General CBS

[Onderzeeboot]

I think you would have to first clarify why they should take such an invasive route over something simple, like tightening up the existing guild mechanics.

You are not wrong, but the fact that they have found satisfying ways to connect blue to red and black to green, and have so far failed to do that at least for RG, and arguably for UB, is an indicator for a possibly more optimal color wheel. I did find skulk a satisfying keyword for the color pair, and I do enjoy playing decks in my cube, so that's something. At the same time, I don't think adds a lot of relevant stuff to the game that couldn't do. Both color pairs can feel very similar in their controlling shell. If anything, feels considerably deeper as a color pair. Anyway, I think it would be fun if they tried this out for a block

 

[vennythekid]

Didn't RTR use that color wheel?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

You are not wrong, but the fact that they have found satisfying ways to connect blue to red and black to green, and have so far failed to do that at least for RG, and arguably for UB, is an indicator for a possibly more optimal color wheel. I did find skulk a satisfying keyword for the color pair, and I do enjoy playing decks in my cube, so that's something. At the same time, I don't think adds a lot of relevant stuff to the game that couldn't do. Both color pairs can feel very similar in their controlling shell. If anything, feels considerably deeper as a color pair. Anyway, I think it would be fun if they tried this out for a block

I have the same feeling about b/w. It feels like its a worse version of the blue pairs.

The u/w vs u/b problem is very old, and generally is a result of blue CA being able to win the game on its own, and just shopping around for the best supporting interaction. They have done some work promoting uw as a flyers color, but I find that distinction a little blurry as well.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Didn't RTR use that color wheel?

Yes, yes it did! That's quite hilarious

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I have the same feeling about b/w. It feels like its a worse version of the blue pairs.

The u/w vs u/b problem is very old, and generally is a result of blue CA being able to win the game on its own, and just shopping around for the best supporting interaction. They have done some work promoting uw as a flyers color, but I find that distinction a little blurry as well.

White and black have quite some overlap, lifegain, pinpoint removal, wrath effects, and lately high defense creatures (which WotC introduced to separate black from red). These are all things a blue-based control deck is interested in, so naturally the two color pairs feel somewhat alike. The funny thing is that and somehow don't have this problem. Apparently green wants different things from black than it wants from white. Likewise, plays wildly different from , even though white and red have much in common, as Boros shows.

 

[StormEntity]

I suspect a lot of the / distinction comes from the fact that green's really a split color. It has a lot of aggressive elements and a lot of controlling elements, and frequently its cards are two-way in those two paradigms. Tireless Tracker is a prime example. It's very powerful but without its ability to go into grindy and beatdown decks it wouldn't have seen the amount of play it has. Green definitely has creatures that are more polarized to one side or the other, though: Courser and Kalonian Tusker don't go in the same deck all that often. GW gets the Kalonian Tusker side of things, GB gets on the grindy Courser game.

Blue doesn't have that same kind of demarcation and so it relies on the other color often to give it a more clear identity. The burn in UR lets it take a more aggressive, tempo approach while UW tends toward control because it plays off the controlling elements in white better than it goes with white's aggressive elements. This may actually have something to do with the UG identity crisis and the inability to make them anything but good stuff and ramp decks: both colors are trying to take cues from their partner as to what identity the deck will take on.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Like I've said before, I actually really like UG identity (at least in cube). The problem is that its very picky about what types of cards it wants in the card population; but the basic aggressive formula of getting ahead on mana development, so you can play fatties with counter and bounce backup, is a lot of fun. Both colors provide evasion (flying/trample) and you can always add a touch of blue card draw, addressing the issue of your aggressive decks running out of steam. Just make sure you have that foundational ramp, and the decks very nearly build themselves. (elves/bouncelands). Its frustrating that there isn't more depth, but at least the basic formula is engaging.

All of the colors, I think, could be described as having both aggressive and controlling characteristics, which is significant. What matters is how those elements are layered over one or the other. For example, you're never going to get a reactive UG deck, due to the lack of hard removal: reactive elements in U/G will always result in a third color removal splash, making attempts to support those strategies in UG effectively a wedge/shard endorsement.

B/W really frustrates me, as most of its strategies feel like they lose to U/x midrange or control decks: like B/W is effectively executing the same gameplan, but with worse tools. Than in the aggro department, its fairly miserable due to the lack of reach.

Reactive U/R is kind of interesting, because I feel like its probably the worst of the reactive U/x color pairs (UG aside of course), since the removal is never really consistent. It can run into that control deck problem where you just draw the wrong part of your removal suite to match what threats the opponent is spinning out. It can still produce competitive decks, but I feel they are on average worse than what UW or UB can produce. Its a shame too, because the X spells in red (and blue), dovetail much more eloquently into what a control strategy should be (mana superiority fueling endgame abuse), than anything black or white provides, which is largely just mercenary removal spells.

Its kind of funny that the aggressive slant is basically a fun burn deck, but I will allow it.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I think and are sexier as enemy color combinations anyways.

Guilds pairings ranked by coolness (objective rating, best to worst):

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Really? You have look-at-me-I-can-do-lifegain-and-wraths-in-a-million-different-ways Orzhov and sleep-indu-snoooooooore.... Azorius that high? I agree on Selesnya though, but there's no way I can axe it from my cube without giving up Grixis, a.k.a. the bestest shard in existence, a.k.a. Nicol Bolas and Cruel Ultimatum are mandatory first picks! At least Knight of the Reliquary is a cool card.

Anyway, from this ranking we can calculate your optimal color wheel Jason! We total the ranks of the five guilds that make up a potential color wheel, and figure out which one has the lowest total!

: 5 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 = 33
: 5 + 4 + 2 + 8 + 9 = 28
: 5 + 1 + 6 + 2 + 10 = 24
: 5 + 1 + 8 + 2 + 3 = 19
: 5 + 7 + 2 + 6 + 9 = 29
: 5 + 7 + 8 + 6 + 3 = 29
: 3 + 4 + 1 + 8 + 10 = 26
: 3 + 4 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 31
: 3 + 6 + 1 + 7 + 10 = 27
: 3 + 2 + 7 + 1 + 9 = 22
: 9 + 1 + 4 + 2 + 10 = 26
: 9 + 6 + 4 + 7 + 10 = 36

Congratulations Jason! Your favorite color wheel is , which gives you Azorius, Izzet, Gruul, Golgari, and Orzhov as guilds. The current color wheel, in place since the beginning of Magic the Gathering, is your number two least favorite color wheel. Tough luck!

 

[sigh]

Now correct me if I'm wrong here.... but doesn't every color wheel give you all ten guilds? There was acruelly a follow up Question Mark about this. WotC's color wheel doesn't support enemy colors intrinsically less, they just have fewer cards focused on those guilds at the moment.

Basically this only matters if you want to ignore half of the guilds, right?

 

[Chriskool]

Basically this only matters if you want to ignore half of the guilds, right?

Yes, we should ignore half of the guilds in our cubes.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Now correct me if I'm wrong here.... but doesn't every color wheel give you all ten guilds? There was acruelly a follow up Question Mark about this. WotC's color wheel doesn't support enemy colors intrinsically less, they just have fewer cards focused on those guilds at the moment.

Basically this only matters if you want to ignore half of the guilds, right?

Supporting all 10 guilds in a set (or in a cube) has some serious problems if you're pushing a gold theme. For one, if everyone's in a different guild, there's no competition for the gold cards. Also, each guild demands a threshold of cards in its colors to really feel supported, which means there's less room for mono-colored cards, i.e. cards that are desirable for multiple drafters. Focussing on only five guilds gives you much more breathing room to flesh out the guild without giving up a solid base of mono-colored cards.

The other option, of course, is to not focus on a gold theme, and just sprinkle in a few gems in each guild. This is the approach WotC has taken in the last few non-gold sets, and it works well. Each guild gets one uncommon that pushes players in a strategy fitting for that color pair in a natural way. There may be a multicolor rare for each guild as well in certain cases, which serves the same role. Both the uncommons and the rares are a bit more powerful than the monocolored options at their respective rarities, giving a nice incentive to pick up the gold card.

Anyway, if you do want to push a gold theme, five supported guilds is better than ten imho.

Yes, we should ignore half of the guilds in our cubes.

It therefore should be no surprise that I already am doing just this!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I found it much easier to rank the shards and wedges, so I calculated the order of guilds based on that.



Guilds pairings ranked by coolness (objective rating, best to worst):











I assigned each guild a compound rating, based on the rank of each of the three shards and/or wedges the guild appears in. Tiebreakers are resolved based on the lowest floor, i.e. I'ld rather play a guild that supports a higher low. Like I predicted, Selesnya is last, though not by much. I forgot about Sultai, which I enjoy even more than Grixis. Funny thing is that my list is almost identical to Jason's, except that Orzhov and Azorius, the two guilds I called out, are lower on my list than on his. That's almost entirely due to me not liking Esper's identity much I believe Also, Naya has a serious problem. You need to step up Wizards!

Edit: This, of course, leads to my own preferred color wheel, which is apparently all enemy guilds! That's a bit boring though. Looking at the other options, my current setup () ranks 4th when I total the ranks of the guilds, but shares first place when I use the compound rating based on shards/wedges above. It's also the first option that features my three favorite guilds! Switching black and red (), the option I asked MaRo about, ranks second



I might have to waste another edit on this, factoring in the shards/wedges ranking

Edit2: See? My current setup jumps to second place if I take into account my favorite shards/wedges. It's the only high-ranked color wheel featuring my least favorite shard (Naya), because it also happens to feature my four favorite shards/wedges!

 

[Jason Waddell]

My affinity for Orzhov comes from a very early impression of playing Magic. This pairing gives you the "good / evil" dichotomy in the same deck, which I found pretty interesting. It also seems to be a relatively rare constructed color combination. It's perhaps an outdated impression, but it's left me with the feeling that the combination is "cool".

For , I think there's something sexy about the classic control pairing. Even this may be misguided, as maybe many of you think of for classic control. But I started playing Magic with a SOM Standard control deck, so that's where I get it from.

I'm glad you've turned my subjective ratings into an objective analysis. I suspect "all-enemy" would be more popular if Boros weren't so lame.

 

[vennythekid]

For , I think there's something sexy about the classic control pairing. Even this may be misguided, as maybe many of you think of for classic control. But I started playing Magic with a SOM Standard control deck, so that's where I get it from.

I started playing right before Gatecrash came out and Revelation Decks were a huge force in Standard, so I'm also biased to favor over as a control color.

Spoiler: My Power Rankings

My personal power rankings:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.


Which leaves me with (lower score better here):
: 3 + 1 + 4 + 2 + 7 = 17
: 3 + 6 + 2 + 4 + 5 = 20
: 3+ 1 + 8 + 2 + 10 = 24
: 10 + 2 + 6 + 1 + 5 = 24
: 5 + 1 + 9 + 2 + 7 = 24
: 3 + 9 + 2 + 8 + 5 = 27
: 10 + 4 + 1 + 6 + 7 = 28
: 3 + 9 + 4 + 8 + 7 = 31
: 3 + 6 + 8 + 4 + 10 = 31
: 5 + 4 + 9 + 6 + 7 = 31
: 10 + 9 + 1 + 8 + 7 = 35
: 10 + 9 + 6 + 8 + 5 = 38

Unsurprisingly, my favorite color wheel is the RTR wheel with and swapped. Interestingly, the Gatecrash wheel is my least favorite.

 

[vennythekid]

Okay so my question for discussion is this: I like the RTR wheel the most () and want to start re-designing my gold section to reflect these color pairings a bit more.
This requires some anchor gold cards in the following shards:
Jeskai
Grixis
Jund
Junk
Bant

A quick trip to the Gatherer reveals that only Cruel Ultimatum and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker interest me in terms of three-color cards.
What other 3-color cards (if any) are you excited to play in these shards?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

 

[sigh]

Honest question here: what are alla y'alls drafters' rankings for guilds? Do you design your "color wheel", or whatever, to your peeference, or the aggregate of your drafters?

Basically I'm saying that from my perspective it should be the aggregate. What if every other drafter of venny's cube loves the "gatecrash color wheel"?

Before I attempted to redesign my color balancing around some "favorite" or "ideal", I'd have to poll my group to figure out what would make the group happiest. It'd be the same math, just aggregating all the players' ratings. Data amount could be increased by asking both for guild and shard rankings.

 

[Diakonov]

White is by far the most boring color in magic.

It would be nice if they could somehow provide a consistent card-advantage engine to the color besides tokens. Blue and green have regular draw and mill, black has graveyard recursion and life-loss draw, and red now has pseudo draw.

For the most part, the only motivation to include white is for removal or spamming creatures. They do have blink effects, but it's hard to make it theme without it getting out of hand.

What are some of white's interesting aspects? If I were to rebuild my cube, I'd probably start there and work out into the other guilds.

Edit: I think the Curiosity mechanic deserves to be in white. Doesn't that just feel like it makes sense?

 

[Dom Harvey]

Peregrine Drake emergency banned in Pauper, lol

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Peregrine Drake emergency banned in Pauper, lol

Lol. Finally.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Peregrine Drake emergency banned in Pauper, lol

Which guild is this?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Interesting:

Magic formats typically only have changes to the banned and restricted lists with each of the four major set releases each year. However, since Pauper is only a format on Magic Online, we have the ability to more quickly make changes in ways that affect all players since the legality of changes can be universally enforced. This differs greatly from the paper game, and this change should not be considered typical. It was, however, an opportunity for us to leverage the flexibility and data of our digital platform.

Given R&D's desire to make this change, we were able to implement it on Magic Online with the November 16 downtime rather than forcing players to play a less fun format until Aether Revolt.

Seems relevant for all older formats migrating to Modo; and pauper is a good laboratory since the financial consequences of flash bans are negligible.

 

[Chris Taylor]

as with most things cube I don't really have stuff I love, just things that I end up hating (BW and UG respectively)

I can't really find an archetype to stick there, at least one that isn't just midrange.

 

[shamizy]

Guild wise, I think my rankings are as follows:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

I just don't like UG at all, it tries to be all these different things but usually just defaults to something good-stuffy. There's no real identity there. Golgari is the best because I love grindy stuff and things that have to deal with the graveyard. As far as actual design for guilds goes, I'm mostly on the 4-5 gold slots per guild plan just for balance. I know that I'm going to have drafters in just about every color combination on most nights, no one really has a preference aside from one friend who almost always goes some kind of black deck.

As for tri-colored cards, I only try to include those that bring some interesting gameplay. I've got the following right now:



Sidisi is just sweet to play with and can change the complexion of a game, bonus points if you have a self-mill reset with Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. Ultimatum is obviously like the poster child for amazing tri-colored cards, there's nothing better than actually being able to cast one. Tamiyo is just very well-designed and I really like how her card is a nice supplementary piece to more creature based Bant strategies.

Finally, Jeskai Ascendancy is just a fun little combo piece and can get absolutely crazy with Prowess creatures. I once saw a Monastery Mentor and Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest hold off like 5 BW Aggro guys at like 7 life backed by the ascendancy. BW player literally couldn't get a decent attack in or any chip shots because there was a high probability of getting wrecked on the crackback or having giant monks appear out of nowhere off defensive Brainstorms and bounce spells. It was such a flavor overload.