General HWO MAENY CRTAUERE??

[CML]

conventional wisdom, which has been wrong about most everything else (headed as it is by geniuses like this) says cubes should have "~50%" creature spells (i.e. creatures/total nonland cards). my cube (at http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/114) has 56.3%, if I classify some token-makers like Gather the Townsfolk but not Bitterblossom as "creatures," but let us not descend into picayune issues of taxonomy and singleton-breaking Elvish Mystics; let us instead deliberate shit like,

does the creature count even matter
how does it matter
what do we do with spot removal and mass removal counts
what do we do with devotion
what do we do with U and B (traditionally spell-based in cube) if we wanna aggro
what do we do with G/R/W (traditionally dude-based) if we wanna make 'em control (not really a difficulty for W, but kinda for G/R)
are threat-light aggro decks possible
what do we do with cantrips
how can we hit that sweet spot between "only good in one deck" and "good in all decks"

discuss

 

[anotak]

http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/2573 i haven't updated this but i also havent cut any creature cards non-creatures or vice-versa other than +1 signal pest
182/360
50.55%

yes, creature count matters, but not as a number i explicitly have been keeping track of beyond just 'feel'. i don't think 50% is a perfect magic number that has any significance or use.
i dont think devotion is something i want to put in my cube as it feels so parasitic
black is pretty dude-based in my cube, but not aggro. i don't really know the answer to this question as i haven't tried it. i would start with Phantasmal Bear I guess?
i dunno about green, but for red control you have to run stuff like Shard Phoenix and random card advantage artifacts otherwise you start running out of cards. you also need red cards that give you late game reach. green would be all about some acidic slimes or something, but how does green deal with creatures?
cantrips own, but why does that connect here?

 

[James Stevenson]

Cubetutor says 197/418 = 47.1%
My google doc says 211/418 = 50.5%
I dunno what's with that, I thought the lists were the same.

I once drafted Visions, which was so creature heavy I ended up with 20 creatures in my deck and had a load of fun. Lots of good combat situations, lots of attacking and blocking, a few tricks. I decided to jam loads of creatures in my cube and try to achieve the same thing. But I never did. I try to keep it over 50%, but I would like it to be a pretty high percentage. I just never really achieved that. I'm not sure I want to all that much, really.

 

[Jason Waddell]

What I think is a good question for you guys running a higher percentage of creatures is: are your decks running more creatures total? Are there some creatures always getting cut? My decks tend to run between 8 and 15 creatures.

Let's see if we can articulate the thought... I would probably run the same proportion of creatures in my decks even if there were more available to me. Uh.... it's a diversity question really. Are your extra creatures providing strategically different options, are there sufficient differences in archetypes that sometimes you run one creature over another depending on context and vice versa? Moreso than spells, I find creatures more readily lend themselves to "strictly superior" rankings. I also find the utility of spells to be more context dependent, and feel that leaning towards a higher proportion of diverse spells allows me to maximize the potential deck diversity within my cube.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I have never really thought about this question. In my mind, cards do stuff. I make sure that I have cards that do stuff that makes decks fun, diverse and competitive. I don't think too much about the type of card that's doing the stuff.

When we are asking about creatures, are we talking about the card type, or the card role of "permanent that continually pressures the opponents life total?" Because grouping together Sylvan Caryatid and Tarmogoyf and Genesis seems pointless.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I think the recent trend towards Magic being played over the board - especially with effects that we would traditionally associate with spells being tacked onto creatures - is a good thing overall. Warm bodies still have a use even if their main purpose isn't achieved, which makes it easier to attach situational effects to them and still have them be worthy of maindecks (or Cubes). Lifebane Zombie is a great example.

This logic works for most types of card, but you have about the right amount of removal when you can draft it 'naturally' - without going out of your way to get it or ignoring it - and end up with enough. When drafting the MODO Cube once, I had a U/B deck that was saturated with removal but had no room for Agony Warp (a card they somehow saw fit to spend a gold slot on...) while the deck was wanting for playables in every other area and getting to 23 was a struggle.

The problem with threat-light aggro decks is that those threats have to be very strong to compensate for the lack of spread, so you have to include cards that go against what many of us are trying to do - Mirran Crusader, Hero of Bladehold et al.

Without many of the conventional control tools, G/W/R end up relying fairly heavily on planeswalkers (or any repeatable source of card advantage, but PWs are the most obvious ones), in my experience.

Blue and black aggro really like powerful equipment, given that they have fewer and less powerful threats (in theory). Building your guys into Baneslayers is also much more interesting than just playing Baneslayer.

 

[Eric Chan]

My creature count is at 50% on the dot, after the latest round of changes. Like CML, I run an usually high amount of fixing, so 15% of my cube is lands, meaning that only 35% is spells. With those numbers, it's probably no surprise that my Delver / spells-matter theme isn't really coming together, as the 9 creature / 14 spell tempo deck is fairly difficult to assemble.

Most of the aggro decks I've seen here run 16+ creatures, and that number can go as high as 19. Meanwhile, the control decks get by with around 7 to 9. As Lucas pointed out, the high creature count (along with the neutered removal) makes the games here primarily about interacting through the combat zone, which may be atypical of what people expect out of a cube experience.

I would love to see some threat-light aggro or tempo decks come together and run the table, but that hasn't happened in a long time. Not sure what knobs I could tweak to make that possible.

 

[Chris Taylor]

the overall percentage of creature density of your cube isn;t really important, but can be an interesting surface statistic to inform you that you might have a case of the boardstalls.

More important I find is the individual percentages for each color, like blue is typically 30% creatures 70% not, and that makes playing blue decks which attack a bit of a pipe dream. If an aggro deck is gonna need 15-19 creatures to function, and there's only 20 in the damn color, it ain't gonna happen

A threat lite aggro deck is usually accomplished by playing a single creature and riding it to victory. This is usually impossible because
A) a game like that is either horribly uninteractive because they can't interact with your creature OR
B) you play a reasonable clock before they get established on the board, and suppress everything they do

We're all pretty anti A plan, and B is hard to have happen without said creature being insanely broken. It's a lot more feasible in constructed because the broken creature put heavy demands on what can be in your deck, like delver. In cube, we usually don't have the freedom to construct our decks so the broken creatures can be good, since... you know... interactive draft format.

And I don't really see a straight up 3/2 flying being played in a low threat aggro deck. I think it'd just get swept up by the regular aggro player

 

[CML]

Good shit everyone!!

Ano -- tons of cantrips means in all likelihood no space for Blue beaters. Unless we wanna retry the whole Delver thing.

James -- now this is very interesting, as the popular image of MTG is "creatures sucked until 2008" and I'd never considered looking at the historical ratios for Limited. Visions, which was the set most ahead of its time in MTG history, is 73/167 = 43.7%, while Theros is 138/229 = 60.3% (this is excluding basic lands). If we crunch "as-fan" numbers to adjust for rarity, Visions is (30/62*11 + 26/55*3 + 17/50*1) / 15 = 47.2%, while Theros is (59/101*10 + 35/60*3 + 32/53*7/8 + 12/15*1/8) / 14 = 58.7%. I'm not saying your intuition is fooling you, though, as the issue of playability brings us to

Jason -- My favorite idea of yours is "count the creatures that are actually getting played," as I'm sure the Blue decks and especially the Black decks are way more creature-heavy over the last month or so than their cantrip-and-discard-filled forerunners. In the last six months I've been slowly replacing spells with creatures, which has amounted to an attempt to promote "diversity" -- i.e. Blue does things other than draw cards and durdle; Black does things other than kill things and reanimate them -- but I guess the question is, "at what point has it been taken too far?" To that end I strongly agree that the answer will be found in the kinds of decks people are playing. Also, though I do agree broadly with the "context-dependent" comment on spells vs. creatures, remember that creatures are also at their best on-curve and tend to suffer out of that "context" i.e. a Lightning Bolt is way cooler than a Stromkirk Noble on turn 7, and also that the Lightning Bolt will make any red deck much better, but the Noble only goes in some of them. Of course the same is true for Kitchen Finks "going in everything" over Hallowed Burial not fitting in Zoo, and creatures are a little more "always do something" than spells on balance, but you're well aware of this.

FSR -- Yeah it's a blunt and unsubtle categorization, but damned if it might not be useful.

Dom -- I'm with you here, do you have any fun equipment to suggest that's not Jitte Swords Clamp? (Sorry if you already answered this in some long-forgotten equips thread). Also I for one stand proudly for Hero of Bladehold

Eric -- I dunno

Chris -- Case of the boardstalls is very "pauper cube in 2012," the dialectic for me has gone something like boardstalls -> oh shit boardstalls time for sweepers -> oh shit sweepers time for more dudes -> sweepers still too good, cut some signets -> huh misewell replace that with some aggro-oriented fixing -> eh multicolor aggro let's add a few more sweepers -> present day. each -> represents an incremental but palpable increase in power level. Also your experience of Delver has been identical to mine per the discussion in my Cube's thread

 

[Jason Waddell]

Chris -- Case of the boardstalls is very "pauper cube in 2012," the dialectic for me has gone something like boardstalls -> oh shit boardstalls time for sweepers -> oh shit sweepers time for more dudes -> sweepers still too good, cut some signets -> huh misewell replace that with some aggro-oriented fixing -> eh multicolor aggro let's add a few more sweepers -> present day. each -> represents an incremental but palpable increase in power level. Also your experience of Delver has been identical to mine per the discussion in my Cube's thread

I have a thought here, and it basically goes like: the better your aggro, the more you can jam removal in your cube (higher density). The more removal you have in your decks, the fewer board stalls you see. You don't actually need sweepers, just, have things get killed turn after turn by whatever shit you have. If the board is always changing then you get these really fun fluid game states. But shit aggro can't win in removal-dense environments. Of all the benefits of improving aggro, the one that never gets talked about is increased interactivity.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Thats an interesting idea Jason. What is the removal percentage in your cube? My cube sits at an intentionally paltry 10.5% (by more liberal interpretations) and 3.3% sweepers. (Also liberal)

I remember one of the problems I had with disenchant was that it kept getting left in the sideboard because it rarely interacted with the opponent. Maybe with a diversified kind of threats (more walkers/artifacts/enchantments that affect your clock) might make them more playable.

I've always kept my removal numbers really low because I'd inevitably see the deck that was essentially 10 doom blades 10 lighting bolts and 3 creatures, and while it never won it was miserable to play with and against. I'd never really considered that a random joe aggro deck could win against a deck like that unless they were playing uninteractive stuff like Paladin En-Vec or Thrun.

How do you do it?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Uhhh I am far too lazy to compute that percentage but if anybody else wants to take a stab I'd probably like your post.

 

[Eric Chan]

Geez, 10.5%! And here I thought I was nerfing my spot removal by bringing it down into the 15-16% range (plus an additional 3% mass removal).

Along with the removal proportion, I suppose it's also important to note the quality of the removal that we run. I don't have any of the staples like Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Dismember, or Go for the Throat, and instead run slightly clunkier options in Crib Swap and Eyeblight's Ending. So the removal feels weaker here than it used to, even if the quantity hasn't gone down by that much over the years.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Maybe that's why your aggro is too good Eric. I'd buff removal before nerfing aggro.

 

[Eric Chan]

Everybody on this forum already despises me for this, but.. Lightning Bolt is still banned in my cube.

*ducks and runs*

 

[Chris Taylor]

Uhhh I am far too lazy to compute that percentage but if anybody else wants to take a stab I'd probably like your post.

Oh, cube tutor is still up to date. One moment.

Jason's cube is at 56/360, which is 15.5% Not too high.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Meanwhile, I have 3 Lightning Bolts.

*high five*

 

[Eric Chan]

I have a Pillar of Flame. Along with a Burst Lightning. And a Shock!

One time, all three of them were in the same pack. Much confusion and bewilderment ensued.

 

[Jason Waddell]

"Since when did they started printing do many suboptimal burn spells?"

 

[CML]

i'll say again Lightning Bolt as a red card cannot by definition be overpowered. it is shocking how much better it makes a red deck, though. that and STP are just mid-blowingly powerful, all other removal looks like shit next to those cards because, well, it is.

jason: re. increased interaction, you're certainly right, and when NWO designs are at their best they follow your paradigm of strong aggro, strong removal. when NWO designs are at their worst they end up having no removal, so we end up with disasters like mono-creature Domri from Standard last season, or, worse, Theros limited.

 

[anotak]

in my experience the only problem with lightning bolt is that if you're a red deck of any kind, whether it be control or aggro, you almost always have to take the bolt out of a pack because anything else actually has a possibility of wheeling, but if a bolt goes untaken that just means nobody else is in red.
is this actually a problem?

 

[Lucre]

I have never laughed so hard at an opening post.

 

[Lucre]

NAYA control is something I am always interested in exploring. I'd really like it if those colours could have some more control over their draws and had adequate disruption to make it work, but it usually ends up looking pretty bad and midrangey. I think I can get down with a midranged deck being an expression of a colour's ability to play control but not the badness bit.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

CML: I obviously don't mean to say this isn't an interesting topic, but I think the separation is important. By discussing the creature type, we are more discussing the means to interacting with the card. If 50% of the cube is made of creatures, then 50% of the cube dies to wrath of god. That's interesting to look at in terms of what and how much removal.

By discussing "cards that put continual pressure on the opponents life total" we get into more of a game flow conversation, which is different.

I agree both conversations are probably damned useful, I just wasn't sure which one we wanted to have. But, why not just have both!

Eric: I'm totally with you on lightning bolt. In my latest revamp (fun fact: my cube is only in an assembled state about 5% of the time), I'm dropping a bunch of the powerful removal so that I can slam in more pump and auras. Are there any cascading effects of this I might be overlooking?

Jason: I've never, ever had board stall problems, but I've always run tons of removal. Your words ring true to me.

 

[CML]

FSR -- remember that "the means to interacting with the card" are a major trait of the card itself, level 1 (how to deal with it) and level 0 (what is it?) collapse into one another. the old bromide (usually used with some irony) "dies to removal" elegantly expresses that idea. i think your distinction is interesting especially vis-a-vis the toughness in M14 articles (http://riptidelab.com/take-it-part-one/ and http://riptidelab.com/take-it-part-two/) and topics like the Modo Cube, where creatures suck.

but then in a riptide context, i end up getting intellectually lazy and saying "eh wall of omens puts pressure on their life total by enabling you to survive until you get a Sun Titan and kill them, so what we're really talking about here is 'how does the card help us win the game,' and then it's a discussion principally about power level."

ano, i agree it is a problem that lightning bolt is the best red card by a wide margin. so then the questions become "is it worth it?" and "can i incentivize other red picks above bolt sometimes?" i think it's worth it, as i love lightning bolt, and i can also imagine some red decks in my cube that might want other red cards over Bolt. Naya deck lacking a finisher? thundermaw or inferno titan. RWU control lacking a sweeper? pyroclasm. Br zombies needing some more degenerate durdles? Faithless Looting. And so on.