On the other hand, Frenzied Fugue hits way more targets and doesn't cost 8 for the first threaten just 4, and is threatening for free forever after that until the permanent is gone. Frenzied Fugue also doesn't become completely irrelevant when its hit by doomblade/etc. Seems like way more cons for this than Fugue.
General Ixlan Spoiler
- Thread starter Chris Taylor
- Start date
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Frenzied Fugue is such an awesome card 
There's no reason red can't have multiple threaten effects though. Personally I run Dominus of Fealty, which is bonkers (in a sweet way) if you can land it. I have to say it's probably better in my specific environment than in most, seeing that Izzet is one of only five supported color pairs (so it's almost guaranteed there'll be an Izzet drafter that can run it).
Captivating Crew looks like a nice mana sink though, and the ability to grab multiple targets in the late game is pretty juicy.
There's no reason red can't have multiple threaten effects though. Personally I run Dominus of Fealty, which is bonkers (in a sweet way) if you can land it. I have to say it's probably better in my specific environment than in most, seeing that Izzet is one of only five supported color pairs (so it's almost guaranteed there'll be an Izzet drafter that can run it).Captivating Crew looks like a nice mana sink though, and the ability to grab multiple targets in the late game is pretty juicy.
I have the exact opposite thought on the matter. I want these aggressive decks to exist, since if you can't put pressure on control it becomes the dominant format, and that requires all those cards you mention in the first sentence. (except jungle lions as green aggro actually sucks lol.) I also find it fun to play these aggressive, low-curve decks. In turn having an aggressive strategy available helps midrange out considerably, since they aren't just always in mirrors or losing to control. The three theatres work really well, in my experience.
The legendary cube had this problem, and the games were frankly awful. Every game went into the late late game, there was very little reward for early board development since huge swingy plays always occurred in the later game, and it felt like nothing mattered until the end.
Even worse, every time you were mana screwed you were pretty much guaranteed to lose. I like giving my players decks that don't punish them for this aspect but still have other weaknesses.
So while I kinda hear what you're saying about having 24 functionally interchangeable cards being not super appealing, the opposite seems even MORE limiting and niche.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's not ironic at all. You need your 2 power 1 drops turn 1 in those decks, and the ones available are the best available. Above everything else, those cards are great because they are 2/1s, I'm skeptical I would run all three if they were just 1/1s. The abilities are awesome, sure, but outside of Gideon I am not sure if they would be enough. I'm not going to argue experiences, but t1 Jackal Pup is a winning play in RDW, just ask Randy Buehler.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
You are addressing a false dichotomy that has nothing to do with what I said.
Then what are you saying?
I'm saying constructing a format around 24 interchangeable one drops to be where I want to be and not what I want to avoid at all costs because it's a really fun format, and I don't get how any of it's ironic when that's your goal and these are the cards we have available. There's nothing unfortunate about it at all, at no point has it ever felt limited which frankly feels crazy to describe any cube as such, and it feels pretty great to play with.
I'm saying constructing a format around 24 interchangeable one drops to be where I want to be and not what I want to avoid at all costs because it's a really fun format, and I don't get how any of it's ironic when that's your goal and these are the cards we have available. There's nothing unfortunate about it at all, at no point has it ever felt limited which frankly feels crazy to describe any cube as such, and it feels pretty great to play with.
I think this is the single biggest misconception the mainstream cube community has perpetrated upon itself. We all know where it originates from too (cough... MTGS... cough).
2 power 1 drop aggro is not required to balanced a meta. Period. It's certainly one way to do it. It's maybe the easiest way especially in a very high powered list. But there are so many dials you can turn to create balance. You aren't limited to the roshambo three theater thing. Look at Grillo's lists if you want to see how far away from traditional three theater balance you can go. Even in more powerful lists, just shave a little off the top end and you'll have miles of design space to work with.
We will have to agree to disagree. I know everyone here has some weird bias against MTGS and 'power maxing', especially since that's seemingly one of the reasons this forum was created, but from my own experience I've found what I feel to be true, so *shrug* no point in arguing experience going forward. I've played a lot of cubes, lists similar to the ones here, and I like the ones that are closer to mine than here. I respect the choices people make here since it's your own cube and do what you want, and at the end of the day cube is cube which is great, but the reasons for the change don't reflect my own experiences so it's hard to get behind any/most of it and since time is precious I don't really want to waste mine playing something I know I will enjoy less.
I try hard not to use the 'everything maxed out' mindset here, and I think I do a good job. Most comments from me here are looking at the card in cubes in general, not in environments where there are black lotuses and kiki jikis and jittes and what not. But still, I know what fun feels like for me, and when a user is talking about the irony of jackal pups and savannah lions, then I think we're ignoring both sides of the coin of what fun is, as I could talk about the irony of running a POS card like the enchantment which I don't even think would be great in a format where you aren't running Jackal Pups and what not. It seems hella bad.
But you know, to each one's own! cheers
There isn't any reason for us to agree to disagree. I said you could balance a meta using 2 power 1 drops and the three theater paradigm. I've not disagreed with you. I simply said there are other tweaks you can make to create balance without resorting to the 2 power 1 drop strategy.
The main reason for the anti-MTGS sentiment has to do with the fact that the people on that forum tend to be closed minded and dismissive of ideas that don't conform to the dominant philosophy there. I don't believe for a second that anyone has so much time on their hands that they are experts on every single cube meta or knows the actual outer limitations of cube design. These sorts of conversations would be considerably more productive and less hostile if each side respected the other but that's just not how this tends to go (at least on MTGS). I've seen half a dozen posters rage quit or get banned on MTGS because they tried to take on the establishment over there, got swarmed and either gave up or got removed. And it's unfortunate because many of these individuals had really interesting ideas and were adding value to the community. MTGS has essentially been sabotaging free thinking for many years now.
The main reason for the anti-MTGS sentiment has to do with the fact that the people on that forum tend to be closed minded and dismissive of ideas that don't conform to the dominant philosophy there. I don't believe for a second that anyone has so much time on their hands that they are experts on every single cube meta or knows the actual outer limitations of cube design. These sorts of conversations would be considerably more productive and less hostile if each side respected the other but that's just not how this tends to go (at least on MTGS). I've seen half a dozen posters rage quit or get banned on MTGS because they tried to take on the establishment over there, got swarmed and either gave up or got removed. And it's unfortunate because many of these individuals had really interesting ideas and were adding value to the community. MTGS has essentially been sabotaging free thinking for many years now.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Most powered cubes are essentially midrangy formats with a red hyper-aggro component tacked on (usually at the cost of warping the red section), to create the illusion of Roshambo "balance."
Draft formats naturally trend towards midrange, with even the power max formats being more comfortable as midrange-centric formats that occastionally lean towards pressure-control or aggressive midrange. The hyper aggressive decks (RDW) that are allowed to exist due to critical mass, exist asymmetrically compared to what the rest of what the cube is doing, and there are huge issues that design creates: cube space issues, warped color sections/curves, drafting traps when multiple people go in on the deck etc. Than there is a whole conversation as to whether supporting decks to function as "fun police" on the people trying to explore the cube/have involved interactive matches contributes or subtracts from net fun.
You can do it, but there is a cost associated with it, and that cost should be discussed.
Honestly, I know everyone has been working on the exact same cube for about a decade now, so there is a huge cultural investment being made by what is already a niche community, but these conversations are really weird. Its like listening to crazy people talking about how their corvette is mechanical perfection, but they don't know how the engine works, won't look at a manual, and will only grudgingly glance at another (maybe better!) car. The cube ideology is real, and thats why MTGS isn't really loved around here. Its just always the same boring stifling conformity over, and over, and over again, leading to the same deadend design.
Draft formats naturally trend towards midrange, with even the power max formats being more comfortable as midrange-centric formats that occastionally lean towards pressure-control or aggressive midrange. The hyper aggressive decks (RDW) that are allowed to exist due to critical mass, exist asymmetrically compared to what the rest of what the cube is doing, and there are huge issues that design creates: cube space issues, warped color sections/curves, drafting traps when multiple people go in on the deck etc. Than there is a whole conversation as to whether supporting decks to function as "fun police" on the people trying to explore the cube/have involved interactive matches contributes or subtracts from net fun.
You can do it, but there is a cost associated with it, and that cost should be discussed.
Honestly, I know everyone has been working on the exact same cube for about a decade now, so there is a huge cultural investment being made by what is already a niche community, but these conversations are really weird. Its like listening to crazy people talking about how their corvette is mechanical perfection, but they don't know how the engine works, won't look at a manual, and will only grudgingly glance at another (maybe better!) car. The cube ideology is real, and thats why MTGS isn't really loved around here. Its just always the same boring stifling conformity over, and over, and over again, leading to the same deadend design.
I've more recently starting thinking of powered cubes being combo in nature more so than midrange because so much of the gameplay revolves around degeneracy. But I can see the argument for them playing more midrange simply because that is what most draft formats tend to push. There are exceptions even to this line of thinking though. Burn drafting for example is looking at a massive amount of the cube and you are going to get very archetype power focused decks from it. It's certainly going to be a lot less midrange than even a traditional 8 man draft.
But even in an 8 man draft, I think it really depends - both on your players and the cube itself. A couple older posters on MTGS had powered cubes much in the vein of MTGS but they groups that drafted them did so heavily focused on archetypes. And the sense I got was that they were not interacting much with one another during draft other than to read which decks were open and then proceed to build a textbook version of that deck. Not all groups will draft like that (or even want to), but those that do will have a very different meta from the goodstuff midrange focused groups.
I've watched probably 50 vintage cube drafts online now and most of the good decks again revolve around degenerate cards. True fair value midrange decks are not very good in powered cubes as a general rule because they simply don't do enough. They tend to be very good in Riptide cubes though because the power level is often much lower.
I'm probably using the term "midrange" too loosely here since it's encompassing both a theater of play and a drafting style. But hopefully what I'm saying makes sense on some level.
But even in an 8 man draft, I think it really depends - both on your players and the cube itself. A couple older posters on MTGS had powered cubes much in the vein of MTGS but they groups that drafted them did so heavily focused on archetypes. And the sense I got was that they were not interacting much with one another during draft other than to read which decks were open and then proceed to build a textbook version of that deck. Not all groups will draft like that (or even want to), but those that do will have a very different meta from the goodstuff midrange focused groups.
I've watched probably 50 vintage cube drafts online now and most of the good decks again revolve around degenerate cards. True fair value midrange decks are not very good in powered cubes as a general rule because they simply don't do enough. They tend to be very good in Riptide cubes though because the power level is often much lower.
I'm probably using the term "midrange" too loosely here since it's encompassing both a theater of play and a drafting style. But hopefully what I'm saying makes sense on some level.
I can't disagree with you more.
The amount of work and dedication by some users there is insane, and you don't have to believe it for it to be true. I've literally been invited to another user's house for a draft and when I got there they were already drafting, there were multiple cubes of varying power levels around, and everyone in that group was obsessed with cube. I'm not going to name the user because I respect his privacy, but I can tell you he's an active user but not one you would guess unless you knew personal information about me. I've playtested for hours with different cube members, steve_man over there is literally drafting almost every day on xmage/discord with a number of other users. Frankly, the obsession with cube some of those users have is insane, it's like all they do with their free time. Personally there was a 2-3 year period where I drafted 4-7 times a day on cockatrice, and almost always a different cube, and I know I don't play as much as some of the users on there.
In terms of oddball, against-the-grain design, you're still wrong. If we're ignoring the amazing peasant/pauper cubes, there are: powered, unpowered, low-powered, curbed powered, specialized cubes, really cubes of all type. We have an active user that has a cube with 1500 cards in it, and not only that but one that still tries to curb the power level. That's insane! But you know what? When he talks about his card choices, no one is jumping down his throat, no one is calling him a dingus, no one is feeding him the kool aid. The only reason you don't see more of it is because it's a forum full of people who want to run that type of environment, really the only time people get called out about crazy card choices is when they try to argue they are better without any caveats about being in a lower powered cube or if they know they are sacrificing power for fun. Some users run Morphling, I run Jokulhaups, I've seen some awful cards and some definitely worse cards, and the only time it's questioned is when there isn't a reason or we're actually arguing the merits of its worth.
You may not realize this, but the mods only ban people at MTGSalvation when they actually break the forum rules, not when they disagree with the establishment. If that's what you think, you have no understanding of how moderation works on those forums. You can't just report someone for disagreeing with you, no one just gets removed, are you for real in thinking this? That's some tinfoil hat shit, and most importantly it's wrong.
I've been there for years, and the people who get banned are doing it because of utter BS they do. Remember hopefulhawkeye/sunshinesoldier? He got banned because, after I put him on ignore he went to another site to harrass me there about how I don't have class. I got banned there once because I talked about how to make proxies. In fact, I said that you could use a printer to make them. wtwlf got banned for something similar. It had nothing to do with conduct or whether or not I felt they should be allowed. In fact, if you reported threads you disagreed with over and over and they weren't violating forum rules, *THAT* would get you banned. So, you don't know what you're talking about there.
And then jump into the threads. Unless the card is the bomb-diggity and universally sweet (see: fractured identity), no one ever fully agrees on anything. Are we reading the same threads, homie? There's no consensus, there's no hive mind, there's people posting about cube, and those tones are ones you're inserting solely yourself.
And of course, wtwlf. When these forums were made, I could understand him being a reason, as he was pretty unbearable back then, but I would be remiss to no mention how much he's changed since then. Frankly he's not only stopped his previously negative/snide/etc ways, but when people bring him up I'm pretty sure they aren't paying attention. I know you didn't bring him up personally, but I'm not the first person to mention his name on these forums, but I might be one of the first to defend him. And me and him aren't pals or close or anything--in 2012, I actually left MTGSalvation for a few months because I felt like he was being an ass to me, and I still haven't fully gotten over it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to say he's the same person today.
You can hate on MTGSalvation for a number of things, but hive mind? Sabotaging free thought? It's bullshit, it was bullshit three years ago when you made that 'Power Max Lightning Bolt' thread EDIT: found it here http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/...r-max-the-hive-mind-and-lightning-bolt?page=2 --which people responded to pretty positively when you re-read through it, and you get defensive when people have a reasonable discussion with you about it--and it's bullshit now. I would say the only thing that is fully agreed upon over there is that cube is a singleton format, so if that's your point of divide then ok thats understandable, but otherwise I haven't agreed with *anyone* there on all matters completely, and that's pretty much the experience I have reading all the posts that are there (which I do, 5-7 days/week, cause Im a loser who pretty much only thinks about cube and magic lol)
Right it's because you're completely wrong on the matter. People getting banned over going against the grain? You don't know what you're talking about.
Honestly though I don't know how you dispute some of the above. Like, some of it is just facts. If you had evidence of people being banned for disagreeing then OK we walk down another path..but you don't, because that's bullshit.
Are you really trying to tell me no one got bullied on MTGS? You can't seriously be saying that.
Look man, I'm not defending MTGSalvation of 5 years ago. *I* was bullied there then, maybe it was 4 years ago, I forget, but like I said in that large post I've had to deal with shit too that made me leave for a number of months. But that was *five years ago*. I'm on there almost every day, I read every post, and people aren't being bullied there. Say what you want about what it was and who the members were, but that's not what it is today. At all.
So again, say what you want about the forums, but if you're going to keep on saying what you're saying, be sure to use the past tense. We have collectively worked hard to make the environment what it is today vs what you still think it is, and it's a shame that you are still there mentally when you and anyone else is welcome to join what it is today and participate.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The thing though is the entire tirade would probably be more persuasive if your response to FSR had been somewhat different.
I have to look at what people do, not what they say. When you distort a post in a way that reflects an ideological bias, its weird to than deny the existance of that bias. And thats not necessarly a bad thing to realize.
But I'll leave the topic at that since I know how unproductive this is likely to get.
I have to look at what people do, not what they say. When you distort a post in a way that reflects an ideological bias, its weird to than deny the existance of that bias. And thats not necessarly a bad thing to realize.
But I'll leave the topic at that since I know how unproductive this is likely to get.
It has been much better of late (MTGS). I do still post there pretty regularly to try and give a different angle on cubing. MTGS cube forum is not very active anymore though. There's probably half a dozen regulars left and then the occasional odd poster. Reddit might have the most active cube forum now. I don't post there but do read it often. It's unfortunate we are as splintered as we are. This is a very niche format and it doesn't help that we basically all have formed cliques and largely dislike one another.
EDIT: And to Grillo's point, this is why we are splintered. Because there is a very dismissive attitude by many people in the cubing community towards other viewpoints. I don't mean to call you out Salmo, but you've made it pretty clear you only believe there's one way to cube and that's going to set a lot of people off because it's disrespectful towards the time and energy those people have put into cubing. It's not like MTGS and mainstream cube managers hold a monopoly on cubing design space.
EDIT: And to Grillo's point, this is why we are splintered. Because there is a very dismissive attitude by many people in the cubing community towards other viewpoints. I don't mean to call you out Salmo, but you've made it pretty clear you only believe there's one way to cube and that's going to set a lot of people off because it's disrespectful towards the time and energy those people have put into cubing. It's not like MTGS and mainstream cube managers hold a monopoly on cubing design space.
I don't really care about it being persuasive, I'm just not going to sit here when ahdabans is talking out of his ass about what specifically MTGSalvation is. Frankly I have no problem with having the conversation with FSR, it's interesting to see both sides of that coin, but if that's the color ahdabans sees through his glasses then his lens are tinted.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Ok, I understand where you're coming from, it was just too extreme of a negation of MTGS, and lost its ability to be constructive. I can understand your reaction than.
Again, I've read through tens of thousands of posts on MTGS. That's not an exaggerated number either. It's a really useful source of data I rely on heavily. To be fair, I spend a lot of my time looking at older posts because they are more useful for my cube design (which is much more retro than modern). Again, the current climate on MTGS is much better than it was. You are correct. It was also a really great community back in 2008 FWIW. People were exchanging ideas regularly back then and it was collaborative and open and creative. Then it got really ugly for many years. There are thousands of posts as evidence of this. I'm not talking out of my ass at all. Go look for yourself. In the last year or two, the traffic in the forum has died down a lot. Maybe everyone turned over a new leaf and stopped being assholes, but it's probably more about the drop in the number of posters more than anything. There's no one left to disagree really and so it's much more calm. I'm one of the few dissenting voices left and I generally avoid arguments with everyone because I know there's no point to it. I just post the alternate viewpoint and move on. And I do it just so anyone new can see different sides exist to some of these arguments.
I don't know how many times I've said 'it's your cube, do what you want' 'I'm not talking about power max', 'insert thing I say that is intending to not have that conversation again', and when you think that's what I've made clear it shows again that you have no idea what we're talking about. Yes when it comes to my own cube I prescribe to a certain philosophy, but fucking-a look at my post history here and say that I am always saying what you're saying, or even a majority of the time. I'm not. Maybe recently since we've been on this for a while, but I come here *specifically* to talk about lower-powered cube ideas, or to just get more discussion in general, as I cannot get enough no matter what it's about. It's not that it's something that isn't discussed at MTGS, but you guys seem to add like 20 cards from each set so I'm always interested to see how they fare and debate their merits. But yeah, fuck me for doing that right?
And you want to talk about dismissive? How many times have I made general statements on the power level of a card and then had to clarify that Im not considering it solely from the power-max outlook? I mean, I recommended Frenzied Fugue here, and I don't run that card and don't think I would. There is a lot of discussion I've had on here that pertains to that, but yeah what the fuck do I know.
This forum is just as much of the 'problem' as you could blame MTGSalvation for, since it has way less active posters (6 regular posters? again, no idea what you're talking about, and in addition it's sometimes days before there's something new, or there will only be one active thread being commented on day to day, this forum's activity is a sliver compared to there) but hey if you ever want to see what MTGSalvation is like it's not this limited echo chamber as you're describing it, come on over we're not whatever you think we are.
Either way, I don't think there's really a problem, except when one group wants to shit on the other. But you'll be hard pressed to find anything like that recently at MTGSalvation.
But you weren't using that tense, ahdabans, you were implying that's what MTGSalvation is *now*. I don't disagree 2008 was a great time then, I lurked around 2009-2010 until I made my account. I don't disagree that it sucked for a while and that people left. I don't disagree that there are less people. (Though half a dozen? That's some silly-billy shit.)
Also back then cards weren't as powerful. Cube spots had a lot more options. Things were easier to navigate through. People have had their wishes fulfilled for what they want. (Except for black 5 drops lol.) People were more willing to experiment because, well, cards were just straight up shittier back then.
*But that's not what you said.* That's not the post I wrote a tirade for. That's not the place I'm defending *today*.
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I'd like to clarify, though, that I do love posting here, and I feel like this is a great community. I don't agree with everything in terms of applying the same card choices to my own cube, but for the most part outside of this specific instance I have felt welcomed and I really enjoying debating cards so this is a good place to do that. It's the reason I added a bit about riptide in the guide I put out earlier this year. My main issue comes from implying what ahdabans implied. So, sorry if I offended anyone who thinks Im shitting on riptide, cause Im not.
I have no problem *not* talking about MTGSalvation as well, I get that people are happy here, but that requires not poo-pooing on MTGSalvation from here too, you know? I sure as fuck wasn't the first one to bring it up here.
I really should let this go, but I have a hard time doing that. So apologies to everyone looking for Ixlan Spoilers and getting more of me arguing with people. At least I haven't done this in a long time so I'm making progress.
I honestly don't think things have changed very much over there. Maybe there's less direct bullying but people are just as dismissive today as they were 4 years ago. And look, I get it. Cube started as a "best of" format and people ran with that and the longer this has remained the focus, the less people are inclined to reconsider it or look at other philosophies, etc. Look at the "this or that" thread. How many replies are "X > Y" with zero context? Happens all the time. I've tried to make the case more than once that you need context. Goes on deaf ears because in a power max philosophy, X > Y is the answer since the content (most powerful) is already implied. Fair enough.
MTGS is focused on power cubing. Nothing outside that philosophy will be discussed in any real way there because that is what the community pushes. Call it hive mind or something less sinister, it doesn't really matter it's all the same thing. Again, I get why this is the case. All this work people there have put into building cubes with a power max design, why toss all that out for something new? Everyone is operating under a similar paradigm so can more easily share experiences. As you said, there's literally hundreds maybe thousands of hours of work put into that philosophy. People are going to be very resistant to changing it. Even over here, I read Grillo's penny pincher posts and I'm torn between the excitement of what he's doing and the harsh reality that I'd be tossing massive amounts of knowledge and data if I were to drop my cube power level down that far. Is that worth it to me with the limited time I have for cubing right now?
I would disagree with you. Back in the day, there were hardly 400 cards worthy of cube inclusion in total. There was basically only one rare list because you couldn't make another one that played nearly as good because the options were so few. People experimented with fringe choices more perhaps. Now we easily have 1000 cubable cards (maybe more). The number of choices we have today is mind boggling. So many in fact it's easy to get analysis paralysis. That's why context is so much more important. X > Y is woefully inadequate these days as an explanation on what to run. In 2008, it was solid. So many questions have to be answered first now. What is the goal of the swap? Which archetype(s) benefit and which lose out by the change? Does your meta improve as a result? Cubes are way more put together today than in 2008 and that means you have less leeway to just toss in some questionable stuff and let it froth into an interesting deck. That sort of thing creates unplayable piles that get crushed.
This is my own opinion, but the sooner we evolve this format into being more meta design conscious the better. Because the idea that we can just forever keep upgrading cards power level wise is not logical. Wizards doesn't do this with any set they design, so I have no idea how we convinced ourselves that cube is somehow exempt from this reality. We've already crossed a point where the diversity of cube is suffering in higher powered list due to all the power creep in Magic. And it's ultimately going to hurt the cube format IMHO. I'm very lucky I came into cube when I did because I got to see the clunky beginnings and what was possible creatively and as my cube got tighter and more powerful I saw a lot of fringe interesting things no longer working in cube. It made drafting less interesting not more interesting. Modern cubes are lacking quite a bit of that IMO because they are so efficient now you have very little room to deviate outside tier 1 archetypes if you don't want to get crushed in gameplay.
I honestly don't think things have changed very much over there. Maybe there's less direct bullying but people are just as dismissive today as they were 4 years ago. And look, I get it. Cube started as a "best of" format and people ran with that and the longer this has remained the focus, the less people are inclined to reconsider it or look at other philosophies, etc. Look at the "this or that" thread. How many replies are "X > Y" with zero context? Happens all the time. I've tried to make the case more than once that you need context. Goes on deaf ears because in a power max philosophy, X > Y is the answer since the content (most powerful) is already implied. Fair enough.
MTGS is focused on power cubing. Nothing outside that philosophy will be discussed in any real way there because that is what the community pushes. Call it hive mind or something less sinister, it doesn't really matter it's all the same thing. Again, I get why this is the case. All this work people there have put into building cubes with a power max design, why toss all that out for something new? Everyone is operating under a similar paradigm so can more easily share experiences. As you said, there's literally hundreds maybe thousands of hours of work put into that philosophy. People are going to be very resistant to changing it. Even over here, I read Grillo's penny pincher posts and I'm torn between the excitement of what he's doing and the harsh reality that I'd be tossing massive amounts of knowledge and data if I were to drop my cube power level down that far. Is that worth it to me with the limited time I have for cubing right now?
I would disagree with you. Back in the day, there were hardly 400 cards worthy of cube inclusion in total. There was basically only one rare list because you couldn't make another one that played nearly as good because the options were so few. People experimented with fringe choices more perhaps. Now we easily have 1000 cubable cards (maybe more). The number of choices we have today is mind boggling. So many in fact it's easy to get analysis paralysis. That's why context is so much more important. X > Y is woefully inadequate these days as an explanation on what to run. In 2008, it was solid. So many questions have to be answered first now. What is the goal of the swap? Which archetype(s) benefit and which lose out by the change? Does your meta improve as a result? Cubes are way more put together today than in 2008 and that means you have less leeway to just toss in some questionable stuff and let it froth into an interesting deck. That sort of thing creates unplayable piles that get crushed.
This is my own opinion, but the sooner we evolve this format into being more meta design conscious the better. Because the idea that we can just forever keep upgrading cards power level wise is not logical. Wizards doesn't do this with any set they design, so I have no idea how we convinced ourselves that cube is somehow exempt from this reality. We've already crossed a point where the diversity of cube is suffering in higher powered list due to all the power creep in Magic. And it's ultimately going to hurt the cube format IMHO. I'm very lucky I came into cube when I did because I got to see the clunky beginnings and what was possible creatively and as my cube got tighter and more powerful I saw a lot of fringe interesting things no longer working in cube. It made drafting less interesting not more interesting. Modern cubes are lacking quite a bit of that IMO because they are so efficient now you have very little room to deviate outside tier 1 archetypes if you don't want to get crushed in gameplay.