Draftout is an exciting new mod created by 7rowl and Mar1n, which basically just combines MCSR Ranked with Lockout. Two players, each on their own singleplayer world, race to be the first to complete 13 objectives on a board of 25. Once a player completes an objective, it locks out their opponent from completing it. Before each match, players “draft” a board: players take turn choosing one of two objectives to go on the board.
Lots more info can be found on the official Draftout twitter, and rowl also made a Q&A video. The leaderboard can also be found at draftoutmc.com (which presumably will have more stuff on it in the future). The main important things to know imo are:
Draftout currently is for Minecraft version 26.1.1, but the intent is to keep Draftout updated to the latest Minecraft version
This is quite exciting. The latest versions run much better than 1.16.1, and obviously have far more features and content. If they do actually try to stay on the latest version not only will we get new objectives with existing content, but also new objectives actually new Minecraft content as well.
You play on a single player world with shared chat and advancements.
So it’s just like ranked. Two players in their own singleplayer world, but the worlds are identical and you’re playing on the same game board. Additionally, there is some standardization (mostly just vanilla now, though some is modded in still), and seeds are filtered (mainly just a close village, lava pools, bastion, and fortress).
Open Beta ETA is 1 month from now [posted April 17th]. Closed Beta will last for 2 weeks.
Right now there are about 100 people in the Closed Beta, mostly MCSR streamers, but also a few from adjacent communities (as i’m writing this, flowtives is streaming Draftout). Feinberg has been streaming Draftout every day for four days (since the closed beta started) as well.
Overall I’m super excited to see where Draftout goes. It has a much lower skill floor than speedrunning or MCSR Ranked, but simultaneously has a much higher skill ceiling. 7rowl being at the helm of this project also gives me a lot of confidence, since he himself is a top speedrunner and has won lockout tournaments in the past. Being in the closed beta, I’ve also played Draftout myself, and even with it being pretty bare bones right now (and the fact that I’m pretty bad at it), it’s a ton of fun. I can’t wait for the open beta to start so the community can try it out.
