Block Draft Pack Order?

[Agetian]

I wanted to ask about something I noticed just recently (but didn't pay attention to before for some reason) - in draft mode, when choosing Block Draft, there is something odd about the order in which packs are opened, I think... At least if I recall correctly as to how it used to work in the past. For example, when drafting Mirrodin, I'm offered a choice to draft 5DN/DST/MRD (in this order), but I recall the usual draft order being the inverse of that (MRD/DST/5DN). I'm not sure if both drafts are actually valid (I don't see why not, but I'm not sure because tbh I haven't participated in many real drafts). At any rate, should anything be changed about the current order of packs in draft mode? Perhaps it should be made possible to draft both ways (in both the normal and the reverse order), or maybe we're good as we are (and I'm just forgetting something about the drafts), or maybe we should change the order to the reverse of the current one?... Your thoughts are welcome here, if anything needs to be changed, I can take a look at what needs tweaking.

- Agetian

[Agetian]

I'm committing an experimental change that adds four more choices for block drafts which are the inverse of the current ones (set numbers 0/1/2, 0/2/2, 1/1/2, and 1/2/2 in addition to only 2/2/1, 2/1/1, 2/2/0, and 2/1/0). Let me know if it's worth keeping or not.

- Agetian

[RumbleBBU]

It's always been this funny "reverse order" as long as I've been using Forge...(i.e., not very long, really).

I wouldn't add more entries to the list, though - instead, just reverse all entries, and no-one should complain.

Take a look at SealedDeckFormat.java. If you added "correct-order" alternative entries for all those "reverse-order" entries, you would get long lists for Sealed Deck games that use 9 different sets...

Much better to just reverse the order in all entries. (But that too will entail a lot of manual labor for SealedDeckFormat.java - or a snippet of code that deftly reverses the order 'on the fly'.)

[Hellfish]

Reverse is the official order since...Scars, I think? Might be ISD. It does make drafting RAV or MRD a bit odd.

[RumbleBBU]

Ah, I wouldn't have known of that - it was well after my time.

But for Sealed Deck, there'd no real reason not to reverse the current 'reverse order', is there? Except perhaps to remain consistent with Draft.

[Agetian]

I believe that since there are two official orders of drafting, presumably pre-ISD and post-ISD, I still say we keep both orders, or at least maybe implement some kind of an option for the user to choose which order he would like to use, or maybe make this dependent on the block chosen (but for that, we need to know for sure which block was the first to reverse the order, and I'd probably need some help because I don't know how to easily find out if the set was, for instance, pre-ISD or post-ISD...) But, if we keep only one possible order like it was before, it'll make drafting certain sets weird.

P.S. I don't think it matters for the sealed deck mode because you still get all the cards in the boosters, no matter what order you unpack the sealed products in.

- Agetian

[friarsol]

I think leaving both directions as choices is fine. Maybe in the future we could just have a Booster Draft dialog, where set choices are sent in, how many packs to draft, and you could just select a pack order on your own, with some preset values. (Release order, reverse release order, etc).

[Agetian]

Yes, I agree, Sol. That's a nice decision for the time being.

- Agetian