This is a discussion of designing a cube of cards for play with the Goldfish Draft format. These design principles were refined over time, and apply to version 9 of the Goldfish Cube.
This cube is designed to have all the most powerful cards available for the format, for a maximally wacky result. The cube mostly contains a mix of card draw, mana acceleration, and cards to convert one type of resource into another. Cards to get additional turns are also included (at the rare level only).
The cube is divided into "rarities", which are chosen based entirely on the power level of the cards, with rares being considered better than uncommons and uncommons better than commons generally. The intention is to build packs of 15 cards which contain 2 rares, 4 uncommons, and 9 commons. We have found that having two rare quality cards gives interesting choices from the start and ensures everyone gets a chance at some of the best cards. In total there are 240 cards, enough for eight players to draft two packs each.
Rares are the cards so good you couldn't possibly pass them, and are varied in terms of what they actually do. They're cards that will be good in any deck and may be completely broken in some. All of the extra turn effects are in the rare slot as well.
Uncommons are solid cards that most decks will want, and include all of the best mana fixing and card draw outside the completely broken ones in the rare slot. Black Lotus can be found here which, while still good, has been seen as late as 12th pick!
Commons are the remaining role-players and mostly consist of cards which convert one resource to another, either repeatedly in the allowed direction or in a limited fashion in the reverse direction. There's also a smattering of cards just to do things you would normally expect to be able to do, such as deal damage or put a cheap creature into play.
Infinite combos are not desirable for Goldfish Draft, so this cube goes to great lengths to avoid containing any. The following policies are followed to avoid them:
drafted-cards → turns → untapping → drawn-cards → mana → creatures → mill → life → damage → power → pointsSo for example Sanguine Bond (life → damage) is allowed but Exquisite Blood (damage → life) is not. It should be clear enough why both these cards can't be in the cube together. The ordering above is based on which effects are more common, but other orderings would be possible for a different cube. Cards which convert resources in a direction contrary to the above are allowed, so long as they are limited to a finite number of uses, such as being a spell you can only cast once and copy finitely many times, or an ability which requires tapping.
All of these are infinite with Stolen Identity, among other things.
Both of these draw cards when life is gained, closing a loop of Ghave + Doubling Season, Soul Warden, and Fastbond.
Infinite with enough doubling effects active (e.g. Doubling Season + Parallel Lives)
Infinite with many cards
These all return cards from the graveyard in some fashion. The eldrazi are a bit of a shame because they'd be good otherwise.
These cards are infinite with themselves due to the infinite libraries (or at least unbounded).
Infinite with Ghave, Guru of Spores and Doubling Season.
Converts damage to creatures, and is infinite with, for instance, Goblin Sharpshooter and Blasting Station.
Converts damage to cards, infinite with Seismic Assault and Psychatog.
Converts creatures to cards, so infinite with for instance fastbond, goblin sharpshooter and 3 copies of Soul Warden.
This is infinite with Karn, Time Walk, and a bit of other support (repeatedly restart the game with more land each time). It was also accused of being too powerful in a similar fashion to Yew Spirit.
Cast this, fork it. Fork goes to the graveyard as part of resolving, then gets shuffled back into your library when the copy it creates resolves. Combine this with any (red) mana-producing spell for infinite mana.
This creates too complicated an analysis due to the choices given to the goldfish.
These cards are simply better than they ought to be due to the setting. These could be included but they just feel like they're abused in a way that's against the spirit of their designs.
These were removed purely for being too good. Animist in particular is kind of easy-mode in that almost any deck will get an extra layer of exponentiation out of it for free. Yew Spirit needs more work because of the colour requirement, and has been added back in to the latest build.
There are too many ways for it to make copies of itself, potentially with haste, and too many ways for those copies to generate the mana required. To cut a long story short, being able to copy arbitrary creatures with a tap ability is now considered too dangerous.
Too many planeswalkers are capable of untapping this...
mezzacotta | Comic Irregulars' Magic: The Gathering | Goldfish Draft
Last updated: Tuesday, 28 April, 2020; 00:33:58 PDT.
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