It has been a couple of months since my last post & for that I apologize. Boardgaming has taken a bit of a back seat since Padawan Babygeek came into my life where if I'm not minding Babygeek then I'd be taking care of Minigeek, although the latter case seems to be more of the norm. In my downtime I've been catching up on ALL the movies I've missed, watching "Let's Play" series of my favourite games on YouTube & building a Return to Ravnica Cube, which is the topic of my post today. (If you are unfamiliar or uninterested in Magic The Gathering, this post might not entirely be for you, sorry.)
Game(s) Built:
Magic: The Gathering
MTG – Building A RTR Cube
As mentioned in previous posts, I actually acquired a playset of commons & uncommons of the Avacyn Restored set which we used to draft by creating booster packs from those cards. It turned out to be "too" balanced because I actually balanced the created boosters for colours which does not tend to be the case in a real draft environment.
So Why Cube?
For those unfamiliar with the Cube format of Magic The Gathering, the Cube can be described as follows:
"The Cube is the best cards in Magic, stuffed together, to create incredibly fun experiences" - Evan Erwin (creator of The Magic Show)
Apart from the great endorsement above, there are quite a few aspects of Cube that appeal to me:
1) Cubes are usually built with singletons (only one copy of each card)
2) You choose the cards you want to include & don't have to include the "bad" cards
3) There are no limitations in terms of sets, you can use cards from any set you want or have
4) The Cube you build can be used forever & ever
All of the above creates additional tension in the drafting phase where card choice becomes more important. The cards that make up your Cube are supposed to be the best cards you own that simply ooze value & having only single copies of them makes Players really have to consider which cards to pass on as the likelihood of a bomb coming round again diminishes exponentially. Perhaps most importantly, the Cube’s longevity achieves my side objective of having fun with MTG on a budget.
Having decided that this is now the format for me, here's how I went about building my Return to Ravnica Cube.
Firstly, I decided that I would build a block Cube to start with as the cards would have better cohesion & avoid any weird interactions of inter block abilities. I couldn’t really build a Cube from the existing cards that I owned as my collection starts in 4th Edition, stops in Urza’s Saga then picks up in Avacyn Restored & is mostly skewed to Green & Red. So I asked my good friend Gideon which would be the block he would be most interested to draft & after some discussion, we settled on building a Return to Ravnica Cube, a fairly popular & big release that places emphasis on dual colors & designating color combinations into the ten guilds of Ravnica.
Acquiring the Cards
I proceeded to acquire a singleton set of commons and uncommons of the entire block. I used my previous contact for this but honestly the service provided this time around was not stellar so I can't really recommend him here. There were cards missing & some had multiples although I had requested for a singleton set. However the reality is that it is actually not as easy to get playsets off ebay in Malaysia so if you are still interested in the contact, leave a message & I will pass the contact on to you.
The rares & mythics would actually set me back a further RM900 which put me off the acquisition since this is supposed to be on a workable budget & for casual purposes only. This led me to the often not talked about aspect of Magic The Gathering... proxies.
Even Wizards uses proxies themselves
Acquiring the Cards through other means
Proxies are basically "pyrat3d" copies of Magic cards. You can draw your own cards, print them, use a cookie as a substitute… Basically use anything that would represent the original card to you & your opponents. Lacking any artistic skills whatsoever & similarly lacking sufficient differentiated cookies to proxy all the rares & mythics, I resorted to printing them. Personally I have "okayed" this with myself but if this doesn't sit well on your conscience, you should skip the next section & jump straight to the Cube’s skeleton.
There are lots of good printers in town but I used the one at this address:
942, Jalan 17/38, Seksyen 17, 46400 Petaling Jaya
Bear in mind that they actually don't have card stock so I had to buy poker cards to add thickness to the cards. I have been recommended another printer at this address but fair warning, I have no experience with the quality of their service:
11, 13 & 15, Jalan Juruanalisis U1/35, Hicom Glenmarie Industrial Park, 40150 Shah Alam
My first sample card which turned out pretty good
This works out to roughly RM0.20 per card
I wish I had one of those guillotine style cutters but that was too big an investment
As you can see they do end up a bit flimsy so some "backing" is required
The arts & crafts aspect of this did take some time to complete but there's a nice feeling that comes from pimping your boardgames plus it was something that I could do in my downtime. That done, I proceeded to determine the skeleton of my Cube:
Mental construction of the Cube
It perhaps makes more sense to mentally construct the cube before sourcing for the cards but I decided to reverse these two steps because I wanted to be able to tweak my cube without having to keep sourcing for the additional cards each time I tweaked it.
These were the few things I had to decide on:
1) Size of the cube = 450 cards = 10 Players (we will never have 10 Players but the size provides variety for future plays)
2) Balance (I decided to then split each category evenly down the middle to be fair to each color)
You can use Google Documents to keep your list online but I find their version of excel... limited
I first filtered out the cards that are "broken", in that the card simply doesn't work in a singleton environment. Then I first chose the creatures I thought provided the most value & then did the same for non-creatures (enchantments, sorceries, instants all lumped together).
I then uploaded my cube to www.cubetutor.com which provides (1) in depth analysis into your cube in terms of averages on just about every aspect of your cube & more importantly (2) allows you to draft your cube against bots. You can check mine out (or better still, draft it) at http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/26644
I didn't really like my first draft so here's what I did next. I basically used Luis Scott-Vargas' reviews of the entire block & simply chose all the cards he rated the highest in the limited format & whilst this might seem like the wrong way to go about it, the results turned out alright so this is what I stuck with.
Physical construction of the Cube
Apart from the cards, you're going to need a box to hold your cube as well as enough sleeves for your cube as well as your lands. Building my own box seemed a little beyond my DIY skills so I watched the Professor's reviews on the Tolarian Community College YouTube channel & settled on Ultimate Guard's Stack 'n' Safe for my box & KMC Hypermats for my sleeves, both available at this address:
Lot 1-038, Millennium Square Condominium, Jalan 14/1, Seksyen 14, 46100 Petaling Jaya
The finished product
Just a note that whatever sleeves you end up using, choose a color that you like so that in the event that you decide to build an additional Cube, you can share the lands between both Cubes if you have sleeves of the same color.
Now, it is time to sleeve your Cube till your finger prints disappear.
Drafting the Cube
So this step is still outstanding but there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel as we have confirmed the date of KFCgamers' next meet-up to be in May. Whilst we won't be drafting this at the first meet-up we will definitely be slotting this in for future sessions.
I hope that this localized version of building a Cube has been helpful in some way. I have not been paid in cash or kind to provide endorsement / advertisement for any of the above establishments (hence the addresses sans the business name) but I included them because sometimes we really don't know where to go or where to start. By all means, patron them or not at your own convenience & budget.
Do look forward to future session reports, which will include guest, Padawan Minigeek! Here you see her playing with Lords of Vegas components in a table I'm absolutely jealous of. If you know where I can get a six seater table with a coverable sink-in (see Minigeek’s table) apart from geekchic, do let me know.
Never too young to learn boardgames
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