Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Worlds format should be Rochester Draft

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Scizor

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When was the last time you were facing a bad matchup at Worlds and were twirling your thumbs and considering flipping the table until they got an unplayable start? I bet it was recently. Everyone gets bad matchups once in awhile, even our beloved Jason Klaczynski, who should have 4 straight World Championship titles, mind you. Well, I have a solution for luck-based formats and bad matchups: Make the Worlds format Rochester Draft.

Imagine the amount of skill involved in this format! You get to see what your opponents are playing because all the cards are on the table while drafting! There are no surprises here! No more of that Pachirisu out of nowhere to discard your Energy Gain attached to Palkia. No more Machop/Rare Candy/Macheap/Fighting Energy to OHKO your helpless basic.

Rochester Draft would also save much time in events. Being able to run swiss rounds with only 20 minutes and 4 prizes is amazing. Just imagine what you could do in place of this time! Maybe after the tournaments are over, side events with a deck constructed format could be ran! Deck constructed should only be used for side events, though.

This move is also cost effective. The company already prints the cards, how hard could it possibly be to provide each PTO with hundreds of booster packs each event? I bet it's a lot easier to do than having to provide those organizers and judges with compensation for 40 minute swiss and 60+ minute matchplay all day and all night for lager scale events.

Rochester draft is the way to go and anyone doubting it has not tried it and does not realize how much potential this format truly has.
 
LCQ should be Draft though.
It would be like PTQ in MTG.
But this wouldn't be a bad idea.
(even though I'm getting sick of all the joke threads.)
 
TheDoctor said:
Can you explain how Rochester drafts work exactly..?
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Of course. From our friends at WOTC: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Article.aspx?x=magic/magiconline/formats

Rochester Draft. Rochester Draft is a lot like Booster Draft, but there are a few important differences. Instead of each player opening a pack at the same time, only one pack is open at any time. That pack is laid out face up, so you’ll see all the cards drafted at your table. Also, the draft order reverses after everyone at the table has taken one card from the pack.

Let’s say that eight people are starting a Rochester Draft, and they’re numbered from one to eight clockwise around the table. Player 1 opens the pack and lays it out on the table. After everyone has had a chance to see the cards, player 1 drafts a card. Then player 2 drafts, and so on around the table.

After player 8-the person to the right of the player who opened the pack-has drafted a card, player 8 drafts a second card and drafting continues back to the right until all the cards have been drafted. (Since there are only fifteen cards in a booster pack, you won’t get a second card from a pack you open.)

Player 2 opens the next pack, and so player 1 gets the eighth and ninth picks from that pack. This process is repeated until everyone at the table has opened one booster pack. Then player 8 opens a second pack, but drafting starts to the right. Player 7 opens a pack, and so on. Player 1 is the first to open his or her third pack, and drafting starts to the left for the rest of the packs.
 
Or the slightly different version from POP that uses pairs of packs.
http://www.go-pokemon.com/op/tournaments/docs/2008-2009/Official_Formats.pdf said:
1.2.3. Rochester Draft
In a Rochester Draft event, players receive booster packs from the Tournament Organizer at the beginning of the event. Players split into equal sized groups, which should not exceed 8 players per group, and are seated in a circle.

At a signal from the Tournament Organizer, the player designated as player 1 opens two of his or her booster packs and lays each card face up on the table so that the cards are clearly visible to all players. The players use a snaking draft to select their cards. Player 1 selects the first card and, moving around the circle in a clockwise direction, each player selects one card from the pack, placing it in front of him or her face up. The last player selects two cards, after which the draft proceeds in a counter-clockwise direction. When the draft gets back to the player 1, that player selects two cards, after which the draft proceeds in a clockwise direction once again. The draft continues in this pattern until the last card has been selected. Once the last card from the opened pack is taken, players may realign the cards they drafted in any manner they choose.

After all of the cards from the first two packs have been selected, player 2 (to the left of player 1) opens two booster packs and lays each card face up on the table so that the cards are clearly visible to all players. Starting with player 2 and moving clockwise, players select cards from the opened pack, adding them to their card pools, using the same snaking draft described above. As the cards in opened packs are exhausted, the player to the left of player 2 opens two packs and each of the players takes turns selecting a card, starting with the player who opened the pack.

This process repeats until all remaining booster packs have been opened and all of the cards have been selected. Each player constructs a 40-card deck, using only the cards he or she selected and any basic Energy provided by the Tournament Organizer. Players have 30 minutes to construct their decks.

Players may not trade the cards they selected in the draft with other players until the tournament ends. The Tournament Organizer may require players to fill out deck lists, including the cards in their decks and any cards not being used. Once the first round of the tournament begins, players may not alter the contents of their decks.

Booster packs used for a Rochester Draft tournament should come from the same set to preserve Evolution chains, which may not exist outside of that set.
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Have POP ever sponsored a Rochester Draft?

One detail I didn't see is that the first round pairings are fixed by where you sit in the draft. You play your opposite number so you can see what they pick and try to counter draft.
 
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I LOVE Rochester draft. The last one I did was the final WOTC Professor Cup Top 8. It's the most skillful way to draft, IMO. (I only got 3rd, so I wasn't the best drafter - Eric was.)

BTW, JasonK was Top 8 at that event, so a Rochester draft would certainly not hinder his dominance in this game.

It would be fun to see how the Japanese would do in this format.
 
What is the difference, Jason would just win this too. Going to have to make Worlds a weight lifting competition before Jason takes anything but first place.
 
...um... except for the fact that it is pretty random what you get.

Why would you do this? Why not make a more skill involved game?

We face bad matchups, but that is part of the deck building process. You take into account bad matchups, and tech for it.

Also, if a deck has too many bad matchups, you don't play it. That's part of the game.
 
I disagree that the format for the main event should be rochester. You do have a lot of control over your matchups by the deck choice you make. Everyone says that all decks have autolosses and I guess that this is true to a degree, but it should be obvious that some of these "autolosses" are going to turn up more than others. You have to be able to accurately predict the metagame to do well. Machamp (etc) donks are partially under your control in that you have to build your deck with the possibility of a donk in mind, although I'll admit this is still a major problem.

I think a seperate rochester championship would be pretty interesting though.
 
Has anybody thought about what language the drafted cards should be in. Given that there is a lot of information to absorb in a very short time any choice would give a huge advantage to certain players.
 
mozartrules said:
Has anybody thought about what language the drafted cards should be in. Given that there is a lot of information to absorb in a very short time any choice would give a huge advantage to certain players.
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English, of course! To punish the silly Japanese for getting everything months early.
 
prodigal_fanboy said:
English, of course! To punish the silly Japanese for getting everything months early.
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The sad part is that I can't tell if that is sarcasm. If it is, it is someone else's idea, and that is why draft will never be a worlds format. Everyone will want to raft in their language and say that everyone else should siply know what every card does.
 
It can't be too hard to print them in every language, right? :p
 
pat460 said:
The sad part is that I can't tell if that is sarcasm. If it is, it is someone else's idea, and that is why draft will never be a worlds format. Everyone will want to raft in their language and say that everyone else should siply know what every card does.
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I obviously didn't do my job. It was. However, it's not like this would be a pre-release where everyone is "Zomg what cards are these?" but rather a draft from say the most current pack, etc, etc. All the players would know all the cards if they were a high enough caliber to compete in the event, and then they'd have staffers on hand to translate.
 
Let me be the first to say this: NO.

Pokemon is TERRIBLE for limited play. At least for competitive limited play. Sealed is a disaster, and so is draft. Rochester is slightly better, but still far beneath constructed in terms of reliable competitive play.

I remember when WotC used to do limited events. Here are the limited events I played in:

Central Stadium Challenge 2002: Took 2nd. We drafted Gym Heros and Challenge for 6 rounds of swiss ( I believe I X-1ed or X-0ed that ) and than Rochester'd top 8, where I lost to wiffing all my Sabrina's Haunter flips to Chuck in top 2.

Professor Championships 2002: Rounds 1-3 were draft, and I went 2-1 there, and than 5-0ed swiss in constructed to make top cut, which was again, Rochester. Beat Chuck in top 2 to win the whole thing. ( REMATCH! )

Professor Championships 2003: Rounds 1-3 were again draft, and I went 3-0 during this portion of it, than flubbed the constructed portion with some pretty bad draws.

Team Multi Player Championships 2003: 3-0'd the first draft portion in TEAM DRAFT, than X-0-1 IDed into the finals, where it was TEAM ROCHESTER DRAFT ( the Master Trainers were actually, day of tourney, trying to figure out how that would even work :p It was amusing ) and got 3rd overall.

So I've played in alot of higher level draft events for Pokemon and done quite well, and I always play Pre-Releases and side drafts. I'd argue I have as much Pokemon limited experience as anyone else here. Having played Magic quite a bit lately,a nd having played VS and The Spoils, both with very strong limited tournaments, I can tell you that Pokemon limited is NOT a good format.

I won't get into the inherent issue of bombs vs no bombs, which due to the amount of tutoring effects ( be it attacks, trainers, or the like ) becomes a much bigger issue in here than other games, where it is significantly more difficult to draw. I'll cite the Aqua Vs Magma pre-releases as an example: Whoever opened any of the basic EXes pretty much smashed everyone. Every set still has bombs.

Yes, there is alot of skill in rochester draft, but I will also argue if you take a table of 8 near identically skilled players, that the winner of that tournament, if played out numerous times, would gravitate towards certain seats, more so than players. You don't eliminate luck of the draw, prize issues, OR matchups. You may not have Machamp vs Kingdra disadvantages, but you still have " I drafted Grass, hes the idiot who drafted fire, which has like 3 guys per set max" disadvantage.

Plus, actually PLAY a game of limited. The skill needed drops DRASTICALLY. Plays are terribly simplistic, misplays borderline impossible, and the games are boring or often come down to status flips. I GUARANTEE YOU, that if you take only Worlds qualified players and had them play limited games, they would all make the same moves, every time. The skill needed to DRAFT the deck still leads to a LARGE skill net loss for the format as a whole because the games are SO simple.

I LOVE limited. One of the reasons I enjoy playing magic so much. But Pokemon can't support it well. It may be fun for the occasional pick up draft, but it isn't good for say, Worlds.
 
The only thing I don't like about draft is that people get as much energy as they want. If you want energy, you should have to DRAFT energy. This goes for EVERY set! No more free energy!
 
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