Mordor's Cube (The Ship of Theseus)

[blacksmithy]

i am coming to similar conclusions in the wake of the MH2 update… there’s very little that just straight outclasses what i’ve got right now unless i break singleton or move from fair to powered. so i can pretty much ignore new releases!
it’s a nice problem to have

 

[alvoi]

Yeah, this is a problem I feel more and more, and takes me away from my "powermax" cube. In fact, I have the idea that my cube will never be finished, and since I'm a perfectionist, that hurts.

I'm thinking that maybe putting a release date restriction on my cube could help me not have this feeling, and also not falling in the capitalistic abyss of paying 40€ for a Jackal Pup with upside

 

[blacksmithy]

…and also not falling in the capitalistic abyss of paying 40€ for a Jackal Pup with upside

moc.sdraCgniyalPekaM

 

[Chris Taylor]

Capitalism is the worst part of a lot of things, magic included.
Even if you don't go as far as I do, you're well within your rights to sharpie "Taiga" on a forest and go to town.
Get real versions of cards that prove they're fun

 

[landofMordor]

At this point, there are so many good cards in the high power/fairmax space that most "upgrades" are not going to be particularly meaningful

Absolutely. That wealth of mutually playable cards what enables this philosophy shift of mine.

Sure, maybe back in '10 when there was only one Watchwolf and every Terror had a downside, you could make a serious argument that there was only a handful of combinations of 360-720 "most powerful Magic cards" possible for a given set of design goals. And maybe that's still true for cubes that chase Constructed-style Storm/Stax/other unfair archetypes, since support for those decks is intentionally throttled by WotC. But at any lower power level, or for any more restrictive goal (such as fair-archetypes-only), there are dozens, if not hundreds, of possible combinations of Magic cards that yield desirable gameplay and stay within an even power band. It'd be impossible to determine whether a given card is a net "upgrade" in power, at least without access to MTGO data and a bunch of iterations of a single cube.

In other words, I've realized that the impulse to constantly "upgrade" cube is really a self-perpetuating outgrowth of WotC's capitalist business model. It might have served me well when my collection was much smaller, but now it's counterproductive.

 

[landofMordor]

Capitalism is the worst part of a lot of things, magic included.
Even if you don't go as far as I do, you're well within your rights to sharpie "Taiga" on a forest and go to town.
Get real versions of cards that prove they're fun

Absolutely! Part of the reason I'm making this shift is because I have a ton of cards proxied up that have proved themselves consistently fun (Brazen Borrower foremost among them). I'm learning that I'd rather spend my finite Magic budget on stuff like that, instead of speculative tests.

 

[sigh]

 

[landofMordor]

Wow! @sigh coming in hot with freshly made memes, nice!

 

[landofMordor]

Cube Weekend '21 Lessons Learned​

This past weekend I visited Baltimore to meet new friends, eat good food, and jam five cube drafts in a single weekend. Here's what I learned:

As a player:
> Magic players tend to imbue too much meaning to our game pieces. It feels bad psychologically to "lose life" or "sacrifice a creature", and so we don't view those as the strategic pawn sacrifices that they are. Treating certain Magic sub-systems like a Euro game, like mana efficiency or value maximization, can help isolate strategic thinking.
> Linear, proactive strategies (especially if they have auto-win combos or curves) are often superior to reactive strategies in an unknown cube.
> Magic's game engine is incredibly win-condition-dense. Most fair decks run creatures (ie, game objects capable of winning), which isn't the case in other games like Netrunner. So Magic's tension isn't usually whether a deck can win, it's how reliably/quickly/inevitably.
> The old adage "draft is self-correcting" isn't strictly true. A draft is self-correcting if and only if its players share an understanding of the metagame, and are sufficiently skilled to attack that metagame on equal footing.


As a Cube designer:
> To create specific gameplay dynamics, find the points of greatest leverage. Here's the example that crystallized this lesson for me:
I don't want people to draft undisciplined 4- and 5-color decks in my format. They're doing it because some players didn't pick enough lands, sure, but also because they're not getting punished. Cards like Field of Ruin, Tectonic Edge, and Ghost Quarter offer a simple and flexible tool to disincentivize greedy splashes, without too much collateral damage.
> 3x Brainstorm is probably too good.
> My current dilemma is that I'm really, really enjoying the deckbuilding that comes with Uro, Oko, Omnath, and other FIRE-era designs. But since not every color was given an equal treatment under this paradigm, it creates gradients in the draft landscape away from WRB and towards UGx. How can I avoid a "blube" without outright banning the UG-based power outliers? What are the points of leverage here besides the individual power outliers? I'm continuing to reflect on this and my goals, and will work towards addressing this in my next major update.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Cube Weekend '21 Lessons Learned

Great post Parker!

> My current dilemma is that I'm really, really enjoying the deckbuilding that comes with Uro, Oko, Omnath, and other FIRE-era designs. But since not every color was given an equal treatment under this paradigm, it creates gradients in the draft landscape away from WRB and towards UGx. How can I avoid a "blube" without outright banning the UG-based power outliers? What are the points of leverage here besides the individual power outliers? I'm continuing to reflect on this and my goals, and will work towards addressing this in my next major update.

The optimal strategy here might simply be only including one of the cards you mentioned here as weighting the format towards UG. Just having, for example, Uro in the Cube makes UG a bit stronger, but it doesn't make the meta UG oriented. Now instead of having several cards that draw players into a UGx color combination, you only have one card that does this.

You might even be able to get away with running Oko and Omnath together since they both have different optimal shells. Omnath wants to be in a 4c/5c midrange deck which can capitalize on Omnath's mana addition ability. Oko wants to be in a slightly more reactive 2 to 3 color deck where he can act as a pseudo-removal spell and food token factory. Uro goes into both of these strategies exceedingly well, which makes him an easy pickup and potential combo with the other "broken" cards.

While I'm not sure what the correct option is, you don't need to "ban" the outliers so much as you just need to not run them all simultaneously.

 

[blacksmithy]

i have been finding that Omnath in particular tends to draw me towards a Naya deck that splashes blue for him.

you might also look at some of the other 3-4 color bombs like Breya and Saskia to help pull players in splashy directions other than UG. i find Breya plus Baleful Strix, for example, has really been a strong pull into UB for people who get a Ballista or some other strong artifact early on and then start looking for other pieces of the package once they see Breya. haven’t tested Saskia yet but i think she’s pretty cool in an aggressive Jund or Mardu or Naya deck that wants to splash for her.

 

[landofMordor]

September '21 Update: MID testing, AFR update, rebasing cube list​

Note: I rebased my cube list off my paper list. I'm going to try to be better about keeping them in sync.

These will be my first updates after August's resolution to test cards based on whether they'll fill a hole in my existing design.

MID Testing:
Arlinn, the Pack's Hope: Excited for the beautiful Equinox showcase art, as well as some novel play patterns. I think I'll be cutting Arlinn Kord, who is great but has a much less beautiful frame.
Slogurk, the Overslime is the best Midnight showcase card for my cube list. I'm intrigued by giving Simic a 3mv Baneslayer-type creature, because it might give the color pair a little more risk in deckbuilding. We'll see.
Infernal Grasp is filling the hole of clean black removal. I like it more than Power Word Kill, so I'm playing Grasp over PWK.
Poppet Stitcher filling a hole of Blue creatures. I will only test this one if I pull it in tonight's Sealed event, probably.
Consider is filling the void that 3x Brainstorm left in my format.
Rotten Reunion features adorable callback art to American Gothic, and since Cling to Dust is good in my format I'm going to try this.
Cathartic Pyre
...and Field of Ruin and Delver of Secrets get new art.
For what it's worth, I'll also be collecting 1x of each of the black-and-white basic lands, or maybe more.

AFR Testing:
I've narrowed my testing list to just 3 cards: Cave of the Frost Dragon, Hive of the Eye Tyrant, and Portable Hole. All have attractive showcase/promo art, so that's mostly why.

 

[landofMordor]

STX Playtest Results:​

Top Tier ("staples for years to come")
Prismari Command does the modal thing quite well. I've cast this card as a Loot and Treasure several times in a pinch, and not been disappointed. Considering those are the worst modes, that's a decent baseline.
Rip Apart is flexible and powerful removal.
Dragonsguard Elite has some sick art and grows like Tarmogoyf.
Elite Spellbinder is mechanically unique, has a historically-significant design, and powerful stats for Collected Company/Ephemerate shenanigans.
Vanishing Verse is solid removal and a draw into Orzhov. Not much else to say.
Tempted by the Oriq in my format is just Fractured Identity for a full mana less.
Expressive Iteration has probably established its pedigree by now as the closest thing to a 2mv Divination, and I can't disagree.
Sedgemoor Witch is neat -- it gives Black mages a reason to skew aggressive, and the Ward mechanic to give it better Baneslayer qualities.

Ambivalent Tier
Quandrix Apprentice is quite nice, and I have no complaints, but it's not a smash hit like the upper tier.
Witherbloom Command has very strong modes, but it's harder to make it a clean 2-for-1 in the same format as Kird Ape.
Decisive Denial is firmly a "reward" for already being Simic, rather than a Reason to draft the color pair.
Clever Lumimancer does work in a Prowess-style deck, but it doesn't really spark joy to play.
Leonin Lightscribe is a lot better than it looks, but still not amazing.

Chop-Chop Tier
Quandrix Command, womp womp.
Callous Bloodmage felt like it was one or two stat points away from being great. A 2/1 token, an extra point of power, a combat keyword, or an environment where grave hate matters more... but as it is, the modality isn't worth it in my fair environment.
Symmetry Sage didn't even make it through a full draft.
Extus, Oriq Overlord: I didn't open a copy, so I didn't test it.
Culling Ritual is splashy, swingy, and tough to pull off. By itself, that's not a dealbreaker, but 4mv is.

Overall Thoughts
Ward is one of my favorite keywords of all time. It uses flavor to elegantly address the tempo losses that Baneslayer-type creatures suffer versus cheap removal, and does so in a highly tunable way. Imagine actual Baneslayer Angel with Ward 2 -- it still "dies to Doom Blade", but the opponent no longer gets a total blowout. It's a really robust design tool.

Magecraft is fairly simple to grok, but the strong designs tend to be wordy.

STX's MDFCs were incredibly ungainly, wordy, inelegant -- you name it. Worst of all, the power gained by that modality was fairly marginal. My least favorite implementation of the MDFC technology to date.

On the other hand, the Mystical Archive was a huge hit for my cube and my players. I wouldn't be mad to see alternate-art reprint sheets in every set from now until the end of time.

 

[blacksmithy]

i am really happy to hear prismari command is doing well for you, it’s one i’ve considered and just haven’t picked up to test yet! thanks for the analysis!
(also happy that other people like the absolute boss that is Dragonsguard Elite, what a massive beater)

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Quandrix Command, womp womp.

Maybe I should use this slot to test Croaking Counterpart

 

[landofMordor]

Change 2: Towards "Art Singleton"
I really, really like the Mystical Archives. I probably have 20-30 cards on my shopping list from that subset of STX. But, at the same time, I also really like my Alexis Ziritt Lightning Bolt, my 2XM Brainstorm, and my Ice Age Counterspell. I like the element of my cube that is a self-contained art museum, and I don't want pesky singleton to get in my way. So I've decided not to worry about Singleton if my exceptions are for the sake of good art.

I'd like to think this is a distinct restriction from just arbitrary singleton-breaking. Instead of just running 10 Lightning Bolt arts, I'm saying that since my first copies of Shock, Lightning Strike, and Incinerate are prettier than the 8-10th worst Bolt arts, I will be running no more than 7 Bolts (which is just a toy example -- in reality I'll probably only run 3 Bolts max because I only like that many arts).

My general concerns with nonsingleton will temper my includes, too:

• I'm running out of room overall in the cube. I have more excellent cantrip art than slots in my cube for cantrips. I'm also running out of storage for the cube itself, physically: I can't let my cube size get too big or I'll have to reorganize my bookshelves.
• I don't want to homogenize the play experience too much, especially with regard to threats/answers. I don't mind every cantrip being literal Brainstorm, which resolves and goes to the grave, but I do mind every proactive spell being literal Tarmogoyf. There's a lot of drama in maximizing the little edges of sub-par threats like Bloodsky Berserker or Putrid Leech.
• Those diverse threats necessitate diverse answers -- Doom Blade will kill Tarmogoyf, but not Leech. (A heavily non-singleton Eldraine set cube I made taught me that having too many Reave Souls is highly exploitable at the metagame level, and the same applies here.) For that reason, I have to be careful to restrict my singleton-breaking to cards like cantrips and fetchlands which don't drastically affect players' metagame choices. (Every blue mage wants Brainstorm, but they'd need to hit their critical mass of cantrips even if I was running Peek.)
• Another key opportunity for non-singleton Magic is to bolster specific strategies and classes of cards. For example, 1MV black discard falls off a quality cliff after Duress, which coincides with there being several sick Duress arts, so I've just decided to run 3-4 copies of Duress. Another example is that having multiple Lingering Souls may draw more drafters into Mardu. (I've already done the same thing with Delver of Secrets.)

in my STX update, I first introduced arbitrary singleton-breaking. Today I had an offhanded conversation with @Feld who had a pretty good line: "only break singleton on cards you don't mind taking for granted".

This sums up some of the nuances of the points in my original post, and adds an additional dimension to "homogenizing play experience". If a cube is heavily non-singleton, there will be a very small gradient in the relative power of a given type of card, like Tarmogoyf-class beaters. Ten Goyfs are identically powerful and they have identical deckbuilding incentives (aka zero gradient). By contrast, ten different 2mv green beaters have different power, creating a gradient of power, a gradient of deckbuilding incentives and in-game decision-making, and a hidden gradient of emotional response. It feels exceptional to draw Tarmogoyf only when drawing Tarmogoyf is exceptional.

Thanks, Feld, for articulating this design insight!

 

[landofMordor]

2019-2020 Playtest Results: ELD, IKO, M20, M21, THB​

I've recently been working on a project for Lucky Paper, and had the occasion to look through my old survey submissions from 2019-2020. I thought I'd break down my playtest results from these sets. ZNR and forward have been in their own posts here and there on this thread.

(UPDATE: here's that "project" I mentioned -- thanks to Anthony and Andy for helping me!)

Top Tier ("staples for years to come"):
Oko, Thief of Crowns needs no introduction. I like that he's so good that he'll take a solid RB drafter into RBug just to splash for him, with all the risk that incurs. It helps create dynamic drafts that can't be guided by simple heuristics.
Stonecoil Serpent's pro-multicolor has gotten only more relevant. And i'm always shocked it has reach. It's just so pushed.
Robber of the Rich was the card that taught me haste is really worth a full mana. So good.
Bonecrusher Giant is the definition of a clean, pushed 2-for-1. It's awesome showcase art doesn't hurt, and is probably one of the reasons it's stuck around so long.
Brazen Borrower is the same way.
Ditto Murderous Rider.
Lovestruck Beast is the closest of the Adventure cards to Ambivalent, but it shines in creature mirrors and has amazing art in both versions. I like looking at pretty game objects -- sue me.
Once Upon a Time is a free self-replacing spell with a reasonable floor. 'Nuff said.
Drown in the Loch is a strong enough modal removal spell to actually pull players into Dimir. Like I mentioned about Oko, that's something I highly prize in my gold cards.
Castles Ardenvale, Locthwain, and Vantress are at their best in my environment, and I tend to activate them about once a match. And, like I mention above (https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/mordors-cube.3180/post-105598), they were intentionally added to help mitigate board stalls and they've done their job admirably.
Phoenix of Ash is my favorite Red 3-drop. It doesn't go into every deck, but it's certainly a huge payoff for proactive decks, and I also think it's got panache.
Elspeth, Sun's Nemesis is similarly my favorite White planeswalker. That art! She's strong, too -- the lack of an uptick means that each of her downticks provides more juice than similarly costed 'walkers, which is a trait my high-speed format rewards.
Cling to Dust is a great little cantrip that does a little bit of everything. Fun stuff.
Shadowspear was close to being good enough... until Urza's Saga was printed. Now it's a Stoneforge-Mystic-level combo.
Ashiok, Nightmare Muse has that baller Lukacs art and is a highly efficient finisher for control decks. I initially was way too low on this card, calling it "boring". Consider this my redaction.
Klothys, God of Destiny just slams doors shut on games her controller has no business winning. Such a house, and one of the strongest pulls into RG.
Chevill, Bane of Monsters is pretty cool and plays extremely well (like a cross between Bob's card draw and Putrid Leech's threatening body) but it always gets Cruella DeVille's theme song stuck in my head.
Lurrus of the Dream-Den -- isn't it wild that Oko isn't the most broken card on this list? Anyways, I like how Lurrus incentivizes a radical shift in drafting priority, but maybe it's too strong in the long run, and/or maybe I'll get bored of building around it.
Sprite Dragon is a great threat in Xerox-style decks and I've really enjoyed getting the Dragon experience without the need for a million mana.
Knight of the Ebon Legion was a big surprise to me -- the combination of the pump and the passive growth makes this a pull into Black-based midrange and aggro in my format, and I like it for that reason.
Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse is a secret Simic gold card, but is so good at her job in that shell, frequently making huge amounts of stats from any turn past T2. Love me some Cat tokens.
Eliminate has been my favorite kill spell recently. Hits almost everything, does so cleanly, and has some sick alternate art that really elevates it over alternatives and sidegrades like Heartless Act.
Radha, Heart of Keld is my favorite Courser of Kruphix impersonator because she aligns better with aggressive gameplans. Unfortunately, she's also at the bottom edge of my format's 3-drops on power level, but so far her cool flavor and character have buoyed her to staple status.
Finally, I play and enjoy all 5 Triomes. The art is beautiful, the gameplay helps to foster disciplined splashes, and the art is beautiful.

---

Ambivalent Tier
Glass Casket is not exciting nor particularly efficient, but helps me hit my desired removal spell density. If another Oust art is ever released, I'll drop Casket in a heartbeat.
The Royal Scions are bleeding-cool and play extremely well in RUx aggressive decks, but that's a small niche and I could see myself cutting them in some dark future.
Mystic Sanctuary might be in the "repetitive and broken gameplay" category but I haven't gotten tired of it yet.
Gallia of the Endless Dance has that haste-with-upside! It's crazy how Robber is so much better, but the gulf is not so wide and my format is hungry for these types of role-players.
Bronzehide Lion isn't as cool as Fleecemane, but I run both because Zoo needs a critical mass of creatures this big.
Heartless Act, the excellent Doom Blade variant that has no soul. Ugh.
Extinction Event might not cut it in my list if I had access to Damnation and Toxic Deluge, but as it is, it's perfectly serviceable, and I like that it flexes into midrange's sideboard slots.
Shark Typhoon is just expensive enough to make me start to question it in this environment.
Elvish Reclaimer is a fine Zoo threat, but not too special. Maybe I'll be higher on it if/when I add Field of the Dead.
Stormwing Entity is one of Xerox's best threats, but honestly I'm a couple more good Delve creatures away from cutting it.
Liliana, Waker of the Dead is perfectly serviceable, but also 4 mana.

---

Chop-Chop Tier
Giant Killer is no longer good as my cube's average size has gotten much larger than 1/2. I've cut Ardenvale Tactician,Rimrock Knight, Order of Midnight, Fae of Wishes, Foulmire Knight, Shepherd of the Flock, etc for similar reasons. I'd still be on many them if I hadn't moved to Zoo-type aggro, as my cube archive attests (https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/1313).
Rankle, Master of Pranks is four mana. Four.
Blacklance Paragon was an okay Immolating Glare, but ultimately didn't provide enough joy for its slot.
Boon of the Wish-giver is a cheap cycler, sure, but is so close to having no other mode that it lost its joy for me.
Similarly, Neutralize has such a rough hardcast mode that its cycling doesn't quite make up for it.
Gemrazer was my token IKO showcase art for a long time, but it's just too clunky and Mutate is such a stupid-complicated mechanic that didn't get any reminder text on the showcase.
Gingerbrute might get resuscitated by Urza's Saga, but for now its body is too small in my format.
Heartfire Immolator is close to being good enough in my current format, but a vanilla 3/3 still outsizes it pretty significantly. I like the 1-mv Prowess creatures like Swiftspear, but 2 is a little too much to outweigh its anemic sizing.
Nightpack Ambusher is another victim of my 4-mana purge. It's telegraphed too easily and doesn't do enough vs opposing, instant-speed, cheap removal. Still wrecks me in Historic, though.
Voracious Hydra falls in the same category.
Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer is amazing and I love her emotionally. Maybe I'll add her back. I don't have any real reason for cutting her except that planeswalkers have gotten generally worse in my environment, which is now full of Eliminate, Vindicates, and Kird Apes-sized creatures capable of killing 'walkers in a single combat step. But I think Mu can still hack it, thanks to the massive 4/4 body she makes.
Basri Ket and Garruk Unleashed, on the other hand, really suffer in this format because their tokens are so small.

---

Edit: let me clarify what I mean when I diss the stats of cards on the chop-chop tier. My format is extremely tempo-heavy, meaning that answers are extremely plentiful and extremely low-mv (an average of <2 mana per answer). Moreover, my format is fast enough, with beefy low-mv proactive cards like Wild Nacatl, to truly punish such tempo stumbles with huge swings in board presence and life totals. This means that tapping out for a 3-or-greater-mana threat is extremely dangerous, unless it a) provides near-immediate return on investment, b) is resilient to removal, or c) snowballs board advantage so quickly that it's worth the risk. Examples for each category include Niv-Mizzet Reborn and Kess, Dissident Mage, Thrun, the Last Troll and Nissa, Who Shakes the World, and Saskia the Unyielding. The very best threats in my format are often at the intersection of these -- Esika's Chariot, for example, provides immediate Cats, takes multiple instant-speed kill spells to completely remove, and threatens to snowball immense value. And even Niv-Mizzet is a 6/6 flying Mulldrifter, which really ends games quickly too.

That interplay of blazing speed and crushing tempo means that I tend to evaluate threats as if they can find themselves at the receiving end of a Doom Blade less than a turn cycle after they're cast. The cards on my chop-chop tier perform extremely poorly by that metric.

 

[landofMordor]

November '21 Update: Push-Pull Manufacturing, VOW Testing, and a fancy name​

I thought of a new metaphor for my new-ish Cube update ethos. In industrial engineering, push-type manufacturing makes widgets until the warehouse is full -- it means you get a lot of supply, but it's inefficient and wastes resources, especially if the widget's design evolves over time. On the other hand, pull-type manufacturing only makes a widget if there's a customer who wants one.

Wizards' business model as it relates to Cube curation is push-type. We're going to get roughly 300 new cards every quarter, whether or not those cards are actually good for our cubes. If I test every remotely interesting card WotC puts in the warehouse, there will be a lot of waste and inefficiency as my needs (and my ship of Theseus cube) change. I have shifted my cube curation to pull-type, where I only visit the warehouse if there's a need for new cards thanks to playtest results or my evolving design goals. On-demand, pull-type cube updates make the most of my limited resources.

Watchlist: Asmoranamardicadaistinaculdacar and The Underworld Cookbook are a mega-parasitic combo in my list. Asmor is okay as a 1-mana 3/3, but Cookbook in my opening hand without Troll King or Daredevil is usually worse than a basic land. To push this deck to the extreme, I recently made a "constructed"-style Cube deck for her, choosing whichever cards I wanted from my cube instead of drafting them, and playing it against a sick Naya Zoo deck that took down my last Rochester draft. The deck skeleton, below, performed admirably, so in the future I'll narrow my focus to whether the rewards of Asmor are worth the drafting risks.

Ones (8) 1 Asmoranamardicadaistinaculdacar 1 The Underworld Cookbook 3 Faithless Looting 1 Blazing Rootwalla 1 Urza's Saga 1 Unearth Twos (2) 1 Young Pyromancer 1 Priest of Fell Rites Threes (5) 2 Lingering Souls 1 Plague Engineer 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den 1 Kolaghan's Command Fours (1) 1 Kaya, Ghost Assassin (0)

New Demand (aka cuts):
Shark Typhoon just does not spark joy for me and has gotten a turn too slow for my format. Plus it's silly, and as a native Okie, I take tornadoes seriously.
Green Sun's Zenith doesn't really do much in my format, which a) relies on planeswalkers and Collected Company for the top end of green midrange decks, and b) doesn't really have any green targets worth tutoring -- they're all just interchangeable beatsticks or mana dorks.
Living Wish was an interesting test, and I liked the play patterns enough to throw it in a lower-power list, but played similarly to GSZ.
Clever Lumimancer, Decisive Denial, Stormchaser Mage, and Leonin Lightscribe all had their moments, but they are making room for VOW tests (or more accurately, I'm cutting them so I don't run out of sleeves and/or storage space and/or mental energy for keeping my list manageable).

Filling demand with VOW:
Eruth, Tormented Prophet seems much stronger than Jori En, Ruin Diver, who performed reasonably well in my format, so I think the abilities are real. Eruth also has the major advantage of stunning art in 3 different varieties.
Graf Reaver is one of the biggest vanilla creatures Black can boast at this mana cost (besides Scourge of the Skyclaves, which I already run). I have had limited success with Jund-based Zoo decks, and I wonder if this can inject more power into the archetype.
Torens, Fist of the Angels might offer enough power to be a reason to go into Selesyna early in a draft, as opposed to being a Fleecemane Lion-esque reward for already being in GW. That's a role I'm looking to fill in all my guilds.
Cobbled Lancer seems to me like a little Gurmag Angler who has Delve 1, but will still be played late because it's a specific type, but even so has completely nasty curve-out potential -- imagine playing Liliana followed by a 3/3 blocker on Turn 4. These play patterns are not uncommon with my extant Delve threats, so one might wonder what hole Lancer fills, but it only costs 1 colored pip, and can be one's third or fourth "Delve" card in a single deck without stretching the graveyard too thin. If it's not powerful, I suspect it will be because it doesn't stonewall the Watchwolf-style mid-cost threats that are so prevalent in my format, and only beats up on 2/3s and smaller.

Abrade and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben get new art, which is something that's always in demand in my cube list.

Cemetery Illuminator and Cemetery Gatekeeper are my favorite of this cycle, but they're nothing special on rate, nor would they fill a particular need in my format, so they're firmly in the "I'll test them if I open them in Limited" camp.

I find all the Cleave cards to be completely gross to read. I know Train will @ me to argue for Dig Up, but let me preempt by saying my dislike is aesthetic and pull-type curation lets me safely ignore this. (Maybe this is my induction into Magic boomer-hood.) Day/Night has been similarly onerous from a complexity standpoint (I only run Arlinn), and Exploit and Disturb offered nothing that piqued my interest.

I'm sure this mini "set review" is full of contradictions concerning power level. Pull-type curation has enabled me to decouple my interest in a card from its power level, so I'm really just testing the cards that speak to me. If I didn't mention a certain powerful card, it's most likely that I just didn't want to test it. But feel free to ask for clarification.

And finally...
I've found an appropriately pretentious name for my cube, besides just "[possessive]'s Cube". I'm renaming it The Ship of Theseus. I do think it's a poetic way of capturing the idea that every addition and every cut changes my cube, such that I constantly strive to comprehend it afresh even as I change it, but it will also probably net me a nonzero amount of fake internet points and that's surely worth something, right?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I find all the Cleave cards to be completely gross to read. I know Train will @ me to argue for Dig Up, but let me preempt by saying my dislike is aesthetic and pull-type curation lets me safely ignore this. (Maybe this is my induction into Magic boomer-hood.) Day/Night has been similarly onerous from a complexity standpoint (I only run Arlinn), and Exploit and Disturb offered nothing that piqued my interest.

Plot twist: I'm actually not going to argue for Dig Up in your Cube because you convinced me on discord that it's probably too slow for you.

I think it's roughly less powerful (than Traverse the Ulvenwald). Costing 4 means you'll be taking the turn off a very high % of the time, such that I think Dig Up is only good when playing from ahead when it comes to fast cubes.

I thought that was a very salient criticism of Dig Up and defenitiely removed some amount of my bullishness towards the card. I still want to test it in my Cube because I like these cantrippy green cards for spell-based midrange and I think the card is easier to understand than Traverse the Ulvenwald, but it might not be as great as I had initially hoped.

Now Dread Fugue, on the other hand...

I'm sure this mini "set review" is full of contradictions concerning power level.

The only card in here that looks a little below the power level of the Cube to me is Torens, Fist of the Angels, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem given the role this cards are supposed to fill. As long as it doesn't immediately die (or you wait to play it until you can cast a second creature and make a token), it can generate a lot of value. I think it's definitely a good option to look at.

 

[landofMordor]

Now Dread Fugue, on the other hand...

Plot twist in response to your plot twist: I already run 3x Duress and 2x Thoughtseize in addition to Inquisition and Collective Brutality, so I have no need for another discard spell (;

Good point on Torens. I'm relatively high on the "baneslayer" type creatures that become "mulldrifters" if you can hold priority and double-spell. For example, Kess is a 4mv baneslayer but a 5mv mulldrifter, since you can cast the first spell from grave without the opponent getting priority. Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse ditto from 2-3 mana. Torens does the same thing from 3-4 mana. Now, if Torens turns out poorly, it will be because he is a worse topdeck than Kess, combined with how little incentive there is to slow-roll a 1-mana creature in my format (vs Jolrael and cantrips, where I might reasonably not cast a cantrip if I have other things to do). I'm currently testing him in a Naya Zoo deck, having opened one at prerelease; we'll see how he plays!

 

[landofMordor]

December '21 Update: Musings on philosophy, fun designs, and artifact piles​

No structural updates at this moment, since I haven't gotten any testing in, but I have gotten an order of cards I made for aesthetic upgrades, and I need to fit in my newly won Top 8 Collected Company (which is my biggest Magic accomplishment to date, given that I didn't start grinding Limited until the pandemic), so I've been thinking about the cube a fair bit.

Watchlist, according to outsiders: I solicited the Cube Talk discord for the weakest cards on power level, and the consensus outliers were Moderation, Gideon Blackblade, Glissa the Traitor, Pacifism, Terror, Rotten Reunion, Sickening/Disrupting Shoal, Slogurk, Sword of D&D, Asmor/Cookbook, Sanctum Prelate, Knight of the White Orchid, Slaughter Pact, O Rings, Serra the Benevolent, the various Spellbombs, and my 3 Field of Ruins:

> Some of these I can't refute and will probably cut soon (Sanctum Prelate, O Rings)
> I have some aesthetic-level sujective rebuttals on other cards -- for example, I like Adam Rex's Terror art better than I like any Doom Blade art, despite the fact that Terror is strictly worse (but also, Terror only misses 39/154 creatures). Same goes for Pacifism. And I'm testing Rotten Reunion where others have Cremate or Cling to Dust because the American Gothic callback is adorable.
> In still other examples (Serra the Benevolent), I'm duty-bound to preserve the cards my partner most enjoys.

However, my initial reflex concerning some other cards -- most notably the Shoals, Glissa, Slogurk, Spellbombs, and Asmor/Cookbook -- is actually indicative of some deeper cube philosophy which I've not yet articulated, and indeed, it wasn't even a conscious philosophy until all that constructive criticism spurred me to introspection...

Cube Philosophy: A Riptide ethos in a Constructed world
In the words of Sid Meier, games are nothing more than "a sequence of interesting decisions". In a competitive 1v1 game like Magic, one thing that makes the decision interesting is testing your chain of decisions against those made by another mind. Combined with Magic's random resource system, it truly does resemble two wizards locked in a battle of wits on unstable footing.

It is that crucible of decision-making that makes Magic so fun to me, and this love of interesting decisions reified in opposition to an opponent's decisions approaches the drive of a psychographic. I do have Spike-ish tendencies, but the most satisfying games (win or loss) are when my decisions matter. I have Johnny tendencies, too, but my love of card interactions is really just a craving to stretch my mind against ever-new decisions. I play Magic to learn, about myself and others. There is no learning more satisfying than testing a theory against an opponent.

This crystallizes and clarifies some of my goals with The Ship of Theseus. Simply put, I want to accelerate the feedback loop between a decision and its outcome, to make my cube into a testbed of ludic decision-making.

As the power level, tempo, or speed of a cube increases, there are some parts of the environment invariant to these changes, such as the relatively normal distribution of cards about the mean power. Other design aspects, however, are not invariant to power level/tempo/speed -- two pertinent examples are the degree of randomness mitigation (Flooded Strand + Once Upon a Time will get mana screwed less than Flood Plain and Index) and decision density in the early turns of the game (what to fetch? when to cast OUaT? what to get off OUaT? these are not questions which Index affords). The link between decision and outcome is less clear (to my eyes, at least) in slower and/or lower-power formats. As I joke in my CubeCobra description, I want my cube's games to be Hobbesian -- "nasty, brutish, and short" -- because I want to use the games to interrogate my decision-making process and the Magic game system itself.

Meanwhile, my power distribution includes some of Magic's biggest baddies at the top (Jitte, Oko, Once Upon a Time, Treasure Cruise, Swords to Plowshares, Lurrus, Urza's Saga), but a fairly wide band of power all the way down to Glissa, the Traitor. At first blush, this may seem to contradict other goals of mine like maximizing agency, even though the power outliers blaze clear paths for the sake of my newer or less skilled drafters. Even so, there is an extent to which the power disparity creates non-decisions in gameplay and draft (Oko is equally obvious as a P1P1 and a turn 3 play into an empty board).

And yet... what happens when Oko isn't opened until pack 3 by the Orzhov mage? What happens when a Gruul mage picks up a Lurrus on the wheel of Pack 1? Power is the one true build-around, and power outliers like these incentivize drafters to incur risks in the pursuit of win equity, which creates novel decisions in draft and deckbuilding (to continue the prior examples, the BW mage's draft priorities now includes Bayou and Tundra, and the Gruul mage has to throw out all their 3+mv picks). As they build around the power outliers, I want other cards to be radically recontextualized (Urza's Saga makes the Spellbombs better; the Spellbombs make Glissa more attractive; Lurrus makes all 3+mv cards literally unplayable). The power distribution forces my players to make dynamic decisions, the outcomes of which are reified in-game.

Unlike other high-power cubes that resemble mine, The Ship of Theseus is not a "museum of magic", a collection of the "best" 360 cards for the desired play experience, or even a punishingly skill-testing Limited format for the sole sake of "getting better". Instead, it is a quintessentially Riptidean cube whose origin point is more Constructed than Retail Limited, a format which prioritizes cards good for my cube instead of cards good in my cube, a format whose play experiences are carefully tailored to achieve a subjective vision of fun. At the risk of reductionism, Riptide cubes often look for fun in novel draft/card interactions for the sake of a tightly designed web of archetypes, whereas I'm looking for novel tactical and strategic interactions, regardless of the contents of the cube -- but the ethos is the same.

(Much like an untested line of play, this articulation of philosophy is untested until it encounters challenges! So help me by demanding explanation or posing questions, dear readers )

Fun designs and artifact piles
That (finally) brings me around to the design-oriented defense of the Shoals, Asmor, the weaker gold cards in my list, and Spellbombs.

It is true -- Disrupting Shoal is among the worst of the free countermagic. However, unlike Force of Will or Daze, Shoal's decision heuristics change as the game state does. Rather than just keeping any Blue spell in hand, or any Island in play, the Shoal demands tailoring one's pitch fodder to the opponent's anticipated plays, creating a smear of probabilities rather than pinpoint exactitude. That means decisions change from game to game and even turn to turn, so the player's interest is refreshed each time they draw the card. (Of course, undergirding this discussion is the assumption that DShoal is good enough on power level to contribute to the web of interesting decisions I'm trying to weave. I think it is; the hard-cast mode is quite reasonable vs cheap spells, which are abundant in my format, and the ceiling is obviously just FoW, which is a nice place to be.) Sickening Shoal is the same calculus, as is Slaughter Pact, with the addition of bluff/combat shenanigans that these kill spells open up.

Asmor/Cookbook is a new, untested addition, which represents my search for low-cube-slot-cost "archetypes" like Stoneforge Mystic and Batterskull. SFM is a huge reason to commit to a proactive white strategy and to pick "bad" equipments over alternatives; I discuss my hopes for Asmor doing the same in my prior post. Testing will tell whether the high ceiling is worth the drafting risks.

Slogurk, the Overslime is a reasonably sized beatstick in UG. The lack of CA-generating abilities just means it's evaluated as a locked-at-3 Delve threat rather than a Mulldrifter. With 3 fetch cycles, I think this card is powerful enough to consistently brawl and also get LTB value. But more importantly, I want to incentivize my Zoo drafters (already a Landfall-heavy deck) to splash this card; I want my BUG drafters to get assertive with an interactable threat; these are both novel decisions that I hope Slogurk can incentivize. This falls apart if the presence of Oko/Uro is overbearing on Simic, which is the strongest argument against Slogurk specifically, but I haven't gotten in real reps with the Ooze yet, so judgment is deferred.

Finally Glissa the Traitor and the Spellbombs. I'm thinking of adding Goblin Engineer, Emry, Ichor Wellspring, etc, because the bauble-style gameplay attacks my format from an unorthodox axis and is thus a source of interesting (I hope) draft/game decisions for both players. Glissa is a bit of a pet card, but she is my favorite type of Baneslayer -- highly relevant combat abilities and threatens to immediately accrue card advantage if priority is retained on a later turn of the game. T5 Glissa + Terror, returning Pyrite Spellbomb, seems like a good enough ceiling in BG shells to be worth the one-slot risk.

So, dear reader -- what inconsistencies did I miss? Is Uro truly too dominant a power outlier? Would you play Glissa if she wheeled to you? Thanks, as always, for reading.

 

[Nanonox]

Even in your format, I think the Spellbombs can have merit. Splitting the cost over two turns makes it a lot more manageable.

Where it falls apart for me though is with cards like Ichor Wellspring.
2 mana do nothing is rough and I would actively avoid drafting them in your cube.
I think you would get more mileage from another Relic of Progenitus variant (or Urza’s Bauble).

I’ve added Goblin Engineer, Lurrus, Emry and Scrap Trawler and they are amazing in my cube with the baubles. I’m sure Emry would complement your artifact suite well, but it might be a tougher sell with the engineer. It requires mana to activate and always costs 2 mana where Emry is frequently 1 mana.
Trawler could be interesting since it effectively has a LTB trigger to deal with removal and would complement Lurrus/Emry. But 3 mana for a weak body and a relatively narrow ability is likely to be a trap.

Keep in mind I’m not a great player, sontake all of this with a grain (or ten) of salt!

 

[landofMordor]

Even in your format, I think the Spellbombs can have merit. Splitting the cost over two turns makes it a lot more manageable.

Where it falls apart for me though is with cards like Ichor Wellspring.
2 mana do nothing is rough and I would actively avoid drafting them in your cube.
I think you would get more mileage from another Relic of Progenitus variant (or Urza’s Bauble).

I’ve added Goblin Engineer, Lurrus, Emry and Scrap Trawler and they are amazing in my cube with the baubles. I’m sure Emry would complement your artifact suite well, but it might be a tougher sell with the engineer. It requires mana to activate and always costs 2 mana where Emry is frequently 1 mana.
Trawler could be interesting since it effectively has a LTB trigger to deal with removal and would complement Lurrus/Emry. But 3 mana for a weak body and a relatively narrow ability is likely to be a trap.

Keep in mind I’m not a great player, sontake all of this with a grain (or ten) of salt!

I appreciate the feedback! I do get your concern r.e. Ichor Wellspring. I think it's good in precisely Welder/Emry+sac/Engineer value loops. Play Arcum's Astrolabe, then Goblin Engineer, entombs wellspring, then next turn you sac your Arcum's Astrolabe to Engineer, grab Wellspring, draw a card... I think the potential for Engineer to be a 2-mana Howling Mine is there. But we'll see. (And now that i think about it, since i'm going all in on this nonsense, why am I not running a Cat/Oven/Squirrel/Deadly Dispute/Shambling Ghast/Goose package???? maybe for my next update...)

I neglected to mention initially that I'll probably add the Mirrodin artifact lands and any other artifact lands since like Treasure Vault. That should be a pretty serious boost in power to artifact themes. (And no worries, I'm also not a great player, I just like making decisions that are above my head)

 

[TrainmasterGT]

(Much like an untested line of play, this articulation of philosophy is untested until it encounters challenges! So help me by demanding explanation or posing questions, dear readers )

Well, I found myself nodding along with most of what you were saying, so I figure that's a good start!

At the risk of reductionism, Riptide cubes often look for fun in novel draft/card interactions for their own sake, whereas I'm looking for novel tactical and strategic interactions, but the ethos is the same.

Honestly, that doesn't sound too reductive. While there are some Cubes cataloged on this site that don't necessarily function in the way you described, I think the majority of people's main Cubes do work this way. The one thing I will say is that I'm not sure what the difference between "novel draft/card interactions" and "novel tactical and strategic interactions" means. They seem to be stemming from the same general concept (novel interactions), but I'm not sure how you differentiate between "draft/card" and "tactical and strategic." In essence, how different is the interaction between Glissa+Spellbombs from Drake Haven and cards with cycling/discard? Or, is this not the type of interaction to which you were referring?

Unlike other high-power cubes that resemble mine, The Ship of Theseus is not a "museum of magic", a collection of the "best" 360 cards for the desired play experience, or even a punishingly skill-testing Limited format for the sole sake of "getting better". Instead, it is a quintessentially Riptidean cube whose origin point is more Constructed than Retail Limited, a format which prioritizes cards good for my cube instead of cards good in my cube, a format whose play experiences are carefully tailored to achieve a subjective vision of fun.

Not sure this is the right place to discuss this, but I feel roughly the same way about my Cube. Even though my main goal (currently) is to make the gameplay feel like constructed Standard and Modern Magic back when I first started playing, I'm using a more tactical approach to archetype design beyond just "this card has some level of historic significance." I think I may have done a little bit of that when I was just trying to fill slots towards the end of the summer, but that wasn't really intentional. Like you, my goal is to use cards good for my cube instead of good in my cube.

So, dear reader -- what inconsistencies did I miss? Is Uro truly too dominant a power outlier?

I believe I said this above, but I really don't think Oko and Uro should be played together if the dominance of Simic base decks is a potential issue. Both cards are good in the same basic strategies (although one could argue they are optimal in different decks), and I think they might push more people in a "UG Midrange Control" direction than is entirely desirable. Also Considering the fact that you're currently playing 5 UG 3-MV cards, it might be a good idea to cut one of the UG power outliers.

Having said that, I've never drafted your Cube, so if the Oko-Uro axis isn't an issue, there's likely no harm in keeping both around. I'm just saying that if there is a problem, you should cut one.

 

[landofMordor]

I'm not sure what the difference between "novel draft/card interactions" and "novel tactical and strategic interactions" means. They seem to be stemming from the same general concept (novel interactions), but I'm not sure how you differentiate between "draft/card" and "tactical and strategic." In essence, how different is the interaction between Glissa+Spellbombs from Drake Haven and cards with cycling/discard? Or, is this not the type of interaction to which you were referring?

I've thought about this for a day or so, and here's what I've got: your Drake Haven example is a card-wise interaction. Riptiders are known for designing draft-wise and archetype-wise interactions, for integrating that Drake Haven synergy seamlessly into an environment full of grave-matters or Madness or whatever. But even if those archetypes aren't all A+B, the broader decisions for playing well which arise out of that environment may not necessarily be novel, either with respect to other Retail Limited experiences or Constructed heuristics. Where I'm at, by contrast, is explicitly prioritizing the new decisions for their own sake, kinda regardless of how I arrive there in terms of the card-wise contents of the cube. It's a murky distinction especially because the actual design tools are usually the same: card-by-card swaps, like your Glissa example.

But, you'll note that my argument for the Shoals and Slogurk is not of the same kind as that of Glissa, and that's the key distinction. I guess you could say that pursuing interesting strategic decisions is a super-set of design goals which includes card-wise synergy, but is not limited to those interactions.

Not sure this is the right place to discuss this, but I feel roughly the same way about my Cube. Even though my main goal (currently) is to make the gameplay feel like constructed Standard and Modern Magic back when I first started playing, I'm using a more tactical approach to archetype design beyond just "this card has some level of historic significance." I think I may have done a little bit of that when I was just trying to fill slots towards the end of the summer, but that wasn't really intentional. Like you, my goal is to use cards good for my cube instead of good in my cube.

Great stuff! I hope my musings are helpful given that our goals align fairly well.

I believe I said this above, but I really don't think Oko and Uro should be played together if the dominance of Simic base decks is a potential issue. Both cards are good in the same basic strategies (although one could argue they are optimal in different decks), and I think they might push more people in a "UG Midrange Control" direction than is entirely desirable. Also Considering the fact that you're currently playing 5 UG 3-MV cards, it might be a good idea to cut one of the UG power outliers.

Having said that, I've never drafted your Cube, so if the Oko-Uro axis isn't an issue, there's likely no harm in keeping both around. I'm just saying that if there is a problem, you should cut one.

I hear you. I don't really know for sure myself, given my small sample size. I have gotten some grumbles the last couple times I cast Oko, but at the same time, my players like to beat the Oko player (and Zoo tends to do that fairly well), so I guess I'll wait until the public outcry becomes too much, because I sure do enjoy Elking fools. And w.r.t. the curve of Simic... yeah, good point, I'll be trimming Temporal Spring in the next update (Simic Vindicate is cool, but Simic can often just splash Vindicate).