Triple Khans Cube

[ossa]

Current list iteration: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/103630

Drafted a box of this recently, I missed out at the time. It stands up to the hype, so now the plan is to turn that box into a 360 cube.

The cube is intended to simulate 3KTK but without the GRBS bombs and waste-of-ink cards. While also attempting some minor balancing, using the post-format analysis and other cards from the block.

First up is a rough first population of the list...

The average frequency of a specific card appearing in an 8 man draft would be C:2.4 U:0.9 R:0.4 M:0.2, so the number of lands would average to around 30 total gainlands, trilands and fetch lands. Happy to skip the fetch lands as they don't add much to the environment, and a slight increase to the total number of lands to 40. Initially starting with 3xgainlands and 2xtrilands.

Each wedge averages 6 cards, and each enemy pair 2.2 cards. Starting with 3 of each common (the morph cycle), and 1 of each uncommon, plus another 2 reserved slots in each wedge.

2 of each Banner, and the 5 of the relevant colourless cards totals 15 colourless cards. This leaves 52 cards in each colour.

I'll go through each colour one-by-one, try to give a boost to Blue and minor improvements to Red.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I like this format in between a regular cube and a draft sim. Seems to capture the ratios of common uncommon and rares without having to seed packs every time you want to draft. Nice job! Makes me wanna build my own.

 

[ossa]

I like this format in between a regular cube and a draft sim. Seems to capture the ratios of common uncommon and rares without having to seed packs every time you want to draft. Nice job! Makes me wanna build my own.

Doing a full draft sim seemed like too much hassle unless you're actually looking for a full emulation of the environment.

Lower variance is better, as this isn't being replayed at the same rate as a actual set release and you want to confident that any time you pull this out you're getting the best example of drafting the format.


I've completed the first iteration, the only real alterations I've made are:

• adding Gore Swine and cutting Bloodfire Mentor as another way for Temur to turn on Ferocious
• Sultai Skullkeeper in for Wetland Sambar same cmc and p/t profile but helps Sultai fill the graveyard
• Marang River Prowler as a payoff other than Delve for Sultai
• One of bumps for Jeskai in Jeskai Sage, Mistfire Adept, Whisk Away
• Cut Taigam's Scheming for Anticipate as card filter that isn't card disadvantage

Generally tried to keep the same cmc distribution to work nicely with the morphs, and not change the speed of the format, and not to add any of the other keywords from the block.
Looking at other keywords, a manifest package looks like it might fit well, maybe even bolster. I like dash, but I think it would turn the format too far to aggro.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Those all sound like really good switches to me! Is this cube built and ready to be play tested by your play group?

 

[Ruien]

I love cubes like this. I just created an account to say cheers and good work.

I did a couple of these for my favorite two sets (SOI & EMN) with exactly the same goals of tweaking the balance and tightening the experience. It takes a lot of time and experience to do a single set cube and get it right, and I wouldn't even know where to start for 3KTK. Maybe someday I'll collect a few of these set-cubes for rotate drafting once, in which case having cube lists like yours ready to go make life a lot easier. Thanks again!

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Warwolt's UR Aggro Deck from CubeTutor.com

Actually coming to think of it, would you guys say it's a good way to introduce players to drafting with these kinds of set cubes? The complexity should be way lower, with the amount of repeated cards, and the number of mechanics are much much fewer. Morph might be a little complex, but the set cube format.

 

[Ruien]

Actually coming to think of it, would you guys say it's a good way to introduce players to drafting with these kinds of set cubes? The complexity should be way lower, with the amount of repeated cards, and the number of mechanics are much much fewer. Morph might be a little complex, but the set cube format.

That's part of the main point. My group likes Texas Hold'Em, and we draft a cube for some variety (no offense, but Magic's a better game). No one's going to put up with that if I have to explain 12 keyword mechanics before the game even starts, and the reality of life is we don't play often enough to justify a major time investment. Similarly to this is not having to explain that "enters the battlefield" and "comes into play" mean the same thing, and how "remove target creature from the game" doesn't actually work against Eternal Scourge -- which is a real feel-bad moment when that has to be explained to a beginner in the midst of a game. A set cube eliminates all of that unnecessary complexity!

There are other reasons that I like set cubes. For one, all of the card borders/artwork is consistent, and one of my favorite parts of Magic is the artwork and thematic "feel" of the set. Coherency is good, and it also means that when you switch set cubes to try another environment, the change is that much more dramatic and interesting. WotC put a lot of effort into making Innistrad feel like Innistrad. I appreciate and want to take advantage of that hard work as much as I can.

I think if you have a group of 8 that can reliably meet for a draft every week all running the same cube for a year with enfranchised players that go back to Tempest then sure, a full cube has its advantages. But I'm lucky to get in one draft every two-three months with a few friends after work on a Wednesday evening. If the cube ever gets played to boredom, I'd say it served its purpose well enough.

 

[ossa]

Those all sound like really good switches to me! Is this cube built and ready to be play tested by your play group?

Yep, she's double sleeved, boxed and waiting. Probably a month or so until I get it drafted, I've got a box of Conspiracy: Take the Crown that my group wants to draft first (and that'll probably get the set cube treatment too).

I love cubes like this. I just created an account to say cheers and good work.

I did a couple of these for my favorite two sets (SOI & EMN) with exactly the same goals of tweaking the balance and tightening the experience. It takes a lot of time and experience to do a single set cube and get it right, and I wouldn't even know where to start for 3KTK. Maybe someday I'll collect a few of these set-cubes for rotate drafting once, in which case having cube lists like yours ready to go make life a lot easier. Thanks again!

Thanks for the love man. I tried to do a draft of your cubes, but wasn't sure if they were intended to be drafted together?

I hope more people make set cubes, especially the less revered sets. This leads to the question, can we make good/fun/balanced set cubes from poor retail draft formats, or are there inherent flaws in the cardpool. Maybe time for a "Riptide Remasters" series...

Actually coming to think of it, would you guys say it's a good way to introduce players to drafting with these kinds of set cubes? The complexity should be way lower, with the amount of repeated cards, and the number of mechanics are much much fewer. Morph might be a little complex, but the set cube format.

Grokkability was a primary design goal of my first "real" cube, and it definitely helped getting people used to drafting. The only reason I disassembled it was because at the time I didn't want to maintain multiple cubes. I'd go for a "post-modern" set, benefits of low complexity NWO commons, the most streamlined templating, and tighter flavour vs a regular cube.

There are other reasons that I like set cubes. For one, all of the card borders/artwork is consistent, and one of my favorite parts of Magic is the artwork and thematic "feel" of the set. Coherency is good, and it also means that when you switch set cubes to try another environment, the change is that much more dramatic and interesting. WotC put a lot of effort into making Innistrad feel like Innistrad. I appreciate and want to take advantage of that hard work as much as I can.

I think if you have a group of 8 that can reliably meet for a draft every week all running the same cube for a year with enfranchised players that go back to Tempest then sure, a full cube has its advantages. But I'm lucky to get in one draft every two-three months with a few friends after work on a Wednesday evening. If the cube ever gets played to boredom, I'd say it served its purpose well enough.

Flavour and A E S T H E T I C is an area cubers don't pay enough attention too (outside of the Desert Cube). I'd love to make a Portal: 3 Kingdoms cube if it wasn't so hideously expensive.

I'm definitely moving to the preference of multiple "closed card pool" cubes like set cubes. Whatever you lose in spiciness, you gain in variety/novelty/nostalgia, and not having to tinker endlessly after every set release. Not to mention super cheap, if you buy a couple of common/uncommon sets for stuff that's rotated and add in whatever cards you need you're looking at the same price (or less) as a modern boardgame.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I hope more people make set cubes, especially the less revered sets. This leads to the question, can we make good/fun/balanced set cubes from poor retail draft formats, or are there inherent flaws in the cardpool. Maybe time for a "Riptide Remasters" series...

I like this idea a lot, I think the main obstacle for people is just understanding the sets and how they worked. Do you start just by taking a raw set of commons and uncommons and drafting those? Or do you sort of guess as to what the right number of each card should be?

 

[MULRAH]

I hope more people make set cubes, especially the less revered sets. This leads to the question, can we make good/fun/balanced set cubes from poor retail draft formats, or are there inherent flaws in the cardpool. Maybe time for a "Riptide Remasters" series...

Like Ruien, I just joined to cheer you on and respond specifically to this. My group is pretty casual and small (4 to 6 players), so smaller set cubes (270 cards) have been a great fit for us. We play each set numerous times, and then I host a final draft and give away the whole set to the winner! So far, we've done Invasion, Theros, and (Dragons of) Tarkir. I personally take it as a challenge to "fix" the less popular draft formats and have had the most fun with Zendikar, which was based on the poorly received Battle for Zendikar. By mixing in its expansion set and some cards from the original Zendikar block, we ended up with a very replayable and fun set. The giveaway is this Saturday!

 

[Ruien]

I tried to do a draft of your cubes, but wasn't sure if they were intended to be drafted together?

It's buy two get one free. My design goal was to try as hard as possible to balance SOI drafted alone, EMN drafted alone, and SOI+EMN drafted together.

This leads to the question, can we make good/fun/balanced set cubes from poor retail draft formats, or are there inherent flaws in the cardpool. Maybe time for a "Riptide Remasters" series...

Balance is always possible, but not necessarily within an equal number of cards per color, and balance might require many copies of a single card, which reduces re-playability. But that's almost entirely hypothetical -- usually, after about 50 drafts it's fairly clear when and where to make some balance tweaks, since WotC gets it mostly right, especially once you've removed the Game-Ruining BS and tweaked the speed of the format.

I can sort of share my thought process for SOI and EMN. Blue is underpowered in SOI but balanced in EMN, so I removed a lot of the worse blue cards in SOI and even added some strong rares to compensate. However, since SOI is much faster than EMN, the Blue I added was mostly tempo, some fliers to help UW, and some zombies for UB -- as well as four copies of Sleep Paralysis -- which all get much worse when the slower EMN format with Emerge (to sacrifice Sleep'ed creatures) is added. So this helps to keep everything balanced separately as well as combined. Tweaking came elsewhere as well: One copy instead of two Hinterland Logger to reduce turn-2 variance and likewise only one Dual Shot to strengthen UW spirits. Finally, using lifegain-taplands instead of normal taplands helps to slow the format down just a tad further, to help UG value.

Something like a "Riptide Remasters" series would be great because it's not a moving target that changes as sets are released. It could be iteratively improved over time, but such an endeavor would always preserve a Limited feel, which I like but not everyone likes.

Do you start just by taking a raw set of commons and uncommons and drafting those? Or do you sort of guess as to what the right number of each card should be?

I'll take a shot at answering this question (but Ossa might take a different approach).

I start by counting up all of the Uncommons that I want to include. Uncommons form the basis of the set, and at this point you also perform rarity shifts. For instance some rares are important to the set and must be included, but they aren't strong enough to consume a "rare" slot. Likewise you may upshift some Uncommons or Commons, etc. Let's say we choose 68 Uncommons in the end.

Once you know how many Uncommons you want to include, get 1 copy of each. Then choose your "pack" rarity distribution -- An example would be 1 : 4 : 10 (that is 1 Rare to 4 Uncommons to 10 Commons) per 15 cards. Since on average a 15-card pack has 4 Uncommons, the full set of 68 Uncommons requires (68/4)*15 = 255 cards. So we're probably making a 270-card cube, as that's about right for 6 players (6 people * 3 packs/person * 15 cards/pack). Go back and tweak the rarity distribution until you get the right number -- it's fine to go over by a bit. It's also fine to use 14-card (or some other size) packs if that keeps it tighter rather than adding cards.

At 270 cards and a 1 : 4 : 10 rarity split, we'd have 270 * (4/15) = 72 Uncommons, so go pick four more of them or shift rarities around until you have that many. 270 * (1/15) = 18 are Rares, which is 3 per color plus three colorless/multicolored, or however you want to distribute them. You might need to tweak the rarity distribution again here if you need more or fewer Rares. Finally, the rest are Commons: 270 * (10/15) =180, so maybe 34 per color plus 10 colorless, or something else.

So then you go and choose these in such a way as to best balance the various archetypes in the format. A final note: even though I mentioned a "pack" rarity split, I don't actually seed each draft pack with one rare, four uncommons, and ten commons. I guess you could, but I prefer the limited "set cube" whereas seeding feels more like a draft sim. I might also mention that I prefer the dynamics and feel of a 6-man draft to 8-man (maybe it comes from preferring 6-max poker over full ring?), which makes 270 my favorite cube size.

 

[MULRAH]

I like this idea a lot, I think the main obstacle for people is just understanding the sets and how they worked. Do you start just by taking a raw set of commons and uncommons and drafting those? Or do you sort of guess as to what the right number of each card should be?

I have taken a different approach from Ruien based on the format and my own interests. For formats that were less well-received, I break down what the various sets were trying to achieve and do my best to remix things in such a way that key themes are hit upon evenly throughout my new set. I stick to the singleton, which can be challenging at times, and treat Commons and Uncommons the same. I tend to stick with 30 Rares though, so I can get one in each pack. (We do 5 packs of 9.)

For more highly regarded sets like Khans (to bring it back to the original thread), I actually lean on Wizards' own structure and just do 2x Commons, 1x Uncommons, and 20 to 30 Rares/Mythics. This does not perfectly emulate the distribution of actual packs, but it's close enough for us. You also won't ever get 4x of a card, which might limit some deckbuilding possibilities, but my default has been that the renowned sets have more than enough draft depth built in to make up for some of the texture we might be missing.

 

[Rosavig]

Can I get a valid link?
It seems the cube has been removed

 

[Nemo]

You're getting me interested in set cubes. Thanks for talking through some of your methodology and intent.

I'd really like to see what the RTL community would come up with on a community effort to remaster a set or block.