So the cube format is very interesting to me, but as I understand it, it is for groups of 8 to draft. Rarely if ever will I be able to get 8 people together to draft, but 4 (and up to 6) can happen often enough.
Is a cube for 4+ people possible? Also how would I go about making such a list, as most how to articles are for 8 person cube?
Ok, so just modify the way you draft. That makes sense. I'm gonna get to work on it this weekend, start going through all my cards and roughing out a list.
I do a "Pick one exile one" variation of that when drafting with 4 people. Since we're aiming for 66 card multiplayer EDH decks the numbers are slightly different, but the idea's the same.
An alternative idea is to try and modularize your cube. It's a lot more work on the front end, but it let's you do a typical 3 pack draft with any group size and get a similar drafting experience to 8 man with a 360 cube.
To elaborate a bit more I'll tell you how I'm trying it out (there are probably a bunch of ways you could approach this). I have 5 modules, each 90 cards (450 cube total). Those modules each focus on a specific color (one shard and one wedge) and 2-3 mechanics. All colors are represented in each module, but it's skewed towards the primary color (the wedge/shard colors are more splash). If you drafted the "White" module alone, you would be hard pressed NOT to make a Wx deck, but there would be 2-3 ways you could build one. With 4 players, you randomly pick 2 of the 5 modules (3 of 5 with 6 players, etc), so say you wind up with "White" and "Blue". There would be 4-6 themes roughly and a heavy concentration of white and blue cards, but the more modules you add the more dynamic drafting gets because of all the combinations that start to pop up. The more overlap you can include with your themes obviously the better.
This has a few advantages over drafting just a percentage of the cube. In particular, you can run more narrow themes like +1/+1 counters or landfall. With modules, either that theme will be in the draft pool (all of it) or it won't (none of it). Secondly, you can ensure a proper distribution of fixing. In the example above (white/blue module), you will see pretty much every Wx and Ux dual land instead of getting BG with minimal incentive for an actual BG deck (very possible when random drafting just a percentage of larger cubes).
Again, big disadvantage up front though (and separating this back out into modules after you draft - this definitely sucks and I've found no easy way to do it yet). It takes a considerable amount of effort to balance each module as you have to pay attention to 5 separate mana curves, removal density in each module, etc. It took me weeks to get a workable draft of this and it's still very much a work in progress. It has been a fun experiment though and I love how tight drafting feels.
The introduction of Glimpse drafting definitely ups the deck quality in such small draft pods simply because the size of the pool grows exponentially. FWIW, though, we routinely ran 4-man and even 3 or 5-man pods with a normal 3x15 set up and the drafts were still fun. I won't lie and say that our decks were as powerful or even as consistent as what we'd see with an 8-man pod or a Glimpse draft, but that didn't stop us from having fun. And that's the great thing about cube. Even if it's just you and two buddies, you can still make it work with a Glimpse draft, a sealed event, a grid draft, or even just a regular old 3x15 draft (or 4x11 or 5x9, whatever you want).
tl;dr: Cube drafting is fun no matter the size of the draft pod!
Love this idea. Our playgroup is 5/6 players max and about 4 most of the time. Thanks a bunch for this, going to test it soon!
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A hobby is by defenition something you're not any good at - otherwise it'd have been your work. Magic is my biggest hobby so I mustn't be very good at it.
You can even draft 2 players from a cube, let alone four. My cube is designed such that it can accommodate a three person glimpse draft at maximum. However, it is also built with Winston drafting in mind. In fact, the card choices, fixing quantity and selection and archetype support you have really needs to take your draft format(s) into account. We've talked about this in the past on our podcast (/shameless plug) and it's definitely something to consider when building the cube.
I would recommend giving Glimpse drafting a go. The only really drawbacks are that you need a very large cube for glimpse drafts relative to many draft methods (540 for only a four person, or 810 for six!), which can become expensive to run and manage, and that the drafts can take a while if you're looking to smash through some games quickly. However, the deck quality is very high, and there is a lot of strategy involved in drafting.
My cube is designed for commander drafting and contains 585 cards, so that should do fine. I'm curious though if it'll support a regular 40-card draft. We're going to test that with the glimpse method soon.
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A hobby is by defenition something you're not any good at - otherwise it'd have been your work. Magic is my biggest hobby so I mustn't be very good at it.
It's been a glimpse draft and it worked out great! Thanks again for this idea.
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A hobby is by defenition something you're not any good at - otherwise it'd have been your work. Magic is my biggest hobby so I mustn't be very good at it.
If you don't like glimpse drafting (like we didn't, no offense to its supporters), smaller cubes can be made to support drafting smaller groups. We went from 400 to 270 (for 4 player) to 190 (for 2 player). wenplay so many other games (gasp!) that there's not a lot of larger player groups for cubing.
There isn't a lot of interest on these forums about smaller cubes (for obvious reason lol, bigger groups are better if you have em lol), but if you want help, pm me, or hit up my cube thread and I'd be happy to share what we learned cutting ours down.
I've had some success doing a 1/2 draft 1/2 sealed format (no name for it yet). We made 3 8-card packs each, and then split the rest of the cube into 4 sections. We drafted the packs, and then moved onto our sealed pools with a "head start" from our draft.
One advantage is that sealed deckbuilding moved pretty quickly, since we all had an idea of what we wanted to build, and it was fun to play both limited environments in the same get-together. The disadvantage is that you don't necessarily have support for whatever archetype you draft in your sealed pool (I drafted golgari reanimator, and ended up going with red/green lands-matter). The guy who won just used the strategy of taking the best control card in each pack regardless of color. The decks end up more focused than regular sealed would be, but delicate decks like stax or reanimator are still pretty hard to put together.
@thesaltysea - i recently attended GP Madison and they did something similar. they simply called it "sealed draft." the only difference is that players looked through their 3-pack sealed pools first, and then drafted. this still allows you to play with more of your cube, but it also lets you pick out some stronger cards/archetypes from your sealed pool and start with a direction you'd like to go in draft.
Is a cube for 4+ people possible? Also how would I go about making such a list, as most how to articles are for 8 person cube?
Basically, each player does the equivalent work of 3 drafters, so a 3-4 player Glimpse simulates about the same draft activity as a 9-12 player pod.
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!
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
To elaborate a bit more I'll tell you how I'm trying it out (there are probably a bunch of ways you could approach this). I have 5 modules, each 90 cards (450 cube total). Those modules each focus on a specific color (one shard and one wedge) and 2-3 mechanics. All colors are represented in each module, but it's skewed towards the primary color (the wedge/shard colors are more splash). If you drafted the "White" module alone, you would be hard pressed NOT to make a Wx deck, but there would be 2-3 ways you could build one. With 4 players, you randomly pick 2 of the 5 modules (3 of 5 with 6 players, etc), so say you wind up with "White" and "Blue". There would be 4-6 themes roughly and a heavy concentration of white and blue cards, but the more modules you add the more dynamic drafting gets because of all the combinations that start to pop up. The more overlap you can include with your themes obviously the better.
This has a few advantages over drafting just a percentage of the cube. In particular, you can run more narrow themes like +1/+1 counters or landfall. With modules, either that theme will be in the draft pool (all of it) or it won't (none of it). Secondly, you can ensure a proper distribution of fixing. In the example above (white/blue module), you will see pretty much every Wx and Ux dual land instead of getting BG with minimal incentive for an actual BG deck (very possible when random drafting just a percentage of larger cubes).
Again, big disadvantage up front though (and separating this back out into modules after you draft - this definitely sucks and I've found no easy way to do it yet). It takes a considerable amount of effort to balance each module as you have to pay attention to 5 separate mana curves, removal density in each module, etc. It took me weeks to get a workable draft of this and it's still very much a work in progress. It has been a fun experiment though and I love how tight drafting feels.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
tl;dr: Cube drafting is fun no matter the size of the draft pod!
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I would recommend giving Glimpse drafting a go. The only really drawbacks are that you need a very large cube for glimpse drafts relative to many draft methods (540 for only a four person, or 810 for six!), which can become expensive to run and manage, and that the drafts can take a while if you're looking to smash through some games quickly. However, the deck quality is very high, and there is a lot of strategy involved in drafting.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
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!
There isn't a lot of interest on these forums about smaller cubes (for obvious reason lol, bigger groups are better if you have em lol), but if you want help, pm me, or hit up my cube thread and I'd be happy to share what we learned cutting ours down.
Old school group, sometimes more beer than cards. Revised thru Tempest block (and a little of Urza), sorry if I don't know all the new cards
Ye' Olde Schoole Casual Decks: BUReanimate -- GRAggro -- BWPestilence -- G10-land Stompy -- GRElfball -- GWEnchantress -- RAnkh Sligh -- BDiscard -- MUC "Draw-go" -- BRSuicide -- UWSkies -- UHigh Tide Mill -- WWeenie -- UMutated Bombers -- URThe great land-toss -- UB Molasass
One advantage is that sealed deckbuilding moved pretty quickly, since we all had an idea of what we wanted to build, and it was fun to play both limited environments in the same get-together. The disadvantage is that you don't necessarily have support for whatever archetype you draft in your sealed pool (I drafted golgari reanimator, and ended up going with red/green lands-matter). The guy who won just used the strategy of taking the best control card in each pack regardless of color. The decks end up more focused than regular sealed would be, but delicate decks like stax or reanimator are still pretty hard to put together.
my cube excel sheet, with metagame info and charts!