General Too Many Lands

[Mad Prophet]

Question for the prophet, somewhat serious: if the primary argument is that you want more spells, why not run 16-card packs?

A powerful wizard once said "restrictions breed creativity."

This is a good question, and altering the draft in that way is something I have considered.

But before I start messing around with a dial I've never tweaked before, I feel like I should have pretty compelling evidence that standard cube design techniques aren't going to get the job done.

 

[Jason Waddell]

It's more of just a theorycrafting / slippery slope question. Cubes already expanded from 14 -> 15 card packs, so, now we're just talking about degrees, aren't we?

 

[Mad Prophet]

I agree. I think the most obvious argument against pack expansion goes something like this:

Your drafters only have so much mental energy/attention/memory. Increasing the size of a pack taxes those resources in a very direct way, so should only be done for good reason.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

It's more of just a theorycrafting / slippery slope question. Cubes already expanded from 14 -> 15 card packs, so, now we're just talking about degrees, aren't we?

Correction. Retail packs shrank from 15 -> 14 card packs

 

[James Stevenson]

Sounds like something somebody should just try, rather than making up something about energy/attention/memory. Like, I see your point, but you're pointing out a possible flaw that we won't know until we try it. So.... Anybody tried large packs?

 

[RavebornMuse]

Sounds like something somebody should just try, rather than making up something about energy/attention/memory. Like, I see your point, but your pointing out a possible flaw that we won't know until we try it. So.... Anybody tried large packs?

I've tried the opposite: more packs that are smaller. For a 3-player group, 7 (or 8) packs of 12, and then discarding the last 6 cards in each pack, is my preferred way of drafting these days, and I've tried about every 2-player and 3-player draft format. It avoids the awkward "hahah-oops-we're-all-in-the-same-color(s)" hokey pokey of Burn/Glimpse drafting, while pushing power level and consistency in looser archetypes by seeing a lot of the cube; cutting the last 6 cards of each pack is a necessary way to balance seeing so many cards, and it helps to make picks matter more (since you're only getting 2 out of every pack) instead of easily wheeling the tools you want when you've got a pack full of goodies. Since I only ever draft with 3 (and rarely 4), I can't say how this could map to larger groups.. but I know I can't be the only one who drafts with less than a full 8, so maybe this is handy for someone?

 

[StormEntity]

As much as I'm in favor of experimentation...this doesn't sound like an idea that interests me at all. It doesn't actually even solve the initial problem here:

Question for the prophet, somewhat serious: if the primary argument is that you want more spells, why not run 16-card packs?

The primary argument is that the prophet wants more spells, but not in people's draft piles. In the cube itself. The idea was to open up a greater diversity of archetypes, and this doesn't actually do that. I think all it does is make decks better; correct me if there's something I'm missing. In addition you'd have to go from 360 to 384 cards to facilitate this change for a standard 8-man draft format. When you add 24 cards to the draft, it won't ever help to facilitate archetypes that aren't presently in your cube. You could be proposing upping your cube size to 384 and also drafting 16-card packs, but you could be adding cards to your cube to have more spells already if that's what you wanted to do. Many people don't do that for the same reason you play exactly 60 cards in a constructed deck: there's always a cut in the cube.

 

[Diakonov]

The primary argument is that the prophet wants more spells, but not in people's draft piles. In the cube itself. The idea was to open up a greater diversity of archetypes, and this doesn't actually do that. I think all it does is make decks better; correct me if there's something I'm missing.

If you're trying to make a narrow strategy come together, seeing more cards in the draft will help regardless of changing the cube's size. For exmapple, suppose there are 30 cards in a 360 cube that strongly support a storm deck. It's fair to assume that some of these cards are narrow enough that they are more likely to spin until they get to a storm drafter. With only 45 cards, you might not reach that critical threshold to make a storm deck that functions properly, but with, let's say 51 cards in the draft, you would have had a greater chance of getting there.

It's the difference between "just making a deck better" vs. "having the necessary threshold to be functional at all."

 

[StormEntity]

This presupposes that the cards are in the cube in the first place. They aren't if you're filling up a ton of slots with lands. It certainly solves a problem, but not the one the Mad Prophet set out to fix. Again, it's "just" making a deck better, albeit in a critical way--not introducing new strategies to your cube environment.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I really don't see the distinction, design-wise, between a card that is added as a "16th" card and a card that takes the place of a land that's been cut. Let's say we have a fixed 24 spells we want to add. Does it matter if we do it by adding 1 card to each pack, or by replacing one land in each pack?

 

[StormEntity]

My point is that if you're adding cards to the total count of cards in your cube to help facilitate new strategies, that isn't some new exciting idea. You could've been doing that already with 15 card packs, and all the 16th card ever does is make decks better, not make the cube any deeper in terms of strategic diversity (as opposed to drafting the 384 cube with regular 15 card packs). If you want to make the decks better, 16 card packs are a great way to do that--I'm just saying it doesn't actually open up the same cube design space that cutting lands does.

 

[sigh]

I really don't see the distinction, design-wise, between a card that is added as a "16th" card and a card that takes the place of a land that's been cut. Let's say we have a fixed 24 spells we want to add. Does it matter if we do it by adding 1 card to each pack, or by replacing one land in each pack?

There is a pretty major difference. Removing lands increases the spell count, but makes the mana base worse than it was before (less total fixing available per person). Adding spells and upping the cards per pack increases card access, but leaves the fixing per person intact

 

[Jason Waddell]

There is a pretty major difference. Removing lands increases the spell count, but makes the mana base worse than it was before (less total fixing available per person). Adding spells and upping the cards per pack increases card access, but leaves the fixing per person intact

Right, yeah, I agree with you there. I mostly meant in terms of some vague "archetypal support". Obviously most decks get worse (in objective terms, not relative) by having lands trimmed.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

One seeks to add more depth to the spell selection within the confines of a "regular" draft setup, the other seeks to add more depth to the spell selection by changing the "regular" draft setup.

 

[StormEntity]

But the change to the draft setup doesn't actually add any more depth to the spell selection--the only thing that's adding depth to your spell selection is adding the 24 cards, which you could do with 15 card packs or 8 card packs or whatever. The number of cards in the packs doesn't at all effect the depth of the cube's spell selection. All you're doing is distributing the cards in the cube differently. I'd argue that the cube's depth of spells is independent of draft method. Would you say the depth of spells in your cube is different when you play sealed with it? When you grid draft? I think to say that the drafting method changes the spell diversity is as absurd as claiming it changes the number of cards in the cube. It just doesn't.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Here's what I'm getting at. Say we have a cube that is:

340 spells
20 lands

With these 340 spells, we have certain archetypal support. Now make a cube that is:

340 spells
44 lands

Yes, the mana is better, and certain things will change as a function of that. I get the surface level differences between the two. I just feel like, functionally, in terms of the diversity of archetypes your spells support, you haven't really changed anything. Obviously this is very different than:

316 spells
44 lands

 

[Jason Waddell]

But the change to the draft setup doesn't actually add any more depth to the spell selection--the only thing that's adding depth to your spell selection is adding the 24 cards, which you could do with 15 card packs or 8 card packs or whatever. The number of cards in the packs doesn't at all effect the depth of the cube's spell selection. All you're doing is distributing the cards in the cube differently. I'd argue that the cube's depth of spells is independent of draft method. Would you say the depth of spells in your cube is different when you play sealed with it? When you grid draft? I think to say that the drafting method changes the spell diversity is as absurd as claiming it changes the number of cards in the cube. It just doesn't.

Deck diversity definitely changes as a function of drafting method.

At a certain level, so does observed spell density. Many niche cards rarely if ever see play in formats like sealed because they require a certain density of effect. Sealed and grid are both far more "good stuff" centric than 8p booster drafting, and your spell representation changes as a result.

 

[Diakonov]

You could've been doing that already with 15 card packs, and all the 16th card ever does is make decks better, not make the cube any deeper in terms of strategic diversity

Unless you have all the components of a pod deck except for Birthing Pod, and the 16th card that wheels to you is Birthing Pod. If it wasn't a Birthing Pod, you would have a more generic deck. It's a hyperbolic example, but the point being that it does increase diversity to have drafted more cards.

If I have half of a storm deck, half of a pod deck, and half of a wildfire deck, then I only have one actual deck: good stuff deck. You could argue that more cards per pack only made those potential decks better, but in practice you don't have diversity until those decks are actually playable enough to be considered for your final 40.

If you replace all lands with spells, you have a 100% chance of adding a new spell to the pack. If you add a 16th card to packs instead, you have a 90% chance of adding a new spell to the pack (assuming 10% of your cube is lands).

Edit: That last part I wrote is a little bit misleading in terms of average number of total spells drafted. The expected value for the former case is 15 spells, and for the latter (16 per pack with lands) would be 14.4 spells.

Also, if the goal is to have a greater diversity of spells, there's nothing preventing you from replacing the flattest 10% of spells in your cube with more divergent ones.

 

[Mad Prophet]

If I have half of a storm deck, half of a pod deck, and half of a wildfire deck, then I only have one actual deck: good stuff deck. You could argue that more cards per pack only made those potential decks better, but in practice you don't have diversity until those decks are actually playable enough to be considered for your final 40.

This is spot on.

My desire in experimenting with cutting dual lands was to support strategies like storm, wildfire, and pod by by filling the cube with loads of crossover cards that work in a large percentage of traditionally parasitic plans.

I find drafting to be most interesting when cards in the pack are desired by multiple drafters for different reasons
mulldrifter and wooded foothills are fine crossover cards in the sense that they are playable in a wide array of archetypes. But the best crossovers perform wildly different functions in different decks. burning-tree emissary is a very different card in storm than in red devotion. This type of dynamic keeps you focused on synergy and card interactions even when "staying open" by picking crossover cards.

 

[StormEntity]

I think what this is all coming down to (as always) is a semantic difference. Nobody's actually really put a word or phrase to the thing we're discussing. We have "archetypal support," "spell diversity," and a lot of vague notions here. Let me try to explain what I'm talking about here. We'll call it the "archetype value" of a cube. Each card in the cube contributes some amount to each archetype accessible in the cube. Whirler Rogue, to use a favorite example, would contribute to the artifact archetype, the ETB archetype, the Reveillarketype, the sacrifice archetype, etc. You add up all the contributions from all the cards in the cube and you arrive at the cube's archetype value, which is expressed as a number of archetype and an "average support" for those archetypes. It's clear, now, that the way you draft the cube doesn't have any effect on its archetype value. In fact the cube has the same archetype value even if you never draft it, even if you just put a list of cards on a piece of paper. Increasing the number of cards always adds to the archetype value.

I think it's fair to use this (now more explicit) concept as a proxy for what the Mad Prophet was talking about. Notably, maximizing your cube's archetype value goes exactly hand in hand with the Prophet's suggestions to cut lands and fits with his grievances about lands taking up cube space that could be occupied by spells that help support other archetypes. It also suggests that you should cut lands or else build your mana base such that it contributes to the archetype value in some way. It's understandable that this wouldn't have been others' characterizations of what we were discussing, but it's the picture I had in mind and what motivated my claim that draft method does not add to your cube's support of various archetypes. A cube is a set of cards, not a collection of possible draft actions (i.e. grid drafting your cube doesn't make it a different cube)

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The terms "archetype" and "theme" are pretty ambiguous. I like to think in terms of supporting "decks," because I think thats a little easier to pin down, but its a mess either way.

Increasing the number of cards always adds to the archetype value.

I think a qualifier should be added here. Adding cards increases the theoretical amount of archetype diversity, but its always possible for more dominant strategies to occlude, minimize, or consume them in practice. People tend to be drawn towards strategies that are successful, and addtional archetype pieces that end up tier 2 or tier 3 can be effectively competed out of a format.

There is also a cost inherent in simply increasing archetype diversity that should be considered. Too many decks/archetypes/themes introduces a lot of variance in what match-ups you get, how your match-ups play out, and whether they are even fun or particularly fair. The only strong exception to this would be if your player base is really casual, in which case they probably don't care, and may even prefer the opposite.

 

[RavebornMuse]

I think what this is all coming down to (as always) is a semantic difference. Nobody's actually really put a word or phrase to the thing we're discussing. We have "archetypal support," "spell diversity," and a lot of vague notions here. Let me try to explain what I'm talking about here. We'll call it the "archetype value" of a cube. Each card in the cube contributes some amount to each archetype accessible in the cube. Whirler Rogue, to use a favorite example, would contribute to the artifact archetype, the ETB archetype, the Reveillarketype, the sacrifice archetype, etc. You add up all the contributions from all the cards in the cube and you arrive at the cube's archetype value, which is expressed as a number of archetype and an "average support" for those archetypes. It's clear, now, that the way you draft the cube doesn't have any effect on its archetype value. In fact the cube has the same archetype value even if you never draft it, even if you just put a list of cards on a piece of paper. Increasing the number of cards always adds to the archetype value.

I think it's fair to use this (now more explicit) concept as a proxy for what the Mad Prophet was talking about. Notably, maximizing your cube's archetype value goes exactly hand in hand with the Prophet's suggestions to cut lands and fits with his grievances about lands taking up cube space that could be occupied by spells that help support other archetypes. It also suggests that you should cut lands or else build your mana base such that it contributes to the archetype value in some way. It's understandable that this wouldn't have been others' characterizations of what we were discussing, but it's the picture I had in mind and what motivated my claim that draft method does not add to your cube's support of various archetypes. A cube is a set of cards, not a collection of possible draft actions (i.e. grid drafting your cube doesn't make it a different cube)

Except archetype value, even as conceptualized here, is heavily conditioned based on % of cards you see in a given draft, and the format you're drafting in. The former matters a lot more as your archetypes get more fringe, as Grillo noted, but there are also implications based on if the archetype cards are density/incrementally oriented vs big-payoff-oriented. e.g., /x Spells-Matter decks aren't too much of a problem to support in most Riptide lists, but getting 1 Monastery Swiftspear is a lousy reward for drafting lots of red spells if that's all you see because Prowess Beats is about density, whereas Pyromancer's Goggles can be a big enough payoff that it's acceptable as the only -based spells-matter pickup you make. And this is the most simple example I can come up with off the top of my head; most archetypes aren't this clear-cut. There's also questions to be answered about how strong a payoff is, and how desirable it is outside of its home deck; Whirler Rogue is a great support card for a bunch of decks, sure, but how do you evaluate Entomb? Does it get points for being a Splendid Genesis and delirium enabler? What if you have no direct creature reanimation spells, but your cube heavily supports Welder strategies, Spider Spawning, and Burning Vengeance? How do you assign that point value? Cards are so heavily contextualized by what's native to their environment and how strong of a payoff you can get for running them. There's a million concerns which make "archetype value", as defined above, nearly useless without a million specific qualifiers. You could complicate the methodology, but you're probably best served evaluating archetype support from a different angle altogether than merely counting up where a card could fit. I just don't think the "count em up" approach works when generalized to this extreme degree.

Draft method also has a massive impact on the way a cube plays out, which anyone can attest to who has explored different methods than standard 8-person, 15 card packs, 3 packs each. You get very different decks and very different draft strategies out of Grid Drafting, Burn-4, Quilt, Lawyer, etc. We literally have people on this very forum, figuring out how you have to change a cube to take advantage of the unique opportunities and hurdles of grid drafting. It doesn't change what's in your cube, no, but it changes the % of cards seen and your ability to select freely from them, which it turn impacts archetype-oriented drafting.

 

[StormEntity]

I think it's not a big deal since I don't have any intention of tabulating any cube's archetype value; it's just a conceptual tool to demonstrate that adding cards to packs doesn't make a difference. Again, archetype value is a measure that's independent of draft setup--I was careful to define it as a property of a set of cards. I understand that play is different when you draft differently; I've also done a number of alternate draft setups. All I'm saying is that the specific concept I had in mind (and I do think it's a good measure to be thinking about, and roughly the measure our Prophet had in mind) is entirely independent of your draft setup.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think the important caveat is that as a heuristic, all its generally going to get you is a theoretical archetype count, rather than an actual archetype count.

Which is somewhat helpful during the initial design process, but always is going to be adjusted based on play results, which is fine. However, maybe after many repetitions of the cube, you could maybe precisely define how many decks an individual card contributes towards.

 

[James Stevenson]

Wait so if I add 24 brushwaggs to my 360 cube, and everybody drafts now 16 card packs, doesn't that mean all the old decks are just as viable as before, but now there's also a 16-land suicide-brushwagg deck, as well as oodles of new possibilities for brushwagg synergies and combos with the rest of the cube?

The debate about 16-card packs hasn't touched upon the importance of seeing the whole cube. The experience of cubers indicates that the more of your cube you see during a draft, the stronger your decks come together. Drafting storm in a singleton 720 cube is going to be a disaster. But if you could guarantee you saw the whole cube, or some high proportion of it, storm decks could be viable in every draft. Or brushwaggs, or zombies, or goblin welder, or whatever.

So if it turns out 16 card packs are not a strain on drafters, surely having 384 cards gives some more space to work with.

Am I missing something? Is everybody else presupposing something? As always, somebody should just try it.