The Penny Pincher Cube 2.0--Inventors' Fair

fozzy fosbourne

fozzy fosbourne

Right now, I'm looking at Inventor's Fair as a candidate, although I would feel bad swapping out the cube's namesake, lol.

In other news, we're going to draft this cube on Thursday
 
fozzy fosbourne

fozzy fosbourne

We did the draft. It was a lot of fun!

I made a pretty nasty Gruul angry midrange graveyard recursion deck. Some of the all stars were Genesis, Kessig Cage Breakers, and the red Khenra that has haste and makes a target unable to block. That last guy is pretty nasty when he's in the graveyard and can be embalmed at any moment. Also pretty strong role players were Hooting Mandrills, the worm token card with flashback, the minotaur that you discard a card to play, and the kessig prowler. Just a lot of beef that could be played either early or cheaply, with graveyard interactions. I also got in a pretty sweet spider summoning. Ambush viper caught some people off guard. I don't think I can upload a deck unless I'm a champion?

A couple other observations:
- People were surprised that the Karoo lands require a specific basic, since the Ravnica bounce lands just require any land. Two different games I played with different people, they had a karoo stuck in their hand because they didn't have the appropriate basic to play it. Ran over by my aggro deck while mana screwed out of one color. While I think that some of that is maybe on the players, I think I might consider swapping out the karoos. Maybe for the cards Kirblinx posted or for the mono-colored cycle lands.

- The games took a bit longer than our usual limited retail draft matches. They were a lot of fun though. With my deck in particular, I wasn't really playing off of topdecks because I had a lot of options in my GY typically. A lot of close games.

- The fixing is pretty great other than the karoo thing I mentioned above.

- Someone got really close to lab maniacing!

Overall, really cool. Thanks for all your hard work putting this together.
 
fozzy fosbourne

fozzy fosbourne

So, I think I will try exchanging the karoos for the 1 mana cycle lands, like:


They seem like they will help enable a few mechanics in the cube and will generally smooth things. I also have a full set so I can sleeve them up in time for our next draft on Wednesday! The other cycle I was considering were the sac deserts or the mono man lands. Or just swapping them for 5 colorless utility lands.

No other changes to the cube yet. I want to play more before I consider doing anything.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Man, that might be the perfect swap. I've just had the karoos in there as placeholders, and those could be better placeholders.

I was just worried they would be too marginal a pick for someone to actually take.
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
Yeah, I think it may be a marginal take as well. Plus some colours want these more than others, so it may be a lopsided cycle, but heck, it beats the karoos by a fair margin, so give it a shot.
 
inscho

inscho

I love the idea of running the cycle lands, but I'm not sure there's enough synergy outside of simic to warrant it.
 
sigh

sigh

Even in my higher powered cube, I had people take cycling lands from the draft and maindeck them. Now I just give them out for free :p

In an bounceland format you have the added benefit of being able to bounce them from the table and then cycle them, getting both halves of the functionality.
 
fozzy fosbourne

fozzy fosbourne

I think they also have synergy with delve effects in general, so I think the whole Sultai wedge probably has some extra value from them. If I wanted to support red and white more, one idea was to include the artifact lands in those colors and break the cycle. Those are very narrow cards though relative to the base utility of cycling so I’m not sure about that. It would make Jor Adeen and the like less of a risky proposition though if someone else is cutting heavily into artifacts (like all of Grillo;s insane drafting AI hehe)

The cycle deserts had a lot of basic utility in Hour of Destruction draft so that’s what I was basing my hopes on. The smoothing in a slower format is very nice, and it’s a means of balancing the lands you will receive from the bounce lands.

One concern I have is the amount of CIPT lands overall. In-person and against the AI, I often have 8+ bounce, scry, cycle lands and I’m not sure how things play out when you go much higher. I guess I’ll find out. I really wish you could goldfish decks you make on cubetutor.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
That will probably be the swap that I try.

I was a little worried about them biasing the drafters too much in one direction or the other, but I think it will be fine.
 
dbs

dbs

In a 20 bounceland environment, Thespian's Stage is an odd but consistent little ramp package... but isn't that super inside-baseball-y, if you know what I mean? Naively, people would be looking to line it up with lands with activated abilities: I imagine you'd basically have to pull it out and explicitly explain its inclusion to your draft group, which just seems weird to me.

With utility lands and bouncelands, maybe it changes a bit because there's more flexibility. I really wanted to run Stage because I was trying to push Lands Combo - with or without Dark Depths there are all sorts of utility lands that get way better when you can copy/uncopy them. My problem was I didn't have enough cube slots to put more lands in, and a Utility Land sidedraft would benefit anyone drafting lands payoff and recursion way more than anyone else. Is there some way to get around this?
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Yeah, pretty much. The reason I don't run stage or vesuva is that they just aren't really worth it. All they end up being is esoteric bounceland filler, and people aren't really going to bond with these choices anyways.

Cyclers should be fine. The OG karoos were fine, and these should be better. I will prob run the {2} cyclers since the format is slow enough where I can get away with that. You can actually get a lot of incidental creative value out of those (labman etc.), while being baseline solid, which is all that I really need from these land slots.

Part of this too is to just have more variety in the format. Cutting out the second row of bouncelands, and replacing it with other lands, added more spice. I don't need 20 bouncelands, and it adds to the format having greater variety in the mana base.
 
fozzy fosbourne

fozzy fosbourne

We did another draft. This time my deck was a much more durdly GW deck. I had cards like Student of Warfare, Reliquary Knight, and Coatl Viper that would slowly gain +1/+1 counters but I didn't have much evasion outside of Elitescale Guard, the guy who taps an opponent creature when a +1/1 is attacking. I also grabbed most of the white removal which meant I had a lot of answers for both creatures and other problematic permanents.

The deck was chewed up by an BR aggressive deck 2-1 in the first round when it struggled with drawing lands, but then went 2-0 in the next two rounds by slowly gaining card advantage and not letting anything heinous stick around long.

Some more thoughts-
- White removal is pretty versatile since a lot of it targets creatures, enchantments, and artifacts. It's also kind of expensive.

- Icy Manipulator + Vizier of Tumbling Sands is really nasty.

- Rude Awakening is really strong. If you can hang around until you get to 7 lands, it's a beating.

- Masticore seems nuts in a madness deck and pretty awkward in most other situations. Time has not been kind to it.
 
Aston

Aston

dbs said:
In a 20 bounceland environment, Thespian's Stage is an odd but consistent little ramp package... but isn't that super inside-baseball-y, if you know what I mean? Naively, people would be looking to line it up with lands with activated abilities: I imagine you'd basically have to pull it out and explicitly explain its inclusion to your draft group, which just seems weird to me.
Click to expand...


I've had Thespian's Stage in my ULD pile for a while and I get asked a whole lot whether Dark Depths is also the cube (it isn't). It's unfortunate that the card is so cool but all its other functions have been overshadowed by that interaction.
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

Feeling a bit nostalgic...

So I built the last cubetutor version of this card for card (and the missing 100 cards are incoming)! I will aim to provide updates of any gameplay after it occurs. :) also... Psionic Blast having a cheap textless version was the first thing learned. Yuck.

Miss reading your posts, Grillo, and hope all is well!
 
Chriskool

Chriskool

from earlier in the thread... I had this saved in a notepad for my reference said:
RBU: Discard/Sifting/Looting powered decks
RWU: Aggressive Artifact decks
UWB: Esper Zombie decks
RWB: Hard Control
BUG: Library Depletion Themes

RB: madness
RG: Berserkers//Horizontal Aggro
RU: Burn Tempo// Burn Control
RW: Artifact Aggro//Horizontal Aggro
UG: Ophidian Tempo//Ramp
BW: Zombies
UB: Hard Control//Tempo
UW: Flyers
GB: Reanimator
GW: ++ Counters//Reanimator

Some people said that there didn't seem to be any clear themes, but the fact that discard, reanimator, trinkets are all themes that exist but don't have a fixed two colour identity that people expect make them feel that the cube is all over the place. The fact that all the decks felt reletively focused and had some decent interplay between them is all I really want and it seems to excel in that area. I am thinking a little more interaction with artifacts/enchantments might be required, as being in red and not being able to deal with salvaging station was a bit annoying, but maybe that is the appeal of those cards (being hard to kill).
Click to expand...

With the pandemic halting paper play for me (and countless others) and tons of great penny-synergy-card candidates in the past year, it seems like now is as good of a time as any to start my Penny Pincher update (looking to be V2.5, not V3.0, level of update - maybe a 30-60 card update - with a strong adherence to the above design).

Changes will focus on the following observations:
  • looks low on graveyard interaction | I count 6 spells, two being instant-speed interaction.
  • looks low on instant-speed enchant & artifact interaction | I count 4 spells.
  • tribal cards (except golems?) are very sparsely supported and add another layer of record-keeping | currently has zombie, human, goblin, golem
  • some multicolored cards are hard to grok as signposts | there is some opportunity for updated signposts from recent sets, with possible update to color-triad/-pair archetypes
  • lots of token-makers | currently 50 cards making tokens! there is also some opportunity to reduce the some ~35 unique types of tokens (and maybe add in populate for a small interaction with some of the more unique tokens ...)
The last update to Penny Pincher 2.0 was Guilds of Ravnica; there is a lot of new material to peruse!

My shortlist of swaps and possible includes:

VIS Karoos -> IKO Triomes
LRW Vivids -> JMP Thriving "duals"

Possible adds:
MH1 goodness
TBD Escape Mechanic, more enchantment interaction
ELD Adventures ... Fooooood?
ZNR Modal Double-Faced Cards (non-mythic spell/tap lands)
IKO More Playable Cycling Cards

Has anyone taken a stab at integrating Penny Pincher sensibilities for newer cards in your cube(s)? What worked, didn't work or are you excited to see if it works?

For those of you that have played with this cube, are there any cards that you LOVED or LOATHED?
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
Chris: MTGO Academy said:
For those of you that have played with this cube, are there any cards that you LOVED or LOATHED?
Click to expand...
Cards I find to be lackluster or just mediocre:


Plus all the Karoo's, so I am thankful you will be removing them. I think the triomes are a good addition.

Probably my favourite cards of each colour in the cube so I would like if they stay:


I can go into more detail if you want Chris, and am willing to help out on the changes if you have any ideas!
 
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