By: Jason Waddell
Nearly every time I visit the cubing subreddit, the place is plastered with questions from aspiring cubers looking for advice on how to build a set or block cube. Invariably, they get bombarded with a mix of conflicting suggestions and numbers, and I can’t help but wonder if they walk away feeling more confused than helped.
As has always been my mantra, there’s no one right way to do design. Today’s ChannelFireball article, however, should provide some clarity on the topic. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of set design is how great an impact your “pack creation” method has on the number of cards you need in your set cube. One can achieve nearly identical results using a mere 400 cards or by using nearly 1000 cards.
The topic of set cubes likely isn’t of tremendous interest to cubing veterans, but I think they serve as a great opportunity for giving beginning designers an accessible hands-on way to start learning lessons about cube and game design. What happens when you tweak this variable? How are the different aspects of the design connected? Can we make the set more fun than Wizards’ set when gameplay is our only focus?
On a personal note, it was nice to write an article that lived in the intersection between my professional life (statistics) and one of my hobbies (cube design).
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