I'm sure that everyone at one point has thought about adding Vouchers inside Cube Drafts where you would draft something like "URZA LAND SET" and redeem an Urza's Tower, Urza's Mine and Urza's Power Plant after the draft.
I initially disliked this idea as I felt it ruins the concept of a limited format.
However, more recently, I noticed a complete lack of diversity among midrange archetypes in the cube as archetypes often focus on curving out and playing on color spells rather than building effective synergies. I'm currently brainstorming about the idea of adding Vouchers to help improve deck diversity:
1) Adding 2x Voucher for Thought-knot Seer and Reality Smasher. I think these cards are absolutely amazing staples in every eternal format. To have consistent Colorless Mana for either requires around 7-8 colorless sources. Moving your archetypes towards 7-8 Colorless sources could be a slight deck building constraint for archetypes already having 3-4 colorless lands and if an individual drafted both eldrazi, they could be much better rewarded. (I could see adding an Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi temple as the third voucher and drafting these 3 together is like drafting a "combo")
I personally would like more diversity among creature based archetypes, with more combo oriented mid-ranges that generate a combo style advantage (infinite mana) but isn't as powerful as one of the more traditional combos such as Splinter Twin.
I've noticed midrange creature strategies such as Pod/ Company based strategies, opening with mana dorks often struggle in power cubes as mana dorks are a significant downgrades compared to moxens. I personally would like more Company style strategies to be competitive against midrange and fast combo.
I've also found Tezzert/ Artifact decks relied too frequently on ramp with Tinker as a finisher. I'm thinking Thopter/ Sword could help diversify these fast artifact mana strageties. ?
Dark Depths and Thespian Stage to potentially help diversify land based strategies involving turbo exploration/ ramp where its more of a hybrid between ramp 6 drops and Dark Depths?
I'm not too crazy about adding these vouchers, but I'm feeling green or creature centric strategies are struggling somewhat against a all in combo-centric powered cube, with reanimator, sneak and show, splinter twin and storm. I'm hoping to potentially shift green's mana dorks to Boreal Druid or Magus of the Library (A card I think is severely underplayed) to have green's role to have an Eldrazi style theme or re-invigorate the company style decks in additional to the traditional ramp/ lands or Survival strategies.
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
I am curious to hear how this works out for you. My gut reaction is that it is really unfair. By drafting a voucher, I would effectively be drafting 1 or 2 cards more, per voucher than everyone else at the table. I think if you are going to do this, then the cards on the voucher need to be incredibly narrow, so that they only work together and not in any other decks. Otherwise the vouchers become the best draft pulls in the cube, and I think it could reduce diversity.
If you feel that the midrange strategies need more help, you can provide it, and remove the payoffs of more busted/fast mana-things. When I feel the format is getting stagnant, I pull out "packages of cards," and add in packages. I actually have a separate binder with different cube "packages" in it. Like a side board for the cube.
If the moxen are overpowering what you want the cube to do, add more hate or briefly remove a couple.
Maybe Eldrazi "invade" the cube for a month or two, and then disappear. I have actually been considering that myself lately, and I would remove a set of lands, and put pain lands and other colorless lands in their place to help support the eldrazi. Go down on other artifact creatures, or maybe pull a handful of cards from each color, and create an eldrazi section. 3 cards from each color, and 1 from each guild, is 25 eldrazi support cards.
Lately, my cube is visiting Ravnica and features multi-color (gold cards) heavily. I have added 20 new multi-color cards (1 per guild and shard) and more rocks that produce any color mana, and pulled 4 cards from every color and switched a few artifacts.
Also, I pulled out black hand destruction, and added in aggro instead. That way my drafters never quite get comfortable, but I don't have to over-haul everything.
If you want your cube to play differently, change it around and nudge your drafters in that direction, but again, I am supper curious to see how the vouchers work out.
Either way it is cube, so feel free to experiment, just listen to your drafters, and keep the play experience fun.
It's more that I just want to most broken powerful cube possible; The obvious choice is to add all the moxes, powers, storm support etc.
I kinda want the most diverse possible cube; I'm not a fan of 6-7 out of the 10 drafted decks being midrange tri color with "some" synergy.
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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
I initially disliked this idea as I felt it ruins the concept of a limited format.
However, more recently, I noticed a complete lack of diversity among midrange archetypes in the cube as archetypes often focus on curving out and playing on color spells rather than building effective synergies. I'm currently brainstorming about the idea of adding Vouchers to help improve deck diversity:
1) Adding 2x Voucher for Thought-knot Seer and Reality Smasher. I think these cards are absolutely amazing staples in every eternal format. To have consistent Colorless Mana for either requires around 7-8 colorless sources. Moving your archetypes towards 7-8 Colorless sources could be a slight deck building constraint for archetypes already having 3-4 colorless lands and if an individual drafted both eldrazi, they could be much better rewarded. (I could see adding an Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi temple as the third voucher and drafting these 3 together is like drafting a "combo")
2) Voucher for 2 Card Combos:
Myr Galvanizer + Palladium Myr
Devoted Druid + Vizier of Remedies
Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek
Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage
I personally would like more diversity among creature based archetypes, with more combo oriented mid-ranges that generate a combo style advantage (infinite mana) but isn't as powerful as one of the more traditional combos such as Splinter Twin.
I've noticed midrange creature strategies such as Pod/ Company based strategies, opening with mana dorks often struggle in power cubes as mana dorks are a significant downgrades compared to moxens. I personally would like more Company style strategies to be competitive against midrange and fast combo.
I've also found Tezzert/ Artifact decks relied too frequently on ramp with Tinker as a finisher. I'm thinking Thopter/ Sword could help diversify these fast artifact mana strageties. ?
Dark Depths and Thespian Stage to potentially help diversify land based strategies involving turbo exploration/ ramp where its more of a hybrid between ramp 6 drops and Dark Depths?
I'm not too crazy about adding these vouchers, but I'm feeling green or creature centric strategies are struggling somewhat against a all in combo-centric powered cube, with reanimator, sneak and show, splinter twin and storm. I'm hoping to potentially shift green's mana dorks to Boreal Druid or Magus of the Library (A card I think is severely underplayed) to have green's role to have an Eldrazi style theme or re-invigorate the company style decks in additional to the traditional ramp/ lands or Survival strategies.
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
If you feel that the midrange strategies need more help, you can provide it, and remove the payoffs of more busted/fast mana-things. When I feel the format is getting stagnant, I pull out "packages of cards," and add in packages. I actually have a separate binder with different cube "packages" in it. Like a side board for the cube.
If the moxen are overpowering what you want the cube to do, add more hate or briefly remove a couple.
Maybe Eldrazi "invade" the cube for a month or two, and then disappear. I have actually been considering that myself lately, and I would remove a set of lands, and put pain lands and other colorless lands in their place to help support the eldrazi. Go down on other artifact creatures, or maybe pull a handful of cards from each color, and create an eldrazi section. 3 cards from each color, and 1 from each guild, is 25 eldrazi support cards.
Lately, my cube is visiting Ravnica and features multi-color (gold cards) heavily. I have added 20 new multi-color cards (1 per guild and shard) and more rocks that produce any color mana, and pulled 4 cards from every color and switched a few artifacts.
Also, I pulled out black hand destruction, and added in aggro instead. That way my drafters never quite get comfortable, but I don't have to over-haul everything.
If you want your cube to play differently, change it around and nudge your drafters in that direction, but again, I am supper curious to see how the vouchers work out.
Either way it is cube, so feel free to experiment, just listen to your drafters, and keep the play experience fun.
I kinda want the most diverse possible cube; I'm not a fan of 6-7 out of the 10 drafted decks being midrange tri color with "some" synergy.
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
You might consider strengthening control to help push out some midrange decks.