General Getting Started - The Core of A Cube

[Onderzeeboot]

To give a simple example. Say you're faced with these two four drops, and enchantment matters is an archetype that you support, which one are your drafters going to pick?

vs.

Synergy based archetypes are great, especially when/where they cross over into different archetypes in your cube, but if you populate the other half of your cube with generic, powerful cards, why would you draft te synergy card?

 

[inscho]

Hello once again, guys! I've got a new question.
Many experienced people say that every cube designer who wants to build an archetype-based cube must (or at least should) reward players for drafting synergy-cards insted of drafting "good-stuff". Is there a way to control this aspect? Or it's based only on the feeling of every particular person and play-group and on experience? Thank you very much in advance!

The power level of the "good stuff" is the main thing to consider. To oversimplify, you want the net positive of a combination of synergistic cards to be greater than one single card. Your Gifts Ungiven for Silent Departure, Reach of Branches, Life from the Loam and Oona's Grace is looking pretty sweet until your opponent just casts a Wurmcoil Engine or Consecrated Sphinx, doesn't need to expend any further mana, and just steamrolls you. You want to limit the power of individual cards so that they don't trump intricate interactions and strategies.

 

[Karn Cuberated]

Thank you very much, I think I understand)

 

[Karn Cuberated]

The thing I remembered about drafting synergies VS. drafting good-stuff is that if you, f. e., want to support an artifact theme and at the same time you have Fatal Push, Path to Exile and other premium removal cards which are not dependent on artifacts in your cube, Executioners Capsule won't look so good in comparison with them.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I think old tripple innistrad draft exemplifies this pretty well. Almost every common and uncommon in Innistrad looks kind of weak or lackluster (to me, at least) until you realise all the ways you can put things together to get a stronger effect. Even a card like rotting fensnake can become a roleplayer in a deck with lots of ways to recur it, because it trades with pretty much everything, and in a deck with ghoulcaller's chants and ghoulraisers it just keep coming back. A deck like that wouldn't come together if one of the black four drops was just way better, so it's important to sort of keep the cards "kinda bad, unless I also play.."

 

[Karn Cuberated]

I think old tripple innistrad draft exemplifies this pretty well. Almost every common and uncommon in Innistrad looks kind of weak or lackluster (to me, at least) until you realise all the ways you can put things together to get a stronger effect. Even a card like rotting fensnake can become a roleplayer in a deck with lots of ways to recur it, because it trades with pretty much everything, and in a deck with ghoulcaller's chants and ghoulraisers it just keep coming back. A deck like that wouldn't come together if one of the black four drops was just way better, so it's important to sort of keep the cards "kinda bad, unless I also play.."

I "Thoughtseized" the idea, thank you very much

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I "Thoughtseized" the idea, thank you very much

Heh. Thoughtseize. A card I cut somewhat recently after defending it to death in a heated discussion with grillo (if memory serves) a few months ago. Sorry grillo, you live, you learn!

 

[Karn Cuberated]

Heh. Thoughtseize. A card I cut somewhat recently after defending it to death in a heated discussion with grillo (if memory serves) a few months ago. Sorry grillo, you live, you learn!

Don't you remember where this discussion can be found? In fact, I don't know much about how to use discard effects and which decks do that (or do better that others), so, it would be interesting for me to learn.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Don't you remember where this discussion can be found? In fact, I don't know much about how to use discard effects and which decks do that (or do better that others), so, it would be interesting for me to learn.

Sure. Fair warning, it's a... terse discussion at times. Clickity!

 

[James Stevenson]

Don't you remember where this discussion can be found? In fact, I don't know much about how to use discard effects and which decks do that (or do better that others), so, it would be interesting for me to learn.

I know the feeling. I'm a decent player, but it amazes me the types of cards I don't know how to use, how to draft, how to consider when deckbuilding: discard spells, pump spells and combat tricks, draw filtering.
These are pretty fundamental, so not understanding them has held me back a lot as a cube designer.

 

[Karn Cuberated]

Hello, guys! haven't seen you for ages because of work.
Could you, please, tell me, at which point should I choose acnhor cards for archetypes? And how to realize if *this* or *that* amount of anchors per archetype is enough or not in my cube?

 

[Peter LaCara]

Hello, guys! haven't seen you for ages because of work.
Could you, please, tell me, at which point should I choose acnhor cards for archetypes? And how to realize if *this* or *that* amount of anchors per archetype is enough or not in my cube?

That's not really something where you can give a percentage number and have it always be correct. You are getting into the part of design that's more art than science. You just gotta put the cards in, playtest, and see what works.

However, there is a pretty decent tool that WotC R&D uses called "As-Fan" to calculate the number of cards in a given archetype that show up in a pack on average. If you want to calculate the As-Fan of a mechanic in your cube and compare it to the As-Fan of mechanics in other sets, someone made a pretty good website that lets you calculate that here.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I'd complement As-Fan with looking at some sample packs and thinking about how your drafters might view them. How powerful are your anchor cards in comparison to the average, generically good card in your Cube? Do they have enough obvious power or potential for drafters to take a risk on them over those safer picks? Is it clear what the anchor cards actually point to, or will your drafters feel they missed a trick when it becomes clear later in the draft but it's too late to pick up the necessary support?

 

[Karn Cuberated]

Thanks, I have been looking for some tool like this
Also I'd like to clarify, are anchor cards something which the whole archetype rely on and is built round or they're not so crucial?
I heard that there should be some cards which will sort of inspire your drafters to choose a certain archetype, but I'm not sure it was a convercation about anchors

 

[safra]

Thanks, I have been looking for some tool like this
Also I'd like to clarify, are anchor cards something which the whole archetype rely on and is built round or they're not so crucial?
I heard that there should be some cards which will sort of inspire your drafters to choose a certain archetype, but I'm not sure it was a convercation about anchors

Some people here like to talk about having both "anchors" and "signposts", where anchors are the cards that you really want to have if you're in an archetype (Birthing Pod, Wildfire, Gravecrawler) and 'signposts' are your less essential cards that still tell a drafter what's possible (mana rocks, '[X]-matters', tribal shit). So in this analysis, you want to have enough anchors that people can find them early, but not so many anchors that people only draft around whatever they take P1P1. And then the signposts are there to give texture to the draft and to let someone know which colour(s) they might want to branch out into. hth!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

A cube itself is kind of too complicated to really navigate without some guidance. The deck or the archetype is like a treasure buried in that complexity. In order for the drafter to find it, their needs to be some kind of signpost or marker to let them know that they are in the right place, and suggest for them what direction they should go in to find the next marker.



This is kind of a classic example across my cubes. Big flashy powerful effect that catches the eyes, suggests there is an artifact deck buried out there somewhere in the draft, and than hints at how the markers might look that could lead them somewhere worthwhile, perhaps we subsequently see:




Which we pick up, confirming we are on the path to something. By the end of the draft, we should have the raw material to actually make a deck with an identity.

Otherwise, what drafters tend to do is just revert to power drafting, which kind of gets dull quickly for everyone involved.

The actual draft itself is an interactive game, as important, or possibly more important (for some people), than the actual physical games you subsequently play with the drafted cards.

 

[Karn Cuberated]

The thing is I was confused when in some thread about, AFAIR, "Spells Matter" archetype anchors I saw Faithless Looting. I just couldn't imagine how the whole deck can be built around it. And now, I think, I understand, why it could be an anchor. Thank you very much, guys, I really appreciate your help

 

[Karn Cuberated]

Hello everyone!
Now I'm working with my sacrifice section in cube. There're three colour combinations which are connected with it: WB, RB and GB. How do you think, how can I spread the key pieces (sac. outlets, "fodder" spells and payoff) between colours and how many it's better to have in general? I tried to analyze some constructed decks, and I found out that typically they have sth about 17% of outlets, 20-25% fodder and 15% payoff (+ some removal), but in cubes I usually meet about 3 outlets per colour. I'm confused. Maybe, that's because outlets are too narrow to include many?..

 

[Jason Waddell]

Hello everyone!
Now I'm working with my sacrifice section in cube. There're three colour combinations which are connected with it: WB, RB and GB. How do you think, how can I spread the key pieces (sac. outlets, "fodder" spells and payoff) between colours and how many it's better to have in general? I tried to analyze some constructed decks, and I found out that typically they have sth about 17% of outlets, 20-25% fodder and 15% payoff (+ some removal), but in cubes I usually meet about 3 outlets per colour. I'm confused. Maybe, that's because outlets are too narrow to include many?..

I wrote a couple articles on sacrifice themes in cube:
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cube-design-remodeling-part-one/

https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cube-design-remodeling-part-two/

Maybe these can think about how to structure things. For what it's worth, the strongest sacrifice decks in my cube were usually RB, perhaps with some random splashes.

 

[Karn Cuberated]

As far as I understand, we should spread these components across several colours so that each colour pair can provide us with some interesting combinations and synergies. But when cards contribute to several strategies at the same time, it becomes sort of a messy thing for me to figure out if archetypes are equally and enough supported and whether or not players will end up with lack of, say, sac. outlets. Also I doubted if playing, f. e., only 2-3 outlets will be enough: will they come to our hand? Probably, that's because now I'm more binding each archetype to one colour pair, yet not thin-king too much about adding more variants.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Hello everyone!
Now I'm working with my sacrifice section in cube. There're three colour combinations which are connected with it: WB, RB and GB. How do you think, how can I spread the key pieces (sac. outlets, "fodder" spells and payoff) between colours and how many it's better to have in general? I tried to analyze some constructed decks, and I found out that typically they have sth about 17% of outlets, 20-25% fodder and 15% payoff (+ some removal), but in cubes I usually meet about 3 outlets per colour. I'm confused. Maybe, that's because outlets are too narrow to include many?..

This comes up a lot for the sacrifice subtheme as it's so deep that you can support it almost entirely with cards that go in a normal Cube and don't explicitly suggest that the theme is there; it's a nice problem to have, but it can make it hard to predict what your drafters will see. If you want to make it more obvious and require a commitment from drafters, you could tie it to a 'tribal' subtheme (Zombies/Goblins, artifacts).

You're right that the outlets themselves are hardest to find; there are lots of good colourless outlets (Spawning Pit, Blasting Station, Altar of Dementia, Ashnod's Altar to power big spells, Grafted Wargear as a makeshift sac outlet) and you'll need those if you want to support it in Bant colour combos. Red has enough support that you can build it in R/X but if you want to restrict it to B/X (which you might based on the colour pairs you listed?) then keep the outlets to black and spread the sac fodder that's readily available in every colour.

 

[Karn Cuberated]

And are there some ways to understand if *this amount* of sac. outlets, or sac. fodder, or payoff is enough for colour pair to normally exist?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Draft your cube. Draft your cube. Draft your cube. See if the archetypes you want to support get drafted, look at how they perform. It took me only one draft to discover I pushed the +1/+1 counter theme in GW way too hard, for example. The archetype was so deep that it was able to easily support two drafters. One of them beat the other in the semifinals, their only loss was in the mirror match, the rest of the games they won handily, beating a variety of other archetypes. I toned it down a bit after that draft, and the archetype has been at a much healthier place in my cube's metagame since then. UB-based control (often Esper) was also a bit too strong, but that one took me longer to realize. After a couple of drafts, I finally figured out the culprit: too many synergistic planeswalkers in the available color pairings. I've since cut Jace, Architect of Thought and Kaya, Ghost Assassin, which should hopefully make the archetype a little less prone to simply grinding opponents out through planeswalker "abuse". Stuff like that you can only find out by playing your cube. Try a number of sac outlets that feels right, then see in practice if it actually is right, and adjust according to your findings.

 

[Karn Cuberated]

OK, thank you so much everyone, now I feel much more confident)

 

[Jason Waddell]

As Onderzeeboot said, drafting your cube is the most valuable feedback you can get. You can theory craft to a certain degree, but a lot of your assumptions or worries will be stripped away once you actually start playing.

One of the great things about a sacrifice theme is that you can build it with cards that are generally independently appealing. This is a good quality, because it provides a few things:

a) you can draft cards from this theme without fully committing to it
b) you can use sacrifice effects as a subtheme in another deck
c) most importantly, since there is competing demand for cards in the sacrifice theme, your decks will look different every time. It's not just the storm drafter collecting the storm cards, but everyone will be cutting into these cards to some degree



These cards will get put in decks because they're good cards. But, on top of that they have lots of nifty interactions. Then, if you have a lot of sacrifice effects, you can take one of a few "dedicated support" cards like Goblin Bombardment.

The sacrifice theme is a nice one because your players can audible to an aggro or midrange deck, but a dedicated sacrifice deck is quite a joy on its own to play.