General Emotional Spikes in Cube Design

[Grillo_Parlante]

If you up the density of mana sinks I find them pretty replaceable. Their main use for me was always filling those gaps in game where not much was going on for one player.

I never found that the interaction between manlands and wraths was particularly great, at least not in the same way as you would find in constructed. Wraths in general seem more like a policing tool in cube, and they don't seem as powerful in general as they used to be.

I do really like creeping tar pit though.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Wasteland and Strip Mine without Loam and Crucible of Worlds to me are just really dull picks. It rarely generates interesting situations. You either sucker punch a mana screwed player or you just slowed someone a little, big deal..
Wastelands seem to be in cubes just to answer creaturelands, which also to me are dull picks since they are multicolor cards that are close to vanilla creatures. Creature lands also feel kind of cheesy, because you can just wait for ever with them and kill the opponent when each player are hellbent. I don't understand the fun in creaturelands and neither in Wastelands i rather have some more flashy cards over them any day of the week.

By the way having Wasteland that gives an Eldrazi Token after destroying a land would be a nice one also. Sometimes you can destroy your own land to get a chump blocker

I think the dichotomy between "Slowing someone a little" and "sucker punching a mana screwed player" is oversimplifying it. Remand and Man-o'-War "Slow someone down a little", and their effects aren't even permanent. Keeping the game in the early stages for both players can be very valuable, getting more value out of otherwise easily outclassed creatures like 1 and 2 drops.

Manlands are an answer to magic's variance being imperfect: players don't always have a lot to do, weather that's because of drawing literal blanks or just cards that aren't applicable right now. Turning into creatures is just the easiest way to further your gameplan, and the same niche can easily be filled by something like Stensia Bloodhall or Soothsaying instead.

The fact we usually fill this role with lands instead of spells is due to the fact that you only really get 20-25 spells to put in your limited deck, but usually end up drafting 45 cards. Not all of those are going to be on color, but since most of us have taken the chimney imps out of our cubes (For an extreme example, have a gander over the Legends spoiler, and try to imagine opening a pack of that for drafting. Yes it wasn't designed for drafting, but people still tried to.), you often end up trying to decide which 18 cards to cut from your deck, which is both a difficult thing to ask your drafters, and a lot of wasted effort. Past a certain amount of nonbasic lands (Since Volcanic Island helps ensure more of your picks actually make your deck in the same way that creeping tar pit does), some of these lands are going to have to do more than fix mana, since not every deck really needs Cryptic Command into Cloudthresher into Cruel Ultimatum levels of manafixing.

Grillo's comment about upping the density of mana sinks is interesting, but I do think a key point about manlands is their being lands, and this sidestepping the most common removal spells. It's a lot easier to count on faerie conclave to do something for you on turn 10 than it is to rely on say, Azure Mage, since azure mage often gets caught in the crossfire. Artifacts and Enchantments tend to have similar resiliency, (See my comment about soothsaying, above) but either those cards are less powerful, or I'm just mostly ignorant of good examples, because very few seem to come to mind

Mobilization maybe? One of the key appeals of manlands is they aren't just a mana sink, they do further your gameplan in the meantime when you do have something to do.

 

[shamizy]

I'm a huge fan of Wasteland and I love what it does in games. It punishes greedy decks, gives Aggro some teeth, and can stave off a potentially huge blocker or wrath for a whole turn allowing you to push through another 3-4 damage. Manlands are sweet, I love playing with them whenever I have a chance. It's just so useful being able to apply pressure to an opponent without having to play out your hand when the coast is clear. A card like Needle Spires is such an awesome boon to an aggressive RW deck allowing them a threat that straight up dodges sorcery speed removal and wraths while still allowing them to apply pressure. Navigating your way to an opening where you can start getting in there with your manlands is also a sweet little mini-game that I've done many times in Cube as well as Constructed.

 

[Meltyman]

Creature lands, at least the fair ones, and that mainly excludes Colonnade, which is just bonkers, are good in and against decks with wraths. As such, they do fill a niche imho.

Control isn't the biggest player in my cube atleast. Why do i want to bolster midrange and aggro, that will do fine even without creature lands? I think it's a little overkill to give cards that randomly hose control when there are already so many creatures that survive wraths or give so much value that you get by after wrath happens.
During the draft phase those creature lands also feel "lucky". I don't want to pick them highly, but they probably wheel and it's an easy inclusion because i'm happening to play those two colors. You get random value from them just because you happened to play those colors, not that much depth during your draft, you just happened to be lucky. I dunno.. they feel so stupid to me in cube.

I'm a huge fan of Wasteland and I love what it does in games. It punishes greedy decks, gives Aggro some teeth, and can stave off a potentially huge blocker or wrath for a whole turn allowing you to push through another 3-4 damage. Manlands are sweet, I love playing with them whenever I have a chance. It's just so useful being able to apply pressure to an opponent without having to play out your hand when the coast is clear. A card like Needle Spires is such an awesome boon to an aggressive RW deck allowing them a threat that straight up dodges sorcery speed removal and wraths while still allowing them to apply pressure. Navigating your way to an opening where you can start getting in there with your manlands is also a sweet little mini-game that I've done many times in Cube as well as Constructed.

But i find aggro doing fine no matter how much i cut stuff from it. Almost no one wants to play it, so when someone does, he will beat the shit out of everyone basically
Guess it's group dependant, our group has really good players and some players who just like to explore. The good players don't want aggro, because it's too easy and boring. The explorers want to see big plays happen. And the aggro is usually left to the not that experienced draft players.

I think the dichotomy between "Slowing someone a little" and "sucker punching a mana screwed player" is oversimplifying it. Remand and Man-o'-War "Slow someone down a little", and their effects aren't even permanent. Keeping the game in the early stages for both players can be very valuable, getting more value out of otherwise easily outclassed creatures like 1 and 2 drops.

Wasteland in aggro or in any deck that happens to hit his curve perfectly can win the game on the spot after using wasteland, but it doesn't tell a story in a game. It rather goes to the manascrew category, where the opponent probably stripped a color from the opposing player or made it so he couldn't get to 5 mana in time or something. This to me isn't what i'm looking for in games. If you want to hose the opponent's manabase you need to work more than that. Braids, Acidic Slime are much more fair even though they can really warp the game around in the right situations. Just using a land to randomly win is just stupid. And when it didn't win the game it really didn't matter that much. I don't think there are that much variation. You won the game soon after using it or it just didn't do much because the opponent had enough resources to recover from that early game harrasment.
Sure Wasteland can hit some powerful lands, but i don't like most of those either, because it's hard to balance them out without Wasteland.

What comes to manadumps. I would rather have more lands like Shelldock Isle that are clearly spells AND interesting while at it. Sadly there doesn't appear to be anything else than that at the moment

 

[sigh]

If creature lands arent attractive for one reason or another, then I agree that the Spell Lands are a good alternative, although they don't fix.

Again, agree totally with Meltyman on Wasteland. There are entire threads, formats, and ideals built around escaping the clutches of mana variance, and then this land gives someone the power of creating mana screw (potentially even for themselves by being )? I'd rather give my aggro fiery confluence or Burst Lightning or anything with haste, to "randomly" win games. At least those can be countered and interacted with.

And I do think that Wasteland is perfect for this thread. Polarizes people every time it comes up

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I know that that conceptually the thread has mostly focused on polarizing cards, big plays, and the S/T/J divisions, but on a more basic level what made me want to post was the idea that decisions more commonly are driven by an emotional component than a logical one, in particular to adds and cuts we make.

As gigantic nerds, I think that its easy to trend towards having some sort of logical framework, and pretend that there was never an emotional component in our decision to cut or add a card.

Was card <x> actually GRBS, or did it just make a player feel bad, and now it needs to go, and how long does this trend go on? Most powerful cards are capable of shutting an opponent out of a game, and as long as you have powerful cards in a format someone is going to be able to point to situations where "because of card <x> I just couldn't win." The more your focus is on fairness, with the resulting closer power band, the more you're likely to hear those complaints directed at progressively more fair cards, because any power spike begins to look disproportionately egregious.

When we are cutting already somewhat bland cards like kytheon, hero of akros as GRBS, maybe our pursuit of fair and balanced magic is moving in an unproductive direction: too afraid to promote the emotional spikes and lows of a compelling game narrative out of fear of offending competitive sensibilities. (btw don't mean to seem like I'm dog piling: kytheon was just an interesting card to discuss, and otherwise Dom will accuse me of low power bias)

Wasteland is a really interesting card, because I feel its inclusion in cube is a decision driven by an emotional attachment to (and bias towards) the legacy format, which is a fairly awkward thing to point out, but here goes. Its debatable whether legacy itself wouldn't be a better, more diverse format without it, but what isn't debatable is that it warps the entire format around itself, in ways that can't really be reflected consistently in cube.

Its also very interesting to see some of the people who are lining up against certain polarizing cards, also lining up in defense of wasteland, a card far more capable of producing negative emotion spikes than anything discussed thus far, and (unlike many of them) largely incapable of balancing that out with any sort of excitement or other positive emotional resonance for a player.

I just don't see how this can be a logic driven include, which is fine if thats the case, but how is it fun?

 

[ahadabans]

What about land destruction in general? Wasteland you can't really do anything about. But spells you can interact with and they generally can't be cast right away. Stone Rain? Avalanche Riders? Mwonvuli Acid-Moss (you know I had to mention this one)? More negative than positive?

 

[Dom Harvey]

I'll accuse you of anything you want baby, just say the word*

Kytheon was a bad example to begin with, the main strike against it is that literally nobody remembers which of the abilities on the other side have which loyalty costs. It would make a great trivia question in a few years.

That's what I've always said about Wasteland, it's a bad (and feel-bad) answer to a largely illusory problem. Legacy would be a lot better without it (and without most of the cards that define Legacy today tbh)


*"tempo"

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Does the "line" for us here relate to interactivity to an extent? We've already talked about wasteland not being interactive (though that has the additional burden of preventing a player from playing).

Maybe compare control magic and sower of temptation. Sower generates less (though not none) feel bads, as Jonny feels like he has cards in his deck to kill sower and get his giant monster back, but is less likely to have disenchant.

Perhaps there's also a dimension that relates to immediate fame impact and how long you have to pull yourself back into the game (see Titans, wurmcoil engine etc).

 

[ahadabans]

Perhaps there's also a dimension that relates to immediate fame impact and how long you have to pull yourself back into the game (see Titans, wurmcoil engine etc).

Speaking only for myself here, this is probably the number one factor for me that determines how fun a game of Magic is. Games that end and it's clear there was no other way for them to go are very unsatisfying. It's slightly more digestible if the manner of the win is based on a great draw/well assembled combo (due to solid deck building and not something cheap and easy - i.e. something you can appreciate as a spectator). And is tempered even further if the loser had a good hand and just needed "one more turn", etc.

So I guess it boils down to competitive Magic. Flattening the power curve has been a way to try and artificially produces a higher percentage of competitive Magic games. But in hindsight I'm not sure it was the best way to go about it.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Does the "line" for us here relate to interactivity to an extent? We've already talked about wasteland not being interactive (though that has the additional burden of preventing a player from playing).

Maybe compare control magic and sower of temptation. Sower generates less (though not none) feel bads, as Jonny feels like he has cards in his deck to kill sower and get his giant monster back, but is less likely to have disenchant.

I think it does to an extent. I realize its kind of eccentric to suggest that feel bads might play a positive role in cube design, but look, if you're playing this game 1 v 1, its very much a competitive game, and competition naturally entails making the opposition feel bad. Its maybe more productive to own that aspect of the game, rather than going off on a (to a point) fruitless quest to make losing feel good.

What I'm more afraid of, is boredom: player's not feeling that they are engaging in some sort of compelling game or draft narrative. Winter and static orb are cards that really turn me off for this reason, but than so does easily solved metas revolving around maximizing the number of ETB value creatures you run, and those formats are theoretically very interactive game play wise.

Whether a card is interactive or not interactive, or feeds into interactive or non-interactive drafting, can be a hard judgment to make, and is probably going to be based at least partially on anecdotal experience, with the final call off of feel (look at the ashiok back and forth). Some cards, I feel, are fine, or even great for a format individually, but are capable of forming certain play sequences that may feel like they predetermine a game's outcome. A lot of cards walk a very gray line in that regard, and thats part of why we have this forum, of course.

That's what I've always said about Wasteland, it's a bad (and feel-bad) answer to a largely illusory problem. Legacy would be a lot better without it (and without most of the cards that define Legacy today tbh)

Perhaps there's also a dimension that relates to immediate fame impact and how long you have to pull yourself back into the game (see Titans, wurmcoil engine etc)

Legacy often times gets held up as a perfect competitive format, where percent plays dominate game outcomes, but it does have a lot of characteristics that are very "low brow" magic. The storm combo decks, and other combo decks, are capable of some very cheesy, polarized wins, where the players never really played magic: to the extent where a pro-player that dislikes the format and constantly trolls it by running a crappy mono-red sneak attack deck, can still place highly at an open.

The miracle deck wants to lock you out asap with top/counter balance, a turn 1 chalice from the eldrazi deck is auto win against a lot of the delver decks, the wasteland based delver decks want to mana screw you out of the game, and the lands deck looks just miserable to play against.

Now, I'm not saying that legacy is a bad format, or that its not skill testing in ways that most other formats can only dream of (Hoogland takes criticism of it to an extreme i.m.o), I'm saying that even here, the analysis of what makes "fun" magic is more complicated. Even this format, has its variants on Eureka->eldrazi (just look at the SCG highlight reel for some great examples), and I think people might like these swingy, polarizing effects perhaps more than they are willing to admit, including spikes. We shouldn't be surprised when certain cube formats, that seem to cater towards degeneracy and unfairness, are broadly well received. There seems to be a real demand for this stuff, in some form at least, and not just from easily scoffed at J/Ts.

As another example, as much as I agree with all of the general anti-wasteland sentiment, I would say that pretty consistently, some of my most memorable games have been where both players are mana screwed off the start of the game, and wasteland does encourage those scenarios. This is one of the reasons why I am not sure that removing all negative variance from the game would actually be a net plus for it.

So what does all of this divergent reasoning mean? This was just me remembering two things:

1). Solid structured reasoning might seem compelling, but there is a good chance the impetus of the decision is coming from an irrational place.

2). The final goal of a format is fun (in whatever incarnation that takes for your group) and not fairness. Fairness is just another means to that end, and can sometimes become an obstacle to achieving that end.

 

[ahadabans]

We shouldn't be surprised when certain cube formats, that seem to cater towards degeneracy and unfairness, are broadly well received. There seems to be a real demand for this stuff, in some form at least

I suspect part of that has to do with elitism though. Knowing how to break combinations of cards in these types of metas gives a player a very large advantage over less knowledgeable players (even good players). And I suspect a lot of the resistance to exploring more fringe cube environments on other sites has to do with this. I visit three major cube forums regularly: this one, MTGS and Reddit. And the disregard each community has for one another is about as suble as a 45 magnum.

So what does all of this divergent reasoning mean? This was just me remembering two things:
1). Solid structured reasoning might seem compelling, but there is a good chance the impetus of the decision is coming from an irrational place.
2). The final goal of a format is fun (in whatever incarnation that takes for your group) and not fairness. Fairness is just another means to that end, and can sometimes become an obstacle to achieving that end.

Agreed. Solid points and glad you started a thread on it.

 

[genericco]

In 2013 it was Bow of Nylea. In 2015 Kytheon, Hero of Akros. Who will be the next inductee to the "what does that card do again?" wing of the Cube Design Hall of Shame?

 

[Meltyman]

I know that that conceptually the thread has mostly focused on polarizing cards, big plays, and the S/T/J divisions, but on a more basic level what made me want to post was the idea that decisions more commonly are driven by an emotional component than a logical one, in particular to adds and cuts we make.

As gigantic nerds, I think that its easy to trend towards having some sort of logical framework, and pretend that there was never an emotional component in our decision to cut or add a card.

Was card <x> actually GRBS, or did it just make a player feel bad, and now it needs to go, and how long does this trend go on? Most powerful cards are capable of shutting an opponent out of a game, and as long as you have powerful cards in a format someone is going to be able to point to situations where "because of card <x> I just couldn't win." The more your focus is on fairness, with the resulting closer power band, the more you're likely to hear those complaints directed at progressively more fair cards, because any power spike begins to look disproportionately egregious.

When we are cutting already somewhat bland cards like kytheon, hero of akros as GRBS, maybe our pursuit of fair and balanced magic is moving in an unproductive direction: too afraid to promote the emotional spikes and lows of a compelling game narrative out of fear of offending competitive sensibilities. (btw don't mean to seem like I'm dog piling: kytheon was just an interesting card to discuss, and otherwise Dom will accuse me of low power bias)

Wasteland is a really interesting card, because I feel its inclusion in cube is a decision driven by an emotional attachment to (and bias towards) the legacy format, which is a fairly awkward thing to point out, but here goes. Its debatable whether legacy itself wouldn't be a better, more diverse format without it, but what isn't debatable is that it warps the entire format around itself, in ways that can't really be reflected consistently in cube.

Its also very interesting to see some of the people who are lining up against certain polarizing cards, also lining up in defense of wasteland, a card far more capable of producing negative emotion spikes than anything discussed thus far, and (unlike many of them) largely incapable of balancing that out with any sort of excitement or other positive emotional resonance for a player.

I just don't see how this can be a logic driven include, which is fine if thats the case, but how is it fun?

To me it's a given that i have to take out cards or put cards in a cube based on a feel along with the rational thinking of how a card interacts in my cube environment. I don't take out cards before i have seen them in action many times - heard the gossip around me during and after games, played the spesific card myself or played against the spesific card and last but not least DRAFTED THE CARD. But i have my irrational moments where it might be only me that has a problem for spesific cards.
I have an example that left my cube not long a go: Glen Elendra Archmage. It's been in my cube since modern masters 1 was released. I've enojyed playing it and me incluced HAAAAATE to play against it. This hate relationship has made it so i will pick it about every time i see it pack 1 and later if i'm playing blue, because i don't want to play against it. Irrational and stupid i know, but it still modifies my enjoyment when i see it. The card to me feels annoying, because it totally hoses non-creature based interactions, which already are cut down in modern days due to so much better creatures. What i'm looking for in my cube is to have ~every booster looking like an adventure where there isn't a clear pick every time. If something really really annoying card exists in my cube that i don't want to play against and also it kind of disrupts my draft experience, i should take it out right?
Did this change ruin my cube? Probably not.
Did anyone in my gaming group mind this change? Maybe, but i'm pretty sure no one enjoyes this cube less after this change.
Will this change our games? Definitely, since now there are less situations where glen gets cast turn 5 where it hoses every cool interaction you were going for before turn 8-10.

Legacy often times gets held up as a perfect competitive format, where percent plays dominate game outcomes, but it does have a lot of characteristics that are very "low brow" magic. The storm combo decks, and other combo decks, are capable of some very cheesy, polarized wins, where the players never really played magic: to the extent where a pro-player that dislikes the format and constantly trolls it by running a crappy mono-red sneak attack deck, can still place highly at an open.

I was excited to watch that video, since Hoogland is great, but i couldn't bare watch that misplay from the first few minutes where he has City of Traitors for 3 turns and plays lands without sacrificing it and even the commentators don't say anything... i guess it has been a long day for them all. Closed the video in disgust I'm a dork

 

[Laz]

I was excited to watch that video, since Hoogland is great, but i couldn't bare watch that misplay from the first few minutes where he has City of Traitors for 3 turns and plays lands without sacrificing it and even the commentators don't say anything... i guess it has been a long day for them all. Closed the video in disgust

You mean all the turns with a Blood Moon in play?

 

[Meltyman]

You mean all the turns with a Blood Moon in play?

ah true ! i'm a dork!

 

[japahn]

My early nominees:



Adding to the subtlety, whenever I go back to MTGS to see what's going on, I get sad. They evaluate a single axis (power level) and it's a faux pas to mention any other. Try using the argument that a card is "fun" there.

 

[ahadabans]

MTGS has gotten a little subdued with that as of late. Not so much the pushing of the power axis (which is still holding pretty strong), but the animosity towards different viewpoints. It may have sunk in with the ruling members that the forum is almost dead now with only maybe a couple dozen regular posters left. Pretty sure Riptide has more active members at this point. Which is probably a good thing given how much constructive discussion goes on over here.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Can I just say that it's really fun to transform a magic card? I love how Wizards has been pretty creative about the different flip conditions. Definitely feels better in paper though, love sliding the card out and flipping it over.

 

[japahn]

I really think transform is fun as well, but there's a complexity cost incurred, and sometimes both sides are too complex. I see they tried to keep Arlinn Kord simple, but the others?

I'm not against using any of these cards specifically, but opening a cube booster and reading 15 walls of text is super tiresome, and these cards are complex enough that few people will have memorized them.

 

[genericco]

There's a fine line with the double-faced cards. There are ones like Duskwatch Recruiter/Krallenhorde Howler; Lots of text, daunting for new players, but eventually you can make sense of it, shorthand it, and compartmentalize it like you do with most cards. Some amount of internal logic helps I suppose.

For me at least the Origins flipwalkers are in another category where I can never remember which abilities cost which loyalty. I think they're worth running despite this, but I'd probably take them out of the pool if I were drafting with a lot of new or infrequent people.

 

[Tanner K.]

I tend to run very few flip cards. I agree that they're fun, but I sleeve my cards, and most of my playgroup doesn't play a whole lot of Magic. Putting a flip card in my cube means putting a card in my cube that someone will have to remove from its sleeve during the draft just to understand what the card does.

I've had Kytheon in my Cube since it came out. It's rarely played and never successfully flipped, likely because no one knows what it does.

 

[James Stevenson]

I tend to run very few flip cards. I agree that they're fun, but I sleeve my cards, and most of my playgroup doesn't play a whole lot of Magic. Putting a flip card in my cube means putting a card in my cube that someone will have to remove from its sleeve during the draft just to understand what the card does.

Every time double faced cards come up, I have to point out that there are sensible ways to do them. For mine, I made custom kamigawa-style flip cards so that all the text can be read during the draft. This card is put in the deck, and acts exactly like those place holder cards they printed. The actual double faced card is in clear sleeves, and kept in the sideboard. When you play the placeholder card, you just take the normal one out from your sideboard and put it into play. No need to desleeve anything, and all the text is readable during the draft and while in hand.

 

[GiftsForgiven]

My only issue with flip cards is visibility in draft. I actually don't like the revealed information aspect of it, and I don't like the fact that nubblets are punished for not knowing the back face in cube, where they are sleeved to preserve lack of info (by being forced to slide it out and show everyone what's goin on in that ol' cranium of theirs.)

 

[sigh]

My only issue with flip cards is visibility in draft. I actually don't like the revealed information aspect of it, and I don't like the fact that nubblets are punished for not knowing the back face in cube, where they are sleeved to preserve lack of info (by being forced to slide it out and show everyone what's goin on in that ol' cranium of theirs.)

Imo, James' idea is the best. Both halves of the card are right there for viewing on the indicator card, and then have the dual face cards in clear sleeves in the SB. With this technique there is no unsleeving, no flipping around. All the info is right there, and the real DFC can be acquired later, during gameplay. I'm very strongly tempted to utilize this technique, especially since I do cater to newer players.

Every time double faced cards come up, I have to point out that there are sensible ways to do them. For mine, I made custom kamigawa-style flip cards so that all the text can be read during the draft. This card is put in the deck, and acts exactly like those place holder cards they printed. The actual double faced card is in clear sleeves, and kept in the sideboard. When you play the placeholder card, you just take the normal one out from your sideboard and put it into play. No need to desleeve anything, and all the text is readable during the draft and while in hand.

Do you have any readily handy examples you could show? Did you just use the flip card format, or is it more like the two rules-textboxes laid out one over the other?