I am considering putting together a bad cards cube, and was wondering if someone in here had some experience I could draw on.
I want to try and make a balanced environment where actual interesting games of magic can take place. In other words, I will not put together a complete pile of Great Walls, Wood Elemental and One with nothings.
Some key concerns I need to address:
Balance. I think it may be hard to gauge the power of these cards next to each other, and I might end up with a significant power gap between the absolute worst and the least bad cards in the cube. I thought about trying to "fence in" the power by choosing a selection of cards and having an inclusion criteria be something like "every card in the cube should be worse than Throttle, Centaur Courser and Ainok Guide, but better than Gray Ogre or Durkwood Boars (cards in this example selected without careful analysis). Would this work?
Board stalls. With bad creatures and bad removal, I can see games ending up as board stalls fairly frequently. I thought about a couple of things to do to mitigate this. The first is being somewhat lenient on the removal, and not cutting all of it for being too good. Having a decent amount of it, but having it be bad when possible (Merseine), or only able to hit small things (Vicious Hunger) or expensive (Vanquish the foul). My concern is that even the very bad removal will be so important in the environment that they will too often be the correct picks.
The other thing I want to do to mitigate board stalls is with my selection of creatures. I want to limit the number of mainly defensive creatures, and go a bit higher on creatures with evasion. I also thought activated evasion could be a way to go, Coastal Hornclaw, Blockade Runner, stuff like that. I'm also wondering where this puts deathtouch-creatures. Are they pseudo-evasion, and thus good, or do they discourage attacking, and should be avoided?
Worthlessness of low drops. This is only theorycrafting, but I expect games to be slow, and I expect efficiency of creatures to be poor, so that aggro-decks will be next to impossible to draft. When looking at possible one-drops, it just struck me that all of them were so bad, and often completely wihtout impact past the first few turns. Two drops might not be that much better, so unless I'm careful the correct strategy becomes to just eschew low-drops altogether. Is this reasonable speculation? Should I try to mitigate it by having low drops be "slightly less bad" than the higher drops?
Fixing. I think I need some fixing, and was thinking about having the Guildgates and the bouncelands. Not terrible lands by any means, but I figure some amount of fixing is necessary. The concern again is that if things are too slow, then fixing and splashing becomes a very high priority. Will this be an issue? Unfortunately, the very bad fixing lands like the Homelands cycle and the Tempest cycle are only half cycles. I would have loved to have run the complete cycles of Tempest lands and Kamigawa Lands. (I probably would not run the Homelands cycle even in a bad cube, they are so awful). Should I pull back on fixing?
I think these were my main first points. Any advice is welcome!
You have to find some way to keep the novelty from wearing off. All the "spheres" I've played were fun like once or twice, but then nobody wanted to ever draft them again. You'll have to approach the design from an angle that can remove that somehow. That's hard to do when you're playing with a pile of terrible cards.
Keep the power level flat and make sure that the synergies of cards are such that things can cross pollinate to a high degree so that the cookie cutter archetypes are not a problem (think Innistrad limited).
With a slower, lower power environment, I think you can do bare minimum fixing since it’s less punishing to miss your colors on curve. I like the synergy between the bouncelands and the scrylands, and I personally would go that route.
You have to find some way to keep the novelty from wearing off. All the "spheres" I've played were fun like once or twice, but then nobody wanted to ever draft them again. You'll have to approach the design from an angle that can remove that somehow. That's hard to do when you're playing with a pile of terrible cards.
Could you say a few words about what made the spheres fun (even if it were only for 1 or 2 drafts), and what made people not come back? Was it terrible gameplay? Lack of arhcetypes? Lack of fun things to do?
I have looked a little bit around, and I think the cards might end up a little bit better than I had initially thought. I figure I have to have some sort of archetypes and buildarounds. So I need to have a power level elsewhere that makes it possible to throw in key cards for the archetypes I want to support without them being overpowered compared to the rest of the cube.
There are some cards and archetypes that seem fun and interesting, but are just a bit (or a lot) too weak to work in most limited environments, I'd love to get these to work.
What made it fun was having players discover cards that were just absolutely terrible, and seeing their reactions.
What made it undesirable is that the cards are bad, so once the novelty wears off, the format was just stale. Traditional cubes are fun because they're exciting and powerful. A bunch of french vanilla creatures, mediocre removal and passable combat tricks doesn't make for a great cube experience. If that's what I was looking to play, I'd much rather hone my retail limited skills.
Not trying to be discouraging, I'm just giving you my honest opinion of how Spheres have played out for me in the past.
I've played in a reject rare draft and it was an absolute blast.
You need to explain what certain cards do like rebirth, when I played it did nothing.
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Wtwlf, I got around that problem (to a degree) by essentially turning the cube into an extreme exercise of "find the combo".
I included most of the common changelings and unusual tribal synergies, like giants. Theres a large spirit/arcane presence which people immediately recognize as bad but gives them something to latch onto.
I tried making and playing a bad cards cube. I avoided things that were effectively blanks, even if they were the worst, but focused on things that were below the curve. Pillarfield Ox was my target card. I was also non-singleton for certain cases, such as including a few Groffskithur or howling wolf.
I also included a few relics of days past like Ihsan's Shade.
The end result was that the board would stall out with no way to break through. Junktroller became a top first pick because it would let you win the decking war. I think that it was fun to draft once, before the metagame was known, but it wasn't worth repeating.
I know this thread is a little old, but I had to share that I have a bad card cube that I've been maintaining since 2011, and I still think it's a lot of fun. I don't play it that often, though.
What's kept it interesting for me is that I try to include cards that are bad but interesting, like Junk Golem, Unstable Shapeshifter, and Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded. Obviously if you have One with Nothing in your cube, that's good for a laugh the first time anyone sees it, but no one will ever pick it. And while Squire can at least attack and block, but it doesn't make for interesting games. Try to limit your cube to cards that people will actually pick. (A few exceptions just for laughs is fine.)
Another problem I often see with bad cubes is inconsistent power level. Bad cards in the 1-4 mana range are often just straight-up bad, but bad cards in the 5+ range are usually just bad for their cost. That means games with a poorly designed bad cube often have nothing happen in the first 4 turns or so, and then you start just playing overcosted things. You really have to stick to a consistent power structure to combat this, which often means including cards that don't feel that bad. For example, Gray Ogre would be slightly underpowered in my cube, but Durkwood Boars would be too good. Generally, 5 mana gets you a 3/3, so that your 3-mana 2/2s don't feel totally outclassed in the mid-to-late game.
You're right about fixing, though. I'm running the two cycles you've mentioned, but honestly, the fixing in a bad card cube doesn't have to be bad.
It looks like you've put a decent amount of thought into how you'd design this cube, and I think your intuitions are largely correct. If you end up making the cube, I'd definitely like to see it!
My list on CubeTutor isn't completely up-to-date, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what I believe a well-desinged bad card cube looks like: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/9574
I want to try and make a balanced environment where actual interesting games of magic can take place. In other words, I will not put together a complete pile of Great Walls, Wood Elemental and One with nothings.
Some key concerns I need to address:
Balance. I think it may be hard to gauge the power of these cards next to each other, and I might end up with a significant power gap between the absolute worst and the least bad cards in the cube. I thought about trying to "fence in" the power by choosing a selection of cards and having an inclusion criteria be something like "every card in the cube should be worse than Throttle, Centaur Courser and Ainok Guide, but better than Gray Ogre or Durkwood Boars (cards in this example selected without careful analysis). Would this work?
Board stalls. With bad creatures and bad removal, I can see games ending up as board stalls fairly frequently. I thought about a couple of things to do to mitigate this. The first is being somewhat lenient on the removal, and not cutting all of it for being too good. Having a decent amount of it, but having it be bad when possible (Merseine), or only able to hit small things (Vicious Hunger) or expensive (Vanquish the foul). My concern is that even the very bad removal will be so important in the environment that they will too often be the correct picks.
The other thing I want to do to mitigate board stalls is with my selection of creatures. I want to limit the number of mainly defensive creatures, and go a bit higher on creatures with evasion. I also thought activated evasion could be a way to go, Coastal Hornclaw, Blockade Runner, stuff like that. I'm also wondering where this puts deathtouch-creatures. Are they pseudo-evasion, and thus good, or do they discourage attacking, and should be avoided?
Worthlessness of low drops. This is only theorycrafting, but I expect games to be slow, and I expect efficiency of creatures to be poor, so that aggro-decks will be next to impossible to draft. When looking at possible one-drops, it just struck me that all of them were so bad, and often completely wihtout impact past the first few turns. Two drops might not be that much better, so unless I'm careful the correct strategy becomes to just eschew low-drops altogether. Is this reasonable speculation? Should I try to mitigate it by having low drops be "slightly less bad" than the higher drops?
Fixing. I think I need some fixing, and was thinking about having the Guildgates and the bouncelands. Not terrible lands by any means, but I figure some amount of fixing is necessary. The concern again is that if things are too slow, then fixing and splashing becomes a very high priority. Will this be an issue? Unfortunately, the very bad fixing lands like the Homelands cycle and the Tempest cycle are only half cycles. I would have loved to have run the complete cycles of Tempest lands and Kamigawa Lands. (I probably would not run the Homelands cycle even in a bad cube, they are so awful). Should I pull back on fixing?
I think these were my main first points. Any advice is welcome!
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With a slower, lower power environment, I think you can do bare minimum fixing since it’s less punishing to miss your colors on curve. I like the synergy between the bouncelands and the scrylands, and I personally would go that route.
Could you say a few words about what made the spheres fun (even if it were only for 1 or 2 drafts), and what made people not come back? Was it terrible gameplay? Lack of arhcetypes? Lack of fun things to do?
I have looked a little bit around, and I think the cards might end up a little bit better than I had initially thought. I figure I have to have some sort of archetypes and buildarounds. So I need to have a power level elsewhere that makes it possible to throw in key cards for the archetypes I want to support without them being overpowered compared to the rest of the cube.
There are some cards and archetypes that seem fun and interesting, but are just a bit (or a lot) too weak to work in most limited environments, I'd love to get these to work.
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Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
What made it undesirable is that the cards are bad, so once the novelty wears off, the format was just stale. Traditional cubes are fun because they're exciting and powerful. A bunch of french vanilla creatures, mediocre removal and passable combat tricks doesn't make for a great cube experience. If that's what I was looking to play, I'd much rather hone my retail limited skills.
Not trying to be discouraging, I'm just giving you my honest opinion of how Spheres have played out for me in the past.
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!
You need to explain what certain cards do like rebirth, when I played it did nothing.
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
I included most of the common changelings and unusual tribal synergies, like giants. Theres a large spirit/arcane presence which people immediately recognize as bad but gives them something to latch onto.
Any useful one or two off buildaround I could find is in too, like where ancients tread, death pit offering, pyromancer's assault, conflux,muraganda petroglyphs, or booby trap because I have gone super deep on lantern control.
Oh, and I've also included almost all of the intro deck planeswalkers like Chandra, Pyrogenius. People sorta like those.
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I also included a few relics of days past like Ihsan's Shade.
The end result was that the board would stall out with no way to break through. Junktroller became a top first pick because it would let you win the decking war. I think that it was fun to draft once, before the metagame was known, but it wasn't worth repeating.
What can be sustainably interesting is cubing for synergies. ie. starting with a pile of multifaceted middling-power cards like Mogg War Marshal, Moldervine Cloak, Waterfront Bouncer, Zulaport Cutthroat and Seeker of the Way, running 3 copies of each, and trying to build an environment that tries to turn them into slam first picks.
What's kept it interesting for me is that I try to include cards that are bad but interesting, like Junk Golem, Unstable Shapeshifter, and Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded. Obviously if you have One with Nothing in your cube, that's good for a laugh the first time anyone sees it, but no one will ever pick it. And while Squire can at least attack and block, but it doesn't make for interesting games. Try to limit your cube to cards that people will actually pick. (A few exceptions just for laughs is fine.)
Another problem I often see with bad cubes is inconsistent power level. Bad cards in the 1-4 mana range are often just straight-up bad, but bad cards in the 5+ range are usually just bad for their cost. That means games with a poorly designed bad cube often have nothing happen in the first 4 turns or so, and then you start just playing overcosted things. You really have to stick to a consistent power structure to combat this, which often means including cards that don't feel that bad. For example, Gray Ogre would be slightly underpowered in my cube, but Durkwood Boars would be too good. Generally, 5 mana gets you a 3/3, so that your 3-mana 2/2s don't feel totally outclassed in the mid-to-late game.
And finally, try to include hidden synergies! It's amazing when you Amrou Scout out an Amoeboid Changeling so you can steal something with Goatnapper!
You're right about fixing, though. I'm running the two cycles you've mentioned, but honestly, the fixing in a bad card cube doesn't have to be bad.
It looks like you've put a decent amount of thought into how you'd design this cube, and I think your intuitions are largely correct. If you end up making the cube, I'd definitely like to see it!
My list on CubeTutor isn't completely up-to-date, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what I believe a well-desinged bad card cube looks like: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/9574