How to (Not) Run a Draft Boot Camp
Back when I played Magic: The Gathering, most of my friends were a lot better than me (to be clear, that’s true for Flesh and Blood as well). One of my friends was a former rookie of the year hopeful that loved limited. Whenever a new set came out, he went to every prerelease he could find, gathering all the prize packs he could muster. He would then harass all of us to draft the week between the prerelease and release, using his prize packs as the product.
Once release hit, him and some other excellent players shacked up for a weekend and drafted the set an unfathomable amount of times. They called it a “Draft Boot Camp.”
What is a draft boot camp?
As you might have guessed, a draft boot camp is a time where you get in a high volume of quality drafts of the current set with similarly minded people. Most of the time, these boot camps occur right when a draft set releases (like Outsiders, for example). However, you can also “boot camp” before any event you want to prepare for, whether it be the Pro Tour, Road to Nationals, or the Battle Hardened in Pittsburgh.
The key here is to get a lot of exposure to the relevant format, in a manner that is worth your time.
Guidelines for running your own draft boot camp
So you might like the idea of grabbing your friends, setting up shop in someone’s basement in preparation for the upcoming Road to Nationals seasons.
Is it as simple as getting 8 people in a room together and drafting until you run out of booster packs? Well…it can be. Keep in mind the elements of our draft boot camp definition:
High volume of…
Quality drafts…
Of the current set…
With similarly minded people.
Let’s talk about each of these elements individually.
High volume of
You could, of course, go to your friend’s house, bring a box, and draft once. You would probably have fun, learn something, and come away satisfied. After all, the community is the best part of Flesh and Blood. The card game is really just the excuse we use to get together. But a pop-in Saturday draft wouldn’t really help us advance our purposes or goals. We’re looking to get a lot of drafts in to maximize our learning, gain an edge in the format, and prepare us for the upcoming tournament.
You might be able to get in one draft a night three nights a week, but what if we could do five drafts in on a Saturday the week before the tournament, in addition to our usual draft nights? We would multiply our learning and edge by a large amount, just by the sheer volume alone.
Quality drafts
The purpose of these drafts is to simulate competitive environments. When you’re drafting at Armory, and you’re tasked with drafting either a solid rare that plays a key role in your deck vs. a $30 Majestic that you can’t play, you’ll be hard pressed to not take the majestic.
This is, of course, bad practice. In Day 2 of a Calling or when you’re at the Pro Tour, it’s advisable to take the card that makes your deck better. The return on investment of a solid role playing card goes up, and if your goals are to win the tournament or place well, the value of the $30 Majestic plummets. No one blames you for taking the $30 Majestic (or a $15,000 Mythic), but you do have to be aware that when you make these decisions, you’re making your deck, and thereby your chances to win the tournament, worse.
It’s for these reasons that your draft boot camp should disincentivize “money” drafting, e.g. simply drafting the most valuable card in a pack. There are several ways to do this, but here are two of the most common:
Each person supplies their own three packs. At the end of the draft, going in order of best record to worst, draft each desirable card that was opened. This incentivizes solid play and rewards those who are playing the best Flesh and Blood in each draft.
Have one person supply the box for each draft. This way, whoever provided the box keeps all the cards drafted and there is no incentive at all to money draft.
Having one person supply the box for each draft is most common, but I enjoy the stakes attached to drafting based on performance. There is an argument that the point of testing isn’t to win but to instead improve, and the inclusion of results oriented rewards undermines collective improvement. It also disincentivizes discussing lines and interacting with your testing partner in a collaborative way.
But I say let’s roll them bones. (Just kidding, do the one person supply the box thing)
Of the current set
At this point, I can’t imagine you’ll schedule a draft boot camp for Welcome to Rathe, or god forbid Uprising, but it should be stated that the purpose of your boot camp should be narrowed in on a goal of getting better at the draft format in front of you.
Draft in Flesh and Blood, like most games that have a draft component, varies so much from set to set. To be sure, many core principles transfer from set to set, but the reason draft is so appealing is that it’s a fresh, undiscovered landscape each time a set is released.
You probably won’t benefit too much from a Tales of Aria boot camp at this point, if only because there aren’t any competitive tournaments using it as a format (that being said, if you and your buddies are going to boot camp ToA, let me know…I’m in).
With similarly minded people
This element is really where the crux of draft boot camping comes into play. You may not want to boot camp out 5 – 10 drafts with teammates in one day. Alternatively, you might, but your buddies may not.
Like anything in life, it all comes down to goals and expectations. If you want to get better at Flesh and Blood draft, get more serious about competing, and better structure your practice time, you’re going to have a hard time if your practice partners don’t also share that goal.
I don’t include this section to demean people who have less ambitious goals. In fact, my own goals with the game are in a weird, undefinable spot right now. All I know is that if your group of drafters aren’t on the same page as to the objectives of the draft boot camp, you’ll leave frustrated.
Common pitfalls/tips and tricks
When you go to organize a boot camp for your friends/testing partners, it will generally be a smooth experience once you nail down a date and location. That being said, some things may pop up that you can get ahead of if you plan properly.
Not having clearly defined goals
As just discussed, not having clearly defined goals really undermines any testing enterprise. For the most recent boot camp I organized for Outsiders, I didn’t do a good job of seeing what we wanted out of the boot camp experience.
We did six drafts (I think) that day, and it was definitely useful. That being said, it may have been better if we had articulated some group goals ahead of time. For example, one boot-camper (I don’t love this phrasing either) mentioned that it would have been a good idea for people to have created tier lists for rares and commons, or at least have a general idea of theories they wanted to prove or disprove.
I talked a little bit about preliminary card evaluation for limited in last week’s quadrant theory edition, and I agree with our boot-camper that it would have been nice to have hypothesis to prove or disprove at the camp. We could have even used quadrant theory to have pre-camp meetings about what cards we wanted to get more information about.
Likewise, I regret not gathering more data. In any card game testing, there is often too small of a sample size for any data driven exercise to prove useful. That being said, in a six draft day, that’s around 72 matches happening. It’s not statically insignificant if you find that, of the 10 Uzuri vs. Riptide matches, all 10 resulted in Uzuri fatiguing Riptide.
It would also be useful to know what people’s tendencies for going first/second were. After the fact, it would be useful to go back to players and ask, “How did going second feel? Would you have changed your decision? In the matches since the boot camp, have you learned anything else about that decision point?”
I bring all of these examples forward as examples of things to consider about what you want out of the experience and to hopefully define them before heading into your boot camp.
Not getting a clear head count
This “pitfall” is here mostly to prevent people feeling annoyed at when they have to sit out for a draft. It sucks to be the ninth person at an eight person event. Because our goal is to get quality drafts, it undermines the experience to add a 9th or 10th drafter to the pod.
At the most recent boot camp I ran, I over booked. Fortunately, people were flexible and cool with being randomly excluded from a draft or two throughout the day. And because we had an even amount, those two players could play classic constructed during the draft they sat out.
Scheduling with card players is pretty challenging, so I understand the difficulty of wanting to make sure you have enough people on the day of the boot camp. That being said, if you’re worried that someone might flake (I say this knowing full well that I’m the flake of my group), you might want to address the more pressing elephant in the room of whether that person has goals that are aligned for the type of boot camp that you’re looking to run. See, I told you it’s all about goals.
If you are in a position where you feel it’s best to overbook, I would plan for the worst case scenario of everyone showing up. Make sure that people know they may have to sit for a draft or two. They can otherwise be involved, like helping with pick decisions or discussing lines of play, but I felt bad when people had to sit in our drafts, so I just want to minimize that where possible.
Not having product
It would really suck to get through two or three drafts, be gaining some momentum towards a productive day, only to realize that you’ve ran out of sealed product!
My Magic friend’s group solved this problem by requiring each boot-camper to provide their own box. Entry was available to basically anyone, but to get in the door, you had to provide a box.
I understand this isn’t feasible for everyone, and you may not want to exclude friends from the drafts simply because they can’t spring for a box. No one should be excluded for that. So just keep in mind product availability heading into the boot camp. If you’re going to aim for six drafts, make sure you have six confirmed boxes accounted for before the weekend. If you don’t have the product, you can simply adjust expectations for the boot camp!
Conclusion
A draft boot camp is mostly just jamming a bunch of drafts with particular goals in mind. Anytime you take a simple thing (here, drafting) and tag “serious” onto the end of it, you just want to make sure you do what you can to make it worth your time.
I love draft boot camping. There’s something about getting together with a bunch of buddies for a whole day of gaming that really reminds you of what’s good in life. It also has the competitive upside as well: if you do this the first weekend product is available, you’ll undoubtedly have more drafts in than anyone else at your next tournament. If you do this ahead of a major event you’re preparing for, you’ll be more prepared and focused for the event than you would have otherwise.
Have you ran a draft boot camp before? How did you handle things? What issues did you run into, and what was the group’s consensus of the boot camp? Let me know in the blog’s comment section. If you do decide to give draft boot camp a go, I hope you let me know how it goes!
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