General Designing for Sealed?

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Has anyone here put any thought into what a cube that's optimized for sealed might look like? One of my friends has recently become a big sealed fan and it's got me brainstorming about what a cube that's specifically built for sealed could be. I assume this would be somewhat similar to designing a "midrange mirror" cube.

Some ideas off the top of my head:
-Include a lot of generically good effects that can slot into pretty much any deck
-Limit narrow synergistic payoff cards
-Limit cards that only go in decks like aggro or control
-Limit gold cards?? These often feel like dead spots when I've been playing sealed with my budget fair stuff cube lately, but maybe that's okay?
-Lots of rainbow fixing, probably don't include traditional duals and instead go for more Prismatic Vistas etc.
-Maybe limit the synergistic themes to just a few key elements so players are more likely to be able to build around them? Not sure about this, maybe it's more fun if there are more synergistic opportunities but they only come together occasionally.
-Smaller packs?? Larger packs?? I really don't know, but it's probably worth thinking about if 90 is really the optimal number of cards for a pool. Maybe it is!
-Possibly a higher removal density than usual? It can be tough in sealed to feel like you've got enough interaction in your colors, so this might be something you want to crank up a bit.
-Low curve, limit big expensive bombs and focus more on things like cheap cards with mana sinks.
-Maybe limit to 3 or 4 colors instead of the usual 5? Players might be a bit more likely to be able to build functional decks more often if there's less colors.
-Utility lands!!

A concern here is that one of the things that makes it possible to wrap your brain around building a sealed pool is knowing that like half your cards are just not gonna work in your deck, so it's possible that "optimizing" for sealed might end up making it too challenging to build pools correctly. Interested if anyone has any further thoughts on this, I might give this a shot some time soon.

 

[Rusje]

Some of your ideas are spot on, others are way off.

Most mtg sets are made to be drafted and for sealed. What you see is in those sets is the following:
* not many different “abilities”. They focus on 2 a 3.
* the abilities work without payoff cards and a payoff card works since there are enough cards that work with it by having not many abilities.
* there is no combo. (Read cards that only work with each other)
* there is aggro, control, midrange. No need to only use midrange slugfest.
* multicoloured is possible, either put tapped duals into the basic land box or add them liberally into the pool.
* your removal should be such that you can answer utility threats, but not that there are more answers than threats.
* expensive cards are not a problem. A real disparity however is. It is hard to have half the cards cost less than 3 and the other half more than 5.

If you are lazy, you could use a set/block cube as a starting point. That recipe is as follows:
* pick your favourite set/block.
* cut the power outliers. (The chaff nobody uses and the bombs that win on the spot.)
* cut the cards that do not work using cards only in this set/block.
* tweak a bit by removing cards/add duplicates.
* have fun.

-Maybe limit the synergistic themes to just a few key elements so players are more likely to be able to build around them? Not sure about this, maybe it's more fun if there are more synergistic opportunities but they only come together occasionally.

I think occasionals are just what you are looking for. You can search for it on this forum.

 

[Mown]

I opened a sealed pool of my cube and my immediate takeaways are: Have clear power outliers (that ideally require some commitment). You want signposts that signal the major decisions you have to make with your card pool to cut down on the noise. If you get a sealed pool of a "Jund cube" you're going to be juggling whether you want the RBW pile that gives you slightly more efficient removal or BG pile that is a bit more consistent on mana or the URW pile that is 10% more aggressive, because all your cards are interchangeable and the only thing you can get is margins. It's a lot easier and more engaging to wrap your hand around "My interaction lends itself better to a control deck, but my best cards are Ephemerate and Restoration Angel, which best capitalize on the red cards in my pool that encourage me to play some more artifacts, but a lot of them are more suited for a higher-tempo strategy".

I think you do want some amount of glue that you can fill your deck with, but I do also think you want a degree of exclusiveness between parts of your card pool that helps you visualize your pool more easily.

 

[Karshtakavaar]

I was literally thinking about this two days ago. I've done a lot of duplicate sealed pools but I don't think I've ever played sealed with a draft cube and am similarly interested in how people go about it.

If its at all relevant. when I build duplicate sealed pools I like to have some set of strong signpost cards that drag you in opposite directions from each other. Preferably these have a frame or feature that helps them stand out - they're gold, they're legends, they're mythics, stuff that lets the players instantly locate things to do.
Then there's some synergy stuff. cards that go with one or more of the signposts - as long as it's not too parasitic and would only see play with one of them. Finally generic playables to fill out the bulk. In order from most to least abundant the pool will be creatures, combat tricks and soft removal, hard removal, synergy pieces, cute gimmicks and buildarounds.
Pretty basic I know but they tend to get used once or twice at most so.