General CBS

inscho

inscho

Brad said:
I've been fighting an internal battle between me wanting to make the deepest format possible vs my playgroup being half beginners/intermediates that can't handle that much text or super tricky interactions. They aren't going to remember that they have a dozen effects waiting in the graveyard and they aren't likely to re-read their Dread Wanderer that's already dead to find out. My players certainly aren't going to be able to keep track of their opponent's graveyards and point an accurate exiling spell at it.

I don't want to abandon The Black Cube, but it seems inherently complicated by using the graveyard as a second hand in a lot of decks. I have an idea for a fix, but it definitely feels like it's going to neuter things. Designing to the level my group is at rather than plunging a few into the deep end every time is proving problematic.

Even when I look at lower powered cards, a lot of those have a ton of text, too. It's a struggle.
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I've been meaning to reply to this...I've been struggling with major life burn out, and I've had zero mental space lately for engaged cube talk. But I've dealt with similar issues with my cube, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think my network of players sounds more skilled than yours on average, but I get the same compulsion. I think as japahn mentioned, elegance is super important for approachability. Limiting keywords and the types of tokens generated helps. I think going deeper into fewer keywords increases repetition and fosters familiarity. Maybe a mechanic is new to someone, but after seeing it on 5 different cards they latch onto the idea more quickly. It's like the difference in having 2 threshold cards, 3 madness, 4 flashback, 2 delirium, 1 jump start, 3 eternalize, 2 unearth, 1 embalm, 2 undergrowth, 1 scavenge compared to 10 cycling, 6 madness, 6 flashback, etc.

vs

I think that within a simple framework you can still mine complexity. You can still have interesting mechanical intersections, challenging decision trees and board states. I think cycling is the single most important mechanic to exploit in a graveyard cube with these goals. It's elegant, it reduces non-games, it's modal, it triggers draw and discard, it fuels the graveyard.

You can also select cards that have unique game dynamics:



This is a poor example as it is neither a particularly elegant card nor a keyword minimalist card, but it's the first one that comes to mind as a relatively simple card that introduces a lot of in game complexity and tension.

or things like:



Super legible, super elegant, super interesting (imo)

I know I'm not breaking any new ground with these thoughts, but these are the first places my mind goes when trying to tackle this problem.
 
Rowan_CB

Rowan_CB

They really are quite excellent in STX limited.

Campuses vs. temples is an interesting design choice, but they actually complement each other pretty nicely. Temples help you avoid early screw, and campuses help avoid late-game flood.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Rowan_CB said:
They really are quite excellent in STX limited.

Campuses vs. temples is an interesting design choice, but they actually complement each other pretty nicely. Temples help you avoid early screw, and campuses help avoid late-game flood.
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In my experience Temples also help avoid land flood. But probably not as much as Campuses though.
 
sigh

sigh

Speaking of lands, does anyone know if theres been any update from CubeCobra folks on improving how lands are picked? It's really frustrating seeing a RB drafting bot taking two entirely unrelated triomes as well as several other non-relevant lands...
 
Brad

Brad

Link me your cubes if you feel like you run a successful Gx +1/+1 counters deck so I can look at it. Not sure what kind of densities I'm looking for.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I have a book club with a couple of friends from college. A few years ago, we read the book 'Lost At Sea' by Jon Ronson. It's a collection of short stories where he investigates weird slices of life. I've forgotten most of them by now, but the book's Amazon description gives you an idea:

Ronson investigates the strange things we’re willing to believe in, from robots programmed with our loved ones’ personalities to indigo children to the Insane Clown Posse’s juggalo fans. He looks at ordinary lives that take on extraordinary perspectives. Among them: a pop singer whose greatest passion is the coming alien invasion, assisted-suicide practitioners, and an Alaskan town’s Christmas-induced high school mass-murder plot. He explores all these tales with a sense of higher purpose and universality, yet they are stories not about the fringe of society. They are about all of us. Incisive and hilarious, poignant and maddening, revealing and disturbing—Ronson writes about our modern world, and reveals how deep our collective craziness lies, and the chaos stirring at the edge of our daily lives.
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One story, however, firmly imprinted itself in my brain. It's the story of Phoenix Jones, a "real-life superhero" who patrols the streets of Seattle fighting crime. Supposedly. Ronson follows Phoenix and his fellow superheroes for a few days, and observes no real crime fighting. Instead, the bulk of their activity is discussing costume construction. 'Is that cape satin?', 'What kind of stitching did you use there?', 'Where did you find the leather for that belt?'.

I think about this story every time /r/mtgcube gives 300 upvotes to a picture of someone's cube storage.
 
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