General Steppe Lynx is a Terrible Magic Card or a different kind of aggro.

[Chingonman]

So obvious bait aside I wanted to see what you guys thought of a design process I had on my own cube.

It came to me when I was finding that green was not only the weakest but also the most unfun color in my cube. The error I later identified was that I went for dominating color identities to construct the cube, and as such I ended up with a green section that did the lamest archetype of all; Ramp. I mean sure green has flying hate and naturalize effects, maybe an elf or beast tribal that can be squeezed in there. But the quintessential green-feeling strat is ramping. So I decided to "pump up" my green section (forgive me) by adding some meaningful aggro options and attain the mythical "Supergreen".

I constructed the green section of the cube after tweaking some drafts and I consistently came across one superstar:

Spoiler

Now here is where the bait title comes from. I know that Steppe Lynx is a beloved Riptidelab staple (I have lurked enough to notice) and that going with the strictly worse version might seem anathema, but here's why I like the leopard and not the lynx:

One is a 2/2 and the other is a 2/3.

A lot has been written on bad retail draft formats, and here on Riptide Magic 2014 comes as a noted stinker. The disparity in Power / Toughness ratio is the most notable reason the summer set was a bad draft, and seeing how such article is from this very website I feel comfortable assuming a large portion of the userbase has come into contact with it.

The more I think about it the more I feel that Steppe Lnyx is not an aggro favoring card. Its a midrange card that is criminally under costed. That's where it's high power level comes from. If the card is played to its optimal cube potential it becomes a 4/5 creature for W. Siege rhino eat your heart out. How am I supposed to deal against that with my Jackal Pup and not have to face huge card disadvantage? If cubes are played in stores (as mine is) they will be played with a lot of newer drafters. New at playing Magic, new at drafting, or new at cubing (heaven forbid all of the above). A lot of newer players build miderange. This is one of the 10 commandments of cube I feel. Steppe lynx comes in early as a midrange threat so midrange players get pressured quick and as such they are no longer the beatdown. The white deck with the lynx is now aggro.

The danger a midrange player faces with a Steppe Lynx, whose stats are typically answered until turn 3 o 4, is daunting when compared to what a Jackal Pup or Elite Vanguard will bring to the table. In order for Elite Vanguard to have an acceptably comparable impact on the red zone to Steppe Lynx he needs another 2 clones turning sideways with him, and having 15 Savannah Lions in our white section is a quick way to make our cube rancid. So now we see Steppe Lynx is a card that is dominated by the midrange mentality; it has it all the way to its design core. Other quick creatures without deathtouch can't trade with it on the block. If a 2/1 swings after Lynx I just let him trough the door because I'm winning the race next turn with a 2/3 or 4/5. Yet Lynx is good against midrange because his chunky stats pressure early or trade with creatures four times his mana cost later.

Scythe Leopard solves all these issues. He's lean and mean so smaller creatures can still block him, they are dissuaded from it because they will trade AT BEST, but even when he goes super saiyan a Blade of the Sixth Pride will do him in. He also has some....

Wait wait wait but what about midrange?

Well Scythe Leopard is garbage against midrange once their dudes hit the board, but that's a good thing.

The two ways to add impact to aggro is either to lower power or to turn it up to eleven. In the green section of my cube I did all those things and when I started noticing it I had done so with all relevant colors in the cube:

Green

Spoiler

Black:

Spoiler

Red:

Spoiler

White:

Spoiler

Sorry

And here for your enjoyment and mockery is the full cube
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/38657

Now here are some notes on the cube for a better picture:

The standard power is 2 and the standard toughness 1. That makes guys like Elvish Mystic and Icatian Javelineers pull double duty. Most of the traditionally great midrange cards are gone from the cube and that makes lost of effects overkill in most situations. Why a Flame Slash when Shock will do? However when the boards arise where those cards pull their full weight they feel so much more powerful. Effects like Carrier Thrall, Young Wolf, or even Shambling Goblin feel more in tune for me than just Gravecrawlers and Bloodghasts. Maybe I should bench Zulaport Cutthroat. Blood Artist is GOD in this cube.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. As all cubes this is still in progress. The point I wanted to make is that players can be introduced to a version of aggro that doesn't just compete against midrange but is enhanced by it as a finisher. A version of aggro that is the backbone of a cube. A version of aggro that views creature exchanges not as part of an archetype but as a fundamental goal of the playing experience. A different version of cube aggro.

And that version has no place for Steppe Lynx.

 

[RavebornMuse]

I may be missing your point, but, I'm not sure if you get the point of Steppe Lynx's popularity (which to my knowledge is on the decline here and many don't run it any longer). Steppe Lynx is(?) popular because it's fun. This fun comes from having a cool effect which makes it potentially powerful which rewards synergy-oriented drafting. These factors make it fun, and fun cards lead to what I'll refer to as "enjoyment"; players get enjoyment from a lot of sources in Magic, and high enjoyment=satisfaction and a desire to keep playing. Let's break these factors in Steppe Lynx first, and discuss why they're important.

For starters, it's important to note the following: many aggro cards in cube are not "fun". This is why I personally believe midrange strategies are so popular in standard cubes; they're not only easier to pull together, but they're also a lot of fun. Consider your list, for example; why on earth would I want to draft 1 of your four (!!!) Expedition Envoys? What's fun about them? It's simply a generic 2/1 for beater, as far as I can tell. Sure, I can make a fine aggro deck if I draft a pile of those, but is that aggro deck fun? Well, not to everyone. Most players might find it more fun to draft Knight Exemplar and try for a more synergy-based deck than a bunch of boring beatsticks which may well win the game better than the Examplar brew. Fun is an actual factor in enjoyment, and it's very important to consider in shaping your list. In a vacuum, most drafters will choose Knight Exemplar over Expedition Envoy, simply because the former looks a lot more fun than the latter; the question is only how important the type of fun Exemplar offers is to that player over a dull, efficient option. We'll return to Enjoyment in a moment, but, let's discuss what makes cards "fun".

1) Fun cards have cool effects. This is hard to quantify; what's cool or unique to one player might not be to another. However, I think anything a step above vanilla has the potential to be cool, so, that's easy enough to look out for. Magma Jet is "cool", and thus fun, because it has Scry 2 strapped onto it. Meanwhile, Lightning Strike isn't particularly "cool", despite dealing a full point more in damage. Why is this? Well, for starters, scry is obviously typically more valuable than 1 more point of damage, but I believe there is a more nebulous feature here: scrying is exciting, whereas dealing an extra point of burn damage generally isn't. Scrying gets you engaged in the game; it creates more decisions, and those decisions are fairly low-complexity at scry 1 and 2, so they're very welcome by all players. Does Expedition Envoy do anything cool? Not really. What about Steppe Lynx? Well, yes! Playing lands makes your creature bigger! How crazy is that? That's pretty cool, right? I was gonna play lands anyway - now I get a reward? Cool beans!

2) Fun cards are potentially powerful. There's a reason many Riptiders refuse to run Wurmcoil Engine. It's definitely powerful, and definitely cool! Look at all those abilities! Think of all the shenanigans it could do for reanimator or artifact strategies! But, it's reviled. Why? Because it's busted. Players like busted things in small doses, but they're not good in large doses. In this regard, busted cards are candy, and our drafters are frail, diabetic children; they think they want the candy, but if they get it, they'll probably regret it. Some of them will get sick (the players who have to face the busted cards and feel "cheated" by how "unfair" they are, whether they realize those cards are actually unfair or not), and some of them will get bored (the ones who autowin all the time just because they draw Wurmcoil; again, whether they realize the cards are busted or not, this can happen if the busted cards are doing this often). For this reason, lots of fun cards are potentially powerful. Players play Magic because it's a cerebral game. Making them think they made the "smart plays" makes them feel good about themselves; they go, "aha, look how clever I was to do that!". Thus, including cards that can be potentially powerful is a handy compromise; players get the excitement of powerful cards with the reward of feeling clever when they unlock their full potential. Is Expedition Envoy potentially powerful? From what I can see, not really. What about Steppe Lynx? Why, yes! The ability is not only cool, it's also potentially powerful! It has a crazy ability that can make it go from a 0/1, to a 2/3, to a 4/5, if you plan for it correctly. This correct answer is often to crack a fetch on your turn to double pump it to 4/5, but maybe, the right answer is to play defense and crack that fetch on your opponent's turn. Either way, it's a mid-complexity decision that makes the card powerful in some scenarios, making the drafters feel clever for using it right.

3) Fun cards reward synergy-oriented drafting. Think of all the most popular decks across the ages; some are value piles, but others are full of synergy. Consider the popularity of Birthing Pod, Delver of Secrets, or affinity decks; archetypes cubers try again and again to make work in their lists are often unsuccessful because those fun archetypes rely on a great deal of synergy, which can be hard to generate in cube. Does Expedition Envoy offer any synergy? Well, it could, if you ran something like Champion of the Parish or Lantern Scout. But what about Steppe Lynx? Why, yes, the Lynx is full of synergy power! It rewards playing a high density of lands; it gets better with fetchlands; it could do obscene things with Crucible of Worlds and Zuran Orb; it loves Rampant Growth effects, which are typically, as you point out, a bit dull on their own. This last is important, too, since it promotes playing a second colour, which makes the synergy seem even deeper; "I didn't pursue some dull mono-white deck, I made a green-white lands-matters deck!". The more you can maximize synergy, the more fun the card is; Steppe Lynx is much less exciting in a format without fetchlands, for example.

These are just a few factors in what makes cards "fun", but I think it covers a lot of the key features (I'm sure someone else more invested might break point 1 down more, but I use these 3 criteria myself often in card evaluation, so, I'm sharing it here). Drafting fun cards is ideal; it leads to fun decks, and fun decks lead to higher enjoyment.

Let's consider enjoyment for a moment. What is enjoyment? It certainly can't be just "winning". If people only enjoyed winning, everyone everywhere would be playing Tic-Tac-Toe, where matches are exceptionally quick and your odds of winning are about the same as in Magic. No, enjoyment comes out of many factors, but, I think one of the easiest to look at is fun. Let's consider the player archetypes for this. What percentage of enjoyment is comprised of "winning" for each type?
Perhaps Spikes enjoy games based on this formula: 70% winning matches, 10% synergy maximization, 10% "unlocking" powerful effects, 10% playing cool cards.
Perhaps Johnnies enjoy games based on this formula: 10% winning matches, 60% synergy maximization, 20% "unlocking" powerful effects, 10% playing cool cards.
Perhaps Timmies enjoy games based on this formula: 60% playing cool cards, 20% "unlocking" powerful effects, 10% synergy maximization, 10% winning matches.
We could theorize on the percentages all day long, of course, but the archetypes are truly about how players enjoy the game, and it's important to note that winning does not dominate the equation very often (though it obviously helps).

So, let's go back to Scythe Leopard. How does it stack up on these metrics? Well, the ability is less "cool", it is significantly less powerful, and it has lower synergy incentives (since ramp is already green-focused, there's no real temptation to cross into another colour for help). Meanwhile, how powerful is Steppe Lynx, anyway? Even at 2 copies, it doesn't run away with games unless your format is extremely low-powered. While I applaud the effort to make green more exciting, I don't know that I agree with the choices you made to do so, as they seem to be missing the point of Steppe Lynx's appeal. It seems like you've just traded Fact or Fiction for Inspiration; the exchange looks fair, but you've actually just lost a great deal of fun in the exchange. That's my two cents, anyway! Obviously, you need to take in your format's powerful level and goals into consideration, but I think you really need to examine why midrange is more popular than aggro for newer drafters; for me, I believe this is because aggro tends to look much less fun in comparison. Scythe Leopard isn't going to add much to that except in the weakest of environs.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I promise to read every word of these great posts later, but the first thing that hits me is: what makes Steppe Lynx a midrange card? I guess it works better with a higher land count, but it also can't block at all. I do agree that Steppe Lynx kind of makes Scythe Leopard look like a turd.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

"In this regard, busted cards are candy, and our drafters are frail, diabetic children;"

Amazing.

 

[ahadabans]

Great posts. My 2 cents is that Steppe Lynx is fun specifically (and maybe solely) because you can break him and doing so takes a little effort and is very satisfying.

The payoff for Scythe Leopard is so much lower there's just no motivation for me. I can get a 2/1 for 2 in three different colors with zero synergy required and that extra point of toughness buys very little. And my reward for getting a double landfall trigger is an elephant for one turn? Sigh. Lynx is great because you can sequence crazy alpha strike turns with it (same reason adventuring gear is dope). Does that make it midrange? Maybe. Definitely more so that 2power1drop.dec, but it's still a pretty aggressive card in my mind. As Jason points out, it's a horrible blocker (not a very midrange characteristic). But even more importantly perhaps, you only get 2-3 good swings out of Lynx before it's completely useless (so this card has zero late game to it). Nothing midrange about that design in my mind even if the typical lynx deck is slower than your all-in aggro varieties.

I completely agree that generic 2/1 aggro is pretty boring by cube standards though, which is another appeal of things like lynx which encourage aggressive decks but do it in an interesting and engaging way. But to each their own. I know people who enjoy vomiting their hands on the table by T3 and swinging for the fences with no plan "B". I'm just not one of those people.