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Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
As you can gather from the previous replies, there isn't a wrong way to do it. I agree with Brad that, in the end, it's irrelevant where you put it. Players drafting your cube aren't going to notice how you classified your cards, unless you do something really wild like classifying your green cards as red and seeding your boosters (potentially leading to fewer red and green cards in boosters). In other words, go with your gut feeling.
As for me, I like to determine which color identity is most likely to pick up the card. Spring and Road aren't efficient enough to make the cut in a mono green deck, you want to be able to cast the backside to get full value out of the cards. That's why I, like Mown, would put them in the gold section.
As for me, I like to determine which color identity is most likely to pick up the card. Spring and Road aren't efficient enough to make the cut in a mono green deck, you want to be able to cast the backside to get full value out of the cards. That's why I, like Mown, would put them in the gold section.
I agree that people can be more relaxed with classifications, but I disagree with it not mattering.
Let's say one's golgari section consists of two gold power outliers, while the selesnya section is just Nature's Chant and Kitchen Finks. Let's assume the white and black section are mostly equally powerful and synergistic with green, but because the drafters wont notice anyway, there are 43 white cards and 47 black cards. We now have an environment where green drafters will move into black notiecably more often than they will move into white.
Does that mean we have a bad draft environment? Certainly not. But it does have an impact how things were classified here.
Everything else is subjective. But if one's goal is to have all the colors/pairs/shards/whatever be drafted somewhat equally and having a somewhat equal success, being aware of the impact loose classifications can have is a valuable tool.
Let's say one's golgari section consists of two gold power outliers, while the selesnya section is just Nature's Chant and Kitchen Finks. Let's assume the white and black section are mostly equally powerful and synergistic with green, but because the drafters wont notice anyway, there are 43 white cards and 47 black cards. We now have an environment where green drafters will move into black notiecably more often than they will move into white.
Does that mean we have a bad draft environment? Certainly not. But it does have an impact how things were classified here.
Everything else is subjective. But if one's goal is to have all the colors/pairs/shards/whatever be drafted somewhat equally and having a somewhat equal success, being aware of the impact loose classifications can have is a valuable tool.
I don't think classifications really matter in practice unless you had something radical like 23 white cards and 67 black cards to where the discrepancy is apparent in a cube leaning towards a color. Small outliers like 43 vs. 47 in two colors across 360 cards will not be picked up by anyone other that the cube creator unless draft packs end up wildly imbalanced. Mostly because it's not like we're going to have perfectly balanced packs color-wise each and every time; variance is an expected part of the drafting process unless it's an intensely curated environment.
It wouldn't be the slight difference in black versus white cards that would push me one way or the other; it would be dependent on the raw card quality that I see from payoffs coming my way. In that example yes, if I see something like Grist, the Hunger Tide or Pernicious Deed versus cards that are filler then that definitely creates an imbalance but that's more due to raw power than classification. The more good cards of a secondary color that come my way the more I'd want to lean on that color regardless of gold offerings which I might just not see. Unless Finks and Chant are higher value in this environment than normal, I think it's kind of a wasted gold slot to classify them as such when you're probably better off just using one of your 40+ slots in a single color.
It's kind of like if you're playing a Constructed format where graveyard strategies are powerful. I don't necessarily need all the hate mainboard, but I better have the critical mass available somewhere within the 75. Finks and Chant are perfectly fine, but I don't necessarily want them to be classified as signpost cards for a color pair when they're just solid filler at best.
It wouldn't be the slight difference in black versus white cards that would push me one way or the other; it would be dependent on the raw card quality that I see from payoffs coming my way. In that example yes, if I see something like Grist, the Hunger Tide or Pernicious Deed versus cards that are filler then that definitely creates an imbalance but that's more due to raw power than classification. The more good cards of a secondary color that come my way the more I'd want to lean on that color regardless of gold offerings which I might just not see. Unless Finks and Chant are higher value in this environment than normal, I think it's kind of a wasted gold slot to classify them as such when you're probably better off just using one of your 40+ slots in a single color.
It's kind of like if you're playing a Constructed format where graveyard strategies are powerful. I don't necessarily need all the hate mainboard, but I better have the critical mass available somewhere within the 75. Finks and Chant are perfectly fine, but I don't necessarily want them to be classified as signpost cards for a color pair when they're just solid filler at best.
I mostly agree with Brad, but to ask a probing question: what is the purpose of your classification. In the draft, the card is just the card, so what design problems are being addressed by your classification system? (no wrong answers)Legitimate question: how would you classify these cards?
and would you classify them the same way if the Aftermath part only had a single colored pip?
EDIT: To clarify, would you be willing to sort these into the mono-green part of your cube, or would you feel the need to stick them in a Simic/Gruul "slot"?
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
So, let's say there are 45 green cards in the cube, we have 43 white + 45 green + 2 g/w hybrid cards = 90/360 = 25% of all cards (ignoring colorless cards and lands) are in your colors as a g/w drafter. The b/g drafter, conversely, has 47 black + 45 green + 2 b/g gold cards + 2 g/w hybrid cards = 96/360 cards = ~26,7%. So, even though there seems to be a significant difference, I'm not convinced green drafters will move into black noticeably more often.
I like to keep exact parity in my sections, but I feel absolute freedom to classify cards as I see fit, and my internal consistency is secondary to making the most interesting cube. Restrictions breed creativity and whatnot, so I don't mind having to make compromises of some sort, and from a "managing a cube in my head" perspective, having equally-sized color segments is my preference.
Though at 720 (or even 360 tbh), from a color balance POV, it's statistically less relevant than the randomness introduced by simply shuffling up the cube/not collating packs to even out colors to have a "perfectly balanced" color distribution in the list...
Anyways I think you're fine to classify the AKH split cards as gold cards or as their front side, whichever seems more relevant/is more convenient to you. If you'd imagine folks will play them 80% of the time specifically for their top half, I'd lean in the direction of putting them in a mono color spot personally.
Though at 720 (or even 360 tbh), from a color balance POV, it's statistically less relevant than the randomness introduced by simply shuffling up the cube/not collating packs to even out colors to have a "perfectly balanced" color distribution in the list...
Anyways I think you're fine to classify the AKH split cards as gold cards or as their front side, whichever seems more relevant/is more convenient to you. If you'd imagine folks will play them 80% of the time specifically for their top half, I'd lean in the direction of putting them in a mono color spot personally.
I understand the desire to balance a spread sheet but, when you crack open boosters in a retail draft the distribution of colors is gonna be all over the place, and I have fun drafting retail
Yes and no. There not all over the place. They used to be slightly seeded. I have never heard of a booster which was without 1 or 2 colours. Something which is not unthinkable when you randomly grab 15 cards from a cube.
I think he means like... the counts from when you add up 24 packs are 'all over the place' (by cube standards).
Legitimate question: how would you classify these cards?
and would you classify them the same way if the Aftermath part only had a single colored pip?
EDIT: To clarify, would you be willing to sort these into the mono-green part of your cube, or would you feel the need to stick them in a Simic/Gruul "slot"?
I’d only classify them as mono Green if a 3cmc rampant growth was a desirable/playable/good card in the format.
My goal was to strike up some flavor of discussion... which was a rousing success!
In all seriousness, though... my question is, in a roundabout way, about the draft (I just phrased it badly, because I just finished work and was sleepy). Basically... if you saw Spring//Mind in a draft, would you go "ah, this is signaling that Rainbow Green¹ is a possible deck that I can draft", or would you go "oh, Simic ramp is a thing"?
¹ Or Domain, or whatever else you want to call that particular flavor of "this is a heavily green deck that happens to be able to splash every other color because Green".
i always assume rainbow green is a thing in any draft format, so i guess i would think the second one?
Well, that is if you have a 360 cube… if you have a bigger cube than the amount of cards you draft then the distribution is likely to be all over the place.
I think I would only consider rainbow green if I have a lot of green cards that can fix for multiple colors, like birds
I have a thought but not sure how half-baked it is... some idea that signaling is more relevant to high-power cards (relative to your environment) than low-power cards. If these cards are 10th-15th picks, by the time I'm picking them I've already seen like 80+ other cards.My goal was to strike up some flavor of discussion... which was a rousing success!
In all seriousness, though... my question is, in a roundabout way, about the draft (I just phrased it badly, because I just finished work and was sleepy). Basically... if you saw Spring//Mind in a draft, would you go "ah, this is signaling that Rainbow Green¹ is a possible deck that I can draft", or would you go "oh, Simic ramp is a thing"?
¹ Or Domain, or whatever else you want to call that particular flavor of "this is a heavily green deck that happens to be able to splash every other color because Green".
Generally agree though that it's best not to hang your drafters out to dry with bad signals.
How can I tell if a card is Mirran? Obviously, I thought to search the watermarks, but that seems hugely insufficient. For example, there are more cards with "t: phyrexian -watermark: phyrexian" than there are with "watermark: phyrexian". Another example, the Mirran watermark is missing from For Mirrodin! cards. There's also cards from the Duel Deck that have a Mirran or Phyrexian watermark while having no connection to either.
Nice
What a cool website
NINJAS vs. PIRATES!
So, let me tell you about the tagger project. 
You can try fiddling around with something like...
Annoyingly, there is a mirran-resistance tag... but it has only been used for cards showing the Mirran resistance in ONE and the related Alchemy/Commander sets.
You can try fiddling around with something like...
Annoyingly, there is a mirran-resistance tag... but it has only been used for cards showing the Mirran resistance in ONE and the related Alchemy/Commander sets.
I adore the heck out of this site, I've been using it for some of my (yet to be released) Cardboard by the Numbers infographics.
It's unbelievably strict in what it assigns to planes, which I appreciate, but for a project I'm working on for MOM right now, I've got to play a little looser than it.