Eric Chan's Modern cube (405)

[Eric Chan]

Hey! I now am the proud owner of an Oppressive Rays!

Crib Swap is pretty sweet. It's unconditional removal, with a very small drawback that sometimes matters, and when it does, it's delightful. It's just about the perfect power level for my cube.

 

[Lucre]

I'm so dubious about rays and I was even more dubious about crib swap.

 

[Eric Chan]

Hey, it kills stuff dead, at instant speed. As much as we both love Volcanic Hammer, sometimes you just need to make a changeling baby out of something.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I think what we need to take away from this is eric's baseline removal is thus:

 

[Eric Chan]

Don't you even read these forums? Shock is long gone; I'm on double Burst Lightning now. Get with the program.

I actually swap between Eyeblight's Ending and Hero's Downfall, depending on my mood and the position of the moon.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm saying those are the baseline, and we go up and down from there.

Most other cubes are chain lightning, doom blade, oblivion ring by comparison.


Does that seem fair to say?

 

[Eric Chan]

Er, no. Not exactly. The three cards you listed are at the low end of the spectrum as far as removal goes. If you were to ask me, my baseline probably looks more like:



For as much as people enjoy whining about my selection of spot removal - Hey there Lucas! How are ya today? Good, good! - there are a variety of options that go above this baseline.



That's not including planeswalkers, removal-on-a-stick, and sweepers. You often have to dip into more than one colour to gain access to these higher-power options, but if you're taking anywhere near an adequate amount of fixing, that's not usually a problem.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Alright, I'm actually going to take a good hard look at this removal shenanigans

White:
I think the difference people pick up on here is the lack of Path to Exile (And Swords, but that's a modern thing). You've got a host of other cards in there, and the off the wall ones to me are Sunlance, Opressive Rays, and Crib Swap that I don't see in too many other cubes.
I see the direction, and while my gut tells me there's something with less of a downside than crib swap out there, but maybe I'm wrong.
I will say opressive rays seems super niche How horrible would straight pacifism be in your cube?

Blue:
This all seems totally fine. Most people have found the cancel variants to be too slow, but if they work they work. I still like hinder better than dissipate though.

Black:
Stuff that would normally be here that isn't: Go for the Throat, Doom Blade, Damnnation (which I actually find interesting. Is this a "once I get one" exclusion?) and maybe hero's downfall. There's a drown in sorrow as well, but I think I remember you telling me this was going to turn into toxic deluge once you got one. (please correct me if I'm wrong)
Odd New Stuff: Eyeblights Ending, Executioner's Capsule, Darkblast, and maybe Barter in Blood (Which is why I asked about damnnation earlier)

I can see here you want black's instant speed unconditional removal to cost 3 on average. This and Red (once I get to it) are probably people's issue
I am noticing a heavy number of black symbols to all this, perhaps it's time to add something like rend flesh?
Darkblast seems odd to me. I'm not going to look at the density of 1 toughness creatures and how need to kill they are, but maybe this wants to swap to a 3cc killspell? Or maybe my old favorite soul reap?

Red:
Missing: Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning (Hey, it's in fire and lightning!), Endless Searing Spear variants. (Also I should note you have the wrong art for incinerate. The 10th edition art is clearly superior )
Quirkey: Burst Lightning, Volcanic Hammer, Rift Bolt and Pillar of Flame (but like, kinda not, because gravecrawler)

Lightning Bolt's omission mirror's path to exiles, and the downgrading from searing spear-esque cards to shock-esque (I said esque!) cards has the effect of making 3 toughness more important, as opposed to the usual cube benchmark of 4. (This also has the side effect of making burn to the dome a little less effective)
Most of the creatures with burn proof buts (4+ toughness) ended up either being wall of omens/blossoms/spellskite or cost 4 or more. Not too many creatures in your cube survive shock but die to searing spear (Again, just using the ur example here) other than Galepoweder Mage, Herald of Torment, Prophetic Flamespeaker and the Kird Ape twins. But then again, your cube is hardly devoid of two mana 3 damage burn, just a little less than usual.

So yeah, it's not all that different. I mostly agree with the choices you've made, even though crib swap still rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it is that art o.O
Oddly enough for all the volcanic hammer trumpeting we do I actually think your black section is the most offbeat

 

[Jason Waddell]

That post needs a TL DR.

 

[Dom Harvey]

tl;dr: add some fucking removal

 

[Chris Taylor]

the short is that most of his choices aren't actually that weird. There's a few odd ones, but their replacements show a clear vision.

The nonzero number of shock variants does change things, but it could be good

 

[Lucre]

Is damnation really too good? I'm trying to understand the thinking here.
Like I got really excited when I started seeing Barter in Blood but man it's such a tease that damnation isn't even there.

 

[Eric Chan]

Whoa, thanks for the breakdown, Chris. I'm always honoured to be on the receiving end of one of your thorough dissections! Even with your spot-on analysis, though, you think there's any chance I can shake my image as the "guy who runs horrible all-sorcery removal that costs a million mana"?

Oppressive Rays is a card I'm testing out because it seems like it could be sweet. It's obviously more effective in the early turns of a game, but with the speed of my cube, I think something that works early but loses its proficiency late could still be worthwhile. I probably wouldn't run actual Pacifism, though I had Temporal Isolation in here for over two years before I swapped it out just this week to free up a slot.

As I was telling Lucas over text message, black is actually more than fine overall as a colour, and is never short on removal in general, so I'm not really looking to change anything at the moment. I'm kind of looking to move the sweepers exclusively into white and red, which is why I'm testing out Barter in Blood over Damnation at the moment. Barter is sweet because even aggro decks can make use of it - imagine it with Gravecrawlers! The colour is still the king of spot removal and Nekrataal effects, so you don't have to feel sorry for it not having enough kick in that department. As Lucas pointed out in our giant Skype chat, one toughness is actually the critical toughness in my cube, believe it or not. There are a lot of things at one toughness that need killing! It's not the worst thing to blow it early, with the knowledge that you can buy it back later on if needed. And the self-mill is just gravy for the black decks that happen to care about that aspect. The Capsule is for the Tezzeret and Trinket Mage experiment I'm trying, and I'm hoping it's not that much worse than the usual suspects.

Lucas - you haven't cubed with me in two months, and in the meantime, I've been going taking the cube through something of a transformation, taking into account the input of my co-workers in my playgroup. Please don't take this personally, as I always value your advice, but a lot of your card evaluations in the context of my cube - particularly on the Skype chat - have been.. off. It's not that I'm ignoring you, but when I can tell that some of your suggestions are way off base, it makes it that much harder for you to convince me of any one change in particular, because I can't tell if you're taking into account the context of my environment. I'm still listening to you, but I'm also getting feedback from people who've played my list more recently, and can tell me in the right here and now what needs fixing. (These guys don't also don't bug me to double up on Remand every other day, so.. there's that. Credibility, people.) So what I'm saying is - come cube with me again, get a feel for the updated list, and then toss some ideas my way.

 

[Lucre]

Re: Remand
I thought you were shooting in the dark to improve blue, I thought trying different densities of unique and favourite effects that filled similar spots to old tired cards would be a neat idea to try. If you want to argue the specific usefulness of them, that's fine I'll fight you on examples I feel like I have an argument on, but I don't want to get bogged down on these anecdotes, I'm saying, whats the harm, it's an idea, I'm throwing out cute ideas that seem safe.
Like how often have I absolutely edged a game out with a venser that has only been there to be a remand in that game, I cannot tell ya.... it's been a lot and so I'd love to have the chance at a 3rd remand in my decks.

What's changed about your white section though? You cut a lot of sweetest white midranged spells ages back which had made it a lot less attractive to me, and a lot more shallow to me, now we don't have denix or someone taking a baneslayer or cloudgoat high anymore. We have lots of these cards that are kinda confusing and weird to evaluate and sorta fit very particular decks like 3/3 battalion dude. I guess maybe decks are just less powerful and force you more on a path now in general which is kinda fine, but I think places like white and blue need more help than less in this area, and maybe even places like red who, despite having very versatile spells tends to have trouble being the basis for a wide variety of decks (do you think double pyromancer might have seen it's day? Remember when I had the grixis deck with 9 tokens in play?)

I just wish picks felt like they worked together as well in white and in some cross colour sections as many do with your black section. Your black section plays really well with itself and in a lot of strategies.

I also just don't understand why you would worry about control and cut damnation. Damnation makes me want to play control, it makes games winnable for my control decks. It's such a great tempo play against midranged and such a great card advantage engine against aggro. I'm sad that black midranged and aggro decks are doing too well (but it makes sense) but like they really don't want barter and damnation most of the time, not as much as control does, and man does control need effects like that.

My other idea for making games better for control is fighting graveyards with double terminus. Overwhelmingly most of the 1 mana terminus I cast are still what I call "late wraths" even if they are for 1 mana. It's usually just the difference of me being able to attack with a man land or not.

 

[Eric Chan]

Regarding white: you never played those white midrange decks, so I'm not sure why it's less attractive to you than before. I've never seen you draft a Cloudgoat Ranger when it was around. Denix's decks? Sure, they were sweet, but between you and me, he's never won a draft using white midrange. Or blue midrange, or green midrange, or any midrange. The white midrange decks were mid-tier at best, but not particularly interesting, and weren't fun to play with or against. The games took forever to resolve because army-in-a-can cards would prolong matches by upwards of twenty minutes or more. From where I sat, there wasn't much upside to supporting the archetype, so I've taken a scalpel to it. So I'm not sure why you're suddenly professing a longing for it, when you've had myriad chances to try it, but never have.

With that said, I'm not denying that the white section has a dichotomy right now between weenie-based aggro and sweeper-filled control. But, quite honestly, this is a fairly common problem with, well, any cube ever. You can cry and whine about Temporal Isolation all week long - and you have - but that doesn't really address the heart of the problem. I'm willing to listen if you have some ideas on how to tackle this problem, that don't just involve moaning about spot removal.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that Damnation hasn't actually been in a winning deck in my environment in over a year. You can call my bluff by checking the first page of my cube list to verify my claim - I'm too lazy to do so, but I'm relatively certain of the accuracy of my claim. If people really wanted Damnation, it wouldn't be going around the table as much as it was before I cut it. Now, with all that said, I've ordered a copy of Toxic Deluge, which will be slotted in during my next round of updates. I have high hopes for that one.

After my latest update, I'm up to four white sweepers now, so we'll see if that changes anything as far as the outlook for white control goes. If Austere Command turns out to be too unwieldy, I'm thinking of reverting to Hallowed Burial, which was always decent before the Avacyn Restored set introduced the miracle mechanic to the world. I agree that having another spell to clean up wayward Kitchen Finks and Gravecrawlers wouldn't be a bad idea.

Lucas, what I really need from you is more suggestions about the design of the cube as a whole, and advice about how to sculpt playable archetypes in the environment, rather than a laundry list of complaints about how Spot Removal Spell X should be 12% more efficient. Give me top-down design notes, not bottom-up development tweaks. Those are easy enough to suss out from gameplay and testing. What's harder is baking in interesting, draftable, deep, and fun archetypes that people want to both play with and play against. Tell me about your vision for an particular deck, how you'd like to see it play out, what key cards you think the deck should revolve around, and - most importantly - why that archetype is good for the environment as a whole. This kind of context is really important, especially if you want to make the same suggestions for cards over and over.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I've long said one of the best improvements one could make to cube is to very deliberate about removal and the way you shape critical turns, "shields up" moments, etc.

I am also find with archetypes having explicitly planned weaknesses. The only place where I think complaining about non-pmaxed cards is super appropriate is when an archetype is underperforming. Other than that I say go to town.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I've long said one of the best improvements one could make to cube is to very deliberate about removal and the way you shape critical turns, "shields up" moments, etc.

I am also find with archetypes having explicitly planned weaknesses. The only place where I think complaining about non-pmaxed cards is super appropriate is when an archetype is underperforming. Other than that I say go to town.

I think that's lucas' beef with control FWIW.

Is UB control a thing in here Eric? I always had trouble persuading people it was possible and they shouldn't just go UW. One of the things that did was the double damnnation.

 

[Eric Chan]

It's not really a deck nowadays, no. Back when it did exist in another lifetime, the UB control decks were more about value & attrition spells - Sea Gate Oracle, Agony Warp, Phyrexian Rager, Nekrataal - followed up by huge tap-out threats - Grave Titan, Consecrated Sphinx, but most of all Wurmcoil Engine. Unlike UW control, the UB archetype was never really defined by its sweepers. It played more of a nickel-and-dime game, until it could run the opponent out of resources, and then take over with a single threat that could provide endless value.

I run a slightly different suite of value spells nowadays - with Baleful Strix being a fantastic addition - though I suppose what I could really stand to do is beef up the finishers. As much value as Tamiyo provides, she doesn't close out the game as quickly as a Frost Titan. He might be the most fair Titan to bring back, actually...

 

[Lucre]

I like frost titan + tamiyo. I feel like they would help with the state of nickle and dime interaction control which is kinda hard to pull off because many decks want those cards as much as the blue or black control players. Wraths are easier for control players to get a hold of because they are less playable to other decks and require more building around to feel supes attractive, kinda like how you could sorta lean on Careful Consideration because who else in their right mind is playing that thing, kinda like campions for the white aggro player lol.

So yeah! I like nickle and dime control, I hope it gets legs I have a lot of great games with decks like that though often opponents feel kinda shut down or out when those decks are doing well, but maybe they just need to learn how to appreciate watching a machine having a good run. Blue's ability to influence tempo is a place where it gets along really well with some other colours, like shut-out tempo decks, green decks that go big fast and use blue to extend the big tempo gap you create with a goyfe or a 2nd turn 4/2 or a 3rd turn 5/5 that can wrath the board on instant. Of course messing with lands and whatever makes recovering from removal more of a tricky proposition so white and black control love it.

It's about finding places where strategies get along for me. I like pyromancers because they are fine in rdw and human decks, tempo decks love them because they make each advantageous trade a faster kill and control decks can play them in a pinch because it blocks and lets your draw spells block too. They are also really strong against a lot of enchantment based removal and with the shallower wrath pool it could pose a really long term problem for a control deck after a wrath.

I liked goyfe for the same reasons I keep thinking of quirion dryad in your cube, there's a lot of room for the green decks to be getting along with the black removal spells and the blue disruption and tempo cards. Even things like compulsive research feel kinda neat with green cards that care about how many spells you can play or whats in your graveyard.

I really dug the champions meet red deck or humans meet confidant and xxathrid things that were possible and how many sweet things you could do with zombies but it makes me sad that WWx is so bad and black zombie decks make up the bulk of the winners. I keep thinking things like Finks and Cathar are some of the options to make white decks feel more at home in a world built with death and recurring dorks in mind. Makes terminus and pillar of flame cooler too. I'll keep thinking about it.


I didn't mean I played cloudgoat, I meant denix or whover would take the cloudgoat out of the pack and maybe a fetters or something would survive for me. The packs felt deeper, but seraph of dawn, kor hookdaddy and galepoweder mage don't tend to be taken over the good cards that fit into many decks that control decks rely on. White has lost a lot of depth through losing big bombs.

I think every black deck I've played that contained cards that cost 5 or more and 2-1'd or better had damnation in it. Especially my lauded grixis win. I like that card a lot.

 

[Eric Chan]

You might think you had that Damnation, but - you did not. To be quite honest with you, I don't think I've even seen you cast Damnation in the last year. Though you've certainly cast your share of Bonfires!

Back when you were coming to my cube events, your feedback was almost universally positive, and the last time I saw you, you mentioned that you both appreciated and enjoyed how I was creating kind of a "super limited" environment that didn't feel like a typical cube. Then, I went out of town, you haven't attended in a while, and suddenly - your feedback over the last month's been almost universally negative, despite me changing only a small handful of cards, and you being completely out of the loop. News flash - I cut Cloudgoat Ranger six months ago. My cube's been better overall since that change. How is it that you're only noticing this now...?

Not only that, a lot of your suggestions seem to indicate that you're itching for the power level to bump back up, to something approaching a power max environment. What gives?

This may be an unpopular stance to take on these forums, but if an archetype that I want to succeed is underperforming, I might help it out not by directly buffing that deck, but by taking the axe to some of the more oppressive cards keeping it down. It's the reason I cut Liliana of the Veil recently. She was mostly being used to press the advantage in grindy midrange decks, as opposed to doing sweet things for graveyard shenanigans decks, and was very difficult for a lot of decks to interact with. So, out she goes. It's these kind of changes I'm looking to make going forward. No, my cube won't resemble power max cubes, and it won't even resemble a lot of the "Riptide lists" on here. So you won't be able to look at, say, Chris's list and make apples to apples comparisons. You'll have to, you know, show up and play the list before you can give some real feedback.

That said, I think I should give Careful Consideration another go. Being instant is a big deal for four-mana draw spells. Don't say I'm ignoring you!

 

[Lucre]

I totally remember playing damnation in those games though, maybe I boarded it out and never put it back in at some point before the deck was registered... hmmm. I remember taking damnation out of a deck once to put another creature in against a better control deck but it was so long ago....

I've actually never really won a game on the back of liliana in your cube besides in so far as it let me discard something I wanted to. I've only really lost to it in games I felt like I was going to be losing anyway. It's a card I feel comfortable with the power level of, and I think when I got that news it more struck me that black lost a cool enabler than a really amazing card. I'm pretty sure I've p3-p1 taken nighthawk over her and I think I'd do it again (I wish big sorin cost 2BBB).

I might even like lily 4 more than lily 5. Lily 4 is less of a control hoser and is another removal spell, albeit a slow one I cannot get back with creature recursion or snapcaster.

You know I'm not into power max, I'm more into trying to work angles so that decks have room to grow. I like playing weird decks a lot, ones where I'm trying to exploit a synergy, I think I just audible into wrath control decks because I love wrath + manland a lot and I know you can find that deck in a lot of formats, but I'll play a cruel ultimatum and haste guys deck, a quirion dryad or pyromancer tempo deck, or a graveyard silliness deck any day of the week. I can see spaces that could be explored to deepen the links between picks / decks / colours and I'm not always concerned so much with powerlevel as synergy and making packs deeper for more drafters. I also just seem to have the most experience drafting 2- 2.5 colour control as any other sorta vocal person in your pool and so I guess I have a lot of little bits of experience to share but maybe I should be trying to work them into broader statements.

 

[Eric Chan]

Nah, Nighthawk over Liliana of the Veil is objectively wrong in my cube list, unless perhaps it's in pack three, and your deck has specific needs. But I agree that Nighthawk might be up there as one of the top five black cards!

Liliana of the Dark Realms? She's.. really bad. I've tried her. You have to want to be mono-black, and even then, her plus ability doesn't really do all that much. Her minus mode is really awkward because - unlike with three mana Lilly - she can't come down, eat a creature, and then stick around for another turn, unlike most other four-mana walkers. Meanwhile, Liliana Vess takes over a game fairly quickly, provided you give her a suitable defence corps. I'm all for theorycrafting here, Lucas, but play some games with both of them, and then let me know you feel. I've done my part, and I can report back that the better one's currently in my list.

Yeah, your suggestions to me have mostly been to upgrade one incidental spot removal to increase its power by 17.5%. When you keep giving me these similarly themed suggestions, day after day, week after week, without any sort of supporting context, all I see is a rampant power maxer who isn't happy that their removal spells aren't all instant speed and one mana. You also have to understand that I need to support more than just your favourite archetypes - which, honestly speaking, only covers two decks. You say you like to draft green, but you've done it once - ever - and someone else usually beats you to the U/R spells deck. So I need to take your personal biases into account whenever you offer up a suggestion, and filter out the portion that comes down to "player asking for their pet deck to be buffed", and see if there's any advice leftover from the "cube designer looking to create viable archetypes" category. I haven't been getting a whole lot of the latter from you lately, but if you frame some of your ideas as part of more cohesive designs - and stop just asking for six gazillion Remands so that your favourite deck is more fun for you - then I'm willing to be more receptive to your feedback.

 

[Lucre]

But like so few decks want that big lily.

I've never asked for path or anything from you eric, I've said bolt would be a neat move for red decks way back when because it was great against midranged. I like doom blade and ultimate price in your cube, because I think 2cc removal is cool but my main problems with black removal were that I always seemed to be reaching to red or trying to go too deep on trading to feel like I had enough to interact in combat with, maybe it's just my drafting priorities.

I haven't asked for six gazillion remands, in the past I had talked about doubling up on remand because I thought it fit a lot of decks and was half a counterspell half a cool sifting option that usually tempo wise only cost you 1 mana at most and netted you mana at best. You later expressed interest in revamping your blue sections 2cc answers and I suggested going 2x condescend 2x mana leak 2x remand. I don't think it's unreasonable to bring up again when you are clearly up for a change and shooting in the dark, if I ever fight you on it, it's only because you've said some silly anecdote dismissing the idea and I thought I had a counterpoint, I don't really want to fight over remand, I just think it's as good as any other idea. This is a sample pack style of finding new solutions, trying a couple things out and tasting.

I've drafted like 3 green decks maybe 4. My first draft was green, most of my value decks have been green and I played one ramp deck. I don't always do well with it so it may not be notable, but I do play green, especially when it could involve eternal witness or salvage or thragtusk. I'm just as into casting Goyfe and remand and vapor snag though. You know.

Anyway I'm trying to just be helpful here and offer tidbits that have come to mind through having played with your cube and talked to folks and thunked about it alot. I've dropped the rhetoric of criticism and I don't think I've made any attacks at your credibility or assumptions for ages, I understand if you feel beset Eric, but it's not from my end anymore. I'm not just asking for better removal or more remands or complaining about how things don't cost one. If I ask about my pet decks it's because I know you've been asking after white and blue too and I am the most experienced with blue or white based control. If I'm thinking about UR tempo I think it's really cool that twice I've been on a table where two players had their foot in that deck and it was almost doing it and it seems like there are opportunities to painlessly support it, I also see it as being very similar to that grixis control deck I loved a lot so I'm pretty excited. You also know I've been thinking about how to combine green better with control cards for ages and remembering the old quirion dryad and goyfe kinda decks of yore sorta stirred my memory.

Maybe I'm a little biased because I'm excited to cast stone rain with a pyromancer out, but you know I'm not really just whining or being biased here, I'm just presenting a few of the tonnes of ideas I have. I'm trying to be more wholistic like you like, talking about archetypes and gameplans more than cards. I can try to get more into mechanics and number trends but it's hard for me without sitting down with a lot of time.

For the record you have a lot of ways to disrupt enchantment removal and I was never on the side of draw 3 discard 3 over looter, I just think looter isn't as good as the enabler sorceries in control decks because it has a huge target on it's head in a creature light deck, it doesn't do anything immediately and you are probably playing day of judgement and earthquake. I like the card a lot I just think this was the result of me talking about how much cards like compulsive help control decks and you mention looter, and I'd say, looter isn't the card my control decks are jumping on, it's not what my real argument was about.

 

[Eric Chan]

And what decks would want Liliana of the Dark Realms? You'd have to show me a couple of sample decklists to convince me that this is an actual card. Because I've played with it, and it isn't.

While my cube list might seem to stand in stark contrast to what I'm about to say, I'm actually loathe to break singleton except for really good reasons. I'd like to think that, in all the spots where I've doubled or tripled up on a card, it's been through a careful vetting and curation process. So it's not that I'm against doubling up on all of the best blue counterspells - actually, wait, no, that's exactly what I'm against. I mean, it's the same reason I don't just double Goblin Guide, Ancestral Vision, and Bitterblossom. Blue may need the help, but I'm looking for something a little more elegant than "hay guz lets just run 2 of all it's OP cards!!!111". Now, with that said, I'm pretty sure I'm going to throw a Mana Leak in the mix, all those Rune Snags be damned. Double Mana Leak was very annoying the one draft I had them, though. As I told you on Skype, I've already done it, and actual experience in my cube environment with actual feedback from my players is always going to trump theorycrafting here. Theorycrafting is fine and all, but people tend to get locked into very specific mindsets in very specific matchups when evaluating cards, which isn't helpful, and at times can be counterproductive. Just play the damn cards and see if they're good or not. Easy!

Uh - I'm the one coming up the silly anecdotes? Ok. Righty-o! You know, they also say that Christine Hendricks isn't curvy.

No, Merfolk Looter was never meant for the control decks. Unlike Enclave Cryptologist - who herself is borderline in control - it's far too slow. It was always slotted in as a reanimator and graveyard enabler. I certainly didn't mention him in a control context, though I understand your confusion, because, well.. you also remember having Damnation in your decks that didn't, you know, have Damnation. See, this is why you come to my cube, offer me feedback right in the moment, and then I have something I can take back with me and use. Your feedback based on your memory, though--or rather, what you think happened or what you think I said--is a little shakier, and a lot less valuable to the cube design process.

Actually, I'm curious. What card do I have in my list that remove enchantments right now? Other than your mainstays like Acidic Slime and Wickerbough Elder, I think it's a very short list. But I haven't exhaustively looked it over.

Lucas, if you say you like green, then prove it to me. Give some suggestions on how to improve the green archetypes in my cube. In the year I've known you, all I've heard you pine for is more Remands - even back when blue was the best colour in my cube, so don't try and hide behind the pretense that you're only suggesting Remands now cause blue has slipped - but I've never so much as heard a peep on green from you. How do we buff the green midrange token decks (the ones using Imperious Perfect and hopefully closing with Overrun)? What about green ramp (the Utopia Sprawl and Farseek into Thragtusk and Avenger of Zendikar deck)? Green-based graveyard decks (the Satyr Wayfinder and Mulch ones)? I'm actually happy with where the green aggro decks are at right now - so park those suggestions of double Tarmogoyf at the door - but these three other archetypes could do with a little more mustard. If you really want to help, there's work to be done here, and it's far more important than grousing and grumbling about Temporal Isolation.

And I mean, therein lies the heart of the problem, does it not? There's player advice, and then there's designer advice. As a player, of course you want that second Remand, that second Tarmogoyf, that second Eternal Witness. You want to see the decks you're invested in do better, so you're naturally going to suggest ways to buff them. As a designer, you want to see a variety of archetypes succeed, with winning strategies changing from week to week, and you want every deck to have a fighting chance against every other deck. These goals couldn't be further apart from one another. Designer goals often have you downgrading decks and banning cards outright. Over the entirety of the last year, you've pretty much defaulted to drafting one particular deck, as well as giving me suggestions for that same deck. Huh. Do you see where these goals might be incompatible, and why your suggested upgrades aren't always at the front of my mind?

 

[Lucre]

Things I wish:

• Kor Dancemaster were a human and like a 2/3 (3 toughness is great in your cube)
• Kor and Kithkin were human more or less
• Spider Spawning's recast was less expensive
• More token generating instants made creatures with useful types
• I'd just love more token generating instants for delver decks etc
• Your 4 toughness angel had heroic
• There were more cool ways of using heroic
• Snapcaster had more things to hit
• My graveyard decks would be slightly less likely to be 4 colours (though I look forward to exploring salvage and fetchland and spawning synergy)
  
  It had something like this:
  
  
  Instant
  Target creature gets +2/+2 and trample until end of turn.
  Cycling

I wonder if heroic has given more oppertunities to dumb crap like moldervine cloak.
I feel like your cube is also really flying light with all the zombies and humans. It makes flying guys pretty interesting.