So there is a person at my local gaming store who has put together a cube that focused on recent standard cards (As well as ante cards, and conspiracy because he is a madman) and honestly just playing a draft with his cube has gotten me interested in building a cube of my own. Problem is while I have been playing magic for a long time (Off and on again sense cold snap), I have not personally played draft a whole lot, even counting the cubes I have been playing recently I can still count the amount of times I have drafted on both hands. So I wanted to get some advice with the cube I wish to build, but here is my current plan...
So I wish to build a Kamigawa themed cube featuring only cards from those three sets, this is because Kamigawa has always looked like a weird, but fun set to me, but I never really got the chance to play with it. The Current break down is as follows...
1 Rare, 3 Uncommons, and 10 commons per pack. With the cube itself having.
25 Rares
75 Uncommons
250 Commons
For a total of 350 (If my math is right, that should be about 25 booster packs, so enough for 8 people to draft with 1 left over.)
In order to try to represent the sets in the block somewhat equally between the three I was going to break it down as follows
Each set has 8 Rares representing it (Leaving 1 Rare slot left over)
25 Uncommons form each booster set.
83 Commons from each booster set. (Leaving 1 common slot left over)
Of course I will try to distribute colors evenly over all, as well as have lands and artifacts.
So given these parameters what would be the advice, and or suggestions you guys would give? What are some must include draft cards, and what should I avoid putting in the cube? Any advice is good advice, and thanks in advance.
An anecdote: A while ago, two friends and I set out to build Kamigawa-only casual decks, with only the stuff we could find in our FLGS and collections. We succeeded in getting decks together, played them, and had some of the worst Magic games I've played. Mono-green spiritcraft against RW Samurai against UR The Unspeakable combo, and it took forever for anything relevant to happen. Boards got clogged with chaff and combat was a nightmare of nothing dying and irrelevantly tiny amounts of damage being dealt.
The set is gorgeous. The concepts are evocative. The gameplay, especially at common and uncommon, is terrible. One saving grace is that the complexity can be enjoyable for some, but the resulting payoff isn't of the same standard you'd get out of complex non-Kamigawa decks. I still have my *****ty mono-green spiritcraft deck, and I still pull it out in multiplayer games with new players, because I love the art and I love the theme... But I can't pretend it's good.
My suspicion is that the iconic Kamigawa cards can't be put into a Kamigawa cube. The peaks of Kamigawas power level are so far above the mean that the the game is reduced to "Who draws the bomb first". You probably can't run Yosei or Keiga, or Sensei's Divining Top, and you -definitely- can't run Jitte without the card effectively being a bye for anyone who drafts it.
This all being said, I love the set to death and I want you to prove me wrong. Please try, please succeed, just find a way to dodge the near omnipresent traps that lie before you in this endeavor.
That is a good point with regards to the iconic cards, you are right that I don't want the draft to be boiled down to who drafts with the best cards wins. I guess I will have to pick the rares careful with which rares I pick.
Have a go at building 40 card Kamigawa decks built around archetypes like Soulshift, Spiritcraft, Arcane or along tribal lines or whatever and see what comes from that - It'll give you an idea of what each deck could do at their best and whether it's worth including support for the archetype as a whole. Stick to singleton if you want the cube to be singleton, but I'd lean towards breaking it for this cube. No need to shrink your pool even further.
Would you be willing to include Kamigawan cards that aren't from the block? Sakashima's Student, Tamiyo the Moon Sage and Silent-Blade Oni are all from the plane despite being relatively recent cards, and I'm sure there are others from the commander releases as well.
As far as cards that would be cool, consider Veil of Secrecy. Arcane, 'free' splice, synergy with Ninja or ETB effects, protects key creatures in midrange or control, lets you close out a game in midrange or aggro.
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So I wish to build a Kamigawa themed cube featuring only cards from those three sets, this is because Kamigawa has always looked like a weird, but fun set to me, but I never really got the chance to play with it. The Current break down is as follows...
1 Rare, 3 Uncommons, and 10 commons per pack. With the cube itself having.
25 Rares
75 Uncommons
250 Commons
For a total of 350 (If my math is right, that should be about 25 booster packs, so enough for 8 people to draft with 1 left over.)
In order to try to represent the sets in the block somewhat equally between the three I was going to break it down as follows
Each set has 8 Rares representing it (Leaving 1 Rare slot left over)
25 Uncommons form each booster set.
83 Commons from each booster set. (Leaving 1 common slot left over)
Of course I will try to distribute colors evenly over all, as well as have lands and artifacts.
So given these parameters what would be the advice, and or suggestions you guys would give? What are some must include draft cards, and what should I avoid putting in the cube? Any advice is good advice, and thanks in advance.
The set is gorgeous. The concepts are evocative. The gameplay, especially at common and uncommon, is terrible. One saving grace is that the complexity can be enjoyable for some, but the resulting payoff isn't of the same standard you'd get out of complex non-Kamigawa decks. I still have my *****ty mono-green spiritcraft deck, and I still pull it out in multiplayer games with new players, because I love the art and I love the theme... But I can't pretend it's good.
My suspicion is that the iconic Kamigawa cards can't be put into a Kamigawa cube. The peaks of Kamigawas power level are so far above the mean that the the game is reduced to "Who draws the bomb first". You probably can't run Yosei or Keiga, or Sensei's Divining Top, and you -definitely- can't run Jitte without the card effectively being a bye for anyone who drafts it.
This all being said, I love the set to death and I want you to prove me wrong. Please try, please succeed, just find a way to dodge the near omnipresent traps that lie before you in this endeavor.
Edit: Tagged cards
Would you be willing to include Kamigawan cards that aren't from the block? Sakashima's Student, Tamiyo the Moon Sage and Silent-Blade Oni are all from the plane despite being relatively recent cards, and I'm sure there are others from the commander releases as well.
As far as cards that would be cool, consider Veil of Secrecy. Arcane, 'free' splice, synergy with Ninja or ETB effects, protects key creatures in midrange or control, lets you close out a game in midrange or aggro.