General [Design Discussion] Perfect Imbalance

[Quirk]

Some really interesting points.

As a player, it feels comforting to put the most powerful cards you can in your deck, and frustrating to be overpowered by other people playing one card that crushes all the advantages you've been working up to until now. The obviously good, all-round cards are appealing to play, sad to play against, and let players skip a lot of format evaluation and thought.

But - in the period since 2009, there have been a lot of cards printed that maybe didn't make waves in Standard because they were competing with the obviously good busted stuff. There must be a fair number of them that are at a level commensurate with the power level available back in 2009. It should surely be possible to find ways to build cubes that have similar raw power to earlier eras but which are even more rewarding to play than the older cubes, because they have more options to build with.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Absolutely - one thing I love about Cube is that it's the perfect setting for cards/interactions that were suppressed in Standard. Flametongue Kavu, Jace TMS, Dromoka's Command etc. all basically invalidated entire classes of cards for the time they were legal. In Cube, even when those same cards face off, it happens so infrequently that it doesn't auto-invalidate the loser. I think the biggest change in Cube in recent times is planeswalker saturation: there are ~20 cards that are responsible for the vast majority of GRBS in powered Cubes, but most Cubes of all varieties run about that many planeswalkers, and as a group they massively warp incentives for drafters. Even the most oppressive creatures like Grave Titan or Mirran Crusader or w/e still fit into the 'creatures vs removal' dynamic, whereas planeswalkers are very hard to remove and work best with and against each other. PWs + removal is a simple, default Tier 1 strategy in most Cubes in a way that nothing could compare to 5 years ago.

Compare Cube to Constructed and retail Limited for a moment:

Constructed:
- Renewal is slow and has variable impact: New cards added every few months (a handful of playables for Modern/Legacy vs certainly reshaping the landscape for Standard); the changes to the rotation schedule for Standard should be a marked improvement here, but some cards that were good in Modern/Legacy have been and will be pillars of the format for as long as they are legal.
- Responses to problems are slow: It takes at least one set cycle for a card to be recognized as oppressive and for answers to be introduced. Cards are rarely removed from a format, as few cards are so overwhelmingly broken that they require banning and bannings carry a high cost, so unhealthy cards remain for a long time.
- High level of feedback: Competitive tournaments every week, many thousands of players constantly exploring the format.
- Metagames are broadly understood, rarely 'solved': There have been recent Standard formats - U Devotion/B Devotion/UWx Control in RTR/THS comes to mind - where it's very clear what the parameters are, but larger or more complex formats tend to remain dynamic and interesting despite the time and effort put into them. Upheavals caused by rotation or (un/)bannings often lead to surprises in the short term.

Limited:
- Renewal is slow at macro-level, immediate at micro-level: The underlying conditions of the format change every set release, and the structure of Limited guarantees that this will have a high impact even if the power level of the set is low; drafting adds a level of variety that can't be easily replicated in large-scale Constructed.
- Responses to problems are slow or impossible: Cards can't be removed, so Pack Rat or Umezawa's Jitte will always be there to wreck games when they show up; the rarity system alongside the mechanics of draft are meant to be a safety valve against that happening too often, and this fails when a common/uncommon is the problem.
- High level of feedback: Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of drafts
- Metagames are broadly understood at macro-level, and what constitutes knowledge of the format at micro-level: Outside of 'new' archetypes like Dampen Thought/Dinosaurs/Spider Spawning becoming popular, it's mostly clear what's going on in the format; people who are 'in the know' value cards differently based on interactions with other cards or subtle differences with other Limited formats that mean the 'at first glance' impression of a card is inaccurate. The frequency with which cards appear lead to some weird conclusions: a generic 3/2 might be much worse than it is in another draft format just because a colour has an extra X/4 at common, so changing one piece of the puzzle can have very broad implications.

Cube:
- Renewal is frequent and immediate at both levels: While most Cube designers have sacred cows and generally maintain an unchanging core of cards, it's easy to change your Cube and have it feel noticeably different without going full CML. The Cubes we aim to build here should have enough layers of complexity that each draft can and will be unique (again, beyond the natural variety of draft).
- Responses to problems are immediate: Don't like a card? Cut it.
- Very low levels of feedback: Most Cubes get drafted a few times a month, if we're lucky. There's some degree of homogeneity with power-max Cubes but, in general, findings in one Cube don't carry over to another.
- Metagames are understood to wildly different degrees at macro-level, and often not at all at micro-level: As Cube designers we have a near-omniscient perspective on our own environment, which is important to remember when asking how an evolving metagame is understood by our drafters. Many players aren't paying attention to a lot of what's going on, try to pay attention but don't grasp all of it, understand it but want to do their own thing or fall back on a tried-and-true strategy, and so on. I love trying to develop a deep web of interactions between cards, but for a drafter to understand it they have to a. encounter those cards in the draft, b. recognize the interaction, c. assume it's part of a larger design and correctly surmise what that is, d. actually care about that. Cube design presents this weird epistemology problem, in that to have an informed discussion about the Cube you need to know more about it than most drafters ever will, and so it's hard to put yourself in their shoes. Despite thinking about Cube more than is healthy and having a good idea how Grillo thinks based on his posts, I don't know that I would twig 'Mold Shambler and Resounding Wave are intentional choices to hate on bouncelands'.

Basically, even if a player sees both Troll Ascetic and Edicts and knows that one trumps the other, how will they work out that this dynamic is intentional (and not a by-product of Ascetic and Edicts both ending up in the Cube for their own reasons and some cards naturally being good against others)? When they see more hexproof creatures and more Edicts, maybe the picture becomes clearer, but unless the as-fan of any one effect is high it's going to take a long time to develop that understanding. A player doesn't need to know the underlying logic behind a card choice to have a good play experience, but if you're relying on them to act a certain way for your format to 'work' you're setting yourself up for failure unless you have a pool of smart, committed regulars.


ok bedtime

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Basically, even if a player sees both Troll Ascetic and Edicts and knows that one trumps the other, how will they work out that this dynamic is intentional (and not a by-product of Ascetic and Edicts both ending up in the Cube for their own reasons and some cards naturally being good against others)? When they see more hexproof creatures and more Edicts, maybe the picture becomes clearer, but unless the as-fan of any one effect is high it's going to take a long time to develop that understanding. A player doesn't need to know the underlying logic behind a card choice to have a good play experience, but if you're relying on them to act a certain way for your format to 'work' you're setting yourself up for failure unless you have a pool of smart, committed regulars.

What I want is for people to not be looking at a card in the cube and completely understanding it at a glance. I will 100% back running those relationships at low density. If a player has an experience where an edict effect saves them against a hardened threat, and goes into the next draft having to reevaluate the way they think about cards they thought they understood, thats really awesome. And I think this is especially true in smaller lists, where that added format depth is nice.

 

[ahadabans]

Funny you bring up 2009 Quirk, as I was just looking at a related thread. As I run a cube that is trying to be largely nostalgic, data from 2009 is often more useful to me than data from 2015 simply because of how much cube has changed and how detached I'm becoming from modern cube. I have many thoughts on that, but first check out the power rankings from MTGS from 2009. You'll all enjoy this I think.

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/...9-official-cube-power-rankings-results-thread

I find this list fascinating because it is still 100% power-max mindset but the dynamic of cube back 6 years ago was so vastly different from today it's almost unrecognizable. The green section in particular is extremely telling. In the top 20 most powerful green cards in all of Magic according to a good portion of the cube community, you have Harmonize at 13 and Krosan Tusker at 18. Two cards that Riptiders don't even run anymore, cards that the current MTGS crowd would LOL at I think if you showed up today and asked about them (people here I feel know better).

I don't call these out as bad cards, but more to illustrate how much lower the average power level was 6 years ago. And how that fact alone completely changes the game in ways I'm not sure people really appreciate. Harmonize is NOT a bad card. Even today. It's a 3 for 1 for 4 mana. That is totally decent (more than decent in fact). You could play it in a current list and not feel like an idiot if it weren't for the fact that you can now instead play things like Polukranos, World Eater for the same mana cost (and there are now enough busted cards a 4 CMC for green that there is zero reason to run harmonize). The game is also so much more tempo driven. Why do I need pure CA cards when something like the hydra can generate CA with mana and/or just win the game by itself? More importantly, do I have time anymore to draw cards when my opponent just dropped Hero of Bladehold and that will take the game out of reach if I don't respond immediately. Power max lists have nothing but cards like this in it now. Even your average Riptide list is full of value cards like this.

The effect all this power creep has had on the game IMO is net negative. Even in my cube, I've kept out a lot of the power and I still have found that I just don't have time to do things I used to be able to do. Even my beloved Genesis is starting to show his age. There are plenty of games where there is simply too much pressure on me to get to 6 mana, spend 3 to get back boneshredder all to kill a single threat. In my first cube, this was a frighteningly powerful play. Today? Eh. You kind of need to do more with 6 mana. And I'm really unhappy with that honestly. At least for me, the game didn't get better as a result of this dynamic shift. It just made it harder to experiment with less efficient yet interesting card combinations.

I feel like the creative space I once had is shrinking. The bar is being set too high on your average good stuff list. And we combat that (here at Riptide) by removing many of those cards and replacing them with complex interatctions. This is generally a positive thing, but you know what? It also has an alienating effect on more casual players. A lot of what I've done to my cube over the last year is going over the heads of people. And cards require too much effort to unlock. This is contrary to how the cube used to work and it isn't something everyone likes. But going full good stuff today isn't like before. It just squeezes out too many fringe deck lists.

This is where I absolutely love the direction Grillo has taken his cube projects. Penny Pincher in particular is so much lower power than the average cube but still maintains some of that rare broken feel that existed with early cubes. Incidentally, this was specifically the comparison I was trying to make several pages ago - that the feel of something on the power level of Penny Pincher is more in line with 2009 power max (just for different design reasons). Regardless, that is the type of environment I want to foster, but it is very very difficult to manage all the new power that keeps getting printed and reconcile that with an environment where you can draw Harmonize and be happy casting it on turn 4. I've seriously debated on just making my cube on contain cards <=2009 and calling it a day, but I enjoy adding new stuff and some NWO designs are really solid and it's dumb not to at least consider them.

To me, it's like the old Taco Bell 59/79/99 menu. It was appealing, elegant. I liked it. But over time, the value of a dollar kept going down and eventually you simply couldn't offer food at those prices. So that menu concept could not longer exist. Weird analogy I know (I think I'm hungry), but that I feel is where cube design is going. It used to be this highly interactive environment that was sort of clunky in a way because it had variable power levels and random cards and was singleton and things fit together but didn't really (if that makes sense), but to some extent it was elegant in how all these things drafted and it was supremely fun. It was broken and powerful and yet there was time too in these games to experiment and do cute nonsense like Wrath of God, karmic guide, reveillark. As soon as cube became this highly competitive thing where people didn't have time to play do-nothing 3 drops (somebody actually said that on MTGS), all that made cube great started to drain away for me. I might be alone on my feelings about this though. So if this just comes off as an old man ranting about how the world went to hell in a handbasket, please ignore and I apologize.

If there's one thing I'd really love to start and get out of threads like this is some feedback mechanism on which cards impact environments the most and how you can take that information and bypass a lot of the iterative testing process. I just don't have time to figure most of this out on my own. If you look at the cards I run in my list, its not super outside the box. And that's not because I have no imagination, it's because embarking on a radical cube design with tons of unconventional cards (as appealing as that might be) requires way more time and play testing than I can do. It's simply not practical. I have to make the most of my cube experiences and running Fatesticher (because it's a zombie and combos with Birthing Pod and untaps bounce lands and combos with random fringe deck X) IMO is not the best way for me to do that. I applaud those taking the road less traveled, and I certainly steal all I can from those experiences. So by all means, you guys keep doing that and I'll take the things you figure out and apply them wherever possible.

But here is where I'm at, and I feel like this applies to more than just me. For someone with limited time to do this, I am ultimately better off avoiding all this extreme meta dissection and instead taking a power max list like WtWlf's, looking at the power rankings for 2015, removing the top 10 from each color and artifacts. Then cull more cards based on logical conclusions I can make (like how Manic Vandal actually sucks if you are not facing swords/moxen in every match-up), then replace the cards at each CC I removed with cards that are highly rated by people on this forum in unconventional lists. That theoretical cube I just described would take a day or two to design and it would produce a rich and fun experience AT LEAST 80% as good as the most painstakingly designed cube that took 50 times as long.

 

[Dom Harvey]

in the same vein, Phyrexian Arena being a Top 10 card is an eye-opener

the entire gold section is a barrel of laughs too

eta: thawing glaciers sighting!

 

[ahadabans]

Yeah. The gold section is just a reflection of the fact that there was absolutely nothing available back in 2009. And I doubt very many people went deeper than 4 cards in each color (if that), so anything lower was not actually played (and very likely considered unplayable by a large portion of the community).

 

[Chriskool]

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/...9-official-cube-power-rankings-results-thread

I find this list fascinating because it is still 100% power-max mindset but the dynamic of cube back 6 years ago was so vastly different from today it's almost unrecognizable. The green section in particular is extremely telling. In the top 20 most powerful green cards in all of Magic according to a good portion of the cube community, you have Harmonize at 13 and Krosan Tusker at 18. Two cards that Riptiders don't even run anymore, cards that the current MTGS crowd would LOL at I think if you showed up today and asked about them (people here I feel know better).

I don't call these out as bad cards, but more to illustrate how much lower the average power level was 6 years ago. And how that fact alone completely changes the game in ways I'm not sure people really appreciate.

I noticed this occurring in 100-Card Singleton around the second printing of the Magic 20xx Titan cycle. Up until that point, the format had been a niche card's playground. The density of hyper-efficient haymakers hadn't hit critical, and decks could play fringe answers that pushed games in interesting directions in their 4cmc+ slots. But then, Wizards released a few sets with very high power levels and the efficient cards just outperformed their more interesting, less-stat cousins. I tried to resurrect 100CS with the MTGO Academy editor in the winter of 2012 as a player-run event and the winning decks were predominantly RDW or good stuff; the only synergy decks to do well played were (surpise) green-based Recurring Nightmare. Games end too quickly to play stuff like Ixidron (and incur the risk of drawing it when not needed) as an Imperial Recruiter answer to Progenitus and pals. I don't see why power-maxed cubes wouldn't be affected similarly.

A lot of what I've done to my cube over the last year is going over the heads of people. And cards require too much effort to unlock. This is contrary to how the cube used to work and it isn't something everyone likes

I have this issue too. (The following is a bit of an aside.) My cubes/sets are all (intended to be) manifestations of my favorite Limited incarnations of Magic, where players are rewarded for doing more than turning sideways, cheating on card costs and blow up shit that gets in their way. My idea of a good board state is one where the active player has to consider the cost of attacking (and frequently decides it is too steep to incur). I want games to last a good 8-16 turns, with players attempting to bait one another into making subpar decisions

For better or worse, though, most MTG tournament decks are all about getting to the result slip as effectively as possible, and I assume that a lot of MTG players identify this sensation of crushing victory as a good game experience (especially when their opponent throws down some cards that the winner can decisively dismiss on their path to success). Even players that I know respect fun, interactive games of Magic seem to prefer a winner-takes-all draft of the current set(s), FNM for the chance to win prize packs or a 6-hour drive to test their mettle at a regional Grand Prix. I think that many players often prefer blitzkrieg cubes as they allow dominance to be touted quickly or are over just as fast if losing is on the menu. Lastly, I have also noticed a desire to cast cards with which they've won (or seen famous plays) in the past; there seems to be a heavy nostalgia component to enjoyable cubing. (I lost 1-2, but I had a sweeeeet xyz deck.)

If there's one thing I'd really love to start and get out of threads like this is some feedback mechanism on which cards impact environments the most and how you can take that information and bypass a lot of the iterative testing process. [...]

But here is where I'm at, and I feel like this applies to more than just me. For someone with limited time to do this, I am ultimately better off avoiding all this extreme meta dissection [...]

Maybe, it would be more valuable to split this discussion off in a few directions (that are broadly applicable to cubing and can be then be further focused for the cube(s) in question). How valuable would a case study of a fun retail format be to aid us in our endeavor to infuse forum cubes with the (hehhehheh) magic of a praised draft format? I'm talking archetype breakdowns/interplay, frequency analysis of manafixing/threats/synergies/answers, noted flaws and the like. Let's deconstruct what makes a popular Limited tick and then see how it can be directly translated to a test cube. I vote triple Innistrad, Rise of the Eldrazi or Vintage Masters.

 

[Tzenmoroth]

Anyone have a link to good example of this 2009 style cube? I'm not old enough to remember this and not quite sure what kind of power level we're talking here.

 

[ahadabans]

My cubes/sets are all (intended to be) manifestations of my favorite Limited incarnations of Magic, where players are rewarded for doing more than turning sideways, cheating on card costs and blow up shit that gets in their way. My idea of a good board state is one where the active player has to consider the cost of attacking (and frequently decides it is too steep to incur). I want games to last a good 8-16 turns, with players attempting to bait one another into making subpar decisions

I fully subscribe to this concept, one problem I ran into which really requires attention is nerfing control/combo strategies. If the game is always seeing turn 8, you are heavily penalized for playing fair and heavily incentivized to make unfair card interactions which dominate board states. Even something slow and seemingly innocuous like DeadEye Navigator can become GRBS if there is nothing going under it or a very high concentration of removal (which brings it's own problems). This kind of thing was definitely easier pre-NWO though where there were fewer things generating ongoing snowball virtual CA. You really have to make large scale sacrifices to the cube in order to have a healthy flavor of this.

Maybe, it would be more valuable to split this discussion off in a few directions (that are broadly applicable to cubing and can be then be further focused for the cube(s) in question). How valuable would a case study of a fun retail format would aid us in our endeavor to infuse forum cubes with the (hehhehheh) magic of a praised draft format be? I'm talking archetype breakdowns/interplay, frequency analysis of manafixing/threats/synergies/answers, noted flaws and the like. Let's deconstruct what makes a popular Limited tick and then see how it can be directly translated to a test cube. I vote triple Innistrad, Rise of the Eldrazi or Vintage Masters.

I would happily read any long winded posts about this as I see a ton of value in it. Though I will personally not be able to contribute much in the way of hands on experience with any of it. My last limited experience I think was Future Sight (which I find horrible). And I sufficiently played enough casual constructed to vehemently dislike everything about running 4-of anything in Magic decks. Cube is literally all I play now for the simple reason it avoids (at least for me) the worst aspects of both constructed and limited.

 

[ahadabans]

Anyone have a link to good example of this 2009 style cube? I'm not old enough to remember this and not quite sure what kind of power level we're talking here.

I don't know if this is his original list or not (can't find the old site), but I originally discovered cube several years ago when I stumbled on an article by a guy named Tom Lapille. This list looks 2008/2009 ish, so I don't think he's updated it.

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/15423

 

[Tzenmoroth]

Its like half weird jank cube, half legacy cube. The power level is so all over the place. What is happening. I would replace a lot of the power with more jank and play with Tenth Edition rules.

 

[safra]

Its like half weird jank cube, half legacy cube. The power level is so all over the place. What is happening. I would replace a lot of the power with more jank and play with Tenth Edition rules.

it's so stark when you look at the guild slots: Golgari has Putrefy, Deed, Spiritmonger and Grave-Shell Scarab; Azorius gets Teferi's Moat and Galina's Knight. Then I noticed Top and Clamp and had to stop

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

That was a really great post ahadaban, and there were a few things I wanted to tease out of it.

1. Power Level

Thank you for providing those power level rankings from 2009. I had stopped playing magic right before Lorwyn was released, so that was an eye-opener and really clarified your points. I can also see better where you are coming from when you talk about Kokoshu.

It is shocking to me to see some of the cards on that list, in particular, the following:




These are all cards that I've ran in the pauper inspired penny cube. The idea that rude awakening, starstorm, krosan tusker, and eternal dragon-cards that I had viewed as low power staples-could be seen as power max staples is incredible to me, and really highlights how extreme the design shift was from '09 to now.

The inclusion of grave-shell scarab on that list is truly bizarre to me, as that was card that I ran for a while, but cut because it wasn't competitive in that format.

It always felt odd integrating RGD era rares into a format being inspired by pauper, but apparently the power gap between a common based format in 2015, is smaller than I ever could have imagined, with a rare based format from 2007.

I also suppose it goes without saying that there are real issues with conflating depth with power, and a consistent application of 2007 power standards shouldn't be dismissed as inferior, simply because 2015 power standards far surpass them. Yet, thats exactly where power max seems to take us.

2. Designer Frustrations

I feel the same way every time I sit down and want to come up with a higher power format. It is hard to shake the sense that the returns I'm getting on these higher power cards are constantly diminishing, and the salt in the wound is that they often cost ridiculous $$$. I can't stand the idea of cube being a money pit, as I think that goes against the spirit of the format.

3. Format Development

I do think that the power list, and Tom LaPille's List, show that a lot of the format thought we are doing here does have a lot of value. You can tell that with some of the cards that he is running, that he probably hasn't put nearly as much thought into how these cards interact with one another as he probably should have. While he may end up in a reasonable place, if that occurs, it will be by pure chance, and I don't see how he can ever tune it as tightly as I can. There is a price being paid here in terms of format understanding, and how to effectively improve a particular format.

That bring said, the premise that you are suggesting, is intriguing, and probably gets you close enough, both quicker and easier.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Well I mean Rude Awakening is still powerful. Sure it's an 8 drop, but how much damage is craterhoof, on average? is it 16?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Does anyone here run it, or would run it? Its going to be 14 damage without blockers, if you curve out into it (summoning sickness on the 8th land). Its a lot worse than craterhoof.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Does anyone here run it, or would run it? Its going to be 14 damage without blockers, if you curve out into it (summoning sickness on the 8th land). Its a lot worse than craterhoof.

I have run it, and it basically just kills people. It's a LOT of damage out of nowhere, and there's not many cards that deal with it well (Eg: Volcanic Fallout, Cryptic Command)

 

[japahn]

That was a really great post ahadaban, and there were a few things I wanted to tease out of it.
The inclusion of grave-shell scarab on that list is truly bizarre to me, as that was card that I ran for a while, but cut because it wasn't competitive in that format.

Note that at the time damage still stacked, it changed mid-2009. Also, the format was way, way slower at the time - you had time to capitalize on card advantage instead of dying with 4 cards in hand to a Titan. This part explains all other cards. Note how the theme is card advantage.

It is hard to shake the sense that the returns I'm getting on these higher power cards are constantly diminishing, and the salt in the wound is that they often cost ridiculous $$$. I can't stand the idea of cube being a money pit, as I think that goes against the spirit of the format.

I don't think it necessarily goes against the spirit of the format. Some people would try to keep it budget, others pimp the hell out of it, and the beauty is that it's fun either way.

Do you think cube in general got more expensive? Fun budget cubes were easy to pull, and they remain easy IMO. A fetch/alpha dual manabase obviously got more expensive, though.

I do think that the power list, and Tom LaPille's List, show that a lot of the format thought we are doing here does have a lot of value. You can tell that with some of the cards that he is running, that he probably hasn't put nearly as much thought into how these cards interact with one another as he probably should have.

That was not the idea at the time. Powermax cube was fun, and was a "counterculture" in response to the linear standard decks that existed at the time, so linear archetypes were something to avoid, not encourage. Things like aggro, midrange, control, fish, reanimator and ramp emerged naturally, though.

I'm just dumping here what I remember at the time, not saying this is better. Today, I aim that my draft deck distribution ends up at 50% synergistic archetypes, 50% emergent archetypes.

the premise that you are suggesting, is intriguing, and probably gets you close enough, both quicker and easier.

The current powermax cube is especially bad, because the power level of threats restrict the card pool to board impactful cards. If you stay away from 6- mana must-remove threats, a lot of card categories become playable. My conclusion from this thread - that has nothing to do with its title - is that good stuff cube isn't bad per se - it's bad at current powermax level.

 

[ahadabans]

Cube design has come a long long way from Tom's original list to be sure. Guys weren't thinking about proper mana curves back then let alone card interactions. Any list featuring Umazawa's Jitte along side Hedge Troll has quite the bipolar power range. If you think about it though, it probably isn't any wider than the gap you have in a typical limited format (between your mostly garbage commons and your bomb rares in each pack). That's not even an exaggeration. There is an equally giant gap between storm crow and serra angel after all (both of which you could have drafted together in several base sets).

Honestly, throwing a bunch of really good commons/uncommons and mixing it with a pile of random rares is likely to create a halfway decent drafting set on par or better with some of the weaker blocks Wizard's has released (assuming you had a reasonably curve and color distribution). And that's largely due to the fact that any such list will have a high concentration of very playable cards and/or complex cards which consequently offer a ton of game play. I've argued this a billion times, but pretty much every rare card every printed (with maybe the possible exception of One With Nothing) is inherently game breaking given enough turns and/or mana to exploit them. That's why they are rares.

At the end of the day, cubes generally work with minimal effort because of the nature of the card pool they contain. Basically, even bad musical artists typically have totally decent greatest hits albums. If you release 10 albums, you are bound to have a dozen or so songs worth listening too.

Nice post BTW Grillo. And I agree with you. I'm glad seeing the 2009 power rankings was so eye opening. Honestly, I looked at your Penny Pincher list and the first thing I thought of was my first cube. Your list has way more design and though put into it, but power level wise it really isn't far off (if you ignore the fact that my list had swords, etc). My personally feeling is that I need to continue to bring my power level down back closer to what I was running years ago and only selectively run newer power cards where I'm intentionally trying to support something specific or an amazing design was printed and it's going to generate a ton of interesting interactions.

For awhile, I thought the best approach was making my power level as flat as possible (not power max but just below that), but honestly that might not be the way to go. I'm really questioning that now. Am I better off running something like River Boa instead of something more inherently powerful? River Boa is a great foil to blue decks (but isn't unfair), it has a very cheap regenerate cost. It isn't above the curve though (doesn't have 3 power, it doesn't replace itself or create a 2 for 1, etc). It interacts with no theme really so it's more a good stuff or general aggro filler. But maybe that's where I need to get my general good stuff cards to? And as an added bonus, River Boa is a nostalgic card that at least one guy in the group will appreciate seeing.

We talked in another thread about what the ideal match-up win percentage would look like between genericgoodstuff.dec and a well thought out synergy based deck. I was thinking 40/60 (good stuff would win 4 out of 10). In order to do that, I think you'd need to avoid running a great deal of cube mainstays where your generic good stuff card was no better than Hypnotic Specter. I don't see how you realistically make synergy decks (on the power level of splicers or +1/+1 counters or enchantress, etc,) beat generic decks that are running things like Polukanos or Thrag Tusk.

One of the traps I think I've fallen into of late is adding a power card here or there to "shore up" an archetype and of course it "works" because the card I'm using to shore up the archetype is itself a broken card and good in everything. Like fixing UR control strategies by adding Inferno Titan. Yup, that works but not quite for the reason you were probably hoping. (I didn't do this, it was only an illustrative example not too far off from what I've considered doing one time or another).

Anyway, I really enjoy the thought and effort you put into your designs Grillo. I shamelessly steal ideas from you all the time so I hope you are not deterred by some of the negativity you have gotten in this thread by me and others.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This whole line of conversation reminded me of this old gem by Frank Lepore. Cathartic stuff.

 

[ahadabans]

Cool article. After reading it, I'm tempted to reconsider Sun Titan. But the thought of running any titan makes me feel dirty, so I doubt I will.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The old "anti-goodstuff" movement from like 6-7 years ago I think did a lot of damage. Good stuff is essential. The question is, what good stuff do we run?

 

[Jason Waddell]

This is somewhat an unfair example since Clique is probably the best designed Magic card in history. Trinket Mage is cool and I think can add to an environment. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying here. I want to specifically call out the difference between dynamic power cards that add to a meta (Clique) versus ones that don't (Jitte). Making your cube compatible with the first kind (and including as many as you can) will only do good things to how your cube plays IMO, and maybe more so than any kind of meta manipulation.

True story, I once spitballed with Eric a RipLab competition where I would have people submit a brief description of why they thought a given card was the best designed card in history. And then I realized "I'm just going to accept the best description of Clique", and scrapped the idea.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I noticed this occurring in 100-Card Singleton around the second printing of the Magic 20xx Titan cycle. Up until that point, the format had been a niche card's playground. The density of hyper-efficient haymakers hadn't hit critical, and decks could play fringe answers that pushed games in interesting directions in their 4cmc+ slots. But then, Wizards released a few sets with very high power levels and the efficient cards just outperformed their more interesting, less-stat cousins. I tried to resurrect 100CS with the MTGO Academy editor in the winter of 2012 as a player-run event and the winning decks were predominantly RDW or good stuff; the only synergy decks to do well played were (surpise) green-based Recurring Nightmare. Games end too quickly to play stuff like Ixidron (and incur the risk of drawing it when not needed) as an Imperial Recruiter answer to Progenitus and pals. I don't see why power-maxed cubes wouldn't be affected similarly.

100 card singleton looked like a pretty fun format. One of my old MLG colleagues used to write articles on the format on Pure MTGO.

 

[Jason Waddell]

For awhile, I thought the best approach was making my power level as flat as possible (not power max but just below that), but honestly that might not be the way to go. I'm really questioning that now. Am I better off running something like River Boa instead of something more inherently powerful? River Boa is a great foil to blue decks (but isn't unfair), it has a very cheap regenerate cost. It isn't above the curve though (doesn't have 3 power, it doesn't replace itself or create a 2 for 1, etc). It interacts with no theme really so it's more a good stuff or general aggro filler. But maybe that's where I need to get my general good stuff cards to? And as an added bonus, River Boa is a nostalgic card that at least one guy in the group will appreciate seeing.

We talked in another thread about what the ideal match-up win percentage would look like between genericgoodstuff.dec and a well thought out synergy based deck. I was thinking 40/60 (good stuff would win 4 out of 10). In order to do that, I think you'd need to avoid running a great deal of cube mainstays where your generic good stuff card was no better than Hypnotic Specter. I don't see how you realistically make synergy decks (on the power level of splicers or +1/+1 counters or enchantress, etc,) beat generic decks that are running things like Polukanos or Thrag Tusk.

One of the traps I think I've fallen into of late is adding a power card here or there to "shore up" an archetype and of course it "works" because the card I'm using to shore up the archetype is itself a broken card and good in everything. Like fixing UR control strategies by adding Inferno Titan. Yup, that works but not quite for the reason you were probably hoping. (I didn't do this, it was only an illustrative example not too far off from what I've considered doing one time or another).

Anyway, I really enjoy the thought and effort you put into your designs Grillo. I shamelessly steal ideas from you all the time so I hope you are not deterred by some of the negativity you have gotten in this thread by me and others.

I think you have to run cards that excite people. Some degree of power variability is good. I was super happy to have Kiora in my BFZ sealed pool, and would have had less fun playing if it were a River Boa. Infuse with the Elements was powerful in a unique way that caused me to build my pool differently. The "super flat power curve" idea that gets kicked around feels like an overreaction to overly skewed power max cubes. I like when my players are excited about their decks after taking a couple bomb picks.

 

[Dom Harvey]

You can achieve that despite a flat power level by just having synergies to build a deck around. If my first few picks all work nicely together and set me up for a great sacrifice deck or prowess deck or w/e, I'll still be excited even if none of those cards individually are a cut above the rest. Alternatively, as long as I find the cards I have interesting, it doesn't matter to me what their relative power level is (assuming they aren't much worse than everything else)