by Hadgoth
Just got my copy of the game (including the Core Spell Tome) and I thought I'd throw out there my idea for drafting.It is similar to booster drafting in MtG, meaning that each "turn" the players draft from a limited pool of cards. First you need to sort out all the cards in different piles. The first pile will contain one copy of each card, the second will contain one copy of each card which is available in two or more copies, the third pile one copy of each card available in three or more copies, etc. If the last pile has less that 3 times the number of players, merge it with the previous pile.
Decide which Mage each player will play, define the drafting order and deal out 3 cards per player face up on the table, from the first pile. Starting with the first player, each player drafts one card in descending order and then an additional card starting from the last player, in ascending order (i.e. player A, B, C, D, D, C, B, A, in a four-player game). Each player has now drafted 2 cards and only 2/3rds of the cards on the table have been drafted. The remaining 1/3 is discarded and a fresh set of 3xplayers cards are laid open on the table. Drafting this round starts with the player that drafted second the previous round. Repeat the drafting rounds, until there are not enough cards left in the first pile to complete a set. Discard those cards and start drafting from the second pile. Continue until all the cards have been drafted. Now the players construct their spellbooks using the 120 spell points.
The issue with this method is that it requires a lot of cards since more than 1/3 of the cards are not used eventually, and it might also cause problems when playing with only the core set, or if more than 2 players are drafting. To compensate for that you could initially decide to use less than 120 spell points, in order to restrict the maximum size of the spellbook.
Comments and ideas are welcome.