I recently had the pleasure of participating in my first cube a few weeks back and was very pleased with the experience as a whole. My normal playgroup really liked the change of pace (we usually play EDH or Standard 2HG) but the owner of the Cube we were using isn't around all that often. So, I thought I'd try my hand at building a pauper cube.
I was wondering if there is a way to break down, in a very simple skeleton frame, numerically, the quantity of cards that I could use for a first attempt.
To clarify, for each color, a break down for, say, a 360Cube (what I've read is the minimum sized cube for a 4 man draft) that show is a good CMC saturation numericaly. For example, something like I should have X-total cards in White, and within White, 10 of X should be 1cmc Creatures, 5 should be 2cmc, and so on and so forth.
I understand if this is offensive to you who Cube on the regular, but please understand, I'm just trying to get started in the new method of play and am naive to it's ways.
I've been scouring the main resource thread trying to glean as much info as possible, but when it comes to making up my mind about quantity, I feel like I need a little help with "direction".
I appreciate any help, and would appreciate it if any criticism is kept cordial in tone.
Why on earth would this be offensive? It's a great idea to put a composition "skeleton" together before purchasing cards for a cube.
eidolon232 will be able to provide you with the exact breakdown of how many cards of each color (and how many cards of each CMC) are contained in the typical 360 card cube as soon as he reads this thread.
Go to the Cube Lists forum, find some pauper cubes, and digest the information there. The questions you are asking are really broad, so there's little way to answer concisely without saying "go see what other people have done and use that as a starting point".
Why on earth would this be offensive? It's a great idea to put a composition "skeleton" together before purchasing cards for a cube.
eidolon232 will be able to provide you with the exact breakdown of how many cards of each color (and how many cards of each CMC) are contained in the typical 360 card cube as soon as he reads this thread.
Cheers, and happy cubing!
I was hoping he'd shed some light onto my questions I've been reading some of his stuff as he seems to be the go-to guy.
I also was reading your article on Design Philosophy, and it's also chock full of info.
Go to the Cube Lists forum, find some pauper cubes, and digest the information there. The questions you are asking are really broad, so there's little way to answer concisely without saying "go see what other people have done and use that as a starting point".
I gotcha. I was hoping to keep from having to net-Cube, though. I'll see a lot of peoples builds and it worry that it may influence my card choices. I'm all about failing to get a better hang of learning to build.
As a guess for a 360 skeleton, I'd go with something like:
50 per color (about half creatures and half spells), 50 colorless (about 35-40 artifacts and 10-15 lands) and 60 guild (3 multicolor cards per pair and 3 mana-fixing lands per pair). I'd keep the average converted mana cost just under 3.
And then tinker the balance for personal preference.
Edit:
Quote from quixotegut »
I was hoping he'd shed some light onto my questions I've been reading some of his stuff as he seems to be the go-to guy.
When it comes to running numbers, cranking valuable data and providing comparisons to determine "cube averages", there's no better person to talk to than eidolon232. There's a reason why he dominated the "most helpful member of the year" votes last year. The work he does with cube stats is invaluable.
As a guess for a 360 skeleton, I'd go with something like:
50 per color (about half creatures and half spells), 50 colorless (about 35-40 artifacts and 10-15 lands) and 60 guild (3 multicolor cards per pair and 3 mana-fixing lands per pair). I'd keep the average converted mana cost just under 3.
And then tinker the balance for personal preference.
Edit:
When it comes to running numbers, cranking valuable data and providing comparisons to determine "cube averages", there's no better person to talk to than eidolon232. There's a reason why he dominated the "most helpful member of the year" votes last year. The work he does with cube stats is invaluable.
First, that's the type of skeleton I'm looking for. If I had left it up to myself I'd have gone haywire trying to figure out creature to spell ratios.
Second, I envy those who are able to do what Eidolon is lauded for.
Don't stress over the exact numbers. Keep about half of the non-land cube cards as creatures and it will draft just fine. Probably more creatures than spells in green, and more spells than creatures in blue, as a good rule of thumb. The other colors will be more or less even.
When you put a raw list together, look at the average converted mana cost. If it's much higher than 3, try cutting a few 5+cc cards for more 1 and 2cc cards. It will get the average right down into that sweet spot that will allow the cube to play quickly and efficiently.
I gotcha. I was hoping to keep from having to net-Cube, though. I'll see a lot of peoples builds and it worry that it may influence my card choices. I'm all about failing to get a better hang of learning to build.
If you're really looking for a "quantitative" way to build a cube, there is nothing more quantitative than aggregating a bunch of cube lists and see how many cubes play X card.
I wouldn't be afraid of "net-cubing". Cube is such a deep, robust format that there is always plenty of room to add your own personal flair. In addition, there are no "consensus" cube lists, every cube has its own peculiarities. You're really handicapping yourself if you don't use the work that has been done by the great people in this forum (and in other cube communities) as a starting point.
I'm really sorry but I can't make heads or tails of this.
Is it, each color should have 48, I don't under stand the 34 M (is this gold cards?), 39 Artifacts, and 44 Land?
And, for example, of those 48 in white, I split it into 24creatures and 24spells. Then I need 20% of 24 to be 1cmc creatures, 30% to be 2cmc, and on down the line?
I'm so wet behind the ears with this I'm drowning, man. You may need to dumb it down pretty far.
I think you understood everything correctly. Then go for the even split if creatures and spells, with extra creatures in green and extra spells in blue. Though I think pauper cubes generally run about a 60/40 creature to spell ratio instead of 50/50.
eidolon232 is your man for stats. He's got pretty much every breakdown you could possibly want.
And like a previous poster said, there are plenty of cube lists you can look at on this forum to give you a starting point. That's what I would guess most people have done (myself included).
One thing I did just recently was take every card in my cube and build test decks from them. For this exercise, no card could be in more than one deck, and every color combination had to be represented (including each of the five colors as mono color decks) - so 15 desks total.
It was a great exercise that highlighted several problems in my cube:
1. Not enough 1 and 2 drops to go around. Probably the most common mistake when building a cube because high cost spells are more powerful and thus more enticing to include than one and two drops.
2. Cards that are powerful but too narrow and simply had no home in any color combination. I had a few of these cards in here that I simply couldn't build a good deck around.
3. Cards that seemed good but actually sucked when I play tested them.
From this I figured out where I wanted my CMC distribution to be, and that helped me replace some fringe cards in my cube and fix my overall mana curve.
For a 405 card cube with 55 land cards, it looked roughly like this:
0 CMC: 5 (these are alternate cost cards like Force of Will, Snuff Out, etc)
1 CMC: 60
2 CMC: 90
3 CMC: 75
4 CMC: 60
5 CMC: 40
6+ CMC: 20
Land: 55
This distribution includes X spells (which I counted as 4-5 CMC for the purposes of hitting the numbers above).
This gives an average CMC for the cube of roughly 2.9 (a little less if you remove X spells) and gives you enough playables to make exactly 15 decks, with a 5/5/5 split (agro/midrange/control).
Not sure this is an use to you, but it took me some time to do so I figured I share.
Well I went ahead and built a rough draft of a 360 last night using Eidolon's table. It was interesting, tedious, and fun all rolled into one. Didn't get a chance to play it, but I will soon.
Thanks for all the help. I'll most likely be asking further questions and such later.
I was wondering if there is a way to break down, in a very simple skeleton frame, numerically, the quantity of cards that I could use for a first attempt.
To clarify, for each color, a break down for, say, a 360Cube (what I've read is the minimum sized cube for a 4 man draft) that show is a good CMC saturation numericaly. For example, something like I should have X-total cards in White, and within White, 10 of X should be 1cmc Creatures, 5 should be 2cmc, and so on and so forth.
I understand if this is offensive to you who Cube on the regular, but please understand, I'm just trying to get started in the new method of play and am naive to it's ways.
I've been scouring the main resource thread trying to glean as much info as possible, but when it comes to making up my mind about quantity, I feel like I need a little help with "direction".
I appreciate any help, and would appreciate it if any criticism is kept cordial in tone.
eidolon232 will be able to provide you with the exact breakdown of how many cards of each color (and how many cards of each CMC) are contained in the typical 360 card cube as soon as he reads this thread.
Cheers, and happy cubing!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
I was hoping he'd shed some light onto my questions I've been reading some of his stuff as he seems to be the go-to guy.
I also was reading your article on Design Philosophy, and it's also chock full of info.
I gotcha. I was hoping to keep from having to net-Cube, though. I'll see a lot of peoples builds and it worry that it may influence my card choices. I'm all about failing to get a better hang of learning to build.
50 per color (about half creatures and half spells), 50 colorless (about 35-40 artifacts and 10-15 lands) and 60 guild (3 multicolor cards per pair and 3 mana-fixing lands per pair). I'd keep the average converted mana cost just under 3.
And then tinker the balance for personal preference.
Edit:
When it comes to running numbers, cranking valuable data and providing comparisons to determine "cube averages", there's no better person to talk to than eidolon232. There's a reason why he dominated the "most helpful member of the year" votes last year. The work he does with cube stats is invaluable.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
First, that's the type of skeleton I'm looking for. If I had left it up to myself I'd have gone haywire trying to figure out creature to spell ratios.
Second, I envy those who are able to do what Eidolon is lauded for.
When you put a raw list together, look at the average converted mana cost. If it's much higher than 3, try cutting a few 5+cc cards for more 1 and 2cc cards. It will get the average right down into that sweet spot that will allow the cube to play quickly and efficiently.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
If you're really looking for a "quantitative" way to build a cube, there is nothing more quantitative than aggregating a bunch of cube lists and see how many cubes play X card.
I wouldn't be afraid of "net-cubing". Cube is such a deep, robust format that there is always plenty of room to add your own personal flair. In addition, there are no "consensus" cube lists, every cube has its own peculiarities. You're really handicapping yourself if you don't use the work that has been done by the great people in this forum (and in other cube communities) as a starting point.
I'm really sorry but I can't make heads or tails of this.
Is it, each color should have 48, I don't under stand the 34 M (is this gold cards?), 39 Artifacts, and 44 Land?
And, for example, of those 48 in white, I split it into 24creatures and 24spells. Then I need 20% of 24 to be 1cmc creatures, 30% to be 2cmc, and on down the line?
I'm so wet behind the ears with this I'm drowning, man. You may need to dumb it down pretty far.
And like a previous poster said, there are plenty of cube lists you can look at on this forum to give you a starting point. That's what I would guess most people have done (myself included).
One thing I did just recently was take every card in my cube and build test decks from them. For this exercise, no card could be in more than one deck, and every color combination had to be represented (including each of the five colors as mono color decks) - so 15 desks total.
It was a great exercise that highlighted several problems in my cube:
1. Not enough 1 and 2 drops to go around. Probably the most common mistake when building a cube because high cost spells are more powerful and thus more enticing to include than one and two drops.
2. Cards that are powerful but too narrow and simply had no home in any color combination. I had a few of these cards in here that I simply couldn't build a good deck around.
3. Cards that seemed good but actually sucked when I play tested them.
From this I figured out where I wanted my CMC distribution to be, and that helped me replace some fringe cards in my cube and fix my overall mana curve.
For a 405 card cube with 55 land cards, it looked roughly like this:
0 CMC: 5 (these are alternate cost cards like Force of Will, Snuff Out, etc)
1 CMC: 60
2 CMC: 90
3 CMC: 75
4 CMC: 60
5 CMC: 40
6+ CMC: 20
Land: 55
This distribution includes X spells (which I counted as 4-5 CMC for the purposes of hitting the numbers above).
This gives an average CMC for the cube of roughly 2.9 (a little less if you remove X spells) and gives you enough playables to make exactly 15 decks, with a 5/5/5 split (agro/midrange/control).
Not sure this is an use to you, but it took me some time to do so I figured I share.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Thanks for all the help. I'll most likely be asking further questions and such later.
Thanks again!