General Life Begins at 20 - YT Channel

[Grillo_Parlante]

I guess my point is it's very easy to overly focus on building archetypes and end up locking yourself out of some of the organics that a cube (especially ones with higher powered cards) will naturally foster. And I think that's missing part of what makes this format so awesome. At the same time, the endless power creep race is locking people out in a different way by making synergy less important compared to raw power.

Yes. Its like, you need to have some structure to orient the format, but too much structure and it becomes stifling. Even if the archetypes aren't structured to the point where they are explicitly on rails, if there is no unknown space to explore, than eventually people will learn the format, and drafts will devolve to the point that they might as well be on rails. That being said thats more or less where a competitive format wants to end up, since the focus is entirely on how well players can optimally manage an existing infrastructure, and not on their ability to reinterpret or change a format.

While you need structure, you also need some space outside of the 10 establish guild themes where a player can explore. This is exactly what golvin was demonstrating with his peasant cube example.

Ideally, what those drafters would be discovering would be a new perspective to look at those cards. I think thats why triple innistrad was so amazing. You drafted that format with one interpretation of it, and than suddenly someone discovers a new way to look at a set of cards, and the entire format completely changed. I imagine thats the kind of the excitement that Johnny players are looking for: to be able to explore new ideas and show other drafters different ways to look at existing cards.

Thats tricky though, and its easy to see why it basically never happens on the scale of III: we can't build something we can't know into a format without reducing it into a known quantity, at which point it becomes part of the structure. That was the whole problem with the spiral format: structured creativity isn't really creativity.

 

[japahn]

I would love to read a case study of triple INN, as I did not play limited at the time, but everyone talks so much about it. What were the layers of archetypes that were obvious and what were the hidden ones? How fast was the format? How powerful? How good was removal. How beatable were bombs? How good was fixing? What was the power difference between rarities?

 

[Fulcrum]

I would love to read a case study of triple INN, as I did not play limited at the time, but everyone talks so much about it. What were the layers of archetypes that were obvious and what were the hidden ones? How fast was the format? How powerful? How good was removal. How beatable were bombs? How good was fixing? What was the power difference between rarities?

http://blog.killgold.fish/2015/03/kill-reviews-innistrad-block.html

I'm rereading this article and it's really interesting that we're echoing some of the author's points. It also kind of goes a little into answering some of your questions.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I would love to read a case study of triple INN, as I did not play limited at the time, but everyone talks so much about it. What were the layers of archetypes that were obvious and what were the hidden ones? How fast was the format? How powerful? How good was removal. How beatable were bombs? How good was fixing? What was the power difference between rarities?

Here is what you are looking for. Do a search under his username on the site: he has a number of articles that focus on Innistrad mechanics.

A notable exert re our topic:

One of the most fascinating parts of Innistrad is the balance between the power levels of the Commons vs. the Uncommons, Rares, and Mythics. This most reminds me of Ravnica block (thought it isn’t quite as well balanced as RGD). We are used to sets like Scars of Mirrodin where there is a sharp difference in power level between the Commons and the Uncommons, and another marked difference between the Uncommons and the Rares. Cards like Grasp of Darkness were nowhere on the level of Skinrender, and then you get Carnifex Demon at rare.

But in Innistrad, we see things like Cackling Counterpart at Rare, which might be a little better than Murder of Crows at Uncommon, which is a little bit better than Claustrophobia at Common. There are a few exceptions, especially in Black which seems to have the bulk of the über-powerful rares in the set, but on the whole, we see a much more gentle gradation between the power level of rarities. This is important, because it means that decks will be less dependent on opening the most powerful bombs, and more dependent on crafting synergies. I’ve seen this over and over in Innistrad sealed. Yes, having cards like Olivia Voldaren, Bloodline Keeper, or Devil’s Play greatly increase your ability to win, but these cards absolutely have answers. So many players have been able to find creative ways to deal with those cards.

The other consequence of having a flatter power curve on cards is that everything is generally more playable. Even things like Dream Twist, Feral Ridgewolf, or Gnaw to the Bone are much more playable than I would have ever expected. There are so many things going on in the set that almost every card has a place within specific archetypes. This changes a limited format because it is no longer about simply memorizing a list of cards according to power; instead, this is a format where you have to reevaluate every card you come up against according to how it fits with the strategy you have already drafted. This means that rigid card evaluations are fairly useless in Innistrad; one of the most common threads through the Innistrad sealed events is seeing players get angry with their opponents for winning with “inferior” cards. Apparently players think that their ability to form generalities about cards makes them a better player than people who are able to piece together synergistic strategies. That kind of arrogance is going to make a lot of players very frustrated with Innistrad limited a few weeks down the road. Don’t be one of them.

Than a forshadowing of the coming perspective shift:

Another common mistake was that people were constantly milling their opponents. For some reason, Magic players are afraid to mill their own library. They are afraid that they are going to lose something important, or accidentally deck themselves, and so they hit their opponents with these abilities. Players see Milling as a bad thing, so they don’t do it to themselves.

The problem is that having cards in your graveyard is a benefit in this format. If you mill an opponent’s flashback spell, you have essentially put a card into their hand. If you mill a creature, you’ve turned on their Stitched Drakes, or Unburial Rites, or Ghoulraiser, or Boneyard Wurm. On top of that, you are denying yourself that same benefit. It is like you took a card out of your hand and put it in your opponent’s. When your Selhoff Occultist dies, mill yourself one card, it’s not going to kill you, and it’s much more likely to be neutral or benefit you than cause you harm.

There are definitely exceptions to this. Between Curse of the Bloody Tome and Dream Twist, there is a legitimate mill deck in the format. If you are that deck, or if your opponent is that deck, then you want to mill your opponent. Otherwise, stop giving your opponent free cards.

I love how he stumbles across something significant, and than a moment later scrambles it by applying the old frame to curse and dream twist.

 

[Golvin]

I agree with you that hyper focusing on the 10 guild pairs or however you are laying out archetypes can remove some of the fun and creativity. That is why I occasionally shake things up by tossing in unique build around that I think can work in my cube. (I have 10 specific spots and try to match them to the shards and wedges.) Other than that I look for generally helpful cards that have ability to be used as engine pieces when built around. Think Spider Spawning in triple Innistrad or Sigh's Start Your Engines.

 

[ahadabans]

The parallels between good draft formats and cube are clear in my mind. One thing from the article which I think applies to pretty much every cube - all cards are good (either in an archetype or just by themselves). Probably every good limited format had good commons/uncommons.

Grillo hits on the other - flatter power curve. Which when we talk about power max cube, I think we lose perspective somewhat. We draw attention to things like Black Lotus, etc (even Titans) being way over curve and therefore GRBS. But consider that the "bottom feeder" cards in these cubes are still auto-includes in pretty much limited format ever. What Gx deck doesn't want Llanowar Elves for example? What Wx deck doesn't want Swords to Plowshares? Is Lotus >>> Llanowar Elves/StP? Sure. But is that power gap greater (from a functional standpoint) than the power gap between unplayable cards in a set and the top end cards? Innistrad/RGD, maybe not. Most sets though, I think definitely yes. There are straight up unplayable cards in sets and those flood limited drafting pools making the experience very shallow most of the time. I just hate limited.

Again, the worst cubes ever avoid a huge majority of these problems simply by being "best of" collections. Take any band with hit and miss songs and make a greatest hits. Even borderline crappy bands. If you like any of their songs at all, you'll probably buy a greatest hits album and enjoy it. That's basically cube. We are taking all the good things from the game over the years and putting that all together. It's hard to mess this up.