"Magic the Boxed Set" Teaching Cube

whydirt

whydirt

As a side project, I want to build a small accessible cube for new and casual players. I have a lot of friends who are into board games, but aren't invested into Magic as a hobby. It'd be cool for me to something I could pull out and play for a game night with them. It'd also give me something to bring to my LGS to teach people how to draft in a low-stakes, friendly environment. Plus this lets me feel less guilty for going deep on my main cube.

I'm definitely open to specific card suggestions, but first I wanted to get some feedback on the overall design framework.

Card pool
  • 252 card draft pool; 3 x 14 card packs for up to 6 players
  • 180 total commons; likely a mix of 2-ofs and 3-ofs
  • 54 singleton uncommons, including a gold cycle
  • 18 rares/mythics from a pool of 50-60 total in each draft; color balance doesn't have to be perfect here as long as they're all within a card or two of each other
  • All Modern frames for consistent presentation and clean rules templating
  • Budget - nothing over $1 (I might use a couple $2-5 rares that I like, but the cube should play fine without them)
  • Likely pulling a lot of cards from M10-Origins, but block sets are fair game
Mechanics
  • All evergreen mechanics okay
  • One expansion mechanic per color in the C/U pool; rares can bring in new keywords if explained on the card itself
  • Maybe one additional universal mechanic like cycling/flashback that's easy to understand
  • No going super deep on enchantment, artifact, or graveyard shenanigans; individual synergy cards are okay
  • At least a few simple commons in each color - vanilla/french vanilla creatures, shock/cancel/murder (not necessarily these specific cards)
  • Have flavor match mechanics as much as possible; top-down cards are great (Dragon Egg)

Overall, I want this to feel like a draft simulation as well as a standalone deck building game you could buy as a boxed set.

Even though I'm just posting this thread now, this is a project I've thought about for a while. Even so, I'm sure there are angles I'm overlooking. Thoughts would be appreciated!
 
whydirt

whydirt

So given the above goals, this cube will have somewhere between 60 and 90 unique commons, and all but a few of them are going to be monocolor cards. This means we need to identify around 15 unique cards per color for our common pool.

Looking at white, here's a rough list of effects I want to see in the common pool (with potential examples):
  • One shot token maker (Raise the Alarm)
  • Single target combat trick (Battlewise Valor)
  • One-shot anthem effect (Inspired Charge)
  • Small flyer
  • Enchantment removal
  • Aura-based removal spell (Pacifism)
  • Attacking creature-based instant speed removal (Kill Shot)
  • Something with vigilance
  • Something with lifegain
  • Ground creature at CMC3-5 with a toughness > power
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
For a project like this, you may or may not want to look to one of the core sets as a starting point, and build from there. My personal recommendation is M13, which is widely regarded as the best core set for drafting, and one of the better limited formats around, straight up. Even if you don't end up using most of the actual cards from M13, it can give you a blueprint for how many slots to devote to specific effects at common, much like the design skeleton you've laid out above.
 
whydirt

whydirt

Yeah I knew some of the M-sets were considered better than others, but hadn't looked up which ones those were. Could you, or anyone else from the peanut gallery, elaborate a bit about what made M13 in particular stand out?
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I'll happily sidestep that question, and let a professional take that one! This is Sam Black's excellent primer on the format, from about four years ago.
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/generallimited/24646-Drafting-M13.html

The Cliff's Notes version:
The one thing I'd fix, if I could, is that blue is a step below the other four colours. A lot of slots in the set are wasted on milling cards, which isn't an effective strategy in the format - and I've tried. Oh, I've tried. It's partly that a) mill cards are like Lava Axes, in that they don't affect the board at all, and therefore either do nothing or win you the game on the spot (usually the former), and b) blue's defensive cards were unusually bad in this set, making it hard to set up a board stall and get to work on their library. If you do end up emulating the base structure of M13, I'd gut a lot of blue, and take a fresh stab at it.

edit: Oh, I forgot Jace, Memory Adept is in M13. Get rid of that crap.
 
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