So, with CG out of commission, we have a serious activity void on these boards, so I'm considering making another forum draft, but first I figured I'd check the interest level. So, I have 3 questions:
1: would you guys like another one?
2: what changes if any would you make?
3: should I do silly pick your own packs, or do a KTK draft?

1. Sure
2. It should really be limited to 8 ppl, preferably ppl who can actually commit to drafting and not impulsive sign-ups who drop out of the draft pack 2
2a. Also there should be a limit between each pick, but I kind of understand how this would be hard without like a CG or someone monitoring the picks
2b. A tournament structure like the Eldengard tournament would be cool.
3. KTK.

Yeah I was already probably gonna do the 8 man limit thing. The time limit idea is nice, but it's hard to actually implement when we don't know who has which packs, and while it would be nice to have committed players, that's also tricky to guarantee.

Well, In general we need things to get the forum going.

I can stream drafts and try to make video content, if possible but that's not really 'forum' interactive. We can set up nights in which I can get on and draft and we can try to do it as a community thing.

We can do more crack-a-packs as I could probably get a booster box or something but I'm not sure if those will be interesting for a long time.

I'd draft again but I'd like to actually play this time. I would like to do KTK, as well.

I can probably get something like six real virtual packs for trying picks each weekend, but some of them will be really trivial. Shadowchu, you do online queues, you probably open a few interesting ones, no need to buy a box, just post a few of those from the draft recorder.

@cato: sure, let's make a draft, KTK. We may need an umpire, a person who will not draft, but open and distribute the packs to the drafters, then collect them back after they make the pick and pass them on for the next pick. He would also make the picks for any laggards, either at random, like when you miss the deadline online, or the umpire might use his best judgement and pick the best card left in the pack.

I remember when people used to post some difficult game situations and we posted our thoughts on how to play. I quite liked those discussions.

1. Sure
2. Probably do it like we did pack 3 of the last draft (only one player has all the packs at one given time, and including the set name in the PM title). Also, limit to 8 players.
3. KTK. Let's try to keep things simple this time.

In, I don't have preferences on how to do it and sets to use.

This is my vote. I'd love to play too.

I'd volunteer for such a role. I'm very interested in seeing the drafts on this forum play out (and I'm online here frightfully often) but not interested in joining in the actual Cockatrice gameplay execution.

Ben: try streaming EDH. Everyone loves EDH .
Zlehtnoba: that was how I was originally going to run the first draft, until I realized that it was a lot of work for minimal payoff, and adding another middleman will probably slow down the draft.

So yeah, I'll be running it with Khans.

I wonder if we could use google spreadsheets? After I **** up the last one I just put all the packs into excel so I could track them.

Yeah, Google docs would be my suggestion. I'm in a 20 player fantasy hockey keeper league where we do all our roster maintenance and drafting through a shared spreadsheet. Very good for that sort of thing. Not sure how hood it is at enforcing secrecy though - I know you can lock write access by user is but I'm not sure if te overhead of limiting read access is worth the benefit.

[quote="Cato
Zlehtnoba: that was how I was originally going to run the first draft, until I realized that it was a lot of work for minimal payoff, and adding another middleman will probably slow down the draft.

So yeah, I'll be running it with Khans.[/quote]

I don't think a middleman between each pick is worth the time, but an umpire to independently randomize and issue the packs in the first place, and to make picks in the stead of delinquent pickers, makes sense. If everything works right the picks can be made by private message from picker to next picker, but if someone misses a pick an ump can step in and be an impartial pick that won't skew things unduly.

But really the umps pick should be made with the knowledge of that players previous picks... So maybe the pack forwarding should go to next picker AND ump (ump mup account). So the ump is constantly apprised of picks (by deduction) but normal progress is not bottlenecked on the ump at all, the ump only gets involved in the event of delinquency.

Ump would track pick and pack activity in an entirely private Google docs spreadsheet then make it public readable at event end for draft dissection.

I think there are good ideas there mark. I think IM is probably fine, but I agree they could be cc'd to a ref.

Man it would not be that hard to hack drafts.in to send / receive email and track all picks. Actually, I wonder if you turn off the timer if it would just go forever...

It sounds like you're making this more complicated than it needs to be. This isn't the pro tour, I'm not worried about people cheating because there's nothing at staek.

I was not worried about cheating, just about time between picks. If we go much more than a day between one pick and another, I lose interest.

I just like record keeping. But I am fine with just doing it the way we did the last one.

I just don't see how adding a middleman is going to speed up picks instead of slowing them down.

It speeds up draft progress in the event of delinquent pickers. The version I described above (" pack forwarding should go to next picker AND ump (ump mup account). So the ump is constantly apprised of picks (by deduction) but normal progress is not bottlenecked on the ump at all, the ump only gets involved in the event of delinquency.") only slows down the draft by the amount of time it takes to add a name to the CC field of your private message, but it speeds things up in the event of absentees by avoiding the "Hey, has anyone seen ~? He hasn't logged in in 96 hours" situation, by ensuring there is a safety net in place to quickly have a third party make a sensible pick and get the gears turning again.

It would also allow for eaesier post-event dissection of the draft (to have a third party collating results as they happen) which could lead to further discussion later on draft strategy.

This makes a lot of sense to me.