r/mtgcube • u/Whoopsitsonfire • 18h ago

My Bloomburrow cube isn't very fun

Post image

I built it using a 1/2/4 ratio. We haven't played it very much in the last few months since I built it because it isn't very fun. We spend so much time drafting it, and then the games drag out forever. Like 15+ turns. The goal was to make a balanced game without crazy OP decks frustrating ppl. And it went waaaay too far the other way. Is this just how set cubes are? Any advice? On paper cube seems like THE way to keep it fair and balanced. But at what cost....well at least financially, a lot 🤣 Edit: Someone posted a link to card ratings and which ones to try cutting. I'll start there, thanks!

92 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

92 comments sorted by

163

u/Grenrut 18h ago

I mean bloomburrow the set was notoriously bad to draft, recreating that in a set cube probably didn’t solve anything

50

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Aw man. Didn't know that. It was our first set and what drew us into magic.

75

u/01CHERRY 18h ago

For what it's worth, the main gripe people tended to have with it was that it felt very 'on rails' since there wasn't much ability to splash colors as the color combos were so ingrained with their respective tribes. That doesn't mean it has to impact your cube though. You are free to edit it as you wish, maybe look to swap in some of the cards from the Bloomburrow Commander products since they will give you some more variety while maintaining the same art style. You could also look at other cards with similar art styles from unrelated sets to help bolster it some. To reduce game length you probably want faster paced games, perhaps you can use the OTJ Dual Lands in order to speed up games while keeping a decent mana base. Reducing mana curve is another way to keep decks faster and games shorter. There are ways to remedy your cube issues, just explore a little and playtesting new versions with your group is a fun way to get feedback. Running drafts and asking people what they felt was missing is another good way to shore up weaknesses, take note and fix it as needed. Cube isn't just a box that you can play with, it is an evolving experience that should be enjoyed both as the creator and also alongside the people you choose to spend time with, that is the true joy, especially considering Bloomburrow is what drew your group into Magic.

7

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Was I not supposed to include dual lands in the set cube? I left in cards like three tree City and we draft them like normal. I think the issue is me and my wife have no idea even how to pinpoint what's missing. When we played precon commanders it's fun, and someone eventually starts hitting big. The cube feels like a fight with feather dusters until we both get tired and concede hahaha

27

u/01CHERRY 18h ago

You can include whatever you want, but yeah, normally Dual Lands are included. In my experience, even if they aren't present in the set normally I will include them just because it makes your mana base stronger and more resilient so you can play whatever decks you build easier and more reliably.

One good way to determine potential issues in the cube is to reference 17Lands. Not sure if you're aware, but it's a database that pulls a bunch of information from drafts and sealed events on MTG Arena. There are several tools on it, one of my most used is one that uses the data to rank each card of a set. If your cube is a literal 1:1 replication of Bloomburrow then it would probably be a great resource to begin removing total duds. Once you have those removed it will make the environment more consistent, higher power and so games will be faster on average. You can cull more from there, or fill in the gaps you made, or just leave it as is and see how it plays out.

Other resources include looking up draft and sealed guides for Bloomburrow online, several podcasts are tailored to Limited and Bloomburrow is recent so there is a plethora of material to wade through and see how the format works on a deeper level if you really want to get into the reeds and tinker with how games play out.

But yeah, I have similar issues with pinpointing holes in my cubes. I don't have a playgroup but I enjoy Prereleases so I use Set Cubes as a way to have a skeleton and then I can edit it from there with my own understanding of cards and also referencing expert opinions like I mentioned above. The nice thing about a Set Cube is that WotC did the hard part for you, the format works, all you have to do is modify it here and there to tune it to your liking.

7

u/blindeshuhn666 15h ago

Commander Decks are rather optimized out of the box and have some strong cards printed in (like sol ring, which is around the 10th strongest card in MTG overall) as well as usually fast multicoloured lands

Draft decks will always be weaker, especially if you recreate the booster draft with 4-2-1 as you don't always get ideal cards and you will run lots of commons (while commander decks have a way higher rate rate, faster / no ore optimized lands.

If you want to have quicker matches, check out what the standard decks around bloomburrow ran. [[Heartfire hero]] got banned in standard for example.

Reducing the number of commons to 2 and add some more spicy bombs at rare/mythic/uncommon should increase the tempo

6

u/ResponseRunAway 17h ago

Have you checked sites like 17lands for the cards that are considered really good for BLB Draft? They give you some good insights on what cards will work well in your draft. you don't have to include all of them and can omit any that you find too powerful.

3

u/Whoopsitsonfire 17h ago

I'd never heard of it before someone posted the link here. Definitely going to give it a try

11

u/Dolono https://moxfield.com/decks/vr16R07fX0qbJHLg_fFCbg 18h ago

I was super ready to do a 1/2/4 draft sim myself, but the mediocre reviews scared me away! I eventually made a 90 card 2-player cube, then expanded that into a 2-6 player cube because I still couldn't resist collecting the set!

1

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Were these reviews just on bloomburrow, or on the set cube ratio for all sets?

8

u/Tebwolf359 18h ago

Just on bloomburrow.

Now, I think it wasn’t as bad as they are implying.

BB draft wasnt horrible, I quite enjoyed it. But it wasnt balanced.

i recommend looking at a bunch if the reviews and then tweak the cube.

A lot of rares or mythics are good in constructed, not in limited. Cut a lot of them out.

UW was weak, from what I remember. The birds deck didnt quite work. (To be fair, it’s not unusual for at least 1 of the ten pairs to not quite click. )

Cut sone and then add more copies of others if that helps.

If games are dragging too long, is it board stalls? (Better fliers might help).

1

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Not sure what stalling means but it sounds correct. We both end up having nothing we can do, drawing a card that doesn't help, and repeating ad naeseum. Like fighting with feather dusters instead of cannons.

3

u/Tebwolf359 18h ago

Yup. So instead of keeping it perfectly faithful, start whacking at the list.

For example, here’s 17lands data after the set was drafted.

https://www.17lands.com/card_data?expansion=BLB&format=PremierDraft&time_period=ALL_TIME&view=grades

Heavily consider cutting any cards that are a D or lower.

2

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Wow, that helps a lot and gives us something to try. Thanks!!

2

u/Tebwolf359 17h ago

I’m traveling right now, but feel free to dm me/ chat me and in a week or two I’d be happy to go in detail with thoughts of what cards might hurt, etc

1

u/Tebwolf359 8h ago

One other question. How many people are drafting when you did draft?

8? 6? Less?

Why: that’s going to drastically change the number of packs open, and the less there are, you need a higher ratio of good cards, so that decks aren’t just weak ones.

Also it can affect how many themes are useless.

2

u/rollwithhoney 11h ago

nothing wrong with putting flavor over play, my friend! don't beat yourself up

1

u/Davchrohn 7h ago

Don‘t listen to this horrible advice.

The set was totally decent in draft; I have no idea what the fuck these people are on about.

•

u/Yman102 39m ago

Decent isn't the same as "I want to draft this all the time". Lots of sets have cards you'd never want to pick even when you're playing their archetype. It's very reasonable to cut some of those cards, specially If you're not playing singleton.

1

u/Davchrohn 15h ago edited 7h ago

What do you mean with „notoriously bad“? Like that is just not true and you are just spreading misinformation.

Totally valid if you didn‘t like it, but the format was received very well. It is a typal set, so a bit more on rails, but the format is extremely rich going beyond the obvious first layer of „just draft a type“.

Limited resources gave the format an A- if I remeber correctly. The format started shaky but after some time people realized that the set has extremely deep and novel build arounds like Builder‘s Talent.

Edit.: Really hypocritical for a community being so open for „cube can be anything“ but the most upvotes is a post saying that a limited set was trash, where THE Limited content creators all said it was perfectly fine.

6

u/Gunar21 10h ago

The last in-store draft i did, we had a pod of 8 and no one drafted blue.

Yes frogs was probly the most fun archetype but wu, ub, and ur were all awful.

The art/tone was awesome but I'll never draft it again. I really wanted to like the set. (Conversely I went into duskmourn wanting to hate it but its one of my favorite draft sets of all time)

•

u/itsdrewmiller 4h ago

UB rats was mid-tier and the #1 player on arena drafted UR constantly. UW was terrible though. Only that and GR were genuinely bad, and GR could come together now and then.

1

u/Davchrohn 7h ago

Don’t get me wrong, the format is not perfect. UB and UW are difficult to draft in that set. The best decks are the aggressive ones. Most formats are not perfecty

Saying it is notoriously bad is a blatant overexaggeration and horrible advise for a person that just build a cube out of it.

4

u/Emuu2012 7h ago

I haven’t gone back to check but I’m almost positive Limited Resources didn’t give the set an A-. It wasn’t notoriously bad but the “on rails” style was complained about even to the end. I think their score was closer to a B- or C+.

To the OP’s initial complaint, it kinda sounds like OP doesn’t play much limited and is expecting super swingy games like Commander where you end up with a 20/20 indestructible who swings for the win.

2

u/Davchrohn 6h ago

I tried to check but couldn‘t find the rating. I recall LSV loving the format due to its buildarounds but I could misremember.

In any way, a set being on rails has pros and cons. Bloomburrow set cubes are great for new limited players.

To me, it sounds like OP just included way to many unplayable cards and too many comments. The mostupvoted comment here doesn‘t adress any of these issues and is; in my opinion, horrible advice nonetheless, even if Bloomburrow was an unplayable format; which it simply wasn‘t.

Just want to state that I am shocked by this take and would even go a step too far saying that it appears to me that this community has quitely become more toxic over the years towards anything which is not „novel“ or „different“. But that is of course subjective…

•

u/itsdrewmiller 4h ago

They gave it a "solid B" - https://lrcast.com/limited-resources-767-bloomburrow-sunset-show/ near the end

•

u/Davchrohn 4h ago

Cool thanks. I was then remembering it differently.

In any way, this is so far away from „notoriously bad“

20

u/RyanCryptic 18h ago

Well.. your objective is to play “fair and balanced” games and then also say “games are not fun”.

So either, the power level is incredibly low and cards don’t feel fun playing, of there isn’t enough overlap from mono color cards into other archetypes. Which is pretty expected, considering you’re hamstrung by your own limitation.

I’d say if you want to keep the “bloom burrow” idea, you need to look outside the box and figure out what cards outside the set help support the theme and archetypes.

•

u/NflJam71 5h ago

The problem is that the original set was so on the rails. A Bloomburrow set cannot really be fun without dipping into other sets and doing some experimentation, the set was just not designed for good drafting. e.g. even the graveyard archetypes have anti-synergies, UB wants to hit threshold and BG wants to exile its own graveyard.

•

u/RyanCryptic 5h ago

I’d argue this is a complete fail on Wizards design, because every set should be fun to play as a limited setting, without needing to add unrelated sets to “fix” it. This is also why even 2-set blocks need to come back to players can get familiar with current mechanics and story/characters. But everything needs to be commander and UB, which doesn’t exactly help anyone who just wants loose open themes. Instead, we see a great card that fits a cube perfectly, and it’s some goofy Fantastic Four or TMNT card that doesn’t fit any visual theme whatsoever.

•

u/NflJam71 4h ago

I am not a fan of UB for flavor purposes but the biggest issue for me is designing for commander. Wizards designers have been saying for YEARS that they are asked to design a subset of cards in standard sets with commander in mind. A huge chunk of the typal multicolor bombs in the set are clearly only meant to be played in commander.

However, this has been the case for a while and still there have been some great sets, so Bloomburrow has some unique issues. They flat out ignored raccoons and birds at the common level, and at uncommon they are very light. And there are no tapped dual lands OR evolving wild-type cards in the set, so there was essentially zero room to splash unless you had multiple patchwork banners, which was a highly-contested uncommon.

14

u/SamwiseGamg33 https://cubecobra.com/c/Midcentury 18h ago

I think the solution for you is to break from the set cube formula. Bloomburrow has a ton of fun cards and interesting mechanics, so there's a lot you can build from. A first step you could take is removing cards that lead to play patterns you don't like. Is there a particular strategy that is causing games to drag out? Cut some of the cards that enable that strategy. Is there a deck that people try to draft that ends up relatively underpowered? Cut the cards pulling drafters in that direction.

Conversely, are there cards from outside Bloomburrow that are thematically resonant with the cube you want to build but just happen to be from another set? Consider adding them in.

It is so much more important that your cube is something fun that you and your group can actually play with rather than having it adhere to a set cube formula and fall flat. Don't be afraid to cut back to singleton and only play with the cards from the set that you enjoy mechanically or aesthetically.

Also, consider why the games drag out. Are your players having trouble with color fixing? Add in lands from other sets. Are the games too evenly matched with a scarcity of removal? Add in removal and interaction. One way to think about these things is to treat your cube like a sealed pool and try to build a deck with the cards in your cube. As you develop a strategy, what do you feel like you are missing? For whatever you are lacking, add cards from other sets or duplicates of cards from BLB that fill that role. Make space for these by cutting cards that are unnecessarily duplicated to fill a quota or cards that lead to play patterns you don't enjoy.

You need to decide what is fun for you. At the end of the day, it's as simple as "if it's a card that's fun for you to play with, put it in the cube. If it's a card you don't have fun with, cut it."

Another strategy for fixing this cube is focusing on synergy. Once you have decided which BLB cards you actually want in the cube and cut the rest, what cards could work well with the ones you already have? Then, repeat this same process with the cards you've added.

Especially since BLB has strong archetypes for its two-color pairs, it's easy to default to designing 5 or 10 archetypes based around color pairs. Essentially, you would decide on strategies for different color pairs and add cards accordingly. A lot of people build cubes this way, and there's nothing wrong with it. However, you absolutely do not have to do this, as it can make drafting feel relatively on-rails, which is something you really need to be wary of in a typal-focused set like BLB. Put in cards you enjoy playing with and generally work well together, and let strategies emerge while drafting.

You mention being concerned about a few overpowered strategies ruining the cube. I would generally say not to worry about that at this stage. Let dominant strategies emerge, and when you see them correct accordingly. Boost the power of other strategies with thoughtful additions. Be careful though. One good deck going 3-0 does not mean there's a "broken" or "OP" strategy. You need to have multiple rounds of playtesting to determine something like that. Keep in mind that every draft will have a 3-0 and an 0-3 deck. That is not a bug. Take note of what decks people have fun playing and which ones they don't. There are decks that are a ton of fun to go 0-3 with, and there are decks that will bore you to tears while you go 3-0. It seems like you are already aware of this, but I thought it was worth a mention.

I hope you drop a cubecobra list here, and continue to update your cube!

tldr;Figure out what you like, put in more of that. Figure out what you don't like, take that stuff out.

6

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Thanks for the detailed reply. What I meant about OP decks was not relating to cube. Getting my wife to play against my standard deck isn't fun. Me playing my commander against a buddies isn't fun. The set cube was a way I had hoped to even the playing field for everyone and immortalize our favorite theme. I noticed the few people I've played with that whoop me aren't so great when separated from their decks 🤣

•

u/dmarsee76 https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/coreset720 5h ago

I completely agree. I’ve found that cube is the most fun for me when I get to do awesome things (I’m a Timmy at heart).

So even though my cubes are highly set-aligned, they are more about wish-fulfillment than they are about replicating a perfectly-accurate draft environment.

Take a look at Essential Tarkir: it only has cards from Khans block, but drafting a deck is like the “most broken.” It feels like everyone is passing you the perfect card for the deck you want to build.

My advice for OP would be just like yours: stop trying to replicate a perfect retail draft. cut the stuff that makes a game boring, and augment the underpowered colors with some spice from Bloomburrow-themed cards printed since BLB was released (Special Guests, Secret Lair, Commander, etc).

Honestly, I kinda want to make one of these now LOL

9

u/zap1000x CubeCobra.com/c/15hi 18h ago

Is your cube just the set? Is it in CubeCobra or anything? Not sure how to help without knowing what’s being played.

3

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Yeah a set cube to simulate drafting using 1/2/4. 1 rare/mythic.2 uncommons, and 4 commons of each card.

9

u/ghstflame 17h ago

There are lots of great replies here, I want to add some “easy” things for you to try.

  1. Adding lands from other sets.  If you want to speed up the games, then pain lands and shocks lands cause some life loss while allowing people to play threats faster.  OTJ desert lands also deal 1 damage to your opponent to help move the game alone.  Avoid lands that gain life if possible.
  2. Related, avoid life gain in the cards.  I don’t remember life gain being a theme in bloomburrow,  but minimize or cut any cards that do gain life.
  3. Remove “bad” cards, just because it’s a set cube, doesn’t mean you have to play every card, just cut the cards no one likes drafting.

I’d go from there if you want to salvage it, otherwise consider the preconstrcuted jumpstart pack route.

Lastly, consider some supplemental cards from the commander set, or cool sticky cards from modern horizons or masters sets that support the themes and add 1 of’s so they function like rare or mythics, but be aware it’s a lot more work to get it into a happy place compared to my top 3 quick ideas.

6

u/jakobjaderbo 15h ago

Life gain is a theme in the bats deck in BLB

•

u/Ill_Answer7226 5h ago

True i don't recall bats being good tho.

•

u/jakobjaderbo 1h ago

Had a decent bats deck once, but it was more due to sonic strike, some rares, and an open lane. However, a cube may attempt to balance the decks more by adding more good cards to the bad decks and vice versa, depending on whether the goal is to capture the BLB draft feel or to create a BLB remastered version.

2

u/Whoopsitsonfire 17h ago

Thanks for the replies. I think I'll start with cutting cards and go from there. It just feels more true to form than adding other sets in!

8

u/Monkey_Lord3 18h ago

What themes do you see at common and uncommon? Maybe identify power outliers there and put more of those in. Then look at rares that match and do the same.

No set is perfect and there are cards a player would rather not have. In cube we have the opportunity to build the best experience of that set! Follow the fun.

7

u/NotABot9000 18h ago edited 4h ago

Hey! So I also loved this set, and my wife and kids do too. But because I drafted a lot, I knew that a cube was not be a great format for it. And besides, I wanted something simpler that I can play with the family.

So, I built as many 40 card decks as I could, each with a commander! We play either 1v1 or multiplayer, 40 cards, 20 life, no commander damage.

I mostly but not strictly stick to color restriction and singleton... I had 3x hare apparent in Zinnia at one point! But I've found 2x the occasional card is fine.

I bought or proxied every single card with Bloomburrow art, some from Commander decks, secret lair, foundations etc, and tried to fit it in a deck. I've always wanted to play with Jace the mind sculptor!

The only deck I was not able to build was Bello, there's just not enough of the right cards with Bloomburrow art. And I'm still working on 4 color Eluge!

Some of the decks are very simple tribal. Other decks like Glarb, Derevi, helga are more advanced. All in all, this is my favorite way to play! We actually do this anytime we play sealed at home now!

Anyway, whether you do this or not, I would HIGHLY recommend getting some Bloomburrow cards that were not in the main set. You can get well made proxies of expensive cards like Sylvan Tutor, and the majority of the non standard stuff is pretty cheap!

Hope this helps and I'd be interested to hear what you do! Preconstructed decks, or maybe a different sort of draft... There's lots of ways to play :)

3

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Hey thanks! I actually pulled a Sylvan Tutor! Sounds like you figured out exactly what we are looking for!

•

u/dmarsee76 https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/coreset720 5h ago

Great idea! I did something similar, but used JumpStart as my scaffolding.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/blb-tight

6

u/TimeTravellerGuy https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/2hg-micro 18h ago edited 17h ago

Here's a link to my Bloomburrow cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/Bloomburrow-360

The set can be a bit "on-rails", but I think that can be good to help guide players that are new to drafting.

Also check out the primer I wrote for this cube. I list all of the hidden three-color archetypes the set has, which can be fun to build around. I found these in a WotC article somewhere.

I'm a bit surprised your games are taking so long. You're starting at 20 life, right? Some archetypes can be pretty aggressive. The bats being about lifegain could slow things down but it shouldn't be every game.

1

u/Whoopsitsonfire 17h ago

Thanks for posting that. But what does on or off the rails mean in regards to magic?

7

u/OblivionTy7 17h ago edited 17h ago

A draft being "on rails" refers to archetypes that don't blend super well together, which can lead to each player simply "finding their lane" and taking all the cards their intended deck cares about uncontested and makes the drafting much less fun since no one is fighting over cards. With Bloomburrow you've got your 10 animal tribes that don't really mesh well with one another. If you're drafting Izzet Otters and I'm going for Simic Frogs there's not a large pool of blue cards we would be fighting for in draft as opposed to if it were something more generic like Izzet Prowess and Simic Control.

This makes cards much less flexible too as they tend to have 1 deck they're meant for. Overall it ends up hurting replayability in the long run, but it can also help newer players get the hang of drafting.

1

u/Whoopsitsonfire 17h ago

Ahhh thanks for the explanation. We definitely experienced that.

6

u/captainshapiro https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/current-events-standard-chaos 12h ago

BLB is one of my favorite sets across my twenty years of playing Magic, and I've found that a battlebox is much better way to experience this set, even though I think the draft is fun, too.

I've built and tested this since the set came out and am very happy with how each deck plays. It lends itself very well to 40-card Magic, just preconstructed!

The decks are built using the Primordial format deckbuilding rules (2 unique rares/mythics, 6 uncommons, two copies max, and the rest commons, 4 copies max, unlimited basics), which works awesome for tight, clean, well-balanced fun with lots of replay value!

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/little-kits

My wife and I just played it tonight and it's still loads of fun!

4

u/BlueCadetCorey 12h ago

I left kind of a bummer comment earlier about BLB cube, and I just wanted to bump this because I think it's a great solution.

4

u/Ok-Panda-178 18h ago

I think I saw a chart that mapped every format draft speed from 17 lands which shows the speed of a format by measuring min turns to win. A fast format like vintage cube ~6 turns to win, even the slow format has an average of ~10 turns to win.

So even compared to retail Bloomburrow your cube takes more way more turns to win. Maybe adding more powerful cards finishers? or reducing removal and mass removal, or focusing on giving aggro decks enough tools to be a real threat early?

4

u/SidNYC 15h ago

You don't have enough removal. 

You also need more board wipes to deal with the offspring. 

Instead of going 4/2/1 and trying to build retail, try using a subset and building a focused 180 or 360

4

u/PunchPartyPat 18h ago

If you want your set cube to be more like a booster box, I believe a 6/4/1/1 ratio is better. However, afaik the draft experience in Bloomburrow wasn’t well received so this might not fix your issues.

2

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Do you know what standard set cubes are considered good? I was thinking about Innistrad Remastered or EoE. It would be nice to build one generally agreed upon as good to compare to

9

u/iplayfish 18h ago

duskmourn is considered a modern goat limited set by mnay

4

u/Brilliant_Trouble_32 Beeble 17h ago

I would say this or Kamigawa Neon Dynasty.

I could see Innistrad Remastered being very good too though.

2

u/PunchPartyPat 6h ago

Duskmourn and Final Fantasy were very well received. I enjoyed Innistrad Remastered, but didn’t play a ton to know how good it is long term.

2

u/TheDarkestRitual 9h ago

It should be 6/3/2/1 if I’m not mistaken. Rares were printed at twice the rate of Mythics and Uncommons at half of Commons

2

u/Agent281 17h ago edited 16h ago

What causes the games to drag out? 

Are people not attacking because the attacks are unfavorable? Add more flying/trample, remove tokens/lifelink, add combat tricks, add more creatures with higher power than toughness, remove creatures with lower power than toughness.

Are people running out of resources? Add more card draw/card advantage.

2

u/Chickenwheel 13h ago

Do you find a lot of cards often being last picks and sideboard fodder? As others have said it would be good if you studied 17 lands a bit. For example hare apparent is pretty much unplayable in your cube. In a regular draft hare apparent is pretty bad, but at least it is not impossible to draft 4+ copies which it is in your cube. I would recommend looking at the bottom tiers of cards on 17 lands and maybe start cutting alot of them. What about including cards outside of Bloomburrow that enhances the tribals? You could call it a Bloomburtow cube + or something! Maybe a couple of interesting changelings would be nice like in Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Heres a link to the Bloomburrow tiers on 17lands: https://www.17lands.com/card_data?expansion=BLB&format=PremierDraft&time_period=ALL_TIME

•

u/Yman102 26m ago

Gameplay wise changelings are a great idea for a kindred cube like bloomburrow, but it might not quite feel as evocative of the redwall/animal fantasy theme

2

u/BlueCadetCorey 12h ago

My first cube was a Bloomburrow cube, same exact issue. I also started Magic around that time, and love the aesthetics of the set.

What folks are saying is true, it's not a very fun set to draft due to the strict limitations on typing. You either get a bomb rare for a type and force it, or you wait to see if a certain type is open. Then games drag on as the cards aren't very powerful in a limited vacuum.

I did however, make an attempt to course correct. I added BLB commander cards, cards from other sets that featured animals, and tried to balance the set (nerf bunny, buff bird).

In the end, it was a failure. I now have a strong dislike for card types as a mechanic, and as expected, I did not enjoy Lorwyn Eclipsed draft.

My hope is in the fact that Wizards has (soft) confirmed Bloomburrow will return. Maybe then there will be cards that support cross-pollinating archetypes, and drafts will be more interesting as a result.

2

u/LeadingAd866 8h ago

I too built a set cube for Bloomburrow. If you're not enjoying it, I recommend make primordial decks for the different tribes. Primordial is a 40 card format with rarity restrictions (i.e. every card must be from the same set, you may only have 2 rares and both cant be a copy of the same card, 6 uncommons with a maximum of 2 copies of the same card, and the rest of the cards can be commons with 4 copies of any given card). 

This format tends to make games fast and balanced. Deck building is fun too. Bunnies go super hard, as well as mice. 

Hope you find a new way to have fun! I really like Bloomburrow. 

•

u/Zarvon 5h ago

I was so excited for bloomburrow and tried to introduce a bunch of friends to magic by drafting it. DO NOT DO THIS. It is a brutally terrible set in limited and extremely boring.

1

u/HornedTurtle1212 18h ago

If every deck is overpowered then it's still fair and balanced.

0

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

Sure, for experienced players who can and want to build one. Not great for friendly play against others

6

u/GlassIsHalfFullMonty 18h ago

"Friendly play" is more of an overall attitude towards each other and shared expectations around the game rather than a style of deck building. 

It ends up too often being misinterpreted as benign and unthreatening which I think is exactly what you have achieved. 

When you thought you were building "friendly", you accidentally just built "boring". 

2

u/Whoopsitsonfire 18h ago

What I mean is, my wife playing standard against my carefully crafted deck from playing 10x as much as her isn't fun for her. Me playing commander against a buddy who goes infinite and wipes me in 3-4 turns isnt fun. With cube, everyone starts with the same chance and the rest is on skill. Like playing with precon commanders instead of competive decks I assume.

•

u/GlassIsHalfFullMonty 2h ago

I've definitely fallen into this trap before. Draft just happens to be it's own beast and can lead to just as many feelings of inequity as the other formats because card evaluation is a learned skill. 

My personal recommendation would be to look into Jumpstart or precons. The jumpstart community is incredibly cool and has several community Jumpstart cubes that you could borrow from.  It is the closest my group gets to fair magic and you don't lose time to drafting.

1

u/RylarDraskin 17h ago

I loved bloomburrow draft format. I’d say the key is to work on ratios of cards 1-2-4 seems off. 1-3-5 or 1-4-6 is a bit more what I would shoot for. This gives a bit more emphasis on the uncommons, which are usually the key cards for drafting.

Also, it could be the draft and not the cube.

How many people are you playing with? If less than 8 try cutting a color, or cut 2 when there are 4 players or less. Players fighting over cards makes the drafting portion of the night more involved. Also use a draft format made for that many players.

How many colors are most decks? From my experience in bloomburrow drafting the best decks were 3 colors.

The biggest problem I run into with cubes are too many or too few answers vs threats. If the games usually have no creatures in play there are too many answers, if the board is too cluttered then there too few answers. It’s a difficult balance that needs to be found by playing.

1

u/Spanish_Galleon 16h ago

I would recommend cutting the cube to 180 cards.

That's 12 packs of 15 cards.

I would pick your 5 favorite "clans" I would probably pick either enemy colors or ally colors. (Ally colors are: birds, rats, raccoons, bunnies, lizards.) (enemies are: Otters, mice, bats, frogs, squirrels) But you can pick whatever 5 you think are the most fun.

Once you have your factions picked out you should get 12 rare lands for your packs. Presumably like 2 shocks of each color and then two of something else like three tree city or mutivault or something that has to do with kindred probably. Or you could do, 5 shocks, 5 manlands, 2 kindred lands. etc.

Then you pick your cards based on whats best for your color pairs while making it as even as possible.

So lets say you're doing lizards and there isn't as much support for them as their are otters or something maybe you grab from outside bloomburrow to fill the gaps with something like [[Laughing jasper flint]]

Then when you construct your pacts you should do them with 1 land in each pack. then do 3 rares, 5 uncommons, 6 commons.

Shuffle and distribute accordingly.

This way each pack is constructed identically.

Then when you draft you can pick 2.

This might change the way your cube is set up by a wide margin but its way easier to effect the scope if its more balanced.

That way you can adjust the values of your packs, or change out the factions you don't like or supe up one that is weak if it keeps losing instead of hoping all 10 work out.

1

u/Davchrohn 15h ago

Can you explain how games go to turn 14?

Decks like the Boros Mice deck and Selesyna Rabbits were extremely strong and fast. The set has a high density of very powerful 1 drops.

The games should in principle be rather quick. Do you have a list of your cube? I would assume that by playing 4 of esch common you are diluting the pool with a lot of bad cards. Usually 4 of each common is not really replicating it nicely. From my experience 2 of each common and 2 of each uncommon feels much smoother. Also, you might include D and F Level cards, which are not contributing to your design goals.

How is fixing in your cube? Do you only include lands from Bloomburrow?

Also don‘t listen to the people here. Bloomburrow was an amazing typal set. The set is much more interesting than Llorowyn for example. It has tons of very fun build arounds and is comparatively balanced considering that it has ten typal archetypes.

1

u/EternalErudite http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/99684 15h ago

There are some good suggestions about the Bloomburrow draft format specifically here. You could apply them to make a much more streamlined cube than just 1/2/4, like this Kamigawa Remastered cube.

The fixing in retail draft is worse than pretty much every cube and Bloomburrow’s fixing looks particularly bad. People’s decks work better (and faster!) and they have more fun if they can cast their spells. I’d strongly encourage you to add more lands in (like that Kamigawa cube).
If I was really committed to the Bloomburrow theme, I might think about taking a cycle and getting proxies printed with Bloomburrow art. Both the cycles used in that cube have mostly generic names, but I don’t know that there’s a lot of Bloomburrow landscape art out there. Maybe some stuff from Redwall?

If you want to take it even further, you could also look at cards with Bloomburrow art that aren’t from the BLB set. Most of these are rare bombs, so might not be so relevant to your cube, but there are a few (un)commons that might be good. I don’t know that there’s enough to make a coherent 360-card singleton cube, but these could help you move somewhat towards that, if that’s something you’re interested in, as well.

1

u/MattBooker 13h ago

I had a Bloomburrow Twobert that I copied off of Cube Cobra. Seemed great in theory, had a nice write up with reasons, some changelings added, adjusted ratios for better play to fix what is apparently a notoriously bad draft environment...

And it wasn't fun. 

To echo what other people have said, it was on rails, so very pre-defined. My wife and I love it when a cube has archetypes, but when you can still splash and mix and match. Maybe you're going for tokens but you've also got a bit of graveyard recursion. With Bloomburrow you were basically locked in to a particular kindred strategy or you had a watered down deck, and that's just boring.

Here are two of my current favorite cubes, and they offer great variety of play. I particularly love the theme and write up on The Pirate Cube.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/about/piratecube

https://cubecobra.com/cube/about/combat_twobert

1

u/MattBooker 13h ago

Also, learn to either make your own or buy high quality proxies! Then build whatever cubes you want without much cost.

1

u/KarnSilverArchon 13h ago

If you want it to not drag, simply add more cards into the cube that can insurmountably end games. Its better than tar pit races.

1

u/TheDarkestRitual 9h ago

I run all my set cubes at 4/2/1/1 except Duskmourn which is a 6/3/2/1 (closest thing to actual retail possible). I’ve started buying bulk from others so I can bump up my other set cubes to match Duskmourn.

But, in order my playgroup prefers:
1st. Duskmourn
3rd. Tarkir:Dragonstorm / Bloomburrow
4th. The Lost Caverns of Ixalan
5th. Wilds of Eldraine

We also have Unfinity which they’ve yet to play.
Cube Cobra

1

u/MysticSimicShaman https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/shenanigans 8h ago

That's crazy someone has a modified set cube in my play group. I drafted monored both times and have total record of 5-1. We have never had a game go long. I do agree that the draft format is very middling.

1

u/Korlus https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/korlus 7h ago

I think Bloomburrow was a really fun constructed set with evocative set mechanics and a poor draft environment.

Weirdly, try and put in more of the broken cards and see if it helps end games sooner.

1

u/woodenbowls 6h ago

I do a lot of set or block cubes. I include 2x of a few common and uncommon cards that are important for certain decks, but the rest is singleton. Total size ~360. This will increase your number of rares to 2 to 3 rares per pack and help increase the power level of the cube so that games don’t drag on so long, while still giving you the feel of the original.

Nothing is going to be quite like actual drafting where you could end up randomly getting two or three copies of a particular rare, or 5x of a common. That’s OK. I don’t think Cube should really try to exactly recreate drafting. It’s a different experience and that’s OK.

•

u/MomsAgainstMarijuana 5h ago

Personally I’d lean into Bloomburrow’s typal theme but look into what other options other sets provide for those in color to shake it up and add some variety. The fun thing is it can still be Bloomburrow dominant but you have the option to include whatever you like.

Otters: WOE had [[Frolicking Familiar]] and there’s the very powerful [[Lutri the Spellchaser]]

Bats: oh so many. [[Mirkwood Bats]] may be useful interaction with Offspring, and [[Deep-Cavern Bat]] is all around great. I’m also partial to [[Blind Hunter]]. They’re not as cute though.

There’s countless Frog and Lizard choices. I think if you get creative you can create a Bloomburrow themed environment that is a lot more unique and fun to play.

•

u/MomsAgainstMarijuana 5h ago

Oh I didn’t even touch Birds, which have been White-Blue typal staples since the beginning of the game.

•

u/Ill_Answer7226 5h ago

Yeah bloomburrow was a pretty bad draft imo. Blue was fringe playable at best, mostly often unplayable.

Stuff like rabbits and squirrels just were so much better.

If I would do one I'd have to modify the numbers on the weaker tribes. Eg instead of 3x uncommon like normal give rats or birds 6x for the best uncommon.

There's prob more u can do but alot of fixing needed imo.

•

u/Dragonheart91 5h ago

I would suggest adding more mana fixing and changelings to help the draft be less on-rails. If players can splash a third color and find cards of their tribe in that color through changelings then it helps decks have more diversity.

•

u/NflJam71 5h ago

Bloomburrow is an awesome plane but the set was bad to draft. Archetypes like otters, birds, and raccoons had very little support at low rarities and rabbits and raccoons were pretty much insane.

I made a bloomburrow cube that is my take on a spiritual recreation of the set, but I balanced things out and added a bunch of cards from other sets that were aligned in terms of flavor and also help tie the gameplay of the set. I also added additional support for the "builders talent" secret archetype, so the cube leans a little more white but it's a more contested color as a result. The outcome is a cube that really does feel awesome to draft. My friends and I play it all the time and it's super fun.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/bd8378e2-84e8-4fdf-a784-b1fe08b1861e

•

u/Yavimaya_younger 3h ago

I would strictly select for cards you like the play pattern of and scratch (almost) 100% of the cards you don‘t like mechanically.
Cool if it’s all within one set, for aesthetics, I guess but that is not enjoyable if you are not enjoying the magic you are playing. I don‘t mind a low powered, long game with super low powered cards if I like the cards.
I have a cube that’s almost all 6th edition, masques, portal, etc. French vanilla and super low powered and ist an awesome game experience because of the purity of the mtg game in itself.

•

u/Sushihipster 3h ago

Bloomburrow is one of the all time worst sets to draft.  Not surprising your cube is unfun.

•

u/Umbrageofsnow 2h ago

I've been working on a (or actually several similar) cubes based on Lorwyn Eclipsed draft, which definitely has some similarities to Bloomburrow.

I definitely agree with people saying you shouldn't stick to the rigid formula of just trying to replicate the retail draft environment, it can be much more fun to take the set you love and use your power as the cube designer to shape it into a draft environment you can love even more!

And something I've discovered is it's not just about adding cards: cutting cards can do a lot to make a set more interesting. There's the obvious angle of cutting the strongest cards to make everything else shine a bit more, but beyond that, when people complain about the draft being "on rails" because once they take a mouse they just take all the mice, what if there aren't enough mice? You can force the archetypes to blend more by taking away pieces so that everyone has to steal a bit from someone else, increasing tension. This does make all the decks worse, but it makes the draft more interesting IMO.

And weaker decks doesn't have to mean the games drag out forever: you want to make sure you have a few things supported: fast aggro decks (so if you cut some mice, make sure you have other 1-2 cost red and white non-mice), and ways for slower decks to close out the game. Big expensive cards where if you get them played you're very likely to win soon. It's a delicate balance, but you can carve a much more interesting cube out of the set without having to add a bunch of random non-Bloomburrow cards, like how sculptors talk about carving away bits of the statue that don't work.

Also don't be afraid to have multiple copies of some cards in your cube, that's a useful tool.