NOBS Cube 1 Results and NOBs Cube 2 Signup

[Ben Titmarsh]

Top place was tied three ways on 15 points.  Andy took it down having beaten Paul and myself.  Paul took second from his victory to me.  Charlie took 4th.  Russ, Ross, Amar and Kieran also ran!  Tom did not.

Drafting the cube was awesome fun and I'm keen to do it again next week if everyone else is. 

I suggest that when Return to Ravnica draft kicks in we crown an M13 NOBs champion who will take home the inaugural (and fictional) Foil Door to Nothingness trophy!

Assuming next week is our last draft in the M13 window, we have a two horse race on our hands!

1    Ben    36
2    Ross    34
3    Kieran    22
4    Charlie    21
5    Andrew    20
6    Levi    19
7    Russ    19
8    Nathan    14
9    Maor    10
10    Simon    8
11    Rebecca    8
12    Paul    8
13    Ray    4
14    Dan Waine    4
15    Dan Royde    3
16    Amar    3
17    Marek    2
18    Phil    1
19    Allan    1
20    Joe    1
21    Mills    1 

As an aside Russ made a very good suggestion this week.  Given round robin has notoriously high variance, how about allowing one free mulligan for 0,1,6 and 7 land hands?

Next week:

1. Ross

2. Kieran

3. Ben

4. Amar

5. Louis

6. Charlie

7. Paul

8. Russ

[Kieran Symington]

Cube was definitely fun, even though I was (as predicted) terrible and only won one game!

The Mulligan rule does make sense  - nobody likes losing to random mana issues - though I'll miss being able to beat better players because they've mulliganed to nothing!

[Amar Dattani]

I'm in - and the Mulligan rule sounds great.

[Louis Mackie]

I'd like to join this one if that's okay :)

[Ben Titmarsh]

Absolutely Louis!

[Ben Titmarsh]

Just to clarify on the mulligan point, it wouldn't be free unless you had 0,1,6 or 7 lands and you have to reveal to your opponent.

[Charlie Grover]

In, unless im away

[Paul Hodgson]

In!

[ross miles]

I'd be keen on the muligan rule, what follows are a few thoughts.

We are hoping to avoid auto-muligan hands from deciding the outcome of games and trying to make every game play out so the winner is decided by drafting/play skill, without affecting the strategic balance of the game ...

0 and 7 landers seem obvious auto muls
1 landers are mostly auto muls?
6 landers are mostly auto muls?

I am particularly interested to see what other people think about 6 land hands, it seems in cube esp 6 land hands could be keepable given the number of non basics and likelyhood of multi colour decks ... If we include 6 land free muligan does that give too much of a boost to those decks where 6 may be keepable more times than other decks?

By changing the muligan rules we want to avoid signifcantly affecting the tactical decisions a player has, have we got the balance right or should it only be 0, 1 and 7 landers? Or 0,7 landers? Or should we go in the other direction and also allow hands where you don't have the colour of all your spells? Clearly not the last one, but I think 6 is worth some debate ...

[Russell Davies]

Count me in.

[Russell Davies]

I can think of only one instance the entire history of my Magic playing where I have kept a 6 land hand - that was a Teachings Mirror, on the draw, and to be fair it was probably the best possible hand for that matchup.

I can imagine very few other constructed decks where I would keep a 6 land hand (pretty much NEVER on the play, and almost never on the draw, unless I had specific info about my opponents deck and some weird bomb/trump card was the 7th in my hand).

I have never drafted a deck where I would keep a 6 land hand, even on the draw, though to be fair if one of those lands was Maze of Ith or Library of Alexandria, it's possible it might happen.

All that being said, it's not an auto-mulligan, it's just an option for a single, free mulligan from 7 to 7 (you can't do it a second time, you're on to normal Paris Mulligans then) if you want to, should you be flooded or screwed... I definitely appreciate the caution as I wouldn't want to break anything or make some deck archetypes better than others, but I don't *think* that would be a problem here, I definitely welcome more opinions.

As for "off colour land" hands, you're definitely right we shouldn't do that - that's far from an auto decisions, and I've kept hands like that in Drafts more times than I can remember. Not always the correct choice, but it's pretty common to keep that on the draw if you have 8+ sources of your primary colour and are missing it...

[Russell Davies]

Also, interestingly, I'm curious about how people feel about 1 land and 6 landers. I've kept a great deal of 1 land hands (even in Limited, with the right deck/spells in hand) but not so with 6 landers...

As a rule of thumb, I'd say 1 landers are a lot more keepable than 6 landers... after all "screw always beats flood".  ;)

[Kieran Symington]

From the internet, considering a 17 land deck, the chances of getting a 0 land hand is 1.31%, 7 lands is 0.1% and 6 lands 1.53%. This would be a total of 2.94% of hands getting a free mulligan, which is a pretty low percentage, and works out at about 1.5 free mulligans in one of our tournaments. 1 land hands have a 9.2% chance of coming up and should probably not be given a free mulligan since that would be 12.14% of opening hands being mulliganed (about 7 free mulligans over the evening!)

The real problem, of course, is usually not having the right colour of lands for the cards in hand rather than being simply land screwed/flooded, which I'm pretty sure we can't legislate for. But removing the awful and statistically unlikely hands would probably help reduce variance in the matches.

There is, though, one problem that I can foresee with the free mulligan rule - it makes going first a lot safer. With a safety net for hitting the wrong lands it will surely always be correct to play first. Since playing first is generally the correct option anyway, are we not actually giving even more of an advantage to the person who wins the die roll to go first and actually unintentionally making things come down to luck even more?