General Sunk Cost Fallacy and the impact on the evolution of cube design

Wumpa

Wumpa

I've always had a degree of insecurity that the core of my cube has been fundamentally taken from my favourite lists online, notably Shamizy's cube from two or so years ago. That said, I've put hundreds of hours tweaking, tinkering, playtesting, and ultimately catering his design from two years ago to the interests of my group and myself. Over the years I've drafted up various alternative cubes but I always felt discouraged from taking that final step to physically assemble it because I barely get to play my main cube as is. The cost of cards, sleeves, and storage really adds up. Without much time to play and collect data on that new cube I'd really need to find a solid niche for it, like a micro cube for traveling or a budget one for playing with strangers/teaching new players.

When I assembled my cube for the first time my biggest regret was not having a more refined list online to draw from. The cards from my collection were trash, and I wasted a hefty amount of money scouring through binders and piles of cards at my local game shop grabbing cards I remembered as stars from various draft formats (the majority of which never made it to the cube). I don't blame anyone for wanting to short cut all the time, effort, and money it takes to get a quality cube core. But I regret that my own cube doesn't have that expressive flair and personality that defines so many of the cubes here. That said, my cube plays beautifully and lets me play archetypes I've always wanted to play, and I'm ok with that.
 
Peter LaCara

Peter LaCara

My issue is that I went from drafting my cube almost every week to once every three months if I'm lucky. As such, most of my design is purely theoretical (look, it's not my fault my group moved away or got married in a six month span). In that time, the other issue is that I stopped playing constructed entirely. I think that hurt my designs more than anything, with all my ideas purely being motivated by my limited experiences. I got deep into Hearthstone, and I think that colored my ideas as well.

It's amazing how much Arena changed things for me. I've only been in the beta for like a month, but I already feel like I have a better grasp on a ton of cards. I went on a rant about wide power bands only a couple months ago and I ended up tearing out all my high end bombs. Now after playing constructed for the first time in ages, I'm sitting here looking at the Scarab God and asking myself if it's really so bad as long as I include enough exile effects. I'm holding off from making any changes until GRN is out, but I think my next round of edits is going to change the character of the cube drastically.
 
fozzy fosbourne

fozzy fosbourne

Tangent:

Something I've been thinking about is making 8-16 modern decks (via quality proxies) and doing a little random constructed tournament where you get assigned a deck to pilot.

Sometimes I want to play Limited and improvise heavily on deck construction. Sometimes I want to make a constructed deck, and spend a lot more thought on deck construction (we play heirloom). Sometimes I just want to play a well-oiled machine, that's new to me, without any prior work or effort. I'm not sure if anything can (or should!) try to scratch all those itches.
 
fozzy fosbourne

fozzy fosbourne

Peter LaCara said:
My issue is that I went from drafting my cube almost every week to once every three months if I'm lucky. As such, most of my design is purely theoretical (look, it's not my fault my group moved away or got married in a six month span). In that time, the other issue is that I stopped playing constructed entirely. I think that hurt my designs more than anything, with all my ideas purely being motivated by my limited experiences. I got deep into Hearthstone, and I think that colored my ideas as well.

It's amazing how much Arena changed things for me. I've only been in the beta for like a month, but I already feel like I have a better grasp on a ton of cards. I went on a rant about wide power bands only a couple months ago and I ended up tearing out all my high end bombs. Now after playing constructed for the first time in ages, I'm sitting here looking at the Scarab God and asking myself if it's really so bad as long as I include enough exile effects. I'm holding off from making any changes until GRN is out, but I think my next round of edits is going to change the character of the cube drastically.
Click to expand...

I’m interested in seeing the results and your thoughts.
 
Wumpa

Wumpa

Peter LaCara said:
I went on a rant about wide power bands only a couple months ago and I ended up tearing out all my high end bombs. Now after playing constructed for the first time in ages, I'm sitting here looking at the Scarab God and asking myself if it's really so bad as long as I include enough exile effects. I'm holding off from making any changes until GRN is out, but I think my next round of edits is going to change the character of the cube drastically.
Click to expand...

I go through this struggle about once a month, especially with The Scarab God. It seems like such a cool card with so many lines a play. Adds incentives to graveyard decks, incentives to run zombies etc. I even brought it up in the Single Card Spotlight (or maybe Fight Club?) thread where a member kindly snapped me out of my trance and likened the synergy it has to the synergy Jitte has with +1 counters. I decided to seed it in my next cube draft and I ended up with a disgusting esper control deck where the god brick walled my opponents and functioned more as a dumb difficult to answer beater than the synergistic monster I had hoped it would be. He's currently on the outside looking in but I too have been reconsidering my stance on finishers as a whole.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I think TSG's place as a 5 on its own scale is conditional on your environment; if your synergy-based decks are doing something more powerful when the pieces lock together or your control decks can go over the top of it (the way the Approach decks did in Standard), you can exploit its clunkiness. I find aggro's 5s more oppressive as they just end the game before you can try to find a creative work-around.
 
shamizy

shamizy

I don't agree with Tezz AoB. He's a powerhouse in environments with early artifact accelerants, but he's very very narrow otherwise and requires to be built around. If you can curve like two artifacts into him and have a ton of hits with the Impulse ability, he's incredible, but that requires some real prioritization in a draft regarding your cards. It's different in more powerful environments with generically strong cards that don't require a color commitment ala Umezawa's Jitte, Power, Grim Monolith, etc.

I actually swapped him out for the AER Tezz because it's a better self-contained engine able to fuel itself. He's been solid, way less swingy than AoB was where it ended up being all or nothing most of the time.
 
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