CML
Contributor
Hey doodz,
So with CT becoming more of a thing, we have access to a great deal of quantitative data about our Cubes, some of which is useful for making design choices. Games start too slowly? Add in more 1-drops. Colors grossly imbalanced? Check your number of spells in Red.
Anyone who watches sports or has played online poker with a HUD knows that advanced stats make a beautiful game more beautiful; it's not like basketball will be solved by a multivariable analysis of corner 3's taken with respect to points per offensive possession, nor can you just take a dozen poker metrics, spit them into an algorithm, and determine how to play optimally against your opponent in a certain spot, lest he realize you're doing this (and so on).
Anyway, MTG is the same way and Cube design, as a facet of it, is, too. And though CubeTutor has a bunch of useful stats that grow more encompassing and accessible every month, it doesn't have everything. Some of this is due to sample size difficulties -- nobody has drafted enough for the 'first pick' metric to be useful -- but much of it is just there because it isn't there: principally, you can't visualize your entire curve, nor calculate it.
As (anecdotally) formats appear to be very, very sensitive to the CMC of their spells, this is where y'all come in. I made a nice little spreadsheet that we can work on filling out when we're bored at work or a tedious party. Y'all can change it in any way; I've just begun with slots for curve metrics for the last 4 years' draft formats, but ideally more metrics will get added along the top, along with more Cubes -- your Cubes -- along the bottom. Matthew Watkins' excellent articles on gatheringmagic.com might yield some useful data, too, beyond the (very interesting) 'average length of game' number.
I'm envisioning this as a big project that distills into numbers some of the more descriptive things we do on this forum. A good friend of mine pointed out the other day that Magic writing tends towards subjectivity, beyond the psychological aspect of the game, as a means of covering up our deep ignorance of the game's mechanics; contemporary Magic writing, however good, reads like the poker theory from the '90s that now seems impossibly quaint. Maybe we can help advance the game with not just the best Cubes, but understanding how Limited formats really work -- god knows Wizards needs it these days ...
Have at it:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjuwQWbAEpNndGotaEw1MUtfdDV4Uklfa1pRUnVGM0E#gid=0
So with CT becoming more of a thing, we have access to a great deal of quantitative data about our Cubes, some of which is useful for making design choices. Games start too slowly? Add in more 1-drops. Colors grossly imbalanced? Check your number of spells in Red.
Anyone who watches sports or has played online poker with a HUD knows that advanced stats make a beautiful game more beautiful; it's not like basketball will be solved by a multivariable analysis of corner 3's taken with respect to points per offensive possession, nor can you just take a dozen poker metrics, spit them into an algorithm, and determine how to play optimally against your opponent in a certain spot, lest he realize you're doing this (and so on).
Anyway, MTG is the same way and Cube design, as a facet of it, is, too. And though CubeTutor has a bunch of useful stats that grow more encompassing and accessible every month, it doesn't have everything. Some of this is due to sample size difficulties -- nobody has drafted enough for the 'first pick' metric to be useful -- but much of it is just there because it isn't there: principally, you can't visualize your entire curve, nor calculate it.
As (anecdotally) formats appear to be very, very sensitive to the CMC of their spells, this is where y'all come in. I made a nice little spreadsheet that we can work on filling out when we're bored at work or a tedious party. Y'all can change it in any way; I've just begun with slots for curve metrics for the last 4 years' draft formats, but ideally more metrics will get added along the top, along with more Cubes -- your Cubes -- along the bottom. Matthew Watkins' excellent articles on gatheringmagic.com might yield some useful data, too, beyond the (very interesting) 'average length of game' number.
I'm envisioning this as a big project that distills into numbers some of the more descriptive things we do on this forum. A good friend of mine pointed out the other day that Magic writing tends towards subjectivity, beyond the psychological aspect of the game, as a means of covering up our deep ignorance of the game's mechanics; contemporary Magic writing, however good, reads like the poker theory from the '90s that now seems impossibly quaint. Maybe we can help advance the game with not just the best Cubes, but understanding how Limited formats really work -- god knows Wizards needs it these days ...
Have at it:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjuwQWbAEpNndGotaEw1MUtfdDV4Uklfa1pRUnVGM0E#gid=0
