As usual, CML takes the award for lucidity.
General Say hello!
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
There's a solid mix between bots crawling our site and actual lurkers. But yes, we get a lot of non-registered traffic. Everyone is welcome!
Sad that they only have 5 episodes so far
TSG and Eck's "The Magic Box" is alright, I stopped watching at around episode 3 after it became clear that me and TSG disagreed on literally every single issue they discussed
Also as much as TSG is good at talking, I really think Eck is the guy most people on this board will want to be listening to \ agreeing with.
Rob Dennis
Developer
I'm seeing my in-laws in Vacaville, CA this week so a hearty hello to the I-80 crew
Hey guys, my name's Matt. I'm a computer science student from Switzerland. I've been lurking around here for a week or two now and I thought I might aswell just join the fun.
I first got introduced to cube drafting a couple of years ago by a friend of mine who owns a pretty big powered cube. Getting to play with all those awesome cards was a great experience for me and I was totally hooked. Quite recently I started building my own first cube. The list is pretty generic at the moment, nothing to interesting from a design point of view. We still managed to have a lot of fun in the two cube sessions we did so far.
After I stumbled upon Jason's articles on Channel Fireball I started looking into improving my own list to include some more interesting cards and archtypes. I'm currently spending a lot of time changing cards around on cube tutor and searching magiccards.info for cards that might fit my needs. It's not easy but also a lot of fun. I'm still trying to find the balance between powerful cards and interesting archtype cards that works for me as one of my motivations for cubing was to get to play all the good cards I managed to collect over the years.
Our format of choice depending on the number of drafters is usually Emperor (3vs3) or Two-Headed Giant if we're 8 players. Playing in teams changes card evaluations quite a bit. Spectral Searchlight is a great card to have for example. Pulling of a Wildfire or Pox Strategy can be more difficult tough. And of course Kokusho is pretty insane here. For our Emperor Drafting we tried Team Grid Drafting. (Like 2vs2 Grif Draft. Each Team gets to pick a row/column). Everyone had a blast to say the least. We still need to figure out the right number of packs for however. It seems to be somwehere around 30.
I first got introduced to cube drafting a couple of years ago by a friend of mine who owns a pretty big powered cube. Getting to play with all those awesome cards was a great experience for me and I was totally hooked. Quite recently I started building my own first cube. The list is pretty generic at the moment, nothing to interesting from a design point of view. We still managed to have a lot of fun in the two cube sessions we did so far.
After I stumbled upon Jason's articles on Channel Fireball I started looking into improving my own list to include some more interesting cards and archtypes. I'm currently spending a lot of time changing cards around on cube tutor and searching magiccards.info for cards that might fit my needs. It's not easy but also a lot of fun. I'm still trying to find the balance between powerful cards and interesting archtype cards that works for me as one of my motivations for cubing was to get to play all the good cards I managed to collect over the years.
Our format of choice depending on the number of drafters is usually Emperor (3vs3) or Two-Headed Giant if we're 8 players. Playing in teams changes card evaluations quite a bit. Spectral Searchlight is a great card to have for example. Pulling of a Wildfire or Pox Strategy can be more difficult tough. And of course Kokusho is pretty insane here. For our Emperor Drafting we tried Team Grid Drafting. (Like 2vs2 Grif Draft. Each Team gets to pick a row/column). Everyone had a blast to say the least. We still need to figure out the right number of packs for however. It seems to be somwehere around 30.
Hi Matt, glad to have you on our forum. Indeed, I can imagine that team play would be considerably different than 1v1. I've never used teams with my own cube, but I'd be interested in hearing how the design and draft dynamics change.
Hey Matt, I live in Zurich half the time. Where do you live? We have an abundance of cubes in our playgroup there, each quite different from the next. it's great.
Hey guys, My name is John and I'm currently living in the Houston, TX area. I have been playing Magic since Ice Age but quit around Mercadian Masques. I picked the game back up around Shadowmoore. After playing Standard and Legacy quite a bit I got sucked into EDH. About a year ago I read an article somewhere about cubing and immediately wanted to try it. I couldn't find anyone around me who had one so I decided to build my own. I have been posting for awhile on the Salvation forums and recently found this site so I figured I would stop by and say hello.
CML
Contributor
yooooooooooooooooooo one of my best mtg/poker friends is a houston dude and we collaborated on this article. you know him? http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/...e-And-Romance-SCG-Legacy-Open-Dallas-1st.html
So, we've had a whole pile of forum members join in the last little while. And I'm not sure we've all been properly acquainted with each other. If you've already started posting, but haven't stopped in to say hi yet, or if you're just lurking and waiting for the right time to make that first post - well, either way, don't be shy. Let us know a little bit about yourself, how you got into cubing, and where you're going with it!
I just wrote a really long post and accidentally closed the wrong tab, argh, so I'm gonna make this shorter, apologies.
My name is Thomas, I'm from Auburn, Alabama, USA.
I started playing during Shards of Alara, I took a break from right before Worldwake dropped until Innistrad came out.
I try to be a budget player, and all of my constructed decks are proxied or on mws/cockatrice. Obviously this means I'm not really a tournament player.
I'm a spike, I try to play my best no matter what, and I enjoy cards that lead to both players having to make meaningful decisions.
I play fighting games competitively since 08, the games I've been best at are Marvel vs Capcom 2 and 3, including winning and top 8ing some locals and smaller regionals over the years. I've played other fighters in tournament too some to some mild success but those are the two I enjoy the most and spent the most time on.
I used to play Starcraft: Brood War competitively in 06-09 but I was pretty awful at it. I'm not really a fan of the sequel because all the matchups look like a goofy less interesting version of the protoss mirror from the first one.
Before that I played Soldat 3v3 realistic mode CTF competitively, I was in one of the better clans at the time. Not a game with a huge community but it was a lot of fun. Later patches nerfed things that already weren't good or removed things that added to the game because the designer didn't understand or care about competitive play.
I love programming and game design.
I've known about cube for quite a while, but I hadn't tried it until I tried my friend's peasant cube a little less than a year ago. Before cube I thought I just hated draft. I started working on my cube about 2 weeks ago because I have a ton of cards I love and I want people to be able to play with them.
favorite card: Fact or Fiction
least favorite card: Bonfire of the Damned
formats i play: Standard, Modern, EDH, Cube(s), rarely Legacy
EDH decks I've played: Chainer, Dementia Master, Damia, Sage of Stone, Maelstrom Wanderer, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, The Mimeoplasm, Yeva, Nature's Herald
my favorite color combination: BUG
my favorite archetype: control with a combo finisher, or decks with a toolbox thing going on
my most notable design thing: i'm half of the team working on an super street fighter 4 ae mod over at http://www.sf4remix.com
my youtube with fighting game related stuff on it: http://www.youtube.com/user/HFB/videos
My name is Thomas, I'm from Auburn, Alabama, USA.
I started playing during Shards of Alara, I took a break from right before Worldwake dropped until Innistrad came out.
I try to be a budget player, and all of my constructed decks are proxied or on mws/cockatrice. Obviously this means I'm not really a tournament player.
I'm a spike, I try to play my best no matter what, and I enjoy cards that lead to both players having to make meaningful decisions.
I play fighting games competitively since 08, the games I've been best at are Marvel vs Capcom 2 and 3, including winning and top 8ing some locals and smaller regionals over the years. I've played other fighters in tournament too some to some mild success but those are the two I enjoy the most and spent the most time on.
I used to play Starcraft: Brood War competitively in 06-09 but I was pretty awful at it. I'm not really a fan of the sequel because all the matchups look like a goofy less interesting version of the protoss mirror from the first one.
Before that I played Soldat 3v3 realistic mode CTF competitively, I was in one of the better clans at the time. Not a game with a huge community but it was a lot of fun. Later patches nerfed things that already weren't good or removed things that added to the game because the designer didn't understand or care about competitive play.
I love programming and game design.
I've known about cube for quite a while, but I hadn't tried it until I tried my friend's peasant cube a little less than a year ago. Before cube I thought I just hated draft. I started working on my cube about 2 weeks ago because I have a ton of cards I love and I want people to be able to play with them.
favorite card: Fact or Fiction
least favorite card: Bonfire of the Damned
formats i play: Standard, Modern, EDH, Cube(s), rarely Legacy
EDH decks I've played: Chainer, Dementia Master, Damia, Sage of Stone, Maelstrom Wanderer, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, The Mimeoplasm, Yeva, Nature's Herald
my favorite color combination: BUG
my favorite archetype: control with a combo finisher, or decks with a toolbox thing going on
my most notable design thing: i'm half of the team working on an super street fighter 4 ae mod over at http://www.sf4remix.com
my youtube with fighting game related stuff on it: http://www.youtube.com/user/HFB/videos
Aoret
Developer
Hi everyone. I'm Skrap, a software developer living in San Diego, CA. I'm not entirely sure what my very first exposure to cube was, as several things happened around the same time. I was invited to draft a cube at my local game store with some tournament regulars. It was a bit tricky at first, but I was definitely intrigued. I also started reading about cube online, both on the MtGSalvation forums as well as an article that someone wrote about a budget cube they'd donated to a library.
After hearing that a budget style cube was a possibility, I set out to build my own. Initially my goal was to create a cube with a relatively low barrier to entry. I chose only cards printed with correct Oracle text and which had few abilities. I did accomplish my goal of creating an environment where newbies could learn, but I quickly discovered a problem. I found it really difficult to talk newbies into spending a few hours to play Magic in a way they'd never heard of! Many were unfamiliar with draft, and none had heard of cube. After a few months, I grew tired of this struggle and focused on drafting with friends who already played competitive Magic.
As a result of my shift in focus, I started swapping in more complex cards to my existing cube. Some time later, I discovered some of the techniques used to create custom foil proxies. At the point, I decided to make a second, powered cube full of these custom cards. It was a ton of work, and I didn't foil the full 360, but I did finish the proxied cube and drafted it a bit. After the initial thrill of playing a power-max cube wore off, I found that my hodgepodge low powered cube just resulted in better games.
This brings me to today. My power-max cube has been depowered, and I've stolen lots of Jason's ideas as well. I keep that cube around but it isn't really my focus. I have been working on revamping my old "newb cube" to create an environment that will present something different and exciting to play. I've focused on layering synergies and archetypes, have broken singleton where I felt it was appropriate, and diversified things where I felt I could afford to. In particular, I've worked on using the graveyard as an important zone in the game. The cube still has a number of holdovers from the my original ethos; I'm gradually working to stamp those out. I'm doing a lot of testing to level off the power curve as well.
For me, the trickiest part is holding back on changes and introducing them slowly. I don't want to change too much at once based on theory without doing some testing first. Like many here at Riptide Lab, I often have more time to think about cube than I do opportunities to actually draft, so it is an exercise in patience! I keep a watch list of cards which are either potentially too powerful, too boring, or too linear (unsynergistic). I also keep a list of cards that seem fun, even if they may be a little bit too deep or not viable in the current iteration.
After hearing that a budget style cube was a possibility, I set out to build my own. Initially my goal was to create a cube with a relatively low barrier to entry. I chose only cards printed with correct Oracle text and which had few abilities. I did accomplish my goal of creating an environment where newbies could learn, but I quickly discovered a problem. I found it really difficult to talk newbies into spending a few hours to play Magic in a way they'd never heard of! Many were unfamiliar with draft, and none had heard of cube. After a few months, I grew tired of this struggle and focused on drafting with friends who already played competitive Magic.
As a result of my shift in focus, I started swapping in more complex cards to my existing cube. Some time later, I discovered some of the techniques used to create custom foil proxies. At the point, I decided to make a second, powered cube full of these custom cards. It was a ton of work, and I didn't foil the full 360, but I did finish the proxied cube and drafted it a bit. After the initial thrill of playing a power-max cube wore off, I found that my hodgepodge low powered cube just resulted in better games.
This brings me to today. My power-max cube has been depowered, and I've stolen lots of Jason's ideas as well. I keep that cube around but it isn't really my focus. I have been working on revamping my old "newb cube" to create an environment that will present something different and exciting to play. I've focused on layering synergies and archetypes, have broken singleton where I felt it was appropriate, and diversified things where I felt I could afford to. In particular, I've worked on using the graveyard as an important zone in the game. The cube still has a number of holdovers from the my original ethos; I'm gradually working to stamp those out. I'm doing a lot of testing to level off the power curve as well.
For me, the trickiest part is holding back on changes and introducing them slowly. I don't want to change too much at once based on theory without doing some testing first. Like many here at Riptide Lab, I often have more time to think about cube than I do opportunities to actually draft, so it is an exercise in patience! I keep a watch list of cards which are either potentially too powerful, too boring, or too linear (unsynergistic). I also keep a list of cards that seem fun, even if they may be a little bit too deep or not viable in the current iteration.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
It really is interesting to see what disciplines we have around here, interesting that we have so many computer scientists
Chris Taylor
Contributor
All the geology nerds ended up on minecraft forums I guess
I don't know if it was just Carnegie Mellon or what, but do CS majors everywhere go through that phase where they're finally not living with Mommy and Daddy, so they decide it's acceptable to just not cut their hair (facial or otherwise) for two years?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
No, some of us have class.
Aoret
Developer
....but you did gloss over something, which is that CS majors generally live with mommy and daddy during school to save money, because we're very practical people. Feels bad bro.
We had a "freshmen must live on campus" policy, but nobody at my school was from Pittsburgh anyways.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Honestly I do support living on campus at least once if you can afford it. Most people aren't ready to jump from grade 12 school is mostly easy to ohshit school is hard also now I have to figure out renting