General Optimizing Cube for Sealed/Roto

[landofMordor]

LINK TO CUBE (WIP)

Hey folks, I am thinking about a new cube idea that is pretty much right up the Riptidean alley -- a cube that's optimized for the Sealed format. (It's really hard to build good Sealed decks from my main cube, since the 90 dual lands make almost any color combinations possible for most pools.)

So I am wanting a way to maximize player agency in their sideboards and card flexibility, while also making deckbuilding decisions fairly easy.

I. Pillars of the Format

1. Strixhaven's Learn/Lesson is a perfect example of a good Sealed mechanic. You get access to niche sideboard effects from your maindeck without needing to spend draft picks or cube slots on Lessons.



2. Utility lands are another example of cards that add real win % to one's Limited deck, but are often not worth a pick during draft. Sealed is the place for them to shine!



What other effects will you always include in your deck, but won't pick highly in Draft?

II. Spice/Build-Arounds
These are cards that are too high-risk to pick in Draft, but still offer big payoffs if they can be optimized. Some classes of spice I want to include:

1. A+B cute combos. I don't like the play patterns of combo during draft, but in Sealed it seems like it will be rarer to draw the combo pieces, and therefore more special when it comes together.



2. Power outliers that require larger concessions in deckbuilding. This will be the main tension of deckbuilding, I think -- "how can I support the rares in my pool while also making my deck functional?" -- so I'm really trying to maximize this category.



3. Companions and Conspiracies. Though these are mega power outliers in Draft, in Sealed it will be possible to tune one's entire draft pool around these cards, another way to keep it fresh. (I also would probably introduce a limit on the number of these cards one can play.)



What are other jank rares and cute combos that you love to build around in Limited?

III. The Glue
This is the thing I'm having the toughest time defining so far. A lot of Learn/Lesson, cycling cards, and Kicker cards are fairly low-power, and also centered around instants/sorceries. However, the bombs I've picked out so far are often high-CMC, which makes me think I should gravitate towards an "Eldrazi Domain" or ROE style gameplay with lots of Emerge/Eldrazi Spawn/etc etc.

What mechanics/synergies would you use to tie these pillars together into a more cohesive whole?

Thanks in advance for the discussion! Cheers!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Cool idea! Sealed naturally trends towards midrange a lot of the time, because sealed pools usually lack the density needed to build a good aggro deck, and the tools for building a reliable control deck. Looking towards glue cards that shine in midrange is one way to go, I think.

As far as specific mechanics / cycles go, cycling (heh) is pretty amazing to smooth out draws, and bouncelands are very good in a typically slower format like sealed. Another thing people often associate with sealed deck is bombs, at least in retail sealed. You can play with that a bit in a custom sealed cube, but the question is, will it still feel like seeled if the average quality of cards is so high that you're no longer scrapping a (potentially multicolor) deck (with questionable fixing) together from the colors that offer you the best bombs and/or removal?

 

[landofMordor]

Looking towards glue cards that shine in midrange is one way to go, I think.

Yeah, I really like this point. I'm imagining that most decks will have curves that resemble Limited -- in fact, I think that's about the power level I'm going for. (Much closer to Retail Limited than my main cube is, at least! Maybe like Standard/Historic in terms of average card quality.) That's what is making this more difficult than usual, since the card pool of "standard quality roleplayer" is relatively huge compared to "Modern playable" in my main cube!

As far as specific mechanics / cycles go, cycling (heh) is pretty amazing to smooth out draws, and bouncelands are very good in a typically slower format like sealed. Another thing people often associate with sealed deck is bombs, at least in retail sealed. You can play with that a bit in a custom sealed cube, but the question is, will it still feel like seeled if the average quality of cards is so high that you're no longer scrapping a (potentially multicolor) deck (with questionable fixing) together from the colors that offer you the best bombs and/or removal?

Cycling is definitely a good one, and it also lends itself well to the nexus of graveyard/delirium/discard/sacrifice that I was already thinking about.

Personally, bouncelands aren't my favorite, but I do think there's something there r.e. bombs. Bombs will be really important to this format because they'll give one's deck a firm direction in a pool that's flush with playables. So far, I'm leaning on "II.2." above (Sarkhan the Mad and co.) to provide the bomby aspect of Sealed. I'm hoping they'll provide two kinds of constraints: a mana constraint (multicolor, multi-pip) and a strategic constraint (ie Jace Cunning Castaway is only playable in an aggressive blue deck). Curbing the fixing can also help create a sense of scarcity when it comes to splashing for bombs.

I guess, in summary, I definitely want to emulate a Retail-like tension between manafixing and card quality, but without the feel-bads of mana screw/flood. And I also want to guarantee that every player feels like they opened mega bombs, instead of one player getting absurdly lucky or w/e.

 

[shamizy]

For Sealed optimization I'd say the main two things to focus on are your power outliers and your mana-fixing.

Traditional cubes with good fixing usually end up being miserable Sealed experiences due to great fixing leading to multicolor goodstuff piles lacking identity as you've probably run int in the pat. You get to play more of the powerful cards in your pool, but you're not so much playing a deck with a specific gameplan versus multiple cards that are decent in a vacuum. To that end, your land choices will definitely determine what the typical pool will end up being capable of churning out. The good thing with sealed is that as long as there are certain signposts and cards that are clearly decent, your players will probably not care about any of the narrow inclusions that would otherwise bog down a draft experience. As long as they can construct something playable out of their pool, they're not going to care so much that 40% of it is kind of crap for their gameplan overall. So you can go pretty deep with themes and individual card inclusions without taking away from the overall experience since there is no drafting portion.

You'll want to make sure that your glue cards between archetypes aren't too solid across the board. As designers there's a tendency to want a little more out of a given slot, but sometimes you just need that vanilla 3/3 for 3 to fill out a spot in the curve. If your inclusions are all decent and solid across a vast variety of archetypes, then that might actually lead to more confusion for the average player with information overload and not knowing which way to go. This is one of the rare circumstances where it might be right to just have cards that outright do not go into a variety of different decks, despite the typical inclinations as a cube curator.

Keep some number of decent glue pieces for branching archetypes, but I think the right call if probably to really define archetypes with clear inclusions and exclusions. I know that its way easier for me to review a sealed pool if I run into enough trash cards for a single color to then ignore it completely when building my deck. I'd say the key here is to narrow your players' focus after opening their pools.

Bomb-wise you can go however you like, but I think they need to be more universally playable and generically powerful to give a player more direction from their sealed pool. Traditional sealed has me opening up my packs, sorting by colors, but paying special attention to the rares and uncommons that will usually be a step above from the rest of the pool. If I open enough on color rares and enough filler? I'm golden. However, that's not going to be the case here unless you heavily curate your packs per draft but that doesn't sound realistic. To that end you'll just have to make the jump between bomb and solid card more evident.

Finally, fixing-wise you probably just go with utility lands throughout for some extra spice but nothing all that great fixing wise. Really depends on which kind of decks you want to see in your environment. I'd probably have some tapped duals in there to enable 3C decks and maybe top out with something like the Theros temples as your best fixing to help enable those decks. A sealed format like Theros Beyond Death where you could pretty comfortably play a 2.5 color deck splashing the 3rd is right about where you want for an engaging sealed experience.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I think for sealed you want to not include too many different (and non-overlapping) archetypes in your cube. Your drafters don't get to select their card pool, so if you want decks to still have interesting synergies, there need to be enough of them in their pool to make it worthwhile.

One sealed format I've really liked is Team Sealed: build 2 decks out of 120 cards.

 

[landofMordor]

As long as they can construct something playable out of their pool, they're not going to care so much that 40% of it is kind of crap for their gameplan overall. So you can go pretty deep with themes and individual card inclusions without taking away from the overall experience since there is no drafting portion.

This is one of the rare circumstances where it might be right to just have cards that outright do not go into a variety of different decks, despite the typical inclinations as a cube curator ... I'd say the key here is to narrow your players' focus after opening their pools.

I agree! My question isn't whether to include narrow cards, but how to glue the narrow cards together. A cube with high deltas in power and in parasitism will help players manage a 90-card pool. Adding constraints to their manabase, as you mention, will also help narrow the number of possible decks they can build. Right now, the chaff of this cube will be generic filler effects like Cycling 1, mediocre Kicker cards, and utility lands galore, so that players won't have to scrounge for playables after they decide which bombs they want to play.

But if the high power outliers are parasitic (at their best in a narrower strategy), then drafters will need their chaff to support the various synergies. This goes to Jason's point (and by the way, I will definitely have to try Team Sealed!):

I think for sealed you want to not include too many different (and non-overlapping) archetypes in your cube. Your drafters don't get to select their card pool, so if you want decks to still have interesting synergies, there need to be enough of them in their pool to make it worthwhile.

So I think I'm really asking, what are your favorite low-power glue synergies/mechanics?

 

[landofMordor]

A way to rephrase my prior comment:

Retail Sealed deckbuilding is comprised of 3 phases, broadly: 1) Identify bombs. 2) Support bombs. 3) Cut chaff.

#1 is trivial to put together -- I just sort through my trade binder for cards too bomby/slow for my main Cube.

But the whole point of this cube is to greatly trim down on #3 by turning the bulk of the chaff into utility lands, Lessons, cyclers, Conspiracies, and other things that increase deck functionality without eating up too many mainboard spell slots. (Happy to take other suggestions for cards that fit this bill.)

It's #2 that is trickiest for me. Those are the maindeckable, workhorse cards that just do enough stuff for the bombs to be supported. This design space is too wide-open, so I'm soliciting opinions on what groups of mechanics are preferred by others here on RL.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think you can take a cue from regular set design, where each color pair has one or two strong mechanical identities that ideally overlap or have cross-synergy with mechanical identities in other color pairs. Once you fill in the mechanical skeleton you want to build your cube on, you can hunt for bombs that greatly benefit from or enhance said mechanics. Alternatively, the mechanics-agnostic Flameblast Dragons of this world could also be the bombs you are looking for.