MTG Salvation

I've just recently got into cubing in paper with a friend's new cube and wanted to the poll the forum a bit for good strategies on randomizing packs. Most of my cubing experience is on the MODO cubes - so I have no experience with actually making the packs IRL. Years ago when I did a paper cube we just shuffled the whole thing as a group and built the packs. It worked out OK for most of the packs, but there were definitely some packs with 5+ of one color card and none of another - making it harder to read signals. My buddy suggested seeding the packs with random cards from each color: i.e: (2 of each color, 3 gold, an artifact & a land). Perhaps there are other ways to do it I'm not thinking of

How do you randomize packs?

Take the whole thing, break it into manageable stacks of 50-75 depending on the shufflers' hand sizes, take those break them in half, repeat this a few times, pile shuffle into packs of 15. Nothing fancy and theoretically random.

I know most will accuse me of being over zealous in my shuffling technique but I found that just "shuffle up and deal" leads to stilted packs like five artifacts or only blue and green cards in the pack. To avoid this I do something a bit more invovled, to wit:

1) Starting with the cube separated by section (5 colored sections, land, artifacts and multicolor-the unshuffled state).
2) Then I make ten stacks starting with colored sections-which makes ten stacks of 9 cards with 5 left over which go in there own stack.
3) I continue in this fashion through all the sections-dividing them by ten and the leftovers going in its own pile which then gets shuffled itself and distributed evenly into the ten piles.
4) From there I shuffle each pile (around 90 cards) and then stack them in the box.
5) We pull packs randomly from the box 5-10-15 cards at a time to constitute 15 card packs.

This sounds like more work than it is, especially if two or three people help it usually takes 10-15 minutes (often the time it takes for the stragglers to arrive).
The virtue of this is the packs are not totally random. Instead, each section (artifacts, lands, etc.) is more evenly distributed starting out, it becomes more randomized once we add the stack of extras and pick parts of packs randomly from the entire box.
I have tried to go back and just big shuffle and play, but the packs it produces are messed up to the point where players comment on the "mono-red pack" going around.

We sort the cube after each draft, so once we run through the whole thing we end up with a fully sorted cube. I will typically shuffle it myself while I'm at home watching TV or Twitch or something.

1.) Shuffle each color stack. This is an attempt to prevent the same decks from popping up in the next draft. There are eight stacks total: WUBRGALM
2.) Shuffle the stacks together two at a time, to get down to four stacks total. Example: WU BR GA LM.
3.) Repeat to get down to two stacks. Example: WUBR GALM
4.) Repeat again to end up with a completely shuffled cube. To make packs, we just pull 15 cards off the top.

I'll admit that this process has taken me upwards of 30 minutes to an hour when I do it alone and take time to shuffle each very thoroughly. In the event that I have to share this process with a buddy so we can run another draft, it takes about ten minutes for a "good enough" shuffle between two people.

I do exactly the first option in the poll. It generally works out fine, but you do occasionally end up with packs stacked with one or two colors. My group has been totally fine with this, so I don't see any reason to change my process.

I do it differently from most others, but my randomizing is similar to calibretto's. Not the fatsest method ever, but it ensures a good drafting experience.

The idea of manually color balancing packs seems appealing, but actually just randomizing packs has a lot of benefits:

1) Less obvious signals. I don't wanna be able to look at a pack and know what's been taken. Where's the analytic thinking in that.
2) Agent of Acquisitions has better options. In concept, I love the idea of agent, but in balanced packs I very rarely can reconcile using it. If packs can be slanted, it certainly helps.
3) Signals become less about colors. As an owner of an EDH cube, where the strategy of your general options has a large factor in drafting, deck archetypes are important to read signals for. When color signals are obvious it distracts from signals of archetypes.
4) I like more chaotic packs. I like looking at a pack and going "Whoa, this is an interesting mix." Where structured packs kills that much of the time.

I like randomized packs. Unfortunately that takes a lot of time and prep work, which doesn't work for me because I want my cube organized so I can build an impromptu EDH deck for casual games, since most weekends we don't use the cube.

All random all the time.

The problem I see with randomizing is sometimes, there isn't enough mana-fixing even if there's ample in the entire pool. What I do to reconcile this problem is to ensure each pack has 2 lands. This is why I separate my lands from my nonland cards.

People should be more concerned about this issue if they're running more multicolor than standard cubes.

We do even distribution of colors with randomized artifact/multicolored. We all have a blast drafting and no packs are "incredibly useless". Its a little involved but it works out great, and after playing, sorting it back out is fine.

I can say with some degree of certainty that our randomized shuffled packs are almost never skewed toward one color or another. It's very rare to see a pack with four or more of the same color card.

Mostly random but:
2 slots per pack are seed mana fixing
1 slot per pack is a seeded card that is my testing section.

We keep our 400 constantly shuffled and randomized in the box. We often two player, either Winston/pack/quilt (tried glimopse last night). As a result we don't see all of the cube in two sessions. Sometimes we like to set aside the draft contents from one session, so that whats left of the cube can be drafted without any repeats from the previous session. Actually, I'm curious if any 2-player frequented cubes do the same, if anyone would care to comment.

Anyways, For us, it's a matter of shuffling the used with the unused cards thoroughly...and keeping the cube thoroughly shuffled. I've come to the decision that one either spends time shuffling the cube, or sorting/ordering packs(or piles, whatever). It feels like the same amount of time to me one way or the other...I kinda wish there were a better/quicker way to prep cube games.