General Color matters / devotion

[CML]

Fans of mine (there are about 3?) will know of my contempt for the Modo-style mono-colored support feat. Cabal Coffers, Phyrexian Obliterator and other cards that nobody else would ever pick in a million years. They will also know of my love of Eventide, the best "set that was a commercial disaster but has become a cult classic" since they tore down the bowling alley in Lebowski.

"The Dude likes multicolor decks."

Now Eventide, with its self-indulgent fetishism of hybrid mana, is perversely relevant again, as Theros cards turn out to really like "cards with a ton of mana symbols in them that are nevertheless easy to cast while also encouraging cross-color synergies and identities." I am also into this type of cards, and though the Theros gods seem poorly-developed to me (I'd make them weaker when turned on and stronger when not), I'm happy to throw 'em in and encourage people for taking a few risks this way. Look at the below deck (http://cubetutor.com/cubedeck/50648) and tell me there is a Cuber who would not be proud to play the fuck out of it:

"The Dude abides."

quick hits:
-what kind of color-matters cards do you like best in each color? which for each 2-color combo if any?
-how do these card choices jive with the rest of your color identity scheme?
-is lotleth troll just kind of a piece of shit?
-why does erebos have to suck so much?
-what do we do with fixing and the utility land draft to this end? would throwing in something like expedition map and cabal coffers be justified?

HAVE AT IT

 

[Goldenpineapple]

I like the concept of color-matters effects that reward you for being more committed to a color while splashing others, but thanks to hybrid costs/plentiful gold cards and dual lands things like khalni hydra and utopia sprawl aren't exactly restrictive. I would rather just see things that you can cast without but give you some kind of bonus for having that available/using it to cast it. I feel like lieges and devotion both don't particularly make colors "matter" more, they're just good cards in colors you're playing.

I'm just not particularly fond of any devotion cards yet. They're either stupidly swingy (merchant), not what I want my colors doing (master) or too weak (disciple). I'm playing a few of the gods but value them for their static and activated effects with random upside of being dudes. Looking at how uneven the card-split was for the mechanic (2, 2, 5, 2, 4 in color order) I hope the cards we get in the next couple sets are more interesting.

The only way I can force "color matters" onto people is by having cards with more restrictive casting costs. Precinct Captain and Kargan Dragonlord come to mind. They can make players deviate how hard they're committing to a color, which is kind of interesting, at the risk of just tabling to dead last because no one is playing a deck for them to find a home. I'll never go as deep as phyrexian obliterator but you get the idea.

 

[CML]

re. the whole "reward for extra" yeah i love stuff like Gatekeeper of Malakir but the development does not work well for Cube. BB for a 2/2 is terrible and BBB for an edict bear is insane but in the same way (albeit to a lesser extent) as Mind's Desire or whatever. my theory is that they've balanced color-intensive costs for Constructed MTG, where fixing is far more abundantly available, and the development therefore works better. the only solution I have for this, with which I have been very happy, is to drastically increase the quantity and quality of fixing in Cube.

i found that, even a few months ago, i was ruthlessly cutting out double-cost 2-drops; Ash Zealot, Strangleroot Geist, Bloodghast, Knight of the White Orchid: none of these were spared. But then devotion was printed and i threw em back in and i really like them along with stuff like Frostburn Weird and Sygg, River Cutthroat. Precinct Captain and Kargan Dragonlord are in now too, needless to say

 

[Jason Waddell]

Do you think devotion needs to be pushed in all colors or can we make it a subtheme of one color? Maybe a less bad implementation of the Avacyn Restored dynamic?

 

[anotak]

forgive my ignorance having never played the allegedly awful format, but what is the avacyn restored dynamic?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Black had a heavy emphasis on "only play black" while the other colors intermingled.

 

[anotak]

oh i hate that wizards looooves pushing that it seems like and then they mark rosewater was saying "why is black bad i dont get it" and the non-riptide cube people were saying "why is black bad i dont get it" and zac hill or whoever it was says "man i thought phyrexian obliterator was going to be INSANE in standard when we were printing it"

 

[CML]

"MBC is a thing now though, Mike Flores was right all along"

Seriously though, the latest development (and design?) teams have done a shit job of balancing colors for Limited, I'm doing a Modo III draft right now (having phantom RGD drafts -- not DGR, RGD -- would be a good way of apologizing for Modo sucking in every possible way, I tweeted this at Lee Sharpe, it hasn't been implemented, I don't know why) and it annoys me that White is overpowered. Now the people in this draft are certainly brain-dead as everyone forgets what to do in a format that's been inactive for exactly a year (though the stuff I'm getting passed makes me wonder if someone else is getting passed something even more absurd, I am in fact shipping a ridiculous Red deck -- the odd thing is that the drafters in really old sets like IPA or RGD are usually tough to beat online) but my deck is stupid because it has all these ridiculous cards at common that other colors do not have, and I believe this is at the core of Dom's beef with White in Cube. Here check it

(sitting the woodland sleuth because it is not even playable in draft to spite Jason)

anyway, most every NWO format has a clear worst color(s):
Shards -- naya sucked though gold and a small WUBRG theme made this not too big of an issue
ZZW -- green and blue both sucked, WRB all had interesting virtues (i like this format)
M11 -- red was atrocious and black was not too far behind (GW good, U historically deep -- also liked this format)
ROE -- well-balanced imo
M12 -- bigger problems than color balance, but GW seemed too strong
DII -- biggest problem is that III was so much better, but black was terrible in either
AVR -- black was historically terrible, maybe the worst Limited color since U in Onslaught-Legions-Scourge
M13 -- well-balanced imo
DGR -- having a gold set fixes a lot of these issues (though guild sets make it so much worse as Azorius and Dimir were each clear worst in their sets) but blue was bad and red was meh esp. in the slower full-block environment
M14 -- white was horrible (one of the first times ever to my mind, though lots of "pros" disagree that White is often good)
THS -- B and R are worse than U,G,W (though good together)

i just noticed i put in purify the grave for MD i am a huge idiot

anyway my brief comment is that Black does suffer in NWO in parallel ways to why it sucks in people's cubes (gravecrawler-griselbrand.dec and the "loner" theme) but that these reasons are easily surmountable. also the Constructed thing is a poor excuse, maybe if they didn't piss away half the slots in every NWO set on garbage unplayables it would help balance the colors and, who knows, maybe even create more stimulating draft environments in the mold of MMA

*g1 update: i just put a hopeful eidolon on my observant alseid and blew out his divine verdict with gods willing i equipped a butcher's cleaver to a mausoleum guard and blew out his rebuke with ranger's guile. there's removal in this set but equipment conveniently dodges that issue.

ANYWAY the g-g fallacy shouldnt be a problem in regular draft and the color-intensive design thing worked OK in ZZW where they compensated by giving Black the most powerful limited cards. the main point of my essay is that you can do color-intensive if you offer both rewards to doing so and also the carrot for picking a bunch of fixing and slamming things together. constructed formats also suffer from tilting one way or the other (or in crude MTGS terms "4c goodstuff" i.e. last standard season, or modern vs "mono-color support" i.e. this standard season) -- the best balance is obviously in Legacy, where there is fixing but there is also stifle and wasteland, and as Cube curators we should go for that kind of "dialectic." some devotion and a lot of hybrid (hybrid is perfect for this kind of thing) seems like a great way to do this, whereas cabal coffers and obliterator are just stupid

*round update: i won g3 because though he drew 9 extra cards with Mentor of the Meek, i drew my Butcher's Cleaver. I think we might be remembering III too fondly. the people who rank it with the top draft formats of all time for the most part have not drafted other formats, though there are probably a few fringe cases who have tasted the sweet nectar of RGD and are just philistines with horrible memories and NWO stockholm syndrome

 

[Dom Harvey]

I never liked III. Barely any removal, lots of ways to punish people for the smallest misstep in development. Only a small subset of games were actually competitive, and most of those weren't fun either.

 

[Dom Harvey]

To answer Jason's question, there really aren't many good incentives to go deep into green or white (Honor the Pure I guess?) afaict. Blue/black/red are all much better in that regard and also have stronger colour-intensive cards to unlock those rewards.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

I'm sure we can find decent hard-color cards in every color, but as far as making it a theme in a specific color I'm going to bet black has the most cube-power cards. I've attempted to push 'big black' with cards like crypt ghast and some x activations/spells. Varying success, it usually just becomes control's finishers/stuff for green to ramp into, which I'm fine with.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Yeah, what I am thinking is something along the lines of an influx of hybrid cards in one color, combined with a couple really strong anchor cards that actually have the word Devotion printed on them. Then we can open up a new deck archetype relatively compactly, and if nobody is in it, then it's only a few cards that don't get played. Or that still do get played but are just less effective outside of a dedicated deck (at the cost of the rest of the deck likely being more powerful).

The problem with mono-black's design in a lot of cubes is that they jam it with many cards that are only useful in monoblack that nobody else wants. And even then the monoblack deck is usually terrible.

Bloodghast seems kind of cool in a devotion thing.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Ugh, I am super lazy. Can somebody use the CI tags and post in here the devotion cards that are actually cubable? That may help me conceptualize.

 

[Goldenpineapple]

Ugh, I am super lazy. Can somebody use the CI tags and post in here the devotion cards that are actually cubable? That may help me conceptualize.

Well... I'll just post them all.

Awkward color split aside I wouldn't play either of white's or most of green's, and the blue cards are more aggressive than cards in more aggressive colors... Which leaves black and red. Red's are just fine but how much different is marauder from hellrider or something? Black has 3 different finishers along with a discard dude (who I would rather be bloodhusk ritualist, one of my favorite mono black cards) and their clunky god.

 

[Jason Waddell]

CML, Dom, which of these are you actually running?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I am neither of the people you asked, but am probably running Thasa, Grey Merchant, Nylea and Hunter. I can't tell you if any of these are terrible because I haven't actually played with them yet. Of the remaining I think Purphoros is honestly legit and unique and at some point could definitely see playing it. Fanatic of Mogis is probably legit, but like GP said its not really unique enough for me to care.

 

[Jason Waddell]

How big does X have to be before Grey Merchant is not terrible? Is it pulling more design weight than another 5-drop in that slot?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

The only non-terrible card that really competes for the same niche is Ob-Nixilis who is way bigger, but doesn't do his damage immediately and doesn't gain life, so even he isn't that comparable. I would say X need to be 4 for him to be "not terrible", but there is a great deal of headroom above that for him to be "awesome". It seems to me that the games that black decks that want a 5 drop tend to lose are the ones that turn into a life race. I eagerly await being embarrassed on this, but a life drain that can block seems to be exactly what black durdle decks that aren't on the resource attrition plan want.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Shriekmaw?
Bloodgift Demon?
The M13 demon that you have to sacrifice things to keep alive?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Grey Merchant and Shreikmaw don't seem comparable.

I actually think that Bloodgift Demon is straight up awful and do not at all see the appeal of it. Black already has tons of cards that provide incremental advantages, Grey Merchant cashes in on them to both progress you to victory and give you the life to survive in order to realize those investments.

Shadowborn Demon is decent, but I think Grey Merchant fits the bill better. Murdering dudes is not something my black section is lacking.

 

[CML]

oh god there are always TONS of five-drops you can run in your cube, just because mono-black is sparse on them (and it is) doesn't mean the Merch doesn't need to justify his slot over Underworld Cerberus or Havengul Lich or Obzedat, Ghost Council or whatever.

IMO the merch begins to be passable at x=4 and actively good at x=6. remember that dog is a zombie for gravecrawler stuff and also works well with the whole resto / venser / galepowder / havengul lich / reanimate / whip of erebos thing.

devotion section: thassa, erebos, merch, fanatic, purphoros, nylea, metaphoric Honor of the Pure
hybrid section: creakwood liege, ashenmoor liege, plumeveil, shadowmoor sygg, nightveil specter ashenmoor gouger, deus of calamity, frostburn weird
mono-color devotion fun: precinct captain, cloudfins 1 and 2, tidebinder, coralhelm, bloodghasts 1 and 2 (and a bunch of other black cards)

one of the downsides of this theme is that it encourages you to run awful cards like boros cow, wilt-leaf liege, redcap, finks, BTE, ram-gang, DRS, ash zealot, strangleroot geist that you'd otherwise have no interest in for any cube ever

 

[Eric Chan]

I had Shadowborn Demon in for a bunch of drafts, and even included it in a nut Gravecrawler deck, and I think it's unplayable in cube. Too much effort to set up. Maybe only if you have a strong dredge theme.

I very recently cut Honor of the Pure after having it in my cube for over two years. It encourages people to run mono-white weenie with no splash, which is kinda boring and doesn't win ever. (Unless Calvin is the pilot.)

 

[Jason Waddell]

one of the downsides of this theme is that it encourages you to run awful cards like boros cow, wilt-leaf liege, redcap, finks, BTE, ram-gang, DRS, ash zealot, strangleroot geist that you'd otherwise have no interest in for any cube ever

I'm going to need a translation and a justification for some of these because it feels like you're spouting some unjustified bullshit for giggles.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm going to need a translation and a justification for some of these because it feels like you're spouting some unjustified bullshit for giggles.

Translation: [sarcasm][/sarcasm]

 

[Dom Harvey]

Went over it here, but a rehash: I'm running all 5 Gods, 2 Gray Merchant, Abhorrent Overlord (as a Myr Battlesphere-esque curve-topper for black), 2 Master of Waves, 1/2 Fanatic of Mogis, and considering Mogis's Marauder. It's true that Thassa/Master don't fit neatly into a 'typical' blue section, but I've had a lot of fun exploring a more creature/permanent-heavy take on blue. Heliod and Nylea stay because white needs to keep itself busy and Nylea is kinda cool.

Another Devotion enabler: Borderposts! They can be played basically whenever, they're manafixing, and they can ramp you if need be.