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The Quest: Part 2: The End of the Quest

Aug. 09 James Stevenson Comments Off

The Quest: Part 2: The End of the Quest
By James Stevenson

-1.

Right. Time to get back to this story, since I’m heading for the road again next week. I can write while travelling, but I tried to write “The Quest: Part 1: The Quest” all throughout the events of “The Quest: Part 3: The As Yet Unnamed Part of the Quest”, and later as well, and I didn’t write anything good. I remember multiple writing attempts in a cinema in Toronto, multiple attempts in cafes in Colorado, and an attempt in San Francisco that impressed the barman so much he took the dumplings off my bill. But none of it went anywhere. And I was not even trying to write about Montreal yet, which is the difficult part.

You see, I was going to Montreal to do the most absurd thing I had ever done in my life. I was going there for a woman. This, I gather, is a common story. Talk to Americans about Canada and they’ll either mention the women or the weed. Now, I’m no woman, but as we shall see I am an incredible dope.

I met her over a year ago, as I was working morning shifts in a café. The only thing to brighten my day was a visit from Violet, the exchange student from Montreal (that’s not her real name). She’d come in almost every day and sit down in the back corner with a pile of books. Nobody else was there that early, apart from a couple cooks downstairs, so I’d bring her some coffee and we’d chat for a while. She was working on her PhD, and she was smart and interesting. She would smile and laugh and listen, sweeping her long, lush black hair together over one shoulder and looking at me from under dark eyelashes. Her field was French literature; she was writing her thesis about love. “It’s the best pick-up line,” she told me once. “Everybody wants to be my muse.” She was right. So did I.

One day, after a month or so of this, already past the point I should have asked her out, she was telling me about how her room was haunted. “Wow, really?” I said.

“Yeah, I wake up every day,” here she paused to look me straight in the eyes, “alone,” she laughed a little, “and I have this feeling that someone is watching me.”

Damn! She’s flirting with me! Yes, well done James, you’re quite right.

I made some stupid joke about this massive stuffed whale I have that I share my bed with, and after some further oblivious conversation asked, “Do you have facebook?” She confessed that she didn’t. “Well,” I said, “we should stay in touch when you’re gone. I’ll give you my address, send me a letter.” Yeah, go me! Amazing work there.

We swapped addresses and I went home that day a happy little clam, with only a slight nagging suspicion that I’d completely ballsed that up. It was ok, though, she’d be back on Friday. Well, she wasn’t there on Friday, nor the next day, nor the whole next week. Every day I’d shoot occasional glances into the back corner, finding it empty and feeling a little glummer every time. No luck. She was going back to Canada soon, so after a couple weeks I figured she’d left.

But she came back just once, two days before leaving. This time, she came in when I was just finishing work, so we ate lunch together and took a walk through Hyde Park. It was good. Neither of us would admit any romantic interest, but it was in the air, somewhat. I said I’d come visit, and I asked her if I could just turn up. “Sure,” she said, and smiled. “You can sleep on my couch.”

That day I already knew what I was going to do. My goal was clear. I had the rest of the summer to get in shape, learn French, and get to Montreal.

Almost immediately I wrote a letter to Violet explaining, basically, how she was an incomparable goddess and I an incompetent geek who’d probably miss his chance at true love because he was examining the pattern in the cobblestones. I sealed it up inside my well-worn copy of Catch-22, sent it off, and booked my ticket to Halifax within a week.

Two months later, after the rather unnerving trip through New Brunswick, I arrived in Quebec. I’d neither learned French nor managed to care what shape I was in, but more importantly, I’d had no reply from Violet. I wasn’t broken up about it; time passes and feelings fade. So… what was I doing there? Who knows! I was having a good trip already, and what was there to lose? At least I could get my book back.

After a night in Quebec, I caught a ride to Montreal. My driver was Estelle, girl in her thirties, a real fiery woman. We hit it off pretty well. She’d hitchhiked across Canada a couple times, fending off a few sleazy guys along the way. She was badass, she wasn’t afraid of anything. She was a little chubby, with cute freckles, and she was so full of life that it made her beautiful.

She’d just beaten breast cancer and was recovering from chemotherapy. All through her treatment she’d kept up her job as a massage therapist, and she hadn’t let the cancer take anything from her life at all. “If I wanted to dance, I’d dance,” she said. “If I wanted a guy I’d get one. I fucked fifteen guys last winter! I was dying, so if I wanted to get fucked I do it.” Oddly, she’d managed to maintain her life and her energy all through her treatment, but now that it was over she was quitting her job and starting over.

After a couple hours we rolled into the suburb where Violet lived, and I started to get nervous. My blood was pumping and I couldn’t concentrate on what Estelle was saying. She looked at me. “Ah, you’re in love,” she smiled. “You got the butterflies.” Then she went on to rant about how the butterflies don’t really mean anything, but I wasn’t paying much attention.

Estelle dropped me outside Violet’s apartment building and told me I could crash with her at her sister’s if it didn’t work out. She drove away, and there I was. Oh boy, I thought. Here we go. I rang the doorbell, held my breath, and tried to stop imagining some huge guy opening it and asking me what I was doing there. Thankfully, no such thing happened. In fact there was no response at all. Phew.

I taped my business card to the door and farted around the town all day. I was just killing time and hoping my phone would ring. I read a couple chapters of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, drank some coffee, eyed up a few bushes to sleep in, and eventually realised I’d left all my money in the Quebec. Perfect day.

By 8:30 it was dark and I was tired. My stupid duffel bag was heavy as hell and my feet were killing me. I decided to go to Violet’s house just to check if my card was there, then go crash out by the lake.

As I got up the house again I could see two women ahead me, walking up to the front door. There was no mistaking, one of them was Violet. My heart started trying to jump out of my chest. What could I do? Should I approach? Would it be super creepy if I was right there? I slowly walked over towards them. They noticed the card and lent in to read it. I kept my distance, resisting the urge to lean on a tree and declare seductively, “Bonjour.”

There was some animated talk between the two women, then Violet turned around and saw me there, trying to look as sheepish as possible, and she pretty much started freaking out. She clapped her hands to her face and, at a loss for a reaction, kept repeating “Oh my God!” A more discerning man than I, having written a heartfelt letter and sent it to an eligible lady, might have taken a total lack of contact as sign not to turn up out of the blue, but this hadn’t occurred to me, and there I was.

But it wasn’t so bad. She was not unhappy to see me, so I dropped my bag inside and we went for a walk. We wound through a maze of suburban houses, through the grounds of schools she’d attended and whatnot. We had a nice chat, but there was something important that was still unsaid, and I didn’t know what it was. We kept exchanging these warm little looks, almost flirtatiously, but it was too bizarre. I didn’t know what on earth I was doing there.

I remember we were walking down a dark street, lined with big trees, and there was lull in the conversation. Content, I said nothing.

“You know,” she said, “That last week in London I met someone else.”

I laughed, and all the tension left me. Now it was out in the open. It was pretty much what I expected.

“So, who’s the guy?” I said.

“Actually it’s a girl.”

Oh boy did I laugh! I laughed and laughed and laughed, laughed back to her house, into her car, to Montreal centre, laughed up the stairs into a hostel, laughed into bed, laughed myself to sleep, and woke up the next day so blue I could have made a killer jazz album if I’d had a saxophone on me.

I was really bummed out. I hadn’t realised getting to Violet was so important to me. All I wanted to do now was go home and lie in bed with Whaley, but I was very far from home and it didn’t make any sense to just give up. I’d always said to myself that if it didn’t work out in Montreal, I wanted to try to make it to California. So why not? I hadn’t wooed any women or retrieved any Catch-22’s, so I had better do something successful with this trip.

First, back to Quebec to pick up my money. I made it in four rides, moving bit by bit along the motorway. I remember one big happy guy who was a nurse and told me all about this six-wheeled car he’d bought for hunting. There was also a moustachioed man with a French accent and a beret who collected rare bicycles and “worked in theatre”. Eventually I coaxed out of him that he was a mime. He was perfect. All I could think of was that Gary Larson quote: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s around, and it hits a mime, does anyone care?” But I didn’t mention that.

After a night in Quebec, I headed straight back to Montreal to check it out. Since I’d had such an easy time on that road twice before, I slept late and took my time getting going. Well, I sure learnt my lesson. I caught a few rides, each time further into the middle of nowhere, and ended up only halfway to Montreal by 7pm. It was getting dark already, and raining. My only chance was to stand on the shoulder of the busy motorway, put on my reflector vest, and hope.

At first it was not so bad, but the minutes kept passing and the sun sunk lower below the horizon. Visibility was terrible, the cars were zooming by just a couple meters away, and the rain kept coming harder. My whole body was soaked and I was freezing cold. It was the worst situation I had ever been in in my life.

Around 9pm a little car slammed on the brakes and swerved over onto the shoulder. I grabbed my bag and sprinted over. This moment might be my favourite thing about hitchhiking. When I’ve been waiting somewhere, getting sunburnt or frostbitten, falling into despair, that moment I grab my bag and sprint to a car, I feel as light as air. Suddenly my bag weighs nothing, my feet are not sore, and I can run forever.

My driver was another nurse, and a really wonderful guy. He has four kids and lives on farm, but he doesn’t get to go home from work much. He drives around between hospitals, doing one sixteen-hour shift here, another 12-hour shift there. It’s exhausting. Our conversation was sort of philosophical, about the usual ponderage: life, satisfaction, happiness. My driver was a smart guy, and he spends all his time either driving alone or caring for the sick. I guess those are good ingredients to make a thoughtful man.

After a couple hours we pulled into Montreal. I’d had the worst day of hitchhiking I’d ever had, and he’d been driving all day. We stopped at a red light.

“So strange to see the lines standing still,” he said, pointing at the road.

“So strange to see them moving!” I said.

He laughed. “So we see the relativity of life.”

We went to his cousin’s house, had a beer, and he became the only driver ever to add me on facebook. Of course, we’ve never talked. C’est la vie.

I spent a few days in Montreal, but I was still restless and lonely. I kept looking for Violet every time I turned a corner, so I decided I had to get out of there. I wanted to head straight south, cross into America, and stay with some old friends in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It had been many years since I left America, and I’d been growing curious to visit. Is it really full of ignorant fat people rolling around fast-food joints in Hummers, waving flags, shooting guns and complaining about Mexicans? Probably not, but I wanted to check to make sure.

23.

I got to the border fairly quickly. One young guy I had nothing in common with gave me a lift, then an old guy took me the rest of the way. All I remember is he said he was banned from America for having drugs in a club more than thirty years ago.

My ride into The States was fantastic. My driver was a rich guy in his sixties, obsessed with horses. He’d known since he was sixteen that he wanted to work with horses, and he spent the rest of life working any relevant job he could. He’s done everything from mucking out stables to jockeying. Now all he does is buy, sell, and raise horses.

We drove down south through beautiful golden hills, my driver either telling me what an idiot his son was or telling me about his horses. When we got to the end of the ride, we headed out to the farm to see them. We brought a bag of carrots, went into their paddock, and spent twenty minutes feeding them out of our hands. There were four of them: one beautiful mare and three of her young. They were all gorgeous tans and browns, very gentle, but with tremendous power under their skin. I could see why he was so obsessed with them.

My driver offered to let me stay in his camper. “You could go out there, fool around for a night, then I’ll put you back on your way tomorrow,” he said. “Fool around” seemed like a suspicious way to phrase it, so I declined. Anyway it was only mid afternoon and I wanted to keep going.

He dropped me at an on-ramp and I drew a sign for Pennsylvania. Almost immediately I got a lift. My driver, Paul, was driving a massive luxurious pickup truck. I threw my bag into the back seat and climbed in. This was the last ride I’d catch for a while, and it really stuck with me.

“If you wanna sleep, relax, whatever, go for it. I used to hitchhike, I know what it’s like.” This is always nice to hear. I don’t have to feel awkward in the absence of any inane conversation. Still, I started asking him about himself, and over the next five hours built up a picture of the most broken man I have ever met – perhaps the only one.

Paul was retired, living with his wife somewhere in New York State. He’d left her a note that morning that said “Gone for a drive. Back in a couple days.” He didn’t know how long he was going for, all he knew was he was going to drive straight for Colorado, cross the border, and buy weed the first chance he could get. He was so deeply fed up with life, and fed up with the law, now that Colorado had legalised marijuana, that’s where he was going. He’d have gone earlier, but he had issues with drunk driving and hadn’t been able to make the trip until then. He still had that box in the car that randomly beeps and forces you to take a breath test. He told me he used to be up to two bottles of tequila a day.

Paul had made his career driving freight trains for thirty years. I thought that sounded pretty cool, but I was wrong. It’s an awful job. You drive a few hundred miles to get to the train, then spend a day doing almost nothing at all, just watching for signals and watching your speed. It’s incredibly boring. In the old days, he said, the crew would all get drunk while they drove, but it’s impossible now. They’d all get caught through random drug tests. The more he talked about the trains, the more I got this impression that 50% of freight trains end up derailing. He’d had so many accidents they didn’t phase him at all. His stories about train wrecks always ended up with him complaining about the paperwork he had to fill out and the shit he had to put up with from the police.

But the worst part about the job is the people you hit. Whether they’re suicides or idiots, people die under your train. He told me about a drunk who’d fallen asleep with his head on the track. When they ran him over, the engineer looked at Paul and said, “He was wearing all black, it’s night, we could say we didn’t see him.” They knew the guy was a goner, and they didn’t want to stop the train, deal with the police, fill out paperwork, waste time. What difference would it make? They could just keep going. They did stop the train though, and called an ambulance. The top of the guy’s head was gone, and he was in a coma. He lived a day longer before dying.

Before Paul had driven trains he’d been in the navy. If I remember correctly, Paul was stuck in Hawaii waiting for orders in 1974. The Americans were intending to send more troops to Vietnam. At that time, Nixon resigned, and whatever plans involved Paul were scrapped. He never went to war, but while he was waiting in Hawaii, his nineteen year old wife was on the mainland dying of cancer. As soon as he could leave Hawaii he went back to her, and she died within a week.

I asked him if she was strung out of morphine, and he replied, “I was doing more morphine than her.”

When I met him, forty years had passed since then, and what struck me about him – and what I liked about him at first – was how little he seemed to care about anything. A lot of people throw around the phrase “I don’t give a fuck”, as if it’s something cool not to care. Paul said it a lot, but each time I could see he really meant it. He didn’t care whether he lived or died, whether I was there, whether I killed him (“You wanna shoot me, go ahead. I got nothing to lose”). All he wanted to do was to go and buy some weed.

“I gotta ask you,” I said, “You give the least fucks out of anybody I’ve ever met.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t give a fuck about anything!”

“You know, I spent my whole life trying to forget everything. Now I’m reaching the end of my life, and I’m trying to remember, and all I can remember is the things I tried to forget.”

“Like what?”

“Like my wife dying or people I’ve run over.”

It was dark when we reach Carlisle. Paul dropped me outside a hotel, and that was that. It was another awkward hitchhiking goodbye. What do you say to a guy like that? It was sad to leave him alone again, but I’m not sure it made any difference to him at all.

10.

Well, a week has passed since I started writing this, and in two and a half hours I’ll be on a coach headed for Belgium. My bag is overloaded with two skateboards, a kite, juggling balls, carving tools, a harmonica and a GameCube to give to Jason. It’s time to hit the road again.

Discuss, if you like, in our forums: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/the-quest-part-2-the-end-of-the-quest.880/

Learning From Pauper—The Aristocrats

Jun. 19 Grillo Parlante Comments Off

By: Grillo_Parlante

In my last article I discussed blurring archetypes, using as a centerpiece example pauper goblins for an aggro-control deck, and providing a number of low-power examples of this principle being applied. Not unreasonably, a number of readers pointed out that it would have been nice to have some higher power examples, and I’m here today to do just that. We are going to go through a mock design process, taking insights from pauper goblins to hopefully design an aggro-control archetype for a higher powered format.

First, let’s look at a slightly more recent goblins list:

cspickle (4 - 0), Pauper Daily #8373448 on 2015-06-11

Creatures (36)
4 Foundry Street Denizen
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Cohort
1 Goblin Heelcutter
3 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Sledder
2 Mardu Scout
4 Mogg Conscripts
3 Mogg Raider
4 Mogg War Marshal
3 Sparksmith

Spells (6)
2 Flame Slash
4 Lightning Bolt

Lands (18)
18 Mountain

Sideboard (15)
4 Electrickery
1 Flaring Pain
3 Latulla’s Orders
3 Pyroblast
4 Sylvok Lifestaff

A more aggressive variant than our original example, it still has all of the essential pieces: ample sources of pressure, resilient threats, and board control tools. The deck can quickly curve out and kill like a Sligh deck, or it can take a more controlling axis. For the curious, its control plan is described here. We concluded that the elements for an aggro-control archetype in cube involved providing the following for an aggro player:

1. Sources of incremental value
2. Removal or other disruption that supports an aggro strategy
3. Variety

But just as any of the other major archetype labels can encompass a broad variety of sub-strategies (e.g. draw-go control vs. tap-out control), there are a number of different ways to support aggro-control. Since we’re using goblins as our guide, we have to first ask ourselves what type of aggro-control deck we are dealing with.

And the answer is that it’s an aristocrats deck.

This particular deck type has some existing relevance to the cube community thanks to Gravecrawler, but recent printings from Khans block have essentially revamped the archetype, letting us innovate on what will hopefully be somewhat familiar ground.

But what is an aristocrats deck? Put simply, it’s an aggressive synergy based deck revolving around sacrifice effects and death triggers. Originally designed by Sam Black (you can read his account of the development here), its constructed laurels rest on it winning Pro Tour Gatecrash. The deck was more or less ported over to cube by Jason Waddell, as described here; and since the deck actively benefits from creature death and runs recursive threats, it naturally did very well in cube formats packed with efficient and powerful removal.

Oftentimes when people talk about this deck, they get caught up in the original vision of a B/W/R sacrifice deck. We are going to stay in that familiar spectrum for the time being (peeking a bit into green), but it’s important to step back and remember that we are applying conceptual pieces. You don’t have to stay in the constraints of those colors. The elements we will be dealing with are described by Sam Black as:

1. The Aristocrats: Carrion Feeder and Goblin Sledder
2. The Travelers: Doomed Traveler and Goblin Arsonist
3. The Fodder: Gravecrawler and Mogg War Marshal

In the above, I provide one example each of cards that could show up in the original Gatecrash deck or a pauper goblins list, respectively. The idea is to combine aggressive fodder with sacrifice outlets, which let you convert those previous investments into some sort of advantage. Travelers are creatures that provide some active benefit when they die.

The key principle is to craft an aggro deck capable of converting its prior investments into value. If a durdly good stuff midrange deck can make up for lost tempo via ETB spell effects attached to fatties, our fast aggro deck can make up for lost tempo by maximizing the number of “leaves the battlefield” spell effects we attach to our creatures. This is the core principle at work (and incidentally why I think Thragtusk represents more value than is healthy for a lot of cube environments).

The original Gravecrawler-based aristocrats deck combined Gravecrawler as a fodder card to be used in conjunction with aristocrats, such as Carrion Feeder, in a zombie tribal package. Recent printings from Khans block, however, have provided an interesting alternative in the form of Bloodsoaked Champion.

Let’s nail down the essential pieces and then flesh things out with what we’ve learned from Goblins.

The Fodder

Here we are making a shift towards Bloodsoaked Champion. Gravecrawler is certainly still playable, but the need to support zombie tribal, and the awkward mana cost of some of the supporting cards (Bloodghast and Geralf’s Messenger) is a constraint that is no longer necessary. While Bloodsoaked Champion doesn’t necessitate any tribal commitment, it’s worth noting the two creature types: human warrior.

This means we can combine the card with another well-established beater.

Most cubes already feature a huge density of humans across all colors, and the combination of Champion of the Parish, Bloodsoaked Champion and sac outlets is an outright engine for an aggro deck. The ability to vertically grow a threat adds longevity to the deck’s strategy, as a large Champion of the Parish can compete reasonably well on a board against other large midrange creatures. Meanwhile, the Bloodsoaked Champion provides an element of inevitability against aggro’s other main concern—removal heavy decks.

It gets better, though.

Necromancer in conjunction with a recurring Bloodsoaked Champion is a powerful engine in itself. Goblin Rabblemaster is an excellent aggro beater that can trigger raid, and provide an endless source of tokens to sacrifice.

Mardu Strike Leader’s dash ability (and to a lesser extent Lightning Berserker and Mardu Shadowspear) provides pressure from multiple angles: pumping Champion of the Parish, triggering raid, and providing a token to sacrifice. In addition, dash plays around sorcery speed removal, demanding that an opponent have a diversified removal suite.

It’s worth mentioning there are many other cards that can act as fodder. Any sort of cheap vanilla persist or undying creature would qualify, as would cards like Mogg War Marshal, Chandra’s Phoenix, or Loyal Cathar.

The Aristocrats

Ideally, we want cheap 1-2 mana creatures with no mana or tapping cost. The best options are:

Slim pickings. Tymaret is so on par with the overall strategy that it would be a mistake not to consider him, especially since his creature types—warrior zombie—may be relevant to our setup. Cartel Aristocrat is quite good and provides a lot of interactivity on a cluttered board. Carrion Feeder and Viscera Seer are good, cheap sacrifice outlets.

There are a few 2cc non-creature cards to consider: Goblin Bombardment and Blasting Station. Greater Gargadon is also an excellent sacrifice outlet in formats that are not too fast for him.

Once we move up the mana curve, however, things become more powerful.

Flesh Carver and Stronghold Assassin require either tapping or mana to sacrifice a creature, but make up for this in terms of power level. There are a number of non-creature sacrifice outlets that also could be run—such as Attrition or Mind Slash—that I don’t recommend as I find they lead to frustrating gameplay.

The Travelers

These are, of course, named after Doomed Traveler. In cube, the best examples would be Tuktuk the Explorer and Perilous Myr. While there are only a limited number of cubeable cards that squarely fit this category, there are lots of creatures that provide creative ways to garner value upon their death. Sacrificing a Mesmeric Fiend (or Tidehollow Sculler), with its trigger on the stack, is a good example. In general, creatures with keywords that doom them to death are our likely travelers. This includes creatures with vanishing, haunt, persist, undying, fading, unearth, evoke, or echo.

There is also a subset of cards that provide value from other creatures dying. Cards like Skirsdag High Priest, Blood Artist, and Sylvok Lifestaff. This card pool also encompasses creatures that grow based on graveyard count (Bonehoard), cards that grow vertically upon creature death (Rockslide Elemental), or just useful triggers like Athreos, God of Passage, Hissing Iguanar, Xathrid Necromancer, and Grim Haruspex. Delve or threshold cards also fit loosely into this category.

The Red Crush

So now that we’ve gone over the basic framework of the archetype, let’s flesh things out a bit, taking inspiration from our pauper goblins. At the moment, we are supporting a low to the ground, removal resistant aggro archetype with sources of card advantage that can grind out a win in the mid to late game if need be. We also have some elements of vertical growth via Champion of the Parish and horizontal growth, thanks to Xathrid Necromancer, Goblin Rabblemaster, and Mardu Strike Leader.

We want all of the same tools that pauper goblins has, just dialed up to our power level: 1) ways to leverage sacrifices into board control, 2) tutors, and 3) burst damage. We need to emulate the effects of cards like Sparksmith, Sylvok Lifestaff, Goblin Bushwhacker, Goblin Matron, and Death Spark, which thankfully we can do.

Board Control

An unanswered Goblin Sharpshooter can dominate a board when combined with sacrifice support. Goblin Bombardment can have a similar effect, and the two of them combined can really pose a problem for an opponent on a creature based plan, taking over a board with the assistance of recursive threats and expendable creatures.

These sorts of strategies coincidentally get better with a large store of fodder, and Khans block has given us a card that can fill a variety of roles: threat, removal, or sacrifice fuel.

What a great card for an aggressive aristocrats deck. Outside of being a mana sink, it can act as a surprise threat or help control the board with its tokens. It eloquently supports both the control and aggro axes of the deck.

Raise the Alarm and Midnight Haunting also fill similar roles. Lingering Souls may be a sorcery speed card, but flashback provides another source of board control and pressure.

Burst Damage and Tutors

So now we have a token element that supports both the aggro and the control elements of our strategy. However, we need a Goblin Bushwhacker clone to provide an additional strategic axis based around perceived pressure, rather than actual pressure.

And this brings us to a discussion of anthem effects, most of which are either way too expensive or don’t come attached to a body (problematic for a deck built around sacrificing bodies). Worst of all, many of them are extremely narrow, having no other application than closing out the game. One of the most interesting things about Goblin Bushwhacker is its ability to provide haste, and it would be nice to have an anthem effect active at more stages of the game. Thankfully, the perfect card exists.

An anthem effect that adds a relevant body and which can lead to all sorts of interesting interactions at all phases of the game. This is exactly what we want.

Finally, it would be nice to have a tutor effect like Goblin Matron; and we can easily have this in the form of Imperial Recruiter. In addition, we have an interesting option in green in the form of Collected Company.

So far so good, but how close are we to fulfilling our aggro-control elements? Do we have an aggressive deck that supports:

1. Sources of incremental value
2. Removal or other disruption that supports an aggro strategy
3. Variety

Our entire deck is built around the concept of incremental value and we have access to removal pieces that fit our strategy. We have vertical growth, horizontal growth, sources of burst damage, hand disruption, and removal -resistant threats. We can come out racing, putting an opponent under intense pressure, or we can play a longer grindy game with our sacrifice value engines. Instead of a fragile Sligh deck attacking along a single axis, we now have a dynamic aggro deck; one which we can even expand on if we wish:

Aggro-Combo

We can add aggro-combo elements via a few white double-strike creatures, and copies of Feat of Resistance, Ajani, Caller of the Pride, Vines of Vastwood, or Become Immense. Silverblade Paladin and Mirran Crusader make their way comfortably into higher power environments; while somewhat more niche are Fabled Hero and Arashin Foremost. The latter is probably currently too narrow, but has some interesting interactions with black’s dash warriors, Secure the Wastes, and Mardu Woe-Reaper.

Value Reanimation

Cards like Unearth, Victimize, Stitch Together and Alesha, Who Smiles at Death can add an interesting value reanimation axis that lets you reuse travelers to maximize incremental gain.

Persist Combo

Another Khans block gift is Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit, which means we don’t have to choose between running cards like Melira, Sylvok Outcast, or upping the mana curve to support persist combo.

Conclusion

There are, of course, other ways to design aggro-control decks. You can focus more on the disruptive aspects if you wish, concentrate on tempo advantage, or experiment with applying this style of deck to other color combinations (or even ultimately bump it up to a midrange deck). This isn’t intended as a piece to be strictly followed, but rather to help people unhappy with their aggro sections think critically about what they can change. Hopefully, walking through a mock design process will have made that a little easier to do.

Happy drafting.

***Also, credit to Safra on the forums for posting similar decks, and getting me thinking about the archetype.

Fangs and Figures – Analyzing the Legacy Cube

May. 16 Dom Harvey 1 comment

Fangs and Figures – Analyzing the Legacy Cube
By Dom Harvey

Recently the Legacy Cube returned to Magic Online as the time-killer of choice before the new set release. After a long binge, I formed what I think is a decent understanding of what worked and what didn’t. Some of it is obvious – there’s a reason that ‘…Vampires?’ was the universal reaction on social media – but there are more subtle problems too. In this article I’ll explain the flaws as I see them and offer constructive feedback for addressing them.

As a disclaimer, the ideas on this site can be very unorthodox. Our priority as Cube designers is optimizing our lists for local playgroups under parameters that we control; it’s a much different task to design a list that works for a mass audience of experienced and newer players, that offers enough variety to keep you interested during the third draft of the day, that conforms to conventional ideas of what Cube is, and so on; my ideal Legacy Cube list would not look much like my personal Cube(s). The goal is to help the Legacy Cube be as good as possible on its own terms.

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/designer-fun-black-versus-cube/
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/cube/24754-Cubers-Anonymous-The-Black-Plague.html
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cube-design-remodeling-part-one/

If you follow Cube discussion for long enough, you will hear someone bemoaning the failure of black aggro. Designers dutifully pack their lists with Sarcomancy and Dauthi Slayer, only to watch them circle the table and end up in sideboards. Faced with this dilemma many Cube owners double down on black aggro, cut it entirely, or explore radical solutions, with no real consensus emerging.

Given that, I understand the urge to try Vampires, but the backlash was predictable and justified.

Randy Buehler summarizes the most important part of the official Cube philosophy here:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/MTGO/articles/archive/new-magic-online-legacy-cube-2014-11-3

“We briefly discussed radically changing the theme of the Cube, but at the end of the day we all agreed that “Best of Magic” or “Greatest Hits” Cubes are just awesome, so the Legacy Cube will continue to be a Greatest Hits Cube. In fact, nothing was cut purely on the basis of power level—not even Jace, the Mind Sculptor. We cut some “hits” that were highly non-interactive (aka, straight-forward and/or dumb whether you’re playing with them or against them), so you won’t find True-Name Nemesis in the Legacy Cube and there aren’t any Swords either. We also cut some of the one-dimensional red cards (like Ball Lightning) that make it hard to keep all red decks from turning into mono-red aggro decks (so splashing another color should make more sense now), but mostly we just looked for the most exciting and powerful cards we could find”

In a ‘power-max’ context like this, the bar that any card – an experimental theme, cards from the new set, whatever – has to meet is very high. A few years ago, you could jam whatever ridiculous creature had just been printed into your Cube and call it a day; now, every set brings a bunch of impressively undercosted threats, and cards that were auto-includes before are being edged out. To earn a slot in this cutthroat environment a card must be very strong, both in relative terms and on its own merits. Sangromancer is a bad card to begin with, and is downright embarrassing alongside the likes of Hero of Bladehold. It’s not even better than the other lacklustre black cards that auditioned for that slot. Liliana’s Reaver is not exciting, but it suggests a plan – I’ll play Reaver, remove whatever my opponent puts in the way, and create a cascading effect that is hard to recover from. This plan only asks for cards I want to play anyway – discard and removal spells.
With Vampires, I need to play bad cards to power up my other bad cards, in hope of a payoff that isn’t demonstrably better than what I get from a normal strategy. For a deck based on synergy to succeed, it has to be better than the sum of its parts by a big enough margin to justify downgrading individual cards. I doubt this is true of Vampires: a perfect start of 1-drop -> 2-drop -> Captivating Vampire -> Vampire Nocturnus will win most games, but so will 1-drop -> 2-drop -> Brimaz, -> Elspeth or 1-drop -> 2-drop -> Goblin Rabblemaster -> Hellrider, and in those examples it’s much easier to win if I’m missing one of the pieces. This goes for the draft too: Randy says, “If you want to pass me Vampire Nocturnus or Anowon, the Ruin Sage I am quite happy to grab them and build around them” but his neighbours are also quite happy with that, as they have less competition for the legitimately good cards and can cripple Randy’s deck by hate-drafting at the right moment.

The other major problem is that so many cards are useless outside ‘the Vampires deck’. The biggest offender is Necropolis Regent, which is unplayable elsewhere and also bad in Vampires: with that deck I want to win quickly so my opponent has no time to play their good cards, not drag the game out, and even in the perfect deck for Regent I would rather have Grave Titan. The same problem afflicts the Guul Draz Vampires and Stromkirk Captains that fill out the deck: if I’m currently in another archetype, even a good Vampire tribal card gives me no reason to switch or dabble in black. The other side of that coin is that Vampires has no exit plan: if you move in on Vampires but what you need isn’t coming, you may not have enough picks left to avoid a trainwreck.

Randy argues that you could say the same about the usual black aggro cards, but insofar as that’s true I think the blame lies with the rest of the Cube. Few people enter a draft intending to force black aggro, but the lack of respect it garners means you can often pick up the cards late. Suppose you start with a run of blue cards, but it’s soon clear that blue is being cut and you need a new plan; you see the black aggro cards coming back, and take them from a few shallow packs to keep your options open. You then open a good black card – say, Bitterblossom – and move in, ending up with a solid base-black aggressive deck touching blue for some disruption and maybe a Serendib Efreet or Phantasmal Image. Maybe you’re in mono red, but Carnophage and Falkenrath Aristocrat fill out your curve and Doom Blade gives you outs to larger creatures; or perhaps your white aggro deck really wants that Lingering Souls, and is happy to pick up Dark Confidant and Knight of Infamy too. That kind of flexibility makes aggro in general – not just black aggro – viable in Cube when the draft isn’t going perfectly, and for it to exist you need the aggro cards to be strong outside their own niche and not dominated by only a few colours – UG and BG aggro decks don’t need to be common, but they should be theoretically possible. Vampires violates this rule at the most basic level; Carnophage and friends do not.

The other crucial ingredient to making aggro work is manafixing. In Constructed, multicoloured aggro decks often have 8 or more dual lands – more than a third of their manabase; in Limited you might get a dual land or two depending on the format, but your mana requirements are less stringent and you can usually afford to play your splash card a turn or two later. Cube, which so often is the best of both worlds, is the worst of both here: Limited-quality manafixing is expected to enable Constructed-quality starts. It’s a much less forgiving format, where delaying a key play by a turn is often lethal. This is especially brutal for aggro decks, which need to deploy their cards early to compensate for their relatively low power and which can’t afford control’s extra methods of stabilizing its manabase – Signets/ramp spells, card draw, and the like. Black feels this more than any other colour, as its flagship cards require a heavy black commitment – Bloodghast and Geralf’s Messenger certainly contribute to devotion, to put it nicely. The Legacy Cube isn’t too bad in this regard, but for the more aggressive colour pairs switching out Temples or the Glacial Fortress cycle (which don’t let you go T1 R into T2 BB, for instance) for filter lands or the Seachrome Coast cycle would help if you’re willing to mix and match. Black could really use Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.

The size of the Cube is an understated issue that looms over all of this. The Magic Online Cube has to be reasonably large to sustain people’s interest – if players see the same cards over and over, boredom quickly sets in. As a result, there’s no guarantee that any given card will turn up in a draft. This has depressing implications for the two-card combos sprinkled throughout the Cube. Take one recent addition: when I pick Scapeshift I know it’s a blank card if I don’t see Valakut, but that’s fine as nobody else wants Valakut and I can bet on it reaching me. In a 600 card Cube, the Valakut might not even be there! It’s hard enough to justify experimenting with these combos when both cards are in circulation, but when that’ s not even assured you almost always take the safer route. The same applies to a lesser extent to Vampires: building around Vampire Nocturnus is dubious when you’re guaranteed to see it, so when you aren’t…

The strangest part about all of this is I’m not sure black is a problem that needs fixing. In a Cube as creature-centric as this one, efficient and versatile removal backing up solid threats – Desecration Demon, Grave Titan, planeswalkers – has been a very successful strategy for me. Reanimator and ‘Pox‘ (and similar effects) have been tried in other Cubes to various degrees of success. Black aggro, if adequately supported, might yet be good enough. The one systematic weakness that black has is its inability to deal with certain card types – artifacts, enchantments, and planeswalkers. Cutting Swords and Jitte goes a long way towards fixing that, but green and white have a dozen planeswalkers between them and the Cube could stand to lose one of Garruk, Apex Predator and Vraska, Chandra Nalaar, and so on.

If they do give black aggro another go, I’d swap the Vampires for their replacements and then make some minor adjustments:

– Anowon, the Ruin Sage
– Ascendant Evincar
– Bloodlord of Vaasgoth
– Captivating Vampire
– Dark Impostor
– Guul Draz Vampire
– Kalastria Highborn
– Malakir Bloodwitch
– Necropolis Regent
– Sangromancer
– Vampire Interloper
– Vampire Nocturnus

+ Bloodsoaked Champion
+ Carnophage
+ Diregraf Ghoul
+ Gnarled Scarhide
+ Knight of Infamy
+ Lifebane Zombie
+ Mesmeric Fiend
+ Nantuko Shade
+ Sarcomancy
+ Spiteful Returned

+ Carrion Feeder, crucial for any sacrifice shenanigans and has crossover value with the token generators in red and white
+ Silumgar Assassin, a much-needed two drop from the most recent set
+ Flesh Carver, a startling omission if you’re taking black aggro seriously

– Underworld Connections, too clunky for aggro and underwhelming in midrange decks
+ Sign in Blood, a sleeker draw spell that serves double duty in aggro decks
+ Read the Bones, a more surgical draw spell without the heavy mana/time commitment of Arena or Connections

– Crux of Fate
– Skinrender, a conditional removal spell that feels redundant when you have Bone Shredder, Nekrataal, Shriekmaw, and the noncreature black removal
– Sorin Markov
+ Abyssal Persecutor, the original Desecration Demon and a solid midrange threat for black that creates an interesting subgame
+ Sidisi, Undead Vizier

– Diabolic Servitude
+ Makeshift Mannequin, which is unique among the plethora of reanimation spells

Statistics

For most of us, refining your Cube is a lengthy and gradual process. If you’re lucky you get a draft or two every week, where one card overperforms or something goes undrafted again. You try out the obvious cards from the new set, move on to the less obvious, adjust the rest of the Cube accordingly, and by the time you’ve reached an informed opinion another set is on the horizon.

The Magic Online Cube lies dormant for most of the year, and is then subjected to more drafts in the first hours of its run than most Cubes over their entire lifetimes. There is enough evidence from thousands of drafts that ideas about what does and doesn’t work in the Cube can be backed up by statistics and not just anecdotes or intuition. Randy’s articles explaining his changes are laden with references to these results.

The problem for us is that we don’t have access to the data; we only ever see it when the organizers use it to justify their changes. When we do see it, it often doesn’t support the point being made (or the point remains underdetermined).

Take this quote:

“The really interesting data comes when you compare the average draft pick of cards among people who won their draft to the average position among other drafters. Of the top 30 cards on that list, 29 are mono-red aggro cards (with Sulfuric Vortex having the biggest difference). Clearly mono-red decks are too efficient, and while I am happy to have mono-red be around as an option, it shouldn’t just be easier to win with than all the other archetypes”

Sulfuric Vortex is strong enough to be listed as a top-tier Cube card, no matter how that list is drawn up. But what about Firedrinker Satyr and the rest of Vortex’s groupies? How about the low-tier red aggro cards like Scorched Rusalka? These cards all go in the same deck – and only the same deck – as Sulfuric Vortex, so if red decks have a great win percentage then all these cards will place higher even if most of the work was done by Vortex and other premium cards. Vortex being high makes every other red aggro card that much more likely to be high too; it would be surprising if the list weren’t overpopulated by red aggro cards.

Cards specific to red aggro will look better in this context than cards that are more widely playable or better in the abstract. Lightning Strike is a better card than Skullcrack; if you could only include one in your Cube or your red aggro deck, you would pick Lightning Strike. However, any red deck can find room for Lightning Strike, so these R/G midrange decks or U/R control decks drag down Lightning Strike’s win percentage and lower its position on the list; Skullcrack is certainly higher, and Lightning Strike probably lower, than their power would suggest.

What the data does show is that red aggro cards are ‘poisonous’: a card like Sulfuric Vortex is an automatic pick if you’re drafting the deck and an automatic pass if you aren’t. In this respect it isn’t much different from black aggro, but it’s more successful and has a long pedigree in Constructed and retail Limited so its inclusion has become a sacred cow in Cube. The graveyard theme in B/G was junked for being equally poisonous but less successful – in Randy’s words, “I think we landed in a place where there just weren’t enough rewards in the Cube to justify the enablers (mostly because we cut the rewards because they tend to be super-narrow cards that only work in one deck)”. Ultimately, is there a difference between Shrine of Burning Rage and whatever your reward for the B/G deck would be? With enough delve cards, reanimation effects, and so on, I think there’s room for a successful graveyard deck that offers more interesting gameplay than typical aggro or midrange decks while furnishing black with a distinct identity. The danger is that new Cube designers will look at these results and conclude that this theme, or any unusual theme, is doomed to failure in Cube. As an ‘official’ product this Cube sets the tone for the public’s understanding of what Cube is and what works, so any failed experiments have larger implications.

It’s clear that people were winning a lot with red aggro. What’s less clear is who, and why. Mono red is ruthless at punishing mistakes in deckbuilding and gameplay, and many less experienced players end up with decks that are terrified of Mountains; equally, mono red allows those players to run over better decks and players without engaging them on their level. It’s hard to tell from the statistics how much of red’s win percentage is due to its inherent strength and how much is due to the weaknesses of other decks and players. If everyone paid close attention to their deck’s mana curve, hate-drafted red aggro cards when appropriate, and sent back hands without early interaction, its win rate would be a fair bit lower. Does this matter? The Magic Online Cube isn’t meant to be a perfect test of skill or a purely competitive experience. It stings to ‘waste’ time and money losing to Goblin Guide in five minutes, even if you could have done things differently, and you don’t want to scare newcomers away from Cube permanently.

This same issue applies to individual cards: it’s hard to judge a card in isolation when the other contents of a deck and the skill of the pilot skew the results so heavily. Recently on Twitter, some Pro Tour mainstays were bashing Tangle Wire as a trap that’s only used by bad players in bad decks. Even if their general distaste for the card is on point, the fact that it’s used badly doesn’t make it unusable. Lots of players jam Tangle Wire in decks that aren’t built to exploit it properly, where it’s a waste of a card and mana, and their low win percentage will lower the card’s rating. If, on top of that, the best players are avoiding Tangle Wire, its placement will be solely determined by worse players creating a warped perception of how bad it truly is.

Discuss this article in our forums.

Learning From Pauper – Rethinking Archetype Design

Apr. 22 Grillo Parlante 2 comments

By: Grillo_Parlante

When I woke up this morning I intended to do actually work, but instead found myself browsing pauper content, eventually stumbling across a series of articles by an Italian blogger who goes by the name Near. Pauper is an interesting format in the sense that even though it would be accurate to say that it’s a format defined by commons, it would be much more precise to say that it’s a format defined by pre-NWO commons, and by that I mean, Wizard’s mistakes. The end result is a format executing powerful interactions but fueled by the daintiest of engine pieces. If Vintage and Legacy are the wild guys at the party, Pauper is like their nephew whom you had such high hopes for, until the day you caught him generating infinite mana on turn four in the garage. There is a tremendous amount that Cube can learn from Pauper, as Pauper’s creature-based bizzaro take on a degenerate eternal format offers a unique perspective for cube—itself a creature based, bizzaro take on degenerate eternal formats. And this brings me back to this morning, and Near’s blog post.

In the post, he was discussing some of the common errors in pauper, and number three on his list was “Over valuing Midrange Decks.” The key excerpt, translated below, reads:

“[this is] A common error in almost every format, because Midrange cards appear very strong, given that they often represent the best cards in every color and seem able to handle any situation.”

I think every cube designer has, at one time or another, faced the “Junk Problem” aka the “Good Stuff Problem” aka the “my drafters only want to draft similar looking and playing midrange decks how do I stop this” problem, aka the “my format is ruined because aggro is hardly every drafted and what do I do now” problem. The traditional way of balancing out Magic archetypes is to broadly create “Roshambo” or “Rock, paper, scissors” categories for “aggro”, “midrange”, and “control.” Aggro beats control, control beats midrange, and midrange beats aggro. Unfortunately, even if you do a very nice job designing for control and aggro, if your players are biased towards drafting appealing looking midrange cards, your cube vision can never truly come to fruition, and the entire format is knocked off balance.

So what’s the solution? I’ve seen (and tried) the “nerf midrange to oblivion” plan—didn’t work, casual players just draft bad midrange decks. There is also the “give aggro a super buff” plan—doesn’t work, people just jam the best aggro cards into a midrange shell. Probably the most bizarre (and worst) approach is to just cut aggro completely from the format; the designer evidently resigning himself or herself to a world ruled by King Thragtusk and his Knights of Green Fat.

Pauper, however, poses to us an intriguing question—have we been, perhaps, narrow-minded in our attitudes towards aggro design? Pauper, as a very condensed format, where everything must operate at low CC amounts due to the power of its combo deck and aggro decks, has resulted in some truly bizarre deck adaptations. In this harsh, ultra-condensed world, at what point might a very low CC deck start to heavily bleed parts of the rock/paper/scissors formula to both survive and thrive? What would be the result?

Goblins/Mono Red Control (2014), by jsiri84

Creatures (31)
1 Goblin Arsonist
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Cohort
3 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Mogg Conscripts
4 Mogg Raider
4 Mogg War Marshal
3 Sparksmith

Spells (11)
3 Death Spark
3 Flame Slash
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Sylvok Lifestaff

Lands (18)
18 Mountain

Sideboard (15)
3 Electrickery
1 Flame Slash
1 Flaring Pain
3 Gorilla Shaman
3 Pyroblast
2 Smash to Smithereens
2 Sylvok Lifestaff

I choose this list both because it’s an extreme example of this concept (red and creature based), and because of how successful it’s pilots have been in competitive pauper events. You can read more about the deck here or here if you wish, but as it ties into our conversation today, it represents the idea that even fairly extreme looking aggro archetypes can be tweaked to blur traditional archetype lines. Ultimately, it’s probably more correct to describe the above list as an aggro-control deck, and as we go further, let us partly frame the issues in terms of how we can better apply aggro-control principles to our format.

Now, clearly a direct port of this list into any cube would be a disaster. Some designers require a much greater amount of raw power from their cards, a number of these cards are too narrow (sparksmith/goblin matron) to make the conversion, and it’s also possible that certain cards might be too complicated for some play groups (death spark). So let’s focus instead on a few broad principles.

1. Sligh Aggro is not fun for casual players. I want to bring this to the forefront, because we are not going to get very far without acknowledging this basic reality. Remember our quote from Near? Does playing a bunch of 2/1 creatures for 1 mana seem exciting, powerful, or able to handle any situation? The answer is a resounding no. Unfortunately, this one style of aggro defines what many cube designers will support (usually in only 1-3 color combinations), while at the same time providing a critical mass of attractive looking midrange cards in every other single color combination in their cube. Combining this with how sligh decks are very punishing of drafting and play mistakes, and their focus on technical play rather than flashy play, we shouldn’t be surprised when many such cubes finish midrange dominated.

2.Aggro can play the long game. It’s possible to bleed ideas of card advantage and removal into aggressive strategies. The above list has an engine of reusable removal and incremental advantage that can grind out an opponent if it must, or it can just curve out and kill like a normal aggro deck. This combination of removal, and incremental advantage, creates dynamic games that don’t feel like they are largely decided by turn four, while also providing a big flashy (and fun) way to end the game. This helps address the insecurity that drafters may feel about going into an aggro archetype in the first place, as well as the perception that it’s a fairly bland archetype.

3.Aggro-control decks do not need to be spell based or blue. Aggro decks featuring removal and sources of incremental gain can appear in even the most stereotypical of aggressive guises—in this case, little red men. This is good news, since most cube decks are defined more by their creatures than their spells, and also because any form of blue based aggro is notoriously difficult to support in cube.

So, than, the big question becomes how do we provide our aggro decks with:

Sources of incremental gain that facilitate a presence in the long game
Removal or other disruption, that supports an aggro strategy
Variety

But let’s come back down to earth for a moment, and look at some examples of how this might look in practice, based on a few lists from my own budget cube.

R/W Heroic Goblins

Starting out safe. We have a pretty typical looking R/W goblins list. The format is a bit slower so having your pressure arrive on turn two is fine here. More relevant to our discussion, is the touch of control elements that work nicely with the aggro pieces: Blood Artist, Goblin Bombardment, Goblin Sharpshooter, Spikeshot Elder, Gods Willing, and Shelter. The latter two specifically can act as conditional counterspells (or conditional removal) protecting key threats, while the remaining four pieces variously serve as reusuable removal, or facilitate incremental gain by allowing the pilot to trade up with tokens. Recursive threats, such as a mogg war marshal, provide another source of incremental gain. Alternatingly, the deck can kill suddenly with fabled hero or the goblin bushwhackers, or go over the top with a heroic threat.

The variety of strategic axes, combined with the ability to confidently enter the mid and late game, helps make for a more appealing aggro package than a typical savannah lions based aggro deck.

Now, let’s take those ideas, and flow with them from the other direction—after all, our focus is on bleeding broad archetypal concepts, not just buffing our aggro decks:

G/W/r Hexproof Auras

Here we have a midrange list, but its 2-3 CC focus brings it closer to the ground than a more traditional 4-6 CC midrange deck. While there are some faster draw sequences (generally revolving around Favored Hoplite, Ainok Bond-kin, Kor Skyfisher, and Fabled Hero) the list as a whole is much more focused around building an overwhelming board presence to go over-the-top with (though it does support an aggro-combo and horizontal aggro axes to much smaller degrees). The big payoff a drafter gets by going with this slimmer midrange approach, is that the 2-3 cc outlast cards mutually support one another, allowing the pilot to establish a somewhat earlier board presence, while still reserving the ability to horizontally grow dominate threats.

Ultimately, these two decks represent very different strategies, but due to our aggro deck’s potential to play a longer value game, and our midrange deck’s potential to assert early pressure, we’ve blurred those broad archetypal lines making it more difficult for a drafter to draw harsh strategic distinctions, and write off one part of the cube. Most importantly, by bleeding these broad archetypes into one another, we’ve made moving around the cube space a bit more appealing to that stubborn drafter stuck in the midrange comfort zone.

Now, let’s bring everything we’ve talked about thus far together.

Heroic Metalcraft Aggro

There is a lot going on here, and I don’t want to divert too much into the very spikey mana base design, but this is a very powerful deck: strategically operating as an aggro deck, but with elements of midrange and control, and representing a lot of different aggro axes.

The heroic mechanic combined with combat tricks and protection effects, provides a source of disruption, as well as acting as conditional counterspells and removal—a form of incremental gain often generated through the combat step. Quite simply, you can trade a protection spell or a pump spell to control what is allowed to exist on the board, while also growing a threat that can later dominate the board through its size. This is a deck that is exerting pressure on turn one or turn two, but has enough control tools to play the long game (while also top decking better due to the wellsprings and low mana count), and can also eventually present a single high quality threat able to dominate the board in a manner not dissimilar to what a midrange deck might do.

Strategically, its capable of going with a fair beat down approach, taking a horizontal growth strategy supported by overrun effects, an over-the-top approach via a vertical growth strategy, or a more exotic aggro-combo approach supported by Fabled Hero, Assault Strobe, protection effects, or any other large vertical growth threat. By designing the cube in a way that blurs these broad archetypes, and by supporting a wide swath of viable aggro strategies beyond just sligh, we’ve created some very dynamic and complex aggro decks. Hopefully, our drafters will begin to understand that in our format, what a mistake it would be to overvalue midrange cards, and what a mistake it would be to dismiss those little red men as being simple idiots that must always effectively win by the midgame.

These ideas are also not so distant from what higher powered formats are capable of doing. The idea, for example, of using recursive threats to gain incremental value is already well represented in Gravecrawler-based black aggro. It may take some creativity to broaden those principles into other color combinations at various power levels, but the precedent for doing so exists.

Happy drafting!

Vampires are Storm

Mar. 04 CML Comments Off

By: CML

Everyone knows Black aggro is terrible in conventional Cubes and the Legacy Cube is a conventional Cube. Moreover, it probably has to be at least a little conventional to satisfy people’s expectations of what an official Cube “should be,” which might limit the number of solutions the designers have at their disposal — it would be great if Randy and Gerry could speak to that, and understandable if they can’t.

At any rate, Carnophage et al. are too weak of cards to match up well against much of anything in the average 2015 Cube environment, which is undesirable from a design standpoint, nobody disagrees with that. One solution would be to weaken the overall power level of the Cube by cutting its strongest cards, but I tend to prefer higher-power environments and so do the Modo drafters, presumably. Another solution would be to just cut Diregraf Ghoul et al. and replace them with different Black spells — more finishers, more removal, or more viable yet more expensive creatures. This may have the desirable result of strengthening Black, the conventional worst color in conventional Cubes, to the point it doesn’t suck in general. This would promote deck diversity through balance. I will come back to this.

The argument for trying to keep Black aggro would also be one of diversity — if a color doesn’t have aggressive options, then there’s less you can do with it. So in order for Black aggro to be worth having around, what Black gains in versatility has to outweigh what it will lose in power level. This is an evaluation that every designer has to make for every “theme” they put in their Cube — should I have Academy Rector and a few goofy targets, or a Sublime Archangel and three more beaters? Aggro “themes” are bigger than other themes — they require a lot of slots — but we don’t think about it much because putting in beaters in Naya is what everyone does and everyone should do. However, the conventional Cube community, at large, has ruled against at least one aggro theme: Blue aggro. Check out http://www.gatheringmagic.com/enabling-blue-based-tempo-or-“blueggro”-in-your-cube/ and tell me that Lu Xun, Horizon Drake, and Mistblade Shinobi are worth three slots in your Cube. If they’re not worth it, the other bad support cards you need to make the theme big enough to be supported aren’t worth it, so then it’s time to get rid of the theme and allocate the slots to six Brainstorms, four Rune Snags, and a Dissolve or something.

I mention the multiples because in the case of Black aggro I could come up with no solution that did not involve breaking singleton. Jason Waddell’s excellent articles on CFB are not perfect, but they do have a lot of ideas worth borrowing, and the most successful one I’ve implemented in my own Cube (http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/114) is detailed here: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cube-design-remodeling-part-two/. The Cliffs are that Black aggro with Gravecrawlers, Carrion Feeders, Bloodghasts, and Blood Artists is lots of fun because the cards interact well with a number of other themes, can be reduced or increased in number to nerf or buff, and are viable and flexible enough to lead to interesting drafting and gameplay decisions. Some of the cards the Gravecrawler theme works well with are Vampires, and my Cube contains Blood Artist, Bloodghast, Bloodghast, Falkenrath Aristocrat, Guul Draz Assassin, and Stromkirk Noble, popular inclusions all, as well as DKA Sorin who makes little lifelinking Vampires.

Given that everyone likes these cards, and that Vampires, being an OK deck in a Standard format with Jace and Stoneforge, are among the most-pushed tribes in MTG history, a Cube Vampires theme is tempting. I tried it. It failed, but I learned something from it and some of what I learned I will type out below.

Start at my Vamps thread here: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/vamps.361/. To the typical lineup of Vampires, you could also add Bloodline Keeper, Olivia, Kalastria Highborn, Vampire Nighthawk, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Vampire Nocturnus, Blade of the Bloodchief, Bloodthrone Vampire, Anowon(?), and maybe another few that I’m missing, without making the theme too obtrusive. People who aren’t drafting “the Vampire deck” will want to play with most of these cards at least sometime, and that’s what you want.

At first blush, therefore, the theme looks reasonable. Why didn’t it work? Most of why is captured by Waddell’s comment — “There’s not a lot of actual incentive cards. Maybe the captain and Kalastria Highborn? Like, Bloodghast just works better with Carrion Feeder than any of these dumb old vampires” — but I should go into further detail. You want the “filler” cards to be fought over by a bunch of different people, but not too much — so far, so good. You also want there to be the incentive of synergy if you get a lot of these cards; this is what did not happen. The payoff for assembling the tribe was just not that great, and the tribe didn’t come together often enough. For the week or two I tried the Vampire theme there were maybe 20 vampires in my Cube of 450 cards, or 4.4%. By comparison, there are 56 humans in my current build of 470 cards — 11.9% — and I still cut Mayor of Avabruck and worry about people not picking Champion of the Parish and Xathrid Necromancer until late.

Yet 4.4%, which is insufficient, is significantly higher than the proportion in the Legacy Cube — and my list did not include Guul Draz Vampire, Vampire Interloper, and other draft dreck I see here. It is always funny to me how Cube power-maxers say “Cube is about the good cards,” and then include Sangromancer and defend themselves. (Though Vampire Interloper does make our jokes about Greg’s including Stormfront Pegasus even funnier, if that’s even possible.)

But I digress. In the unlikely scenario someone assembles a decent Vampire deck in the Legacy Cube and gets an incentive card or two, they may win some matches. Far more likely are the scenarios where the deck only comes partially together (40 percent of cards aren’t “opened” in a 600-carder), or where all the cards go 13th pick. The Zombie theme, synergizing as it does with sac outlets and recursion, is only partially a tribal theme; by contrast, Vampires (minus Bloodghast) are just regular dudes. Pure tribal in Cube is fundamentally problematic unless it is Humans. Compare Mayor of Avabruck, a two-mana lord in a big tribe, with the possible Vampire reward cards:

— Blade of the Bloodchief sucks, nobody else will ever want it.
— Bloodlord of Vaasgoth also sucks.
— Vampire Nocturnus looks like it should work, but it will not. 1BBB is a restrictive cost in my Cube, which has a lot of fixing — and no one who has ever played both triple KTK and full-RTR block should ever bemoan games decided by something other than color screw.
— Stromkirk Captain will be drafted by nobody else and is two colors. In general, the lack of fixing in the Modo Cube engenders awful games and throttles options for multicolor aggro, which brings me to the next card.
— Kalastria Highborn is an amazing card, but there’s only one of them, and it’s not worth it with such a small amount of Vampires.

The larger issue is that the Legacy Cube is too big — 600 cards is better than 720, but it’s still obese. With a 600-card singleton Cube, there will never be enough strong Vampires to make a worthwhile theme, yet the theme will be too large and will stoop to include weak cards to artificially support itself — Guul Draz Vampire isn’t better in the abstract than Sarcomancy. This will ensure Black aggro continues to suck, which will make Black continue to suck, which is undesirable for all the reasons I covered at the beginning that everyone agrees on.

There are certain problems that cannot be solved without drastically slimming down the Cube or breaking singleton, likely both, and one of them is the problem of Black aggro. That Black aggro is not seen as irreparable when Blue aggro is widely looked down upon is, I think, due only to inertia and accepted convention, yet for some reason there are Vampires in the Modo Cube and I am writing a polemic about it.

While we’re at it, I’ll articulate my thoughts on aggro in Cube: having it is absolutely vital, and most of my design choices in my own Cube — more fetches and duals to fix and fix untapped, a smaller size, a lower curve — flow from this axiom. Yet I think that singleton Cubes mainly support aggro through having control decks either draw too many 4-drops or color-screwing themselves. (It is also funny to me how Cube power-maxers claim that “the decks should do powerful things” when the average deck will just implode pretty often.) Anyway, this does technically balance the Cube by bridging the power gap between “Scorched Rusalka” and “JTMS,” but leads to rote drafting and lots of horrible games. I also think nobody would consider playing big singleton Cubes were the RiptideLab.com-style Cubes popularized first.

Yet it is easy to rip something apart without doing any better myself. I will propose several solutions:

— Actual redesign of the Legacy Cube with Gravecrawlers, Bloodghasts, and so on.
— Ideal: let everyone make their own Cubes on Modo and draft them free of charge.
— Decent: maybe offer multiple Cubes.
— If the constraints on my solution are what I think they are, I would cut all the weaker Vampires (maybe a dozen of them) and add the strongest Black spells, regardless of function, you can find. Demonic Tutor would be a good place to start.

Jason Waddell articulates the process by which a theme becomes not worthwhile in his excellent article “The Poison Principle,” though, for Vampires, a more pointed comparison might be to Storm. Nobody will argue that “Great, I get to pass this 14th-pick Empty the Warrens again” is a good drafting dynamic, yet here we are with Guul Draz Vampire. Anecdotally, this is what happens when I include a terrible, half-baked theme, which I have done dozens of times in the last three years since I assembled my Cube. There have been a lot of bad cards in my Cube and there are still a lot of bad cards. A few of the bad cards leave and come back and are adopted given time, but almost all do not.

I support experimentation in Cube — I’m on Riptide Lab all the time, I find maybe one idea in twenty worth trying and find that to be worth the time spent, and I have a lot of radical ideas for Cube, including lowering the power level to open up a wider variety of cards, a broader and less explored design space. I’m not arguing that no one should try Vampires — I have tried Vampires. Rather, I am arguing that, based on personal experience and heuristics, and in the context of a 600-card singleton Cube with a conventional power level, it is very likely Vampires will not fix the issue their inclusion is meant to fix, or will just fail to work out according to game-design principles we as MTG players largely agree upon.