The Cube Part 2 - Data

By Adam Styborski

Posted on September 8, 2010

Read this entire article series:

Part 5 - Change Evaluation

Last week I spoke to what I feel is the most important aspect of the cube: consistency created via redundancy. Dealing with singleton creations can make it easy to veer away from providing multiples of effects (in place of multiples of individual cards) and end up with just a pile of stuff. Tuning how much of specific types of effects, and which specific effects are correct as being valuable, is a long process of trial and error.

However there was something else I shared: a small link slipped in casually. Did you miss it? It was the link to documentation on my cube.

Data, Reporting for Duty

I won’t take credit for all of the design but my spreadsheet is one of the most detailed that I’ve seen. Why do I have so much information? So I can apply basic data organization techniques to display both simple counts and visuals that, otherwise, would be difficult to manually pull.

In other words, having good data on my cube lets me scratch a bit deeper than simply visually sorting it would provide.

I’ll admit: pounding data into spreadsheets pretty much sucks. It’s also my day job which makes it twice as tedious for me (despite the apparent efficiencies experience provides). However, let me explain why sorting and entering information once can open a world of possibilities for you.

“What do you want your cube to be?”

There are a lot of angles to handling cube – some likely more interesting and dynamic than others. Trick Jarrett (the ManaNation man himself) has been toying with the idea of a monocolored cube. Indeed, a cube of only one color seems at first glance like a recipe for disaster however upon some deeper discussion there is actually quite a bit interesting lying just below the surface. Consider the skill testing environment of a tournament where you are playing the mirror match repeatedly – that is exactly the type of environment I can see happening.

My angle happens to be using all commons. As a result of cutting what constitutes 90% or more of most classic tournament decks – basic lands aside – the environment is drawn towards Limited play, which makes perfect sense considering commons are the cornerstones of every deck in Limited. Other cubes, the “classic powered cube” being the flagship example, provide excellent tools for creating vaguely familiar constructed archetype decks.

Knowing what your cube wants to be helps define what you want to know about the cards you have in it. Since my cube cares of Limited play let’s take a look at what you care about in Limited:

How much removal is there?

What are the creatures with evasion?

Is there mana fixing?

What are the strong archetypes?

How fast is the tempo? How important is the mana curve?

Having solid answers to these questions will help any players better handle the respective Limited environment. Consider how different Zendikar and Rise of the Eldrazi are in terms of Limited: the differences mark exactly how disparate they are. In terms of my cube:

Removal is plentiful and aggressive
- Efficient and powerful black removal
- Highly redundant red burn that doubles as win conditions
- Blue and white lock-down auras
- Colorless removal via select artifacts

Each color has representatives of its evasion abilities
- Blue, Black, and White have flying and shadow
- Red has haste
- Green has trample

Mana fixing is sufficient and strong
- Multiple artifacts that color fix
- Green and artifact land searching/ramping
- Ravnica “bounce lands” and a few “any color” producers

Archetypes are playing to the strengths of colors
- Black has disruption, removal, and evasive creatures
- White has life gain, removal, and evasive creatures
- Blue has counterspells, bounce, and evasive creatures
- Red has burn (removal and win conditions), creature-based removal (pingers), and aggressive creatures
- Green has mana ramping/fixing, creature buffs (Giant Growth, etc.), and aggressive creatures

The tempo is very fast
- Sufficient one and two drops allow hyper aggressive decks to emerge
- Sufficient removal allow decks to regain control of tempo
- Sufficient color fixing and creature efficiency allow long-game decks to stabilize and win

Can you fill out a similar listing? More importantly, have you played enough rounds of games to begin to feel out what’s clicking and what isn’t? The consistent struggle for more information is the defining feature of a continuous process of development.

Boring Stuff

It’s obvious that a qualitative understanding of your cube is important. Where it gets tricky is in answering “What quantitative information is relevant?” Everyone is going to have a slightly different cube and, therefore, slightly different priority for information. Let’s start with some basic groundwork.

“What format should you input information?” Answering this question is, essentially, choosing what software and sharing requirements are needed for the documentation.

Is the cube a group project without true individual ownership?

GoogleDocs or a shared, Internet-based space to sign in and out of for editing will work best

Use differentiating colors and tagging to clarify who made what changes

Everyone can see which cards are owned by whom – a handy reference indeed!

Do you want to apply more powerful statistical tools to your data?

Open Office is a free software package that includes most of the functionality of more power, but proprietary, spreadsheet software

Saving data in database-friendly formats is (nearly) foolproof with a productivity suite

Locking individual fields or cells can help mitigate inadvertent changes

Formulas can help drive consistent and correct formatting when posting to forums and other social media sites

Are you most concerned about tracking changes and having discussions about choices?

Displaying a cube in a Magic forum allows immediate access to peers and seamless discussion

Natural chronological ordering and archiving of cube changes and discussion allows change management to be clear and indexed into search engines

Easy click-through linking for card information allows newer players easy navigation during review

There isn’t “one best way” to show off your cube, and many of us choose multiple ways. Of course, overlapping means of displaying information covers gaps that happen but it also increases the workload and effort required to get information updated. Personally, I used to use both forum documentation alongside a blog that, effectively, duplicated efforts, as well as a spreadsheet that detailed further information (which is what I’ve been linking).

I’m revamping the blog and keeping the spreadsheet up-to-date. This has been working well for me and minimizes the downtime I need when working to apply multiple changes simultaneously. Your system should fit best with both your time commitment and what you need to track.

Which makes a great segue: “What do you want to track?” There are a lot of choices but I’ll suggest upfront to not consider this an exercise in making a personal Gatherer style cube database (although incredibly powerful if you do!). Instead, ask yourself: what are the key elements that will help you sort through your cube and make transitioning updates move smoothly?

I have a multi-tab spreadsheet that provides the following information:

Set abbreviation codes, for example RAV for Ravnica and WWK for Worldwake, and shorthand for promotional card sources

Spoiler listing of every card in the cube with some card attributes

A chunk sorted from the spoiler that shows which cards I’m looking to pimp out

Mana curves by color via numerical and graphical display

A pivot table of the spoiler data

These tabs, in sum, let me look into my cube in a quantitative fashion. Specifically, the spoiler for the cube is where I track several important pieces of information:

English Card Name (I choose to include only English versions of cards for ease of players)

Color:
- W, U, B, R, G
- MA – allied gold and hybrid; ME – enemy gold and hybrid
- A – artifact; L – land; CL – colorless

Type Classification: creature, spell, or land
- This let set spells like Wind Zendikon as a creature, and Krosan Tusker as a spell.
- Certain artifacts, like the Borderpost cycle, are set as lands

Printed Mana Cost and Converted Mana Cost

Actual Mana Cost and Actual Converted Mana Cost
- This is to properly set mana curves based on what you pay for a spell (for example, morphs that “cost” less than three are set to at least three, or their flip cost – whichever is greater)

Print Edition, Foil Version
- This helps track what cards look like since I actively work to “pimp” it out

Artist, Artist Signed
- I also work at getting the cards signed as being pimped

Forum Code
- If I want to dump the cube into a forum, most use [card][/card] as tags – I can create a linear list, sorted to preference, quickly

DeckStats.net Code
- Creates a linear list for DeckStats.net, including automatically generating alternate mana costs if manually set, which I can quickly dump into an update there
- DeckStats.net is a neat resource for creating breakdowns but isn’t as flexible as an architecture you create yourself – a “quick and dirty” sharing method

Here Are Some Pretty Pictures

What does all of this do for me? Your individual cube needs will vary so take this is merely a demonstration of what a cube focused on Limited would want – at least from my perspective. Let's take a quick overview of the mana curve of the entire cube:

Everything is screwed towards the bottom end, putting two and three converted mana cost cards as the clear leaders. Let's compare this to creatures, instants, and sorceries:

I could dive into some numbers but a visual display of what's at work can convey more much more. Creatures make up the majority of the cube and far outnumber any other card type. Instants come next followed distantly by sorceries. Why?

Creatures are the bread and butter of Limited. Bodies swinging and blocking, giving you “enter the battlefield” and combat-relevant keywords are what makes good Limited good. While Legions showed the promise, and issues, of having too many creatures, having a wide array of available bodies provides a lot of room for diversity: there is more than just “this is efficient so it goes in” creatures at work here.

Instants are prized because they widen the decision making window for using the card. “Do I do this now, or later?” is often a difficult question to answer. Instant allow both more room for error at the benefit of providing more gain when correctly applied. By including more instants than sorceries, bluffing and choosing to leave mana open instead of playing something during your turn become more powerful choices.

The effects of sorceries overlap a lot of space with that of instants but are often considered weaker simply for the sake of being “slower” and less tricky. However, sorceries are home to some of the biggest game-changing spells, like Rolling Thunder and Evincar's Justice, and fill a role of providing many of the essential effects in colors: land ramping, some burn, and creature recursion are all effects found almost exclusively within sorceries. Needed but not entirely as interesting.

Carefully watching how the curves vary between card types ensures that on turns three and four there will be some interesting decisions to be made by players. The mana curves between colors is far more interesting and can help show a problem more readily.

However, looking closer at that is an entirely deeper endeavor. I hope that this taste of what implementing, tracking, and updating data can do will be sufficient for you to decide if it's the right thing for your cube. As an additional note, all of the basic graphs above come from the DeckStats.net online viewer. While it certainly has limitations you can dump just a straight list of cards and get everything above (and far more).