Absense of Allies

Following on from my last post, and more pertinantly,  now that Worldwake has been released it is time to consider what role I want subthemes to play in my cube. As previously stated, the goal for my cube is to duplicate the feel of extended limited, without it being a ultra high powered collection.

As I look to add cards from Worldwake, it appears to me that in order to make room for new cards, Allies have to be omitted – the same would be true with slivers were they around in the selected blocks. Here is my reasoning.

Ally cards are cumulative in their effects. Simply put Allies get better the more of them there are. They also come in all five colours meaning that as there are 5 allies per colour that is 10% of the total coloured slots that have to be devoted to allies.

Obviously this is not practicle. One alternative is to allow allies in only two or three colours. But which colours? Is it worth devoting 15 slots for them instead of 25? In the end I reasoned that it was better to leave them out rather than compromise the drafting experience of the players.