I've scrapped my ravnica cube.
As some of you might know or have guessed, I started playing the best game ever aka Magic: the Gathering when the original Ravnica block came out. And I still love it and I get that warm, fuzzy feeling of pacifism nostalgia just by looking at the cards. However, the 11-year-old ravnic didn't know about prereleases or limited in general, but instead he made very flavorful casual decks for most of the guilds and played with those against his friends.
For quite some time now I tried to somehow form a limited experience that recreates the feeling and gameplay of these days. However, a cube didn't work out, due to the high number of gold cards leading to 3+ colors, usually. Even my latest iteration with only 5 rotating guilds in a draft pool wasn't quite it. But then, a different idea evolved inside my head.
Back then we played with flavorful guild decks crafted from our limited card pools (we were kids with very little access to money and the internet). And then we tried to improve our decks. So how do duplicate that situation?
My answer: I crafted 100-card sealed pools from the Ravnica block's cards for each guild. They each contain of 60 commons (20×3), 32 uncommons (16×2) and 8 rares. I also tried my very best to balance them in removal density and overall power level.
Here are the lists:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/guildspath
From these pools, both (theoretically it could also be played with more) players get only 30 cards initially. Because of a high variance in power level (Lightning Helix and War-Torch Goblin are both in the Boros pack) the initial decks players can then build from these 30 cards will have room to improve. And that's when these become relevant:
(I'll post the other 7 in the next post)
Prior to the deck building process, one of these quest cards will be chosen at random. They don't impact the game directly, but they might impact your deckbuilding choices quite a lot, especially in the early rounds.To make luck matter less, winning a gane will give you an increasing amount of points:
Round 1 -> 1 point
Round 2 -> 2 point
Round 3 -> 3 point
... and so on.
For two players, depending on the time you want to spend, 5 or 7 rounds seem like a good number. For the final game, there won't be a quest.
I only got one actual play test done, and it went even better than I was hoping for! For me it really captured the feeling of old times. And the balanced and synergistic card pools in conjuction with the "level up" system, which almost gave it a RPG feeling, made for a great experience for my buddy as well. And he started later with Innistrad, so he did have no nostalgia bonus at all!
You obviously can't draft it on CC, but I thought it might inspire someone, so I figured I'll share it with you
As some of you might know or have guessed, I started playing the best game ever aka Magic: the Gathering when the original Ravnica block came out. And I still love it and I get that warm, fuzzy feeling of pacifism nostalgia just by looking at the cards. However, the 11-year-old ravnic didn't know about prereleases or limited in general, but instead he made very flavorful casual decks for most of the guilds and played with those against his friends.
For quite some time now I tried to somehow form a limited experience that recreates the feeling and gameplay of these days. However, a cube didn't work out, due to the high number of gold cards leading to 3+ colors, usually. Even my latest iteration with only 5 rotating guilds in a draft pool wasn't quite it. But then, a different idea evolved inside my head.
Back then we played with flavorful guild decks crafted from our limited card pools (we were kids with very little access to money and the internet). And then we tried to improve our decks. So how do duplicate that situation?
My answer: I crafted 100-card sealed pools from the Ravnica block's cards for each guild. They each contain of 60 commons (20×3), 32 uncommons (16×2) and 8 rares. I also tried my very best to balance them in removal density and overall power level.
Here are the lists:
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/guildspath
From these pools, both (theoretically it could also be played with more) players get only 30 cards initially. Because of a high variance in power level (Lightning Helix and War-Torch Goblin are both in the Boros pack) the initial decks players can then build from these 30 cards will have room to improve. And that's when these become relevant:
(I'll post the other 7 in the next post)
Prior to the deck building process, one of these quest cards will be chosen at random. They don't impact the game directly, but they might impact your deckbuilding choices quite a lot, especially in the early rounds.To make luck matter less, winning a gane will give you an increasing amount of points:
Round 1 -> 1 point
Round 2 -> 2 point
Round 3 -> 3 point
... and so on.
For two players, depending on the time you want to spend, 5 or 7 rounds seem like a good number. For the final game, there won't be a quest.
I only got one actual play test done, and it went even better than I was hoping for! For me it really captured the feeling of old times. And the balanced and synergistic card pools in conjuction with the "level up" system, which almost gave it a RPG feeling, made for a great experience for my buddy as well. And he started later with Innistrad, so he did have no nostalgia bonus at all!
You obviously can't draft it on CC, but I thought it might inspire someone, so I figured I'll share it with you
