General 720

James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
I never really minded Armageddon. My aggro decks were never so far head that Geddon just won the game, it always took a lot of work to set it up. But then yeah, it would probably win the game.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
James Stevenson said:
I never really minded Armageddon. My aggro decks were never so far head that Geddon just won the game, it always took a lot of work to set it up. But then yeah, it would probably win the game.
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So one thing I miss from actual limited is the feeling when your cardpool comes together to just produce an absurd deck. I just put in a Mox Sapphire that appears 25% of the time. Armageddon too. Are there other exciting cards that are fun and juicy every once and a while that we don't want to see every time? It'd be cool to see decks come together and have them really be a one-of-a-kind sort of occurrence.
 
Tom

Tom

Another, very similar approach would be to build a "generic goodstuff" 360 card cube then swap out N card expansions as desired. So maybe a 60 card graveyard themed pack, or a 100 card token themed pack, or maybe domain pack complete with a bunch of fixing.
 
anotak

anotak

the thing i don't like about armageddon in this case is that you can't effectively play around it if its just a 1-of in 720
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I've got it at 2/450 and I've seen people hold back excess lands just in case (though they may have thought this was "bluffing")
 
CML

CML

Contributor
James Stevenson said:
I never really minded Armageddon. My aggro decks were never so far head that Geddon just won the game, it always took a lot of work to set it up. But then yeah, it would probably win the game.
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i feel the same way but my playgroup doesn't


anotak said:
the thing i don't like about armageddon in this case is that you can't effectively play around it if its just a 1-of in 720
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sure you can! usually the player will spill the beans and if not you can get em g2 and g3.

wadds, i instinctually dislike the "mox sapphire showing up 25% of the time" idea but i dislike the idea of not trying it more
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
This is pretty awesome, but pretty heavy to do offline. I'm going to try my 3-pack system first and then if that doesn't work see if this can possibly be adapted to the paper world.

Its kind of hard to just blindly suggest cards into this, but hopefully I can think of something useful.

Fuck Mox Sapphire though.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
i'm pretty sure this idea is best if used to explore "alternate card choices" of comparable power to stuff we don't have room for. i.e. i can only have so many green five-drops, but maybe i want Thornling and Primal Command in addition to Slime and Silverheart. these kinds of cuts are painful and due to the granularity of "a card is in the cube or not" arguably make our otherwise tight and well-designed cubes worse and less diverse than they could be.

mox sapphire, though ...
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
Eric Chan said:
isn't a 25% chance Mox Sapphire just a 1440-card powered list
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... and we come to Mox Sapphire. This is an interesting card, in that, like Ur-golem's Eye, it lets you get ahead of the curve. However unlike that 4 mana 720 card staple, Mox Sapphire only produces 1 mana, whether it costing 0 instead of 4 makes up for it will become apparent with testing, but for now I feel the verdict is that it would fit in cubes of 1440 cards or more, unless you feel fast mana is really important to your cube.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I've always considered Moxen to be the most innocuous of the Power cards, and I think they add a touch of excitement and "feel good" nature to drafting them without being stifling or a terrible detriment to your opponent's fun. Perhaps one every once in a while is a net-positive to the experience?

Are there any formal arguments against it? I think it would be a real added benefit to add an excitement factor to the cubing experience, and playing with the same 360-card list week after week can be a little sterile. The "you never know what you're going to get" is an appealing aspect of regular limited. You have your bread-and-butter effects mixed with splashes of this and that.

The problem is most of the things that are splashy and above my cube's power level aren't in my cube because of the feelbad factor. Are there cards that are fun to see in small doses?
 
Jonas

Jonas

Is there any deck that wouldn't want a mox? I'd gladly put a sapphire in basically any deck I draft, unless it is something ridiculous, like mono black with only messengers, obliterators and poxes?
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Jason Waddell said:
I've always considered Moxen to be the most innocuous of the Power cards, and I think they add a touch of excitement and "feel good" nature to drafting them without being stifling or a terrible detriment to your opponent's fun. Perhaps one every once in a while is a net-positive to the experience?

Are there any formal arguments against it? I think it would be a real added benefit to add an excitement factor to the cubing experience, and playing with the same 360-card list week after week can be a little sterile. The "you never know what you're going to get" is an appealing aspect of regular limited. You have your bread-and-butter effects mixed with splashes of this and that.

The problem is most of the things that are splashy and above my cube's power level aren't in my cube because of the feelbad factor. Are there cards that are fun to see in small doses?
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Like most power (or shit like Balance in non-power Cubes) you can file these cards under "things that are cool to do once," which describes how I feel about powered cubes themselves. Some of the nuttier effects, not necessarily power, that you find in other people's Cubes and not Riptide ones (usually) are splashy (Lotus) and some end the game immediately (Channel), while a third class requires some finesse and setup to use in addition to being broken (Balance, Recurring Nightmare). Moxen are none of these things, they just ramp you a mana at very little risk. What's exciting about that? I would say more insidiously miserable.

If anyone else were suggesting 1/4 Moxen things I'm sure you'd do them the favor of ripping the idea to shreds. I still think it's worth trying, but should it not work (which seems very likely) it'll be the kind of design mistake that you'll be annoyed with yourself for criticizing justly in a dozen other posts and then repeating
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
CML said:
Like most power (or shit like Balance in non-power Cubes) you can file these cards under "things that are cool to do once," which describes how I feel about powered cubes themselves. Some of the nuttier effects, not necessarily power, that you find in other people's Cubes and not Riptide ones (usually) are splashy (Lotus) and some end the game immediately (Channel), while a third class requires some finesse and setup to use in addition to being broken (Balance, Recurring Nightmare). Moxen are none of these things, they just ramp you a mana at very little risk. What's exciting about that? I would say more insidiously miserable.

If anyone else were suggesting 1/4 Moxen things I'm sure you'd do them the favor of ripping the idea to shreds. I still think it's worth trying, but should it not work (which seems very likely) it'll be the kind of design mistake that you'll be annoyed with yourself for criticizing justly in a dozen other posts and then repeating
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I don't know, I am never really annoyed at myself for making design mistakes. Theorycrafting only takes you so far. If I'm not testing anything I'm not learning anything.

You'll be happy to hear I'm slowly testing Devotion cards.

We need more playtesters.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
There is nothing remotely interesting or fun about mox sapphire. Its just a 2 mana below average 2 mana card (sky diamond) card that costs zero and comes into play tapped for some reason. So, if you unless you think Sky Diamond is an exciting effect that you just wished was pushed really, really hard, why would you run Mox Sapphire?
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I will admit I have a soft spot for the moxen. I feel I need to disclose that before I continue. My thoughts for what it's worth.

If the argument is that the moxen are broken/bad because every deck is better with them, I think there are other cards we could exclude on the same grounds. Wasteland for instance. And yet most (all) of us run that card (some run multiple copies).

So why does Wasteland get different treatment? Because it's a land? I think the answer is that wasteland is an important card to keep non-basic lands in check. It's a key component for cube balance. Do the moxen make a similar impact on cube balance? Probably not (at least not positive balance). With that said, I think you can argue that the moxen open up (or improve) some arch types. All cards that bounce something back to your hand are better with a mox. Upheaval goes from time waster to game winner with a mox. Control decks probably benefit more from having a mox than aggro decks do, so if your control decks need a little help this is one way to do it (though probably not the best way to do it).

I'm currently running all 5 mox but no other undercosted mana (stuff that produces more mana than it costs to play). I have found this an acceptable compromise that hasn't ruined the meta. Of course, my group tends towards more midrangy type decks. So I wouldn't exactly call my meta diverse.
 
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