So I built my cube intending to see the whole thing in an 8 person draft, and made it as big as possible with that in mind, in order to include weird cards. This ended up being 3 packs of 16 cards with 8 players, which was the absolute maximum that felt reasonable to me. (384 cards total.)
But I just tried practice drafting with 2 packs of 16 and 7 bots on Cubetutor, and it was surprisingly fun.
I feel like the main incentive to seeing more/all cards is having a realistic chance to use weird, narrow cards and build decks with lots of synergy, whereas drafting fewer cards has a really great "limited" feel of like gladiators thrown in a roman sand pit colosseum or something lol you know? The gritty feeling of trying to beat the other players with what happens to be on hand. Plus, this can give some weaker cards their chance to shine just because players may be forced to maindeck them when they stretch for playables.
Now I am wondering if I want to keep my intention of seeing the whole cube, but make it smaller, or throw out the weirdest/narrowest stuff entirely and drastically reducing the amount of cards drafted (like the initial example of players ending up with 32 cards instead of 48.)
You can change cube size, pack number, and pack size. Is there anything to possibly even increasing or decreasing minimum deck size? And do you adjust these knobs further based on the number of participants?
3x15 when I have a chance, 5x9 or 4x11 for groups of four.
I don't see the benefit of going smaller. I like reading draft signals and having cards that are of vastly different values for different decks. Tried a few 2x16s like you described in CubeTutor... just wound up playing literally every on-color draft pick for all three drafts.
Doing something like 2x16 and 30-card decks could certainly be different/better, but at 40 cards I don't think trading deck specialization for a "stretch for playables" is going to increase the amount of fun I have while cubing.
One of the draws to the format, in my mind, is being similar to a core set limited with relative balance and no unplayable cards. That's how I describe it to someone who has never drafted it, and it's something I really enjoy. To that end I try to emulate the actual drafting setup (3x15) as often as possible. 4x11 for 6 people, and tenchester or 5x9 for 4 people. Changing the overall size of your draft pool is interesting and I'm sure it changes some pick orders and such. But I really like being able to "waste" a couple of picks on splash cards or speculative picks that don't always pan out. I feel like with 30 picks total, you lose a lot of flexibility in that regard.
But I just tried practice drafting with 2 packs of 16 and 7 bots on Cubetutor, and it was surprisingly fun.
I feel like the main incentive to seeing more/all cards is having a realistic chance to use weird, narrow cards and build decks with lots of synergy, whereas drafting fewer cards has a really great "limited" feel of like gladiators thrown in a roman sand pit colosseum or something lol you know? The gritty feeling of trying to beat the other players with what happens to be on hand. Plus, this can give some weaker cards their chance to shine just because players may be forced to maindeck them when they stretch for playables.
Now I am wondering if I want to keep my intention of seeing the whole cube, but make it smaller, or throw out the weirdest/narrowest stuff entirely and drastically reducing the amount of cards drafted (like the initial example of players ending up with 32 cards instead of 48.)
You can change cube size, pack number, and pack size. Is there anything to possibly even increasing or decreasing minimum deck size? And do you adjust these knobs further based on the number of participants?
Thoughts? How many cards do you draft and why?
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I don't see the benefit of going smaller. I like reading draft signals and having cards that are of vastly different values for different decks. Tried a few 2x16s like you described in CubeTutor... just wound up playing literally every on-color draft pick for all three drafts.
Doing something like 2x16 and 30-card decks could certainly be different/better, but at 40 cards I don't think trading deck specialization for a "stretch for playables" is going to increase the amount of fun I have while cubing.
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