Dragon’s Maze Release Draft

The release event for Dragon’s Maze was smaller than past release events. (We blame the release of Iron Man 3 on the same night.) Don’t let the small size fool you. There was still much competition and fun at Anime Kat. As tradition, we had a booster draft for the Dragon’s Maze Release Event.

For those not familiar with it, a booster draft is a format where you pick one card from a pack of cards and then pass it to your neighbor. In order to have a booster draft, you need:

3 Booster packs per player from the current draft format. We used Dragon’s Maze, Gatecrash, and Return to Ravnica
8 total players (It’s possible to draft with fewer than 8, but 8 is the number needed for sanctioned Magic drafts)
Supply of basic lands

Players are seated randomly at the table. Each player opens his first booster pack, chooses one card from the pack, and place the card face-down on the table. After you choose your card, you pass the rest of the pack to the player on your left. Once everyone has passed their packs, pick up the next pack (located on your right), pick the best card for your deck from that pack and put it in your pile, and again pass it to the neighbor on your left. This continues until all the cards from the pack have been picked. Next, each player opens his pack, picks a card, and passes the pack to the right. This continues as before until all cards from a pack have been chosen, and then repeats for the final pack moving left again.

Any drafted or opened cards not used in a player’s deck function as his or her sideboard. Once you have 45 cards in your pile, it is time to build your deck. Booster draft rules allow you to add as much basic land as you want to your deck, and require that the deck be at least 40 cards.

There were a total of four rounds of play with a limit of 45 minutes per round. During the four rounds of play, three players slowly made it to the top of the standings. Congratulations are in order for our first, second, and third place winners.