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Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Brad said:
Help me get some quick data. How many cards are in your cube that you'll usually cast at mv>6? Meaning something like Myr Enforcer or Virtue of Persistence don't really count, as they're cast for mv<7 and mv=2, primarily.

I want some idea of how many a normal cube runs so that I can see how far to push my cube.
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But Virtue of Persistance having two modes is the entire point. I expect it to be hardcast in my cube as well, so for my environment it’s definitely a seven drop as well. But fine, if we look at pure 7+ drops without an alternate, cheaper use…



For completeness, here’s the cards with alternative modes that I expect to be cast at seven mana some of the time.



Bramble Wurm is on the chopping block though.

And then there’s 14 X-cost spells, though not all of them make sense at 7+ mana.
 
Brad

Brad

Onderzeeboot said:
But Virtue of Persistance having two modes is the entire point. I expect it to be hardcast in my cube as well
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It would feel like a betrayal to my Eldrazi overlords, but I'm sort of interested in a having all of my bombs have an alternate mode. Given that the average number of mv>6 cards around here is "like two," I'm feeling like a cube designed to ramp into cyclers, Virtues, and MDFCs is probably way smoother to run than a cube designed to ramp into 10 drops with no secondary option.

Then again, nothing really pumps out dopamine like an Eldrazi does. Getting that nearly guaranteed cast trigger value plus a god-tier creature feels damn good.
 
Humpty_Dumpty

Humpty_Dumpty

ravnic said:
Am I the only one who thinks the arena cube keeps being the worst experience you could imagine?
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Hyperbole aside, what is your objection to the arena cube?

It appears to me to just be a mess of "good cards", but that is where a lot of our cubes started and were still a lot of fun.

Personally I miss the social interaction, and prefer games to be played out within pods, as it feels that draft actions are more consequential on how the subsequent games play out.

I quite like being able to try out cards in a cube-like draft that I might want to consider for my own cube.
 
ravnic

ravnic

My personal taste of course, but it is far too much "cards, not decks", the power level of the 3+ mana cards is so high that every turn swings a game conpletely (I prefer incremental advantages one has to work for) and, maybe the worst of all, 9 out of 10 cards are novels. Inpossible to read a whole pack before the timer runs down and I usually forget the pushed wordy masses of rares we get every set very quickly.

Afterwards I played a couple games of "Jump-In" and had a lot more fun.
 
N0oh

N0oh

The cube is obviously not refined, but i think this specific iteration has huge power level disparity now that reanimate, swords, path, mana drain & co have been added to Arena.
From what I saw this time it is not everybody on G/x midrange so it's somewhat better than last time I guess...

Also, if they could stop putting Lutri in it è_é
 
Velrun

Velrun

Something happened in Magic a few days ago.

The non-official format Duel Commander that I love so much became part of official Magic because Wizards took it in. To be specific it is now a real Magic format and you can play it on Magic Online.

So what does this mean for Magic if you don’t care so much for this format? Not so much right now. Of course it means that when they design sets they have to have this format in the back of their heads.

But I think it could have a cascading effect on the game in general.

Like we saw when Commander became an official format. Suddenly new cards arose to the game that was Commander specific. And the format grew and grew and grew until it overtook Standard by popularity measures.

I think that some Commander players will SOMETIMES want to play a 1v1 game. And now they suddenly have a format for it. Instead of player 1v1 with their Sol Rings. They can now do it properly. In the beginning it might not change things but I can imagine in a few years that people will think it’s better to play Duel Commander in a 1v1 game than to play 1v1 CEDH.

And if that happens, we will maybe slowly, maybe.. see a return to normal 20 life 1v1 Magic. But with a Commander.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Bloomburrow bringing the type back made me thing that it could be kinda cool to make a class cube. The idea that springs to mind is an emblem cube where everyone starts off at level 1 in the same class (or different classes, but then it'd be trickier to design around and balance). Then there's some archetype-y stuff you can do, with some players wanting to level up all the way while others are fine with just the basic effect.

Off the top of my head, I feel like these would be some nice Classes to use for this:

 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
Velrun said:
The non-official format Duel Commander that I love so much became part of official Magic because Wizards took it in. To be specific it is now a real Magic format and you can play it on Magic Online.

So what does this mean for Magic if you don’t care so much for this format? Not so much right now. Of course it means that when they design sets they have to have this format in the back of their heads.

But I think it could have a cascading effect on the game in general.

Like we saw when Commander became an official format. Suddenly new cards arose to the game that was Commander specific. And the format grew and grew and grew until it overtook Standard by popularity measures.
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I don't think this will have a cascading effect. They are just trying out new things with MTGO. Some people were already playing this in the casual rooms they are just trying to make some money off it now that someone else has ownership of it (Daybreak) they are trying other avenues to try and make money.

1v1 Commander used to exist on MTGO but they took it away because too many people complained about the banlist and they didn't have the resources to keep changing it.
We will say how long it will stay up.

My thoughts are that it will be the same as pauper. Nothing ever gets designed for this format things just accidentally fall into it. Let's just hope that if they do decide to run with this they have a decent ban cadence because that is what will make or break the format.
 
Velrun

Velrun

@Kirblinx

Yeah the 1v1 Commander variant cannot really be compared to the actual Duel Commander format because it was just a clone format that wasn’t taken care of. Duel Commander has existed for almost as long as EDH. The banlist is updated every 3 months.

I think it is very good Wizards finally give in to the people who made the format.

And I feel confidant some Commander players will want to try out the 1v1 variant using a real banlist and rules set instead of playing their 40 life 1v1 and feel silly.
 
Seeker

Seeker

Seeker said:
Gotta admit, they know how to hook people.
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Trip report from the first weekend of IRL cube qualifiers:
So many people signed up on Saturday that they had to cap the signups on Sunday.

So it looks like a rousing success! I don't know how many people it'll act as a "gateway drug" into MTGO cube much less IRL cube for, but hey, more cube is good cube.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

LadyMapi said:
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Class Struggle Cube, Comrade
 
Velrun

Velrun

@Seeker

Seriously it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed so hard at something I read online!

Great post!

I read the first row and thought “Hmmm this is interesting”

The second row killed me :p
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

@gaytransmulldrifter I heard your hot take for MH3 in the most recent Lucky Paper Radio episode! I agree with your point, especially the one at the end about freeing Palestine.

Energy naturally asks players to draft as many energy producers as possible and figure out what to do with it from there. I think that energy is less fun when there isn't a density of enough energy cards to allow players to pick and choose which producers and outlets they want to play. This is even a problem in MH3 limited, despite the fact that energy is a major theme of the set! Likewise, it is very difficult for Cube designers to make energy cross over with other themes. While there are a couple of energy cards from Kaladesh that cross over with the artifact theme from that block, there really isn't much for other popular archetypes.

Maybe 15 years from now, after we've gotten a few more energy sets, it will be an interesting mechanic. However, I agree with you that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze at present.
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

Glad you enjoyed it! I had a lot of fun recording that and it was cool to get to hear it on the show. Lucky Paper was like a guiding philosophy for me when I was figuring out cubing a few years ago so it was a fun little thing for me to participate in it a little bit.

I think you're right that there's a possible future where there's a big enough density of energy cards that you can start to do something interesting with them, but it's definitely not the kind of thing that's exciting to me right now. I think one of the things that's so exciting about designing cubes is getting to find all of these interlocking mechanisms that bounce off each other in unexpected ways, and energy just feels too siloed off for that at the moment.
 
TrainmasterGT

TrainmasterGT

gaytransmulldrifter said:
I think one of the things that's so exciting about designing cubes is getting to find all of these interlocking mechanisms that bounce off each other in unexpected ways, and energy just feels too siloed off for that at the moment.
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I totally agree! It doesn't help that most of the energy cards in MH3 were specifically meant to go into a deck that only cared about energy. At least in Kaladesh (and the Fallout Commander set to a much lesser extent), there were a couple of other themes that the energy deck was meant to cross over with. I'm not sure it should have been that way. For example, I am baffled that the only low-rarity glue cards for the Energy and Modify decks that actually encouraged people to spec into energy stuff was Hexgold Slith. This is despite the fact that Modify and Energy were literally White's only archetypes in the set. Sure, there were a couple of more open-ended cards that supported both decks (primarily Metastatic Evangel), but nothing said "use a lot of energy while also using +1'/+1 counters" like the Slith.

This is one of the big reasons why I think MH3 was so much worse than the other two MH sets, but that's a rant for another post and another time.
 
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