Article ChannelFireball: Ghost of Cubing Future
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
I'm not so sure about the power - complexity/fun correlation. I played my friend's peasant cube the other day and it was fantastic. I still think it's the most fun cube I've played (Could use a few more drafts with yours and/or better memory to have more confidence in my opinion). As far as I know his design strategy is power maximization, but with close attention paid to archetypes. He also has a small ban list (Sol Ring, Skullclamp...). Anyway I was playing a white weenie/token deck and I had so many options on each turn that it was really interesting to play. I recall this being the same in your cube, but being mostly a limited player I myself kind of go on autopilot when I play. In the peasant draft people around me were playing loads of interesting cards and interesting games, so I just wanted to say that I don't think powerful cards lead to more interesting games, but interesting cards (which, to be fair, are mostly powerful rares). Also restricting to peasant lets a lot of cool cards become cubeable, like Meadowboon (What a cool card! It was amazing in my deck)
Anyway I don't really think I'm right but I wanted to argue anyway.
Anyway I don't really think I'm right but I wanted to argue anyway.
The article feels a bit disjointed. You talk a lot about power level in Cube, but your solutions to increase decision density have nothing to do with power. Decisions increase with competing costs and the options available (of which removal and do-something-lands are a subset). I could make a low-curved/aggressive, highly interactive environment out of low-powered cards if I wanted to, and compensate for the lack of Goblin Guides by giving control decks fewer answers and aggressive decks more reach. That might end up feeling a lot like your powered aggro cube, so long as I pay attention to archetypes, obviously.
Now, more options certainly correlates with higher power, since versatility is generally pretty good, and Wizards has been relegating more complex cards to higher rarities. But there are so many thousands of cards available to us as cube designers that I don't think it's fair to compare the decision density of our environments to those catering to an average, uninitiated Magic player, like RoE.
...that said, my main cube is designed for the uninitiated and I enjoy it, so maybe I'm just biased.
Lastly, slowing the game down in a format like RoE doesn't necessarily reduce the number of decisions, it just reduces their impact. Having time to recover makes it much more forgiving than misplaying Owen's legacy hand, so people may spend less time in the tank.
Now, more options certainly correlates with higher power, since versatility is generally pretty good, and Wizards has been relegating more complex cards to higher rarities. But there are so many thousands of cards available to us as cube designers that I don't think it's fair to compare the decision density of our environments to those catering to an average, uninitiated Magic player, like RoE.
...that said, my main cube is designed for the uninitiated and I enjoy it, so maybe I'm just biased.
Lastly, slowing the game down in a format like RoE doesn't necessarily reduce the number of decisions, it just reduces their impact. Having time to recover makes it much more forgiving than misplaying Owen's legacy hand, so people may spend less time in the tank.
Like the others, I was convinced by the argument in favour of lowering a cube's curve to increase decision density, but I'm also not entirely sure that a high power level is necessarily to achieve that. I wish Calvin would get the hell back on these forums, because I suspect his intentionally lower-powered, limited-feel list has a lower curve than most of our cubes here, and there'd still be plenty of decisions and complexity to go around. I've been carefully neutering the power level of my own cube in the last eight or so months, while taking great pains to ensure the mana costs stay roughly where they were, and it doesn't feel like the games are less fulfilling than before.
As I've said before, I'm also of the school of thought where I prefer more expensive, conditional removal to cheap, universally applicable removal. I still ensure that there's plenty of removal to go around for everyone - quantity-wise, I think I have roughly 16% spot removal and 3% mass removal - but I like when players are forced to figure out when to use their Tragic Slip versus their Darkblast or their Eyeblight's Ending. It'd be easier - and would require fewer decisions - if they were packing Dismember, Go for the Throat, and Terminate.
As I've said before, I'm also of the school of thought where I prefer more expensive, conditional removal to cheap, universally applicable removal. I still ensure that there's plenty of removal to go around for everyone - quantity-wise, I think I have roughly 16% spot removal and 3% mass removal - but I like when players are forced to figure out when to use their Tragic Slip versus their Darkblast or their Eyeblight's Ending. It'd be easier - and would require fewer decisions - if they were packing Dismember, Go for the Throat, and Terminate.
CML
Contributor
I'm on board with the "more power is more decisions" sentiment, but an idea I had while playing the Holiday Cube (which was miserable) was that Cubes should have a flat power curve between card types. The spells in the Holiday Cube are obviously way more powerful, on balance, than ours (except for Frenzied Goblin et al.) but the lands are horrendous, so games often come down to "Could I cast my spells?" or "Could he cast his spells if I could cast my spells?" or so on, with few iterations or complexities.
Now the fixing thing is a familiar idea ("color-screw Cube" is an epithet right up there with "Grim Monolith Cube") and the card-type-parity idea is also old hat, as bringing the creature up to the level of the spell is the main agenda of NWO. Legacy and even Vintage are more interesting and challenging now that creature decks are popular and viable (and not just there to win the games when the combo player does nothing, as in the Holiday Cube). When decks are smoothly functional, "real games" take place far more often, and I really think the average deck from Jason's Cube would wipe the floor with the average deck from the Holiday Cube; power maximization of cards is bad design, but power maximization of decks (with some neutering) might approximate what we're trying to do here.
That being said, the best draft format of all time is still RGD, and nobody would argue that format is all that powerful -- the first time I drafted it, I wondered why everything was so expensive, then enjoyed the nice leisurely pace at which the difficult and interactive games unfolded. ROE works similarly, and that hand with the Lifestrider will often produce good games because the games tend to last a while, unlike in, say, Gatecrash. I sometimes wonder what would happen if we battled with draft decks from different formats.
As for the article, you do way better when you're more specific. There's no way to cover this topic within the scope of a single article, resulting in sentences like "This is a pretty loaded question with a lot to unpack" that even an academic would be ashamed of. Next time!
Now the fixing thing is a familiar idea ("color-screw Cube" is an epithet right up there with "Grim Monolith Cube") and the card-type-parity idea is also old hat, as bringing the creature up to the level of the spell is the main agenda of NWO. Legacy and even Vintage are more interesting and challenging now that creature decks are popular and viable (and not just there to win the games when the combo player does nothing, as in the Holiday Cube). When decks are smoothly functional, "real games" take place far more often, and I really think the average deck from Jason's Cube would wipe the floor with the average deck from the Holiday Cube; power maximization of cards is bad design, but power maximization of decks (with some neutering) might approximate what we're trying to do here.
That being said, the best draft format of all time is still RGD, and nobody would argue that format is all that powerful -- the first time I drafted it, I wondered why everything was so expensive, then enjoyed the nice leisurely pace at which the difficult and interactive games unfolded. ROE works similarly, and that hand with the Lifestrider will often produce good games because the games tend to last a while, unlike in, say, Gatecrash. I sometimes wonder what would happen if we battled with draft decks from different formats.
As for the article, you do way better when you're more specific. There's no way to cover this topic within the scope of a single article, resulting in sentences like "This is a pretty loaded question with a lot to unpack" that even an academic would be ashamed of. Next time!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
- One of the problems with Cube is that the constraints Limited places upon you force out cards like Barren Moor that do a lot of work to make games more interesting but aren't unique or impactful enough to earn a spot in the Cube or consideration in the draft. The Utility Land draft is a nice way of remedying that.
- High-power Cubes tend to present a different type of decisions to you. In 'Riptide Lab' Cubes you don't often get those exhilarating conclusions to games where you spend three turns setting up the board perfectly so that you deal exactly lethal the turn before his Hero of Bladehold you kill you. The decisions in power max Cubes 'matter more' in that the consequences for getting them right/wrong are often more immediate and more obvious, feeding that base sense of excitement. I always used to hate playing against Hexproof in Standard/Modern, but it did lead to something that you don't see in more fair/tame formats - that feeling of terror as you know that you're under the gun and have to find a way out, and trying to fix your pieces together to make it happen. It's something that's hard to recreate in regular Limited, where the power disparity between bombs and regular cards is very high, but Cube is a great venue for it. I want most of my Cube games to be like chess, but the variety of having occasional blowouts or more fast-paced games is welcome and I don't think that's easy to achieve in a more 'flat', less powerful Cube.
- I agree with pushing aggro and cheap removal/interaction hard, but most decision-light games tend to occur when aggro is involved in my experience. Finding ways to give aggro some midgame punch so that you can justify loading up on cheap removal/interaction is crucial, and stuff like Gravecrawler recursion is the way to do it.
- High-power Cubes tend to present a different type of decisions to you. In 'Riptide Lab' Cubes you don't often get those exhilarating conclusions to games where you spend three turns setting up the board perfectly so that you deal exactly lethal the turn before his Hero of Bladehold you kill you. The decisions in power max Cubes 'matter more' in that the consequences for getting them right/wrong are often more immediate and more obvious, feeding that base sense of excitement. I always used to hate playing against Hexproof in Standard/Modern, but it did lead to something that you don't see in more fair/tame formats - that feeling of terror as you know that you're under the gun and have to find a way out, and trying to fix your pieces together to make it happen. It's something that's hard to recreate in regular Limited, where the power disparity between bombs and regular cards is very high, but Cube is a great venue for it. I want most of my Cube games to be like chess, but the variety of having occasional blowouts or more fast-paced games is welcome and I don't think that's easy to achieve in a more 'flat', less powerful Cube.
- I agree with pushing aggro and cheap removal/interaction hard, but most decision-light games tend to occur when aggro is involved in my experience. Finding ways to give aggro some midgame punch so that you can justify loading up on cheap removal/interaction is crucial, and stuff like Gravecrawler recursion is the way to do it.
I don't like powerful spells or creatures, particularly. Not even GRBS, but even just inherently powerful individual cards are aggravating to me, because then you just jam your wurmcoil in your brew or dump your massacre wurm and drop the mic, or that sort of thing. I'd rather play some magic.
Now, my viewpoint is skewed here, as the main way I've played magic in the last 8 or so years is prereleases, and before that was playing in the library at school with whatever decks I could actually build from assorted precons and sealed leftovers; I've never played "proper" constructed. I'm in the sorts of demographics where MaRo talks about casual players that a lot of the time aren't visible online, because they aren't really invested in the game beyond a couple of packs when the new set comes out.
I guess I'm not interested in big splashy bomb turns, as they're just those games in a prerelease where someone plays their mythic and ends the game, but I'm also not invested in going in the tank for 10 minutes to plan three turns in advance. To that end, my cube is mostly cool cards that work together, with some thought going into overlapping archetypes, but without much concern for either powermax or 'funmax', but trying to make something interesting and unique. I mean, I probably have the only cube that lets you draft the RW flanking deck?
Now, my viewpoint is skewed here, as the main way I've played magic in the last 8 or so years is prereleases, and before that was playing in the library at school with whatever decks I could actually build from assorted precons and sealed leftovers; I've never played "proper" constructed. I'm in the sorts of demographics where MaRo talks about casual players that a lot of the time aren't visible online, because they aren't really invested in the game beyond a couple of packs when the new set comes out.
I guess I'm not interested in big splashy bomb turns, as they're just those games in a prerelease where someone plays their mythic and ends the game, but I'm also not invested in going in the tank for 10 minutes to plan three turns in advance. To that end, my cube is mostly cool cards that work together, with some thought going into overlapping archetypes, but without much concern for either powermax or 'funmax', but trying to make something interesting and unique. I mean, I probably have the only cube that lets you draft the RW flanking deck?
I also don't particularly like easy access to fixing, which is my own in-built bias, because sealed decks and precon/sealed/draft remnants decks can only really do two colour, so that's what I'm used to. Two colour is a constraing, but I'll try and do what I can within it. For similar reasons I want to stay singleton (because that's sort of what cube is to me) and don't want to include custom cards (because that's an interesting challenge).
Maybe the important take-away is that there's not one platonic ideal cube, but there's also not a platonic ideal powermax cube, monolith cube, riptide cube, peasant cube or cbob's weird idiosyncrasies cube, and that's all ok.
Maybe the important take-away is that there's not one platonic ideal cube, but there's also not a platonic ideal powermax cube, monolith cube, riptide cube, peasant cube or cbob's weird idiosyncrasies cube, and that's all ok.
Here's the argument I would make. You start with 20 life. If you have a low curve, but low power, you can't always properly incentivize actually playing the one drops. I would offer Hannes' original cube. It had a reasonable curve, but the power level was so low that you could just sit around and start dropping five-drops onto the table and not really worry about dying. Poorly tuned? Perhaps, but I always felt like these games were less about what I decided and more about what I drew.
But that may be one of the inherent considerations of a budget-constrained cube. It's pretty easy to buy a 25-cent rare six drop that can dominate the game (see: Scars of Mirrodin), but getting aggro up to those levels requires a lot of investment (namely: manabase).
Yeah, not my best article, although I have gotten some good feedback via email and the RipLab front page. I've had a lot of assorted thoughts that I've been looking for a home for, and hold pretty strongly that "low curve, strong aggro, high removal density" is a winning formula for much better games of Magic. I think it's easy to make deckbuilding / drafting fun, even if the games play like shit, as evidenced by most cubes. If only playing out matches didn't take 5-6 times longer than the deckbuilding part...
I will say, cards like Armageddon, Upheaval and Sulfuric Vortex did at times create really memorable and interesting games. I don't really miss them though, but perhaps there's a discussion to be had on baking tension and "wow" moments into "fair" cubes? I do find the "tank from Turn 1" games pretty tense, even if there's not one big hallmark moment. There are always trade-offs, and I tend to bias in favor of promoting drafts where you feel like the skill you brought to the table is more strongly correlated with results. Others prefer the "drop a bomb and win" approach.
i want to promote decision density without removing the visceral fun of doing something that feels powerful. i guess you could say this is timmy-related but i think it is a big oversimplification that only timmies want that, everyone wants that, just not to the same degree. in that way the whole maro player psychographic thing is a bit misunderstood. to me a potential failure of a game is when everything feels weak (this is a problem i with many of the wotc limited formats).
a little bit of unfair is actually good for gameplay. you want to put a little hot sauce on your food, but not a little food on your hot sauce.
i actually like playing matches a lot lot more than i like deckbuilding/drafting. bad formats upset me because deckbuilding feels like work and then i did all this work to have fun and then no fun happened.
example of how much card power vs life total matters: EDH
a little bit of unfair is actually good for gameplay. you want to put a little hot sauce on your food, but not a little food on your hot sauce.
i actually like playing matches a lot lot more than i like deckbuilding/drafting. bad formats upset me because deckbuilding feels like work and then i did all this work to have fun and then no fun happened.
example of how much card power vs life total matters: EDH
"Better"? For Spike? For everyone?
I'm honestly asking, since my cube certainly falls into the "criminally untested" camp. But my target audience also doesn't follow the game or buy new cards anymore, and might be overwhelmed by the intensity of something like your primary cube.
Either way, it sounds like we're starting to argue over personal preference, instead of the design tools you laid out in the article. Here's what I see summarizing the decision density discussion: if you want higher density, increase distinct options but limit resources...
- Increase the number of abilities on all of your cards (lands, etc.).
- Decrease the flexibility of individual cards (like sorceries over instants, or more conditional spot removal. Basically avoid universal answers so one option is not strictly superior).
- Limit the time available to use your mana by making aggro better, forcing decisions between competing costs. To make aggro better:
- Lower the curve so aggro has more threats, and opponents have choices on how to interact instead of stuck with top-heavy hands that get run over and aren't fun.
- Ensure aggro decks - and by extension most decks - have a solid manabase so games aren't reduced to mana screw.
- Add power, since Goblin Guides end games much faster than Raging Goblins can before a goldfish plays a 5cc card of comparable power.
- Add reach or cheap resiliency; anything from Hissing Iguanar to Gravecrawler to Latch Seeker and beyond that can ignore/overrun the goldfish's 5th turn play.
- Technically, you can also force competition of mana needs in slower formats with more activated abilities, like level up, etc. However, that's much more difficult to balance while keeping aggro viable.
- More interaction generally means more fun, but don't let removal overwhelm aggro.
- If you want some good comeback stories so that skilled players don't always dominate, add more variety (spicy bombs and swingier cards). If you want more consistency in games, don't do that.
This is a great post.
No, not for everyone, but, I guess the main metric I go for is "rewarding gameplay at high level competitive play". This is likely influenced by my Major League Gaming background.
Take a game like Halo 1. The default weapon, the Pistol, could drop an opposing player in three quick headshots. You missed a lot if you weren't skilled. Your opponents made you miss a lot if they could strafe well. Some people preferred to play with one-shot kills (no shields), or with a weaker starting weapon, or with vehicles or all Rocket Launchers or whatever, but in the realm of tournament play both of these were unsatisfying options. They made gameplay less skill-testing, battles less interesting. The better team always won.
That's the type of thing I try to capture with my cube, but I do believe it has broad appeal. Scrubs come in and have fun with it, PTQ grinders come and 2 - 1 or 3 - 0 every time. FNM regulars with inflated egos hit 1 - 2 with startling regularity. But they keep coming back.
It's undoubtedly very spikey, but I'll take Sirlin's approach and claim that you can appeal to more casual players with the same product that entices tournament players. However, if you have a game that is fundamentally unbalanced or poorly tuned, casual players may still enjoy it but the competitive crowd will, at their core, feel dissatisfied. This is how I feel about the MODO cube (and others). They can provide some casual fun, but if I really want a testing environment, I'm going home with frustration.
Well, right, I just used unbalanced as a filler word. Any game where both players / teams start out with the same resources is "balanced", but can still just suck / be unsatisfying / be boring when played competitively.
Great article and discussion. My 2 cents...
To aggro or not to aggro...
This seems to be a pretty consistent thing that I read everywhere. It's a real hot button for most people. The spikier players really push aggro due to the inherent balance it brings to "dragony" type cubes (and I could go into a long rant about how the power creep of modern magic has contributed to this idea, but I digress...). While I see the logic, I also don't support agro as heavily as most in this crowd. And it ties back to what a few people hinted at I think - a good part of designing a cube is catering to the players in your group. I play with a lot of timmy/johnny types (I'm a johnny), and although some of us will occassionally feel like playing a heavy beatdown deck, most of us gravitate towards grindier more midrangy strategies (combo and what not). We play a lot of multi-player (two headed giant as well as free for all), and so a lot of the card choices reflect that. I was originally trying to push a lot of 2 power one drops and that stuff went undrafted. It was wasting precious card slots so I got rid of it.
With that said, I am a big believer in lowering the mana curve of your cube for exactly the reasons stated (decision density). Every time I've done that, it has led to better decks across the board and game play that has more interaction. Jason and others bring up a great point with all that. If the game unfolds without you having any decisions to make - those are the worst games of magic possible. You want to have lots of choices and you don't want to feel like you had no way to win or that no decision you made had any impact on the outcome. This is a big reason why I have limited some of the power cards and why I'm presently purging most cards with protection. No one likes losing to a single card. And the argument that you should have included answers in your deck is a poor one in a singleton environment where maybe there was only one card you could have drawn or you never even saw any answers in draft pool. I've certainly mitigated this with my removal suite and what not, but some cards are just really hard to answer and warp games unnecessarily.
In keeping with that idea, I am 100% behind the idea of limiting the power of cube overall. I do not think chasing the most powerful cube possible is the way to go if you want to create the most fun environment. I've been against that design philosophy for many years now. It's the predominant design philosophy (especially on MTGS), and I've been frustrated by it since day one. I understand the other side of the coin though (playing with powerful cards is itself fun). I'm not arguing that we should be reducing power levels to that of limited. I'm simply arguing that the sweet spot is not at either extreme but instead rests somewhere in the middle (or upper middle). And that sweet spot will be at a different place depending on the make up your group (skill level, competitiveness, etc.).
To aggro or not to aggro...
This seems to be a pretty consistent thing that I read everywhere. It's a real hot button for most people. The spikier players really push aggro due to the inherent balance it brings to "dragony" type cubes (and I could go into a long rant about how the power creep of modern magic has contributed to this idea, but I digress...). While I see the logic, I also don't support agro as heavily as most in this crowd. And it ties back to what a few people hinted at I think - a good part of designing a cube is catering to the players in your group. I play with a lot of timmy/johnny types (I'm a johnny), and although some of us will occassionally feel like playing a heavy beatdown deck, most of us gravitate towards grindier more midrangy strategies (combo and what not). We play a lot of multi-player (two headed giant as well as free for all), and so a lot of the card choices reflect that. I was originally trying to push a lot of 2 power one drops and that stuff went undrafted. It was wasting precious card slots so I got rid of it.
With that said, I am a big believer in lowering the mana curve of your cube for exactly the reasons stated (decision density). Every time I've done that, it has led to better decks across the board and game play that has more interaction. Jason and others bring up a great point with all that. If the game unfolds without you having any decisions to make - those are the worst games of magic possible. You want to have lots of choices and you don't want to feel like you had no way to win or that no decision you made had any impact on the outcome. This is a big reason why I have limited some of the power cards and why I'm presently purging most cards with protection. No one likes losing to a single card. And the argument that you should have included answers in your deck is a poor one in a singleton environment where maybe there was only one card you could have drawn or you never even saw any answers in draft pool. I've certainly mitigated this with my removal suite and what not, but some cards are just really hard to answer and warp games unnecessarily.
In keeping with that idea, I am 100% behind the idea of limiting the power of cube overall. I do not think chasing the most powerful cube possible is the way to go if you want to create the most fun environment. I've been against that design philosophy for many years now. It's the predominant design philosophy (especially on MTGS), and I've been frustrated by it since day one. I understand the other side of the coin though (playing with powerful cards is itself fun). I'm not arguing that we should be reducing power levels to that of limited. I'm simply arguing that the sweet spot is not at either extreme but instead rests somewhere in the middle (or upper middle). And that sweet spot will be at a different place depending on the make up your group (skill level, competitiveness, etc.).
Great point, although I think it applies more to balancing strengths of strategies than it does to how "fun" they are. That said, a poorly tuned environment isn't great for casual players either. Just one of the many reasons why WOTC tests Standard so much when probably >90% of their audience never plays in any tournaments.
I was trying to say that this question has no right or wrong answer. We're just establishing more knobs we can turn as cube designers to get what we want. If you can reach the perfect decision density without pushing aggro or adding power (by just lowering the curve and/or making spells more conditional), then great! WOTC has been doing that for years.
I personally have a couple aggro strategies to make sure games don't last a century, and to keep my favorite Johnny engines in check.
And I'm totally in favor of reducing power to the levels of limited, which is no surprise if you've been paying attention to my card examples.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
That's more a symptom of GRBS than of curve or power level. I mean, the lower your power level gets, the more likely it is that otherwise fair cards end up ruining someone's day. Scars limited was bad for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the preponderance of six-mana bombs - that were all unplayable in Standard, natch - that killed all your stuff, and then kicked you in the nads while you were down.
If you carefully curate your cube across all points of the mana curve, I'm still of the mind that you don't need a high power level to make for interactive, back-and-forth games with lots of decision points from both players, provided that there's plenty of stuff to do starting on turn one. Some of my favourite limited interactions ever come from the attack step, in which, after blocks are declared, my opponent and I go a) buff attacker with combat trick, b) attempt to debuff attacker with aura removal, c) counter the aura removal. I think this happened in M14, no less, and I was on the receiving end of that 3-for-1 blowout, but that sequence remains memorable to this day. Decisions from sequencing lots of early game plays is one type of skill-based gameplay that's fun and rewarding, but I would contend that there are plenty of other areas that open up to be explored when you dial down the power level a notch.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I'm not sure you can make a coherently interesting environment where playing a low powered offensive threat like raging goblin will ever put pressure on the guy just trying to hit 5 land. Even a Durkwood Boars is probably good enough to turn the game around. 3rd tier one drops just don't get anything done, their is really never any reason to play them over another basic land so you can more reliably hit your "real cards" higher in the curve.
I don't think you necessarily need to run nothing but the top tier beaters, but if you aren't running 2 power dudes, mana dudes or crazy strong utility dudes, why include them in your deck? What are these cards accomplishing?
To be clear, I'm not advocating for power levels lower than that of retail Limited environments, or even approaching anything like Core Set draft. I agree that Merfolk of the Pearl Trident is not a compelling card in any Constructed or Limited metagame. If you consider retail Limited at one end of the scale, and a typical power-max cube at the other, my argument is that there's a lot of space in between that has yet to be explored if the main goal is to maximize interaction, decision density, and overall fun.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
If there's a way to make Cube more like Legacy (a format where, not coincidentally, there's no true 'aggro' deck any more - Zoo has long since been pushed out, and now you only have hyper-linear stuff like Affinity), I'm perfectly ok with that. My main reservation is what it does to White, which basically only exists as an aggro colour. Handicapping that element would remove what little incentive there is to draft it.
"Low curve, strong aggro, high removal density" is a recipe for a very specific type of fun, but it sounds a little too similar to Zendikar draft for my taste. Emphasizing the early game puts a lot of pressure on every deck to have consistently strong opening hands, and makes for an unforgiving environment where one dead draw step or mulligan is likely lethal.
My cube (http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/3255) is almost the opposite: Curves are higher; raw aggro is a niche player; the removal is a bit scarce. The Spike appeal comes from the sense that your whole deck matters, because you're likely to draw a large fraction of it, and you need to have an engine to generate value from abundant resources in the late game. There's a premium on synergy, mana sinks, and having a powerful plan (recent favorites: Eternal Dragon; Karador, Ghost Chieftain; Laboratory Maniac). There's less focus on heavy redundancy, because you have the time to use draw steps and filtering spells to marshal your resources.
Traditional cubes' power level precludes a late-game focus (everyone needs early, proactive plans for planeswalkers and bomby creatures). The difference is that the decision density never stops in my cube, because you often have ways to spend 10+ mana per turn for multiple turns. To balance that, I've added more powerful threats than I used to run just to keep everyone's durdling more honest---I took it as a good sign when I cut Centaur Glade for being too slow.
I think I'm on the same page as Throgan and Eric Chan on a lot of this. Low-power-level cubes have a lot to offer in novel and interesting games because you have to eke out advantages without broken cards to rely on.
My cube (http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/3255) is almost the opposite: Curves are higher; raw aggro is a niche player; the removal is a bit scarce. The Spike appeal comes from the sense that your whole deck matters, because you're likely to draw a large fraction of it, and you need to have an engine to generate value from abundant resources in the late game. There's a premium on synergy, mana sinks, and having a powerful plan (recent favorites: Eternal Dragon; Karador, Ghost Chieftain; Laboratory Maniac). There's less focus on heavy redundancy, because you have the time to use draw steps and filtering spells to marshal your resources.
Traditional cubes' power level precludes a late-game focus (everyone needs early, proactive plans for planeswalkers and bomby creatures). The difference is that the decision density never stops in my cube, because you often have ways to spend 10+ mana per turn for multiple turns. To balance that, I've added more powerful threats than I used to run just to keep everyone's durdling more honest---I took it as a good sign when I cut Centaur Glade for being too slow.
I think I'm on the same page as Throgan and Eric Chan on a lot of this. Low-power-level cubes have a lot to offer in novel and interesting games because you have to eke out advantages without broken cards to rely on.