Once again, it’s that time of year: a new Star Wars collectible card game has launched and I am already planning how to build a draft cube for it. If you’ll recall, I wrote an article about building a draft cube for Star Wars Destiny not long after they released their multiplayer/limited format pack. Fortunately, with Star Wars Unlimited, we do not have to wait for Fantasy Flight Games to bring out a special pack to allow us to easily manage and play in the limited format.
If you want more information on what separates the different formats of play within Star Wars Unlimited, the official website provides copious amounts of info. In this article, I’ll go over how I plan to build my first cube for SWU. Actually, before I get onto my new plan, I should quickly review how drafting works and what a “cube” even is.
Setting up a draft for most collectible card games usually involve six to eight people around a table, each bringing three booster packs to the table. At the same time, each player will crack one of their packs, take one card they want, and pass the rest of the pack to the player to their left, while receiving the same amount of cards from the person to their right. This is repeated until the first pack is gone. The second pack follows the same method, but is passed to the right and received from the left. Pack three is the same, going back to passing left and receiving right. At this point, every player will have the same amount of cards they would have gotten from their three packs, but they’ve been able to see and select cards from the other players’ boosters. From these drafted card pools, each player will build their deck.
A cube is, usually, a curated set of cards that can by itself support draft play for eight people, the typical number for a draft. Unlike a booster draft, a cube is self-contained and can be thought of as a “draft in a box.” From the cards in the cube, each player would get three “packs” (in this case, stacks) of cards. In other card games, their overall card pool is big enough to theme their cube or make it as simple as pulling from an isolated series of expansions. In the case of Star Wars Unlimited, we only have one set so far, Spark of Rebellion.
You might think we need to wait until the end of the year when we have two more sets to pull from, and that will certainly make for a more interesting card pool, but a cube can give us something great right now: something to do with all of our extra commons and uncommons. I propose a slightly different approach to cube building at this time: no rares or legendaries, a cube consisting of 336 cards (commons and uncommons), a leader draft deck containing 24 common leaders, and 24 common bases available to everyone (undrafted; just in the middle of the table to be grabbed).
As I said in my old article (yes I had to go back and read it), “time for some math.”
336 cards is three packs of 14 cards per player (a booster is 16 cards, but we are removing the leader and base from the equation). The twenty-four leaders draft deck represents the three leaders eight players would pull from their packs and then pass to their left. Twenty-four bases would be the same number of bases pulled from the booster packs, placed in the middle of the table to be grabbed.
Now we have to consider the breakdown of what cards we include. Right now, we’re not going to have a lot of rares and legendaries that we’re not including in our Twin Suns or regular constructed decks, which is why I’m comfortable aiming for a “pauper” (commons and uncommons only) style cube. What we do have is a lot of extra C’s and U’s sitting around not getting used. Ideally, we’d be able to collect 336 cards and, as evenly as possible, divide them between Heroism+Aggression/Command/Cunning/Vigilance, Villainy+Agg/Comm/Cunn/Vig, and then the non-Hero/Villain cards of Agg/Comm/Cunn/Vig as well as the grey/neutrals. Again, this is ideal, but not an absolute, to have 112 of each for those three groups. I wouldn’t even worry about any kind of cost distribution because most of the commons/uncommons will stay within the early (cost 1, 2) to mid-game (3, 4, sometimes 5) cost.
Once you have your cube assembled, including sleeving every single card (yes, I’m serious), you can keep it in its own box, prepped and ready to break out at home, a friend’s house, or any other social event. As the owner of the cube, you’ll be in charge of managing it, meaning, once you have your draft group together, you’ll separate the Leaders and Bases from the main body of the cube, shuffle that main body (with some help from everybody else), and then begin making your 14-card stacks, three stacks per person representing your booster packs. After those stacks are distributed, drop those Bases in the middle of the table, deal out three Leaders to every player, conduct your Leader draft, and then draft your packs. You’re all set to play!
I should put a small disclaimer here at the end: if you do not have enough people to fire off a draft, don’t worry! Your cube is still very usable! Instead of doing three stacks of 14 cards, deal out six stacks of 14 cards per person and you can do a sealed session; just deal out six leaders to each player (the math would allow for 4 players in this scenario) and again leave the Bases out to be grabbed at will.
Fantasy Flight has made it significantly easier to concept and execute non-Premier/Constructed formats than in their previous SW card games. As easy as it is right now, I am very much looking forward to when we have enough cards to make a draft cube themed around our favorite shows or time periods (High Republic draft, anybody?).