Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
FTK and Fiery Confluence are actually pretty busted though. Speaking from experience.
General CBS
- Thread starter James Stevenson
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For me it makes perfect sense. In my short experience, the best cube decks are those that have plenty of interactive bread-and-butter cards not just those that try to jam powerful cards. There tends to be no shortage of the later (just pick whatever is appropiate), while you can always do with more counterspells, preordains and burn.
I also think Magma Jet is more powerful than people give it credit for. Scry 2 is a lot, getting rid of a creature for two mana is good and there aren't that many things Lighting Bolt will get rid of but Magma Jet won't.
I also think Magma Jet is more powerful than people give it credit for. Scry 2 is a lot, getting rid of a creature for two mana is good and there aren't that many things Lighting Bolt will get rid of but Magma Jet won't.
You guys have reignited my love for the game. While I'm still bummed about it mechanically, I just love discussing it and its history. I've found myself writing a review of Urza's Block just because it's interesting.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Has anyone pointed you at Jesse Mason yet?
http://blog.killgold.fish/
Bit contentious, but there's a wealth of magic history in that same vein there.
Speaking about being bummed mechanically, how do you guys prevent nongames?
I have Temples and the black cube loves to loot, but I saw quite a few miserable faces last weekend as one or both players were disabled from playing and I'm kind of sick of having a bad night myself or watching someone have a bad night as they're unable to cast things.
I have Temples and the black cube loves to loot, but I saw quite a few miserable faces last weekend as one or both players were disabled from playing and I'm kind of sick of having a bad night myself or watching someone have a bad night as they're unable to cast things.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I go....somewhat over the top 
All of these are doubles, Crack/Mantra/Tracking/Pillage/Gem are triples, and Analyze is a 4of
All of these are doubles, Crack/Mantra/Tracking/Pillage/Gem are triples, and Analyze is a 4of
I kind of suspected that filtering in each color, specifically at 1-2 cmc, is going to be the key. Unfortunately, WOTC doesn't legitimately print that.
Your customs are somewhat confirming my suspicions. Do you feel like these make a big impact on your nongame frequency?
Analyze would be a shitload of value in the black cube lol. Occasional Ancestral Recall.
Your customs are somewhat confirming my suspicions. Do you feel like these make a big impact on your nongame frequency?
Analyze would be a shitload of value in the black cube lol. Occasional Ancestral Recall.
Oh yes! It's a great read, I've read most of it actually. I actually appreciate the contentiouness. Most writing about Magic is done on a very narrow axis, typically "is this card good?" and other strategy-centric perspectives . There's very little writing on game from a wider view, which is one of the reasons I'm writing about Urza Block.
Something I noticed is that my playtest cube games are much, much better on every metric than playing on Arena. And while my cube is far from good, I can think of a few reasons:
- Good mana fixing: The quality of my matches on Arena dropped significantly the second checklands left Standard. The mana system is one of Magic's weakness and good fixing in the form of duals/fetches does away with color screw.
- Low mana curve: The more lands you need for your decks to work the higher the chance of mana screw. The difference between having to hit 2-3 lands and having to hit 4-5 is massive both in number (2 less spells) and probabilities. After all, a 2-lander is good in a low-curve format but will lead to non-games if you have to hit a turn 5-drop on curve
Even beyond the obvious reduction of non-games, I think there's obvious correlation between good mana fixing and better gameplay and more varied deckbuilding. I must point out: Moving to 20 Duals/20 Fetches is the best decision I've ever taken with my cube.
- Reducing "removal checks": One of my annoyances with Magic and specially Standard is that many games down boil to sticking a card that will win the game on its own if not deal with. Planeswalkers and Baneslayer Angels are the most obvious examples.
The problem with these cards is that they are very binary. You either deal with them or you don't and lose. I prefer cards that give one-shot effects or incremental advantages over time because they don't reduce the number of options a player has so dramatically.
For example, you'll probably lose the game to Life of the Loam or Erratic Portal at some point. But the game doesn't radically change, you can still play your cards, attack your opponent or get a similar advantage through other means. It just gets harder as card advantage piles up or the lock gets tighter.
This leads to grindier games, but I don't see any problem with that kind of gameplay.
- Less extreme gameplay: You can win Magic on several axis. The more extreme a deck is on a given axis, the harder it is for other decks to interact with it. Belcher, Storm and extremely hard aggro lead to more non-games than The Rock or Aggro Loam do.
Personally, I think a healthy Magic metagame is mostly creature-based and disruptive.
- Longer games and more cards: One of the reasons Magic has such variance is that you go through very few turns and very few cards. You can win a game of Magic with 5-6 "real" (that is, non-land) cards which is very low. Making games go longer and having players draw more cards naturally reduces non-games because you have more options and variance killing the game through mana screw or not having the right awnswer is less likely.
I wanted to like this post TWICE
100%agreement with what you said, especially excluding removal checks if possible is an important part imo of fun games with more options and decisions going on. Some people claim that cards like Erratic Portal lead to repetitive gameplay, but my playgroup enjoys building their engines and try to pilot them to the win, so it's fine with me as long as these cards don't become oppressive (they're absolutely not). And you have more time to interact with these two cards than you usually have with a single busted stat monster like Grave Titan.
100%agreement with what you said, especially excluding removal checks if possible is an important part imo of fun games with more options and decisions going on. Some people claim that cards like Erratic Portal lead to repetitive gameplay, but my playgroup enjoys building their engines and try to pilot them to the win, so it's fine with me as long as these cards don't become oppressive (they're absolutely not). And you have more time to interact with these two cards than you usually have with a single busted stat monster like Grave Titan.
I already do all that stuff lol. It's just this lands/spells thing is bullshit.
I only have 4 color pairs, so the fixing is pre-fixed.
The curve is quite low/normal. I feel that your cube's curve should look similar to an expected deck's curve. That way, even your poorest drafters end up on curve, usually.
Pretty sure I have no removal checks. I recently added some really weak old walkers and a few of the uncommon new walkers and found that to even be too much lol. I think these kinds of cards are especially heinous lower in the curve. Historically, I've fucking hated Geist, Polukranos, etc. I don't even run low curve ETB effects unless they're super mild.
I've got pretty traditional 2/X for 1 type aggro decks and that's as extreme as it gets.
Long games gets debatable on what you define as long. A long game of standard might be 25 turns, but a long game of modern might be 5 turns, depending on the deck. I also don't think it's beneficial to have your games feel "long." I think "not short" is probably more accurate for what we're trying to achieve here.
That all said, none of it fixes 6 land mulligan into 0 land mulligan into a 5 card keep. It's not like this happens TOO often, but occasionally you get a few games like that in the same night or two in the same match and it really ruins the experience. London mulligan helps a lot, but we had at least 3 games the other day (out of like 20) where one player didn't get to play at all. We had one where it was dueling 5 card mulligans and the aggro deck happened to curve out 1, 2, 3 and it was not even a little close. I think that Chris' customs are closer to fixing what I'm looking at.
I only have 4 color pairs, so the fixing is pre-fixed.
The curve is quite low/normal. I feel that your cube's curve should look similar to an expected deck's curve. That way, even your poorest drafters end up on curve, usually.
Pretty sure I have no removal checks. I recently added some really weak old walkers and a few of the uncommon new walkers and found that to even be too much lol. I think these kinds of cards are especially heinous lower in the curve. Historically, I've fucking hated Geist, Polukranos, etc. I don't even run low curve ETB effects unless they're super mild.
I've got pretty traditional 2/X for 1 type aggro decks and that's as extreme as it gets.
Long games gets debatable on what you define as long. A long game of standard might be 25 turns, but a long game of modern might be 5 turns, depending on the deck. I also don't think it's beneficial to have your games feel "long." I think "not short" is probably more accurate for what we're trying to achieve here.
That all said, none of it fixes 6 land mulligan into 0 land mulligan into a 5 card keep. It's not like this happens TOO often, but occasionally you get a few games like that in the same night or two in the same match and it really ruins the experience. London mulligan helps a lot, but we had at least 3 games the other day (out of like 20) where one player didn't get to play at all. We had one where it was dueling 5 card mulligans and the aggro deck happened to curve out 1, 2, 3 and it was not even a little close. I think that Chris' customs are closer to fixing what I'm looking at.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Honestly Analyze is in my cube because printing and making them was easier than tracking down or ordering preordains
They certainly help, and people do mention that's one way my cube is different then most they've played: there's a lot of smoothing like this.
You could fudge it, but there is literally no white card that could help. It's a noted weakness, like black and artifacts, except it's fundamental to how we play magic every single game, instead of one type of threat.
I've definitely already been contemplating taking a marker to the on a variety of cards like those lol. White has Board the Weatherlight if you wanna support artifacts or legends, but, ya, it's lacking. I'm fine with a color lacking smoothing. I'm not happy with the current state of blue having the overwhelming majority of this stuff.
I played a deck with 1-2 blue smoothers a few drafts ago and can remember thinking how much better a couple of my questionable hands looked when I knew I could see up to 3 more cards if needed.
on a variety of cards like those lol. White has Board the Weatherlight if you wanna support artifacts or legends, but, ya, it's lacking. I'm fine with a color lacking smoothing. I'm not happy with the current state of blue having the overwhelming majority of this stuff.I played a deck with 1-2 blue smoothers a few drafts ago and can remember thinking how much better a couple of my questionable hands looked when I knew I could see up to 3 more cards if needed.
That's the thing, isn't it? We are limited by the core design of the game, flaws and all. Sorting cards will only get us so far.
What I mean is that a longer game naturally reduces variability because players will draw more cards and have more opportunities to play them. Missing a land drop is less important if you play 8 turns than if the average lenght of a game is 4 turns.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
So I kind of want to re-do my green section to make it work a little bit better with aggressive and blink strategies. I'm considering replacing some of the +1/+1 counters stuff with some tokens stuff. The problem is that my +1/+1 counters cards are actually pretty good. I don't think I've ever seen a true counters strategy come together, but I've seen almost all of the pieces in other decks before except for like exactly Ainok Bond-Kin, a card which, I should point out, isn't even green. White is already full of tokens and I think giving green black a secondary aristocrats plan would be a good way to supplement the fairly hit-or-miss combo-y graveyard decks that tend to come together. The cube actually has way more tokens in it than counters, even though I have tried to support counters as an archetype.
I was originally avoiding tokens because I don't like how spammy proper token decks tend to be. However, I have been going through an evolution with this issue over the past month or so, especially seeing some of the cool new Eldraine cards.
Im looking to-
-Add pieces for G/W go wide to be a deck.
-Add 1-2 more mana dorks/ramp spells.
-Add some good blink targets.
I'm basically just looking to make better use of my green section. I don't want to take anything away functionally speaking. Can you guys help me re-work my green a bit with some suggestions?
I was originally avoiding tokens because I don't like how spammy proper token decks tend to be. However, I have been going through an evolution with this issue over the past month or so, especially seeing some of the cool new Eldraine cards.
Im looking to-
-Add pieces for G/W go wide to be a deck.
-Add 1-2 more mana dorks/ramp spells.
-Add some good blink targets.
I'm basically just looking to make better use of my green section. I don't want to take anything away functionally speaking. Can you guys help me re-work my green a bit with some suggestions?
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/d40skv/cube_cobra_update_21/
Cube Cobra just released a new version that supports custom card images through external hosting! Hype!
Cube Cobra just released a new version that supports custom card images through external hosting!
Hype!https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgcube/comments/d40skv/cube_cobra_update_21/
Cube Cobra just released a new version that supports custom card images through external hosting!
And it basically has the scryfall filters!!
With this, I believe Cube Cobra is now better than Cube Tutor.
Me: Here's some good advice to make your cube betterYeah but I wanna sling powerful magic cards
Also me: Is there a way for me to include Oppossition and Necropotence in my cube?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Isn't necro not even good?
Oppo tho yeah, that's rancid
Chris Taylor
Contributor
It works!
For reference, the process is Mass Edit > Select card > Image URL > Direct Image link (Eg: https://i.imgur.com/j6Es4JJ.jpg)
They also have an import from cubetutor button, really well done, really responsive!
(I love you Ben, but this really is better. We all appreciate the pioneering you did)
Chris Taylor
Contributor
If you're using Imgur, you have to right click on your image and copy the image address rather than use the pre-baked links imgur gives you
I'm not sure. A couple people on the other thread seem to think it's busted, but elsewhere the opinions I've heard haven't been great. It's hard to say, I've played with the card but never in a cube environment. In Vintage storm, it was a 3 mana "win next turn" spell. But I also have a copy of the old Lauerpotence deck and I can say the card isn't as easy to play with when you are turning creatures sideways.
Let's be honest, the only reason I want to play Opposition instead of Glare of Subdual is that it has a much better theme . A shame that instead of the original art I get this:
K, so, I'm an idiot who's never happy and I'm looking into making a Helm of Awakening emblem cube where everything is a mana cheaper so that I can have nice filtering cards like one mana Seek the Wilds and Tormenting Voice, etc. I'd also let land drops come in untapped, probably, to ease things further.
With that in mind, do any of you have some archetypes that are just shy of working and may become viable if their costs were shaved?
My intent is to keep power level similar to a full-cost cube, rather than making it some super fast bullshit format. Valley Dasher > Goblin Guide, Ancient Craving as a solid draw spell, Failed Inspection as a Cancel+ because 3 cost counters fail to impress me.
It should also be noted that, as with all my ideas, there's an 80%+ chance that I don't do this.
With that in mind, do any of you have some archetypes that are just shy of working and may become viable if their costs were shaved?
My intent is to keep power level similar to a full-cost cube, rather than making it some super fast bullshit format. Valley Dasher > Goblin Guide, Ancient Craving as a solid draw spell, Failed Inspection as a Cancel+ because 3 cost counters fail to impress me.
It should also be noted that, as with all my ideas, there's an 80%+ chance that I don't do this.