General Polycubing and packages

Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I no longer run a "360 card" cube. Instead I run a 360 slot cube. I'll elaborate in an upcoming article, but basically my cube is now a spreadsheet that looks like this:

hoPbPVN.png


Before each draft I randomly sample one card from each row. Those 360 become the cube for that draft. It's never the same, and I don't even know exactly what will be in there, as I just copy / paste the resulting list into drafts.in.

Some of the slots are fixed. Some are variable. Some are highly variable.

This also affords me the opportunity to play with packages. Sets of cards that get included together. From a practical perspective, my current (underformed) idea is to have a number of optional packages, each with their own column. Before the regular sampling, I would choose one of the packages (probably at random) and use that for the draft. These packages can be of any size really. 5 cards, 20 cards, 90 cards, whatever.

If a package is selected, those cards are automatically included instead of whatever other cards are in that row. Maybe this is stupid. Let me know.

I'm looking for ideas for packages, i.e.
a) lifegain
b) double strike
c) brainstorms
d) artifacts
e) humans
f) devotion

etc.

Let me know if you have ideas!
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
I remember you writing about this a while ago. I am happy to hear it is working out, but sounds like a pain from a practical standpoint. Perfect for Online though *cough, MTGO Cube, lift your game! er.. cough*

Packaging strikes me as very difficult, due to the problem of cross-archetypal-synergies (Look, I just went and made it all pseudo-scientific). A package is all well and cool, but part of the design challenge is cards which dovetail into multiple archetypes. Packages seem as thought they would need a very deft hand to avoid becoming too poisonous.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Laz said:
Packaging strikes me as very difficult, due to the problem of cross-archetypal-synergies (Look, I just went and made it all pseudo-scientific). A package is all well and cool, but part of the design challenge is cards which dovetail into multiple archetypes. Packages seem as thought they would need a very deft hand to avoid becoming too poisonous.
Click to expand...

Yeah, definitely. How to properly implement them is certainly an issue. I wonder. The design I put into, say, the sacrifice the package, could pretty seamlessly be turned into a "package" column, even if it were ~100 cards or so.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

This is a pretty sweet idea. I've thought about doing something similar, but it felt unwieldy with real cards so I backed off.

Now if someone made card sleeves that had a colored symbol at the bottom of the clear side (the side with the card face), you could probably do this pretty easily with real cards. All your "red" cards would be the base of the cube (always included), and then you could have different configurations for the other colors (blue, green, yellow, etc). Then randomly pick one or two (however you do it) to make up the rest of the cube. Not as flexible as what you are doing obviously, but a lot more practical when dealing with real cards. It would suck having to rebuild the cube card by card every time you want to draft. Kill me now.

Looking forward to the article.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

A friend of mine is doing something similar to this for simulating actual commercial draft formats. If I remember correctly, he has 2 rare sets, 3 uncommon sets, and 5 common sets of Llorwyn. He has a javascript randomly pick 11 Llorwyn commons, 3 Llorwyn uncommons and a Llorwyn rare for each pack, and if the appearance of a certain card in the resulting pool exceeds how many he owns, he just runs the program again. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but supposedly it works well.
 
Tyrole

Tyrole

ahadabans said:
Now if someone made card sleeves that had a colored symbol at the bottom of the clear side (the side with the card face), you could probably do this pretty easily with real cards.
Click to expand...

I've been toying with the idea of "cube rarity" for some time, in which I assign a rarity to cards in my cube and ensure packs are built accordingly. This would help distribute key archetype enablers, etc.. Rarity is one of the key methods Wizards uses to manage drafting dynamics, and it seems a terrible waste not to have it in cube. Unfortunately, I have yet to solve the logistical challenges in any sort of eloquent way.
 
negativeview

negativeview

Hey, I'm also trying to do something similar to this. For me I'm creating all the cards in Magic Set Editor (though no custom cards) and using the set symbol to denote the package. Before my cube was 0% proxy and now it's going to be 100% proxy just for the set symbols.

This also allows the main cube to be entirely in keeping with Riptide principles and also have a "power pack" for the rare occasions that I want to play with power.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

negativeview said:
Hey, I'm also trying to do something similar to this. For me I'm creating all the cards in Magic Set Editor (though no custom cards) and using the set symbol to denote the package. Before my cube was 0% proxy and now it's going to be 100% proxy just for the set symbols.

This also allows the main cube to be entirely in keeping with Riptide principles and also have a "power pack" for the rare occasions that I want to play with power.
Click to expand...

Do you use Perfect Fits? If so, you can just buy differently colored stickers and put those on the Perfect Fits. That's what I do and it works great.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, stickers on the inner layer of double sleeves is some sweet tech. It's how I currently mark my utility lands, so that it's easy to find and separate them after a draft.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

Eric Chan said:
Yeah, stickers on the inner layer of double sleeves is some sweet tech. It's how I currently mark my utility lands, so that it's easy to find and separate them after a draft.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what I do. I use other colors to denote "double-pick" cards, and so forth.
 
negativeview

negativeview

Diakonov said:
Do you use Perfect Fits? If so, you can just buy differently colored stickers and put those on the Perfect Fits. That's what I do and it works great.
Click to expand...


I probably should, but I don't. I don't think I've ever run into them locally and I've never considered ordering on the Internet...
 
CML

CML

Contributor
I advocate double-sleeving cubes, but this may only be the case because I got a bad batch of KMC Hypers that split faster than Kim and Kanye. Perfect fits are obviously the only way to do this.

I never double-sleeve my constructed decks, which have a similar "value-per-card" and thus a similar risk of split sleeves maiming a Misty Rainforest or something
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Okay guys, I am reviving this concept, with an update. Now that I am doing this as an MTGO cube, it is easier than ever to generate a new list for each draft.

TA1apdZ.png


My cube now has 360 "slots".
Columns 1 and 2 define the slots a card is eligible for. Above, we have 5 Izzet spells eligible for 3 slots. So my script will randomly select 3 of 5 to be in any given draft pool.

As before, the idea is to allow there to be some variability in the card pool, while still locking down the essential elements (e.g. I will have the same manabase present in each draft. 3 of each guild, etc.)

The spreadsheet is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Li9IvhqGz2y9WdQmS7n_E-g863Dctw4-yWdBWXCxJrI/edit#gid=0

Let me know if you guys see any places I can add cool cards into the rotation.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

Some rotation suggestions:
Put Karn and Kozilek in a rotation with each other.
Make 5 of your fetchlands rotate, since you've got 25.
Add the Blue Confluence in a rotation with Cryptic (tor the rotation of misc. counterspells)
Try Silugmar's Command in the UB rotation.
I would add a second Young Pyromancer and a second Abbot of Keral Keep to your red 2-drop rotation.
Definitely rotate Garruks. Try two slots with all three Garruks (although I hate Primal Hunter, personally).

If you want another multi-colored slot, you could take all the fun multi-colored Planeswalkers and rotate them:
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Will do, but I don't have a lot of these cards currently, so I will have to decide how committed I am to the idea.

Was thinking of making room for a tricolor slot.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Jason Waddell said:
Was thinking of making room for a tricolor slot.
Click to expand...


That's a great idea. I really dislike the idea of running static three color cards because it feels so forced and constraining, but there are a bunch of cool tri-color cards I'd like to randomly see once every X drafts.

Also, what about this idea? Have only one slot per Planeswalker type (and just pick one randomly). So you'd never see more than one Jace or one Garruk per draft, etc. I suppose that means you always see Koth so maybe this idea is dumb, but I've seen more than one person mention that the walker density is starting to become something that needs to be addressed in design. Seems pretty flavorful to me that only one version of Jace would exist at any one time (Admittedly, I know zero about the lore though, so I may just not have any clue so grain of salt that please).
 
Ferritovore

Ferritovore

For people that want flex slots or polycubing without having to refer to a spreadsheet, I just found out about Metadeck.

The base idea is that you print a proxy that just has card names on it. So you can print 60 cards which have 4-12 card names on each card, shuffle it up, and tell your opponent "I'm playing Deck 4, aka Blood Moon."

You could totally just print a small handful of them for just your narrow cube slots though. The player drafts a card which says Ral Zaret, Izzet Charm, Electrolyze. And that works one of three or more ways:
  1. Today is a 2 day. Anyone who drafts a polycard is playing card #2. This can be good for narrow cards which hate or love each other and want to be seen in the same draft.
  2. The player who cracks it rolls a die. That card is card #3 for her or for anyone she passes it to.
  3. Player's choice. You draft it and announce which card you're going to use it as for the week.
  4. Other!
2 and 3 lose their memory issue if you replace the checklist metacard with the chosen card.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
That sounds like an interesting paper solution. I'll point out that it doesn't address the "9 cards for 5 slots" option, but does seem useful.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

I tried this a while ago to good success. I don't "polycube" every week because sometimes I don't have the time to do all the prep, but the setup I've got going on works well. I think polycubing with paper Magic is very achievable, it would just require a manager program to help keep it efficient.

This is where all the Magic happens (pun inteneded):
awzcArQ.jpg


All the random cards you see floating around are part of my proxy collection. Anytime I want to make a polycube rotation, I just go through my (mostly organized) stack of proxies and make the swaps.

Keeping it organized manually is a pain though, and can take a lot of time to get set up every week (as I've mentioned). What I want to do is make a polycube manager program that does the following:

1. Stores my cube in some sort structure (spreadsheet, etc). This should represent what cards are physically in my cube box right now.
2. Whenever I want, have it randomly generate an iteration of the polycube (assigning cards to the slots, etc). When does the assignment, it outputs which cards I need to swap out, based on my current list.
3. UPDATE my list to include the newly assigned cards, so when it does the assignment again, it can output a relevant swap list week after week.

Since I'm done with my first semester of Java and C++ programming this week, I want to try my hands at this project next week. Can you guys think of any other features that would make paper cubing/polycubing easier?
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
vennythekid said:
Since I'm done with my first semester of Java and C++ programming this week, I want to try my hands at this project next week. Can you guys think of any other features that would make paper cubing/polycubing easier?
Click to expand...


This is all super possible. Basically you want something that generates a swaplist for you. It could be done from my R code in half an hour of coding or so, but that's a different language for you.

If you really wanted you could add a tracker for how often certain cards have been included, but that's extra work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top