General 12-Card Packs

[Diakonov]

I was thinking last night about the decision to use 15 card packs and how arbitrary that is. Indeed, when you take into account that even retail limited only really uses 14-card packs, it makes even less sense. I'm going to pull a number out of my ass and say that on average the last 2 cards in a retail pack are unplayable garbage, thereby effectively reducing the pack to 12 reasonable picks.

I think one could argue that it's even more useful in cube to have smaller packs. Think about it: by the time you're done drafting, you'll likely use ~23 of your 45 picks. That's HALF of the cards you drafted that you aren't using. Also, since so many cube cards are strong, deckbuilding can take a lot longer than it would in retail. 12-card packs would mean faster drafts and faster deckbuilding. Fewer picks also means the decisions you make have greater consequences.

I'm sure there are some downsides I'm ignoring (for example, shipping fewer cards to yourself). I'd like to hear some feedback on this before I suggest it to my playgroup this week.

 

[CML]

15 is a good number for an 8-man, i think, having shit wheel is fun and exciting. I agree that 15-card packs are not great for fewer than 8, though.

In general the algorithm 2 * drafters - 1 is fun

Drafting more cards is fun, only 36 will substantially cut down on creativity

I like the idea if there's 48 cards for 6 people each, though -- the extra cards drafted will begin to compensate for the lesser amount of cards seen. Conventional 2-person grid drafting results in dull decks that are so homogeneous they begin to approximate the "5c goodstuff" thing, so seeing more cards seems fun. For example, when we only have 4, we sometimes draft 5 packs (of 15) and make 60-card decks. Note that this is a pretty subtle adjustment -- 3 packs is to 40 cards as 5 packs is to ~67 cards. You could always draft 5 packs of 9 too.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, 12x4 is great for six players, I've found. I used to do 11x4, but found that the deck quality was noticeably lower than in our 8-mans, so I bumped it up by a card a pack. It makes deckbuilding a tad harder, as Diakonov posited, but I think it's worthwhile for the improved deck synergies and resulting gameplay.