In one of his articles on design (http://archive.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/78), Mark Rosewater says that sets are usually 50% creatures, with different colors making up more or less of that overall total. I'm wondering what everyone here thinks about this. What are the best ratios for creatures to spells in a cube-like limited environment?
What I mean by "cube-like" is a custom draft environment. I'm not so concerned with power level, but rather just what ratios tend to lead to interactive, fun games, featuring a variety of possible archetypes. There are a few reasons why one might not take Maro's advice to accomplish this. For example, regular sets are created for constructed as well as limited, meaning there's generally a lot of garbage.
Personally, I tend to mainly want creatures, removal, and a few build-around engine cards. I tend to not want a lot of beneficial auras, low-impact enchantments/artifacts, etc. So I tend to think one would want more creatures around 60-70%.
In my peasant cube, I'm a bit over 50%, but I noticed creatures have a much easier time being included than noncreatures. Even the worst Goblin Piker can find its way into a deck, by virtue of being a critter. Creature dense is generally better than creature light, so I might up the creature count a bit.
Specialities about the cube: U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
I don't think it needs to be an exact science. Roughly half of your non-land cards should be creatures, probably, but different decks want different numbers of them, so it's all about playtesting and seeing if the numbers are adequate for your playgroup.
There's another thread on this subject with numbers from Eidolon's analysis from the cube comparison thread as of June of this year. He found the following average ratio of creatures to noncreatures in each color:
White (59%)
Blue (39%)
Black (45%)
Red (53%)
Green (68%)
I have no idea if these ratios are optimal, but they're fairly similar to Cubetutor averages so a lot of cube managers must feel comfortable with these ratios that vary from an exact 50/50 according to color by trying to play to each colors strengths, running more creatures in colors where they're trying to promote aggro, etc. My cube follows pretty similar ratios too in every color except for black where I'm running a lot more creatures than most people seem to (35/60 = 58%).
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Do you guys think the different colors should have different ratios or is 50% good?
Every color should play to its strengths. I would not try to force exactly 50% creatures into each color. Blue wants less and green wants more, at the very least.
Yeah, in most powered/unpowered regular singleton cubes I think the power level of the cards guides a lot of the decisions, but when going off the rails I think having some ratios would be helpful.
I don't think it matters if it's singleton or not. Construct a ratio that's roughly half creatures over the entirety of the cube, and each color plays to its strengths when determining how that section is balanced. So long as every deck can win and every color is good, does it matter if it's 46% creatures or 51% creatures?
You could look at the sideboards after each draft. If there are little to no on-color creatures in the sideboards, then apparently the players are starving for creatures, playing all they can get. So you might need more creatures in your cube to give them choices. Same for non-creatures.
I have run scripts that calculate the creature/noncreature ratio as a function of mana cost, averaged across all sets and, more recently, weighted for commonality. The numbers are much much less meaningful for colorless and multicolored spells, but I'll present the monocolored breakdown for a cube containing 54 cards in each monocolor here. First number is CMC, second is number of creature spells at that CMC, third is number of noncreature spells at that CMC. Note that rounding error is present, so designers who wish to use this as a guideline should consider +/- 1 for each case to tune results to taste. My convention is also to lump CMC=0 with CMC=1 and CMC > 6 in with CMC = 6 for simplicity and to account for the low totals in these bins of the histogram:
Note that the creature/noncreature ratio is slightly > 50%, the average CMC is a bit higher than most cubes with high power levels, and that the distributions vary much less across color than what eidolon found. My conclusion from this is that cube designers appear to prefer to tune the proportions of creatures and spells within each color to the preferences of constructed decks in those colors, rather than provide the more agnostic composition that MtG boosters appear to contain. Note also that because cubes frequently contain artifact and land counts comparable to monocolor card counts, many cubes have closer to 40% creature percentages than 50%. When you consider that a typical draft deck has 23 non-lands and 10-14 creatures, it's probably not surprising why cube sideboards are frequently comprised of mostly spells.
I ended up going for about 35% non-creature spells over the whole cube. I figured that most draft decks are about 17 land, 17 creature, 6 spells. So I tried to reflect that (6/17=~0.35) in the overall composition. I ended up falling a bit short, but since a lot of the creatures in the cube have removal stapled to them, I think it will be okay (analysis here: http://www.cubetutor.com/analysis/13664).
I ended up going for about 35% non-creature spells over the whole cube. I figured that most draft decks are about 17 land, 17 creature, 6 spells. So I tried to reflect that (6/17=~0.35) in the overall composition. I ended up falling a bit short, but since a lot of the creatures in the cube have removal stapled to them, I think it will be okay (analysis here: http://www.cubetutor.com/analysis/13664).
Oh my god, that creature ratio is incredibly different from my cube experiences. Your average cube draft deck has 17 creatures in it? What?
Holy hell, my sentiment is the same as wtwlf's. Even aggressive decks just barely hit 16-17 creatures usually. If that's your average number for a typical deck... Well that's a very different kind of cube.
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Check out the thread for my cube if you have the time, and tell me how terrible it is.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
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What I mean by "cube-like" is a custom draft environment. I'm not so concerned with power level, but rather just what ratios tend to lead to interactive, fun games, featuring a variety of possible archetypes. There are a few reasons why one might not take Maro's advice to accomplish this. For example, regular sets are created for constructed as well as limited, meaning there's generally a lot of garbage.
Personally, I tend to mainly want creatures, removal, and a few build-around engine cards. I tend to not want a lot of beneficial auras, low-impact enchantments/artifacts, etc. So I tend to think one would want more creatures around 60-70%.
Anyway, what do you all think?
450, Peasant*, unpowered**
Specialities about the cube:
U tempo, B aggro, R slow-ish are supported. G aggro is not.
Currently trying to support tokens in all colors but blue, in different ways: W pumps them, B sacrifices them, R suicides them, G has decent-sized ones.
cube list outdated
*literal C/U definition according to gatherer
**some cards are banned. Library of Alexandria, Land Tax, Sol Ring.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
White (59%)
Blue (39%)
Black (45%)
Red (53%)
Green (68%)
I have no idea if these ratios are optimal, but they're fairly similar to Cubetutor averages so a lot of cube managers must feel comfortable with these ratios that vary from an exact 50/50 according to color by trying to play to each colors strengths, running more creatures in colors where they're trying to promote aggro, etc. My cube follows pretty similar ratios too in every color except for black where I'm running a lot more creatures than most people seem to (35/60 = 58%).
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Every color should play to its strengths. I would not try to force exactly 50% creatures into each color. Blue wants less and green wants more, at the very least.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
White:
CMC 1 5 6
CMC 2 8 9
CMC 3 7 5
CMC 4 5 3
CMC 5 3 1
CMC 6 1 0
Blue:
CMC 1 2 8
CMC 2 6 9
CMC 3 7 6
CMC 4 5 3
CMC 5 3 1
CMC 6 1 0
Black:
CMC 1 3 6
CMC 2 7 7
CMC 3 9 6
CMC 4 5 3
CMC 5 3 2
CMC 6 1 1
Red:
CMC 1 5 7
CMC 2 5 7
CMC 3 9 5
CMC 4 6 3
CMC 5 3 2
CMC 6 1 1
Green:
CMC 1 6 6
CMC 2 7 6
CMC 3 7 5
CMC 4 6 2
CMC 5 5 1
CMC 6 3 0
Note that the creature/noncreature ratio is slightly > 50%, the average CMC is a bit higher than most cubes with high power levels, and that the distributions vary much less across color than what eidolon found. My conclusion from this is that cube designers appear to prefer to tune the proportions of creatures and spells within each color to the preferences of constructed decks in those colors, rather than provide the more agnostic composition that MtG boosters appear to contain. Note also that because cubes frequently contain artifact and land counts comparable to monocolor card counts, many cubes have closer to 40% creature percentages than 50%. When you consider that a typical draft deck has 23 non-lands and 10-14 creatures, it's probably not surprising why cube sideboards are frequently comprised of mostly spells.
Peter G.
I ended up going for about 35% non-creature spells over the whole cube. I figured that most draft decks are about 17 land, 17 creature, 6 spells. So I tried to reflect that (6/17=~0.35) in the overall composition. I ended up falling a bit short, but since a lot of the creatures in the cube have removal stapled to them, I think it will be okay (analysis here: http://www.cubetutor.com/analysis/13664).
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 49th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from MKM!
Holy hell, my sentiment is the same as wtwlf's. Even aggressive decks just barely hit 16-17 creatures usually. If that's your average number for a typical deck... Well that's a very different kind of cube.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)