General CBS

VibeBox

VibeBox

Contributor
the vast majority are custom. there are a tiny handful of cards that are functional reprints.
for instance i played a bad WW deck that started with Samus p1p1 (1W, 2/1, stoneforge msytic but the second ability is just "sac an artifact: regen"). only ever found one mediocre equip but still won games because i had an armageddon (called Seal the Land) and as we all know it just wins games
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Typical post-draft chat between Eric and myself.
me: tonight was cray cray
Gb Cloudpost
5-color Zombies
Lifepod
Fabled Hero swinging for 20
Sent at 12:05 AM on Wednesday
Eric: whoa
cloudpost is a deck!
five colour zombies...?! whyyyyy
me: cloudpost is so a deck
Eric: fabled hero can do no such thing
post into karn ?
me: Prime Time, Avenger, didn't have Karn
Eric: i wonder if i should run fabled hero.. and some crappy auras? what else can target it
oh ok, green ramp
sad how all green ramp is so much worse than all colorless ramp
me: his deck had
Reckless Charge, Rancor, Grafted Wargear
battlecry triggers
Eric: cooool
me: it was nuts nuts nuts
Eric: i already run two of those!
does any good card with battlecry exist
me: Oxid Ridge
Eric: ah, fair
reckless charge is sweet, i agree
very underrated
me: UWR control took it with no games lost
Eric: that is sweet
i hope you saved the decklist
as Lucas discovered for me, UWR is the king of control here too
me: I am writing down like, 5 decklists from the draft
Eric: hah
maaaaaybe that's overkill
me: apparently if you have Pridemate on the table and pod Kitchen Finks into obstinate baloth...
Eric: but hey at least it's fodder for your next CFB lifegain article
oh, gross
me: no, this was the sweetest draft, you don't understand
Eric: sweeter than normal?
me: all the decks were outrageous, I was so happy
people went so deep and it all worked
Eric: everybody did go all-out
yeah, deep is the word
me: my primeval titan got killed by Goblin Bombardment
Eric: they are onboard your train
me: Zombie player, on Turn 4, had all 5 colors
and all of his lands tapped for black
just like, consider that for a moment
Eric: whaaaat
i don't even see why he needs that many colours
two and three colour zombies is optimal
me: Bombardment, the UB Zombie lord, Putrid Leech
Eric: at least he got all the black duals!
me: motherfucking reveillark
Eric: oooh, your leech carrot-on-a-stick worked
yeah that is a sweet one
it still lost to UWR?
must see this UWR deck
me: uh, it lost to another aggro deck
an aggro deck that killed me on Turn 3...
it was nutty
Eric: hmmmm
me: the UWR deck was a house, it looked so comfortable
it would just 2-for-1 everything and then Loothouse into more action
best play:
G2 of finals, aggro player is about to swing with Hero of Bladehold, but decides to nuke control's Augur of Bolas before combat with Flametongue Kavu
Eric: loothouse! i can't even get people to take that here
me: this turns on Morbid, and the Hero Dies to that 3-mana morbid burn spell
Eric: brimstone volley! score
me: before attacking...
yeah
Eric: my favourite burn spell
hah, that's sweet
me: oh, one time the control player was stuck on one blue source
so he ran out Meloku so he could tap his island, bounce it, and replay it to cast Sower of Temptation
Eric: heh
meloku has a ton of applications
hope he had a shelldock isle too
someone always seems to assemble that here
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Man, I'm jealous of you people that get to draft your cubes to often and with good players. The last time I drafted cube one was looking at my proxied Bob (because that one Wizards employee couldn't play with the proxies) and as we were taking it out said something like
"It's ok, he's not that great."
I said "No way, he's awesome. Amazing in aggro or blah blah blah (sic)"
"Yeah but black aggro sucks in cube."

Ach! How am I supposed to break through this wall of preconceived cube notions and explain how awesome multicolor aggro is, or how awesome the zombie decks are? How many drafts is it going to take before anybody tries the Gravecrawler shenanigans? Still no one has ever gone into that deck. If I had 8+ players (good ones would be nice too) who would draft like once a month maybe people would start drafting awesome decks. But instead they're always kinda generic piles, maybe a few ramp decks, a mono red deck, and Birthing Pod. Grr whatever. Rant rant rant.
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
Jason Waddell said:
I sometimes wonder if this philosophy is bad. Don't people figure out Wizards draft sets without needing to be told all the details? Or am I being naive?
Click to expand...

You're lucky enough to have articles on CFB and whatnot, but if I turn up somewhere with a cube, everybody already assumes a lot when I say "Hey guys, I've got a cube." Nobody gunna be familiar with my list. They're gunna open a pack with Gravecrawler and Ion Storm and probably say "Meh" and "wtf", respectively. Or they could be good players and they'll open that pack and start talking about how spicy it is, and then draft something amazing. That does happen!
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
James Stevenson said:
You're lucky enough to have articles on CFB and whatnot, but if I turn up somewhere with a cube, everybody already assumes a lot when I say "Hey guys, I've got a cube." Nobody gunna be familiar with my list. They're gunna open a pack with Gravecrawler and Ion Storm and probably say "Meh" and "wtf", respectively. Or they could be good players and they'll open that pack and start talking about how spicy it is, and then draft something amazing. That does happen!
Click to expand...

I gotta say, if I was playing a rando's cube, unless it was really obvious from the packs what sort of archetypes are viable, I would probably go the good stuff route. I don't have enough trust in other designers to not set mono-black style traps, to put in decks that are draftable and not playable.

It's also well possible that cube's learning curve is too high, the design too ambitious and not sufficiently communicated (in the cards, not via the mouth of the author). We'll take an example. One time a bunch of us drafted original Mirrodin block. Most of us had never really played it, but we fell into the set's archetypes by virtue of following the packs and the power within. The set itself guided us into playable decks. I don't think a lot of cubes do this. As a whole we should probably be pushing fewer themes, harder.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Yeah it's kinda hard to spot archetype support from the draft picks without a spoiler. I've literally only seen one person do it: At my bachelor party, someone noticed the second greater gargadon next to a bloodghast and a gravecrawler, with two gravecrawlers already circling the tables and said "Is there some sort of sacrifice things deck?"

That's a pretty blatent hint right there, and he still wasn't sure.
Also lets be honest: fucking nobody ever looks at your cube list unless they themselves are interested in building one. As jason said "Unless any of them read this article, nobody will miss Isaumaru"
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Chris Taylor said:
Yeah it's kinda hard to spot archetype support from the draft picks without a spoiler. I've literally only seen one person do it: At my bachelor party, someone noticed the second greater gargadon next to a bloodghast and a gravecrawler, with two gravecrawlers already circling the tables and said "Is there some sort of sacrifice things deck?"

That's a pretty blatent hint right there, and he still wasn't sure.
Also lets be honest: fucking nobody ever looks at your cube list unless they themselves are interested in building one. As jason said "Unless any of them read this article, nobody will miss Isaumaru"
Click to expand...

Like, half my cubers are building cubes now and I get asked for my list all the time. I think I may have a more passionate playgroup than most.
 
Changling Bob

Changling Bob

So, er, I never read people's cubes. If I want to get a feel for them, I draft them on cubetutor and see what I see. I probably end up with first level thinking decks, but I see what's floating around that's non-standard. I can't parse that many cards.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Changling Bob said:
So, er, I never read people's cubes. If I want to get a feel for them, I draft them on cubetutor and see what I see. I probably end up with first level thinking decks, but I see what's floating around that's non-standard. I can't parse that many cards.
Click to expand...

Yeah sometimes I end up taking a more mathmatical approach to it. Sure, sometimes i'm like "Well what archetypes can I draft?" but other times I'm like "Man, I've got bloody no black 3 drops. I wonder what jason's running, black aggro doesn't suck in his cube from what I hear"
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
A while ago someone made the suggestion of splitting the cube into "sets" of cards to be drafted in a specific order. Initially I was dismissive of the idea as being only "mildly useful". But, as time has gone by, the idea is starting to sound better and better. For those people who run perfect sized cubes (360cards/8players for example), its less important because you know every card will be in the draft, but for those of us do bigger cubes and like the variety therein, this sort of concept is looking helpful. Forcing the most poisonous/deck dependent cards in pack 1 can help to ensure that these cards find homes and don't just becomes pack 3 losers and also makes the less powerful build arounds more playable as you will always find them early. The downsides of this are increased cleanup time (lame), but also it has the potential to be a bit stifling to your players creativity and decreases variance in the draft flow which both my lead to more stagnant deck building.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I didn't really think Dom's "Single Card Spotlight" would take off, because when he made it everybody ignored it, but now it's like our second biggest thread. Thanks Dom!

And thanks VibeBox for making the GBS thread. That was a big step in our forum's development.
 
Alex Blanton

Alex Blanton

Most drafts I've had, I've mentioned what is different/not singleton. I mention the Pods and Gravecrawlers and increased fixing for multicolor, but I haven't seen anyone go deep enough into the archetypes. It's frustrating cuz I'm not sure how much support to put in before it's OP and we don't draft enough to test it. Could be experience, could be infrequency of drafts, could be my own inexperience with cubing in general.

I guess it's actually a blessing that my playgroup hasn't really played any other cubes. We don't know what to expect, so we draft everything equally without preconceived notions about what's good or bad.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Alex Blanton said:
Most drafts I've had, I've mentioned what is different/not singleton. I mention the Pods and Gravecrawlers and increased fixing for multicolor, but I haven't seen anyone go deep enough into the archetypes. It's frustrating cuz I'm not sure how much support to put in before it's OP and we don't draft enough to test it. Could be experience, could be infrequency of drafts, could be my own inexperience with cubing in general.

I guess it's actually a blessing that my playgroup hasn't really played any other cubes. We don't know what to expect, so we draft everything equally without preconceived notions about what's good or bad.
Click to expand...

I used to do this, but for the most part people just gloss over it. If you're including 4 of something, people will notice, and if you're including 2-3 of something, most of the time it doesn't matter :p
Nobody actually cared I ran 2 cultivates instead of kodama's reach, and like 1 dude cared I had 2 wildfires. On the other hand, midway into pack one, every draft without fail, someone would go "Hey are there multiple pods here?" or something of that nature :p

It's almost more fun to just let people explore sometimes. :D
 
CML

CML

Contributor
James Stevenson said:
Man, I'm jealous of you people that get to draft your cubes to often and with good players. The last time I drafted cube one was looking at my proxied Bob (because that one Wizards employee couldn't play with the proxies) and as we were taking it out said something like
"It's ok, he's not that great."
I said "No way, he's awesome. Amazing in aggro or blah blah blah (sic)"
"Yeah but black aggro sucks in cube."

Ach! How am I supposed to break through this wall of preconceived cube notions and explain how awesome multicolor aggro is, or how awesome the zombie decks are? How many drafts is it going to take before anybody tries the Gravecrawler shenanigans? Still no one has ever gone into that deck. If I had 8+ players (good ones would be nice too) who would draft like once a month maybe people would start drafting awesome decks. But instead they're always kinda generic piles, maybe a few ramp decks, a mono red deck, and Birthing Pod. Grr whatever. Rant rant rant.
Click to expand...


you're blowing it way out of proportion mah ofay. bob sucks in every cube that isn't made on this site, it's fine

once i ran into this guy who came to an LGS for an old-school draft, eventually i realized he was in town for the PT, which he had t8ed, and i told him that 'blue tempo could be fun in cube' and he snorted derisively, as he was used to thinking about Cube not from a design standpoint, as more of a static thing.
 
Changling Bob

Changling Bob

I mean, when you boil down to it, it's about parasitic/linear mechanics, right?

For (maybe interesting?) context, Scars has an as-fan of poison of 1.2. To get that in cube, 8.5% of your cards need to have poison, which is what, 30 cards (in a 360 cube), which is maybe two drafters. That's not counting proliferate, which would contribute another 6 cards if taken directly from scars numbers.
 
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