Winchester is a draft format for two people that I learned about when reading a Tom LaPille article a while back. The gist of it is that you shuffle together 6 packs (84 cards), and put one card in each of four piles. The first player takes one of the piles, and then you put one more card on each of the four piles. Keep at it until you run out of cards.
The advantages this has over other two player draft formats are:
1) It is simple. There are something like 25 total decisions to make between all parties.
2) It is fast, you can get right to the playing.
3) It exemplifies draft in that if you take a powerful card, you have to leave behind some other cards, which makes future picks potentially stronger than your current pick.
4) You get around 12 picks to assemble ~23 playables, so you can't over-value single card piles, or you just won't have enough to play.
I decided to try this for my first "solo draft" walkthrough because it involves a small number of pictures (~25), and decisions, while letting me get a feel for the idea of doing this on a grander scale later.
I used a "starter cube" I made to help teach my fiance Kristina the game. It has around 15 cards of each color, 10 artifacts, and 12 lands, for a total of ~90 cards, which was just enough for this exercise.
Pick one showed at least two good options. Welkin Tern is a pretty aggressive creature, but I picked Borderland Ranger, because it will help fix my mana, and I assumed I'd have to play three colors in this format.
Player A Picked: Borderland Ranger
Revealed but not picked: Ravenous Rats, Welkin Tern, Goblin Piker
Pick two put probably the best new card, with the best remaining card, so it was pretty easy to snag the two blue cards, and stay "open" as far as a second card for the time being
Player B Picked: Essence Scatter, Welkin Tern)
Revealed but not picked: Hinterland Harbor, Plague Beetle, Rotting Legion.
Pick three gave a couple options for ways to go. Pile 1 had a removal spell, and some mana fixing, pile 4 had two aggressive red cards, so Player A stayed on-point with the mana-fixing and removal spell of the first pile.
Player A Picked: Pacifism, Hinterland Harbor, Ravenous Rats
Revealed but not picked: Raging Goblin, Thunder Strike, Goblin Raider.
Player B has just two blue cards, so they have the option of a removal spell, or a pile of red and black creatures to fill out their selection. They ended up going with the pile of creatures. I figured at this point they could be Red/Blue, and maybe the black would be okay.
Player B picked: Hill Giant, Goblin Raider, Rotting Legion, Goblin Piker.
Revealed but not picked: Essence Drain, Glorious Anthem, Keldon Warlord.
These piles seemed pretty marginal at this point, so player A grabbed the mana fixing of the land to go with what would likely be a multi-color deck. A case could be made for pile 1 or 2 being superior, because pile 3 actually only has one relevant card at this time, so Essense Drain, Anthem, or even Nether Horror could be better than the land.
Player A picked: Isolated Chapel, Keldon Warlord, Thunder Strike, Plague Beetle.
Revealed but not picked: Giant Growth, Nether Horror, Dragon Fodder
Player B grabs the first pile here, with another spell being added to it. No blue cards, and no great red cards mean we need to consider other options, and three "removal spells" is a fine reason to snag a pile. Maybe pile 4 will "wheel", since it is basically terrible at this point for player A, and it could be useful for our 2-drop "tempo" deck.
Player B picks: Ambition's Cost, Giant Growth, Essence Drain
Revealed but not picked: Youthful Knight, Duskdale Wurm, Wave of Indifference.
The addition of Terramorphic Expanse to pile 2, when player A is already "in" green and white, and looking for multicolor fixing makes pile 2 a fairly easy pickup for player A. Player A is likely hoping that pile 3 i not chosen by player B, since it could be a fine top-end for them.
Player A picks: Terramorphic Expanse, Youthful Knight, Nether Horror, Glorious Anthem, Raging Goblin.
Revealed but not picked: Mind Stone, Assault Griffin, Rampant Growth.
Player B picks: Sulfur Falls, Rampant Growth, Wave of Indifference, Dragon Fodder.
Revealed but not picked: Fangren Hunter, Squee's Toy, Bottle Gnomes.
Pile 3 didn't get much better for us with this pick (we'd play the Divination or the Smite), but we need to take it anyway. Pack 1 was a close runner, since it offers a similar ability of cards, but I didn't remember I had Hinterland Harbor for some blue-fixing, so I was only comparing the green, white, and artifact cards when I made this pick.
Player A picked: Merfolk Looter, Bottle Gnomes, Assault Griffin, Duskdale Wurm
Revealed but not picked: Divination, Mons Goblin Raiders, Smite the Monstrous.
Not much good here for player B, so we take the only halfway good card, and maybe some fixing. We also ensure that player A doesn't get a juicy mana fixing plus acceleration plus fattie pick here "for free". Unfortunate all around though. Hopefully nothing good gets put on top of the Ranger to make the next pick super-easy for player A...
Player B picked: Clifftop Retreat, Divination, Fangren Hunter, Mind Stone
Revealed but not picked: Child of Night, Sylvan Ranger, Harbor Serpent.
Roaring Primadox is a super-fun card, and player A can't resist taking this, along with a removal spell we can (theoretically) cast. Picking any of the other piles might be defensible as well, for the mana fixing in pile 3 (or 2), or the cheap brick-wall that is the Courser....
Player A picked: Roaring Primadox, Harbor Serpent, Smite the Monstrous
Revealed but not picked: Centaur Courser, Dragonskull Summit, Unsummon.
Quite out of focus here, but we have one clear pick for player B. Deny the Ranger to the omni-color deck, pick up a tempo spell and a removal spell in the form of the just-revealed Blisterstick Shaman. Unfortunate that player A seems to have several good options now, but that's what picking mana fixing does for you I guess?
Player B picked: Blisterstick Shaman, Unsummon, Sylvan Ranger
Revealed but not picked: Master Decoy, Restless Dead, Vulshok Berserker
Player A sees three solid playables in pile 1 here and can't resist. Pile 2 is getting very large here, but outside of the fixing, it doesn't offer too much that they care about. If the Righteousness was instead a blank, I think we would have seen player A scoop up pile 2 for the sheer volume + value.
Player A picked: Righteousness, Master Decoy, Centaur Courser
Revealed but not picked: Woodland Cemetery, Sunpetal Grove, Gravedigger.
Player B's about had enough of how the piles have been falling, so they scoop up pile 2 here, with some black mana fixing to go with the likely splash there, and a few aggressive creatures to fill out their pile. Pile 4 is probably their second choice, since it has a couple cards on-color in theory.
Picked: Llanowar Elves, Woodland Cemetery, Restless Dead, Dragonskull Summit, Child of Night, Mons Goblin Raiders, Squee's Toy.
Revealed but not picked: Venerable Monk, Feral Shadow, Crushing Vines.
Player A saw a Birds of Paradise roll off, and snapped it up, along with some other mana fixing and a potential flyer. Pile 4 was a hard pile to pass by, and maybe pile 3 is more likely for player B to NOT take, so taking pile 4 may have been the right decision. Card advantage to the max there... We decided we wanted to be sure to be able to cast our spells though. Not an easy pick.
Player A picked: Birds of Paradise, Feral Shadow, Sunpetal Grove
Revealed but not picked: Drowned Catacombs, Savannah Lions, Jayemdae Tome
Player B had a hard choice here. They realized here that they probably need to be playing a third color, because the good red and blue just isn't coming, so taking a high-impact 6-drop, and a mana fixer, might help their cause here. Very unfortunate to pass pile 4, since it also has a couple cards they could use. It's unlikely that either pile 1 or pile 4 would come back, given that I "saw" player A in Green-White-Black colors as central.
Picked: Phyrexian Gargantua, Drowned Catacombs, Venerable Monk.
Revealed but not picked: Fire Elemental, Prey Upon, Stormfront Pegasus.
Now the blue and red cards start flowing... Pile 4 is an easy pick-up for player A, since they view themselves in GWB and the value is overflowing there. (Also, player A doesn't see anything else that is comparable, and player B could reasonably take pile 4 if we take one of the other piles)
Player A picked: Grizzly Bears, Stormfront Pegasus, Jayemdae Tome, Crushing Vines, Gravedigger, Vulshok Berserker.
Revealed but not picked: Siege Mastodon, Scroll Theif, Volcanic Dragon.
This pick was not easy for player B. Pile 3 offers two very solid finishers, some of the bigger creatures in the cube, but pile 2 has three good cards, so I went with that. Pile 1 and 3 are equally likely to be taken by player A on his next pick, so let's just hope they get something good in any pile but three? Bah.
Player B picked: Aven Fisher, Scroll Theif, Fire Elemental, Savannah Lions
Revealed but not picked: Benalish Veteran, Air Elemental, Archaeomancer.
Player A couldn't refuse the fixing of evolving wilds, to pair with a big ground blocker in the elephant, so they stuck with their overall strategy here. It's possible that pile 3 was superior, because we probably have a fair amount of red fixing, and Prey Upon is not bad. (And player B can't use pile 1, they have to take 2 or 4 just for the playables, we hope?)
Player A picked: Evolving Wilds, Benalish Veteran, Siege Mastodon
Revealed but not picked: Claustrophobia, Flame Slash, Primal Clay.
Finally good cards for player B are showing up (Red and Blue cards). The pick between piles 3 and 4 (or even pile 2) was not easy, but player B is hurting for playables, so 4 cards is better than 3, and huge evasive guys and a removal spell isn't bad.
Player B picked: Coral Merfolk, Flame Slash, Air Elemental, Volcanic Dragon, Prey Upon
Revealed but not picked: Tundra Wolves, Phyrexian Rager, Man-o-War.
What can I say, player A is a jerk. This was the last revealed pile (bug in Winchester, player A gets the first pick and the last (new) pick?), and player A gets one playable out of pile 4, and one more good playable from whatever of the other three piles are left, so they just denied the more problematic cards with this pick, and made player B's life tough on playables. Player B actually has 5 sources of blue with one Island in his deck, which is pretty insane...
Player A picked: Flying Men, Man-o-War, Primal Clay, Archaeomancer.
Revealed but not picked: Giant Spider, Alpha Myr, Midnight Guard.
Player B takes pile 2, which, in retrospect was only slightly worse than pile 4 in terms of playables, and it has a "real" removal spell and some card advantage. It sucks that we give up a spider here, but such is life. I think in the future, using 4 more, or 4 less cards would be advisable, at least when drafting this with a "cube" (rather than packs). Player 2 seems like they're always on the back foot here.
Player B picks: Alpha Myr, Phyrexian Rager, Claustrophobia.
Player A grabs the spider, and Wolf from pile 1
Player B puts the Midnight Guard into the garbage can, and my first attempt at a Winchester draft is over!
No comments:
Post a Comment