So I have a couple retail simulation cubes, ISDx3 and ROEx3. Commons, uncommons, and rares are separated and boosters are made with the normal retail distribution of rarities. After a while, I pruned some of the cards that just don’t work in limited and replaced them with a little more fixing, which seems like a win from my sample. There are a couple drawbacks, in that the formats can feel a bit solved given all of the analysis out there, and at the very least, it’s less and less likely to feel like you;re coming up with something new and novel when doing deckbuilding over and over.
However, I do really like a couple things here that I don’t generally see in cubes: the retail rarity distribution of effects like build arounds and pure power, and narrative/thematic cohesion.
So, an idea. Are there enough cards to make a singleton cube, divide the piles up into “rarities” similar to wizards, and keep things almost entirely on theme when it comes to flavor?
For example, are there enough cards in Innistrad (or that feel like they could be) such that you could make a decent A+B style draft cube like this? Maybe Ravnica after this block?
If you look at Innistrad, it has ~110 commons. I have IIRC 5 of each common in my commons section. So if I were just going to brute force this, I would need 4 more cards for each card in the 110 set that had a similar effect to the corresponding ISD common. That doesn’t seem practical, even for Ravnica after this block.
Maybe that sort of redundancy is overkill here; I used the number 5 because, while rare, it was still possible to see 5 of the same common in a draft pool. I don’t know that the fact that this was possible actually is desirable. Since my goal with the original cube was simulating retail limited draft, I just didn’t want to deviate anywhere at first.
We could try something like 330 commons that match the themes of the set, 195 uncommons, and then however many rares we can find that fit.
What about build arounds like spider spawning? How do you avoid the dark ascension effect where you ruin the spider spawning deck? I guess this depends on whether they have printed enough cards that can be built around in a spider-spawning deck without actually *being* spider-spawning. It would also nice if they were on theme.
Which brings me to my next point — proxy printing has gotten so good, thst I think it would be possible to print a proxy with new art for a card that fits perfectly mechanically. Have a human but need to give them a funny hat? No problem!
Anyways, these are some ideas. Can I have chocolate AND peanut butter? Can I have the flavor and artistic coherence of a set like Innistrad, the excitement of opening a rare you haven’t played yet, the A+B style of design, and the variety and “un-solved-ness” of a custom cube?
However, I do really like a couple things here that I don’t generally see in cubes: the retail rarity distribution of effects like build arounds and pure power, and narrative/thematic cohesion.
So, an idea. Are there enough cards to make a singleton cube, divide the piles up into “rarities” similar to wizards, and keep things almost entirely on theme when it comes to flavor?
For example, are there enough cards in Innistrad (or that feel like they could be) such that you could make a decent A+B style draft cube like this? Maybe Ravnica after this block?
If you look at Innistrad, it has ~110 commons. I have IIRC 5 of each common in my commons section. So if I were just going to brute force this, I would need 4 more cards for each card in the 110 set that had a similar effect to the corresponding ISD common. That doesn’t seem practical, even for Ravnica after this block.
Maybe that sort of redundancy is overkill here; I used the number 5 because, while rare, it was still possible to see 5 of the same common in a draft pool. I don’t know that the fact that this was possible actually is desirable. Since my goal with the original cube was simulating retail limited draft, I just didn’t want to deviate anywhere at first.
We could try something like 330 commons that match the themes of the set, 195 uncommons, and then however many rares we can find that fit.
What about build arounds like spider spawning? How do you avoid the dark ascension effect where you ruin the spider spawning deck? I guess this depends on whether they have printed enough cards that can be built around in a spider-spawning deck without actually *being* spider-spawning. It would also nice if they were on theme.
Which brings me to my next point — proxy printing has gotten so good, thst I think it would be possible to print a proxy with new art for a card that fits perfectly mechanically. Have a human but need to give them a funny hat? No problem!
Anyways, these are some ideas. Can I have chocolate AND peanut butter? Can I have the flavor and artistic coherence of a set like Innistrad, the excitement of opening a rare you haven’t played yet, the A+B style of design, and the variety and “un-solved-ness” of a custom cube?
