After having my cube featured on CubeCobra recently I've been getting more and more questions regarding my Duplicate Voucher system. I had this draft sitting around the last few months on CubeCobra waiting for some touch-ups and figured now was as good a time as any to finish it up.
Cross-posting here to Riptide for a first glimpse before it goes up on CubeCobra later this week!
Back in 2019 I had gone through the ringer with various different attempts at breaking singleton in my cube. I was pleased with how it had worked out in the cases of cards like Champion of Parish and Bloodsoaked Champion which were incredibly effective in the decks they went into, but I was less please with the results from narrow build-around cards like Birthing Pod or Collected Company. Much like the aggressive pair mentioned earlier, these build-arounds would be even more effective with two of them in a given deck for consistency, but they were MUCH more narrow. Unless you picked them early in a draft in pack 1, went in drafting aggressively around the archetype AND was then rewarded with the 2nd copy later on, you probably weren't going to get there and would end up with a mediocre pile.
I was grappling with how to solve the issue of duplicate cards not being wanted by any drafter at the table. For example, if no one is interested in playing a Human Aggro deck or making Birthing Pod work, all of sudden those cards with duplicates in the cube end up being dead cards within the draft pool. With my cube at 420, you're going to miss seeing 60 cards at minimum depending upon the number of drafters and there's always the possibility that a build-around card won't be seen until the 3rd pack. Essentially all 3rd pack build-arounds wind up being dead cards in a draft pool. Unlike an online draft client, I'm not about go to go and pay special attention to seeding packs so I needed to come up with a solution.
And potential archetypes that would be interested in these cards include:
Humans: Champion of the Parish, Bloodsoaked Champion
Recursive Aggro: Bloodsoaked Champion, Gravecrawler
Spellslinger: Young Pyromancer
Birthing Pod: Birthing Pod
CoCo: Collected Company
Soulherder/ Blink: Soulherder
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How does it work?
1. Draft the original copy of one of these cards and also a voucher card during the draft.
2. After the draft is over exchange the voucher for a 2nd copy of a drafted card by presenting the original in your draft pool as proof.
This can be done a maximum of once per card; no double-dipping on the original card that was drafted. Each of the original cards included in the main cube is marked with a yellow sticker on the bottom left corner of the inner sleeve. The duplicate copy is marked with a yellow sticker on the right corner (this is to easily identify and remove them from the pool after a cube session). I've got 4 duplicate vouchers within my cube and a 7:4 ratio of originals to vouchers.
The main reason I implemented this in the first place was to give greater utility to slots being used by a narrow build-arounds and to supplement "critical mass" archetypes; decks where you'd want multiple copies of a given effect to create the best version of that deck. If you can't find a good analog for a specific effect, then the easiest solution is to just double up most of the time. However, a 420 cube means that every single card isn't always in the draft pool, which means that build-arounds may not end up with enough available copies. Squadroning cards is a potential solution, but I haven't been a fan of the Multiple-for-1 system if you're double-dipping on cards that are all worth an actual pick during the draft. The weaker cards are fine, but the more interesting build-arounds end up giving you too much value in a single pick.
For example, if there are two copies of Champion of the Parish the draft pool but no one is drafting an aggressive deck, these will end up being dead cards in the draft. Or if there is a copy of Birthing Pod or Collected Company in the pool, but neither are seen until Pack 3, then it's likely too late for these to be useful and they also end up being dead cards. I was also not a fan of there being zero demand for certain cards unless you were already actively drafting a given archetype. One of the other problems I saw with certain cards were that usually just one person at the table would be interested in picking it up. That makes sense for certain archetypes since that's not really different than the Reanimator player wheeling something like a Dread Return or a giant creature, but it does become an issue when you have too many duplicates within the cube. I didn't want that 2nd copy of Champion of the Parish to become an auto-wheel to the Humans drafter and be a worthless card to everyone else drafting at the table.
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There are 3 problems I'm looking to solve with this voucher system:
1. Minimization of the number of dead cards in a draft pool by giving drafters more options for that card slot
If I'm in Spellslinger I have no interest in the Gravecrawler in Pack 2, but a card that could potentially become another copy of Young Pyromancer is very appealing. If I've already drafted a Pyromancer, this is letting me double up and I'd be super interested in drafting it highly as a core piece of my deck. If I haven't yet drafted a Pyromancer? I might just snipe this late in on a wheel and just keep my eyes open for a copy in future picks. The fun thing here is that you can really customize your approach depending on what you're drafting. With more potential options via voucher for these slots, there are fewer potential dead cards in a draft pool.
2. Create more demand for the potential card in that voucher slot
For example, if you're in Aggro then an early duplicate voucher pick can represent a potential copy of Champion of the Parish, Bloodsoaked Champion or Gravecrawler depending on which you end up drafting. And if you've got a Blink drafter to your left hoping for a Soulherder or a Pod player to your right looking for that Birthing Pod, then all of a sudden this creates an organic demand for the voucher in that particular card slot. This leads to the duplicate voucher being more like a golden ticket for some drafters who will then adjust their drafting strategy. If it's meant to be a very specific build-around card (say Collected Company), you might value the voucher very highly in subsequent packs after drafting the original copy since it's essential to your deck whereas a Aggro drafter has more mix and match options available to them so they might wait it out instead.
3. Maximize the options available for specific archetypes per cube slot
For the archetypes I'm trying to supplement with the cards on the voucher, you'd ideally have two copies of any of those for your deck to make it function effectively. Soulherder is a great card in blink strategies and can really get the ball rolling, but it's often quite fragile without the right curve to maximize value. The best way to mitigate this? Just draft a 2nd copy. The problem? There's no way to ensure a 2nd copy will actually get to the drafter consistently. What if the 2nd copy just didn't make it into your draft pool? If you're playing a 360 cube then too many duplicates will lead to a same-y drafting experience, but too large a cube and you won't consistently see your multiples. What these vouchers end up doing is giving you an additional chance to draft that 2nd copy of Soulherder or Young Pyromancer that you really want to shore up the core of your deck. It's much easier to get a "hit" with 4 potential shots rather than 1.
In a typical cube this would require additional slots for the 2nd copy of each card eating up space and might lead to the pitfalls mentioned in my first point. With this system I end up using 4 physical slots to represent 7 different cards. This helps create some demand for the voucher, minimize auto-wheels during the draft process, and if we end up missing the build-arounds in the main draft pool it doesn't hurt as bad for the rest of the draft.
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How's it working out so far?
Not too shabby. I didn't manage to get in too many drafter post-implementation and pre-lockdown (maybe 3-4), but the results from the handful I ran were super promising. My drafters were able to understand what the vouchers did from the first glance, they drafted accordingly and were able to build the decks they wanted, and best of all there was actual demand when drafting these. In the very first draft I was greedy in trying to wheel one back after drafting a Soulherder, but I was punished as I later found that a drafter to my left snapped one up for their Bloodsoaked Champion while another at the table cashed it in for a Young Pyromancer. Organic demand! Less dead slots! It worked exactly as I hoped it would!
Another time I was looking to go in on some kind of Aggro deck early and snatched up two vouchers early hoping to cash them in later. I was rewarded later in the draft with a Bloodsoaked Champion and Gravecrawler and ended up switching lanes into a Stax-y variant after being passed a Tangle Wire and then topping off with Braids, Cabal Minion and some token generation. I then followed it up with a Flagstones of Trokair drafted later in my Utility Land Draft (which I'll touch upon in a future article).
All in all, it's been an elegant solution to an annoying problem that bothered me for a few years and I couldn't be happier with the outcome.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Bonus Round
I've had a few requests for how I went about making my vouchers but unfortunately it was a friend of mine that created these for me in Photoshop (I've got no experience in PS) so the specifics are lost to me. That said, I do have a link to the original .psd file hosted on Dropbox that anyone interested can take a crack at if they want to customize and create their own: Duplicate Voucher.
Feel free to utilize the .psd template and let me know how it goes if you end up deploying a similar system in the future. I'd love to hear how this works out for other designers.
As always, thanks for reading!
Cross-posting here to Riptide for a first glimpse before it goes up on CubeCobra later this week!
Back in 2019 I had gone through the ringer with various different attempts at breaking singleton in my cube. I was pleased with how it had worked out in the cases of cards like Champion of Parish and Bloodsoaked Champion which were incredibly effective in the decks they went into, but I was less please with the results from narrow build-around cards like Birthing Pod or Collected Company. Much like the aggressive pair mentioned earlier, these build-arounds would be even more effective with two of them in a given deck for consistency, but they were MUCH more narrow. Unless you picked them early in a draft in pack 1, went in drafting aggressively around the archetype AND was then rewarded with the 2nd copy later on, you probably weren't going to get there and would end up with a mediocre pile.
I was grappling with how to solve the issue of duplicate cards not being wanted by any drafter at the table. For example, if no one is interested in playing a Human Aggro deck or making Birthing Pod work, all of sudden those cards with duplicates in the cube end up being dead cards within the draft pool. With my cube at 420, you're going to miss seeing 60 cards at minimum depending upon the number of drafters and there's always the possibility that a build-around card won't be seen until the 3rd pack. Essentially all 3rd pack build-arounds wind up being dead cards in a draft pool. Unlike an online draft client, I'm not about go to go and pay special attention to seeding packs so I needed to come up with a solution.
Thus, I decided to implement a voucher system into the cube.
The cards that are currently in my cube and available through this system are the following:
And potential archetypes that would be interested in these cards include:
Humans: Champion of the Parish, Bloodsoaked Champion Recursive Aggro: Bloodsoaked Champion, Gravecrawler Spellslinger: Young PyromancerBirthing Pod: Birthing Pod
CoCo: Collected Company
Soulherder/ Blink: Soulherder__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How does it work?
1. Draft the original copy of one of these cards and also a voucher card during the draft.
2. After the draft is over exchange the voucher for a 2nd copy of a drafted card by presenting the original in your draft pool as proof.
This can be done a maximum of once per card; no double-dipping on the original card that was drafted. Each of the original cards included in the main cube is marked with a yellow sticker on the bottom left corner of the inner sleeve. The duplicate copy is marked with a yellow sticker on the right corner (this is to easily identify and remove them from the pool after a cube session). I've got 4 duplicate vouchers within my cube and a 7:4 ratio of originals to vouchers.
The main reason I implemented this in the first place was to give greater utility to slots being used by a narrow build-arounds and to supplement "critical mass" archetypes; decks where you'd want multiple copies of a given effect to create the best version of that deck. If you can't find a good analog for a specific effect, then the easiest solution is to just double up most of the time. However, a 420 cube means that every single card isn't always in the draft pool, which means that build-arounds may not end up with enough available copies. Squadroning cards is a potential solution, but I haven't been a fan of the Multiple-for-1 system if you're double-dipping on cards that are all worth an actual pick during the draft. The weaker cards are fine, but the more interesting build-arounds end up giving you too much value in a single pick.
For example, if there are two copies of Champion of the Parish the draft pool but no one is drafting an aggressive
deck, these will end up being dead cards in the draft. Or if there is a copy of Birthing Pod or Collected Company in the pool, but neither are seen until Pack 3, then it's likely too late for these to be useful and they also end up being dead cards. I was also not a fan of there being zero demand for certain cards unless you were already actively drafting a given archetype. One of the other problems I saw with certain cards were that usually just one person at the table would be interested in picking it up. That makes sense for certain archetypes since that's not really different than the Reanimator player wheeling something like a Dread Return or a giant creature, but it does become an issue when you have too many duplicates within the cube. I didn't want that 2nd copy of Champion of the Parish to become an auto-wheel to the Humans drafter and be a worthless card to everyone else drafting at the table.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
There are 3 problems I'm looking to solve with this voucher system:
1. Minimization of the number of dead cards in a draft pool by giving drafters more options for that card slot
If I'm in
Spellslinger I have no interest in the Gravecrawler in Pack 2, but a card that could potentially become another copy of Young Pyromancer is very appealing. If I've already drafted a Pyromancer, this is letting me double up and I'd be super interested in drafting it highly as a core piece of my deck. If I haven't yet drafted a Pyromancer? I might just snipe this late in on a wheel and just keep my eyes open for a copy in future picks. The fun thing here is that you can really customize your approach depending on what you're drafting. With more potential options via voucher for these slots, there are fewer potential dead cards in a draft pool.2. Create more demand for the potential card in that voucher slot
For example, if you're in
Aggro then an early duplicate voucher pick can represent a potential copy of Champion of the Parish, Bloodsoaked Champion or Gravecrawler depending on which you end up drafting. And if you've got a Blink drafter to your left hoping for a Soulherder or a Pod player to your right looking for that Birthing Pod, then all of a sudden this creates an organic demand for the voucher in that particular card slot. This leads to the duplicate voucher being more like a golden ticket for some drafters who will then adjust their drafting strategy. If it's meant to be a very specific build-around card (say Collected Company), you might value the voucher very highly in subsequent packs after drafting the original copy since it's essential to your deck whereas a Aggro drafter has more mix and match options available to them so they might wait it out instead.3. Maximize the options available for specific archetypes per cube slot
For the archetypes I'm trying to supplement with the cards on the voucher, you'd ideally have two copies of any of those for your deck to make it function effectively. Soulherder is a great card in blink strategies and can really get the ball rolling, but it's often quite fragile without the right curve to maximize value. The best way to mitigate this? Just draft a 2nd copy. The problem? There's no way to ensure a 2nd copy will actually get to the drafter consistently. What if the 2nd copy just didn't make it into your draft pool? If you're playing a 360 cube then too many duplicates will lead to a same-y drafting experience, but too large a cube and you won't consistently see your multiples. What these vouchers end up doing is giving you an additional chance to draft that 2nd copy of Soulherder or Young Pyromancer that you really want to shore up the core of your deck. It's much easier to get a "hit" with 4 potential shots rather than 1.
In a typical cube this would require additional slots for the 2nd copy of each card eating up space and might lead to the pitfalls mentioned in my first point. With this system I end up using 4 physical slots to represent 7 different cards. This helps create some demand for the voucher, minimize auto-wheels during the draft process, and if we end up missing the build-arounds in the main draft pool it doesn't hurt as bad for the rest of the draft.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How's it working out so far?
Not too shabby. I didn't manage to get in too many drafter post-implementation and pre-lockdown (maybe 3-4), but the results from the handful I ran were super promising. My drafters were able to understand what the vouchers did from the first glance, they drafted accordingly and were able to build the decks they wanted, and best of all there was actual demand when drafting these. In the very first draft I was greedy in trying to wheel one back after drafting a Soulherder, but I was punished as I later found that a drafter to my left snapped one up for their Bloodsoaked Champion while another at the table cashed it in for a Young Pyromancer. Organic demand! Less dead slots! It worked exactly as I hoped it would!
Another time I was looking to go in on some kind of
Aggro deck early and snatched up two vouchers early hoping to cash them in later. I was rewarded later in the draft with a Bloodsoaked Champion and Gravecrawler and ended up switching lanes into a Stax-y variant after being passed a Tangle Wire and then topping off with Braids, Cabal Minion and some token generation. I then followed it up with a Flagstones of Trokair drafted later in my Utility Land Draft (which I'll touch upon in a future article).All in all, it's been an elegant solution to an annoying problem that bothered me for a few years and I couldn't be happier with the outcome.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Bonus Round
I've had a few requests for how I went about making my vouchers but unfortunately it was a friend of mine that created these for me in Photoshop (I've got no experience in PS) so the specifics are lost to me. That said, I do have a link to the original .psd file hosted on Dropbox that anyone interested can take a crack at if they want to customize and create their own: Duplicate Voucher.
Feel free to utilize the .psd template and let me know how it goes if you end up deploying a similar system in the future. I'd love to hear how this works out for other designers.
As always, thanks for reading!
