Wanted to say that Judge's Familiar is great at any power level. The obvious is there (holds equipment well, hybrid makes it super flexible for many different decks), but the subtle taxing effect is more annoying than you'd think. I miss cubing it, and it's one of the few victims of cleaning up my cube around multicolored and hybrid cards to make organization easier that lost its slot.
General "Looking for a card"-Thread
- Thread starter ravnic
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Which Azorius hybrid card did you include in its place?
That's exactly it -- I didn't.
I previously had hybrid cards placed where their primary home was. So for example:
Rakdos Cackler was Red.
Dryad Militant was White.
Judge's Familiar was Blue.
Deathrite Shaman was Black.
And on the other side of the equation, I had:
Figure of Destiny was Boros.
Kitchen Finks was Selesnya.
Murderous Redcap was Rakdos.
This was done for a few reasons, namely:
1. Precise color/gold balancing only benefits the cube's curator. There's actually little value in having colors / gold cards at exact amounts from a gameplay value. It's largely an aesthetic consideration that mostly exists because we as humans like symmetry and we're confronted with the visual organization of popular cube curation websites like CubeCobra and CubeTutor that further incentivize us on a psychological level to maintain a high degree of rigidity/balance in our color balance.
2. Hybrid is more "playable" than even mono-colored cards. Hybrid cards, from a gameplay perspective, can be treated as mono colored cards that can just incidentally be easier to cast or be used in additional decks than beyond their primary purpose. If you want to maximize playable/draftable cards in your cube, being a hybrid maximalist is a good strategy.
3. Gold slots are the typical cube's most competitive slots. Gold slots can and should be limited as much as possible in cube for balance/gameplay/drafting purposes, and so they tend to be some of the most precious slots in cube. Putting hybrid cards outside of these slots where feasible is not only reasonable from a gameplay perspective (a mono white deck takes no issue with Dryad Militant being castable in a mono green deck) and allows the excitement that is associated with multicolored cards in the eyes of many Magic players.
By putting cards where they were most played, I thought, I'd be making an overall better cube experience. The number of high-power hybrid cards in each color pair are even more drastic in their imbalance than gold cards, so making dedicated "hybrid" slots would only exacerbate issue number 1 up above. I wasn't wrong, necessarily!
A compromise position that I've seen made on these forums and elsewhere that I'm a big fan of is a general "hybrid" section, where there's 10 or 20 slots or whatever that are just hybrid cards of all sorts, since they're realistically closer to artifacts than gold cards in terms of ease of casting. There's no color balance to worry about here, for that reason and for the previously stated "not all hybrid pairs are created equal" point. This seems very smart to me.
The most-cubed hybrid cards, according to CubeCobra on Oct 15, 2021
However, I decided in 2019 that, at 720 cards, I wanted to make things simpler for myself. This happened after the second or third time having my cubers sort the full cube after a draft when I knew I needed to make some changes, and each time, there were "mistakes" and too many questions from my drafters about where cards belonged. Even I had to constantly refer to my online cube list about how I had categorized cards, and when I compared my cubes to others online, I was constantly confronted by my own inconsistency in how the cards were evaluated. None of this a big issue, to be fair, but neither was the loss of two or three cards that would come from saying "if it's BR put it in the Rakdos section" for both my sake and my drafters'.
The cards that ended up leaving cube as a response to this were Judge's Familiar (I had just really wanted a blue 1-drop that I liked), Deathrite Shaman, and Sygg, River Cutthroat. Sygg was in black when it didn't have the wealth of 2-drops that it's gotten in just the last two years and moved to Dimir with the change, and was then cut last year, but he would still be in cube if I had a dedicated Hybrid section as I adore the card.
To be clear, from a design perspective, I think my approach of putting hybrid in gold is objectively worse. A "hybrid section" or "put cards where they're most played" evaluation are both equally valuable in my eyes, and I'd probably give the "hybrid section" strategy the nod as my favorite from an aesthetic perspective. The one advantage of my "put hybrid in gold" approach is that it lets me cut down on the total number of gold cards in practical terms while still including a lot of "sexy" cards, so I've got that going for me! But, after writing all this, I've basically talked myself into a hybrid section...so we'll see what happens there.
In summary:
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Didn’t see your cards until now @Onderzeeboot
What I am hearing you say is to try these two
I like some of the cards mentioned. Now begins the long journey. 365 cards is quite a lot.
What I am hearing you say is to try these two
I like some of the cards mentioned. Now begins the long journey. 365 cards is quite a lot.
my favorite grace play is to return DRC every turn until they can’t kill it anymore and then it kills them
You make some excellent points. I disagree a bit but I think your conclusion is gas.
It certainly also benefits the players that each color and multicolored section is balanced. It simply creates a better format. Wizards can choose to not have their sets balanced like this because they print a new set every third month so players desire different experiences. We cannot.
Having a hybrid section is probably almost as good as having exactly the same amount of hybrid cards for each color combination.
That’s part of the fun. You guys have tried too often to let Player A do X and seen the rest of the players facing X again and again and again until they are frustrated. Not in my cube!
Part of the fun here is to go on a deck-builder journey. Some of your cards will get banned but you will also gain new cards and often better and better cards. I too have tried too often that my players complained about a broken thing that was in my cube. We made this change and it’s so damn awesome now.I think the player can live with having their combo turned off from their 1 drop if a 1-for-1 enchantment removal is spent. If an enchantment removal is happening, then the 1 drops stops being broken and instead becomes a fair 1 drop. Is that a problem?
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Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
... Dammit. You meant Magic cards, didn't you?
It’s not. It’s just different. Sylvan Anthem has a hard time buffing your white flyer in your Selesnya deck.
The scry 1 on green creature ETB (even tokens) is still hard to beat.
Regarding creatures that reward going wide: anything with Coven, as it's looking for at least three different creatures before it activates. Also many of the suggestions from the KRM thread: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/earthcraft-cryptolith-rite-archetype.3510/
Regarding creatures that reward going wide: anything with Coven, as it's looking for at least three different creatures before it activates. Also many of the suggestions from the KRM thread: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/earthcraft-cryptolith-rite-archetype.3510/
Yeah, I agree with LadyMapi.
Actually, any of the big Green convoke cards should do nicely.
For low power, I like Kavu Primarch (which actually costs 4), Root-Kin Ally, and Siege Wurm (which can both be cast for 4 or less if you control some creatures).
I am looking for a potential replacement for Phyrexian Reclamation. I want it to be creature recursion as well, I want it to be as good as it or at least close to it. And I want it to be something that can't be repeated forever that easily. I always liked Reclamaion and while it is at the top end of my power band, I think it's fine. But I won a game yesterday with this combination and it was really ... something.
having a 2/2 that draws you a card and scries every turn for 5 mana wasn't oppressive or anything, but a little repetetive.
having a 2/2 that draws you a card and scries every turn for 5 mana wasn't oppressive or anything, but a little repetetive.
What about
It costs 5 mana and potentially exiles the creature if you don’t have a sac outlet. And it’s not an enchantment.
Exiles so no shenanigans. That said. A combo of 3 cards, which costs 5 mana to scry one and draw one is actually okay in my book. If it happens everytime then yeah, brake it up. But maybe remove the life gain draw creature?
I guess you're right @Rusje
Thanks for the suggestions guys. But now I've come to realize the real problem was how clogged up our boards were with a bunch of 1/1 tokens on both sides. It took too long before one could get attacks in, which made this harmless and sweet synergy feel oppressive.
I think the right answer is to check if I have enough cards that can break board stalls like that. And I will start by running Fallen Angel over Phyrexian Plaguelord (my recent question from the Fight Club thread).
Thanks for the suggestions guys. But now I've come to realize the real problem was how clogged up our boards were with a bunch of 1/1 tokens on both sides. It took too long before one could get attacks in, which made this harmless and sweet synergy feel oppressive.
I think the right answer is to check if I have enough cards that can break board stalls like that. And I will start by running Fallen Angel over Phyrexian Plaguelord (my recent question from the Fight Club thread).
But it has the downside that the rules dictate that each player in the tournament has to keep their graveyard in chronological order at all points in time during the tournament. To me that’s an absolute no go no matter how interesting a card might be.What about
It costs 5 mana and potentially exiles the creature if you don’t have a sac outlet. And it’s not an enchantment.