General Vintage

[D.B.S.]

I've been playing a great deal of Vintage recently. I watched some friends play the MTGO holiday cube and I was shocked at how even though the power level is really high the games don't quite turn out the fun sort of crazy like games of Vintage where I find the games take an immense amount of skill (or at the very least a lot of tanking!). It was often like "oh you show and telled turn one and I lose."

I'm not one-hundred percent sure why this is: I haven't played a powered cube before, only a Riptide style cube. It certainly seems to do a lot with a lack of good ways to interact with your opponent's broken plays? Anyway, I remember seeing a post on here a while ago where Jason mentioned wanted to brew up a Vintage Cube. Someone posted a sample cube tutor list as well. I was wondering if anyone was interested on working to develop one?

I have two initial points to develop

1) How to make it a still genuinely interesting limited format? Part of what I find so enjoyable about Cube is the way that decks and games always play out so differently. The deck building is one of the most fun parts and I find that my decks seem to play differently even if the archetype is similar just because of what cards I happen to have. Is there a way to keep this sort of spontaneity while still consistently being able to interact with your opponent's broken plays?

2) I've been tossing around a rule for Vintage Cubing drawing from the idea of breaking singleton and the Squadron Hawk packages that people seem to like. The idea would be that at the end of the draft you can pick any one card and give yourself two extra copies of that card. That could allow you to build around something more specifically and give more consistency to disruption while also providing neat deck-building decisions. Maybe pick two cards and give yourself two extra copies of each? This obviously is a little more tricky in paper cubes and might require a smaller total cube size (maybe 180?) but maybe we want a smaller pool of cards for a Vintage cube anyway?

Just throwing around ideas.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think that because vintage as a format is all about magic's mistake, and there is a real limit on suitable disruption; maybe make it where everyone gets 2-3 FOW at the end of the draft?

180 cards is probably a good idea, due to extreme print run limitations on your defining effects.

Is it really worth it though? The blue decks would be really interesting, but vintage dredge is pretty mechanical, and not sure how much fun shops would be to play against.

 

[Suicufnoc]

Maybe start everyone with 5 Moxen, 1 Lotus, 1 Time Walk, 1 Ancestral, 2 Force of Will, 1 Mental Misstep, 1 Grafdigger's Cage, and 1 Null Rod. And then draft.

Or something like that. I dont really know vintage

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Huge question: do you want to actually emulate the specific decktypes that appear in vintage or are you looking to more generally create the low margin, high power environment that vintage provides?

I think you would best be served focusing on the fast mana and swingy effects that make the gameplay skill intense while avoiding the "requires specific cards to even interact with" and "wins by making all of the opponent's cards uncastable or unusable, preferably on turn one" types of decks. If you are forced to put in things like cage to make it work, I'm not sure its going to make for a fun draft environment.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I guess the best end to start from is just to make a short list of statements that are to be true of the cube, design goals if you will. I haven't played enough vintage to make an analysis of what makes vintage a good and fun format, but I know for a fact that we want cubes to be somewhat interactive.

By what you wrote in the opening post I'd guess the design goals then would be, intertactive games, have replayability and "simulate vintage". Simulating vintage really can mean different things, like FWS mentioned, so what do you want out of it. Drafting vintage-decks or drafting cube-decks that have a vintage feel? Like a powered cube?

 

[VibeBox]

Maybe start everyone with 5 Moxen, 1 Lotus, 1 Time Walk, 1 Ancestral, 2 Force of Will, 1 Mental Misstep, 1 Grafdigger's Cage, and 1 Null Rod. And then draft.

i would recommend this approach.

been playing vintage lately and getting to know it better. the thing with power is that when everyone has access to it it's just a backdrop. sure it's going to create swings and losses, but at least everyone has theoretically equal chance to take advantage of it and how you construct your deck plays a huge factor in how well you are able to assemble or take advantage of said power.
in cube there is no such guarantee of starting equality. some players will end up with almost nothing in terms of power, others will open a lotus and get passed a time walk or something. this exacerbates the problems of swinginess since some people won't even have the chance to answer back with nearly as powerful things to do.

if you choose to go with a more traditional cube draft format for this i would recommend running A Bunch of power. you will still be susceptible to some decks being way more powerful on luckier opens, but at least the odds are higher that everyone gets some kind of chance to have a powerful deck capable of winning through the increased adversity.
the important thing is to make sure to establish that backdrop of format defining power level so everyone gets to interact in it and not just exist in it and get stomped. the modo holiday cube being the nightmare scenario where some players cast a carnophage and some cast lotus channel emrakul.

 

[James Stevenson]

If everyone's getting Forces, maybe all the decks will end up blue. Maybe sway your cube heavily towards blue. But I don't play vintage, so I don't know.

 

[VibeBox]

while there's no obligation to use the cards you are given to start in that version, yeah most people are gonna wanna be in blue since ancestral and fow are blue.
i would definitely go with imbalanced color representation since blue has more commonly played vintage cards than white, red, and green combined.

 

[anotak]

http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/12253

this was the list that you're probably referring to that i never drafted

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Maybe start everyone with 5 Moxen, 1 Lotus, 1 Time Walk, 1 Ancestral, 2 Force of Will, 1 Mental Misstep, 1 Grafdigger's Cage, and 1 Null Rod. And then draft.

Or something like that. I dont really know vintage

It does present a very particular kind of cube experience. Without knowing vintage any, I get the feeling unburdening the players from hunting power-pieces just to be able to compete relieves them to go look for just interesting cards? Like, you could then shift back into the regular cube experience, just drafting decks with much higher power.