[Design/Construction] Rebuilding my 360...

[Laz]

So, I just about finished the rebuild, just missing 3 last cards. I also updated the first post with the new cube philosophy (Spoiler: It is about decisions...)

Utility Land Draft:
In this iteration, I have added a 'pick-cost' to my lands, which has allowed me a bit more flexibility with the cards that I include, and how they are packaged. The pick cost is simply written on a sticker on the inner sleeve. It would be good to get feedback on how I have assessed these, and the nice thing about this strategy is it gives me the ability to tweak things with much more granularity. My pick process is very free-form. People just grab stuff, and roll off if two people want the same thing.

Players have 4 picks to spend on the ULD

Here is where we are at, and unless noted, each land costs one pick.
White:
Sandstone Bridge
Flagstones of Trokair
Forbidding Watchtower
Windbrisk Heights (2 picks)

Blue:
Blighted Cataract
Skyline Cascade
Halimar Depths
Faerie Conclave (2 picks)

Red:
Flamekin Village
Kher Keep
Barbarian Ring
Teetering Peaks
Hellion Crucible

Black:
Phyrexian Tower
Spawning Pool
Blighted Fen
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (2 picks)

Green:
Yavimaya Hollow
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
Dryad Arbor
Treetop Village (2 picks)

Artifact:
Darksteel Citadel
Vault of Whispers
Great Furnace
Seat of the Synod (3 artifact lands for 2 picks)
Academy Ruins (1 pick by itself)

Cycling Lands: (3 cycling lands for 2 picks)
Two each of:
Tranquil Thicket
Barren Moor
Secluded Steppe
Forgotten Cave
Lonely Sandbar

Cloudpost Package: (All 5 for 3 picks)
3 Cloudpost
2 Glimmerpost

Guild lands:
Nephalia Drownyard (2 picks)
Kessig Wolf Run (2 picks)
Gavony Township (2 picks)
Valut of the Archangel (2 picks)
Slayers' Stronghold (2 picks)
Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace (2 picks)
Moorland Haunt (2 picks)
Desolate Lighthouse (2 picks)
Alchemist's Refuge (1 pick)

Colourless lands:
Mutavault (2 picks)
Vesuva
Tectonic Edge
Ghost Quarter
Rogue's Passage
Contested War Zone

That is indeed a lot of lands... Any that you feel are worthless? There is a very low opportunity cost to putting something in the ULD, so it has randomly grown quite a lot. Is there anything I am missing? Should I throw an Evolving Wilds in there or something?

Those costs are based mostly upon how highly those cards tend to be picked in my current iteration, my assessments may be a little off though (for instance, I cut Urborg for being too strong in the ULD, and now it is back at the cost of 2-picks. That may prove to still be too strong. 3 picks is not something I have broached yet, but we will see).

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I really like the idea of picks. It actually introduces a way to digest the huge list, since it tells you as a drafter that "these cards have more potential, but are going to cost you more". So you can sort of weigh in wheter you want more of this kind of effect or just that single powerful one.

 

[Eric Chan]

I did the pick cost idea in my utility land draft for a couple months, and it was both popular and a good balancing tool. I've since gone back to vanilla land draft for simplicity's sake, but having some lands be worth multiple picks was something that worked for us here.

Of the guild lands, only Gavony Township, Wolf Run, and Vault of the Archangel need extra costing, in my opinion.

 

[Laz]

Hmm... for a cube blog, I don't really blog much. Maybe I should update that.

Lets start with this evening's draft before I go into some larger concerns. 6 players, 4 packs of 15, burn the last 4 cards in order to see the whole cube. We like drafting this way, nothing is left out, though decks tend to be slightly higher quality than regular draft because there is less competition. Except tonight. Tonight had the most fighting over colours and picks I can remember.

Pack 1, Pick 1: Picked a Young Pyromancer from a middling pack.
Pick 2: Got passed a Prime Time in a pack full of green.
Pick 3: Received a middling pack with no strong green in it, took a Brainstorm.
Pick 4: Staggershock

At some point, I got passed the second Pyromancer and wheeled a Delver, so settled into UR Spells. Packs were a little light, so I started speculating on White and Black support cards, picking up a Path to Exile, Disfigure and IoK. Then got destroyed on packs 2 and 4. Turns out the drafter to my left was drafting UWr Humans/Spells-matter, the drafter to his left was in Naya tokens. Each of us had an overlap of at least 2 colours next to them. No idea how the signalling set that up, but it was certainly an adventure. The guy to my right in Gr stompy was loving it, and I kind of followed the open disruptive black vibe I was getting into 15-land Grixis pseudo-delver, with Hellrider as the MVP. Deck was ok, but I wasn't feeling it enough to bother capturing it in pictures.

Overall the table ended up with:

• UW Spells/Humans - This deck was awesome, suffered a little from lack of experience on behalf of the pilot. Still got rewarded with wins on the strength of his draft though, even if getting passed running Snapcasters was all luck with the way the packs broke (3 hours later, still bitter).
• Naya Tokens/Sac - Combo-tastic midrange, that looked like it won a lot of games with Westvale Abbey or Goblin Bombardment.
• Grixis Artifacts - Definitely an inferior build of this archetype, just because he was getting cut so hard in both directions, as UR control cards had to pass through the two-man tempo gauntlet, and the GB sacrifice aggro deck on his other side was taking a lot of the neat stall-y artifacts like Perilous Myr and Epochracite. I think a lot of cards also got hoovered up a speculative early picks, there was a lot of artifact payoff cards in pack one (I saw Thopter Spy Network and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, and someone announced Pia and Kiran Nalaar with a 'I love this card!').
• GB Sacrifice Aggro/Midrange - A super solid looking deck, that actually went a bit larger with multiple 5-drops.
• Gru Stompy - Ramp and big creatures, the classic combination. The combo of Body Double copying Woodland Bellower, fetching Eternal Witness to return Woodland Bellower to hand was probably the most brutal play of the night.

Then myself with Grixis spell-based aggro. I don't think anyone can argue that the archetypes I fought hard to introduce are absent, and they have proved fairly modular. That said, I currently have a concern, Artifacts are basically the best thing you can be doing in a control deck. There is just nothing that can grind more value than an artifact deck in a long game. It isn't the dominant deck, but it certainly is the dominant control deck, and I am unsure if it might need toning down, or other control colours improved.

A couple of ideas:

• Slightly nerf the archetype by swapping out one of the payoff cards.
• Go back to 4 CMC Wraths in White, to buff white control decks, which are increasingly rare (since UB, UR or Grixis artifacts are tending to be better).
• Add a little more hate for non-creature permanents, to make artifact lands more of a liability and pick off some of the better value cards.
• Swap Academy Ruins from the ULD to the actual draft (or make it worth something like 3-picks), this is a card that just offers so much inevitability, since it makes you unable to to break up a Trading Post value engine, or has the player just recurring Hangerback walkers every turn for a tonne of tokens. It is also kind of hard to interact with.

I don't think nerfing the archetype is really where I want to be, since I want to reward players for building these engines, and if they can somehow survive until the late game when it is relevant, they probably deserve their victory. I probably just want some tools other control decks can use against the archetype.
Eh, it is something I will ponder.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

When I still supported an artifact theme I cut Academy Ruins completely. Some recursion is okay, but Ruins just leads to repetitive game states, which, well, ruins a game imo. Cards like Trading Post, Daretti, Scrap Savant and Goblin Welder are, again imo, enough to supply some recursion without demoralizing the opponent.

 

[Eric Chan]

Then got destroyed on packs 2 and 4. Turns out the drafter to my left was drafting UWr Humans/Spells-matter, the drafter to his left was in Naya tokens. Each of us had an overlap of at least 2 colours next to them. No idea how the signalling set that up, but it was certainly an adventure. The guy to my right in Gr stompy was loving it, and I kind of followed the open disruptive black vibe I was getting into 15-land Grixis pseudo-delver, with Hellrider as the MVP.

I've touched on this topic in various places on this forum, but this is the main reason I've moved away from an even number of packs over the years: when a drafter has as many packs going right as going left, they're punished far less for 'forcing' any particular deck archetype or colour combination than with an odd number of packs. Three large packs is still my favourite - I usually do three packs of 16 for a six-person draft - because drafters who force will only be rewarded 33% of the time, instead of 50% of the time with four packs, while reading signals and drafting normally is incentivized more.

Five packs might be an interesting compromise, in that it's easier to view the whole cube, but without having giant stacks of cards that cause analysis paralysis.

 

[sigh]

Five packs of 12, burn 3 cards works out to exactly 45 cards for the draft pools, and it uses 360 cards perfectly.

I don't like Academy Ruins for the same reasons as Onder.

I could definitely see promoting one of your BW's to good ol' Day of Judgment. One 4 mana wrath is respectable, and its got a cool promo . Though I'm not sure balancing control strategies with an arms race is optimal.

I notice you have a very healthy dose of mana rocks. Maybe a trim of that group would help curtail the grixis artifact deck a little?

 

[Laz]

Cutting Academy Ruins seems to be in order, though I do also want to dabble with powering up some of the Wraths. Unfortunately it seems the ideal Wrath I had in mind doesn't exist. I hate it when that happens. Ideally I just want a 5 mana Akroma's Vengeance or better yet, a 5-mana Austere Command. I might mock up the latter and give it a test, it seems like a really interesting card for a control deck to have access to, and adds a little more non-creature hate.

I have never really had an issue with even pack counts in the past, but I can understand the potential issue completely. It seems like an annoying balancing act though, between ensuring drafters get an appropriate number of picks, have meaningful ability to wheel cards, see a high enough percentage of the cube and have appropriate incentives to respond to signalling. 4 packs of 15, burn 4 satisfies a lot of these, as 100% of the cube is used, players end up with 44 cards, and see virtually every pack twice; but occasionally signalling is messed up, and depending on how the table breaks down, drafters are not punished for just forcing an archetype. If my cube was larger, then 'seeing a high enough percentage' would probably not be a consideration, which would make it easier to work out an appropriate system.

Not sure if I am going to get a draft in this week, people have already been flagging work commitments...

 

[Laz]

Seems we are drafting this week after all.

Testing for this week:
OUT:
Rout and Hallowed Burial
IN:
Wrath of God and Day of Judgement

Academy Ruins removed.

Still to solve, a little more artifact destruction, preferably strapped to controlling cards (Hence, 5-mana Austere Command above).

 

[Laz]

Test results... inconclusive. There wasn't an artifact control deck last night (I suspect because I hated Trading Post, Whirler Rogue and Thopter Spy Network out of otherwise unexciting packs).

Decks were:

• RW Aggro - Inexperienced drafter and pilot. The deck was ok as it looked like cards were flowing to him, but in game it always seemed slow out of the gates. Not sure what happened, maybe lack of priority on one-drops or poor keeps?
• Gr Ramp - Going huge as a basically mono-green deck, splashing for Sin Prodder (who was awesome when the revealed cards were commonly 5+ mana) and Dragonlord Atarka. The deck suffered from lack of interaction, as it didn't really have a decent way to remove troublesome opposing creatures like Huntmaster of the Fells or Mother of Runes. This may have been because the drafter was seated next to the Jund drafter, who was basically drafting mono-removal. When the deck was able to be proactive, it was pretty brutal, but struggled against a wall of counterspells from the Grixis Delver player and removal/grindy-value from the Jund player.
• Bant Ramp - Deck was based upon UW Evasion/tempo elements combined with green ramp. I didn't really get much of a chance to see it in action, but it split the games it played.
• Esper (well... WBu) Control/Reanimator - I was confused when this one was described to me as reanimator, as the archetype is pretty poor in my list. Again, I didn't get much of a chance to see it in action, but it seemed like it had a really good late game, beating the Ramp deck despite being on 1-life for a half dozen turns. Also ran Dark Confidant, which I was a bit unsure about it. I heard the groans when Scuttling Doom Engine was flipped to it...
• 14 Land Dual-Pyromancer Grixis Delver - Oh my. Probably the sweetest deck of the night. Played the Delver game to a tee, with a sea of countermagic. Blue was very open at the table, splashed Red for the Pyromancers and a bit of burn, splashed Black for some discard effects and a removal spell or two. The question of 'Is Young Pyromancer sweet with Westvale Abbey?' was answered with a pretty resounding yes.
• Jundy Jund- So much Jund. Perhaps a little light on the discard effects, but everything else was classic Red/Black/Green. Played basically every 4-drop which has been used in Modern Jund, Bloodbraid Elf, Huntmaster of the Fells, Pia and Kiran Nalaar with Obstinate Baloth out of the board. Phyrexian Arena, Liliana of the Veil and Life from the Loam with double Bloodghast offered the long grindy path.

 

[Laz]

Testing still inconclusive. There was an artifact control deck last night, but it was pretty forced and ended up kind of mediocre. It generally got wins by sticking a Delver of Secrets. I am honestly not sure if the White Wraths were even played (which worked fine for me, I was playing the go-wide aggro), as the only players in White were in go-wide aggro and GWb midrange, which didn't really want to be sweeping their own creatures.
Last night more than half of the table was in Green, which weakened a lot of decks. After the draft one of the drafters actually commented:
'Man... Green was not really flowing tonight, I probably should have jumped ship.'
'Well, why didn't you?'
'I liked my green cards...'

Sometimes there is a limit to what you can do (to be fair, the guy was real tired and just drafting on auto-pilot).

Decks of the evening:

• Jund - Deck looked solid, but with a bit of a shakey manabase and maybe a little more creature based than normal.
• GWb Midrange - with a lands sub-theme. Got good mileage off of Titania, Knight of the Reliquary, Life from the Loam and 3 (!) Wastelands.
• GU Ramp - Somehow this guy ended up with a lot of the good green ramp cards (mana dorks mostly). Based upon the table, he was the one doing the cutting, and had most of the value-Blue creatures. Craterhoof won a lot of games (as it should).
• GR Ramp - Drafter mentioned above. Wasn't in the seat for green, but went for it anyway. Had a lot of the solid payoff cards, but was lacking the enablers)
• UB Delver/Artifact Control - Deck was stretched in two directions. Did it want to play the control game or the tempo game?

And... our 3-0 deck of the night:


Decks with a gradient, rather than a curve. As things should be.