General On this forum, how many schools of thought are there?

[spicewitch]

I've been browsing and reading and I've identified what appear to be two main schools of thought on cubing, here, and I'm curious what their core tenets are. I can sorta infer these things from all the mini-opinions that people post, but I'd love to hear some summaries.

The Cantankerous School is certain that MaRo is an idiot, and NWO design has generally ruined Magic. For this school of thought, a good cube lets you play with tons of high-complexity cards in order to assemble a crazy contraption each time you play. Because older cards are generally considered awesome, I don't know how they feel about using tutors to make your unholy deck contraptions come together. On the one hand, tutors are old and powerful cards, and Cranky-School loves old powerful cards. On the other hand, tutors make it much easier to find the most straightforward wincon in your deck and attempt to execute it, which can diminish the deck's variety and "look at this crazy deck go"-ness, which are things Cranky School loves.

When you draft these cubes, you're guaranteed an exciting game, although sometimes short ones.

I believe CML is the leader of this faction, but he might just be its most prolific poster. Lucre might be the real king.

The Bonsai Gardeners know that MaRo drinks a little too much of his own KoolAid, but feel that NWO design has lead to some fun draft environments that are worth emulating. They like to carefully sculpt as fair an environment as possible with as many archetypes squeezed in as possible. They really like the word "tempo" but none of them use the word in the same way, so it might not be a useful word. You'll typically see more Modern cards than non-Modern cards in these cubes, but that's not a hard rule.

When you draft these cubes, victory (in theory) is attained with incremental small advantages, so it might not be as exciting but it's harder to accidentally draft a bad deck.

I might be lumping too many people together in the Gardener school, because it seems to be the bigger school by far. Onderzeebot and Grilla_Parlante are certainly members of it, but Eric Chan might belong in a separate school or he might belong here.

So here are my questions to you:

1. Are there more schools of thought that I'm not accounting for?
2. It's easy to see folks' opinions on individual cards or even whole sets, but what are their core tenets for cube design?
3. What are some of the best Manifestos on cube design? It's easy to find and read the articles that get posted to blogs, but there's a couple problems with that. First, like old MaRo posts, an article will often wax poetic about a new experiment, but then on the forums here the author will be like "Oh yeah that didn't really work out." Second, reading only the articles will tend to feed me only the thoughts of Waddell and people who generally agree with him, and I think the forums are somewhat more diverse than that.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Fuck yes, Bonsai Gardener! Guilty as charged though, 65 of my 395 nonland cards were originally printed in sets not legal in modern. Then again, I believe CML and Lucre run a lot of modern legal cards as well. Truth is creatures, on average, simply got better (I don't think anyone can argue otherwise), and more fun (opinions may vary on that one) over time.

 

[James Stevenson]

Pretty sure I'm a bonsai gardener, but then again Ion Storm is definitely my pet card and it is totally a crazy contraption card. I honestly can't say anything about Mark Rosewater, I really don't know what he's done, I just know he designs cards and seems mad when you see him on camera.

As for your questions:
1.) I have no idea.
2.) Personally I want to encourage synergistic, focused, good decks. I hate limited bombs, so I don't run really nutty game ending creatures unless they really have a place in an archetype, and I like to have plenty of good, flexible answers to permanents (hence tripple Oblivion Ring. Is 3 the right number? Yes, so that one day it can force an infinite loop). I feel a little cranky about new magic, so I don't run many planeswalkers or any hydras and I probably subconsciously ignore cards I don't like the art of.
3.) My "manifesto" is here. I'm pretty clear about which tribe I'm in, cube design wise.

 

[GenericZero]

I don't think MaRo sucks, and I understand that the NWO is a little necessary. At the end of the day, there's a product they need to sell and making it a complex beast pushes away good business. I do really wish the more devoted and invested players had more supplemental products made for them. Seriously, fuck dem filthy casualz and their broken as shit commander formats. Fuck the planechase/archenemy supporters in particular. Give me more Modern Masters stuff but with newer cards.

Oh and while we're at it, screw all the extremely fat, greasy, lazy, "disability check", NEET bastard card/ticket/gaming scalpers. Driving up PAX east prices using their disability check money and "no life" skills to buy as many weekend passes as they want so they can flip them "4 value". Get a real job, you disgusting fucking tubs of lard.

 

[James Stevenson]

Oh and while we're at it, screw every extremely fat, greasy, lazy, "disability check", NEET bastard card/ticket/gaming scalpers. Driving up PAX east prices using their disability check money and "no life" skills to buy as many weekend passes as they want so they can flip them "4 value". Get a real job, you disgusting fucking tubs of lard.

You're mad about something, for sure.

 

[GenericZero]

Yea, they are the same fuckers that preorder all the amiibos, limited edition stuff, and make underhanded deals to get Ugin prerelease boxes to themselves. They have big binders and backpacks of cards, no friends, act very elitist, and will never give you a fair trade unless you milk their tits of butter for them. They're a plague that needs to be wiped out by diabetes.

 

[James Stevenson]

Seems like your talking about a set of people defined by some conditions, all of which together creates a very obnoxious sounding person, but not really a group of people. Or are they really some mythical race that you see at magic events? I am definitely really unjudgemental and could have easily not picked up on them yet. Some people here are total dweebs, fine, but I haven't noticed any unemployed tubs of lard rolling around accumulating copious amounts of nerdy stuff like some human katamari.

 

[GenericZero]

They're a bit rare, but I am almost certain there's at least one in every MtG community. They will usually fit at least 3/4s of that description I gave. If you don't have any at your LGS, you're lucky. Or European. They might be exclusively American. They also usually love to name-drop any older player with a decently large reputation and how they used to face them at "earlier fnms" and "how much that guy has changed" and other stuff like they were close buddies even though you can tell the guy's probably never had many friends if any at all. Bonus points if they "rules nazi" little kids at FNM over trivial shit to pick up a win or two. God forbid they don't get their store credit winnings. Then they might not get optimal value!

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I'm going to just admit I'm too stupid to get the joke and walk away from this one.

 

[Eric Chan]

Very interesting post, bumbeh! I can tell that you're a long time, studious reader of this forum, from the information you've been able to gather.

I don't disagree with the two schools of cube theory you've come up with. In my mind, I'd broken down the cubes on this site along two simpler lines: attrition-based, or tempo-based. These more or less line up with the two groups that you've defined. In the former category, you have cubes with the power knob turned up pretty high, making for decks where people pack a lot of powerful individual cards. Jason's list is perhaps the most prominent cube of this group, and goes to show that attrition-based cubes can indeed support aggro well. In the latter category, the power level tends to be dialed back a bit - especially on the removal front - making for formats where establishing an early board presence is paramount, and old-school "all removal, all counterspell" decks are harder to put together. As you opined, I'd put myself in this camp.

As for your questions, I'm not sure that I have good answers. Other than Jason, not many of us have written up detailed design documents as a guide for ourselves and others (with the notable exception of Grillo). Personally, although I know I have a vision for what I want my cube to play like and what styles and archetypes I want to emphasize, I have a tough time articulating all of that into coherent sentences. It's more of a gradual feeling out process as I iterate through changes, run a couple of cube events, incorporate my own findings and my players' feedback, and then rinse & repeat.

 

[James Stevenson]

What schools of thought are we missing out on outside of RiptideLab? Here's what I can think of:

• Power Singleton Original MTGO Cube - Everything powerful goes in here. Combos are supported. There's a ton of chaf that goes late and, though good outside of cube, doesn't do anything in this cube. The play experience is about doing nutty things, not about having interesting games. In my opinion this is the other beast, the opposite of a a Riptide cube. It still has merit, it's a very different experience though. The main problem with people trying to tie "cube" down is usually that they either think this is the real cube, or they think the real cube is about interesting drafting and difficult games. Really these are two opposite ends of a spectrum.
• The Singleton Powerful but Moderated Cube - This is about power maxing, but still thinking about archetypes. Not much useless chaf floating around here, and stupidly powerful cards have been banned (P9, crazy artifact mana, skullclamp). I include some peasant/pauper cubes in this list. My friend Simon (who I think should be on this site) has a really excellent peasant cube, and this is pretty much his approach. He's still restricting himself a lot more than we do here, but his cube is still about having good games and good drafts.
• No Design Philosophy Shoebox of Awesome Cards Accidentally Breaking Singleton - This is the real cube. When I first started my cube was all the cards I had that were in Evin Erwin's cube, plus all the cards I had that I liked. By God that was tremendous fun to play. I gotta build another like that.

Maybe there is a kind of spectrum we can place cubes on, with the MTGO cube at one end and... I dunno, someone else's at the other end. I was thinking Jason's, since it's the poster child of cube as a well thought out draft format without restrictions, but there are people on this forum going way more off the wall with their designs. Maybe the Scuttlemutt cube.

As it appears to me this puts the Canky School closer to the MODO cube than we Peaceful Gardeners. Or maybe we're both in the same spot but we don't agree on how to approach that spot.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think I've heard so many different definitions and uses for the terms "tempo" and "aggro-control" that I'm not even sure how helpful the terms are at this point.

I don't really agree with those exact divisions, though I do think there are a few branches of thought. I tend to view Jason's designs as basically being cleaned up versions of the older dragon cubes, which he deserves a lot of credit for. Power level tends to revolve around being able to run the titans, which means you have excellent and efficent answers, and lots of ETB creatures. Aggro is represented as a competitive archtype, there are no format warping signets, and there is more of a constructed feel to the format.

However, prison and land destruction as archtypes are ommited. I think there is a fair amount of NWO design here (more than some people would care to admit), and a large percentage of the cards in the cube are modern format.

I think the real break revolves around removal, and its the issue the forum has had some substantial disagreement over. I can recognize some loose commonalities between Onderzeeboot, Eric, and I, but I think it pretty much all stems from a sense that a lower power removal suite is worth exploring to various degrees.

It might be more helpful to think of it in terms of Spike v. Johnny psychology in cube design? I (at least) definitely have a preference for creativity and having a broad design space to explore.

I give a pretty decent break down I feel in the opening post to my cube. I would say my signatures would be a preference for lower power, toned down removal, an emphasis on threats over answers, and comby aggro archtypes that are capable of playing a long grindy game if they must. Also, the idea that limited formats are defined by what they lack.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I should really finally get myself to post in the cubes section of this forum. So far the daunting task of writing up a "manifesto" for my cube as well of the enormous amount of unread posts have deterred me, but it's probably the place where the best feedback on this forum is given, so... If only I hadn't reinstalled Skyrim just now I might actually have gotten this done this week...

 

[ahadabans]

I think I'm the first school, but I like a lot of what the second school stands for (from a theoretical standpoint) and so try to encorporate ideas from it. And so my cube tends to be schizophrenic at times as a result.

 

[shamizy]

I think I'm a Bonsai Gardener through and through. All about dat value, no treble.

My tenets for cube design include designing for balance, interactive gameplay, and synergies. I don't like how so many people build their cubes just jam-packed with the best of everything that leads to games that just end in a few turns without any good interactions. Sure, there's a thrill in assembling a god hand, but then how miserable are games when you don't or if you're just sitting on the other end of the table? I love Limited because until someone plays a stupid unstoppable bomb, it's highly interactive with a ton of back-and-forth action. That's what I strive for in my Cube for the most part.

As far as manifestos and guides are concerned, I mostly just scour threads on here for ideas and see if anyone has found a use for a cool card that I might have missed initially. Most of the members here have a similar mentality when it comes to Cube, so I appreciate their insights because they're pretty reliable. Way different from reading all that "450+ only" or "as my third blah blah card" drivel. I just like playing with cool cards and building environments where they can perform well. I want people to have fun by playing nice interactive games of Magic. To achieve that, you need to take liberties with your own design either by dialing back the power or building up certain archetypes by spreading it around through various colors.

 

[Jason Waddell]

This is a great thread, and I plan to re-read these posts a few times.

Somebody earlier mentioned a spectrum, and I definitely don't think that mine would be on the far end of it. Effectively, my cube is the product of starting with an unpowered power-max cube and trying to apply solid interactive design principles while still maintaining the general power level. Well, I think my aggro decks are often stronger than in a power max, and ramp has been nerfed considerably.

The spectrum idea is neat, but I don't think 1 dimension is sufficient. I think you would need minimally two, with one being overall power level and the other representing "conventionality". So you'd have, say, in one corner a powered singleton (high power, conventional), in another a crazy combo cube (high power, unconventional), the scuttlemutt cube anchoring another corner (low power, unconventional) and something like a pauper cube in the remaining corner (low power, conventional). This provides a pretty good map for putting other cubes on there. I can imagine where Eldrazi Domain, CML's cube, Eric's cube, etc go on there.

The defining characteristic of this cube forum is that they don't max out on conventionality generally. People are trying things, but you have a range of how experimental they're willing to be. I think my cube is pretty tame compared to, say, a Chris Taylor cube or Scuttlemutt or a FlowerSunRain contraption.

As for Maro, I think he's a great designer, and that "restrictions breed creativity" is misinterpreted and abused by the community at large. His examples are always things like "we need a black common that supports both Orzhov and Dimir" and, well, you know. Lost is the dialogue is usually the fact that creativity (if present) doesn't necessarily convert to fun. I can think of lots of design restrictions that cause you to have to be creative, while still forcing miserable gameplay.

 

[Diakonov]

The Cantankerous School and Bonzai Gardeners is a decent place to start, but it could definitely be broken down/restructured further in meaningful ways. I only say this because I sort of have a feel for what you're describing, but I also can see a lot of overlap with those two groups both in myself and other members here.

Regardless of how people feel about MaRo and NWO I think we can all agree that even though you don't see as many unique, interesting, and potentially broken cards being produced, there are still loads of great new cube cards coming out; particularly creatures. Also, even someone whom you would classify as cantankerous like CML was recently railing against Wildfire.

I think Jason's power/conventionality plane is a good broad place to start, and your two initial groups (cantankerous/Bonzai) are something trying to be more specific somewhere on that plane. I think you could add a slider for "convergent vs. divergent design". Convergent designers try to create an specific environment which they have in mind, and want to tune the shit out of it to make archetypes closely competitive and to make games interesting and edgy. Divergent designers are more willing to randomly throw cards in that clearly have a lot of use somewhere but ask the players to figure it out, or at the very least cards that could lead to unusual and bizarrely complex game states.

It's a trade off in the sense that convergent design will make for closer games with exciting plays but the decks will be strategically more predictable, while divergent design allows more for people to act as mad scientists that might lead to games with less interaction. I think this is the difference in camps you are describing as I understand it.

Even for that slider, I don't think anyone exclusively falls into one camp or the other, but rather it is simply a frame of mind one takes when making adjustments to the cube. As an example, I would say FlowerSunRain is more often a convergent designer whereas CML tends to lean toward divergent, but I've seen both add cards to their cube with the other camp's reasoning in mind.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, I think the main difference is that you have some cubes that are custom built from the ground up, with specific design goals, supported archetypes, and crossover synergies in mind. At the other end, you have cubes that essentially start out as traditional, singleton, power-max cubes, but have been honed over the years by weeding out the unworthy cards that are too powerful and just plain Not Fun. The first approach takes its building blocks, and combines them together to construct something from its component parts; the second approach starts off with a given block of stone, and uses a chisel to sculpt it into the desired shape, shaving off unnecessary edges and pieces.

I personally feel the former approach is a lot more difficult, as you don't have a conventional 'blueprint' to work off, as it were. But folks like FSR, Laz, and Grillo have had a lot of success by creating a cube with very few reference points to work off of, other than their own imagination. The majority of lists on here seem to have been built using the latter approach - mine included - as it provides the designer known quantities and shortcuts, so it's easier to know what you're dealing with.

 

[Jonas]

I don't have anything against NWO, nor MaRo, I'm just nostalgic as fuck, as evidenced by my Mirage and Tempest cube. Aside from that, I don't really much care, but I really wanna make a really old school cube, so I can get some mileage out of my Serra Angels and Sengir Vampires.

 

[spicewitch]

Yeah. I should stress that a "negative" word like Cranky doesn't mean there's anything wrong with their approach. But folks from camp A usually seem to be cranky about one thing or another, which makes sense because in some ways Magic has betrayed them and changed too much, like a cheating husband.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Well, this is interesting; these seem to be the three main planes, placed upon a sliding scale, and allowing for overlap.

1. Refined power max <---> ground up design
2. Restrictions don't breed creativity <---> restrictions breed creativity
3. Divergent design<---> convergent design

I hadn't even thought about the divergent-convergent slide, and I would say I am a fairly extreme convergent designer. I hate having cards in my cube that don't support the overall format goals, or not having format goals at all.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I...They really like the word "tempo" but none of them use the word in the same way, so it might not be a useful word...

I fuckin lol'd. Guilty

[quote="Jason Waddell, post: 29241, member: 2"The defining characteristic of this cube forum is that they don't max out on conventionality generally. People are trying things, but you have a range of how experimental they're willing to be. I think my cube is pretty tame compared to, say, a Chris Taylor cube or Scuttlemutt or a FlowerSunRain contraption.[/quote]

This is actually interesting to me, as I don't really see my cube as that experimental.
Sure I've got custom cards, but they're almost all there to serve up fairly conventional archetypes: UR Spells Matter, Pod, Wildfire, Gravecrawler (This is cropping up in more and more singleton cubes as we get more random bloodsoaked champion type cards) etc.

I think the weirdest archetypes my cube has is the +1/+1 counter theme and double strike, which I think would be on people's radar if the individual cards were a bit better. (Even volt charge is a bit below the curve for most cubes, let alone something awful like Fuel for the Cause).

Does my cube seem that off the wall to you guys? Would lowering that barrier make it easier to talk about?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Well, this is interesting; these seem to be the three main planes, placed upon a sliding scale, and allowing for overlap.

1. Refined power max <---> ground up design
2. Restrictions don't breed creativity <---> restrictions breed creativity
3. Divergent design<---> convergent design

I hadn't even thought about the divergent-convergent slide, and I would say I am a fairly extreme convergent designer. I hate having cards in my cube that don't support the overall format goals, or not having format goals at all.

1: Ground up design
2: Restrictions breed creativity (but not all restrictions are useful)
3: Convergent design

I definitely have an idea in mind with my cube, and I'm consciously looking for cards that intersect on themes I run. I still cube a lot of "just good cards", but I'ld say the bulk is put into my cube with a purpose (or multiple purposes as the case may be).

 

[anotak]

i want to create an experience that is interactive, surprising, and thematic

i haven't always succeeded at the interactive part as much as i'd like

 

[Eric Chan]

I hope that the eventual result of this thread is, like, a ten-question survey that can identify what kind of cube designer you are, and put you on a plot or graph, so that you can compare where you stand with everyone else.