CML's Cube (405, polychromatic)

CML

CML

Contributor
welp now that SCG is over (with a nice game loss for deck registration ending my Standard day just before m9g3) i will be setting aside the Boros Charms and convening seattle's finest for what's really the best format that you can't play Boros Charm in, "CML's cube."

on Sunday it seemed like Blue's function in Legacy was to a) stop combo b) see a bunch of cards (that are otherwise giant pieces of shit), so I'm beginning to understand the subtleties behind TNN's horrendous design. the challenge I set for myself is making blue better than that in my Cube. so far i have failed. help me out, cube forum?
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Changling Bob said:
There're subtleties to that pile of shit?
Click to expand...


yeah, blue beats in legacy is pretty mono-dimensional and a lot of it had to do with a weakness to spot removal. think of it is as a counterweight to Abrupt Decay, though it's bad against golgari charm and shit.

CT you goof Tarmogoyf is a super-interesting card in cube and legacy and I am proud of having a Cube where tarmogoyf is good. you're just beefin' cuz you bolted it when it was a 2/3 with no instant in the yard
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
CML said:
yeah, blue beats in legacy is pretty mono-dimensional and a lot of it had to do with a weakness to spot removal. think of it is as a counterweight to Abrupt Decay, though it's bad against golgari charm and shit.

CT you goof Tarmogoyf is a super-interesting card in cube and legacy and I am proud of having a Cube where tarmogoyf is good. you're just beefin' cuz you bolted it when it was a 2/3 with no instant in the yard
Click to expand...

Nah man I love goyph :p
I'm just saying there's a bunch of people who just kinda dismiss him as like "Eh, he's that big dude." where he actually does have a lot of play to him.

Most of the reason I hate TNN is while he is an answer to problems a deck in legacy has, He has to be so insanely over the top protected from those problems because the problems are so insane in themselves (Regardless of weather StP is fair in a vacumn, it's probably not too nice on creature decks if you can run 4 of it, 4 path and 4 snapcaster)

He's a broken answer for a broken problem because the entropy of legacy boggles the mind. It is the cesspool of every RND mistake ever created, to the point where some mistakes were bigger than others and have pushed other mistakes out. (when's the last time you saw bitterblossom in legacy?)

It might be fun to a player but as a designer it irks me.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
in honor of my new exercise initiative, i've slimmed my cube from 450 to 405, which has the honor of being the worst freeway in every state where it exists. cheque the new list

also i'd preesh help with the following problem. my playgroup has turned against the "feeding frenzy" method of funsies land draft, which vexes me because i thought it was brilliant. if anyone's figured out how to get sweet lands into the hands and decks of my drafters with minimal disruption of the evening's arc, then please tell me, because i feel strongly the lands make the games and decks a lot sweeter, but the process of selecting them is just so awful.

---

CT and ano,

TNN confirmed no fun for players. The thing is, even at SCG Seattle, where "Team CML's Cube" murdered the universe, and there was 1 TNN in the top 8, TNN so warped the metagame that most of the t8 was "anti-TNN decks." There's just some shit you can't really play because of TNN.

Agree strongly TNN fails at fixing what it tries to fix, and it's bizarre to see such a ham-fisted approach to a relatively subtle design problem. Legacy tends to "balance itself" because there's so much powerful shit going on, but I guess the flipside of this is it demands a relatively absurd printing to shake things up, like Deathrite I guess or Abrupt Decay. Thalia Griselbrand Lilly etc
 
CML

CML

Contributor
hey now lucas i will not hear such words slurring my beloved selesnya

today the whole Pod thing worked out and it brought me much joy. i'm pretty sure this was a byproduct of shaving my cube down to 405 cards, which will stop being the case once JNX spoilers are complete and will start being the case again once i actually play with the cards from this abortion of a set

playing conventional cubes (see: qualifiers for this draft series of questionable provenance -- https://www.facebook.com/groups/1421349861437619/) has given me newfound appreciation for this site, i really hope traffic picks up again because this is an incredible resource, even if it doesn't end up changing the broader cube culture
 
anotak

anotak

i mean if it was GW it would still be a shit design but at least it would have a slightly smaller influence on legacy
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
CML, mind explaining what you hate so much about Journey to Nyx?
Maybe it's because I never liked devotion to begin with, but I like it so far:
  • Flash on symmertrical effects to make them interesting (even if they are all kinda bad)
  • Bestow creatures with downsides to make them tri-modal cards
  • new twists on old favorites (Mindslaver as a sorcery, city of brass with a modern wording)
  • Strive is one of the best keywords I've seen in a long time (Bringing actual brief card text to cards that were monstrous before, see my cube thread for the bounce spell)
there's a surprising amount here, and even if a few cards are EDH bait, I don't really mind that, the whole set can't be for me anyhow.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yup, even having seen only a quarter of the set, I'm excited about Journey Into Nyx way more than I was for Born of the Gods.

Strive being 'unoriginal' or 'just multikicker' doesn't concern me too much, provided we get some sweet ass cards out of the mechanic. Cheap, downside bestow cards are awesome for Spikes like us, and the loss of the tribute mechanic isn't a big deal, as long as there's a couple decent monstrous cards to make up for it.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Chris Taylor said:
CML, mind explaining what you hate so much about Journey to Nyx?
Maybe it's because I never liked devotion to begin with, but I like it so far:
  • Flash on symmertrical effects to make them interesting (even if they are all kinda bad)
  • Bestow creatures with downsides to make them tri-modal cards
  • new twists on old favorites (Mindslaver as a sorcery, city of brass with a modern wording)
  • Strive is one of the best keywords I've seen in a long time (Bringing actual brief card text to cards that were monstrous before, see my cube thread for the bounce spell)
there's a surprising amount here, and even if a few cards are EDH bait, I don't really mind that, the whole set can't be for me anyhow.
Click to expand...

Flash: EDH (this is literally what EDH players have been begging for, for years, and the cards are completely useless outside of it -- i've typed my argument against this kind of design enough)
Bestow: this is OK with me, wish they'd pushed the GRW ones a little more though
New Twists: why aren't there more of these? Slaver is just another dumb EDH card but Pyro Pillar + City are sweet
Strive: another EDH-y mechanic with a gay name (there's no other word for it)

basically my contention is that when wotc makes some cards for limited, some cards for casual, some cards for competitive (with further divisions within those categories!) the result is predictably bad and rigid and wooden and dull, like a grim mongo cube. not every mechanic (heroic!) can be a thing in constructed, but it's like they didn't even make much of an effort this time.

the whole set reads like a bunch of custom cards made by some gibbering designeraster on MTS, completely immune from criticism, except now everyone is gonna have to play with them
 
Changling Bob

Changling Bob

This whole block seems a little disjointed to me. The way they've dropped devotion and tribute and brought back monstrous is... peculiar compared to what they normally do.

EDH stuff is here to stay, unfortunately, as it's a good way to get 'casual' players (which I'm defining as players who don't maintain competitive decks) to spend more money, which I bet is a thing they've been struggling with for a while. Same deal as mythics, really.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
CML said:
Flash: EDH (this is literally what EDH players have been begging for, for years, and the cards are completely useless outside of it -- i've typed my argument against this kind of design enough)
Bestow: this is OK with me, wish they'd pushed the GRW ones a little more though
New Twists: why aren't there more of these? Slaver is just another dumb EDH card but Pyro Pillar + City are sweet
Strive: another EDH-y mechanic with a gay name (there's no other word for it)

basically my contention is that when wotc makes some cards for limited, some cards for casual, some cards for competitive (with further divisions within those categories!) the result is predictably bad and rigid and wooden and dull, like a grim mongo cube. not every mechanic (heroic!) can be a thing in constructed, but it's like they didn't even make much of an effort this time.

the whole set reads like a bunch of custom cards made by some gibbering designeraster on MTS, completely immune from criticism, except now everyone is gonna have to play with them
Click to expand...

I'll buy the flash thing, but I do like the design space opened up with it. If Jace Beleran werent so awesome I might actually play the blue one, for example.
My brain hopes the white one is Nether Void, but I just know that's not going to happen :p

Bestow: these cards existing was my pipe dream for the block, and yeah I wish they pushed them more too, but that's basically true of 90% of uncommons I see. Cube is a different beast to standard, and probably not healthy for the game to be maintaining on every card

You can only have so many, but I'm liking the ones we've seen so far. Would you cube a 7 mana time walk? God no, but it's cool. I had this card at 3BBB for a while, and it was...okay.
I think were it cheap enough for us to consider it (I think UU2 time walk might be cubable) it'd be WAY too good when the control part of mindslaver becomes relavant (sac outlet etc)

Strive: How fucking dare you man! Strive is great, a lovely way to have scaling without all the hodgepodge text that comes with multikicker. I don't really think it needs a word unto itself, but as mechanical space goes, this is awesome.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Chris Taylor said:
I'll buy the flash thing, but I do like the design space opened up with it. If Jace Beleran werent so awesome I might actually play the blue one, for example.
My brain hopes the white one is Nether Void, but I just know that's not going to happen :p

Bestow: these cards existing was my pipe dream for the block, and yeah I wish they pushed them more too, but that's basically true of 90% of uncommons I see. Cube is a different beast to standard, and probably not healthy for the game to be maintaining on every card

You can only have so many, but I'm liking the ones we've seen so far. Would you cube a 7 mana time walk? God no, but it's cool. I had this card at 3BBB for a while, and it was...okay.
I think were it cheap enough for us to consider it (I think UU2 time walk might be cubable) it'd be WAY too good when the control part of mindslaver becomes relavant (sac outlet etc)

Strive: How fucking dare you man! Strive is great, a lovely way to have scaling without all the hodgepodge text that comes with multikicker. I don't really think it needs a word unto itself, but as mechanical space goes, this is awesome.
Click to expand...


yeah i'm coming around. good post CT
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
The strive card I want them to print but they wont:
WashAway.jpg
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Two reasons:
kiorasdismissal.jpg
61.jpg

they've already made one, and it's probably too good for regular limted

Oh god I even forgot
73.jpg


Yeah good bounce is not happening in this block
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I think the Theros block design is pretty cool, and like the way many of the mechanics interlock with each other. I guess that's not super on topic.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
on the "shitty card" topic (a running joke): here's a list of cards i wanna try


-
brago
lore broker
aether searcher
grenzo
paliano
dack’s duplicate
coercive portal
agent of acquisitions
-
soul of ravnica
genesis hydra
mercurial pretender
reclamation sage
avarice amulet
military intelligence
ulcerate
mercurial pretender
goblin rabblemaster
-

please critique
 
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