Draft

[eomund]

A couple of my friends are thinking of trying to draft LotR by taking a bunch of our own cards, shuffling them together, and creating booster packs out of them. Any advice from people who have drafted on what a good percentage of companions/minions/events/etc would be?

Obviously we want half-and-half FP and Shadow cards, but I know Decipher put out specific "draft packs" to help with drafting ... I'm assuming that was because the ratios in the original sets led to poor drafts. Any help would be appreciated, even if all you know is what the Decipher draft packs contained.

[ket_the_jet]

Well, keep in mind that you should each have a starter deck, so (worst case scenario), you all have a complete deck to play with.

I know it sucks, money-wise, but the best way to do it is to just buy draft packs. Otherwise, people are going to argue about what cards to pile in (if you get the Eomer starter deck, for example, you will definitely want Simbelmyne. But if your opponent gets the Eomer starter deck, you might not want to pool your copy of Simbelmyne, you know?)

Either way, good luck with it. Packs are one rare, three uncommons (one site), and the remainder are commons. Each person gets three of those and a draft pack (I don't remember the exact specifications of those, right now!)
-wtk

[Thranduil]

The basic issue is you need enough characters (especially minions given that Shadow events, conditions and possessions are close to useless in a draft). So, you can either fix this with the cards you choose (I would counsel that at least 50-60% of the Shadow cards should be minions, maybe 30-40% of the FP cards companions) or start with something that already gives you enough characters to make it work. This can either be a starter set, which gives you a whole load of guys you can use, or I once drafted when everyone started with a box of Age's End (which is almost entirely characters and gives everyone access to monstrosities like Demon of Might and Dark Lord as well as utility companions like Wise Guide, Pitiable Guide and Skeptical Guide) and that worked pretty well.

So that would be my advice. If you have any other thoughts, either before or after you've done it, please tell me! I love Magic drafting and making LotR work in a draft is one of my goals in life!

Thranduil

[FM]

A good way to go about is try Cube Drafting. Search the web for some good sites on how a Cube works (it`s a MtG thing), I actually think it would work fairly well in LotR, although sites would be a totally different matter. However, one-ofs make for a nice drafting, and LotR can DEFINITELY work this way, although you should probably end up playing the smaller decks (20/20, with one reshuffle per game, if the deck ends). Want me to elaborate on the subject?

[eomund]

I'm familiar with cube drafting - that's actually where I got the idea. I really enjoy drafting, but don't have to money to keep buying boosters ... so I made a cube which has worked fairly well. I'm hoping to do a similar thing for LotR.

Site-wise, my thoughts had been to make site packs of 9 sites, and draft them last. Otherwise, it could work to make blank sites available after the draft ... sites with no rules text except maybe a keyword. That way you can fill up to nine sites without (entirely) getting to pick-and-choose your favourite sites. We'll probably end up trying both and see what works.

Since I'm making my own card pool, I'm hoping to avoid having to use starter decks or draft packs. Thranduil, I think your percentages are pretty good ... even more minions couldn't hurt.

Another problem I've noticed is the number of cards needed for a deck. In Magic, a forty card deck only contains 23 or so drafted cards (out of 42 ... hurray for basic lands in boosters  ), while in LotR, a forty card deck needs 40 drafted cards. So it would need seven eleven-card boosters to have the same ratio of played to unplayed cards. So I think I'll probably use larger (15 or more) card boosters in order to simplify things a little.

[Thranduil]

Yep, I came to the same conclusion about booster sizes. But you should definitely not work on the basis of anything bigger than 20/20.

Thranduil