MTG Salvation

Nope. I've opened plenty of ZEN packs that have zero cards of a color in them, and 5 of another color. I've opened sealed pools with <6 cards of a single color, and >18 cards of another color too. It's random. Especially if the event is big enough that your boosters don't come out of the same order of the same booster box.

Quote from wtwlf123

Nope. I've opened plenty of ZEN packs that have zero cards of a color in them, and 5 of another color. I've opened sealed pools with <6 cards of a single color, and >18 cards of another color too. It's random. Especially if the event is big enough that your boosters don't come out of the same order of the same booster box.

Yes but if it was 100% random you could open a pack with 14 red cards which never happens.

Quote from Phantizle

I don't think this is actually true. Real boosters have some sort of loose organization if I recall correctly (my brain has gone all fuzzy). So if a sealed event is pooled from real boosters, it is not 100% random.

Each set has a common print run (not sure about uc's and rares). The commons are printed on a sheet (11x11cards). Usually they put the cards, which are next to each other in the same booster.

Common Printruns for Lorwyn (in german)
http://www.planetmtg.de/articles/artikel.html?id=3545

Some site I googled just now (haven't read it though)
http://www.quadibloc.com/math/dioprint.htm

So I think it's safe to assume, that BOOSTERS in general contain at least one card of each colour. Sealedpools can be random as hell, but each pack has a minimum amount of fixation.

Kind of Off-topic, sorry!

I knew there was some sort of crazy math that made them random, but not quite 100% random. Thanks.

There's also Rare/Mythic printruns, they are just a lot more difficult to guess. Generally there's only one of each rare in a boosterbox for instance. This don't count for foil rares ofcourse. I've opened my share of boxes and definatly noticed that this is the case. Further more there's almost exactly 4 of each common (in a big set) and you are almost guarenteed one of each uncommon.

Quote from Donald_McDonald

Yes but if it was 100% random you could open a pack with 14 red cards which never happens.

It's never happened in the cube, either.

We don't "sort" our packs, but they do end up slightly even. I don't designate two of each color, two lands, two artifacts, and a gold card for each pack. What we do is after each draft we sort the drafted cards (if everyone does this, it takes no time at all). Once we've finished the cube, the entire thing should be sorted. I then seperate the cube into eight different stacks (WUBRGALM). Next I count out ten white cards and make ten different piles. I then pile shuffle the entire thing in this manner. Doing it this way keeps my packs fairly balanced, but not every pack is the same. It doesn't take long and I usually do it sometime before I'm going to be drafting the cube anyway, so it rarely ever takes away from draft time. Even then the whole process only takes about 5-10 minutes so it's really not a big deal at all.

Depending on your distribution between colors, artifacts, multicolors, and lands, you may or may not want to seed your packs. If they're really uneven, seeding when you aren't going to use the full cube would result in over-representation.

Eg. If you have 60 cards of each color and 40 multicolor, 20 artifacts, 40 lands, and you're drafting for 6 people using 15 card packs seeded with 1 of every card 'color', you'll see more artifacts than if you were to just shuffle everything together, (at least 18 seeded vs. around 12-14 shuffled) simply due to the percentage of the full card pool you would see.

That being said, it's not something to worry about if that's what you want to have - maybe you need all of those artifacts available, and just want more variance in the rest of the card pool.

@bwian: True, but as your calculation already shows, the difference wouldn't be that big. And sometimes we draft the whole cube and the partial fixation is just to even out the cubes to avoid the two extremes in packs.
FYI: 60 each colour, 55 gold, 50 artifacts, 40 nonbasics in my cube. So the artifactsection is quite big, but who doesn't love some artifacts. (I know the landsection could be bigger)

I also think sorting cards before making pack distribution takes away the skill of signaling as well...do I take this best black card of 4, or the slightly less only red card?

-AA

Quote from Antknee42

I also think sorting cards before making pack distribution takes away the skill of signaling as well...do I take this best black card of 4, or the slightly less only red card?

-AA

care to elaborate?
If you "seed" 2 of each card, having a fully balanced booster, there indeed is no skill involved, when drafting the pack. If you just put 1 of each section in the booster, you just assure that each booster contains at least 1 card of each section, ergo no colour-empty packs. But we quite often get packs with a distribution 4 B to 1 W. 7 cards of each Booster are completely random following the method, Shalazar and I are using.

If you "gurantee" one card of each color per pack, and Pick 2 there's no cards of a color that just came from the right... that's a pretty tell-tale signal that that player is in that color.

If you control ANY portion of what the pack contains, it reduces the value of draft skill required and makes it easier to read signals.

Quote from wtwlf123

If you "gurantee" one card of each color per pack, and Pick 2 there's no cards of a color that just came from the right... that's a pretty tell-tale signal that that player is in that color.

This. I've drafted a couple cubes with a perfect color to pack distribution and it was a pretty boring experience. Oh, a blue cards is missing, I wonder what's going to get cut? I can see maaaaybe guaranteeing even colors in the entire draft, but doing it by the pack seems real loose.

We randomize the entire cube by pile-shuffling the whole thing a couple times and making 4 packs of 11 for a 6 or less and 3 packs of 15 for 8-mans and up.

It largely depends how you've stored your Cube. At the moment my Cube is stored in sections as I tamper with it fairly often and being in sections makes this MUCH quicker. When my Cube's in that happy place where I'm totally happy with all the cards, it'll be mashed together and I'll draft properly.

At the moment I do the take-a-few-cards-from-each-section method, which is sub-optimal for the reasons already mentioned. It's good enough for the time being though.

Mhmm... made me think.

My whole concept was indirectly based on the system, that WotC uses. So while there is one card of each color in every Booster, Wizards ever sold, this shouldn't automatically be translated to the cube. Especially because 5colours are a slighter fixation than 8 sections. Nonetheless, the times, where a colour was missing from the pack after the first pick almost never occurred. So I guess I'll change to absolute randomness, and see how my playgroup responds.

My way of card distribution and shuffling gives me somewhat balanced packs, but in a very random way. So if I pile shuffle WAULBMRG, then the first pack will look like WAULBMRGWAULBMR or WWUUBBRRGAALLMM. That's two of everything and one green card. The next pack will be similar, but different. GWAULBMRGWAULBM or WWUUBBRGGAALLMM. Two of everything and only one red card. Later on it gets different as I have less artfacts and multicolor than colors and land. So if you get your P1P2 and there's no white cards in it, you can probably guess that the guy to your right is playing white. The same can be said for a pack in a normal booster draft as well, though.

As an exercise and because my cube is fully shuffled at the moment, I made three packs. If you were to draft my cube this could very well be your three packs.

Pack 1: WWUUBBRGGAALLMM (only one red card, two of everything else)
Pack 2: WWUUBBRRGGAALLM (only one multicolor card, two of everything else)
Pack 3: WWUUUBBRRGAALLM (only one multicolor card, only one green card, three blue cards, two of everything else)

I don't sit down and even everything out. I pile shuffle by colors and the packs come out looking like this which is completely random enough. Once you get farther and farther into the cube in making packs, they get more and more random because of the smaller artifact and multicolor sections.

Quote from Elgger Cube

So while there is one card of each color in every Booster, Wizards ever sold, this shouldn't automatically be translated to the cube.

This is false. I've opened plenty of packs that are missing a card of a particular color. I know for 100% fact that this has been happening at least since Alara block, because I've played a retarded amount of both ACR drafts and ZEN drafts. I've opened plenty of ZEN packs that have been missing cards of one color or another.

And yet, ZEN draft is some of the best limited I've ever played. Complex, balanced and lots of variety in competition. Perhaps balancing cube packs isn't the best idea.

And some have all 5 colors as the first 5 commons in a pack. Random, just the way it should be

-AA

Quote from wtwlf123

And yet, ZEN draft is some of the best limited I've ever played. Complex, balanced and lots of variety in competition.

I completely agree with this.

If you control ANY portion of what the pack contains, it reduces the value of draft skill required and makes it easier to read signals.

First, it is what WotC does too, so it's not less skill testing than a regular draft by any means. Second, completely random boosters creation make signaling matter much less, and be less rewarding.
Even if you carefully pass the correct signals, due to purely bad luck, you can be handed packs that won't contain a single card of your color. You lose picks randomly just because the booster wasn't shuffled well. Even worse, you might change your color because of it, and take a different color, which is already drafted by someone else obv., who probably also signaled well, then mess the signals of the whole table.
Another problem is if in a booster in the middle of the draft there suddenly is a large mass of cards in your color. Now what are the people down to you going to think? Two options: One, that your color is open and all your signaling effort was for nothing. The second, they realize that the shuffle was bad and that booster is just an anomaly. So when they see that their boosters contains no cards in their colors, because there are just too many cards of your color to have any and it will eventually happen, they will not only take cards that are irrelevant to their deck, and not only take a card from your color, but they will cut the best card from that color, a card that if the shuffle was more even could easily wheel to you given good signaling.

As in most things in life, I think the best answer is somewhere between fixed boosters and random uncontrolled boosters.

Regarding the specific problem of having no cards of a certain color in the first pick indicates that a card of that color was picked in the first pick, my shuffle method, if you make the replace written below it, avoids the 100% of certainty completely.

Quote from metamind

As in most things in life, I think the best answer is somewhere between fixed boosters and random uncontrolled boosters.

I don't like the idea of just riffle shuffling the whole cube either. The one time we did it, not only did it take for-freakin-ever, but it just didn't get the cards random enough. There were lots of clumps and the packs just didn't feel right. I'm with metamind on this one, the best option is somewhere in the middle of the road.

Quote from Metamind »

Even if you carefully pass the correct signals, due to purely bad luck, you can be handed packs that won't contain a single card of your color.

And? This happens in real drafting all the time. So does opening ZEN packs with an entire color missing.

Quote from wtwlf123

And? This happens in real drafting all the time. So does opening ZEN packs with an entire color missing.

But not at the frequency it happens with randomly shuffled cube boosters, especially with all the land and artifacts most cubes run. You'll even have cube boosters with multiple colors missing which is extremely rare in Zendikar. I don't like the guarantee of 1 card of each color but I think putting in some effort to avoid clumping would be worth it. Next time I cube (hopefully at FNM today) I'm going to give Metaminds suggestion a try and see how it works.

Quote from Donald_McDonald

But not at the frequency it happens with randomly shuffled cube boosters

But it doesn't happen that frequently in the random cube boosters. Not any more frequently than being passed a ZEN pack with no black cards in it, for example.