General Elegance in cube card selection

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Funny you mention that, Ive actually done something similair. 180 cards about retail draft level, mostly simple cards.

One nice aspect of that I think is that you get to build the interesting and complex interactions yourself, they're not prepackaged on the cards.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

To kind of link two topics together, we recently had an interesting discussion on this card starting here:



I know this is a topic that can kind of bounce all over the place. When you look at the cards in your cube nearly every single one of them is covered with texts and keywords to the point of just being overwhelming to someone new to the game, and retail draft sets include vanilla or easy to understand spells simply to reduce the amount of mental fatigue. We might criticize those formats for their simplicity, but they have a unique design objective than none of us ever have to really confront and embrace: accessibility.

This does bring up an interesting point though, as to whether cube formats that relatively new players are being exposed to should deliberately be devoting a certain % of their card pool to simplified spells, or at least actively looking for places to reduce complexity level.

I think for most of us though, viridian emissary is the kind of inelegant card design we most want to avoid: cards that are actively deceptive or signal a deck or drafting strategy that isn't actually reflected in the card pool. While I think its easy to understand most tribal deck attempts, or cards with trinket text fall into this category, as issue cards, VE provides false signals in a way that can be challenging for designers to spot.

In the above case, primal dryad is a clear example of a simplier, easier to understand card, being a better choice than the seemingly more complex alternative, viridian emissary.

 

[sigh]

.....

This does bring up an interesting point though, as to whether cube formats that relatively new players are being exposed to should deliberately be devoting a certain % of their card pool to simplified spells, or at least actively looking for places to reduce complexity level.

.....

I think this point is exactly what I've been trying to do for the past little while, because a majority of my players are relatively new to the game, and very new to drafting.

I think a good example of this decision making in action is something like:
v.
Counterspell is textbook for simple concept executed cleanly. It does what it says in literally 3 words, and yet can still find it's way into 'spells' decks, control decks, ~tempo~ decks, etc. Miscalculation, on the other hand, has a lot of cool/techy upsides, but requires so much more comprehension for how much gain? (this is an entirely hypothetical slot we are talking about... a cube could run both).

Another one that I've recently dealt with (power level of aura removal completely aside):
v.
At the base level it's 40 words versus eight words. It's gonna be a hell of a lot easier on someone fresh to cube to grok the Pacifism while they are also coming to grips with hundreds of other decision-dense and new cards.

I personally think it's a goal all cube designers can at least look at. Having every techy/flashy spell is nice, but so is having the ground-floor basics. That's why I think this is such a good thread. It's motivated me to look carefully at slots and decide whether I really need that command or charm or wordy effect or what-have-you, when I could run something Simple and Clean and my environment will be no worse for wear, but my drafters will be more at ease.

 

[ahadabans]

It's a fine line. Temporal isolation is magnitudes more interesting. And while it has more text, it's not all that complicated.

My rule of thumb is... If the font had to be made smaller to fit all the text, that card needs a really good reason to be in the cube.

 

[sigh]

It's a fine line. Temporal isolation is magnitudes more interesting. And while it has more text, it's not all that complicated.

My rule of thumb is... If the font had to be made smaller to fit all the text, that card needs a really good reason to be in the cube.

The way I look at it is, why does it have to be all that more interesting? I guess in this case I tread on the other side of that line, where I'd rather have drafters more at home in the format than individual cards that are interesting for interesting sake.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Temporal Isolation is an interesting example. Not only is it more wordy, but it includes a keyword that is generally just going to be a convoluted and confusing way to say "this creature can't attack or block."

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Temporal Isolation is an interesting example. Not only is it more wordy, but it includes a keyword that is generally just going to be a convoluted and confusing way to say "this creature can't attack or block."

Well, technically shadow roughly comes down to "this creature can't block or be blocked", but together with the damage prevention effect, it's basically Pacifism with flash written in the one of the least elegant ways possible.

Interestingly, Time Spiral in general is a very convoluted block, with a myriad of keywords, and nonobvious interactions, and a host of weird reprints. Professional players loved it to death (both limited and constructed) for the deep gameplay the environment offered, but newer players were generally (very) overwhelmed by it. There's a nice analogy to draw here, as I'm pretty sure the same holds true for our cubes. You can create (at least reasonably) deep gameplay using elegant cards without overwhelming your players, or you can create a truly convoluted puzzle for your experienced players. Either works, but not for the same experience level. Moreover, I'ld wager an environment with a lot of elegant cards can still challenge an experienced player, while a cube with a lot of Temporal Isolation-style cards will almost always overwhelm a newer player.

 

[japahn]

The lessons learned for me were:

1. Reading 15 simple cards > reading 15 complex cards.
2. Nostalgia and resonance are fun by themselves.
3. Basic Lego blocks stimulate creativity. Specialized Lego blocks do not.
4. Magic is complex enough that simple cards can create interesting games.

Funny you mention that, Ive actually done something similair. 180 cards about retail draft level, mostly simple cards.

One nice aspect of that I think is that you get to build the interesting and complex interactions yourself, they're not prepackaged on the cards.

I wanted to highlight this. My wife and I felt exactly the same thing, and I tried to summarize it in point #3.

3. Basic Lego blocks stimulate creativity. Specialized Lego blocks do not.

When you take a bunch of squares, rectangles and triangles and build something, it's cool and you actually designed it. When you take a bunch of weird shapes that can be combined in a lot of ways, you can build something even bigger, theoretically with more variations, but they do not match well.

Take 8 Lego sets with specific colors and specialized pieces (and plunge into debt by doing so), mix them up and build stuff with 7 friends. People will just unshuffle the pieces and follow the manuals, and that'll be the most optimized way to get something that makes sense. Otherwise, it'll look like this:

Now, if you take a box of simple bricks and do the same thing, they are much less restrictive about what cards go with which:

 

[genericco]

Spoiler

 

[sigh]

Excellent post! (and excellent chess set )
I think these are sage words that every cube designer can gain something by at least keeping them in the back of your mind.

I think Shadow is a perfect example of a neato mechanic that is just.... not needed, really at all.

Another victim of that for me might be Spell Mastery. I'm not sure if any of the cards I'm running with the ability are really really worth it or not. It really cranks up the comprehension level for some payoff, but is it enough? something like Dark Petition Might be ok, because the ability is already pretty simple, and the Mastery is very impactful, but like... Nissa's Pilgrimage should probably just be Cultivate (for instance).

EDIT: turns out I only had three cards with spell mastery in my cube. Well, now there's two.

 

[Tzenmoroth]

Speaking of Dank Petition, I would love to just play , Sorcery, Tutor and Add . That is definitely a card I would simplify.

 

[ahadabans]

I was a huge fan of Legos as a kid. And the generic blocks were way better than the specialty stuff for all reasons stated.

That said, I'm not sure this analogy is completely portable to Magic. I don't like Temporal Isolation. I think the art is cool. It's a two mana enchantment in white. It's removal. So it fills a role but I run it begrudgingly. This is not a defense of this card. But I want to stick to it and the "simpler" Pacifism because I think it's an example of why the analogy doesn't necessarily work. What can you do with Pacifism? Only one thing - shut down a blocker/attacker. It's a simple card, sure. But it's not block Lego set simple. It only does one thing. It's actually a specialty Lego piece that simply looks like a block Lego.

Temporal Isolation effectively does the same thing as Pacifism, but because it has flash there is more play to it. You can hold it, attack and cast or cast and attack. Or choose not to play it and instead cast another instant (depending on the situation). It can also be cast on your own dude. This is a super corner case obviously, but some creatures have triggers on attack instead of damage, but say you can't attack with them because they will run into something and die. This card gets you around that. I can't remember the last time this actually happened in a game, but the point is there is simply more play to Temporal Isolation. Inelegant card? Maybe (probably). But more elegant doesn't necessarily mean better (at least from a less text / more simple standpoint).

Nothing wrong with ABU magic. It certainly has a much lower learning curve for new players (a big plus). I tried teaching my girlfriend how to play with some basic pre-made decks, and it was so fucking boring I couldn't even get through a game. I personally want my Magic complicated as fuck because I've been playing so long. Primarily because it's more challenging but also because I think the game is more satisfying when you lose or win games by exploiting (or making) play mistakes. I never want a game to feel like it's on rails - where you have few play decisions to make and the outcome was outside your control because there was nothing else you could have done. Simple cards lean more towards that kind of play. The best cards of course being ones that read simply but have great play depth to them (that would not be Temporal Isolation for the record).

I completely get the intent behind this thread and I think card complexity has to be taken into consideration. So I'm not really disagreeing here. Just don't think it's black and white is all.

 

[japahn]

Yes, there is definitely a sweet spot somewhere between overly simple and overwhelmingly complex.

I get that veteran players are often in for the challenge and want things complicated. I did that, and what I like was that it had some massive disadvantages: 1. Being inaccessible to non-hardcore players; 2. Diminishing returns in fun; 3. Headaches.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I mean hey, take a look over your cubes and decide if individual cards are worth their weight in complexity. The bar is clearly going to be different from group to group, but some examples of what might be a problem candidate probably can't go amiss.

Sometimes it's worth it:

Attacking into this guy is a pain sometimes, and trying to time burn spells before he gets big enough but when it'll help you can also be frustrating.
Buuuuuuuut, there's no card I like as a designer better for proliferate tribal.


I've seen no card that makes people tank for 5 minutes more. And yet I hope I don't need to defend this one.

Sometimes it's a subtler thing:

My drafters hated this card, and for odd reasons. They mentioned Scry 3 is a lot of little busywork to be doing every turn, and that discarding a card when your whole deck is so good is hard. So not only would people tank every combat step before blockers, they'd also tank whenever it got doom bladed, since they probably want to protect it, but also have no idea weather swords to plowshares or gideon is the right card to discard.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

These are two cards I dislike running because of the tank time.



Brainstorm hasn't been a problem at all in terms of tank time, though the card is grossly overrated in formats without heavy fetchland density. Ponder is the hardest to play though i.m.o, with preordain being the most elegant of the bunch.

I just pretend serum visions doesn't exist.

 

[Chris Taylor]

These are two cards I dislike running because of the tank time.



Brainstorm hasn't been a problem at all in terms of tank time, though the card is grossly overrated in formats without heavy fetchland density. Ponder is the hardest to play though i.m.o, with preordain being the most elegant of the bunch.

I just pretend serum visions doesn't exist.

I find it really interesting the difference in tank time between sensei's divining top and Mirri's Guile (That is to say, extreme vs Nonexistant)
Maybe it's that guile goes straight from the ordering to your draw step, so it ends up being kinda a psudo-impulse in practice, or maybe it's that top just has more moving parts (Tap a mana, what do I want to leave up, do I want to tap the top to draw a card, why am I ever doing this as a sorcery, oh wait because sometimes that's the right play, etc)

Brainstorm in fetchland heavy enviornments though does involve quite a bit of planning ahead. I had a deck with a few Brainstorms and this:

Which has a lot of little decision points in it: Do I chump or wait? What am I discarding? (Plus the usual cantrip stuff like how much longer can I wait? Are there prowess creatures I want to be boosting?)

At least as far as cantrips are concerned, the more experienced players tend to spend a lot of time overthinking them, while the less experienced players end up spending less time thinking about optimal brainstorm patters and more about the rest of the game, so the total time invested tends to even out.

However, there is one point in favor of serum visions: When you're playing it early, casting it, drawing a card and then saying go while you scry is a nice way to keep the game flowing, an option usually unavailable to the others. It's the same principal that leads us to tap a scalding tarn for a spell, play out how everything resolves, then actually go find the land while our opponent starts their turn.

You usually can't do that with it's compatriots since the actual cards in your hand will be different depending on how you resolve the spell, instead of just the top of your library being different.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Can I get some opinions?

Is it inelegant design to include exalted angel as your only morph card?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Can I get some opinions?

Is it inelegant design to include exalted angel as your only morph card?

Well, it is the reason I don't run her. In fact, I recently thought about reigning in the number of little-used keywords in my cube. Might be interesting, as it forces you to make some changes and is probably good for the grokkability of your cube. What would be a good lower limit in a 450 cube? 3? 4? 5?

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Can I get some opinions?

Is it inelegant design to include exalted angel as your only morph card?

Not necessarily. I think a lot of this depends on your play group.

If you have a bunch of old school regular drafters that played during Odyssey, and they draft your cube every week, then Exalted Angel as your only morph isn't going to be an issue.

If you have casual newish players then you might want to save your cheat day style cognitive burden cards for something more essential to your design vision.

 

[Meltyman]

I have a friend who has a "cube" with 10k cards or something that are mostly non-english. I call THAT inelegant, because there won't be a draft or other multiplayer game with that pile where someone asks "what does this card do?"

I definitely pass on "elegance" if it means i have to put away an effect that might happen sometimes and change the course of the game unexpectedly. I don't have that many friends in my cube group who haven't played for a long time, so i don't think i have the diminishing returns as far as i know.

Some random examples that might or might not provoke conversation:

Counterspell vs Scatter to the Winds - i have both in my main cube, but now that i think of it, i would probably cut Counterspell over Scatter even after considering i have Counterspell also for nostalgic reasons. Awaken might happen 1/100 games but it's still potentially going to win someone a game; love that !

Swords to Plowshares vs Declaration in Stone - I have thought about removing STOP from my cube when we get enough sweet white removal. Declaration has so much more play to it than STOP although STOP probably is the better of the bunch AND also much simpler.

Bloodghast vs Relentless Dead - Bloodghast probably isn't that elegant either, but Relentless Dead is even more heavier for the eyes. Still no way Relentless Dead is leaving my cube in a long time.

Lightning Bolt vs Blast from the Past - Bolt won't be leaving my cube ever probably, but if i had to choose between these 2 which would leave, it would be Bolt because Blast has more play to it, simple.

Wood Elves vs Nissa, Vastwood Seer - Elegance losing here easily. Nissa is more powerful so maybe a little too bad example.

Anything vs The Gitrog Monster

 

[Dom Harvey]

Maybe it helps to view elegance as a kind of points system: it's fine to have wordy cards (or, in the case of Blast from the Past, to have cards because they're wordy) as long as there are enough simple cards to lessen the cognitive burden. I'd rather 'spend' my complexity on cards that are especially unique or interesting (many of which can only be that way thanks to this complexity) rather than something like Declaration in Stone, which is a hopelessly wordy version of a stock effect; even for a 'minor' upgrade like Watchwolf -> Fleecemane Lion, I'll take that because Fleecemane Lion is powerful and fun whereas Watchwolf is average and boring.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I feel like morph is particularly inelegant as an isolated keyword, because every time you play out the morph, there is that awkward moment where you think "what is that crea---oh yeah, its the one morph in the cube" which just feels inelegant in the most base sense of the definition.

Than there is that level 2 inelegance as concerns grokability, where new players have to learn this one of keyword. Even worse, if they aren't familiar with the cube, they might mistakingly believe there are other morphs in the pool, and be at kind of a trite disadvantage. AND if that isn't enough, there is the awkwardness of rooting around for morph tokens.

On the other hand, exalted angel is an amazing card. I always feel similarly conflicted about vesuvan shapeshifter.

Does this factor into people's decisions to run or not run these cards? I think both cards are great, but it just occurred to me that I never see them really discussed here.

 

[psly4mne]

I agree with with Grillo about morph. I used to run a number of morphs in my cube, and every time you are sitting across from a morph you feel a pressure to enumerate all the possible creatures it could be (either from memory or by asking around) and trying to play around all of them. That would be largely mitigated if there is only one morph, but it still introduces the cognitive burden of remembering that you actually know the face-down card's text.

For that reason, I don't run any morph now, and I don't normally put too high a priority on ease of play. I had a sizeable morph package before I stripped it out, including both Exalted Angel and Vesuvan Shapeshifter.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'm firmly in camp no-morph. But I have been tempted for that green 3-drop that pretends to be Eternal Witness.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I wish I could tack morph onto random cards so that Deathmist Raptor was playable