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I enjoyed Zoss's tinkering with the M15 frame, so I decided to play around, too. I chose Counterspell since it has lots of real versions to compare. The first one is CMR except with the hologram added for comparison's sake. Next is my attempt to declutter the M15 frame. Then we have...

I started playing in 1994, so I had a bad attitude about the 8th Edition frames when I first saw them. I hated the color change for artifact borders, and I'm still on the fence about it. I remember particularly disliking the blue frame. I came around, though, and now I prefer the newer style for...

Reading what other people write makes me find more flaws. Reversing course on parasitic tribal: I changed my mind and took out Goblin Chieftain and Thirsting Bloodlord. I went back to Champion of Dusk, which is fine on its own and even better with an extra vampire. Goblins don't have a tribal...

How about this? A Thran Dynamo on a stick seems fine on its own. Canopy Tactician

Using Occasionals with a cube that breaks singleton could create some nice outcomes, right? After reading the Cavalcade of Calamity post, and thinking about set cubes, I've been thinking on how a cube could get some of the benefits of a retail set's rarity system with the least amount of effort...

That was a nice post on Charging Monstrosaur and trample. I really enjoy the way you're able to step back and generalize how elements of a card affect decision making and game play.

Devoted Crop-Mate Bishop of Rebirth Reveillark Sun Titan Liliana, Defiant Necromancer Any weenie creatures with ETB / dies triggers or a sacrifice ability would be extra fun. These come to mind: Saffi Eriksdotter Selfless Spirit

Evolutionary Leap

Just want to let you know that you're on fire with this blog! I've been reading every post.

You can count me in the population of people that would find this to be a fun puzzle that's worth the while to draft even if the deck wasn't a barn burner.

That would be The Elegant Cube. The occasionals bump it from 70 in the core cards to 102 overall. Occasionals are a good place to add a non-overwhelming amount of variety, so that makes sense. Exactly half of the keywords from the core cards appear exactly once, so as expected, a single number...

I've written some new code to look at keyword content of sets and cubes. Here's a visual: This won't come as a surprise: cubes usually have more unique keywords than retail draft sets. "Other" sets include masters sets, Jumpstart, Commander Legends, and Modern Horizons. Those sets are...

I made a project of putting some basics together that I like for my beginner cube. I only chose basics with modern borders and went for variety. This is a set of 21 of each, but I couldn't help myself and collected a bunch more beyond this. When you don't buy the old, expensive ones, nice...

Yeah, comparing colors could be interesting for some cubes. And it isn't necessarily a bad thing to have an imbalance in that regard. I looked at that for my list and noticed some imbalance, but it was a little more interesting to me to notice a few cards that were a lot of words for what they...

Hey, it's a Confiscate reprint with current border and rules text. Nice!

I was curious how these numbers compare to a retail draft set, so I wrote some more code to run through the set files available from mtgjson to figure that out. I also looked at the differences between rarities. These numbers are for the full oracle text. A handful of sets are excluded because...

I added that to the list. Sorry for missing it the first time - I tried to include lots of cubes from the regulars on the forums. That cube is indeed on the lower side for average words per card. I also added the old version of Graveyard Cube.

I found a bug and fixed the algorithm. Likely, other bugs exist, considering the wide variety of cards. Data table image has been updated. I also added the other cubes you asked about. Zoss, here's an attempt to share the Python code. If it doesn't show up properly, you can private message me...

For fun, I downloaded some JSON card data and wrote a bit of Python code to find the average number of words per card in a bunch of cubes from this site. It's a metric I'm trying to minimize in my cube, within reason, so this interests me. I looked at full oracle text, but also the text...

I gave the vampire update a try: Gutterbones -> Vampire Lacerator ("upkeep"... dammit) Gravecrawler -> Vampire of the Dire Moon Shambling Ghoul -> Child of Night Royal Assassin -> Blood Artist Cursed Minotaur->Marauding Blight-Priest Death Baron/Lord of the Accursed-> Thirsting Bloodlord...