Splinterlands Enhancements I: Booster Draft

One of the most popular formats in Magic: The Gathering is booster draft. I believe that it could garner even greater popularity in Splinterlands -- and help the game at the same time. A Splinterlands booster draft tournament can be held with as few as two players. Thus, impromptu tournaments could be held at any time with 2, 4, 8 or 16 players for a single-elimination tournament and any even number of players for a round-robin tournament.

Tournaments can be played at any league level (novice, bronze, silver, gold, diamond/champion). Every card is, for the duration of the tournament, at the maximum level allowed by that league. This will allow players with very few cards to be able to play competitively at any level.

In booster draft, each player starts with a number of unopened packs. Magic uses three 15-card packs to make a 40-card deck with 16-18 lands. For Splinterlands, I would recommend anywhere from three to five packs. For each match, a maximum of (packs – 1) splinters will be unavailable (or, alternatively, the system will ensure that each player has, at least, one option). Note that there is no reason why orbs couldn’t be substituted for packs.

Players are randomly assigned sequential numbers. Once everyone is ready, each player has one pack opened and they pick one of the five cards. Once this is done, the rest of the pack is passed to the player with the next lower number (with player 1 passing to the highest number player). Players pick one of the four remaining cards and continue passing and picking until the last cards are picked. The second pack is then opened and the same process is repeated except the packs are passed to the player with the next higher number (with the highest numbered player passing to player 1). Packs alternate directions until all packs have been opened and drafted.

Players may then choose a number of rare summoners equal to the number of packs each player stared with. If a player picked a rare summoner during the draft, they may replace it with an epic or legendary summoner of the same splinter.

Play then proceeds normally.

Booster draft tournaments will cost money (or crypto) for the packs but players will get to keep the cards that they draft. This is a great thing as it will increase pack sales. Alternatively, the Splinterlands team could conceivably allow for some of the rounds of packs to be “shadow” packs whose cards disappear at the end of the tournament (and therefore don’t need to be paid for).

Prizes can be packs or any other cryptocurrency and be paid for either by whoever starts the tournament or by the players as a cost for entry.

Alternatively, winners could choose one card from one player from each of the brackets they won (with players being able to protect their cards by passing along their unused pick from the bracket below if available). For example, in an eight-player tournament, the winner would get probably the best card from the second, third and fifth (although the second, third and fourth players could prevent this by replacing it by their picks from the fourth, seventh and eighth picks respectively). The net effect is that the winner will get three cards, second place will get one, third and fourth will net zero, and fifth through eighth will lose a card.

So, what do you all think? These are just my initial thoughts and I’m sure that they could be improved upon. PLEASE comment below whether you would participate or not and any changes/improvements to the above that you can come up with. You could also suggest other Splinterlands enhancements and I’ll add them to my list.

Stay tuned for my next post on Improved Target Selection via User-Scripting. Until then may you always hit, retaliate and poison when you need to – and your opponent not be so lucky.