I’m curious how this compares.

While there are other shops that work like yours at least in The Netherlands I am familiar with at least 2 locations locally that I can draft at that work at around €10/draft AND put a booster in the prize pool per player (and you can bring your own 4 boosters too). One of those actually takes place on Monday evenings.

Personally I’d feel your shop charges way too much. €4/pack is indeed a normal resell price for boosters, but they will pay somewhere around €75 per box so a little under €2.10 per pack. It would seem that they could easily throw in a booster, or reduce the cost of the draft somewhat (though of course we don’t know what their other costs are).

I am not an avid drafter, but I have more often heard of drafts like Danny describes than I have of ones that seem as expensive as the one your shop hosts. It might be you who is in the more rare situation (something I hope for you improves!).

Sadly nowhere in town does pack-ins but given our other advantages, that’s okay.

It is neat that you are using your experiment to see if you can actually make it cover the cost or part of the cost. I just fold the cards into my collection and speculation.

As far as prereleases go there are 3 places to play in the general area though 2 of them are a 30 min drive. One store is switching to a flat prize structure for this prerelease and the rest give out a box or boxes to first then divide the rest of the packs based on attendance. I refuse to play at any store not offering a box for first for prerelease. May just be spoiled but that is what I have come to expect.

If you have time FNM or simply other tournaments in general may be a place to gain packs to cover drafting (from reading though it seems like you would rather just draft; others may wish to use this strategy). Though for your experiment you would likely have to use your whole card pool to get constructed decks together to use. Another alternative would be to assume you can borrow any of the other cards that you own (outside of the experiment) for your constructed play.

If anyone else is trying to draft for free I would recommend not opening the packs you win and trying to get a group either at the local store or at a friend’s house where you can put those packs to use drafting. Seems like common sense, but some people desperately need to open packs while I have found mostly disappointment in opening packs unless they are for draft.

Just as a note: swiss rounds in limited are the same length of time as swiss rounds in constructed. Single elimination has no time limit.

112. Match Time Limits

The required minimum time limit for any match is 40 minutes.

The following time limits are recommended for each round of a tournament:

• Constructed and Limited tournaments—50 minutes

• Single-elimination quarterfinal or semifinal matches—90 minutes

• Single-elimination final matches—no time limit

The following time limits are recommended for Limited tournaments:

• Sealed Deck—20 minutes for deck registration and 30 minutes for deck construction

• Draft—30 minutes for deck registration and construction

• Team Sealed Deck—20 minutes for deck registration and 60 minutes for deck construction

• Team Draft—30 minutes for deck construction and registration

• Multiplayer Draft—40 minutes for deck construction and registration

-The push for flat swiss payouts for prereleases is incredibly frustrating, if you open nothing of value you can not even flip your packs to cover entry fee.

-The only shops worth playing at are the ones that prize support can cover your entry fee(tuesday nights, fridays as well if you can take store credit). Its up to you whether you want to push for splitting top two every time or try to net some value. Personally I would rather take the covering of my draft than net the +/-3 dollars.

-Swiss for single is a huge time sink for very little payout.

– The free draft card nets you a swiss version of your primary draft location. 3 packs+1 prize=$12, with $3 to the store, for every 5 drafts you get a free draft. So they net 0 if you draft consistently but its a payoff by players not using their frequent draft cards. The monday night draft gives the store a guaranteed $2 for every draft, and with a flatter payout than 5/3 you can not even make your draft cost back.

I’ll be purchasing the box from the shop (so they’ll still be getting money from me), but there are no additional fees to pack in.

Just making sure I didn’t miss an entry fee or something to offset their cost of not selling you anything to participate.

I like your Idea of “going infinite” with paper Magic, in Europe this would be doomed to failure right away. Not only is the cheapest draft I know $16 (12€) aditionally I have never seen the opportunity in a Game Shop to bring your own product. Whats even worse: After the draft is over there are NO Boosters in prize Pool but the rares get picked. Your performance in the draft would be directly linked to your financial outcome since the first after swiss gets to pick first.

I am not sure if I got this right: you plan to trade only with your drafted stuff right? Since the majority of draft junk cards are close to worthless I would suggest either selling them on ebay as a Lot or buylisting if its possible.

What you also should keep in mind is the fact that over all limited rounds take longer than constructed rounds. People from a Standard tournament are always finished earlier with their rounds what will give you only a small time window to trade with them.

I wish you good luck with this project, and let us hear about your progress.