General [Grid League] Penny Cube Grid League

[Grillo_Parlante]

we just finished, melty won, though the games were all close and felt great.

I'll do a write up later, but hilariously, melty beat out kirblinx by one point for second place.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Here is the actual deck

This is basically a good version of last week's UB tempo deck. This is much more of a ninja deck, with the cheap evasive enablers to carry the ninjas through (though I think aston's exile/pacifism removal would still have been a problem). Wall/mancer/imp to provide long term grinding power, and mana ramping with the untap effects. Whelk was my finisher. Since there is so much UB drafting this league, I did a write up as to how the different variants of these decks function here, for anyone curious. I just added a section for solar flare decks, because I had forgotten about them.

I was very happy with the deck for the most part, and though I went 1-2, the games I lost felt razor close.

His deck (which I hope he posts) was a solar flare deck, and was a lot slower and reactive than I had anticipated, with many more counterspells. There was a predictable white splash for the flashback on unburial rites, and a really interesting red splash for starstorm. That might seem greedy, but you have to remember that even if he misses on the , he always has the option to cycle it away. Other than that, it was a typical UB shell, with the reanimation/discard package of body double, unburial rites, compulsive research, and oona's prowler.

The first match I made some play decisions that were wrong since I thought his deck was going to be more pressure orientated: playing into mana leak when I didn't need to, and not holding stroke of genius. Those matches were still really interesting though. I ended up killing a lot of artisan of kozileks over the three matches lol.

I had some decent white sb cards, but didn't really board them in. I ended up boarding out master splicer for thrashing wumpus, though I'm beginning to think that card is a lot worse than pestilence. I've noticed in these grid drafts at least you can't really use your life total as a resource, which makes wumpus more of a win con than a stabilizing piece. In addition, being a creature is a huge liability, since it runs into all of the bounce, removal, and anti-creature counterspells, a further liability if you are behind.

Draining whelk is a very strong card when you are ahead in the late game, but a very poor card when you are behind, since you can't justify holding up 6 mana while stabilizing a board. Its just very memorable when it gets you.

I wanted to comment a little bit on the actual grid drafting format, and solicit some opinions.

While I like how it makes cube drafting online more reasonable, there are a few aspects of it that I disliked:

1. The focus on hate drafting. While this cube (specifically) has enough internal regulating devices to prevent traditional multi-color good stuff drafting from being a consistent winning strategy, grid drafting does seem to encourage a form of good stuff drafting within color pairs.

Yes, you're perhaps more focused in a color pair, which demands a strategic focus, but due to the hate drafting component of the format, you're more likely to waver around that color pair in a pursuit of the best value tools you can find, rather than committing to a more nuanced strategy.

We've had a lot of UB decks, and while we've had some more focused ones this week (these still felt inconsistent compared to what you would get in an actual draft), Aston probably set down the blue print for how you want a generic UB/w deck to look.

2. Actual aggro is a bad strategy. This is another consequence of the hate drafting. These grid draft decks seem to be less consistent than actual draft decks, which just murders most aggro strategies. This kind of shows whenever we see a R/W deck, which just look so clunky and midrangy, rather than sleek and focused. Its so bizarre to see red become the worst color.

Tempo as a strategy is very good, probably the best overall strategy, but actual aggro seems unplayable.

3. Color imbalance. With some of the cube's regulatory tools being focused in specific colors, subtracting a color from the draft can have an imbalancing effect. I think the best example of that is removing the black edicts or the red sweepers.

I'm not surprised that certain aspects feel off: every time I use a cube for a non 8-man format, there are some things that need to be calibrated. It does have me thinking how a cube purpose built for grid drafting would look like.

Also:



Lets be honest, this is the best card in the cube. It plays like resto on steroids.

 

[Kirblinx]

I agree with everything you say above about the Grid Draft format Grillo. Let's have a look at what decks everyone drafted:

UB Ninjas (Aston) defeated BUG Value Grind (Grillo)
UGb Flash (Melty) defeated UR Artifact Control (Kirblinx)

RWG Beats (Melty) defeated WB Kitty (Grillo)
BGrw Value Grind (Kirblinx) defeated BRg Sacrifice Aggro (Aston)

WUG Tempo Control (Aston) defeated GRUw Midrange Goodstuff (Melty)
UG Prowess Tempo (Grillo) defeated RWu Splicer Aggro (Kirblinx)

UB Ninjas (Kirblinx) defeated WUGb Midrange Goodstuff (Melty)
WUG Blink (Aston) defeated BUG Midrange (Grillo)

UBw Blink (Aston) defeated UR Goblin Aggro (Kirblinx)
UBrw Solar Flare (Melty) defeated UBw Ninjas (Grillo)

It looks like blue is the strongest colour to go in grid drafts as every winning deck had blue in it somewhere, except for the non-blue week. Anything with the deck type 'aggro' lost and only one deck with a substantial amount of red won (Melty's Naya Beats). This is a little strange as red never had this problem when Grillo and I were doing our grid drafts before this league. I even had a WR aggro deck that had crushed Grillo in a grid draft.

It is just a problem with the grid draft draft format and the cube doesn't need to change. I am just wondering if there is a way we can tweak the grid draft format or make up a new 2-player draft format that can help alleviate some of those problems. I just don't know.

 

[safra]

Adding a couple more packs to the draft (CubeTutor grids are 18 packs to Jason's 16) might give aggressive and synergy decks more space to come together.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think the thing that really murders the aggro decks is that they can't pick anything up on the wheel. They're looking for a redundant density to form a critical mass at the 1-3 mana point, and thats really hard to do without a second bite at the apple. This also probably plays a role in drafting consistent versions of more niche decks within color pairs.

Those value decks are much easier to draft, because they can move all over the curve. They have no real curve pick restrictions in what they can select from, which is huge when you only have one shot at a pack.

The addition of more packs might make up the slack.

As for the decks, I think part of that is that we were new to drafting the format, and early on we kind of decided that G/B was a thing, so maybe it was a bit of a self fullfilling result. The big advantage of UB (which has always been the case I will add) is that you gain access to black's recursive graveyard tools, while also gaining access to blue's raw card advantage. Its very hard to compete with that on a value axis, which is augmented by that being such a focus of these grid draft formats.

I've toyed with the idea of taking away some of blacks reanimation (cadaver imp and dread return are listed in my SB), and its the reason why corpse churn never made the list (despite being a very interesting card).

One thing that really surprised me about the grid drafts (despite not being an aggro friendly format) was how you still can't use your life as a resource due to the strength of the tempo elements.

Its interesting to me (as we have never talked about it on the forum as an element of game flow to my knowledge), especially since I watched joe lossett last night complaining about his losses in Baltimore as being partly due to him forgetting that in standard you can't use your life total as a resource in the same way you evidently can in legacy. Looking back at the matches I lost, thats pretty much how I felt (except for this week, where I jealously guarded my life total), taking small persistent hits in the early game can really predetermine the game's flow against you.

Small evasive 2 power flyers costing 2-3cc seems like some of the best picks (hey look its esper).



Its almost like delver, in the sense you always want to jam them on curve, because sometimes an opponent just losses to them, maybe not now, but they will later when you use cheap interaction or spike damage to clobber through.

Also, I think we should recognize what a beast unburial rites is.



If I were to tinker with the format for grid drafts, I would probably have to come up with something regarding the red 1-2 drops, and buff the lifegain elements somewhat? Right now it feels like its operating on two somewhat narrow axes, which is frustrating.

 

[Meltyman]

Here is my U/Bwr Reanimator. I really wanted to play 50 cards, but the spike in me doesn't let me

There are some cards that feel a little off in my mind, but later on made perfect sense. Something like Vault Skirge made ninjutsu easier to pull off and incidentally it also blocked almost every creature in Grillo's deck.
Tortured Existence looked really awesome with Mulldrifter and friends, but in reality i saw it played only once and even then the game was already over.

Starstorm i find to be really powerful in this cube, so i really wanted the splash, also i think my mana base handles it quite well and as Grillo said, i could also just cycle it (i never did).
I was struggling if i should add Rolling Thunder in or not, but i decided its too clunky in this deck and i'm happy i didn't add it.

After i saw Grillo's deck i started to side Chromatic Star out and put Tragic Slip instead.

Our matches were really tight and i had to work hard to win our matches.
Playing around Draining Whelk being the biggest goal. I pretty much tried to hold on tight with Exclude and Silumgar Sorcerer, so i don't get blown out.
Our games went pretty grindy so keeping Stroke of Genius in mind was funny also, there were atleast two times where i was a few turns away from dying to it.

But yeah, thanks for letting me in on grid drafting and also thanks for taking the time to teach us how to grid draft and also setup the boosters and everything i really appriciate your effort.

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Penny Pincher Cube in Grid Drafting

Grid drafting does infest good stuff over anything else, i feel , and aggro is harder to accomplish than in a normal draft.

That being said, i think Penny Pincer Cube doesn't have that many elements that would make me personally go for aggro anyway.
I don't usually play aggro and in my cube i will play aggro when my initial creature-combo strategy or what have you starts to dry up, and i am left up with low mana creatures, so i just force on a faster strategy as a result.

If i want to force aggro, i need strong incentives to go for it; cards that really scream "you can win if i'm in your deck!".
In my cube these would be something like: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Mirror Entity, Monastery Mentor, Ajani, Caller of the Pride, Liliana, Heretical Healer, Goblin Guide, (Young Pyromancer), Goblin Rabblemaster, Koth of the Hammer, Falkenrath Arostocrat, Bloodbraid Elf, Arlinn Kord, Tangle Wire.

In Penny Pincer Cube i see only: Flickerwisp, Young Pyromancer, Troll Ascetic, Rancor.
All of these work great without an aggroshell, so i'm reaching here.

I understand my point of view is narrower than Grillo's since he has designed this cube and he knows all the in's and out's, but it doesn't change the fact that i wouldn't play a straight up 'balls to the walls' -aggro if i drafted this cube.
Why would i play an aggro deck in Penny Pincer where the aggro cards are worse when compared to the tools that midrange and control gets?

Red's token aggro could be fun to play, but heroic dudes, green aura's or pump spells in a format where black has nothing but instant removal, blue has so many bounce spells and also operates mainly instant speed, no way, just no.

There are too many incentives to go elsewhere and these incentives seem WAY better in grid drafting also.
Everything with ETB basically, blacks removal, almost anything in blue, red mass removal, multicolors doesn't scream aggro with the exception of maybe Anax and Cymede and Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer, artifacts has 2 bonesplitters for aggro and that's it.

I would like to see this cube without all the juicy bits and replaced with something a little more linear.
Flickerwisp, Mulldrifter, Draining Whelk, Stroke of Genius, Bone Shredder, Gurmag Angler, Troll Ascetic, Acidic Slime, Saproling Burst(?) all seem a little too out there FOR THIS CUBE and warp the experience towards the more traditional cube experience in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, i really love to draw 4+ cards from Mulldrifter or kill 3 creatures with Bone Shredder or cast B 5/5's against creatures that can't compete against it, but i don't think it makes this cube unique, just the opposite, it makes this cube feel like the rest of the cubes.

The games i played were fun and this cube did offer me really awesome games, but i felt the cube had some imbalances that crippled the potential to make the games feel more of its own thing.

Just some food for thought, hope you get something out of it!

 

[Aston]

The way I see Grid Draft is ending up somewhere between sealed and booster draft. It's not impossible for synergies to come together, but it's much more difficult as you can get randomly hosed by two cards you want together ending up on opposite sides of the same pack, or getting collateral damage hatedrafted when the card you need ends up with two that your opponent needs. The other issue is that you only see 144 cards from the cube, which when cutting a colour is taken into account seems to be about half of the full card pool, and so it's reasonably likely that the density of effects you need for a good synergy deck isn't even available in the whole card pool.

I approached the grid draft in a pretty similar way as I approach sealed, trying to maximise the raw power of my cards whilst finding incidental synergies when they were available. As you can probably tell, I also proritise blue's card draw spells very highly and tried to play 17 lands with multiple bouncelands, to ensure I'd hit all land drops but still have enough spells to win. It also helps that some of the "safety-valve" spells that punish bouncelands are blue, like Riftwing Cloudskate and Regress, and I tried to take these whenever I could. Getting one of your bouncelands messed with seems like a very easy way to lose a game in the first three or four turns.

As much as I enjoyed the grid draft, I do feel like it doesn't show off the cube to its fullest, as many of the themes like Heroic and artifacts-matter seemed close to unplayable due to the lack of density issue, and that led to a lot of dead cards in the packs. For an example, in white alone there are 8 combat tricks/auras which are I think mainly to enable heroic and I would be pretty unhappy to have more than one of those in my deck in this format, even if in the right booster draft deck I could easily see myself playing 4+ of that effect.

Finally I want to say how much I dislike Mindshrieker. It's so unbelievably swingy. Any creature where for 6 mana it could reasonably get anything between +0/+0 and +12/+12 is not a card I want to play with or against. Even though it does have the potential for cool plays where you use Memory Lapse to set it up or mess with your opponent's scry, those are so few and far between compared with the situations where it's just a dice roll, I would not want to play with it.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thank you Aston, that saved me a lot of time. Sealed naturally rewards slower more value based strategies due to how inconsistent the pools are, and aggro is a dead archetype. I felt like the grid drafts produced that relationship.

In actual drafts, the well made aggro and tempo decks are some of the strongest deck types. Young pryo, flickerwisp, and troll ascetic I wouldn't consider incentive cards for aggro. Stuff like kor skyfisher, goblin bushwhacker, reckless bushwhacker, goblin sharpshooter, porcelain legionnaire, jor kadeen, fabled hero, goblin bombardment, champion of lambholt, tymaret, the murder king, anax and cymede. It tends to be more of a R/W or R/B color combination, maybe some G/R or G/W (though the G/W decks are kind of big aggro or little midrange counter strategies).

And why that would be is actually hinted at by the grid drafts: well made aggro decks exert consistent early pressure on a life total that actually matters, and than possess a multitude of ways to exert reach in a stalled late game. They also tend to have really good grinding and board control tools.

I'm still doing my archetype breakdown of the cube, and eventually we will get to the aggro decks, but as has been said, the grid drafting format was a horrible representation of those decks as they are really hurt by the factors both aston and I have been bringing up.

Here is an early aggro deck if you don't believe me.

R/W Heroic Goblins

We even had a R/B deck from one of our early grid drafts that dominated, which you can read about here. Not impossible, just very difficult to pull together giving how grid draft mechanics work.

We also won't be cutting good low-power good cards because they are low-power good cards.

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I also want to address the myths about auras/combat tricks and instant speed removal being incompatible in the same format. If you want the short version, just watch the way Tom Ross plays his infect deck in legacy. You do not play instant speed creature buffs into removal and set yourself up to get blown out.

Half the time he's playing vines of vastwood, become immense, or invigorate to save his creatures in response to removal; and this is in a format that has some of the strongest instant speed removal spells ever printed.



I use legacy as an example because its more relateable to people, but in pauper those types of relationships have existed for years alongside incredibly strong instant speed removal.




One of the big perks that non-blue decks have in this format is that they get access to what are effectively counter spells, which is something you generally don't see in most cubes.





Simple vertical buffs can push creatures out of direct damage range



There are only a handful of buffs in the format that have to be used affirmatively, most of them invite reactive plays as counter-removal. I always say that the quickest way to lose in this format is instant speed removal on fabled hero during the attack step.

They are also one of the factors that make aggro decks better, since you can use them to either force damage through (letting them function as reach) or preserve their board state.

Actual heroic is a somewhat ancillary topic, though I don't want the presence or absence of buffs to be seen as connected to the fate of heroic. Heroic has a lot of problems as a cube mechanic, and historically we've been slowly dialing down its presence in the cube.

 

[Chriskool]

If I were to tinker with the format for grid drafts, I would probably have to come up with something regarding the red 1-2 drops, and buff the lifegain elements somewhat? Right now it feels like its operating on two somewhat narrow axes, which is frustrating.

I've felt the few grids I've play to be more about card advantage than tempo. Tempo plays a role in the value-oriented mirrors, but aggressive one-drops have been very scarce in appearance.

My theoretical solution: 4-colors with a color imbalance favoring a color pair. A color imbalance in the card population would allow players to (1) explore different archetypes across the prominent color pair, (2) anchor strategies in at least one the prominent colors, (3) make fixing more relevant to the card population being drafted and (4) use hybrid one-drops for aggro when available (otherwise, mostly keep them in the main color pair). Unsure if this is even an ideal solution; it could be 3-color grids...

Sadly, I have also found Grid with normal cubes to feel like super Sealed. (It's much better than normal sealed but still isn't perfect.) My recommendation is to not only design a card population for the format, but in the case of access to five 4-color grids, design each population separately.

Here is a green-black sketch that may do a better job of illustrating some of my ideas than words (based on my experience with grid drafting safra's cube): http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/47988 . I haven't explored a low-powered version of this, though... I cannot recall the riptider that made a tri-color module cube, but their modules might also be a fantastic starting point.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think we kind of ended up with that anyways? Imbalance is one of the easiest things to stumble across, and I think we ended up with an imbalance favoring either GB or UB, depending on the week, and even though there is a fair bit of space to move around in UB, it makes the gameplay experience feel a bit repetitive after a while: sort of like going into a league where 20% of the metagame is delver.

I do like the idea of cutting one color in the grid drafts, as that imbalance is really interesting, but I think I maybe need to put a little bit more thought into how that imbalance should play out in practice.

Losing and gaining a color should ideally make the drafting experience feel like a fresh challenge: as if the world has been turned on its head, and the context of what is the dominant color has fundamentally changed, and the way you go about attacking it is fundamentally different. That also seems to work better with the hate draft elements of a grid draft. Any commentary about this from your orzhova cube?

That way if we do a 5 week league, its kind of like a triathlon (pentathlon?) with the nature of the challenge changing with every week, and the range of streategies varying with those changes.

 

[Kirblinx]

So the main problem with Grid draft is that the player going first has the chance to take the top 33% of that pack in one pick. Why not lower that percentage? Why not have the person going first take a singular card. This could be the bomb card of the pack or the synergy card they need. Then let the second player pick a row or column then the first player gets to pick their row or column.

This may take a little extra time but then you aren't completely blown out in the draft by a sinlge bomb row that you didn't manage to open. This means that each player has the possibility of 4 cards every second pack, which shouldn't matter.

I was trying to think of another two-player variant, and while glimpse drafting seems like it could be alright, it might be hard to confirm what people had picked and what people had burnt. So why not make the burning cards part of the game? Scratch that idea, it was a real time-consuming idea where the burnt cards were your 'possible second deck'. I can't try and reiterate more if people are interested.

It is actually pretty hard coming up with ideas for forum drafting, as you almost need it to be a hate-drafting format, since you are both looking at the same pack and know what each other are picking. The problem with introducing any hidden information over the forum is the possibility of cheating (or just misunderstanding). Can always try drafting it in drafts.wtf with 6 bots, but that might be even more random when bots are cutting you cards that have no sense of synergy.

I'll continue to mull this over at work for the next week or so and see if anything comes to mind.

 

[Meltyman]

Lets do a reversed grid drafting, i would LOVE that.

Every card you picked goes to your opponents pool. voilá ! no hate drafting ! uhm, sort of..

 

[Jason Waddell]

Great thread guys. I think I am realizing that you need to rebalance the design based on the drafting format. As a start, I would say: weaking mass removal (4 cmc -> 5cmc) and high CMC bombs.

 

[Chriskool]

I do like the idea of cutting one color in the grid drafts, as that imbalance is really interesting, but I think I maybe need to put a little bit more thought into how that imbalance should play out in practice.

Losing and gaining a color should ideally make the drafting experience feel like a fresh challenge: as if the world has been turned on its head, and the context of what is the dominant color has fundamentally changed, and the way you go about attacking it is fundamentally different. That also seems to work better with the hate draft elements of a grid draft. Any commentary about this from your orzhova cube?

That way if we do a 5 week league, its kind of like a triathlon (pentathlon?) with the nature of the challenge changing with every week, and the range of streategies varying with those changes.

I unfortunately have been unable to cube this year... no group (slowly feeling out local populace ... built a Ravnica-based fantasy set that should minimize theft when I can finally host some...) plus heavy workload. For now, Orzhov cube is just an unboxed theorycraft.

Approaching 4-c grid from a "something is missing" top-down design is a really nifty idea! How would you propose approaching it: would you want to theory craft and build each grid from the ground up or start with a cube and pare it down?

Also, I chatted with ahadabans (the module-cube owner that I forgot previously), and he was gracious enough to upload the modules again for perusal: http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/ . I am excited to look at 2-3 modules, remove a color, add some duplicates and see what the card population is like!

So the main problem with Grid draft is that the player going first has the chance to take the top 33% of that pack in one pick. Why not lower that percentage? Why not have the person going first take a singular card. This could be the bomb card of the pack or the synergy card they need. Then let the second player pick a row or column then the first player gets to pick their row or column.

This idea also intrigues me; maybe grid drafting has been flawed!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Approaching 4-c grid from a "something is missing" top-down design is a really nifty idea! How would you propose approaching it: would you want to theory craft and build each grid from the ground up or start with a cube and pare it down?

This idea also intrigues me; maybe grid drafting has been flawed!

I think the thing that I'm most worried about from doing other small set cubes is the lack of a print run, which means you can just get weird pools of cards: removal saturated pools or removal light pools etc.

I was thinking of condensing it down from 360 to make the pools feel more consistent, and make sure each color has a truly unique feeling identity: e.g. blue is direct card advantage.

Also its probably important to have a very flat power level, because otherwise its like you're just making endless first and second picks from pristine boosters.

 

[Chriskool]

Here are two 4c grids (two-colors weighted heavier, low power level from same "card pool') that resulted in a lot of fun:

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/55582

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/55581

I made the mistake of not cataloging decks, but about my compatriot that ran through ~10 grids (best of 5 games) had a good time. The penny pincher seems like it would naturally break into a similar experience.

My big questions:

For replayability, what is the best # of cards to include in each grid population? I went with 144 as it's easiest to track the 16 9-card grids, but I am not convinced that it would stand the test of time. I suppose that using a single "cube" to create the grids without waste would just require 180 cards (with 36 not being used). My concern is that the focus of cards to be drafted should be quite a bit different depending on the color missing.

How should the colors be imbalanced at all within a grid? Minus one? Minus two? Strange distribution? We've been working under the 4-color paradigm (which I've quite liked), but there are so many considerations beyond it. Perhaps having 40% of the population being one color and playing all 5 colors is a better solution than just 4 colors. Or maybe 3 colors is the way to go!

And lastly, how to lure unsuspecting magic players to buy into playing a grid for the first time? :/ I tried to get some pickup games at the LGS to no avail.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The issue with going from 5 to 4 colors for me was that the cube really wants all five colors to operate as intended. I think you deliberately imbalance it not so much to create real imbalance, but to create some sort of conflict within the environment that drafters have to strategically overcome.

The reality is that grid draft formats are formats built around first and second picks, and thats going to have to be taken into account somewhere, regardless of if you do 4 or 5 colors. While I think the Penny cube is fine for grid drafting, its not optimized for it, as it intends for cards to wheel to achieve critical density in certain spots. If I were optimizing it, I would probably start by tightening the power bands even more, to eliminate wheel cards.

Your two lists look really reasonable to me, and I too like the idea of trying it at 180.