Meanderings at Castle Grayskull

[Heymaker]

It’s been quiet… too quiet. Maybe it’s because I hate writing and/or because I only write when I’m both drinking and at a computer (likely the both). I’ve come to the conclusion I need some prompting or discussion to get my writing going, so this post is geared towards generating some opinions and insight from you great folks!I’ve recently had cube archetypes and “theater principles” on mind. I have all these notes and thoughts, and given the time I’ve had recently, some of them have slowly merged and morphed into topics finally worth discussing. I’m going to save you some puzzle solving and get it out -- I think the rock-paper-scissors (RPS) design metric of Aggro/Midrange/Control is a sham. It’s a blunt statement, but I feel warranted. At the very least, adhering to the RPS view as a design goal is one I think needs reconsidering.

How have you guys factored in this concept of gameplay speed into your designs? How do you think about it differently than just the RPS of aggro/midrange/control?

For context, I’ve bookmarked some forum posts that highlight the opinions I’ve come to adopt myself. Together, I think these posts back a view that midrange isn’t the boogie man it’s generally made out to be, and that a significant portion of magic happens on the outskirts of midrange without becoming degenerate, polarizing aggro/control. I have the feeling there are more lessons for cube to pull from retail limited than just its drafting texture.

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/fight-club.560/page-113#post-71543

Good discussion on the whole agro debate. I think there are many ways to balance things. My 2 cents, the faster you make agro the more polarized (roshambo'ish) your meta will wind up. If you can reliably assemble T4 goldfish agro in draft, you set that as your bar and other decks have to meet that or fail to be viable. So you either need a ton of sweeper effects for control, or specific agro hosers or lots of obtuse high end creatures and/or spells, etc. In essence, it forces you to power up the other end of the spectrum. On the opposite side, if you have T2 agro and things are slower and blunted, you have to take care about what you let control and midrange have access too. Give them Wurmcoils, et all and you are just asking for problems.

To some extent both designs force your hand. IMO, it would be a mistake to run the best agro cards in history and blunt your top end, or to run slow T2 agro and play obtuse finishers and/or super efficient removal/sweepers. These things don't mix well. That said, this format being largely singleton you can misfire on a lot of card choices in a cube list and still wind up with a very playable meta. I've run some pretty bad cubes over the years and it took a long time for people to break even the worst version. Truthfully, cube is a pretty forgiving format.

My personal objection to hard agro (T4 goldfish style agro) is how limited your options are during the game. As an opponent, you either have the answers or you don't. As the driver, you either get (or mulligan) into a fast start or you lose. And the most important decisions are being made during draft and when side boarding. For me, I'd rather have as many important decisions as possible made during a game in response to things happening. And that's why I side with RBM and others on the idea of making things a little more towards the middle. You have fast decks that want to exert pressure and you have slower decks that want to stall until the later parts of a game. My experiences lead me to believe the best version of Magic is the one where games go for a little while and there are lots of twists and turns. High decision density basically. And that version of the game IMO is less common with hard control/agro/midrange theater design.

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/fight-club.560/page-113#post-71544

ahadabans has a good take on the aggro discussion, but I want to talk about one part in particular...

ahadabans said: ↑
Good discussion on the whole agro debate. I think there are many ways to balance things. My 2 cents, the faster you make agro the more polarized (roshambo'ish) your meta will wind up. If you can reliably assemble T4 goldfish agro in draft, you set that as your bar and other decks have to meet that or fail to be viable. So you either need a ton of sweeper effects for control, or specific agro hosers or lots of obtuse high end creatures and/or spells, etc. In essence, it forces you to power up the other end of the spectrum.



This is a strong point; in traditional cube design, you build towards the "constructed archetype theaters" of aggro, midrange, control, and combo. You're then put in the position to balance 4 deck styles against each other, while also not disrupting the mythical understanding of a "rock-paper-scissors" relationship between them all, where each one has clear edges on another and clear shortcomings to another, which are supposed to generate the tension, the "lots of twists and turns" people want out of Magic. It easily becomes an arms race that is premised on a strength vs weakness evaluation of each theater that you are supposed to both shore up (so aggro stands a chance vs control) while also not disrupting (so control doesn't auto-lose to aggro); it's a paradoxical design goal that defeats itself in its implementation, but as ahadabans has said frequently, even a really lousy cube can still be fun, so it's not always clear to the designer why their design goals are working against them.

But when you look at these decks from a different angle, one of speed rather than strategy, you get a sort of fast, medium, slow, and (for lack of a better combo analog) "wildcard" relationship. This is how we get "Dragon formats" (centered on slower gameplay), which is a style of cube we all recognize as an alternative to a "standard" cube. The proposition I'm making is merely an elaboration on that: if we orient our cube such that all decks are interested in interacting across the same sort of speed relationship (here, a "medium" setting), we can ditch the traditional 4 theaters and instead balance 10 (or more, or less) deck archetypes that play out in different ways but keep the same "rhythm". If we do this, the competitiveness of each pair is more easily manipulated, as we are no longer attacking some nebulous 4-way split in the cube, but instead each guild pair we choose to support and the ways we support it.

We then wind up with differently-themed decks that can play towards and against different objectives, which are free of the time constraints normally placed on each "theater" of deck. A good "aggressive" deck is then not evaluated by whether it can get there by T5; it can still win later and it has planned for this outcome, as it does not have to go all-in to get under the other deck types. Similarly, a ramp deck doesn't need all of its mana right away, but instead is looking to build towards a point in the game where the mana superiority can be translated into an overwhelming amount of pressure. I could go on, but I won't (

); my point is, if we limit the speed of our format and trend it towards one center point that everyone can pivot around, we allow for a diversity of strategies to emerge, and increase our ability to manipulate a list by addressing weak spots or strong spots in different color pairs, which in turn gives us more games of magic with "lots of twists and turns".

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/ixlan-spoiler.1807/page-6#post-70707

Salmo2 said: ↑
I have the exact opposite thought on the matter. I want these aggressive decks to exist, since if you can't put pressure on control it becomes the dominant format, and that requires all those cards you mention in the first sentence. (except jungle lions as green aggro actually sucks lol.) I also find it fun to play these aggressive, low-curve decks. In turn having an aggressive strategy available helps midrange out considerably, since they aren't just always in mirrors or losing to control. The three theatres work really well, in my experience.


I think this is the single biggest misconception the mainstream cube community has perpetrated upon itself. We all know where it originates from too (cough... MTGS... cough).

2 power 1 drop aggro is not required to balanced a meta. Period. It's certainly one way to do it. It's maybe the easiest way especially in a very high powered list. But there are so many dials you can turn to create balance. You aren't limited to the roshambo three theater thing. Look at Grillo's lists if you want to see how far away from traditional three theater balance you can go. Even in more powerful lists, just shave a little off the top end and you'll have miles of design space to work with.

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/ixlan-spoiler.1807/page-6#post-70711

Most powered cubes are essentially midrangy formats with a red hyper-aggro component tacked on (usually at the cost of warping the red section), to create the illusion of Roshambo "balance."

Draft formats naturally trend towards midrange, with even the power max formats being more comfortable as midrange-centric formats that occastionally lean towards pressure-control or aggressive midrange. The hyper aggressive decks (RDW) that are allowed to exist due to critical mass, exist asymmetrically compared to what the rest of what the cube is doing, and there are huge issues that design creates: cube space issues, warped color sections/curves, drafting traps when multiple people go in on the deck etc. Than there is a whole conversation as to whether supporting decks to function as "fun police" on the people trying to explore the cube/have involved interactive matches contributes or subtracts from net fun.

You can do it, but there is a cost associated with it, and that cost should be discussed.

Honestly, I know everyone has been working on the exact same cube for about a decade now, so there is a huge cultural investment being made by what is already a niche community, but these conversations are really weird. Its like listening to crazy people talking about how their corvette is mechanical perfection, but they don't know how the engine works, won't look at a manual, and will only grudgingly glance at another (maybe better!) car. The cube ideology is real, and thats why MTGS isn't really loved around here. Its just always the same boring stifling conformity over, and over, and over again, leading to the same deadend design.

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/fight-club.560/page-42#post-40548

I guess I just don't understand why 6 drops are required to be more than a 5/5 flyer with upside. I know many have been printed and will continue to be printed. If you just look at this from a power perspective, I get the position people are taking. I just don't see why super finishers make the game better. Assuming you didn't completely sit around doing nothing for the first 5 turns, if you got to this point in the game as the control player you should have stabilized already especially against an aggressive deck that blew their wad on Hellrider. You probably wrathed. You probably drew some cards and filtered to some answers. You probably got some two for one action going so you are ahead on cards (card quality if nothing else). Assuming you aren't at 2 life, at this point drop your finisher and win. And pretty much anything will do honestly. Now, if you are staring down a huge board position against you because your opponent's deck is better than yours or you just have a shit tuned control deck, I fail to see why your finisher (one fucking card) should fix that problem for you in one fail swoop just because you suddenly have 6 mana.

I don't want to go around in circles on this (and I'm repeating myself so the value add in this post is already questionable I apologize). But the way I see it, if you have super oppressive finishers that do multiple things (stabilize, play offense and defense simultaneously, etc), all you are accomplishing is moving the game to a more polarized state. By that I mean, you suddenly REQUIRE your aggressive decks to win the game before turn 5/6 or they essentially auto lose the game. Why is this a desirable thing? As far as I'm concerned, the more homogenized I can make the whole stupid ass aggro - midrange - control "theater" nonsense the better.

http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/debate-topics.533/page-2#post-18068
[QUOTE]Magic IMO at its core is a much simpler game that than. Each game really boils down to one guy being the beat down and one guy playing the role of the control player. And it doesn't honestly matter what deck you built when you went into the game either. At the end of the day, one guy has the better CA engine and/or better card quality. The longer the game goes, the better that guys odds become. He should be the control player if he wants to win. And following that, the other guy really has to use tempo to win. He has to pay the beat down. And if he made a super slow ass control deck with zero early game or he tries to slow play just because, he will get 3-0'd.

It really isn't more complicated than that. The only variance comes from mana flood/screw, play mistakes and the occasional silver bullet scenario (protection guy you simply can't answer, etc.). That's really it. That's Magic in a nutshell.

And this is why I want to make my cube play more in the middle of the two extremes (super fast aggro and CA-mania control being those extremes which lead to NID game outcomes for many matchup scenarios - these ruin the game IMO).[/QUOTE]

There’s so much to unpack here and more that I want to talk about, but this is probably too much for one post already. I’m hoping this will jumpstart a conversation that melds into some of those other areas in due time.

P.S. If you guys have any other posts bookmarked that follow along similar discussion lines, I’d LOVE to read ‘em!

EDIT: I'm going to stop formatting this post in fear of tearing the very fabric of our universe with this rich text editor. I'm pretty sure I just heard an alternate universe version of myself talking about a new Tupac album...

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

You've got some big questions here, which is probably why your response is pretty stagnant.

I'm not sure I'm going to say much more than what you've quoted already. The first dynamic is about power level of your cube. The higher your power level, the faster your aggro needs to be to be able to police the power.

If you have a lower power level, then you have more breathing room and potential design space. I still think that decisions about what you want aggro to do in your cube should be one of the foremost design principles in your cube. It's pretty instrumental to the decisions you make about power level and control tools like removal, sweepers and lifegain.

So you mention 'gameplay speed', and that's what I think about when I think about aggro. We're mostly all familiar with the turn 4 aggro kill concept, but I prefer to think about aggro as the aggressive deck that puts pressure on the opponent. (And this refers to the above comments about somebody is always the beatdown). As a cube designer I guess your job is to make sure that the battle between beatdown and 'control' player is one that is interactive, fun and balanced (whatever that means to you and your players).

I want a cube that maximises fun, and minimises non-interactive games. That means lots of ways that reduce mana screw and mana flood and gives you options and the opportunity to execute your game plan. When it comes to aggro I want something that starts putting on the pressure early (turn two really), and then presents threats that are hard to block, and has reach that is interesting from a deck building or execution perspective.

I have to say that getting this right is one of the hardest things to do, which is perhaps one of the reasons why the turn four aggro blitz is a popular approach.

Traditional aggro requires a lot of cube space, which can make for parasitic, non-interesting picks. The more your aggro cards can bleed into and be midrange cards (and potentially even control or combo cards) I think this makes your cube 'better'.

Its good to see you pick out some of the jewels from the forum, there's a lot of good stuff there, but a lot of it is hidden away. Any of the threats which have 'aggro' in them are generally a good read. The one about how to make it more interesting is great, and the ones about aggro combo too.

I don't think you can talk about gameplay speed as a concept without talking about archetypes / good stuff deck strategy scale as well. All these concepts are tricky, inter-related with interdependencies, which goes back to why this whole conversation is difficult to have. (And a lot of it is opinion and personal preference, none of which is necessary wrong (as long as people are enjoying themselves)).

 

[Heymaker]

Just posting a few decks from some recent playtesting. I had some fun ideations of cube design that has been driven primarily by deckbuilding and gameplay. I'll upload a few more decks tomorrow to talk about archetypes, gameplay patterns, and how I've been using this "play design" approach to drive card choice in my next cube design. I've been walking back from some lower power design approaches (for various realizations/learnings) so kind of keen of seeing how things look as I "peel back the band-aid".

I suppose in short, I've simply been taking themes like +1/+1 counters and creating a deck with an assortment of cards to playtest against others. After playing a few games, I start finding the card combinations that seem most interesting to build around or card interactions that might open up gameplay patterns if fleshed out further. Over time, I'm finding cards that I want to steal between decks which in my eyes is a good sign for the viability of the competing archetypes coexisting in the cube together. In the case of building off of interesting interactions, I found Mutate supplemented a lot of existing lines in the counters archetype, which intersect with those lines to the same effect (but often in different ways) that signs do (for context on the signs and lines terminology: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/decks-not-cards-synergy-and-power-design.1741/page-2#post-68143).

There's also some distinctions worth making with respect to how we talk about themes and archetypes (https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/color-pair-draft-archetypes.1935/#post-77352). Within the +1/+1 counters archetype, the signs and lines I've been working with seem to diverge between (1) tokens and maximizing the number of counters you place with a single card (e.g.Ridgescale Tusker or Good-Fortune Unicorn), and (2) cards that feed off having many counters put on them (e.g. Walking Ballista or Grakmaw, Skyclave Ravager). It's not to say that you wouldn't possibly include both directions in your cube selection (or play with other potential directions) -- just keep in mind how the two archetypes might draw from overlapping, but possibly separate pools of lines. In fact, I've learned this lesson including Madness cards in past versions of my cube, not keeping in mind that players often draft all the discard outlets and all the Madness cards they can, only to find out that they have an aggressive R/B Madness deck playing Murderous Compulsion. Perhaps it's a fine card to still include if you support faster and slower Madness decks, but I wasn't painfully clear with myself as to what flavors of Madness I was pushing, and to what extent Murderous Compulsion was enabling that design. Food for thought.

Abzan Counters

Simic Self-Mill

Rakdos Sacrifice

Bant Artifact Control

 

[Heymaker]

Just wanted to add some new decks I've been playtesting with, as a continuation of the project from my last post. Hoping to soon post some notes on playtesting so far and what directions this is taking the whole cube redesign. Been really digging what NEO has opened up for archetypes with so many impressive commons and uncommons.

Boros Artifact Aggro

U/B Saboteur Tempo

U/B Zombie Discard