Playtesting & Theorycrafting

Andy and Anthony are tackling a big subject in this episode: how do you turn experience playing your cube into informed design decisions that improve your environment? What do you do when your players insist that cards you included are either too good or not good enough and need to be cut? How do you handle people that are unwilling to draft or maindeck certain cards that you think are good?

The listener submitted pack 1, pick 1 this week is actually a pack 1, pick 2, because the boys are discussing Only on Tuesday’s Two-Headed Giant Cube. You can read more about the cube, and creator Jacob’s other writing about Magic, on his blog.

Topics addressed in this episode include:

• Two-Headed Giant
• Jett’s article on Analyzing Your Own Cube Drafts
• Why you should care about the experience from a playtesting session rather than the results
• Putting yourself in your drafters’ shoes
• Using hypotheses to build explanatory knowledge about your cube
• The ideal kinds of feedback to get from your players, and give to other cube designers
• How to strike a balance between playtesting and theorycrafting, and the respective value of each

You can find the hosts’ primary Cubes on Cube Cobra:

• Andy’s “Bun Magic” Cube
• Anthony’s “Regular” Cube

If you want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube on air send a link to your cube, your name, and pronouns to [email protected].

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.