Juju linked to his classic cube that was built to showcase older cards. Just today, wtwlf123 gave his opinion on the best white board wipes for lower powered environments. You're looking for hostility towards lower powered environments that just isn't there.
The OP talks about "going deeper" by playing lower-powered cards, but often the higher powered card is the better option for cross-archetype support because the higher powered card just does more things. This is why Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is a more interesting card than Youthful Knight, and Pia and Kiran Nalaar is in my unpowered cube while Beetleback Chief is not. The more powerful cards are frequently more versatile and they open more interesting drafting and deckbuilding decisions.
And no, this isn't for every playgroup. If it's not for yours, that's cool, but without more specific questions than "Isn't it more fun to build cubes with a lower power level?" it's hard to give productive answers.
You want to help? What five red rares should I run if I'm only going to run five rares in each color at 540?
Here are the 5 red rares I'd add to my Peasant cube based on my design goals and wants for that cube:
Will that fit your cube? Beats me! You haven't even provided a link to a CT page for your cube, much less explained what you want out of your lower powered cube. Once you provide some meaningful context, people here will help you with your specific questions. If you're just looking for a fight, please take it somewhere else.
why come into a thread about playing at lesser power levels just to say "I only play maxpower. Don't play lover power levels."
I didn't. The OP asked a specific question, and I answered it:
Quote from Mergatroid_Jones »
"At what power level are there the most fun cards to chose from?"
Quote from wtwlf123 »
I found that playing with better cards was more fun. But every playgroup is different, so you should include whatever you and your friends enjoy most.
A) That's enjoying powerful cards is not "maxpower". It's that my experience with cube drafting has shown that all folks that I play with (core players and guests) get a kick out of using good, iconic Magic cards.
B) But since "fun" can be subjective, the people to ask are the other folks in M_J's playgroup, which is what I recommended. The only important thing about cube drafting is to cultivate a format that your regular playgroup will enjoy.
Quote from Ms_Mxyzptlk »
Here is an idea, if you don't want to help cultivate different power levels, go back to threads that interest you.
Well, that doesn't sound very inclusive. It sounds pretty condescending. Just because I run a powered cube doesn't mean that this thread doesn't interest me.
Quote from Ms_Mxyzptlk »
And don't pretend that you aren't condescending. Because you are. If you weren't then people wouldn't be telling you that you are.
Like I said, I think this is more of a misunderstanding than any real intent coming from my end. Maybe I'm just bad at handling certain discussions with kid gloves and inclusive political-correctness. But I don't intend to be exclusive. Only concise. Like I said before, no harm intended. And I'd like to think I've gotten better over the years, because my tone was certainly more abrasive in my earlier posting career. Again, sorry for the misinterpretation, but I mean no offense, and certainly never mean anything personal.
Quote from Ms_Mxyzptlk »
Your list is the first one I refer to when I want to look at a power cube list. Why can't that be enough for you?
I'm glad you use my list as a referral, but that shouldn't mean that I'm barred from discussing other cube topics.
Quote from Ms_Mxyzptlk »
...stay the hell out of the conversations...
No thanks. I prefer to participate.
Quote from Ms_Mxyzptlk »
You want to help? What five red rares should I run if I'm only going to run five rares in each color at 540?
Can you provide a list and/or some context? I'm happy to discuss any and all things cube, and would love to help.
The best thing to do if you think someone is being condescending/rude/etc is to *ignore it*, because they probably are not actually being that way! If you *can't* do that, then make pretend everything they're saying is being said with a positive spin. You know Kenneth Parcell, from 30 Rock? Imagine he is saying the comments that you don't like. If it's still rude with his voice--which, BTW, 99.9% of comments never are!--then maybe it was condescending, but if Kenneth Parcell can read the comments with the same exuberance and joy as he does everything, then it's probably an issue of text being tough to attach tone to.
After 5 years with wtwlf on these forums, I think I can say that his succinct and to-the-point responses are *often* misinterpreted as being rude to a poster, when in reality I think most of the time he's not considering the poster at all and the card instead. If he says 'we would never play this trash'? If he vouches for a pet card? They're his opinions and have nothing to do with you! Frankly I don't envy his position at all--if I was constantly called out for my posts because I say a card is good or bad or whatever, I would've left these forums a long time ago.
I think it's time we all relax and remember that we're talking about cardboard and if you really think someone is being condescending about cardboard and you can't take the time to do the Kenneth Parcell voice, then be the bigger man and forget about it because we're talking about *cardboard*.
------
@ravnic: I try to maintain an unpowered cube. The usual suspects are missing, but I also run zero conspiracies. Free spells are just too powerful in a limited environment, especially the ones you 'draw' every game like Power Play or Backup Plan.
Telling you that I'm thinking about a 540 unpowered cube IS CONTEXT. So, now that this thread isnt about WhiteWolf123 anymore, what direction would you take for red rares? I feel like it is beneficial to start out tribal. Goblin guide or Siege gang commander. Maybe even Krenko. Im playtesting tribal now, but with only one draft under our belts its kind of hard to zero in just yet. I'm listening for the open minded level headed responses that you all are offering.
The thing about both of those guys is you don't really need to go tribal for them to be good, they're pretty good on their own, and then if you heavily support tribal after you have a bunch of cards that aren't great without their tribal components and will therefore miss a lot of play. But I'm not entirely sure if you can't go deeper with tribal in a mostly-peasant cube, but just having both of those guys is no reason to force that archetype if you don't need to.
Siege-Gang does a lot for a number of archetypes. Seems like a shoe-in.
Goblin Guide is a A+ aggro guy. If you are interested in supporting aggro in any capacity, he should go in for that alone, although there are options at Common and Uncommon for aggro critters as well. If you're limiting based on rarity (though, it begs the question - why?), then it might not add the most 'value' for your buck in terms of adding something unique.
Krenko can get out of hand, but doesn't form the basis of an archetype.
Something like Sulfuric Vortex is a nice build-around card. Goblin Rabblemaster is a really fun and unique aggressive three-drop and fits your tribal thing too. Goblin Dark-Dwellers is a neat 'build your own ETB creature' five drop and is another Goblin. Grim Lavamancer is another unique creature at rare who can't be replaced too readily. Sneak Attack has no parallel for what it does so if you want to support cheaty decks, you'll want that one.
By the way, red doesn't suffer too much for an arbitrary rarity restriction, since a lot of the good effects are at C/U anyway, but some archetypes in other colours will be hit really hard by it. You can probably do Reanimator and Ramp with a modicum of difficulty.
Guide, Rabblemaster, and Commander are solid in any red aggro build, but Chieftain and King are deliberately narrow as clear signals to your drafters that there's a Goblin deck to built.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I built a Cube not knowing of a forum dedicated to people discussing Cube. I thought my Cube was amazing but looking back, it was fundamentally flawed and terrible but still fun enough to play. My Cube since then has gone through about 300 cards worth of changes, trying to support archetypes and themes and it was still fun to play. I eventually started to angle my Cube towards a more "traditional" 360 unpowered Cube, getting the more powerful card for the slot 90% of the time. My group enjoy this the most and so do I.
Having wtwlf123's (and other's) dedication, opinions and feedback on Cube, in my opinion, is fantastic and he is a pillar of the Cube community. Whether or not you agree or disagree on things he says and other prominent members of the forum, having them around, even if they don't certain cards or ideas, makes this forum and community tick. This sentiment is echoed to anyone who contributes.
I am pretty impartial and probably don't offer much as I am pretty firm in the "play whatever you want, I don't care" camp but am thankful for the passionate people who start threads (like this one), evaluate cards, test them, try them out and offer feedback for others. I think encouraging everyone to do more often is probably a good thing.
Sorry if this is off topic, so I'll make it on topic; regarding power level, doing what suits you and your group, I think, is always going to the be best. There is no point pushing your agenda and being upset when it isn't universally accepted.
I was thinking that using tribal could be a kind of crutch until playing a cube with a limited number of rares was more smoothed out. But a lot of the ideas here are excellent. I'm working on making a cube list, which I still am learning how to do that. So rather than make this thread a clinic about my cube I'd rather we talked more about what kinds of rares we would include in such an environment. As wtwlf123 pointed out it is probably best to use rares which provide things that cannot be replaced at common or uncommon. I can speak from some experience that I ended up using a lot of token generators, Meloku, Talrand, Siege gang, to help give rares a bit more bang for your buck, but I suspect that there is probably a better methodology to follow for rares. I wonder what some of the upper level builders think, as well as some of the people thinking of playing a lower power level.
This has been experimented with and discussed in quite a bit of detail on the Pauper and Peasant Cube subforum, you should definitely check out this thread.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
For myself whenever I started to Cube, it was a few points:
A. I play
Commander->All decks in all color combinations
Modern->Competitive decks, wanted to create at least 4
Cube->2 Cubes
The problem is that with any economics looking at the long range prospects in regards to these decks, there will always be a point whenever you have to make concessions. Now if I stopped playing Commander, I could build one super Cube and so on for cost benefit analysis.
Price is always relative to cost, so there are ways of having one deck being very strong. Say purchasing Jund and playing that for several years with few to little new modifications to most of the main deck base. There is also the point of rotating cards, which I am fully against.
For myself, I usually build around preconstructed decks and buy entire booster boxes on occasion. I spent about 4 years sifting through various common bins and dollar bins to find specific cards to build each of the projects. I begin with a shell for a project, then slowly add and combine new cards into the shell.
Cubing I typically set out with a budget and no timeline horizon for completion. The first thing I understand was either you have one very powerful Cube that is also very expensive, or use a theme or specific limitation to create a ceiling. The quickest is always to build off of your current collection and current released sets.
At the time, I had a lot of Theros product so the Enchantment Cube was the first thing I started with. Theros and Urza Blocks respectively both had strong enchantment themes. Then there have been supplemental products and sub themes in sets that support Enchantments. Equally Enchantments typically are one of the cheapest cards to buy in Magic when it comes to some older cards.
The other was Artifacts, and that was born out of a few points:
A. There have been several Artifact Blocks and will remain popular for time immemorial.
B. New colorless mechanics like colored artifacts are being released
C. There are a lot of great older artifacts that are interesting to play with
D. There are preconstructed decks built around artifact themes
With those four, so for example with Oath of the Gatekeepers, Conspiracy 2, Kaladesh, and Aether Revolt will all have colorless and artifact themes respectively. And with five sets in several years, let alone the yearly obligatory Commander decks like in 2014 that had Nahiri built around equipment and Daretti with various new skills for Red to interact with artifacts. Places the choice on theme better, since you can collect the cards as you go along rather than having to buy at top gang plank prices.
Now doing what wtfft waffle, flaffle, or whatever the handle is spelled. The Dude has a nice cube built up over time and is a long term player, so power makes sense for him to engage While for people of means or of a focused budget with Magic, place something that wants something. The problem, though, is that some people want a full set of expeditions and have 2.5 cards and everything else. The "best" to me would for someone getting with a Modern Masters sets and build with Shocks, Fetches, and Manlands and the Painlands if supporting Eldrazi. Otherwise if you do go Power, it's far easier to Proxy.
I feel that the crowd over at Rift Tide Lab spelled it out fairly well, that the higher your power level the fewer card options you end up having. However, the reverse is also true depending on what themes you use, you can also limit yourself out of a lot of cards.
My Enchantment Cube rarely changes, while my Artifact Cube is getting touched up with new set that includes better artifacts of note. It is also directly comes a time to prioritize. If money is limited, go with Pauper or an open ended theme. Overall a Cube has to be built over time and takes a lot of patience to get right. With the other sections of my collection, the Cube is in competition always for resources.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
The OP talks about "going deeper" by playing lower-powered cards, but often the higher powered card is the better option for cross-archetype support because the higher powered card just does more things. This is why Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is a more interesting card than Youthful Knight, and Pia and Kiran Nalaar is in my unpowered cube while Beetleback Chief is not. The more powerful cards are frequently more versatile and they open more interesting drafting and deckbuilding decisions.
And no, this isn't for every playgroup. If it's not for yours, that's cool, but without more specific questions than "Isn't it more fun to build cubes with a lower power level?" it's hard to give productive answers.
Here are the 5 red rares I'd add to my Peasant cube based on my design goals and wants for that cube:
Will that fit your cube? Beats me! You haven't even provided a link to a CT page for your cube, much less explained what you want out of your lower powered cube. Once you provide some meaningful context, people here will help you with your specific questions. If you're just looking for a fight, please take it somewhere else.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I didn't. The OP asked a specific question, and I answered it:
A) That's enjoying powerful cards is not "maxpower". It's that my experience with cube drafting has shown that all folks that I play with (core players and guests) get a kick out of using good, iconic Magic cards.
B) But since "fun" can be subjective, the people to ask are the other folks in M_J's playgroup, which is what I recommended. The only important thing about cube drafting is to cultivate a format that your regular playgroup will enjoy.
Well, that doesn't sound very inclusive. It sounds pretty condescending. Just because I run a powered cube doesn't mean that this thread doesn't interest me.
Like I said, I think this is more of a misunderstanding than any real intent coming from my end. Maybe I'm just bad at handling certain discussions with kid gloves and inclusive political-correctness. But I don't intend to be exclusive. Only concise. Like I said before, no harm intended. And I'd like to think I've gotten better over the years, because my tone was certainly more abrasive in my earlier posting career. Again, sorry for the misinterpretation, but I mean no offense, and certainly never mean anything personal.
I'm glad you use my list as a referral, but that shouldn't mean that I'm barred from discussing other cube topics.
No thanks. I prefer to participate.
Can you provide a list and/or some context? I'm happy to discuss any and all things cube, and would love to help.
..........
@Spike Rogue: Thanks.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
After 5 years with wtwlf on these forums, I think I can say that his succinct and to-the-point responses are *often* misinterpreted as being rude to a poster, when in reality I think most of the time he's not considering the poster at all and the card instead. If he says 'we would never play this trash'? If he vouches for a pet card? They're his opinions and have nothing to do with you! Frankly I don't envy his position at all--if I was constantly called out for my posts because I say a card is good or bad or whatever, I would've left these forums a long time ago.
I think it's time we all relax and remember that we're talking about cardboard and if you really think someone is being condescending about cardboard and you can't take the time to do the Kenneth Parcell voice, then be the bigger man and forget about it because we're talking about *cardboard*.
------
@ravnic: I try to maintain an unpowered cube. The usual suspects are missing, but I also run zero conspiracies. Free spells are just too powerful in a limited environment, especially the ones you 'draw' every game like Power Play or Backup Plan.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Goblin Guide is a A+ aggro guy. If you are interested in supporting aggro in any capacity, he should go in for that alone, although there are options at Common and Uncommon for aggro critters as well. If you're limiting based on rarity (though, it begs the question - why?), then it might not add the most 'value' for your buck in terms of adding something unique.
Krenko can get out of hand, but doesn't form the basis of an archetype.
Something like Sulfuric Vortex is a nice build-around card. Goblin Rabblemaster is a really fun and unique aggressive three-drop and fits your tribal thing too. Goblin Dark-Dwellers is a neat 'build your own ETB creature' five drop and is another Goblin. Grim Lavamancer is another unique creature at rare who can't be replaced too readily. Sneak Attack has no parallel for what it does so if you want to support cheaty decks, you'll want that one.
By the way, red doesn't suffer too much for an arbitrary rarity restriction, since a lot of the good effects are at C/U anyway, but some archetypes in other colours will be hit really hard by it. You can probably do Reanimator and Ramp with a modicum of difficulty.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
Guide, Rabblemaster, and Commander are solid in any red aggro build, but Chieftain and King are deliberately narrow as clear signals to your drafters that there's a Goblin deck to built.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Having wtwlf123's (and other's) dedication, opinions and feedback on Cube, in my opinion, is fantastic and he is a pillar of the Cube community. Whether or not you agree or disagree on things he says and other prominent members of the forum, having them around, even if they don't certain cards or ideas, makes this forum and community tick. This sentiment is echoed to anyone who contributes.
I am pretty impartial and probably don't offer much as I am pretty firm in the "play whatever you want, I don't care" camp but am thankful for the passionate people who start threads (like this one), evaluate cards, test them, try them out and offer feedback for others. I think encouraging everyone to do more often is probably a good thing.
Sorry if this is off topic, so I'll make it on topic; regarding power level, doing what suits you and your group, I think, is always going to the be best. There is no point pushing your agenda and being upset when it isn't universally accepted.
Modern: Jund
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
A. I play
Commander->All decks in all color combinations
Modern->Competitive decks, wanted to create at least 4
Cube->2 Cubes
The problem is that with any economics looking at the long range prospects in regards to these decks, there will always be a point whenever you have to make concessions. Now if I stopped playing Commander, I could build one super Cube and so on for cost benefit analysis.
Price is always relative to cost, so there are ways of having one deck being very strong. Say purchasing Jund and playing that for several years with few to little new modifications to most of the main deck base. There is also the point of rotating cards, which I am fully against.
For myself, I usually build around preconstructed decks and buy entire booster boxes on occasion. I spent about 4 years sifting through various common bins and dollar bins to find specific cards to build each of the projects. I begin with a shell for a project, then slowly add and combine new cards into the shell.
Cubing I typically set out with a budget and no timeline horizon for completion. The first thing I understand was either you have one very powerful Cube that is also very expensive, or use a theme or specific limitation to create a ceiling. The quickest is always to build off of your current collection and current released sets.
At the time, I had a lot of Theros product so the Enchantment Cube was the first thing I started with. Theros and Urza Blocks respectively both had strong enchantment themes. Then there have been supplemental products and sub themes in sets that support Enchantments. Equally Enchantments typically are one of the cheapest cards to buy in Magic when it comes to some older cards.
The other was Artifacts, and that was born out of a few points:
A. There have been several Artifact Blocks and will remain popular for time immemorial.
B. New colorless mechanics like colored artifacts are being released
C. There are a lot of great older artifacts that are interesting to play with
D. There are preconstructed decks built around artifact themes
With those four, so for example with Oath of the Gatekeepers, Conspiracy 2, Kaladesh, and Aether Revolt will all have colorless and artifact themes respectively. And with five sets in several years, let alone the yearly obligatory Commander decks like in 2014 that had Nahiri built around equipment and Daretti with various new skills for Red to interact with artifacts. Places the choice on theme better, since you can collect the cards as you go along rather than having to buy at top gang plank prices.
Now doing what wtfft waffle, flaffle, or whatever the handle is spelled. The Dude has a nice cube built up over time and is a long term player, so power makes sense for him to engage While for people of means or of a focused budget with Magic, place something that wants something. The problem, though, is that some people want a full set of expeditions and have 2.5 cards and everything else. The "best" to me would for someone getting with a Modern Masters sets and build with Shocks, Fetches, and Manlands and the Painlands if supporting Eldrazi. Otherwise if you do go Power, it's far easier to Proxy.
I feel that the crowd over at Rift Tide Lab spelled it out fairly well, that the higher your power level the fewer card options you end up having. However, the reverse is also true depending on what themes you use, you can also limit yourself out of a lot of cards.
My Enchantment Cube rarely changes, while my Artifact Cube is getting touched up with new set that includes better artifacts of note. It is also directly comes a time to prioritize. If money is limited, go with Pauper or an open ended theme. Overall a Cube has to be built over time and takes a lot of patience to get right. With the other sections of my collection, the Cube is in competition always for resources.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>