General Cutting cards people don't play

Aoret

Aoret

Developer
I've been considering asking my drafters to track their 15th cards for a while now and I've always stopped short of doing it for fear of being a nag, or of slowing down the draft, or of having to find a pen. So, I was drinking alone and photoshopping proxies mid-workweek when I had this idea...

What if I just added another 24 cards to my cube and told people to throw their 16th picks into a discard pile in the middle? This streamlines the process of gleaning info mid-draft at the cost of a slight improvement in deck quality over a normal 8 man. In my case, we're usually just doing 6 man team drafts, so this downside is probably actually an upside.

Either way, what are you guys thoughts on this? I mean, I guess the answer is "just try it" but I'm curious to get some input on it :)
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I just hand out everyone pencil and paper and have them write down their 15th pick each booster. Never heard any complaints about it.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

CML said:
usually someone will just yell "CML, this is the worst card you've ever put in your Cube" and then we get to play a little game of what is it? the wrong answers are great too
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And then pack three they discover a cute synergy with said worst card ever and wreck me with it.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

vennythekid said:
And then pack three they discover a cute synergy with said worst card ever and wreck me with it.
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Seriously this.

The worst card in my cube is probably better than most of the cards I used to run in my best casual decks (sad I know). I sometimes hear these comments, but I feel like players in my group have just become desensitized to how high the card power level actually is.

On a related note, I remember years back I dropped a Jackal Pup on turn one. And my friend looked at it and said "that cards sucks... oh, I get it... You are going to give me that creature somehow, and then deal damage to it so I take the damage".

Uh.. no. I'm going to just punch you repeatedly in the face with it. And you are going to take it because:
1. You durdle
2. You don't want to use your removal on my lowly one drop that you think sucks

So you'll end up taking 6 points of damage from a card that costed me R. How you liking my double stroked lightning bolt now?
 
Aoret

Aoret

Developer
Definitely some good points. I guess the subtext that I'll actually do anything with this information is a bit misleading. I already routinely ignore balance comments.

I think what I'm more interested to discover is whether there's anything surprising lurking in that 15th pick pile. Archetype anchors or lower powered cards, okay fine. But what if there's something that nobody is playing and I just haven't noticed because it seems good?
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

That's always possible. What I usually do when something like that crops up is I try and draft that card the next session and see if I can make it work. If the card is lackluster even when I intentionally try and build around it, that's a good indicator it probably needs to go. But not always.

I've had a case or two where I thought I was maximizing a card and then someone else came up with a different use for it and suddenly I realized I wasn't unlocking it's full potential. I think it was Bow of Nylea. I wrote off the graveyard to library ability as too situational, but guys have been doing all sorts of crazy stuff with it. Preventing decking in a long game, reusing cards via tutors. One guy put his tinker target back in his deck after he got Hypnotic Specter'd and lost his fattie. This is a big reason I tend to run as many flexible cards as possible even if the power level seems low on some of them because of all the creative things that tend to happen with those cards. Trading Post is another card like that people keep coming up with cool ways to use it.

Another thing I always keep in the back of my mind... this isn't universally true, but for the most part if a card is rare or mythic, it's broken. I don't mean Ancestral Recall broken. I mean that it either allows you to do something you should be able to do, or it generates obscene value over time, or it otherwise does something to the game state that must be answered, etc. And for those cards, the only real difference between "playable" and "junk rare not worth a cube slot" is often down to a single mana in the cost or a single point of toughness or, in many cases, just your play group. A lot of janky cards can actually be insane in certain scenarios (like some cards which are crazy in multi-player for example). Or maybe your group is like mine and they durdle a lot, which gives you more time to get otherwise unplayable cards online.

I guess my point is don't be too quick to cull your 15th pick just because it was the 15th pick a bunch of times. Because odds are it's better than what 15th pick implies. Then again, it could just be a card your group doesn't want to draft. If that is the case, it doesn't really matter what potential it has. You are better off replacing it with something else.
 
Aoret

Aoret

Developer
Completely agree with you ahdabans. There are tons of cards that hit 15th pick that are probably still worthy of inclusion. I'd just like to kinda take a peek at this info since I've been running my cube for quite a while without ever examining any last pick data. I also agree that trying to force the archetype just to check the card and/or call attention to the strategy for the rest of your drafters is a great tactic.

I actually threatened to cut a card recently when I was talking to one of my drafters and responded like "no! I'll force that archetype next time! Keep it in!" so that's kind of a novel thing to be able to trigger in a player...
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

Actually that sounds like a pretty nice thing to just make more apparent to the playgroup, what cards are meant for what styles of decks. A lot of draft formats have articles written about all the archetypes that are viable, and while we showcase and discuss tons of stuff we've put in our cubes I don't think a lot of our players are as aware of the subtle details as we are. If we just tell them what we've put in probably you can get people going deeper in their picks, since they don't have to safe as much with the more familiar (ie good stuff midrange).
 
Tyrole

Tyrole

ahadabans said:
I've had a case or two where I thought I was maximizing a card and then someone else came up with a different use for it and suddenly I realized I wasn't unlocking it's full potential. I think it was Bow of Nylea. I wrote off the graveyard to library ability as too situational, but guys have been doing all sorts of crazy stuff with it. Preventing decking in a long game, reusing cards via tutors. One guy put his tinker target back in his deck after he got Hypnotic Specter'd and lost his fattie. This is a big reason I tend to run as many flexible cards as possible even if the power level seems low on some of them because of all the creative things that tend to happen with those cards. Trading Post is another card like that people keep coming up with cool ways to use it.
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This right here hits on one of my cube's foundational design principles, and one of the reasons I get nervous about adding in strong archetypes. If I can design a cube with emergent strategies - strategies that I don't even plan for - I feel like I am succeeding. If someone pulls together a solid graveyard deck, that's great, since I put the cards in there for that type of specific deck. But when someone comes up with an idea to execute a sweet strategy or combo I never even thought of...well that's when I get really excited. That's my cube taking on a life of its own.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Chris Taylor said:
You're totally allowed to take a stance on which combos are and are not okay in your cube.
Now "Combos that have killed me" is not a great one, but it is still technically a reason...
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Haha, yeah, that wasn't the reason. Basalt Monolith accellerated the top end of a ramp deck a bit too quick (who would have thought?). I wasn't entirely comfortable with a t3/t4 Elspeth, Sun's Champion or Karn Liberated going forward. In addition to that there was the 2-card combo with Wake Thrasher that could kill someone out of nowhere. My opponent killed me once with it on t4, which was pretty hilarious because I hadn't catched the combo, but not something I would want to happen repeatedly (back then my cube was till 360, so that combo would have been there every 8-player draft). In the meantime I increased my cube size to 450, removed Elspeth and Karn, but the 3 mana accelleration still does fundamentally unfair things. I have also cut Worn Powerstone and Coalition Relic, because they also had a tendency to just power midrange and control decks to the midgame too fast.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

Onderzeeboot said:
Haha, yeah, that wasn't the reason. Basalt Monolith accellerated the top end of a ramp deck a bit too quick (who would have thought?). I wasn't entirely comfortable with a t3/t4 Elspeth, Sun's Champion or Karn Liberated going forward. In addition to that there was the 2-card combo with Wake Thrasher that could kill someone out of nowhere. My opponent killed me once with it on t4, which was pretty hilarious because I hadn't catched the combo, but not something I would want to happen repeatedly (back then my cube was till 360, so that combo would have been there every 8-player draft). In the meantime I increased my cube size to 450, removed Elspeth and Karn, but the 3 mana accelleration still does fundamentally unfair things. I have also cut Worn Powerstone and Coalition Relic, because they also had a tendency to just power midrange and control decks to the midgame too fast.
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I came to the same conclusion with those sort of cards. I'm giving Palladium Myr a shot though since it's a lot easier for your opponent to interact with than Powerstone.

More and more I'm feeling compelled to increase the power level of removal and to focus the mid- and high-end control cards toward requiring more specific conditions to be powerful (and away from generically powerful cards such as titans). In the same way that Craterhoof Behemoth is a fairer inclusion for reanimator than Woodfall Primus, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is a more interesting and reactive ramp target then Karn. Ramp will start to feel more reasonable with this philosophy, IMO.
 
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