CML
Contributor
so the initial purpose of this post was to ask everyone what their play-groups looked like and how that jived with their cube design and though i'd like to do that i thought i'd explore the issue a little further.
when i started playing mtg again it was with a bunch of old friends, one of whom (the guy who spearheaded it all) had gotten travis woo into the game some sixteen years ago. this was in 2010. i hadn't played for about a decade. the short version is that these drafts went on weekly for awhile, online poker died, i had to find something to do, i played a ton of modo, my friends got jobs or wasted their time in other terrible ways, the drafts became less frequent, i made a cube, interest briefly spiked, the cube exhibited many common design flaws, interest dwindled, i t8'ed an scg here, i made some friends, these friends came to cube, the cube became better, these friends' friends came to cube, the cube became even better, and that brings us to the present day.
i've noticed that as my skill has grown the difficulty of the formats we've drafted has grown. since the converse is certainly true as well there's a muddled correlation and causation -- in other words, not only do playgroups improve cube, cube improves playgroups. (cube is the most skill-testing of formats -- and if you want to read about the absence of these notions from the modo cube's design and how that explains why that cube an abortion, here's my old thread on it: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/riptide-laboratory/KSbgXi2QpPk).
i'm very fortunate to have access to the playgroup i do. there's about 15-20(?) of us who show up semi-regularly. maybe 13 of us play competitively. three of us (not me!) have won ptq's. four have t8'ed scg opens. one has t16'ed a gp. two brew decks across formats. the 'worst' players are casual-ties like my dad, my soccer buddy et al. and their decks are often very good.
in an old tcgplayer article i talked about some of the intrinsic problems with casual formats (mainly EDH, which i fucking hate a lot): the diversity of skill level, card availability, card familiarity, time to construct decks, and especially differing subjective notions of what 'fun' is. these are admirably solved by cube.
since people always come back, i get to see them do different things with cube. for example, a blue-in-every-formats guy drafted the nut GB deck with gyre sage, survival, deed, and grave titan. my dad, who loves to not 'win more' but 'lose less,' drafted aggro. on the other hand, since it's not the same exact people over and over again, we get fresh sets of eyes to try and 'break' the cube. a sometime contestant first-picked acidic slime and built reanimator LD to modest success. a relatively new player drafted the first uwr tempo deck we've ever had. these 'brews' often match up well against the baseline decks, among which are naya/jund zoo, ux control, 3-color midrange, gw beats. players both new and old are constantly discovering new things that are possible within the cube.
what it comes down to is that the cube design benefits greatly from my play-group; tastes and preferences evolve over time; the cube makes the players better; the players make the cube better. i should reiterate that this is so much richer than the modo cube, whose design philosophy (i mean sophistry) is 'give the peasants what they want' and 'rearrange the furniture to create the illusion of progress' (cf. the corporate mentality of wizards turning many of its employees and player-subjects into self-loathing narcissists and compulsive liars, but this is a topic for another thread).
anyway, my cube was once plagued by the same bad design flaws as the modo cube. the curve was too high. the fixing was too sparse and too slow. there were unplayable cards and unbeatable cards. the spells durdled. aggro sucked. walkers dominated. then my playgroup suggested i could do better. i listened. week by week the cube improved. getting nice proxies for onslaught fetches (thanks, dan!) and revised duals was a huge step towards the current design; that simple change made the drafting experience so much more fun. the interplay between players eliminating the cube's flaws and the cube eliminating players' flaws is analogous to how the game of mtg encourages one to deal with one's issues; it is useless and clichéd to point out that the culture of the game too often aggravates those same issues. this culture of dishonesty and insecurity is absent from my cube. i wish that this was true for all of magic.
to finish up, i'd like to briefly outline what a night looks like. we draft once a week on wednesdays. we start "at 630" which really means "somewhere between 645 and 700." the entry fee is a six-pack of nice beer, but only if you liked the cube enough to come back. we always drink a lot of beer. we sometimes smoke weed. i try to invite only people i like, and for the most part i succeed at this. we can accommodate up to 9 players (15*3*9=405) though the median is probably 8. when we have too many people we just switch off and play whatever constructed format we feel like. there are no rounds; you're encouraged to play whomever you want. table-talk and "signaling" are supported. there are two gameplay-based house rules. the first is that the die roll is forbidden and best-2-of-3 RPS is mandated (one two shoot, west-coast style). the second is that the second mull is always to 6. there are no prizes. takebacks are encouraged. all of magic is a learning experience and i would rather not pretend otherwise.
how have your cubes influenced your play-groups? how have your play-groups influenced your cubes? what do your draft nights look like?
when i started playing mtg again it was with a bunch of old friends, one of whom (the guy who spearheaded it all) had gotten travis woo into the game some sixteen years ago. this was in 2010. i hadn't played for about a decade. the short version is that these drafts went on weekly for awhile, online poker died, i had to find something to do, i played a ton of modo, my friends got jobs or wasted their time in other terrible ways, the drafts became less frequent, i made a cube, interest briefly spiked, the cube exhibited many common design flaws, interest dwindled, i t8'ed an scg here, i made some friends, these friends came to cube, the cube became better, these friends' friends came to cube, the cube became even better, and that brings us to the present day.
i've noticed that as my skill has grown the difficulty of the formats we've drafted has grown. since the converse is certainly true as well there's a muddled correlation and causation -- in other words, not only do playgroups improve cube, cube improves playgroups. (cube is the most skill-testing of formats -- and if you want to read about the absence of these notions from the modo cube's design and how that explains why that cube an abortion, here's my old thread on it: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/riptide-laboratory/KSbgXi2QpPk).
i'm very fortunate to have access to the playgroup i do. there's about 15-20(?) of us who show up semi-regularly. maybe 13 of us play competitively. three of us (not me!) have won ptq's. four have t8'ed scg opens. one has t16'ed a gp. two brew decks across formats. the 'worst' players are casual-ties like my dad, my soccer buddy et al. and their decks are often very good.
in an old tcgplayer article i talked about some of the intrinsic problems with casual formats (mainly EDH, which i fucking hate a lot): the diversity of skill level, card availability, card familiarity, time to construct decks, and especially differing subjective notions of what 'fun' is. these are admirably solved by cube.
since people always come back, i get to see them do different things with cube. for example, a blue-in-every-formats guy drafted the nut GB deck with gyre sage, survival, deed, and grave titan. my dad, who loves to not 'win more' but 'lose less,' drafted aggro. on the other hand, since it's not the same exact people over and over again, we get fresh sets of eyes to try and 'break' the cube. a sometime contestant first-picked acidic slime and built reanimator LD to modest success. a relatively new player drafted the first uwr tempo deck we've ever had. these 'brews' often match up well against the baseline decks, among which are naya/jund zoo, ux control, 3-color midrange, gw beats. players both new and old are constantly discovering new things that are possible within the cube.
what it comes down to is that the cube design benefits greatly from my play-group; tastes and preferences evolve over time; the cube makes the players better; the players make the cube better. i should reiterate that this is so much richer than the modo cube, whose design philosophy (i mean sophistry) is 'give the peasants what they want' and 'rearrange the furniture to create the illusion of progress' (cf. the corporate mentality of wizards turning many of its employees and player-subjects into self-loathing narcissists and compulsive liars, but this is a topic for another thread).
anyway, my cube was once plagued by the same bad design flaws as the modo cube. the curve was too high. the fixing was too sparse and too slow. there were unplayable cards and unbeatable cards. the spells durdled. aggro sucked. walkers dominated. then my playgroup suggested i could do better. i listened. week by week the cube improved. getting nice proxies for onslaught fetches (thanks, dan!) and revised duals was a huge step towards the current design; that simple change made the drafting experience so much more fun. the interplay between players eliminating the cube's flaws and the cube eliminating players' flaws is analogous to how the game of mtg encourages one to deal with one's issues; it is useless and clichéd to point out that the culture of the game too often aggravates those same issues. this culture of dishonesty and insecurity is absent from my cube. i wish that this was true for all of magic.
to finish up, i'd like to briefly outline what a night looks like. we draft once a week on wednesdays. we start "at 630" which really means "somewhere between 645 and 700." the entry fee is a six-pack of nice beer, but only if you liked the cube enough to come back. we always drink a lot of beer. we sometimes smoke weed. i try to invite only people i like, and for the most part i succeed at this. we can accommodate up to 9 players (15*3*9=405) though the median is probably 8. when we have too many people we just switch off and play whatever constructed format we feel like. there are no rounds; you're encouraged to play whomever you want. table-talk and "signaling" are supported. there are two gameplay-based house rules. the first is that the die roll is forbidden and best-2-of-3 RPS is mandated (one two shoot, west-coast style). the second is that the second mull is always to 6. there are no prizes. takebacks are encouraged. all of magic is a learning experience and i would rather not pretend otherwise.
how have your cubes influenced your play-groups? how have your play-groups influenced your cubes? what do your draft nights look like?
