Hey all!
Went to my second draft ever last night (first was 12 or 13 years ago) and had studied up on Aetherdrift since I’d asked about the event and was told it’s pretty much always just drafting whatever the latest set was.
When I got there, though, it turned out the regulars wanted to do a chaos draft, so I ended up trying to make a deck out of everything currently standard legal. Needless to say, this went incredibly poorly for a relative newcomer like me and I ended up going 0-3 (as expected, I assumed I’d lose since drafting is hard, even for experienced players).
After the first match, though, it was pretty clear that this was going nowhere, and the space was a bit louder than anticipated and I could feel myself getting exhausted pretty early. While I finished out the evening playing all 3 matches to completion, I was wondering what the ettiquite around dropping early actually is. Is it OK to bow out if it’s clear that my picks were trash and there’s no chance? Or if not, can I just let my opponents for matches 2 and 3 know that it’ll be pretty one sided and preemptively concede so they don’t have to waste any time on rolling me? Or is it expected to just take the lumps and play through the whole thing?
It would be different if I thought I could put up a fight even if I lost every game, but I was having trouble getting any amount of damage through, or impacting board state at all. So the whole thing just felt like I was wasting my opponent’s time.
So yeah, just hoping for an ettiquite lesson. Not rules (I know I can technically drop any time for any reason if I let the TO know), but the social angle.
FLGS owner here, I usually can tell when someone is going to drop. It is always a bummer when it happens. But I never expect anyone to stay especially when they are not having a great time.
During my Aetherdrift prerelease I had a new player join us (she was a long time customer, but has never played in the shop) and I had a feeling she was going to drop, sometimes you can just tell. I was glad she did because I could see the stress on her face.
If the other players give you grief ignore them. I think most shop owners will be understanding about it.
Yeah, I tried to not show that I was wearing down because I know that can dampen the mood. I did reflexively apologize to my first opponent because I assume one sided matches are boring, especially if someone is high skill, but to his credit he said not to worry about it and thanked me for the pack, so maybe I was overthinking it.
If I go again I’ll bring noise dampening earplugs and hopefully weather the environment better.
My suggestion is to either look for a smaller shop, or talk with the owner/manager about smaller events.
At my shop I can seat about 20, but events are rarely larger than 10. With non commander events topping at 6 most times.
A lot of players, after beating your pants off, are willing to look at your deck and offer some advice. This can help with your play, as well as introduce you to new friends.
Yeah I probably should’ve asked for advice, but I knew while assembling the deck that all my picks were garbage. Plus I was intimidated by being the only one there who didn’t already know someone else, so the anxiety took over and I didn’t do a whole lot of talking. The first opponent might have helped me out a little, he seemed pretty nice. The last two were a little scary tbh haha.
And yeah this group had 24 I think. Funny thing is that this is the small shop nearby me. It just happens to have high ceilings so every sound on the floor is amplified.
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