Episode 78 - CubeCon as a Designer

So what was it like to have my cube in the event? It's a lot different having your cube in a cube event than just drafting with your friends.

Uh, the, the biggest thing is that whenever your cube gets drafted at an event like this, most of the people drafting the cube have never drafted it before, and it's also people that you don't know, and you don't get to, like, talk to them.

So, like, when I'm laying the cube out, when I'm drafting it with my friends, if there's anyone that hasn't drafted the cube before, I give them a little, like, overview, maybe pull out a couple cards that are examples of things that are, like, particularly strong.

You don't get to do that at CubeCon because I am across the room drafting a completely different cube, like, locked in on that.

You don't get to, like, give a little spiel.

You don't get to, like, explain what the cube is about, all that sort of thing.

So it's a lot different.

It's a lot... much different meta game putting your cube out in front of eight strangers than it is putting it out in front of your friends.

I also think it's actually better data to get the cube drafted by strangers.

So now, if you have a cube and you only play it with your friends, and you, you know you have no, like, higher designs of getting this into event or something like that, that's a bit different because you have different goals for your cube.

But GUT is a cube that I want to bring to more events, and so that experience of people drafting the cube for the first time to me is very valuable, and it is also very valuable to me to see how people respond to the cube without the context that I usually give to people.

So I really actually value both the direct feedback that I get about the cube from CubeCon, as well as the data that I've aggregated from all of the pools and decks that people submitted for the event.

So as far as the direct feedback, um, [laughs] I did get to talk to a fair amount of people about my cube during the event.

Always less than I would hope at [laughs] an event like this because, like I said, I'm across the room drafting some other cubes, so if I wanna watch people play my cube, I need to, like, get up from my table between rounds, walk around the entire convention hall trying to find where my cube is being drafted because there's n- the ta- tables aren't, like, labeled or anything.

I did get to watch a lot of the gameplay, like, live during the top 128, like, not on Twitch, because I [laughs] lost my top 128 matches very, very quickly, so I got to hang around the coverage area, sort of awkwardly lurk, uh, outside of the fenced-off area and, like, watch the games as they were happening.

So, uh, that was pretty sweet.

I did get to talk to a fair amount of people as well, sort of between matches, because, you know, I ha- I have a podcast.

People kind of do know what I look like.

And people would come up to me and talk about GUT a little bit.

And I'm happy to report that the biggest piece of feedback that I got was, with the target audience for this cube, it was a hit.

And this cube very directly is about putting people in uncomfortable, awkward, tight gameplay situations and asking them to use their brain to get themselves out of it.

And this very directly targets people that enjoy gameplay in Magic, less targeting people that are looking to cook during a draft and more targeting people that are really looking for interesting gameplay positions.

Mostly spikes.

This is a cube for spikes, and I'm very happy to report that a lot of the people that came up to me said, "I understood that this is a cube targeted at spiky players, and as a spiky player, I loved it." And I had a bunch of people say it was their favorite cube in the event.

Very, very pleased with that sort of feedback.