Holy mother of runes there's going to be a massive refugee influx over here! We might finally be getting the fresh blood we need! (Kirblinx didn't do his top posts of the year thread for 2018, but we're absolutely in decline). I'm not ecstatic that we'll be getting an influx of power-maxers, but I'm sure some new recruits can be made. In the last few years, we've had such an embarrassment of riches in themes being fleshed out and concepts becoming viable for the first time. A philosophy may have been ironed out here, but I think we could use some of the number-crunchy people from MTGS to help with refining and vetting our cardpools. I'm tired of endlessly swapping cards and subthemes, going with my gut on everything and using online sites to playtest virtual decks in a pinch. There's simply too many cards out there. We need a dash of hivemind to make this easier. This may be end up being a wild dream, but I'm envisioning a resurgence in cube popularity coinciding with Riptide Lab, home of replayable, cheaper cubes, becoming a part of the mainstream.
General CBS
- Thread starter James Stevenson
- Start date
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Yeah a handful new members would be welcome. They will learn soon enough, that Drake Haven is more fun than True-Name Nemesis! :eek:
I saw Verdant Force and thought "it would be cool to make a cube where this card is good". I checked cards around a bit and decided Mirage-Mercadian Masques would be a cool time period to represent but man, the creatures just suck. It's not that they are low-power, it's that they are awful, overcosted jank. It's hard to create a playable environment because a creature-based deck is barely functional unless it curves out or is backed by burn, land destruction and countermagic.
I can create a Power Max subforum. 
I can create a Power Max subforum.
Library of AlexandriaLAB.com
Hey, nice to get a name shoutout. That is always cool.
I can't believe you missed my Most Liked Post at the start of the year. It is always my favourite part of this forum and will always do it even if my interest waxes and wanes.
I even mentioned about the dropoff in activity in that thread in the post here.
I will always welcome new blood, it is the same with my LGS. If you don't have new blood then the place will just eventually die. Too be perfectly honest, I think Onderzeeboot is the one holding this whole show together at this point being the first one to reply and comment on anything he can.
The new blood are the ones that are making this forum still flow, and the old hands still appear every now and then to make whole hearted posts full of content to make it feel like they are still constantly reading, even if they aren't posting with the regularity the new forum users would like.
My interest has been heavily into Pauper as of late (I did like the bans btw, UB was getting a little too oppressive), and I would rather spend my free time just grinding online leagues then spending 30 minutes trying to think of the right words to say when trying to explain what I like and dislike about someones cube.
I could go on, but I have learn that this is my problem, and that I still have plenty more I could say, but if I don't hit enter now, then this will never be posted and I will still be just the silent observer that I generally am.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
You heard it here first, I'm butchering my likes per posts ratio just to keep this forum flowing
Seriously though, I'm more of a quick quip guy most of the time, but I enjoy the more thoughtful responses others make!Oh my, I just woke up to find I have completely butchered my information and potentially offended a lot of people. Kirblinx, I prostate myself before thee. I must have completely missed that thread by some freak accident, but I certainly enjoyed going through it now.
I was mostly just basing my position off of a gut feeling. I feel like the science part of cube design has dropped out of discussion in the last couple years, and that forging new concepts (we need to talk more about subthemes! They're one of the hardest things to engineer, but we've got a great model in the Penny Pincher 2.0. I also think there is more to learn from some limited sets in the way that each card's dynamic in relation to every other, especially between the commons, has been explored to a minute degree, M25 being a good example of this) has been slow lately. I suspect this correlates with the fact that the most active posters have a fairly strong grasp on their cube, and are not looking to uproot its foundations, which is all well and good. However, if we get a bunch of new members, they will not necessarily have read through the vast treasure trove of information that is the 2015-2016 era of posts surrounding archetype design and the roots of the modem Riptide philosophy (in which Grillo had an important part). Therefore, since it is not a common topic today among established members of the community, it can be missed, and having a lot of new threads about how to do 2-color archetypes sounds a bit redundant. If concepts closer to this foundation level were talked about more, new members would get up to speed more quickly and could contribute to the expanding of our knowledge about this as they started to formulate their own Riptide cube.
I realize that time constraints are really the greatest, well constraint, when it comes to reinventing the wheel and conducting investigations with massive data tables and all that. That's just life. My hope is that by getting more people, we will have more collective time to advance things and become more efficient and knowledgeable about design. I am looking for the scientific revolution to begin anew.
Hello all. Long time no talk. Hope everyone is doing well.
Haven't played much magic recently, but this new set is exciting to me as it feels like a throwback for the old folks (very Timespiral-like?).
And for anyone that wants to watch a Laboratory Maniac draft deck piloted to perfection, just finished watching this masterclass. So good.
And special shout out to Grillo on this link as I know Lab Maniac is a bit of a pet card.
Haven't played much magic recently, but this new set is exciting to me as it feels like a throwback for the old folks (very Timespiral-like?).
And for anyone that wants to watch a Laboratory Maniac draft deck piloted to perfection, just finished watching this masterclass. So good.
And special shout out to Grillo on this link as I know Lab Maniac is a bit of a pet card.
It looks like someone over at MTGS is trying to funnel them our way...
Evidently Onderz left an Impact on this guy, He's the first on they mentioned after Jason!
Evidently Onderz left an Impact on this guy, He's the first on they mentioned after Jason!
It looks like someone over at MTGS is trying to funnel them our way...
Evidently Onderz left an Impact on this guy, He's the first on they mentioned after Jason!
Wow. I didn't realize they were shutting down. That's crazy. Well, I hope the cube community migrates over here. This forum has always been a great place for thoughtful discussion.
I know Jason was semi-joking (I think?) when he suggested a powermax sub forum, but it might not be a bad idea. I've always had a love/hate relationship with broken magic. I like watching obscene plays happen so it's appealing to me on some level. And as a further defense of powermax, there is a common thread that you can rely on when looking for card information. One of the drawbacks to Riptide style discussion is that card evaluations are extremely context dependent. Lab maniac is absolute trash in many cubes but could be a bomb in a slower, grindy, self-mill enabled meta. That's obvious of course, but many other cards are a lot harder to figure out the same way. No matter how far I get away from powermax, I always refer back to those cubes to sanity check the power level of things. IMO, it will always be a useful and powerful resource.
And I think we'd rather the MTGS folks come here versus reddit, no?
I just want to see more discussion in general, which is not something that the Reddit format is conducive to for the most part. I don't use MTGS as much of a reference when it comes to my own design or card evaluation, but I do reference their Testing/Includes thread when a new set comes around to see actual play results and people's reactions to certain cards. You can definitely find cards that you may have overlooked on first glance ala Walking Ballista or Bomat Courier.
Speaking of broken magic... I have to post another LSV video. The last match of this draft is one of the craziest cube games I've ever seen.
For the secret power max lovers lurking here (with more on the way from MTGS?? Yeah? Yeah?)... this type of stuff is really only possible in that sort of meta. And it's hard not to get an adrenaline rush from watching it. I know we Riptiders really enjoy our incremental fair magic here, but absurd magic is also just really sweet.
For the secret power max lovers lurking here (with more on the way from MTGS?? Yeah? Yeah?)... this type of stuff is really only possible in that sort of meta. And it's hard not to get an adrenaline rush from watching it. I know we Riptiders really enjoy our incremental fair magic here, but absurd magic is also just really sweet.
Yeah we should do that, a few people seem to be turned off by our general contempt for "Card X is better than card Y, therefor, card Y is unplayable."
We're going to need to come up with a term for that way of thinking instead of referring to everything that isn't open-minded as "Powermax."
This whole fiasco has gotten me to start thinking about ways to apply a decks-not-cards philosophy to Powermax cubing, so I'll have to do a writeup for the new Powermax forum.
In the mean time, for those of you with MTGS accounts, make sure people know that we exist so we can take in some refugees! We've got more room for people, so long as they're respectful.
Get out there and put us on the map!!
Also, hit up wtwlf on twitter @wtwlf123. He's the guy who always does the top 20 set (p)reviews for every set over on MTGS. Even if just he started posting his reviews here, then we would gain a huge amount of traffic to the site. He's apparently just moving to twitter for the time being, so we could probably get him to come over if we're polite about it.
Years ago I used the term "powermax" over on MTGS and it was taken well. I think the feeling is its sort of a slight against the format philosophy. FWIW, we should probably just leave the naming the way it is ("powered" and "unpowered cubes" - are rare lists that focus on card quality - the first simply runs P9 and stuff like Library).
What we actually need to do is come up with a proper term for lower powered cubing. I mean, maybe we just call it that - low powered cubes. I don't know. There's just a huge gap between traditional powered/unpowered and peasant/pauper lists. That's the area Riptide cubes occupy and it's a really interesting design space. It needs a good name.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Welp, the post got deleted and infracted under their soliciting rules. They are working on a new community site, so I can understand them enforcing it still, to be fair.It looks like someone over at MTGS is trying to funnel them our way...
Evidently Onderz left an Impact on this guy, He's the first on they mentioned after Jason!
That's very true, but I wouldn't agree with low powered cubes as a term. That makes me think more of an environment bereft of powerful cards at all by choice, where there is a flat power band that compensates for the lack of outright bombs.
Personally my environment is decently powerful all things considered, more than the norm here, but it's somewhere in the middle between unpowered and powered. While I do play some generically powerful threats and cards that can carry themselves without much help, there is still an overarching theme of looking deeper into archetypes and interactions. I think the big difference is that the design philosophy commonly seen around here isn't centered around the power level of individual cards themselves, but on creating a certain gameplay experience. That requires looking over things as whole rather than individual pieces that just come together eventually. Synergies take higher precedence, interactions with other pre-existing cards and archetypes, and just seeing wonky applications are the main appeal to the design process (for myself at least). It's not necessarily a plug-n-chug of new X is stronger than old Y, let's give it a go. It's fine that the majority of people that design cubes are into that, but I've never thought that that led to the development of an especially interesting or nuanced gameplay experience. In fact, I've found most of those environments to feel more like a dime a dozen. Like what actually makes that environment yours? What are you doing differently? What interesting choices have you made to develop this?
Part of what makes synergistic decks in a Limited environment so fun is being able to exploit corner cases or assembling some re-occurring engine that lets you churn out an advantage. Drafters like feeling smart when they can create something like that in a draft setting; where they found this weird interaction that creates something memorable and exciting. That's what makes W/B aggressive decks with growing Champion of the Parish interacting with the Raid from Bloodsoaked Champion so fun to see in action. It's what makes using a Gifts Ungiven to put card types in the graveyard to reduce the cost of Emrakul, the Promised End a sweet value play. Use Sylvan Safekeeper alongside Titania, Protector of Argoth to create an army of tree people out of nowhere to steal a game. How about using looters and Sifting type effects to turn a card like Archfiend of Ifnir into a virtual Plague Wind?
Honestly, as much as flak as some people give the format, I'd say EDH has been a pretty big influence on my own design. I like building synergistic decks in that format and my favorite decks to run are my Tymaret, the Murder King Sacggro, Karametra, God of Harvests Enchantress, and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant Graveyard decks. I've spent so much time theorizing with new cards to add to them each spoiler season when I see something that piques my interest and the first thing I think of is all of the pre-existing cards and what new interactions I can come up with. It's using all the parts of the buffalo, so to speak. Like Cryptbreaker by itself is pretty mediocre, but if you have a means of generating additional Zombies to fuel that card draw, that's sweet. Then if you have a Life From the Loam in the graveyard, that additional card draw can turn into a Dredge 3 which can generate another zombie if Sidisi is out there and you pitch more things from your deck to the graveyard. But what if you also had a copy of The Gitrog Monster or an Underrealm Lich out there to change up your interactions with Dredge by also allowing you draw a card or the Lich letting you choose 1 out of 3 and pitching the others to generate another Zombie token? These individual pieces can do things on there own in a vaccuum, but when they come together to create something really powerful and interesting that makes it memorable.
I just feel like there's so many possible avenues to explore in design that are left untouched by a lot of people and that's just a shame. I hope we do get some more people visiting these forums to get a different look at design and hopefully come away with new ideas. I know that I definitely find myself referencing other lists here very often when I'm trying out new things or looking for new ideas.
Good post.
I've always looked at what designers are doing here as advanced cubing though. The downside is that you have to pour a lot of your own time and resources into making it work. By contrast, the more traditional power cubing paradigm saves a lot of development time up front.
I feel weird arguing for the "other team" as it were, but I think adding your own spin to an environment just for the sake of personalizing it is overrated. If you have the resources and a dedicated group, by all means. For sure you will get a better cubing experience by doing it. Don't disagree at all with that. But it's a lot of work, and casuals are very likely going to get equal or better mileage out of copying and tweaking a power list.
I've argued - and will continue to argue - if you are new to cube, don't start with a Riptide list. Start with a derivative of a power list (or run the average cube tutor list), play it for six months to a year and then see what your groups wants to do. I'd never be happy with that cube long term but I also have 10 years of cubing experience to know what I think works and what I personally dislike.
I've always looked at what designers are doing here as advanced cubing though. The downside is that you have to pour a lot of your own time and resources into making it work. By contrast, the more traditional power cubing paradigm saves a lot of development time up front.
I feel weird arguing for the "other team" as it were, but I think adding your own spin to an environment just for the sake of personalizing it is overrated. If you have the resources and a dedicated group, by all means. For sure you will get a better cubing experience by doing it. Don't disagree at all with that. But it's a lot of work, and casuals are very likely going to get equal or better mileage out of copying and tweaking a power list.
I've argued - and will continue to argue - if you are new to cube, don't start with a Riptide list. Start with a derivative of a power list (or run the average cube tutor list), play it for six months to a year and then see what your groups wants to do. I'd never be happy with that cube long term but I also have 10 years of cubing experience to know what I think works and what I personally dislike.
I agree. there's definitely something to be said for ease of entry, and there's nothing that stings like getting your cube finished, having your playgroup shuffle up for a draft, and having people say "This card is trash, why is this in here?" because they're used to a more traditional cube from MTGO or whatever. Playgroup expectations are very important when considering making an IRL cube and not just theorycrafting.
I agree with that, I was in that exact position when I was first designing my cube. I would look over the most popular cube threads at MTGS, see what they were running, and try to emulate something similar. It wasn't until actually playtesting and seeing things in action that I saw things that I disliked seeing in a game environment where I wanted to make changes. I would definitely advise against beginning cube designers from referencing the more nuanced cubes here for initial design strategy. There would be way too many decisions and concepts deployed that would end up being information overload. It would be the equivalent of introducing someone to MTG by having them play a complicated CMDR deck in a 4 person free-for-all versus a beginner deck designed for teaching.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
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