Now I know that there are a lot of things going on right now, and a lot of suggestions being thrown around. But now might be the perfect time to start thinking about a new game mode, to supplement ranked mode and leagues. Enter the Draft. Admission price TBD. You start by picking characters. -One possible way of doing this is to give the player their choice of race OR class. So if you pick Warrior, you could get any race of warrior. If you pick Human, you will get a Human that could be Wizard, Priest or Warrior. -Of course, the other possible way would be like Quick Draw where you are given 3 random characters whether you like them or not! Once all 3 characters are picked, you start filling out their decks. There are two ways of doing this. The traditional way would involve drafting up to 108 cards, even if you used duplicates for Weapon/Staff cards it would still take a while! But is there a better way? How about instead, you draft Items! Each time you are presented with Items that will be forced into an item slot for that character, for the duration of the draft play. You can't change the items/cards after they have been picked. So for example, you are presented with 3 random Shields and you pick one that is "equipped" and places those 3 cards into that character's deck. The other items disappear. Now, as far as order goes, you could either have: -A fixed order (Weapon/Weapon/Shield/Heavy Armor/Helmet/Weapon/Martial Skill/Racial Skill) for warrior, for example -A random order decided by the RNG, -Or you could offer the player the choice of what item type they would like to select next. This will be somewhat random, but the player can choose between Divine Weapon or Shield, and once they pick the type, pick the item and then pick the type again (this time for two random item slots that haven't been filled already). Make sense? Once the first character is done (all items equipped), move onto the second character and then the third. Now, as for dealing with power tokens, here is what I propose. -Every normal item slot will give you a choice of THREE items- a token-less item, a minor token item, and a major token item, all random. That's level 1-8, 9-17 and level 18 respectively. -Every Weapon/Divine Weapon/Staff slot will give you a choice of 5 items- token-less, one minor, two minor, one minor/one major, and two major. **If a player consumes all of their tokens before they have picked all of their items (or if they already picked 4 token-less items) the system *could* recognise this and give the player 3 equip-able items (and properly costing items, instead of more unnecessary token-less items) each time. Not a necessity though. ** *Actually, smart drafting should be a factor and a player should pick their items for both synergy and to make the best use out of their tokens. I'll leave that last paragraph there for now. Once all 27-30 items have been picked, you may now begin your Draft battles against other players. This could be a three hour event like Leagues, OR you could simply have a fixed number of games with your drafted party (or a fixed number of losses) and at the end of the draft you would receive some prizes. Some notes: -The items "drafted" will never actually be put into your inventory or necessarily "equipped" to your characters. Visually it makes sense to players, but the actual mechanism is to put the appropriate cards into your deck(s). -Similarly, the characters drafted won't be added to your roster! -The draft party will probably need to be separated from your normal party- but again, the system needs to save the character's race, class, (name?), and the 36 cards in their deck, as well as the player's wins and losses with this party. I'm not sure whether it would be easier to code this format as items being "equipped" to characters or for the cards to simply be put into decks. That's not for me to decide as currently I'm not employed by Blue Manchu.
