General Brainstorming: 2 Player Cubes

Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Have you guys built 2-player cubes before? How was your experience?

I have an idea for a cube that is like... 70% blue. Built for Grid Drafting.

Blue because it's a fun interactive, yet incomplete color. You would want to splash to kind of round out your deck, and I'd want to try a rule like... 'No basic lands other than islands'. So you'd also have to draft your ability to cast your splash spells. This would really take advantage of the 'hate draft' tension in Grid Drafting.

Lately I've been recommending that people cut a color or two if they're going to do drafting with small numbers, and this is maybe an extension of that concept.

Maybe Brad has some ideas...
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

A 2-player cube would be, what, 90 cards? 120 if you wanted a bit more flexibility in terms of what people could draft?

I'm thinking... 10 of each non-blue color, 10 colorless cards, and 5 fixing lands? That leaves you with 45 blue cards, or 75 if we're going for 120 cards? Make 12 of those cards Ux, and I think we have an appropriately biased cube.
 
sigh

sigh

Grid drafting is 18 grids of 9, if I'm not mistaken. That would put a minimum pool of 162, if no variation in cards between drafts is desired.
 
Brad

Brad

Jason Waddell said:
Maybe Brad has some ideas...
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Part of why I built The Black Cube was a desire to access grid drafting without removing a color. It works really well and you could probably go even more into one color if you wanted. Don't see why not.

I think the idea about not allowing non-Islands is a little risky. Part of the goal of removing a color or color-slanting is to make the cards more pickable in a more restrictive environment. If anything, I'd like the inverse. A four color grid with a few bombs of another color that can only be played with drafted fixing.
Brad said:
I went with black because it's kind of the jack of all trades color. Great removal, respectable card draw, graveyard interactions could be a focus, plenty of aggro 1 drops, second best midrange creatures, lots of cool top end creatures. It also has the most swamps/black matters cards, allowing me to play a lot of things no one else could.

If I had to do another color, I'd probably do red or green. Burn spells are super flexible in their ability to remove or to race, so I like the idea of having a lot of those around. Green has some notable forest-matters cards and Gigantosaurus that I'd like to play. You'd need to be careful that you don't end up all aggro in red or all ramp/fixing in green, although a true mega ramp strategy looking to hard cast Emrakul 1 could be sweet. Green has the issue of supporting GW and GU, two problem guilds.

I wouldn't go for white because it seems like tokens would have to be a feature of the environment and they can really lock the board up in a detrimental way. The average white card also doesn't feel very interesting. White tends to have more solid role players than interesting, fun cards once you have 150 of them in your list, I'd think.

I wouldn't go for blue because control mirrors are going to lead to very long games for your players with a high frequency if counterspells are a primary feature of the format. The aggro deck in blue would maybe be interesting, but we know it would be unreliable and you'd be unable to support many aggro players.

I'd probably look at the devotion/[basic land type] matters/[color] matters/m:CCC cards for red and green and decide from there if I were to do a different color.
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I will note something extra here that I found while looking at making a Torment 2. White maintains the color pie pretty well because it gets hosed by black and red, which are removal colors anyways. Combust vs I don't know, just any red spell, honestly is an easy swap. Same for Deathmark vs Go for the Throat or whatever.

Also, I suppose you could cut the token-board-clogging from white, as well, if desired. Not like that's impossible, but it does narrow the pool a bit.

If black is the jack of all trades, white is the jack of very few trades. It could be interesting to force the white decks to splash for access to more effects.

For blue, if you were in a smaller list, in a two person environment, the aggro decks would be a lot sturdier.

For black, don't you dare.

I love the idea of how uneasy your life total would feel in a red cube.

Green definitely has the coolest green-only cards like Llanowar Tribe, Leatherback Baloth, Steel Leaf Champion, Gigantosaurus, and Kalonian Twingrove.
 
sigh

sigh

TrainmasterGT said:
Ah, so you're basically building a cube where White is as bad as every commander player says it is ;).
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I really enjoy this sentiment among commander players, especially when it gives a false sense of ease amongst my opponents when playing my monowhite Teshar deck that very commonly wipes the floor
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

sigh said:
I really enjoy this sentiment among commander players, especially when it gives a false sense of ease amongst my opponents when playing my monowhite Teshar deck that very commonly wipes the floor
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"Uh, that's not a real monowhite deck. It totally has artifacts in it! Therefore, white still bad." ;)
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

It's kinda like lifegain. You know how a bunch of people underestimate how good incidental lifegain is because "gaining life doesn't win the game"? The point isn't to win me the game, friendo (unless I'm building around killing you with my lifetotal), it's so that I don't lose the game while I'm working on winning the game.

I kinda want to build this deck:

 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
LadyMapi said:
It's kinda like lifegain. You know how a bunch of people underestimate how good incidental lifegain is because "gaining life doesn't win the game"? The point isn't to win me the game, friendo (unless I'm building around killing you with my lifetotal), it's so that I don't lose the game while I'm working on winning the game.
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sigh

sigh

People call lifegain bad, but then complain about these cards raising hell for certain decks ;)

etc etc etc.

I would probably agree with the masses regarding cards that only gain life, except in very specific circumstances, but when built into the gameplan of the deck? it can be a really powerful tool.

Edit: I think Oketra is far too good for my power level, especially since I plan on running the other two in the trio of cards I listed above, but couldn't really say at a higher power level where 5 mana is peaking out a curve. She is a lot of value in any case, and is a stupidly difficult body to push damage past because she doesn't fall apart when trying to block a creature with high toughness (for instance a 1/1 double striker blocking a 1/3.)
 
sigh

sigh

if we are trying to balance it within the mtg power band, probably never worth it in a vacuum. If you don't mind going off the deep end a bit, probably +10 life? Even then it just buys a bit of time since it's a one shot effect rather than a repeatable one. A 1CMC sorcery removal spell will often result in as much or more net life gain over the course of the game.

Even Feed the Clan with +10 life (situationally) only saw play in a specific setting, if I recall correctly.
 
Aston

Aston

That kind of effect is so inherently situational that I don't think there is a number where it could be said to be "good". Against some decks, it won't matter at all, and against others it will be the only thing that matters. If you're talking about a typical retail level draft set, and with "good" meaning "maindeckable", I think I would consider it at something like 15 life? Eventually it will get to a point where it will blank an attack step which is almost like drawing a card, and then as you increase it will blank more attacks which almost makes it card advantage., but at the same time even in limited there are decks that won't care if you gain 20+ extra life.

I'd compare it to something like a narrow destroy effect. If Naturalizeis equivalent to Feed the Clan in this comparison, then the most powerful version of Naturalize would be a 0 mana instant that destroys any number of artifacts and enchantments. That card could win you the game by itself, or it could be completely uncastable, and gaining N life for 1 mana is going to be much the same.
 
Velrun

Velrun

ravnic said:
At which number would a cmc 1 sorcery with "You gain N life" and nothing else be good?
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13 life

This was calculated at some point 10 years ago and it assumed going in blind (not knowing the match up.) Not sure it holds true anymore.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Maindeckable is a hard question for that because how much it varies.
Like depending on the format and how control decks actually kill you, they won't care about W, sorcery gain 200.
 
ravnic

ravnic

Hm, this is actually interesting, now that I think about it, because Soul Warden, a card I've been cubing for years (my drafters love her) is kinda that. Depending on the deck and matchup she is {W}: If they don't kill this, gain something between 8 and 50 life. Well, if the opponent doesn't care for the lifegain, she can also still grap a weapon and hit them, but I think she's as close as you'd get. And she can also eat a removal spell, but I don't mind trading my 1-drop for one of these, so that's barely a downside.
 
sigh

sigh

Soul Warden triggers potentially many times over the course of the game. Assuming you have stuff that triggers off each life gain event, that raises it's stock significantly. And as mentioned, it can hold equipment, be buffed by anthems, etc.
 
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