As cool as duplicates are in theory, real life has a way of getting in the way of the best designs. Essentially, nobody I play with is in as deep as we are here, and duplicates and esoteric archetypes and all that fun to design stuff just serves to confuse them. So, to ensure I have people to play with, and that my friends have a good time, I've gotta compromise a bit. And that's ok!
General Current opinion on duplicates and other Riptidian/Waddellisms?
- Thread starter Wumpa
- Start date
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I don't know, I've cube with everything from friends who had last played a game of Magic "back in the day" to hardcore tournament players, and duplicates never tripped any of them up. I do like the idea of visibly marking them though, I might do that if I can find a way to do it inconspicuously 
I've also never had people get tripped up on my duplicates, but I think it depends on culturally whether or not you view cube as a strict singleton format. If you just think of it as a draft, I think people just go "oh, alright" when you tell them you have to champion of the parish or something like that.
I can really relate to this. Most of my drafters are either die hard edh or modern players with minimal limited experience so I find they mostly gravitate towards cards and archetypes that most resemble their favourite format and play it safe (or if they're drunk or tired draft an incoherent pile and curl up into a ball when its time to deck build). My new experiments typically fall flat unless I force them myself, helping me come to the conclusion that my role during my drafts isn't to try to win but to play scientist and gather as much data as possible.
Speaking of format dissonance, has anyone developed any methods or tools for teaching people the nuances of cube/drafting/their specific environment? I've had some requests for a guide to my format of sorts but I keep writing half a novel and give up when I realize no one will ever read it. I do try to help as much as possible, especially go through decks and sideboards if myself and another player are waiting for others to finish a game. I might make a new thread about it, I can't be the only one with a limited challenged group.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The best thing I did was just use the guild section to suggest at the existance of themes, though I am sure there are other ways to set markers in the desert. Legendary creatures are particularly good at this, since they tend to draw attention, and they hint at a narrative string for each guild. I try to have the cube itself do most of the framing, going off of what I know about the people playing.
I don't have the best drafters in the world either, and with that, goes two things:
1. People don't really like being lectured about the "correct" way to do things, even if its objectively true. Explaining to a drafter what "negative variance" is just tends to make them feel stupid, and turn them off, so I would rather organically design in ways for R/W (for example) to naturally address bad drafting habits. Otherwise you're basically telling them that they are an idiot, and a bad drafter, even if you didn't mean to. I want myself, and the cube experience, to be an advocate for their abilities, not a missile that crashes into their world and upends it.
2. The written archetype breakdowns are hard to follow. Cube formats are too complicated for someone to objectively understand before entering, in the time frame they are likely to be alloted to look over the breakdown. I don't like feeding into that heuristic of "we're going to gain an objective understanding first and from that derive objective valuations for draft picks". I generally find that whatever breakdown you give them, they don't understand at all (though they will smile and nod through it in order to not look silly), they will struggle to remember and apply once put into the draft, and at the end of the day, will likely still depend on the draft itself to frame things for them.
Since I can't assume that pre-draft literature is going to work, I have to count on the draft to communicate its own potential.
Otherwise, you kind of just have to wait for the meta to evolve, or maybe cut things if its too stagnate for too long. At a certain point, people will get bored and start pushing the boundaries of things, and you want them to be able to see and be rewarded with something cool when that starts to happen. This can happen very slowly in our small playgroups.
I don't have the best drafters in the world either, and with that, goes two things:
1. People don't really like being lectured about the "correct" way to do things, even if its objectively true. Explaining to a drafter what "negative variance" is just tends to make them feel stupid, and turn them off, so I would rather organically design in ways for R/W (for example) to naturally address bad drafting habits. Otherwise you're basically telling them that they are an idiot, and a bad drafter, even if you didn't mean to. I want myself, and the cube experience, to be an advocate for their abilities, not a missile that crashes into their world and upends it.
2. The written archetype breakdowns are hard to follow. Cube formats are too complicated for someone to objectively understand before entering, in the time frame they are likely to be alloted to look over the breakdown. I don't like feeding into that heuristic of "we're going to gain an objective understanding first and from that derive objective valuations for draft picks". I generally find that whatever breakdown you give them, they don't understand at all (though they will smile and nod through it in order to not look silly), they will struggle to remember and apply once put into the draft, and at the end of the day, will likely still depend on the draft itself to frame things for them.
Since I can't assume that pre-draft literature is going to work, I have to count on the draft to communicate its own potential.
Otherwise, you kind of just have to wait for the meta to evolve, or maybe cut things if its too stagnate for too long. At a certain point, people will get bored and start pushing the boundaries of things, and you want them to be able to see and be rewarded with something cool when that starts to happen. This can happen very slowly in our small playgroups.
When drafting penny pincher 2.0 for the first time, I took the list of archetypes Grillo provided and sent an email with card pictures of 3 or 2 enablers or payoffs for each shard/wedge/guild archetype.
I don’t think this helped everybody, but I overheard at least one person, who plays Limited and follows the strategy articles, coaching other players after the games to look at some of those hints. So maybe it’s useful for people who already follow Limited and are used to looking for some of these breadcrumbs. This was the same guy who jumped in headfirst with a Lab Man deck, bless his soul lol.
If you didn’t have email then maybe a printed out flier type thing? I don’t know.
I don’t think this helped everybody, but I overheard at least one person, who plays Limited and follows the strategy articles, coaching other players after the games to look at some of those hints. So maybe it’s useful for people who already follow Limited and are used to looking for some of these breadcrumbs. This was the same guy who jumped in headfirst with a Lab Man deck, bless his soul lol.
If you didn’t have email then maybe a printed out flier type thing? I don’t know.
Funny you mention this...I've been working on writing up a comprehensive archetype breakdown for my cube, and this is proving to be the most useful/intuitive way for me to communicate what a cube supports. I think I've settled on a 6 card format that serve as a snapshot or essence of a strategy. Typically 3 anchor cards and 3 support cards. I'm working on mine currently for guilds only. After scanning the sets of cards each guild's strategies, you naturally start thinking of how they intersect in 3-color decks. It's abbreviated enough to not be fatiguing, and card images are easier to digest than walls of text.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Images are probably the way to go. That should be a lot more memorable, and also remove the awkwardness of relying on language.
I would imagine its almost like they are getting a simplified snapshot of a pack, in a sense. Much more relatable to what is actually going to happen.
I would imagine its almost like they are getting a simplified snapshot of a pack, in a sense. Much more relatable to what is actually going to happen.
The most obvious example I can think of in my cube of how guilds can inform 3 color strategies when using this format:
GU Madness:
UR Madness:
RG Madness:
From here it's easy to see that RUG Madness can be slanted a few different ways, from berserker aggro to counterburn tempo to midrange toolbox, or more likely a little bit of all those things.
I'm planning to articulate 3 archetypes for each guild this way, and I think it clearly leads one to crossover synergies and can direct players towards more fringe archetypes that aren't included in the guide. I think it's generous, but a little less tedious and pedantic.
EDIT: Probably a little too obvious of an example...
GU Madness:
UR Madness:
RG Madness:
From here it's easy to see that RUG Madness can be slanted a few different ways, from berserker aggro to counterburn tempo to midrange toolbox, or more likely a little bit of all those things.
I'm planning to articulate 3 archetypes for each guild this way, and I think it clearly leads one to crossover synergies and can direct players towards more fringe archetypes that aren't included in the guide. I think it's generous, but a little less tedious and pedantic.
EDIT: Probably a little too obvious of an example...
I would love to read it!
Planning to update the original post in my cube thread sometime this week. I'm about halfway through. I've only had a cubetutor link for the longest time, but I'm close to finalizing each guilds three archetypes. Finalizing Orzhov's third archetype has been giving me some fits. It's been a surprisingly great exercise to address which guilds are lacking direction, and in need of more thought and cube real estate.
Might steal this approach for my archetypes list I still need to write up, seems like a good approach.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Yeah, an image-basedtheme guide seems like a great idea!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
In my experience people accept double fetches/shocks without a second thought while anything else takes a bit longer to wrap their heads around. Most drafters view lands as a constraint on what spells they can cast rather than an end in themselves whereas, as soon as you see two of one spell, you have no idea what else might be doubled and what the strategic implications of that are
Give them a cubetutor link a few days before the tournament and people will not be surprised.
Grillo you're as wise as ever, I'll take your advice to heart as I tinker with my list tomorrow. And I'll try to resist correcting my drafters the next time they try to play Goblin Guide in the same deck as Griselbrand (true story!). I love your suggestion for crafting an rw section so that it becomes intuitive to assemble an aggro deck, however I've had an issue with my plentiful aggro cards being traps in non-aggro decks which is something I'm not sure how to fix outside of education. But like you said, sometimes stepping back and letting them fail and learn is much more effective in making them better drafters. Honestly I think I'm just afraid that I'm going to push more people in my mtg circle away from the format because they didn't build properly, I've lost a few already.
Also inscho that's brilliant and I'm 100% going to do that I'd been using a tri-picture system but never thought of focusing on highlighting the support cards as much as the anchors.
Lastly I just want to thank you all for these great responses and indulging me in my cube musings, this community is really something special.
Also inscho that's brilliant and I'm 100% going to do that
I'd been using a tri-picture system but never thought of focusing on highlighting the support cards as much as the anchors. Lastly I just want to thank you all for these great responses and indulging me in my cube musings, this community is really something special.
Alright, so I've been grappling with the problem of duplicates not being wanted by any drafter at the table for a while now. If no one is interested in playing a Human Aggro deck or making Pod, all of sudden those cards with two copies become dead cards within the pool. With my cube at 420, you're going to miss seeing 60 cards at minimum depending upon the number of drafters that are at the table and there's always the possibility that a buildaround like Collected Company or Birthing Pod won't be seen until the 3rd pack. To work around this, I've decided to implement a kind of voucher system into the cube. The cards that are eligible for the system are the following:
And you get another copy by drafting and presenting me one of these after the draft (shoutout to my buddy for building this on the fly since I have zero skills!):
I'm testing it out with the 7 cards listed above, but essentially you'd need to draft the card and then also this voucher and then see me after the draft to get the 2nd copy. This can be done a maximum of once per card. I've got 4 of these vouchers within my cube, I think that 7 to 4 is a fine ratio to try this out initially. Young Pyromancer and Soulherder are just there to help flesh out the base of those archetypes, they were just singleton inclusions in my cube before this.
One of the problems I saw with certain cards were that usually just one person at the table would be interested in picking it up. That makes sense for certain archetypes since that's not really different than the Reanimator player wheeling something like a Dread Return or a giant creature, but it does become an issue when you have too many duplicates within the cube. I think this will introduce more competition/demand for these vouchers from players that are fishing for them in the draft. I'm not quite sure what the optimal strategy is to drafting these yet, I've done a number of test drafts on Cobra and the flexibility is great but usually it comes down to targetting a payoff card and then trying to pick up that voucher in later picks. I suppose you could hedge on the vouchers if you're going W/B aggro since there's some redundancy there, but for the other cards you'd want to pick up the card before even thinking about the voucher.
I think it'll introduce a fun mini-game and some tension within the draft. I might have a chance to fire off a cube draft next week (along with my ELD inclusions!) so I'll report back with whatever my results end up being. I'm pretty excited to try this out though!
And you get another copy by drafting and presenting me one of these after the draft (shoutout to my buddy for building this on the fly since I have zero skills!):
I'm testing it out with the 7 cards listed above, but essentially you'd need to draft the card and then also this voucher and then see me after the draft to get the 2nd copy. This can be done a maximum of once per card. I've got 4 of these vouchers within my cube, I think that 7 to 4 is a fine ratio to try this out initially. Young Pyromancer and Soulherder are just there to help flesh out the base of those archetypes, they were just singleton inclusions in my cube before this.
One of the problems I saw with certain cards were that usually just one person at the table would be interested in picking it up. That makes sense for certain archetypes since that's not really different than the Reanimator player wheeling something like a Dread Return or a giant creature, but it does become an issue when you have too many duplicates within the cube. I think this will introduce more competition/demand for these vouchers from players that are fishing for them in the draft. I'm not quite sure what the optimal strategy is to drafting these yet, I've done a number of test drafts on Cobra and the flexibility is great but usually it comes down to targetting a payoff card and then trying to pick up that voucher in later picks. I suppose you could hedge on the vouchers if you're going W/B aggro since there's some redundancy there, but for the other cards you'd want to pick up the card before even thinking about the voucher.
I think it'll introduce a fun mini-game and some tension within the draft. I might have a chance to fire off a cube draft next week (along with my ELD inclusions!) so I'll report back with whatever my results end up being. I'm pretty excited to try this out though!
Its weird to me how not color balanced the voucher is. I wonder what that does to how much each color is drafted, if anything.
I thought long and hard about any blue cards that I wanted to double up on and I couldn't find anything that was compelling that would actually add to my environment. I think what matters more is mechanical distinction for the decks that would want those cards than actual colors. There's major overlap in the aggressive cards, but I think that's fine since Aggro could always use a little bit of a shot in the arm in a format that tends to lean more towards midrange goodstuff.
My ratios for actual cards in each color are still mostly the same, maybe off by 1 here and there, so imagine it would be virtually indistinguishable unless someone gets a really weird pack color-balance wise.
My ratios for actual cards in each color are still mostly the same, maybe off by 1 here and there, so imagine it would be virtually indistinguishable unless someone gets a really weird pack color-balance wise.
Or Brainstorm if you have a lot of shuffle effects.
Or Gifts Ungiven if you want that strategy to be viable.
I'm not really a fan of Delver in Cube, tried to make it work a few years back but I'm pretty sure it's a trap. It's just difficult to build up the redundancy and density of effects you need to make Delver comparable to how powerful it's been in Constructed formats when drafting a cube deck. Brainstorm was 3 of for a long time, but the value plays of Brainstorm + Fetch didn't line up often enough for it to be worth it and stuff like Preordain or Ponder that don't lock you in with dead cards have just been better in practice for me. Finally, I think Gifts is fine as a one-of since it's more of a niche card and might be too strong going x2 for the decks that actually want it (mostly just Reanimator). Gifts is more fun and there's more nuance to it at a lower power level with the wonky piles and combinations you can assemble, but in my environment I think there are going to be fewer cute piles and more plays towards raw efficiency knowing my drafters.
Not sure where it was made, my friend built it for me since I'm not too familiar with any of those custom card/proxying programs. I'll have to ask him and find out.
Not sure where it was made, my friend built it for me since I'm not too familiar with any of those custom card/proxying programs. I'll have to ask him and find out.
Agreed, Delver is a trap in Cube. You just aren't going to get the density of cheap spells and other support you need 90% of the time. I strongly suggest switching to Scary Terry instead.
Scary Terry goes to the same deck as Delver.
Every card will seem like a trap if all of the support cards are getting cut. In other words there is a world where Delver works but it requires some work and it is the same world as Scary Terry. Also you are making Scary Terry stronger by also having Delver in the cube.
Also Delver gets stronger the more of him you have. If your 720 cube has 1 Delver and 0 Pteramander then it will be a trap. If your 360 cube has a Pteramander and a Delver squadroned/duplicated with Brainstorm also being squadroned/duplicated then you are suddenly looking at a whole other format. This will compliment your Young Pyromancer and other Prowess cards as well.
Every card will seem like a trap if all of the support cards are getting cut. In other words there is a world where Delver works but it requires some work and it is the same world as Scary Terry. Also you are making Scary Terry stronger by also having Delver in the cube.
Also Delver gets stronger the more of him you have. If your 720 cube has 1 Delver and 0 Pteramander then it will be a trap. If your 360 cube has a Pteramander and a Delver squadroned/duplicated with Brainstorm also being squadroned/duplicated then you are suddenly looking at a whole other format. This will compliment your Young Pyromancer and other Prowess cards as well.