There are very few cards I feel like I'll play in every deck. Most of them are fixing lands. None of the others are egregiously powerful, with the exception of Black Lotus. That's the only card I can think of that's truly game warping and goes in every deck I build.
I also think it is very few cards, namely Moxen, Sol Ring and Black Lotus. Most decks are just better when you add one of those cards, even taking into account that you might have a slightly less powerful card in your deck because you had to spend a pick on the accelerator. The resource advantage is never as powerful as in the first turns.
But anyway, this thread is about Sol Ring in an unpowered Cube, and if I'm not mistaken we agree that Sol Ring is just too powerful in relation to all the other cards in an unpowered Cube so playing it is not advisable. Sorry for derailing the thread.
From my experience I have not seen Sol Ring cause some outrageous wins.
Also, I would not say that Sol Ring is an auto include like the Moxen.
There are cases wherein I put it in my deck and just become mana flooded.
Nevertheless, I am listening to the wisdom of the majority and replacing Sol Ring with Worn Powerstone.
(We don't have enough play testing yet)
On a side note, Mana Vault is really insane as well, I have played turn 2 Bloodgift Demon that are very hard to catch up with.
But of course not as powerful as Sol Ring.
Sol Ring is disgustingly good and I don't think it fits in an unpowered cube either. However, I have no issue running things like Mana Vault and Grim Monolith.
I think it's kind of silly evaluating Sol Ring in a vacuum, since the power of the card changes drastically based on various factors of any given cube. Assuming all cubes aren't exact replicas, anyone asking themselves how good Sol Ring is, should sit down and evaluate their cube as a whole, seeing as it's an amazing card when you're packing a lot of things like titans which have heavy colourless costs and incredibly powerful abilities, it's worthless when you're mana costs are mostly colour restrictive (Geralf's Messenger, Bloodghast, Carnophage, Strangleroot Geist, Kargan Dragonlord, etc), and it's simply a solid card when you have a lower power cover on heavy colourless cards and strong answers.
So we get the enemy colored painlands and not the allied color ones? Well that's reverse of the norm, but I thought Wizards was planning to do full 10 land cycles from now on.
Enemy pains could indicate allied Fetches in the next set, to offset the colour imbalance. It would also make sense since it would allow Modern to have access to all 10 Fetches as opposed to only 5.
Or you could read the article, and now that's not true.
I think it's kind of silly evaluating Sol Ring in a vacuum, since the power of the card changes drastically based on various factors of any given cube. Assuming all cubes aren't exact replicas, anyone asking themselves how good Sol Ring is, should sit down and evaluate their cube as a whole, seeing as it's an amazing card when you're packing a lot of things like titans which have heavy colourless costs and incredibly powerful abilities, it's worthless when you're mana costs are mostly colour restrictive (Geralf's Messenger, Bloodghast, Carnophage, Strangleroot Geist, Kargan Dragonlord, etc), and it's simply a solid card when you have a lower power cover on heavy colourless cards and strong answers.
But none of those cards are being ramped out with Sol Ring anyway. It's not like anyone is playing Primalcrux in their cube.
Sol Ring is disgustingly good and I don't think it fits in an unpowered cube either. However, I have no issue running things like Mana Vault and Grim Monolith.
I have an unpowered cube and I decided to leave Sol Ring out of the cube. I think Sol Ring is really poweful and decided not to put that card in the cube. I choose to put Mana Vault in the cube instead. I instead choose to put some select powerful cards in the cube. So I'm running Mana Vault, Mox Diamond and Umezawa's Jitte in the cube. I don't have any problems with these powerful artifact cards in my cube.
I think it's kind of silly evaluating Sol Ring in a vacuum, since the power of the card changes drastically based on various factors of any given cube. Assuming all cubes aren't exact replicas, anyone asking themselves how good Sol Ring is, should sit down and evaluate their cube as a whole, seeing as it's an amazing card when you're packing a lot of things like titans which have heavy colourless costs and incredibly powerful abilities, it's worthless when you're mana costs are mostly colour restrictive (Geralf's Messenger, Bloodghast, Carnophage, Strangleroot Geist, Kargan Dragonlord, etc), and it's simply a solid card when you have a lower power cover on heavy colourless cards and strong answers.
But none of those cards are being ramped out with Sol Ring anyway. It's not like anyone is playing Primalcrux in their cube.
That's the point really, in that depending on what you're planning do the power of Sol Ring drastically changes. Mono Black Aggro and Pox are probably the best examples of where Sol Ring is very marginal in power level, and if your cube simply doesn't include something like Grave Titan. In other words, Sol Ring's power is all relative to cost restrictions and the power level of other cards in the cube.
So we get the enemy colored painlands and not the allied color ones? Well that's reverse of the norm, but I thought Wizards was planning to do full 10 land cycles from now on.
Enemy pains could indicate allied Fetches in the next set, to offset the colour imbalance. It would also make sense since it would allow Modern to have access to all 10 Fetches as opposed to only 5.
Or you could read the article, and now that's not true.
That's the point really, in that depending on what you're planning do the power of Sol Ring drastically changes.
It is entirely possible that, on the level of deck-building, not including Sol Ring makes sense because you have close to none colorless mana costs where you could use it. On the level of Cube-building, however, you would have to go way out of line in order to make it so that Sol Ring is not an auto-include in almost every deck.
Of course you cannot evaluate cards in a vacuum. In a vacuum, it would not be clear whether or not the ability of Sol Ring is any good. However, evaluated within the context of mana accelerators, Sol Ring is very good because it puts you two turns ahead on resource development for the small cost of one card and one mana (it is even possible that the cost is -1 mana, in other words you get paid for playing it!). Only in a context where you cannot make use of colorless accelerators does that evaluation not hold true. So even though not all Cubes are the same (which is true, thankfully) it is still possible to say with certainty that in almost all of them, Sol Ring provides a disproportionate advantage for the one playing it.
One of the reasons Sol Ring is so powerful is because it produces mana, and every deck wants mana. So the context of where Sol Ring is good is barely any different from "decks that want mana." There aren't enough color restrictive cards to make Sol Ring bad. It's far more likely that someone will pick a Sol Ring and look for more colorless mana symbols to abuse with it. I can't imagine a scenario where someone would pass a Sol Ring because "free colorless mana just isn't good enough." At least, that could only realistically happen in a contrived example cube. I've never seen a real cube that came anywhere close to this.
I actually play a pretty significant number of decks where it gets left in the sideboard. It's not a stellar card for hard aggro, especially with 1XX 3-drops and only 1-2 4cc cards.
I actually play a pretty significant number of decks where it gets left in the sideboard. It's not a stellar card for hard aggro, especially with 1XX 3-drops and only 1-2 4cc cards.
Probably the smarter choice, but I can never give up the dream of sol ring -> ridiculous 4 drop in my aggro decks, so I always have the bad habit of including it. It has allowed me to go 2 2 drops on second turn though which was awesome..
My initial build of my cube included Sol Ring. It was the first of two cards that were cut for power reasons from my cube (the other being Wurmcoil Engine). For whatever reason I didn't identify how powerful this card was until my friend killed me on T3 through some shenanigans he had put together involving a hasted Laquatus's Champion. After that I started tracking how often a player that resolved Sol Ring won the game... I didn't track when the card came down or if it was destroyed or anything other than if the card itself was resolved. The Sol Ring player won 70% of the games when this card resolved. There are a few other cards with a similar metric, but those cards don't go into every deck (like Wildfire for example) so they don't bother me.
Ultimately, I think this card turns one of the players in any given match into a spectator rather than an opponent. Even if they draw something to deal with it early, the damage will have already been done in a lot of cases (Disenchant on your second turn could still leave you dealing with their 4 drop).
I will nearly always P1P1 Sol Ring. I had a pack once that had it, Black Lotus, and Sensei's Divining Top in it, which gave me indigestion. Choosing between that set was unpleasant, and I think it's one of the few times I took something over Sol Ring, but the Top is just stupid. I think I ended up regretting it as the deck it went into used it to put some huge monster in play ahead of curve and my Top shenanigans hadn't procured me a solution yet.
A Revised Sol Ring was in my first Magic deck (my first purchase was a 60 card sealed deck that had it) and it'll always be one of my favorites. In fact we went to a powered cube in part because I wanted the thrill of playing it back when I started playing Magic again.
More to the point, in an unpowered cube this card is gonna lead to total blowouts. I had it in mine along with the Signets. Games were decided by who drafted this card. I saw it power out huge creatures way ahead of curve and no one else could match it. It meant that midrange decks were king with the only check being land destroyer control decks, which was a stagnant setup. So we powered the cube to level the playing field. Our other option would have been to cut Sol Ring, but using it was too fun.
When I built my first cube, before I powered my cube up, we ran Sol Ring. Sure it's a guaranteed first pick, but no one complained about the power disparity of that card. After all, it's only 1 card from the 40 in your deck. But that's just us.
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!
But anyway, this thread is about Sol Ring in an unpowered Cube, and if I'm not mistaken we agree that Sol Ring is just too powerful in relation to all the other cards in an unpowered Cube so playing it is not advisable. Sorry for derailing the thread.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
Also, I would not say that Sol Ring is an auto include like the Moxen.
There are cases wherein I put it in my deck and just become mana flooded.
Nevertheless, I am listening to the wisdom of the majority and replacing Sol Ring with Worn Powerstone.
(We don't have enough play testing yet)
On a side note, Mana Vault is really insane as well, I have played turn 2 Bloodgift Demon that are very hard to catch up with.
But of course not as powerful as Sol Ring.
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Draft!
Oh... Ok... Clearly.
Visual Spoiler
Draft!
That's the point really, in that depending on what you're planning do the power of Sol Ring drastically changes. Mono Black Aggro and Pox are probably the best examples of where Sol Ring is very marginal in power level, and if your cube simply doesn't include something like Grave Titan. In other words, Sol Ring's power is all relative to cost restrictions and the power level of other cards in the cube.
Oh... Ok... Clearly.
Of course you cannot evaluate cards in a vacuum. In a vacuum, it would not be clear whether or not the ability of Sol Ring is any good. However, evaluated within the context of mana accelerators, Sol Ring is very good because it puts you two turns ahead on resource development for the small cost of one card and one mana (it is even possible that the cost is -1 mana, in other words you get paid for playing it!). Only in a context where you cannot make use of colorless accelerators does that evaluation not hold true. So even though not all Cubes are the same (which is true, thankfully) it is still possible to say with certainty that in almost all of them, Sol Ring provides a disproportionate advantage for the one playing it.
"What am I looking at? Ashes, dead man."
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!
Probably the smarter choice, but I can never give up the dream of sol ring -> ridiculous 4 drop in my aggro decks, so I always have the bad habit of including it. It has allowed me to go 2 2 drops on second turn though which was awesome..
My 450 Cube
Ultimately, I think this card turns one of the players in any given match into a spectator rather than an opponent. Even if they draw something to deal with it early, the damage will have already been done in a lot of cases (Disenchant on your second turn could still leave you dealing with their 4 drop).
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Cube Tutor
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
A Revised Sol Ring was in my first Magic deck (my first purchase was a 60 card sealed deck that had it) and it'll always be one of my favorites. In fact we went to a powered cube in part because I wanted the thrill of playing it back when I started playing Magic again.
More to the point, in an unpowered cube this card is gonna lead to total blowouts. I had it in mine along with the Signets. Games were decided by who drafted this card. I saw it power out huge creatures way ahead of curve and no one else could match it. It meant that midrange decks were king with the only check being land destroyer control decks, which was a stagnant setup. So we powered the cube to level the playing field. Our other option would have been to cut Sol Ring, but using it was too fun.