General [Lucky Paper] When Trivia Beats Strategy

[landofMordor]

Complexity is what gives cube its strategic depth... unless we're talking about complex rules trivia. All my homies hate rules trivia.

https://luckypaper.co/articles/when-trivia-beats-strategy/

 

[Mown]

I think being able to leverage the less immediately apparent parts of the game to do cool plays is pretty fun. There are certainly limits, and I wouldn't want Sharuum + Sculpting Steel to be a combo deck in my cube, but I kind of find the Fiend Hunter wording to be more of a feature than a bug. You only get bamboozled by it because you mentally shortcut the card's effect, but mechanically it's quite basic and teaches good fundamental rules understanding.

How many instants does a player have to memorize before they are able to counterplay into open mana?

Somewhere in the 130-150 range I think if wotc weren't so sheepish about printing sufficiently appealing ones.
I don't really feel like this belongs here. Sure, having to play around instants increases the cognitive load of things you need to consider, but that's also true of sweepers, discard spells, haste creatures, sorcery speed creature interaction, potential combo enablers, and relative to your own answers, the threats your opponents can use. What is a game of magic if not weighing your options in the face of uncertainty. Instants just make the consequence immediately apparent. Besides, they are the coolest part of magic.

How many combos are more obvious on Wikipedia than they are mid-draft? Those are candidates to cut or nerf.

I don't know entirely what this means, and as mentioned I wouldn't recommend having combos that inherently require a deep rules understanding to pull off, but if you have subtle interactions that you might not realize until you're faced with it in a game I think that makes the prospect of drafting more times a lot more appealing. As long as you can reasonably navigate a draft and be opinionated about your picks I don't think your format suffers from having something like Yorion + Animate Dead as a potential combo. Setting aside that Animate Dead in itself is a bit of a complexity nightmare, and I am consciously playing it and LED in spite of it. I have a "complicated" tag I use on cubecobra (when I remember) to try and be conscious of cards I expect to cause rules questions or just take a really long time to read and parse, and on that note, I would like to nominate Read Ahead as one of the all time worst cube mechanics wrt this topic.

Somewhat related, but I went through the effort to remove any mentions of planeswalkers (that I found) in the text of my cards, because my environment doesn't feature them, plus some other things I considered noise like partner text, and a part of me wonders if I'm doing my players a disservice by potentially duping them into thinking the real cards do something else than what they actually do.

 

[Seeker]

on that note, I would like to nominate Read Ahead as one of the all time worst cube mechanics wrt this topic.

I disagree with this, not because it's not a complicated mechanic (it is) but because the general idea of "this is a story and you can Read Ahead at the start of it" is surprisingly intuitive. There's not that many mechanics where the flavor does enough lifting to get complimented by me like that - flying is the all-timer, because nobody even think of it as complicated to the point where you'll look at art and be like "yeah, that thing flies" - and it really does help the mental load a lot.

 

[Ecophagy]

Great article! I think Magic is so complex a game that it would be hard (i.e. very intentional) to sand off all the weird edges, but definitely agree with the premise that avoiding complex/one-off abilities like Regenerate or Protection is a good idea, and that you should think carefully about your audience before using foreign/full art/non-oracle versions of cards (as sweet as they might be!).

It's all part of managing the complexity budget, but taking into account the cube as a whole experience, not just how many words are on cards.

 

[Mown]

I disagree with this, not because it's not a complicated mechanic (it is) but because the general idea of "this is a story and you can Read Ahead at the start of it" is surprisingly intuitive. There's not that many mechanics where the flavor does enough lifting to get complimented by me like that - flying is the all-timer, because nobody even think of it as complicated to the point where you'll look at art and be like "yeah, that thing flies" - and it really does help the mental load a lot.

I don't dislike the actual mechanic, just how it's impossible to tell that a saga has the mechanic unless you specifically read the saga reminder text for some reason. It needs way better visual cues.

 

[Nemo]

Good read.

Damage spells with "damage to any target" wording are exactly what I look for. Why is that confusing?

 

[landofMordor]

Good read.

Damage spells with "damage to any target" wording are exactly what I look for. Why is that confusing?

It’s the pre-errata (“to target creature or player”) that can be confusing. That erratum was six years ago and many of my group’s drafters are younger in Magic than that, lol

 

[landofMordor]

I think being able to leverage the less immediately apparent parts of the game to do cool plays is pretty fun. There are certainly limits, and I wouldn't want Sharuum + Sculpting Steel to be a combo deck in my cube, but I kind of find the Fiend Hunter wording to be more of a feature than a bug. You only get bamboozled by it because you mentally shortcut the card's effect, but mechanically it's quite basic and teaches good fundamental rules understanding.

Somewhere in the 130-150 range I think if wotc weren't so sheepish about printing sufficiently appealing ones.
I don't really feel like this belongs here. Sure, having to play around instants increases the cognitive load of things you need to consider, but that's also true of sweepers, discard spells, haste creatures, sorcery speed creature interaction, potential combo enablers, and relative to your own answers, the threats your opponents can use. What is a game of magic if not weighing your options in the face of uncertainty. Instants just make the consequence immediately apparent. Besides, they are the coolest part of magic.

I don't know entirely what this means, and as mentioned I wouldn't recommend having combos that inherently require a deep rules understanding to pull off, but if you have subtle interactions that you might not realize until you're faced with it in a game I think that makes the prospect of drafting more times a lot more appealing. As long as you can reasonably navigate a draft and be opinionated about your picks I don't think your format suffers from having something like Yorion + Animate Dead as a potential combo. Setting aside that Animate Dead in itself is a bit of a complexity nightmare, and I am consciously playing it and LED in spite of it. I have a "complicated" tag I use on cubecobra (when I remember) to try and be conscious of cards I expect to cause rules questions or just take a really long time to read and parse, and on that note, I would like to nominate Read Ahead as one of the all time worst cube mechanics wrt this topic.

Somewhat related, but I went through the effort to remove any mentions of planeswalkers (that I found) in the text of my cards, because my environment doesn't feature them, plus some other things I considered noise like partner text, and a part of me wonders if I'm doing my players a disservice by potentially duping them into thinking the real cards do something else than what they actually do.

Totally fine to disagree with my specific examples, as it’s group-dependent. If your cube is “a retirement home for former spikes,” as somebody on Discord put it, then maybe the things they find complex rules-wise aren’t stack shenanigans, but rather The Initiative’s lack of reminder text (what’s Goad do again?).

what I hope my examples do is illustrate the *stakes* of rules trivia: they can be the difference between an discouraging loss and a fun one; they can cause friction between your players; and they just don’t add very much depth relative to the confusion they cause.

 

[Phone]

Somewhat related, but I went through the effort to remove any mentions of planeswalkers (that I found) in the text of my cards, because my environment doesn't feature them, plus some other things I considered noise like partner text, and a part of me wonders if I'm doing my players a disservice by potentially duping them into thinking the real cards do something else than what they actually do.

Since my whole cube is proxied, I've done this too. I removed any trinket text, partners, etc. I have similar concerns but at the same time, it feels like WOTC is less concerned than we are. Like so many text erratas on cards have happened over the years and I recently saw a reddit post about a Secret Lair drop which released un-errata'd versions of previosly errat'd cards. So I don't lose any sleep over it, honestly.

 

[Seeker]

definitely agree with the premise that avoiding complex/one-off abilities like Regenerate or Protection is a good idea

Post your favorite card that you're mad about one too many abilities on
Mine is Tourach, Dread Cantor cause about once a year I am like oh, that exists, I should try it, go to add it, then see the "Protection from white" and go "no, fuck it" (or Sword of Fire and Ice but at least I know what I'm getting into if I think about that one)

If your cube is “a retirement home for former spikes,” as somebody on Discord put it

...do we need a subtitle for this entire site?

 

[ravnic]

Background and Partner ...



I decided to try Erinis now and I'll probably do an alter where I draw some rocks or stuff covering the unnecessary clause at the bottom. Still annoying that I am forced to.

 

[Schafkurai]

Post your favorite card that you're mad about one too many abilities on

It's not in the same spirit as the abilities you mentioned are but there are quite a few cool cards that would be perfect for my cube with one ability less (I think this is also part of the commander syndrome of enabler and payoff on the same card).

The card I think most often about in this regard is:


I would love any combination of two abilities in this card:
Karnstruct + mana generation
Karnstruct + card advantage
Mama generation + card advantage

Though I do like the Karnstruct the best.

 

[Aston]

(or Sword of Fire and Ice but at least I know what I'm getting into if I think about that one)

My solution: