Eric Chan's Modern cube (405)

Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Yeah, I've never understood why a lot of Cube designers want people to have to jump through hoops in order to have a decent manabase. Casting spells is fun! It's neither enjoyable nor skill-testing for one player to not even be in the game because their 9-8 manabase doesn't come through. People cite the Lorwyn-era 5CC decks as an example of what can go wrong when manabases are too strong, but a. chaining Cloudthresher into Cruel Ultimatum was fucking awesome and b. there were in-built safeguards (half your lands CIPT) and targeted hate (Anathemancer) that stopped those decks becoming dominant.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
I think what they don't want is for drafting to go on autopilot: just take the most powerful cards and jam them all in a deck without regards to colors.
 
LordOfTexas

LordOfTexas

Chris Taylor said:
I think what they don't want is for drafting to go on autopilot: just take the most powerful cards and jam them all in a deck without regards to colors.
Click to expand...

While I think balance is needed, I think if a cube would devolve into "take the most powerful cards and win" due to hypothetical infinite fixing, then the cube is poorly built (not enough cards with conditional power levels).

I definitely think there is a point where a cube could have too much fixing - colored mana cost management is a drafting skill-tester that shouldn't be marginalized, and the colored mana system does other good things for the cube as well. But, I think its pretty difficult to reach the "too much fixing" point in practice.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Chris Taylor said:
I think what they don't want is for drafting to go on autopilot: just take the most powerful cards and jam them all in a deck without regards to colors.
Click to expand...

Autopilot is far more prevalent in cubes that have very rigidly defined decks, e.g. "the mono red deck". As somebody who plays what is probably the highest quality fixing of any cube in the land, I can say quite honestly that pushing beyond three colors is extremely difficult, and when successful, happens due to the negligence of other drafters. The better the players at the table, the less fixing I get. Sometimes I deliberately go for 3-colors and get pushed into sticking to two colors.
 
LordOfTexas

LordOfTexas

I think its telling that in standard, a format where you can literally play 100% good duals and zero land hate exists,, most decks are still 2 or 3 color. In cube, its practically impossible for any level of fixing fixing to make color irrelevant.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah, it's this weird notion that has lingered from the LaPille/Erwin era of cubing when cubes were all slow and durdly. More importantly, the players were terrible (I imagine). You can play 100% nonbasics and still struggle with a 4-color mana base.
 
Lucre

Lucre

What decks do you find are drafted most often and to the most success. Not that I'm looking for an edge or anything...
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Jason Waddell said:
Autopilot is far more prevalent in cubes that have very rigidly defined decks, e.g. "the mono red deck". As somebody who plays what is probably the highest quality fixing of any cube in the land, I can say quite honestly that pushing beyond three colors is extremely difficult, and when successful, happens due to the negligence of other drafters. The better the players at the table, the less fixing I get. Sometimes I deliberately go for 3-colors and get pushed into sticking to two colors.
Click to expand...
LordOfTexas said:
I think its telling that in standard, a format where you can literally play 100% good duals and zero land hate exists,, most decks are still 2 or 3 color. In cube, its practically impossible for any level of fixing fixing to make color irrelevant.
Click to expand...


ding ding ding.

blah blah blah confirmation bias fallacy blah blah zac hill lying after he left the mothership ... the "4c goodstuff" problem is only a real concept to the extent people think it's a real concept. like god, if you stop believing in it, it will go away.

i will say it's really a testament to the strength of people's biases that this myth is still alive, though. and some otherwise smart people believe it! or maybe it's just that this dead timbermare is a favorite target of my lightning greaves (just a little
humor!)
 
Lucre

Lucre

CML said:





ding ding ding.

blah blah blah confirmation bias fallacy blah blah zac hill lying after he left the mothership ... the "4c goodstuff" problem is only a real concept to the extent people think it's a real concept. like god, if you stop believing in it, it will go away.

i will say it's really a testament to the strength of people's biases that this myth is still alive, though. and some otherwise smart people believe it! or maybe it's just that this dead timbermare is a favorite target of my lightning greaves
Click to expand...

Well I dunno I think you are being a bit glib. I don't think consistent aggro decks being 3 colour is really all that normal. You'll also find that most 3 colour decks aren't 2 colour splashes, they are like farseek supreme verdict art heeling decks or decks with copies of minotaurs, dragons, ghost councils and human advisors in them. All with pretty serious colour commitments, cards people want to play on straight powerlevel with whacko colour requirements can be jammed into your 75.

Has anyone played the new 4 colour reanimator deck yet? That thing is a blast!

Standard is also totes not a draft format. If your colours have removal or great enablers available, you feel pretty secure about being able to find it and slide it into your decks. In draft there isn't as much luxury. Buuuut if you draft fixing well maybe in later packs you can just rest assured you'll get what you need because it won't have to be on colour right?

Anyway, my last point is despite having no experience drafting those decks and disliking the decision making that leads to them I'm always seeing them. When I drafted with Chris Taylor the last few times there was always at least 1 person playing 3 colour splash for card. Online it's rampant. Almost as bad as ramp with the fixing first mantras of popular streaming personalities and when I'm with my buddy Sam in my most recent cube experiences it's really rare when at least 2 people at the table aren't going to be going (at least) 3 colour because of picking up highly powered passes on top of their 2 colour shell. Of course their cube is powered and does a lot of artifact synergy but I think it still applies. I'm not playing these decks or advocating them but I see them and I see them winning.

I think fixing does enable them, I think calling them bad and putting it up to a poor understanding is sort of only a bandaid. You can kinda influence the decision making by changing the atmosphere around it, true, but that won't mean those decks aren't doable, out there and viable.

I also think the amount of retarded fixing in the standard format is more influential on deck composition than you might think but I'm just going by what I see and hear about in podcasts or when my friend lets me play with his decks online. Red green appears to be the only really winning deck that is sticking to Two colours and that probably has something to do with racing other aggro decks and utilizing burning tree emissary. This is even in a format when you only get solid fixing at the 3cc aside from the one rampant growth they allow in the whole format.

In old ravnica the most popular decks always seemed to be Gruul and Glare. I forget what was popular after kamigawa rotated. I remember playing solar flare decks but I had bounce lands and signets so why not play wrath and persecute and remand together right?
 
Lucre

Lucre

Eric Chan said:
Not to be a tease, but try for yourself and find out!
Click to expand...
Okay I think I like your cube from the first two runs I've made.
Being able to throw together a eternal witness // snapcaster // remand deck goes a long way to making me comfortable.
Then for some reason I thought you didn't have any swords at all in your cube and I was really excited by a first pick sword of fire and ice into garruks, bitterblossom and lily. I was still shy of the symetrical sacrifice effects because I'm not sure how well some of that interacts with mana elves but I'm sure that's the sort of thing that you have to get a feel for
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
The thing about Standard manabases is that they can't be partially designed to fix mana: most of them consist of 12 duals + 12 buddy lands before they even consider the Innistrad spell lands or anything else. In Cube, even if you take as much fixing as you can you'll only realistically end up with maybe 6-8 pieces of fixing in your colour combination, so the Boros Reckoner-Obzedat or Liliana-big Garruk-overload Mortars silliness you get in Standard is a pipe dream. As you point out, draft is very different from Constructed: every pick you spend on fixing is a missed opportunity to pick up decent spells. Trying to force the multicolour good-stuff decks comes with its own risks - it isn't definitively a safer/stronger strategy.

I guess the overall point is that, where these decks are too good/prevalent, this is usually a symptom of a more fundamental problem or further down on the list of concerns than more pressing issues.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Lucre -- aren't we agreeing?

(Just to be clear: The 4c reanimator deck is really sweet. It's also a small corner case. This goofy format is dominated by Junk Rites (best deck, don't kid yourselves), UWR, the basically mono-red Gruul -- if we have all the shocklands and mono-red is viable, why shouldn't something silly like 4c be in the format? Cube can't possibly have such good mana-bases, so stuff your cubes with fixing, sky's the limit, and the worst-case scenario is RGD block)

i guess in general i find shocks to be good design and buddy-lands ok but vivids and friends to be meh

Lucre said:
Well I dunno I think you are being a bit glib. I don't think consistent aggro decks being 3 colour is really all that normal. You'll also find that most 3 colour decks aren't 2 colour splashes, they are like farseek supreme verdict art heeling decks or decks with copies of minotaurs, dragons, ghost councils and human advisors in them. All with pretty serious colour commitments, cards people want to play on straight powerlevel with whacko colour requirements can be jammed into your 75.

Has anyone played the new 4 colour reanimator deck yet? That thing is a blast!

Standard is also totes not a draft format. If your colours have removal or great enablers available, you feel pretty secure about being able to find it and slide it into your decks. In draft there isn't as much luxury. Buuuut if you draft fixing well maybe in later packs you can just rest assured you'll get what you need because it won't have to be on colour right?

Anyway, my last point is despite having no experience drafting those decks and disliking the decision making that leads to them I'm always seeing them. When I drafted with Chris Taylor the last few times there was always at least 1 person playing 3 colour splash for card. Online it's rampant. Almost as bad as ramp with the fixing first mantras of popular streaming personalities and when I'm with my buddy Sam in my most recent cube experiences it's really rare when at least 2 people at the table aren't going to be going (at least) 3 colour because of picking up highly powered passes on top of their 2 colour shell. Of course their cube is powered and does a lot of artifact synergy but I think it still applies. I'm not playing these decks or advocating them but I see them and I see them winning.

I think fixing does enable them, I think calling them bad and putting it up to a poor understanding is sort of only a bandaid. You can kinda influence the decision making by changing the atmosphere around it, true, but that won't mean those decks aren't doable, out there and viable.

I also think the amount of retarded fixing in the standard format is more influential on deck composition than you might think but I'm just going by what I see and hear about in podcasts or when my friend lets me play with his decks online. Red green appears to be the only really winning deck that is sticking to Two colours and that probably has something to do with racing other aggro decks and utilizing burning tree emissary. This is even in a format when you only get solid fixing at the 3cc aside from the one rampant growth they allow in the whole format.

In old ravnica the most popular decks always seemed to be Gruul and Glare. I forget what was popular after kamigawa rotated. I remember playing solar flare decks but I had bounce lands and signets so why not play wrath and persecute and remand together right?
Click to expand...
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Lol, yup. It's one of those pet cards I threw in from the very beginning, and didn't expect it to stay long, but the lifelink has proven valuable for decks needing some defence. Kind of like a Lone Missionary for black.

Yeah, it's not good by any objective measure. But decks sometimes run it, so it's fine, I guess? I could see cutting it.

(Also Lucas said you might be coming to cube tonight ARE YOU COMING TONIGHT)
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Lol. Lucas said the exact same thing. I needed another cheap burn spell, and... yeah.

Burn is a lot worse in Modern than in Legacy, I will say that.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
RE: the burn situation, it looks like you're toning down the power of your burn spells as well, as I notice Lightning Bolt and Searing Spear are missing. (But incinerate? I guess it does look way cooler)
Here might be a good time for using different spells instead of intentionally weaker ones.

I've found control decks benifit most from the multi-target burn spells. 1-for-1ing your opponent into oblivion is harder when everyone is competing for those cards.
Maybe remove some of these:
Forked Bolt, Staggershock, Flames of the Firebrand, Pyroclaysm
and add in some of the more aggro oriented burn cards?
Char, Shard Volley, Burn Trail, Dead//Gone

I've also never found stone rain that strong :(

Also about shock: Galvanic Blast man :p
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Good points all round, Chris. It's true that I've cut Bolt for power level concerns. On Searing Spear - this is a point my players poke fun at me over and over for - I try not to run functional reprints. Instead, I deliberately break singleton in areas where I feel the cube design needs a boost. Since 99% of the time, Searing Spear and Incinerate are functionally identical, I choose to run only one of them. And then I throw in the strictly worse Volcanic Hammer, because hey, 3-point burn spells!

I did run Shard Volley for a long time, before I realized it's mostly just a Lava Spike, because there's a pretty deep feel-bad that comes with throwing away a Mountain and a spell to take down Birds of Paradise. This is a case where Shock is better than Volley, even in aggro decks. Char is fine, but I realized that my curve in red has a lot of three mana spells already. Brimstone Volley is kind of fighting for the same spot, and it has a higher upside, so I'm going with that for now. And Stone Rain is really good here! I've lost to it way more than I've won with it, but I think that's still a good measure of a card's success.

Forked Bolt is kind of a new addition, because I feel that red needs more help against green mana dorks, which are threatening to dominate the cube. Staggershock is indeed one that I've got my eye on, though. You're right that it's mostly a midrange and control two-for-one kill card, and very rarely goes to the face, so maybe that's one I can swap out. I don't think I run Flames of the Firebrand anymore.. did you see that in my list? Check my cubetutor link in the very first post, that's the one I keep updated the most nowadays.

Yeah, Pyroclasm is a necessary evil. Somebody has to keep tokens in check!

Galvanic Blast is strictly better than Shock, but it's not feasible nor common to assemble three artifacts in my cube. As I have a non-insignificant number of new and lapsed players, I'd rather reduce the mental load on them during the draft portion, and use the simplest version of that effect.

To be fair, I'd actually love to replace Shock at this very moment. I just haven't found anything I really like over it. :( Gut Shot? That's just bad, right? Lash Out?
 
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