Rochester Draft for Cube: The Open-Information Format

Rochester draft opens one pack at a time, face up, in the middle of the table. Players take one card each in a snaking order until the pack is gone, then the next player opens the next pack. Nothing is hidden. You see every card your neighbors take, and they see yours.

It is the slowest of the pack-based formats and the most social. For a cube, it turns a quiet 45-minute pick session into an hour of open negotiation, visible lanes, and public hate-drafts. This article gives the procedure precisely enough to run it tonight, then says when it is worth the time.

Where did Rochester draft come from?

According to the MTG Wiki, Wizards of the Coast R&D invented the format and first demonstrated it at a convention in Rochester, New York, in late 1993 or early 1994, which is where the name comes from. It was a professional format for years, including a team version, before booster draft’s speed won out. The wiki notes that the most common criticism is simply how long it takes.

That length is the trade. In exchange you get a draft where every pick is a statement the whole table can read.

How does Rochester draft work?

The setup assumes eight players and a 360-card cube split into 24 packs of 15. The procedure below follows the tournament rules for Rochester as written in the Magic Tournament Rules, section 8.5, simplified for a single table of individuals rather than teams.

Setup

1. Shuffle the cube and deal 24 face-down packs of 15. Give each player three packs. Do not open them.
2. Seat eight players around one table. Number the seats 1 through 8 clockwise.
3. Seat 1 is the first “opener.” Choose it by die roll.

Drafting one pack

1. The opener turns their first pack face up and spreads all 15 cards in the center so everyone can read them.
2. Twenty seconds of silent review. Nobody touches anything.
3. The opener takes one card. Then the player to their left takes one, and so on around the table.
4. The eighth player to pick takes a second card immediately. The order then reverses: seventh player, sixth, and back toward the opener.
5. Continue until the pack is empty. With 15 cards and 8 players, the opener takes one card from their own pack and every other player takes two.
6. Keep your most recent pick face up in front of you until the pack is finished. Then turn your picks face down.

Rotating the opener

The opener rotates one seat each pack. For pack round one, it moves clockwise: seat 1 opens, then seat 2, then seat 3, through seat 8. For pack round two, it moves counterclockwise, starting with seat 8 and ending with seat 1. For pack round three, it moves clockwise again. The MTR calls this a horseshoe.

The reason for the rotation is arithmetic. The opener gets only one card from their own pack, but two from each of the other seven packs in that round: 1 + 14 = 15 cards per round, 45 per draft. The pick direction snakes too, so the player who picked last from one pack picks first from the next.

After the draft

Build 40-card decks as usual. Deck-building takes less time than normal because everyone has been thinking about their deck in public for an hour.

How long does a Rochester draft take?

At tournament pace, the MTR allows 20 seconds of review and 5 seconds per pick, which works out to about a minute and a half per pack and roughly 40 minutes for 24 packs. No casual table plays that fast.

Budget 60 to 90 minutes for a cube Rochester with eight experienced players. Groups that let the table talk between picks, which is most of the fun, run closer to 90. If your night has a hard stop, plan for the draft to take twice as long as your usual one.

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What changes about how people draft?

Three things, and they are the whole reason to run it.

Lanes are public. By the fourth pack, everyone knows who is red-white aggro and who is building toward a reanimator deck. Signals are not read; they are announced. Players who normally rely on reading the pack learn to read the people.

Cutting is deliberate. In a normal draft you cut a color by accident as often as on purpose. In Rochester, when the player two seats to your left takes the third green card in a row, the table sees it and adjusts. Expect more players to end up in open colors, and expect two or three to fight openly for the same lane out of stubbornness.

Hate-drafting is correct. When you are the last player to take a card from a pack and there is nothing for your deck, taking the best card for the deck you will face is free. In a normal draft that card would have wheeled to a stranger. Here you know exactly whose it would have been.

The flip side: the format is harder on new players. There is no quiet pack to learn in, and every hesitation is watched. If you have a first-timer at the table, seat them next to a patient veteran and allow table talk. Our first-timer approach is in cube for new Magic players.

What house rules make Rochester run better?

• One talker at a time. The opener may narrate the pack if they like. Everyone else waits until a card is taken.
• A visible pick clock. Twenty seconds of review is plenty. Ten seconds per pick keeps the pace honest without feeling rushed. A phone timer in the middle of the table is enough.
• Picks are final. Once a card touches your pile, it stays. The MTR makes this a rule for a reason: open picks invite second-guessing.
• Sorting the layout. Spread each pack as three rows of five, roughly by color. It saves everyone ten seconds of scanning.
• Stand up. Eight people leaning over 15 cards works better standing. Clear the table of everything but the packs.

When is Rochester the right call?

Run it when the group wants a draft that is also a conversation, and when the draft itself is the evening rather than a preamble to games. It is the best format we know for a rivalry pod: six or eight regulars who have drafted together for years and want to see each other’s choices.

Skip it when time is short, when half the table is new, or when you have more than eight players, because a nine-player table turns 90 minutes into two hours. For a fully open draft with less table time, the rotisserie format in cube sealed and rotisserie is slower per pick but easier to run online over a week, and Grid draft covers two to four players.

FAQ

How many cards does each player get in a Rochester draft?

Forty-five, the same as a normal draft: one card from the pack you open and two from each of the other seven packs in a round, across three rounds.

Who picks first in a Rochester draft?

The player who opened the pack picks first, and the pick order snakes: around the table one way, then back. The opener rotates one seat each pack so the one-card disadvantage is shared.

Can you run Rochester draft with fewer than eight players?

Yes. With six players and 15-card packs, three players get three cards from each pack and three get two, which evens out as the opener rotates. Or use 12-card packs so everyone takes two.

Is Rochester draft still played in tournaments?

Rarely. The MTR still documents the team version, but booster draft is the standard at competitive events, and length is the drawback critics cite most often, as the MTG Wiki notes.

The slow draft that nobody forgets

Rochester takes twice as long and produces half the surprises. In exchange it gives you an hour where eight people watch each other think. The game is the reason. The people are the point.

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