Ben and I ran a Magic the Gathering draft as part of the summer program we work for thi past summer. We had a successful day with 10 students and us drafting.
The students arrived and we made sure everyone was all set and had a DCI number as this was going to be a sanctioned draft. We then sat everyone down and proceeded to explain how to draft. Once the explanation was done we drafted. The first pack had a bit of a hiccup and we had to shuffle some cards around so everyone had the correct number. Some of the students set a pack on top of another pack, and they got mixed together! But after we fixed that packs 2&3 drafted pretty smoothly.
We then sent them off to separate tables and gave them time to build decks. Most of the students did so without much help from us, only one or two needed some suggestions on ratio of cards to mana.
We then played a 4 round tournament with a lunch break in the middle, handed out prizes, and called it a day.
This was my first time running a full scale draft with only middle school students, and it went very well. We tried to fill to much of the day with Magic though, and lost a few of them by the 4pm mark.(They were there 10am-5pm) Next time I think I would just shorten things by an hour and we will be all set. The students really enjoyed the tournament atmosphere, and they all now have some of their own cards to play with rather than having to borrow mine every game.
Overall it was a great time and we will be running another draft again soon.
