Solomon Draft

Solomon Draft is a casual limited Magic: The Gathering format that allows players to draft with just two people.

Description

Each player needs three booster packs, which they open without looking at the contents. All six packs are shuffled together, creating a combined pool of ninety cards.

Decide who will be "Player A" and who will be "Player B" through a random method, generally a die roll. Player A gets to draft first, while Player B gets to choose whether he or she wants to play first during the games. To draft, Player A flips over the top eight cards of the deck and then divides them into two piles. They can be divided evenly into two piles of four cards, or disproportionately into piles of five and three, six and two, seven and one, or even eight and zero.

Once Player A has split the cards, Player B picks one of those piles and adds it to his or her drafted cards. The other pile goes to Player A. The process is then repeated, this time with Player B separating the top eight cards from the deck into two piles and Player A selecting a pile. The process continues, alternating between Player A and Player B splitting the piles, until all the cards have been drafted. (The last batch will have ten cards rather than eight.) You then each build decks of at least 40 cards, adding as many basic lands (Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains or Forests) as you like.

Many players enjoy the Solomon Draft format because it challenges them in different ways than a traditional Booster draft. Instead of simply choosing a single card from a single pack, players have to analyze what colors they think their opponent will play, balance powerful cards with mediocre ones in order to have good cards in their own pile, and remember the cards that have already been drafted for both decks.

Four-player Solomon Draft

A variation on Solomon Draft can be played with four players. Instead of putting all product together, instead each booster is used separately. The player who opens the booster must make four piles, usually of about equal strength. Then the players in a previously established turn order take a pile each, with the player who opened the booster getting the last pick (the remaining pile after the other three players had their choice). Players open boosters in turns until the product is used up.

Players have to make 40 card decks using any number of basic lands. Usually the game is played in a round robin format, with the usual die roll to decide who may choose to start or draw in the first game of a match.