The Penny Pincher Cube 2.0--Inventors' Fair

[sigh]

this is a very tempting argument...

Still worried that something like D tutor would just enable shenanigans past what would be wanted... I still like Dark Petition well enough, but could see myself coming around on something like this as well.

Though I may be wrong, I thing the perfect tutor for my particular speed is:

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, grim and cruel tutor might be fine: i've not tested the 3cc price point.

Also, this card is probably fine?

Prob run vamp before that, if we're organizing off of power level

 

[safra]

Diabolic Intent is really fair. In the past I've played it in Nic Fit with Veteran Explorer, which is about the best-case scenario, but it's fine and playable in all sorts of Cubes.

 

[inscho]

I agree on your general assessment of tutors importance. I run Vampiric Tutor over Demonic in my cubes. There's some fun incidental synergies with the top of library and instant speed. I like and run all of the mirage tutors except worldly.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Been reviewing some of the featured cube CT drafts, which is always good, as you get a perspective from people not familiar with your design how they react to signaling etc.

Unlike last time, all of my guilds are being represented in the drafts, which means I did my job in terms of balance. People seem to be reading and understanding signals for the most part

Heres are a couple guy that was able to follow my aggro signals, which feels monumentally important.

aphilliott's draft of Penny Pincher 2.0--Inventors' Fair on 20/09/2017 from CubeTutor.com

WR Arty Aggro from CubeTutor.com

Also, enjoying some of the mono-colored or near mono colored decks that occastionally pop up.

Mono green (splash u/w) versatile beats! from CubeTutor.com

This obviously gets helped out tremendously by artifacts that can fill in operational gaps in the color pie, which i.m.o should be the primary function of the artifact section. Also, something to think about too for people avoiding tackling simic as a guild.

Here is a heavy blue splash back deck, leaning heavily on artifacts, to again, fill gaps. Very pretty looking little deck, and I love how the artifacts feel like they naturally feather in as de facto blue cards, both enabling and diversifying the strategy, brought out further by the slight dab of black. Mono colored decks often times feel stifiling to me in their rigid predictablity, signaling, and construction, offering little room for the color to change perspective. This feels very blue to me, but the on point artifacts, coupled with the black dab, lets the color still feel fresh.

toolatefrozen's draft of Penny Pincher 2.0--Inventors' Fair on 07/09/2017 from CubeTutor.com

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Made a few swaps earlier in the week to see how drafters would react to them. Briefly took molten vortex out, which I don't think is a great card, and replaced it with kari zev, skyship raider, which I do think is a great card.

For some reason, Kari was not being picked, which seems very odd to me, and perhaps reflective that my red 2s are sufficiently saturated. I put vortex back in, which while not a great card for all sorts of logical reasons, seems to be something that drafters enjoy.

The hammer of purphoros I added, however, looks nice.

U/R Golem Beats from CubeTutor.com

This is my cube tutor draft, but I was doing some silly experimenting in it to see how far I could push things, and this is nice to see. I took the red artifact aggro elements of the W/R deck, and spliced that with the aggressive tempo elements from the blue decks, and what solidifies the entire thing together are the golemns, made possible from hammer.

Technically, this should have been a misdraft, and it was my intention to produce that when I started to go down the inventor's apprentice line--like someone following a bad signal. Instead I got a nice little aggressive, synergistic artifact deck.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Some thoughts about busted cards. For the first time, I thought I would drop this guy in:



Fair tinker has been a discussion topic on the board for years, with the usual problem being how do you get cubable enablers, and threats that don't end the game but justify the setup time.

The only time Tinker was "fair" the top end threats it was grabbing were cards like




Which is largely occluded for a number of reasons. After that, it was using turn 3 to create removal check moments. The card was always boxed on in by the top end threats.

However, if you can run this mirrodan-esque package as part of a ramp top end




Your top end is more about controlling the game, than winning on the spot, but does so in a way that justifies the aggressive play, without defacto ending the game. I kind of suspect that this is the spirit of the top end that these cards want to be enabling to be "fair." Maybe not these cards, but sort of board control fatties. Servos, thopters, bobbles and eggs coupled with some artifact recurssion make for ample fuel, and the basis for a major artifect theme in a wedge or shard.

Esper Zombie Tinker Control from CubeTutor.com

aphilliott's draft of Penny Pincher 2.0--Inventors' Fair on 25/09/2017 from CubeTutor.com

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Tinker is a hard card to balance against the environment if you're not a power list. I won't be (re)including it any time soon with cards like Myr Battlesphere and Steel Hellkite as the top end of my artifact section. Your top end looks reasonable though, you might actually have found a way to make Tinker fair!

On another topic, I have liked to recent additions to my cube very much, and they look like they might be fun in your cube too.



Curse is a card I've been surprised by how well it plays when you run an artifact theme. It's also excellent with my other suggestion. Goblin Bombardment has always felt borderline too good in my cube, and adding the single colorless mana as activation cost has been perfect. As compensation, it now also shoots artifacts at your opponent's stuff!

 

[sigh]

Isn't the "fair" version of tinker
?
Sure there are some inconsistencies in comparing these two, but it's a one-shot artifact cheat effect, it simply requires your deck have some synergy and gameplan more so than play artifact -> sac for best possible artifact in deck at the time.

 

[inscho]

 

[Onderzeeboot]

How are people going to deal with a 10/10 on turn 3? That's the definition of removal check (even if it doesn't have trample). Gift normally has less immediate impact, but the value can ramp up quickly in the late game or if you run some draw & discard effects like Faithless Looting and friends, though the thought of a 4/4 Spikeshot Elder does appeal to me

 

[inscho]

How are people going to deal with a 10/10 on turn 3? That's the definition of removal check (even if it doesn't have trample)

Seems like a decent amount of options for the most ideal Tinker scenario in a cube. Even when you manage to draft all of the correct pieces, Tinker turn 3 without lots of tutors and filter effects won't happen super frequently.

You could always look into :



If you want more of a toolbox effect out of Tinker.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Isn't the "fair" version of tinker
?
Sure there are some inconsistencies in comparing these two, but it's a one-shot artifact cheat effect, it simply requires your deck have some synergy and gameplan more so than play artifact -> sac for best possible artifact in deck at the time.

I would say they are too very different cheat cards. Trash/Treasure is for when you want to move fair reanimation out of black, and create a more conditioned version of it in red. Its basically a bad version of an already fair black strategy, that you run in some formats for a variety of reasons, all connected with wanting to tone 4-5cc black reanimation down.

Tinker feels much more like an artifact ramp spell to me, at least as far as designing for it in cube. The motivation for it, from my experience, has always been that there is some mana number that is hard to hit, connected to an impactful artifact that has the potential to win the game, and the question becomes how do we get that artifact in play.

Thats particularly relevent with pentavus and triskelavus, which are both very strong cards in that format, but you want to be able to unload the buses. Tinker lets you get one in play, but still have a few mana open to create 1/1 tokens with in response to removal. In solves a real, fair problem, for a fair deck.

I think thats part of the difference though. In these discussions before, no one really knew why they were running tinker, other than that it was a fun/iconic/cool card. Here, there is an actual deck, and its solving a problem for that deck. In the previous discussions, the conceptual framework for what and why a deck would want tinker as a tool to enable its specific gameplan was always skipped over, and instead tinker itself was supposed to be the build around, and the focus of the deck. And that made conversation hard, since there was never any real context or broader framework to help narrow down the range of possibilities to something workable.

Its easier to have this discussion in this particular cube, because ramp is much more broadly available (as are small artifacts), so the general plan of getting these big artifacts in play is much more feasible, and tinker becomes a powerful accelerent within an already valid framework.

 

[sigh]

This all seems like relatively valid arguments for Tinker in this format, which really cool.

All I'm saying is that Trash for Treasure is easier to make "fair" due to setup requirements, which you seem to agree with. It can still provide an additional tool to artifact decks looking to get high cost artifacts into play for cheaper. Honestly slightly surprised it wasn't already included, seeing the full suite of red discard-draw, and the overall artifact theme in the cube. Maybe it's that red decks don't end up wanting to do this style of play, and that's fine. Also a little overshadowed by having the Tinker.

Seems, for instance, that it would have been valuable redundancy in the UR deck you spotlight above.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This all seems like relatively valid arguments for Tinker in this format, which really cool.

All I'm saying is that Trash for Treasure is easier to make "fair" due to setup requirements, which you seem to agree with. It can still provide an additional tool to artifact decks looking to get high cost artifacts into play for cheaper. Honestly slightly surprised it wasn't already included, seeing the full suite of red discard-draw, and the overall artifact theme in the cube. Maybe it's that red decks don't end up wanting to do this style of play, and that's fine. Also a little overshadowed by having the Tinker.

Seems, for instance, that it would have been valuable redundancy in the UR deck you spotlight above.

Oh yeah, you're super right.

I had it in for a few test drafts, but the theme already existed strong enough where I felt it was a redundent include. Part of the issue was you would end up with trash for treasure in red, and than body double and tinker in blue, ontop of stuff like hammer of porphorous that was asking for interesting synergies with wing splicer or master splicer in white, jor kadeen etc. It just felt like a lot of redundent support on a wedge that was already more than there in terms of depth and power, and with the red section being so tightly contested already, I figured it would be better to give the slot to a color pair that needs more love.

It would look good though as red reanimator with daretti, welder, and trash for treasure, which I could do here, since black reanimator is so tonned down. It works really nicely in this configuration, because you already have the artifact aggro in R/W, and the golems in W/U/(now)r, so its easy for the personality for R/W/U to become an artifact wedge, with RU carrying an artifact reanimator theme. But now we're overlapping with Grixis, and you're just being fed in draft.

I'm more interested in the enrage ability atm, and how those cards play. It would be nice to have that be the central R/G midrange deck, as the land mechanics in R/G feel inconsistent in draft and play. I'm kind of worried about them going in on the basis that you can trigger them with clasm effects, and than they end up just being BS value cards that make attacking or blocking miserable a certain % of the time.

 

[sigh]

Green land mechanics have played better as a background resource for me (fueling draw engines, land drop consistency, etc), with the decks' focus being more on the burn combos and green late game. Looking for another focus seems totally understandable. I also have reservations re: enrage here, as the negative impact on combat seems particularly sore for this power level.


Man, I totally just need to bite the bullet and add Seismic Assault. Don't know why I haven't tried it yet...

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Here is fair tinker



Oracle text for those that don't want to burn out there eyeballs

Sacrifice an artifact. If you do, search your library for an artifact card. If that card's converted mana cost is less than or equal to the sacrificed artifact's converted mana cost, put it onto the battlefield. If it's greater, you may pay

, where X is the difference. If you do, put it onto the battlefield. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. Then shuffle your library.

Really interesting, presumably you would want to be sacrificng some type of mana rock to help pay the transmute cost.

 

[ahadabans]

That is an interesting card. But the text box is such an eyesore, it's disqualified from serious consideration on that basis alone (for me at least). I've had other cards in my cube that got a similar reaction - so much to read people just didn't bother. Cards like that tend to go undrafted around here which is why I really like choosing cards with short and sweet text boxes when possible.

Again, Tinker is perfectly fair if what you can tinker into isn't that oppressive.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

My vote is for tinker as well. If anything, just because either you get tinker to work, or you sort of end up with what could easily feel as a watered down version of tinker and at that point, will it really feel as good? I'd rather play a shitty tinker deck than an awesome deck with transmute artifact, I think.

 

[Fulcrum]

Transmute Artifact was a card I was looking at for a peasant cube. I imagined it as a way to grind out value by sacrificing stuff like Chromatic Baubles and Wellsprings to get more Chromatic Baubles and Wellsprings in an artifact midrange/ control deck that would maybe get a win condition if you drew it in the late game. $150 is a lot of money to durdle around with Wellsprings though.

I didn't notice this at first but if you don't pay the X the searched for artifact goes to the graveyard so you can even use transmute as a janky artifact only Entomb.

Tinker is definitely the more straightforward and iconic card though.

 

[safra]

I've played Transmute Artifact in Legacy, where it helped me turn a Shardless Agent into Thopter/Sword. (old decklist)

Even then, it was barely good, but it worked pretty well. Fulcrum points out a useful not-so-edge-case where you can entomb an artifact fatty to reanimate later if you're short on mana. It's also worth pointing out that Transmute Artifact doesn't have you sacrifice your artifact until it begins to resolve, which means you no longer have the Dismiss-your-Life's Legacy feelbad.

I would probably still Cube Tinker first.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I'm not sure if my post got deleted, but I was saying two things:

1. Tinker isn't a fair card in itself, while transmute is much closer fair card, which is in itself a really interesting concept to think about for this type of affect.
2. Transmute is also interesting in the directionality that it provides. You're going to run it with artifact mana ramp to pay the difference off of the sacrifice, so you immediatly have the sketch of at least part of a format. One where you're going to be using artifact ramp, and probably low on cantrip effects, to create an incentive to ramp->tutor, rather than cantrip for the pieces and ramp.

Transmute is much clearer in its identity as a mana ramp and tutor effect, than a card intended to just do broken things with. It becomes much closer to being catagorized as something like birthing pod, than something like tinker.

What you would probably want to run would be



Which means that you can start thinking in terms of dividing cheat cards out into two catagories, instead of just dumping them all into the unfair catagory, and having to warp a formats top end to suit it.

So there are at least two fair formats out there, one in which we focus on the busted cheat cards but neuter the top end, and one where we're running things like reshapes/transmutes and doomed necromancers.

I also was irritated with the notion of excluding the card purely off of the text box and said so.

 

[sigh]

If we are running reshape, aren't we also running, or running in its place:

Color requirement aside, a similarly costed effect.

I also would not run Transmute thanks to the textbox. There's one person in my group who might struggle to read this at all. I'd need to get it altered with the better rules text in a more clean fashion...

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

After toying around with demonic tutor, 10/10 want to run a different tutor in its place, just because its picked too highly, so the deck that needs it for redundency never gets it.

This was a neat deck from last night.

UG Clasp control from CubeTutor.com

This is one of the traditional drafting traps a lot of formats deal with--a player goes into UG for the ramp and blue's powerful spells, but finds there is no removal, and either loses or branches out into red. Than they post a thread on the main board "what does simic do?"

This drafter fell right into that trap, but pulled out because the artifact section fills gaps in the color pie, which lets him control the game with a contagion clasp powered removal engine of robots/arrows, while also growing his counter based threats vertically. Muddle lets him tutor for whatever engine pieces he needs (loam, mongrel, or clasp). Don't really like loam in this deck, but like the idea of using it to power haven.

After much toying around with the R/G lands deck, what people actually seem to like doing in that color combination is berserkers and haste based strategies




Than this was a nice aggressive rakdos deck.

Rakdos aggressive midrange from CubeTutor.com

This was a good example of someone going to draft an aggressive deck, but able to adapt with their fixing. The CIPT lands are fine when you're mostly running out bears as your aggro start, because you're really just a low CC midrange deck that wants to make an aggressive start, than scale dead creatures from the yard into late game value. Spider Spawning and leave // chance are there mostly to just value discard than flashback.

These rakdos decks are kind of brilliant. They all want small, cheap creatures, to attack and die. They can either win the early aggressive game, or the creatures in the yard are the fuel for its grindy midrange strategies. It either wins, or turns your losing into winning--very rakdos. Would have been nice to have oversold cemetary though. Graveblade maurader is a monster, and claim // fame was great for getting back ashling.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Drafted my first Baron deck in RL and it was 100% sick

Baron from CubeTutor.com

This was another hard control deck, that used elixer of immortality, tombstalker/death rattle, and razaketh's rite as a reprogramming engine.

The deck was extraordinarily nimble, which sounds funny to say about a control deck. Usually, by the midgame it would start shedding sub-optimal win conditions, and begin reconstituting itself around streamlining a singular win condition, supported by the appropriate control tools.

Razaketh's rite felt extremely powerful in conjunction with elixir, and I think that is probably the core of the baron archetype in cube: unconditional black tutors coupled with colorless graveyard recycling.

The second sun and lab maniac packages fit together: the cycling cards fueling both win cons.

Self-mill card draw spells were great, especially when you could elixir->rite whatever discarded piece you wanted:



Epiphany was really strong, even at fairly small amounts, such as X=3. The effect is powerful enough on its own to merit inclusion, but not "embarrass the color pie" strong like FOF or stroke, while providing a powerful tool for supporting self-mill interactions.

I think its very format specific, since it can obviously be left in the dust by competing blue draw spells, and its going to be happiest where it can be a simultaneous graveyard engine/draw spell, but still was impressed. Very neat spell.

This was probably the best role player in the deck though



Super power smoothing effect, works great with elixir, approach, and lab maniac. Fogs when you need it, gets elixired or delved as needed, and you can unearth it.

The other interesting thing about this deck, was that even though this is a singleton (mostly) format, there is a lot of functional redundancy from the card pool, which made the deck consistent. 2 sweepers, 2 self mill draw spells, 2 delve cards, 2 tutors. Anything it was light on, or wanted more copies of, it could access with razaketh's rite. None of these cards felt parasitic as a result, and the similar-but-different, not-to-similar spells feels like the Goldilocks place to be. Not the soul-crushing consistency of constructed, not the anemic, bomb reaching piles of retail limited.

Still can't get over how powerful the black tutor effects are, and the extent they can warp a deck.

Per our discussions on mana sinks

G/W Artifacts from CubeTutor.com

First off, the artifact interactions were just unbelievably cool. They could function as board pressure, life gain, tribal synergies, board control, vertical/horizontal growth, or card draw. This was another very nimble deck. It had active mana disruption from creeping mold and glimmerpoint, as well as a draw/sifting engine from salvagers, market, mind, wellspring, and feed. Feed being really good with blinked splicers and golem tokens. Than you have genesis.

G/W tends to be one of those color pairs that is either little kid, kind of boring, they struggle with interesting themes for, or it ends up being a drafting trap because it can't really grind effectively against blue based midrange. This deck has none of those problems, and a big part of that is all of the impactful mana sinks it has to choose from, that allow it to either draw/sift, or add impactful threats to the board.