General The stick rule

O

OCPunisher

One of the things I do whenever my cube gets drafted is something we refer to as "the stick rule". It's pretty simple:
- During each pack, everyone reveals the "stick" (last card picked) so I can write them all down.
- There's a column in my cube spreadsheet where I keep track of how many times each card has been a stick.
- If a card is a "stick" enough times, it usually means that the card isn't being used very much, so it likely can get cut.

Granted, this isn't a perfect system. There are times when powerhouses like Pernicious Deed and Volcanic Island have been sticks, and sometimes a stick ends up being playable in my main deck, but over time it does add some more insight into what is and is not being used.

Does anyone else implement something like this? Is it an absurd idea, or something that should be expanded somehow?
 
CML

CML

Contributor
It's a great idea, the only reasons I don't do it are that my playgroup is already vocal (mid-pack, for example, I often hear, "You never know what's gonna be in CML's Cube," "Oooh! I've wanted to play with this one for months," and "CML, this is the worst fucking card you've ever put in your dumb fucking Cube"), and that we already goof around with Funsies Land Draft for long enough.

That being said, I'm gonna try it on Wednesday. There's very little downside, as you're free to ignore Deeds or Volcs or even "anchors" that didn't work out in that particular draft like Cruel Ultimatum, though I'd also encourage you to make your drafters pipe up during the actual draft if they see something particularly putrid.

Anyway, thanks for posting this, I'd be overjoyed if we could turn this into a thread for how to solicit, gather, and react to practical feedback!
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
I've heard this a few times, it's a good idea. I was thinking it wouldn't really help me, since I draft so seldom. The statistics wouldn't prove any kind of consistency. That said, I definitely take note of the cards I see going late and it changes my opinion of them, so I might as well get all the other 15th picks too.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Long thoughts on this subject but feeling sleepy...

I think it's less important to know that a card goes last, and more why. Of course you don't want completely dead cards, but I've had low-value targets that I feel pretty strongly about being in the cube.

Like any data analysis it's a question of how to properly draw conclusions from the data. There are probably cards that are worse than I personally perceive them to be, and my perception might change with sufficient data.

Maybe there's an article for my thoughts on the "rules" of cube card inclusions.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Statistics are of incidental interest here, the anecdotal evidence is far more helpful and amusing. Here's a little screed about overusing statistics:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...BQ2R4c05zX1FBaFowN1BRNkE&hl=en_US&pli=1#gid=0

This is the Cube page of a local. The list is very bad, very unoriginal, and somewhat popular. If you scroll through the bottom tabs, you'll see that the nebbish tracks everything with autistic perspicacity. In addition to your typical data sets such as curve, color balance, etc. (with graphs for curve and creature curve) most every card is subjected to a philistine taxonomy; with how little this Cube deviates from a conventional Cube, which Modo has reminded me is fucking miserable, there's not a chance these data have allowed the Cube owner to draw any conclusions about Cube design, much less game design in general or this nebulous concept of "fun" we keep going on about.

Not that there aren't a number of unintentional jokes strewn at random throughout the spreadsheets (lol Pit Fight), but the punchline is on (or is?) the last tab. Here we get to learn that "Peter F." drafted a deck running 2.33 White cards, 12.83 Blue cards, and 4.83 Black cards, on 8 August 2013, and went 1-2 with it. "@JhoiraArtificer" started 9 White cards, 2 Black cards, and 12 Green cards on 23 March 2013, compiling a record of 1-5. I'm sure the owner draws all sorts of conclusions from this fount of objective knowledge, perhaps using it to boldly reclassify Cruel Ultimatum as an Izzet card, throw in classics like Champion of Lambholt, and otherwise push around the furniture like this:


Except then the Cubing experience is like this:


And that results in this aftermath:


Anyway I think of the above spreadsheet as the illogical conclusion of stat fetishism. On the other hand, listening to your Cubers and having a subjective sense of card quality, fun, and game design should set anyone on this forum above that particular normative cesspool.

Wadds -- as for your last sentence, the only hard-and-fast rule I can think of for Cube inclusions, for all of us, is that it has to be "fun," though that's hardly objective, and I'm not sure adumbrating universal and abstract rules like that is fun or helpful compared to the usual stuff we do here.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
The regular in my group who just finished his cube a couple days ago is already doing this to get feedback on what he should cut. He's got an account on here, so I'll see if I can get him to chime in.
 
anotak

anotak

i always ask drafters about what went last pick, what they took first pick, and what they thought were the best and worst cards they drafted. i record every decklist too.

i'd like to think its helped my cube a lot. it's definitely helped a little. but maybe it just scratches my aspergers itch. it definitely has helped me cut pet cards that i really wanted to be good and people told me they were bad and then nobody was playing with it ever.
 
Goldenpineapple

Goldenpineapple

Yeah I mostly ask people what they drafted purposefully / picked highly but ended up cutting from their actual deck, and what they "boarded" and ever brought in. Sometimes people will intend to splash a color and then botch their fixing and can the splash, or side their manic vandal for fire imp because they know at least a couple enemy players are aggro, etc.

I also sometimes cheat and force new/experimental cards into the card pool to see how often their appropriate deck comes up. Plasm capture finally got played seven drafts later, but mystic snake gets played almost every time.
 
O

OCPunisher

Wow, this is a lot more response than I had anticipated.

I thought I was being a little overly nerdy when it comes to keeping stats on my cube, but apparently I'm somewhere in the middle of the road. I did not think to write down everyone's list or their first picks or anything else like that, but it's probably easy enough to accomplish at the end of a draft.
 
Velrun

Velrun

I have necroed this thread.

Does anyone still do this and does it give you the results you are looking for?
 
Brad

Brad

I try to cycle through the types of decks I'll play so that I can see where they need help. I learned a lot about UB aggro and my cube's aggro in general tonight, for example.

I'll also frequently go into the draft already intending to test Deck X because I anticipate it may either be a bit too weak or too strong and want to see if that's true. I went into UB aggro tonight with the expectation that it would be a difficult deck to truly enable, and I found some of the weaknesses that need to be covered in order to make it tick. I also got good match up knowledge in general for my aggro decks and saw a bit of a disadvantage generated by my removal suite.

You can get a lot if you know what you're looking for.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

I think taking a picture of each deck (And sideboard) gives you more information, is more fun (because you can share the decklists with others) and doesn't take much more effort. I don't think last picks are that meaningful of a data point compared to, say, second-to-last picks and "I tried to draft the artifact deck but didn't get halfway there".

I do love statistics, though, I would check every single one of them. Personally, I would love if Cubetutor or Cubecobra tracked stuff like creature types or how many cards use each mechanic.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Erik Twice said:
I think taking a picture of each deck (And sideboard) gives you more information, is more fun (because you can share the decklists with others) and doesn't take much more effort. I don't think last picks are that meaningful of a data point compared to, say, second-to-last picks and "I tried to draft the artifact deck but didn't get halfway there".

I do love statistics, though, I would check every single one of them. Personally, I would love if Cubetutor or Cubecobra tracked stuff like creature types or how many cards use each mechanic.
Click to expand...

You can manually input hashtags for tracking this sort of thing in cubetutor
I've got "Custom" as a mark I can filter for, but you could just as easily put "control" or "aristocrats" in there as well

Bit manual, but it serves the purpose
 
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