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Black is well positioned though to remove blockers and a 5/5 does a lot of damage on a clear board (and even without a clear board, it costs your opponent a blocker each turn). I think people exaggerate to some extent how obsolete older creatures are. Sure, Juzam is not above curve anymore...

Juzam Djinn is fine. Are we really going to argue that a 5/5 for 4 isn't a solid creature (the drawback is not relevant for a deck wanting to run that card)? And lots of people were running Plague Sliver years ago as a replacement for Juzam due to price considerations (Tom Lapille was running...

The parallels between good draft formats and cube are clear in my mind. One thing from the article which I think applies to pretty much every cube - all cards are good (either in an archetype or just by themselves). Probably every good limited format had good commons/uncommons. Grillo hits on...

I think for me it's just more finding a balance between what I'll call "scripted archetypes" and "organic synergy". One of the great parts about early cube for my group was uncovering synergy. There was no defined meta at all with my first cube or even really a strong focus by guild or...

Mazirek looks like a pretty low payoff to me with some abysmal starting stats for the cost and mana requirements. Are you specifically into the sacrifice trigger? Or are you just looking for a Golgari build around type card of a lower power level? I agree Meren is broken. I love the design, but...

I still think it's important to differentiate between average power level and maximum power level. Again going back to how cube started, the card pool was sparse. People were running River Boa and were happy about it (not exaggerating). And when that is the low bar you have for "filler"...

Good posts. I agree for the most part. I will just say though that there are high powered variants which exclude some of the more abusive cards which can still be quite degenerate even without them. I feel my cubes have always been outside the norm simply because I have never run a single walker...

Exactly. I know we can sometimes look down on the power max community, but we aren't being fair or honest about things when we do that. I'm not saying we shouldn't be exploring lower powered cubes because I think they have a lot to offer and the power max community is largely ignoring them, but...

Nothing at all to do with Magic. It's a way to remember the order of main sequence star sizes. O is the hottest (blue giants) all the way down to M which is the coolest (red dwarfs). Our sun is a G-type star for reference.

Midrange cubes lead to better games of Magic, I would agree with that. Powered cube can lead to better stories though. So I think to some extent it really depends on what your group is looking for. My feeling is that everyone should try playing a powered (or semi-powered) environment at...

There's a bit of douchebaggery at the elite levels of pretty much everything. And that goes for Magic as well. Best to find a cool group of people you like and build a cube for that group which caters to those people. My feeling is that will lead to the best Magic experience of your life and...

Started with mentor P1P1 but shifted a bit towards more of a cycle Drake Haven thing. Did a few gold fishes. Seems OK. I was worried because fixing is bad but the chromatic stars plus cycling really helps (I also avoided most double mana costs). I don't know how fast your meta is, so this...

Made a lot of safe choices on my way to a pretty standard Rakdos aggro deck. There was a lot of yard synergy I passed up and my mana didn't come together because I ended up two colors (probably should have gone with a white splash - I passed some cool cards). Still, this seems pretty good to...

Thanks for the link. I watched a few videos and enjoyed them. I'm all for more cube content.

So I think we can agree the ideal most competitive format doesn't look anything like this garbage right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_565939395&feature=iv&src_vid=1P1sVUEPd64&v=N-xPjY2JBXM

This is what I'm saying. Our theoretical best competitive version of cube is going to have a balance between many elements including variance (you can't get rid of that even if you wanted to). And I don't think you want to anyway because one of the things that would encourage spikes to play is...

I think people are just hung up on discard being "unfun" and associating that with "unfair". You are a control deck and get hit with T1 Thoughseize. You have a mana rock, wrath and a planeswalker. What do they take? Why is that not a skill intensive interaction? I understand the argument...

Was it really about that for everyone though? That might be why we all shouted past each other and this felt like a really bad exchange. I'm not at all convinced that maximizing variance reduction leads to the best version of this game. Didn't the mothership even write an article about how...

The more I think on this thoughtseize argument the more I feel it might just be a difference in power level. In a lower powered list, things are more "fair" and the meta sort of revolves around incremental advantages gained from synergy (either early game or late game depending on how your...

I wanted to mention that I've been using a couple cube tutor lists for inspiration on some card choices as my testing/tweaking continues. Combo is a difficult thing to try and capture I feel because a lot of it can be niche (and hurt drafts in the process) and other stuff needs very specific...