General 180-card "Twobert"

alvoi

alvoi

Good morning everyone,

I hope I'm doing it right since it's the first time I post a new topic in this section, so... anyway. I searched for this topic but I didn't find anything, and I wanted to see your opinion about it. I've read in the past few days some articles by Ryan Overturf (https://articles.starcitygames.com/premium/the-proper-way-to-do-two-player-cube-drafts/ if I can post the link) in which he talks about a way to do 2- and 4- player drafts. Since I usually draft with at most three other friends, but often I draft in two, this was an interesting read, and now I'm thinking about lowering my main cube size from 360 to 180. Obviously this is sad because I have to let a lot of good cards go (but I'm considering: instead of making a 180-card cube, I can do something similar to Jason and build a cube with 180 "slots" in which I extract the cards... I still have to think about this a bit). Anyway, since this 180 "Twobert" formula can be applied to any cube design, I wanted to hear your opinions about this, since I'm still a bit undecided
 
japahn

japahn

When I've played 180 card cubes more than once, it felt repetitive, significantly less deep than 360 card cubes. Caveat is that I don't have _extensive_ experience with them (I just had one for a few drafts), and I do personally value variety a lot.

If you'd prefer to keep the list 360 or somewhat close to it, there are many ways to deal with the problems you'll encounter. Different draft formats like tenchester draft, pancake draft, and my own pyramid draft allow most/all of a 360 cube to be seen in a 2-person draft. There's a lot of information in this thread:

https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/pack-size.3364/

I confess after reading the article I don't understand what it means by "Twobert". It sounds like simply a 180 cube, but I'm probably missing something.
 
Alfonzo Bonzo

Alfonzo Bonzo

If I was gonna build a 180 id go for a mono colour cube. Gives much greater depth to the available decks, and you get to play with the cool utility lands in that colour.
 
ellogeyen

ellogeyen

I myself have a 3-color cube for 1-4 players. Currently it contains 250 cards but I'll downsize it to 180 some time this month. As Alfonzo said, it's easier to create a deep environment with fewer colors. It also helps compitition for colors, as two players could both get a color pair with no overlap with 5 colors.

I'm not quite sure what the "Twobert" formula is.
 
alvoi

alvoi

japahn said:
If you'd prefer to keep the list 360 or somewhat close to it, there are many ways to deal with the problems you'll encounter. Different draft formats like tenchester draft, pancake draft, and my own pyramid draft allow most/all of a 360 cube to be seen in a 2-person draft. There's a lot of information in this thread: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/pack-size.3364/
Click to expand...
Thank you! Yeah all of these seem interesting, I think I'll try some of them, but it feels strange to own a 360-card cube if I never draft it with 8 players
japahn said:
I confess after reading the article I don't understand what it means by "Twobert". It sounds like simply a 180 cube, but I'm probably missing something.
Click to expand...
Oh well, me neither
ellogeyen said:
I myself have a 3-color cube for 1-4 players. Currently it contains 250 cards but I'll downsize it to 180 some time this month. As Alfonzo said, it's easier to create a deep environment with fewer colors. It also helps compitition for colors, as two players could both get a color pair with no overlap with 5 colors.
Click to expand...
I didn't consider the idea of cutting some colors, now I'm really interested! If I build a 2-coloured cube, I can support interesting archetypes that would be too parasitic or too underpowered in a 5-colours environment. Maybe I'll think about it and come up with some ideas, do you have any reccomendations?
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

Has anyone tried "Minnesota Minneapolis Draft" as a head-to-head drafting option? I might try it with some physical grid populations when given the chance.

From the article: https://articles.starcitygames.com/premium/the-proper-way-to-do-two-player-cube-drafts/
Minneapolis Draft is a two-player draft format where both players make eight packs of seven cards. Each player starts by simultaneously opening their first pack without showing the contents to the other player, drafting one card face down, and then trading their first pack with the other player. Then each player takes two cards from the other player’s pack and trades back. Finally, players take an additional two cards from the pack they had opened and the last two cards in each pack are discarded face-down from the draft. To reiterate, that’s one first pick, two picks from the other player’s pack, and then two last cards from the pack you opened before discarding the remaining two cards from the draft. Players continue this process until all eight of their packs have been drafted. From here players add any number of basic lands to their deck and play some 40-card Limited Magic.

I’ve found this to be a really fun way to draft with some amount of hidden information that also involves navigating drafting packs against the other player that emulates a traditional booster draft better than other two-player draft formats. This process could also be done face up, and I imagine some players would prefer that, though I’ve been enjoying the face down draft a lot and haven’t been interested in trying face up.

This Cube and this draft style have led to a lot of really fun games with two- and three-color decks, and I’m excited to play more with this Cube.
Click to expand...
 
B

blacksmithy

that does sound interesting!
i went back to jumpstart packs for 2 player cubing after trying a couple grids, it’s just so fast so you get in a bunch more games per session
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

japahn said:
I tried 10 packs of 10 per player:
- Pick 1, swap
- Pick 2, swap
- Pick 1, burn the remaining 6

It was too easy to read the opponent's picks, leading to heavy hate drafting.
Click to expand...
The following is informed from grid drafting a ton (where hate drafting is a standard operating procedure with perfect info):

Hate drafting has often turned into players switching colors: one issue is most likely the # of picks. Players are picking 40-48 high-quality cards over a max of 4 colors (and the average mv of cards for each is 2-2.5 & 3-3.5) at sixteen 3x3 grids, so players can waffle a lot and still have competitive decks with decent fixing. Haven't tried fourteen grids recently, but last time @ fourteen, decks were a lot scrappier without the final 5-6 cards. I can envision a world of going up to eighteen grids or adding some sort of adjusted power-level system on a per-player basis for novice drafters or those of varying skills, as drafters with lesser format experience may end up with an ineffectual deck (despite have a selected lot of good cards) with too few picks.

My takeaway from the last few years is that density of effects and total # of raw resources matter a ton in cube/retail limited; I am trending toward scarcity over abundance. In any case, it's an interesting knob to turn (and I suppose is part of the Pack Size conversation...).
 
alvoi

alvoi

japahn said:
I tried 10 packs of 10 per player:
- Pick 1, swap
- Pick 2, swap
- Pick 1, burn the remaining 6

It was too easy to read the opponent's picks, leading to heavy hate drafting.
Click to expand...
The last 4 cube draft I did were 1vs1 and I tried various variations of this. I think the best one is exactly this, but I did that with 10 packs of 9 cards per player instead of 10x10
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top