#Moxtober 18: Bottle

During the month of October is #Inktober! Each day has a single-word prompt, but instead of inking something, I design a Magic: The Gathering mechanic to fit the word. This is called #Moxtober.

(#Moxtober was previously named #Meltober, named after "Mel", the more mechanically-inclined counterpart to "Vorthos" of the aesthetic profile spectrum.)
Day 01: "poisonous"
Day 02: "tranquil"
Day 03: "roasted"
Day 04: "spell"
Day 05: "chicken"
Day 06: "drooling"
Day 07: "exhausted"
Day 08: "star"
Day 09: "precious"
Day 10: "flowing"
Day 11: "cruel"
Day 12: "whale"
Day 13: "guarded"
Day 14: "clock"
Day 15: "weak"
Day 16: "angular"
Day 17: "swollen"

Today's prompt is: "bottle"

"Bottle" made me think of "message in a bottle." That resulted in the bottled pack mechanic. Here's how it works:

This is a mechanic made for a set designed for drafting, just like how there are effects that only matter when drafted in a Conspiracy set. Here's how the set and this mechanic works:

Imagine this is Ixalan: The Drafting. Or some other pirate world supplemental set. And there's a "message in a bottle" mechanic. What's that mean? Here's the PACK LOGISTICS of it and HOW IT WORKS.

PACK LOGISTICS
In every box of this set, there are 36 packs, just like with Conspiracy. In every pack, there's a token card. On one of the sides of the tokens is an image of a bottle with a number clearly printed on it. At the beginning of the draft, for everyone's first pack, the players reveal their bottle with number. Whoever has the highest number places a booster pack (recommended from this same set) underneath their bottle card (everyone else sets their token cards aside as is normal in drafts).

HOW IT WORKS
Once a player has a booster pack and bottle token in front of them, they are considered to have a "bottled pack." When you are drafting while having a bottled pack, you may choose to swap the pack you're looking at for the pack in the bottle by placing your pack into that bottle (underneath the bottle token) and retrieving the pack that was under it for you to draft from. You may only do this once per pick.

Once players all pass their packs to the left (or right), the bottle is passed in the opposite direction. That neighboring player now has the bottle and has the same actions as you did.

If a pack is unopened in the bottle, once you swap, you may open up the pack.

Lastly, when a new draft round starts, all the cards in the bottle are removed from the draft face down. And then a new pack is placed under it. The control of the bottle still remains on the player who ended up with it for the second and third rounds, but the direction of the bottle changes just as the direction of the packs passing changes, so that the bottle is always in the opposite direction of where the cards are being passed.

You can even try this mechanic out at home - just need to randomly determine who ends up with a bottle first, use whatever packs you got as normal for a draft. You just won't have any cards that are "bottle matters" like the one designed for today. :)