The Problem With Drafting

[Scott]

Over in the ginormous Wave 11 thread, GB brought up a good point about drafting putting units into play that normally don't see much play. My problem with drafting is that it takes sooo long to let my friends shift through my stacks of units that we cut it out a long time ago.

I don't play competitively and my friends don't own any HS, they just play over here since I have a ton. Therefore, they don't know the units as well as I do (but I did send them the Battleplan link, so we'll see if that changes). So I usually pre-make a bunch of different armies and let them pick. Of course, I optimize those armies for synergies, not to draft against what's in the other armies - I don't know which armies will get picked.

I would like to draft, if we had the time. So I'm looking for any tips on speeding up the draft or limiting the options in a coherent, fair way.

Also, is this part of the reason others don't draft so much?

[Yodaking]

Yup. We drafted armies when we only had a few units to choose from but now I have a few hundered different units, all with different sysnergies to consider. It takes way too long to draft so I just let everyone make an army and then I make an army out of what ever is left.

[1Mmirg]

Drafting really is a great way to play, but once you have hundreds of units, it is also hard or just cumbersome to pull off. Here is a thread devoted to trying to make drafting (in various forms and styles) more viable and diverse. (It also links to several other threads related to drafting as well.)

Hope you find it useful!

[Dysole]

We kind of pseudo-draft. There's usually at least three of us that either have an army already thought up in their head or know the cards well enough that they can come up with an army on the fly. Then we kind of figure out generally what armies everyone wants to play and then see if there's any conflicts. If so, someone (usually me because I often have three different armies planned) will swap stuff out and everyone ends up happy. Not sure it's the ideal situation but it works for us and drafting only ends up taking half an hour or so most of it looking for the figures.

~Dysole, who thinks he wants to do either a Quasatch or Sniper army next

[Toad Rocket]

Drafting has become less common with the more units we got. Time being the biggest factor like you said.

What we have done is compile a spreadsheet of all our units. If we want to do the draft it has to be done a couple days in advance via email (or facebook now). Even that takes long, but at least you can do it through out a few days. Better then sitting down for a couple hour looking over units trying to draft that way.

For example;
Email 1
Toad: First draft= Cyprien
Response
Forrest: Fine then, I will draft Major Q10

Email 2
Toad: Toad, dang, I should of drafted him later. Next draft is 10th Regiment.
Response
Forrest: Hmm, the 10th huh....Ok I will draft Kaemon.

And so forth, a few days it does take. But once it is game night everything is set up right away to get into a game.

[Onacara]

It also depends on the size of the armies you are playing and how well people know "what they want".

If your figs/cards are organized then that part of it wont take so long either.

[Scott]

Good ideas/links up above, thanks all! I might try the email thing, but I don't know if my buddies would go for that or not - it's a pretty casual game night.

Originally Posted by Onacara

If your figs/cards are organized then that part of it wont take so long either.

No problems there, I'm over-organized and I have to re-sort everything after the game as no one else seems to be able to keep the card in the order they start in.

[chaoserver]

Drafting leads to the most quality and differentiated games, but used to take forever until:
1. Minor, but everyone out of the 8-10 different players we have around familiarized with all the units by name, general ect. And knew what they liked.
2. Very very helpful, get a box for the different generals, big enough so you can see pretty much all of them, without any being on top of the other. It's important as the game goes on and figures die to put them back in the boxes, and also be sure never to get a figure in the wrong box. Utgar is the only box that has enough figs to still be difficult to sift through.

3. Organize all cards according to their general, either get sleeves and put multiple cards behind one another, or get a cd book and put them in, separated by generals, and put multiples behind one another.

This honestly makes for much funner games than pre made armies. That combined with having two different maps and remaking them from time to time, leads to amazing games. I recommend you try this out, of course it's going to take longer, but even with 700 point games, doing this, we get in two games a night easily.

[jschild]

I like limited drafting. Let's say you are having a 500 point tourny or game. You can bring say 1000 or 1500 points worth of figures total. That is your "draft pool". That way you can bring some common counters, while keeping your main army intact. This deals somewhat with the OMG I have every wave (wish I had this problem) in the game syndrome while drafting. With my family we typically double the points if we draft, so 500 = 1000.

[A_Train]

Originally Posted by Onacara

If your figs/cards are organized then that part of it wont take so long either.

This is key. Good organization should mean that the draft should go quickly. My cards are all in a CD binder, organized by general, and by point value.
My figures are all sorted in Plano Dividers by General, and labeled from above. I would say our average draft time is less than 5 minutes, but some would run up to 10 minutes if someone took a bit of time to plan things out.

My group is pretty casual, and I own most of the Heroscape we play with, and we almost always draft. The only time we don't is if someone shows up and really wants to try out a particular army, they may just choose the whole thing first.

[killercactus]

Drafting gets a lot easier when the players involved know the cards and their abilities, and how many are available.

When my friends and I draft, it doesn't take long at all because we know the cards, and that I own pretty much everything. If I say "I'll take Deathwalker 9000", my opponent can say "I'll take 3 squads of Omnicron Repulsors", because he knows what they do and that I have at least 3 squads of them. There's no need to sift through cards.

If the players aren't as versed in Heroscape as this, I suggest pre-making armies and letting players draft those, starting with a limited draft pool, or make sure the cards are very well organized.

[kolakoski]

Well met!

Resurrecting this here.

Originally Posted by jschild

I like limited drafting. Let's say you are having a 500 point tourny or game. You can bring say 1000 or 1500 points worth of figures total. That is your "draft pool". That way you can bring some common counters, while keeping your main army intact. This deals somewhat with the OMG I have every wave (wish I had this problem) in the game syndrome while drafting. With my family we typically double the points if we draft, so 500 = 1000.

The TD and those who know they're coming ahead of time can ensure that the necessary units are available to all. There could even be a different set of units to draft on each table. The draft would go very quickly if there were 10-12 Cards/Choices total in a draft.