General Making broken cards fair

[Erik Twice]

I believe there's a very strong correlation between creativity in card design and power. Better, more creative cards tend to push against the boundaries of the game, resulting in an inherent amount of power. The result is that some of the more fun, interesting cards in the game are downright broken.

But in Cube we can tweak the environment to minimize or increase the power of certain cards. So I was wondering, what "broken" cards do you run in your cube and what steps, if any, have you taken to make them fair?

For example, I recently re-introduced Tinker on my cube. Why? Because it's an interesting card when you have mostly fair targets. This is the top I run:



While I'm still not sure about Sphinx, I'm pretty sure there's nothing broken about Tinker into Mindlsaver or Lotus in my cube. It's good, but not game-breaking.

I also suspect you can tweak your cube to make these cards not completely oppresive:



Sadly, some cards are much more difficult to make fair. It's very difficult for Recurring Nightmare not to be the best card in its environment, for example.



One might wonder, and rightly, why I insist so much on running these broken cards. Well, the reason is that most of this cards are both very interesting and iconic. They have defined the history of the game more than the fair cards ever had.

What about you? What broken cards do you run and what have you done to adjust them to your cube's environment and power level?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Nothing, this card is awesome, even if it's very powerful. I've found this to be a far more flexible and interesting crutch for aggro strategies than Sulfuric Vortex.

I think this is by far the most contentious card in my cube, but I could be wrong...

 

[Peter LaCara]

I also suspect you can tweak your cube to make these cards not completely oppresive:

 

[Aston]

I've run Fastbond for ages and a lot of drafts it doesn't even make someone's deck. When it's good it's very good, but it does come with some fairly severe deckbuilding requirements.

That said I have recently been thinking I should down- or side-grade to Exploration just to rule out that 5% chance of a completely broken deck.

 

[Erik Twice]

Fastbond is surprisingly questionable because every card it accelerates you into is a spell you don't have and Exploration is not that worse off. I know Wadell and Inscho run it and Wadell runs like 3 Strip Mines and Crucible which is very far fromt he norm. My only issue with it is that it an fetch lands at 2 life each and you have to curate some dumb synergies (Like Titania)

Sneak Attack and Bribery are only as good as your biggest creatures. You could run either in your cube and they would be very questionable. In fact, I'm thinking of cutting the former because I don't have enough targets for it.

Necropotence and Oppossition are more questionable. That said, Wadell also runs the later and it didn't have that much splash on Extended even though you could easily ramp into it with Birds or Elves so it isn't absurd.

 

[Aston]

Opposition creates miserable games, even if it's not too good.

 

[sigh]

yeah sometimes its not about the actual "power". Does a particular card help make the experience fun?

 

[Peter LaCara]

yeah sometimes its not about the actual "power". Does a particular card help make the experience fun?

Yeah, my initial response was a little glib, but these cards have a reputation for a reason. Like, if your cube is super aggro focused, Bribery isn't going to be that OP, but like, at what cost? Haha, look at you for being dumb enough to put a good creature in your deck. It only takes playing with Necropotence once to understand that there is no universe where that card is fair.

The only one of these whose fun factor might outweigh the bullshit factor is Sneak Attack. And even then, if all you're throwing at them is a Pelakka Wurm or Borborygmos, the game is still basically over after that.

 

[Brad]

I think Tinker is only ok because that's the nature of tutors. You could run Demonic Tutor as well and it wouldn't be an issue if you're a low power, non combo cube. What are you going to get? Is that card still good at +2 cmc? Probably not, really.

You could probably make most cards fair, but it's at the cost of your environment. Just depends how big that cost is and how badly you want to have the card around. For most of these listed, it's certainly not worth it.

Bribery and Sneak Attack are totally fine, for example. As long as your format doesn't run any creatures over, say, 6cmc. But that doesn't seem at all worth it.

 

[dbs]

I think Tinker is only ok because that's the nature of tutors. You could run Demonic Tutor as well and it wouldn't be an issue if you're a low power, non combo cube. What are you going to get? Is that card still good at +2 cmc? Probably not, really.

There's some good 2017 Riptide content on this:

I would say they are too very different cheat cards. Trash/Treasure is for when you want to move fair reanimation out of black, and create a more conditioned version of it in red. Its basically a bad version of an already fair black strategy, that you run in some formats for a variety of reasons, all connected with wanting to tone 4-5cc black reanimation down.

Tinker feels much more like an artifact ramp spell to me, at least as far as designing for it in cube. The motivation for it, from my experience, has always been that there is some mana number that is hard to hit, connected to an impactful artifact that has the potential to win the game, and the question becomes how do we get that artifact in play.

Thats particularly relevent with pentavus and triskelavus, which are both very strong cards in that format, but you want to be able to unload the buses. Tinker lets you get one in play, but still have a few mana open to create 1/1 tokens with in response to removal. In solves a real, fair problem, for a fair deck.

I think thats part of the difference though. In these discussions before, no one really knew why they were running tinker, other than that it was a fun/iconic/cool card. Here, there is an actual deck, and its solving a problem for that deck. In the previous discussions, the conceptual framework for what and why a deck would want tinker as a tool to enable its specific gameplan was always skipped over, and instead tinker itself was supposed to be the build around, and the focus of the deck. And that made conversation hard, since there was never any real context or broader framework to help narrow down the range of possibilities to something workable.

Its easier to have this discussion in this particular cube, because ramp is much more broadly available (as are small artifacts), so the general plan of getting these big artifacts in play is much more feasible, and tinker becomes a powerful accelerent within an already valid framework.

and in particular there was some very relevant sharpening on this particular line of thought that occurred shortly after:

...

1. Tinker isn't a fair card in itself, while transmute is much closer fair card, which is in itself a really interesting concept to think about for this type of affect.
2. Transmute is also interesting in the directionality that it provides. You're going to run it with artifact mana ramp to pay the difference off of the sacrifice, so you immediatly have the sketch of at least part of a format. One where you're going to be using artifact ramp, and probably low on cantrip effects, to create an incentive to ramp->tutor, rather than cantrip for the pieces and ramp.

Transmute is much clearer in its identity as a mana ramp and tutor effect, than a card intended to just do broken things with. It becomes much closer to being catagorized as something like birthing pod, than something like tinker.

What you would probably want to run would be



Which means that you can start thinking in terms of dividing cheat cards out into two catagories, instead of just dumping them all into the unfair catagory, and having to warp a formats top end to suit it.

So there are at least two fair formats out there, one in which we focus on the busted cheat cards but neuter the top end, and one where we're running things like reshapes/transmutes and doomed necromancers.

This definitely feels like central-bouncelandian-wisdom: run Reshape and Doomed Necromancer instead of Tinker and Sneak Attack and you don't have to worry about policing the rest of the format in the same way, but people still get to play a different form of powerful magic. This whole discussion on "neutering the top end" also featured a Demonic Tutor component:

Some data: I'm starting to really come around on this card:



It seems important to me to have a small number of ubiquitous duplicate spells, and thats really what a tutor is in cube: pay 2 mana, discard a card, get a second copy of X spell.

Obviously, its an extremely powerful effect in a singleton format, for the same reasons that reanimation effects are--getting extra shots at your best cards in a singleton based format is really powerful. Too much of these effects can lead to fairely lopsided matchups, with one deck executing a powerful gameplan at a level of consistancy thats difficult to beat.

However, having an effect like this also really opens up a cube format, since it allows players to go deeper on individual cards, opening up an entire family of fringe combo decks that otherwise would lack the consistancy to exist otherwise. I'm finding this is a broader group of decks the more I play the cube.

I've tried a number of the higher CC or conditional varients, and they function very differently than Demonic Tutor. The higher CC cards often represent an awkward sequencing choice and rapidly become difficult or impossible to play (adding 2 extra generic mana to a spell cost is much more doable than 5), while the conditional tutors (excepting perhaps vampiric) go to an entirely different need altogether, being archetype players that dictate future or past pics, rather than functioning as a flexible card that works as a duplicate pick to shore up a deck's consistancy deficiencies.

To bring out a lot of a format's most exciting decks, I think something like this is necessary, and is the reason to cube d. tutor.

but at least in Penny-Pincher this experiment failed:

After toying around with demonic tutor, 10/10 want to run a different tutor in its place, just because its picked too highly, so the deck that needs it for redundency never gets it.

...

This actually mirrors my experience. You would think in a combo cube, DT might allow a niche combo to become more viable because you could go get one key piece. But so often, I see DT in a Rock deck where 99% of the time it fetches Titania and Titania kills them.

 

[Brad]

I nearly went into a discussion about how Tinker and DT can be fair, yet deceiving. If your player is experienced with what Tinker typically does, they're going to slam it first pick and probably end up a little disappointed when they get a Gilded Lotus instead of a Blightsteel or whatever the powermax crew does with it.

I think DT in particular is better in a really flat power band so that it functions as a toolbox rather than "where's my best card?" That said, I think it's like $50 for a card that's going to be mildly useful most of the time and potentially annoying on occasion is probably not a great deal.

Along the tutoring lines, I really like Green Sun's Zenith. It's almost always worth 1 more mana to have the toolbox option.

Booster Tutor is also a riot. It'll almost always find you something that's at least decent and it's entertaining as hell. It also can help with the filtering issue I've been complainng about recently, due to its ability to find a land (often off-color, unless you're the black cube) if needed.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Demonic Tutor is almost always a fair card with my drafters because the best thing they ever seem to want to grab is Cemetery Reaper.

I love having a younger playgroup .

 

[Brad]

Cemetery Reaper

I don't own this currently, but I'm certain he's a big deal in the black cube and I don't blame them.

 

[Erik Twice]

I like Vampiric Tutor much more as a support than Demomic Tutor. Demonic just adds two mana to the cost of casting a spell, which is not very interesting nor fun. Having to wait a turn and losing card advantage is more how I like it. It's still very strong but it's a bit less dumb.

Regarding Tinker, I added it recently to support a general Artifacts archetype which ranges from synergy-good stuff to artifact ramp. Here's an example decklist:

UR Artifacts Midrange from CubeTutor.com

Here's a non-blue version of the deck:

BR Artifacts from CubeTutor.com

In my experience these are fun, interesting decks. They are a bit inconsistent, but prioritizing filtering and draw should help quite a bit.

 

[Dom Harvey]

I benched this card long ago because it ends games very quickly if you have any board presence at all - its true power is only masked to some degree by most Cubes running few blue creatures (so this becomes the best UG card in practice). A recent Twitter thread asked what cards/archetypes people most enjoy drafting (to a general audience) and Opposition was mentioned over and over again so that made me reconsider. It's an iconic card that takes blue in a different direction and offers a strong incentive to maximize it. What have your experiences with it been?

 

[sigh]

Is this a case of like... it's fun to draft and build a deck around, but you aren't asking the question to people not drafting the card (AKA facing it during play)? That's pretty much my/my groups experience with it. Really cool card to base a deck around. Absolutely anti-climactic and miserable way to lose a game from the other side of the table.

 

[inscho]

I love Opposition, but I unfortunately don't think it has much of a place in any but the highest powered cubes or combo cubes. It really needs to be in a fast-paced arms race environment

Tapping lands during an upkeep is just hard to interact with and demands a lot of your acceleration and removal suites.

 

[shamizy]

Opposition is fun for the player using it proactively and getting to draft around it, miserable if you're on the other side. It becomes more fair the higher powered the environment is due to swing-y haymakers and strategies being able to flip games, but that's also just not good gameplay. I don't think there's a way to make Opposition work in cube if your goal is to promote a fun and engaging gameplay experience. It's pretty much the antithesis.

 

[Brad]

I played with it once and found it very unsatisfying to win by so much and in such an unfun way. I don't know who would like to play with or against the card. The card came out of my deck before the next game.

 

[Velrun]

I played with it once and found it very unsatisfying to win by so much and in such an unfun way. I don't know who would like to play with or against the card. The card came out of my deck before the next game.

And this year’s Fair Play Award goes to .. long pause .. MISTER BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD THE BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

 

[Brad]

And this year’s Fair Play Award goes to .. long pause .. MISTER BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD THE BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

I mean... I'M not black.

 

[Velrun]

I mean... I'M not black.

I know. I don’t care about races. But I do care about Magic colors! And in that regard you are the most black cube owner I have seen

 

[Erik Twice]

I benched this card long ago because it ends games very quickly if you have any board presence at all - its true power is only masked to some degree by most Cubes running few blue creatures (so this becomes the best UG card in practice). A recent Twitter thread asked what cards/archetypes people most enjoy drafting (to a general audience) and Opposition was mentioned over and over again so that made me reconsider. It's an iconic card that takes blue in a different direction and offers a strong incentive to maximize it. What have your experiences with it been?

The thing with Oppossition is that it's fun to draft and it creates a viable, interesting archetype in a guild that lacks it. You can also include several colours, include more creatures or more disruption or combine it with other decks. I think that's the appeal of the card.

But it's just busted. It will come down fast and prevent your opponent from ever doing something meaningful again. It wins you the game at the cost of running some creatures and 2UU. And unlike other broken cards, it's difficult to build a cube in which it's not broken.

For me the biggest loss is that Glare of Subdual has a much poorer theme. I love the original art on Oppossition and the concept is great. But it's broken. I think Wadell can get away with it because he runs an extremely low curve, a very high power level and half a dozen Wastelands. For the rest of us, I don't think there's a lot of hope for the card.

---

You can downgrade Oppossition to Equilibrium, which fills a similar slot but doesn't prevent your opponent from playing:



We are still talking about a very strong card. In the right deck, it might bounce your opponent's board several times but at least they have their mana and it doesn't affect all decks equally. I think one might build a cube in which this card is not oppressive nor unfun, though it looks difficult.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I tried Glare of Subdual in my cube once, and it was still miserable. I have fond memories of my Squirrel Opposition deck (featuring Static Orb), but I don't like its effect on lower power cubes.

 

[Erik Twice]

I wrote this thread a year ago, befoer I knew too much about cubing. Here's what I've found about broken cards:



These are all easy to fit into a cube at diverse power levels by being careful about your top end. It can be a bit annoying to make cuts or prevent game-winning ETB effects being cheated by Sneak Attack, but I think it's easily done, just requires discipline. Bribery isn't a very interesting card, though



These are very high-power cards that nontheless are not oppressive in the right environment. I ended up cuting them because I found other archetypes and other, weaker cards to be more interesting. For example, I could have tweaked my cube to prevent Oath of Druids from giving out free wraths every turn but I like Crater Hellion more than I do the Oath. I truly think the issue with these cards is that they are potential trouble for little gain.



I don't think it's possible to prevent these cards from being oppressive or the best in the whole cube. They are versatile, extremely strong and can carry a game on their own. Most of these have better balanced, more interesting variants like Diabolic Servitude. I sometimes think "look, they aren't so bad" but I think they are a step beyond the usual power-players.



These are surprisingly fair cards that may not even have a role in most cubes.



These are pretty difficult to make work and their power level is high enough that doing so might not be desirable.



These are just dumb.