What are your draft rules?

[Meddling Mike]

Recently I've given some thought to the various colloquial rules that people develop when doing booster drafts and I was curious to see what other local rules people had developed in their drafting circles.

One of the most controversial rules my drafting circle has developed is the buyback rules. Initially this rule was to put $5 into the prize pool in exchange for any rare you opened. This put a distinct cap on the potential winnings from a draft, but did add a greater sense of excitement when opening rares and gave less proficient drafters the chance to get some money rares.

One of the points that seems to vary is how to go about splitting up the rares after a team draft. Traditionally the rule was that the pick order was determined by the best record on the winning team getting the first pick. This rewards players for their good play, but at the same time can punish players for taking a team oriented approach. If a player weakens his own deck to take bombs out of an opponents deck should he be punished for his sacrifice for the good of the team? It's a tough call, remove incentives to draft and play well or punish team players?

The alternative method for team draft pick order is just to roll a die or some other form of randomization to determine the order.

One recent issue is how to handle take-backs. When playing with friends do you allow take-backs? Do you put a cap on the number permitted? Does the gravity of the take-back affect the situation? If the game is on the line? How about the match? If we are playing against less familiar opponents is more rules lawyering acceptable?

With many of the drafts held by venues/stores you pay a flat fee for your packs and the prize support is provided by the venue. In these cases players often keep whatever cards they draft. This makes the dividin of rares a non-issue, but consequently the players may have to burn high picks to select money rares they have no intention of playing in their draft deck.

How do you approach drafting?

[LotusHead]

Our local FMN is to lay out all of the rares foils and mythics after the draft. First place gets first pics, and so on.
Our Sunday draft is $3 more, but you keep what you draft and there is pack support for top 3 or 4 or so.

[Diakonov]

If we're playing sanctioned, we always keep the rares we draft and pay more up front for prize support.  Non-sanctioned, ranking determines pick-order.

There are basically two modes in which we play for a 6 man team draft: A. winning team takes all, or B. winning team gets the first three picks, followed by three picks from the losing team, then the winning team takes the rest.  Our group currently seems to have some disagreement with how it should work when dividing up the picks among the winning team.  Currently we go by record and using a die roll to break any ties.  However, just last night I opened a Tezzeret and our team lost, and 2 members of the opposing team basically got owned.  In my opinion, and the opinion of a few others in our group, when the difference between pick 1 and 2 is $30, the team should try to sort it out a bit more fairly.  Almost always, someone would be willing to buy out the card and the other two players can split the cash.

As far as take-backs go in our group, there is a general understanding that during sanctioned events between competitive players, take-backs are frowned upon and pretty much don't happen.  In non-sanctioned, it totally depends on the player personality and the degree of the mistake.  I tend toward lenient here: if you already untapped and forgot to sac your Nihil Spellbomb EOT, then sure, go for it.  I try to be a bit more strict about it during team drafting since my leniency affects my party.  In general I think I should be stricter than I am, and I often kick myself later for being too forgiving.

I believe that the degree of prize at stake, the gamestate/game/match situation, individual personality, familiarity with the person, and the opponent's transparent level of experience are all variables that factor into how people decide to handle take-backs.

[T00L]

3v3 teams. Decide the stakes before it starts.