Set Prospectives

For each new Magic: the Gathering set we conduct a survey of Cube designers to collect information about which new cards they plan on playing in their cubes. While there is no shortage of subjective set reviews written by individuals, our aim to paint a more broad picture of how a new set is perceived. This allows players to compare their own evaluations to the community at large and is a resource for those who aren’t able to review the whole set themselves.

Our survey is conducted between the set’s full-spoiler and official release. We believe there is a unique value in recording people’s first impressions of new cards before they have had time to play with them extensively. In the long run, we hope to use the data we’ve collected to examine how perceptions of card power-level change over time in the hopes of building a more robust and self-aware understanding of the game.

Our approach is simple: we ask Cube designers to share a ranked list of cards they plan on testing in their own cube or cubes from each new set. The cards are scored as follows:

These rankings are subjective and cube designers test cards by different metrics. For example, a respondent may think a card is powerful, but give it a low grade if they are worried it will be too oppressive in their cube, or if they maintain strict numbers of cards in specific guilds or mana values and don’t think there will be room for it. Conversely, less powerful cards may be ranked highly if they provide an effect that a player is especially interested in adding to their cube. Our goal is not to somehow quantify the “best” Cube cards, but instead to celebrate diverse approaches to the format.

Cards are summarized by their average rating and their consensus value, which is an indication of how much users agree on a card’s rating. The consensus of a card is just 1 – σ, where σ is the standard deviation of the card’s rating across users testing it. Because the rating is from 1 – 3, the consensus ranges from 0 – 1. Note that not all combinations of consensus and average rating are possible.

Participants in our surveys are Cube designers that subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on social media, or are members of one of the following communities, to which we specifically reach out:

• MTG Cube Subreddit — r/mtgcube
• MTGSalvation
• MTG CubeTalk Discord
• XMage Cube Group Discord
• MTG Cube Brainstorming Discord
• RiptideLab Cube Talk Forum

If you’re an organizer or member of a Cube community not listed here and would like to participate in future surveys drop us a note at [email protected].

The Lucky Paper set prospectives are conceived by founding contributor Jett Crowdis and written by Jett and Parker LaMascus.