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Winston Draft

Winston Draft for two MTG drafters to battle against each other and their own FOMO of what could be in the next pile.

At A Glance

  • Players: 2
  • Setup Overhead: Low
  • Minutes: 20
  • Core Concept: A two-player format where drafters battle choosing a known pile of cards versus the FOMO and take a gamble on the next unknown pile.

Winston draft with two stacks of face-down cards while a hand is holding a Flooded Strand

Setup Requirements

  1. Gather enough cards for the desired card-pool size * the number of players (Usually 45 cards * 2 players = 90 cards).
  2. Shuffle the cards thoroughly! to form a single draw pile.
  3. Deal the top three cards from the stack face-down in a row, creating three piles of one card each (we’ll call s1, s2, and s3).

How To Draft

Follow these steps for the draft keeping in mind that you may not get enough playables if you frequently choose piles containing 1 or 2 cards:

  1. Player 1 looks at the pile (s1 for the first turn). They have two choices:
    • Take all cards in the pile and add them to their draft pool. They then replace the now-empty pile with the top card from the draw pile face-down. Next, move to step 3.
    • Pass on the pile and add the top card from the draw pile to it face-down. If this wasn’t s3, go back to step 1 with the next pile in the row (s2, then s3). If this was s3, move to step 2.
  2. Draw the top card from the draw pile and add it to their pool having passed on piles s1, s2, and s3.
  3. Player 2 Follows the same steps starting with the first pile.
  4. Continue alternating turns of taking piles and adding cards (if able) until all cards from all piles have been drafted.
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