What is draft in collectible card games?

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

In recent years, various kinds of board games are experiencing a real boom. One of the most popular varieties are collectible card games. As a rule, each of these games can be played in two formats: draft and constructed. Understanding what a draft is and how it differs from a constructed is very simple. Let's pay attention to the main points.

Draft and constructed. What's the difference?

The process of playing a collectible card game involves the use of a deck assembled in a certain way. To play in constructed tournaments, a pre-assembled deck is used, cards for which can be bought separately or exchanged with other players. But in order to understand what a draft is, let's turn directly to the meaning of this word. If we translate the English word “draft” into Russian, then we get nothing more than a “draft” or “draft”. That is, you do not think over the composition of the deck in advance at home, but collect it directly during the tournament.

General principle of the draft tournament

In most games, draft tournaments follow roughly the samescheme. First of all, we note that such a tournament consists of two stages: deck building and the game part itself. In order to start collecting cards in a deck, players are usually placed at one table in the amount of 6-8 people. Each of them has purchased packs of cards. The number of these packs and their composition depend directly on the game. For example, in the most popular card game, Magic: the Gathering, each player needs three packs of 15 cards each. After seating, the players open one pack at a time, choose the best card from it, and pass the rest in a circle to their neighbor. Accordingly, then you have to choose a card from what the neighbor gave, and so on until all the cards are sorted.

After all the packs are opened and sorted, the draft in card games does not end. It is necessary to assemble decks from the received set of cards for the game in the most efficient way. As a rule, after the process of "drafting" the player will have more cards than necessary to build the deck, so you need to choose the best ones and use them for the game.

Draft benefits and challenges

Many players have very limited knowledge of what a draft is. Of course, the vast majority knows the rules, but the point here is different. The draft format requires a slightly different skill from the player than the constructed format. First of all, you need to learn how to correctly assess the strength of the cards, as well as their interaction with each other. After all, it is not always enough to simply take the strongest card and put it in the deck. Sometimes a weaker card canto be extremely strong in a particular deck “in a vacuum”. Among other things, you need to notice what cards you pass to your neighbors in order to be ready for subsequent matches and have answers to possible threats in the deck.

Rookies and draft

From a beginner's point of view, it is difficult to say which format is more effective for learning all the intricacies of the game. Perhaps it is more advisable to start studying the rules and basic mechanics of the game with the constructed game, and then move on to studying what a draft is. A sufficient number of played games in the constructed will allow at least an initial idea of the strength of the cards, so that in the future the player will have the opportunity to make a correct and reasonable choice from the opened set. In addition, to hold a draft tournament, you need at least 6-8 people, but you can just play a finished deck with a friend in the kitchen.

Now you have a general idea of what a draft is. Cards are known to be heavily influenced by luck, and collectible card games are no exception. However, experience and work on the quality of the game will allow you to win against the most sophisticated opponents in any type of tournament.