Min/Max Midrange Cube Experiment
- Thread starter Grillo_Parlante
- Start date
How many lands does each deck want? How many will give you a robust mana base per Karsten's (or another's) definition? If you have a UG deck, and it favors G such that it wants to be able to consistently stick Strangleroot Geist on T2, but also does want to stick serum visions on T1, then we need 14 G sources, and 10 U sources, per Karsten. See my graphic below:
That's 7 overlapping land slots. DOing a little math:
That's a little high (and higher that Grillo's mark), so you can fiddle with the number like that to arrive a platonic ideal for your environment. This 15.6% must also fight against the cube's needs for non-land slots to arrive at the format goals. There's probably no ideal, truthfully speaking. I currently run 54 fixers, so backing out a little
I ended up at a slightly lower overall fixing count per deck, and it's worked decently for my cube so far. I do prescribe to be in that vocal minority, and I'm also trying to shape my format to have incidental fixing and card advantage to the point where slightly fewer lands still works great.
EDIT: I also want to point out that the 50 fixing lands currently in the cube is closer to 14%, not 13. It's: 50/360 = 13.9%.
That's 7 overlapping land slots. DOing a little math:
Code:
7 x 8 = 56
56 / 360 = 15.6%
Code:
54 / 405 = 13.3%
54 / 9 = 6EDIT: I also want to point out that the 50 fixing lands currently in the cube is closer to 14%, not 13. It's: 50/360 = 13.9%.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Thank you, that was really awesome.
The penny cube is 11% colored fixing from lands and is fine, but that format is also designed for slower starts and gets an additional 6 fixers from its eggs. I also can't help but feel that bouncelands are important to the analysis, since players are running smaller mana bases on average. It would be funny if this was another hidden benefit to those cards' design.
This format started out shooting for 11% fixing, which very quickly was a problem, and we've had to steadily increase both the density and power level of the fixing. Like sigh noted (apparently I was rounding down) it would be more accurate to put this format at 14% fixing, which seems pretty significant to me. It still doesn't feel like the mana is consistent enough to enable CC cards on curve, but perhaps thats just bias on my part?
The penny cube is 11% colored fixing from lands and is fine, but that format is also designed for slower starts and gets an additional 6 fixers from its eggs. I also can't help but feel that bouncelands are important to the analysis, since players are running smaller mana bases on average. It would be funny if this was another hidden benefit to those cards' design.
This format started out shooting for 11% fixing, which very quickly was a problem, and we've had to steadily increase both the density and power level of the fixing. Like sigh noted (apparently I was rounding down) it would be more accurate to put this format at 14% fixing, which seems pretty significant to me. It still doesn't feel like the mana is consistent enough to enable CC cards on curve, but perhaps thats just bias on my part?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Also, might as well but the GB +1 +1 counters deck on the docket.
After looking through Dom's post, these are the cards that seem most suitable to me:
The cuts get pretty miserable though. In my heart of hearts I know it should be out gitrog monster, and out grim flayer, but ugh. At that point our GB "delirium deck" is just Ishkanah, which lets be honest is just going to be skeletal vampire 2.0 for a GB grindy deck. It looks special, but doesn't feel special.
I'm kind of being a well-intentioned jerk even running gitrog in this format. Its the coolest card, but with all of this efficient disruption, and no ETB, it just cannot be correct to ever put it in a deck (though people will love having it in their deck).
Prob cut ophiomancer for yahenni? Than gnarled scarhide for feeder.
Fatal push can come in for either go for the throat/ultimate price.
After looking through Dom's post, these are the cards that seem most suitable to me:
The cuts get pretty miserable though. In my heart of hearts I know it should be out gitrog monster, and out grim flayer, but ugh. At that point our GB "delirium deck" is just Ishkanah, which lets be honest is just going to be skeletal vampire 2.0 for a GB grindy deck. It looks special, but doesn't feel special.
I'm kind of being a well-intentioned jerk even running gitrog in this format. Its the coolest card, but with all of this efficient disruption, and no ETB, it just cannot be correct to ever put it in a deck (though people will love having it in their deck).
Prob cut ophiomancer for yahenni? Than gnarled scarhide for feeder.
Fatal push can come in for either go for the throat/ultimate price.
Sigh that was a great example, thanks!
What if your are okay with 75% reliability instead of 90%? That seems more reasonable to me to still get the job done without overtaxing the cube with fixing.
Also, what about those decks that want to play V.Clique and Liliana on T3? Do you account for all the most demanding mana situations when crafting your cube's mana %?
Lastly, does power level factor in? (I run a powered cube with signets (boo, hiss, I know I know...) that sports 70 fixing lands and 12 0-2 CMC rocks (I count those as 1/2 due to their vulnerability) which brings me to 76 out of a 582 card cube. That's 12% from the lands, 13% with the rocks counting 1/2, and 14% with the rocks counting full.) Thoughts, opinions?
(Sorry, I'll stop derailing this thread now! )
What if your are okay with 75% reliability instead of 90%? That seems more reasonable to me to still get the job done without overtaxing the cube with fixing.
Also, what about those decks that want to play V.Clique and Liliana on T3? Do you account for all the most demanding mana situations when crafting your cube's mana %?
Lastly, does power level factor in? (I run a powered cube with signets (boo, hiss, I know I know...) that sports 70 fixing lands and 12 0-2 CMC rocks (I count those as 1/2 due to their vulnerability) which brings me to 76 out of a 582 card cube. That's 12% from the lands, 13% with the rocks counting 1/2, and 14% with the rocks counting full.) Thoughts, opinions?
(Sorry, I'll stop derailing this thread now! )
All useful and valid variables to take into account. Speaking personally, I stopped at the average, not-too-greedy deck, and got my Number of land per deck from that and other factors (like experience with the format). From my perspective, if someone wants to play
/splash (me lol), it should be a legitimate deckbuilding and drafting challenge to successfully get there. Other formats, maybe this is the status quo, so fixing should be more like the "Karsten Ideal" of 15.6%The article that I prescribe more with, found here, gets a little bit more in depth (IMO), and can help you figure things out for probabilities <90%. Using the information from this article is... more difficult, at best, which makes Karsten's article more generically useful. This article requires you to amalgamate entire decks and overlay the mana base requirements. Would probably require some sort of coded tool to use entirely effectively.
I'll note that 75% is rather low, 1 in 4 games chance of having a mana base failure is pretty high. I could see tweaking down to 85% chance of failure. That puts you more in the 10-12 range for needed sources according to my article (single failure on T1-have it in opening hand or not?). That gives us:
This is 5 overlapping lands per deck which gives us:
Code:
5 x 8 = 40
40 / 360 = 11.1%
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I mean signets don't really help too much with a t3 lilianna/v.clique play (Especially since there's a solid ass chance you'll have boros signet -_-)
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I think signets get an unreasonable amount of hate. Yes, they frame a format, but every format has to be defined by something at some point. As long as you are aware of the impact the cards have, and engineer the format to take into account their existence, you should be fine.
What you want to avoid is building a format, and than accidentally discovering that its framed by cards/mechanic/ability/lands <y>, and that you kind of hate that format framing.
What you want to avoid is building a format, and than accidentally discovering that its framed by cards/mechanic/ability/lands <y>, and that you kind of hate that format framing.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Most of the issue comes from the overabundance of signets. The average 360 cube probably doesn't need all 10, AND moxen.
Between all those and the various more generic good artifact mana cards like Mana Vault, Coalition Relic, Thran Dynamo, Sol ring (Shiver) yeah, things are going to feel a bit over represented.
I get the same issue looking at a lot of other cubes where the red section is like 40% burn spells and 40% cheap creatures. Of course red aggro is good, you can't turn around without bumping into 8 first picks for it!
Between all those and the various more generic good artifact mana cards like Mana Vault, Coalition Relic, Thran Dynamo, Sol ring (Shiver) yeah, things are going to feel a bit over represented.
I get the same issue looking at a lot of other cubes where the red section is like 40% burn spells and 40% cheap creatures. Of course red aggro is good, you can't turn around without bumping into 8 first picks for it!
I think I'm with Grillo on this. I think what makes artifact ramp most problematic is what you can ramp into. I'm a broken record on this point, but running Inferno Titan goes a much longer way towards defining your meta than signets do. Original Ravnica block ran signets at common. Many think it's one of the best drafting formats of all time. But again, you were playing Skeletal Vampire and Kamigawa dragons back then. Your lists Grillo are always lower powered rare lists, so I think you can go crazy with signets and be fine.
Monolith can work because it allows you to one-time ramp into an 8-9 drop (sort of like a colorless seal of dark ritual) which you can reload at a cost.
Something like Bogardan HellKite can completely wreck board states (much like a titan but it costs 2 more for the effect). That's where I feel creature design lost it's way a bit over time. Used to be that truly game warping creatures cost 8+ and you had to find some way to get them into play (ramp/cheat). Now, this sort of effect comes attached to your 6 drops. And there's ramifications for that - namely even mild ramp like a signet makes the matchup situation for aggressive decks that much worse.
Something like Bogardan HellKite can completely wreck board states (much like a titan but it costs 2 more for the effect). That's where I feel creature design lost it's way a bit over time. Used to be that truly game warping creatures cost 8+ and you had to find some way to get them into play (ramp/cheat). Now, this sort of effect comes attached to your 6 drops. And there's ramifications for that - namely even mild ramp like a signet makes the matchup situation for aggressive decks that much worse.
Hey Grillo, I see that this has been retired .. do you have any ideas for how you might update it if you were to revisit it? Anything you felt really lacking that may have been printed over the last year and a half?
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Well that was surprising to see.
I'm guessing that you're looking to do something similar? The concept is a bit warped at this point, and the entire way I would think about the project would change. Really, we were just looking to see if there was enough tech where we could update a midrangy riptide cube into singleton, so other people could understand it, and I think it did a reasonably good job at that.
There are enough new printings now, and I've grown enough where I could probably do something more original to better define the wedge/shards thematically with better guilds. That was the main problem at the time with doing this: so many of the cards clustered around this power point were fairely bland ETB based value cards, and there wasn't a lot of non-clunky individuality you could work with. The work that had been done on guild pairs at this power point was almost non-existent when I made the format, and it was at least partially an attempt to see what could be there. I was filling in a lot of the gaps with pairings that I had learned from the penny cube, so it was far from perfect.
I'm guessing that you're looking to do something similar? The concept is a bit warped at this point, and the entire way I would think about the project would change. Really, we were just looking to see if there was enough tech where we could update a midrangy riptide cube into singleton, so other people could understand it, and I think it did a reasonably good job at that.
There are enough new printings now, and I've grown enough where I could probably do something more original to better define the wedge/shards thematically with better guilds. That was the main problem at the time with doing this: so many of the cards clustered around this power point were fairely bland ETB based value cards, and there wasn't a lot of non-clunky individuality you could work with. The work that had been done on guild pairs at this power point was almost non-existent when I made the format, and it was at least partially an attempt to see what could be there. I was filling in a lot of the gaps with pairings that I had learned from the penny cube, so it was far from perfect.
Yeah, I’m looking to put together at least a couple cubes (with proxies) at different power levels to experiment with and study. I am assembling the 2.0 Penny Pincher and have taken a look at this cube and Sigh’s cubes as something to compare and contrast. And then maybe something at the upper end.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I would go with sighs. The main benefit of this thread i.m.o would just be reading the design thoughts while I was doing the initial draft for the format.