General [STX] Strixhaven Spoilers

[shamizy]

As a designer, improving the win percentage is the last thing on my mind when deciding on final inclusions for my cube. That'll come down to the individual player and what decisions they make through draft and gameplay. I'm only here to provide them with the tools and options to get there. It's just not a useful metric because I'm not designing an environment where winning is the end goal. I've got 6-8 people playing and there can only be one "winner" of a cube session, but what good does that do when we aren't playing for anything? There aren't any prizes, there is no cash incentive, you don't get points towards anything relevant. Cube is a format that most people engage with because they enjoy Magic as a game and want a different experience and I've found that the best way to tackle that is to give them a medium that lets them explore the game and discover card interactions.

I don't think fun is a non-issue, in fact that should be one of your main goals as a designer. You provided your drafters with the tools and options and need to make sure there aren't any traps or particularly egregious outliers to diminish their experience. Games and experiences can be completely ruined if players aren't able to interact in meaningful ways, if they feel that their decisions don't matter, or if snowballing advantages become too large for a player to overcome. It differs from cube to cube where the breaking point is, but I'd say it's pretty universal that these types of situations lead to players leaving with a negative impression of the game they just played. Being unable to assemble your synergy engine can happen due to the luck of the draw, but that's not nearly as bad as feeling like what you did during a game didn't really matter. Eliminating those situations should be a priority for the designer.

There's not much exploration or depth to a discussion centered on card rates and power level. That just limits potential discussion and card choices for inclusion. We know what powerful cards look like, we know how they play, and we've seen various iterations of the same xeroxed environment with the same inclusions and gameplay. There's nothing new to talk about or consider if we're already going into a discussion with a cut-off point. Like look at Baleful Mastery. It's obviously a strong piece of removal, it outright exiles threats and has dual modality, and it's super splashy for any deck that has Black available in it. But does it do what I want? I've introduced a card that slots in across the board, but universal removal isn't always the right call. Maybe I want to maintain that baseline of 4 CMC for unconditional removal to promote a certain style of play. If I'm looking for a card that appeals to or Control, slower decks with higher CMCs across the board, then I might be better off including Vraska's Contempt to ensure that it doesn't get snapped up by an aggro player. Or maybe this Eat to Extinction can give some extra utility to a deck that utilizes the graveyard as a gameplan. There's just so much much nuance to design dicussion.

My cube is definitely higher powered than the majority of cubes around here, and the majority of card inclusions for others don't work for me, but that doesn't mean that there aren't ideas that I can't take away from the discussions here that I might be able to apply down the road. And it's way more fun to theorycraft and come up with situations where certain cards do work than just outright dismiss them because they don't fit what I'm looking for. Tunnel-visioning myself to a given power band doesn't help me out much as a cube designer long term, it's way more fruitful to explore and discuss different cards then go X not as good as Y? Forget X.

Exploring card interactions and potential synergies, giving players more options in a draft and during the game, makes the Cube experience more engaging and worth revisiting. Strong cards are strong; they do what you need to get the job done. Great. Good tip for Constructed or if I'm playing retail Limited. But if I'm sitting down to play Cube with a group of friends and/or people that don't get to experience the format that often then giving them more of the same isn't engaging. I want them to walk away having felt that their 2-3 hour session was an experience that they would want to revisit again in the future.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So if discussing cards from other perspectives isn't productive, what exactly is the point of talking about individual cards? Is it just a space for people to say "I think this is cool" and no other conversation beyond that matters? Just trying to get a feel for the kinds of discussions you cats are interested in having here bc the way I think about and analyze cards is always from the perspective of "how does this card contribute to the gameplan of my deck compared to other options I could be running and is it an increase or decrease in my expected winpercentage?" and I'm kind of getting the impression that a lot of folks don't really care at all about shit like that.

I didn't state very clearly in my OP what kind of advice I was looking for, and that's totally on me, but I was actually looking for different perspectives, and yours was definitely appreciated by me! This card piqued my interest when I tested some of the new Commander precons this morning, as potentially relevant 3- mv enchantments are always in consideration for my cube because of Zur the Enchanter. That said, a couple of good points against Cunning Rhetoric were made. I used to run Phyrexian Arena in my cube, which is indeed just a more consistent version of this with less opportunities for feel bad situations because you're not constantly threatening to steal cards from your opponent. Plus avoiding death by Arena triggers is actually a fun subgame that sometimes pops up. I say used to, because I actually cut it in one of my more recent updates. In addition, Brad brings up the excellent point of mixing up cards. With a card like Cunning Rhetoric being able to steal multiple cards that is a potential problem I hadn't thought about, especially considering it steals lands.

 

[Brad]

I used to run Phyrexian Arena in my cube

I was eyeing Arena the other day for being a little slow and was gonna ask my fellow Zur Gang member about it. It's still got the devotion angle for me, but... I've just got better draw options.

Brad brings up the excellent point of mixing up cards. With a card like Cunning Rhetoric being able to steal multiple cards that is a potential problem I hadn't thought about, especially considering it steals lands.

I have a few cards I don't run due to this consideration. Everyone using the exact same sleeves makes it difficult.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

If you offer Rum Raisin, Mint Chocolate Chip and Vanilla, you'll find almost everyone will have at least one flavor they like. That's not true if you offer Lemon, Mango and Orange. We could productively discuss how to build a nice ice cream portfolio that makes your ice cream shop a success even though two or three people in the world like Bacon ice cream.

There's not much exploration or depth to a discussion centered on card rates and power level. That just limits potential discussion and card choices for inclusion. We know what powerful cards look like, we know how they play, and we've seen various iterations of the same xeroxed environment with the same inclusions and gameplay. There's nothing new to talk about or consider if we're already going into a discussion with a cut-off point.

I think this is a very bad take. Card rates and power level as a tool to decide whether or not a card is worth playing. Asking yourself "is this card better or worse than this other card that can lead to a similar outcome" is a really good way to help choose cards. Consider these three cards:

All of these cards are cantrips for 1 mana. But they also have other abilities that makes them slightly different from one another. Opt is clearly the best at being a raw cantrip, but it's significantly worse in the late game compared to the other two cards. Hieroglyphic Illumination is a cheaper draw spell than Boon of the Wish-Giver, but Boon draws twice as many cards. However, Boon isn't an instant, so it might be worse in draw-go style control decks. All three of these cards are great, and choosing which one is best relies heavily on the context of your environment.

Meanwhile, a card like the flashpoint Cunning Rhetoric is worse than so many other things at so many different power levels that it's kind of difficult to find a reason to justify using it over something else. While Funch drew the comparison to three-mana draw spells like Painful Truths, Cunning Rhetoric is probably just worse than Phyrexian Arena! There are certainly power levels where Phyrexian Arena is too good and it is worth seeking a replacement, but Cunning Rhetoric isn't a good choice because it is so inconsistent. The quality difference between these two cards is colossal. Now, if you have an environment with Some Engine Piece that can make the Bad Card into a Good Card, that could effect the calculus a little bit. If the person mentioning the card brings up the other thing that makes it contextually better, it is worth considering that option. However, in the case of Cunning Rhetoric, that doesn't really effect how the card plays in practice.

For what it's worth, I really haven't read anything from Sirfunchalot that is as reductive as you seem to be making his card evaluations out to be. While it is true that his opinions seem to be rooted in the perspective of efficent, low curve formats, they aren't the sort of "Xth best card in -slot-" views that you might see from other people running very high power formats. I mean just last night he was arguing in favor of the synergy applications of Goblin Engineer after I had said it was mediocre most of the time. His ideas are a lot more nuanced than you and some others are giving him credit for.

SirFunchalot seems very, very capable of standing on his own legs, defending his arguments and retain his resolve.

But.

Having tried to be on the receiving end of massive comments pointing my way, I think we should maybe give SirFunchalot a rest. He's not new in the cube environment but he is still new in here and having everyone respond to your comments all at once can be daunting for even the most sturdy of personalities.

This is true. Funch is a good Orator. I think people have been a little bit quick to question him since his perspectives on card evaluation are so different and can kind of sound outlandish if you don't understand where he's coming from. I also think people are completely underestimaing how subjective "Fun" actually is in practice, and how hard it can be to quantiy that factor when discussing card choices. I think Grim Guardian is one of the most fun magic cards ever printed. That does not mean it belongs within even a country mile of my Cube.

 

[SirFunchalot]

SirFunchalot seems very, very capable of standing on his own legs, defending his arguments and retain his resolve.

But.

Having tried to be on the receiving end of massive comments pointing my way, I think we should maybe give SirFunchalot a rest. He's not new in the cube environment but he is still new in here and having everyone respond to your comments all at once can be daunting for even the most sturdy of personalities.

It's certainly a lot but I'll do my best to address the responses as best I can!

I don't take fun for granted, and I see a lot of people playing Magic and not having fun with it. I believe Magic is a popular game because there are many formats to cater to people who crave different things. But when you curate a cube, it is (generally) a single format, and understanding what makes Magic fun to people is a major, perhaps the most important part of curating a cube, so that your cube will be fun for your playgroup.

I agree, but "what makes Magic fun" is a very different thing for many individuals. What I like about Magic is clearly very different from what some of the other folks here like, and that's great, it's what makes these discussions interesting as the points of view are all so varied!

People don't like cards completely randomly though. There are cards that a lot of people like, and there are cards that no one likes, so it is worth discussing whether a given card is one that they will like to play. Also worth discussing whether it is a card that will lead to a bad experience from the opponent's point of view too.

Disagree. I highly doubt there are truly any cards "no one likes". There's a lovely chap on the Brainstorming discord, Minorbug, the guy has intentionally built a cube utilizing some of the most egregious cases of bad game design ever printed in the history of the game, and yes a lot of it is from Mercadian Masques and Homelands hahaha. But the point I'm making is that Magic play preferences are kinda like sexual fetishes, there's someone out there with a kink for just about anything. I don't know who makes up the playgroups of the users here, maybe they have very Spikey drafters like me that are simply trying to sniff out the best cards and strategies to win, maybe they have players that are more so looking for the closest they can get to casting Ember Shot.

If you offer Rum Raisin, Mint Chocolate Chip and Vanilla, you'll find almost everyone will have at least one flavor they like. That's not true if you offer Lemon, Mango and Orange. We could productively discuss how to build a nice ice cream portfolio that makes your ice cream shop a success even though two or three people in the world like Bacon ice cream.

Yeah, but this isn't the context that cubes are actually designed in, they aren't designed to appeal to an extremely wide range of tastes in an open marketplace, they're designed for a specific group of individuals that are close and beloved friends of the cube designer in question, I don't want to offer suggestions such that a designer can offer an experience that is "good enough" for some hypothetical in a vacuum average player, but rather one that is PERFECT for the specific known players in your playgroup including the bacon ice cream lover that shows up to draft every other week. Wizards of the Coast does the former already with their booster product, they're doing their best to create something for everyone, with those tools I want to create something just for the nerds I care about the most. That's something special and it takes a level of understanding only someone who actually experiences that playgroup dynamic can come to understand.

As a designer, improving the win percentage is the last thing on my mind when deciding on final inclusions for my cube. That'll come down to the individual player and what decisions they make through draft and gameplay. I'm only here to provide them with the tools and options to get there. It's just not a useful metric because I'm not designing an environment where winning is the end goal. I've got 6-8 people playing and there can only be one "winner" of a cube session, but what good does that do when we aren't playing for anything? There aren't any prizes, there is no cash incentive, you don't get points towards anything relevant. Cube is a format that most people engage with because they enjoy Magic as a game and want a different experience and I've found that the best way to tackle that is to give them a medium that lets them explore the game and discover card interactions.

I don't think fun is a non-issue, in fact that should be one of your main goals as a designer. You provided your drafters with the tools and options and need to make sure there aren't any traps or particularly egregious outliers to diminish their experience. Games and experiences can be completely ruined if players aren't able to interact in meaningful ways, if they feel that their decisions don't matter, or if snowballing advantages become too large for a player to overcome. It differs from cube to cube where the breaking point is, but I'd say it's pretty universal that these types of situations lead to players leaving with a negative impression of the game they just played. Being unable to assemble your synergy engine can happen due to the luck of the draw, but that's not nearly as bad as feeling like what you did during a game didn't really matter. Eliminating those situations should be a priority for the designer.

I think losing sucks and I know that a lot of magic players feel similarly. It's okay to lose sometimes obviously, Magic is a card game with a lot of variance after all and losing is a part of that, but format balance does matter and clearly you understand this too as you do say that it's the designer's job to ensure that there aren't traps or egregious outliers. I think that creating a gameplay experience that is highly replayable does demand more than just this bare minimum though. If a game is frequently played enough its players will eventually develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of it and with that necessitates a finer degree of format balancing than the levels we see for most magic formats. The average booster set is expected to be drafted by the most enfranchised and invested limited pros only several dozen times, but if a cube is intended to be drafted for years to come, that means it's going to require frequent maintenance and updates to keep the experience from growing stale and becoming solved, or if it is to be solved like some Old Border cubes are, the experience needs to be deep enough to keep players coming back for more, which is a relatively big undertaking.

There's not much exploration or depth to a discussion centered on card rates and power level. That just limits potential discussion and card choices for inclusion. We know what powerful cards look like, we know how they play, and we've seen various iterations of the same xeroxed environment with the same inclusions and gameplay. There's nothing new to talk about or consider if we're already going into a discussion with a cut-off point. Like look at Baleful Mastery. It's obviously a strong piece of removal, it outright exiles threats and has dual modality, and it's super splashy for any deck that has Black available in it. But does it do what I want? I've introduced a card that slots in across the board, but universal removal isn't always the right call. Maybe I want to maintain that baseline of 4 CMC for unconditional removal to promote a certain style of play. If I'm looking for a card that appeals to or Control, slower decks with higher CMCs across the board, then I might be better off including Vraska's Contempt to ensure that it doesn't get snapped up by an aggro player. Or maybe this Eat to Extinction can give some extra utility to a deck that utilizes the graveyard as a gameplan. There's just so much much nuance to design dicussion.

My cube is definitely higher powered than the majority of cubes around here, and the majority of card inclusions for others don't work for me, but that doesn't mean that there aren't ideas that I can't take away from the discussions here that I might be able to apply down the road. And it's way more fun to theorycraft and come up with situations where certain cards do work than just outright dismiss them because they don't fit what I'm looking for. Tunnel-visioning myself to a given power band doesn't help me out much as a cube designer long term, it's way more fruitful to explore and discuss different cards then go X not as good as Y? Forget X.

Exploring card interactions and potential synergies, giving players more options in a draft and during the game, makes the Cube experience more engaging and worth revisiting. Strong cards are strong; they do what you need to get the job done. Great. Good tip for Constructed or if I'm playing retail Limited. But if I'm sitting down to play Cube with a group of friends and/or people that don't get to experience the format that often then giving them more of the same isn't engaging. I want them to walk away having felt that their 2-3 hour session was an experience that they would want to revisit again in the future.

I think @TrainmasterGT already responded to this segment as well as I could have and I certainly agree with the points they made. I think you aren't giving enough credit to just how impactful those sleight differences between extremely similar cards are and how fun figuring out through rigorous discussion which one is the ideal fit can be.

I didn't state very clearly in my OP what kind of advice I was looking for, and that's totally on me, but I was actually looking for different perspectives, and yours was definitely appreciated by me! This card piqued my interest when I tested some of the new Commander precons this morning, as potentially relevant 3- mv enchantments are always in consideration for my cube because of Zur the Enchanter. That said, a couple of good points against Cunning Rhetoric were made. I used to run Phyrexian Arena in my cube, which is indeed just a more consistent version of this with less opportunities for feel bad situations because you're not constantly threatening to steal cards from your opponent. Plus avoiding death by Arena triggers is actually a fun subgame that sometimes pops up. I say used to, because I actually cut it in one of my more recent updates. In addition, Brad brings up the excellent point of mixing up cards. With a card like Cunning Rhetoric being able to steal multiple cards that is a potential problem I hadn't thought about, especially considering it steals lands.

I do think it is a funky toy to get with Zur, but Zur being a one of in a draft means that I'm personally a lot less interested in seeing narrow A+B synergies that are only good if I have Zur in my pool, draw it first, resolve it, untap with it and then attack. It's a lot of preconditions for some pretty narrow value, I'd much rather see enchantments that can do more generally reasonable things that my deck would already want to play on their own that can have some synergistic benefits as a bonus. Treacherous Blessing could be a card that has similar play patterns but a much better rate so it feels better to actually draw it in a game.

 

[sigh]

If you offer Rum Raisin, Mint Chocolate Chip and Vanilla, you'll find almost everyone will have at least one flavor they like. That's not true if you offer Lemon, Mango and Orange. We could productively discuss how to build a nice ice cream portfolio that makes your ice cream shop a success even though two or three people in the world like Bacon ice cream.

Hell yeah Rum Raisin

 

[Suicufnoc]

This may have already been said, but:

If playing Magic is inherently fun, why don't we just grab a pile of 360 random cards and cube with it? Anything we do beyond that is attempt to make the environment more fun for the players. One thing that a lot of people tend to enjoy is playing with powerful cards. Another thing people tend to enjoy is playing cards with pictures of squirrels on them.

Therefore, the one best cube is a powermax+squirrelmax cube.

 

[Brad]

Not gonna lie, squirrelmax sounds super appealing. Big fan of Earl of Squirrel.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I do think it is a funky toy to get with Zur, but Zur being a one of in a draft means that I'm personally a lot less interested in seeing narrow A+B synergies that are only good if I have Zur in my pool, draw it first, resolve it, untap with it and then attack. It's a lot of preconditions for some pretty narrow value, I'd much rather see enchantments that can do more generally reasonable things that my deck would already want to play on their own that can have some synergistic benefits as a bonus. Treacherous Blessing could be a card that has similar play patterns but a much better rate so it feels better to actually draw it in a game.

Yeah, I agree with this point of view! Obviously there's stuff like Compulsion and Drake Haven in my cube as well, but those have a very clear role to play in a particular archetype. Zur acts as a sort of expensive Demonic Tutor on steroids as it can fetch enchantments that are inherently very valuable in a specific archetype. Cunning Rhetoric has no such applications, so you all convinced me not to test the card (sorry Velrun, thanks for the positive response, but in this case I feel the detractors' arguments are more applicable to my own cube).

I have actually somehow missed Treacherous Blessing, that might be worth testing! Thanks for that suggestion

 

[Velrun]

Rhetoric has no such applications, so you all convinced me not to test the card (sorry Velrun, thanks for the positive response, but in this case I feel the detractors' arguments are more applicable to my own cube).

No worries, I said I would test it and that it could look like a fun card to me. Not that everyone should test it or that it is an objectively fun card.

I’ll test the card for you and will report back on how it goes I even have a Zur as one of the commanders in the cube so the specific tutor-situation should come up quite often. Otherwise I’ll report back when the spell has been cast a few times.

 

[shamizy]

I think this is a very bad take. Card rates and power level as a tool to decide whether or not a card is worth playing. Asking yourself "is this card better or worse than this other card that can lead to a similar outcome" is a really good way to help choose cards. Consider these three cards:

All of these cards are cantrips for 1 mana. But they also have other abilities that makes them slightly different from one another. Opt is clearly the best at being a raw cantrip, but it's significantly worse in the late game compared to the other two cards. Hieroglyphic Illumination is a cheaper draw spell than Boon of the Wish-Giver, but Boon draws twice as many cards. However, Boon isn't an instant, so it might be worse in draw-go style control decks. All three of these cards are great, and choosing which one is best relies heavily on the context of your environment.

I think you missed the point. I don't find a power level discussion useful for cube design because if I'm already discussing cards with other invested Magic players with cube experience, its a moot point. Unless you're a brand new player, there's an shared understanding about the going rate for spells and effects based on experience with the game across formats. Most of us know that 1 mana is the base rate for cantrip spells ala Serum Visions and Ponder, that 3 mana is where unconditional removal usually is with the likes of Hero's Downfall and Murderous Rider, and 4 mana is where we find on-rate unconditional exile with Vraska's Contempt variants. Card rates and power level are fine to consider, but they're not incredibly useful or particularly enlightening for discussion aside from being an entry point. Unless you're a brand new designer that isn't familiar with the game, unaware of the base rates for a given effect, treading these same lines does no good.

Exploring individual cards like the 3 you listed and figuring out scenarios and environment where each might be preferred? Maybe using that Opt to power out a Stormwing Entity. Or cycle those other draw spells in an environment for discard synergies or cards that trigger off the action when that's more useful. Great, that's useful and can open up further discussion for card choices in the context of an environment. This is is literally what I'm in favor of, what I have argued for many times in the past, and what I gave an example with the 4 mana exile spells in the rest of that paragraph.

I'm not in favor of using rates and power level as the cutoff point for discussion. It doesn't do any good if two people are already approaching a conversation from completely different angles like that. Like, I don't go into the Lower Power Spotlight thread very much because I don't have much to contribute in the way of possible suggestions/solutions. If I follow up on lower powered suggestion for a 3 drop with landfall synergies with something like well, why not just play Tireless Tracker because it does X, Y and Z? I'm clearly not on the same wavelength.

 

[froggy]

I'll preface this by saying as a whole this community has been very welcoming and I've greatly enjoyed my short time here so far.

But that being said, do you guys always pile on (not maliciously, but still) someone who comes at the situation from a 'controversial' perspective? Is funch not able to express his own takes on cube design without half the forums coming to refute him?

 

[froggy]

I'll preface this by saying as a whole this community has been very welcoming and I've greatly enjoyed my short time here so far.

But that being said, do you guys always pile on (not maliciously, but still) someone who comes at the situation from a 'controversial' perspective? Is funch not able to express his own takes on cube design without half the forums coming to refute him?

I should append this by clarifying that I'm not saying discussion is a bad thing, instead coming from a place of curiosity as I haven't been here in a proper sense very long and I'm unsure if this is traditional or the people of Riptide are just feeling argumentative.

 

[Velrun]

Welcome to the forum froggman

 

[SirFunchalot]

... if I'm already discussing cards with other invested Magic players with cube experience, its a moot point. Unless you're a brand new player, there's an shared understanding about the going rate for spells and effects based on experience with the game across formats.

Yeah I just like, don't agree with this take at all. Just because both people involved in the conversation have a lot of experience playing the game doesn't mean they're going to have a shared understanding of how rate of effect translates to actual power level of a card. Go listen to any spike content during spoiler season where the hosts do a set review exclusively trying to evaluate the cards for a particular competitive format like standard, draft, modern, etc and you will find that they very frequently have strong disagreements over just how good they expect certain cards to actually be because the evaluation is contextual to the surrounding cards. There are formats where Vraska's Contempt provides a contextually more desirable effect than Abrupt Decay despite them both being similar removal spells and one of them being much cheaper. I think if power levels were as easy to understand than competitive constructed metagames would get solved much faster than they are and we wouldn't see anywhere close to the amount of diversity of decklists at big events. Reid Duke isn't bringing Gruul Aggro to the MPL because he thinks it's more fun for him to play, he's bringing it because he thinks it's the best and most powerful deck in the metagame and Andrea Mengucci is thinking the same way when he sleaves up 4c Yorion for the same event, just as Brad Nelson is when he brought UB Rogue Mill, Martin Juza on Sultimatum, Shahar Shenhar on Temur Adventures etc etc. These pro players that spend countless hours of time testing decks, refining them, and grinding the game's competitive circuit disagree massively on every minute detail they possibly could about what is and isn't powerful from individual tech choices and sideboard options to entire deck archetypes. If the most experienced and skilled players in the game can have such wildly different takes then why on earth do you expect homogeneity of responses on some random cube forum populated mostly by players with nowhere close to as much experience or skill?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'll preface this by saying as a whole this community has been very welcoming and I've greatly enjoyed my short time here so far.

But that being said, do you guys always pile on (not maliciously, but still) someone who comes at the situation from a 'controversial' perspective? Is funch not able to express his own takes on cube design without half the forums coming to refute him?

People here are prone to randomly minutely argue over topics at irregular intervals, yes. RiptideLab's most defining feature is that we can't seem to stay on topic though

 

[Suicufnoc]

I should append this by clarifying that I'm not saying discussion is a bad thing, instead coming from a place of curiosity as I haven't been here in a proper sense very long and I'm unsure if this is traditional or the people of Riptide are just feeling argumentative.

They should feel honored that they made a post worth replying to.

Sometimes everybody will reply because they agree, but its harder to contribute when the other guy already said what you were thinking.

Like, nobody has argued with my Squirrelmax statement, because everybody agrees.

 

[Rowan_CB]

I don't know, I think power-level commentary can be helpful, especially if a poster is pointing out that a card may be lower impact than it appears, as I think was the case here.

My magic background is very casual. So while I'm not interested in power-maxing my cube, it will still be relevant to me if someone with more competitive experience points out that a card I'm interested in is likely going to be low impact in practice.

I certainly agree that power-level is not that be-all end-all of the discussion, and not even one of the most important factor to me personally, but I would think we would do fine to treat it as a data point and move on.

 

[Rowan_CB]

Therefore, the one best cube is a powermax+squirrelmax cube.

Powered cube where everyone starts with a maskwood nexus on the battlefield.

edit: god damn it I have work to do today but now I'm brewing a maskwood nexus cube.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I'll preface this by saying as a whole this community has been very welcoming and I've greatly enjoyed my short time here so far.

But that being said, do you guys always pile on (not maliciously, but still) someone who comes at the situation from a 'controversial' perspective? Is funch not able to express his own takes on cube design without half the forums coming to refute him?

To answer your question, no, I don't think we do always pile on like this, so something else is going on. Here's my take on it - in order to explain why I think this is, I've described what I think is the issue, which might be read as 'an attack' but I would prefer it to be viewed in the context of trying to increase understanding of why some people are reacting in certain ways, and hopefully providing the opportunity to think about how to engage to get the most out of participation for all.

From a cube perspective, I think the riptide community is actually quite diverse. If you start delving into individuals cubes you'll see there is a range of power levels, imbalances in colours and guilds and different takes on archetypes and themes. That means individual card choices and selections are going to have different value to those cubes, ie. there isn't a 'right' answer about appropropriateness of a card. Therefore there is much more room to discuss cards, and it is helpful if you have gained some level of familiarity with members cubes.

I think people generally appreciate this and are helpful, respectful and considering when talking about card choices. We rarely say that a card is wrong or bad, and prefer to explore things in context. Even if we're talking about a card that I don't want, or wouldn't consider, we still contribute in a way that is helpful and exploratory. This is one of the things that I think contributes to RTL being a friendly, respectful places to talk about things (and I'm even more impressed that for many English isn't their first language).

So as an example, Cunning Rhetoric, I might say something like - it depends on your environment, and whether you're likely to get multiple uses off it? Are you playing in a multi-player environment? It might cause an opponent to not attack for a small amount of damage, which is an advantage it has against pure draw spells. It could lead to some exciting, memorable games where you steal a high impact card off the opponent. If you're looking for just pure black card draw, there are more efficient options, but if you do test it, we'd be interested to hear how you get on. But personally I have no interest in this card at all.

My observation is that SirFunchalot doesn't undertake conversations in this sort of style, and effectively says that card isn't as good as another card and therefore bad. (I know, I'm simplifying here and there may be some more degree of subtlety). This approach closes down conversation, and isn't exploratory.

I think people have tried to explain some of these things, but for me, there hasn't been evidence that is being understood. There seems to be a tendency to not recognise points, pick on something that can be argued about and focus on that. People don't feel heard, or that their arguments or discussions have validity. It just carries on the argument, and doesn't feel like a constructive discussion anymore, more an attempt to prove being right.

People here are doing lots of different things with their cube. For me, it's just great seeing people have conversations about developing ideas, directions to take their cubes, and feedback on things they've tried. I think we all get on better if we try to be more tolerant and accommodating of different approaches.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I think you missed the point. I don't find a power level discussion useful for cube design because if I'm already discussing cards with other invested Magic players with cube experience, its a moot point. Unless you're a brand new player, there's an shared understanding about the going rate for spells and effects based on experience with the game across formats. Most of us know that 1 mana is the base rate for cantrip spells ala Serum Visions and Ponder, that 3 mana is where unconditional removal usually is with the likes of Hero's Downfall and Murderous Rider, and 4 mana is where we find on-rate unconditional exile with Vraska's Contempt variants. Card rates and power level are fine to consider, but they're not incredibly useful or particularly enlightening for discussion aside from being an entry point. Unless you're a brand new designer that isn't familiar with the game, unaware of the base rates for a given effect, treading these same lines does no good.

Is your argument not that you believe it is not productive to discuss the base rates and power level of cards because you think experienced designers already mostly know how these things work?

I think that there is a lot of nuance that can be spawned from discussions of power level and rate in Cube design. There are very few cards that are so much better than everything else in their class that they push out other cards. Even when those cards do exist, there usually aren't enough of them to fill out an entire Cube section without a singleton break. For example, after Lightning Bolt, there isn't really a clear next best card. There's a bunch of different Shock, Lightning strike, and Volcanic Hammer Variants that can all fill the same role as bolt. In fact, if your cube is too weak for Lightning Bolt, those other cards might be the only things in the discussion!

I also think that comparing a card to a given base rate can be good in helping to decide whether or not a card is worth using. If the base rate for a burn spell in my cube is Lightning Strike, it's useful to consider that factor during my decision process of whether or not I want to play a card like Fateful End. It shouldn't necessarily be the deciding factor, but I feel it can be a useful tool in uncovering the correct choice. I'm sure you don't have a problem with using base rate consideration in addition to other factors after reading your last post, but I still felt like this was worth stating.

Exploring individual cards like the 3 you listed and figuring out scenarios and environment where each might be preferred? Maybe using that Opt to power out a Stormwing Entity. Or cycle those other draw spells in an environment for discard synergies or cards that trigger off the action when that's more useful. Great, that's useful and can open up further discussion for card choices in the context of an environment. This is is literally what I'm in favor of, what I have argued for many times in the past, and what I gave an example with the 4 mana exile spells in the rest of that paragraph.

I don't believe your particular example really worked because Baleful Mastery is just so much better than the other two cards on average that it read like "these other cards are worse than Baleful Mastery but there are still situations where I would want to play them." It felt more like defending B-tier versions of an effect. I'm not saying Vraska's Contempt and Eat to Extinction are bad cards, because they're quite good in practice. However, I think there are cubes that can utilize Baleful Mastery that wouldn't necessarily want Vraska's Contempt and Eat to Extinction.

For my example, I purposefully chose cantrips that were almost exactly alike with their base rate. While I think it would be a mistake to say those three cards are "interchangeable," they're so close to one another that the correct option, if only one can be played, will depend almost entirely on context. You're going to need to consider whether or not there are Stormwing Entity shenanigans, or a cycling combo deck, or the play patterns of controlling strategies in your environment.

I'm not in favor of using rates and power level as the cutoff point for discussion. It doesn't do any good if two people are already approaching a conversation from completely different angles like that. Like, I don't go into the Lower Power Spotlight thread very much because I don't have much to contribute in the way of possible suggestions/solutions. If I follow up on lower powered suggestion for a 3 drop with landfall synergies with something like well, why not just play Tireless Tracker because it does X, Y and Z? I'm clearly not on the same wavelength.

I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree here. I think it's totally reasonable to discuss rates and power level as long as you're doing so within the context of a given Cube. Sometimes a card is just too mediocre to be effectively leveraged by most environments, even if it has the correct types or rules text to fit in on paper. I think in those cases, it's absolutely fine to use power level as the cutoff point for discussion, it just has to be done in context.

 

[inscho]

I feel like this whole divergence should be moved to its own thread. Lots of valuable content here, and it should be easy for people to find via the search in the future rather than buried in a set discussion thread

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I'll preface this by saying as a whole this community has been very welcoming and I've greatly enjoyed my short time here so far.

But that being said, do you guys always pile on (not maliciously, but still) someone who comes at the situation from a 'controversial' perspective? Is funch not able to express his own takes on cube design without half the forums coming to refute him?

I think some of the designers who intentionally build low-power Cubes or Cubes that do not prioritize hyper-consistent gameplay are perhaps having a hard time seeing where Funch is coming from. If you've been playing Kor Skyfisher to good effect for a decade and then someone comes in and tells you that it's actually terrible because of the negative tempo swing or whatever, you're probably going to want to refute that point. After all, if it's been working for you for however long, then clearly it's not bad, at least in the specific context of your environment. Funch has a tendency to focus primarily on card efficieny, which just isn't something a number of people here actually care all that much about because they have really slow Cubes. It really does not help that other members who might be more keen to what Sirfunchalot is saying have not joined the conversation these past few days, so the conversation has mostly centered around the designers who are going to have the biggest disagreements with Sirfunchalot in the first place.

I also think Riptide discussions tend to approach cards with an "open-minded" attitude. People usually try to look for the value in cards instead of dismissing them offhand, especially from a power level perspective. Usually, if your argument against a card is just "the card is not good," people will want to try to refute that in some capacity because most cards that aren't on the quality level of ember shot because they may be fun to play with or have some application somewhere.

Being successful in Riptide discussion involves learning how to engage with cards in a way that recognizes their potential value even if your ultimate takeaway is "don't play this."

Welcome to the forum froggman

Frogwoman

 

[SirFunchalot]

To answer your question, no, I don't think we do always pile on like this, so something else is going on. Here's my take on it - in order to explain why I think this is, I've described what I think is the issue, which might be read as 'an attack' but I would prefer it to be viewed in the context of trying to increase understanding of why some people are reacting in certain ways, and hopefully providing the opportunity to think about how to engage to get the most out of participation for all.

From a cube perspective, I think the riptide community is actually quite diverse. If you start delving into individuals cubes you'll see there is a range of power levels, imbalances in colours and guilds and different takes on archetypes and themes. That means individual card choices and selections are going to have different value to those cubes, ie. there isn't a 'right' answer about appropropriateness of a card. Therefore there is much more room to discuss cards, and it is helpful if you have gained some level of familiarity with members cubes.

I think people generally appreciate this and are helpful, respectful and considering when talking about card choices. We rarely say that a card is wrong or bad, and prefer to explore things in context. Even if we're talking about a card that I don't want, or wouldn't consider, we still contribute in a way that is helpful and exploratory. This is one of the things that I think contributes to RTL being a friendly, respectful places to talk about things (and I'm even more impressed that for many English isn't their first language).

So as an example, Cunning Rhetoric, I might say something like - it depends on your environment, and whether you're likely to get multiple uses off it? Are you playing in a multi-player environment? It might cause an opponent to not attack for a small amount of damage, which is an advantage it has against pure draw spells. It could lead to some exciting, memorable games where you steal a high impact card off the opponent. If you're looking for just pure black card draw, there are more efficient options, but if you do test it, we'd be interested to hear how you get on. But personally I have no interest in this card at all.

I'm glad to hear this sort of behavior isn't that frequent of an occurrence since it's certainly been my experience trying to engage in discussion for the past couple days. I fully understand that individuals are going to have wildly different goals and aspirations for their format and in my analysis of any individual card I'm not intending to pass any value judgments about whether or not that makes it an "appropriate" inclusion or not, because, again, I don't know the individuals here intimately or their playgroups and their individual tastes and preferences. All I can analyze is what a card does, how it lines up against the context of the format it is being evaluated within, and the other options that exist within the card pool of the game that can fill the intended role. But certainly users here should feel more than welcome to play any cards, for any reason, regardless of whether or not I think a card is contextually strong or weak, they're the Monarch of their cube castle and it's not my place to pass any sort of judgment on actual card inclusions and I certainly hope that my words aren't being internalized as though that is the intention. It isn't.

My observation is that SirFunchalot doesn't undertake conversations in this sort of style, and effectively says that card isn't as good as another card and therefore bad. (I know, I'm simplifying here and there may be some more degree of subtlety). This approach closes down conversation, and isn't exploratory.

I think people have tried to explain some of these things, but for me, there hasn't been evidence that is being understood. There seems to be a tendency to not recognise points, pick on something that can be argued about and focus on that. People don't feel heard, or that their arguments or discussions have validity. It just carries on the argument, and doesn't feel like a constructive discussion anymore, more an attempt to prove being right.

People here are doing lots of different things with their cube. For me, it's just great seeing people have conversations about developing ideas, directions to take their cubes, and feedback on things they've tried. I think we all get on better if we try to be more tolerant and accommodating of different approaches.

This bit, however, I feel is unfair and a misrepresentation of my position and how I've spoken. I assure you, I'm not failing to understand the arguments made by others, I simply do not always agree with their specific points as I'm sure they do not always agree with mine. Now we can try and explore topics on a deeper level trying to share information with one another to better articulate why we think the way we do about a given topic, but I'm gonna be honest here, a lot of the opposing points I've encountered contain some fairly condescending and hostile tones that I don't really think are deserved considering that all we're doing is talking about inanimate pieces of cardboard. Maybe this is just a holdover from when you cats were on MTGS and people made fun of you for intentionally playing weaker cards; I'm not judging anyone for saying they are aware of a cards lower power level compared to similar options and are intentionally choosing to play with it either regardless or because of that context. I don't care about the specific cards anyone chooses to play, your cube inclusions do not effect me in any way and I want you to enjoy your cube as much as possible when you play it, so please, play whatever the fuck you want. If playing a card like Cunning Rhetoric is going to make you happy, then by all means play the fucking thing, I'm not stopping you and I'm not trying to stop you.

What I will push back on, is when there's a disagreement about how good we actually think cards are within a context, maybe you think Cunning Rhetoric is bananas and Read the Bones is weaker, we can have a conversation about that and we can each make points explaining our positions. It seems to me like a lot of conversations devolve into variations of that kind of discussion and unfortunately I don't really back down from those types of conversations easily because, unfortunately, I'm a very experienced and high skilled former competitive grinder of not just Magic but multiple similar card games, so I like to think I at least have a pretty decent understanding of what I'm talking about. This means either the other user makes a strong enough case to get me to view the situation as they do or we simply have to agree to disagree and move on.

I think some of the designers who intentionally build low-power Cubes or Cubes that do not prioritize hyper-consistent gameplay are perhaps having a hard time seeing where Funch is coming from. If you've been playing Kor Skyfisher to good effect for a decade and then someone comes in and tells you that it's actually terrible because of the negative tempo swing or whatever, you're probably going to want to refute that point. After all, if it's been working for you for however long, then clearly it's not bad, at least in the specific context of your environment. Funch has a tendency to focus primarily on card efficieny, which just isn't something a number of people here actually care all that much about because they have really slow Cubes. It really does not help that other members who might be more keen to what Sirfunchalot is saying have not joined the conversation these past few days, so the conversation has mostly centered around the designers who are going to have the biggest disagreements with Sirfunchalot in the first place.

It's true, I care a *lot* about card efficiency, I think it is perhaps the single most defining characteristic for how I think about the game. I'm always comparing cards to other cards both within the context of a format and outside of it to grok how effectively I'm enacting a particular gameplan. I'm a "tinkerer / refiner" kind of Spike as Mark Rosewater would say, my goal in any game I play is to solve the puzzle before me and figure out the best way to do something to achieve my goal and in Magic this means eeking out extremely small advantages to maximize my win percentage both in gameplay but also deckbuilding. I care deeply about finding small mana advantages, marginally improving my card quality, decreasing the likelihood of flood or screw. To me, getting these tiny optimizations is what Magic is all about and it's what I find to be the most fun. I don't really care about novel or unexpected interactions or making quirky cards shine in unique circumstances, I just want to cast my Brainstorm immediately after my opponent cracks their Misty Rainforest so I know they're no longer representing Spell Pierce and I can guarantee that I set up to flip my Delver of Secrets through their permission spell. I totally get that this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's the perspective I come from when I think about the game.

I also think Riptide discussions tend to approach cards with an "open-minded" attitude. People usually try to look for the value in cards instead of dismissing them offhand, especially from a power level perspective. Usually, if your argument against a card is just "the card is not good," people will want to try to refute that in some capacity because most cards that aren't on the quality level of ember shot because they may be fun to play with or have some application somewhere.

Being successful in Riptide discussion involves learning how to engage with cards in a way that recognizes their potential value even if your ultimate takeaway is "don't play this."

This is definitely a perspective I'm not really used to so there might be some growing pains as I become more accustomed to how you folks chat about cards. My background mostly being in solving and optimizing formats and decklists means that dismissing cards is like 90% of what I do when I see cards. I tend to see magic sets as comprised of about 90% unplayable garbage and draft chaff with 10% of cards that are actually relevant to any of the formats I play. It's a lot of mental effort to spend thinking about cards with extremely fringe or narrow applications when ultimately we can pretty easily snuff out that they won't be relevant players. Obviously cube is very different and the barrier to entry is often a good bit lower and I simply need to acclimate my expectations a bit for the context that a lot of Riptide Lab cubes are operating at. I'm not really used to formats where something like Cunning Rhetoric is a seriously considered playable card as I don't really play retail limited or have any cubes anywhere close to that segment of the power level pyramid so my unfamiliarity with this space is certainly going to color how I view these kinds of cards as I'm used to seeing cards like Sea Snidd and Kianne, Dean of Substance and as far as a Standard power level format is concerned they're both "unplayable garbage" but in low power formats the actual gradient between the two is apparent and I need to do a better job at recognizing that here.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I'm used to seeing cards like Sea Snidd and Kianne, Dean of Substance and as far as a Standard power level format is concerned they're both "unplayable garbage" but in low power formats the actual gradient between the two is apparent and I need to do a better job at recognizing that here.

Yeah, Sea Snidd is so much more powerful than Kianne, Dean of Substance it's just plain sad.