Draft Mode

[Sandy]

Having begun to find fighting the same 3-4 decks a bit on the dull side, a few friends and I decided to come up with a new mode that'll hopefully make the battles a little more fun. Though we know it might hard to let go of some clans/decks, I personally believe in the old adage "Variety is the spice of life" and hope others will be creative enough to have more than just a few clans under their belts, now without further ado, let me introduce you!

CFA Team Battle Format: Draft System Guidelines

   The Draft system for Team Battles involving 2 or more teams on CFA functions in a very simple manner. Both teams collect and then cast votes from their team on which archetypes, subclans or cards they would like to see banned for the duration of that Team Battle. The rules on the banning process are simple and few in number (please keep in mind that rules may be added and/or changed depending on what may or may not develop in the future):

   1. Teams go back and forth on the ban choices. After one team chooses a card, subclan or archetype to ban, the other one will choose, and so on. This is to prevent doubling up ban choices or causing clusters in the chat.

   2. The number of banned clans varies depending on the size of the team battle. For starters, 3-4 members per team warrants 2 bans per team, for a total of 4 being banned. 5 and above get 3 bans per team, resulting in a total of 6 being banned and so on. Unless the teams agree upon another lower or higher number, which is fine as long as both teams agree to it.

   3. Teams will then decide upon which 'form' the battle shall be, be it Guns, Roundout or Reverse (also deciding upon whether it shall be double mulligan, single or whatever). Once this is decided, the teams will then take no longer than 10 minutes to decide who their first combatant shall be and the battle may then commence.

[Dhan]

I think it's an interesting idea couse it brings a new variant to Team Battles, which can be useful to get out of the boredoom called "same stuff"

It maybe (maybe!) need some improves, but in my opinion, it can make you use more brains in team battles than just auto-mode. What to ban, what not to.....

If you let me share some of my ideas, you can make a system so each team can "save" a clan from beein banned, but just 1 and it only saves for your team (for example if both team wants AqF, both need to use their saves on AqF) or anything near that, otherwise people might get excluded from tbs just becouse they are dedicated to 1 clan (i understand this is about making people get out of their shelter, but you know, it can add more salt to the battle)

Anyways, great upstart Sandy! good stuff =)

[~Lati~]

It can turn into a positive style of event but more so the general clans that will be targetted will be Aqua Force, Royal Paladin, Link Joker, Shadow Paladin.

Its not that its a bad thing but people generally do get a bit salty over not using them. Its the same concept for the enabling of "double mulligan" in team battles in which people refuse to use single and get a bit salty over it.

Team battles back in the day had variety and I miss that.

[Hyo]

Pretty sure people are going to call this a bad before ever giving it a try. I do feel as if a clan shouldn't be banned as a whole but thats up to the two teams in the tb to decide on. It has because an issue where you have to play the same 3 decks and when you see something otherwise it is usually used as a counter. Like to be honest the team battle scene is just over competitive, people denying single-mulligan TBs because their OP decks won't be as busted, denying Roundout/Normal (When was the last time someone even did a normal TB) because they can't counter, people using decks they never used before just to counter someone (Yes I can tell when you have never used that deck before). Like is it really that serious? It's not like the team with the best TB record gets some kind of annual prize at the end of the year, barely any bragging rights goes to any team when it comes to win ratios since none of them are anything fancy. I see people hating on teams because they reset their W/L ratio, like if it makes you so salty, just reset your own and then since you can easily go undefeated do that. But ehh, I don't see the point in being so competitive... you get nothing from winning TBs, so you might as well enjoy it and play what YOU ACTUALLY LIKE instead of oh he's playing CBD, gotta use that Messiah deck. (Seriously whats fun about winning like that). I can understand tournaments being restricted to like a few decks because you win sleeves and I guess it boost your rep? (Even tho it's CFA, we all know each other's play styles and half of us have god luck) so really anyone can win a CFA tournament now. But, anyways I hope people actually try this out and show proof they have. Before going like THIS IS A BAD IDEA. I think it's a good idea, i wish it would of came from someone who TB'd as often as myself. But it's worth a try and im willing to give it a go before I judge it in a positive or negative aspect.

[Kisaragi Zane]

I think this is a good idea for the most part. Personally I think restricting archetypes would be the best way to go about this.Targeting individual cards requires constant editing over and over and to determine whether they should be limited, semi limited etc takes too long to figure out in the middle of a TB. Banning clans as a whole: I've always had an issue with that since it's usually a group of cards that cause the trouble.

However, I do think this idea will expand the meaning of 'clan diversity' in team battles.

[Sandy]

You see though, that's why, after some discussion, we decided to change it so teams could choose between whether to ban archetypes, archetypes or specific cards. That way everyone can agree upon something and hopefully the majority of the team(s) will be happy with it. Also, last night we had a first trial with this new mode. It went over great! The only drawback I could find is that it does take a little time to cast votes and select what you want to ban and stuff like that, but after that is sorted though, everything went smoothly.

I also like this mode because it has people on the team communicating with one another other than "someone please pick (insert clan here)." or "okay whose next?" Again the slowest part of this mode was the actually banning process IE figuring out which 'type' they wanted to ban and then figuring out what of those category, did they want to ban.

[Cherry]

Archetypes or specific cards is the way to go on this. Banning out clans entirely hurts diversity more than helps it in the long run.

The 3 part of this mode is kind of unnecessary when the point of it is just what decks people will use. When you decide on the format doesn't matter all that much. It's a overall good idea beyond that.

[ryujiknight]

I agree with Cherry archetypes or certain cards would be better than banning a whole clan, like I don’t want to ban the whole sp clan, cause I may not want to use abyss, just ban rpba, or ban revengers, not the entire clan because what if I want to use rfd, gust blaster, g sp, etc.

That being said, I just wanna say that during the "Draft Team battle" remember that the purpose is to not see Meta, or certain clans you see all the time in tbs that are strictly to win. People now use Meta because they are scared your opponent is going to use Meta. I just want to have a cf where i can use a clan like nn, against a regular clan like gn in tbs without seeing cbd, sgd, or aqua force, trying to counter it JUST to win. Don’t just go Draft mode just to win, don’t go banning, sgd, ripples, and chaos , then go and use the best next meta, if you’re going to do that just do a regular, just keep this in mind if you are wondering why are doing this and what draft mode is for.

Anyway, I suggest when asking for a tb it should be the following

Tb, 3v3, guns, dmull *Draft Mode: SGD, CBD*
(and if a team accept, they name 2 cards/archetypes that they want to ban)

[[R.T] SpiderHunterMD]

So starting off, restricting archetypes or specific cards is more of a way to go, since banning a clan entirely is just stupid especially since most, if not all team-battles that usually happen fall under the clan diversity rule. I'm not going to lie... I think its kind of a stupid idea, since well, you're practically allowing free reign in tb's if this is used. Lets say, for example your opponent's team has a guy who is really good with eradicators, the opponent team could easily go "right we want to ban eradicators" forcing the person to play something else, which I see as unfair.

Oh on another matter, which Hyoma and Nao brought up is the double mulligan, which is an addition rule for team-battles which allows another re-draw (Which in real-life is not allowed because single mulligan) and with the team-battle scene becoming "more competitive" leading to many people using net-decks and etc making it stressful to play and making that salt mine industry increase. And before you slam me as completely opposed to the idea, i'll give it a chance and see how bad it screws up or how good it succeeds.

So feel free to try it out.

[Cherry]

Spider, that's how Draft mode works on MOBAs and the like in a competitive scene. If you're not banning out something you don't want to see, you're banning out someone specific who you know is a problem to face. If the enemy team bans Eradicators, that one guy is just going to have to deal with it. If he's good at only one deck, that's kind of his own fault. People should have at least three go-to decks in general as it is. The way I see it, Team Battles are essentially CFA's competitive scene (sans Tournaments hosted by... only Sirvat as far as I'm aware). Therefore, competitive decision making is just a natural thing.

This is also why you don't blindly ban Sanctuary, Chaos, and Abyss or the like without thinking about what your opposing team is good at. If you don't know what they're good at, well, may as well blindban those anyway.

[Sandy]

I see everyone suggesting that we remove the 'banning of a entire clan' option, but that's just it, if that's what the teams agree to, then that's what they agree to, I'm not going to limit the options for everyone just because it might seem like a bad idea. If it's what they want to do and both teams agree to it, then I don't see a problem.

That being said, I am glad that the idea seems to be primarily well received, our plans now are to try to setup our TB's to have these on occasion, to show this off a bit more and have it as another, hopefully viable option for teams to use when fighting other teams.

[[ER] Patrickzzz]

Worth giving it a shot.

[Helios]

I agree alot with the point Cherry made. With like two dozens of clans to focus on and more subclans with in them, it should be no problem mastering two to three decks per person. Also this is practically only one of two CFA's competitive formats. And with tournaments being quite rare and sometimes conflicts with people's schedules, tb's can for some people be the only competitive source with some sort of meaning. So the idea of Draft Mode brings out that more competitive side in tb's.

Also, kind of going off of what Sandy said, it can limit all of the good and popular decks used. Responsively you may get to see some other non-popular decks being brought to the table.

To be honest, I really dis-liked the idea at first, but once you dive into it a little, you can see some of the brighter effects on it. All in all, I would really like to try out this format and see how much of an impact it can make, but I wouldn't want every tb to have the Draft Mode.

[Sandy]

Exactly, it not only forces people to think/play more 'outside the box', but it also allows those who usually cannot play the decks they want to, due to them knowing that the same 3-5 decks are going to be played and the only way to counter those 3-5 decks are to use one of those 3-5 decks. I'm hoping this will not only make TB's more fun, but also allow for some more diversity as well.

[Sandy]

Mostly it's been archetypes that have been selected to be banned. With the top 5 usually being CBD, Ripples, Brawlers, SGD and Abyss.