This is done by consensus. There are a lot of players with excellent rules knowledge in the group, so we are able to resolve almost all rules disputes without difficulty. The level of rules enforcement varies, but is normally agreed upon by the players beforehand. On nights where the the groups are divided by skill level, the groups with higher-skilled players will generally have stricter rules enforcement.
Note that since the release of M2010, we have played using the new rules that accompanied M2010.
It depends on the format. For Swiss tournaments, we use the standard DCI tiebreakers.
In brief, the tiebreakers are:
Note that for the purposes of calculating these percentages, a given player’s OMP and/or OGP cannot be lower than 33%.
This section assumes you know how to play MTG. If not, you can always show up before a draft anyway and see if you can find people there who will help you learn, or go to the various card stores around the city to see if they’ll help you out.
Drafting requires unopened MTG booster packs, normally 3 per draft. The basic idea is that each player opens a pack, picks a card from it face down, passes the rest, and that this continues until the cards have all been picked, at which point the players construct decks from those cards plus basic lands and play against the other players in that draft.
The booster packs are normally all from a single “block”, e.g. Mirrodin/Darksteel/Fifth Dawn, or M2010/M2010/M2010.
Players are not allowed to talk about their picks or otherwise signal to other players what cards they are taking.
The packs are opened in a partiular order, with the oldest set being opened first. New packs are not opened until everyone has received their final card from the preceding packs. When a new set of packs is opened, the draft order is reversed—in pack one, it’s clockwise; pack two, counterclockwise; pack three, clockwise again.
At the end of the draft, each player will have forty-five cards to construct a deck from, with an unlimited number of basic lands.
The minimum size for decks is forty. There is no maximum size (although you might have to start providing your own basic land once you get past a reasonable deck size).
There are no restrictions on the number of copies of a card you are able to play—if you draft five Lightning Bolts, you can play them all.