Drafting Aidalon
This article originally appeared as part of Hubworld: Aidalon’s Gamefound campaign.
Hello everyone!
My name is Andrew Fischer, the game design director at Earthborne Games. As I have provided support to Cory and Michael in their development of Hubworld: Aidalon, I have been a vocal advocate for including a draft format (or any other “limited” format) in the game. I have played a lot of these formats in different games across the years and felt that this game would be perfect to do something similar. So, when it came time to write the article about our draft format, we decided that I would be the perfect person to talk about it.
Before we dive into talking about draft though, first I’m going to review how our normal deck construction works for “constructed” play. This system is phenomenal in its own right, and I think understanding how both our constructed and draft formats work will better allow you to appreciate what they both bring to the table.
Constructed Format
The constructed format is the mode of play that most people think of when you discuss a card game like Hubworld: Aidalon. Each player shows up to play with a deck (or many decks) that they have constructed from their collection. Constructing a deck allows you to explore different playstyles, experience the game from new perspectives, and express your creativity and game mastery by shaping how the game itself is played.
Each constructed deck must contain the following:
Exactly 37 total cards.
Exactly 6 agents (from any affiliation), with no more than 1 copy of each agent (by title).
Exactly 1 seeker.
No more than 2 copies of each obstacle, source, and moment (by title).
The six agents you choose are a very important decision, as they determine the card affiliations that you are allowed to include in your deck. As you choose your Seeker, and moments, sources, and obstacles that make up the rest of your deck, you'll compare the number of affiliation icons they require to the number of Agents you have with a matching affiliation. A card with two green (Old Aidalon) affiliation icons, for example, requires that you include two green Agents in your deck.
We discuss the above information on the campaign page, but here I wanted to dive into a bit more detail on what makes this system so interesting. Since a card can have anywhere from 1 to 6 affiliation icons, this means that each card can be “deeper” in a given affiliation. Meaning that to add that card to your deck you may need up to 6 agents from that affiliation, fully committing your deck to that color. A card having a higher count of affiliation icons doesn’t necessarily mean it will be more powerful as a result, but it will likely use mechanics and create combos that are more exclusive to that affiliation’s identity. We don’t have time to get into affiliation identities here, but you can check out Cory’s update from yesterday for more information on those.
This system creates a very interesting push and pull to deckbuilding. Do you run an agent or two from each faction so you can run all of the “staple” cards with lower numbers of affiliation icons? Do you run all six agents in the same affiliation to get access to its more exclusive mechanics? Or do you split down the middle to try and get the best of just two affiliations? This push and pull of constructed deckbuilding creates a ton of different choices while allowing the actual cards themselves during gameplay to use a shared resource system (of shards).
The iconographic image in the art window of some cards is placeholder.
Our draft format also uses these affiliation icons, but in a slightly different way.
Draft Format
As I mentioned at the intro, I was very interested in including a limited format in Hubworld: Aidalon. “Limited” is a term from Magic the Gathering referring to a format where players don’t bring preconstructed decks. Instead, they follow a set of rules to construct decks from a limited pool of cards and then play those decks against each other. This is most commonly done as a draft, but can take a lot of different shapes. The common thread between all of these is that players don’t show up with decks constructed, instead they are always building decks from a limited set of cards together following the same rules. Limited formats have a few fun benefits:
They can be a great way for new players who don’t have cards of their own to try out the game while being on the same playing field (at least on access to cards) as other players.
They allow experienced players to play with the cards they already know in a whole new context. In a limited pool, a card that they would never use in constructed might become incredibly valuable.
If the format uses different deckbuilding rules, it can allow you to combine cards in ways you couldn’t during constructed play.
We tried out a few different approaches to limited for Hubworld: Aidalon, and after several iterations we settled on a design for drafting that we think accomplished all three of these goals in a fun and elegant way.
Drafting uses a single set of Hubworld: Aidalon cards. Each box is designed to be a perfect set for drafting, but as more cards come out, players are encouraged to mix-and-match sets to create their perfect draft. When drafting, separate the set into 5 piles:
Seekers
Agents
All other cards with 5 or 6 affiliation icons
All other cards with 3 or 4 affiliation icons
All other cards with 1 or 2 affiliation icons
Shuffle each of these piles and then perform the following steps:
Deal out a bank of 3 of these Seekers. Players take turns picking 1 Seeker from these, refilling the bank after each pick. Continue this until each player has 2 Seekers.
Deal 6 Agents facedown to each player as a "pack." Each player will then take 1 card from their pack and pass the rest to their right. Continue this until all players have 6 Agents.
Deal 9 of the 5/6 icon cards facedown to each player as a pack. Each player will then take one card from their pack and pass the rest to their left. Continue this until all players have 9 of these cards.
Deal 12 of the 3/4 icon cards facedown to each player as a pack. Each player will then take one card from their pack and pass the rest to their right. Continue this until all players have 12 of these cards.
Deal 15 of the 1/2 icon cards facedown to each player as a pack. Each player will then take one card from their pack and pass the rest to their left. Continue this until all players have 15 of these cards.
This process will leave each player with a pool of 44 cards. They then build a deck from this pool that must contain:
Exactly 37 total cards, but these cards can be from any affiliation, regardless of what agents are in the deck.
Exactly 6 agents.
Exactly 1 seeker.
Why I Love Our Draft Rules
These draft rules use the same affiliation icons that are used for constructed play, but turn them on their head a bit. By using them for determining when you have to pick your cards for your deck, but ignoring them for the final deckbuilding, it allows us to make a drafting process that is smooth but still creates some very interesting decision-making for a few reasons:
Deckbuilding decision-making is staged by specificity: As I discussed a bit above, the more affiliation icons a card has, the “deeper” into an affiliation that card’s mechanics are. These mechanics are more unique to that affiliation, so they are more rare, and they are more likely to synergize with other cards in that faction. They are the “build-around” cards that really define a deck. So, by starting with Seekers and Agents, and then proceeding with the higher icon-count cards first, you are drafting the cards for your deck from the most specific, combo-heavy cards, out to the most general “staple” cards last. In this way, you can construct the skeleton of your deck’s strategy first, and then flesh it out with your later picks. But since you are drafting 44 total cards, you still have some wiggle room to hedge your bets early with a couple options.
Your number of choices increases as specificity decreases: You might have noticed that at each step in the draft, you are picking from 3 more cards than the step before it. This means that as the card abilities get less specific, you get more and more choices. This gives the ideal mix of high pip and low pip cards for a functional deck, but it also eases you into the decision-making of the draft a bit easier. The early choices when your options are open, you are choosing between just a few cards, while at the end when you already have most of your deck built to guide you, your options open up and you’re deciding which of 15 different cards might best help your deck succeed.
Your final deck list is flexible: Your final deck list not needing to follow the normal rules of a constructed deck is the final, and maybe most critical, piece to this puzzle. This opens up your choices during the draft and allows you to focus on the card mechanics in your decisions. It also means that your draft deck can combine cards that couldn’t be used together in constructed! By using the deckbuilding information in how we divide up the pools of cards you will be picking from, we still restrict your options within a set and randomize each draft so that no two decks are the same, but we also open up your options to create more potent, interesting decks for this limited environment.
I hope this brief glimpse into our formats gets you all excited! The drafting process is something you aren’t going to be able to fully appreciate until you have the complete set in your hands, but once you do, I think it will give you a truly varied and compelling play experience, all from within one set box