And the Mystery Card was often a creature. Yikes! Seven creatures! To be fair, Spirit Mirror, Metrognome, and Verdant Touch all kinda count as creatures here. Hey, I'm the only one whose games I observed fully. I'll start with my favorite draft subject: Me. I was actually more concerned with how long that card would stretch games than its unutterable power level ultimately, though, it came down to the spirit of the draft-the whole point is to play with these misfit rares, not turn them into good rares instead. Comedian Aaron Forsythe, who donated Arcbound Ravager and Metalworker to reflect their rejection by the DCI.) There was one card in the pool that was so powerful that I had to pull it out of there and ban it from the format: Richard Garfield, Ph.D. A perfect example: the Ogre Shaman that wound up in Scott Johns's deck. Lots of low-valued cards are Limited bombs, and by reusing them, they get a chance to dance in the spotlight once again. It only means that the cards are bad in your collection. Just because “reject” is in the title doesn't mean the cards must be bad in the Reject Rare Draft format. Powerful? This was, by far, the weakest overall card pool to grace the five RRDs I've run, which was great-it meant you needed to be even more clever and opportunistic in finding ways to build a winning deck.
I was surprised to hear moans of dismay from the players that the cards in this draft pool were too powerful. Each participant gets back 45 different rares (the ones they draft), which both leaves them even in terms of rare count and sets them up for the next draft. Every card in the draft is a rare, and every one has been rejected by their owners simply by tossing it away into the draft pool. Reject Rare Draft is a completely normal booster draft with one major exception: Instead of using booster packs of the latest expansion, we use 15-card packs I've created out of rare cards that the participants in the event donate.
This is an opportunity to resurrect all the bizarre, unplayable, or merely neglected rares gathering dust in your collection and put them to work once again.
At House of Cards, Draft Week can only mean that it's time for my favorite Magic format of all time, Reject Rare Draft.