General Jitte and assorted GRBS, P1P1, etc.

[ahadabans]

To be fair Quadcrawla lost that draft... mostly because I let my opponent completely re-do a turn in Game 3. And, sometimes Jitte is too slow for my cube. No value until you spend 4 mana and swing?

Jitte too slow? How is that even possible. That card is ridiculous.

I know my cube is slower than most, but Jitte is actually on the verge of getting cut for being GRBS. It's broken to pieces.

 

[CML]

Yeah, sometimes you can have the perfect Gravecrawler deck and you'll just lose to a "bad matchup" or bad draw. I like this about Cube and MTG in general, I guess, kinda annoying though.

As a huge proponent of letting people take back obvious level-0 punts, a lax timing policy that forbids use of the word 'trigger' outside the context of Lebowski quotes, etc. I am heartened to read that the Wadds cube has a similar "take back that dumb turn" policy. What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

Jitte can be pretty underwhelming in a fast format without many 1- or 2-toughness guys (or if your equipment targets all just die -- have you seen Stoneblade play against Punishing Jund? HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH), but Wadds has a bunch of small dudes that come back from the dead, the Wadds Cube presumably has a bunch of targets, and, no matter how fast a specific Cube is, I thought it'd always be slow enough for Jitte. So like uh I dunno.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Yeah, sometimes you can have the perfect Gravecrawler deck and you'll just lose to a "bad matchup" or bad draw. I like this about Cube and MTG in general, I guess, kinda annoying though.

As a huge proponent of letting people take back obvious level-0 punts, a lax timing policy that forbids use of the word 'trigger' outside the context of Lebowski quotes, etc. I am heartened to read that the Wadds cube has a similar "take back that dumb turn" policy. What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

Jitte can be pretty underwhelming in a fast format without many 1- or 2-toughness guys (or if your equipment targets all just die -- have you seen Stoneblade play against Punishing Jund? HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH), but Wadds has a bunch of small dudes that come back from the dead, the Wadds Cube presumably has a bunch of targets, and, no matter how fast a specific Cube is, I thought it'd always be slow enough for Jitte. So like uh I dunno.

Jitte is still a very easy P1P1 pick over here, but it does lose games. I had a Jitte + Porcelain Legionnaire opener that seemed like it should auto-win, but Jitte can be slow mowing through a line of Ranger of Eos reinforcements.

But really, like a PW, Jitte really provides you shit value until you trigger it at least twice. If you had to pay 4-mana (even in two installments) for an artifact that came into play with two charge counters on it and Jittes abilities (kinda), I don't think anybody would be all that amazed. The problem is that it can, like a PW, provide runaway value and just make everything else in the game irrelevant.

Sometimes you have games over here where a player just gets steamrolled with a Sword and Jitte in play because his opponent has a high removal density. Granted, that usually doesn't happen to a Zombie deck. They tend not to have trouble finding a way to put bodies on the battlefield.

 

[CML]

Jitte is still a very easy P1P1 pick over here, but it does lose games. I had a Jitte + Porcelain Legionnaire opener that seemed like it should auto-win, but Jitte can be slow mowing through a line of Ranger of Eos reinforcements.

But really, like a PW, Jitte really provides you shit value until you trigger it at least twice. If you had to pay 4-mana (even in two installments) for an artifact that came into play with two charge counters on it and Jittes abilities (kinda), I don't think anybody would be all that amazed. The problem is that it can, like a PW, provide runaway value and just make everything else in the game irrelevant.

Sometimes you have games over here where a player just gets steamrolled with a Sword and Jitte in play because his opponent has a high removal density. Granted, that usually doesn't happen to a Zombie deck. They tend not to have trouble finding a way to put bodies on the battlefield.

gnuhhhhh very easy p1p1's

i don't think i like the whole picks like that, though i'm sure it's sensitive to the kind of context da Cub3 cultivatez. jitte is kinda weird in that it's 'low-margin' but in an efficient way. it fills a certain niche, i guess.

 

[Jason Waddell]

It is an interesting question though. The feeling of beating an active Jitte, of solving that puzzle, is pretty incredible. And it's super doable too, it's not like a freak occurrence or anything. Is that an experience we want to give to our players, and at what cost?

I can see arguments in both ways, and Jitte is certainly the most borderline card in my cube, but...

 

[CML]

It is an interesting question though. The feeling of beating an active Jitte, of solving that puzzle, is pretty incredible. And it's super doable too, it's not like a freak occurrence or anything. Is that an experience we want to give to our players, and at what cost?

I can see arguments in both ways, and Jitte is certainly the most borderline card in my cube, but...

So I know you mean this more subtly than the typical MTGS line about such things, but I still think the following are true: the argument both acknowledges that the cards are rarely beaten and are miserable when not beaten, and doesn't really care about that. It also leads pretty quickly to including cards that are even more 'unbeatable,' which is a worse experience. Whatup Hoard-Smelter Dragon

One thing we do on here is make Cubes which include, on average, cards far 'worse' than a typical Powered Cube, but decks that are much, much better -- they're not defined by a single card so much as the interactions of 20+ spells and some sweet lands, so we're not beating a single card so much as beating another clump of interactions. Subgames within games are sweet, but what if the game is just the subgame? I guess I throw in Jitte with other GRBS, and GRBS just makes me tilt more so than anything else. When I beat these cards, the feeling is way closer to 'thank god this game wasn't quite ruined' than 'lookit me I got lucky at da club,' the pleasure is, like drubbing an ill-tempered otaku at a PTQ, or the moments of happiness in Ada's anxious life, mainly the absence of a baseline negative feeling than it is an intensifying of our typical Joy of Cube.

Of course, some of every Cube's cards are better than others, and your experience may be completely different.

 

[Jason Waddell]

So I know you mean this more subtly than the typical MTGS line about such things, but I still think the following are true: the argument both acknowledges that the cards are rarely beaten and are miserable when not beaten, and doesn't really care about that. It also leads pretty quickly to including cards that are even more 'unbeatable,' which is a worse experience. Whatup Hoard-Smelter Dragon

One thing we do on here is make Cubes which include, on average, cards far 'worse' than a typical Powered Cube, but decks that are much, much better -- they're not defined by a single card so much as the interactions of 20+ spells and some sweet lands, so we're not beating a single card so much as beating another clump of interactions. Subgames within games are sweet, but what if the game is just the subgame? I guess I throw in Jitte with other GRBS, and GRBS just makes me tilt more so than anything else. When I beat these cards, the feeling is way closer to 'thank god this game wasn't quite ruined' than 'lookit me I got lucky at da club,' the pleasure is, like drubbing an ill-tempered otaku at a PTQ, or the moments of happiness in Ada's anxious life, mainly the absence of a baseline negative feeling than it is an intensifying of our typical Joy of Cube.

Of course, some of every Cube's cards are better than others, and your experience may be completely different.

Well I think we both agree there's a line, it's just a question of where that line is. I really don't have much of a defense against Jitte, and it's well possible that it should be removed. The card is kind of a colorless PW that is harder to get off the table.

 

[CML]

Right, the line shifts for every environment, but the whole EDH players and other children having only their inflexible definition of "fun" thing is a compelling counterargument against the concept of GRBS going too far. ("No Rush 15, OK?" said the teenager to the frat house.) Another counterargument is the great fun I've had raising by degrees the power level of my Cube.

If I were to make a general rule for Cube environments, though, assuming you wanna maximize fun and difficulty and parity, it would be to eliminate all them cards that are "easy p1p1's," or if you want a laxer threshold because metaphorical JTMS is fun, after all, and good cards are generally good for the environment, you can say "no cards that people will pass and feel bad about it," or "nothing that makes the game into a subgame," or "cards that people hate playing against and/or with." All these definitions have their issues, since it does all come down to a matter of taste, but I think this kind of culling process can take place without unduly neutering one's Cube. Jitte is a powerful card, sure, but as you identify, it's the flexibility (impossible to play badly!) and repeated 'walker-like effect and colorless casting cost that annoy me the most. That and Legacy sucks right now cuz of TNN

 

[Laz]

Right, the line shifts for every environment, but the whole EDH players and other children having only their inflexible definition of "fun" thing is a compelling counterargument against the concept of GRBS going too far. ("No Rush 15, OK?" said the teenager to the frat house.) Another counterargument is the great fun I've had raising by degrees the power level of my Cube.

If I were to make a general rule for Cube environments, though, assuming you wanna maximize fun and difficulty and parity, it would be to eliminate all them cards that are "easy p1p1's," or if you want a laxer threshold because metaphorical JTMS is fun, after all, and good cards are generally good for the environment, you can say "no cards that people will pass and feel bad about it," or "nothing that makes the game into a subgame," or "cards that people hate playing against and/or with." All these definitions have their issues, since it does all come down to a matter of taste, but I think this kind of culling process can take place without unduly neutering one's Cube. Jitte is a powerful card, sure, but as you identify, it's the flexibility (impossible to play badly!) and repeated 'walker-like effect and colorless casting cost that annoy me the most. That and Legacy sucks right now cuz of TNN

I think you are making a lot of good points here, but I don't think there is some theoretical general rule about maximising fun/interest/etc by including/not including certain powerful cards. I would tentatively state something about flattening power levels, but that is certainly an imprecise science. I am sure there is a theoretical environment where Jitte, JTMS and the like are perfectly fine cards (I think the environment is called 'Legacy'), but the power gulf between say 'JTMS' and Raging Goblin, which both exist in the MTGO cube is not conducive to interesting drafting decisions.

You also made a good point about flexibility. The most interesting cards are ones that do one particular thing, but can play interestingly with other cards. Jason's Gravecrawler is a great example of this. It is a simple creature which has this neat ability to be cast from the yard, but enables so many interesting interactions. Then again, cubes need some flexible cards, such as removal spells and counterspells to function, so I don't think there is anything hard-and-fast there either.

 

[CML]

As points of theory we've decided (or haven't?)

-- Cards can be pretty flexible or pretty narrow, but not very flexible or very narrow, except when they're not (Jitte, Cruel Ultimatum). Batterskull is the flipside of Goblin Charbelcher, Legacy's a little different in that there are many decks that don't want Batterskull, while there are very few Cube decks that don't.
-- Cubes should have a flat power level, except that the WotC notion 'bombs give direction to a format,' while dumb (and geared towards pleasing a public that doesn't come over to my house every week), vestigially exists in every Cube because it has to. Furthermore, a completely flat power curve is an ideal not worth fully subordinating to the goal of 'diversity' -- having a bunch of different cards that do different stuff -- as well as 'synergy' -- which says that certain cards will be bad in deck X, but good in deck Y, while other cards might be good in both, so it has a lower overall power, but that's fine. In other words, if putting card Z in deck X and deck Y gives them both an increased chance of winning by 2%, but card A gives deck X +3% and deck Y +0%, card A will be 'better' from a GT perspective, but then it depends on what else is in the pack, what everyone else is doing, etc. and so things are already getting really complicated to the point where theorycrafting is a waste of time.
-- Everything affects everything else. (Easy one)

The best heuristic I can think of is that Cube designers should promote 'diversity,' i.e. different decks with different decisions for (maybe?) different player psychographics. To this end the Cube should have 'diversity' between the cards' types, CMCs, etc. (obviously) but also functions, suitability for different decks, if not power level. The comparison I'd make is to American culture, where the maldistribution of wealth results in too many foregone conclusions, and though 'equality of opportunity' is only an asymptote when all cards and people are different in most every way, you can certainly do better than the current Modo-Cube-piece-of-shit state of affairs.

 

[Laz]

Furthermore, a completely flat power curve is an ideal not worth fully subordinating to the goal of 'diversity' -- having a bunch of different cards that do different stuff -- as well as 'synergy' -- which says that certain cards will be bad in deck X, but good in deck Y, while other cards might be good in both, so it has a lower overall power, but that's fine. In other words, if putting card Z in deck X and deck Y gives them both an increased chance of winning by 2%, but card A gives deck X +3% and deck Y +0%, card A will be 'better' from a GT perspective, but then it depends on what else is in the pack, what everyone else is doing, etc.

and yet so many bad cubes exist... Why can't they just follow this simple formula?

I do love your style of prose CML, it reminds me a little of late, erratic Kurt Vonneget.

 

[Jason Waddell]

If I were to make a general rule for Cube environments, though, assuming you wanna maximize fun and difficulty and parity, it would be to eliminate all them cards that are "easy p1p1's,"

I don't really think easy P1P1s are problematic. I don't even know that easy P3P1s are that big of an issue.

"nothing that makes the game into a subgame,"

Lots of cards present fun subgames though. One of my favorites is the "get 100% of the zombies off the board" subgame. Well designed PWs make for interesting subgames.

-- Cards can be pretty flexible or pretty narrow, but not very flexible or very narrow

I don't really know what you're trying to say here but I don't think I agree. Is there a problem with hyper-flexible cards? Where do you consider something like Lightning Bolt to stand?

-- Cubes should have a flat power level, except that the WotC notion 'bombs give direction to a format,' while dumb (and geared towards pleasing a public that doesn't come over to my house every week), vestigially exists in every Cube because it has to.

This feels pretty loose butthole, and I don't think you'd enjoy a truly flat power level. Direction is good, and one of the problems I had in the early builds of the Eldrazi Domain cube was that there weren't enough bombs to give players direction, or that the bombs weren't properly distributed among archetypes, which led to too many players in / not-in various archetypes.

It also felt pretty shitty when you opened a pack and saw that all the cards were about the same power level. It was far more enjoyable to choose from a few more powerful cards, than to feel like all the cards were equally powerful and the only thing pushing you one way or another were your whims of the day.

It's also an issue with my current Lifegain work, as I wish the archetype had more bombs to encourage people to dive into it. Archangel and Obzedat are strong enough to be played outside of lifegain decks, and Pridemate, bless his heart, wins games but doesn't entice anybody into the archetype.

I feel like perhaps you're stretching for some grand unifying theory, but either you've missed it or one doesn't exist in this direction.

 

[Changling Bob]

I think cube needs easy P1P1s, but they shouldn't be of the form 'this will win games when I get it', and should be more of the form 'this will make a neat anchor card for $archetype'. The anchor cards need to be stronger than average to draw you into the archetype though. This is what they've recently(ish) been doing with uncommons, providing cards that you can draft early to give you direction in a draft. Then they talk about bombs giving direction because magic serves two masters.

I think this is also why they're increasing the number of uncommons in a set as of I forget when, but it was on MaRo's blog; both to make any given archetype-drawing card come up slightly less often, but to have slightly more of them.

 

[Dom Harvey]

what is a GRBS

Jitte is an entirely defensible card unless your Cube runs a lot of weak (/'fun'/'interesting') cards, in my experience.

 

[Jason Waddell]

what is a GRBS

Game-ruining bullshit.

 

[Laz]

what is a GRBS

Jitte is an entirely defensible card unless your Cube runs a lot of weak (/'fun'/'interesting') cards, in my experience.

Jitte is an entirely defensible card, it is just also an entirely uninteresting one. There are virtually no decks in most normal cubes (read: non-deliberately spell-oriented/non-combo cubes) that would not be better without a Jitte. Sure, as a card it is able to be beaten, but it detracts from the entire drafting process by being a card which doesn't require you to make a choice. Less-choices in the drafting process are not a net-positive for the whole Cubing experience.

I think that your statement is an interesting one, since you seem to correlate 'fun' and 'interesting' with weak. Power-maximisation is easy to do, but surely by designing a cube, the aim is not towards rampant power-maximisation, but fun-maximisation and interest-maximisation, the very things you seem to be talking down.

I wasn't around for the infamous 'Wurmcoil-engine-as-a-finisher' discussion, but I think that it is relevant here.

ASIDE: GRBS - Game-ruining-expletive (not sure the board's policy on language, I admit it Eric and Jason, I never read the rules, but I will now, I promise!)

 

[Jason Waddell]

ASIDE: GRBS - Game-ruining-expletive (not sure the board's policy on language, I admit it Eric and Jason, I never read the rules, but I will now, I promise!)

We have rules?

 

[Laz]

Oh, the rules are just 'Don't be a douche', 'You can and will be moderated' and 'We can repost anything you say, but you have the rights to what you say?'

Good rules.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I moved this to a new thread as it wasn't really about 3-0 decks anymore.

Anybody want to argue for / against Jitte? The way my opponent played around it in M3G3 of the last draft was extremely interesting, and the usage of counters was actually a very intricate, tactical dance that would not have existed with any other card. The game was really the essence of "the type of Magic I am trying to cultivate" despite centering around a card that many consider to be completely broken. I know anecdotes aren't the best arguments though.

Is part of the question that people never feel good winning with Jitte, only against it? How do we feel about card villains? Is there any merit to letting people be the hero?

I also feel that Jitte is fundamentally different from something like Wurmcoil Engine, which you need to get off the table or lose to. Jitte is less of a "do I have the answer" cannon, and offers wider decision trees.

Do you guys often have games where it feels like one guy should win, then Jitte just turns it irreversibly around?

 

[Dom Harvey]

I've built tons of decks in my Cube that don't want Jitte, and my Cube is more creature-heavy than most (from what I can tell).

 

[Laz]

Jitte is an incredibly interesting card to play with/against, although the incremental value it generates, while costing very little and being difficult to interact with does tend to, not so much make the games one-sided, but definitely skew them. The decision trees with Jitte are really intricate, and playing against Jitte makes is also interesting, possibly because the consequences of your decisions become so much greater. Perhaps interesting isn't the right term, knife-edge may be better, and that is also a pretty desirable feeling for a designer. I love getting to the edge of a game and feeling drained, simply because the consequences of every decision were so high. I suspect that is what you mean when you say 'the type of Magic I am trying to cultivate', though I may simply be projecting.

I wasn't arguing against that. That sounds like a fantastic type of final environment (although sometimes you are tired and just want to play a proactive deck instead), but I am not sure you want that for only one of the players, as making a mistake with Jitte is not easily punished. Making a mistake against Jitte often just costs you the game.

If Jitte was a card that had coloured mana-symbols in its cost, I think I would feel pretty different about it. It is not too different to a planeswalker, but when you see a JTMS P1-P1, you know what you are getting in to. When you see a Jitte, it is a free pick that commits you to nothing more than 'playing a couple of creatures/cards that produce tokens'. Jitte is just completely uninteresting in the drafting portion of the game, and is just as good pack 3 as it is pack 1. JTMS is very easy to pass if you have nothing to do with Blue by the time pack 3 comes around, but Jitte is always worth grabbing. I don't know if Jitte in-game decision trees are worth that reduction in drafting decisions. (Jason, this was also the comparison to Wurmcoil. They are fundamentally different cards in-game, but much the same in terms of drafting decisions)

 

[Changling Bob]

In my ideal cube, the point of not P3P1-ing JTMS is valid. Depending on density of fixing, I'm not sure it's universally true, especially if you aggressively draft fixing because hey, look at all these fetches that can grab basically any colour of mana with the right duals/shocks.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Jitte is an incredibly interesting card to play with/against, although the incremental value it generates, while costing very little and being difficult to interact with does tend to, not so much make the games one-sided, but definitely skew them. The decision trees with Jitte are really intricate, and playing against Jitte makes is also interesting, possibly because the consequences of your decisions become so much greater. Perhaps interesting isn't the right term, knife-edge may be better, and that is also a pretty desirable feeling for a designer. I love getting to the edge of a game and feeling drained, simply because the consequences of every decision were so high. I suspect that is what you mean when you say 'the type of Magic I am trying to cultivate', though I may simply be projecting.

I wasn't arguing against that. That sounds like a fantastic type of final environment (although sometimes you are tired and just want to play a proactive deck instead), but I am not sure you want that for only one of the players, as making a mistake with Jitte is not easily punished. Making a mistake against Jitte often just costs you the game.

If Jitte was a card that had coloured mana-symbols in its cost, I think I would feel pretty different about it. It is not too different to a planeswalker, but when you see a JTMS P1-P1, you know what you are getting in to. When you see a Jitte, it is a free pick that commits you to nothing more than 'playing a couple of creatures/cards that produce tokens'. Jitte is just completely uninteresting in the drafting portion of the game, and is just as good pack 3 as it is pack 1. JTMS is very easy to pass if you have nothing to do with Blue by the time pack 3 comes around, but Jitte is always worth grabbing. I don't know if Jitte in-game decision trees are worth that reduction in drafting decisions. (Jason, this was also the comparison to Wurmcoil. They are fundamentally different cards in-game, but much the same in terms of drafting decisions)

A couple assorted comments:
I am not terribly worried about the possibility of making one-fewer drafting decision. Also note that not all Jitte decks are created equal, and given that you have a Jitte your other picks can be weighted differently. Personally I think that the in-game decisions are far more important than the drafting decisions, which is largely why a set like Modern Masters was so well received despite a lot of the drafting mechanics in the set being super poisony and disjointed.

Back when I had Wurmcoil in my cube, I did once 3 - 0 by taking Swords to Plowshares instead of Wurmcoil P1P1. I don't know that I have ever passed P1P1 Jitte, but, in a sense, taking Jitte commits me to an attacking deck more than StP committed me to anything. Sure, you can play Jitte in any deck, but as Dom points out, that's not always wanted.

Regarding the asymmetry, Magic is a pretty asymmetrical game, and I don't really know that any card is equally interesting to play with and against.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I directly compare JtMS and Jitte and don't run them for the same reason. Both cards have potentially the same capacity for producing interesting game states and plays, but because they are so absurdly powerful it doesn't feel right when you win with them. I mean, sure, you can "skillfully" use these cards to pick up "tough" games, but it seems roughly equivalent of using a gun to win a knife fight: nothing to brag about at the very least.

I don't think Jitte is quite as raw powerful as Jace, but being colorless makes up for it.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I directly compare JtMS and Jitte and don't run them for the same reason. Both cards have potentially the same capacity for producing interesting game states and plays, but because they are so absurdly powerful it doesn't feel right when you win with them. I mean, sure, you can "skillfully" use these cards to pick up "tough" games, but it seems roughly equivalent of using a gun to win a knife fight: nothing to brag about at the very least.

I don't think Jitte is quite as raw powerful as Jace, but being colorless makes up for it.

That's strange, I think I would cut Jitte on power level concerns way way before Jace. Jace doesn't even top the list of most oppressive cube Planeswalkers.