Constructed magic would suggest there's quite a lot of decks that don't.
General "Looking for a card"-Thread
- Thread starter ravnic
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The question is also, imo: Should every color get cantrips like this? In many ways it feels like a color pie break to me. Usually greens card draw is tied to creatures or it gets those cantrips, where you can get a creature or land, sometimes enchantment, from the top X cards of your library. Abundant Harvest is the only one that can draw you a Lightning Bolt. It is the only one, that has a 100% guarantee to draw you gas. Sure, it's not Brainstorm, but for my personal taste - and I reckognize this is probably an upopular opinion - it gets too close. It feels like putting a burn spell into my blue section.
Aggro?
I like Adventurous Impulse, too. What deck is it specific to, though? Gx spells?
True. It would be more on-color to choose creature or land, but that leads to some issues with using it as a tutor. Even like "Reveal top N<5, choose a permanent" is strong and greener.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Constructructed magic, sure, but we're playing limited here (Mostly. Battlebox enjoyers?)
I am a firm beliver in yes, but I aim REAL high:
Blue of course needs no introduction, you've got a wealth of options, I run a mix of preordain and consider. I did used to run a custom black cantrip (see below) but for unrelated reasons I'm currently running a mix of Thoughtseize/Inquisition of Kozilek.
Personally, I think WotC is already muddying the color pie a bit too much. Mostly to please commander players' desire to have card draw and ramp in all colors, and have them be great at the long game. Sure, I do appreciate some of the innovations, like red's impulse draw or a third color being able to answer enchantments now, but I am also worried, that it could easily lead to a point, where the colors all feel too similar. And giving green and white better versions of Opt or Ponder is exactly that horror scenario of a future I have in mind 
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Personally, I think WotC is already muddying the color pie a bit too much. Mostly to please commander players' desire to have card draw and ramp in all colors, and have them be great at the long game. Sure, I do appreciate some of the innovations, like red's impulse draw or a third color being able to answer enchantments now, but I am also worried, that it could easily lead to a point, where the colors all feel to similar. And giving green and white better versions of Opt or Ponder is exactly that horror scenario of a future I have in mind
Couldn’t agree more!
This is the problem with Commander being their main focus now.
Commander had charm when it was an organic format and not sculpted and designed by Wizards of the Coast including the meta.
There’s no turning back now though.
Well, yes, true, but why does that distinction matter? Do aggro decks have drastically different incentive structures in limited that makes cantrips more appealing to their gameplan? Do cubes, despite the infinite variety of environments they provide, all necessarily encourage cantrips? It's not like Opt is traditionally a highly contested pick in retail limited to my knowledge, and I would imagine Abundant Harvest is quite bad in the conventional green decks in the MODO cube considering a significant portion of your nonland cards are mana producers. Do I think cantrips improve the quality of games? Yes. I would not even be too surprised if cantrips were good in every deck in my game, but in general terms I think cantrips are often replaceable at best.
I'm very sympathetic to this but ultimately think: yes, they should, and if it is a break it shouldn't be. The color pie was defined by Garfield 30+ years ago, long before Frank Karsten sat down to math out your pips in deck vs # of mana sources etc. Dr. Garfield is a genius and an incredible game designer but I think he made a mistake when he gave blue the lion's share of control over interacting with the game engine itself (drawing cards; stack interaction).
While cantrips are 'replaceable at best' in many decks (low-curving midrange ones without major synergies), that doesn't describe any of the strongest decks in my cube, all of which shave some number of lands for cantrips in order to 'see' 'more cards' per game. Seeing more cards means making more (and more interesting) decisions, which is what I want to encourage. Leaving good cantrips mostly in blue (they've never all been blue) means that the drafters who were in good seats for blue get most of the cantrips, which means they have more "xerox"-y decks, which means they see more cards and make more interesting decisions than anyone else does.
In constructed formats like Legacy, that's fine. Everyone's blue and everyone knows everyone else is blue. But in draft? I think it's more important to me to give everyone some draw smoothing than it is to adhere to a version of the colour pie where blue gets most of the fun and most of the 3-0's.
In the early days not all had to be blue. The thing is, over time blue got the best of everything. Blue was due to card draw the support color but (aside from merfolk) could not get a dent in (and even merfolk was not obnoxious like delver).
The cantrips are to avoid non-games. I think avoiding non-games is great. However, when
become very strong cards then something is off...
There are other ways to avoid non-games, e.g. Cycling.
The early colour pie was much stricter. Yes blue had most of the p9 (mistakes galore) but looking at old, but more mature sets like from ice age on then the colours were much more balanced.
This discussion is about cantrips, but what it really comes down to is draw smoothing IMO. Safra mentioned cantrips, Rusje mentioned cycling and for me, they are two sides of the same coin.
I think that the key to success is actually finding effects that each color wants and at a competitive mana value (whatever that is for your cube, though more than 2 seems suspect for this goal).
In White, maybe you have Humans, Blink and control decks, in which case these do work
In Blue, depending whether you have a spells matter theme, a discard theme or a GY theme you could opt for these
There are a few cantrips that are so above rate that you play them everywhere (Preordain, Ponder), but I think these are less interesting even though universally useful and powerful.
I won't list every color, but you can easily fit draw smoothing as part of synergy packages to really make your decks tick. And that is even excluding colorless ones (Mishra's Bauble, Chromatic Star, Ichor Wellspring, ...) which will help give every color a boost.
tl;dr: cantrips are great, but are a subset of draw smoothing which is the real issue that needs to be addressed.
I think that the key to success is actually finding effects that each color wants and at a competitive mana value (whatever that is for your cube, though more than 2 seems suspect for this goal).
In White, maybe you have Humans, Blink and control decks, in which case these do work
In Blue, depending whether you have a spells matter theme, a discard theme or a GY theme you could opt for these
There are a few cantrips that are so above rate that you play them everywhere (Preordain, Ponder), but I think these are less interesting even though universally useful and powerful.
I won't list every color, but you can easily fit draw smoothing as part of synergy packages to really make your decks tick. And that is even excluding colorless ones (Mishra's Bauble, Chromatic Star, Ichor Wellspring, ...) which will help give every color a boost.
tl;dr: cantrips are great, but are a subset of draw smoothing which is the real issue that needs to be addressed.
I really like Rosewater's insights on Cycling's return as a mechanic in his retrospective article he did on Onslaught right before Lorywn's launch (It's called 'Onslaught Machine', highly recommend you give it a read if you want the early insights and intent behind the development of Tribal Archetypes).
Towards the end of the article, he brings up cycling as such:
I think mechanics that focus on what Rosewater calls "Deck Greasing" are exactly what @Nanonox is referring to as 'Draw Smoothing'. And I agree, I think this offers colors outside of blue the benefits of cantrips, while remaining distinct. As Onslaught itself proved, Cycling triggers can be very 'in' color-pie and very powerful (Krosan Tusker is my son).
Unfortunately, for a long time the Cycling keyword was often tied to narrow mechanics that don't fare well in a 'standard' cube environment, but my hope is that in the future we will see more versatile options including the keyword (Ozolith, the Shattered Spire is a wonderful modern example).
The landcyclers in the new LoTR set are also amazing at this, but unfortunately for me, I absolutely cannot stand Universes Beyond o<o. My fingers are crossed so hard they might break that we return to Alara and get buffed dual-landcyclers ( Sanctum Plowbeast, Jhessian Zombies, etc)
Towards the end of the article, he brings up cycling as such:
I think mechanics that focus on what Rosewater calls "Deck Greasing" are exactly what @Nanonox is referring to as 'Draw Smoothing'. And I agree, I think this offers colors outside of blue the benefits of cantrips, while remaining distinct. As Onslaught itself proved, Cycling triggers can be very 'in' color-pie and very powerful (Krosan Tusker is my son).
Unfortunately, for a long time the Cycling keyword was often tied to narrow mechanics that don't fare well in a 'standard' cube environment, but my hope is that in the future we will see more versatile options including the keyword (Ozolith, the Shattered Spire is a wonderful modern example).
The landcyclers in the new LoTR set are also amazing at this, but unfortunately for me, I absolutely cannot stand Universes Beyond o<o. My fingers are crossed so hard they might break that we return to Alara and get buffed dual-landcyclers ( Sanctum Plowbeast, Jhessian Zombies, etc)
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? It just has random cycling attached to it. Not that it does anything with cycling/discarding cards.
I think my use of the term 'Cycling effects' was confusing. For this statement I simply meant: 'For a long time the Cycling keyword was tied to narrow...'
I wasn't referring to what I had previously called 'cycling triggers,' I will edit to avoid confusion
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Yes they are the same side of the coin. Thing is, not all colours should have equal access. Definitely not if one colour has more strength in a certain field than another.
So, if blue was weaker on other angles then it could have stronger cycling/cantripping/whatever. Thing is, they shit the bed with delver and so on and changed that blue was supportive to what other colours were strongest. This is especially a bad idea when that colour is already the strongest in one of the core mechanics of the game (card/time amount). Why would one need a colour as main when it plays second fiddle to anything?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I both agree with you, and also think certain things just shouldn't be cordoned off from certain colors. Cantrips are one of those things I think every color should have, at equal power level, using their own mechanics and flavor, because they let you play good games of magic.Personally, I think WotC is already muddying the color pie a bit too much. Mostly to please commander players' desire to have card draw and ramp in all colors, and have them be great at the long game. Sure, I do appreciate some of the innovations, like red's impulse draw or a third color being able to answer enchantments now, but I am also worried, that it could easily lead to a point, where the colors all feel too similar. And giving green and white better versions of Opt or Ponder is exactly that horror scenario of a future I have in mind
I'm of the opinion these things are as fundamental to a game of magic as interaction and fixing, not a special thing blue does because that's how it's always been done.
I think white deserves opt because I think every color deserves opt, the same way someone playing green should be able to do something other than concede when their opponent plays giver of runes or some other creature you need to interact with. (Also fight spells are a poor substitute, they're about as consistent a removal spell as rhystic lightning. They're not conditional if it's a genuinely bizarre circumstance your opponent doesn't have the counterplay in their deck).
Most colors can do most things, but I definitely wouldn't say that makes all colors feel samey. Act on Impulse and Concentrate (let alone jace's ingenuity) are vastly different cards, the exact same way lightning strike and go for the throat are, even if there are surface similarities.
And yeah, I vastly prefer this to the more restrictive color pie of yesteryear, where survival of the fittest also secretly had shroud because disenchant was a bad card against a deck that was 95% creatures and one enchantment that makes you lose, or where if you were playing black or red or white or green, a decent chunk of the time you just drew your cards in the wrong order and couldn't do anything about it.
?
Green goes over it with trample/go wide. Mother of runes is in my cube (twice) and it is good, but not even remotely concede worthy. No matter the colour(s) the other player is playing with.
You’re also playing with late 90’s creatures which have a significantly less impactful board presence than creatures from the mid 2000’s onwards. Mother and Giver both get way more powerful when they have better things to protect.
Better creatures are in all colours. Thing is, mom does nothing against the green beasts of these days. If your cube is such that white creatures are as strong as green then yes, but what does green do then?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
It doesn't need to be giver specifically, just any creature that you need to interact with. Grim lavamancer, Royal Assassin, Master Decoy, etc
"just win around it" is not an acceptable answer to what do I do if my opponent has this thing in play
"just win around it" is not an acceptable answer to what do I do if my opponent has this thing in play
I am confused. Suppose green has nothing against flyers, then the lavamancer is just a 2/2 flying. If you cannot play around the decoy, but you must interact with it, then we play vastly different games.
I think this is the more reasonable approach to the topic, and there are a lot of tools to combat it. Wotc has realized that interacting with creatures is a core part of the gameplay that every deck is encouraged to be able to do, and therefore has given it much wider distribution than it had during its inception. I don't really think smoothing cantrips falls into the same category, because a lot of decks just aren't interested in trading tempo for consistency, and I think instead that we (they) should find ways to provide every archetype with reasonable ways to mitigate randomness if you are of the opinion that cantrips makes for higher quality games. I think effects like kicker, evoke, and to a lesser extent adventures, help more in that regard than colorshifted ponders and adventurous impulses. They should also stop using the few names we have for split cards on draft chaff.
I would personally be very happy if wotc printed a lot more consistency-providing cantrips in other colors, but that is more so particular to my cube and its design goals in specific and not the needs of magic at large. I could believe that every deck in my cube probably wants cantrips, as my card selection tries to be deliberately hostile to the idea of "curving out", but it operates largely outside the norm. I honestly don't really see how the same can be true for your environment safra when you have decks looking to power out planeswalkers and initiative cards with rituals, mana dorks and sol lands, plus a solid handful of cards that actively punish you for cheap cantrips. I'm sure they're often good, but it seems pretty realistic to me that I'd end up with a deck where I'd ideally play none.
My playgroup is strongly against breaking singleton. I just asked them. Maybe they're ignorant...
Either way, give me your best/favorite 3 mana creature removal.
Colours? Conditional? What do you desire?
Do I need to go on?
(no not the blast, but maybe you have a blast with it).
I like:
The reason doesn’t matter though. You have to create an environment that they like. That’s the challenge of cubing of course.