New Game Mode Idea: Draft League

As the discussion about the new arcade style games the devs are developing continues, I wanted to think up a new kind of league set up that may produce good value for players old and new. We know new players struggle at the beginning gaining assets in the game and the more modes playable will allow for them to get greater value from their time as well as improving their skill overall. Drafts are done across sports and fantasy sports leagues every day creating hope for every player on a successful season. The same approach could be used in Splinterlands and we will break down how it will work below.

Draft Mode

This mode could be used in both tournaments as well as in-season format. The idea is to have a draft at the beginning of the season or tournament giving all players access to a certain set of cards. For sake of time doing the draft, my idea would have only epic and legendary cards available for drafting and all players would have level 1 starter cards to play from. No other cards other than starter cards and drafted cards could be used. Each player would have a pick per round selecting their lineup and it would be snake format. Snake format calls for the player with the first pick in the draft to pick last in the second round and then first again in the third round. This allows for things to be fair for the most part understanding that the first few selections will probably have a slight advantage. 10 rounds I think would be sufficient to garner a playable deck and allow for the first few picks to not have as great of an impact. There would also be a time cap on selecting your cards such as 15 or 30 seconds. 

Strategy

A whole new list of strategies could be used in this format. You could select the best card at each round or select a specific team/cards that match well together (i.e. grum and flamesmith). Another strategy that could be used is looking at the starter cards and seeing what one monster pairs well with that splinter’s starter cards. For instance, queen mycelia could be the only card you need to draft for the green team given the shield protects your glass cannon magic cards with obsidian. 

Benefit to all players

The new mode would be appealing to all players I believe for a few reasons we will discuss now. One reason is that new players can now be competitive with only investing ten bucks for the spellbook and raise up the ranks of the leagues without having to buy cards. The second reason is that more veteran players would be offered a complex new challenge making the game more interesting if they are growing stale of playing the same players all the time in top leagues or winning with the same strategies. Lastly, the reward system could be more lucrative for end of season leaderboards given the equal playing field and the only way to do well is play often as well as be skilled at the game. This would reward players of high skill but not necessarily the whales of the game. 

I hope you all enjoyed reading about this interesting new game mode potential and maybe we will see something like this in the future. If you have any other new game mode ideas, I will love to hear about them in the comments. Thank you for reading!

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