General I actually played magic this weekend.

[FlowerSunRain]

I actually got to play Magic yesterday. Here are some observations I found. Since I hadn't played any Dragon Maze yet, we forced all the cards from that set into the draft. This was a 4 player table, which is the usual for my group.

1) Recently, I had been thinking that Force of Will is a bad cube card. Card disadvantage counters just aren't needed. Yesterday, it performed beastly work in a Blue/Green midrange valuetown deck, killing tempo and letting it get to the point where it could do dumb things like spike weaver/renegade krasis and set up Genesis loops. Force of Will is no longer on notice.
1a) Spike Weaver is also an amazingly funny card.

2) Phyrexian Arena is another card I had been thinking is a bad cube card. No one drafted it, but if i had jumped into the red/black control deck that was definitely wide open, it might have been decent in there. Unfortunately, we'll never know since I was too busy trying to draft a deck with tithe drinker and ready//willing in it that I tunnelvisioned away from it. Phyrexian Arena is still on notice.

3) Hurricane is still the best card no one cubes.

4) I don't care what anyone says, Bonfire of the Damned is a fun card.

5) Ready//Willing did some good work. My deck could only cast the Willing half, but it busted my "curve stops at 3" black/white aggro through many stalled boards, all the while gaining me life which was not inconsequential.

6) Blood Scrivener did no work whatsoever. He attacked for 2, never drew a card and never forced sub-optimal removal to avoid drawing me a card. Again, my deck had 15 land and the curve ended at 3 and had free spells in it (Snuff out and Contagion) that helped empty my hand, so this was sort of the ideal situation for this card.

7) Everyone liked the land draft add on. However, the popular sentiment was that the draft should take place entirely after the regular draft. So, after the 3 packs, we would do all 4 picks instead of 1 pick after pack 1, 1 pick after pack 2 and 2 picks after pack 3.
7a) Everyone was happy with how the lands were sorted between the cube and the land draft. The only one which was uncertain was Phyrexian Tower. Right now its in the cube.

8) I got blown out by shelter.

9) Everyone likes the custom cards. Benalish Hero with battlecry did work and created some fun board states.

10) I went 2-1 (vs. White/Blue Midrange), 2-1 (vs. Green/Blue Control), 0-3 (vs. Red/White Midrange). There was an extremely disproportionate amount of white cards in the draft.

My Deck

Dryad Militant
Grave Crawler
Soul Warden
Carrion Feeder
Sarcomancy
Swords to Plowshares
Thoughtseize
Syndic of Tithes
Oona's Prowler
Thalia, Guardian of the Thraben
Bitterblossom
Tithe Drinker
Blood Scrivener
Mistral Charger
Grave Servitude
Liliana's Specter
Silverblade Paladin
Grafted Wargear
Geralf's Messanger
Kitchen Finks
Vindicate
Sword of Mind and Body
Ready // Willing
Snuff Out
Contagion

Fetid Heath, Caves of Kolos, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

A couple of others I forgot.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I cut Arena a while ago and haven't looked back. I've grown tired of cards that take a while to generate an advantage; I'd rather cast Toil/Trouble than Arena most of the time. I'm glad someone else finds Blood Scrivener useless as well; there's far too much best-case-scenario thinking when discussing that card.

Ready/Willing sounds cool.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Yeah, Scrivener has been pretty useless around here. I'll probably slot Wretched Anurid back in soon.

 

[Eric Chan]

Sweet post, Kevin. I think I might shift the utility land draft all to the end, too. I much prefer completely hidden information until after the draft portion is complete, and this might reduce the analysis paralysis that sometimes happens after pack one, when people haven't quite settled on an archetype yet.

 

[James Stevenson]

Analysis paralysis is a great phrase, and "I played magic recently and these were my thoughts" is a great topic.

I don't run Force of Will. Should I then? I have heard it is an interesting card to draft and play with. It also seems like one of those cards that is really fun to see in a pack. It's kind of.... Well I want to say legendary, or mythical, or it has an aura, but all these are magic terms. I need to improve my diction and magic needs to stop stealing words.

 

[tomchaps]

On Force of Will: having to worry about a counterspell when your opponent is tapped out is a gameplay tension that I enjoy having in my cube, although it's not as powerful a card in the format as you'd expect, given its reputation. I've really enjoyed having it in.

On Phyrexian Arena: man, I read stuff like this and have to remind myself how amazingly different cards play out in different cubes. We rarely cube with more than 2 (and then usually 4), and my cube is definitely a notch slower than many here, but... This card singlehandedly pulls people into black, more than just about anything else. It buries anything other than aggro decks in card advantage, and how in heck does it start too late? Drawing a card a turn starting T4? Scrivener I can easily see getting the axe, but Arena...

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Force of Will is probably worth running. Its a fun card, it just had a bad run for us. Yesterday was redemption. Being able to completely shut off the opponent's tempo is worth a card and a life.

I remembered my last two cards: Gravecrawler and Silverblade Paladin.

 

[CML]

the opposite of analysis paralysis is "exegesis kinesis." this is one of my finer jokes and it is a bummer nobody else agrees with me.

i'm looking forward to playing FoW. as far as the other heavy-duty legacy counterspells go, i've found daze and spell pierce to be useless, though now that i think about it i'm very curious about spell snare.

phyrexian arena was a ridiculous card in the cube's infancy, now i think it's merely good. don't cut arena. it's a really powerful effect.

blood scrivener is terrible

 

[Jason Waddell]

Daze and Spell Pierce are fantastic. At least here.

 

[VibeBox]

daze and force of will carry a great deal of weight in keeping blue involved with aggression at all. particularly in combination with white to double up force spike opportunities by way of mana tithe. thalia really puts work in with that crowd would be sad to see them go, imo.

agreed with CML on arena.
spell pierce is quite good.
i have no blood scrivener results, but anurid is similarly impatiently scoping his watch on the bench for me as well.

 

[James Stevenson]

Exegesis kinesis. Bravo, bravo, bravo. You are an underappreciated man.

 

[VibeBox]

as ever when it comes to blue offense, it's queen kira presiding, but don't undersell her minister grand arbiter augustin or enforcer lodestone golem.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Dangit that's another primer I should write sometime. Blue Aggro is underappreciated.
Personally I havent found FoW that amazing, and the other free counters were much nicer (Daze mostly)
Maybe it's lack of support, but the "blue card" stipulation was often a problem

also I've never seen the appeal of GAIIV. Sure taxing is nice, but his body just seems so not worth it, especially alongside Thalia and Lodestone Golem

 

[CML]

council of the absolute is a great "cock-tease" mythic w/r/t "i wanted a voice and all i got was this lousy [ten-mana card beloved by EDH players and other children]"

as far as legacy goes i'm about the hugest fan of Daze as it gets, but i have no love for Force Spike or Mana Tithe in cube.

i might try snare, i dunno about pierce, but it was really funny with pvddr ended up picking spell pierce over deep analysis in his 3c aggro modo cube pile at the WC.

 

[Chris Taylor]

*Shrug* to me, spell pierce is at it's best in aggro decks

 

[James Stevenson]

I'm not at all sorry to be kinda necroing, but I Recently Played Magic And These Were My Thoughts. I've been on a massive binge of cutting powerful cards and trying to balance archetypes recently, and here were the results.

We played a 6-man team daft, deciding to team draft while we were sitting down, and just taking the teams the way we were sat. We ended up being Team Control (my team) vs. Team Aggro. I was straight UB control, my teammates were 5c control and Ubr control. I wanted to play Cruel Ultimatum but my mana was kind of tough. I adored my deck, it ran Mystical Teachings, which fetched all kinds of good stuff: loads of removal, Venser, Wydwen, and a few counterspells.
The other team had a WB weenie deck that was sweet, a RW aggro deck whose curve topped at like 3, and a GR aggro deck which topped out with Primeval Titan for some reason.
The main thing I want to blurt out about this draft is that I think my cube is very well balanced. Team Aggro beat Team Control 5 to 4.
I felt bad every time I cast Black Sun's Zenith, but it was SO good. I also blew my opponent out by waiting for him to flashback Lingering Souls before landing Engineered Explosives. The question is, were my opponents over extending against control every time, or was that their best out against my deck anyway? I certainly think flashing back Lingering Souls is wrong against me. He hadn't seen Engineered Explosives, but everyone knew I had the Zenith.
I'm thinking of cutting Disfigure. There is perhaps too much removal running around in my list. I will keep Tragic Slip, because it is interesting and versatile.
We didn't get any midrange yesterday (though maybe the GR deck was a it midrangey). I think I should add one or two Birthing Pods and see if that deck works out.
There was a great moment when The RW player landed a Frazzled Editor against me. I had a Bitterblossom out, and one faerie token. I was using cards from a Batman card game as tokens, and I realised that one I had chosen was wordy! Naturally I ripped BSZ right when I needed to
Pyrewild Shaman Was good. It used bloodrush and got returned to the hand right away, and was hard-casted the next turn.
Sadly Trostani, Voice of Resurgence wasn't in the draft, so I didn't get to try that deck out.

Ok I gotta go.