A Dozen Planes, A Dozen Cubes

[MULRAH]

Hi everyone,

I would like to share and am interested in feedback on a mega-project I've been working on for quite some time. Basically, I've got 12 cubes for you all (well, just 11 for now...), spanning the many planes Magic has taken us to over the years.

Background

As a long-time board/card game aficionado, I instantly gravitated to the cube format when I first heard about it, even though I had little experience with Magic at the time. Rather than start out with a typically powerful cube, I decided to reverse engineer Magic limited environments to come up with sets based on whatever WotC had already designed. One thing led to another, and I eventually found my designs revolving around one set per plane. Once I'm finished with my "design," we play these sets and then "retire" them in a giveaway contest where the winner gets to keep the set.

Design Parameters

1. Because I view each set as a stand-alone board/card game and a personal design experiment, I try to keep costs down. These sets should be ~$40 to purchase at the most. Therefore, there might be some signature cards missing because they are too expensive.
2. My group is pretty small, coming in at 6 players max. Therefore, these sets are just 270 cards, and we do 5 packs of 9 cards per player.
3. The card pool for each set consists only of cards from that plane. However, I set aside some of the "greatest ever" draft sets to be their own separate projects and exclude their cards from the card pool for their respective planes. I will note this below when it comes up.
4. Update: I do pay some attention to rarity. In every cube so far, there are exactly 30 rares, one for each pack. In some cases--including both Kamigawa and Alara--I also paid attention to the count of commons and uncommons.

Phase 1 Sets
We have already played through or are currently playing the following sets. I am open to feedback because it could inform how I do later sets, but I probably won't change anything about these sets themselves. With or without feedback, I hope these can be of interest to anyone putting together sets based on these settings:

• Dominaria (Invasion block only): This was my first design, and it was pretty haphazard. Nonetheless, it was informative and fun.
• Theros: This evolved from being Theros-only to including the whole block. I was still learning about how to support different archetypes, but we still thought this was a fun set with decent diversity.
• Tarkir: Because I wanted to keep Khans of Tarkir as its own thing, this set focused solely on Dragons of Tarkir + Fate Reforged. Due to a smaller card pool and lack of variety in supported archetypes, the set basically built itself. I was not a fan, but my players enjoyed it.
• Zendikar: As with Khans, I wanted to keep Rise of the Eldrazi as its own thing. This was the most challenging and rewarding design so far, as I was working with sets that many felt had serious issues in limited. Fortunately, things seemed to worked out pretty well.
• Ixalan: This design was not as straightforward as it might seem, as I wanted to keep some of the streamlined tribal identities from Ixalan while also bringing in the more balancing/interesting elements of Rivals of Ixalan. This set has been excellent as a teaching set that's not boring for me to play.
• Kaladesh: I found this to be the most interesting set so far to "reverse engineer," as there's a lot going on underneath its seemingly straightforward mechanical framework. When I originally wrote this post, we were playing this set, so it was queued up for the next giveaway. However, I liked it so much that I have decided to keep it for myself!

Phase 2 Sets
I started on this second cycle of sets more recently. On the one hand, they benefit from my experience having done the previous sets. On the other hand, most of them have considerably larger card pools, so the designs are more reliant on my own choices than previously, which could result in some blind spots becoming more obvious. For example, my approach seems well suited to supporting linear themes, but I wonder sometimes if I'm missing out on more "engine"-based themes where you need to bring together disparate components that I might not have included in a set. In any case, here are the six more recent sets I've been working on:

• Alara: I broke singleton for this one to provide more breathing room to the shard's mechanical themes. I like the new version more so far, but both versions were playable.
• Amonkhet: I put this together several months after I originally wrote this post. Had I come to this set earlier, I might have found it more interesting, but at this point it felt rather run-of-the-mill. It's doing some interesting stuff, but nothing blew my mind.
• Innistrad: I haven't made this one yet. It will notably not include Innistrad itself, since I've set that aside alongside Khans and Rise. I think this will be the a very interesting project; I find card pools of this size (several sets, ~800 cards) the sweet spot for me so far.
• Kamigawa: I found this set to be the most intricate as I put it together, probably because I was trying to stuff so much into it. I suspected that my original version was overstuffed with themes that didn't get enough support, and that proved to be true. I subsequently overhauled it, and drafts have been much smoother.
• Lorwyn-Shadowmoor: It was pretty challenging mashing these two sets together. Drafts haven't gone as I expected, but the playtests have been quite good. I made some tweaks to shore up some weak archetypes, and since then this set has really taken off for me. Although the strategies are very linear, the cards overlap with these strategies in so many ways that you always have multiple paths to explore.
• Mirrodin: This set is the newest one I've put together, so it bears the mark of the most experience. It's playing well so far, but I'm interested in what others think. I'm not sure I'm really capturing the modular design that was essential to the plane.

Anyway, thanks for looking! I'm happy to answer any questions and would love to get your thoughts on any of these projects.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

This is a really interesting project.

 

[Laz]

Oh no! Balduvian Trading Post is leaking!

Seriously, interesting idea, though there is a lot to process.

 

[MULRAH]

Hi both, thanks for your comments. I'm happy to just have this up here as a resource for others interested in the same thing. I've seen a few comments as I've lurked about wanting to make block cubes, cubes for fewer players, etc., so I hope others might find these useful someday.

If people want a point of entry for providing feedback, we'll probably be doing Alara or Kamigawa next. Given my design parameters, I'd love to get folks' thoughts on those two sets.

 

[Kirblinx]

I decided to give the Kamigawa one a spin, and it seems pretty good. Here are my questions:

• Why have you kept in the silly red LD theme? Akki Blizzard Herder and Stone Rain don't even have an Akki Raider to trigger and just seem a little out of place.
• Was there not enough room for the BR Ogre/Demon theme? I liked that one when I drafted it retail. Surely the Miser's can be cut from black to help this theme, as no one will have 7 cards in their hand by the point they come down anyway.
• Meloku is very, very strong. Is it worth having the iconic Moonfolk in this cube as a flavour win, to the detriment of gameplay?
• Please cut Kitsune Mystic. It is a bad signpost by suggesting something that is not in your cube. Put in Takeno or something else please.

I think it has all the building blocks of what I remember the format being, so it will be a good representation of a flashback draft, which is what I feel this set of cubes is aiming to be.

 

[MULRAH]

Hi Kirblinx,

Thanks so much for checking out the Kamigawa cube! Regarding your specific points:

• The land destruction theme is not intentional. My note for Stone Rain in my spreadsheet says, "Is this necessary?" Akki Blizzard-Herder is in there to keep the Goblin count up for the minor tribal theme that's in each color. It seemed better than alternatives like Akki Raider or Akki Underling.
• I originally tried to put the Ogre/Demon theme in, but I felt like I didn't have enough slots to do it justice. The rats were already doing work elsewhere in the cube, so I went with them as Black's tribal mini-theme.
• Good catch on Meloku! It looks like I already removed that card in my spreadsheet for the reason you mentioned but hadn't updated CubeTutor.
• Yes, I had Kitsune Mystic as a borderline card but kept it in because it helps--once again--with the tribal subthemes, this time White's foxes. I have some other rares I could use to replace it and will consider making a swap. Thanks!

In seeing your questions and comments, I realized I should add a couple notes to my first post:

• I do pay some attention to rarity. In every cube so far, there are exactly 30 rares, one for each pack. In some cases--including both Kamigawa and Alara--I also paid attention to the count of commons and uncommons.
• My main goal for these is to make interesting, playable draft formats. In many cases, the result is probably pretty close to a flashback draft, especially for the smaller sets. However, in other cases, there are some pretty big differences, especially the sets drawing from more than one block (Zendikar, Mirrodin, Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, and eventually Innistrad). I'm saying this because I just want to be clear that for Kamigawa, I definitely was not trying to emulate the much maligned full-block draft, but I did want to include Saviors in places where I thought it could contribute.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Hi Kirblinx,

• Yes, I had Kitsune Mystic as a borderline card but kept it in because it helps--once again--with the tribal subthemes, this time White's foxes. I have some other rares I could use to replace it and will consider making a swap. Thanks!

I definitely think you should swap it out for something else. I really like Samurai of the Pale Curtain from champions.

 

[MULRAH]

For anyone who's interested, I've playtested and modified my Lorwyn-Shadowmoor cube, so it's ripe for feedback. This set has been a nice challenge, as I've wanted to include themes from the original blocks, but they were never drafted together. Combining the two has been a fun puzzle, and I'd love to see what others think.

 

[Chriskool]

Hi Mulrah! Invasion was also one my first mini-cube designs! Any reason you started with it? (The IPA retail draft format might be one of the reasons I still enjoy Magic today.)

As far as each project goes, is my understanding that you only play them ONCE? Or is it once in your possession and then the victor holds the set for possible future gaming? In any case, I hope that some of these are seeing more than a single exposure to the redzone. In general, your approach seems to have enough constraints that developing the cardpool is attainable without a lot of feedback through gameplay.

My concern is some pools have colors with a noticeably higher average converted mana cost (most notably manifested in a lack of 2cmc cards that may be played on an open board and a glut of 3-or-4cmc cards). Lorwyn-Shadowmoor and Kaladesh have this in blue. Mirrodin has it in black.

Also, in such a small pool of cards with a vast spread in power-level, the rares that have very hard-to-play around, destructive abilities (Sunblast Angel or Release the Gremlins) may ruin the experience of those that must face them. Have you considered attempting to flatten the power level of these sets?

Cheers!

 

[MULRAH]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your thoughtful feedback.

Hi Mulrah! Invasion was also one my first mini-cube designs! Any reason you started with it? (The IPA retail draft format might be one of the reasons I still enjoy Magic today.

I had most of the cards on hand already, and I wanted to take a stab at a multicolor environment with a card pool smaller than Ravnica's. (You'll notice Ravnica is not among the planar cubes listed above just yet.)

As an aside, each of these projects builds on the last one. I built Invasion and Theros around the same time, noticed a lot of flaws in those designs, and tried to integrate my learning into future sets.

As far as each project goes, is my understanding that you only play them ONCE? Or is it once in your possession and then the victor holds the set for possible future gaming? In any case, I hope that some of these are seeing more than a single exposure to the redzone. In general, your approach seems to have enough constraints that developing the cardpool is attainable without a lot of feedback through gameplay.

One or two sets have seen just one play with the group, but most of them get played several times. The constraints have been helpful as a novice cube designer in that many of the sets "build themselves" and can rely heavily on the original design done by Wizards of the Coast. However, as you have seen, the more recent sets are starting to move into new territory, like trying to merge the Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks into a single set.

My concern is some pools have colors with a noticeably higher average converted mana cost (most notably manifested in a lack of 2cmc cards that may be played on an open board and a glut of 3-or-4cmc cards). Lorwyn-Shadowmoor and Kaladesh have this in blue. Mirrodin has it in black.

Thanks for highlighting this. I do try to pay attention to curves within each color, but sometimes it can get a little wacky, as I'll occasionally count cards with double mana costs as costing one more than they do (e.g., 2UU = "5-drop"). Looking at Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, I would have guessed this issue would be more of a problem for White (seven 2-drops vs. twenty-two 3/4-drops) than Blue (nine 2-drops vs. twenty 3/4-drops), but maybe the difference has to do with "2cmc cards that may be played on an open board," which I do not really consider. Could you elaborate on this a little?

Also, in such a small pool of cards with a vast spread in power-level, the rares that have very hard-to-play around, destructive abilities (Sunblast Angel or Release the Gremlins) may ruin the experience of those that must face them. Have you considered attempting to flatten the power level of these sets?

Yes, this can be a challenge. On the one hand, the power level is already constrained by budget and setting requirements I place upon each set, but that can make disparities in power level all the more egregious when they do sneak in. I generally lean toward trying to include stronger cards when I can, and my main priority is to have an even power level across colors and hopefully archetypes, rather than a flat power level overall. For example, I had noticed a preponderance of really strong cards in White in Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, which led to repetitive drafts despite the diversity of archetypes beneath the surface of these absurd powerhouses. I therefore scaled it back a little, so White wasn't so appealing, but there are still extremely strong cards in each color that might be deemed unfun by the person facing them. I tend to lean toward inclusion, since it's hard to tell what people will find oppressive. Release the Gremlins, for example, has not been a problem for us, but there was no end to the complaints about Deathbringer Thoctar in Alara.

Thanks for the feedback! Each one of these sets is a learning experience, and I realize it can be daunting to look at all of them all at once. Thanks for taking the time to look at more than one. I really appreciate it!

 

[MULRAH]

I've made a number of updates to the original post to reflect the current state of this project. The following sets have gotten significant changes over the last few months:

• Amonkhet: I put this together, trying to capture the Hour of Devastation version of this block rather than the Amonkhet version. It's had its moments, and I wouldn't turn down a game of this set, but for whatever reason it's not really clicking with me. There's only so much you can do with these smaller card pools (e.g., Ixalan, Kaladesh, etc.), but I'd be interested to hear from others if they feel like my version does the format justice.
• Lorwyn-Shadowmoor: I had been enjoying this set, but I noticed that some archetypes weren't really coming together. I made some changes, and subsequent drafts have been quite interesting. This set is emerging as one of my current favorites.
• Kamigawa: Test drafts unfortunately validated my concern that the multitude of themes I'd stuffed into this set did not feel fully supported, so I spent some time reorienting it around a smaller suite of archetypes. I also expanded it a bit to generate some more variety, and my first couple drafts of the revised version felt great.
• Kaladesh: This set has emerged as my favorite of the "small block" sets, and I'd play it over several sets that were derived from larger card pools, even though I tend to prefer those. I made some slight tweaks to enhance the mechanical symmetries that seem to be a part of this set's dynamism, and then I probably undid all that by throwing in additional uncommons and rares to increase variety. This had been queued up as the next giveaway set, but I like it so much that I decided to give it away to myself!

Thanks to everyone who has been drafting and commenting on these sets. Your feedback has very useful!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Please cut Kitsune Mystic. It is a bad signpost by suggesting something that is not in your cube. Put in Takeno or something else please.

Yes, I had Kitsune Mystic as a borderline card but kept it in because it helps--once again--with the tribal subthemes, this time White's foxes. I have some other rares I could use to replace it and will consider making a swap. Thanks!

I see Kitsune Mystic is back in again, but with only five auras that the Mystic survives at most in any two-color combination (WU, WB, and WG), it still feels undersupported. If you really want to support the Mystic (and Tallowisp), in white you could add Heart of Light, which works very well in a flyers deck and is great with the Mystic. If you could work in a demon subtheme in black, Mark of the Oni and Oni Possession become possibilities. Finally, Phantom Wings is actually a decent evasion/bounce split card.

I full on forced the Kitsune Mystic deck here, picked up every aura in my colors I saw, and still only got four, one of which is Kagemaro's Clutch, which the Mystic might very well not survive.

In any case, if you're just looking for foxes to feed the patron, there are other, better options available for the environment I feel. Kitsune Diviner, Kitsune Loreweaver, Split-Tail Miko, and Kitsune Dawnblade are all playable to good.

Anyway, your enthusiasm makes me want to try my hand at this concept myself, so job well done

 

[MULRAH]

Thank you for forcing the Kitsune Mystic deck! Yes, I had taken it out per Kirblinx's recommendation, but put it back in not for Fox tribal deck (which I'm no longer trying to support) but instead because it's the least bad 11th rare that costs less than $1. Alternatives are Pure Intentions, Reverse the Sands, and Vassal's Duty, all of which are extremely narrow/weak. At least Kitsune Mystic has a little bit of upside, as minuscule as it might be.

If I want to go a little above $1, then Sensei Golden-Tail or Promise of Bunrei could be good. I usually avoid doing this unless I absolutely have to, since a dozen sets of 270 cards is over 3,000 cards; there was no way I was going to do all these if I didn't draw a line on price points somewhere! However, I'm pretty invested in this set in particular, and either of these cards would be a fun upgrade well worth the splurge.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'ld suggest ignoring the rarity and just go with something that fits the environment well, rarity be damned. It also isn't the end of the world if the color counts aren't exactly equal, and you could easily put in another green rare. You could even swap out a green common or uncommon for a white one if you do want to keep an equal number of cards per color. I promise you the cube won't be worse off.

 

[MULRAH]

Yeah, that's a good point. Green has plenty of rare options in this block that could sub in for a White one.

I'll leave it as is a little while longer; I don't think there's anywhere else on the internet that lets you draft the Kitsune Mystic deck, and I don't want to take that away from people too soon.