The idea in short:
Have a fetchland "collection". Have a bounceland "collection".
Flip a coin or vote as a group to decide which collection to use for this draft.
The concept of Occasionals is a mind-blowing new lever for injecting variety into the draft, letting players express ingenuity. Using the new tool as written, your drafts produce unique combos every time! Even when some drafts are quite similar, it's always possible for a drafter to devise a trick that's never been done in your cube.
There's also the spreadsheet aficionado approach where each cardslot can contain random candidates, a la Waddell's cube.
Both of the above remind me of good roguelikes where the dungeon is made "randomly", but according to some constraints that result in a series of normal things peppered with spikes of high variance. Like so: https://pkrg1g.csb.app/ (try refreshing that page a few times. sometimes there's only one room!)
Even a Fetchland-centric cube (maybe it contains a lot of Threshold/Delirium/Delve cards?) can benefit from swapping the land collection! If archetype pillars are weakened, which lesser synergies are now highlighted? Are your Revolt and Landfall cards now better, or worse? Have any cards become a sleeper hit because they happen to work fantastically with the new land package?
Which players are crying out with joy and relief because this week, they don't have to wait for friends to shuffle for 30 seconds after each fetch? And the players who prefer fetchlands have something to look forward to in future drafts!
The "collection" could simply be your classic "double shock, double fetch" either being in the cube, or out of the cube and replaced with 40 other land cards this week. Or a few spells could tag along in the land packages. And if you've got a cast of rare occasionals, now that variety is doubled! When that nyxbloom ancient pops up, is it gonna be alongside a karoo?
You could have three or more collections! One collection could have no duals in it?!
And how about your overcrowded three drops? Your old faves could be in one collection that you use often, and every now and then you can swap the whole thing out with new hotness (or ancient hotness!). (Faves + newhots + oldhots) * (bounces + fetches) = 6 different cubes in one, with a healthy amount of overlap and familiarity so that it's not a nightmare for casual players.
Have a fetchland "collection". Have a bounceland "collection".
Flip a coin or vote as a group to decide which collection to use for this draft.
The concept of Occasionals is a mind-blowing new lever for injecting variety into the draft, letting players express ingenuity. Using the new tool as written, your drafts produce unique combos every time! Even when some drafts are quite similar, it's always possible for a drafter to devise a trick that's never been done in your cube.
There's also the spreadsheet aficionado approach where each cardslot can contain random candidates, a la Waddell's cube.
Both of the above remind me of good roguelikes where the dungeon is made "randomly", but according to some constraints that result in a series of normal things peppered with spikes of high variance. Like so: https://pkrg1g.csb.app/ (try refreshing that page a few times. sometimes there's only one room!)
Even a Fetchland-centric cube (maybe it contains a lot of Threshold/Delirium/Delve cards?) can benefit from swapping the land collection! If archetype pillars are weakened, which lesser synergies are now highlighted? Are your Revolt and Landfall cards now better, or worse? Have any cards become a sleeper hit because they happen to work fantastically with the new land package?
Which players are crying out with joy and relief because this week, they don't have to wait for friends to shuffle for 30 seconds after each fetch? And the players who prefer fetchlands have something to look forward to in future drafts!
The "collection" could simply be your classic "double shock, double fetch" either being in the cube, or out of the cube and replaced with 40 other land cards this week. Or a few spells could tag along in the land packages. And if you've got a cast of rare occasionals, now that variety is doubled! When that nyxbloom ancient pops up, is it gonna be alongside a karoo?
You could have three or more collections! One collection could have no duals in it?!
And how about your overcrowded three drops? Your old faves could be in one collection that you use often, and every now and then you can swap the whole thing out with new hotness (or ancient hotness!). (Faves + newhots + oldhots) * (bounces + fetches) = 6 different cubes in one, with a healthy amount of overlap and familiarity so that it's not a nightmare for casual players.
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