The Rules of the Draft

by Charlie Plaine, Chairman

15th April 2010

The following is an excerpt from the official Infinite Diversity rule sheet, which you'll be able to download in its entirety with the cards in the expansion on Friday, April 23, 2010. Go ahead and read through these rules, then head on over to the Boldly Going forum to ask questions and talk about what you've read!

Running a draft event requires a little bit of preparation. First, the tournament director will need to prepare the virtual booster packs from which the players will draft their decks. You can do it all yourself using Virtual Pack Creator, available for free here. Just print a set of packs for each player, cut them out and group them into nine (9) card boosters, and you can start drafting. Each player should bring a copy of Infinite Diversity.

To begin the draft, the tournament director should divide the players into drafting groups. These should have a minimum of three (3) players and a maximum of six (6) players. The tournament director should create the largest drafting groups possible, while ensuring that groups are approximately the same size. Players then receive their virtual draft boosters: one (1) booster of missions, including at least two headquarters, and then six (6) of the thematic boosters selected for the event. (Note: This is just the recommended combination. Tournament directors should feel free to mix this up in order to accommodate the players' wishes.) The mission pack should be drafted first, then the remaining packs in the order selected by the event organizer. Infinite Diversity is not drafted.

As a limited event, players are not limited to the “rule of three” when constructing their draft decks. This means that any number of copies of the draft cards may be included in their decks. In addition to this, there are a few special rules required for draft format events, outlined below:

Deck Size Limits

• Deck Size: Minimum 25 Maximum NONE
• Dilemma Pile: Minimum 15 Maximum NONE
• Missions: Minimum 3 Maximum 5

Multiple Headquarters If your deck contains more than one headquarters mission, you may play a personnel or ship at your headquarters mission that you could play at your other headquarters mission. You must spend one additional counter when paying that card's cost.

First Turn Download During the Play and Draw Cards segment of your first turn (and only your first turn), you may spend 3 counters to download a ship.

Dilemma Recycling When your opponent scores points from a mission, you may return all your dual dilemmas overcome at that mission to your dilemma pile.

Discard Pile Recycling When your deck contains no cards, you must take all the cards from your discard pile and shuffle them to form a new deck. This is done only once per game.

Victory Conditions A player wins the game when he or she has:

• scored 70 points (or more);
• completed at least one planet mission; and
• completed at least one space mission.

-djl-