The first suit I decided to tackle was diamonds. That’s because Cube is a singleton format with only one of each card, so Deeds are already the suit I assumed I would struggle to muster 75 unique cards for.
Note, if you don’t care to read all the waffle about how I designed the cube, you can head straight to the latest ruleset for the Doomtown Cube.
This means a) I’m building from a smaller pool making decisions easier and b) if I don’t have 75 deeds, I’ll need to know this for when it comes to the other suits, as either they’ll need to reduce to the same number of cards (maintaining an even split of suits in the cube) or make up for the lack of Deeds by having more (maintaining a cube size of 300 cards).
I sat down on a cramped and excessively hot train to sort through my Deeds. I first took a small aside to separate out the non-unique cards – these won’t be in the Cube, but will make up part of the Outfit Packs. I found five non-unique Deeds, four of them strikes and then the ubiquitous green eye saloon. Nice to know I have enough to carry out the plan (which currently calls for four non-unique Deeds per pack). These are underwhelming in terms of return on investment, but at least guarantee every player will have a very basic economy and in the case of the Saloon, a control point.
I then removed all the duplicates from my remaining Deeds, and ended up with a pile of 83 cards. So I have enough… just.
From this, I need to set aside a small number of Deeds that might go into the Outfit Packs. These are The Courthouse and Jail (for the Law Dogs) and the Docks and Scooters Lift Winch for Sweetrock. Only Law Dogs can even move to the Courthouse, and without the Jail the Courthouse is distinctly underwhelming. These pretty much have to go together as a pair.
Meanwhile, the Docks and Scooters Lift Winch have a tonne of thematic and mechanica synergy with two of the key Sweetrock characters, Big Jake and Scooter. They don’t have to go as a pair, but their close association with Sweetrock made me set them aside to begin with. I might consider putting the Docks back into the Cube though, as even though it benefits from synergy with Big Jake, it’s a very powerful Deed for anyone looking to build a strike based economy.
So for now I am down to 79 cards. I only have to remove 4 to finish the Doomtown Cube diamonds.
Pulling out the two Improvements (cards that attach to Deeds rather than being Deeds) was an easy decision – they’re a generally underwhelming card type introduced late to the game, and I think only having two of anything is aesthetically odd.
Finally I rememebered about ensuring a reasonably even face value, and on checking, discovered a preponderence (eleven, to be precise) of 8’s in the pile. All other values fall within the desired range of 3-8 cards. Cutting two 8’s leaves me with 9, so slightly over. If I put the Docks back into the Cube, it will be in place of another 8 so all face values will have the right frequency.
I just looked for the two most underwhelming or narrow Deeds with a value of 8, and settled on the Candlestick Maker and Bob’s Fix It Shop. the Candlestick Maker has a below average rate (paying 2 for +1 Ghost Rock per turn) and there are other 8’s such as the Slaughterhouse with the same rate and an ability. I’d definitely consider keeping Bob’s in the Cube if I had the mad scientist based Collegium outfit, but I don’t – and even if I did, Bob’s would be a candidate for inclusion in their outfit pack instead.
Postscript: That fevered episode on the train gave me my initial list. When I got home, I found a handful more Deeds I’d missed, yielding another 10 or so unique cards. This allowed me to remove more narrow, underpowered or simply slightly boring Deeds. As of v1, there are still a couple of deeds ripe for cutting and several that are on the watchlist for removal as well.
Rather than duplicate the actual list of cards I ended up with for the Cube, I’ll refer you to the Doomtown Cube Lists where I will publish all cube and outfit lists.