Article Sink or Swim: Making Cube Approachable

[Humpty_Dumpty]

@TrainmasterGT stays on the rails so the rest of us don’t have to.

@burymeinmsg’s post reads like a manifesto for fully proxied cubes.

 

[MilesOfficial]

Welcome to the forums, my friend! I already like your style quite a bit!

Borders/Art: My players have found cubes way more accessible when the cube designer has a 90%+ consistent border preference. Old Border only/Modern Border only, Low full art / normal border variance, Low special frame treatment etc. I've played some cubes where half the cube is in full art, half in normal frames, a huge chunk in secret lair trippy art. It can be quite jarring. It's okay to throw in spice for your most favourite cards but having a consistent aesthetic and design language helps alleviate information overload for new and old players alike.

It's really rough. On one hand, Cube is an excellent place to centralise your collection, your favorites, and the rich history of Magic: the Gathering. On the other, we're already at the point where many cards look like they come from different games, even those printed within the same expansion! It's a tough balance to strike.

I think having old and new borders is totally fine, but even extended art cards can take up mental space that's better used elsewhere if it's harder to grasp a card's type or color at a glance. My beloved Frontier Explorer is not long for cube exclusively for the reason that it's jarring to read, but it's remained longer than other cards from the playtest sets because white cards are at least...white.

Also, every card but one in my cube is in English, even when the Japanese-only editions look 10x cooler (I am still working to get perfect-fits that "translate" over the card, effort there TBD). My exception, which I'm sure you've wondered, is this:


This card is already extremely expensive (I paid $50 for my Japanese copy) but I adore the art and having the classic frame for such a classic card. "But why, Miles," you may ask, "why have the Japanese version when you've shown that there is an English edition as well?"

It's a very easy answer: those are exclusive to one country in SEA as a make-good for another issue they had with promo distribution, and I've not seen one in English go for less than $300, and it's been exclusive to private FB groups. I already feel like an incredible dope for paying $50 for a Llanowar Elves, I can only go so far.

Also....even if you can't tell it's a Llanowar Elves specifically at first blush, it's pretty obvious what it does, yeah??

Dual Lands: If you're proxying Duals, please proxy any design that has the basic type lines and doesn't have the old paragraph text. This is the number one thing I see players go wtf does this say? and OH I can fetch this? (Unless you're specifically making an old school cube)

I've actually considered proxying my duals for this reason, even though I made a big deal to collect them all properly. It's a seriously important point.

No One Wants To Look Up Oracle: This is one that I haven't completely phased out yet but cards that require oracle text knowledge is horrible for new players and is commonly overlooked by cube designers.

Amen. I make exceptions to keep as many old-bordered cards as possible, but even I'm begrudgingly swapping out my old Chain Lightning for the Dominaria Remastered edition. I think it's also healthy to cut cards that have unclear wordings overall -- I'll probably be striking personal favorite Dance of the Dead in the next update or two for this reason.

Frequency of Cube Changes: It can be exciting to frequently add and swap cards into your cube, especially when a new set is released. If changes are made too often though, your new players will be in a perpetual cycle of not only learning how to draft your cube, but also learning new cards.

This is one I agree with conceptually but disagree with in practice. Even the most casual players will often hear about new expansions from time to time and get excited about them, and having a few cards from new sets every time they cube will not actually negatively affect their experience, if you think about the maths.

On my first point, I imagine the first thing that my group will ask me next time we get together is "what Lord of the Rings cards are in Cube? Can I draft The One Ring??" I wouldn't be surprised if most of them have hardly seen many spoilers, if any! But they (largely) know about the set's existence and will be stoked to see some favorite characters come to life.

Regarding maths, I have a 720 card cube, so the notion that they'll encounter cards they didn't see previously is (quite literally) doubly true for me, but even with a 360 or 450 sized cube, having a few dozen changes per play session is not an overwhelming amount, and new cards and swaps may not even register for players, so long as you're following good design principles in the first place.

Relationship Factor: Many of my new players are friends of friends that think about MTG maybe once or twice a month if that. Not all players will be entrenched in magic like our core player base that will be happy to show up just for the love of the game.

Absolutely.

All very small things in the grand scheme of onboarding New Players into the cube but it all culminates to a better experience.

Couldn't have said it better myself! Cheers, mate.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

@TrainmasterGT stays on the rails so the rest of us don’t have to.

Even then, I'm usually just building new rails lol.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Even then, I'm usually just building new rails lol.

 

[blacksmithy]

i am realizing as i read this thread that i do the exact opposite of a LOT of this advice lol

 

[Chris Taylor]

Cube design is falling down a ravine trying to spend more time on your feet than on your back

 

[burymeinmsg]

@burymeinmsg’s post reads like a manifesto for fully proxied cubes.

A lot of the issues with my own cube could be solved with proxies but funnily I only proxy the duals and a handful of old expensive cards like survival of the fittest.

Welcome to the forums, my friend! I already like your style quite a bit!

Thanks!

Also....even if you can't tell it's a Llanowar Elves specifically at first blush, it's pretty obvious what it does, yeah??

I have full art lightning bolt and incinerate so I'm not exactly following my own advice too lol! It's okay to make exceptions. It's not all or nothing, having 1 card in Japanese is so fine especially for such a simple effect.

having a few dozen changes per play session is not an overwhelming amount, and new cards and swaps may not even register for players, so long as you're following good design principles in the first place.

Yeah that's true, I suppose it's about the cards you choose to swap as well. If you're frequently upgrading/downgrading a 3 drop red aggro beater, they're all conceptually the same.

 

[Phone]

I'm playing a lot more with newish Magic players than I used to. My Jeskai Cube has been simplified a bunch in 2022 and 2023, mirroring the mothods for that listed above. Right, now I'm working on a way to introduce new players to Magic with it, following these steps:

1. I'll make 3 mono-colored 40-card decks, each with around 4 keywords to learn. The cube itself will be simplified enough that I can skip a lot of rules (like planeswalkers, enchantments, the upkeep), and with just 4 keywords to remember for their own deck I think this will be the lowest point of entry to start playing.

2. The new player can pick their favourite 2 decks and combine them in a sealed pool. I'll probably add the multicolored cards for that color pair as well. From there they can construct their first limited deck!

3. Grid-draft the cube with them, maybe excluding a chunk of the cards to make sure all familiar cards will show up and the new player will be familiar with most of them.

4. Four-player draft with all 180 cards of the cube.

5. Profit???

A fifth step might actually be to have them build a commander deck from the cube, as that's the most popular casual format and the only other format I play myself. This could be the way to go teach new players Magic, although I've yet to try this. I feel it transitions nicely from premade decks into deck-construction into cube.

I've been looking at doing something similar with my cube recently. I have a couple enfranchised magic players who can draft but a lot who are completely overwhelmed.

So I was looking at making the cube into decks that can be played without having to draft them so players can get familiar with the cards before hand.

I also started playing a format I call wizard tower which is a little wacky but cuts the complexity of the draft down. I call it wizard's tower. I put the whole 360 card cube down as a communal library and we share a communal graveyard. Then lands are played as face-down rainbow lands.

The actual rulings get made up on the fly but you get to see how cards work together regardless of mana base and the set up is dead easy.

I really enjoyed this article. Accessibility it is so important for a growing community. I have many new players and this is a major thing I think about.

Another area outside of game design I would like to add is accessibility in the aesthetics of your cube and few other tid bit observations I've had:

Borders/Art: My players have found cubes way more accessible when the cube designer has a 90%+ consistent border preference. Old Border only/Modern Border only, Low full art / normal border variance, Low special frame treatment etc. I've played some cubes where half the cube is in full art, half in normal frames, a huge chunk in secret lair trippy art. It can be quite jarring. It's okay to throw in spice for your most favourite cards but having a consistent aesthetic and design language helps alleviate information overload for new and old players alike.

Dual Lands: If you're proxying Duals, please proxy any design that has the basic type lines and doesn't have the old paragraph text. This is the number one thing I see players go wtf does this say? and OH I can fetch this? (Unless you're specifically making an old school cube)

No One Wants To Look Up Oracle: This is one that I haven't completely phased out yet but cards that require oracle text knowledge is horrible for new players and is commonly overlooked by cube designers. This includes old burn spells. They've reprinted a lot of burn spells with the new "any target" wording but not all of them. Some of your favourite editions and promos will never get reprinted but if you have many new players, you might have to bite the bullet and put those in the binder and add newer editions or break singleton.
I asked one of my new players that had played the cube maybe 10 or so times if they knew they could bolt a planeswalker, they said nope, doesn't say it on the card so they didn't realise. I've explained this errata once in a while but it never sticks! This is one of those issues where if you don't ask you'll never see it because you'll mistaken your new players are playing sub-optimally because they're new not because they don't understand the card.

Frequency of Cube Changes: It can be exciting to frequently add and swap cards into your cube, especially when a new set is released. If changes are made too often though, your new players will be in a perpetual cycle of not only learning how to draft your cube, but also learning new cards. They need time with your cube to get some footing. Low frequency, Large updates > High frequency, Small updates.
Designers often hate complex individual cards. Throw even the most complex modern card like Cosima, God of the Voyage into a cube where your new player has been playing the same cube for the past 6 months and they'll definitely pick it up quickly, they have less learning to do. Throw Cosima into a cube where your new player is constantly trying to understand the shifting 10% of cards going in and out of the cube each time they draft, and of course they'll find it difficult to understand.

Relationship Factor: Many of my new players are friends of friends that think about MTG maybe once or twice a month if that. Not all players will be entrenched in magic like our core player base that will be happy to show up just for the love of the game. I found more important than game design (not to disregard or minimise this element) is making sure the actual physical/online experience is accessible. My community will go out to eat afterwards, 90% of players will join and I make sure to befriend the newer players. I make sure to introduce them properly to other players. Breaking this ice is so important to having someone come back. Always reaching out afterwards to say hey did you have any questions, how was your experience etc is vital as well. If your new players are showing up, drafting once, leaving, and then never returning and never saying why, this is a flag!

All very small things in the grand scheme of onboarding New Players into the cube but it all culminates to a better experience.
Sorry for derailing a bit but I thought you summed the cube design aspects well enough.

As someone with a fully-proxies cube, I'm definitely going to go back and see if I can streamline the aesthetics. That makes a lot of sense to me!

@landofMordor Great article. It gave me a lot to think about as I've been really interested in growing the play group for a while. Thanks!!

 

[Phone]

I really enjoyed this article. Accessibility it is so important for a growing community. I have many new players and this is a major thing I think about.

Another area outside of game design I would like to add is accessibility in the aesthetics of your cube and few other tid bit observations I've had:

Borders/Art: My players have found cubes way more accessible when the cube designer has a 90%+ consistent border preference. Old Border only/Modern Border only, Low full art / normal border variance, Low special frame treatment etc. I've played some cubes where half the cube is in full art, half in normal frames, a huge chunk in secret lair trippy art. It can be quite jarring. It's okay to throw in spice for your most favourite cards but having a consistent aesthetic and design language helps alleviate information overload for new and old players alike.

Dual Lands: If you're proxying Duals, please proxy any design that has the basic type lines and doesn't have the old paragraph text. This is the number one thing I see players go wtf does this say? and OH I can fetch this? (Unless you're specifically making an old school cube)

No One Wants To Look Up Oracle: This is one that I haven't completely phased out yet but cards that require oracle text knowledge is horrible for new players and is commonly overlooked by cube designers. This includes old burn spells. They've reprinted a lot of burn spells with the new "any target" wording but not all of them. Some of your favourite editions and promos will never get reprinted but if you have many new players, you might have to bite the bullet and put those in the binder and add newer editions or break singleton.
I asked one of my new players that had played the cube maybe 10 or so times if they knew they could bolt a planeswalker, they said nope, doesn't say it on the card so they didn't realise. I've explained this errata once in a while but it never sticks! This is one of those issues where if you don't ask you'll never see it because you'll mistaken your new players are playing sub-optimally because they're new not because they don't understand the card.

Frequency of Cube Changes: It can be exciting to frequently add and swap cards into your cube, especially when a new set is released. If changes are made too often though, your new players will be in a perpetual cycle of not only learning how to draft your cube, but also learning new cards. They need time with your cube to get some footing. Low frequency, Large updates > High frequency, Small updates.
Designers often hate complex individual cards. Throw even the most complex modern card like Cosima, God of the Voyage into a cube where your new player has been playing the same cube for the past 6 months and they'll definitely pick it up quickly, they have less learning to do. Throw Cosima into a cube where your new player is constantly trying to understand the shifting 10% of cards going in and out of the cube each time they draft, and of course they'll find it difficult to understand.

Relationship Factor: Many of my new players are friends of friends that think about MTG maybe once or twice a month if that. Not all players will be entrenched in magic like our core player base that will be happy to show up just for the love of the game. I found more important than game design (not to disregard or minimise this element) is making sure the actual physical/online experience is accessible. My community will go out to eat afterwards, 90% of players will join and I make sure to befriend the newer players. I make sure to introduce them properly to other players. Breaking this ice is so important to having someone come back. Always reaching out afterwards to say hey did you have any questions, how was your experience etc is vital as well. If your new players are showing up, drafting once, leaving, and then never returning and never saying why, this is a flag!

All very small things in the grand scheme of onboarding New Players into the cube but it all culminates to a better experience.
Sorry for derailing a bit but I thought you summed the cube design aspects well enough.

Okay, so read this a while back and really took these suggestions to heart. I wanted to share some updates for custom cards/updated cards I've added to the cube.

1. Is getting all the frames the same because I use proxies. The artifacts and colourless cards are all properly brown now (and looking dope)
2. When I do use custom cards I've started to really dig into how complex I want these cards to be. Trying to cut that down as much as possible.
3. I've reworked a number of my custom cards to make more sense.
4. I've gone back and reworded some cards and removed trinket text.
5. Oh and I've been going back and adding reminder text to everything.

I'm only part way through everything but I love the idea of making it all seem similar. I think I've struggled with getting new players in the past so I've really appreciated your post and this thread by LandOfMordor

Spoiler: Example for Point 3.

Fleeting Beauty
Went from this

To this:

Removes a lot of the difficulty with the card and a fair bit of power. But still retains the flavour.

Example for point 4.

Spoiler: Example for Point 4.

Yoshimaru gets the Commander Text dropped:

Magda gets cleaned up too:

Council's Judgment is a fucking mess and gets a whole ass remake:

Edit: I guess you can think of this as a follow up to the post I made just above. Kind of showing people what I did to work on what I said previously.

Edit2: Forgot the biggest rewrite:

Spoiler: Chains of Mephistopheles