From the
MtG site about their officially sanctioned formats:
'
What is Booster Draft?
Have a group of friends who want to enjoy playing a format together? Booster Draft is exactly the format you're looking for! Instead of just opening your cards and building a deck, you and the other players at the table (four to eight total) have to draft the cards for your decks.
At the start of a Booster Draft, each player opens a booster pack and picks the card he or she wants from it. (You can't see the cards that the other players draft.) Then each player passes the rest of the pack to his or her left. You pick up the pack that was passed to you, select a card, and pass the rest to your left. This process continues until all the cards have been drafted. Next, each player opens a second pack, but this time, you pass the pack to your right. After all those cards are drafted, you open the third pack and pass to the left again.
Here's a diagram of the process of passing the packs:
Pack 1
Pack 2
Once all the packs have been drafted, players build decks from the cards they selected, adding as many basic lands (Plains, Islands, Swamps, Mountains, and Forests) to their decks as they like. Each deck must have at least 40 cards.
Each pair of players then plays a match, which consists of the best two out of three games. In the next round, the winners play against other winners (and the losers against the losers, if you like). The player who wins all three rounds—or all three matches—is the winner. It's a great way to spend a few hours with your buddies.
With other words, "a draft" and "to draft" means to play a format in the given ccg where you build a deck from a limited cardpool that was somehow both randomly and non-randomly acquired by the players in an equal and just manner.
In all my years I have never
ever heard anyone mention the name "booster draft". Instead, all players say just "draft".
To be fair to WotC there is indeed
different kinds of drafts. In the example above they used un-opened booster packs. (Btw this format/function is supported in some of the software that will be used to play WT). They do so because that is when the format generates most money to WotC
In theory however, nothing prohibits players from drafting from "tournament packs" or "pre cons" or whatever as long as they know which cards belongs to who etc if they care.
Drafting as a CCG format is general, and not only used by WotC (although maybe it was WotC that invented it?), it's usually popular in communities that meet and play/evolve around the local game store. Often such stores will do something like this: Set a date for the draft, have a draft event at least after every new expansion, charge 20 - 30 € for the event, and in that price there's a soda, maybe a special card and x booster packs included (from which all others also will draft). Usually at these events the winner of the tournament will also get a special and rare card.
On one point I actually do agree with WotC: Drafting is indeed a fun format to play.
What I don't like is it that it costs plenty every time to do it if it's done as they want
Luckily for us there are hundreds of solutions for that when it comes to WT, so we will also support drafting.
In any case and to not bore you with more text:
Draft area and to draft will probably lead the thoughts of most players to drafting as described by me in this thread. It's a word that's associated with a particular and common format among ccg:s. Thus, we should find another word for the drafting area and drafting process you write about. (Personally I agree with you that draft is the perfect word, and I wouldn't want to change it if it wasn't in a CCG context)
My suggestions aren't brilliant, but here are some more of them: sandbox, blueprints, devbox, genesis, cardforge, dna, genome