I don't 'pimp' my cube at all. My
Volcanic Hammer is a nice, ugly, white bordered 9th Edition version - the very same one that pops up in the tooltip. My basics are a mish mash of core set, Rise, and Innistrad lands. The only foil is a
Torch Fiend that was donated by a friend from his pile of draft commons. I'm at the furthest point along the spectrum away from the all-foil mentality of a typical powered 'museum' cube.
Who's to say that there's a fixed number of white two drops in a 360 list? Isn't there enough room in this playground for your usual suite of white aggro beaters, along with a set (or more) of
Squadron Hawks? I'm not following your insistence on why things have to be one way or the other. The argument doesn't resonate with me. If there are enough aggro bears in white, and there are a couple of extra slots to play with in the colour, does it really matter that I have double digits worth of two drops?
People hate draft Hawks all the time here, but they usually won't do it at the expense of taking a real card, like anything ninth pick or earlier. If it tables, and there's only three cards left in the pack, perhaps it's not the worst tactic to steal it and prevent someone from completing their playset. At the same time, you might decide that your deck has multiple ways to make use of extra cards in hand, and you might take a Hawk as early as, say, p1p7. I've certainly done so, and not regretted it.
Cube doesn't have the same problem as Limited, where you have a lot of
worthless riff-raff that doesn't ever make anyone's main deck. So this actually gives us more room to play around with narrower effects, without needing to worry that the presence of these cards will derail people who are desperately scrambling for their 23rd playable. Now, it's a problem if a card is so narrow that it sits on the bench 90% of the time. But the Hawks are actually the opposite. I'd gather that when someone scoops up three or more copies - which is a pretty regular occurence - the drafter will run them 90% of the time.
I'm hearing the same arguments from you over and over, and I hate to say it, but it feels to me like you haven't tried this for yourself, and are attempting to criticize this exercise from a purely theoretical standpoint. Now, there's nothing wrong with a bit of theorycrafting, especially when you're constrained by a testing bottleneck. But sometimes ideas that you don't think will hold up actually turn out okay in practice. Try it yourself for a few drafts. Throw in a handful of Hawks, and see how your playgroup reacts. You might be surprised!
