Wizards of the Coast has asked Wizards Play Network members how Friendly Neighborhood Draft events are going.
Most in Magic: The Gathering's local game store community is saying they haven't been going well.
"Worse than a regular draft for sure," says Ryun Valdez, co-founder of Golden Game Guild in Golden, Col. "Went from eight people down to three by the third weekly event.
Valdez comments the store switched back to running drafts of Edge of Eternities with full-sized draft pods of eight players rather than the four-player pods for pick-two. "Fridays bounced back immediately to 16 people," he says.
Michael Glick, assistant manager of Game Night Games in Salt Lake City found a similar response at his shop: "My regulars came we ran it once. They hated it and we have not touched Spider-Man in a draft since."
He says his store has been running chaos drafts ever since because his players "don’t ever want to do the 4 person pick 2 again."
The poor reception for Spider-Man pick-two draft isn't for lack of trying, however.
"We have tried pick-two draft and just traditional draft with this set, and the pick 2 draft just isn't great," comments Robert McFadden, owner of All Fun & Games in Chambersburg, Penn. "The set has plenty of issues in limited as it is, but pick-two just kind of makes it worse.
He continues, saying "...it's probably fine as a last resort if you can only get four people together to draft, but otherwise I think it's best avoided."
At other shops, the issue is with the Spider-Man set itself.
"My community has refused to play with Spider-Man limited," says Dallas Peterson, Assistant Manager at Queen & Rook Game Cafe in Philadelphia, Penn.
Still, there are some, such as Sean Johnson of Brute Force Games in San Diego, Calif., that see promise with the draft style.
"I think the format still has legs but Spider-Man draft in general has collapsed at our store," he says. "We haven't been able to fire an event since week two and we're pretty big draft store. Hopefully the format will continue to be offered and we can see if it performs better during a strong set."
