General Waddellian, Riptidian, Funchian

[Jason Waddell]

As you may have noticed, there's a bit of a crossover episode happening in the cube community. Members of the MTG Cube Brainstorming (led by SirFunchalot) have started cross-pollinating, joining into both our Discord server and the forums. This is a good thing! Welcome to cubers of all shapes and sizes. A number of Riptiders have already been active on that discord for some time (Onderzeeboot, TrainmasterGT, landOfMorder).

Last night I recorded a podcast with SirFunchalot. I feel like for me it was a bit challenging at times because I wasn't super well versed in his design perspective going into it.

So to help ease some growing pains in both directions, I thought it'd be useful to try and define some broad design philosophy terms.

Riptide was founded and originally populated by people looking for a place to discuss alternative cube designs. There was already a well established home for conventional cube discourse, and needless to say it was quite hard to discuss designs that didn't fall neatly into predefined categories: powered, unpowered, modern-bordered, peasant, pauper, etc.

Pretty quickly after this site started, 'Team #VolcanicHammer' started the first kind of design offshoot here. These were people who were consciously de-powering their threats and removal, aiming to create a very specific rhythm of gameplay. Thanks to the contributions of Grillo and others, it's evolved into what I would call a Riptidian approach:

Riptidian Design
- intentionally lower powered
- often very archetype focused (see Penny Pincher). Many of these cubes explore themes that aren't viable in a high power environment
- 'decks not cards' approach. the decks in these cubes are synergy clusters that eke out resource advantages not through raw card power, but card synergy

Ironically, even though this is my website, my cube wouldn't be described as Riptidian. Last week I even found this cube through some Reddit post: The Former Wadellian 2021 Cube. Despite how they spelled it, I would call this approach:

Waddellian Design
- a six on the strix
- open to singleton breaking for both spells and lands. Double cycles of fetchlands (or more) are quite common for Waddellian cubes. Fixing lands in the range of 6-8 high-power fixing lands per player.
- a lower power tolerance for proactive plays. Cards are excluded for power level reasons, but they tend to be more in the Uro, Oko, True-Name Nemesis, Skullclamp, Jitte range.
- sometimes includes a Utility Land Draft or Duplicate Voucher system

Then comes what is a new school of design to me, and perhaps to you as well. I'll describe it as best as I can, but am not really the expert on it myself.

Funchian Design
- number of drafted cards greatly exceeds 45
- very high density of fixing. More in the range of 13-17 fixing lands per player
- not very concerned with traditional cube proportions (e.g. equal representation between colors). very gold heavy.
- very high individual card quality. Some cards will be excluded (power, combo), but high power spells like Uro, Oko, Wrenn and Six, etc. find their homes here. Funchian design leads to consistent, high-octane gameplay.

Other assorted terminology:

GRBS - game ruining bullshit
powermax - a cube that seeks to maximize power within a set of constraints and/or card exclusions

Let me know if there are changes you would make to any of these definitions, or other terms / considerations that are needed.

 

[froggy]

While I generally agree with the definitions presented, I can't help but wonder if it would potentially be more productive to focus not on the traits of the specific cubes, but instead on the design philosophy behind - I know Funch has at least stated in the past his philosophy can apply to any level of cube, be it legacy+ or pauper, so perhaps it would be a good idea to focus on the inherent philosophy and how it can be applied to different scenarios

 

[SirFunchalot]

I'll try and sum up as best I can what I believe my overarching design philosophy is at the macro level:

- Power Max within a given power level restriction (New set releases, good cards in, worst cards out)

- Decks not Cards

- "Constructed" decks not limited decks, ie much higher redundancy of effects and a focus on efficiency of rate. More cheaper more gooder.

- Effect density determined by hypergeometric probability distribution

- GRBS is more tolerable the higher the power level. Tringleton Vintage cube has many non-games, Pauper Cube does not.

 

[Jason Waddell]

- Effect density determined by hypergeometric probability distribution

Can you elaborate on what this means? I know what the hypergeometric distribution is but I'm not sure what you're trying to describe with it.

 

[SirFunchalot]

It's the easiest way to figure out how much of a particular thing you need in your cube to meet your design goals.

Like let's say I'm tweaking a hypothetical 540 card pauper cube which has zero fixing lands and only supports two color decks and it's drafted with 8 players using 3 packs of 15 and I say "I think red decks in this format should be able to consistently have access to a removal spell within the first three turns of the game on the play with a roughly 10% failrate". From there we can calculate how many burn spells that is in a 40 card deck (it's about 8). Now since the format has no fixing and only supports two color decks we'll assume that three players at the table will be in red at most in any given draft assuming no one trainwrecks, which means ~24 burn spells need to work their way into the draft pool plus a skosh extra to accommodate card in pack distribution variance where potentially a pack has 4 red removal spells and cannot supply each red drafter, or someone didnt realize red was their lane until halfway through pack 1, etc. Since the cube is 540 cards and we only see 360 we need to now calculate how many variations of this effect must be in the total card pool such that we see our desired, say 27 burn spells in the pool. Plug that shit into a hypergeo calculator and eventually you'll find that you need ~46 burn spells total in your cube to supply three red drafters with enough burn such that they can interact a single time by turn 3 on the play ~90% of the time provided they draft their ~8 removal spells and they play them in their mainboard.

 

[sigh]

Is this really how you are constructing actual examples of your cubes? Because that's about half of the entire red section dedicated to that one effect. Or this is a little bit exaggerated to show the point.

 

[SirFunchalot]

Is this really how you are constructing actual examples of your cubes? Because that's about half of the entire red section dedicated to that one effect. Or this is a little bit exaggerated to show the point.

The above post is simply a toy example to illustrate how the tool can be used to solve for the correct effect density to suit desired gameplay patterns of the designer. But the reality is that my actual cubes aren't too far off from this example and they do run a significantly higher density of interaction spells than you might find in those of more "traditional" cubes. I typically design my formats to more closely mimic the play patterns of constructed and with that entails a very high density of interaction spells being available for midrange and control decks. Modern Boomer Jund for example typically contains ~20 removal spells (counting liliana of the veil) and in my cube you can expect to see decks playing similar ratios.

This is an example 3-0 Jund list from some time last year when I was trying singleton fixing lands.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I think the big thing here to notice is that both Funchian Designs and Classic Riptide Cubes are both Decks-Not-Cards formats.I wasn't getting what I needed out of just Riptide design theory when I decided I wanted to raise the power level of my Cube to match my desired style of gameplay. While I had joined the Cube Brainstorming Discord at this point, I wasn't a big fan of the actual Cubes they had built at the time. However, I liked their ideas and thought I could borrow some of that theory for my own environment. I realized that Funchain Cubes were basically decks-not-cards Cubes, but with emphasis on different In my Cube thread, Onderzeeboot and I kind of summed up the differences like this:

Really, what we're looking at here is cubes on one side [Riptidelab] characterized by:

* Narrow archetypes, archetypal 'islands' (disregarding color, some cards are expected to work in only one drafter's deck, even if they are not the only drafter in a given broad archetype (aggro, combo, control, or midrange))
* A number of low floor/high ceiling cards (cards that are elevated by synergies with a subset of other cards)
* Synergy over interchangeability (e.g. Harnessed Lightning over Incinerate because you want to support energy)
* Theme over value (when looking at a random booster, the cards often tell you a specific theme is supported, e.g. cards like Life from the Loam, Blood Artist, Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle, or Master of Etherium)

And cubes on the other side of the spectrum [Cube Brainstorming Discord], characterized by:

* Broad archetypes, archetypal 'continents' (disregarding color, cards in one drafter's deck are expected to work as well in any other drafter's deck that falls in the same broad archetype)
* High floor cards exclusively (each card should be able to stand on its own)
* Synergy through interchangeability (e.g. Fire Ambush over Harnessed Lightning because that means you don't have to run energy and Fire Ambush goes face, so it has value in aggro as well) * Value over theme (when looking at a booster, no theme pops out, instead you're looking at a pack of generally useful cards that promise a great density of broadly applicable cards, e.g. Shock, Hieroglyphic Illumination, Boreal Druid).

As far as synergy is concerned, I think cards like Diregraf Ghoul and Fledgling Djinn synergize in a very different way than cards like Blood artist and Nantuko Husk. Ghoul and Djinn synergize because they both work well towards the same end goal (kill the opponent as quickly as possibly), while Artist and Husk work together because they're abilities are linked (Sacrificing a creature to the Husk causes the Artist to drain the opponent for 1). Both sets of cards have Synergy, but for completely different reasons.

The final result is a little different in each case. Classic Riptide Cubes tend to feel a bit more like assembling Rube-Goldberg machines, while Funchian Cubes tend to feel like building very pure forms of constructed decks. A fair bit of this divide is due to what archetypes are being supported and the power level of each environment.

Also, two terms I would like to add to the dictionary:
Fairmax Cubes: High-Power environments that eschew combo decks and the Power 9, but are still trying to maximize the power level of the Cube as a whole, such as Unpowered Fair Stuff.

Museum Cubes: MTGO/MTGS style Cubes that run cards for their nostalgia value instead of their contributions to power level or quality. See: Wtwlf123's Cube, SteveMan's Cube, and the MTGO Cubes.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Thanks Train, that was a helpful post and I appreciate the intention to focus on what we have in common, rather than differences.

 

[kactuus]

I agree with statements above on the "Funchian" cube philosophy as far as what it means, which essentially power maximization within a set of restrictions. Both my powered and my unpowered cubes fall within this design philosophy. The significantly larger card pools is something that we are experimenting with at the time and I have quite enjoyed, though am currently working out what exact size I want my particular cube to be at.

The primary point on which I disagree is the terminology of "Funchian." The design philosophy has been refined by many people in the MTG Cube Brainstorming discord, more than just Funch himself, despite him being the most visible of our community. I would personally say it is the Brainstorming design philosophy, rather than it being an individual's creation.

 

[landofMordor]

While I generally agree with the definitions presented, I can't help but wonder if it would potentially be more productive to focus not on the traits of the specific cubes, but instead on the design philosophy behind - I know Funch has at least stated in the past his philosophy can apply to any level of cube, be it legacy+ or pauper, so perhaps it would be a good idea to focus on the inherent philosophy and how it can be applied to different scenarios

Yeah, I think this will be key. It doesn't do any good to say "my cube is Brainstorming-esque" if I then have to explain that "I only draft 45 cards, I'm not as gold heavy, and I don't always slot in good cards if I don't like them". I'd much rather get past describing cube phenomena to get at design philosophy.

I think the big thing here to notice is that both Funchian Designs and Classic Riptide Cubes are both Decks-Not-Cards formats.I wasn't getting what I needed out of just Riptide design theory when I decided I wanted to raise the power level of my Cube to match my desired style of gameplay. While I had joined the Cube Brainstorming Discord at this point, I wasn't a big fan of the actual Cubes they had built at the time. However, I liked their ideas and thought I could borrow some of that theory for my own environment. I realized that Funchain Cubes were basically decks-not-cards Cubes, but with emphasis on different In my Cube thread, Onderzeeboot and I kind of summed up the differences like this:



The final result is a little different in each case. Classic Riptide Cubes tend to feel a bit more like assembling Rube-Goldberg machines, while Funchian Cubes tend to feel like building very pure forms of constructed decks. A fair bit of this divide is due to what archetypes are being supported and the power level of each environment.

Also, two terms I would like to add to the dictionary:
Fairmax Cubes: High-Power environments that eschew combo decks and the Power 9, but are still trying to maximize the power level of the Cube as a whole, such as Unpowered Fair Stuff.

Museum Cubes: MTGO/MTGS style Cubes that run cards for their nostalgia value instead of their contributions to power level or quality. See: Wtwlf123's Cube, SteveMan's Cube, and the MTGO Cubes.

Jargon like this, while it can be useful to bin similar cubes together, isn't at its best when it's used reductively. For example, I doubt Wtwlf consciously thinks of their cube as one that "runs cards for nostalgia value". Storm is a very powerful mechanic, and so are the Power 9. Power level is relative to one's restrictions, and can't be defined in absolute terms.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The primary point on which I disagree is the terminology of "Funchian." The design philosophy has been refined by many people in the MTG Cube Brainstorming discord, more than just Funch himself, despite him being the most visible of our community. I would personally say it is the Brainstorming design philosophy, rather than it being an individual's creation.

Well if we're renaming Funchian, I look like a pure narcicist if I let Waddellian stand.

 

[SirFunchalot]

For example, I doubt Wtwlf consciously thinks of their cube as one that "runs cards for nostalgia value". Storm is a very powerful mechanic, and so are the Power 9. Power level is relative to one's restrictions, and can't be defined in absolute terms.

This is in fact where a huge amount of conflict in "the cube community" comes from. Some folks really are out there saying Juzam Djinn is still one of the 720 most powerful cards ever printed in magic so while they play cards that we think are there just for nostalgia they think they're powermaxing. Fwiw while power levels of cards can be contextual to some degree a lot of it is so broadly applicable that the hyper specific edge cases where it's not true lose meaning. Just because some schmuck can build a 5 toughness only cube just to prove that they can construct a format where soul sear is better than lightning bolt doesn't really mean much when >99% of all other cubes will reflect the opposite. Nahmean?

 

[landofMordor]

This is in fact where a huge amount of conflict in "the cube community" comes from. Some folks really are out there saying Juzam Djinn is still one of the 720 most powerful cards ever printed in magic so while they play cards that we think are there just for nostalgia they think they're powermaxing. Fwiw while power levels of cards can be contextual to some degree a lot of it is so broadly applicable that the hyper specific edge cases where it's not true lose meaning. Just because some schmuck can build a 5 toughness only cube just to prove that they can construct a format where soul sear is better than lightning bolt doesn't really mean much when >99% of all other cubes will reflect the opposite. Nahmean?

Ab-so-lutely. So much conflict is averted by using precise language w.r.t. design goals and context (which is why I'm glad this thread exists even if nothing comes of it).

I do agree with you that a card like Bolt is powerful in many contexts. It's indeed a cop-out to say "all cards' power level is completely fluid". But I also think it's true that the combinatorics between 360+ cards introduces some quasi-chaos into the system, where we can't always predict how powerful a card will end up in its context.

For example, Baneslayer Angel is pretty much past its prime in Constructed -- it's Standard-legal and sees no play -- but people who self-describe as powermaxing still swear by it in Cube. Maybe that's partly nostalgia talking, sure. But there are also very real non-edge-case contexts where BSA is a good card, even if it's not intentionally designed to be a pillar of the format.

Formats that are high-variance for whatever reason (high power deltas in proactive cards, low as-fan of quality removal, or even just wildly inconsistent player skill level) may easily favor BSA more than a card like Goblin Guide or Tarmogoyf or whatever. In those formats (or more granularly, even in an individual game state), tempo becomes less about leveraging mana efficiency to get cards on board, and more about squeezing maximum value out of topdecks. If every game is guaranteed to go past T5, I definitely want a BSA in my deck because it'll punish late-game tempo stumbles from my opponent in the same way that Goblin Guide punishes early-game tempo stumbles in a faster cube. (One toy example of such a format is 1v1 EDH.)

TLDR, a format's speed and tempo have drastic effects on which cards are contextually more powerful. A low-tempo, low-speed format can still maximize power in that design region and end up with 0 power outliers in common with a high-tempo high-speed format.

 

[japahn]

This is in fact where a huge amount of conflict in "the cube community" comes from. Some folks really are out there saying Juzam Djinn is still one of the 720 most powerful cards ever printed in magic so while they play cards that we think are there just for nostalgia they think they're powermaxing. Fwiw while power levels of cards can be contextual to some degree a lot of it is so broadly applicable that the hyper specific edge cases where it's not true lose meaning. Just because some schmuck can build a 5 toughness only cube just to prove that they can construct a format where soul sear is better than lightning bolt doesn't really mean much when >99% of all other cubes will reflect the opposite. Nahmean?

Yeah, and a more nuanced example is how environment speed drastically affects how good higher CMC cards are. Value engines like Assemble the Legion that are unplayable in faster cubes can be oppressive in other cubes. A lot comes down to whether tempo or card advantage is the most common bottleneck for the environment.

Creature stats are another area in which power level vary a lot. In pauper, Gurmag Angler is powerful because it's just bigger than anything else, and the available removal mostly misses it.

"Power level is not a number" has been my motto lately.

 

[SirFunchalot]

words

I feel like slow formats where tempo doesn't matter as much are inherently not maximizing power levels, whether this is intentional or unintentional doesn't really matter. My understanding of what "powerful" in Magic means is a direct reflection of how fast a format is and how important the tempo axis is. Vintage is faster and tempo matters more than in Legacy which is faster and tempo matters more than in Modern which is faster and tempo matters more than in Pioneer which is faster and tempo matters more than in Standard. So while contextually a slow threat can be stronger in a slower format than in a faster one (Elder Gargaroth sees play in Standard, not Legacy), that is generally a reflection of a lack of other stronger options that could otherwise punish the slow threat (Standard doesn't have removal like daze or swords to plowshares), aka a lack of power in the format's reactive spells or an inconsistency or lack of powerful threats for faster strategies (the fastest deck in Standard is mono red, not Belcher). Obviously I think just about all cubes are avoiding "powermaxing" in the most literal sense in that I don't think I've ever seen a non-singleton 360 copies of chancellor of the dross cube but as far as cubes with similar design restrictions go ie: legacy/vintage card pool, singleton, pauper/peasant, blah blah blah, I don't think the claims of powermaximization really hold up under scrutiny should slower cards and strategies be allocated slots over more efficient options.

 

[landofMordor]

Yeah, and a more nuanced example is how environment speed drastically affects how good higher CMC cards are. Value engines like Assemble the Legion that are unplayable in faster cubes can be oppressive in other cubes. A lot comes down to whether tempo or card advantage is the most common bottleneck for the environment.

Creature stats are another area in which power level vary a lot. In pauper, Gurmag Angler is powerful because it's just bigger than anything else, and the available removal mostly misses it.

"Power level is not a number" has been my motto lately.

Haha I think we had a Vulcan mind meld. ^^

Man, I love Gurmag Angler. It's got this weird bimodal performance curve where it's good in low-power formats because it's just a beefcake, and good in high-power formats where it costs 1 mana, but bad in those intermediate-power formats where a 5-mana 5/5 isn't good but the format doesn't allow it to be turbo'ed out.

Tangent: I had somebody cast Gurmag Angler against me a month ago for the full 7, despite their full grave. I was thinking to myself "Wow this person must be a scrub and I'll have to quit the game if I don't win this". I topdeck a land, pass the turn, and they hard-cast Ugin by tapping 8 basic lands. Which is another case in point that environment speed drastically changes the power of individual cards.

 

[Jason Waddell]

and they hard-cast Ugin by tapping 8 basic lands.

Colorless cards are the basic land archetype payoff.

 

[landofMordor]

as far as cubes with similar design restrictions go ie: legacy/vintage card pool, singleton, pauper/peasant, blah blah blah, I don't think the claims of powermaximization really hold up under scrutiny should slower cards and strategies be allocated slots over more efficient options.

I think I agree. There's some complexity there, because often those slower cubes have additional unstated restrictions. Like, yes both our cubes might fall into the "Legacy unpowered powermax" bucket, but that's a really big bucket, and it doesn't have the nuance to account for Player A is on a budget, Player B is avoiding all functional reprints, or Player C wants to curate Standard-style gameplay.

Of course, it'd be nice if everybody started from the baseline of the 360 Chancellor cube being "the most powerful" so that we'd all chill out when our pet cards get called "bad"... but idk the best way to make that happen.

 

[SirFunchalot]

it'd be nice if everybody started from the baseline of the 360 Chancellor cube being "the most powerful"

What I'm hearing is it's time to update what a "10" on the Strix Scale really is hahaha

 

[Jason Waddell]

I have a lisp, so I really try to only type the phrase "my cube is a six on the strix scale".

 

[froggy]

This thread has me thinking on both the applicability of riptidian philosophy to high power formats and the potential in merging elements of both riptidian and brainstorming philosophies

 

[TrainmasterGT]

This thread has me thinking on both the applicability of riptidian philosophy to high power formats and the potential in merging elements of both riptidian and brainstorming philosophies

Read my cube thread

 

[froggy]

I shall!

 

[Erik Twice]

I think the defining feature of your cube environment is how "agressive" it is, Waddel. Like, you run half a dozen strip mines and yet Crucible of Worlds is not overpowered because it's not fast enough.