Rotisserie Draft

Rotisserie Draft is a unique way to play Cube that facilitates asynchronous drafting with players that don’t need to be in the same place and facilitates robust table talk. It’s like drafting from one enormous pack — the entire cube at once.

One at a time, each player makes a pick from the entire cube. Rather than drafting in a circle, picks snake back and forth, with the 8th and 1st player taking two picks in a row. This mitigates the advantage of picking first, and adds some interesting texture to the draft.

Most often, 8 players draft and the draft ends after each player has picked 45 cards.

At some pre-determined point in the draft you may want to switch to double picks to speed things along once players have staked out their lanes. This means each player would take two cards at once and the players on the end take 4 at a time.

The actual draft can happen in person, or asynchronously online.

If you’re up for it, get everyone together for the draft, lay the whole cube out on a big table, and draft in person. This can take two or three hours, depending on how quickly players draft, so make an event of it.

More typically, rotisserie drafts are organized virtually and Asynchronously with a shared Cube and draft list. You’ll never have so much fun with a spreadsheet.

All players have access to a shared spreadsheet and the list of cards in the Cube. As players make their choices they fill in the card name in the next slot on the sheet and notify the next player to make their choice. Our template takes care of the setup and makes it easier to keep track of who’se up for the next pick and which cards have been chosen.

An asynchronous draft can take a matter of weeks (depending on the group), but is a great way to play when not everyone can be in the same space at the same time. Set up a group chat so each player can ping the next in line to pick.

In the spirit of keeping things asynchronous, and getting the most gameplay value out of decks that took hours to draft, games are most often played in a round-robin. Each player plays each other in a best of thee match. Whether you’re playing virtually, over Spelltable, or meeting up at your LGS, games can be played all at once or as schedules allow.

Rotisserie’s structure is extremely flexible. 8 players is typical, but it works just as well with other group sizes. For very small groups, players can also each draft multiple decks at once to emulate more players.

There are many fewer ‘dead’ picks compared to a booster draft, since the public nature means you’re less likely to switch lanes and you don’t have irrelevant picks late in packs. This makes it reasonable to stop drafting well before the 45th pick without affecting deck quality. Agree on the number of picks before starting the draft.

Late picks can become streamlined as players ‘find their lane’. Some groups prefer to switch to players taking two cards at a time after some number of picks. Double picks speed up the draft and later in the draft has relatively little effect on the draft. Note that players on the ends will effectively take 4 cards at a time.

We’ve worked hard to make the spreadsheet template as quick and easy to get set up as possible.

To host a draft, make a copy of the template from “File” > “Make a Copy”. On the “Setup” sheet, fill in the Player Names and Cube URL to your Cube on Cube Cobra. Click “Load Cube List” and “Randomize Seatings” and you’re ready to go! The sheet will ask you for permission so the script is allowed to reach out to Cube Cobra to load the Cube and to modify the sheet.

The sheet automates a lot including:

• Loading your Cube List from Cube Cobra
• Randomizing player order
• Building the draft sheet for your number of picks and double picks
• Building a round-robin tournament sheet
• Highlighting the next drafter and pick spots
• Checking off cards in the Cube list and indicating who picked them
• Validating and auto completing drafted card names
• Validating cards haven’t already been picked
• Color coding picks based on card color
• Tallying and graphing match results

Alternatively, the Cube list and players on the ‘Overview’ can also be filled in manually if you prefer to pick the player order or want to import a Cube from another source.

One caveat is that card names must be unique for automation to work. If your Cube includes duplicate cards (and you didn’t automatically load it), you’ll need to number them. Remember to remove numbers if you’re moving your decklists somewhere else.

The overview sheet is pre-filled with some basic rules for drafting. Customize this page with the rule set your using, a primer, a link to your group’s Discord, or to clarify the rules of the draft.

Personalize your draft sheet, but be aware that many cells include formulas for automations, including some apparently empty spaces. Check empty spaces for formulas before making changes.

Google Sheets allows you to protect sheets, allowing viewers to only edit particular cells. Depending on the level of pranksmanship in your playgroup you may want to ‘protect’ the sheets except for the ranges for the draft and match outcomes. Or, invite your players directly so you can share your sheet in view mode with the world!

• Article: Asynchronous Cubing with Rotisserie Draft
• Lucky Paper Radio Episode 139 with Justin Parnell on a roto draft with Magic pros.
• Episode 35: Spreadsheet the Gathering on a draft of Anthony’s Regular Cube
• Episode 9: Rotisserie Rundown on a draft of Andy’s Bun Magic Cube