So I'm thinking about making my first cube and I want to make an EDH cube (4 player). The issue I hold though, is that often when drafting EDH cube it becomes very hard to figure out what to draft until you have a commander chosen, and it is very easy to be trapped into those colors since you don't know what colors of legends you will even see to consider. I was thinking it might be better to have the first pack be seeded with 3-5 commanders. This ensures several options early on (12-20 commanders!), but not the entire list of available commanders (so variance can thrive). Any thoughts on this idea? Any unforseen drawbacks or better ideas?
We draft generals in packs and have never had any issues. My Cube emphasizes 3 color so most people have figured out that prioritizing artifacts and 1 or 2 colors early while they wait for a general to hit a 3rd color works well. Or, some just grab the first 3 color general they find and let fate make that call. A lot of people will defend the separate generals for the concerns you listed, but we've never seen it be an issue and actually the strategy of drafting your commander in the packs appeals to people more.
I have at least 2 generals in each Guild and 2 in each Shard/Khan. Spread out over 600 cards that's plenty to play with. And, if you do pick cards early that are off color... too bad, isn't that how drafting 40 cards decks from packs works? Early you go for the best cards and then as your pool builds you narrow it down...
I normally do a generals-only pack toward the beginning of the draft (3-7 cards), but have recently been trying out the seeded pack approach here:
I separate all of the generals into their guilds, shards, and wedges (3 per) and then deal them randomly into 3 piles, that only 1 from each G/S/W is present. I seed each pack with 1 general card each, and then move onto another one of the general stacks if I run out on the first pass. This reduces the incidence of the same colored shard and wedge generals showing up, and cuts down a bit on color overlap between the players. I've been pretty happy with the results of this, and it helps me see a greater cross section of my generals than when I have kaalia, rafiq, etc showing up every draft.
During the draft I ran last weekend, we had Zegana, Oloro, Zurgo, Kresh, and Keranos as the generals.
I have at least 2 generals in each Guild and 2 in each Shard/Khan. Spread out over 600 cards that's plenty to play with. And, if you do pick cards early that are off color... too bad, isn't that how drafting 40 cards decks from packs works? Early you go for the best cards and then as your pool builds you narrow it down...
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I separate all of the generals into their guilds, shards, and wedges (3 per) and then deal them randomly into 3 piles, that only 1 from each G/S/W is present. I seed each pack with 1 general card each, and then move onto another one of the general stacks if I run out on the first pass. This reduces the incidence of the same colored shard and wedge generals showing up, and cuts down a bit on color overlap between the players. I've been pretty happy with the results of this, and it helps me see a greater cross section of my generals than when I have kaalia, rafiq, etc showing up every draft.
During the draft I ran last weekend, we had Zegana, Oloro, Zurgo, Kresh, and Keranos as the generals.
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