I've tried to find this info in a bunch of places, but haven't found it.
How do you make packs for your cube?
Do you shuffle everything together and get a random 15? Do you use some type of rarity system? Do you seed the packs with one card of each color and then randomize the rest?
I originally tried making packs to be somewhat color distributed, but it was tiring and rather unnecessary.
I've had more fun just shuffling the entire cube and having each person make their own packs (or just "drawing" a new pack when it's time for one) - it's casual and while it can sometimes create some weird packs, it's a more cube-like experience.
My 720 card Cube is sorted into each color, colorless, multi, and lands. We take a percentage of each section based on how many people are drafting and then make packs randomly. For example, when we have 8 players we use half the cards of the Cube, so I will count out 48 of the 96 blue cards, etc. This helps the draft so that everything is balanced at the macro level, but packs don't give weird signals from color distribution equally planted in the packs. I have tried shuffling up 720 cards and making packs completely randomly, but you have some awkward variance when the draft sees 70% of your blue cards and only 30% of your red cards.
Eh, if you actually shuffle the full 720 sufficiently, you'll more or less never get 30% or 70% of a color to show up. Or, at least not until your 30,000th draft or so on average.
WoTC does color-balance booster packs to a degree, so players who are used to retail limited are used to seeing a certain amount of color balance in each booster pack. This makes the distribution in truly randomized cube packs jarring to players who are new to cube. I have at least one player who is completely new to cubing in nearly every cube draft, so I do try to cater to them and color-balancing booster packs is one way to do that.
Here's the system I use to balance my packs by color. I sort out each mono-colored card into a separate stack for each color, then shuffle each mono-colored stack. I then shuffle all the lands, colorless and multicolored cards into a single stack of "miscellaneous" cards, which I divide up into 5 equal parts, then shuffle each of those into one of the piles of mono-colored cards. This leaves me with 5 equally sized stacks that are each about 3/4 mono-colored in a particular color and 1/4 land/colorless/multicolored. Then I take 3 cards from each of these stacks to make booster packs and put each one in a 4"X6" Ziploc bag(trust me, this last step is worth it).
This system might sound a little complicated, but I've found it doesn't actually take me any more time than just randomly shuffling a 465 card cube, and it leaves packs that usually have at least one card in each color and never more than three of the same color. If anything, it actually saves me time because I don't waste time overshuffling randomly and hoping I get it right.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Regular booster packs often miss cards of a given color. The only thing that's "seeded" are the print runs, which are balanced before randomizing them (aka, the cube list). And ensuring that there's at least one card of each color telegraphs information to the other drafters when their second pick is missing a color from the pack. When you look at your P1P2, and it's missing a white card, you KNOW the drafter to your right took the lone white card from the pack, and I think that's really bad practice. The cube list functions as your balanced "print run", and all random packs prevent telegraphed information. It's the most similar to cracking regular boosters, and it cannot give away free information.
This system doesn't guarantee a card of each color in every pack because I could pick 3 colorless, gold, or lands from a particular stack, only that there won't be more than 3 cards of the same color. Packs completely free of one color still happen occasionally. This does mean that if there are 3 green cards in a pack you know a (mono)green card wasn't picked yet, but a pack missing a color doesn't actually guarantee it was picked. I also think seeing three green cards late in a pack should be a reasonable signal that green is open.
The biggest benefit, though, is I don't hear anymore complaining about how the cube didn't get shuffled when they see 5+ red cards in the same pack. This seems to come up more often in cube drafts than in retail packs. A seasoned cube draft group probably doesn't care about this if they know you shuffle well, so fully random probably works fine for your group. That's not who I usually play with, though, and because of the nature of my playgroups it might never be.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Eh, if you actually shuffle the full 720 sufficiently, you'll more or less never get 30% or 70% of a color to show up. Or, at least not until your 30,000th draft or so on average.
The key here is "sufficiently." Sufficiently randomizing a 720 card Cube is incredibly time consuming, and from my experience it does not work out like you want it to. My method of balancing the macro numbers of the draft is faster if everyone in your group sorts their decks into colors after the drafts. Also it makes it so that my 720 card Cube drafts exactly like a 360 card Cube - for a 360 8 man all colors are going to have equal numbers, so that is my goal.
And depending on the number of players, our cube's rule of thumb is to only allow players to see each pack twice MAX. So to have more packs with less cards (around 44-45 cards in a draft)
8 players - 3 packs of 15 cards
7 players - 4 packs of 11/12 cards
6 players - 5 packs of 9, or 4 packs of 11/12 cards
5 players - 5 packs of 9
4 players - 6 packs of 7/8
But I'm sure all cube groups are different, in how they manage their draft packs
For example, when we have 8 players we use half the cards of the Cube, so I will count out 48 of the 96 blue cards, etc.
I think I missed a step here. After you count out the % of cards from each pile, do you just shuffle those together or do you seed the color some how?
Nothing is seeded after the card pool is made. Like many others I don't like obvious signaling based on what's missing (or even if it's less obvious with partial seeding). For me the important thing is that the draft as a whole is balanced and has an AVERAGE ratio of the following per pack:
2 of each color
2 nonbasic land
1.5 multi
1.5 colorless
It works out perfect for this ratio with section totals of 96 and 72 respectively and ratios drawn out of the total pool depending on number of players. Hope that makes sense.
Keep the whole thing shuffled, have everyone shuffle the entire thing for a minute or two, then everyone makes packs. Keeping the whole thing random can make it annoying when making a switch to find the card, but ultimately it saves time from sorting and figuring out appropriate numbers for colors. We do glimpse drafting almost exclusively so most every card is used for 3-4 man drafts as is, but even when making a smaller pool it's rare that the colors feel massively disproportionate.
I use a system similar to Dan and Pat's. I separate and shuffle by section (each monocolor, plus a joint multi/lands/colorless misc section), then try to distribute roughly balanced amounts of each section into packs. To Mark's point, I actually allow myself a little sloppiness here and there so the packs don't seem "?too perfect".
One big point I want to make, since it hasn't been brought up yet, is that I do all the shuffling at home (in my spare time). I try never to shuffle day of, let alone expect my drafters to do the work for me. This is probably a surprising approach to some, but it's worked out well. One thing I hated about more "traditional" cube shuffling is that almost always resulted in this annoying prep period where the cube manager(s) and/or the other drafters had to setup the packs on the spot. I always found this both unnecessarily time-consuming and an unfair expectation of the drafters. So pre-shuffling at home was always gonna be the one and only option for my cubes, and every other pack-related decision (from methodology, to margins, to packaging) has been born out of this perspective.
Obviously this method has pros and cons, but I've never gotten a severe complaints. Probably the one thing that helped the most was adjusting my packaging system to separate by pack (i.e. 15 cards) instead of by drafter (45).
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Sounds good, I think I'm going to go with the "keep the overall pool balanced, but do random packs" method.
For the people who make packs ahead of time, how do you separate the packs? Do you just flip them around to indicate a new pack? Use some type of divider? Wrap them in something?
I use a system similar to Dan and Pat's. I separate and shuffle by section (each monocolor, plus a joint multi/lands/colorless misc section), then try to distribute roughly balanced amounts of each section into packs. To Mark's point, I actually allow myself a little sloppiness here and there so the packs don't seem "?too perfect".
One big point I want to make, since it hasn't been brought up yet, is that I do all the shuffling at home (in my spare time). I try never to shuffle day of, let alone expect my drafters to do the work for me. This is probably a surprising approach to some, but it's worked out well. One thing I hated about more "traditional" cube shuffling is that almost always resulted in this annoying prep period where the cube manager(s) and/or the other drafters had to setup the packs on the spot. I always found this both unnecessarily time-consuming and an unfair expectation of the drafters. So pre-shuffling at home was always gonna be the one and only option for my cubes, and every other pack-related decision (from methodology, to margins, to packaging) has been born out of this perspective.
Obviously this method has pros and cons, but I've never gotten a severe complaints. Probably the one thing that helped the most was adjusting my packaging system to separate by pack (i.e. 15 cards) instead of by drafter (45).
That is cool that you do that for them. Usually we'll just chit-chat about ***** during this as I don't see everyone I play with on the reg, so it's nice for a communal reason to all shuffle together. If the guy whose cube we usually use wasn't traveling to get to us, we might pre-pack them, but the process takes about 5 minutes for us and that's never been an issue. (Except when some ******** think he's going to get out of shuffling...)
(Except when some ******** think he's going to get out of shuffling...)
I'm sure you're joking, but this kinda goes to my point. That said, I'm glad your group can generally get enjoyment out of the process (that was never the case for mine).
For the people who make packs ahead of time, how do you separate the packs? Do you just flip them around to indicate a new pack? Use some type of divider? Wrap them in something?
For my cubes, I've basically just used dividers from the getgo. I briefly considered some kind of sealing method, but they're all really superfluous and cumbersome (not to mention expensive).
After I started with WotC/UltraPro ones, I realized those were either too bulky or too flimsy. So I found the awesome BCW dividers for card boxes. They work great in my Cub3 at home and traveling case(s). I use about 25 - 26 of these to divide up 24 packs. Most players like them both for time saving and to clearly indicate which cards are being passed and which are still "sealed".
Yeah I'm 100% joking. If someone was really that much of a prick that he refused to help us shuffle for a few minutes, we probably wouldn't invite him back. We're not really asking a lot, you know? It just never really bothered our core group. It's also partly because we're not going to ask the guy whose cube we use the most to make packs before he comes over to draft with us, we'll happily take a few minutes as a collective instead of asking him to do more work when he's already done so much in constructing and maintaining the cube.
Time constraints are a big concern where I play with both of my playgroups. In one we're usually playing after a retail booster draft on a Sunday, so people don't want to get home on time. In the other, we're playing after work on a weeknight and the Seoul subway closes at around midnight, so we have to finish on time for people to be able to get home. We can't afford to waste time shuffling and making packs right before the draft so I take the time to do it ahead of time.
For the people who make packs ahead of time, how do you separate the packs? Do you just flip them around to indicate a new pack? Use some type of divider? Wrap them in something?
I briefly considered some kind of sealing method, but they're all really superfluous and cumbersome (not to mention expensive).
Ziploc baggies work great for me. 4" X 6" (10cm X 15cm) fits a pack of 15 double sleeved cards just fine, and a pack of 20 costs about $1 at my local dollar store.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I briefly considered some kind of sealing method, but they're all really superfluous and cumbersome (not to mention expensive).
Ziploc baggies work great for me. 4" X 6" (10cm X 15cm) fits a pack of 15 double sleeved cards just fine, and a pack of 20 costs about $1 at my local dollar store.
Ah, but it's not opaque. (To each their own though.)
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
I keep my cards in it's box, and when we want to draft we shuffle like mad, and then randomly pull 15 card packs. We don't use all the cards in the cube, so color balance and power balance is rarely clean, but we still have fun. The more people that play, the less of a problem it becomes.
Separating into colors to balance it out seems like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a headache for someone as lazy as myself.
I keep my cards in it's box, and when we want to draft we shuffle like mad, and then randomly pull 15 card packs. We don't use all the cards in the cube, so color balance and power balance is rarely clean, but we still have fun. The more people that play, the less of a problem it becomes.
Separating into colors to balance it out seems like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a headache for someone as lazy as myself.
It also feels wrong to be able to calculate the amount of a color left. You could hypothetically figure out a good estimate of how much of a color to expect through each pack if you're doing numbers the same for each color.
I briefly considered some kind of sealing method, but they're all really superfluous and cumbersome (not to mention expensive).
Ziploc baggies work great for me. 4" X 6" (10cm X 15cm) fits a pack of 15 double sleeved cards just fine, and a pack of 20 costs about $1 at my local dollar store.
Ah, but it's not opaque. (To each their own though.)
I just flip the bottom card over so no one can see the bottom card. My friend who runs a cube and also bags his packs puts a token card in the bottom of each pack.
Separating into colors to balance it out seems like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a headache for someone as lazy as myself.
It takes about 5 minutes to sort by color before I start shuffling.
It also feels wrong to be able to calculate the amount of a color left. You could hypothetically figure out a good estimate of how much of a color to expect through each pack if you're doing numbers the same for each color.
You only hypothetically know if a color wasn't picked if you see 3 cards in that color. I also haven't told my drafters about my shuffling system, and I'm pretty sure they're not reading this thread, so you know more about it than they do.
There, my shuffling system is perfect.
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465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Add me to the cubists who totally randomize all the packs.
There will sometimes be "land packs" - 3 lands! But overall since it's a draft it will matter less than sealed.
[quote from="Edward Mass »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/694511-how-to-make-packs?comment=21"][quote from="Spike Rogue »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/694511-how-to-make-packs?comment=20"]
You only hypothetically know if a color wasn't picked if you see 3 cards in that color. I also haven't told my drafters about my shuffling system, and I'm pretty sure they're not reading this thread, so you know more about it than they do.
You're in trouble when I make my way out to Korea
(But I mean, if I count ~15 green cards in the first pack and I know there are only 30-40 in the pool, I can make some guesses and inferences based off that and use that information pack to pack. It's a lot of mental work at times to keep track of, but it was something players in my group did until we randomized the whole thing as it actually did make a difference.)
How do you make packs for your cube?
Do you shuffle everything together and get a random 15? Do you use some type of rarity system? Do you seed the packs with one card of each color and then randomize the rest?
Any help would be appreciated
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=63536
Don't for get to put have and want tags in your trade threads! If you want to know how, ask!
I've had more fun just shuffling the entire cube and having each person make their own packs (or just "drawing" a new pack when it's time for one) - it's casual and while it can sometimes create some weird packs, it's a more cube-like experience.
[Developing] 430+ Peasant Cube Thread --- [and on Cube Cobra]
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!
Here's the system I use to balance my packs by color. I sort out each mono-colored card into a separate stack for each color, then shuffle each mono-colored stack. I then shuffle all the lands, colorless and multicolored cards into a single stack of "miscellaneous" cards, which I divide up into 5 equal parts, then shuffle each of those into one of the piles of mono-colored cards. This leaves me with 5 equally sized stacks that are each about 3/4 mono-colored in a particular color and 1/4 land/colorless/multicolored. Then I take 3 cards from each of these stacks to make booster packs and put each one in a 4"X6" Ziploc bag(trust me, this last step is worth it).
This system might sound a little complicated, but I've found it doesn't actually take me any more time than just randomly shuffling a 465 card cube, and it leaves packs that usually have at least one card in each color and never more than three of the same color. If anything, it actually saves me time because I don't waste time overshuffling randomly and hoping I get it right.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
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!
The biggest benefit, though, is I don't hear anymore complaining about how the cube didn't get shuffled when they see 5+ red cards in the same pack. This seems to come up more often in cube drafts than in retail packs. A seasoned cube draft group probably doesn't care about this if they know you shuffle well, so fully random probably works fine for your group. That's not who I usually play with, though, and because of the nature of my playgroups it might never be.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
The key here is "sufficiently." Sufficiently randomizing a 720 card Cube is incredibly time consuming, and from my experience it does not work out like you want it to. My method of balancing the macro numbers of the draft is faster if everyone in your group sorts their decks into colors after the drafts. Also it makes it so that my 720 card Cube drafts exactly like a 360 card Cube - for a 360 8 man all colors are going to have equal numbers, so that is my goal.
I think I missed a step here. After you count out the % of cards from each pile, do you just shuffle those together or do you seed the color some how?
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=63536
Don't for get to put have and want tags in your trade threads! If you want to know how, ask!
8 players - 3 packs of 15 cards
7 players - 4 packs of 11/12 cards
6 players - 5 packs of 9, or 4 packs of 11/12 cards
5 players - 5 packs of 9
4 players - 6 packs of 7/8
But I'm sure all cube groups are different, in how they manage their draft packs
Nothing is seeded after the card pool is made. Like many others I don't like obvious signaling based on what's missing (or even if it's less obvious with partial seeding). For me the important thing is that the draft as a whole is balanced and has an AVERAGE ratio of the following per pack:
2 of each color
2 nonbasic land
1.5 multi
1.5 colorless
It works out perfect for this ratio with section totals of 96 and 72 respectively and ratios drawn out of the total pool depending on number of players. Hope that makes sense.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
One big point I want to make, since it hasn't been brought up yet, is that I do all the shuffling at home (in my spare time). I try never to shuffle day of, let alone expect my drafters to do the work for me. This is probably a surprising approach to some, but it's worked out well. One thing I hated about more "traditional" cube shuffling is that almost always resulted in this annoying prep period where the cube manager(s) and/or the other drafters had to setup the packs on the spot. I always found this both unnecessarily time-consuming and an unfair expectation of the drafters. So pre-shuffling at home was always gonna be the one and only option for my cubes, and every other pack-related decision (from methodology, to margins, to packaging) has been born out of this perspective.
Obviously this method has pros and cons, but I've never gotten a severe complaints. Probably the one thing that helped the most was adjusting my packaging system to separate by pack (i.e. 15 cards) instead of by drafter (45).
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
For the people who make packs ahead of time, how do you separate the packs? Do you just flip them around to indicate a new pack? Use some type of divider? Wrap them in something?
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=63536
Don't for get to put have and want tags in your trade threads! If you want to know how, ask!
That is cool that you do that for them. Usually we'll just chit-chat about ***** during this as I don't see everyone I play with on the reg, so it's nice for a communal reason to all shuffle together. If the guy whose cube we usually use wasn't traveling to get to us, we might pre-pack them, but the process takes about 5 minutes for us and that's never been an issue. (Except when some ******** think he's going to get out of shuffling...)
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
I'm sure you're joking, but this kinda goes to my point. That said, I'm glad your group can generally get enjoyment out of the process (that was never the case for mine).
For my cubes, I've basically just used dividers from the getgo. I briefly considered some kind of sealing method, but they're all really superfluous and cumbersome (not to mention expensive).
After I started with WotC/UltraPro ones, I realized those were either too bulky or too flimsy. So I found the awesome BCW dividers for card boxes. They work great in my Cub3 at home and traveling case(s). I use about 25 - 26 of these to divide up 24 packs. Most players like them both for time saving and to clearly indicate which cards are being passed and which are still "sealed".
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Ziploc baggies work great for me. 4" X 6" (10cm X 15cm) fits a pack of 15 double sleeved cards just fine, and a pack of 20 costs about $1 at my local dollar store.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Ah, but it's not opaque. (To each their own though.)
I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
Cubes:
Modern Banlist Cube
Monocolor Budget Cube
Separating into colors to balance it out seems like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much of a headache for someone as lazy as myself.
It also feels wrong to be able to calculate the amount of a color left. You could hypothetically figure out a good estimate of how much of a color to expect through each pack if you're doing numbers the same for each color.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
I just flip the bottom card over so no one can see the bottom card. My friend who runs a cube and also bags his packs puts a token card in the bottom of each pack.
It takes about 5 minutes to sort by color before I start shuffling.
You only hypothetically know if a color wasn't picked if you see 3 cards in that color. I also haven't told my drafters about my shuffling system, and I'm pretty sure they're not reading this thread, so you know more about it than they do.
There, my shuffling system is perfect.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
There will sometimes be "land packs" - 3 lands! But overall since it's a draft it will matter less than sealed.
You're in trouble when I make my way out to Korea
(But I mean, if I count ~15 green cards in the first pack and I know there are only 30-40 in the pool, I can make some guesses and inferences based off that and use that information pack to pack. It's a lot of mental work at times to keep track of, but it was something players in my group did until we randomized the whole thing as it actually did make a difference.)
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic