FBTB DRAFT SIX: 8091 Swamp Speeder

[Chief]

Everyone should have it in their PM inboxes now. Please contact me ASAP about any concerns or questions!

[Chief]

We just lost a member of our intrepid band of heroes. STANDBY LIST: HEADS UP. Jargon check your PM inbox!

[Jargon]

This is one crazy rollercoaster of emotions, Chief! I'm not going to be able to make it at this point regardless, whatever the case may be. Have fun, folks.

[Chief]

Thanks everyone for our fastest draft yet (which could have been even faster still!)

After 6 drafts, we're still learning new things and people are coming up with great ideas to improve it. Things to be looked at or implemented in future drafts:

-Revisit how we assign draft order. We originally decided draft order live in the chat the day of the draft, but that took too much time. After that I assigned people in order that I received payment. Despite my attempts to equalize everything by announcing almost exactly when I would send out the payment instructions, and my receiving 9/10 payments *within the hour* of sending out instructions (easily a new record for us here, btw) there is still a concern of fairness. I will not decide the order based on when you posted on the forum for the same reason payment order seems to not work for everyone. If you have any ideas, chime in, otherwise we may just go back to randomly picking on the day of the draft.

-For the first time I numbered individual bags of parts according to their lot number on the inventory we sent everyone. I also lined them up in numerical order on the table in front of me. This was a significant timesaver on my end during the actual draft. I'll be doing this from now on.

-Everyone in the chat renamed themselves with names that began with their draft order #. For example, bacon1986 was _1_bacon1986, and so on. This made following the draft order *incredibly* easy. Expect to see this used in all future drafts.

-Three(!) missing participants, regardless of the reason, really fraks things up. I don't blame anyone. They were all legitimate reasons. However, me having to scramble to find replacements, trying to get payment, trying to decide in chat what to do with the extra shares, it all added up to stress and an actual draft time start 20 minutes after the scheduled time. I have yet to hear anyone complain that they were essentially forced into buying extra parts, but I hate that I'm asking people to make that decision after they've already paid their fee and are sitting around in the chat ready to start.
So from now on I'm going to institute a 24-hour cutoff time. 24 hours from the start of the draft is the last time I'll make any changes to the participant list. If you contact me before that time saying you will not be able to make it, I will make my best effort to fill the spot. After the 24 hour mark the participant ranks are closed. Additionally, I'm going to make a 10-minute cutoff after the scheduled draft time. Fail to show up after that 10 minute cutoff and you're out.

Refunds will be given for those who missed this draft, since nothing was explicitly outlined beforehand, but I'm still debating whether to refund the draft fee in future drafts: convince me one way or the other.

-From now on I'm going to recommend that people show up to the chat about 10 minutes before the scheduled draft start. This time will be used to do all the user renaming and last minute organizing that has been eating up the actual draft time.

-I will do a better job splitting up valuable lots. I had been pretty good about it till now, but got too settled into my rut of splitting figures 4/3/3 and I also missed that some figures had gone up in price since I bought the sets a year ago. Not everyone wants minifigures, but there's no denying they are a significant and valuable draft component. I will try harder to spread that value across the entirety of the draft.

Am I missing anything? Chime in.

-edited by Chief on 9-16-12 at 11:10 pm

[bacon1986]

I do think the minifigures should be split up more. Maybe an idea for future drafts would be to not include the figures at all, but instead sell them yourself and then the draft could cost even less or the figures could be the draft organizer's gift for all their hard work. The reason I went for the 3 Barriss Offee figures instead of the 4 was I don't need more than one, but I sure did want at least one. Altogether it was a fun time. I was surprised at how quickly you "Chief" were on the ball during the whole draft. Look forward to receiving the parts and adding them to my collection.

[onions]

me personally, i think there are some things that we can't control. we can't control making everyone happy. someone's not going to be able to register for the draft because the window opens up at an inconvenient time for them. same deal with the payment request; if they can't send the payment soon enough, that's something we can't avoid. no matter what time and day we choose, someone's going to be late to the game. the best we can do is change the times for registration, payment requests, and drafts so that it's not inconveniencing the same people every time. like, if we open up registration on 12 noon local time on a monday for one draft have another one open up at 8pm friday night, etc.

we, and by we i mean mostly ryan, are already trying to make things as smooth and fair for everyone but there are certain things we have to control and determine what is best for ourselves. cause it's not like we're making any money off of this. we should at least be able to determine times when we feel like it.

[onions]

regarding minifigs, we could split them 10 ways or however many draft participants we have, so that everyone gets a copy of whatever figs were included. i wouldn't feel right about keeping from the draft pool to resell.

[twbooth]

I love the idea of "No refund within 24hrs". Cancellations happen, but I know if conflict arises with a 5K Run (or concert or airline flight), in many cases I won't get a refund. I suggest: "If over 24hrs, full refund" and "Under 24hrs, refunds only if a replacement (from Standby List) is found. If not, then everyone gets free pick(s)."

I also love the "10min late cutoff" idea.

[buriedbybricks]

I'm down with the cancellation policies as well. As for the minifig issue, when it's "unique" figs, splitting them up ten ways seems like a good plan. However, with generic figs like droids, clones, creatures, etc, having the option to get 3-4 is a very nice feature. The atlantis draft was fantastic because in one go I (along with two others) managed to get 3 squid men in one go, which was a fantastic perk of the experience. Perhaps it could be dealt with as soon as the draft participants are locked in or they could even answer with their "Swampy! - split ten ways" battle cry. On the last draft the three votes could have been: split ten ways, all figs split 4-3-3 or unique figs 10 ways SBD's 4-3-3.

Making everyone happy is a fools errand, but it's nice that you try and put so much effort into it.

Foo!

[Chief]

I'm on a self-imposed exile from local LUGs because of petty people and issues like drafts that became unfair and unfun. I'm trying a different approach with our drafts, and if that means trying something new every other draft until we get it right, I'm fine with that. As I told one person, after 5 drafts I felt like we had it down perfect, but then new discoveries were made and the science experiments continue.

[kjklock]

This was my first LEGO draft of any kind. I thought it was absolutely great. Going in, I was concerned that there would be a bunch of down-time between picks where I would be sitting around waiting for my turn and wasting a few hours of my day. If I had nothing better to do, then I guess I would not have been concerned; but this draft occurred during my mother-in-law's 50th birthday party. So the more time I sat in the corner on my laptop, the more annoyed my wife was going to become. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised at how fast everything occurred. In fact, sometimes I found myself franticly searching my inventory list for the lot that was just taken so I could cross it off before the next lot was claimed. (I had my list organized by my priorities, so the lot numbers were no longer in numerical order.)

I think all of the above suggestions are good ideas, but I'll provide my opinion on the minifigure discussion. Personally, I was most interested in getting as many of the Clone Troopers as I could (I ended up with the lot of 4, so I was super-happy). To me, everything else in this draft was gravy. If the lots of minifigs were all singles, I would have been concerned that I may have ended up with only 1 Clone Trooper. But, I had zero interest in Barriss Offee since I already have one of her from an old-school (non-glued) magnet set; so maybe there would have been a bunch of people who would have drafted her, leaving the door open for more Clone Troopers for me. I guess the bottom line is that I was happy with how the minifig lots were broken down this time, but if in the future minifigs are all singles, I think that would be OK too. It would not prevent me from participating in future drafts, and I think it would actually increase everyone's odds of getting at least one of any minifig not currently in their collection.

[Bobster]

I've been curious about participating in one of these drafts since I found out about them. I'd love to see the inventory list for this last draft and see how you broke up the lots - is that a possibility?

[Chief]

No problem. Here you go.

[darth_fett]

My own take on the minifigs discussion: I know i'm dying to get my hands on a couple of those bounty hunters in the newest draft listed. Hopefully i'll have a decent internet connection in a permanent place to live by the time that goes thru. I wouldn't mind a couple of those ponytail pieces for my collection. I'm fine with the 4-3-3 split if it means i can get multiples of the same fig. Likewise, I'd like getting multiple clones. Honestly though, if someone wants to sell some of their figs on Bricklink or ebay, i don't think it's any business of ours. Me, i'll be keeping my figs and maybe customizing them. I know if i get 2 or 3 ponytails i'm gonna be tempted to cut and glue 1 into a custom minifig. Make my personal custom Samurai Sigfig and all that. These drafts keep getting better and better, hopefully i'll be able to participate in 1 soon!

[onions]

one idea for minifigs is to split lots up into 2-2-2-2-2. those who want minifigs will have waste more turns getting them passing up on other elements in the process; this will give people who want elements better chances at getting what they want since there will be one person or more saving turns for figs.

[Chief]

^ I think I'm digging that idea.

Also, here's a shot I took before the draft started:

FBTB Draft 6 by fbtb, on Flickr

Not terribly exciting, but you can see all the pieces and how things were laid out for easy grabbing as choices were called out.

[kjklock]

I have not seen or heard anything about my shipping charges yet. Will that info be coming out soon?

[Chief]

Yup. Been busy with new house related stuff and didn't make it to the box store yet, but tomorrow's the day.

[kjklock]

No worries... Just wanted to make sure I didn't miss something.

[murphquake]

Box store? Unless you're saving the boxes from the sets or reselling them why not just cut them down to fit each person's lot (the way TLG has been making the boxes so big you probably won't need half of them :-)

Just as an fyi you can also get free priority mail envelopes and boxes delivered to you from usps.com the tyvek envelopes in particular are great. I did mail order for an indy record label and a custom nylon military gear company for a bit (separately, lol) and they were indispensable.

Shipping advice aside I have a few comments on the draft issues

1) sorry I didn't have the list and had a few hiccups but I'm quite pleased with what I got...

2) for parts that come in large amounts I'd recommend splitting some lots up... Are 80 1x2 plates equal to 10 1x3 plates? 2 lots of 40 would have seemed more fair, and possibly allowed 2 people to get those parts or left the person getting them with the choice of using more picks. More, smaller lots seems more enjoyable overall.

3) for minifigures I'd suggest breaking them up differently next round.. A few sets of 2 different bounty hunters, and a few of multiples... I've got 2 BHAGs