General Speed of the cube

[jaska]

Someone somewhere once said that in Magic you win by either having a lot faster or a tiny bit slower deck than the other guy. I'm trying to build a cube that would be on the slow side, but I'm afraid that if I slow down aggro too much the winner will always be the guy who drafts the slowest, most controlling deck and the biggest bombs. Are there any good tips you guys could share on how to slow things down so that 7-drops still matter but that aggro would/could still be a viable archetype? Should I just have very few aggressive one drops? How many creatures with defender and/or toughness-higher-than-power I should have? Should removal be the kind that only hits the early drops?

What has worked for you guys?

p.s. I haven't started writing down the actual cards I want yet, because I'm not sure what exact themes I want in the cube. All I know is that UW Reanimator will be a thing...

 

[Dom Harvey]

- Look for aggro creatures with late-game applications (Figure of Destiny, Student of Warfare) - or that fit in control decks (Tarmogoyf, Blade Splicer)
- Include ways for aggro to sweep the legs out from under control (mass LD is particularly good for this, even lesser cards like Thoughts of Ruin; 'mass discard' like Delirium Skeins) and/or artifacts/enchantments that attack resources such as Ankh of Mishra, Rivalry, Sulfuric Vortex, Spellshock)
- Have control's finishers be cards that get better as the game goes on but are relevant early (evoke/kicker, X-spells, cheap cards with repeatable effects: Sphinx of Lost Truths, Devil's Play, Ludevic's Test Subject; Urza's Factory?). This also applies to your choice of removal: cards like Burst Lightning, Shriekmaw, and Into the Roil get better with more mana but don't rot in your hand as you're beaten to death by 1-drops.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

If you want to be a slow cube, is it necessarily a bad thing if the games come down to who can build the slowest most controlling deck and land there biggest bombs? As long as you include enough tools for everyone to have control and bombs and make there be variety in how decks accomplish this, it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[jaska]

While that would be one way of doing it I would still like to have some variety in the decks. I fear having everyone just draft control would get stale after a few runs. Also, control mirrors aren't exactly riveting entertainment anyway.

 

[CML]

labor a lot to lower your curve and support aggro, one of the most contemptible things about the erwin / modo cube contingent is how the curve is basically like a limited-set environment.

support aggro ≠ fast cube

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I've been working on an experiment wherein 85% of the monocolor cards are between 1-3 mana and see how it plays out. I'm guessing it will be awesome.

 

[CML]

let us know how it goes, my ratio is 250/344 = 72.6% and i'd love to find other people's but you can't on CT

 

[Changling Bob]

You can use the curve charts to get the data pretty easily, but it's still manual. Also means you don't spot things like morph, suspend, madness, and other ways to get stuff cheaper than CMC.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

You can use the curve charts to get the data pretty easily, but it's still manual. Also means you don't spot things like morph, suspend, madness, and other ways to get stuff cheaper than CMC.

I mean, on cubetutor you can adjust the mancost of your own cube to account for such things, but obviously other people may not be so polite.

After looking over 2 sections (White and Green) 85% may be just a bit lofty. Though, I did come up with a reasonable white section (moral of the story: Gideon has no friends). If CML's aggressive casting cost chopping only got him to 72.6%, 80% might be fine.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Mine is probably the lowest CMC cube I've seen and I wasn't close to 85%

 

[Aoret]

I had also been kicking around the idea of building with speed in mind. My graveyardish cube is nearing a (semi) stable point, so I'm already plotting my next project.

Last weekend I played one matchup from that cube where both decks were fairly aggressirve, but in different ways. I was piloting a G/W trample deck that sort of *wanted* him to kill my guys and he was on red madness with a splash of blue for wee dragonauts, cantrips, etc. The net result was a set of three very interactive and very fast games.

Afterwards I got to wondering whether a two player cube built to create these faster "I could die at any minute" situations would be nice to have around as a way to kill 30-45 minutes. The idea would be to grid draft it and jam a few quick games. This ties in to the "how would you change your cube if it were a grid draft only cube" idea.

I'm also considering trying Jason's color banning idea. I'll have to either do some variant of that, or just build this two man cube with the color concept in mind. There are lots of options there too; I could just build a Naya, Jund, or Dega cube or something, but it feels a shame to permanently cut two colors. Maybe it could be cool to create a color imbalance such that there is a heavy focus on three colors, with a few carefully selected cards or flashback costs in the other two?

As I say, this project is a bit of a distant thing for me. I still need to write my intro thread for this forum and make a post for you guys to critique my grave cube! I just wanted to join in the convo on cube tempo since I had some idea to barf out

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Mine is probably the lowest CMC cube I've seen and I wasn't close to 85%

I think I'll try this idea balls out and see how that plays. The "lower your curve" mantra seems good, so lets take it to the extreme and see how that plays. I'm thinking of using the classic 1-2-3-4/4-3-2-1 sligh curve for my first trial in a 384 card design. Theros is actually putting out some playable 1 drops, so this might not be as hard as it seemed two weeks ago.

 

[CML]

yo wads what does yours clock in at?

 

[Jason Waddell]

yo wads what does yours clock in at?

Going from the old Deckstats link, I had 35 cards at CMC 5 or greater, and 85 cards at CMC 4 or greater. That comes out to about 73% of the nonland cards.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

I think I'll try this idea balls out and see how that plays. The "lower your curve" mantra seems good, so lets take it to the extreme and see how that plays. I'm thinking of using the classic 1-2-3-4/4-3-2-1 sligh curve for my first trial in a 384 card design. Theros is actually putting out some playable 1 drops, so this might not be as hard as it seemed two weeks ago.

I was wrong, this actually pretty hard. Not enough 1 drops. Dropping to 288!