Ravnica Archetype Cube

[Naturax]

We just drafted my cube for the first time this evening and a lot of the players said there was "too much removal", which was a big surprise to me. Would you please look at my list and let me know how to figure out the correct amount of removal to include? Thanks!

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/24398

Players can add any number of Guildgates to their decks after drafting.

I cut the broken rares so that decks would rely more on synergy and less on mashing a bunch of good cards into the same pile. I also cut the premium removal to make for a better limited environment. The guild cards need to be versatile enough to go into multiple decks in order to allow for a variety of strategies for each guild. There are only a couple of exceptions to this in order to ensure each archetype has enough support.

Supported Archetypes:

• Auras (Bant)
• Cipher (Esper)
• Control (Grixis & Jeskai)
• Hellbent (Jund)
• Tokens (Naya)
• Graveyard (Abzan)
• +1/+1 Counters (Sultai)
• Sacrifice (Mardu)
• ETB (Temur)

 

[Aoret]

My best advice on removal numbers is to check out this thread and get your as fan figured out. There's no hard and fast "right" number as formats do differ a lot, but it at least gives us a common language to start the removal discussion with some comparison points. This also prevents people from making mistakes when eyeballing your list (especially in your case since yours is a fairly unique idea!). Here's a thread on as fan: http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/asfan-calculator-tool.868/#post-40717

 

[Naturax]

Cool, thanks for that link! I have 52 removal spells, which gives an As-Fan of 2.17, which does seem high.

Do you know if people post their removal As-Fan for other styles of cubes? I'd like to get some kind of basis for comparison to figure out what I should be aiming for.

Thanks again!

 

[Aoret]

It looks like you're actually totally fine. This thread has a bit more info: http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/removal-by-the-numbers.830/ tl;dr 2 is low 3 is high. Another good place to look for data if you don't trust the info in that thread would be the cubetutor average cubes, although personally I trust the other analysis a bit more than comparing to CT average (because of the over-representation of powermax cubes in the general population). Ultimately, it may be that your players just genuinely don't like removal, and maybe it is an interesting design challenge to think about how you can reduce that while still maintaining a healthy format.

That's pretty advanced stuff (I have no idea at all how I'd approach it so I can't offer any suggestions), so the other easy answer is to just stop asking your players for input. I definitely listened to people too much early on and let them shove my design every-which-way, despite the fact that my formats were fine and people were having fun. A lot of this is in how you present yourself and your cube. If you take the stance of "I've worked really hard to create a fun environment, and I think you should trust me," generally speaking, people will. If you take the stance of "oh I don't know what I'm doing and I'm pretty unsure of myself and my cube," people who have no idea what they're talking about will offer advice to you as though it were gospel. I'm very guilty of doing the latter for the first year or so I ran a cube.

 

[Naturax]

Thanks again for this, Aoret. I really appreciate you sharing your personal experiences in this kind of situation.