want.  Of course, if several people want to buy a tournament pack then it'd make sense for them to arrange some sealed game against each other.


Solomon Draft


One version described [here].  Basic principle is you alternate between two people taking a chunk of cards, cutting them into two piles; then the other player chooses who gets which pile.  You have a cardpool of 3 boosters for each player, and you build a 40-card minimum deck afterwards.  The variable is the size of the chunks: Anthony Alongi suggests whole 15-card boosters, or shuffling the packs together and
It should be possible to modify the generic cake-dividing algorithm for larger numbers of players -- Senji
Indeed, I've now played this format with NetRunner, [Dave's Cake Draft Format]
(PeterTaylor) Ah, the classic problem of discrete cake division.

Winston Draft


As described by AaronForsythe? on magicthegathering.com some time back. A two-player format. Shuffle together all of an appropriate amount of cards (probably 90). Deal three 1-card piles face down. 1st player looks at the first pile. He may take it - if he does, he replaces it with a face down card from the big stack. Otherwise, he returns it and adds a face-down card, then considers the second and possibly third piles similarly. If he wants none of them, he takes a card off the top of the stack and must keep it. The 2nd player then does likewise. Repeat. This obviates the problem that in a standard 2-person booster draft, it's possible (with a very good memory) to know all bar 3 of your opponent's picks (ignoring print runs!). It's estimated that Winston Draft leaves you with about 50% of their pool unknown.

ChrisHowlett and RobertHiersemenzel Winston Drafted CHK-SOK-SOK on CH's StagNight?. It was fun. The oddest part is how hard it is to get a consistent colour base. It's almost, but not quite, as bad as playing Sealed with 3 boosters would be. CH won, thanks to red burn and white fliers. Sounds familiar...
*nod* Seems to match my and qqzm's experience. We Winstoned Fifth Dawn, and still found it hard to find a consistent colour base! Admittedly we didn't see too many manafixers. --AC

Mind Master


As described [here]. A two-player battle, one booster vs one booster. The difference from Mini Master is the whole booster starts in your hand. Card drawing does nothing, and you have 10 basic lands available, in any mix of the five basic land types, in addition to whatever lands you might have in your booster. Looks intriguing, and a good use of booster packs.

Pack Reconstruction


(Also  described [here].)  A lot of us may not have 45 reject rares.  But how many of us have 100 reject commons?  AC has 500 easily, probably much more.  Deal a large amount of them mostly randomly into stacks of 15 (ensuring each stack has at least 2 cards of each colour), and then do any limited booster format with these repackaged boosters.  Draft would do fine, and would be plenty wacky enough with my commons pool (combining cards from Prophecy, Invasionblock, Mirrodin and Alliances, for example).  Costs precisely *nothing*.
I'd be tempted to say at least "add an uncommon or two" or "add a rare" for each "booster" -- Senji

Problem with this is the same as with Reject Rare drafting. My cards are mostly from the time before you could tell a rare from an uncommon from a common by looking. I'd need about 10 spoilers and as many hours to work my cards out into common, uncommon and rare. A job for the holidays --Requiem

Group Game Draft


[Description]
Like normal drafting, but with the explicit intent of building a deck to win a multiplayer chaos (free-for-all) game. Card values change a lot as a result. 

Team Events:


Two-Headed Giant


Works like it says on the tin: two teams of two, each team has a shared life total of 40.  Rules vary on whether both opponents can block, what order you take turns in, and even both teammates taking simultaneous turns.  There's one well-known set of rules which are used in MagicOnline, but a range of other variations.

Could be done either in limited or constructed (persons who don't have cards and wanted to play constructed could petition people with cards to give/build them decks); with seeded pairings or at random. Or even by selecting teams.

See http://www.wizards.com/magic/generic/official/rulings/multiplayer_rules.doc for rules for Two-Headed Giant, Emperor, &c - PeterTaylor found that he couldn't view the file in wordpad, but quick view worked fine. Haven't looked at it with a plain text editor (too large for notepad).

Team Sealed


Described [here].  Looks cool.  Needs 6, 9 or 12 players. See /EventsAndReports for reportts of Team Sealed games at Kamigawa block prereleases.

Emperor


A format for two teams of three or five players, although it can be extended for two twos, three threes, etc. Lends itself to a variety of formats including drafting beforehand, and many variant and house rules, including some discussed on /EmperorRules.



SeeAlso: /ConstructedFormats

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