Practicing Draft Without Spending A Fortune!

Drafting has become a part of high-level play in FFTCG.

This is the message that Square Enix sent the playerbase with their announcement regarding the inclusion of draft in Crystal Cups this year.  Although it won't be implemented in North America until the back half of the 2019 season, it's clear that their plans moving forward are to make it a pillar of high-level play.

Square's plans for Draft at Crystal Cups.

The decision and announcement was divisive in North America but regardless of where you stand on the issue, if you plan on participating in Crystal Cups or other high level events in the future you're going to be faced with drafting.  For those looking to compete, that means developing and/or strengthening your skills at the draft format so that you can step into it with confidence and a winning strategy.

Practicing drafting is inherently much more complex than working on constructed play as you can work through developing your deck with as little as one other player and two decks between you.  For draft you are looking at gathering 3 or more friends and 5 times as many packs as you have players.  At minimum that's going to be 20 packs to run one draft, and depending on how you acquire the packs you're looking at a cost of at least $50.  At 8 players you're looking at needing more than a box to run it and easily hitting the $100-$125 range.

Another option is practicing with older product you can acquire for cheaper.

Anyone who has competed in a TCG knows that getting in lots of reps is key to your preparation for the tournament.  Similarly, learning and developing drafting skills is going to take a LOT of practice going through the entire experience of drafting packs, building your deck, and playing in a limited format.  Combine the need for lots of practice with a high cost and that can add up to a very expensive skill to develop!

So what's the alternative? You could try to recreate packs by assembling your own to draft with, but how do you decide what to put in each pack?  How do you ensure the packs approximate what you'll find in an actual drafting situation?  There are a lot of variables that go into building packs.  You don't want to include too many copies of any given card or rarity.  There are other factors like the fact that a pack won't have more than one Legend in it and that the Rares in each pack won't have more than one of any given element.

Ideally, you would want to duplicate as much as possible what it would be like to open fresh packs.  There's no substitute for actual data, so arguably the best option would be to open enough packs for 4-8 players and catalogue exactly what cards are in each pack so that you could recreate it again later.  But who has time to do all that?

We do!

Who needs a simulator when you've got the real thing!?!

We've cataloged the cards from 40 packs and listed them in a spreadsheet so that you can recreate your own packs!

Spreadsheet Link: Opus VIII Draft Resource

There are enough packs there to support up to an 8-player draft so that you can get some friends together and start practicing.  We've even included a list underneath each box's packs of how many copies of each card you need to recreate the packs.  Generally, you're going to need the following to recreate any given box:

4-7 of each Common
3-5 of each Rare
1-3 of each Hero
1-2 of each Legend

We recommend using proxies for the Legends to keep costs down, and you can use the tool at MogPod Gaming to accomplish that (https://www.mogpodgaming.com/fftcg-proxy-templates).  Even a smaller playgroup will probably have enough extra Commons, Rares and Heroes to pool together to make a communal drafting set.  If you're interested in giving this a try here are some tips on how to assemble your own set to draft with.

1.  This is a lot like assembling a cube for something like All-Star Draft, but with the added benefit that very few of the cards will be Legends.  This makes the cost much more affordable, especially if you get some of your playgroup to donate some Commons, Rares and Heroes!

2.  We recommend sleeving up these extras to essentially make your own cube pool to draft with, ideally with opaque backs so that you have the option to use proxies for the Legends.  This will also cut down on the overall cost to assemble what you need despite the investment of buying a whole lot of sleeves.

3.  Once you've collected all the copies of each card that you need, you've got to assemble the packs.  Spread the work around a bit by assigning each player 5 packs from our list to assemble and then you can randomize the pack distribution a bit afterward when you hand them out.

4.  At an actual Square Enix event, they will replace the foil in a pack with a random card from the set.  For maximum accuracy our lists include what the foil card was in each pack and to keep it all simple you can put a non-foil copy of the listed card in the packs when you build them.  The replacements for the foils will never include Starter cards, so if the pack you're building had a Starter foil in it, feel free to replace it with another card from Opus VIII (ideally one that wasn't in the foil slot in another pack of the same box).

Drafting provides a very different social experience as well!

Currently the spreadsheet only has 40 packs, which is enough to to a 8-player draft.  However, if you keep assembling from the same packs for several drafts you may start to recognize and remember the packs in the pool.  This can lead to diminishing returns as you have more information than you usually will in a draft.  But we've got you covered there as well!  Not only will we be adding the contents of additional boxes to the spreadsheet, but you can check out images of each and every pack of a 6-Box Case on our Facebook page!

Facebook: Photo Albums of Boxes

With 6 different boxes of packs to choose to assemble/recreate, you're guaranteed to have enough variety to keep experiencing a fresh draft every time you do it.

We hope this helps you to practice your drafting skills without having to shell out a ton of money!  If you have any comments or suggestions about this resource, you can let us know in the comments or reach out through Facebook or e-mail.  Happy Drafting!