General Fight Club

Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Even if all colours have good fixing, green has unique advantages: ramp, ways to find and use lands consistently, having enough fixing to support 3+ colour decks (4- or 5-colour green is a classic and really neat archetype). You could push this further by having extra G/X gold cards to highlight and reward it?

This whole idea of restricting fixing to preserve the colour pie sounds like an important concern to people who enjoy thinking about design but it's an irrelevant abstraction to players miserable because their 8 Mountain/8 Swamp/1 Dragonskull Summit manabase failed for the third game in a row
 
Velrun

Velrun

There are hundreds of ways to reduce the amount of non-games. Choosing the right or wrong ones for your cube is also part of the fun we have when we create a cube.

I do not believe basic land cycling is the only way to make sure there's much less non-games.

So again: I guess it depends on your design philosophies because choosing one of the hundred ways of helping players smooth their mana base (in this case basic land cycling) is neither wrong nor right.
 
sigh

sigh

Basic land cycling definitely isn't the only way to have non-games. We also shouldn't dumb it down and say green is the only color that can fix. Wizards doesn't do this, and neither should we. That doesn't mean you have to use basic land cycling, but it behooves us to consider it as a useful mechanism to improve our format.

The argument here was don't exclude Grave Betrayal because it has a fixing mode. That mode will be a net format positive, and is in Wizards color pie to do it.
 
Mondschwein

Mondschwein

vs

I don't like to have GRBS in my cube, and so far, none of those two could be called such, but I want your experiences.
A little while ago, I read in one thread that someone finds Compulsion to be too strong, and in another someone posted that Monastery Siege sucks.
I can see that this is true for the latter, as unconditionable loot every turn is very desirable for a lot of decks, while the second mode nearly kills some harder control decks.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

Mondschwein said:
Compulsion vs Monastery Siege

I don't like to have GRBS in my cube, and so far, none of those two could be called such, but I want your experiences.
A little while ago, I read in one thread that someone finds Compulsion to be too strong, and in another someone posted that Monastery Siege sucks.
I can see that this is true for the latter, as unconditionable loot every turn is very desirable for a lot of decks, while the second mode nearly kills some harder control decks.
Click to expand...

Neither of those cards are "GRBS" in a cube as powerful as yours, Mondschwein. It's important to remember that different people have different cube power levels - none of these are really pushing the upper limits of your own cube imho, as both are vastly less efficient CA/CQ engines compared to the other tools in your list. You could run either very safely in your list, I'm sure.
 
MDT12

MDT12



I was thinking of adding this card to my cube as a fun (but very different) replacement of Unearth. What are your experiences with it?
Booster Tutor seems very fun and also very strong, but I think it feels weird to have such a card in my 'main' cube.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

I would recommend against cutting Unearth, as that's a very fun and very fair reanimator effect that has an unnecessary, but extremely nice, cycling mode.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Booster Tutor compares unfavourably to a lot of other cards in your list, but if your group likes some "fun and silly" style cards, feel free to give it a shot. My frank assessment is that, while I like drafting the card myself, I wouldn't draft it in your list; there's a bit too much meat to waste the slot on something inconsistent, I think.
 
Mondschwein

Mondschwein

I'm currently updating my list, it got several changes, but the power level didn't drop too much.
So, the second mode of the Siege is not a problem? Would you still rate it higher than Compulsion? I want to add the one that is on the lower power end, especially when I compare them to Looter il-Kor, as I'm not sure if I want double Looter or double Baby Jace, the latter being definitely able to hold its own against the mentioned two enchantments.
 
Fulcrum

Fulcrum

In my experience Compulsion plays more like a 6 drop or a 2 drop with 5 time counters on it. I've found that if you play it on turn 2, you'll spend the following turns not activating and playing other spells just so you won't die. If you're able to survive to the late game you'll be able to drown your opponent out in card quality.

Monastery Siege doesn't do anything when it comes down (I guess Compulsion doesn't either) but after that, you get to look at an additional card for free every turn which I like. I don't think the second mode is a problem.

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I think you should only play Booster Tutor if you commit to bringing 10+ packs of various sets to your drafts. I agree with Raveborn that it depends on if your group likes the fun and silly side of magic. Booster Tutor is a card that would make me excited to see going around and I would probably pick it even if it wasn't the most optimal pick.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I think I would only play Booster Tutor with additional packs of my own cube. If you're regularly doing 8-mans, that means you need to account for a maximum of 9 boosters (assuming three rounds of best of 3), or 45 additional cards, which means you need a cube of at least 405 cards. Doing it that way means the cards you open are (on average) of comparable power level as the cards you passed to pick up Booster Tutor, as well as more in line with the cube's themes. Using retail boosters is going to get expensive fast, plus not very fun at all since most themes won't match what you're trying to do in your cube. Opening desert-matters cards from an Hour of Devastation booster, or energy cards from a Kaladesh booster is pretty useless in most cubes I imagine.
 
MDT12

MDT12

Thanks for the input. I was going to make packs from my cube, since my cube is 450(ish) and we rarely get more than 6 people drafting anyways. I'm still torn though, since I agree with RavebornMuse about the Unearth, but I believe my playgroup would also appreciate Booster Tutor. Maybe I'll remove something else to see if it's worth it.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
You could cut the Vampiric Tutor or the Liliana Vess. You run a lot of planeswalkers (I've personally been content with 10-15/450), and Vess isn't particularly impressive anyway?
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Vital Force was extremely uninteresting to me when I had it in my cube. The -3 sometimes comes up, but the +1 just kills your opponent with expendable resources. The ultimate is weaksauce compared to the other two abilities. I wanted to like it, but I really don't care for the design execution. I agree with sigh that Nissa, Vastwood Seer is where it's at. If you don't want to run flipwalkers, run a cool Garruk instead, as none of the Nissa's make for particularly fun or interesting gameplay imo.
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara

Onderzeeboot said:
Vital Force was extremely uninteresting to me when I had it in my cube. The -3 sometimes comes up, but the +1 just kills your opponent with expendable resources. The ultimate is weaksauce compared to the other two abilities. I wanted to like it, but I really don't care for the design execution. I agree with sigh that Nissa, Vastwood Seer is where it's at. If you don't want to run flipwalkers, run a cool Garruk instead, as none of the Nissa's make for particularly fun or interesting gameplay imo.
Click to expand...

Well, I think Voice of Zendikar does a lot of interesting things. She's an anthem effect, she provides food for sac outlets, and she gives +1/+1 counter synergy. I think I talked myself back into her.

Now we've got a Commander special:

vs.
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

I tested Corpse Augur and wasn't particularly impressed. Vindictive Lich is certainly more interesting, but I have to ask: do either of these cards actually have a home? What sort of deck wants either of these 4-drops? My current evaluation process is always to consider that question; "where does this fit?" At 4cmc, I suppose it does a fine job as a control roadblock, but imho I want roadblocks on T3; on T4, I want to make a more impacting play.
 
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