Mordor's Cube (The Ship of Theseus)

[landofMordor]

"Magic is about too many things": Slay the Spire x Cube​

I got to have a conversation a couple weeks ago with class act @Jason Waddell, during which we talked about Slay the Spire and design lessons we could learn for Cube. (Coming soon to a podcast near you...)

One of Jason's many excellent points was that Spire creates an infinitely replayable, nearly addictive playground of synergy -- using only 50-ish common cards for each character. Contrast this to the average cube, where we often jam 360 unique designs into a single format, and then wonder why it's so difficult for synergies to come together. (Of course, they're different game engines, and Spire benefits from getting quasi-random Companion-like build-arounds in the form of Relics, the combinations of which drastically change deckbuilding incentive from game to game. But the point remains that Spire's synergies use every part of the buffalo -- no more and no less.)

Jason also said that "Magic is about too many things," and one of the reasons Limited sets feel so fresh is that they recycle the subsets of game that Magic cares about for that particular set release. It is extremely difficult to make White care about artifacts, enchantments, lifegain, small creatures, tribal, and +1/+1 counters all in a single set without blending the enablers into each other so far as to become flavorless. So instead, we get THB (enchantments and Heroic), ELD (artifacts and enchantments and Knights), MID (graveyard, coven, Spirit tribal, etc), each of which focuses on a subset of White's color pie. And as Riptiders know, the broader the mechanical hook, the easier it is to support incidentally (the difference between Coven and Madness).

So this got me thinking: what is my cube, The Ship of Theseus, about?

Level 0: Game Resources
Games (in the Meier-ian sense of "sequences of interesting decisions") are emergent from resource allocation and mechanics. In that sense, my cube is "about" the interchange of cards and life players are given by the game rules, and the tempo and mana that are generated by their cards. But that's endemic to most Magic formats -- in fact, it is more rare for a format to not utilize these resources (although 1-life cubes or Turbo Cubes or DrawHalfYourDeck cubes do exist).

What might be more unique to The Ship of Theseus specifically is my emphasis on the interchange between cards and tempo, which I find to be the source of many of Magic's most interesting decisions. I also have little patience for Magic's resource of life, because I prefer playing a relatively large quantity of short games. So I choose to cultivate a environment where tempo is highly relevant, card advantage is plentiful enough to be leveraged into tempo, and powerful, fast effects cause life totals dwindle faster than other formats.

Just by considering Magic's core resources, my cube's focus narrows with some parameters for design: powerful, fast, tempo-heavy games. If we build up from this foundation, the next level is our choice of cards.

Level 1: Card Design
There exist cards which are predominantly tempo-negative (Divination), primarily tempo-positive (Lotus Petal), and somewhere in between (Ophidian). Some cards can be either or both, depending on the stage of the game, or the way the player leverages their resources (Alchemist's Apprentice and even planeswalkers to some extent). There's a similar spectrum for card advantage, although usually high-tempo cards are card-negative and vice versa. (And I guess there's a spectrum for life, too, but most cards are neutral, and it's bikeshedding to taxonomize whether Grizzly Bears does better at shielding your life or removing your opponent's.)

The Ship of Theseus cares about the resource decisions concerning cards and tempo; therefore its individual cards must provide the opportunity for such decisions.

Mox Opal and Ancestral Recall are non-starters here, since they occupy the absolute extremes of the card advantage/tempo spectrum, and thus there is too little tradeoff to be had. These cards create fewer interesting decisions from game to game than more modest designs, and thereby contradict my goals. The Ship of Theseus cannot pursue power for its own sake, only the dynamic decisions which arise from powerful cards.

Let's take some positive case studies from my current list, starting with some extrema on my cube's tempo/card advantage spectrum:

Treasure Cruise represents the biggest guaranteed X-for-1 in my list. It is always tempo-negative, since the caster pays non-zero mana for zero board impact. However, the degree to which Cruise is tempo-negative depends on how much is Delved away. Though this decision often reduces to "delve the most you can" (a nice fallback for inexperienced players), the heuristic is not always optimal. If the caster has Tarmogoyf in their deck or is digging for their Tasigur, the Golden Fang, they may wish to selectively Delve, for example. These moments of discovery are rewarding for Jennys, Spikes, and Tammys alike (assuming Tammy likes playing beeg delve threats, I guess).

Meanwhile, some of the most tempo-positive plays in my list are free spells like Grief and Daze. These cards are obviously as tempo-positive as it gets when cast for free, but this often comes at significant card disadvantage or opportunity cost. And, most importantly, the player can choose to make decisions which affect the tempo of these cards. If Grief is cast as card advantage, it comes at a significant tempo investment that can be punished by Shock or Zombie; if Daze is cast for the card-neutral mode, it is less tempo-positive.

Finally, as an example of a switch hitter in the tempo/card advantage space: Grist, the Hunger Tide, like many planeswalkers, is a potential card advantage engine. But because the caster overpays for this flexibility, it's usually a tempo negative play (after all, you can buy a 1/1 creature for , or a Bone Shards for ). But if Grist's owner leads with the -1 on a creature that costs more than 3, it's a tempo-positive, card-neutral play. Which mode is "correct" will depend on the player's preferences, their deck composition, and each player's prior decisions -- this is exactly the kind of dynamic decision-making that The Ship of Theseus is built around.

Level 2: Archetype Design
Once cards are selected for their desirable gameplay decisionmaking, the combinations of those cards with the slant of Magic's resource system gives rise to the concept of synergy. Synergies cause cards to be re-evaluated as part of a greater whole, creating dynamic decision-making in draft and in gameplay. An example would be the interaction between Ephemerate and Grief. Maybe it's usually correct to hardcast Grief when is available, but Ephemerate will at least cause the player to reconsider the wisdom of that heuristic.

The Ship of Theseus cares about synergies which yield novel decisions regarding the resources of tempo and card advantage. Some of this is inherently contained in Levels 0-1. The synergies I'm looking for won't contradict those deeper goals (eg. Dark Depths+Vampire Hexmage combo invalidating card advantage by dealing 20).

But I should define what I mean by "novel decisions", and I think the easiest way is to illustrate what novel decisions are not. The +1/+1 counters deck signposted by Winding Constrictor, Conclave Mentor, or Zameck Guildmage degenerates into essentially one strategic heuristic: play creatures, grow them, and profit. The opponent's gameplay also degenerates at the strategic level: kill/disrupt the counter production (card advantage), and/or kill the opponent before their creatures grow unmanagable (tempo). Or, the Auras deck signposted by Brine Comber, Setessan Champion, or Satyr Enchanter degenerates tactically and strategically (assemble Voltron or bust, with minor variations if the opponent is telegraphing removal). The opponent's tactic: get X-for-1s by killing their creatures while establishing a clock of your own, or die a painful death. I don't know whether these kinds of heuristic decision trees can be wholly excised from Magic (the game is much too difficult for that!), but The Ship of Theseus seeks to minimize the situations when synergies lead to obvious decisions.

Ideally, then, my format's synergies (and its archetypes, which are just concentric synergies) should:
1. cause players to sacrifice elements of tempo or card advantage,
2. hinge on an unconventional use of tempo or card advantage, or
3. contribute to tempo/card advantage decisions which dynamically evolve.

Examples respectively:
1. Aggro Zoo decks in my format sacrifice the ability to gain card advantage in exchange for early-game stopping power. 5-color Niv-Mizzet Reborn decks sacrifice tempo to gain ridiculous virtual and actual card advantage from the entire color pie.
2. Interactions between Ephemerate and Evoke, or Delirium/Delve and Faithless Looting, are examples of card (dis)advantage yielding a synergistic benefit on the tempo/CA spectrum.
3. Upon reflection, any synergy causes dynamic evolution of decisionmaking, to the extent that it could be used as a definition of the term. I just want the subset of synergies which specifically affect tempo and card advantage.

Looking over my cube holistically, I observe that the bulk of the synergy revolves around strategic synergy (lots of 1-drops+burn, or counterspells+wraths), or else the very broadest of interaction with different zones and types of cards (graveyard-matters, artifacts-matter, spells-matter). So, if my cube could be said to be about one group of things at this high level, it's about board presence, graveyards, and card types. But these synergies inform one more level of design -- the manner in which I curate my cube.

Level 3: Cube Design
Funnily enough, I've painted myself into a corner by explicating my desire for novel decisions in Level 2. Novel decisions are definitionally ones that I haven't seen before, so the longer I play my Cube, the less my cube will contribute to this goal! (Even granting that there are more than 10^765 ways to order the cards in a cube draft, such that I'll never see the same cube twice, the color pie drastically reduces the effective diversity, and so does the way I support consistency by selecting many redundant variations of cards from a few broad classes. And, like, my lizard brain gets bored too easily.)

This brings us back to Slay the Spire and my conversation with Jason. He mentioned the fallacious-but-prevalent assumption that Cube design is an eternally unfinished process. While I agree with his logic, I don't think The Ship of Theseus fulfills its goals if it never changes. That's not to say I'll solve the environment in a rigorous way, because I certainly won't be able to. I also take to heart the idea that I'd benefit from a slower cycle of updates and iteration (after all, Theseus' vessel was renewed plank by plank). But if I can enrich the fertile soil of Cube through some occasional tinkering, so be it. Magic may be about too many things, but I care about only one:

The Ship of Theseus is about mystery, discovery, and exploration as boundless as my curiosity.

 

[landofMordor]

February '22 Update: NEO, artifacts, & an experiment​

Neon Dynasty is everything I wanted in my life, aesthetically speaking. I'll probably make a set cube or heavily NEO battlebox, and definitely make an Arena-legal set cube. But for now, The Ship of Theseus is renewed once again.

NEO Test List
Logistics note: Since I am keeping my online list synced up with my paper list, I am proxying these cards with plain ol' printer paper until such a time as I 1) acquire better proxies or the real thing, or 2) play them once and decide they're a bad idea .

The Wandering Emperor looks like it has genuinely fresh play patterns for a planeswalker, which is just thrilling. The worst part is that I can't run all 3 arts on a single card (what I call "the Thalia problem").
Lion Sash -- I've found a good overlap between Dominaria's Judgment card eval and success in my own cube environment (thanks, Dom!). Lion Sash was praised highly there, and I have 2 Stoneforge Mystics in my cube. QED.
The Restoration of Eiganjo: idk, I'm less optimistic about this one but I think it's cool (TM)
Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire is two of my favorite things: removal, and a land. It's Shatterskull Smashing's cool cousin.
Spirited Companion is not an effect I want in blue or green, but maybe white is just desperate for this kinda thing. Plus, it feeds Tarmogoyf.
The Reality Chip is a Wall of Omens that gives its "etb card" in the form of a mana sink with big upside. I like that decisionmaking and risk.
Otawara, Soaring City is pretty and I'm a little tired of Mystic Sanctuary.
Takenuma, Abandoned Mire is also pretty.
Blade of the Oni is freaking cool and also is Stoneforge Mystic's friend.
Mukotai Soulripper will need to trigger once or so to be worth its salt, but a 5/4 in my format is pretty huge, and tokens are not hard to find.
Goro-Goro, Disciple of Ryusei seems close to strong in my format, so I'm trying it for the cool points and the Dragons and the samurai frame.
March of Reckless Joy wouldn't be interesting to me if it weren't an Instant and if it didn't offer dynamic decisionmaking about which (and how many) cards to pitch. But it does! so it's cool.
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker seems like a planeswalker's worth of value -- two 2/2s with residual value, looting -- plus I like the callback.
Twinshot Sniper is a side-grade Magma Jet. Instead of Scry, you get the marginal card advantage of two types in the graveyard, uncounterable, and a "kicker" mode for a 2/3 reach.
Kaito Shizuki I am skeptical about, but am testing for the Ninja frame if nothing else.
Tamiyo, Compleated Sage broke my Vorthos heart, but is still a neat planeswalker with an amazing borderless treatment.
Eater of Virtue sounds like an innuendo, but whatever, it's cool.

Artifacts
With this update, I'm committing more fully to the artifacts-matter package in my cube. I have long been curious about the interaction between Tree of Tales and Tarmogoyf (and so on throughout my cube list), so this really originates in Mirrodin's busted cycle of artifact lands for me, and this update is a test of "how many artifacts are needed until these lands become high picks?" NEO is just providing a convenient opportunity for an overhaul.

The update includes the usual suspects in terms of high-powered (but fair!) payoffs (Urza, Emry, Goblin Engineer, Thought Monitor, Breya, etc), bauble/egg-style enablers (Ichor Wellspring, Chromatic Star, etc), and strong rate cards that happen to be artifacts (Twinshot Sniper, Breya's Apprentice, etc). Joining this update from NEO is Tameshi, Reality Architect, Mnemonic Sphere, and Experimental Synthesizer, which I wouldn't bother testing without this archetypal shift. Complete changes are at the bottom of the post (and please note I don't make like-for-like swaps).

An Experiment
To my eyes, the decision-dense cards I like from NEO (Wandering Emperor, Reality Chip, March, etc etc) are relatively clunky compared to just jamming a value engine like Grist, Daretti, or Oko, or playing the apex threats in my format like Kroxa, Uro, or Stoneforge Mystic. And it's well-established that metagames tend to coalesce around these power outliers. If, as I suspect, the power of my format is choking out some of the most interesting decisions and game pieces available in Magic, then I won't escape the gravitational pull of these outliers without making bigger changes.

Therefore, an experiment: I'm cutting the biggest self-contained "removal check" value engines of my format (Oko, Grist, Daretti, Klothys, Uro, Dauthi Voidwalker, Lurrus, Ashioks, and more) that offer better ceilings than the decision-dense cards I like without as much risk. Cards that are 3 or more colors are mostly safe for now, given that they incur manabase risks naturally. Mono-colored apex threats like Laelia, Stoneforge Mystic, and Esika's Chariot are definitely eligible to be cut, but for now I'll just wait and see.

I also need my removal to be strong enough to clear complex boardstates and stop the format from degnerating around the fastest clocks, but not so strong that it dunks on the slower value plays or strategies. Cards like Bloodchief's Thirst, Prismatic Ending, Oppressive Rays, Condemn, and Pacifism seem to fit this play pattern, but the trick is finding good red removal. Burning Oil is the only example I could think of that's anywhere close to a good rate -- if readers have other suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them, but right now the plan is just to run 4x-5x Burning Oil over my Lightning Strike variants. I'll also slightly lower the as-fan of removal during this experiment.

I'll be juggling several criteria to evaluate these design changes:
- Will a relative lack of power outliers contribute to swingier or smoother gameplay?
- Is artifact pile subjectively fun to pilot, with a net increase in gameplay decision diversity?
- Will the less-powerful yet more-decision-rich cards I'm focusing on (the Shoals, attacking-focused value engines like Slogurk, Ninjas, RNA Dovin, etc) interact positively with my current aggro decks, which remain mostly untouched?
- And, most importantly, do the theoretically decision-rich marquee cards I'm emphasizing actually play out that way?

The last criterion is the most important. If this experiment doesn't work out, it will be because the environmental pressures of my format reduce a player's viable decision-making space, or that I'm bad at evaluating which decisions are actually fun. On the other hand, if the format proves to better fit my gameplay goals and desires, I'll make some hard decisions concerning the powerful cards which I nonetheless enjoy.

I do not intend for these changes to be a permanent step of my cube ossifying into a museum. Instead, I'm exploring a significantly different design space, importing the design lessons from that space, and evolving The Ship of Theseus into an ever-new vessel.

Card swaps: http://cubecobra.com/cube/blog/blogpost/6205209867938e51fa0a1144
And because I never manage to get everything in a single update: http://cubecobra.com/cube/blog/blogpost/6205216067938e51fa0a149e

 

[inscho]

I've been heavily considering the OG artifact lands....Tameshi is what got me thinking about them to begin with, but I like how you are leveraging them for value, and it has my gears turning. The Blackstaff of Waterdeep is another card I've been eyeing, and I love the idea of making Darksteel Citadel an indestructible 4/4. That's my brand.

If, as I suspect, the power of my format is choking out some of the most interesting decisions and game pieces available in Magic, then I won't escape the gravitational pull of these outliers without making bigger changes.

Therefore, an experiment: I'm cutting the biggest self-contained "removal check" value engines of my format (Oko, Grist, Daretti, Klothys, Uro, Dauthi Voidwalker, Lurrus, Ashioks, and more) that offer better ceilings than the artifact deck without as much risk. Cards that are 3 or more colors are mostly safe for now, given that they incur manabase risks naturally. Mono-colored apex threats like Laelia, Stoneforge Mystic, and Esika's Chariot are definitely eligible to be cut, but for now I'll just wait and see.

I'm excited to read this. I'm obviously biased, but I think you may be pleased with the results that this path may lead you to. Eventually, there will be enough high-powered interesting cards printed that cards like Lurrus and Uro will cease to overshadow everything as low-risk apex threats, and just co-exist among other powerful interesting cards, but I don't think we are quite there yet (proper combo environments excluded).

I avoid SFM, Esika, and Laelia for the same reason.

I'm slowly working my way up in power with my cube, as I'm now realizing that my design goals can be maintained at a much higher power-ceiling. So this development in your cube is interesting to me as it feels that you are working your way down some. We have very different design goals, but are coming to some slightly convergent ideas.

- Will the less-powerful yet more-decision-rich cards I'm adding (the Shoals, attacking-focused value engines like Slogurk, Ninjas, RNA Dovin, etc) interact positively with my current aggro decks, which remain mostly untouched?

I'm a bit skeptical. Your cube has a no-nonsense backbone with a lot of redundancy as currently designed. I suspect that you may find yourself at an impasse and may have to choose whether the fun, diversity, and complexity of these new cards are a greater net benefit to your design goals than keeping this backbone perfectly intact. Some dominoes could fall or this experiment mostly scraped. I'm interested to see the conclusions you draw.

 

[landofMordor]

I've been heavily considering the OG artifact lands....Tameshi is what got me thinking about them to begin with, but I like how you are leveraging them for value, and it has my gears turning. The Blackstaff of Waterdeep is another card I've been eyeing, and I love the idea of making Darksteel Citadel an indestructible 4/4. That's my brand.

Gotta be honest, I've only cast Blackstaff once prior to this update, and it was kinda in that "worse than a basic Island" territory. But that's why I'm adding more support!

I'm obviously biased, but I think you may be pleased with the results that this path may lead you to. Eventually, there will be enough high-powered interesting cards printed that cards like Lurrus and Uro will cease to overshadow everything as low-risk apex threats, and just co-exist among other powerful interesting cards, but I don't think we are quite there yet (proper combo environments excluded). /n I avoid SFM, Esika, and Laelia for the same reason.

For sure. SFM and Esika I do find interesting, so that's another reason I haven't cut them. I like the subgame Esika makes between the player trying to copy stuff, and the opponent trying to mitigate all the value. And I like the drafting subgame of pairing equipments with SFM alongside other deckbuilding constraints (CoCo comes to mind), plus it'll be cool with Reconfigure things...

I'm slowly working my way up in power with my cube, as I'm now realizing that my design goals can be maintained at a much higher power-ceiling. So this development in your cube is interesting to me as it feels that you are working your way down some. We have very different design goals, but are coming to some slightly convergent ideas.

Exciting stuff It makes me grateful for a long-form forum like this where it's possible to actually get that deeper, longer-term knowledge about a cube design strategy or set of goals. There's no way we'd be able to adequately exchange ideas like this on Reddit, haha.

I'm a bit skeptical. Your cube has a no-nonsense backbone with a lot of redundancy as currently designed. I suspect that you may find yourself at an impasse and may have to choose whether the fun, diversity, and complexity of these new cards are a greater net benefit to your design goals than keeping this backbone perfectly intact. Some dominoes could fall or this experiment mostly scraped. I'm interested to see the conclusions you draw.

Zoo does indeed make for a stiff backbone of a Cube. Consistently buying a 2/3 or bigger for a single mana just straight outclasses a lot of cards. I didn't make deeper changes initially, because there's a nonzero chance that these "fun/diverse/complex" decisions may turn out to be a pipe dream once they actually become the focal point of the format. Maybe it sucks to make Disrupting Shoal decisions every game! I don't think it will, but I've never played a Shoal in a format where it thrives, so I have to accept the possibility that all my theorycrafting is off base.

Either way, I'm making a lot of smaller-scale changes which I'm really excited about, so I'm sure I'll learn a lot.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

February '22 Update: NEO, artifacts, & an experiment​

Neon Dynasty is everything I wanted in my life, aesthetically speaking. I'll probably make a set cube or heavily NEO battlebox, and definitely make an Arena-legal set cube. But for now, The Ship of Theseus is renewed once again.

Great post as always parker!

An Experiment
To my eyes, the artifact deck that I'm considering is relatively clunky compared to just jamming a value engine like Grist, Daretti, or Oko, or playing the apex threats in my format like Kroxa, Uro, or Stoneforge Mystic. And it's well-established that metagames tend to coalesce around these power outliers. Artifacts are also simply a different design space. If, as I suspect, the power of my format is choking out some of the most interesting decisions and game pieces available in Magic, then I won't escape the gravitational pull of these outliers without making bigger changes.

Therefore, an experiment: I'm cutting the biggest self-contained "removal check" value engines of my format (Oko, Grist, Daretti, Klothys, Uro, Dauthi Voidwalker, Lurrus, Ashioks, and more) that offer better ceilings than the artifact deck without as much risk. Cards that are 3 or more colors are mostly safe for now, given that they incur manabase risks naturally. Mono-colored apex threats like Laelia, Stoneforge Mystic, and Esika's Chariot are definitely eligible to be cut, but for now I'll just wait and see.

This is actually something I've done in the current version of my own Cube to some extent. I will say, though, that I'm not 100% pleased with the results. But first, I need to give you some context because my decision-making process in this matter came from a different place than yours.

When I was starting to learn how to play Magic, I really hated losing to stuff like Primordial Hydra that were just big blocks of stats with little substance. That's one of the reasons why I love removal so much– it helps to beat back the garbage mythics that the idiot older scouts my esteemed friends used to put in all of their decks. When I started building my Cubes, I intentionally kept the power level low because my favorite cards were on the weak side and I didn't have the cards to build a diverse powerful format. Over time I realized that the gameplay I enjoyed actually was more in the realm of a high power level, and so I adjusted my designs to that idea. However, I tried to avoid the much-maligned "game ruining bull shit" (GRBS) cards that could choke out the synergies I was looking to cultivate, even as my Cube got more powerful. Then, last winter, I realized that the Cube I actually wanted was effectively a draftable experience with a constructed gameplay feel. This lead me to realize that cards I was previously keeping off-limits for fear of ruining games actually fit my design goals. While it turned out some of these cards were not as problematic as advertised, I still worked to include relatively few removal checks or potential GRBS cards beyond the ones that were meant to be big-ticket flashy cards. Likewise, I included a lot of good removal spells to ensure these cards would not be issues.

The net result of my experimentation with limiting the number of potential power outliers as finishers has yielded some positive, albeit weird, results. First, the Cube gameplay so far has been excellent. While my draft experience has been somewhat limited thanks to COVID, games do not feel decided by one card very often. If a single card does end up winning the game, it's as a Reanimator Target or as a "protect the king" style value engine. However, that's where the definite net positives stop and things get weird. The big thing I'm noticing is that finding good first picks can be very difficult. Consider this pack:

My Cube's power band is pretty tight, so outside of fetchlands and some of the efficient smoothing that I run, making a first pick can be very hard. All of these cards are things I would be perfectly happy putting into my deck. But choosing which one to start with is a bit rough. However, in this next pack I think there is an easier answer:

Tasigur is a really easy pick here. While a triome or treasure cruise might be a little bit more "correct" Tasigur is super cool and a fun card to build around and play with. Since there aren't any stellar fixing or smoothing cards here, he's an easy first pick.

What I'm getting at here is simple: cutting out too many of the power-band topper creatures and permanents can make the draft experience a little more difficult for players, as these cards are helpful to providing them with some sort of direction. While blindly taking a Bonecrusher Giant first is rarely a bad way to start a draft, it's not as reassuring as getting a pack one pick one Elspeth, Sun's Champion. Crusher doesn't necessarily make me want to go play a red deck as much as Elspeth makes me want to go White Midrange/Control. While the Bonecrusher Giant is obviously great, it's harder to justify committing to a lane because I have just the crusher: he's good but he's not going to be the best threat in my deck.

I'm wondering if your Cube might have the same issue I'm seeing if you fully commit to cutting the most alluring power outliers. For example, I'm looking at some of these sample packs and having a hard time making a pick when there isn't a fetchland. For example:

Obviously this pack is full of good cards, but where do I start? Breya seems very powerful, but she's 4 colors. There are some nice 2-drops, but they are also color-intensive and push me in a very specific direction. The fixing in your Cube is great, so while casting carts with intense color isn't as much of a concern as it might be elsewhere, choosing the best colors to play can still be pretty rough. If there were a grist or something in here I'd have my answer of what to do, but there's not, which makes choosing an initial card a bit harder. Let's try another pack:

Liliana is cool but I don't think she's that great in this particular environment. Monastery Mentor is an interesting direction but maybe a little too specific on having the right cards to be good. The next best card is... Mishra's Bauble? I think that might be the pick but going with that first makes me a little nervous (although maybe it shouldnt?)

Even with this next pack, while there is an easy pick in the Fetchland, I'm not sure what I would be taking first other than it:

Now, this might not be an issue for you, but I do think it's worth noting. When all of the cards are good but none of them stand out, it can be a little tricky to make a good early pick in the draft. I think removing cards like Oko and Uro to make room for some more synergistic strategies is a good move. However, I think it may be wise to look for some more "exciting" cards that can help players make some early choices beyond the "correct" decision of taking land. While I don't think these cards need to be power outliers, I do think looking for some more cool cards to draw people's attention in lieu of Uro and company would make sense.

For my Cube, I'm looking at some cards that are not really near the top of my power band but just look and read "cool" to try and help draw people in certain directions. For example, I'm looking at Junji, the Midnight Sky and Iymrith, Desert Doom to help draw people into Reanimator, Control, and Esper Dragons. These cards aren't near the top of my power band (Junji might actually be a little weak if anything), but they are cool, and might encourage my drafters to try something a little different. These specific examples are too weak for what you have going on, but I think the same principle might apply.

In the meantime, I would advise against cutting things like Stoneforge Mystic and Esika's Chariot unless you are absolutely sure they are having an adverse effect on the format. These cards are exciting to pick up early and will help to provide a direction to aspire towards if seen in the draft. Again, I think cutting Uro and friends makes sense given your current goals, but you may need something to fill the "flashy finisher" slot that is now mostly vacant. These changes are great but you will likely need further adjustment before it's perfect.

Thank you for writing such a thought-provoking post!

 

[landofMordor]

Thanks for writing about the aspirational cards and sharing your experience, Train. Your examples were great, and I see what you mean about feeling direction-less. I'm already loath to cut the monocolor bombs you mentioned, partly because they serve that aspirational role, and partly because I think they're really cool. And I'm definitely on the market for more such cards -- Kaito Shizuki strikes me as one such example, where it's a build-around (because UB isn't always about tempo-forward attacking) but certainly offers a high ceiling in exchange -- assuming they're at the right power level.

On this note of making interesting cards worth building around, @Dom Harvey drafted a pretty cool deck the other day: http://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/6205f30a066e1a19238369c8 . Titania, Protector of Argoth, for example, is a card that was barely-good-enough in my prior list, but here I think it is this deck's premier beef, forming a prominent lattice of synergy with Esika's Chariot, Urza's Saga, Wrenn and Six, etc, which trickles down all the way to the choice of removal spells like Pyrite Spellbomb and Boseiju, Who Endures. Small sample size, of course, but this kind of micro-synergistic deckbuilding was less common in the prior version of this cube. It looks like a blast to pilot and showcases some of the dynamic decisions that I wanted to foster, so I'm pretty pleased.

That said, I'm definitely keeping my eyes peeled for more aspirational card designs that are at the top end of my power distribution, and I'll keep monitoring the quality of deckbuilding as I do.

 

[landofMordor]

April '22 Update: Playtest Methodology, Revert Removal​

Got a couple drafts in from February's update, and the limited playtesting I've had has already been pretty revealing. I thought I'd share my methodology for rapid playtesting before diving into some results.

Playtesting
50 swaps in a cube environment isn't just 50 new cards; it's an entire new cube. A single power outlier like Urza's Saga may recontextualize swaths of extant cards; each basic effect may tilt the threat-vs-removal tradeoff; the shiny new cards may cause your drafters to play differently. But it's inefficient to explore the entire new space just to test one design experiment.

As a result, I tend to playtest by constructing (not drafting) extrema in my format's decision space. For my artifact experiment from February, e.g., I built a 4-color Breya nonsense pile, an Esper Urza/SFM/Reconfigure pile, a Sultai Slogurk proactive deck, and a Winota Zoo deck. Between these four, I got to include the majority of my newly added cards. Moreover, the four represent the extrema of my cube format -- the Zoo deck is about as aggressive as this format gets, the Slogurk deck is as good-stuff-y as I could build (Kaito, Goyf, Thoughtseize, etc etc), and the two artifact decks deeply exploit the synergies of this update.

Testing extrema is likelier to reveal the maximum degeneracy of my metagame. If one of these decks "solves" my format, then it'll never get much worse than what I'm experiencing during testing. Or if I think the extreme is fun, then I'm likely to think anything short of the extreme is also fun. And if the experiment didn't go far enough, I'll know because the synergy decks will fail even at their most degenerate.

It's kinda like going straight for the spiciest salsa at the taco bar -- all it takes is one bite to determine whether you have the misfortune of eating "Mexican food" in Boston, or something delicious and authentic. If you start with the mild stuff and work your way up, it may take many more bites to figure it out.

First Impressions of "Version Bitterblossom"
These are the evaluation criteria for the February update:

- Will a relative lack of power outliers contribute to swingier or smoother gameplay?
- Is artifact pile subjectively fun to pilot, with a net increase in gameplay decision diversity?
- Will the less-powerful yet more-decision-rich cards I'm focusing on (the Shoals, attacking-focused value engines like Slogurk, Ninjas, RNA Dovin, etc) interact positively with my current aggro decks, which remain mostly untouched?
- And, most importantly, do the theoretically decision-rich marquee cards I'm emphasizing actually play out that way?

- Yes, the gameplay was slightly smoother. Incremental card advantage snowballed slowly and it was possible to break parity with a well-built value engine. Fewer "removal check" threats meant there were fewer tempo/board swings. Conversely, relative lack of removal and bombs meant it was more difficult to recover from stumbles.
- I had fun with the first few turns as an artifact deck pilot. The Welder/Emry gameplay loops quickly got tedious in grindy matchups, though.
- My aggro deck was middle-of-the-pack in my limited testing. Winota, Joiner of Forces was a huge power outlier for that deck, but I made a deckbuilding mistake by including Loam/W6 in a deck that really wanted to just clock the opponent. I suspect that aggro which ignores the cute loops will be quite powerful, but not overwhelmingly so. However, the Ninjas and similar cards were too small to stack up well against Kird Ape, which is a fairly glaring issue.
- I don't yet know how to answer the final criterion. These are "first impressions" for a reason

Note that my confidence is much less than 100% on these -- I'm not using these results as "data" in the same way I would 17lands.com stats; rather I'm trying to get at the emotion and play pattern underneath the data.

However, to the extent that I trust my emotions... I did not really have fun playing the grindiest matchups. (So many game objects! So much card manipulation! Big "ships in the night" energy.) I think a lot of this was due to ground stalls and a lack of interaction -- ironic, considering that I cut interaction for this update! The lack of Daretti-to-Oko-tier power outliers also contributed, since neither artifact player could break the game open with a huge topdeck.

I can sum up my initial feelings by paraphrasing the systems analyst Jay Forrester: I found a leverage point to change my cube format, and pushed as hard as I could in the wrong direction!

Removal Reversion
I pushed on these particular levers -- weaker apex threats, less and worse removal, and greater synergy -- because I feared the synergy decks being a "trap". But I ended up forcing my players to suffer through Euro-game-style (or EDH-style) Magic, which is even worse in my opinion!

Therefore, I'm going to pull back slightly on one design lever, removal. I'll cut the "best against Zoo" removal like Condemn and Burning Oil, reinstating Lightning Strikes and such. This should allow proactive decks to interrupt value loops, force the synergy decks to diversify their deckbuilding, and generally help games end. I may also slightly increase the asfan of removal in my format, closer to the previous levels.

The other two levers I'll leave mostly untouched, because I'm still curious as to how synergy decks will perform (and, like I said, I don't fully trust my small sample size). But I've gotten enough subjective experience to learn that a trap synergy deck is far from the worst possible outcome of this experiment, so undershooting might not be so bad after all.

Card changes: http://cubecobra.com/cube/blog/blogpost/625056149a74b7100a345efd
As always, a reminder that I don't make one-for-one swaps.

 

[Zoss]

It's kinda like going straight for the spiciest salsa at the taco bar -- all it takes is one bite to determine whether you have the misfortune of eating "Mexican food" in Boston, or something delicious and authentic. If you start with the mild stuff and work your way up, it may take many more bites to figure it out.

That's your problem right there--gotta go at least to Somerville for the good shit.

On topic, this is a fantastic writeup. It's always great hearing about testing methodology, and I think we tend to sweep failed experiments under the rug, so getting to read about your removing removal trial is especially valuable.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

April '22 Update: Playtest Methodology, Revert Removal​

Got a couple drafts in from February's update, and the limited playtesting I've had has already been pretty revealing. I thought I'd share my methodology for rapid playtesting before diving into some results.

Great post as always!!

Therefore, I'm going to pull back slightly on one design lever, removal. I'll cut the "best against Zoo" removal like Condemn and Burning Oil, reinstating Lightning Strikes and such. This should allow proactive decks to interrupt value loops, force the synergy decks to diversify their deckbuilding, and generally help games end. I may also slightly increase the asfan of removal in my format, closer to the previous levels.

Glad you changed this back, I liked the idea of playing stuff like Burning Oil as additional removal but not at the expense of most of the Face Burn. It was a good experiment, though!

Thanks again!

 

[landofMordor]

May '22 Update: SNC Testing​

Planned SNC/NCC Testing:
Inspiring Overseer, rate+blink.
A Little Chat is at its strongest in blue-based creature decks that can bluff countermagic. In other words, exactly my ideal Blue deck.
Ledger Shredder. Good rate.
Lethal Scheme is at its strongest in my least favorite game state: board stalls. I wasn't high on it before I realized this, but now I want to try it.
In Too Deep offers some upsides and downsides versus Declaration in Stone, and I'm ok with that.
Tenacious Underdog's 2 toughness might prove too frail for this format, but it trades with Watchwolf and keeps coming back for more in a way that can help alleviate topdeck wars, another game state I don't love.
Dogged Detective I think is a cute design, and I have no idea if it's strong enough for my format.
Strangle.
Rob the Archives is the least impressive of my tests, but I'm willing to give it a try.
Jetmir's Garden and the rest of the Triomes are an experiment to see if my format can handle all 10 Triomes. I think it's likely, but if it encourages my drafters into reckless splashing then I may cut back.
Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer is like a baby Tasigur mixed with some Watchwolf energy.
Ob Nixilis, the Adversary has an intriguing economy of resources -- to really maximize his power, you want to be ahead on board with strong creatures to sacrifice, but then Casualty removes one's ability to protect him, but two planeswalkers will provide a life buffer and some very modest creatures... in other words, playing with the Adversary promises to be an interesting subgame with a unique, self-contained decision space. That's my kind of card.
Jinnie Fay, Jetmir's Second is supremely hybrid, and thereby an open-ended build-around.
Endless Detour has a lot of flexibility and my format doesn't mind the mana cost.
Void Rend, see above.
Park Heights Pegasus is another variation on Watchwolf, trading stats for stronger evasion.
Currency Converter and Urza's Saga.

I'm also making some rules changes with this update:
1. Legion Angel, Collected Company, and Delver of Secrets will be "draft 1, get 3". It is frustrating to speculate on these effects when the failcase is a draft trainwreck, and unlike burn or counterspells or cantrips, few reasonable alternatives exist.
2. Volatile Fjord and friends will be made available along with basic lands, for those who need a certain fetchable and are willing to take the tapland for it. The 10 Triomes will probably alleviate much of the need here, but I realized I needed a safety net to ensure Kird Ape doesn't get screwed by variance.
3. Cogwork Librarian is now in the list as a 4-of. I really enjoyed my friend Jordan's use of this card at a recent in-person draft.

Even though I don't cap my cube size, the list was getting a little bulky, so I cut several known quantities in order to make room. Expressive Iteration and friends are not gone forever; they're just taking a break.

http://cubecobra.com/cube/blog/blogpost/6276740dd08f8a0ffdae2eb0

Some reflection navel-gazing

Playing @inscho's cube reminded me how blasted fun it is to use synergies to elevate nearly-there roleplayers to contextual A+ status. I don't think my cube offers this gameplay, but maybe I'm just inoculated to the novelty of a format I spend so much time staring at. There's definitely some fun and novelty in what I consider to be an extremely spikey Limited format, where a Magic player's skill is tested in every phase from draft to deckbuilding to gameplay, with razor-thin margins of error. The characteristic that gives rise to the thin margin is the powerful synergies between fetchlands and shocklands, or the synergies between cantrips and Delve spells, or any other synergy that emerges from my cube. Players in my format simply must be exploiting the game engine in a fundamental way via combinations of cards, and if that's not synergy I don't know what is. But even so... part of me wants to decrease the pressure on the player to give them a little more room to explore.

There's some balance to be struck here. Too much room for exploration leads to a format resembling 1v1 casual EDH, which is (in my opinion) best left at the casual EDH tables. For the time being, I remain uncertain and don't quite have the bandwidth to address these things as deeply as I'd like.

For example, I'll be spending a lot of this month traveling and working, so it'll be at least post-Baldur's-Gate before I can dedicate the energy to some serious cube testing. As such, I'm freezing card updates for the time being. I'll obviously still be thinking about Magic, duh. But I'm not going to worry about the cards in my cube just yet.

 

[blacksmithy]

you have just tipped me over the edge to running cogwork librarian again

 

[landofMordor]

Interaction, Synergy, & Game Size​

Definitions
Interaction (or "removal" or "kill spells") is any game piece which interferes with the opponents game pieces by reducing their amount of relevant game attributes. Usually the reduction in relevant text happens by forcing an opponent's card to go to a less useful game zone, but this can also happen passively.

Like all cards, Interaction spells contribute Power (which I define as win %) to their caster through two complementary attributes: the Rate of the card and its Synergy with other cards.

Most Cube-relevant interaction involves a trade of resources like mana and cards, either 1-for-1 or few-for-1.

Interaction and Synergy

Synergy is when the combination of two cards gives rise to greater Power than the Rate of the individual cards would suggest. Most synergies vote for "big games" in which many pieces of cardboard are relevant, compounding the synergy's effect. For example, Lord of the Unreal on an empty battlefield is a Grizzly Bear, but each Illusion in play causes the Lord to get better and better with no upper limit. This also applies to synergies in non-battlefield game zones: Storm decks can deal 20 damage in one turn but require sufficient game objects in the hand and on the stack; Dredge decks require enough cards in the graveyard before they can vomit their entire deck onto the battlefield.

"Small games" are the opposite of big ones: players are trading their cardboard with their opponents' to reduce the total resources available. Most synergies are stifled by small games. Even though "threshold"-style on/off synergies are harmed less by small games than "scaling" synergies with no ceiling, this trend is still fairly universal -- after all, in the limit where there is only one card in any game zone, no Synergy can exist because that card will have nothing to trigger or enable it (unless that card is Barren Glory, I guess).

Because Interaction usually involves a trade of resources that removes cardboard from relevant zones, it votes for a small game and therefore pushes against Synergy at a broad structural level. This is to say nothing of Interaction's tendency to target specific game objects, disrupting linchpins like Lord of the Unreal to implode the opponent's synergistic game plan.

Are Interaction & Synergy Incompatible?

Andy posed this question in a recent LPR episode, and it might seem intuitive given what we've just discussed. Even so, my answer is: No, but Small Games are more hostile to Synergy!

If a Synergy is contextually weak despite the individual Rates being contextually acceptable, it may be because features of the environment lend themselves to net-smaller-game trades of resources. This includes, but is not limited to, the interactive spells of the format:

Votes for a Small-Game Format
Relevant to the interaction discussion:
* High power-to-toughness statlines (making combat trades more likely -- a.k.a. creature-based "interaction")
* Cheap, dense interactive spells (early fractional advantages are less likely to snowball)
* 1-for-Y interactive spells (interacting removes cardboard from relevant zones for both players)
* Interaction affects multiple zones (players can invalidate opponents' cards wherever they might matter)
* Lack of graveyard- or stack-based synergies (objects are less likely to matter when interacted with)
* Mana chokepoints (players can't play their resources because their lands are destroyed or taxed, or they're killed before playing their lands)
And other structural features which are as much symptom as cause:
* Life chokepoints (players can't play all their resources because they are killed too quickly.)
* Strongest engines on Rate provide fractional card advantage (fractional value matters more in small games)
* Strongest value on Rate is split among multiple currencies like life/cards/stats/abilities (players aren't rewarded for going all-in)
* Strongest Synergies are threshold-style (the binary on/off provides no incentive to develop past that threshold)

Votes for a Big-Game Format
* Low power-to-toughness statlines (making combat trades less likely)
* Low density of interaction (early fractional advantages are more likely to snowball)
* X-for-1 interactive spells (interacting is more likely to add to one player's resources)
* Interaction doesn't completely invalidate game text (Pacifism or Moat may "interact" to prevent attacks, but not abilities)
* Card chokepoints (players need mana sinks or big spells to stay competitive in the late game)
* High starting resources (through Commanders, multiplayer, or custom rules, the game starts with more relevant cardboard)
* Strong graveyard- or stack-based synergies (objects are more likely to matter even if interacted with)
* Strongest engines on Rate provide snowballing value (value grows in big games)
* Strongest Synergies are scaling-style (the player has incentive to keep as much of their cardboard in play as possible)

An Analysis

Andy's Bun Magic Cube, on average, exhibits nearly all small-game tendencies. Aggressive decks comprised of creatures with high power-to-toughness ratios are highly supported in this format, leading many games to be decided before players have fully developed their resources. On average, removal spells are 1-for-1 or 1-for-Y and cheap. Mana chokepoints exist in W aggro, and life chokepoints exist through the shock/horizon/fetch manabase and the robust aggro. The strongest engines on rate are nearly all planeswalkers (fractional advantage) or gain value by pressuring life or mana (Ragavan, Laelia, Kroxa, Young PZ). When power is gated behind synergy, it is near-exclusively threshold-based. One exception is the prevalence of graveyard-based synergies, but this is mitigated slightly by the inclusion of interaction that affects the graveyard.

But, caveats!

No cube is a monolith. Andy does have many cards and decks which do vote for big games. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath is the most obvious single card -- as Patrick Sullivan has observed, every piece of Uro's value votes for an extended big game. But there are also synergies which vote for a big game, from ramping out Craterhoof Behemoth with a million mana dorks, to gumming up the board with Field of the Dead zombies, to control using attrition to fight through the opponent's cards. Moreover, even small games can turn into big games: if both aggro players have played 6 lands and traded all their creatures without killing the opponent, then we're in a big game where the player who has more mana sinks will be favored. (With a flash of insight, I realize this perfectly describes the topdecking gameplay I've struggled to describe in The Ship of Theseus.)

Designing Game Size

The big games in which Synergy thrives come with increased complexity/tracking to the players, but also provide ripe opportunity for exploring novel card-wise interactions of Magic. Big games essentially improve the odds that players will witness a novel combination of cards in relevant zones. (Maybe this is one reason why EDH, famous for its ethos of "cards you've never seen before", is a 40-life, 4-player format). Big games typically end in a flurry of value, an uncontested bomb, or by banking mana early into an insurmountable advantage.

In small games, fractional advantages like a 1/1 token, a scry decision, or a skilful double-block comprise a larger percentage of relevant resources, so small games provide strong opportunities for mastering tactical and strategic concepts and seeing cause-and-effect in one's play decisions. Games that end early often do so after a well-planned combat, or a single threat that sticks. Games that go late can be affected in a volitile way by high-impact topdecks, or can blend into big "high resource" games where mana sinks matter. Since less cardboard is involved in small games, they are much friendlier to first-time drafters of the environment, as less format-specific knowledge is required to execute a successful game plan. It may also have benefits for newer players, since less tracking and comprehension complexity is required in smaller games.

Each style of game has benefits and drawbacks, which I'll use to conclude in broad strokes (also because otherwise I'll spend all day typing):

Benefits of Big Games
* Friendly to Jenny and Tammy psychographics
* Lets the 0-3 drafter save face because cause-and-effect is murkier (just being pragmatic, here!)
* Friendlier to scaling synergies, and therefore big story moments
* Easier to test synergy decks because more cards matter in each game

Benefits of Small Games
* Friendly to the game-mastery-focused Spike
* Friendlier to small decisions that matter, and therefore subtle displays of skill
* Faster games for higher testing volume
* Lower comprehension complexity and tracking requirements are friendly to newer drafters
* Less format-specific knowledge required to pilot a small-game deck

Thanks for reading, and cheers!

 

[safra]

Phenomenal post. Gonna be thinking about this for a while. Thank you.

 

[LadyMapi]

Jumping off of that excellent post...

I think that you can actually divide cards into four categories:

Cards that vote for small games
Cards that vote for big games
Cards that require big games
Cards that abstain from voting

The first two categories are pretty obvious. The third category covers stuff that requires a "big game" before it's actually usable — stuff like combat tricks, tribal lords, and other things that rely on the assumption that you can keep stuff on the board for extended periods of time. As for stuff that abstains from voting... that's how I'd categorize cards that mess with cardboard quality instead of cardboard quantity, if that makes sense. That's where I'd categorize stuff like ninjas, cantrips, tutors, and bounce spells.

 

[blacksmithy]

ninjas require small games IMO otherwise you can’t accrue value from their bounce and combat triggers. in a big game there’s usually no good attacks to be made to do ninja stuff

 

[LadyMapi]

Isn't that more dependent on evasion than the game size? Like, if you're attacking with a Storm Crow because you want to ninjitsu in your Fish Waifu, villain having a creature with reach is going to stifle that plan a lot more than villain having a million soldier tokens.

 

[blacksmithy]

i mean once you get the first hit in, can your ninja continue attacking? in a big game probably not. in a small game you’re more likely to either 1 have profitable attacks or 2 be a removal spell away from such

 

[landofMordor]

Phenomenal post. Gonna be thinking about this for a while. Thank you.

Thanks for the kind words! Let me know what you conclude

Jumping off of that excellent post...

I think that you can actually divide cards into four categories:

Cards that vote for small games
Cards that vote for big games
Cards that require big games
Cards that abstain from voting

The first two categories are pretty obvious. The third category covers stuff that requires a "big game" before it's actually usable — stuff like combat tricks, tribal lords, and other things that rely on the assumption that you can keep stuff on the board for extended periods of time. As for stuff that abstains from voting... that's how I'd categorize cards that mess with cardboard quality instead of cardboard quantity, if that makes sense. That's where I'd categorize stuff like ninjas, cantrips, tutors, and bounce spells.

Thanks to your kind words as well Interesting response, especially the "abstaining" category. I wonder if we can dig into cantrips, tutors, and bounce spells a little bit.

Diabolic Tutor (the one with a fair rate) is 4 mana to search up the situationally best card. You spend 4 mana (tempo) and 1 card for 1 card. Big games are ones with more mana spent in total, so the 4-mana investment is a more negligible cost than in a small game where you might not even play your 4th land before the game ends. I'd say DT votes for a big game slightly more than a small one. But, maybe this is subtle enough to be functionally similar to "abstaining".

Bounce spells, similar deal -- you trade 1 mana and 1 card for X mana and 0 cards, so the tempo you gain from your opponent losing a blocker and having to re-spend X mana gets better the less mana is spent during a game. I'd say bounce usually votes for small games (and indeed, when we've seen Constructed-playable bounce spells like Vapor Snag, it's often as a part of blue aggro "delver" style decks which are interested in trading down resources so that their weeny creatures will shine).

Cantrips are the tricky one. You spend 1 mana (usually) and 1 card for slightly greater than 1 card of value. Normally I'd say that this votes for a big game because that's when the 1 mana becomes negligible, but this contradicts my experience of U Xerox decks (a small-game deck) utilizing a ton of cantrips. Maybe it's because, in small games, that fractional "slightly greater than a 1-for-1" bit of card advantage is a bigger fraction of the total relevant cards. It's murky either way, though, enough so that "abstaining" is probably the best way to describe this.

EDIT: wait, I think I take it back on cantrips. U Xerox decks (in Legacy, Modern, etc) are 2-for-1-ing themselves all over the place, with Daze and Force of Will etc, and even starting the game with bigger-than-usual elements of virtual card disadvantage (Treasure Cruise). So a cantrip doesn't just help the deck run smoothly in the early turns; a cantrip's fractional card advantage also represents an even bigger portion of the total relevant cards in Xerox because the Xerox deck player is essentially lighting some of their cardboard on fire as they pitch them to Forces. But I guess this is just to say that the "big game/small game" vote is partly contextual and all my bullet points above are probably malleable if you're willing to do enough work to change the context.

 

[LadyMapi]

i mean once you get the first hit in, can your ninja continue attacking? in a big game probably not. in a small game you’re more likely to either 1 have profitable attacks or 2 be a removal spell away from such

That's why the good lord gave us Smoke Shroud.

In all seriousness, that's a solid point I didn't consider.

 

[sigh]

Bounce spells, similar deal -- you trade 1 mana and 1 card for X mana and 0 cards, so the tempo you gain from your opponent losing a blocker and having to re-spend X mana gets better the less mana is spent during a game. I'd say bounce usually votes for small games (and indeed, when we've seen Constructed-playable bounce spells like Vapor Snag, it's often as a part of blue aggro "delver" style decks which are interested in trading down resources so that their weeny creatures will shine).

"Big Games", though, also suffer from "chokepoints" as described above, aka much bigger things that need recasting. In a small game the most expensive thing you might be recasting is 3 mana, but that vapor snag might be bouncing a 6+ drop in a "big" game, or a permanent that has had X prior mana-activations pumped into it. That is a much bigger absolute mana hit, and a maybe equal relative mana hit.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

ninjas require small games IMO otherwise you can’t accrue value from their bounce and combat triggers. in a big game there’s usually no good attacks to be made to do ninja stuff

i mean once you get the first hit in, can your ninja continue attacking? in a big game probably not. in a small game you’re more likely to either 1 have profitable attacks or 2 be a removal spell away from such

This is consistent with my experiences with Ninjas in MH1 and Neon Dynasty limited. Even though these formats tend to be a little smaller than other retail formats, they still have bigger games than a constructed format. I found when I was playing Ninjas that I would often get in with my Moon-Circut Hacker or Dokuchi Silencer once and then never be able to connect with them again. Honestly, this seems like one of the reasons why Cunning Evasion was in Modern Horizons: it let players attack with Ninjas without having to worry about losing them and it resets ninjas so they can be ninjutsu'd out in place of an evasive idiot.

 

[blacksmithy]

a good example in constructed is pauper ninjas + faeries where you are basically keeping the board small while pinging in with ninja of the deep hours or whatever

 

[Nanonox]

From my experience with multiplayer games (which naturally tend towards big games) you need something like this for bigger games.



It snowballs once it hits and threatens to continue much more reliably than other threats. The downside is that it can run away with the game if unanswered.

 

[landofMordor]

I Love Losing (and other armchair psychology from insignificant data)​

The other day I asked the Cube Talk discord what their favorite and least favorite ways to lose a game of Magic were. Some responses were fairly obvious (for example, nobody likes losing to mana screw). But other aspects of Magic's game engine were much murkier. See if you can guess whether "love" or "hate" is spoiler'd out in each pair of the following responses. (Most respondents didn't use language this strong, but I need the spoiler'd words to have the same length lest their spoiler blurs look different!)

"I love losing when I make a mistake and it's obvious what it is. I hate losing when I make an error for a face-up card."

"I hate losing to nuances in the game rules. I love losing to some niche detail of the stack."

"I hate losing to 2-card combos. I love losing to Turn 1 combos."

I wasn't quite expecting the margin between a fun loss and a discouraging loss to be so razor-thin. On this knife-edge are balanced several insights for game design, but it all boils down to this:

It's fun to lose if you can still feel clever or unlucky. It's discouraging to lose if you feel foolish or helpless.

Hooked on a Feeling

Regardless of player psychographic or investment level, we all play games to feel good. We know from the psychological ideas of recency bias and availability heuristics that our brains tend to privilege our most extreme and most recent feelings, which will inform our enjoyment of a particular Cube (and of games in general). Game losses are often the most dramatic and highly emotional moments in Magic, and the nature of those emotions can be crucial for attracting and retaining Cube drafters.

It's possible to feel good even when losing a game, but only if there is a sub-goal that isn't a function of game outcome (e.g. Jenny discovering a novel synergy, Timmy casting a hyuge creature, Spike leveling up their technical play, or Human sharing their opponent's joy at a particularly lucky sequence). Rewarding losses will often allow the player to make measurable progress towards those genuinely desirable goals, as my informal survey emphasized. In the full results at the bottom of this post, you'll notice how many satisfying losses could easily be reframed as "subgame wins". (Think about how many games end with the loser excitedly explaining how they "could have won if one thing went differently".) In a satisfying loss, any gameplay mistakes get disguised as Bad Luck, which allows the loser to feel good about what could have been.

By contrast, the most tilting losses I've ever seen are ones where the loser wasn't aware of a rule until it lost them the game, when the loser played into an on-board trick, when the loser is locked out of the game, or when the loser is defeated by their own game objects. These losses are so frustrating because they strip away any possibility of illusion -- the loser knows they never stood a chance, and they know the victor knows it too. Feelings of foolishness, embarrassment, or hopelessness are anathema to a replayable and inviting game.

To optimize the satisfaction players feel during gameplay, including their losses, we can tune player agency, help disguise mistakes, and create subgames.

Player Agency is Good... Right?

The feelings of foolishness and helplessness are two poles of a single spectrum: player agency. Too little agency, and the player is powerless against dumb luck; too much agency, and the player cannot disguise their mistakes as bad luck. Somewhere in this choice economy lies an optimum which allows players to feel clever-not-lucky when they win, and clever-but-unlucky when they lose.

It should be obvious that the optimum is a function of playgroup skill. A skill-testing format that allows a Magic pro the right amount of agency may be punishingly difficult for a novice, and a high-variance format that disguises the novice's errors can feel like coin-flipping to a veteran. Therefore, general design heuristics are hard to come by, but there are a few insights that are generalizable:

- Cards with low modality or high output variance contribute to less agency
- Cards with low variance or high modality contribute to more agency
- Decks that win on an unorthodox axis asymmetrically decrease only one player's agency
- A "small game" (where each player has few meaningful permanents) is higher-agency than a "big game"
- Unreliable or insufficient game resources (life, cards, mana) contribute to less agency
- Too much or too little interaction tends to decrease agency
- The more choices a player makes, the higher agency they experience, and vice versa.
- More experienced or skilled players generally desire higher agency
- Output variance on the opponent's cards helps disguise one's own losses as Bad Luck

When both players experience a rich choice economy with a balance of skill and luck, they're likely to describe their losses as "fair and square," or "a tight game." I recently had an opponent describe their loss after a close race as the reason they play Magic, and I felt the same way. Games are series of interesting choices, and making those choices rewarding is one key to a satisfying experience.

Disguising Mistakes

Magic's game engine is already extremely well-positioned to obscure player mistakes through variance and hidden information. Not only does Magic's randomness contribute to less agency (as discussed above), but the hidden information throughout the game gives each player plausible deniability when they do make mistakes. When my bomb gets blown out, I can ascribe this setback to bad luck, even if I was oblivious to counterplay. The heuristics (like "bolt the bird") enabled by the hidden information are important, too, as they provide quasi-rational explanations for one's actions.

There are also several card-level design trends which tend to create and reveal mistakes. These types of cards are easy to misplay in a public manner, which can make the loser feel foolish or embarrassed:
- On-board tricks
- Dynamic complexity
- Dynamic stat changes
- Objects that might actively help the opponent
- Comprehension complexity, including new/obscure cards, foreign cards, and cards without reminder text
- Cards with very technical lines of play
- Manabases that resemble W-2 tax forms

These trends can be mitigated by decreasing the effects' density, by gating the abilities with high activation costs or rate limiters, and/or by treating a cube's complexity as a resource. This is especially salient for cube curators who are trying to build up a consistent playgroup, since many of these offenders are especially harsh for newcomers.

There are also some cube-level design decisions which can contribute to misplays. It's not likely that these errors will trainwreck an entire draft, but since trainwrecks may leave players feeling foolish and/or helpless, there's still some degree of risk.
- Only half of a well-known combo
- Misleading cube name (e.g., even though "vintage unpowered cube" accurately describes The Turbo Cube, it is rather inaccurate)
- Combos which require in-depth knowledge to play or disrupt
- Errata or custom cards

(And, while I'm on the topic, there are also player-level activities which can contribute to players feeling foolish or embarrassed:
- Bragging after a win or, conversely, whining after a loss
- Mansplaining rules or jargon
- Loudly or publicly addressing a rules infringement
- Reading one's cards aloud instead of handing them to the opponent to read
- Taking rules enforcement too seriously for the context
These actions can all embarrass new players and prevent them from coming back to game night.)

All game players make mistakes, but satisfying games will hide many of those mistakes from both players, instead placing emotional and psychological emphasis where it belongs: on the successes of each competitor.

Play a Magic Subgame

Even if the act of losing is satisfying, a loss is not a desirable outcome for most Magic players. Since fun is not zero-sum, designers can include "subgames" that do not depend on winning, providing players with memorable, fun, and engaging moments.

Subgames may include:
- "Achievement Unlocked" card interactions
- Scalable cards
- Narrow, high-upside cards
- Novel or hidden draft archetypes
- Opportunities to improve technical play (especially for Spikes)
- Undesigned, emergent synergy

The importance of emergent synergy, especially, cannot be overstated. Synergy is designed into Magic's game engine from the basic lands up, and the process of Limited is partly a process of crafting such synergies from a randomly perturbed environment. Many of the subgames listed are simply a subset of emergent synergy. But all the subgames provide opportunities to generate fun for both players, regardless of who wins.

---

It's quite remarkable that Magic has built-in systems and contingencies to create fun loss experiences, from the agency-balancing RNG resource system to the mistake-obscuring face-down library to the subgame-creating emergent synergies. (Or, more precisely: perhaps Magic has been so successful because it had all these features from the beginning.) Cube designers can further expand on those properties to ensure that losing is as fun as possible.

Thanks for reading, and cheers.
Mordor

Spoiler: Full responses: "I like losing..."

I like losing...
To a choice that's 51% to work out;
To a combo after I disrupted it multiple times;
A high-agency match;
By self-decking naturally at the end of a grindy game;
When I make the opponent have the out, and they do;
To a savage bluff;
To the 4th Lightning Bolt in response to my Sphinx's Revelation which responded to their 3rd Bolt;
When the other player used a rules interaction cleverly;
Quickly;
When the opponent goes all-in and makes sacrifices and risks;
To an opponent's long-term plan they'd clearly been setting up for multiple turns;
When I played wrong and know exactly what I did wrong (as long as it's not something stupid like misreading a card);
When I Chaos Warp the opponent into a worse threat and it's still enough;
To a Pact of Negation trigger because the opponent cleverly messed up my mana;
To Fblthp, the Lost;
To good players where there's a back-and-forth, a battle of wits;
To sideboard hosers in a format that's been advertised as high-variance;
To a turn 1 combo, especially if I have Force of Will.

Spoiler: Full responses: "I dislike losing to..."

I dislike losing to...
Mill;
Prison;
Slow engines or loops;
Overtuned cheat (where I'm "outpicked" not "outplayed");
Lifegain;
2-card combos;
Onboard tricks or complexity;
Land destruction;
Bribery and theft effects;
Game objects I paid for and deckbuilt around, like Monarch;
"War"-like randomness;
Rules interactions/nuance you weren't aware of (Cascade or Companion erratum, house rules);
Misreading a card;
Feeling like I lost to mana flood/screw;
Being 1-for-1'ed into oblivion;
Face burn spells;
My opponent topdecking better than me for 4 turns in a row.

* Obviously I'm not a psychologist and this sample size was really small. I see these results as merely anecdotal evidence for the more academically rigorous psychological concepts I cite.

 

[blacksmithy]

super glad you kept my real answers AND my meme answer