EE Booster Draft
Contents |
Emperor Edition Booster Draft Format
General Information
Draft Set-Up
Once arranged and seated in their Councils, players may then open their first booster. If there are multiple sets in the draft, the set of the first booster to open is determined by the tournament organizer. If there is a Premium card in that pack, set that aside. Those cards do not go into your deck and are not used for drafting. However, the back of the Premium card will have your Governor's Estate. Then, players look through that booster and select one card from that pack. Once that card has been selected, it becomes part of their Cache and is no longer considered part of the booster pack. The rest of the booster pack is turned face-down and passed to the person on his right. Once everyone has selected their card, they may pick up the booster that was just passed to them and select another card for their Cache, again passing the remains of the booster to the person on their right. This continues until the last card is selected and there are no more cards.
Once the first booster is depleted, the tournament organizer signals which set's booster players open next. Like the first booster, players select their cards. But this time players pass the booster to the left instead of the right. Players continue until that booster is depleted and go on to the third booster. The passing direction continues to alternate, with odd-numbered boosters passed to the right and even-numbered boosters passed to the left.
Building Your Deck
After all the boosters have been depleted, players begin the deck building process using the cards in their personal Cache. In addition to the drafted cards, each player also adds one Governor's Estate stronghold to their Cache. This is the stronghold you will use for your deck. If your booster packs contained Premium cards, you can find your Governor's Estate on the back of them. If your draft did not have any Premium cards, a proxy of Governor's Estate may be used. It is recommended that you print a proxy of Governor's Estate out before the tournament for reference. Players then have a time limit set by the tournament organizer for deck building.
Draft Specific Rules
• Decks must contain at least 20 Dynasty cards and 20 Fate cards. All cards in decks must either be Emperor Edition legal. Cards which are not bugged for Emperor Edition, such as proxies cards which may not go into your deck, may not be played.
• If you ever need to take a card from an empty deck, immediately take all cards from your appropriate discard pile and shuffle them to create that deck again.
• After a celestial or event enters the discard pile, it is removed from the game.
• Players may include as many copies of any single card in their decks as they were able to draft, but they must abide by all other deck building and play restrictions (i.e. Loyal, Unique).
• Once players have created their decks, they simultaneously and secretly write down two of the nine Clan alignments, then they show these clan alignments. Each player has both of his or her chosen Clan alignments, for all card and rule purposes, throughout the tournament. Once that is done the tournament begins.
• Each player begins the game with 5 Fate cards in their hand.
• The player who goes first draws one less card during his first End Phase.
• Players do not begin with Border Keep and Bamboo Harvesters in play.
Prizes
Prizes vary from tournament to tournament, but one common practice to consider is, at the end of the draft tournament, collect all of the Rare cards the players drafted in their booster packs and put them in a Rare pile. Then, starting with the tournament winner and proceeding in final standings order, allow each player to select one card from the Rare pile for him to permanently keep as part of his collection. This method prevents players from "Rare drafting", in which they draft all the Rares they can so after the tournament their collection gets better, while the other players in the tournament suffer. This also gives extra rewards, beyond the standard prizes, to the players who do the best.
Another practice to consider is to follow the above method, but allow last place to pick first, going in reverse order final standings order. This allows the players who are new or have less cards the opportunity to get the rares they might need for their deck.
