After some discussion about house ruling Squadron Hawks, I decided to make custom Package Deal cards for my cube. When you draft one, you can cash them in during deck construction for the cards listed on them.
One has all 6 artifact lands.
One has Ornithopther, Phyrexian Walker, Shield Sphere, Tormod's Crypt, Bone Saw, and Fountain of Youth.
One is 3 copies of each Tron land, and Glasses of Urza and Urza's Chalice because why not?
One is 6post. 3 copies of Glimmerpost, 3 copies of Cloudpost.
These have all turned out to be reasonable. People freak out about them not being in the spirit of drafting or whatever, but they're just fine. Tron isn't even that good, and on average you only see half of 6 post.
From thinking about it for a short time, I come to think that the main reason for doing this would be to increase consistency within archetypes that are served by the packages you create. While in and of itself not a bad idea, it collides with my personal goal that my cube is trying to achieve: Something different everytime without any form of hourlong brewing (except building the cube itself and thinking about changes almost daily :P).
Adopting package creation leads cube to more constructed-stylish outcomes. The basic idea of having packages is: "If you want one of this card, you will want all of them", which is the opposite of unexpected deck-composition that I so love about cube. I mean, I could make packages "Stoneforge Mystic, Umezawas Jitte, Recruiter of the Guard", or "Crucible of World, Life from the Loam, Ramunap Excavator", and while I'm sure I would extremely enjoy those packages, I would end up playing a smaller variety of decks over the long run, because I either assemble all the pieces or none. This last part is hinting at the more constructed-style gameplay you'll get. You either have Deck A because you managed to get package A, or you have Deck B because you got package B and so on.
I'm sketching it in a binary way and I know it's exaggerated, but without very in-depth analysis of the idea I wouldn't know where to stop with the package-density and the package-composition. I know for sure however that it leads into constructed-terrain, and that is not a place I want to be at, ever.
All in all, I don't see this idea being good for me as a permanent change of my Cube-environment. It might be nice however to once in a while allow for some more streamlined drafting, if there were some packages and every player can choose exactly one and build a very specific deck with it and the rest of the cards they drafted.
From thinking about it for a short time, I come to think that the main reason for doing this would be to increase consistency within archetypes that are served by the packages you create. While in and of itself not a bad idea, it collides with my personal goal that my cube is trying to achieve: Something different everytime without any form of hourlong brewing (except building the cube itself and thinking about changes almost daily :P).
Adopting package creation leads cube to more constructed-stylish outcomes. The basic idea of having packages is: "If you want one of this card, you will want all of them", which is the opposite of unexpected deck-composition that I so love about cube. I mean, I could make packages "Stoneforge Mystic, Umezawas Jitte, Recruiter of the Guard", or "Crucible of World, Life from the Loam, Ramunap Excavator", and while I'm sure I would extremely enjoy those packages, I would end up playing a smaller variety of decks over the long run, because I either assemble all the pieces or none. This last part is hinting at the more constructed-style gameplay you'll get. You either have Deck A because you managed to get package A, or you have Deck B because you got package B and so on.
I'm sketching it in a binary way and I know it's exaggerated, but without very in-depth analysis of the idea I wouldn't know where to stop with the package-density and the package-composition. I know for sure however that it leads into constructed-terrain, and that is not a place I want to be at, ever.
All in all, I don't see this idea being good for me as a permanent change of my Cube-environment. It might be nice however to once in a while allow for some more streamlined drafting, if there were some packages and every player can choose exactly one and build a very specific deck with it and the rest of the cards they drafted.
You and I have different concepts of package deals. I have package deals in my cube in order to boost otherwise undraftable or niche cards. Maybe out of my zero mana artifacts package deal, you play ornithopter and fountain of youth, and then if your opponent has graveyard synergies you board in Tormod's Crypt.
Putting Posts or Tron in the draft environment would require a lot of slots and require the stars to align in order to get enough pieces to assemble Tron. Package deals make that easier.
Artifact lands would be fine outside of a package deal, I just don't want to spend 6 slots on them or require a drafter to waste 6 picks just because they have a single Frogmite in their deck.
Your concept of using package deals for already powerful synergies is interesting.
I tested package deals a little bit and the problem is that it adds two decent playables into your deck (say 4x Squadron hawk) and this is incredibly powerful in a limited format where the drafter could take advantage of this and pick up more fixing.
I will add that the 2x ghost quarter package is an exception to this rule - land destruction is a badly needed effect that unfortunately is weak outside of Strip Mine/ Wasteland and adding 2 colorless lands is a strong enough drawback to deck building where the drafter will need to pick up +1 dual land to compensate for the colorless mana.
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
One has all 6 artifact lands.
One has Ornithopther, Phyrexian Walker, Shield Sphere, Tormod's Crypt, Bone Saw, and Fountain of Youth.
One is 3 copies of each Tron land, and Glasses of Urza and Urza's Chalice because why not?
One is 6post. 3 copies of Glimmerpost, 3 copies of Cloudpost.
These have all turned out to be reasonable. People freak out about them not being in the spirit of drafting or whatever, but they're just fine. Tron isn't even that good, and on average you only see half of 6 post.
It's something that I recommend. Thoughts?
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Adopting package creation leads cube to more constructed-stylish outcomes. The basic idea of having packages is: "If you want one of this card, you will want all of them", which is the opposite of unexpected deck-composition that I so love about cube. I mean, I could make packages "Stoneforge Mystic, Umezawas Jitte, Recruiter of the Guard", or "Crucible of World, Life from the Loam, Ramunap Excavator", and while I'm sure I would extremely enjoy those packages, I would end up playing a smaller variety of decks over the long run, because I either assemble all the pieces or none. This last part is hinting at the more constructed-style gameplay you'll get. You either have Deck A because you managed to get package A, or you have Deck B because you got package B and so on.
I'm sketching it in a binary way and I know it's exaggerated, but without very in-depth analysis of the idea I wouldn't know where to stop with the package-density and the package-composition. I know for sure however that it leads into constructed-terrain, and that is not a place I want to be at, ever.
All in all, I don't see this idea being good for me as a permanent change of my Cube-environment. It might be nice however to once in a while allow for some more streamlined drafting, if there were some packages and every player can choose exactly one and build a very specific deck with it and the rest of the cards they drafted.
You and I have different concepts of package deals. I have package deals in my cube in order to boost otherwise undraftable or niche cards. Maybe out of my zero mana artifacts package deal, you play ornithopter and fountain of youth, and then if your opponent has graveyard synergies you board in Tormod's Crypt.
Putting Posts or Tron in the draft environment would require a lot of slots and require the stars to align in order to get enough pieces to assemble Tron. Package deals make that easier.
Artifact lands would be fine outside of a package deal, I just don't want to spend 6 slots on them or require a drafter to waste 6 picks just because they have a single Frogmite in their deck.
Your concept of using package deals for already powerful synergies is interesting.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
The other possibility you could consider is you have a base cube and you have a possible "packages cube" for the special events.
I will add that the 2x ghost quarter package is an exception to this rule - land destruction is a badly needed effect that unfortunately is weak outside of Strip Mine/ Wasteland and adding 2 colorless lands is a strong enough drawback to deck building where the drafter will need to pick up +1 dual land to compensate for the colorless mana.
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i