Jumpcube

Cube ID
Art by Thomas M. BaxaArt by Thomas M. Baxa

289 Card Cube

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Designed by ErceusRSSQR Code

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Owned
$1,064
Buy
$730

This cube is a collection of custom jumpstart packs aimed to be match in any configuration.

Cube's purpose

  • Having an environment to play interresting mechanics and cards that couldn't find a place in one of my Duel Commander decks nor my other cubes (Multicolored Grid Draft and Iconic Novice Cube)
  • Having a ready to play high level experience like a gauntlet but with more replayability.
  • Emphasize more on small design projects than cyclopean task that cannot be conduct in a single evening: one pack can be thought as its own design project.
  • React quicker to new cards and idea. WotC print regularly new cards an mechanics that I have no time to use in my main cube or an Commander deck because there's already new cards around the corner even before I have time to get the old-new ones !
  • Test new design avenues, for example by making pack around flavor instead of mechanics.
  • Having a modular set of cards that could be use with diverse draft methods or be a collection of primer for constructed decks.

Draft mechanics

  • Each pack contains 20 cards with a strong theme.
  • The pool of packs needed depend on the draft type: 7+ for a Quick duel, 15+ for an Advanced duel.
Quick duel:
  • The draft proceed by rounds where three packs are displayed in front of the players, each player choose one pack and the last is discarded.
  • The player who choose first alternate each round until each player has two packs.
  • Then, one more rounds of packs are displayed but players must discard one of their pack to pick a new one (if there aren't enough pack left in the pool, you may use again the previously discarded packs, therefore you only need 7 packs for this draft method).
  • Finally, players shuffle their packs wich makes a 40 cards deck.
Advanced duel:
  • The draft proceed by rounds where three packs are displayed in front of the players, each player choose one pack and the last is discarded.
  • The player who choose first alternate each round until each player has three packs.
  • Then, two more rounds of packs are displayed but players must discard one of their pack to pick a new one.
  • Finally, players shuffle their three packs wich makes a 60 cards deck.

The difficulty of making packs that work well with each other in every combinations is proportional to the number of packs in the cube. Meanwhile, combining three packs in one 60 cards decks may dilute the potency of one pack's mechanics even though it would have work fine in a 40 cards decks without ever interracting with cards of the other pack. Thereby, in the case of three packs combining in a 60 cards deck, packs should always have some interraction with each other.
Keeping in mind the "Advanced duel" draft rule seems a way to constantly aim for interactions between packs.

Grid erosion (2+ players):
  • Display every pack of the draft pool face down as a grid.
  • At the start of the draft, turn face up each pack with only two edge jouxting another pack (starting from a square, this reveal the four angles).
  • Players pick alternatively whatever pack they want. Retire the selected packs from the grid.
  • Whenever a pack has only two edges jouxting another pack (mainly when packs are picked), reveal it.
  • When the player has two packs (for a quick draft) or three packs (for an advanced draft), he can discard one of his packs to pick another.
  • The process continue until every packs are revealed or when each player feel it has what he need.
  • Before playing, each player shuffle the packs he picked in a 40 cards deck (for a quick draft) or a 60 cards deck (for an advanced draft).

Playability

Every pack combinations should be viable, here are some rules to try to reach this goal:

  • The cube need at least 15 packs to work properly with the Advance Duel draft rule.
  • Each pack must contain at least one rainbow land to be combined with any other pack.
  • To improve complementarity between packs, each pack must contain one or more of the following if possible:
    • Card(s) with CMC>5 (Cascade pack / Imoti, Celebrant of Bounty)
    • Card(s) that can target your creatures (Shapshifter pack / Orvar, the All-Form), combat tricks is a plus.
    • Equipement card(s) and/or Knight(s) (Knight pack).
    • Play from exile, cards with the following mechanics help this archetype: "impulsive draw", adventure, cascade, foretell, rebound, suspend
    • Planeswalkers or Counters synergy.
  • Removals: each pack must contain creature, artifact and/or Enchantment removals.
  • Fast mana & powerful mana fixing cards: some mechanically or thematically designed packs may be slow or simply inefficient manawise. To adress this unbalance, a pack could get up to three manarocks like nonpower moxen, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, etc. This will benefit to every archetype contained in the final deck but the concentration will depend on the average card quality and should not be as much problem if these cards aren't used in packs with the most competitive mechanics or tribes.

Packs variety

  • 30%-50% of all packs should be "focused" (have a strong theme without support).
  • 70%-50% of all packs should be "balanced" (have a theme with enough removals and ramp support that fit).

Observation: as they impose more constraints in term of colors, curve and symetry, 3-color pack seems to demand more of a focused design than two color pack. Maybe that's also because I try to shoehorn as much on-theme cards into the packs. In anyway, Leaving some spot for responses (removals, sweepers, combat tricks) is paramount there. Meanwhile, 2-color packs must be endowed with enough responses to fill the gap.
This dissymetry beetween 2-color and 3-color packs may have an advantage as it should discourage players to combine 3-color packs together (wich is a bad idea in itself manawise). However, if it persist or is enforced, this structural aspect should be communicated before draft to help player in their decision process.

  • There must be at least five 1-color packs.
  • For each 3-color pack, there must be a 2-color pack of the missing colors (no necessity to get the full cycle of 3-color and 2-color packs).
  • 4-color and 5-color packs should be scarce.
  • As only 15 packs are necessary, if the cube's size is larger than 15, the pair of 3-color and 2-color packs can be used to select a coherent draft pool:
    • Method A: use only one half of each pair when setting the draft pool (the other pack will not be used), it will ensure that seeing a totally offcolor pack is more rare.
    • Method B: constitute the draft pool by only adding a 3-color pack if every of its 2-color subcombination are also in the pool (example: the draft pool can contain a wub pack only if the draft poolalso contain wu, ub and wb packs. This method make pretty sure that certain colors will be more frequent than other but ensure that every 3-color pack have maximum chance of being combined with a pack that share more than one colors with it.

Packs list

c Toolbox
w Monarchy
u Shapeshifter
b Sacrifice ?
r Chandra tribal
g Ooze Tribal
wu Foretell // brg From exile => Faldorn/Prosper ?
ub Rogue & Ninja ? // wrg ???
br Suicide ? // gwu Superpals
rg ??? // wub Esper Combos
gw Duelist ? // ubr Superfoes
wb Limited Ressources ? // gur Cascade
bg ??? // urw Timing (suspend, rebound, prowess...)
gu Hoarding // rwb Knights
ur Riggers // wbg Keyword ?
rw Modular // bug Mutate ?
wubrg ???

Minimum jumpcube structure

Assembling right away a 500+ card cube with every color combination is a taxing endeavour. It may even be counterproductive as one striking advantage of this cube format is to be playable only with a small pack selection. Therefore, what could be a minimal size for this cube ? How many packs needs to be ready at any time to play ? There are several critera to answer these questions:

  • Considering the draft method, there are the minimum of packs needed:
    • 4 packs is the raw minimum number of packs to play a jumpcube, you will only have 6 packs combinations and at most 4/5 of MtG's colors.
    • 7 packs are needed to play with the quick duel draft method, you'll have plenty of combinations but if you want five monocolor packs, you'll only get two multicolored packs.
    • 15 packs are needed to play with the advanced duel draft method, it's 300 cards but you can have five monocolor pack and 10 multicolor packs. That's as lush as opposite to the concept of minimalism even if you can play a long time before every pack combinations are exhausted.
  • A 100 cards commander deck is fairly easy to carry and the opportunity cost of putting two or three in a single bag is limited. Plus, boxes containing up to 300 or 400+ cards are common and may also be transportable without too much difficulty. Therefore, a jumpcube with less than 400, 300 or 200 cards will be increasingly practical. Finally, as hinted before and thanks to the commander format, a jumpcube with 5, 10, 15 or 20 packs should be appropriate if you don't like having half-empty boxes.
    With these two factors in mind, it appears that a jumpcube could be divided into modular clusters of 5 packs using several 100 card boxes you could assemble one at a time.
Example 1:
  1. First box: w ; u ; gw ; wu ; gwu
  2. Second box: b ; r ; g ; br ; rwb
  3. Third box: c ; ur ; rw ; wub ; gur
  4. Fourth box: ub ; wb ; gu ; ubr ; urw
  5. the remaining: rg ; bg ; brg ; wrg ; wbg ; bug, anything more than three colors...
Example 2:
  1. First box: w ; u ; b ; r ; g
  2. Second box: wu ; br ; gw ; gwu ; rwb
  3. Third box: c ; ur ; rw ; wub ; gur
  4. Fourth box: ub ; wb ; gu ; ubr ; urw
Example 3:
  1. First box: w ; u ; g ; gw ; wu
  2. Second box: b ; r ; br ; rw ; rwb
  3. Third box: c ; ur ; gwu ; wub ; gur
  4. Fourth box: ub ; wb ; gu ; ubr ; urw

With one of these setups, the first box is always playable by itself, and every monocolor packs are available with the second box (both first and second boxes are playable by themselves in example 3). The third and fourth box are almost the same in each example.

  • In each example, the third box add a colorless theme (in the case of my cube, four of the added packs are artifact centric).
  • The fourth box is more for demonstrating what you'll gain with an additionnal box as 15 packs is already enough to play with the advanced duel draft method.