That's very true. I run 20 fetch+20 shocks and a ser of bounce lands and the bounce lands are just a (arguably less powerful) albeit synergistic/advantageous way of fixing your mana. They are pretty neat imo.
General CBS
- Thread starter James Stevenson
- Start date
Cube gameplay and deckbuilding tend to skew closer to constructed than limited because of the pre-determined and lower variance nature of the card pool, along with the design sensibilities of most Cube builders. In retail limited, players are forced to use what cards they get, even if they don't actually want to put those cards into their decks. In Cube, we have the luxury of being able to play only cards that people want to use in the context of the format at hand. As a result, looking to constructed when evaluating the performance of a group of cards can often be a reasonable exercise to determine whether or not the card is right for our needs. This is especially true for lands: most retail limited sets have very few or even no fixing lands, whereas even the most land-light Cubes still tend to run enough land to have an as-fan of at least one land per pack. As a result, using the performance of lands in constructed instead of limited makes a little more sense when trying to sus out the viability of certain lands in a given format, because most retail limited data on lands comes from the context of "I need to play these or else I will have no fixing" as opposed to "I want to play this because it fits with what my deck is doing."
Exactly. I think tapped poisonous lands would be worth including. Especially in a limited format without poison. But also in All Will Be One where poison is a mechanic.
?
Constructed (in a deck of 60)
1) uses 10-19 unique cards.
2) has 15+ duals in non-mono colour decks.
3) has a very large cardpool
draft:
1) has often a big power band these days
2) tend to have 1 dual/fixing in a booster (when multicolour is a theme)
3) has a limited card pool.
cube:
1) has a narrow card pool.
2) has 6 duals per player? (2x dual, 2x fetch, 1 set of 10 for 50 in total.) This is less than half, if you even get the ones you want than constructed.
Decks from cubes tend to be in between draft and constructed but much closer to draft than constructed. Especially, the nature of playsets vs a bit make do of cube is what makes cube much more play style wise to draft than constructed. I always compare it with a supercharged limited set without chaff.
Pauper is good!
I've been thinking about Train's wise argument, and it's hit me:
The format that Cube is closest to is EDH, since it's all about singleton decks that are more than the sum of their parts (with some bombs thrown in to the mix).
The reason why I don't think Cube feels like normal Constructed is because, to me at least, Constructed is all about playing best-of-three matches against a meta with fine-tuned engines and sideboards (BO1 Constructed is basically just kitchen table, except you purely play with assholes instead of your friends). Cube doesn't work like that, at least partially because a common design goal is to prevent a meta from arising (because we avoid stale gameplay).
In other words, the deck you get out of drafting a Cube might feel Constructed-y, but the experience of playing with those decks won't be.
The format that Cube is closest to is EDH, since it's all about singleton decks that are more than the sum of their parts (with some bombs thrown in to the mix).
The reason why I don't think Cube feels like normal Constructed is because, to me at least, Constructed is all about playing best-of-three matches against a meta with fine-tuned engines and sideboards (BO1 Constructed is basically just kitchen table, except you purely play with assholes instead of your friends). Cube doesn't work like that, at least partially because a common design goal is to prevent a meta from arising (because we avoid stale gameplay).
In other words, the deck you get out of drafting a Cube might feel Constructed-y, but the experience of playing with those decks won't be.
I like what you're saying overall, but I think it could be expanded upon further.
I think building a Cube can feel like building an EDH deck: you're trying to shape whatever you want the deck//Cube to be into a specific outcome. If I want a spells matter archetype in my Cube, I'm trying to include a bunch of cards that can interact on that space and play to the overall strategy I am looking to apply to that deck. Likewise, if I'm building a spells matter commander, I'm also trying to select a group of cards that play well with the theme I've chosen. The big difference is that Commander decks get the ability to go super deep on a single theme, including cards that are hyper-specific to one archetype or require the Commander to function, while Cube cards need to have a broader appeal than the specific deck they may be included to support. This is why doomsday is a snap include in every Kess commander deck, but it goes in only a small minority of Cubes with storm or spells as themes: it's very good at what it does, but it's very narrow.
Gameplay-wise, though, I don't think Cube and EDH are particularly analogous. The differences in nature between a 1v1 20 life format and a 1v1v1v1 40 life format select for different cards in viability for inclusion. Cards like Tarmogoyf and Lightning Bolt end up being really powerful Cube inclusions in most contexts because their rate is so good in a game where you only need to hit the opponent for 20 damage. But they're not particularly good in a game where you have to do 6 times as much damage to multiple different players in order to win. Additionally, the higher life totals in Commander lead to games being a lot longer (except for at tables where everyone is trying to win with an early-game combo), making an entire suite of cards that are usually awful or incredibly niche in Cube into format-defining staples.
But that still doesn't give us an answer for what Cube is actually like. While I agree that Cube doesn't always feel like normal constructed, I don't think this is because of the metagame. Every format is going to have a metagame revolving around the best deck or a small set of best decks, and trying to stop this from happening is basically impossible. I think most Cube designers try to stop any one deck from pulling too far ahead of the others, but that doesn't change the fact that something is always going to rise to the top, much like in actual constructed. However, metagaming as a player in a Cube format looks very different than in a constructed tournament. In tournament constructed, you start your day with a refined deck and a sideboard full of tools to help you deal with bad matches. You can bring your Leylines of the Void for Dredge, Shatterstorms for affinity, and Pithing Needles for those pesky Borborygmos (just make sure you name Borborygmos Enraged and not Borborygmos, lest you incur the wrath of the rules lawyers). If you guess wrong about what you'll face, you get hurt, but you can adjust to that before the tournament. In Cube, you have no idea what your deck is going to look like or what you're going to face until you sit down and draft your deck. Therefore, your metagaming decisions have to come during the draft while you're still actively shaping your deck. For example, if you think the format is going to be full of aggro decks, you're going to want to try and pick up that Nyxfleece Ram in your slow deck. However, you also have to worry about building the best deck possible with the cards you can draft.
Ultimately, I think this means that Cube ends up being the closest to the classic "60 cards I own: the format" experience as opposed to anything else. While there is still a lot of strategies involved in deck construction and picking sideboard pieces, you're less likely to face a specific type of opponent than you would be in a tournament setting. The big difference is that instead of people bringing their own random piles of 60 cards to play, they're drafting from a single pool. This means that players will be building their decks from a common set of cards on a roughly even power level, so a player's skill will be a larger factor in who wins as opposed to deck power level or financial status.
From my experience, casual group power band and finances were driving factors behind my wanting to build a Cube in the first place: I wanted to play casual constructed with my friends, but there was not a consistent power band that everyone was building and playing in. There were kids with decks that basically looked like 60-card versions of recent draft archetypes, and there were kids who had 4 copies of every mythic baneslayer that was unbeatable without interaction. Someone even had a Blistercoil Weird storm deck that they insisted on playing against literally everyone, even though only a few people found it interesting to play against. For my part, I got really bored after a year at Scout Camp, where I went 36-0 undefeated with Slivers, and realized everyone would get more out of the game with a Cube. My tangent here may seem a little random, but the more that I think about it, I feel that it's an important part of understanding my perspective on Cube.
A. I don't love the way that Jumpstart works because it's a bit of a pain to organize and store and it has decent replayability, but considerably less than a draft or something.
B. I don't love the way that a draft alienates newer players and can take an hour to complete.
C. I've played a lot of Commander at work lately and really enjoyed it.
Introducing: Commander Sealed! Or something. The name needs work, but here's the rules:
1. I give each player a pack of 10 commanders. They select a commander, or commanders with partner, from the pack.
2. They then show me their commander and get a 100 card sealed pool specified to that commander. For example, a RG commander would get 30 red, 30 green, 20 colorless, and 20 RG cards. The ratios here might need some work and could even be up to a player's request if they needed more artifacts for their commander or something.
The RG cards include lands as well as spells. The colorless cards include artifacts and some premium fixing like City of Brass or Reflecting Pool. The only color-identity-break is that fetches go into their two color pair rather than counting as colorless.
A Grixis commander would get something like 20 blue, 20 black, 20 red, 6 cards of each two color pair, 22 colorless. I'm not going to bother carrying around additional sections of 3c cards.
3. Everyone gets a Command Tower and an Arcane Signet.
4. From there, it's regular Sealed with a pool of cards that have high playability for your commander.
This gives a lot of deck building agency to the players without overwhelming a beginner with seeing 92 unique cards in their first 8 picks of a draft or having 4 packs piled up on them while everyone waits. Also, a player who missed the start can easily come in and get a pool. Similarly, you can redo your deck if you hate it.
The biggest downside to this idea is storing it. In order to have enough sets of 30 monocolored cards ready, you need at least 150 cards of each color and colorless cards. That's 900 cards, plus 100 commanders, plus probably 40-50 of each color pair and you're looking at this thing being 1500+ cards. That said, if anyone knows of a good box with various sizes of compartments, that would be useful.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/640ada9666edf22483bc0048?scale=medium&f=tag:commander
Let me know if you think any of the commanders should be swapped. If you unfilter the list, it's a complete mess right now. Beware.
Another challenge of this cube is that I'd like it to play in multiplayer and/or 1v1, so it'll be tricky to decide which cards help both the most.
B. I don't love the way that a draft alienates newer players and can take an hour to complete.
C. I've played a lot of Commander at work lately and really enjoyed it.
Introducing: Commander Sealed! Or something. The name needs work, but here's the rules:
1. I give each player a pack of 10 commanders. They select a commander, or commanders with partner, from the pack.
2. They then show me their commander and get a 100 card sealed pool specified to that commander. For example, a RG commander would get 30 red, 30 green, 20 colorless, and 20 RG cards. The ratios here might need some work and could even be up to a player's request if they needed more artifacts for their commander or something.
The RG cards include lands as well as spells. The colorless cards include artifacts and some premium fixing like City of Brass or Reflecting Pool. The only color-identity-break is that fetches go into their two color pair rather than counting as colorless.
A Grixis commander would get something like 20 blue, 20 black, 20 red, 6 cards of each two color pair, 22 colorless. I'm not going to bother carrying around additional sections of 3c cards.
3. Everyone gets a Command Tower and an Arcane Signet.
4. From there, it's regular Sealed with a pool of cards that have high playability for your commander.
This gives a lot of deck building agency to the players without overwhelming a beginner with seeing 92 unique cards in their first 8 picks of a draft or having 4 packs piled up on them while everyone waits. Also, a player who missed the start can easily come in and get a pool. Similarly, you can redo your deck if you hate it.
The biggest downside to this idea is storing it. In order to have enough sets of 30 monocolored cards ready, you need at least 150 cards of each color and colorless cards. That's 900 cards, plus 100 commanders, plus probably 40-50 of each color pair and you're looking at this thing being 1500+ cards. That said, if anyone knows of a good box with various sizes of compartments, that would be useful.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/640ada9666edf22483bc0048?scale=medium&f=tag:commander
Let me know if you think any of the commanders should be swapped. If you unfilter the list, it's a complete mess right now. Beware.
Another challenge of this cube is that I'd like it to play in multiplayer and/or 1v1, so it'll be tricky to decide which cards help both the most.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I think none of the three-color commanders should be better than the two-color commanders, because you're already getting access to an extra color! Why would I pick Niv-Mizzet if I can pick Kess, or Aesi if I can pick Chulane, for example?
While I agree that Niv looks worse than Kess, Niv is more of a storm commander, so they're serving a different purpose. I want to be sure that there's a variety of options.
I'm also not sure that gaining access to a color is that good in a format where you're given a card pool to suit your colors.
kamigawa duals arts deserved better cardsMan, I'm so sad because I do love the art for the Kamigawa duals
Sadly, they could've been named pain lands too, because they're actually a pain to play with.
I vaguely recall a post by someone a while back about a G/x Artifacts archetype that they had come up with, anyone have a link for reference?
I was able to fire off a true 8-man pod yesterday with friends in town (Cube recap incoming!) and one of my drafters drafted an interesting hybrid of GW Artifacts that mostly worked off Urza's Saga, midrange-y bodies, and having many artifacts to grow Karnstructs and Nettlecyst. He mentioned that it didn't quite get there for him, but after looking at the decklist I'm intrigued in seeing how I can make it a reality for future drafts as a mini-archetype.
This led to me re-evaluating Teething Wurmlet as a viable option if there are enough potential triggers. Something like a Tireless Tracker is a nice way to get counters off Clues, you get additional bonuses from Tree of Tales or Vault of Whispers from my Utility Land Draft, anything that can generate Karnstructs would also work ala Urza's Saga or Karn, Scion of Urza, and I can see weird cross synergies into my existing artifact support in red and blue.
It's real easy to miss the forest for the trees when you spend so long tinkering on a cube that it's always a great refreshed when you actually do get to draft with people that have different approaches to an environment they aren't incredibly familiar with. A lot of minor synergies and combinations that just don't register to me have been revealed in drafts over the years and have helped a ton in letting me fill in the blanks and give more opportunities for exploration. Maybe more so than actually playing the cube, which is always fun for me, I enjoy seeing the drafting philosophies and gameplay choices made by players when it comes to my cube.
I was able to fire off a true 8-man pod yesterday with friends in town (Cube recap incoming!) and one of my drafters drafted an interesting hybrid of GW Artifacts that mostly worked off Urza's Saga, midrange-y bodies, and having many artifacts to grow Karnstructs and Nettlecyst. He mentioned that it didn't quite get there for him, but after looking at the decklist I'm intrigued in seeing how I can make it a reality for future drafts as a mini-archetype.
This led to me re-evaluating Teething Wurmlet as a viable option if there are enough potential triggers. Something like a Tireless Tracker is a nice way to get counters off Clues, you get additional bonuses from Tree of Tales or Vault of Whispers from my Utility Land Draft, anything that can generate Karnstructs would also work ala Urza's Saga or Karn, Scion of Urza, and I can see weird cross synergies into my existing artifact support in red and blue.
It's real easy to miss the forest for the trees when you spend so long tinkering on a cube that it's always a great refreshed when you actually do get to draft with people that have different approaches to an environment they aren't incredibly familiar with. A lot of minor synergies and combinations that just don't register to me have been revealed in drafts over the years and have helped a ton in letting me fill in the blanks and give more opportunities for exploration. Maybe more so than actually playing the cube, which is always fun for me, I enjoy seeing the drafting philosophies and gameplay choices made by players when it comes to my cube.
Strong urges to change my avatar.Tonight I dreamt that Grillo was back. Then it turned out that it was just some random dude wuth Delver as their avatar.
green artifact decks can also use Elvish Reclaimer to get stuff like Urza's Saga and Shop and other artifact-friendly lands
Like how superheroes sometimes pass on the cape?
Legitimate question: how would you classify these cards?
and would you classify them the same way if the Aftermath part only had a single colored pip?
EDIT: To clarify, would you be willing to sort these into the mono-green part of your cube, or would you feel the need to stick them in a Simic/Gruul "slot"?
and would you classify them the same way if the Aftermath part only had a single colored pip?
EDIT: To clarify, would you be willing to sort these into the mono-green part of your cube, or would you feel the need to stick them in a Simic/Gruul "slot"?
Doesn't matter at all.
Legitimate question: how would you classify these cards?
and would you classify them the same way if the Aftermath part only had a single colored pip?
EDIT: To clarify, would you be willing to sort these into the mono-green part of your cube, or would you feel the need to stick them in a Simic/Gruul "slot"?
Probably just put them in green, don't really care aside from spreadsheet aesthetics. I've moved around Deathrite Shaman from Golgari to Hybrid to Black to Green and back to Hybrid over the years purely to make numbers look even and pretty. Doesn't really matter as long as it's an option for the final pool of 360.