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Modern Rotisserie Draft Adds Spice to MTG Play

Ever thought that you were a great deckbuilder, but because all the Magic formats are “solved” you’ve never gotten to prove that? Been stuck in the draft pods and just got crap that came together so wonky you couldn’t build a passable deck? Let me introduce you to your new favorite format, Modern Rotisserie Draft.

How does a modern rotisserie draft actually work? It’s a simple process, really. You get eight people together for a draft pod. You can use fewer, but eight is the most fun.

Drafting

Imagine you put together one pack that contains a single copy of every card in modern. Person one selects a card from all of the cards legal in modern. This card is no longer available for picking by anyone at the table.

The next person in the pod then picks a card that is still available, the third person does the same, then the fourth, and so on. When you get to the last person in the pod, that person picks two cards and sends it back in reverse. This makes it so no one in the draft gets shafted by pick order.

That means pick nine goes to person eight, pick ten goes to person seven, and it keeps going until you are back to the person who picked first. They pick two cards and the process continues until everyone has 42 cards.

To speed things up, most groups start picking two at a time after pick 20.

Out of these 42 cards, everyone makes a 40-card draft deck using as many basic lands as they want. You must draft every other land in your pool.

Gameplay

There are two ways to proceed from here. One is to play a three-round Swiss with a cut to top four. The second is a round robin where everyone plays everyone at their convenience. I like doing a round robin and getting to play everyone’s list. If there is a time crunch, playing a Swiss is perfectly acceptable, too.

The easiest way to accomplish a modern rotisserie draft is by the use of Google docs. We have modified one to make it super easy for your group to draft.

From there, I just use random.org to determine the pick orders in the pod. Here is an example of a draft done by our team here at Gamer Ammo. Keep in mind that we only have six people on this one. You can use whatever number you want, but eight is optimal.

If this format sounds like a blast to you, all you have to do is find eight people to play it with, copy our Google sheet, and start drafting.

To play, you can either use cards that you own, MTGO, or just write some names on cards and turn them sideways.