interesting tales here. i got into cube due not to the cost of constructed but rather that of limited. we used to convene here every week to draft old sets. rav boxes were $150. boosters of gpt, dis, arb were $3 a pop. i love old sets and my love for the game's history and history of design principles informs my cube design. anyway, then modern came out and it all got very expensive very quickly. so i built al'kaabah.
i don't share y'all's frustration with competitive constructed all that much, or at least not beyond my typical complaints about how a small cabal of nerds (wotc) has imposed their stinginess and misery upon the impecunious community. "cyclical planned obsolescence" is of course infuriating but it mainly exists in standard; as my cube ages well, so will my modern collection. i disagree with vibe that constructed has become any more "linear" or "powerful" or uninteresting to brew in; i think we've come a long way since something like fae, which was extremely powerful and pre-built for ya by R&D, and "absurd power levels, even more absurd prices, [and] lack of real deck options" are also old news.
finally, though i do agree with jason that the "tension between your wallet and your deckbuilding desires" is awful -- if comp-con brewing is a constrained optimization, money is not an interesting constraint (man it's almost like they should pay the good players more?!?!) -- cube enables me to solve that one too. our 'team' (er, 'ragtag band of dudes who drink and gossip') shares card resources, enabling anybody to play pretty much whatever they want. maintaining the cube (and driving people up and down the i-5 corridor in my minivan) is my contribution to the community. in return i get to test, refine, and play my brews at competitive events, which i find both stressful and fun. in other words, cube enables me to brew and play and explore competitive-constructed, and competitive-constructed informs the design of my cube. (brags, if you can still stand my style:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/pr/238 and
http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/393858268 -- ff to 10:22:00 and 13:35:00).
i guess my contention is that cube accommodates a broad range of styles within
mtg. you guys dislike organized play, i like it -- most of this forum consists afaik of casual players, yet there is something there for everyone. cubers are the happiest and most engaged and engaging casual players i've met. (typically, casual players, say, EDH players, are like narcissists or objectivists -- only they can tell it like it is, cognitive biases are something other people have, and they love themselves but hate each other). to further that point i'll x-post an old article of mine from another thread (
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10597) -- there i argue that, though we may not agree with what the problems are w/r/t
mtg, we can agree that cube solves nearly all of them! for if the chief virtues of
mtg are that it is a rich game, therefore a psychological game, therefore a 'people' game, a game that includes many subjectivities, a game that has pluralism at its core, a game that can be enjoyed in infinite different ways, a game that includes style and taste and punishes intellectual dishonesty and other character flaws, has creativity at its core, and is all about doing whatever you want, then cube, which encompasses all these virtues, has gotta be the best way to play it. i wish you could learn that by drafting on modo -- but you can't, so here we are.
