Stealing cards from your opponents can be fun. You can see this in the fact that Gonti, Lord of Luxury is one of the most-Cubed black creature across the history of Magic according to CubeCobra (#14 out of 2,825 as of writing!). The pushed Dauthi Voidwalker is not far behind. While your opponent's game plan is not generally the same as yours, there's something satisfying about beating your opponent with their own weapons, and depriving them of key cards can be strategically advantageous as well. Cards are cards, and if a card is in Cube at all, it usually has some value, regardless of the deck it's slotted into.
And yet! I have a rule for my Cubes that I don't run cards that steal cards from opponents. The biggest reason is that cards are likely to get mixed up between decks in a situation where everyone has the same sleeves. We've had to regularly unwind games when someone realizes a key card is missing from their deck because it was stuck underneath an Oblivion Ring effect from the last game, and I try to minimize this. I've observed this as an issue all the time in EDH games and even at limited RCQs where people will accidentally keep their opponents cards between games even when the sleeves are starkly different!
That said, I am not dogmatic about any "rules" for Cube, self-imposed or otherwise. For example, I'm a big believer in singleton, but I break it with a few functional reprints (a la Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic), and I also have two of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail copies of Birds of Paradise because I'm 12 and I think breaking singleton exclusively for the African Swallow/European Swallow joke is kind of funny. So yes, I break my own rule for Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor because its theft ability has never been used (and because I like running Gix in Cube) and for Etali, Primal Conqueror, because it's the kind of red top end that's impossible to find otherwise and usually is cast near the end of the game. This was a challenge when I previously ran Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, as the cards exiled from him would get confused between players easily, especially basic lands. There would often be a side pile of exiled cards that would look like a sideboard pile to a reasonable person.
Theft cards that immediately cast spells back into your opponent's graveyards or their own exile like Blue Mage's Cane, Wildfire Devils, or Mysterious Stranger are generally fine because they don't cause any zone confusion
If I didn't mind stealing cards, I would be running many of these compelling and exciting cards:
So my question for all of you is: how do you handle this? Is theft cool in your Cubes? What practical advice do you have to avoid these kinds of scenarios where cards get mismatched between games?
And yet! I have a rule for my Cubes that I don't run cards that steal cards from opponents. The biggest reason is that cards are likely to get mixed up between decks in a situation where everyone has the same sleeves. We've had to regularly unwind games when someone realizes a key card is missing from their deck because it was stuck underneath an Oblivion Ring effect from the last game, and I try to minimize this. I've observed this as an issue all the time in EDH games and even at limited RCQs where people will accidentally keep their opponents cards between games even when the sleeves are starkly different!
That said, I am not dogmatic about any "rules" for Cube, self-imposed or otherwise. For example, I'm a big believer in singleton, but I break it with a few functional reprints (a la Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic), and I also have two of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail copies of Birds of Paradise because I'm 12 and I think breaking singleton exclusively for the African Swallow/European Swallow joke is kind of funny. So yes, I break my own rule for Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor because its theft ability has never been used (and because I like running Gix in Cube) and for Etali, Primal Conqueror, because it's the kind of red top end that's impossible to find otherwise and usually is cast near the end of the game. This was a challenge when I previously ran Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, as the cards exiled from him would get confused between players easily, especially basic lands. There would often be a side pile of exiled cards that would look like a sideboard pile to a reasonable person.
Theft cards that immediately cast spells back into your opponent's graveyards or their own exile like Blue Mage's Cane, Wildfire Devils, or Mysterious Stranger are generally fine because they don't cause any zone confusion
If I didn't mind stealing cards, I would be running many of these compelling and exciting cards:
So my question for all of you is: how do you handle this? Is theft cool in your Cubes? What practical advice do you have to avoid these kinds of scenarios where cards get mismatched between games?
