The Penny Pincher Cube 2.0--Inventors' Fair

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thanks, that deck is a good example of how I would like the aggressive drops to work out: you can get fairly aggressive sequences, but the cards are fine with slow hands as well, and the low drops retain some utility.

Probably want some more embalm and eternalize to stealth sneak in midrange functionality into more aggressive aggro shells.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

These are the swaps I'm looking at by the time the new set comes out:

To Be Implemented Fully by 7-7-2017
These changes are based on contemporary play testing results. Some of them have already been completed.

sunbeam spellbomb->cogworkers puzzleknot
soul-scar mage->greater gargadon
ghastly demise->never//return
honored hydra ->roar of the wurm
binding mummy-> glory-bound initiate
failure // comply->remand
flameblade adept->figure of destiny
horror of the broken lands->metalspinner's puzzleknot
prepare // fight -> shelter
champion of the parish -> student of warfare
bloodsoaked champion -> sarcomancy
stromkirk occultist -> Arc Mage
stromkirk noble->stormblood berserker
zombie infestation->oversold cemetary
Dissenter's Deliverence->Satyr Wayfinder
hanna, ship's navigator->aven wind guide
miasmic mummy->rotting rats

Hour of Devastation Era Swaps

dread wanderer->diregraf ghoul
gargoyle's castle->radiant fountain
Recollect->Down // Dirty
Volt Charge->Struggle // Survive
Domonic Cullusion-> Razaketh's Rite
Gideon's Reproach-> Farm // Market
Exempler of Strength->Hope Tender
Stormblood Berserker/flameblade adept->Burning Fist Minotaur
Oketra's Attendant->sunscourge champion
Quirion Dryad->Resilient Khenra
Mog War Marshal->Earthshaker Khenra
Renewed Faith->Leave // Chance
isamaru, hound of konda->adorned pouncer
zurgo bellstriker->hellspark elemental
silumgar sorcerer->Champion of wits
Lord of the Accursed->Grisly Survivor
wander in death-> claim // fame

More Speculative Swaps, may not occur
sesmic assualt->refuse // cooperate
Wyden, the biting Gale->Forbidden Alchemy
reviving melody->Ramnumap excavator

This has the following results:

1. Signals aggro better by reducing the density of unflexiable one drops, and signals to midrange decks to lower their curve via flexible sources of powerful 1-2cc pressure that either provide strong pressure, or can be embalmed, eternalized, or unearthed in the midgame to build or rebuild a competitive board state. The ghoul and sarcomancy seem ok. Not really interested in recursive black 1 drops that can't block, as this sends the wrong signals.

Really, very difficult for me to describe the one drop signaling. But basically, it either has to directly communicate the structure of a valid deck (tool craft exemplar) or not directly signal curve outs as a strategy (student of warfare is a fine midgame draw, isamaru is not). Two drops shouldn't be curve out two drops (blood thirst), but hefty, tough, or providing enough utility (blood rage brawler) to create an incentive for a midrange drafter to begin slanting the curve downwards.

The recursive cards as a mechanic--and we again, finally have enough density of these effects that can block at low CC thanks to amonkhet/hour of devastation--provide a simple card advantage tool built into the aggressive drops. You don't have to really understand the game to profit from this, helping casual players, lowering the learning curve, and greatly minimizing the number of developmental paths resulting in misdrafts.

2. Provides a density of mana sinks that create bodies and push the game forward. This helps all of the decks across the board, and makes games more fun, but more importantly, very casual drafters don't always understand the importance of library manipulation, building miserable decks that stall out in the midgame, becoming dependent on the top deck lottery. This goes a long way towards making them, and those games, less miserable.

3. Aftermath is flashback 2.0, but probably better for cube. I was never really available before with the density of good from the graveyard interactions, and the aftermath cards really play a huge role towards making this a great gy format. They fill the niche that flashback cards held in the original triple III. They also simulate RGD in the sense that there is a lot more cool, but odd ball effects tacked onto cards, and they provide a way to artificially boost the multi-color section. This feels like it adds infinite layers to the format.

It feels like to have a good gy format, you want players to be self-milling about 7ish cards a game, and if you want them to be pushing themselves towards decking, it feels like 10-12 cards in a game is a good number. The big motivations seem to be:

1. Self-discard as a value play: enabled by cards retaining use from the yard (aftermath, flashback, embalm, eternalize).

2. GY recursion as the principle source of card advantage in a format. Once they can easily generate CA by just ripping cards off the top via traditional card draw (and this includes cards like Fact or fiction), thats just too efficient for a true gy CA package to compete, as the former is unconditioned CA, and the later is conditioned.

Once you have to go the yard to fill your basic card advantage needs, than milling 7-12 cards a game starts to seem great, especially when you have a critical mass of goods cards castable from the yard, due to all of these Amonkhet printings.

Than my plan after this is to just not look at spoilers ever again, and finally retire from designing cubes. Objective completed, time to move on to something else.

 

[ahadabans]

Those changes look good to me. I'm happy to see you pushing the gy stuff so much. Your innistrad cube was sweet and I felt that angle wasn't as heavily represented in penny pincher 1.0 (not a bad thing, I just really like gy shenanigans).

Than my plan after this is to just not look at spoilers ever again, and finally retire from designing cubes. Objective completed, time to move on to something else.

Really? But you are so good at it. Your lists are always so well thought out. I understand there's burnout with this. I feel it myself and it's not the first time for me. Once I dial in my combo list, I'm at a minimum taking a break.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Its not really burn out, its more that I've realized that the pleasure comes from pursuing the goal, and achieving it is actually quite bad, because now you have the problem of coming up with a new goal to achieve in order to be happy. So, basically, what I would end up doing was just endlessly ripping up a great format, probably making it worse in the process, and just engaging in an endless cycle of format destruction to artificially create challenge. I don't think thats good to do at this point, and I have to let cube identity Grillo go, and move on to something else.

Plus, there isn't much outside reward or incentive to completely design a new format, which is really time consuming. I'm realizing that cube design is probably an infinite define space (albeit not all of those designs would be good), and that to cope with that complexity, cube designers basically just gravitate towards a meta structure, revolving around a vetted pool of meta cards (meta as in the things that transcends the entire range of things--in this case cubes). For example, most of the formats here are nested beneath Jason's original Riptide design, and are just variations of his original structure, built from a pool of very similar cards that have transcended all other potential cards in the card pool. His format is, in turn, nested beneath the broader Power Max structure. I would argue that contemporary pauper and peasant cubes are nested beneath that format as well. This has essentially been the project hundreds of people have been laboring on for well over a decade--arguing about and perfecting this one design, and establishing the library of cards that most assist in that process.

Of course, the reason for this is that doing anything else is just a gigantic pain. The process of developing the penny format was really a four year process, which is insane when you think about it. Its the only separate meta structure distinct from the power max cube that I know of, and the only separate meta structure that has actually succeeded in populating nested cubes beneath it to some extent. The only real exception I can think of are the desert cubes, but I'm not sure how "real" those formats really are off of cube tutor (note: I think there is tremendous design space there). Some of the formats here are starting to mutate though in interesting directions (sigh and RBM, as well as probably Alfonso--who doesn't post as much as he should) and I have no idea what to think about that.

But anyways, a big part of designing this format was coming up with a new library of meta cards that would fit into this new structure, which took literally years, and is probably far from complete, but I have my 360, and this format feels very real. No one will likely play it besides my group, and maybe a few other people, but I would stand by this as being as good or better than most professionally designed limited formats, and better than most competing cubes if not all of them. There is some triumph in that I suppose.

Vetting a new library of cards though is...very annoying, and no one really talks about structure--since there is no reason as cubes have been premised off of the same meta format--it was a gigantic pain having to learn a bunch of things you think would have been handled a decade ago:

1. How to design aggro
2. How to design tribal
3. How to support graveyard interactions
4. NWO structure vs. pre-NWO structure
5. Guild, wedge, and shard identities
6. What is tempo
7. Cube as a midrange dominated format
8. Conditional vs. non-conditional removal
9. Archetype design
10. Signaling
11. How bad players evaluate cards and play magic
10. How certain beloved limited formats actually functioned

But the journey was really sweet, and I learned a lot about how insane people are in the process. Thank goodness Salvation was such a stifling place and it caused this forum to exist, as it would have been terrible otherwise.

I realize this is probably my most insane sounding ramble, but it really isn't!

 

[ahadabans]

Not insane at all. I think it's raw and honest. One of my favorite posts from you actually.

I can identify with some of your struggles. I've spent literally hundreds of hours on my cube experiments, which while rooted in power max philosophy deviates enough to be very different in actual play (you'll just have to take my word on that). I don't have a consistent enough group, so didn't get as far as you did with actually building my own unique meta and putting it through the ringer balance wise. And to some extent, I've nearly exhausted all avenues I have open to me at this point short of rounding up a new group of people to do more consistent testing with (which I'm not motivated to do). I have one last thing I want to complete, but it's going to be very time consuming and I'm hesitating on how much value there truly is in doing it. Primarily because - like you - my list is likely not ever going to be played outside my group. So it's for me only and just about the love of development at this point. Is that enough?

If it's any consolation, I think you came the nearest to actually achieving a nearly perfect version of Magic. That's pretty sweet and I'm glad I got to read about it. This forum has been great. I'm glad I found it.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Lets talk about a card called Death Cloud, and the terrible things it just did in this absurd shell.

R/B Death Cloud from CubeTutor.com

This was a complicated little monster, designed to shut an opponent out by resolving both oversold cemetery and death cloud, leaving at least 3 lands left, than recurring bone shredders, asylum visitors or sin prodders to drown the opponent out in value. Demonic Collusion provides a way to assemble whatever the missing pieces are, and note the two aftermath cards whose front sides are impossible to cast--they are there purely as value discards to fuel the hellbent engine.

Than it also had these weird hands where greater gargadon would come down and start fueling the cemetery (black genesis), or be recurred back after a death cloud, get suspended, and than sit there a few turns value eating 1-2cc drops, making sure the cemetery stayed oversold, before rushing over to murder the opponent. Asylum visitor looked great as well, as either an early turn 2 play, a value turn 4 play off of reunion, or recurred post death cloud to draw cards. It could be insane in that situation, since it triggers at each upkeep, and death cloud, of course, easily can strip each players hand.

Death cloud is an amazing magic card, and very well designed, being essentially a reasonable version of balance. It was interesting watching it so naturally fit into a deck. It seemed like every part of the deck managed to support the death cloud plan in some way, the three powerful engine pieces--death cloud, greater gargedon, and oversold cemetery--all mutually complimenting each other to build something that managed to find every angle it could to turn every piece of Rakdos self-consumption into a powerful advantage, and it did so without being an obvious pox deck.

Three high pick cards that came together, but because they were engine cards rather than just generic good stuff, you get this intricate little syngery engine that runs off of the consumption of the self. And since its built better to do that from every angle, when it resolves death cloud it just wins--thats how a pox strategy should look and work in cube.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, here's a revelation from last night, now that I've had some more time to think about it.

The first picks in this format tend to be engine pieces for broad mechanical themes (draw-discard sifters, or TOL manipulation self-mill), rather than just generically good cards or even narrow build-arounds for archetypes. Thats why I cut the honored hydra, and will continue to cut any cards that pop up that draft like it.




Which work best when they are nested beneath supporting mechanics that are common across a wedge or shard--the draw/discard sifting in Grixis, the graveyard artifact CA in mardu, the self-mill TOL manipulation, or the trinket/ETB land self-bounce.

The developmental path of a draft, revolves around first picking an engine piece, rather than just a generic good card. In a certain sense, there isn't actually a difference between wormcoil engine, grave titan, tragtusk, or jace, the mind sculptor, as far as draft dynamics are concerned. While there is a big difference between genesis, greater gargadon, masticore, or firemane angle.

Masicore is a good exemplar of this, compared with its high power equivalent--wormcoil engine. Both are--in formats reflective of their respective eras--easy first picks due to their power level and colorless status. However, masticore has the potential to be built into a format as an engine piece, in ways that wormcoil engine never can be.

The trade-off is format accessibility, but the format gains tremendously in depth, which I think--giving the already complex nature of cube and absurd price tag that makes replayability a priority--is better.

And I think that that idea carries over cross power level: cards like griselbrand, yawgmoth's will, or palinchron are interesting because of their status as plastic, engine cards, but not because of their power level. The entire storm deck is intriguing because its basically just a collection of engines.

And here is the thing--its the plastic build arounds that make magic fun. Players don't actually seem to care or register that a madness enabling masticore is supposed to be worse or less fun than a storm enabling grislebrand. The game is at its best when the meta-game is about collecting and optimizing engine pieces within the mechanical structure.

If the central metric that actually matters for enjoying magic is high pickable engine pieces nested into a supporting mechanical structure, than you don't need mythics or chase rares totaling thousands of dollars, or supporting mana bases worth thousands of dollars, or even need to bleed off hundreds of dollars worth of ink cartridges to get a collection of never-quite-right proxies. In fact, those cards might actually be making your format shallow and less fun.

And that was the shift at Lorwyn--the game started to focus more on accessible, but generically good designs like ETB creatures and planeswalkers, and away from a focus on engine pieces, which has been reflected in cube. We are a long ways away from the 2006 era designs, that revolved around things like mystical teachings, teferi, dralnu, firemane angel, glare of subdual, skeletal vampire, or dread return.

And that seems to match with commentary from MARO, about how TSP standard was too complicated and tournament attendance suffered during that era, NWO designs focus on simplifying commons via ETBs around that time to address onboard complexity, and the generic goodness of flagship planeswalkers to become the marketing face and entry point for the game.

 

[ahadabans]

Death Cloud is an insane card. Nick West (https://mtgcube.blogspot.com) has raved about it numerous times in his posts and it was his insistence that encouraged me to try it. No power max cubers run this card and that's a shame. More cubes should try running it I feel and it's probably one of the last black cards I would ever cut. The mana cost is prohibitive, but it does so much and fits so well into what most black sections want to do. Oversold Cemetery is a card I'm constantly looking at and wondering if I should be running. But it feels a tiny bit narrow and slow for my power level. Still, card oozes flavor and I love me some additional gy synergies.

Spot on with your analysis about engine pieces being the heart of this game. At least in Cube. And I think that's why this format in particular took off the way it did. It tapped into this truth about the game - what made the game actually great. This is also why I've been an opponent of the power arms race because it is moving away from synergy driven Magic.

The only reason I have not come down lower in power level to where you are working is because it limits some of the resources you can draw upon (thousands of old forum posts and testing by other cube owners). Which is fine if you have a regular group of drafters to test with and build your own data source. Broken record, but 10 years ago cubes were operating on a similar level to your penny pincher projects. This current penny pincher project is not far away from a 2008 unpowered rare list (power max design). Cards like Masticore, Genesis, etc. were first pickable cards for the exact reasons they are in your list. That brand of Magic is timeless and awesome as it produces amazing depth in gameplay and deck design. There's a lot of power but it has to be unlocked. And people weren't fine tuning metas back then either, they were simply running cards with high ceilings and it was all coming together organically despite bad curves and loose fixing, etc.

New sets have given us more tools to take that original version of cube and improve upon it. I think you are doing it the right way. Everyone else who has just made 9 years worth of power swaps have lost so much of what made cube cool. Masticore >>> Wurmcoil Engine if depth of gameplay is what you want. So few cube owners see that. I've been hoping we'd see this evolution in thought in the larger cube community, and we may still in time. I hope so. I think the format is going to die if we don't because there won't be anything fun about playing with a bunch of True-Name Nemesis cards and that's the only place power max thinking can go.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Made the Hour of Devestation updates, and c-stick provided some nice drafts that highlight how some of those mechanics can help a format.

GW Beats from CubeTutor.com

This is a really nice deck with an aggressive stance, the ability to disrupt or create spaces in the removal suite, negate blockers, and the ability to come back from behind with a combo kill out of nowhere from the double strike creatures.

The tricky thing with these types of decks, is that they have no in-built mechanism for controlling their draws, and this could be a problem, since most of this aggressive decks draws will turn on at turn 2, which means we're looking at the sort of low CC aggressive midrange deck I've been talking about. This deck is going to get into the midgame and late game, where it will have to grind, and we can't have a deck list like this just entering top deck mode, auto-losing to decks with better manipulation, or worse--leaving the player to sit there bored, making prayers and sacrificing goats to the god of the TOL--those terrible lulls in gameplay, the doldrums, that this style of green deck is susceptible to.

The two eternalize creatures--and mouth // feed--help address this, by filling those gaps in the draw cycles. Rather than falling behind and losing due to hitting too many lands off of the TOL, the deck can fill in those draw-gaps with plays that feel as impactful as if you had hit TOL action--keeping the action flowing, with everyone having fun, rather than sitting there, joylessly cursing negative variance and the top of the deck.

Given that formats naturally allow these types of decks to exist, I think its important to minimize that type of miserable game state they naturally will trend towards, by giving the player good mana sinks. And these mana sinks that add a body to the board, from the graveyard, are some of the best we've had.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Its not really burn out, its more that I've realized that the pleasure comes from pursuing the goal, and achieving it is actually quite bad, because now you have the problem of coming up with a new goal to achieve in order to be happy. So, basically, what I would end up doing was just endlessly ripping up a great format, probably making it worse in the process, and just engaging in an endless cycle of format destruction to artificially create challenge. I don't think thats good to do at this point, and I have to let cube identity Grillo go, and move on to something else.

Plus, there isn't much outside reward or incentive to completely design a new format, which is really time consuming. I'm realizing that cube design is probably an infinite define space (albeit not all of those designs would be good), and that to cope with that complexity, cube designers basically just gravitate towards a meta structure, revolving around a vetted pool of meta cards (meta as in the things that transcends the entire range of things--in this case cubes). For example, most of the formats here are nested beneath Jason's original Riptide design, and are just variations of his original structure, built from a pool of very similar cards that have transcended all other potential cards in the card pool. His format is, in turn, nested beneath the broader Power Max structure. I would argue that contemporary pauper and peasant cubes are nested beneath that format as well. This has essentially been the project hundreds of people have been laboring on for well over a decade--arguing about and perfecting this one design, and establishing the library of cards that most assist in that process.

Of course, the reason for this is that doing anything else is just a gigantic pain. The process of developing the penny format was really a four year process, which is insane when you think about it. Its the only separate meta structure distinct from the power max cube that I know of, and the only separate meta structure that has actually succeeded in populating nested cubes beneath it to some extent. The only real exception I can think of are the desert cubes, but I'm not sure how "real" those formats really are off of cube tutor (note: I think there is tremendous design space there). Some of the formats here are starting to mutate though in interesting directions (sigh and RBM, as well as probably Alfonso--who doesn't post as much as he should) and I have no idea what to think about that.

But anyways, a big part of designing this format was coming up with a new library of meta cards that would fit into this new structure, which took literally years, and is probably far from complete, but I have my 360, and this format feels very real. No one will likely play it besides my group, and maybe a few other people, but I would stand by this as being as good or better than most professionally designed limited formats, and better than most competing cubes if not all of them. There is some triumph in that I suppose.

Vetting a new library of cards though is...very annoying, and no one really talks about structure--since there is no reason as cubes have been premised off of the same meta format--it was a gigantic pain having to learn a bunch of things you think would have been handled a decade ago:

1. How to design aggro
2. How to design tribal
3. How to support graveyard interactions
4. NWO structure vs. pre-NWO structure
5. Guild, wedge, and shard identities
6. What is tempo
7. Cube as a midrange dominated format
8. Conditional vs. non-conditional removal
9. Archetype design
10. Signaling
11. How bad players evaluate cards and play magic
10. How certain beloved limited formats actually functioned

But the journey was really sweet, and I learned a lot about how insane people are in the process. Thank goodness Salvation was such a stifling place and it caused this forum to exist, as it would have been terrible otherwise.

I realize this is probably my most insane sounding ramble, but it really isn't!

Two roads diverged in a crowded wood, and i
I took the one grillo brushed aside, for he had found the end

And I was terrified of the end

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

A few quick thoughts.

The deathcloud deck from last weekend reminded me of how powerful unconditioned tutor effects are. Every cube deck I've ever drafted/seen that felt truly constructed was abusing tutors to do something powerful consistently: in this case, making sure it could run cemetery into deathcloud to lock down the game.

It makes me wonder if the the two elements to a combo cube aren't:

1. Having a selection of highly pickable engine pieces that combine to win games, as a sort of alternate win condition.
2. Tutors to allow those decks to consistently assemble the pieces they need.

And if thats a formula, than again, combo formats probably don't need to be power maxing.

And than, also, perhaps unconditional tutors are something fair cubes should be intrinsically wary of. Demonic collusion is an odd card in the abstract, that hemorrhages tempo, but even as a super nerfed demonic tutor, it felt very good here. As bad as it might seem, when resolving a card means you'll probably win the game in the next couple turns--rather than just being a generic value play--its not too bad.

Also, I was toying around with some of the old pre-NWO structures, and it occurred to me that some of the original creature cheat cards from the early 2000s, may have been devised as work arounds for the tempo problem I keep on going on about. Basically, casting 5+ CC monsters into cheap bounce is an easy way to lose the game, when you aren't getting any return on your mana investment. R&D would solve this problem eventually by stapling ETBs onto everything, but I suspect one of the original ideas behind, say, sneak attack or elvish piper, was to create a way to minimize the mana expenditure into otherwise expensive, bounce-sensitive- threats. If you paid one mana on your turn to sneak a symbiotic wurm, or piper a verdant force, into play, you feel less bad if it get hits by a capsize, swords, or whatever else people were running around with for removal during that era. Its a way to keep high CC creatures relevant in eras of strong interaction. Of course it spiraled horribly out of control with future printings...

 

[ahadabans]

I love that you are taking time to deconstruct some of this because it's useful for me to have another sounding board on it since it's what my combo exercise has really centered around. You are reaching most of the same conclusions I came to.

Part of the power of tutors is the power level variance between your high powered cards (in combo - those are high synergy cards or engine pieces) versus your average good stuff card. I wondered with my midrange list where I was hammering the curve really flat why demonic tutor often felt weaker than impulse. I was valuing the draw smoothing and instant speed of impulse much more than being able to find a specific card since my decks were not typically revolving around engine pieces.

On the 5+ CC monster thing... I think it was more just Wizards (and Richard Garfield) underestimating how much a threat was worth in the abstract. Again, if you have never played the game you'd see a one time use spell that did X and then try to compare that to a creature which was around forever potentially providing ongoing value. Of course, in practice creatures get chumped, they die, they encounter moat or Maze of Ith, etc. So they are providing a lot less ongoing value in reality than they appear to do on paper. Wizards corrected that over the years, then went overboard once walkers were introduced. Here they did they opposite by undervaluing the true ongoing value of walkers and thinking it would be more like creatures where combat damage would stunt how much value they gave you. Yeah, not so much.

I've been trying to find a middle ground with my list where combo was not so degenerate that you had time to interact with it or race it. This is very hard to do. Natural Order into Craterhoof Behemoth is so painfully easy to assemble and has virtually zero ways to stop outside a counterspell or a fog effect. It can only be "balanced" with more degeneracy or speed. That's why power max lists are generally completely obsessed with 2 power 1 drop aggro. The whole meta crumbles unless those decks are running rampant and gold fishing T4.

There is some middle ground though. Sneak attack into a play a Kokusho and you are just not really doing that much more than a solid curve out deck. Sure, it's a 10 point life swing, but it might as well be Sorin's Vengeance lite. Depending on how good your other archetypes are, it's not even technically broken.

A final piece to this puzzle which is nearly impossible to calculate too is difficulty in assembling. Take storm for example. A nut deck list even in my meta is a force of evil. It's pretty much unstoppable and can be extremely consistent. It's the best deck you can build in my list. But it's also the hardest deck to build. I've tried drafting storm a dozen times and I've made maybe 2 good lists and 10 lists that will be 1-2 decks and only get cheap wins off of bad draws or even worse decks. That's a form of balance, maybe not a good one though. Still, I do not believe for a second that if people drafted my cube regularly, storm would dominate it. It's too damn hard to draft. Too many cards have to get passed to you and it's exceedingly hard to force.

I love the idea of combo because one thing I didn't care for in my midrange lists was how easy it was to just build a solid deck. I guess that's fine, especially for more casual players, but there just wasn't much challenge to it and picks felt somewhat meaningless. Whether I run one good stuff card over another, it was more about do I need another 4 drop? I have 3 choices I could run, which do I want? That was partly an issue with the power level of my lists. It was too high for midrange magic to be all that interesting. This is where Penny Pincher I think is closer to a sweet spot. Because synergy is really good here and I think it matters more in drafting. I am again trying to tap into that with my lists but using higher power options. In a way, there's higher ceilings but the floors are higher which cancels that out (even more than cancels it out maybe). I don't know. If I had 8 dedicated players interested in a cube like what you are building, I'd go to town testing and refining. The journey would be fun. I feel like you did that with PP 1.0 and I enjoyed reading all the discovery you did along the way.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, I'm having a hard time articulating this, which is unfortunate, because I feel its important. Part of it though is embodied kind of in this quote:

but there just wasn't much challenge to it and picks felt somewhat meaningless. Whether I run one good stuff card over another, it was more about do I need another 4 drop? I have 3 choices I could run, which do I want?

Back when I was running the old net decked power cube from years ago, I remember drafting a deck with the balance->gargadon combo in it, held together by some tutor I don't remember. This is difficult to describe, but the deck felt constructed vs. its opposite numbers. Sort of like back in the day, the difference between somebody who had assembled a pile of good cards, and the difference between someone who had assembled a pile of good cards in a way that had unlocked a higher level of interaction--something powerful, dynamic, whose development felt like a natural organic evolution of the card index, but needed to be discovered and realized by the drafter.

This is different from the feeling of when you showed up with your prosperous bloom deck, stomped all over them, and no one wanted to play with you again. Different from assembling a bunch of reasonable, but ultimately interchangeable good cards, and than grinding the opponent out.

Thats what that death cloud deck felt like: someone found a way to layer two powerful engines over one another, tied together by a tutor, and than gravitated all of the rest of the pieces around it, until the deck itself had become this perfect, dynamic, flexible, and powerful engine. The combination was like a not-obvious shift in perspective, that once realized, brought the entire deck to an entirely new level.

The engine pieces enabled good things, but than the player could figure out combinations to do extraordinary things by layering the engines, and the tutors facilitated the entire process.

At least thats how it seems to me, in a still very abstract sense.

 

[ahadabans]

Spot on. And you are describing what I love about cube.

When I first started playing, I was blown away by the depth. I think a lot of people are and why this format took off the way it did. "Layers" is a good word that captures it too. You start by seeing an interaction and it's sweet because combined the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but then there's an exponential effect when you layer these things (or things happen and you see the layers come together). I read an article that talked about this. It was around Astral Slide. And how when you first see that card, you think "oh neat, I can block and then save my blocker". And then it goes farther and you see "oh hey, I can abuse some ETB effect AND block a dude at the same time", then you realize you can do even more like get back a card that cycles by looping eternal witness and now you have this engine. That is the essence of cube interactions which make the format so amazing.

I remember a game very vaguely now, but it involved Genesis and the game was just completely nuts. Not in a grindy way where you just out value over time and it's inevitable. It was swingy but not so swingy that it felt like top decking bonfire of the damned. It was just right. I can't really explain this game I played other than to say it just kept one upping itself as all these things started happening. It seemed like one person was going to win and it seemed impossible for that to change and then a series of plays that sort of uncovered themselves - like solving a Rubix cube - and things turned the other way.

Ever since that game I was hooked on cube. I've sometimes stumbled away design wise from that place where my meta got too easy to solve, not layered enough, too layered, too janky. It's been all over the place. It's frustrating sometimes but also really satisfying when you hit on something and it takes things a way you didn't expect. That's really the best. When you don't plan something and it's organic and so much more than you could have hoped for. This is the primary reason I favor some of these powered cards with high ceilings. I don't know what people are going to do with some of these cards and I'm often really surprised and that's just super satisfying for me.

 

[inscho]

This discussion is relevant to my interests, and articulates some thoughts I've been unable to put into words. Is there an independent thread on Riptide where we can highlight specific combo archetypes that exemplify these ideas? Most of the content I have to add to this discussion is deck related, and seems out of place to put here.

 

[ahadabans]

There might be a combo thread in the main forum. If you can't find one, create it. I'm a fan of discussing this.

 

[sigh]

Safra made a combo thread a couple of years ago. The discussion within may (or may not) be a little dated, but still worthwhile, and certainly a good thread to revive for discussing this topic anew.

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/combo-in-cube-thoughts-on-the-showdown-turn.812/

There may be other threads, but this was the easiest for me to find.


Did dig up another fun one that talks about power versus synergy:

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/decks-not-cards-synergy-and-power-design.1741/

 

[RavebornMuse]

And than, also, perhaps unconditional tutors are something fair cubes should be intrinsically wary of. Demonic collusion is an odd card in the abstract, that hemorrhages tempo, but even as a super nerfed demonic tutor, it felt very good here. As bad as it might seem, when resolving a card means you'll probably win the game in the next couple turns--rather than just being a generic value play--its not too bad.

Love this discussion. Just wanted to add to this: I recently drafted a deck that featured Behold the Beyond, and it gave a similar impression; it looks like a card that just hemorrhages tempo and is strictly win-more or unplayable, but really, whenever I fired it off, even if I was behind, I was able to flip the match in the following turns. Well-worth the 7 mana, and well-worth losing my hand for, too! It's an incredibly powerful effect - although I haven't decided if it's exactly what I want here..

 

[whydirt]

Here's the "tokens combo" thread that is a little more recent as well: http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/tokens-combo.1300/

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Love this discussion. Just wanted to add to this: I recently drafted a deck that featured Behold the Beyond, and it gave a similar impression; it looks like a card that just hemorrhages tempo and is strictly win-more or unplayable, but really, whenever I fired it off, even if I was behind, I was able to flip the match in the following turns. Well-worth the 7 mana, and well-worth losing my hand for, too! It's an incredibly powerful effect - although I haven't decided if it's exactly what I want here..

Thats an interesting observation: behold the beyond is a little bit like demonic collusion, mystical teachings, and doomsday in the sense that they can act like engines in themselves, demanding a large exchange of resources, but able to put together game winning combinations. All of those except for doomsday have the potential to be value tutors as well as setting up combo kills.

It partly makes me wonder whether there isn't some worth in at least partly approaching the concept of combos from the perspective that the tutors themselves act as otherwise reasonable engine enablers, letting the deck layer its other engine pieces over one another.

Obviously there is an unbelievably narrow sweet spot with this as regards balance, but its a great feeling of accomplishment when a deck you drafted feels like its becoming something more over the course of gameplay.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Hey, we're the featured cube on cubetutor right now, which is nice to see!

But here are a few decks:

Naya Lands/Reanimator from CubeTutor.com

Yes, someone did get burned out by an embalmed heart-piercer flinging a pelakka wurm :eek:

I like this deck, but for loam to really take off as a draw engine, it needs a greater density of cycling lands in the right colors. Its really mana intensive and durdly even in this format, where its about as mana efficient as a jayemdae tome. The real appeal for loam is vortext, but I would like a little more obvious, and powerful, of an interaction to be present ideally. Really want to stress how durdling of a draw engine this is, and how important it is to the format that the blue draw isn't completly crushing this style of engine.

Still, lots of neat little angles and lines of interactions here. It can be psudo-aggressive, midrange, or grindy, and runs a powerful value/reanimation package in colors that normally don't go down that line. The embalm/eternalize is really important for decks like this, that are running

Grixis Trisk Control from CubeTutor.com

Just a classic deck running the teachings->whelk package as a finisher, and using epitheth golem to reprogram for mystical teachings recasts (and not decking itself), while also having some wing splicer synergy. It takes over the game by getting repeat milage out of the two trisks. Wanted to show this as a pretty run of the mill control deck package, and how interesting and unique that can still be. The draw towards red here is for cards like tormenting voice, which wouldn't be appealing if blue had a monopoly on efficient card draw. Also, one of the traditional problems with R/U control is that red removal gets outpaced by certain threats, forcing control into more traditional Esper colors. Here, the two artifact tappers fill that role, helping give UR more of an identity. There is some room to explore here with welding effects, as a result.

Esper Zombie Tokens from CubeTutor.com

Here is the synergy masterpieces from last night. One of the problems that these decks that want to eat a yard sometimes have, is that they are too much control. There is a big evasive pressure component here made up of garbage looking creatures, which means someones creatures are going to be dying, even if they're his, and all of that dead early pressure feeds into a big lategame zombie plan to close things out. In the midgame, you have chronicler and kage, which are both doing what control decks want to do, but also can apply a monsterous amount of pressure, building off of the early game evasive pressure.

Than the late game takes over, and the late game is converting all of the early/mid game pieces into a zombie presence, buffed by one or all of the three lords (necro cov., aven wind guide, undead alchemist). Necro cov., or from under the floorboards can create an army our of nowhere, or the deck embalms/eternalizes zombies from the yard. The early game comes back as the late game, rising from the dead if you will, to end things. Note how adorable Rever // Return is here because both sides synergize perfectly with the gameplan.

This is a zombie deck, but its much more clever than just reading the sub-type on a card, matching it up with a lord and rolling over. There are pressure/control layers to the deck, and the efficently tucked-in zombie presence makes sense within those layers as a means to achieve a higher overarching plan, building up a crescendo in the same way a spider spawning or burning vengence deck would.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Also wanted to comment on the lands decks: naya's identity is rooted in managing mana flood and color screw. Cards like loam or mana vortex are unimportant in themselves, and have to first fit into an existing structure premised on deck thinning to improve draws, and converting an excess of mana into a board presence. Being a mana sink is insufficient in itself, the deck needs to be able to convert an excess of lands into bodies. Building the shard around loaming back cycling lands, or discarding lands to mana vortex--or even wildfire to a less extent--is a distraction from what the shard is really about--being the best combination at turning mana flood situations into wins.

I know we've been tossing this idea around for a while with cards like tithe, land tax, loam, and vortex, but this seems to me the focus of the shard, and focusing on being the best "flood into board state + thinning to improve draw quality" has been a better focus for me than true land recurssion, though land recurssion can exist as a sub-theme nested beneath that overatching structure. Addressing negative variance is just much more important to a shard or wedge's identity than anything else, and if the shard/wedge can't provide some useful commentary on the negative variance problem, I find it not particularly meaningful within the context of the game.

Looking to make some tweeks to the shard to reflect this.

Most interesting cards:





These seem to have the best pedigree, but also thinking about



Fleshing out the UB zombies theme a bit more, cards I'm thinking about




Which repeats the same tribal formula I've been working with where the card both creates a body of the relevent creature type, while also buffing the creature type in some way. Advanced stitchwing just because it looks like one of those interesting engine pieces. Dark salvation seems to have come down in price.

Would consider:



But that cards is currently about a million dollars

 

[sigh]

I run all three of your 'most interesting' Naya cards for flushing out what that shard wants to do, and they all work fabulously in that role. Really competing with and exceeding what U is doing with land development is a victory for the shard I feel, and great for a variety of decks and brews in the colors.

I also really like Yavimaya Elder for this role of generating card advantage through lands. Useful with the engines, but also generically useful for the deck plan you quote above.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Warwolt's Golgari Yahenni Angel Sac from CubeTutor.com

Picked Yahenni pretty early and then fallen angel, tried to go for a pretty straight forward black/green aggro deck with just enough stuff that I might want to sacrifice. Not super sure about Quirion Ranger, but untapping creatures in combat can be powerful, and I can untap Tuskguard champion to grow her really quickly. A couple of fliers to get Okiba-Gang Shobi into the read zone. Yavimaya elder and Vital splicer makes for good food, and then when there's some bodies in the yard Spider Spawning can help refill that buffeet.

Nice cube Grillo.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Some data: I'm starting to really come around on this card:



It seems important to me to have a small number of ubiquitous duplicate spells, and thats really what a tutor is in cube: pay 2 mana, discard a card, get a second copy of X spell.

Obviously, its an extremely powerful effect in a singleton format, for the same reasons that reanimation effects are--getting extra shots at your best cards in a singleton based format is really powerful. Too much of these effects can lead to fairely lopsided matchups, with one deck executing a powerful gameplan at a level of consistancy thats difficult to beat.

However, having an effect like this also really opens up a cube format, since it allows players to go deeper on individual cards, opening up an entire family of fringe combo decks that otherwise would lack the consistancy to exist otherwise. I'm finding this is a broader group of decks the more I play the cube.

I've tried a number of the higher CC or conditional varients, and they function very differently than Demonic Tutor. The higher CC cards often represent an awkward sequencing choice and rapidly become difficult or impossible to play (adding 2 extra generic mana to a spell cost is much more doable than 5), while the conditional tutors (excepting perhaps vampiric) go to an entirely different need altogether, being archetype players that dictate future or past pics, rather than functioning as a flexible card that works as a duplicate pick to shore up a deck's consistancy deficiencies.

To bring out a lot of a format's most exciting decks, I think something like this is necessary, and is the reason to cube d. tutor.