Hello and welcome to a special edition of The Awesome Cube article series. Today, I'll be discussing Darwin Draft; a novel limited format that has become the primary way that my playgroup interacts with my cube. Now that we've hammered out the fine details regarding the format, I wanted to write a short article discussing what Darwin Draft is and how it works, its advantages and disadvantages as a format, why we opt to play it in the first place, and how it has affected the design philosophy of my own cube. Hopefully some of you out there give this a shot with your own cubes and find it enjoyable.

With all of that out of the way, let's jam.

One of the things that got me into Cube as a format was how it allowed my playgroup to experiment with different limited formats. While traditional 8 person drafting is definitely the most common way to play limited, it's far from the only way to do so. This is important because we've almost never had a full 8 players at the table. You can definitely do a traditional draft with fewer than 8 players, and we have, but fewer packs going around the table results in a very different experience. This can be adjusted by tweaking pack sizes, burning cards, adding additional packs, etc, but it's never quite the same as an 8 person draft pod.

During my cube's life span we've experimented with a ton of different styles of limited play including, but not limited, to the following: Sealed, Team Sealed, Team Draft, Anaconda, Backdraft, Emperor, Grid, Pancake, Quilting, Rochester, Rotisserie, Two-Headed Giant, Wacky, Winchester, and Winston drafts. Each of these formats have their own advantages, disadvantages, and idiosyncrasies that make them feel unique. The actual choice of which to play comes down to player preference as much as anything else, but at this stage in our lives, we are finding that our decisions are driven by the same two factors every week: time and player count.

Because of familial/work responsibilities and the difficulties involved in lining up player schedules, we're left with four players at a time and a grand total of 2-2.5 hours of table time per session. That's enough time to have a traditional draft and then play at most 1-2 matches with no time to discuss the performance of any cards or review deck lists. Being unable to play every other player who drafted is really disappointing, especially if you have one long match or have to stop in the middle of your second. It puts pressure on players during the drafting and deck building processes to make snappy decisions in a very complicated format that requires you to read an understand a lot of cards you may not be familiar with. It also makes it impossible for me to collect adequate data from my play group, which makes updating the cube more difficult than it needs to be. What we needed was a limited format that put less pressure on players to draft and play fast, allowed more matches to be played, and still allowed time for discussion to be had at the end of the night. We tried some of the previously mentioned limited formats and kept running into the same problems over and over again. The answer actually came to me while thinking of a way to introduce new players to cube.

Most players do not have a particularly positive or successful experience the first time they play a cube. They don't know what cards are in the cube, they don't know the general power level, are unaware of supported archetypes or combos, they're unfamiliar with the color balance, and they are unaware of the preferences of other people in the play group. This puts them at a severe disadvantage before they ever open a pack and look at a single card. Players adjust, particularly more experienced ones, but it takes time, and nearly always results in a messy first draft with several wasted picks. While some of this can be made up by playing well, players remember those missed opportunities and frustrations. What I wanted was a way to reduce the barrier to entry while still allowing for skill testing decisions to be made regarding the curation of one's card pool and the construction of their deck. I also wanted to accomplish the aforementioned goals regarding maximizing the amount of time we had to play given our limited number of players. Enter, Darwin Draft.

Darwin Draft is a pseudo-sealed deck that allows you to adjust your deck as you play your games. Each players selects a different two color combination to serve as the base of their deck. A deck is preconstructed by the curator of the cube, usually before players arrive for the draft, consisting of the following randomly selected cards. I'm using as an example.

10 cards
9 cards
3 gold cards
1 colorless/artifact card

4 dual lands
7 Island
6 Mountain

There is no consideration made for mana curve, card type, strategy, or any other qualifying factor, and players do not have sideboards. The only cards that I curate before adding to a deck is the artifact card to ensure that I am not placing a Golgari Signet in a deck, for example. I then take a quick look through the decks to verify whether players have any nonbasic lands of a single color, like Shelldock Isle. If they do, I simply add another card of that color until every player has 23 spells and 17 lands. Players play their first game with this deck as constructed. Upon completion of their first game, players must evolve their deck twice.

How to evolve - Select one of the two colors of your deck and draft two random cards of that color. Choose one of the two cards and put it into your deck, replacing a different card. The drafted card that you did not choose is returned to the box along with whatever card you cut. Players can adjust basic lands however they like, including using them as cuts while evolving.

Example - Player A drafts two cards (Inferno Titan and Lightning Bolt). They put the Lightning Bolt in their deck and cut a Cemetery Illuminator. The Cemetery Illuminator and Inferno Titan are returned to the box.

Players can cut any or card they want from their deck during this process, the colors do not have to match. They can also draft an artifact card if they want to replace their existing artifact card. I do request that players do not cut or replace any of their gold cards. This is to ensure that gold cards receive adequate play testing, and to ensure that players are not cherry picking the best gold cards in every color combination. I don't want every single deck to always have Oko, Thief of Crowns, for example.

Play continues with every player drafting two cards after every single game until the draft is over.

Despite how long it took to settle on the rules and name for our format, I'm extremely pleased with, and proud of, how it's turned out. Darwin Draft allows players to start playing their matches as soon as they arrive. They walk through the door, sit down, grab their deck, shuffle up, and play. Players no longer have to spend half of their allotted time drafting and deck building, because those actions occur between games in brief, iterated microbursts. This saves an enormous amount of time, and allows us to not only play matches against every other drafter regularly, but also have time for discussion afterwards. Players still have the opportunity to customize their deck and leverage their ability to maximize a limited card pool, it just focuses on massaging an existing skeleton as opposed to molding one from scratch.

Many people, particularly those with no constraints regarding time and player counts, will disregard Darwin Draft on the grounds that it's "not drafting", and that's okay. It's certainly a very different experience and can feel more like dynamic sideboarding than drafting, proper. If you find that most of the joy of Magic comes from the draft itself, Darwin Draft may not be for you. I've always seen the drafting process as something that got me towards actually playing a game, and that's the thing that keeps me going. It's one of the reasons I've never loved vintage Cube, as I've always found less enjoyment in actually playing those games out.

Ironically, I don't think Darwin Draft would work that well with a vintage cube, anyway. Too many of the cards in Vintage cube only work within a single context, and provide little to no value in other shells. I've tried to ensure that most cards in my cube are playable in multiple archetypes to avoid this, as I've found it more satisfying than seeing cards go around the table that only one player wants. I've also eschewed direct two card combos and linear strategies like storm, which would both make it difficult for this type of format to function as intended. Even if you get a slightly awkward build for your first game, you'll have a completely competent one by the end of your first match. It's surprising how quickly decks improve, and I've often found that the decks feel very powerful and consistent by the end of the session. Even though the process is different, it does feel like you've built and customized your own streamlined strategy.

Darwin Draft has allowed my playgroup to spend our limited time and resources in a way that prioritizes gameplay, testing, and feedback while maintaining control over the limited subset of cards in your pool. The evolution of the decks over the course of the session is satisfying, and rewards thoughtful and careful planning and vision. It requires a different subset of skills and may not be to everyone's preference, but I highly recommend that you give it a try if you feel that your environment and playgroup will support it. We're thrilled with how its turned out, and we're so confidant in its longevity, that it's actually affected the ongoing design philosophy of my cube as a whole.

Once we established Darwin Draft as our primary way of interacting with my cube, a few things started to come into focus that I had not anticipated. First and foremost was that I suddenly found myself in need of a larger gold section. When the entire cube is mixed together in a traditional draft, you actively want to avoid having too many gold cards. This ensures that players can cast their spells reliably without essentially forcing everyone to play 4-5 color soup. However, when every single deck starts with 3 of their respective gold cards, you run the risk of decks feeling repetitive with smaller sections. I'm currently running 7 gold cards per section, so I'm seeing roughly 43% of my gold cards in a given color combination per draft. Even adding one more gold card per section would go a long way towards increasing variety from draft to draft. This is also the case for nonbasic guild lands, but to a much lesser extent as the only danger cards there are the various creature lands, which I would not want to see in every deck, every draft.

Like gold cards, the number of colorless artifact cards I'm playing in my cube no longer seems appropriate. When I curated packs for traditional draft, I ensured that each pack contained 1 artifact card and 2 random cards that could potentially be artifacts. At the time, Having 70 artifact cards allowed for variety from draft to draft. Now that I am essentially selecting at most 1 artifact card per deck, this section seems bloated. It's particularly awkward that cards like Golgari Signet and Dimir Signet aren't in their respective gold sections. Is there a more organic way to ensure that the right kind of artifact cards get into their associated decks? A control deck would never run Bonesplitter, for example.

What is the role of mana fixing in this environment? Coalition Relic and Birds of Paradise lose a bit of luster when all the decks are only 2 colors, after all. How does the role of change when it's not enabling splashes into other colors? How do I incorporate splashing into Darwin Draft so players can branch out when they feel it's appropriate? This is a question I don't have an answer for at the moment.

The last thing I noticed was that the functional role of certain cards in my cube has changed. This includes cards that affect the physical action of drafting like Cogwork Librarian and Lore Seeker, Conspiracies, and cards that establish their abilities through the draft itself, like Aether Searcher and Arcane Savant. Nonbasic, non-guild lands like Mutavault and Prismatic Vista are no longer mixed in with the rest of the nonbasic lands, and lack an organic avenue to make their way into player's card pools as well. Some of these cards no longer serve any purpose and can be easily replaced. Others, like Arcane Savant, would need significant house rules to adjust how they function. Other may need to be categorized differently in order to maximize their returns. These concerns will be addressed over the course of the next couple of cube update articles as I determine the proper pathway for each of them.

I'm sure there's a lot of intricacies that I'm missing here, but that's just what I've run into so far. The takeaway here is that, just like when evaluating cards for cube, context matters. How you play your cube should affect how you curate it. It should reflect the experience you want your players to have and the cards you include should make sense within that context. Despite this, I'm not going to make wholesale changes to perfectly encapsulate the Darwin Draft experience. After all, I still like traditional draft, and I still want to do traditional drafts when possible, and I know the rest of my playgroup does too. I just want to massage the contents of the cube so that it's able to support the reality we live in, which is that we just don't have as much time to play as we'd like anymore.

I'm really happy with Darwin Draft has turned out, and it's been a very rewarding experience that my playgroup has really enjoyed so far. Let me know what your thoughts are on Darwin Draft, especially if you actually try it out. One of the things that makes Magic, and Cube in particular, so great is that there are an endless amount of different ways to interact with the game. Find what works for your playgroup and don't be afraid to buck convention and experiment. You never know when you might stumble onto something that maximizes what you and yours enjoy best about the game. I'll leave you with a little practice draft deck so you can have a tangible example.

Until next time, may all of your packs contain a card for your cube.

I've chosen a color pair at random and compiled the following sample deck.

Ardoz, Cobbler of War
Laelia, the Blade Reforged
Midnight Reaper
Geralf's Messenger
Judith, the Scourge Diva
Isareth the Awakener
Callous Bloodmage
Caves of Chaos Adventurer
Sawhorn Nemesis
Immersturm Predator
Harvester of Misery
Troll of Khazad-dûm
Chaos Defiler
Wurmcoil Engine

Searing Blaze
Ultimate Price
Agonizing Remorse
Volcanic Spite
Flame Spill
Seismic Wave
Ghostfire Slice
Chandra, Acolyte of Flame
Damnation

Dragonskull Summit
Restless Vents
Blood Crypt
Canyon Slough
7 Mountain
6 Swamp

Here is your first evolution. Pick one card and one card to replace two cards from your deck.

Woe Strider OR Baleful Mastery
Burst Lightning OR Grim Lavamancer

Here is your second evolution. Pick one card and one card to replace two cards from your new deck.

Archon of Cruelty OR Deep-Cavern Bat
Earthshaker Khenra OR The Akroan War

How are you evolving your deck?