General Fair

[Velrun]

I have dedicated an entire thread to this topic because I feel like I (and maybe others?) do not quite understand the term when it comes to cubes.

What does fair mean?

Sub-questions: Is fair short for fair max, which is short for fair maximum power, which is short for the more power the better but no cards that either cheat the natural mana or card mechanics in the game (Companions, moxes)? If not, please elaborate <3

I feel like I keep misunderstanding the term when described on this forum and I want to end my confusion

 

[sigh]

There are two general usages that I think of:

Fair = doesn't break game systems. In this version of fair, Storm Spells, infinite combos, broken mana generation, and taking away opportunities for interaction is "unfair" because it abuses the game engine. Basically everyone here uses entirely "fair" cards by this definition.

Fair = at an appropriate power level for the other cards in a format. Hellrider would be "unfair" for my players because it would represent a power level that my decks aren't designed to handle so would lead to game losses because the opponent was lucky enough to open this bomb card, not because they built a strong overall deck using carefully selected groups of cards.

I think both usages are two sides of the same coin.

 

[blacksmithy]

agree with sigh’s analysis of the current state of “fair” term usage.
fwiw i think it would be less confusing if we started using a term such as “outlier” or “bomb” for future state to refer to the second instance of “unfair” cards where the card isn’t doing anything inherently broken, just broken relative to its environment, such as hell rider and known fair bomb Tireless Tracker

 

[MilesOfficial]

Agreed with both @sigh and @blacksmithy.

As such, this isn't going to sound too different than their approaches, but to me, "fair" means playing Magic with opportunities and outcomes within a relatively tight band across all players. Cube is already a great equalizer for those that don't have a lot of funds to dominate a beer-filled EDH table or the local Modern event, and the draft portion helps self-correct even further. But if there are cards that allow for a specific player to reach an outcome that is meaningfully more powerful than what a typical deck could hope to do, that imbalance creates an unfair situation.

Now, dedicating the resources in-game towards a specific goal or self-constraining deckbuilding around maximizing a strategy are wonderful, and don't really factor into fairness, unless the strategy gives a player undue ability to "cheat" on resources.

From this, I would consider cards like Tinker unfair, while Balance is technically fair, but simply too high of a power level relative to the cube experience I otherwise support. Dark Ritual could be fair, as there's a real cost to use it, but when combined with Mind Twist, it's anything but. I guess I'll just go back to @sigh's definition -- a card or strategy becomes unfair when it bypasses the game engine's core constructs. Fast mana, cheating on costs, and taking away interaction fall into this category, but it's a gradient on each, and a lot of the most apparently oppressive cards in my cube are diluted by its size.

I target my own cube as a "Fairmax" list because both my players and I like to play with the most powerful cards in Magic, but to do so without consideration makes for uneven games that surpass our tolerances for variance in both opportunity and outcome that we'd want for a casual game night. This is especially important for us because our cube is 720 cards, a necessity due to our playerbase, which loves to randomly have 14 players some nights, while offering greater variance on nights where we scarcely manage a pod of 6. Sure, we shouldn't run Grim Monolith (it's the last holdout of fast mana), but slowly but surely we've been picking out anything that fits into the first "unfair" category outlined above. Cards that are simply too strong relative to the environment, yes, could be considered "unfair" in context, but I typically try to avoid that terminology when it's context dependent.

 

[Velrun]

So with the three answers above in mind, does anyone feel like they run an unfair cube? Or a cube that is not fair?

 

[blacksmithy]

the Mox cube is deliberately unfair and a pretty frickin cool environment imo

 

[inscho]

My cube runs plenty of cards that take away opportunities from players in the form of discard, counter magic, tax effects, and land destruction/stax so by that definition my cube is unfair

 

[sigh]

I don't think most of those count for what I meant in my definition. I mean like Jin gitaxias, core augur, Iona, Shield of Emeria, and stony silence.

Counterspell is itself interaction, and countering one spell doesn't stop the opponent from drawing and using something else, or from coming up with plan B with what's in their hand. Same with most discard effects. Tax/Stax can get unfair, but don't really stop the opponent from playing unless you have all the best versions of those effects all out at once. I don't see winter orb or stasis in your cube, nor armageddon

 

[blacksmithy]

My cube runs plenty of cards that take away opportunities from players in the form of discard, counter magic, tax effects, and land destruction/stax so by that definition my cube is unfair

yeah i would count all of this as fair, even if the play patterns are undesirable

 

[sigh]

I wouldn't even call most it undesirable. Counterspells aren't undesirable gameplay, just blues method of direct interaction. Raven's Crime and Duress aren't going to make most people rage. Thoughtsieze and Hymn to Tourach are a couple of the only discard spells that I see as overtly 'tilting'.

 

[inscho]

I do try to utilize some of the more "fair" resource denial options....but I'm also okay with doing unfair things sometimes

 

[blacksmithy]

I wouldn't even call most it undesirable. Counterspells aren't undesirable gameplay, just blues method of direct interaction. Raven's Crime and Duress aren't going to make most people rage. Thoughtsieze and Hymn to Tourach are a couple of the only discard spells that I see as overtly 'tilting'.

yeah i meant the land destruction specifically haha

 

[Dom Harvey]

To me there's:

- The folk use that roughly rounds to 'this card is so/too good': 'Wurmcoil Engine is unfair!'
- The contextual use where something breaks the parameters of a format: Wurmcoil Engine is unfair in retail Limited but not Vintage Cube
- A statement about the type of Magic being played: Wurmcoil Engine is definitionally fair because it's just about contesting the board in combat whereas Yawgmoth's Will or Sneak Attack tries to invalidate those normal metrics
- Something that pushes against the safety valves of the game, often the mana system: Wurmcoil Engine for 6 mana is fair, T2 Tinker/Reanimate on Wurmcoil Engine is unfair

With the last two being the most common/useful

 

[Sheltem]

But is unfair always unfun? Aren’t some of these unfair situations like with tinker not exactly these we keep talking months or even years later?
I don’t like a fair format and my players don’t either. In our experience that mostly lead to boring or unmemorable games. But I might be in a minority here. But this forum seems hospitable enough to share my contradicting opinion.
I want my cube to be able to create decks which lead to many memorable games. So I don’t care much about fairness.

 

[sigh]

Fair and fun are definitely not synonyms, so yeah totally valid.

 

[blacksmithy]

But is unfair always unfun? Aren’t some of these unfair situations like with tinker not exactly these we keep talking months or even years later?
I don’t like a fair format and my players don’t either. In our experience that mostly lead to boring or unmemorable games. But I might be in a minority here. But this forum seems hospitable enough to share my contradicting opinion.
I want my cube to be able to create decks which lead to many memorable games. So I don’t care much about fairness.

yeah you can craft your environment such that the unfair stuff is still interactive and fun, and even build around the supposition that people are all going to be running either “unfair” or “anti-unfair” decks which is a cool and fun metagame. i don’t attach negative connotations to the MTG term “unfair,” it’s just a descriptor of the method used to achieve victory.
myself and several others choose to run an environment where all victories are achieved “fairly,” but there’s several heckin’ sweet cubes in the RL cube blogs that go pretty much all the way in the other direction.
when fair/unfair becomes a problem is when one or the other type of deck is a trap that will result in a 0-3 deck for the drafter who went for it. that’s a signal to a cube architect that they either need to do a better job supporting that archetype or remove the signals for it entirely IMO

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Isn't "fair" and "unfair" distinctions mostly used in legacy and vintage? In that context there are certain decks that try to win by playing creatures and turning them sideways, and there are decks that try to win by some fantastical interaction between card mechanics (i.e. combo) that most decks can't interact with.

 

[sigh]

and in EDH, which is I believe the biggest format in MTG at the moment.

 

[blacksmithy]

and in cube, the only format that matters

 

[shamizy]

For myself fair vs. unfair comes down to whether you're breaking a fundamental "rule" of the game. The most common ones revolve around resource deployment and expected board state development.

Playing fetchlands to get extra triggers off Tireless Tracker and grow it quicker? Fair; you're still playing by the rules of the game via typical land drops and just taking advantage of synergies. Playing a T2 Lovestruck Beast off a T1 Llanowar Elves? Fair, deploying an early source of ramp gives you more mana sources to deploy more expensive threats earlier.

Going T1 Entomb, T2 Exhume for a Sheoldred, Whispering One? Unfair; you should not be able to deploy a 7 mana creature on T2. Deploying an Agent of Treachery that is damn near uncastable off a Winota, Joiner of Forces trigger on T4? Unfair; very difficult to actually interact with the trigger and you can cheat on multiple costs depending on how many Winota triggers you get.

 

[Dom Harvey]

But is unfair always unfun? Aren’t some of these unfair situations like with tinker not exactly these we keep talking months or even years later?
I don’t like a fair format and my players don’t either. In our experience that mostly lead to boring or unmemorable games. But I might be in a minority here. But this forum seems hospitable enough to share my contradicting opinion.
I want my cube to be able to create decks which lead to many memorable games. So I don’t care much about fairness.

Unfair certainly doesn't always mean unfun - to me some of the most memorable games are ones where Player A does something wildly unfair but Player B is able to overcome it or take as big a swing in the other direction. Tinker for Wurmcoil can invite that kind of counterplay - Tinker for Sundering Titan so you can't cast spells any more doesn't. That's why I'm always baffled when I see Iona or whatever in Vintage Cubes - it's like, how is this meant to ever be fun?

 

[shamizy]

But is unfair always unfun? Aren’t some of these unfair situations like with tinker not exactly these we keep talking months or even years later?
I don’t like a fair format and my players don’t either. In our experience that mostly lead to boring or unmemorable games. But I might be in a minority here. But this forum seems hospitable enough to share my contradicting opinion.
I want my cube to be able to create decks which lead to many memorable games. So I don’t care much about fairness.

What's ultimately most important is the gameplay experience. If there is meaningful interaction and back and forth, that's different from one person just stomping the other. There's a definitely high when you pull off something busted that flips the game, but it's not nearly so great if it's happening every single game or if either player feels like they didn't get to play Magic. Once in a while is fine which is why I do have stuff like Tinker and Reanimator cards in my cube, but if it's happening consistently and leading to non-games it's just not going to be nearly as exciting or fun.

Whether the cube is based around being fair or unfun is secondary to whether or not you've developed an environment that allows for fun and engaging gameplay. That might come down to proper sequencing and navigation of a board state in a fair environment or it may come down to whether players can trade haymakers and/or deploy answers accordingly in an unfair environment. Whatever the case, it ultimately comes down to whether you as the cube designer have given your players the correct tools to navigate the gameplay experience.

 

[MilesOfficial]

But is unfair always unfun? Aren’t some of these unfair situations like with tinker not exactly these we keep talking months or even years later?
I don’t like a fair format and my players don’t either. In our experience that mostly lead to boring or unmemorable games. But I might be in a minority here. But this forum seems hospitable enough to share my contradicting opinion.
I want my cube to be able to create decks which lead to many memorable games. So I don’t care much about fairness.

Definitely not. One reason that I like Riptide Lab is because it's one of the few places where I see regular discussion of cube from a perspective other than the powermax mentality or the MTGO ethos (there was a really good post a week or so ago here on the MTGO philosophy of splashy games that I wish I could find), but "fairmax" and adjacent philosophies for cube are not the only POV, the most valid, or anything like that.

Splashy individual cards lead to splashy individual games. I personally find the drama of a close game from a tight power band cube more compelling and memorable, but there's no denying the "and then on turn 2 I swung with my hasted Sundering Titan" is more titillating at face value. Unfair is very fun, at least for one player but often for both, so long as that's not every game. But a good unfair deck will be that for every game, and it makes a format less replayable. It's dessert, very sweet and good in small doses.

I never get bored in lower-powered formats that are well constructed: many of the recent retail draft experiences come to mind, where I ravenously dove into drafts 20, 30, or even 50 times in a single format. But for the "special" draft, that's what the Cube is for -- that's the "max" in "fairmax" for me, where you're playing with some of the most powerful cards, and can make incredibly spicy combinations of them, and sometimes it's one-sided but it doesn't feel like a coinflip of "who opened with power 9 this time" (to be a bit hyperbolic).

I don't think you can make a cube environment with enough cards for 8 people to draft that's as engaging as a fairmax cube when the delta between the best card and the 360th best card is so dramatic in a cube with Sol Ring. I think it's plenty fun, but it gets old quicker. It's all about what your prioritizing for!

 

[Erik Twice]

In Magic and other games, a card or deck is unfair if it breaks one of the fundamental aspects of the game. For example, Fastbond, Mox Jet and Mana Vault and "unfair" because they ignore and break the mana system:



Storm is the prototypical "unfair" deck. It doesn't interact with the opponent, it ignores the combat phase and is based on playing spells that copy themselves several times with no upper bound, which is inherently broken. Historically, it has also relied on breaking mana costs, fast mana and broken draw spells.

Conversely, the typical fair deck is The Rock or Jund. Play creatures, kill some of them, interact with the opponent. It's very much "Magic working as normal".

While breaking a fundamental aspect of the game is inherently powerful, power doesn't make a card unfair per se. Cards like this may be "pushed" but are inherently fair:



I know I'm late with this but I forgot to hit "Post Reply".

 

[LadyMapi]

My opinion on unfair strategies is that the best ones do something flashy-but-disruptable. To use reanimator as an example, one of these two creatures is way less obnoxious to see on T2: