Team FacedownSideboardCard
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- Thread starter James Stevenson
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Chris Taylor
Contributor
Nah 1 color decks in my cube are mostly wasted equity
I play fast, I don't necessarily play well
I'm trying to get my tokens in color-appropriate sleeves and keep them with the basic lands, so that when people are doing deck construction, they actually pick out the tokens they may need in advance instead of waiting until they're mid-draft and start using d20s because they can't immediately find what they need.
I don't think it's an issue when folks are proactive, and it actually can be more fun to have/use the proper tokens or at least funny token approximations that can be clearly read/understood/tapped. But unless you make it stupidly easy for your drafters, yeah, the whiteboard tokens or cutting down on unique tokens are the way to go. Kind of like with double-faced cards, I've conceded that if I want the most fun/memorable cards of the appropriate power band for a whole 720 cards, I can't design too much around
That said, I have over 100 cards that produce tokens, and they produce 50 unique tokens if you take out close-enough duplicates (Angels from Geist of Saint Traft vs. Angel Warriors from Emeria's Call), cards with Embalm/Eternalize, and planeswalker Emblems (who aren't counted in the 100+ token-producers anyways...). Wow. That sucks. I recently did an audit as I went out of my way to procure the missing tokens I had, but I guess I didn't put together the numbers of it. It's not going to change what I said, this is just an unfortunate consequence I'll do my best to make up for at the play-level instead of the (probably more sensible) design-level that I see as more popular here, but it does objectively suck.
Even so, I think, like with so much of this obtuse and bloated digital-first approach that modern WotC/Studio X has to design, cubes are inherently going to suffer like this more and more if they keep up with the typical cards that are printed in the power band that many of us (myself included) find most exciting.
Do I really need to Cube Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia and Poppet Stitcher though???
I don't think it's an issue when folks are proactive, and it actually can be more fun to have/use the proper tokens or at least funny token approximations that can be clearly read/understood/tapped. But unless you make it stupidly easy for your drafters, yeah, the whiteboard tokens or cutting down on unique tokens are the way to go. Kind of like with double-faced cards, I've conceded that if I want the most fun/memorable cards of the appropriate power band for a whole 720 cards, I can't design too much around
That said, I have over 100 cards that produce tokens, and they produce 50 unique tokens if you take out close-enough duplicates (Angels from Geist of Saint Traft vs. Angel Warriors from Emeria's Call), cards with Embalm/Eternalize, and planeswalker Emblems (who aren't counted in the 100+ token-producers anyways...). Wow. That sucks. I recently did an audit as I went out of my way to procure the missing tokens I had, but I guess I didn't put together the numbers of it. It's not going to change what I said, this is just an unfortunate consequence I'll do my best to make up for at the play-level instead of the (probably more sensible) design-level that I see as more popular here, but it does objectively suck.
Even so, I think, like with so much of this obtuse and bloated digital-first approach that modern WotC/Studio X has to design, cubes are inherently going to suffer like this more and more if they keep up with the typical cards that are printed in the power band that many of us (myself included) find most exciting.
Do I really need to Cube Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia and Poppet Stitcher though???
Chris Taylor
Contributor
You could absolutely make due with existing Zombie tokens and some beads
Edit oo or clear sleeves, double sided zombies!
no one needs to cube anything
I'm trying to use color-coded sleeves to make it super obvious what tokens go to what cards, I've found as long as I actually do it right (i.e. black sleeves instead of purple for zombie tokens, people are pedantic I guess) it's made things easier. I think the beads are a good solution though, I'd be annoyed myself to have two 2/2 zombie styles especially when I have 10 different arts for zombie tokens to start with.
They're unique designs I like a lot in isolation/conceptually though!! ;;;-;;;
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Thankfully the zombies are pretty black even without the sleeve, so you'll be fine either way.
Like I color code the token sleeves as well, and run these tokens from unstable:
Zombies will be fine.
Like I color code the token sleeves as well, and run these tokens from unstable:
Zombies will be fine.
Then run them dang! Have your cube's users had an issue with it, or are we just talking about maybe issues that could maybe happen? I've used everything from a dollar coin to a skittle to a toy car as a token.
Nah, no one's said anything or had an issue, I just hadn't taken a step backwards to properly assess the insane number of tokens we end up with at a cube of my size without a design restriction around minimizing unique tokens. Using other items for tokens is fine (and still happens plenty with my cube) but I think it's a better play experience when there's less nonsense you have to remember on the board, like "how big was that again?" or "is that a zombie and that a plant token? ok".
I will run them both for sure, it just felt bad to see it all spelled out like that. I think dice/beads on top of regular zombie tokens will work just fine. Thankfully, in real life, we don't have to watch the MtG Arena decayed animation every time a creature "decays".
Gathering the appropriate tokens are kind of a losing battle as a cube curator. You can put in all the legwork to gather the right tokens and color code them all you like, even have them readily available in a box for drafters to grab from, but realistically the majority of drafters are just going to flip over cards and use the backsides or just dice to represent things in games. That's what I've gathered over the years. I haven't even bothered updating my tokens box since like 2018 as a result.
Ultimately I think I'll probably just pick up the equivalent of those quick erase whiteboard cards along with some markers and call it a day.
Ultimately I think I'll probably just pick up the equivalent of those quick erase whiteboard cards along with some markers and call it a day.
You should see my boys' handwriting lmao. No shot.
I was already leaning towards "I'm best to try it cus I don't have Gx/Wx tokens" but this might be a good middle ground. Nearly half my token producers make Zombies and like a third are there for the WB tokens deck that I'm a little suspicious of, anyways.
The times I hate the most are when you need a token and you look through and can't find one for quite a while cus there's only 4 of this token in the pile of 100, or whatever. Only Zombies is preeeetty simple and very black. This might be the move.
Ironically, I love cards like Bestial Menace.
I only have, I dunno, 7-8 types, but even that's sort of a lot when you need excess copies of all of them.
Maybe I can find 4-6 tokens and just have 2-3 double sided kinds. I know there's a 1/1 Spirit / 2/2 Zombie DFT.
In my experience people really love having fitting, good looking tokens, and they rarely bother to search for those. So, kinda the opposite experience with my players.
I've been sorting by color and then by power/toughness, which makes it super easy to find the token you're looking for.
I have 6 unique tokens and put them two of those each back-to-back in a clear sleave. So, technically, I have only 3 kinds of (double-sided) tokens. On top of that, matching the front and back (both are artifacts, or both are 1/1) helps decrease the cognitive load of remembering which tokens are paired.
I also consider a 1/1 Servo and a 1/1 Myr to be the same token, although you should be cautious when doing this: I had to cut Myr Battlesphere in order to prevent confusion. Some kinds of tokens, like embalm or eternalize, can be ignored alltogether and represented by the card itself (pulled slightly from its sleeve). If the color of tokens is irrelevant for your cube, you might even simplify the tokens by homoginizing all green, red and white 1/1 tokens.
I also consider a 1/1 Servo and a 1/1 Myr to be the same token, although you should be cautious when doing this: I had to cut Myr Battlesphere in order to prevent confusion. Some kinds of tokens, like embalm or eternalize, can be ignored alltogether and represented by the card itself (pulled slightly from its sleeve). If the color of tokens is irrelevant for your cube, you might even simplify the tokens by homoginizing all green, red and white 1/1 tokens.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
People using sleeves or especially sideboard cards with the same sleeve as every other card in play/hand/etc tilts me way more than it should
takeaway i’m getting from this discussion is that sorting your tokens is always better than not sorting them
Like I said, when you make it easier than not to get the proper tokens for your draft deck, people will actually try! And it makes it a much better play experience. Dom's right that sideboard cards face-down in the same sleeve is actually the worst thing humanly possible, literally use a discarded pizza crust before that.
For a food token, that would indeed be better.
Flavor is on point.
Can you explain this using different words than the ones you already used?
I am not sure I quite understand. What is the problem with the sideboard cards and the sleeves?
Thank you <3
