So, last night we decided to kick the new year off with testing out the
new draft rules for limited draft events.
We drafted (Rochester) just 1 booster each, and played a VEKN rules
game
to see what we thought.
We had 4 boosters, 1KMW, 1CE, 1Anarchs and 1BH (which I had lying
around)
The Black Hand booster was drafted first. The 3 vampires were drafted
straight off, leaving player 4 (Buzz) to just draft a random card. Bit
of a shame that, as it is difficult in this format to be sure what to
take. It actually paid of in the end. Due to no additional BH boosters,
as no vamps were BH, there were 3 cards which were useless.
CE was drafted next, and I admit I rare drafted the Protected Resources
(owning none) but this was useless as no bleed mods really appeared
(except Kindred Spirits and Anima Gathering) so pretty useless. The
Elder library (but played) and Year of Fortune were also useless as
everyone was very likely to have a hand/library of 5-7 anyway. Best
card
I drafted here was a Boxed In. Other good Cards - Molotov Cocktail and
Kindred Spirits.
Then we drafted KMW. 3 vamps, 2 of which were Red List and a Trophy:
Clan Respect, which I played and got. Not really much other tech.
Then Anarchs. I think probably the best booster overall. Anarch
Railroad
- played effectively, Galaric's Legacy - just discarded as no use to
player, and Smash and Grab - a good threat card. Other stuff not bad,
but not brilliant, but the vampires were useful.
Play:
Everyone actually decided to put all their vampires in their crypt
(uncontrolled) so no choices got made. In order to make use of cards,
most people needed at least two of their vampires anyway.
I think everyone used at least 6 in their library, and no-one more than
7, partially because there was never going to be any drawing issues.
The
game started pretty slowly with people trying to get what little tech
they had into play. At one point it looked as though an Anarch Setite
was going to bleed out his prey at 1 per turn at +1stealth with
railroad, the prey started bleeding for 3 his prey (me) with Kindred
Spirits. The recursion kept bits in hand every turn, making Life in the
City and Kindred spirits probably the two most powerful cards in the
game. My fighty boy took down a red list and got his trophy, but other
than that, we tended to be limited to what the vamps could do by
themselves.
The game ended with a sweep for Mr Kindred Spirits. Hardly a surprise
when (with built in +1 bleed) he was bleeding for 3 and had 3 minions
out total.
Thoughts about this:
1 booster really isn't enough. Whilst recursion gives you potentially
60+ cards, the choice is limited. I personally don't feel this would
have improved had all boosters been from 1 set, as the number of
disciplines and vampire clans, even in a focused set, tends towards
being greater (or at least equal to) the number of library
cards/vampires in the total packs.
There is the risk that someone might not get a vampire if they draft
some library before vampires. I would in retrospective laid out all
vampires here and drafted those before drafting the library cards as
boosters. However, with more than 1 booster per player, this probably
wouldn't be so bad, although you still end up with the last person to
draft from the first booster not being able to draft a vampire before
library, so perhaps this should permanently be the case (unless
draftferior significantly increases utility here).
You do have technically the most focused deck possible (12 of every
card
you drafted) with no potential hand jam, but I think you just didn't
see
enough.
We also thought that whilst it might be alright with a healthy number
of
participants (3 tables) over a day, it would be boring playing such a
small deck over a tournament.
We will try again with two or three boosters soon. I'll report back.
Andy
Slytherin <an...@operamail.com> wrote:
> So, last night we decided to kick the new year off with testing out the
> new draft rules for limited draft events.> We drafted (Rochester) just 1 booster each, and played a VEKN rules
> game
> to see what we thought.> We had 4 boosters, 1KMW, 1CE, 1Anarchs and 1BH (which I had lying
> around)
1-booster draft works best when everyone is using cards from the same set.
Especially for the "VEKN Rules" version.
> The game ended with a sweep for Mr Kindred Spirits. Hardly a surprise
> when (with built in +1 bleed) he was bleeding for 3 and had 3 minions
> out total.
So you only played one game?
If you really wanted to test the VEKN-sanctioned single-booster draft rules,
you should go all the way and do 2 or 3 rounds with a final, to see just
how painful it is to play the same single-booster decks repeatedly.
Especially if you have a mish-mash of boosters, I'd recommend Duffin Draft
for the 1-booster experience. 1-booster fully-sanctioned draft just isn't
very much fun (even with coherent boosters, in our experience).
Slytherin wrote:
> So, last night we decided to kick the new year off with testing out the
> new draft rules for limited draft events.
>
> We drafted (Rochester) just 1 booster each, and played a VEKN rules
> game
> to see what we thought.
>
> We had 4 boosters, 1KMW, 1CE, 1Anarchs and 1BH (which I had lying
> around)
So you also tested out the new BYO option from 7.2.4. at the same time.
1-pack draft works less well with the BYO option, I'd think. As it seems you found:
> Thoughts about this:
>
> 1 booster really isn't enough. Whilst recursion gives you potentially
> 60+ cards, the choice is limited. I personally don't feel this would
> have improved had all boosters been from 1 set, as the number of
> disciplines and vampire clans, even in a focused set, tends towards
> being greater (or at least equal to) the number of library
> cards/vampires in the total packs.
And remember, just because you can run a 1-booster draft (or a 36-booster draft)
doesn't mean it's a good idea. It really depends on the preferences of the
player populace.
Slytherin wrote:
> So, last night we decided to kick the new year off with testing out the
> new draft rules for limited draft events.
>> We will try again with two or three boosters soon. I'll report back.
>
3rd Edition is definately at good way to go, especially with very few
packs. In Boston, we had a mini-league where where drafted a pack,
played a game, drafted another pack to go with the first one, played a
game, etc... It was BYOP but most players chose 3rd Edition.
Results were: 1 pack was kinda painful. 2 packs was better but not
great. Most players had some combos they could run. 3+ packs started to
get quite functional. Games got competative and it started to feel like
real V:tes.
But I would say stick to base sets - especially 3rd Edition.
-Ben Swainbank
Thanks for all additional thoughts.
Has anyone got any ideas on whether they think
i) Rochester draft
ii) draft and pass pack (unseen)
iii) or pool vamps, then draft vamps, then packs
is better. In this case we did Rochester, which has been my experience
of all drafting in VTES,
but it can get very time consuming with multiple packs, and does leave
the problem of at
least one person not being able to draft a vampire from the first (and
possibly 2nd) pack.
Comments on peoples replies to original post:
We have Duffin Drafted before, which was great fun. Just thought we'd
try it out to new VEKN
rules, but have to say we do think it would be boring over a full
tourney (hence the test), so
probably best just to Duffin Draft.
These were boosters I had literally lying around. Next time I will pick
up from the local shop
some others, which I was thinking of keeping it to having at least 1
booster from any given
set to each player (although they may not all be from the same set). I
don't truly think this made
a real difference here though, but I can see the benefits of keeping
sets down to a minimum,
due to lack of tech-minion ratio if the sets don't really combine (i.e.
CE with BH would be no
but 3rd with BH yes!)
P.S. Anyone got any ideas what they think would be best to draft with
NoR? I would only be
thinking probably a ratio of 1NoR:2Other maximum. Personally I'd
probably go CE, but
Gehenna/KMW could be good with the Events
Cheers
Andy
VEKN Setite Ruler of Cambridge
> But I would say stick to base sets - especially 3rd Edition.
>
Agreed, except jyhad beats 3rd Edition by about a mile. From just
drafting a single jyhad booster you get something that actually feels
like a little deck.
Regards
Frede
[ quoted text not captured ]
A Jyhad booster is 19 cards. Which equals 1.727 11-card boosters, which rounds
to 2 11-card boosters. So drafting a single Jyhad booster doesn't equal a
"1-booster" draft, as the V:EKN rules see it. It effects a "2-booster" draft:
you end up with a minimum of 2 crypt cards and 10 library cards with five
recursions.
See the note in http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/?line=veknRules#sec7.2.1
Doubtful that drafting 1 Jyhad booster beats drafting 2 3e boosters "by a mile",
esp. when the draft effects are also factored in.
> P.S. Anyone got any ideas what they think would be best to draft with
> NoR? I would only be
> thinking probably a ratio of 1NoR:2Other maximum. Personally I'd
> probably go CE, but
> Gehenna/KMW could be good with the Events
If you're drafting a small number of NoR packs you might consider
throwing extra conviction into the mix somehow. Since conviction is
already 'recursive', having 1 in your 10-card deck will feel the same
as having 1 in a 90-card deck.