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General Abstract: What do you wish was better about your cube's design?
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
Lot's of things. But that is sort of the beauty of designing a cube. It's never where I want it to be no matter what I do to it. It's a project that I can't finish, but that is at least half of the appeal for me.
With that said, I want to make some changes to improve a few things. In particular:
1. Get rid of auto P1P1 cards. This means removing a lot of cards I've resisted removing for a long time. Recurring Nightmare, Jitte, the moxen (I don't run any other power, just the 5 original mox), probably the remaining swords. There are always going to be cards at the top, and so I suppose you can't truly eliminate the auto first pick thing, but I'd like to get it to where there are 2-3 cards in each pack that you have to choose from that could be P1P1. This also makes the gap between the best and worst cards smaller, which I think is only going to improve drafts.
2. More synergy. I want as many interactions in my cube as humanly possible, because this is the beauty of the format for me. I love seeing guys come up with crazy interactions that no one has really exploited before. This requires that the cube continue to evolve, which works out because it's a never ending project that I can't finish anyway (see above).
3. Remove proxies. I hate playing with fake cards. It just annoys me. But this also means from a budgetary aspect I have some limitations. I don't own Force of Will for example. It's $70. I won't pay that for a piece of cardboard unless I can trade for it, which maybe I could do if I ravaged my card collection, but I can't bring myself to do it. $70 for a card is all kinds of retarded. I have a Gorf actually, and I've thought about selling it because it's $100 and that's just stupid that someone will pay that amount of money for it.
With that said, I want to make some changes to improve a few things. In particular:
1. Get rid of auto P1P1 cards. This means removing a lot of cards I've resisted removing for a long time. Recurring Nightmare, Jitte, the moxen (I don't run any other power, just the 5 original mox), probably the remaining swords. There are always going to be cards at the top, and so I suppose you can't truly eliminate the auto first pick thing, but I'd like to get it to where there are 2-3 cards in each pack that you have to choose from that could be P1P1. This also makes the gap between the best and worst cards smaller, which I think is only going to improve drafts.
2. More synergy. I want as many interactions in my cube as humanly possible, because this is the beauty of the format for me. I love seeing guys come up with crazy interactions that no one has really exploited before. This requires that the cube continue to evolve, which works out because it's a never ending project that I can't finish anyway (see above).
3. Remove proxies. I hate playing with fake cards. It just annoys me. But this also means from a budgetary aspect I have some limitations. I don't own Force of Will for example. It's $70. I won't pay that for a piece of cardboard unless I can trade for it, which maybe I could do if I ravaged my card collection, but I can't bring myself to do it. $70 for a card is all kinds of retarded. I have a Gorf actually, and I've thought about selling it because it's $100 and that's just stupid that someone will pay that amount of money for it.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I'd like to find ideal harmony between threat power level to removal power level. Its tough to promote interaction and include powerful cards while avoiding rocket tag and keeping auras viable. The fact that their are so many rulebreakers (like journey to nowhere negating the entire purpose of Elephant Guide) make it even harder to pick the right removal. Theros and BotG has helped a ton, but there still is a lot of work to be done.
I enjoy the aesthetics of a real card and don't use any proxies either.
That said, pet peeve, "proxies" are just custom game components. I never heard anyone refuse to play a game of Power Grid because someone used homemade feemo resources instead of the default cubes and cylinders in the box and there is no train gamer I know who would even consider using the default paper money included in the box over generic poker chips, but many Magic players will throw a shitfit if you don't use the "real" component. The fact that its allowed to alter a "real" card in a way that is 99% unrecognizable and or play versions of cards that hinder gameplay (textless or written in a language people at the table can't read) while a "fake" card that is 100% functional is taboo is absurd to me. As long as it doesn't attempt to violate copyright or hinder gameplay I don't see any reason to oppose them.
That's my annual complaint about proxies, I should be good until 2015.
I enjoy the aesthetics of a real card and don't use any proxies either.
That said, pet peeve, "proxies" are just custom game components. I never heard anyone refuse to play a game of Power Grid because someone used homemade feemo resources instead of the default cubes and cylinders in the box and there is no train gamer I know who would even consider using the default paper money included in the box over generic poker chips, but many Magic players will throw a shitfit if you don't use the "real" component. The fact that its allowed to alter a "real" card in a way that is 99% unrecognizable and or play versions of cards that hinder gameplay (textless or written in a language people at the table can't read) while a "fake" card that is 100% functional is taboo is absurd to me. As long as it doesn't attempt to violate copyright or hinder gameplay I don't see any reason to oppose them.
That's my annual complaint about proxies, I should be good until 2015.
I totally hear you on the proxy thing. It is all about the aesthetics for me. It has nothing to do with them being "fake". They just look like crap and don't feel right.
I'm extreme about look and feel. In fact, I've kicked Cloudgoat Ranger out of my cube on multiple occasions because the art sucks so bad I can't handle it. I'd rather cube with Geist-honored monk which isn't as good but has a thousand times better art (and fills a similar function).
Good point on the threat/removal density. It's a key design element that I find hard to balance as well.
I'm extreme about look and feel. In fact, I've kicked Cloudgoat Ranger out of my cube on multiple occasions because the art sucks so bad I can't handle it. I'd rather cube with Geist-honored monk which isn't as good but has a thousand times better art (and fills a similar function).
Good point on the threat/removal density. It's a key design element that I find hard to balance as well.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I really like my Black Removal selections, they all have real strengths and drawbacks. Red is removal is really efficient, but also has clear boundaries (toughness). White Removal is really where a lot of the problem lies because they tend to be unconditional, have fake drawbacks (many decks can't kill enchantments to get their creature back) and get around death triggers. Blue removal is basically white removal, but more expensive and extremely swingy.
I wish more of the aggro vs control games were more interactive, and less of the "does he have the wrath?".
I wish being on the play mattered less in my cube.
I wish the matchups in my cube weren't Control > Midrange > Aggro > Control rock paper scissors and instead were more about play skill
I wish white was more interesting
I wish control would be better
I'm cutting/reworking a lot of the cards that make it be like this in the revision im working on atm
I wish being on the play mattered less in my cube.
I wish the matchups in my cube weren't Control > Midrange > Aggro > Control rock paper scissors and instead were more about play skill
I wish white was more interesting
I wish control would be better
I'm cutting/reworking a lot of the cards that make it be like this in the revision im working on atm
CML
Contributor
More options, more options, more options. I think my Cube is brilliant, for the most part, but I wonder if it would stand up to iteration after iteration of drafting. I wonder if the colors would be balanced. I wonder if a clear front-runner would emerge. I wish the people that have the time to do this, who are the people whose jobs it literally is to design Cube, worked on something from this template instead of Modo, I'd be interested to see what happened in the vein of
"what does a Modo version look like"
"what does an in-house version look like"
"what does a version a little more casual look like"
etc. pulling various levers like "audience" and "powered" and "rarity" and "funsies draft" and "alternative draft formats." it seems to me the greatest waste in Magic (aside from, you know, Magic) is that Magic isn't more forms of Magic; corporate culture has so saturated the game at every level that the spirit of curiosity flickers rarely in small and obscure places, what if there was less "why" and more "why not"?
"what does a Modo version look like"
"what does an in-house version look like"
"what does a version a little more casual look like"
etc. pulling various levers like "audience" and "powered" and "rarity" and "funsies draft" and "alternative draft formats." it seems to me the greatest waste in Magic (aside from, you know, Magic) is that Magic isn't more forms of Magic; corporate culture has so saturated the game at every level that the spirit of curiosity flickers rarely in small and obscure places, what if there was less "why" and more "why not"?
I want to actually get the cards and playgroup together to actually draft; mostly my cube is intellectual game design exercise.
I feel like my bounce is too prevalent for the environment.
Some colour pairs are way shallower than others in mechanical themes, although they might be better overall? The design is very 'good stuff' oriented with themes added rather than the other way around, although I think I'd rather keep it that way around for now.
Relatedly, I'd like more signals to the drafter of what themes are available, so people don't sit there without an idea of what they could be drafting.
I think some of my individual card choices are dumb, but want the effect because I think impact it'll have on drafting will be cool, but I have no idea if that'd actually be the case.
E: I feel like I should post a thread for my cube, but also not because it's so raw and untested at the moment that I feel like three drafts has a high chance of sending me back to the drawing board for huge chunks of it.
I feel like my bounce is too prevalent for the environment.
Some colour pairs are way shallower than others in mechanical themes, although they might be better overall? The design is very 'good stuff' oriented with themes added rather than the other way around, although I think I'd rather keep it that way around for now.
Relatedly, I'd like more signals to the drafter of what themes are available, so people don't sit there without an idea of what they could be drafting.
I think some of my individual card choices are dumb, but want the effect because I think impact it'll have on drafting will be cool, but I have no idea if that'd actually be the case.
E: I feel like I should post a thread for my cube, but also not because it's so raw and untested at the moment that I feel like three drafts has a high chance of sending me back to the drawing board for huge chunks of it.
Without meaning to provoke or go off on another rant, this is EDH, right? Someone had a neat idea for how to play magic, but then it got corporatised and now it's a homogeneous, bloated mess rather than getting slimmed down and improved. I guess the same could be true of cubing, given the modo cube, and depending on what we see in Conspiracy.
I have some news for you about goyf's price...
I'm afraid of slamming my list with narrow enablers, so the 'build-around' archetypes I do have are very weak.
Despite cutting 4 of my colors to 2.5 average cmc, a 4-color midrange battle always manages to emerge from drafts.
Yeah I have a FTS goyf and I'm a) glad I procrastinate too much to have sold it a year ago, and b) unsure when to get off this crazy train.
Amen brother. This is the single most annoying aspect of Magic for me. I don't want match-ups determining the victor. Our group has done a good job of making that happen simply because we all tend towards midrangy type decks. But it comes up sometimes. Someone will build a really strong control deck and the advantage against midrange can be felt. Or someone will randomly build a hard aggro deck and get stifled by all the midrange decks. I don't have a solution to that one either. But I'm curious what changes you are making to combat this. I'm very interested.
I just looked it up on StarCity. $200?? What the hell?
That's a good point. I think there is a lot of that type of thinking around this forum which is why I come here. I sort of miss the days when I didn't know anything about Magic because I experimented more. Most of the time I made crap decks, but sometimes I would stumble onto something really great and powerful that no one else was really doing. And that felt awesome. I sort of want cube to be that way which is why I'm so focused on synergy over trying to support defined themes and such (though I certainly have a lot of that in my current cube). Because my group is casual they don't have a lot of preconceptions about the game, so they are very unconventional at times. And it's cool to see that. I want to encourage it.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I know the feeling. I dumped three Vendilion Cliques when they were $20. That's $120 bucks I lost out on right there.
This. I've wanted to talk about this topic for quite some time, actually, but never really knew how to articulate it, nor do I have the empirical evidence to back up my assertions. My gut feeling, though, based mostly on personal experience, is that the play vs. draw conundrum matters most in the matchups where the decks are furthest apart on the aggro - control spectrum. That is to say, RDW / burn decks and white weenie decks without a solid game plan to dish out a second wave when things go poorly benefit the most from winning a coin flip against slow control decks, and likewise are the most susceptible to get royally hosed when they lose the ever important flip. An Augur of Bolas muddying up the ground before you turn a single guy sideways or a Rune Snag eating your best two-drop are both big game versus aggro, and I'd wager that winning the coin flip puts the pilot at a significant advantage, maybe something close to 60/40. It feels like it's really hard to break serve in those specific matchups, and as a control player I often mind myself exasperated upon losing at how another half turn would've helped me to stabilize enough to buy myself another five turns.
Other matchups, like midrange mirror attrition slogs, don't seem to be affected nearly as much by the coinflip. So thankfully this isn't something I need to worry about universally for every player and every deck on any night. But I'd still like to fix this for when the aggro and control players go head to head. I just have no idea how.
If you trust these statistics, you need better players.
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/play-or-draw/
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/play-or-draw/
Play vs. draw matters less and less as the power level decreases, no?
CML
Contributor
Not quite. It seems to be very important to ... lose the die roll. Check out the format analysis on mtggoldfish.com if you don't believe me
Re: OP
I want Haakon, Scourge of Something of Other to be good, I want value graveyard decks to be good. I want it to be harder to jam 4 or 5 colors. I want to raise the power level without the bombiness. Right now the cube is really techy, everything's about synergies between mediocre cards, and I wish the cards could be awesomer. But I love the techiness.
I want Haakon, Scourge of Something of Other to be good, I want value graveyard decks to be good. I want it to be harder to jam 4 or 5 colors. I want to raise the power level without the bombiness. Right now the cube is really techy, everything's about synergies between mediocre cards, and I wish the cards could be awesomer. But I love the techiness.