Card/Deck Ug... What should I do with my Blue-Green section?
- Thread starter James Stevenson
- Start date
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
I was thinking about 2/1@
, probably trying it next update
, probably trying it next update
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I might too, and I don't even have heroic or anythingI was thinking about 2/1@
Man, I should really get on the custom train yeah? I'm actually kinda happy with this board's custom culture, more tweaking things tastefully than going completely haywire.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I'm going haywire. Fuck that shit!
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I've actually contemplated a cube full of cards that just had their mana costs tweaked, but let's start simple. How about a Helm of Awakening cube?
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Goblin Piker OP?
Could be cool! Not a small ammount of sharpie work though, I doubt every card needs that change
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Goblin Piker OP?
Could be cool! Not a small ammount of sharpie work though, I doubt every card needs that change
Well, the challenge is to include only cards that aren't overpowered with a Helm of Awakening so that you can just start the game with it as an emblem. No sharpie-ing required!
How does Simic Charm fair in the typical Riptide enviornment? I'm thinking of trying it out.
I like each of its modes, but it's very much a tempo card. Midrange and control don't want it, imo. So it depends on how big a deal UGx tempo is in your cube. FWIW, I prefer Edric and Mystic Snake in tempo, but this only costs 2 and does all the things tempo wants to do—pump dudes, protect dudes, and remove blockers.
I find the Charm cycles, while useful, aren't nearly exciting enough to be ran in multicolour sections. imho your multicolour cards, since they fit in the least number of decks, need to be "cool" enough to draw you into the pair. I won't decide to go UG off a Simic Charm and won't even pick it up speculatively, though I'm happy to pick it up if I'm firmly in UG. However, I might go UG off a Kiora, the Crashing Wave because she's an interesting Planeswalker, and I will be happy to pick her if I think I'm going in that direction. Personally, I build my multicolour sections to feel as intriguing and fun as possible; generic utility belt effects do their job best in the mono-coloured sections. A Giant Growth that might be an expensive Ranger's Guile (sans stat boosts) that might be a Consuming Vortex can certainly do fine work, but at the end of the day, I don't care about it and I don't get excited by it. Odds are, neither will your drafters. Just my 2 cents, anyway.
Simic Charm is more narrow than some of the other charms, so I don't run it. Already discussed, but I run Coiling Oracle instead because every UG deck will run it.
Also discussed, but I like to run a lot of generic cards in the multi-colored sections. And that's because I am not a fan of building a UW deck and then in the last pack getting a UW card which I want no part of running because it's too narrow (say I draft UW tempo and I open Supreme Verdict - well that sucks - I'm the only person at the table who can run it and it has no place in my deck at all). I'd rather have more generic options even if they are less sexy. That's not to say I won't run very powerful archetype defining cards, but they have to be like Falkenrath Aristocrat type cards that go in lots of stuff and are all-star cards in those decks. Not a whole lot of multi-colored cards fit that bill without being super narrow.
Multi-colored cards are already at a disadvantage - they need two specific colors which limit in what decks they can be played. Why also have the card be only good in one specific deck (control or what have you) version of that guild combination? Unless it's like the most badass card in that deck, I don't see the point of wasting a gold slot on something that will end up in a deck list once very six months.
Also discussed, but I like to run a lot of generic cards in the multi-colored sections. And that's because I am not a fan of building a UW deck and then in the last pack getting a UW card which I want no part of running because it's too narrow (say I draft UW tempo and I open Supreme Verdict - well that sucks - I'm the only person at the table who can run it and it has no place in my deck at all). I'd rather have more generic options even if they are less sexy. That's not to say I won't run very powerful archetype defining cards, but they have to be like Falkenrath Aristocrat type cards that go in lots of stuff and are all-star cards in those decks. Not a whole lot of multi-colored cards fit that bill without being super narrow.
Multi-colored cards are already at a disadvantage - they need two specific colors which limit in what decks they can be played. Why also have the card be only good in one specific deck (control or what have you) version of that guild combination? Unless it's like the most badass card in that deck, I don't see the point of wasting a gold slot on something that will end up in a deck list once very six months.
Aoret
Developer
Multicolored cards/categories I'm particularly happy with:
really good in the archetype that wants it. Also more fair in cube due to self mill worries (particularly since you might get glimpsed!)
Works in every deck (generic utility etc) but compared to monocolored counterparts, is better enough in my cube due to broken singleton and tokens. This will always get run and it'll always be good enough to be worth being two colors.
Singlehandedly opens up a new archetype that has a number of looks available to it. Creates a draft subgame for the person who picks it, just like Birthing Pod. Gets opened p3 sometimes and sucks but whatever.
really good in the archetype that wants it. Also more fair in cube due to self mill worries (particularly since you might get glimpsed!) Works in every deck (generic utility etc) but compared to monocolored counterparts, is better enough in my cube due to broken singleton and tokens. This will always get run and it'll always be good enough to be worth being two colors. Singlehandedly opens up a new archetype that has a number of looks available to it. Creates a draft subgame for the person who picks it, just like Birthing Pod. Gets opened p3 sometimes and sucks but whatever.
It's true that gold cards should probably be more open-ended and not jank like Supreme Verdict. I recall trying to give U/G a morph theme by sliding in the bounce crow, hexproof bigfoot, and that enchantment from khans that lets you draw cards when you unmorph. Kept the morph theme, but I cut the enchantment cuz it was just not good enough. FWIW, morph is a decent theme in lower powered cubes.
Detention Sphere is a card I SHOULD run for exactly the reasons stated but I just hate everything about it. It's O-Ring with like twice as much text that really only kills tokens better in cube. I can't get behind that card no matter how hard I try.
Bounding Krasis has been pretty sweet for me the 2 two times I've used it in Cube and the handful of times that I've drafted it. Worst case is that it chumps and buys you some time. Best case is wrecking your opponents tempo and/or surprise trades. I'm a fan of Cowabunga Lizard.
I tried the lizard and had a similar experience. Not sure I will actually end up running him though. Lorescale Coatl fits my +1/+1 counter theme better, so I'm leaning towards that right now over the cowabunga lizard. I do like that the lizard is pseudo removal though in a color pair that basically has next to no good removal options.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
I've gotten to the point where I favor a smaller, higher impact, but more narrow multi-color section. The higher relative power of the multi-color card justifies going in the direction it suggests, and accepting the color conditions it imposes. I find that its a nice tool to help tempt people away from their comfort zone, and experiment with new archetypes.
I don't favor using it as a way to "sneak" additional effects into the cube or as a dumping ground, e.g. I don't want to spend a slot on a one drop in my white section, so I will make up for that by running dryad militant.
Not sure how I feel about running a larger section with mostly broad utility cards. Is our purpose there making the color condition less painful by promising that the card can fit in whatever we draft?
I don't favor using it as a way to "sneak" additional effects into the cube or as a dumping ground, e.g. I don't want to spend a slot on a one drop in my white section, so I will make up for that by running dryad militant.
Not sure how I feel about running a larger section with mostly broad utility cards. Is our purpose there making the color condition less painful by promising that the card can fit in whatever we draft?
Aoret
Developer
Depending on power level, if we're just trying to flash in kill spells in UG, Winged Coatl does a decent job. I've always found it kinda boring though, even if it is satisfying to randomly kill whatever out of nowhere in that color combo...
Aoret
Developer
I tend to agree with this newer riptide philosophy of squeezing down gold sections. I guess what I was getting at in my post is that I want things to do one of those three categories of thing (and maybe D. Sphere was a bad example, I dunno). If you're trying to squeeze down further, I think those generally applicable, slightly better cards are the first cuts. If you're trying to squeeze down even further than that, I think your potent but archetypal cards go next (bye Sphinx's Revelation!). When left with only the Tezzeret category of cards, I feel like you'll always be excited to see multicolored cards, except in pack 3...
I think this is a logical approach. But one thing I wanted to move more towards was loosening my grip on what I want guys playing. For example, I could really push tempo in UG by just including tempo cards that are good in that archetype. And guys would probably draft it and you'd see a bunch of UG tempo decks consistently. Actually, this isn't theoretical at all. I did this and that is what happened. Which is fine. But then someone drafted something completely outside my plan for UG (some kind of weird control deck I don't remember exactly what it did) and it occurred to me that I might be doing my meta a disservice by trying to force things. Like, would that deck and decks like it have happened sooner or more often if I had just put less heavy handed direction on the color pair?
Now I don't want to just go straight power-max route and run "the 3 most powerful UG cards ever printed" MTGS style. That just moves me back to goodstuff.dec vs goodstuff.dec (meta say what?) and I feel like a failure as a designer again, but somewhere in the middle is what I'm trying to get to where I have a theme and guys draft it but it's open enough to where you can get creative and build things I didn't plan for.
I bring up the Falkenrath selection again because it's exactly what I'm after. That is not a narrow card as it turns out. It is aggressive but it goes in all kinds of configurations. You can go hyper aggro, or you can combo with it so more midrange. I don't think it goes in control, but maybe since it gets indestructible you could conceivable run it with wraths (no one has done that yet but never say never). Point is, that card does just tons of shit. And it's powerful and it ends up a focal point of a lot of decks. I want more of those cards in my multicolored section. But where I don't have a card like that, I am now leaning more towards generic utility or cards that are not sexy but go in virtually every flavor of their color pair.
Aoret
Developer
I think maybe this part is the trick. Generic and unsexy is fine as long as you'll almost always want it if you're those colors. The biggest issue I can think of with this approach is you run into the Everything Is Vindicate problem in your multicolored section. Maybe then, the thing to do is to try as hard as you can to avoid falling back on Vindicate, Maelstrom Pulse, Detention Sphere, for your generic stuff and filling in with those when you feel you need it. I could see that being something that changes depending on what certain colors are doing in any given iteration of your cube. My Orzhov section at the moment has a bunch of fairly generically good cards that also say "something something gain life" which is an effect that both white and black really want in my environment, almost regardless of archetype*. Net result, I don't run Vindicate even though it's the best, most skill testing version of vindicate that exists (AND I have a sick foil proxy of it that is just rotting!). If my cube ever changes to where my current set of orzhov cards no longer what I wanted, I might have to fall back on the sorta plain feeling vindi.
*We overload the word archetype to mean too many things. It gets used, at the very least, to refer to Aggro/Control/Midrange as well as Tokens/Graveyard recursion/Lifegain/Counterburn/etc. Is there a better term for one or the other of these usages? Archetype vs Theme? Strategy vs Archetype?