CML
Contributor
BenS is one of the few top MTG players that maximizes the function (charisma * popularity * visibility * results), so his articles are always a treat. http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/stark-reality-drafting-the-hard-way/
You could draw analogies between his methods of consistently crushing draft to the edge-mongering of the best poker players, or apply these methods to winning Cube drafts. Though I'm interested in that, as a complex and competitive and difficult environment is the level zero that enables the rest of MTG's fun, I think others might be able to do a better job of it.
Instead I want to focus on this paragraph:
Different things are a little more or a little less important in each new format. So at the start of a new format, I’m mostly trying to identify whether flying is a little better (Return to Ravnica). How about lifelink? (Zendikar). Is this a format where drawing cards is a little bit more profitable than usual (Modern Masters)? Or is this a format where a lower mana cost is of extra value (Gatecrash).
Applied to Cube design I read this as, "Draft formats have far more similarities than differences, and are extraordinarily sensitive to certain choices you will make as the designer." The most important of these choices is average CMC, I think, but density of fixing, density of removal, and other things Cooperfauss talked about in his similar article here (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cuberhauss-please-try-this-at-home-part-2/). This all means that rich environments are difficult to create, as without calibration edges will be more unsubtle than "flyers are slightly better than lifelink" and therefore as simple as slamming a Wurmcoil Engine or Black Vise. A draft environment is an intricate puzzle -- the kind of maze that DGM describes and does not embody.
Applied to Cube drafting I read this as, "Everyone's gotten a lot better, which is cool, since it means we're on a higher level, but it also means that the edges are thinner and margins lower (in a way comparable to online poker or sports betting or finance) than they used to be, so then making the act of solving the puzzle fresh each time is on the designer, as the players have high standards." Designing a Cube is far easier than designing a set from scratch, though. Concepts like novel mechanics, commercial success, managing pre-existing expectations, the effect on Constructed formats, and numerous other constraints, become irrelevant. But this isolation makes conventional Cube design fragile, as when two or three of these concepts are introduced, you end up with a train-wreck like the Modo Cube. And there the difference is not the difference between flying and lifelink; it's the difference between Jace and Tibalt.
Discuss
You could draw analogies between his methods of consistently crushing draft to the edge-mongering of the best poker players, or apply these methods to winning Cube drafts. Though I'm interested in that, as a complex and competitive and difficult environment is the level zero that enables the rest of MTG's fun, I think others might be able to do a better job of it.
Instead I want to focus on this paragraph:
Different things are a little more or a little less important in each new format. So at the start of a new format, I’m mostly trying to identify whether flying is a little better (Return to Ravnica). How about lifelink? (Zendikar). Is this a format where drawing cards is a little bit more profitable than usual (Modern Masters)? Or is this a format where a lower mana cost is of extra value (Gatecrash).
Applied to Cube design I read this as, "Draft formats have far more similarities than differences, and are extraordinarily sensitive to certain choices you will make as the designer." The most important of these choices is average CMC, I think, but density of fixing, density of removal, and other things Cooperfauss talked about in his similar article here (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cuberhauss-please-try-this-at-home-part-2/). This all means that rich environments are difficult to create, as without calibration edges will be more unsubtle than "flyers are slightly better than lifelink" and therefore as simple as slamming a Wurmcoil Engine or Black Vise. A draft environment is an intricate puzzle -- the kind of maze that DGM describes and does not embody.
Applied to Cube drafting I read this as, "Everyone's gotten a lot better, which is cool, since it means we're on a higher level, but it also means that the edges are thinner and margins lower (in a way comparable to online poker or sports betting or finance) than they used to be, so then making the act of solving the puzzle fresh each time is on the designer, as the players have high standards." Designing a Cube is far easier than designing a set from scratch, though. Concepts like novel mechanics, commercial success, managing pre-existing expectations, the effect on Constructed formats, and numerous other constraints, become irrelevant. But this isolation makes conventional Cube design fragile, as when two or three of these concepts are introduced, you end up with a train-wreck like the Modo Cube. And there the difference is not the difference between flying and lifelink; it's the difference between Jace and Tibalt.
Discuss
