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TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

shamizy said:
I agree with that, I was in that exact position when I was first designing my cube. I would look over the most popular cube threads at MTGS, see what they were running, and try to emulate something similar. It wasn't until actually playtesting and seeing things in action that I saw things that I disliked seeing in a game environment where I wanted to make changes. I would definitely advise against beginning cube designers from referencing the more nuanced cubes here for initial design strategy. There would be way too many decisions and concepts deployed that would end up being information overload. It would be the equivalent of introducing someone to MTG by having them play a complicated CMDR deck in a 4 person free-for-all versus a beginner deck designed for teaching.
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Absolutely. I've seen a few newer designers trying to emulate the Penny Cubes by throwing in some of the more niche cards like Auriok Salvagers and such without the proper support those cards need.

That said, I don't think a "first cube" needs to be an old MTGS style power cube. I think it is more prudent for one to just xerox an established list exactly and try playing with it before embarking on their own design journey. I think building either version of the Penny Cube or Adam Styborski's Pauper Cube is a good place to start.
 
Brad

Brad



Anyone here ever run a black based discard deck? I'm personally more low-mid powered, but I'd be interested in the idea at any power level. Seems like it could be cool, but also seems potentially annoying.
 
Mondschwein

Mondschwein

What do you do to play a game of Magic? Right, you tap and untap cards. This is some aspect I'd like to go deeper on as I think it's weak in constructed but sometimes powerful in limited, and riptidian cubes tend to be in the middle of both. I'll throw in some cards that peaked my interest and you people tell me something about them. :D

Lap over with Cycling:


Love Tethers and Faeries. Not sure about the other two.

Useful with bounce lands (in fact, Voyaging Satyr is my mana dork of choice :) )


Seedborn Muse, Snap and Kiora might all be a bit strong? Like I said, Voyaging Satyr is my standard dork. Pore Over the Pages looks amazing as it's generally a good draw spell for Ux control, discards for Madness/Flashback/Reanimator and may generate mana with bouncelands.



Flyers that tap and therefore generate a tempo advantage. I like Niblis as it fits spells, Somnophore is interesting as it taps down a lot if you're not able to handle it. The sphinx needs islands to be worth it so it looks somewhat meh to me, while the dragon's passive ability improves counterspells with taxes like Miscalculation. The geists look boring to me.



the weaker etb creatures. not going to include any of them, personally.



Repeatedly tapping creatures for mana investment. Less exciting than the bigger blue creatures that need something done to reward you with tapping down enemy's creatures.



Those are the spells I am the least sure about. Hands of Binding is less exciting than Hidden Strings as untapping opens up cool interactions, but they might not be worth a card as you need to connect repeatedly with the encoded creatures?

Feeling of Dread and Ojutai's Breath are good for spells matter.dec, and I actually have a soft spot for Feeling of Dread as a cool multicolour flashback Innistrad card. :D Oh, the two Cipher spells obv are good for Spells Matter.dec, too.

Send to Sleep/Chilling Grasp actually don't convince me. Repel and Grip have Cantrips attached to them and come at instant speed. Of those four I only really like Grip of the Roil.



Strong tapping spells. Time of Ice looks REALLY interesting and is a payoff for other tapping effects. Might actually be a bit too strong in producing non-games? Sleep is strong but boring. Being in blue might help, as you need to add a more creature heavy colour to benefit from it.
 
Brad

Brad

Piqued my interest*
Ok, onto the real stuff.

I've often considered a simic untaps deck. I'd run it, but I don't currently support simic. It looks roughly like this:


Plus the "free" spells can function as rituals.

And the upcoming
lotusfield1.jpg


There's a lot more than that, but that's the basic, very loose, idea. Stuff that taps for multiple mana and then you untap it. Pretty simple variant of ramp. Probably a more rewarding build to assemble. Also probably more interesting for your opponent, as they have an opportunity to interact with the creatures rather than putting additional, usually noninteractable, lands into play.

I also left out some higher power stuff because I hate it.

EDIT: Someone respond to my BW discard idea two posts up. Lol.
 
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Knifethrower

Knifethrower

Re: B. Discard. I've happily run creatures with incidental discard as part of other archetypes.. i.e. victimize or exploit or emerge mechanic.) As a core archetype, the payoffs seem awkward, and the deck performs differently against fast opponents and slow opponents, which I don't like.

Re: hidden strings: I'm currently running this in a cube where it slots into ru "storm", gu ramp, bu "guys that hit you" ( I forget the term for this), and uw heroic. The card is great in this context.
 
japahn

japahn

Brad said:
Anyone here ever run a black based discard deck? I'm personally more low-mid powered, but I'd be interested in the idea at any power level. Seems like it could be cool, but also seems potentially annoying.
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It sounds like a feasible sphere archetype (look at me citing myself), payoffs I think are reasonable are:


There are some pretty serious issues with it, though:
  • Including enough discard to support the deck will heavily warp black into discard. It's normal to have some discard in cubes, but you'd probably need ~9-10 discard enablers in a 360 cube for the deck to be draftable, which is a huge part of the black section.
  • Discard is soft to aggro. You can circumvent this by using Smallpox-like effects, but there aren't a lot. The deck might have too many 20/80 and 80/20 matchups, which feel bad in cube.
  • The payoffs need to be cast before the enablers, so you need a high density (think 8-rack, you need 5 or 6 payoffs in a 40-card deck to have the same density). That will take another 6-7 slots and warp the black section further.
  • Discard is generally a miserable deck to play against.
 
japahn

japahn

Mondschwein said:
What do you do to play a game of Magic? Right, you tap and untap cards. This is some aspect I'd like to go deeper on as I think it's weak in constructed but sometimes powerful in limited, and riptidian cubes tend to be in the middle of both. I'll throw in some cards that peaked my interest and you people tell me something about them. :D
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I'm testing {W}{U} Tappers as an archetype, but haven't had enough drafts to conclude how it performs.

 
Mondschwein

Mondschwein

wtf @ same card? Sin Collector is targeted discard which is WAY better, and I don't think that the Grotesque works with blinking as the card doesn't remember what was spend to cast it when it re-enters the battlefield.

As a HUGE fan of discard and counterspells, I have to tell you that it is way harder to implement a well-balanced discard suite than a counter suite. It does have the same problem aggro has: proactive strategies are hard to balance right as they end up too weak if you don't support them properly but might end up dominating if you give all the strong cards to them.

@ japahn:
Sunblast Angel does look a bit pushed between all those cards while Blinding Beam, Territorial Hammerskull, Sentinel of the Eternal Watch, Watertrap Weaver and Pestermite seem quite weak. How has Time of Ice been for you? It's also a card that looks like it could make a game very miserable for the player who's in the spot of being the aggro deck.
 
Brad

Brad

Onderzeeboot said:
Could you put the M20 card in a spoiler tag for those of us who don't want to see cards that aren't out yet? Thanks! :)
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Honestly never even considered people did this lol. What's the [x ] for spoiler?


japahn said:
  • Discard is generally a miserable deck to play against.
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This was my main concern and why I asked.

My cube is black-slanted, so I have a shitload of black slots to utilize. I don't know the deck really needs payoffs. The opponent has fewer cards is a payoff.

Probably not a good idea.

Erik Twice said:
I love Sin Collector and it's pretty much the same card. Love splashing for it and blinking it :)
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I actually hate most targetted discard because it fucks up their day so badly with only one use. The cool thing about non targetted is that it slowly pressures them more and more as their options get fewer.
 
Brad

Brad

Peter LaCara said:
As long as we're on the topic of black discard, this guy seems like a centerpiece:

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As long as we're on the topic of new walkers, has anyone who previous didn't run walkers decide to add them in post-WAR? I've been considering adding walkers to my low-power format.


Mondschwein said:
So you don't like targeted discard?

While I can see that people find Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek to be too strong, I like my Duress and Thought Erasure. Blackmail and Lay Bare the Heart are also cool cards. Gerrard's Verdict and Augur of Skulls are strong discard two's without being as miserable as Hymn to Tourach. Random discard is something I really dislike in my cube.
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I guess you're right. Targetted discard that's costed appropriately is fine. 2 mana to take a look and get a one-for-one works well. I think that slapping it onto a creature and having it ETB+1 AND take a look is a lot unless it were costed to the point that the body were rather poor.

Random discard definitely sucks.

I like how Villain's Choice discard gradually ups the value of each discard as their remaining cards increase in value.

My big concern is that it's unfun to be the Villain here. On the flipside, a little 2/1 for 3 with a discard on it is a serviceable card in any deck, depending on power level, so it doesn't necessarily take up space.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

Mondschwein said:
wtf @ same card? Sin Collector is targeted discard which is WAY better, and I don't think that the Grotesque works with blinking as the card doesn't remember what was spend to cast it when it re-enters the battlefield.
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I misread it and thought it was targeted discard. Without it, I would be really hard-pressed to play Grotesque at all. By the way, by "same card" I obviously don't mean it's as good but that it's the same concept.

By the way, I understand your reservations. I don't think targeted discard is a good mechanic but there's not much in Magic that fills its role and it's kind of needed.
 
japahn

japahn

Mondschwein said:
Sunblast Angel does look a bit pushed between all those cards while Blinding Beam, Territorial Hammerskull, Sentinel of the Eternal Watch, Watertrap Weaver and Pestermite seem quite weak. How has Time of Ice been for you? It's also a card that looks like it could make a game very miserable for the player who's in the spot of being the aggro deck.
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Yeah, it's quite strong, but I need more drafts to tell if it is _too_ strong. Somehow, it was sideboarded in all drafts I ran since added it.

I run a wider power band than most, and this is intended to be close to the top.

Rasmus Källqvist said:
This was my notion as well! A sphere is a set of points, which doesn't really suggest something "singular". A sphere archetype sounds like something that covers all 5 colors.
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I visualize cards as points inside a sphere that is the color, and the spheres laid out in a pentagram shape like in the back of a card. The archetypes are the subgraph with the cards as vertices and their synergies as edges.

Anyhow, I'll go with what feels right for most people.

https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/name-of-archetype-shape-contained-in-a-single-color.2025/
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

I'm increasingly sad about the fact that the Modern Horizon changelings aren't good enough.

The idea of making tribal more viable in draft by giving some cards all creature types is very smart. It turns parasitic or pseudo-parasitic cards into cards that can be played by a large portion of the table. In a cube, it could turn interesting tribal picks into pay-offs and introduce competition between tribal and non-tribal decks.

But all the included changelings are weak. The best of the bunch is a Gravedigger variant because giving all creature types to the typical 3/1 draft creature isn't an actual incentive. I understand that Wizards is wary of making a card that ends up seeing play in any and all tribal decks ever created but I would have liked something I could put in my cube. After all, it's not like Modern, Legacy and Vintage are going to be affected much by a solid tribal creature. It doesn't need to be something powerful, just a versatile utility card. A Looter Changeling, for example, wouldbn't be overpowered but it could be interesting.

I also wish all Kithkins were rebels.
 
Brad

Brad

Erik Twice said:
But all the included changelings are weak.
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Weak is relative. If you truly want to build something tribal, you can adjust your power level to the changelings and run them in multiples.



Speaking of tribal... does anyone here run Bx life gain? I can see that feeling almost tribal-ish, but I don't have experience with the deck. M20 had some goodies that I may be interested in.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
TrainmasterGT said:
No, the best changing is Chameleon Colossus. Of all the cube cards I haven't been able to squeeze into highball, this is probably the one I'm saddest about.

I guess if you're trying to explicitly support a specific tribal subtheme in a cube, then something like Changeling Outcast could be better, but that's environment specific. Chameleon Colossus does the most pound for pound in my opinion.
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We were talking about the changelings in Modern Horizons. Still, Chameleon Colossus's design is marred by its protection from black ability.
 
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