General Elegance in cube card selection

[ahadabans]

The most confusing part of morph for people I've found is the stack(less) exception. Everyone wants to respond to the morph trigger. Didn't that go to the stack?? I've heard that many times. It's not a new player friendly mechanic.

I think the mystery aspect of morph is overstated. You only play a morph because you are either getting it in play faster or un-morphing gets you something better than just playing it straight. What the card is doesn't usually matter. See a morph, kill it. Almost always a good idea. Maybe it matters if they have open mana to un-morph and you have to wonder if it's Stratus Dancer or Exalted Angel (i.e. will my magma jet kill that). Or the questionable shit like Ire Shaman (is that worth a removal spell?). The only morph that you feared to kill was Willbender, and I had him in my cube for the longest time just because it was such a sucker punch to flip that on someone's removal spell. But the card is just bad outside those moments (and most cubes are probably too fast to be trying to setup that play these days).

There are never going to be enough playable morphs to create true mystery in your average rare cube. Morph is more like suspend I think. People generally know what's coming, and morph is only delaying it like time counters. Morph is pretty clunky honestly. The angel will probably always be in my list because she is great, but everything else is pretty expendable in my mind. Although Eternal Witness morph has been pretty good.

 

[CML]

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

it's a 5-drop i'll have you know

whipping it back was ... not the greatest

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

In terms of elegance...how do we feel about flip cards?

Say prowler vs heir:

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I run both. Efficient and playable black discard outlets turn out to be something of a rarity...

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thats not what I'm asking; but I can understand, it does look kind of like the fight club thread

 

[psly4mne]

I was skeptical at first, but DFCs have been fine. It's a little clunky to take the card out and look at the back during the draft and sometimes everyone will know you're looking at a DFC, but it hasn't really been a problem for us.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Thats not what I'm asking; but I can understand, it does look kind of like the fight club thread

What I meant was, you can't really afford to be picky in this department Unless of course you want to double up on the more elegant one, which I guess is Oona's Prowler. Like psly4mne, however, I have found that DFCs are less of a burden than I thought. In my cube I use sleeved checklist cards, and keep the DFCs themselves in clear sleeves in a separate pile that is accessible for reference during the draft.

 

[japahn]

I do think Morphs are kind of inelegant because the way you play against them depends a lot of the cube list rather than the cards that are in front of you. This problem is diminished in full draft, where you see ~90% of cards. It creates an advantage to people familiar with the cube and especially to the cube owner, unless you go the super inelegant route of having the morph list and passing it around.

I've never liked double-faced cards, though some in SOI are amazing designs so I run them anyway. Again, one of the reasons is that people who know what's on the back have a significant advantage, and having to remove them from the sleeve to flip is a bit of a harass. Things that don't flip often like Westvale Abbey and Thing in the Ice aren't as bad as say, Jace VP.

Both morph and flip cards are mechanics that I'd assign a significant cost in EP (elegance points), but not dealbreakers.

 

[Jason Waddell]

My girlfriend asked me to teach her to play Magic, but I only have the cube cards. I made little 30-card decks for each color, and the blue one has Ludevic's Test Subject in it. She understood the card immediately. Well, sort of. She really wanted to put five counters on it, but didn't even know what the backside was, and didn't know you could take it out and look.

Anyways, she's kind of addicted now. I edited the "starter decks" a bit, and now the way we play is that she chooses two colors, and we just shuffle the two 30-card piles together to make a 60-card deck. The piles now have an Evolving Wilds each, and the cycling lands and maybe one more utility land (e.g. Halimar Depths, Teetering Peaks). It works pretty well.

All told, I was pretty pleased that you could use cube cards to teach a completely new player how to play the game. After she learned the basics, she installed Magic Duels on her computer, but finds it really boring in comparison.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

What I meant was, you can't really afford to be picky in this department

I included prowler originally as a discard outlet, but its been largely used as a tempo beater in a ub flyers style deck. That style deck is pretty absurd, because not only does it get a cheap effective flying beater in black, but it gets to select from the full gambit of blue tempo tools, as well as efficient black hars removal.

I would never run both, but have been thinking of swapping prowler for heir, which is a better balanced card I think (as well as costing less $$). I'm also kind of into it for the negative synergy with ninjas, as a matter of color balance.

But flip cards as super inelegant, and players are constantly wanting to look at one of the sides in draft and game.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I included prowler originally as a discard outlet, but its been largely used as a tempo beater in a ub flyers style deck. That style deck is pretty absurd, because not only does it get a cheap effective flying beater in black, but it gets to select from the full gambit of blue tempo tools, as well as efficient black hars removal.

I would never run both, but have been thinking of swapping prowler for heir, which is a better balanced card I think (as well as costing less $$). I'm also kind of into it for the negative synergy with ninjas, as a matter of color balance.

But flip cards as super inelegant, and players are constantly wanting to look at one of the sides in draft and game.

Well, like I said, cubing and playing with the checklist card and having the DFC itself on the side in a clear sleeve works well for me. Just put the DFC in the clear sleeve over the checklist card when it's in play, and you can easily look at both sides whenever you want.

 

[sigh]

I like DFC's, and a lot of them are elegant designs, but inelegant executions, if only because flipping the card around all the time is messier than not having to do that. I've found that people get used to it pretty easily, but I do worry on occasion that the full power of the card is escaping burdened down newer players.

Would not cube exalted angel, I think. Much more difficult to grok than DFC's... (see discussion above about timing, hidden info, etc etc).

I think for me, it's hard not to think about elegance as a system characteristic. That is to say, elegance is format context dependent. Unsubstantiate may be the most elegant modular spell ever in one cube's U section, and might be 15th pick ruffage in another, thereby losing it's elegance through being woefully misplaced in the format.

 

[japahn]

Agreed on elegant design and inelegant execution, that's a precise way of putting it.

I don't get why Unsubtantiate can be more elegant in one format and less on another though.

 

[sigh]

Agreed on elegant design and inelegant execution, that's a precise way of putting it.

I don't get why Unsubtantiate can be more elegant in one format and less on another though.

Basically the way I look at it is, a truly elegant card has to be able to interact in the format its in, to be a part of it, to actually be elegant. Without that it's just a wasted or suboptimal slot, which shrinks design space and is just awkward. Imo.

That might be slightly beyond the scope of how we want to think here (cards that are assumed to be in the right places?) but I definitely think about it.

Edit:
I think a good example of what I'm trying to explain is

(I also think a good example of non-simple elegance) In the right format this one card can open up a whole new space to play in, which I think Grillo can explain/has explained better than I ever could. In too fast of a format, however, it just... isn't effective and is too slow, and therefore isn't really even a card in the format, and so can't really show it's elegance off. Hence inelegant in that situation.
(super short: inelegant through exclusion?)

 

[ahadabans]

Maybe that's just another example of elegant card design but inelegant execution? Not to argue semantics (which is generally not super useful). I agree with your message though. Whether you label it elegance or not, considering if a card fits a format has to be a major part of the equation.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Here is another example of inelegant inclusion, depending on the format/players



It takes up 2-3 slots in your green section, some players/playgroups will never touch it due to card AND drafting complexity, and in formats without ETB density moving up a curve, its terrible.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Here is another example of inelegant inclusion, depending on the format/players



It takes up 2-3 slots in your green section, some players/playgroups will never touch it due to card AND drafting complexity, and in formats without ETB density moving up a curve, its terrible.

And then there's players/playgroups that will always gobble this card up and cackle with glee when the deck comes together.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yeah my group is somewhere in between, and given its 3 cards for a huge story and depth equity, I'm keeping it in.

Pod is drafting dark souls

 

[shamizy]

I had a friend draft literally just bannedModernCards.dec. He drafted a pod deck that had Bloodbraid Elf, Stoneforge Mystic (with Batterskull), and the Kiki combo ala Resto Angel built in. It was disgusting.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I saw this article on puremtgo that I thought was pretty interesting, and got me thinking what makes for healthy complexity.

Part of what makes Magic such a great game is that even cards from Starter or Portal can make for amazing matches. That said, the level of strategic complexity soars as more challenging mechanics are introduced to a game. Every once and awhile, a card comes along that is a game unto itself, a card whose power level fluctuates wildly depending on the player casting it.

He lists out the top 10 most spike cards (as he sees it) but what was interesting to me was how a lot of the cards on the list are cards we really seem to either gravitate towards, or want to gravitate towards.

10 - Vendilion Clique

9- Doomsday

8 - Force of Will

7 - The Fetchlands

6 - Cunning Wish / Burning Wish

5 - Jace Beleren / Jace, the Mind Sculptor / Jace, Vryn's Prodigy

4 - Gitaxian Probe

3 - Ponder

2- Fact or Fiction

1- Cabal Therapy

The interesting thing about a lot of these cards is that functionally they share certain complexity traits. Most of them either:

A. Require you to make a card evaluation judgement; and/or
B. Puts you in a position to make judgments about the direction the game is going to head.

This all puts the impetus on the player, and increases the amount of skill > variance as being deterministic to the games outcome.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

C. Require blue or black mana.

But seriously, what's with the lack of red, green, and white card? Are there no options in other colors?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I figured someone would get caught up on that. This is just one guys perspective, and should be seen as a catalyst for further conversation, not a dispositive list.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I figured someone would get caught up on that. This is just one guys perspective, and should be seen as a catalyst for further conversation, not a dispositive list.

That's why I'm asking. Are there no options in other colors. Birthing Pod is a good example of a card that gets much better in the hands of a good drafter.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think you need to look at modern era cards for that. The first green card that pops into mind for me is collected company.

 

[vennythekid]

Yeah my group is somewhere in between, and given its 3 cards for a huge story and depth equity, I'm keeping it in.

Pod is drafting dark souls

My playgroup consists of 3 people who had Pod banned (one played Kiki-Pod) from underneath them, 2 who had Twin banned from them, and then some randoms. So needless to say Pod is extremely popular around here.