A few months back there was a lot of discussion about creating a cube for Redemption. Little did they know that there was already one in the works. I have partnered with Andy Fish at Your Turn Games to create a cube that he would be willing and able to distribute on his website. Before we go any further I guess we should define what a cube is and then explain the thought process behind our end result.
A google search says the definition of a cube is: “A cube is a custom draft format of Magic: the Gathering. Traditionally cubes are sets of 360 or more unique cards chosen by the Cube's designer, drafted like a booster draft. There are no hard rules. Within and beyond that template, Cube can be whatever you like.” For Redemption this is basically the same thing. Instead of buying packs to do a booster draft you create a draft experience with a particular set of cards. The advantage of this is the controlled environment created that can help new players understand how the drafting process is done without a financial investment that they might otherwise not be able to afford. It also creates an environment in which there are no questions about duplicate cards, unique characters and needing to know rules other than deck building rules and those that are part of the cards themselves.
As far as what is included, it was alluded to just briefly. First, we wanted a set of cards that did not include any duplicate cards. That means exact copies of cards, which will often happen in a typical draft experience, and also no duplicate characters. This ensures there is no need to see if you have the same unique character in play, or the rarer case of the same character in the same battle. Every card is legal for play all the time with no additional complications.
When first building the cube, both Andy and I knew it would make sense for it to be built around the Roots set, as it is easy to acquire and there are copies of those cards available to both Andy and the community. The next question answered was how many cards were to be included. The number that was agreed upon was 600 cards. This gave us extreme flexibility. The recommendation for building the cube is for the host to package the cards randomly into 15 card piles or packs. Then allow people to pick their packs that they will draft and then proceed with the rules for drafting. Given the 15 card packs the host can support up to 10 people with this cube with each player drafting 60 cards to help build their decks. Using less players allows people to either draft more cards, or allow some packs not to be used which creates unique experiences each time the draft is played.
Now building off of the foundation of Roots and knowing the end number, further discussions were had to reach the desired outcome. While it might seem strange that certain cards were left out of the cube, it was done intentionally for a few different reasons. The first reason was that the goal of creating the cube in the first place was to give not only the community a product that they can strive to build, but creating a product itself. By allowing Andy to be a part of this from the beginning we were able to make sure cards that were selected to be included were cards that Andy was able to supply to the community. Very prominently dominants were one of the first things cut as they are found within so many decks, including decks Your Turn Games already offers, making them hard to keep in stock. Another reason dominants were removed is also the power level that can be created by someone drafting multiple dominants that might not be available to others, since again we have one card per cube. Next, was an intentional decision to make this cube as beginner friendly as possible. The cube as a whole was created with the desire that when a card is played, it simply works. If there are a lot of requirements for a card to work properly, it is not unusual for that card to ultimately do nothing within the draft setting. Meaning that cards that have little to no requirements for them to fully activate were chosen. Then for those cards that did need requirements, those requirements were added to the cube to try to make sure they work as often as possible.
This led to several conversations on making sure that we had cards that seemed easier to play with, Andy had plenty of stock for, and that made our counts somewhat consistent. One of the hardest things was trying to balance the brigades and card types so that they are equally represented. While this is not the case within typical sets, we did feel that was important within the cube environment. This did get tricky as there is not a perfect way to do this within a card game that does not have a card pool that is even for each brigade. But regardless, we hope that you will be satisfied with the final results. Either way, know that time and effort was put into this product and was not created for something to just simply exist. With that information, I am grateful to be able to present to you the Your Turn Games sponsored cube draft!
Check it out here!
Redemption Cube
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