What Makes a Format Good?

There are several things that go into making a format a fun thing to play in. In short, these are having fun cards, having decent balance between the cards and archetypes, and having a good depth of options. These apply to all formats but they do so in different measure if we are looking at constructed or limited. Most of the formats are predetermined for us by Wizards, they design the cards then say which ones are allowed in which places. As such it is not very important for the average magic player to understand how to make a format good. These are game design skills rather than game play skills. It is a skill that comes in handy as a cube curator but even then you only have control over which cards to include. You can use simple metrics to determine what is worthy and it is simply a binary yes/no on each card. If you open the door to the individual card design in terms of creating a format then the possibilities literally become infinite. In trying to completely design my own cube from the ground up I have learned a lot about how to make a format good and hopefully I can use those skills to be a better cube curator across the board. 

Individually fun cards is the hardest part to design, but luckily Wizards are pretty good at that. There are plenty out there to chose from. The key is that you can't all be front men or strikers (insert some NFL reference here, would it be the quarterback for yall?), you need drummers and defenders to make the band/team perform. Omnath might be the fun thing your deck is built around but you are leaning on those dull Farseeks really hard. The most fun cube doesn't just have as many fun cards as it can ram in, it has as many fun cards in it as it can suitably support with your more standard cards. A fun card is only fun if you get to use it and you need those foundational cards, the Shocks, Preordains, and that sort of jazz are what will lead to you getting to cast and use the fun stuff. 

Balance is important to a point but in some lights it just looks like the third category - options. More cards that are suitably powerful means more playable stuff and hence more option rich format. There is also a strong point for not over balancing too much. A bit of variety is no bad thing. If it is all too flat in power level things can get a bit generic card soup and games can become a slow grindy trudge. Balance between archetypes is more important than between individual cards. Ideally all cards within a format should be playable in some circumstances, ideally more than one. Equally you don't want any card being an auto-include if you can help it. If your cards sit within that range then great. Even if they don't it is still fine, you are just reducing your options a bit and having some dead space. Dead wood is worst for limited formats where cards of little power or use get in the way and lower consistency. You can just ignore them in constructed settings where they are just background noise.

Depth of options is the area that a cube curator or designer has most scope to improve their format. A healthy format should look like a healthy ecosystem. There should be lots of interconnecting and crisscross synergies. Balance is all well and good but if your cube supports eight archetypes but there is no overlap between them then the draft portion is far less fun and relevant. Everyone just gets in their lane and has far fewer meaningful choices. If those eight archetypes all share cards they want with various others then the draft gets a whole lot more interesting. Building and playing decks also gets more fun if your cards have lots of little synergies between them. This is where the dead wood in a cube harms you most as it really reduces your synergy density. The higher the synergy density the more interconnecting interactions your cards have the better the format. You get more control over the direction your deck and draft go in, more interactions with your opponents at all stages, and just have more cool and quirky little interactions popping up and giving novel and cool experiences.