General [Lucky Paper] - The First Four Questions Cube Designers Should Ask

[landofMordor]

https://luckypaper.co/articles/the-first-four-questions-cube-designers-should-ask/

Hey all, long-time lurker and admirer of the Riptide community here. I recently wrote an article to address how dang hard it can be to articulate one's design goals to oneself (let alone others!). The article, linked above, includes four accessible prompts to kick-start thought and discussion, as well as a markdown template for including your own responses in your CubeCobra descriptions if desired.

Have questions? clarifications? struggling to answer one of the prompts? Start a discussion here!

Cheers!
Parker / landofMordor

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Very good article Parker!

 

[ravnic]

Who will you play your cube with?
My girlfriend and a semi regular group of potentially up to 9 other people (usually we draft with 2-6 people)

How experienced is your average player?
2 are enfranchised and experienced, the rest mostly newbies/irregular players

How will the cube be drafted and what kind of games will you play most often? (e.g. draft or sealed, 1v1 or multiplayer free-for-all or two-headed giant, etc.)
We have draft methods from 2 to 10 players. The cube is constructed for thedefault of 4 players drafting 4 packs of 15 with every last remaining 4 cards getting exiled from the draft.

How invested is your playgroup in your cube?
My girlfried quite a bit. She has pet cards and I sometimes asks her for fight club questions. All other drafters trust me to manage all alone to their satisfaction. I always listen when a card is called too good or something.

Are your card choices constrained by budget or card availability?
Since I use high quality proxies: No

Are you adhering to the singleton restriction?
Yes.

Have you imposed other legality, thematic, or rarity restrictions (e.g. updated rules text only, peasant Pioneer, silver-border, or even “all creatures must be wearing hats in their art”)?
I try to avoid m15 frame rares for aesthetical reasons. I also exclude planeswalkers.

Are there specific cards you do or don’t include for a special reason? (e.g. a favorite card among your players)
My pet card is Nightmare. I also lean towards old cards and those I think are cool, totally subjective, if it's close.

Do you have any favorite cards you want to include that might help define a power level?
Gravedigger
Nightmare
Werebear
Savannah lions

There are more.

Is there a specific deck or archetype that you know you want to be viable that other parts of the cube might be built around?
All my 15 supported archetypes need to be viable.

What are the best cards in your cube?
Bread and butter spells like Lightning Bolt and Counterspell. Still trying to make removal against medium/big creatures.

Are there any cards have you excluded for power level reasons?
Siege-Gang Commander
Death Pact
Tireless Tracker
Journey to Nowhere

There are more

Are you comfortable running cards that sometimes (or often) underperform?
If the (fun) upside is enough, a few are okay

What do you find most fun about Magic?
Flavorful cards, creative deckbuilding, skilltesting and interactive games

How acceptable are board stalls? Conversely, how acceptable is a fast, combo-oriented win?
Stalls are okay if they happen sometimes. Quick combo kills only once a year.

How acceptable is mana screw or flood?
Try to minimize it where possible

How many colors do you want your average deck to be?
2. And 1 and 3 should be equally played.

How okay is it for a player to “scrub out” of a draft due to inexperience or bad luck?
Skill testing is a more important quality. But I want everyone to have fun.

How clearly should your draft archetypes be signaled? Conversely, to what extent should a drafter discover emergent archetypes that were not explicitly designed?
Main archetypes should be clear enough for newbies. Secrets archetypes happen quite frequently and I love it.

How much variance do you desire in gameplay? In drafts?
As much as possible while keeping each of my 15 core archetype viable in 3/4 draft rounds

 

[landofMordor]

All my 15 supported archetypes need to be viable....

How clearly should your draft archetypes be signaled? Conversely, to what extent should a drafter discover emergent archetypes that were not explicitly designed?
Main archetypes should be clear enough for newbies. Secrets archetypes happen quite frequently and I love it.

How much variance do you desire in gameplay? In drafts?
As much as possible while keeping each of my 15 core archetype viable in 3/4 draft rounds

Interesting take on these questions, @ravnic! Thanks for your reply.

I think there's an interesting little quirk contained in your answer to these questions. First, you say that you support 15 archetypes and you want them to all be viable. Then, you also say that variance is desired within that constraint, and that you love it when drafters discover new archetypes.

That's not a contradiction per se, but it does illustrate how squishy the word "viable" is -- depending on whether one means "viable = always a Tier 1 Deck" or "viable = isn't drastically outmatched by any other deck" or something else, that will drastically change the outcomes of this thought experiment. Probably the "isn't drastically outmatched" definition will be the one that leads to the most variance in gameplay and draft, since your supported archetypes can't be so parasitic or dominant that there are no reasonable alternatives. In that limit, perhaps "15 supported archetypes" ends up looking more like 0 supported archetypes, since all archetypes are supported equally? Food for thought.

 

[ravnic]

Interesting take on these questions, @ravnic! Thanks for your reply.

I think there's an interesting little quirk contained in your answer to these questions. First, you say that you support 15 archetypes and you want them to all be viable. Then, you also say that variance is desired within that constraint, and that you love it when drafters discover new archetypes.

That's not a contradiction per se, but it does illustrate how squishy the word "viable" is -- depending on whether one means "viable = always a Tier 1 Deck" or "viable = isn't drastically outmatched by any other deck" or something else, that will drastically change the outcomes of this thought experiment. Probably the "isn't drastically outmatched" definition will be the one that leads to the most variance in gameplay and draft, since your supported archetypes can't be so parasitic or dominant that there are no reasonable alternatives. In that limit, perhaps "15 supported archetypes" ends up looking more like 0 supported archetypes, since all archetypes are supported equally? Food for thought.

Viable means for me, that the deck will come together to some degree and never be a trainwreck. From experience I tried to create a formula for that.

I take every crucial key part of a theme or archetype and note how many cards I want in my deck to play that role. Example for a full blown blink deck:
6 Blink Enabler
10 Blink Targets
Since 200 is the smallest card pool we use from my cube (with 2), I took that as the base, took the number x2, so the theoretical ideal for a 400 card cube would be 12 and 20 here. But than I added 100 more cards for variety. Then, I also gave every card a tag and counted for how many other decks cards of a category would be interesting. I gave out "flexpoints" which led to 0-5 cards added to each category to outweigh the more intensive fights over cards. It's just not fair to have the same number of "sacrifice payoffs" and "lifegain payoffs", when the former category contains mostly flexible, strong cards like Zulaport Cutthroat and the latter is half narrow cards like Ajani's Pridemate.

I tried different numbers and so far this seems to be the golden spot for me. Archetypes feel supported enough to appear with some regularity but there are enough buildarounds and flexible "good stuff" cards that players can come up with their own ideas. For example, last week my girlfriend beat me 3:0 in a 2-person draft with an all fliers deck and she found some great support cards (Path of Bravery was such a beating) - a deck I never supported on purpose with a single card.

I can go more into detail on this if someone is actually interested in my madness.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I can go more into detail on this if someone is actually interested in my madness.

I'd like to hear more about how you've formulated your math, but perhaps that should be in it's own thread.

https://luckypaper.co/articles/the-first-four-questions-cube-designers-should-ask/

Hey all, long-time lurker and admirer of the Riptide community here. I recently wrote an article to address how dang hard it can be to articulate one's design goals to oneself (let alone others!). The article, linked above, includes four accessible prompts to kick-start thought and discussion, as well as a markdown template for including your own responses in your CubeCobra descriptions if desired.

Have questions? clarifications? struggling to answer one of the prompts? Start a discussion here!

Cheers!
Parker / landofMordor

I just noticed you're new to posting on Riptide. I guess since I've seen you so much elsewhere it didn't occur to me that you haven't posted here until Monday .

I would suggest you create a thread for one of your cubes in the "cube blogs" section of the site. Even if you don't do it for purposes of discussion, it is good archive of cube updates and can help in re-visiting old ideas or past thought processes.

Just food for thought, I'd really like to see you become a part of this subset of the cube community. You bring a lot of good ideas to the table.