CML
Contributor
this is the penultimate in my series of design principles that, in my mind, differentiate the cube thought process here from most everywhere else in Magic. scraps of these thought processes exist elsewhere -- i am greatly indebted to Rob Van Leuven of Seattle for yelling at me to support aggro and Recurring Nightmare over and over again -- but the general refusal to see these principles through to their logical conclusion, and connect them with all the others for a holistically delightful cube experience, is proof of Riptide superiority.
i will tell a brief anecdote. when i was designing my cube initially and working for TCGplayer.com for chicken-feed, i penned a couple of articles about cube, http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10397 and http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10413, in which the discerning reader can easily see my trending towards being right and being irrelevant. yet the first few iterations of my Cube were not too different from the Modo Cube; though we did so through different means (they with a bad curve, me with Signets and stuff), we arrived at the same control-larded ... terminus (only word for that). for some reason i was averse to proxies and wanted to "work with what i had," a thought process i now recognize is completely worthless, so fixing was in the form of bouncelands and signets -- in my defense, though, they were the fixing in the only draft format which i prefer to my Cube.
after a tuesday night nostalgia draft (this was when old sets were still somewhat affordable, and i was employed), the owner of my LGS told me he had 'something to show me'; it was the 'most bizarre collection' he had ever been sold, consisting mainly of very high-quality proxies. to this day cube initiates are shocked that my trop and volc are fake (and that only the plateau is real). he insisted that i throw them in, so i threw them in, and noticed the aggro decks were winning. i took out the signets and added more high-power-level fixing (thanks, RTR shocks!), and the aggro decks won even more. cube was more fun than ever before. each week, my drafters were showing up with higher and higher expectations; this was the way i was able to meet them, then.
color balance, color identity, a high density and high power level of fixing, a flat power curve, an avoidance of the poison principle and 'good in everything' cards, and careful attention to metrics like curve and spot removal / sweeper / creature proportions are all connected and all at the very core of a quality Cube, but multicolor aggro is the 'jewel.' if RDW is only good on Modo because there are no other aggro archetypes and all the control archetypes are inconsistent due to high curve and bad mana, it stands to reason that the only way to combat strong control archetypes is to support multicolor aggro. (though i've recently been on a kick increasing the power level of my cube's individual cards, the decks have been far, far stronger than the average Modo deck for a long time.)
anyway for multicolor aggro you need a critical mass of
-fetches and duals and shocks
-1-drops
-not much else
the problem was that these decks were nearly always naya colors, and some kind of 'color-identity-based aggro' should be present for all WUBRG, i think. so not until the introduction of the gravecrawlers and the devotion theme could other colors start to beat with gusto on t1; the devotion theme also provides a nice reward for sticking with a single color. RDW, it turns out, is of great interest to draft when there are other players who want some of your cards, but not too many; when a splash is possible; when the control and reanimator decks can hit back fast enough to beat your sulfuric vortex; when it is not the only aggro deck; in other words, when interaction is at its very highest, and dynamic tension between 1c-4c aggro and all the other decks you can make, which are not their own discrete "things" or "archetypes" so much as ideas that bleed into one another, is also high. just like me when i write half my posts on here
i still like fixing and non-basics enough that i'm not considering adding Wasteland, though.
now yell at me and each other
i will tell a brief anecdote. when i was designing my cube initially and working for TCGplayer.com for chicken-feed, i penned a couple of articles about cube, http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10397 and http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10413, in which the discerning reader can easily see my trending towards being right and being irrelevant. yet the first few iterations of my Cube were not too different from the Modo Cube; though we did so through different means (they with a bad curve, me with Signets and stuff), we arrived at the same control-larded ... terminus (only word for that). for some reason i was averse to proxies and wanted to "work with what i had," a thought process i now recognize is completely worthless, so fixing was in the form of bouncelands and signets -- in my defense, though, they were the fixing in the only draft format which i prefer to my Cube.
after a tuesday night nostalgia draft (this was when old sets were still somewhat affordable, and i was employed), the owner of my LGS told me he had 'something to show me'; it was the 'most bizarre collection' he had ever been sold, consisting mainly of very high-quality proxies. to this day cube initiates are shocked that my trop and volc are fake (and that only the plateau is real). he insisted that i throw them in, so i threw them in, and noticed the aggro decks were winning. i took out the signets and added more high-power-level fixing (thanks, RTR shocks!), and the aggro decks won even more. cube was more fun than ever before. each week, my drafters were showing up with higher and higher expectations; this was the way i was able to meet them, then.
color balance, color identity, a high density and high power level of fixing, a flat power curve, an avoidance of the poison principle and 'good in everything' cards, and careful attention to metrics like curve and spot removal / sweeper / creature proportions are all connected and all at the very core of a quality Cube, but multicolor aggro is the 'jewel.' if RDW is only good on Modo because there are no other aggro archetypes and all the control archetypes are inconsistent due to high curve and bad mana, it stands to reason that the only way to combat strong control archetypes is to support multicolor aggro. (though i've recently been on a kick increasing the power level of my cube's individual cards, the decks have been far, far stronger than the average Modo deck for a long time.)
anyway for multicolor aggro you need a critical mass of
-fetches and duals and shocks
-1-drops
-not much else
the problem was that these decks were nearly always naya colors, and some kind of 'color-identity-based aggro' should be present for all WUBRG, i think. so not until the introduction of the gravecrawlers and the devotion theme could other colors start to beat with gusto on t1; the devotion theme also provides a nice reward for sticking with a single color. RDW, it turns out, is of great interest to draft when there are other players who want some of your cards, but not too many; when a splash is possible; when the control and reanimator decks can hit back fast enough to beat your sulfuric vortex; when it is not the only aggro deck; in other words, when interaction is at its very highest, and dynamic tension between 1c-4c aggro and all the other decks you can make, which are not their own discrete "things" or "archetypes" so much as ideas that bleed into one another, is also high. just like me when i write half my posts on here
i still like fixing and non-basics enough that i'm not considering adding Wasteland, though.
now yell at me and each other
