Draft your cube at CubeTutor.com!

[Ben Titmarsh]

I felt this was a big enough feature to announce it on a new thread.  Draft cubes here:

Ben's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/1
Simon's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/5
Tom's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/7
Kieran's Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/12

You can pick cards and you'll see them on the right as you do so.  You're actually playing againt 7 bot drafters who basically just force two colours each and take the occasional artifact/land.  Each colour will be drafted by at most 3 bot drafters so it kinda mimics what should end up happening in a real draft.  They pick at random a card from their colours.

As usual only minimal testing has been performed, please do report any bugs and let me know what you think!

[Ben Titmarsh]

hehe yeah the bots need to get a bit better at drafting.  I'll be getting them to use pick orders soon.

[Ben Titmarsh]

Bots now use pick orders!

So at the end of each pack you draft, CubeTutor will record the order of your picks.  The bots will then use this information in subsequent drafts to inform their picks.  The logic goes something like this:

1) Order the pack by previous pick orders.  Any card that has never been picked is assumed to be a last pick at this point.

2) Find the first card in my colours or the first colourless card and pick it.

3) If no card is found then hatedraft the most picked card :)

I think this is a pretty good representation of how people draft (aside from the fact that the bots force from the beginning).  Obviously it relies on data so the more you and others draft your cube, the better the bots will get!  So get training your bots!

Coming soon: Analysis on most picked/least picked cards which should help inform your cut decisions.

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

better stop kieran using it then otherwise it will still pick randomly

Ben Titmarsh said:

Bots now use pick orders!

So at the end of each pack you draft, CubeTutor will record the order of your picks.  The bots will then use this information in subsequent drafts to inform their picks.  The logic goes something like this:

1) Order the pack by previous pick orders.  Any card that has never been picked is assumed to be a last pick at this point.

2) Find the first card in my colours or the first colourless card and pick it.

3) If no card is found then hatedraft the most picked card :)

I think this is a pretty good representation of how people draft (aside from the fact that the bots force from the beginning).  Obviously it relies on data so the more you and others draft your cube, the better the bots will get!  So get training your bots!

Coming soon: Analysis on most picked/least picked cards which should help inform your cut decisions.

[Ben Titmarsh]

We have some data coming in!  Simon here are all of the cards that have been picked in your cube by a human (inc. Kieran) more than once.  These will be getting picked a lot higher by the bots now.  Will make this sort of data available on the site soon:

| Sword of Body and Mind     |
| Silverblade Paladin        |
| Porcelain Legionnaire      |
| Tangle Wire                |
| Swords to Plowshares       |
| Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker  |
| Hero of Oxid Ridge         |
| Burst Lightning            |
| Ajani, Caller of the Pride |
| Miraculous Recovery        |
| Hellrider                  |
| Go for the Throat          |
| Lotus Cobra                |
| Ajani Goldmane             |
| Thoughtseize               |
| Survival of the Fittest    |
| Hymn to Tourach            |
| Liliana of the Veil        |
| Muddle the Mixture         |
| Karn Liberated             |
| Careful Study              |
| Midnight Haunting          |
| Sever the Bloodline        |
| Preordain                  |
| Reanimate                  |
| Damnation                  |
| Makeshift Mannequin        |
| Flooded Strand             |
| Exhume                     |
| Fact or Fiction            |
| Dark Confidant             |
| Rampant Growth             |
| Oblivion Ring              |
| Graveborn Muse             |
| Tumble Magnet              |
| Griselbrand                |
| Demonic Tutor              |
| Tragic Slip                |
| Umezawa's Jitte            |
| Flickerwisp                |
| Dismantling Blow           |
| Careful Consideration      |
| Symbiotic Wurm             |

[Kieran Symington]

Go Tumble Magnet!

I'm determined to make Talon Trooper a first pick in Ben's cube by drafting it whenever I see it!

[Kieran Symington]

I had a try at some drafts on Ben & Simons' cubes, but then realized that drafting a deck probably doesn't help the bots learn what's good (you don't want a third-pack Jace in mono-red, for instance). So then I gave up on making a deck and have just been taking the best card in each pack. My decks have been unplayable, but it's got to be the quickest way to teach them!

[Ben Titmarsh]

You can now see the top 50 draft picks from your cube on the Analysis page!

http://www.cubetutor.com/analysis/5

[Paul Hodgson]

Hi Ben, I've been wanting to build a cube for a while so I'm going to track progress on your site. However I'm failing at the first hurdle, which is uploading a list.

Questions:

1) Is it possible to export someone else's list as a starting point?

2) Is there a flag for 'got' or 'need', to indicate that I have/have not got the card in question?

3) What is the format of the input list?

ta!

[Ben Titmarsh]

Hey Paul!

You don't have to start with an offline list, you can just go to the List page and start adding cards!  Each batch is grouped into an 'update' and to commit it you have to write a title and description and click 'Save'.  I think that I should make it more obvious in the reg process that you don't have to upload a list to start using the site.

Yes there is a flag for Got or Need.  When you've got a list on the edit cube page there is a drop down where you can set the version (foil, non foil, promo etc).  This defaults to [NOT SET] so you could just use this to indicate that you don't have the card yet.

If you do want to start with the list, basically any non-proprietary text file type is supported, so .txt, .csv, .rtf etc.  It will scan the file and just look for card names so you can arrange the file however you like.  If you want a starting list I can send you the one I started with.

Glad to have you on board!

Paul Hodgson said:

Hi Ben, I've been wanting to build a cube for a while so I'm going to track progress on your site. However I'm failing at the first hurdle, which is uploading a list.

Questions:

1) Is it possible to export someone else's list as a starting point?

2) Is there a flag for 'got' or 'need', to indicate that I have/have not got the card in question?

3) What is the format of the input list?

ta!

[Ben Titmarsh]

Looking at this chart it was clear to me that there is a problem in the bots card ordering algorithm.  They weren't really taking into account frequency of picks.  So just because Grim Monolith was first picked once, it would basically never get passed by a bot and was rated much higher than Mox Pearl which was picked 6 times but has an average pick of 2.5.

I've modified it so the cards are now ordered by the largest delta between the pick count and average pick.  i.e. cards that are more frequently picked earlier are rated above cards that were just first picked once. 

If I didn't explain that very well, it should be more visually evident on the graph.

[Kieran Symington]

The Draft Analysis is awesome! It would be good to also get the bottom picks though, so you can work out what needs to be replaced.

[Ben Titmarsh]

yep, will do this soon.