The Penny Pincher Cube 2.0--Inventors' Fair

[ahadabans]

Confirmed. I made a Genesis deck and I see all sorts of value here (cycle dudes, shredder, etc). The power level is lower here too, so solid value like that is going to win games whereas that sort of thing is often not good enough in higher powered lists (it has to be degenerate or really fast/efficient).

On Ninjas.. I think you are OK. I'm happy with the deck I made actually. Black has a lot of removal, so it's easier to get a 2/2 Ninja of the Deep Hours through in that combination. Green can pants it up as you said, but black can just kill things in the way. It's interesting too because you can swing with deep hours and another dude, lose the ninja in a bad trade and then just recoup the CA by ninjutsu'ing in black discard ninja. Probably not a great line, but OK in the deck I made because I'm getting life drain value when creatures die in theory (or getting them back with raise dead effects anyway). Speaking of which, I know you are getting ETB under a tight leash... but what about Gravedigger? He's low value but offers a lot of synergy with all this graveyard goodness. I really like Gravedigger.

One other thing I wanted to mention... I looked at the mana curve for this new list and it's high. 3.2 I think for non-land cards (above 3 anyway). I think you want to try and cull some higher cost stuff and get that closer to 3.0. The original Penny Pincher was at 3 (little under) and I think that's the sweet spot where you have a balanced aggro/control scale. But maybe you are intentionally taking this list higher up the curve?

In the three drafts I did, I over compensated and took a lot of low cost cards in my first two decks afraid I'd have nothing to do early. Both times I actually wanted to go tempo/aggro with the lists and drifted more midrange/control because that was what I was seeing (notice I have holes in the middle of my curve). Both decks worked out in the end, but I was trying to go low with both of them and felt like I was almost forced away from that. The midrange GB list by comparison I wanted midrange/control and I got there easily and even under shot my 1-2 mana slots by a card.

OK, last thing... is this really a double bounce land environment? Going back to moving the curve down a bit, what about swapping one copy of the bounces for some pain lands? I feel like aggressive strategies could use a dual that doesn't ETB tapped.

If you already covered some of this in earlier posts, I apologize.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, the mana curve should be a bit higher on paper, though its probably lower in practice. Its a product of the original draft where higher CC sifting cards existed alongside higher CC brick creatures and high CC cylers. Though remember, a lot of the high CC cards have cycling, so for example, lay claim is pushing the average CC up on average as a 7 drop, though you can cycle that for 2. I tried to reflect how I thought people were typically going to use the cards, but thats a bit tricky to do.

The curve as a whole seems better balanced to me, with less of a bulge at the 3cc slot (except for black!) and less of a CC catastrophe at the 3 drop slot in white. The cards don't feel to like they are awkwardly clumping up to one another as much.

The aggro decks should be good. Aggro works very differently in these formats, and is quite brutal. Its more appropriate to think of it as a low CC midrange deck, than a proper hyper aggro deck--if anything I'm spoiling it by giving it this many quality one drops to pressure an opponent with. Those decks will run a curve up to 4-5cc spells, and will happily run some number of bouncelands, or perhaps a mix of baubles and eggs to smooth out their mana if they are tap land wary.

They are very good at grinding out games, and the amount of damage they can generate in a turn is utterly absurd. Typically, they will provide what pressure they can with 1-2 drops in the early game, before switching to a strategy of board development, than drop something nuts like a bushwhacker, insult // injury, or jor kadeen, and murder you. Or they follow a berserker strategy, backed up by their own temp. protection counters, to deal 10 plus damage in a turn, past your blockers.

And if you want to grind with them, they have recursive tools, their own removal, CA, and even mass removal. I'm actually more worried about the decks being OP.

The bouncelands are double edged swords. While its true they provide a form of extremely powerful ramp, they are also easy to harass. Flickerwisp was the best card in the old penny cube, for example.

Gravedigger you say? Let me introduce you to some 21st century tech



That is pretty tempting.

 

[ahadabans]

Dual mode gravedigger/targeted discard. That's neat.

Fair enough on the curve. I was most likely going to use Undead Gladiator as a cycle 2 early in the game and I certainly always do that with Eternal Dragon. Both can be recurred too, so it's almost a no-brainer.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This is the gravedigger variant I plan on running



Valuable effect isolated in a color pair that is typically glossed over, communicates to a player color identity, and is on point with what that portion of the cube is doing: turning baubles and eggs into a draw engine via recursion and bounce--a draw engine that is competitive because blue is not obscene.

Speaking of which, I am debating cutting pull from tomorrow for epiphany at the drownyard. Epiphany seems like a good card, but a pretty big downgrade in terms of power level, and maybe thats what I'm looking for. It very clearly cuts the legs out from blue as a CA color. I'm a little nervous though about so loudly communicating self-mill in BUG. I know that the BG decks could handle it, but this brings us back to UG's awkwardness, which really should have a slower strategy endemic to the color pair, that cares about self-mill.

I'll probably do it just for the data.

I'm actually pretty excited about this, and the lists are really evolving into something different. There was a really deep mechanical super structure in Grixis, and its cool to have something similarly deep to oppose it in Abzan. The mechanical rooting for the wedge and shard structures are very deep, tied to concepts that are elemental to the game--card selection and card advantage.

The aesthetics of it are also super pleasing, and I hope it isn't missed by my players during actual gameplay. The mechanics of the Abzan midrange decks are self-consumption, represented by self-mill and recursion. Ideally, the decks should feel like they are collapsing on themselves, and then their engine pieces are focused on excavating the artifacts from the yard needed to renew the state. I feel like thats a very flavorful description of the wedge, particularly the idea of a state/deck fixated on mechanical objects being subject to constant breadown, and in need of rejuvenation and repair, unknowingly on the path to the ultimate catastrophe--decking.

If it works out, it opens the door to more self-mill cards to aid in that constant erosion, and renewal.




Already some of the decks poping up on cubetutor look like homes where spider spawning can be a real card

G/B Aggro artifact from CubeTutor.com

GB Aggressive Midrange from CubeTutor.com

GB Midrange from CubeTutor.com

Want to give props to these two black cards:



As self-mill CA, and



Which I find to be a super nuanced card with lots of subtle play to them. It can serve as a big source of CA in black, provides an incentive for self-mill, but also can act as an early game smoother. It scales wonderfully with changing game states.

These cards are also probably a good argument for cutting stroke/pull from tomorrow, which overshadow these lower power, but very interesting, ways to explore the concept of CA.

It will be interesting to see how deeply the wedge can go, and the extent to which U can intersect with it. If the decks become powerful enough self-consumptive engines--and I believe they have a motivation to do so--the logical end game for those decks would be to find a way to go infinite.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Drafted the cube again last night, and it felt amazing. We were short a few people, and short about 15 cards, but we fired it up anyways, and the whole thing just flowed beautifully. Because the power gap is so tight, all of the cards feel valid, and as a result, if you can conceive of doing something, you generally can.

The games feel very clean and dynamic, with lots of back and forth. There is the right balance of bursts of dynamic activity with restorative elements, which makes the games themselves feel like multi-layered, harmonious interactions between vibrant decks, rather than either over linear tempo games, dull static control matchups, or brutal feel-bad combo bursts.

There is the right amount of ETBs and non-ETBs, board states don't feel too complicated, but the contingent of ETB creatures provide an orienting force. I think what really warps the game, is when you have a density of powerful midrange ETBs, possibly coupled with planeswalkers, at that point you're putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the low CC aggressive decks, to be hyper-efficient in terms of time, because the midrange decks can so casually recoup the time they lost in the early game, and end up with a vastly better board state.

The sweepers also felt very good in terms of density and power. This is something I worry about, because I dislike constant board resets in cube, that bog games down, and extend them past any point that could be considered reasonable. All of them--except niv's disk--have some conditionality on what they hit, so their is usually some remnants left behind after they pop to continue the progression of the game. They feel more like tapering effects on the game, which is what I want. Niv's disk is a powerful effect, but CIPT, which gives both players the opportunity to prepare for living in a post apocalypse world.

A few standouts:



Love this card, this is the mana dork that cube wants: a source of ramp that scales with the game.


This card was very impressive, as well as functioning in the game in an aesthetically pleasing manner. It scales wonderfully with the game state, starting off as a credible blocker, before growing with the game's progression into a win condition in its own right.



My drafters, creatively solve my small deck UR problem. It turns out that untapping goblin sharpshooter or spikeshot elder (wearing an unstable mutation) is pretty big game. Great card.

Also, aftermath and embalm were both great. I especially liked embalm on smaller creatures as a late game mana sink, and source of CA.

Last addition looks to be:



Otherwise, there looks to be maybe some small tweaks: it might be nice to have some CA baubles that send themselves to the yard, like elsewhere flask, or toying around with some of the aggro one drops. Of course, I would like to add the new cycling lands from the next set, if they get printed. Thats all I have on the horizon for the format.

Changing the focus on CA and card selection was very good, as it tremendously opened up the format. Its very difficult to fully describe here, but the basic concept, I hope, is obvious: tying an essential mechanic of the game to a single color--blue--makes no sense, and it utterly strangles out any other approach to CA or selection. This is kind of an issue, if you're trying to get people to think of the gy as a source of either CA or selection, and I suspect there are a lot of gy formats out there unsuspectingly cutting their own legs out from under them as they chase the power level faerie.

I think this is what III actually did, btw, it nerfed the hell out of CA engines, and tied something mechanically essentially to the game of magic, to the yard. I don't have that level of gy velocity, but I feel the abstraction is fairly well defined.

I think it would be fair to describe this as a lower power rare format, running cards roughly reminiscent of the power level from 2005-2006. There is 0 difference between my drafters capacity to get excited between opening a pack with these types of rares in them, vs a much higher powered cube pack (which I have ran with these same people). Its all context and perception.

Players can respond just as positively to cheaper, often times better designed cards, in more careful format structures, as long as those cards are given room to breath. Power max might be an approach capable of working, but its an approach driven by brute force impulses in card selection, and as an axiom, is less a commentary on what players will objectively respond to positively, but more a commentary on the way WOTC's marketing has subjectively shaped the perception of card acceptability. There is some value in remembering that--the net worth of your format is much less important than how you build it.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This was a neat little draft from venny

RUG Assalt Haven from CubeTutor.com

Another, very cool and creative, drake haven deck. I feel like this deck is a very good example of the way that the cube is oriented at the moment, though my several attempts to explain exactly why have been too wandering to be helpful. The deck is filled with non-obvious, and extremely interesting, ways to create consistency, which are possible due to the move away from powered blue draw and cantrips.

I really like the deck: it consists of multiple layers of interaction working together harmoniously. It always has something to do, and lots of interesting, non-obvious ways to do it. That seems to me to be the product of the tight power gap, that allowed this first time drafter to wander around, follow his imagination, and for that imagination to be rewarded.

I want to draw some attention to the aftermath cards, which like I mentioned before, help open up a format by tacking niche--but interesting--effects onto already relevant cards, while also acting as impactful high CC mana sinks, during lulls in the game. Feed and mind both seem like really nice effects for this particular deck, and perfect to keep the action from stalling out.

There also isn't a real condensing force here, and thats the main difference from formats running ETB creatures/planeswalkers, and what I'm trying to accomplish here. The poster child for this is the normally unplayable mina and denn, wildborn, an interesting, but non-ETBing 4 drops, that provides incirmental gain over several turns. The idea here is that we're going to get to turn 4, and instead of ramping up the threats, and trying to bury the opponent in time efficiency/pressure, we're going to sit back and put together our incremental gain engine.

This last point, I don't really know how to articulate, but its goes to our several past discussions, about many of these fair cubes running a lot of superficially different, but directionally identical cards. The specifics of the card ceases to matter at a point, and its just a question of gathering a critical mass of cards that fall within a certain stat range and a certain mana cost, with a minimum tacked on effect. The decks actually end up being very focused and consistent, and kind of boring. On the other hand, if the effects are too wildly different, the decks become inconsistent and formless.

Look how wonderfully this deck threads that needle, and I think the fact that a first time drafter produced it, says something about the card pool and structure of the format. The individual cards and pieces feel distinct, and the execution of its gameplan can vary wildly. I think the thing that I dislike about overly condensed or pressure focused formats (which I blame on ETBs and planeswalkers) is that it hurts this 2006ish style of back and forth gameplay, expressed through the structure of the deck itself. The interesting thing about playing this deck is its own internal push and pull between its need to assert outside pressure on the opposing deck, and its need to attend to its own complex internal development and protect its state from the opposing deck.

You can imagine how much fun it is for two of these decks to face off against each other--with their mana sinks and their engines--engaging in building up an internal state: skirmishing, attack and interlude, with the cog pieces--like Mina and Denn-- having to shift back and forth in their role, adapting with the changing game.

The pieces came together where there is real structure here, the cards providing all the relevant elements for a deck, but there is still quite a lot of plasticity in the way that gameplan is realized, and that keeps the experience fresh and new for the pilot, even after multiple games. Here, when you get a different draw, with a different combination of cards, you can still hit all of the notes for developing a win, but the developmental pathway will feel markedly different.

There is redundancy of effect, but because that effect is defined more broadly, it can manifest in really different ways in game. Ponder, preordain, and brainstorm, create both redundancy of effect as well as redundancy in play. Trade routes, mina and denn, wildborn, and careful consideration create redundancy of effect, but not redundancy in play--which should be the entire point in having a singleton or psudo singleton format in the first place!

So that was still wandering, but I think in the end, I articulated what I wanted to say.

And of course, this is also why I am keeping an eye on aggro one drops, as thats the only real avenue left that could have an unfun condensing effect on the format.

 

[sigh]

This deck gives me life

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Venny will be happy to know that I contacted the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his piece, "RUG Assult Haven" will be on display during the month of July.

Sometimes that i-phone keyboard can get a little slippery when you name those decks, but we'll pretend its part of the artistic genius

 

[vennythekid]

What a nice write-up Grillo
You've got me really excited about this format and I just had to give it a whirl... which turned out much better than I expected. I saw the Drake Haven P1P1 and instantly went to discard effects to try and abuse it. That led to an early Seismic Assault and some red Madness cards. Mina and Denn was the driving force that brought me into Green, combined with wanting to abuse land-reuse (an effect that's very green). I got lucky and picked up Life from the Loam late into Pack 2. Between Mina, Loam, and Trade Routes I figured I had enough of a land/discard engine to really abuse Haven and Assault.

The draft offered me a lot in terms of options and I think I could have picked a few different directions since there were so many tools availible. This format looks awesome. Thanks for the feedback on my list too!

 

[ahadabans]

Definitely a fan of your design approaches. This cube is shaping up nicely.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Here is another deck that is illustrative

Wu aggro from CubeTutor.com

Thankfully, this one is easier to discuss. What I want to show here is the way that the artifacts work together to smooth out aggressive decks. Any sort of gap in the aggro curve--that may be due to limited printings, or just the randomness of drafts--can be filled by providing 1 or 2 drop artifact creatures. This is encouraged by the existence of low CC "artifact matters" cards, and those decks natural interest in baubles to help smoothing.

Here is the other end of the smoothing equation. Due to the existence of low CC artifact creatures, the drafter had the option of running an almost mono-colored mana base.

This is also very much attune with what I want from my aggressive decks--this is essentially a small control deck, or pressure-control. It has board control, evasion, and early pressure, coupled with sources of burst damage, spot removal/mana disruption and card advantage.

Its the exact sort of deck I want to keep an eye on, and make sure that some of the one drops aren't asserting too much early game pressure, and distracting from the midgame drama that I want to be the focus of the format.

G/W Aggro--Aggressive Build from CubeTutor.com

Here is another GW deck, this one aggressively built, with sb options to become more grindy and controlling if it needs to. Green traditional has limited options in one drops, and here, again, thats largely being addressed by artifact one drops, filling in for that deficiency, and complimenting white's early drops. This nicely fills a drafting gap in a lot of formats, that players have to train themselves to avoid.

This is another deck that is an example of a deck with the potential for early pressure draws, that can than transfer into navigating a more grindy midgame, trying to put together a damage burst plan and closing out the game. That means that if there is some disruption in the curve out--negative variance, CIPT lands, or removal--the game isn't just over, and we still have lots of magic left to play.

These are still the types of decks that I want to keep an eye on, as they are still very directionally focused: put boots on the ground, kill opposing creatures, get into the red zone, and win--be more time efficient, or mana efficient.

Thats the nature of an aggressive deck, but instead of focusing that nature into an all-or nothing early game, I want the avalanche to be slower, more nuanced, carefully paced, and require an articulated end game. More of a pressure midrange or pressure control, and I think both of these decks demonstrate that.

The nice thing about these decks is that they are easier to understand, and follow a more familiar plan to a lot of drafters. This means there is an actual reason--rooted in what drafters actually are inclined to do--for drafting an aggressive deck. Because I am willing to say that in these fair formats all decks are variants of midrange ultimately, I'm not fighting upstream against what my drafters actually want to do, heavy handedly promoting a fun police deck, actively condensing the format etc.

And I don't even need smooth curve out, hyper aggro decks anyways: all I need for the health of the format is some early ground pressure to keep people from becoming too complacent in the early game--and than they can go back to doing what everyone wants to do anyways, focusing on entertaining incremental midrange value plays or aggressive dramatic damage bursts.

 

[sigh]

I've seen this card crop up here and in a couple other lists recently, and I'm wondering what the impetus is for putting this card in over its counterpart unsubstantiate is? Is the bounce creature clause on unsub too efficient for this sort of list? The two card types on failure?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

When it showed up in Amonkhet draft, people would try to cabal ritual therapy guess on comply, which is interesting, and the reasonable front end means that having a questionable back end dosen't hurt the card. I would like to explore the card a bit more and see how people react to it.

The short to your question though is that people just have a bias towards running new cards, which is why you're seeing it pop up across more lists. Memory lapse, unsubstantiate, or remand are all perfectly fine to run over it.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Wanted to say thank you to B8R and Cstick for the recent drafts. I particularly enjoy the cleverness of describing the draft experience with pseudo movie/book titles.

Rakdos Fair Crasher 3.0: In Search of Madness from CubeTutor.com

Magnivore is, of course, symbolic of the madness inherent in humanity--the fool, and the sometimes tragedy of hubristic exploration. Here, it stumbles into the wrong deck because everyone reads the card as being instants and sorceries, when its in fact just sorceries! This tragic character represents what happens when the decent into the underworld goes array on the hero's journey. Its eaten in the third act, when the player awkwardly realizes their folly and throws their deck across the room. Oh no Magnivore, what were you thinking!?

Rakdos Fair Crasher 4.0: The Perils of Fixation from CubeTutor.com

With the death of Magnivore--who here represents your father--there is nothing to do but shoulder on, in the barren wilderness of the underworld. Our anti-hero, driven by resentment to abandon the structure of civilization and society, manifests this nihilistic chaos by abandoning the rules and social norms of that society--which they feel has rejected them in a scene reminiscent of the fall from Milton--and thus, the age old wisdom of drafting fixing has been abandoned!

And this of course leaves us with one interminable question: am I the vore, or am I the thing that eats the vore? Shocking!

Also, I might be out with friends drinking.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Card spotlight from last night



This is like ramping up to a planeswalker ultimate that can be beaten. Because its an enchantment, its more difficult to interact with, and Timmy gets to actually have fun. Because its a powerful enchantment it rewards people for playing/drafting those answers, but because it doesn't immediately shut them out of the game, it doesn't unfairly punish them if they don't. Probably my favorite ramp payoff card yet, because its basically a control win-condition, and that type of design takes what are fundamentally midrange decks, and gives them a more controlling identity.



Exciting top ends for the sort of "small creature matters" midrange deck I am presenting as aggro decks. I had one game against a genesis deck, where I had to grind against them by recurring the dusk end of dusk // dawn with shreds of sanity, play dawn to rebuild my board, than over the course of the next couple turns dig a bunch of cards with auriok salvager recursion on a chromatic star to find furystoke, furystoke to ping + sac my board to goblin bombardment to deal exactly lethal, with 3 cards left in my library, the turn before the genesis player had rebuilt their board enough to come crashing over.



This card, of course, needs no introduction. Just a really dominating card, and basically a draw engine and mana sink for a midrange deck, which is something they badly need. Definitely a defining card for green.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Few tweaks from playtesting

First off, the aggro decks feel fine. I was worried they were going to just run people over, but they are inconsistent enough where that doesn't seem to really happen. Ideally, there would probably be at least a 5th egg effect for them, however. 4 is a bit tight, for the hyper aggro varients.

Out



In



Soul-scar was too marginal, never // return because I really like aftermath, and a lot extra gy hate is nice, especially with genesis become a premium green pick. GG is an old cube favorite, and I have dozens of copies from time spiral standard, and it was only excluded due to price considerations.

Honored Hydra was a little bit too good, and reminded me too much of the old pelakka wurm->unburial rites grind combo, just requiring no work. The combination of trample and ability to be recurred feels oppressive, and at 6 mana can be ramped out a little bit too quickly in this format.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This was my actual, true to god, control deck from last night, which was a blast to play. Approach-->Moonlight Bargain-->Approach is a very real win condition.

Mardu Second Suns

It felt really strange both drafting and playing the deck, and I was pretty uncomfortable at first, because its usually so difficult to build actual control decks in cube.

Card Spotlight



This card is really good, and not a low power card at all. Not really sure why it doesn't get more attention. It scales to the game, and can be an early smoother or late game major CA engine as needed.



Being able to run open mana into potential chump blockers to preserve life into removal is really neat. Really good design: you get some board presence, which cube control decks like, but not enough to distract from the removal + CA based plan.



This was also very good. Its kind of like a low power dig through time that feeds graveyard interactions, and combos with sun.

The creature suite deserves some mention too. They all carry the theme of being answers, in addition to threats, and were great in their clunky glory.

Kage, masticore, and archfiend are all a bunch of bricks, and their playabilty was a function of all the things going on in the cube. Archfiend in particular, is a card that some of the time is just going to be a garbage 5/4 flyer for 5, waiting for a reunion or best buddy masticore to come along.

Masticore was a beast, that could just take over games--as you would expect from this power level--, and kage was super interesting. Cast it with a mana up, and its basically the abyss until removal gets targeted at it, at which point its wrath.

 

[japahn]

So much of your experiences here described resonates with my experiences lowering my power level:
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/why-im-going-low-power.1558/

It's impressive how card and archetype selection opens up when you go down the power pyramid.

One effect I am seeing is that fewer cards are known, so people have to read a lot of cards they did not know that existed. This has the pro of making the experience very unique and incredible for experienced players, as they get to play cards they only read about or did not even know existed. It also has the con of making it much, much more difficult to draft and play.

I gave your cube a spin and after two miserable failures trying to draft emergent archetypes (control, midrange value) I dove into the "let your imagination run wild" mindset and drafted this:

RGw Graveyard Midrange - japahn's draft of Penny Pincher 2.0--Inventors' Fair on 26/06/2017 from CubeTutor.com

Is it good? Probably not. But damn, that is an interesting deck.

Now for the criticism:
I can identify two major themes in your cube. One is artifacts. The other is graveyard. I don't see much interaction between them though. I don't know what other themes there are. Lord of the Accursed suggests there is a Zombies deck, but I don't see many Zombies. Scryb Ranger and Quirion Ranger want to say something, but I did not figure out what.

Is there another major theme I'm not seeing?

I like what you did with blink support: cards like Glimmerpoint Stag are mostly for hitting opponent's permanents like bouncelands and creatures with counters. It does add a sort of a trap in that players will expect a blink archetype and trainwreck their draft looking for them.

Don't mistake my criticism for negativity though. This cube is amazing.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

That looks great, thank you for the draft. That was really good feedback, and suggests the format is pretty deep.

The two major themes for these types of cubes are bouncelands and artifacts. The graveyard I would describe as a not fully developed sub-theme, though its interesting--and probably very good for the longevity of the format--that you gravitated towards it as one of the main themes, and missed bounceland abuse.

The zombies are there, but they are a nested theme in tokens, and most of their bodies are there in black token makers, or white embalm creatures.

The rangers are just generally good cards, though its not always easy to evaluate them as such. Their main utility is working with the outlast creatures, though their are a number of other interactions where they are quite good (assassin, bouncer, sharpshooter etc).

Blink won't have any problems--even when you run those effects with no ETB creatures, they are still absurdly good. Here they have the splicers to abuse, which is a pretty brutal interaction.

I'm not going to pretend there isn't an initial shock to drafting these types of formats. One thing I always do as a sort of base quality control, is just go through and randomly pick cards for a draft or two, and see if a somewhat reasonable deck could be construed, and so far thats been the case. I've had a few people on cubetutor (thank you Laz) that were kind enough to go through and complete a draft they were unhappy with, and the results, though uninspiring, were certainly playable.

I have to induce some form of dissonance in the player, otherwise this would be just another boring cube format where they are drafting from the same meta cube. This is a unique meta, and its going to make them feel uncomfortable and disoriented to some degree, and I don't think I can--or should--go out of my way to remove that feeling. Thats where the excitement comes from. Maybe they run into an old friend along the way they had forgotten about, that helps guide them through it--or maybe they don't get through it in one piece, and experience failure. I can't be so overbearing, and suffocating, that I stifle their own development in the format.

For example, it is possible for someone to go through and train wreak a blink deck, but is that because there is no blink deck, or is because their perspective of what a blink deck is supposed to be has been overly colored by drafting from the same meta formats? I would say I have blink decks, but its going to take some personal growth on the part of the drafter to find them, with part of that potentially involving the experience of failure, and feeling like a fool.

And thats what you did with your three drafts, having two drafts you weren't happy with, but than when you finally let go of your preconceptions, you achieved something really cool and unique.

Of course, at the same time, I don't want the format to be so alien and overwhelming that a large number of drafters are wandering around it on their first go, seeing nothing tangible and familiar. The challenge--and any failure--has to feel proportionate to their future ability to overcome it. Maybe the format isn't quite as accessible as it should be, but thats a hard line to run, and its even harder to get helpful feedback on, since sometimes people just get weird and neurotic about these things. I mean, I know its more comfortable to draft from the same meta format, but thats boring.

 

[japahn]

Drafted this trying to see the bounceland synergies. There are definitely a lot of bouncelands, but are the payoffs just the expensive cards? I also see Trade Routes (which sort of went against the midrange expensive threat plan, so I cut it), Molten Vortex (which is sweet, though it has the same problem), Seismic Assault (which as triple red, and awkward in a deck that's forcedly 3 color due to the nature of its enablers. I also see gainlands and temples, and though I believe the temples are nice, the gainlands make the mana base so slow that they are a net negative in this deck.

I'd like to see land untappers (Magus of the Candelabra, Voyaging Satyr), free spells (Frantic Search, Snap, Cloud of Faeries) and Radiant Fountain.

Are there other things we can do with bouncelands here that I'm not seeing?

Temur Midrange - japahn's draft of Penny Pincher 2.0--Inventors' Fair on 26/06/2017 from CubeTutor.com

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I'd like to see land untappers (Magus of the Candelabra, Voyaging Satyr), free spells (Frantic Search, Snap, Cloud of Faeries) and Radiant Fountain.

Hey, thanks for the draft. All of those cards are either in, or have been in the cube, except for radiant fountain, which is a good suggestion. Magus is in the original penny cube, and was so-so with the way the meta drifted towards mana base design.

Outside of shifting ramp into blue, and moving ramp away from green, bouncelands provide general ramp for the entire format, and greatly change the fabric of mana bases. For example, that rug deck should be running 15 lands, and you would never want to draw with it, as you would quickly find how they self regulate their own density as tools for mana base greed.

Being able to return an excess land to the hand has all sorts of interactions with cards that are powered by discard--tormenting voice, cathartic reunion, stormbind, seismic assault etc. In addition they give you repeated scry's with the temples, lifegain with the gain lands, and certain cards can exploit that (like trade routes) to create TOL or lifegain engines. They also work well with the landfall and revolt mechanics (if I ever opted to include revolt again).

Or you could always just generate infinite mana with them in the format's storm combo deck.

While being extremely powerful as engine pieces in themselves, they also present a contrasting point of vulnerability. Higher CC modal destruction that hits lands, as well as universal blink and bounce effects, give aggressive decks a strong disruptive angle. In the original penny cube, flickerwisp was probably the objectively strongest card, because it was a flying wasteland.

The bouncelands and the eggs are the foundational cards of the format.

 

[japahn]

I also disagree that's a 15-land deck, even with 4 bounces. There's Molten Vortex, Cathartic Reunion, Stormbind to get rid of the excess, as well as Mindshrieker, Genesis, Niv-Mizzet, Heaven // Earth, Mold Shambler, Bogardan Hellkite and Sandwurm Convergence that are require hitting 6-8 mana fairly quick, and there are 0 other mana producers. I also see now I added Jor Kadeen by accident...

I do understand now how the cube is crafted around bouncelands though.

Grixis Control - japahn's draft of Penny Pincher 2.0--Inventors' Fair on 27/06/2017 from CubeTutor.com

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Played around with some different configurations testing for mis-draft sequences. I don't think there is anything material left really to do with the card pool available to me. Once of the nice things about working from a midrange base, and with a plan laid out for the 10 guilds, is that well its possible to draft a weaker deck, its hard to achieve a true misdraft.

Still, its also true that the narrow power band makes the format less accessible for people whose draft strategy is dependent on hierarchy ranking. For combination drafting, there are enough density of pieces that its not unreasonable to expect a person to be able to piece together the combination, even with other drafters dipping in. I don't feel that any of the lines taper too much, though maybe some of them are a bit tight: it will be nice to add the externalize mechanic, to sneak in some more zombies, but than I had anticipated that from the start with Amonkhet.

The easiest place for a misdraft to occur are the aggro decks, which I feel are possible to distort for people that struggl to understand the game's core mechanics. All of the pieces are there, but its possible to assemble them awkwardly, or just wrongly. You can still do that with a midrange deck, but its much harder, I feel. This is somewhat more prone to occur here than in the original penny cube, because of the better quality of the one drops that make these decks look like they can be built faster than they should, there being two less eggs, and the removal being generally better in spots.

There are a few tricks I have incorporated, the artifact creatures tucked into the main colors, combined with the small creature theme of "artifacts matters" helps points a sign post to smoothing, color fixing, eggs, while also allowing for creatures to come out turn one or two even through awkward colored mana. I've decided to take that a little bit further, and add two hybrid mana one drops.

I made a few other configuration experiments, but nothing particularly helpful. Really, the best thing that I can do from this angle is provide more "small creatures matter" cards as they are printed, ways to use or exploit a wide board, and a theme of tiny reanimator to help blank removal, as well as provide an easy to understand CA engine. One card that will really help with this, is the 5cc vampire sun titan being printed.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Had a blast tonight, this was the most fun playing magic I've had in I don't know how long. Format has really hit a sweet spot, and I expect it to get better with the new set. We ended up deciding we were going to rebuild the decks next week, which was a first. I had a sweet madness deck, where I kept on nearly milling myself to death. These types of midrange decks, where the power level is tight, and they become little complicated synergy engines, are magic at its best. This is all I want from this game.

R/B/w Artifact Madness from CubeTutor.com

Masticore->From under the floorboards is very real. I wasn't playing when Masticore was the best creature in magic, and I have to say, I can see why it held that title for a while. Its absolutely insane in these sorts of lower power formats, especially here with universal ramp, and madness cards to profit from.

Tons of sweet interactions: I basically never cast the front end of start // finish in this deck, just discarding it for value, than aftermathing the finish portion off of tokens. Aftermath is such a great mechanic. I was pretty much always discarding dread return to flash it back with either myr or zombie tokens, and the big target was necropolis fiend. Moonlight bargain was again, just incredible. Card Selection, advantage, and self mill all in one card. A real find for these lower power formats.

Magus of the wheel was very strong-RBM was 100% on point with that card; and icy manipulator shined the entire night like, which is exactly where I want my formats at.

The self mill and graveyard interactions are much more real than I had originally thought, and a lot of the games felt very triple innistrady. The aftermath cards really open that area of cubing up, and I'm looking forward to adding more of them, as well as the externalize creatures. Emblam and externalize are both great mechanics, as mana sinks are nice, but mana sinks that add a body that matters to the board are so much better when there are lulls in the game. I'm finding that it also helps poorer players enjoy the experience more, as it means they are much more likely to have something to do.

Made some updates to the 1cc aggro drops: the problem was that some of them were overly signaling curve outs, cards like champion of the parish and stromkirk noble. Thats been smoothed out, though I'll still be on the look out for more mini-control cards as they are printed.

People seem to be adjusting to the learning curve, after a few drafts.

 

[ahadabans]

First picked masticore and built a sweet aggro madness deck. Looks fun. Has some CA too so should have some long game. List is looking great.

Rakdos Madness from CubeTutor.com