In Epic the Card Game Wise Wizard Games (WWG) came up with a draft format for two players called Dark Draft.

The following are the rules for a Dark Draft by WWG.

• “Shuffle a stack of at least 120 cards. Deal 5 to each player.
• Each player takes 1 card out of their hand of five cards and drafts it, then passes the other 4 to the other (at the same time).
• Each player takes 2 cards out of their new hand of four cards and drafts them, then discards the remaining two cards into a shared face-down discard pile.
• Both players now have drafted three cards. Repeat nine times to get to a 30-card deck, shuffle and play.”

WWG finish by describing this draft format as “…a fun, fast, and skill-testing draft format for two players.”

I like this format because it gives that bit of mystery during the draft of you know what you handed over to your opponent. However you don’t know what they kept and what was discarded. So you have partial information.

My current thinking is take the 48 card cube I’ve created and use that as the stack to shuffle and deal the cards from. I’m also still using just two dice per card as per official draft packs.

I still want to have that team building element.

The way I see this working is starting with the basic action cards being drafted.

I can’t see this phase of the draft being anything other than a single draft round. It’s also the phase I think might need tweaking the most.

So each player gets dealt 5 basic action cards. Select one and pass the rest to the other player. Both players then select two basic action cards and discard the remaining two to a discard pile facedown.

Now onto the meat of the dark draft.

This takes place over 4 rounds and at the end of it each player has 12 cards to build a team of 8 from.

Each round both players get dealt 5 cards. They choose one to keep and pass the rest to the other player.

Each player now has a hand of 4 cards. They choose two to keep and discard the remaining 2 cards face down to a discard pile.

This is repeated another three times. Giving each player 12 cards.

Once the players have built their teams, and chosen the two basic action cards to use, they reveal their teams and then recruit the dice required as per rainbow draft rules.

In summary this Dice Masters Dark Draft requires a minimum of 40 cards to draft from for the teams. Is drafted over 4 rounds. Giving each player 12 cards to build 8 a card team from. It also requires a minimum of 10 basic action cards to draft from. These are drafted over a single round and give each player 3 basic actions to choose a final two from.

I do like the idea of using the pauper cube I built (or any cube) for this. It gives enough cards to use, plus a little variety as the whole cube is not being used.

Obviously this hasn’t been tested yet. But it will be at the first opportunity I get with (most likely) Dave.

If you do get a chance to try this out please let me know how you got on and what you thought. Or even if you haven’t what you think of this idea anyway.

I do like deck construction. It’s a side of ccgs like MtG that I get immense enjoyment from.

However I have over the more recent months come to appreciate more the other aspects of game formats offered by this type of game. Such as preconstructed decks and draft.

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy these differing ways to participate in a game before. It’s just my preference was for playing with decks I’d constructed.

But as I took an extended break away from the competitive side and the constant very expensive arms race. I wanted to return to playing these types of game casually with my friends and without the expense.

As I’ve documented in previous posts I’ve found official MtG precons for Standard/Pioneer/Commander/Game Night Kits and the Card Kingdom Battle Decks great as casual pick up and play sessions with friends.

Now I’m trying to bring that casual side to Dice Masters. Particularly using cards from sets that I already own.

Sadly in the Dice Masters world there are no precon products apart from starter/learning sets that do not give the full blown Dice Masters experience. But are great for teaching the core ebb and flow of the game.

Which is how I fell into and loving the draft format with the draft packs.

But at £10 a pack purchasing two packs a time can soon mount up. I needed a way to get more value out of any draft packs purchased, and my dated collection.

Luckily the MtG community had an answer. The cube. I’ve already written about constructing a cube for Dice Masters.

So at the moment draft whether using official packs or a cube is my preferred way to play Dice Masters with friends.

Which brings me after that rather long introduction and justification to the fact that once again this Tuesday Dave and I played Dice Masters by drafting the two Dark Phoenix Saga draft packs.

I’m enjoying our two player draft experience but in an ideal world we’d have three or four drafting and playing their teams against each other.

The first two games I was royally beaten by Dave. Game one saw me purchase two early explosion basic action dice. They helped whittle Dave’s life down but I wasn’t able to capitalise on it.

Game two I just wasn’t able to get anything going to container his bloody doubled up attacks or overcrush.

Our third and final game of the evening saw me get a consolatory victory so it wasn’t a complete white wash. My key to victory in this game was my Mystique Freedom Force comboing with Madelyne Pryor Sisterhood.

Basically I kept throwing Mystique in to chump block and pump up the loyalty counters on Madelyne Pryor, and when a suitable character die was in the used area move it to the prep area.

Madelyne at the end was getting pretty pumped at the end +7A and +7D iirc.

The three games were all we had time for before the early closing of social club (our hosts).

Did I pull a Master Mold?

After all that’s the thought that was eating away at me whilst the two draft packs remained unopened. The temptation to find out in the days since their arrival excruciating. But I managed to resist.

However we pulled no Master Mold between the two packs.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed. But that’s the major drawback of the ccg model that you live with.

Now for the bit related to the post title…

So I now have my first cube.

It’s probably the laziest one you can do. I just threw the four draft packs together. It really doesn’t get simpler than that.

It’s a modern cube.

Which means I used draft packs from Modern legal sets. In this case two draft packs from The Dark Phoenix Saga and Secret Wars.

So it’s kinda a chaos draft experience due to the fact I’m using two sets.

Nice thing is this all fits into a MtG Commander deck box!

However the play testing of this cube will have to wait until our next Dice Masters session due to the evenings time constraints.

The nice thing is that once I get more draft decks from these sets I can curate the experience better, like including a Wolverine. There were one or two cards that had abilities that triggered if Wolverine was present. But those thoughts are for another day.

I think I mentioned briefly in a previous post the idea of creating a Dice Masters version of an MtG cube.

So what is a cube?

Basically a cube is a large pool of cards selected to play a limited version of the game, ie draft.

A cube is a casual format. Apart from I think CardKingdom there are no commercial cubes to purchase. A cube is normally put together by a person to play with friends or gaming group.

Usually a cube reflects a theme or mechanics that the person putting it together enjoys. So the cube could be a tribal cube containing cards that are tribes the creator likes playing like elves, slithers, dinosaurs, etc. Or it could be cards from MtG sets that the creator enjoyed playing, or a pauper cube with just commons.

There are usually at least 360 different cards in a cube, but can be more depending on how many players the cube is designed to support.

A cube is also a living thing. As you play them they get tweaked, new cards added, etc.

A cube is a very personal thing. It’s an expression of the person that created it. But they are fun. If you like the draft format that is.

So what about Dice Masters?

I think it is possible to create a cube for Dice Masters.

Currently draft in Dice Masters uses the blind draft packs that contain 2 or 3 basic action cards (depending which set draft pack you are using), 12 cards and 2 dice for each of the 12 cards.

It is this draft pack that I will suggest we try and recreate over the old draft of using booster packs.

I think as a minimum our Dice Masters cube should support up to four players (but could be built to support more players).

So with this in mind our cube when finished will have

• 48 cards (a mixture of character and action cards), that’s 12 cards per player
• 12 basic action cards, that’s 3 basic actions per player
• 96 dice to go with the 48 cards

Obviously these numbers will go up depending on the number of players we want to support with the cube.

Now the hard part choosing the cards to include in your cube.

Here are some ideas:

• Pauper – only common cards from a set/sets
• Only rare and super rare cards
• Only certain teams, so just Avengers or X-Men for example
• Cards only from certain sets like D&D
• Hero team vs Villian team
• Only Villians
• Only female characters
• No global actions
• Only cards with global actions
• No cards over a certain purchase cost
• Only promo cards (are there 48 promo cards?)

You get the idea.

When it comes to play. Before hand I’d sleeve the cards. Ideally I’d sleeve the basic action cards a different colour.

Shuffle the basic action cards deal 3 per player.

Then shuffle the rest of the cards and deal 12 to each to player.

After that you follow the Double Rainbow Draft rules that Wizkids publish here.

This is a great format for breathing life into those cards from older sets or even cards you don’t use in newer sets. Let me know in the comments below if you tried building a cube and how it went when you used it with your friends.

In the meantime I will post on here any Dice Master cubes that I create.