New Cubist, can use direction! RTR Block Cube

[zarepath]

I like the idea of customizing my own limited environment and have decided to start with a cube made out of the limited environment I'm most familiar with, RTR block. I have a single copy of every common and uncommon in the block (so 2 of each guildgate) and plan on going from there.

http://deckstats.net/decks/3895/14081-rtr-block-cube

That puts it at 470 cards, and I see that people often have over 360 cards to create a more varied experience, but that others keep it on the leaner side in order to be able to make more significant design decisions. A few questions:

1) Is this going to be too multicolored?
2) Should I just cut all of the crappy cards or keep them in to reward better drafters?
3) How easy is it to phase rares into a cube like this? Is it best done upping the level of the cube all at once?
4) I assume this should be fun since it's based on the limited environment that Wizards is pushing right now, but 1-ofs certainly make it different. Will this even be playable/fun? Any issues you foresee?

I'll be testing it with some friends and plan on tinkering based on that, but I would love any kind of direction from y'all Master Cubists. Thanks!

 

[Jason Waddell]

Hey Zarepath, welcome to the forums!

Designing a block cube is a great way to start, and as a general rule, your cube should be able to be at least as fun as real full-block drafting.

Regarding your question of whether it will be too multicolored, I would say that there's no strict right or wrong answer here. Wizards have built a lot of different sets, many with a multicolor emphasis. They key is to be cohesive. The more multicolor cards you include, the more fixing you'll want to include as well. I've got an article in the pipeline on this idea, but for now I would think of what types of decks you want your environment to produce. RTR block is designed around 3+ color decks, so you'll want to have enough fixing to support this. The better question is "do I have enough fixing to support my sets color requirements?" You may find that you want more gates.

Drafters will be rewarded with or without the existence of crappy cards. My cube has no "bad" cards, but skill still plays a huge factor. That said, one of the attractions of building a cube is shifting it away from the retail draft dynamics. Retail draft games are a little light on interaction for my taste, so maybe you want more removal in there. The Fuse cards look like ones that I would want to play with a lot in a draft environment.

Some numbers to be aware of: in a retail set, there is roughly a 6/3/1 ratio between commons/uncommons/rares. That means you are 6 times as likely to see any specific common as compared to a specific rare. You don't have to hold to this, but it's something to be aware of. Your environment, for example, will have a much higher density of uncommons than a real draft.

Lastly, full block draft is close to singleton anyways. You will see an average of 0.8 copies of an RTR common in a draft pod, for example.

 

[Eric Chan]

Welcome to the forums here, zarepath! Building that first cube is a fun and rewarding project, and hopefully you'll be seeing the fruits of your labor soon with your playgroup.

My first "cubes" (I hesitate to even call them that, since I had no intention to building a cube at the time) were much like yours. I took two of every common and one of every uncommon in M10, and put 'em all together to Winston draft against my brother. We actually took the time to count out 11 commons and 4 uncommons per pack, to try and simulate normal pack distribution. But I think in general, you're probably just as well served by shuffling the whole mass together, with commons and uncommons from all three sets mixed in.

To answer your first question - there's a good possibility that there's too much gold, and not enough fixing. Thankfully, there are a few easy remedies. One is to simply up the number of guildgates. Twenty total fixing lands likely isn't going to be anywhere near enough, and you'll want either four or five copies of each of the guildgates. The reason for this is that (almost) all DGM packs contain a fixing land in actual limited drafts, so the density of fixers is much higher than normal pack distribution would account for.

The other thing you can do is double up on all of your commons. This has two nice effects: it more closely aligns with the intended balance of Wizards' retail limited format, by making the less powerful commons more plentiful, and it increases the density of monocolour cards compared to multicolor cards. I remember reading somewhere that in DGM, Wizards was very careful to slot the majority of their gold cards in uncommon and higher rarities.

As far as cutting bad cards goes, I would say give the raw list a test run or two first, and see how it feels. There may be some cards that are categorically useless, but other cards that are underwhelming on paper may turn out to be better in practice. So if your total cube size isn't too unwieldy, it might be worth giving all the cards a fair shot before taking a scalpel to it.

If you decide you're ready to add rares, and especially mythics, you're essentially making the move from "cube that emulates limited set" to an actual cube. At that point, you'll definitely want to prune the unnecessary weaker commons and uncommons, as they just won't fare well against high powered constructed-level cards. This is where you'll get to make your mark as a cube designer, because simply adding 150+ rares to a custom limited set that's low in power level and then shuffling them all together just won't work. On the other hand, you'll get to flex your design muscles, and create a fun, balanced draft environment for your group.

This is just how I would do things, but by no means is it the only way. The best thing to do is probably to take your playgroup's preferences and requests into account, and build your cube to be what everyone wants. Have fun!