More Casual Variants to play?

R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
Mindmaster has been a lot of fun on this site, even if I've fallen off the wagon for extended periods of time. The Ultimate drafts have been fun. The Build-a-Decks were amazing! Our Season League has captivated a number of you!

However, it seems like we could be doing more to promote Casual play in the magic community. Sure, we're not a large community, but we get noticed from time-to-time and we advocate fun games.

I suggest we test out some other variants that have garnered attention over the past few years. Planechase. Archenemy. EDH (more games!). Even Cube drafting... which is where I would like to start. The Ultimate drafts have been awesome, but extremely time-consuming. Shouldn't Cube drafting be even worse. Not necessarily. Not with the website I showed you guys a while ago, ccgdecks.com.

I swear that this is not an advertisement. I have been using ccgdecks since Zendikar came out to simulate drafting newer sets and get an idea of what decks are possible to make. Recently, I've imported these decks to Magic Workstation to gain playing experience without having to pay (PrinceRXI has been doing the same with me).

We can apply this same concept to a cube draft. You are allowed to create your own set on ccgdecks and draft out of it. THEN, discuss with a player on this site a time to draft. You don't need 8 players, as you can fill the empty slots with bot drafters that draft pretty consistently. Just two players, a determined cube and the simulator. After decks are built, play them on the CPA for the community and the world to see.

Any takers?

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
I'll "start a conversation" with you, Spidey. It'll be better that way, I think.

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
Hmm.... maybe not. I actually thought a "conversation" would be more like chat, but I was wrong.

Go here. Register an account. Start with that. No private info. No payment. Just like CPA.

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
turgy22

turgy22

Nothing Special
I'm always up for trying new MTG variants. I prefer draft-type formats over anything that requires actual deck-building, but I'm up for anything. Can you refresh my memory on what cube drafting is, though? Or perhaps direct me to where it's explained or where we've discussed it before? I'm too lazy to look it up myself.

Also, I know no one else was interested in this, but BigBlue came up with the "topdeck" format and we played a few games of that awhile back. It's where you have no hand and can basically pick any card to draw each turn. It was a ridiculously broken format and I spent WAY too much time looking up the perfect card to draw each turn, but I had a ton of fun playing it.

You know what else would be fun? Maybe starting up a tribal game. We should really look into that.
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
Cube drafting is a variant of casual drafting where an individual designs her/her own custom set of 360+ individual cards (no repeats). When you have a group to cube, everyone grabs chunks/packs of the set in 15 card increments and drafts with them. I can't tell you how fun it is to open a pack and have to choose between Survival of the Fittest, Brainstorm, Dark Ritual or Tarmogoyf in pack one.

The point of mentioning this site was to eliminate the need to have someone PM packs to everyone. Rather than wait weeks/months for 1 draft to finish, you can finish a draft in 10-15 minutes on this site.

On the idea of tribal themes, you can do that with cube as well. Simply select only tribal focused cards in your cube and fire it up.

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Wait, so we have to come up with a set of 360+ cards? I'll have to be out, I don't have a lot of time to do that. I can barely find enough time to make a tribal deck...
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
No no no.... You don't have to create the pool. The website does not have to create a pool collectively. Any of us can create our OWN card pools. All you have to do is dedicate 10-15 minutes of time (pre-determined with the players that you've set) to draft. That's all.

Additionally, this is not like the Build-Our-Own Set thing. We will not be creating our own cards. Just card pools (or cubes) from our favorite cards in Magic's History.

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
So if I don't create a pool and the website doesn't create a pool, it's coming from another player? What if no one decides to build a pool (extreme example) due to time or whatever? We just don't start?
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
Or I can create a pool and post the list on the site so everyone can see the choices. And edit it over time to keep the card pool fresh.

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
<shrug> Whatever works to get a pool. I was just stating I don't have the time or know-how of the cards to get a pool together :)
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
K. Turns out that it takes a bit more effort to get a pool ready to draft on the site. I've e-mailed the guy who runs the site to add it and we've have some correspondence.

Ransac, cpa trash an
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
My set is ready to draft, but it's not in a state to be considered serious. It has less than 15 cards in the set and contains the most powerful cards of all time (Dwarven Pony, Orcish Librarian, Pearled Unicorn, etc.) plus a scrub copy of Black Lotus in the common spot to keep the power level of the set down. I'll be inputting my own cube soon enough and let all of you know in the event that any of you wishes to draft it.

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
Mooseman

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
I might be able to do this. I have cube drafted IRL, I always pick the wrong colors to build, so I build a second deck for games 2 and 3......

I have an account on there... still mooseman
 
R

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
So, I put up a video on Youtube showing how easy this website is for drafting uses. I don't think you guys are retards (except for Spidey), but this is moreso just to jumpstart more interest with you guys.

Here

Ransac, cpa trash man
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
:(

Can't view it from work 'cause it's blocked. Probably won't remember to do so at home... so I'll take your word for it :)
 
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