General Embrace the Chaos / Cube Occasionals

[shamizy]

How are you all physically separating your core vs your occasionals/modules?

The OP gives some suggestions in terms of stickers/marks, but I'm curious what's worked in practice for those who have implemented it!

I'd recommend stickers on an inner sleeve as well. I haven't implemented cube occasionals, but I do utilize multiple different systems within my cube. I've got a Utility Land Draft, Squadron Cards, and a Duplicate Voucher system implemented and the best way to keep track of all the special circumstances is just with different colored stickers and a small information card I'd leave out in the middle of the draft table. Makes it much easier for everyone to understand what each sticker signifies.

The bonus is that any cards that enter our pool from outside the main draft are easily removable by just flicking through a pile of cards and taking out the ones that are marked. It's made the sorting process post-draft so much easier and I'd imagine that it would help you out immensely if you have to pre-construct any sort of special pack configurations pre-draft.

 

[japahn]

I have these nice stickers inside the sleeves, made from washi tape cut into triangles. The effect is pretty good, but it takes a while to do.

 

[whydirt]

I have these nice stickers inside the sleeves, made from washi tape cut into triangles. The effect is pretty good, but it takes a while to do.

Any tips for making them after all your practice?

 

[japahn]

Any tips for making them after all your practice?

Main tip is have an awesome wife.

As for details:

• Take washi tape, cut into small strips, then small squares, then small triangles.
• Use tweezers to stick the triangles in the inside of the sleeve.
• Watch or listen to something while you're at it.
• Put the stickers on occasionals, not on core, because the core is used much more often and its sleeves wear out faster.

 

[Velrun]

I needed this article badly. i’ve been building, tearing apart, and starting over on my new cube list for at least a couple weeks, in an attempt to fit a bunch of cool archetypes into a 360 or less shell. This concept of occasionals has sparked the solution for me: a simple “core set” shell with “occasional packs” that can be shuffled into the draft to provide support and payoff for new archetypes. This way i can just add new packs to my rotation rather than redesign the whole cube going forward. Thank you japahn!

This is what Vince is doing. You should find him and ask for details. Maybe he can provide you with some positive feedback. He’s been doing this since 2014 I believe.

Edit: I now realize I haven’t read half of the thread before I commented. I just saw Blacksmithy’s comment and wanted to help.

 

[Nemo]

Using Occasionals with a cube that breaks singleton could create some nice outcomes, right? After reading the Cavalcade of Calamity post, and thinking about set cubes, I've been thinking on how a cube could get some of the benefits of a retail set's rarity system with the least amount of effort and cost. It doesn't get much easier than putting an extra copy of a few build-arounds into an Occasionals module. That would result in two copies of a build around about 9% of the time with japahn's configuration. A cube could also include a duplicates module that adds extra copies of some cards with a higher likelihood than a large occasionals module. That gives the designer some knobs to turn to set the frequency variance of cards, and some cards can have higher variance than others.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Using Occasionals with a cube that breaks singleton could create some nice outcomes, right? After reading the Cavalcade of Calamity post, and thinking about set cubes, I've been thinking on how a cube could get some of the benefits of a retail set's rarity system with the least amount of effort and cost. It doesn't get much easier than putting an extra copy of a few build-arounds into an Occasionals module. That would result in two copies of a build around about 9% of the time with japahn's configuration. A cube could also include a duplicates module that adds extra copies of some cards with a higher likelihood than a large occasionals module. That gives the designer some knobs to turn to set the frequency variance of cards, and some cards can have higher variance than others.

That Cavalcade of Calamity post is great!

 

[landofMordor]

Thomas Baxa is severely underrated. Thanks japahn for playing cool art (and boo this image that doesn't have the right art!)

I'm implementing a "rare/occasional" module into my ELD set cube, so that I have an excuse to play with broken stuff like Balance and so forth. I think I'll probably opt for stickers or marks on the inner sleeve... perhaps a Sharpie mark (on the perfect fit) over the set/collector information would be subtle enough.

 

[japahn]

Now that I got several drafts with them, I can say occasionals have worked quite well!

I've refined the concept further:

I am now frontloading occasionals, so that the first booster has 2, the second booster has 1, and the third (and fourth+ if playing with more boosters) have 0. This is useful because several occasionals are meant to give direction to a deck, and are unlikely to be useful if seen late in the draft. Logistically, I made different packs for different rounds, but that was kind of a headache to mark them and make sure they didn't mix, so now I'm just making normal packs and giving people occasionals from a pile when they open the pack.

Some categories worked better than others. In particular, cards that give direction to a deck have been the ones that worked best:

Best occasionals

Single card archetypes: these add a lot of variety to the drafts and give decks identity for minimal space. I'mm very happy with these cards, though they are few and far between. Make sure they work with the cube's core. Remember the cube is still mostly about the core, and without core support an occasional can't thrive.

Tri-color cards: giving an incentive to be in a particular tri-color combination gives a "secret goal" to the person who first picks a Siege Rhino to solve. The deck might feel almost like an EDH deck, with a headliner sponsoring it.


Good occasionals

Combat tricks: they work as well as intended, with two caveats: first, most tricks are balanced for retail limited and not actually that great even there, so I have to run the cream of the crop to be competitive. I ended up removing a lot, but I'm happy with the ones that got played. Second, part of the fun of combat tricks is deciding when to play around them. Although putting them in occasionals sounds like it make this more difficult, it's still doable if you've seen them during the draft, in a previous match, or in previous games. In fact, the occasional sticker sort of calls attention to them, so I feel like it's actually easier to remember the "combat trick of the day".

Finishers: having a variety of large creatures has kept them exciting to open, even when they aren't power level outliers.

Archetype intersections: as single card archetypes, these give direction to your draft and often are enough of a push to combine different archetypes for a unique deck. The issue with them is true ones are rare, and they are often misleading: cards that look like archetype intersections, are really of a single archetype. For example, Abzan Falconer is a counters payoff, and not really a fliers card since flying is redundant when the creature has a counter.

Weird cards: these are fun and can give identity to decks too. This category is too broad to generalize, but it's just cool to see a couple of weird cards in the draft, while too many can feel overwhelming and Un-sety.

Silver bordered cards: I didn't mention these in my original article, but if you're always wanted to add a couple of silver bordered cards to your cube but didn't want it to be an "Un- cube", occasionals are a good way to sprinkle a few and not change the cube's identity.

Repetitive play patterns: Doing a lot of the same thing in one draft is fine and actually does give identity to a deck. But Sprout Swarm is going too far, Anthony (https://luckypaper.co/podcast/77/)


Mediocre occasionals

Cards removed to make space: some are still nice to see, but cards like generic removal spell don't really matter and I have been cutting them to make space for better occasionals.

Morphs: their identity needs a certain density to remain hidden so that a few need to be seen in a draft, and the power level of Grey Ogres is just too low even for my cube, unless the payoff is backbreaking like Sagu Mauler. I decided to cut them though they was fun when they worked. Foretell would also fit this category.


I didn't actually find any categories of bad occasionals, but I still don't recommend putting power level outliers in them and suspect they belong in this category.

Edit: Forgot to add the second point about combat tricks.

 

[Mown]

I'm not totally sold on this, largely because the puritan in me doesn't like adding too many complexities to the cube structure, there's an appeal in the elegance being able to solve your problems with just a pile of cards instead of layering the packs or giving everyone a free emblem or squadroning picks or whatever you have.

Having said that, I do think it's interesting how you can frontload your build-arounds to let players make more informed decisions and take advantage of those cards more frequently. You do lose out on some of the suspense of "getting there" though, when you know that Replenish won't arrive halfway into the draft. Of course, you usually have ~3 games to play with your deck that didn't quite get there afterwards.

 

[ravnic]

My issue with this was only, that I couldn't find enough cards, that I wanted in my cube, but only in 10% of the drafts. Maybe I don't explicily want to face Drake Haven every single draft, but more foten than twice a year would be cool. So I ended up preferring the result of simply expanding my cube from 450 to 680 cards.

 

[sigh]

I would assume the 10% variable could be tweaked. Have a smaller pool that's a 33% chance or something.

 

[blacksmithy]

Of course, you usually have ~3 games to play with your deck that didn't quite get there afterwards.

this right here is what we should all be doing everything in our power to prevent happening to our players

 

[japahn]

I'm not totally sold on this, largely because the puritan in me doesn't like adding too many complexities to the cube structure, there's an appeal in the elegance being able to solve your problems with just a pile of cards instead of layering the packs or giving everyone a free emblem or squadroning picks or whatever you have.

Absolutely. This is the one structural thing I do in my cube. I'm very hesitant to deviate from the basic, simple booster draft structure when playing with 4+ people.

It does add some complexity points to the designer, but to players it can be as transparent as they want or need. They don't need to draft having in mind that occasionals are a thing; they just draft the cards they open.

The complexity for the designer is compensated by the benefit of being able to keep the core stable instead of managing a larger list that changes more deeply with each set release.

I would assume the 10% variable could be tweaked. Have a smaller pool that's a 33% chance or something.

Yeah, you can do whatever ratio makes sense for you here. Of course if you get to the point where like 30% of the cards that appear in packs are occasionals (not the same as each occasional appear 30% of drafts which is what sigh said), they lose the benefit of not affecting densities significantly.

But I'm not advocating everyone should use occasionals! It's a just tool that I am finding useful and it's helping me with maintenance, player familiarity and deck variety. Each group has different needs of these things and you can achieve them in various ways.

 

[blacksmithy]

i have found myself doing a really informal occasionals where i have a pool of cards that’s a little bigger than the cube and just kinda swap them around a bit between each draft, it definitely helps to freshen things up a bit without upending all the established archetypes

 

[spicewitch]

I would assume the 10% variable could be tweaked. Have a smaller pool that's a 33% chance or something.

this sounds like it could have legs! Procedural generation in roguelikes thrives on having common events and rare events. So let's assume a Main Dish section of the cube where cards have an 80% chance to show up, and a Spicy Appetizer section of the cube where cards have a 25% chance to show up.
Any given spicy 2-card combo that requires a card each from both pools, only appears in 20% of all drafts, which would be enough to generate memorable moments, especially if those cards are perfectly reasonable mid-tier picks when *not* combined.

It feels like the original premise is for Occasionals to be extremely rare spice, but even if there was less variance (and power) in the Occasional pool, the intersection of two random pools seems like it oughta work fine for keeping things varied. I'm putting a cube together so I'll be trying it! Based on the randomness spikes built into good roguelikes, i'll probably going with something like 75% to 85% reliability in the main-dish section, and something around a 20% chance for occasional cards to show up. Can always stick more build-arounds into the occasional section if things feel too reasonable or predictable!

I also feel like squadroning could be particularly good for the Occasionals? Like two good-but-not-crazy Elves in one slot, a couple Madness cards squadroned in the occasionals, which can pair with a main red section that already discards cards to do good things, or a white artifact squadroned with a white equipment-matters creature?

 

[japahn]

this sounds like it could have legs! Procedural generation in roguelikes thrives on having common events and rare events. So let's assume a Main Dish section of the cube where cards have an 80% chance to show up, and a Spicy Appetizer section of the cube where cards have a 25% chance to show up.
Any given spicy 2-card combo that requires a card each from both pools, only appears in 20% of all drafts, which would be enough to generate memorable moments, especially if those cards are perfectly reasonable mid-tier picks when *not* combined.

Yeah, a 25% occasional ratio is similar to a given rare being opened in a draft while 80% core is about the as-fan of an uncommon. You can definitely use that sort of ratio and it should work perfectly well.

It feels like the original premise is for Occasionals to be extremely rare spice, but even if there was less variance (and power)

I don't actually think you should include more powerful cards on average in Occasionals, the original post talks about this.

I also feel like squadroning could be particularly good for the Occasionals? Like two good-but-not-crazy Elves in one slot, a couple Madness cards squadroned in the occasionals, which can pair with a main red section that already discards cards to do good things, or a white artifact squadroned with a white equipment-matters creature?

Absolutely, my latest cube is playing with squadroning all cards and that made me realize how beneficial it would for deckbuiding to get squadroned occasionals. The logistical overhead increase a bit, and doubling the physical size of the large occasionals pool is something I don't think would work in my cube at ~500 occasionals, but I assume you're running a much leaner pool and then it would be very reasonable to duplicate it. Keeping track of the copies is not too bad if you keep at least one of the sets of copies sorted by color.

 

[spicewitch]

and, you can shrink your occasionals section by putting things together. i have a "modal squadron occasional" which is kami of restless shadows with imperial subduer. You're not likely to want both, but maybe you'll want one of 'em, why waste two "slots"?

on which note, it seems like cubers are very anti-tribal these days, but oh well at least it's an Occasional

 

[japahn]

Saw the concept of companion cards today in this article and thought it was an elegant solution to improve consistency when drafting a deck around your occasionals:

https://mtgds.wordpress.com/2023/01/16/companion-cubing-with-the-parliamentary-cube/

In this case, occasionals are 3 picks out of a 5 card pack at the beginning of the draft. The occasional pool consists of only 2 colored cards, all signpost uncommons.

It is a bit like starting with a 10-card hand, so I'm curious about how close to typical MtG it ends up being, which is why I never tested this solution. Maybe I am being too much of a purist, though.

This cube seems really cool!

 

[Mown]

On the topic of companions and not so much occasionals, an idea I've been tinkering with since Jason off-handedly pitched the Pokemon cube idea he's probably already forgotten about; after your draft, you choose three cards to designate as... let's call them signature cards. You start with your three signature cards in your sideboard, revealed to your opponent at match start. Each game, you can play one of them from your sideboard, but you can't play the same one twice in one match, so in a bo3 you get to use all of them once.

What I think is cool that it's a smoothing mechanic (make one of them a land) with a lot of decision space and room for personal expression, and it can be a great consistency tool, with some caveats (you can guarantee a build-around for one game, at the cost of two others). I am a bit concerned about how it would play out in practice though, I feel like the optimal play pattern will often just be threat/disruption/land, which is a lot less fun than whatever I had envisioned. (I've also considered doing it with conspiracies or other custom implementations instead of actual magic cards, the idea of "pick three, use one each game" fascinates me.)

 

[japahn]

How about you can play all three every game, the first costs the regular amount of mana, the second costs 3 to pull to your hand, the third costs 6? Or maybe 2 and 4. You don't have to choose in which game to have your build around, but it's kind of weird to only have access to it in one game anyway.

 

[Mown]

I don't want it to be an insane consistency tool where you can put your high-variance build around in your sideboard and curve into it every game. But I also don't want it to be primarily utilitarian, which realistically I think is what would happen. And the idea of someone having a Mana Leak companion sounds extremely toxic, so I will have to think more about it. I have a plethora of ideas that both need a bit more thinking, and probably don't belong in this thread.

 

[Jason Waddell]

On the topic of companions and not so much occasionals, an idea I've been tinkering with since Jason off-handedly pitched the Pokemon cube idea he's probably already forgotten about; after your draft, you choose three cards to designate as... let's call them signature cards. You start with your three signature cards in your sideboard, revealed to your opponent at match start. Each game, you can play one of them from your sideboard, but you can't play the same one twice in one match, so in a bo3 you get to use all of them once.

What I think is cool that it's a smoothing mechanic (make one of them a land) with a lot of decision space and room for personal expression, and it can be a great consistency tool, with some caveats (you can guarantee a build-around for one game, at the cost of two others). I am a bit concerned about how it would play out in practice though, I feel like the optimal play pattern will often just be threat/disruption/land, which is a lot less fun than whatever I had envisioned. (I've also considered doing it with conspiracies or other custom implementations instead of actual magic cards, the idea of "pick three, use one each game" fascinates me.)

I have no memory of this place.

That said, I do have a pokemon cube idea but I don't remember anything you quoted at all

 

[Mown]

I have no memory of this place.

That said, I do have a pokemon cube idea but I don't remember anything you quoted at all

You made an offhand suggestion of making a cube where you draft a deck that has to use a different companion each game. I'm not sure why I associate it with Pokemon.

 

[LadyMapi]

If you want to avoid "I made three counterspells my companions!", just restrict the card types that you can turn into a companion.