Rob's unpowered cube - with primer

Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
this is a very, very different list from the original thread here:
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/robs-450-unpowered-list-with-primer.113/

And since I can't rename threads, I thought maybe it'd be better to make a new thread? Maybe not, I'd be happy to delete one or the other.

here's the cubetutor list:
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/161

(note, this list is current as of 2013-08-24)
Here's a cuesbey link to my new list (to compare against yours):
http://cuesbey.com/#/797676e1-4c05-44ac-a4cf-0913a5e5ef4c

And here's a cuesbey link for my old list compared to my new list:
http://cuesbey.com/#/118c3e67-f3e0-423e-93e9-dad0aac4ebd8
Red is removed, Green is Added, Blue is in Both

Goals:
  • Maximize variety in draft and play
    • There really shouldn't be a "correct" pack 1 pick 1; the right card is based on your mood, what you think will come back, and your knowledge of your neighbors preferences
    • Any card where it's always "correct" to take it pack 3 pick 1 needs to be benched
  • Someone drafting a deck, should beat an opponent who drafted cards, no matter the seat
    • synergies are important; collections of synergies form archetypes; a deck that focuses on 1-2 archetypes has a proactive game plan
    • any card with enough raw power or is so uninteractive that it allows a random pile to beat a good synergy deck needs to be benched
      • Hexproof/static protection from a color are examples of uninteractive abilities
  • Each card gets played, because it's one of the following:
    • contested (not just playable, or ok) in multiple archetypes
    • the engine of it's own archetype that's actually worth going into
    • has fun enough gameplay, that even if it's only good in one archetype, it'll always get played
  • The list works in both a 2-man grid draft, up to an 8-man
    • I don't get to fully draft a whole lot, but a two-person draft is a lot more common
    • currently happy with it when we ban two colors at the start: link
To that end, this cube has decided on two main design choices:
  • This cube breaks singleton; there are specific times where I've intentionally done so, and I'll state my reasoning there, but here's some examples:
    • when the potential archetype/theme in a particular color/combo aren't particularly fun/interesting/enticing enough to have people draft it I'll consider breaking singleton
    • there's a card that promotes interesting play decisions where there aren't functional reprints or similar enough cards to use instead of a repeat
  • There's a number of cards banned for being an uninteresting draft choice (often, this is a power level thing):
So, this is an unpowered cube that breaks singleton. ON TO THE SECTIONS!
In each section, I'll list times I'm breaking singleton, along with any notable sub-themes before transitioning into the supported archetypes by color pairs
White
  • High-quality aggressive creatures
  • Good point removal (though intentionally less good than red/black)
  • Best sweeper effects (though still only a few)
  • Flicker/Blink effects (mostly the ones that can hit your opponent's stuff and they come back EOT)
  • Tokens (global/permanent pump effects, army in a can cards)
  • Some resource denial via Armageddon (end the game when you're ahead) and Balance (catch up or break the symmetry to get ahead)
  • 2x Champion of the Parish / 2x Elite Vanguard / 2x Gideon's Lawkeeper
    • This is really just doubling up on Champion and supported it with using the functional reprint that has the human type
  • 2x Flickerwhisp flicker effect on a 3CMC 3 power evasive creature means this should be a role player in most any deck
  • 2x Wall of Omens
    • not a lot of white defensive creatures worth blinking
  • 2x Soltari Champion
  • 2x Otherworldly Journey
    • The flexibility of faltering a blocker is worth the EOT return on the 2 CMC flicker effect
Blue
  • Good tempo (via bounce or cheap counters) and high-power evasive creatures
  • the usual control tools of hard counterspells/card draw/control magic effects/cloning what made it out (a distant 4th in hard removal though)
  • higher ratio of instants and sorceries relative to creatures compared to non-red colors
  • Opposition pairs well with most of the other colors (except may red)
  • 2x Looter il-kor
    • more than 3 total looters seemed like a good number, and glad two of them wear equipment
  • 2x Delver of Secrets
    • wanted the cheap tempo creatures to be good enough to be worth it (vs, say Phantasmal Bear)
Black
  • Sacrifice outlets for profit
  • Graveyard recursion as card advantage
  • Best point removal, with good sweepers as well
  • disruptive aggro using threats with manageable drawbacks balanced by resiliency
  • discard spells prevent hard to deal with cards from hitting the board
  • Some control tools in addition to removal in the form of card draw (typically in exchange for life)
  • lifegain to offset life payments
  • 4x gravecrawler, 2x carrion feeder, 3x bloodghast
    • not a new trend, but the aggressive nature of these recursion creatures and sac outlets promote a different, and I think more interesting type of gameplay relative to more grindy choices like Reassembling Skeleton and Contamination
  • 2x Blood Artist
    • supporting the sacrificing and lifegain themes at a cheap cost
  • 2x Vampire Nighthawk
    • Defensive lifegain creature that still attacks fine and really enables a control deck to get the resources and time they need
  • 2x Cabal Therapy
    • supporting disruptive aggression while being a fine sacrifice outlet
Red
  • Aggressive creatures back by burn for reach and removal
  • More burn than a typical list because I wanted to play more control-relevant spells (e.g. Arc Lightning) and to differentiate the Red and White aggro gameplan
  • Sacrifice outlets for profit
  • Threaten effects for burst damage, pairing well with sacrifice outlets
  • resource denial via artifact/land destruction
  • 3x Young Pyromancer - 2x Guttersnipe
    • Get additional value out of burning things
  • 2x Goblin Bombardment - 2x Greater Gargadon
    • Sac outlets; and for gargadon, a great 1 drop
Green
  • Ramp to more expensive spells earlier using either creature-based or land-based ramp
  • Value creatures to gain incremental advantage while ramping to a big creature (or to get value off a birthing pod activation)
  • Big creatures to cast when you have a lot of mana (or Birthing Pod
  • Most of the ramp creatures are elves, including 2x Elvish Archdruid for some random upside
  • Graveyard and non-creature permanent hate
  • 4x Birthing Pod
    • Not really a new trend either, but this has been good in its role to make a different type of archetype, want the same cards as normal ramp which is good for competition
  • 2x Scavenging Ooze for graveyard hate and being a late game relevant 2 drop
  • 2x Penumbra Spider for holding off the enemy while being letting half of it become a 5 drop thanks to pod
Colorless
  • It's useful to have colorless cards that mirror effects that might exist in other colors (e.g. add some colorless sac outlets and Red, Black, and other colors entirely can have access to the effect where it makes sense)
  • For Artifact ramp, I'm not allowing color fixing while ramping until 3CMC (notably, no signets); colorless ramp at 2CMC is fine
  • 3x Bonesplitter
    • This is mostly a reaction to wanting to get rid of static protection effects like on the mirrodin swords
    • it's been great, but it's answerable by any color pair
  • 2x Solemn Simulacrum
    • Value guy to ramp/pod into
Land
  • Each color pair has 5 pieces of fixing:
    • OG dual land
    • shock land
    • fetch land
    • worldwake man land (allied color) / 2nd fetch land (enemy color)
    • land relevant for what the color pair is trying to do (e.g. Fetid Heath due to notoriously hard B/W costs; vs Battlefield Forge for turn 1 Red AND White)
  • 4x Wasteland
    • instead of Strip Mine and a bunch of worse-than-wasteland options, we're running enough wastelands that you need to be intentional about sequencing land drops
WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THIS?
Each color pair has a plan that it's drafting towards and able to execute on. Ideally there's more than one.
I'll take this first in allied color pair order:
  • White + Blue
    • Tempo - Aggressive (hopefully evasive) dudes, with enough counter-magic, bounce (both blue), and point removal (white) to drag out the "beginning" phases of the game, where you ideally push across 20 points before your opponent can play out all the cards in their hand
    • Control - Play defensive creatures, counter their haymakers, draw into your answers to things that make it onto the board, sweep away multiple cards
    • Sub-themes:
      • Value Blink - Blue has a lot of value effects attached to creatures, and white has a lot ways to re-trigger those effects
      • Tokens/Opposition
  • Blue + Black
    • Tempo - Disruption through discard and aggressive threats that can get hits in using bounce, cheap counters; card draw helps us to not stalls out; Blood Artist effects provide some reach
    • Control - counter or kill their haymakers, draw into your plentiful answers to creatures that make it onto the board, sweep away multiple cards
    • Reanimator: Looter il-kor and other looting effects discard fatties like Griselbrand to animate dead early
    • Sub-themes:
      • Nekrataal and other removal-creatures plus clones
      • bounce your stuff, cast discard spells for hard to deal with things
  • Black + Red
    • Aggro - Disruption through discard and aggressive threats; clear out blockers with burn, or turn it towards your opponent's head; burn plus Blood Artist means a LOT of reach
    • Grixis (add Blue) Control - Similar to Blue/Black control, but different/more point removal
    • Sub-themes
  • Red + Green
  • Green + White:
Now, in enemy color pair order
  • White + Black
  • Black + Green
    • Recurring Survival: Getting Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest (or slightly less powerful, though similar cards) accrues a lot of value by searching/discard threats/stabilizers and reanimating them
    • Ramp: ramping up to big plays, be they Grave Titan or Rampaging Baloths; reanimate any fatties your opponents managed to kill, and use black's card draw to get more threats if you run out of gas
    • Pod (optionally adding another color) - you care less about ramp, but get as many interactive/value creatures you can manage, and climb up your Birthing Pod chain; in Black/Green it's easy to pod away Black's resurrecting 1 and 2 drops so you don't always have to climb all the way to 6 to get value.
  • Green + Blue
    • Ramp: ramping up to big plays, be they Frost Titan or Terastodon, clone liberally for even more value, and use blue's card draw to get more threats if you run out of gas
    • Pod (optionally adding another color) - you care less about ramp, but get as many interactive/value creatures you can manage, and climb up your Birthing Pod chain; Blue/Green has significantly more value than interaction on the way up, so plan accordingly (maybe get that other color in there)
    • Sub-themes:
  • Blue + Red
    • Tempo: stick a threat like Delver of Secrets or young pyromancer and protect it/gain value through all the spells you're casting
    • RWU (Add White) Control: cram as many cheap and interactive pieces of removal together, and win with a quality threat like Restoration Angel who re-triggered your Augur of Bolas along the way
    • Sub-themes
  • Red + White:
    • Boros Aggro: play as many quality 1-2 drops you can, burn out your opponent's blockers, and cast Armagedon, Ajani Vengeant, or Hellrider on turn 4
    • RWU (Add Blue) Control: cram as many cheap and interactive pieces of removal together, and win with a quality threat like Restoration Angel who re-triggered your Augur of Bolas along the way
    • Sub-themes:
      • lots of artifact destruction in this color pair
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
here are some example decks to give you a sense what the cube looks like when drafting

Monocolored
Color Pairs
Shards/Wedges
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
Eric Chan said:
Rob, any chance we could hear some more in-depth thoughts about your series of recent changes, and how they're performing? I really like the overhaul that you're taking your cube through, as the tweaks you've been describing in various threads here seem very promising. Could you describe how they've panned out?

In particular, I looked over your list now, and wanted to know more about:
  • 2x Wall of Omens. I need to boost white control over here, but was afraid to toss in more walls. Is this working out?
  • 2x Traitorous Instinct. Is the steal + sac theme going over well?
  • 3x Bonesplitter. Is this insane, or just fair? (The one axe I run is really good over here!)
Click to expand...
  • Wall of Omens is doing what I want to so far; it's not actually a mini-moat, and since the list is 525, it's nice having a chance at the effect
    • Red's much more burn heavy than a typical list
    • Green still goes over the top
    • Black is growing large Carrion Feeders while draining you
    • Blue still flies over
    • White also flies over, has tokens, and with the extra cheap equipment can punch through
  • so far, Black is has been banned both times I've been able to do a grid with the full list, so it hasn't yet had a chance to get there. Even so, I don't think the 4 mana threaten is going to be good, so I bumped one down to a Mark of Mutiny and one to a fireslinger and seeing in action how few creatures I actually have left in red
  • so far, fair since I'm comparing it to the swords I've taken out (for the protection clause, mainly) and with the list being as large as it is, I don't expect to see a deck have more than 2
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
+1 for Blasting Station. It does a lot of good work here in Modern land. Though it might be underwhelming if you already run double Bombardment.

Nine people! Score! I imagine organizing that draft must've taken some Herculean effort.
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
Jason Waddell said:
Momentous Fall always seems better in practice than on paper. If you want that sort of effect I think there are better alternatives
Click to expand...


already have the 1 Garruk. Surprisingly Masked Admirers and Penumbra Spider have over-performed at the 4CMC slot. Those spells might turn back into Vengevine/Kozilek's Predator (again)

Eric Chan said:
+1 for Blasting Station. It does a lot of good work here in Modern land. Though it might be underwhelming if you already run double Bombardment.

Nine people! Score! I imagine organizing that draft must've taken some Herculean effort.
Click to expand...
I don't think I appreciated how often I needed more ways to get value out of gravecrawlers and at 525, I find red kind of wants more than the 4 on-color sac outlets (bombardments and greater gargadon) to make that something to build around. So a colorless outlet in addition to Mortarpod seems good. It was in the original list before testing, and I cut it since I figured I had enough.
This is definitely the full court press of picking the date, providing food (we're serving brunch) and throwing the widest net I could. Hope it works :x, I'd really love to get a twice monthly or ideally weekly thing going.
Tanner K. said:
Wow, Blasting Station. My recursion package is very similar to (*cough stolenfrom*) yours. That'll fit perfectly. I like the second Carrion Feeder as well.
Click to expand...

I stole it from waddell so :x, and thanks, I've been real happy with him so far

Tanner K. said:
Fecundity is interesting. I'd like to add some sacrifice or on-death effects to colors other than just black and red, but part of that desire is so I can make Lotleth Troll work in the Gravecrawler recursion deck.
Click to expand...
I'll wish you luck on the troll, when looking at the B/G archetypes that I could see coming together I just didn't know how he fit. Varolz, the scar-striped is on-deck for me I think.
two blue cards stuck out if you're going all-in on sac outlets in as many colors as you can spare:
Reins of Power
Ray of Command

an interesting colorless card: altar of dementia

white is pretty rough:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text= ["sacrifice a creature"]&color= @([W])

though white can always play spoiler with rest in peace or angel of jubilation
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
this is a B/R sacrifice deck that I drafted that had middling results thanks primarily to (in my opinion) mostly bad luck:

playset of gravecrawlers: the deck










careful observers will note that I pulled all 4 Gravecrawlers. This was a 10 person draft and I was 1 to the right of a G/B drafter and 4 to the right of a U/B drafter, with a value survival of the fittest deck with some splashes. I p1p1 Recurring Nightmare and had a Birthing Pod at the end of pack 1, but with the cheap guys and bombardments coming, I pulled into cheapest possible B/R sacrifice.

we did a team draft and as it turned out, my matches were against mostly black creatures (e.g. Deathrite Shaman/Murderous Redcap) and that depressed the value of boneshredder/attrition a bit more than I'd like. I also didn't have lot of experience with when to sac to seer vs. feeder vs. gargadon vs bombardment. There were multiple times where I have options and I don't think I did it right each time. I also still felt constrained by not enough zombies, heh. I never saw my mark of mutiny, but would have totally played 2-3 of them if I saw them.

Also, I probably could have done 9 swamp/3 mountain since I did actually find myself constrained on black (for gravecrawler rebuys or even in some 2 land mountain/stronghold openers)

all that being said, I definitely enjoyed playing it, when it was actually doing its thing it felt like a constructed deck and the main problem was that there was a lot of explaining all the triggers and interactions to relatively new players and I could be completely lying to them and who would know :eek:

Overall, great day, lots of good feedback and the undefeated deck was (literally) ALL the counterspells in the pool (there were some tempo drafters and a U/W venser PW deck splitting blue) plus vedalken shackles. So he ended up with a lot more annoying deck than I typically am cool with, but I think it's atypical that there's more than 1 counterspell drafter
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Always Sucks when you can't get a full draft in. Can you get 4? By giving each player twice the packs and having everyone shuffle out a card from the pack, you can get the feel of 8 person drafts a bit.

As for the actual changes, I like most of them in the dark, with slight worry about how fun new elspeth and snake-o-mancer will be.
Also, no love for the curses?
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
I've been enjoying grid-draft with banned colors for playing, but I could see the merits of a fake-4 man for testing the frequency of different kinds of pieces (e.g. do I have enough discard outlets, fatties, and reanimation spells to support reanimator?)

Martial Coup was underwhelming even if I liked the idea, so if new Elspeth is essentially game over every time, I could see it turning into a different marginal sweeper like Terminus
I'm feeling pretty good about snake shaman since it's probably less tokens over the course of a game than something like Pawn of Ulamog assuming you have Gravecrawler/bloodghast going. But if you're heavy on sac effects and light on things to sac, it's like a more defensive grim lavamancer. So it's kind of a hedge for a grindy black deck to get value without needing to get all the good recurring creatures.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Nah I'm not worried about him being too good of a creature generator (though he is sweet at doing that)
I'm worried about the endless supply of deathtouch guys you get :p

At one point my cube had a planeswalker with +1: make a 2/1 deathtouch. She cost {2}{B}{B}{B}. While Ophie can't make more than 1, he's still really gridlocking
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, as Theros limited has proven, 1/1 deathtouch guys can be mighty annoying. Without having tested Ophiomancer for myself, I think Chris has a valid concern about this indestructible 1/1 deathtouch snake stonewalling the erstwhile efforts of your everyday aggro deck. I'm probably still gonna nab a copy at some point and see for myself, though.
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
Where I'm at so far, is opinions are:
  • grindy attrition black decks are very rush-able
  • the control and ramp decks pretty easily go over the top
  • aggressive decks have a good mix of evasion and reach/removal and gladly will take a 2-for-1 using that removal to continue the rush
 
CML

CML

Contributor
pulling and not playing recurring nightmare, which is the strongest cube card that is not p9, is really silly. IS IT A METAPHOR???

i think this cube is hampered by misapprehensions of power level, the gravecrawler deck that is more or less ideal and yet didn't roll over everyone is a good example of this. my thesis is that "stormbind and recurring nightmare work poorly in the same environment."

that is more in the line of "development," but for "design" there are some choices of which i'm skeptical. 3x young pyromancer without multiples of cantrips, doubles of gargadon and pestermite, some of the card choices from greater good and stormbind on one end to balance on the other are examples. as for issues of taste, the curve is a smidge high to my mind and the extra doubles / triples in odd places (elvish archdruid?) might create too much redundancy.

with the three bonesplitters and the two elite vanguards, are you trying to create a 'fair' environment, or with the grim monolith and recurring nightmare are you trying to go balls-out power?

in general it looks like you took the waddell skeleton and added a bunch of cards that go in the Erwin crowd's cubes.
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
with respect to your comment about curve, I feel like every deck (outside of ramp or pod) I've done has really just stopped about 4 CMC. Here's what I drafted yesterday in a 2-man grid draft










Sure, anecdotes aren't evidence, but I feel as if it's difficult to look at a cubetutor page and get a sense for the curve, if only because things like Greater Gargadon not being in a 1-drop slot are easy to forget. My only response here is that I consciously balance sections by:
  • laying out the whole color as if it's my sealed pool, looking at curve and creature balance
  • laying out each two color pair as if it's my sealed pool, and again, look at curve and creature balance for each type of deck (aggro, control, build-arounds, etc) I know about
I also went through and after a lot of cubetutor bot drafts / builds, sanity checked that cards I expected to make the build when I drafted it were actually doing that. (For example, Momentous Fall looked great on paper, but even when I hit a few mono green decks, it never made the cut), and although I didn't explicity check for curve there, I'm wondering if you could check some of the decks in the second post of this thread and comment on the curve of some of those decks?

I'll swing back around to the other comments as I have downtime at work, but that's enough lost productivity for the moment
 
CML

CML

Contributor
i mean the curve is too fat at 3 and too skinny at 1 and 2, unless you're going for the feel of the modo cube or a regular draft environment. again, it's a matter of taste, and i don't think it's all that important compared to bridging the kruin striker-balance divide.

due diligence: the decks above look better than my theorycrafting brainchildren
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
Have a bit of time to today to address your other (appreciated) feedback. I guess, at it's root, the answer to all of the differences in objective power level you point out, is that this list grew organically based on the consistent (though infrequent) feedback over about the last year.

Cards that are a tier higher than everything else, but still in:
Grim Monolith
Recurring Nightmare
Balance

Some of the cards that were cut because people hated the gameplay (there's more I list in the OP):
Wurmcoil Engine
Batterskull
Thrun, the Last Troll

On balance, the first list is probably more objectively powerful than the second. The second list are cards people either with take p3p1 literally every time no matter what (and not really be happy about being "forced" to pick it) and/or will scoop to following resolution. In the first list, in a year, every single person has played those cards as "fair". Meaning, just good cards that you can get some synergies with, and occasionally use to catch up or close a game(and are usually happy to play it).

This is probably because a combination of experience and play preference, and I have zero illusions that this list could be transplanted to arbitrary playgroups and have it be played the exact same way. I do hope it's somewhat close, mostly because I do want to be able to discuss the list with people here and take objective feedback.

so, to specifically answer this question:
with the three bonesplitters and the two elite vanguards, are you trying to create a 'fair' environment, or with the grim monolith and recurring nightmare are you trying to go balls-out power?
Click to expand...

Specifically, I want a fair environment, with the potential for cool stories. A juiced Modern Masters, essentially. Monolith and nightmare don't preclude a fair environment so far, because no one in the ~12-person playgroup metagame has actually tried breaking these very breakable cards.

This desire for a juiced MMA also explains some of the redundant pieces where it doesn't seem obvious. Though I wrote up specifics in the primer in the OP, the short version is that the cards you mention (young pyromancer, elvish archdruid, and greater gargadon) are cards I've identified as being cards that work well on curve in a very straight ahead deck, but also have a bit of a subtheme that mean you can try drafting around it. I really appreciated MMA's balance of a color pair's main archetype and related but distinct sub-themes within a color.

Gargadon and Pyro are totally fine 1 and 2 drops in a mono-Red deck or boros. Gargadon is also an engine piece in BR sacrifice and Pyro is a tempo threat a la delver of secrets in a U/R tempo burn deck*.
Archdruid is a good bet to tap for 2 on turn 3, which is always appreciated in a ramp deck, and unlike a cultivate can be podded away. That's nice, but there's actually a LOT of elves in turns 1-3 in green, and I liked having a chance at a double archdruid-gaea's anthem draw if you got critcal mass.

* Given how much burn is in red, I didn't originally think I needed more cantrips in blue, since I feel like red can reliably trigger pyro 3-4 times in a game, which is totally great on it's own. Testing could shift that.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
these kinds of topics are very fascinating and your post was a pleasure to read.

riptidelab and theorycraft have given me a lot of great ideas, but if i'm really being honest with myself it's also the playgroup's feedback that has shaped my cube. i am going to now write a lengthy aside about this:

i am a competitive player and my friends are competitive players. i had a great deal of difficulty forming a community within mtg (even playing a ton and writing for TCGPlayer) until i top-8'ed something, then was given the time to pursue it by getting laid off, then had another friend arrange a fun trip to vegas and LA, then lived in Seattle and have indulgent parents that support to a degree my various forms of unconventional employment, which is a common thread between the three dudes who head the "team." i have achieved a community, and it is one of my proudest achievements, but look how lucky i had to get to do so.

one of our guys went to Dublin for the PT, and the only other people qualified from seattle were the obnoxious types who pretend they don't need to get drunk or laid. i do not like these people and i do not like that the game is too often a refuge for them, though, on balance, my magic friends are my favorite new adult people. anyway, the social set of PT Dublin led to a disappointing experience; the point of magic, Rob discovered, was hanging out with people he liked, or "having a cube group," but as i wrote above it's hard to achieve this without obtaining results, which requires a lot of solitary work. that might be tied up with the cultural problems of the game, or it might be an intrinsic tension in things like this.

so in order to keep the whole community going -- as what everyone is really looking for in life is a community, which is why they sit home alone watching TV shows about it; which is why my book (read my book) is tragic; which is why americans compartmentalize and wonder why they're unhappy -- i need the cube, and the cube needs the community.

to conclude my threadjack and tie my tangent back to the source material, i like competitive magic players the most out of anyone i've met in adult life; you'd think that we'd be bad at everything else because we spend so much time on a children's card game, but instead we're good because we're good at other things. (disclaimer: i am not very good at card games compared to other things in life, it's more of a personal challenge to myself, a self-improvement hobby that's way cooler than bicycling or crossfit.) the good players - good people connection was also pretty common in poker, which was far more of a meritocracy than any other way of making money i've seen to date. good play requires good judgment; good judgment requires good taste; good taste creates good people and a good cube. i love having my friends over and having them yell at me for a stupid inclusion. i love it when one of them breaks the cube.

tl;dr i think it's all too common that people aren't all that close with their cube playgroups, and i think that phenomenon is tied in with the metaphorical "can't break recurring nightmare." (or is it "won't" because, whenever someone describes himself as a "casual player," he's saying that he CAN play competitively, he just chooses not to? is he saying that he's not really trying?)

i've heard 1,000 variants on the "fair environment with cool stories" thing, it's the perfect self-descriptor of the broader cube community.

taste / context: they say de gustibus non est disputandum, but really this entire forum exists because of arguing taste. who the hell am i to say you've blown it when i don't know your playgroup? and if i'm being honest with myself, i don't think my own cube could achieve outside relevance, either, and that is a big clue as to why i like it so much. it accommodates a broad variety of people of whom i am fond, but then the dialectic between "MTGO-style cube based exclusively on perceptions of what people want" vs. "disappearing into own asshole" is another thing to keep in mind.

last thing: the more i think about it, double archdruid is pretty sweet
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I believe it's convention for things phrases like "to conclude" and "tl; dr" to come at the end of a post. :)

But I'm glad you like Dan Harmon.
 
Rob Dennis

Rob Dennis

Developer
Re-sleeved everything this last week and it was a useful experience to see everything all laid out.

Changes (will backfill to cubetutor, which is under maintenance now, so this is from memory):
  • Red - already creature light thanks to upping the spell count, it seemed to be cross-purposes to use creature slots on "Ball Lightnings" since it really makes equipment a tricky proposition
    • Hellspark Elemental -> Kargan Dragonlord: while I'm intentionally de-emphasizing heavy color commitments for low drops, this had an interesting tension and I do enjoy rewarding folks on the wheel when they correctly identify that they're the only ones interested in a card
    • Keldon Marauders -> Gorehouse Chainwalker: Really about similar in terms of expected damage but one has more reach and one carries equipment better, and since I want red to still care about equipment, here we are
    • Hell's Thunder -> Keldon Champion: I felt a little light on haste 4 drops (a stable of mono-red) and the 3 direct damage and that option to pay echo doesn't seemed enticing
  • Green
  • Simic
    • Master Biomancer -> Kiora the Crashing Wave: I wanted biomancer to be a gift to U/G Opposition but that's narrow at best and this is a cute new toy.

committing to a weekly game (not just magic) night will hopefully give me the kind of reps I want (ideally 1/2 times a month), so here's hoping
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
  • How's Otherworldly Journey? It's a card I saw do good work in Modern Masters, but haven't seen much of elsewhere.
  • Centaur Courser..? Tell me that's a typo.
  • Were Brimaz and Courser of Kruphix too midrangy and/or hard to deal with?
  • That is a lot of two-drop walls in green. Has anyone ever assembled them all and 'gone off'?
  • More generally, what kind of decks do well in your environment?
 
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