General Elegance in cube card selection

Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Was looking through gatherer for cards that seemed to meet those criteria, and came across:



Is this a thing? It looks like decisions I would want to have to make.
 
japahn

japahn

Cabal Therapy is awesome, but I hate cards that stimulate people to build their decks in an anti-social way. Brain Pry is the same thing, but more boring.
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara

Going back to the morph discussion, the only morph I'm currently running is Grim Haruspex, and I kind of wish I could just erase the morph line from it because I love the effect, and literally the only other creature with the ability is Harvester of Souls which is too expensive.

I've been aware of keyword complexity for a while. It's the reason I don't run Greater Gargadon despite how good it'd be in the RB sacrifice deck, because suspend is a super weird keyword and it would be the only instance of it in the cube. Gargadon doesn't even have reminder text! For a while I refused to include any card with a keyword unless I could fit at least 3 cards in with that keyword. I've relaxed that restriction along the way, but the basic idea still informs a lot of my decisions.

As far as double-faced cards go, I think they're super easy to grok, and I think the idea of them is actually pretty elegant. I just don't include them because I draft exclusively in paper Magic, and I don't like the physical logistics of pulling the card out of the sleeve and flipping it around (there was a point when we were drafting in bars and cards got damaged). I could include checklist cards, but that once again gets into comprehension issues for drafting. I had a guy who'd literally drafted once in his life drafting my cube on Wednesday. He was lost enough as it was without including that kind of thing.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Peter LaCara said:
Going back to the morph discussion, the only morph I'm currently running is Grim Haruspex, and I kind of wish I could just erase the morph line from it because I love the effect, and literally the only other creature with the ability is Harvester of Souls which is too expensive.

I've been aware of keyword complexity for a while. It's the reason I don't run Greater Gargadon despite how good it'd be in the RB sacrifice deck, because suspend is a super weird keyword and it would be the only instance of it in the cube. Gargadon doesn't even have reminder text! For a while I refused to include any card with a keyword unless I could fit at least 3 cards in with that keyword. I've relaxed that restriction along the way, but the basic idea still informs a lot of my decisions.

As far as double-faced cards go, I think they're super easy to grok, and I think the idea of them is actually pretty elegant. I just don't include them because I draft exclusively in paper Magic, and I don't like the physical logistics of pulling the card out of the sleeve and flipping it around (there was a point when we were drafting in bars and cards got damaged). I could include checklist cards, but that once again gets into comprehension issues for drafting. I had a guy who'd literally drafted once in his life drafting my cube on Wednesday. He was lost enough as it was without including that kind of thing.
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He'd be lost anyways
 
genericco

genericco

Peter LaCara said:
I've been aware of keyword complexity for a while. It's the reason I don't run Greater Gargadon despite how good it'd be in the RB sacrifice deck, because suspend is a super weird keyword and it would be the only instance of it in the cube. Gargadon doesn't even have reminder text! For a while I refused to include any card with a keyword unless I could fit at least 3 cards in with that keyword. I've relaxed that restriction along the way, but the basic idea still informs a lot of my decisions.
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This has been bugging me lately too, specifically with my one and only devotion card, Keranos, God of Storms.

Overall I think the design of the Theros gods is clever and pleasing, but in practice in my environment Keranos is an over-designed pain in the ass. He's an indestructible enchantment creature that's never a creature, and if you haven't played with him before it must be hard to judge whether devotion is important to the card and how achievable it is. Naturally the card doesn't even provide reminder text for devotion.

New drafters are probably going to struggle with the flip-walkers as well, where running the entire cycle doesn't help since they each do something different. Kytheon, Hero of Akros has been in the cube for a long time but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what all his back side does. Maybe that's a disqualifying strike against him, but for now the positives of having a 2/1 for {W} that does something outweigh the negatives.

I think that gets at what makes a cube card inelegant: negatives and baggage and burden of memorization. An elegant card should be clean in the text box but rich with implications and easy to memorize.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Agree with all the comments here. Years back someone on MTGS said they didn't run Gargadon because there was no reminder text on suspend. And I thought it was a silly reason at the time. But I've come full circle on that, especially with the all the new sets. I keep up on the game, and I get confused by them. A couple sessions ago, I thought Menace was Intimidate. So I was not blocking something because I didn't think I could. And if I'm doing stuff like this, how are my super casual players doing? Somebody legitimately called into question my Deftblade Elite story a couple weeks back. Totally could have been a misplay (though I asked and it turned out he had him paired with Silverblade so probably not a misplay).

Still, I think there is a really sound reason to limit the number of keywords, especially in a cube that is intended more for a casual audience like mine is. This game is complicated. I lose sight of that sometimes. And I'm not cubing frequently enough to have that constant reminder in my face that not everyone spends hours reading cube blogs and forum posts.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Grillo_Parlante said:
How about if we warped a format around cabal therapy type interactions? How would that look: double g. prob/young pyromancer?
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I actually did that. This was for one of our first RipLab Cockatrice drafts.

It felt off. Well, okay, nobody really wanted the Gitaxian Probes, CML moaned relentlessly. Even when the interactions came together, it felt so forced. Like, it's clever in a Legacy deck, and it was super cool when you would cast Threaten and then hit them and then sac their creature with the back-end of Cabal Therapy, but the probes and therapy cards were low demand and didn't really have that many interactions.
 
japahn

japahn

ahadabans said:
Years back someone on MTGS said they didn't run Gargadon because there was no reminder text on suspend. And I thought it was a silly reason at the time. But I've come full circle on that, especially with the all the new sets. I keep up on the game, and I get confused by them.
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Wow, even the Modern Masters reprint omitted the reminder text on Suspend. I get it, the text box would get crowded but... Suspend really, really needs reminder text.

ahadabans said:
Still, I think there is a really sound reason to limit the number of keywords, especially in a cube that is intended more for a casual audience like mine is. This game is complicated. I lose sight of that sometimes. And I'm not cubing frequently enough to have that constant reminder in my face that not everyone spends hours reading cube blogs and forum posts.
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One thing people did complain a bit about in my 4-player simple cube was that there were still too many keywords. Let me list them:
Evergreen:
  1. Defender
  2. First Strike
  3. Indestructible (technically not a keyword, I know)
  4. Flying
  5. Vigilance
  6. Lifelink
  7. Trample
  8. Haste
  9. Intimidate (not anymore, but was printed as such)
  10. Hexproof
  11. Double Strike
  12. Scry
  13. Equip
Not evergreen:
  1. Flanking (3 cards)
  2. Devotion (2)
  3. Delve (1)
  4. Scavenge (2)
  5. Unearth (1)
I really think flanking is somewhat close to evergreen and I like how it rewards attacking. Devotion is complex, but it adds some spice. Scavenge is pretty simple IMO. I'm ready to let Delve (Gurmag Angler) and Unearth (Shambling Remains) go, though.
 
psly4mne

psly4mne

Indestructible is a keyword ability now. It was changed a while back to make its interaction with Humble effects more intuitive. What do you mean by "Intimidate (not anymore, but was printed as such)"? I'm not aware of a card that was printed with intimidate but doesn't have intimidate in its oracle text.

I had to make a similar list for my cube. I ended up with a nice, elegant 76:
Annihilator
Battle Cry
Bestow
Bolster (keyword action)
Buyback
Cascade
Changeling
Converge (ability word)
Convoke
Cycling
Dash
Deathtouch
Defender
Delve
Dethrone
Devotion (not a keyword)
Double Strike
Echo
Enchant
Equip
Evoke
Evolve
Exalted
Fading
Fear
Fight (keyword action)
First Strike
Flash
Flashback
Flying
Haste
Hexproof
Hidden Agenda
Imprint (ability word)
Indestructible
Intimidate
Investigate (keyword action)
Kicker
Landfall (ability word)
Landwalk
Level Up
Living Weapon
Lifelink
Madness
Manifest (keyword action)
Meld (keyword action)
Menace
Miracle
Monstrosity (keyword action)
Morbid (ability word)
Multikicker
Ninjutsu
Overload
Persist
Protection
Prowess
Raid (ability word)
Reach
Rebound
Regenerate (keyword action)
Renown
Scry (keyword action)
Shadow
Shroud
Soulbond
Storm
Surge
Suspend
Trample
Transform (keyword action)
Undying
Unearth
Unleash
Vanishing
Vigilance
Will of the Council (ability word)

Edit: missed a few
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I did a not so quick count and arrived at 78. That's going to be less soon though as I am going to weed out cards with underused keywords that are not particularly important for the cube. Bonus points (towards removal) for keywords without reminder text, like the two defender (bye bye Wall of Omens) and three hexproof cards in my cube.
 
sigh

sigh

I wouldn't remove defender, tbh. It's a super intuitive keyword (this creature can only defend, and the creature usually isn't any good at attacking anyway, so card and ability link). There are several keywords like this, I think fight being another one.

Singular keyword usage is annoying, but not immediately bad, especially with "ability words" like landfall, that help provide a mental link to the ability.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
sigh said:
I wouldn't remove defender, tbh. It's a super intuitive keyword (this creature can only defend, and the creature usually isn't any good at attacking anyway, so card and ability link). There are several keywords like this, I think fight being another one.

Singular keyword usage is annoying, but not immediately bad, especially with "ability words" like landfall, that help provide a mental link to the ability.
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I agree that's the theory. I want to see what happens when I do reduce the number of underused keywords though. Because I use customs I can easily plug holes with keywords that are supported. Wall of Omens could be a 1/4 that investigates for example!
 
sigh

sigh

All I'm trying to say is that the quest is a noble one, but Defender might not be the target to start with. As Aston mentions, WoO is strong. Beyond that it is really a great card design, and I'd hope would be a poster of child of what this thread is trying to achieve: clean design that performs it's job well while still providing something unique and interesting.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I don't know about the best creature in Modern, but yes, Wall of Omens is an excellent and elegant card! It's still not essential though, especially not in a cube that explicitly doesn't support {W/U} and {W/B} decks. Also, I'm not starting with defender, it's just high up the list because there's only two instances of the keyword and I don't consider the keyword to be all that important for a fun game of Magic.
 
psly4mne

psly4mne

Wall of Omens is a great tool for control decks, that's about all there is to it. When you play it, you absolutely need to care about the trigger and the body, unless you would play Yoked Plowbeast just for the cycling. If you actually think the Defender keyword could be confusing, you could just remove it from the card and it will not really change anything.
 
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