Hi guys, my cube has been 450 cards for a long time, but recently my playgroup and I have been considering increasing its size. So what do you consider the pros and cons of larger cubes?
The most "obvious" drawback, it seems to me, is probably the effect on aggro. To use a hypothetical extreme, aggro seems like it would be very weak at 900 cards. But what are some other, less obvious, pros and cons that I may not have considered?
Less consistency, more variance. If you're trying to regularly build focussed decks, large cubes have a hard time with it. If you're looking to differ your experiences from draft to draft, a larger pool will help you do that though. Instead of seeing the same cards each and every draft, there will be more variety in how the decks are built. Additionally, the powerlevel dips a bit, since the concentration of the most powerful cards will be diluted. I prefer to use a list that is small enough that the powerful cards and powerful decks can still be assembled, without the list being so big that there's a lot of "filler" that needs to go in. I think the sweet spot for that is 450, unless you have access to regular 3-4 player Glimpse Drafts, in which case 540 is just as consistent.
The merits, for me, is you get to include pet or interesting cards that aren't quite at the power level necessary for sub-500 cubes.
The downside for me, beyond aggro is that it's really hard to push any of the combo-y archetypes. Control, midrange, aggro, etc will all be relatively fine. Eureka/SnT, Sneak Attack, reanimator, UR spells matter, pox/stax, artifacts, super ramp, etc., the bigger the cube is the much higher the chance that decks that require specific cards to work will just not happen in any given draft. For me, I like being able to support those archetypes and have it be more likely the support cards are there more than I like being able to have the sort of fun, pet cards that aren't up to smaller cube power levels, so I'll always choose a size that lets those decks flourish.
Hi guys, my cube has been 450 cards for a long time, but recently my playgroup and I have been considering increasing its size. So what do you consider the pros and cons of larger cubes?
The most "obvious" drawback, it seems to me, is probably the effect on aggro. To use a hypothetical extreme, aggro seems like it would be very weak at 900 cards. But what are some other, less obvious, pros and cons that I may not have considered?
The obvious upsides are that you can draft with more players and you get a lot more variance. The downsides are less consistency and a lot more upkeep - more cards to test (both by absolute number and percentage in each set), more cards to shuffle, heavier to carry etc. It also takes a much longer time to get feedback on card changes.
The whole cube gets slower, as the concentration of fixing that doesn't enter the battlefield tapped goes down. However, control takes a bigger hit than aggro when you increase in size. There is a lot of redundancy in creatures in all aggro colors at all spots of the curve (one drops being a big exception) and plenty of burn spells, but cheap counters and mass removals are too shallow even for a 720 cube. I have been managing a large cube for seven years, and in the last five aggro was the most powerful and successful archetype by far (and we see 3-4 aggro decks in an 8 man draft usually).
One of the solutions to the problem of diluted power level I've found is to include cards that are always maindeckable but not powerful enough for a small cube. I play all the conspiracies and most draft altering constructs, as well as more fixing by percentage and cards like Karakas and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
I agree that combo archetypes are difficult to support. Synergy based decks that have a lot of redundancy in the game, like super ramp, become easier to play, however.
The most "obvious" drawback, it seems to me, is probably the effect on aggro. To use a hypothetical extreme, aggro seems like it would be very weak at 900 cards. But what are some other, less obvious, pros and cons that I may not have considered?
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The downside for me, beyond aggro is that it's really hard to push any of the combo-y archetypes. Control, midrange, aggro, etc will all be relatively fine. Eureka/SnT, Sneak Attack, reanimator, UR spells matter, pox/stax, artifacts, super ramp, etc., the bigger the cube is the much higher the chance that decks that require specific cards to work will just not happen in any given draft. For me, I like being able to support those archetypes and have it be more likely the support cards are there more than I like being able to have the sort of fun, pet cards that aren't up to smaller cube power levels, so I'll always choose a size that lets those decks flourish.
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The obvious upsides are that you can draft with more players and you get a lot more variance. The downsides are less consistency and a lot more upkeep - more cards to test (both by absolute number and percentage in each set), more cards to shuffle, heavier to carry etc. It also takes a much longer time to get feedback on card changes.
The whole cube gets slower, as the concentration of fixing that doesn't enter the battlefield tapped goes down. However, control takes a bigger hit than aggro when you increase in size. There is a lot of redundancy in creatures in all aggro colors at all spots of the curve (one drops being a big exception) and plenty of burn spells, but cheap counters and mass removals are too shallow even for a 720 cube. I have been managing a large cube for seven years, and in the last five aggro was the most powerful and successful archetype by far (and we see 3-4 aggro decks in an 8 man draft usually).
One of the solutions to the problem of diluted power level I've found is to include cards that are always maindeckable but not powerful enough for a small cube. I play all the conspiracies and most draft altering constructs, as well as more fixing by percentage and cards like Karakas and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
I agree that combo archetypes are difficult to support. Synergy based decks that have a lot of redundancy in the game, like super ramp, become easier to play, however.
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