Drafting is one of my favorite aspects of collectible card games. Now that Star Wars: Destiny has been released, a group from our local game store decided to give drafting a try. Bear in mind that, at the time of this article, Fantasy Flight Games does not have any rules for this style of play. What follows is a description of our draft and possible solutions for improving the drafting format.
The Draft
We had seven people draft at Limited Figures Comics & Games in Kansas City. Wanting to keep the draft affordable and make sure people had enough characters and cards to build a team, we allowed use of any card/character from either/both starters, in addition to the six boosters we drafted. We maintained all regular game rules, including hero/villain and color divisions. Each participant opened 6 boosters, put the dice in the center, and divided their cards into two stacks. We then drafted one stack of cards, taking a card and passing the remainder to the right until that stack was gone, followed by a draft of the other stack, passing to the left. Each person then took dice to match their cards.
The Games
We allowed forty minutes per game, which felt about right, though could have been slightly longer. Those games that went to time were decided by who had killed the largest number of characters with the greatest point totals. We played three games, after which only one player was undefeated.
Thoughts
It was important to open all the boosters up front, since knowing your characters allowed you to draft hero or villain, as well as the appropriate color(s). Even knowing the characters up front, it was still tricky to draft. I pulled a Dooku and Storm Trooper, so knew I was going to play blue and red villains, but even then, half of the cards passed to me were irrelevant (hero and/or yellow cards). This lack of options made most of my choices feel predetermined, rather than agonizing between excellent cards for my team. Often I would just say “oh, only one blue villain card in this pile…guess I better take it.”
Allowing starter characters/cards was essential, though it would have been nice to do a pure draft. I can’t imagine trying to build a thirty-card team from only six boosters unless the hero/villain and color restrictions were lifted, and even then, players still may not get enough characters. Since most players had previously mixed their starter cards into their card collections, finding the starter cards proved difficult. Thankfully I had printed lists of starter cards that people could reference, but even then, it took a while to pull the cards out for the draft.
Possible Solutions
At this early point in Star Wars: Destiny’s life, several approaches could be taken to make drafting viable.
- Twelve or more packs drafted. This would provide the required characters and cards, but would be cost prohibitive. Six packs retail for $18, which is likely the upper limit of what “regular” players will pay for a draft.
- Allow starter characters/cards. This route is the safest in assuring that no one will be stuck characterless, though finding and implementing the starter cards was cumbersome, and presupposes that all players own starters or are willing to purchase them.
- Relax team building rules. Not having hero/villain and color restrictions, and/or lowering the team point limit would make drafting and team building easier. Still, removing these restrictions could make for severely unbalanced gameplay, and felt to me like it would be cheating.
- Use special draft packs. If Fantasy Flight Games made packs which guarantee characters or created randomized draft starters, this could make drafting more viable. How much would such packs/starters cost, and how would they be structured? I’ll leave that to Fantasy Flight and their game designers.
I don’t know what the future of Star Wars: Destiny drafting will look like, but I am hopeful that Fantasy Flight Games will roll out an affordable and elegant solution in the near future.
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Having another starter available for each side would be nice. So you could have yellow villain and red hero as an option.
Finn helps out in this scenario due to being able to ignore some restrictions in Deck building.
This was the exact thing I was afraid would happen. “I have to take this card because it’s the only card in my color/faction” rather than because it fits into a deck. On the rails drafting doesn’t really feel like drafting. And using the starters as a base is a good idea but I feel like you end up with decks that are “starter deck plus a few extras” almost every time.
SWD really doesn’t feel conducive to drafting. The small booster sizes and restrictive deck building rules pretty much kill it.
The best I would say is to remove deck building restrictions, draft 8 packs (so you have some leeway to cut cards from your final deck) for a 20 card deck, and allow the use of any of the non-unique characters so no one can get snubbed out of not having any characters. Play restrictions (i.e. Spot a character) mean players are still incentivized to stick to a slightly leaner deck if they want some of the more powerful cards.
I was actually able to attend this event. It actually worked out pretty well IMHO how we did it. Allowing any cards from the starters seemed to work fine. I get that it required follks to own at least one starter, but honestly the starter is a good value in this game anyhow.