Are there any other commonly played cube cards that make tokens which also have names of cards?
Commonly played? No.
Besides "Illusion", the one other example is Splintering Wind that creates tokens named Splinter. The other cases are tokens identical to actual cards (copies of things like Pack Rat or Rite of Replication, or virtual copies like Llanowar Mentor's Llanowar Elves tokens).
Automaton is a challenging card. I feel like anything 7 power and over is decent for it but the trouble is drafting it to its fullest potential. People get scared of it getting too high and take it earlier than they should. Then since the power is so low they don't play it. So far I want to say the average is power 8+ once every four to five drafts and then it gets played.
Interesting. So it basically functions as a free hate draft?
Automaton is a challenging card. I feel like anything 7 power and over is decent for it but the trouble is drafting it to its fullest potential. People get scared of it getting too high and take it earlier than they should. Then since the power is so low they don't play it. So far I want to say the average is power 8+ once every four to five drafts and then it gets played.
Interesting. So it basically functions as a free hate draft?
We're afraid to take it early and have a lame useless card but we are also afraid to let it go too long and become a huge fatty. Its really hard to know when to take it and when to let it pass you by.
I don't think it's that difficult. I pass it if it's smaller than a 7/7. If it's a 7/7 or greater, I figure out if I want it or not. Most of the time I just passed it (while we played it) because a 5 artifact 15/15 is more beatable than a ton of 1-4 cmc cards that I'd rather have.
10/10 is the average but I'd say it's most commonly a 9/9 in our group.
Card has been solid in our 540. It doesn't always make the decks but sometimes you need a big dude & this fits the bill. Combo this (or a huge Cogwork Grinder) with Lightning Greaves for extra hilarity.
I don't think I'd ever pass a 10/10 for 5, let alone wind up with a 15/15.
-AA
You guys are focusing too much on the exact numbers in my post. 7/7 is when it starts to get attractive, 15/15 is me saying there are tons of other cards that are way more valuable than this guy, even if he's at his best.
Just wondering if anyone here has had experience with Worldknit in a two-man draft. I've taken out the two conspiracies I was running - Advantageous Proclamation and Backup Plan - because I didn't like how either played out (in a word: broken). Worldknit, though, seems promising, especially given that almost all two-man draft formats involve a lot of "collateral" picks. Think about how much deeper Grid/Quilt/Wilson/etc. drafting becomes when you're playing every card in a pack/row/etc., not just the stuff you want. I imagine some truly weird interactions will come to the table, without the power level skyrocketing.
Haven't played it in 2-man, but wow is it fun in regular draft. Not uber broken, because you have to play lots of cards that aren't exactly game-plan fitting, but as long as the cards in your Cube are good it shouldn't be TOO embarrassing!
Just wondering if anyone here has had experience with Worldknit in a two-man draft. I've taken out the two conspiracies I was running - Advantageous Proclamation and Backup Plan - because I didn't like how either played out (in a word: broken). Worldknit, though, seems promising, especially given that almost all two-man draft formats involve a lot of "collateral" picks. Think about how much deeper Grid/Quilt/Wilson/etc. drafting becomes when you're playing every card in a pack/row/etc., not just the stuff you want. I imagine some truly weird interactions will come to the table, without the power level skyrocketing.
Has that been your experience?
Worldknit might be the absolute best card in Burnfour. It's very strong in Glimpse too, although it is a little worse.
I think Worldknit is actually the strongest in Burnfour/Glimpse compared to other formats, since you'll rarely (if ever) have a card in your card pool you don't want to play.
So umm, yeah. I think the card is ridiculously good if you use those drafting styles for your 2 man drafts.
When we were still doing Burnfour, I took Worldknit over Sol-Ring early and mid in the draft and I was never disappointed with my decision. I probably would have taken Sol Ring over it if it were late in the draft, but by that point Worldknit does get worse (even though it's still likely very strong), and Sol Ring stays the same in quality (maybe drops off a bit if you're playing a deck that doesn't want it).
In Glimpse, I've taken Worldknit over Sol Ring, and it's certainly not as much of a windmill slam, it is still on-par or slightly-better if taken early.
Worldknit's dream home is P1P1 Burnfour, and Glimpse isn't so much different that it makes it so much worse.
I always like to go back and read some of the old posts. Curious to hear everyone's opinion on the draft matters cards now. I personally think that Cogwork Librarian and Lore Seeker are slam auto includes in every cube ever. I don't see any downside to either of these cards.
Cogwork Librarian, Deal Broker and Lore Seeker are all really popular in my cube. Cogwork Librarian helps turn weak mid to late picks into double first picks in the 2nd and 3rd packs. Lore Seeker slows down the draft a little with two packs getting drafted at the same time, but is enough fun to make it worthwhile for everyone. Deal Broker almost always creates value from other drafters' off-color draft picks, and is really fun. It's also, understandably, the only one that actually gets main decked, and it's fine for some decks as a defensive card selection engine/discard outlet.
I just cut Canal Dredger from my cube. While it usually netted an extra playable or two if picked early enough, people are rarely starved for playables, and everyone having to remember to show the next person the last card that they won't be getting before handing it over to the drafter who got Canal Dredger is kind of annoying for everyone.
I always like to go back and read some of the old posts. Curious to hear everyone's opinion on the draft matters cards now. I personally think that Cogwork Librarian and Lore Seeker are slam auto includes in every cube ever. I don't see any downside to either of these cards.
Disclaimer: I don't run conspiracies or the draft altering cards as they don't appeal to me or my group so feel free to ignore my post. Just wanted to throw my $0.02 in from what little experience I have playing other cubes as maybe it'll be useful for someone.
Deal Broker is the only "draft matters" card in my cube so I guess I lied. I put him in primarily as a colorless looter to help reanimator, but he's never really done anything so I'm thinking about cutting him. He's one of the most normal "draft matters" cards.
Cogwork Librarian was fine in Conspiracy draft, but it feels like revealing it, and shuffling cards around in packs gums up the draft. Got to draft him in another cube, and he still didn't do much. I basically just held onto him since I got him too late to really use his ability.
I also got to draft Canal Dredger last night and all he ended up giving me was a bunch of assorted slivers. Probably wouldn't recommend this one for cube.
We have actually been really happy with canal dredger as well, as if you take it p1 or p2 it almost always gets you 4-5 playables in an 8-man. Obviously much worse the less people you have drafting, which is not something the other constructs suffer from, but we almost always have 8-10, and almost never less than 6, so that's not often an issue for us.
The draft-altering constructs work very well for us. We run Lore Seeker, Deal Broker, Cogwork Librarian, Aether Searcher and Paliano. For the first three, Spike Rogue pretty much hit the nail in the head a couple of posts above.
I could see myself cutting the ones that never end in decks (Seeker, Librarian). Deal Broker is a reasonable Looter for non-blue decks, and Paliano is still a better fixer than other lands I still run. But for us, the star of the group is Aether Searcher. Tinker into an Aetherling plus a Craw Wurm extra body? Animate Dead that comes with its own Sword? I've done both.
So for the conspiracies where you name a card at the start of the game (like Double Stroke), how do you handle the card-naming? Small Post-it notes? Honor system?
I'm not really interested in the Conspiracies themselves, but when Cogwork Librarian was spoiled, I loved the idea of it and just blanked a few foils and used those as wildcards. I play 4 in my 400 cube, but they don't count as filling slots, so I don't feel bad about having to include a vanilla 3/3 for 4 just to get the draft altering effect. When you take one, you have to reveal it and can swap it like Librarian later as usual, but whoever is holding it at the end of the round exchanges it for a random card from the cube. Makes for some interesting decisions and prevents double first picks from packs 2 and 3.
I also had the idea recently of blanking another foil and sharpie-ing it gold, with that one pulling a random card out of a pool of about 50 from my on-deck binder. So there could be a rare chance of playing with power, historical cards that have been cut, or joke cards like Cheatyface without them taking up actual slots in the cube.
So for the conspiracies where you name a card at the start of the game (like Double Stroke), how do you handle the card-naming? Small Post-it notes? Honor system?
I want to keep my cube drafts paperless, so I don't draft with any of the Hidden Agenda conspiracies and (almost) none of the draft-altering cards that require keeping notes.
These are the conspiracies that I run (roughly ranked by power level):
Backup Plan
Being able to pick the better of two possible starting hands is freaking amazing. All types of decks love this and it is usually first-picked.
Advantageous Proclamation
A strong effect that makes decks more consistent and powerful. Gets picked a bit lower, since it is not as insane as the Plan.
Power Play
In dedicated aggro decks, this is even better than Proclamation, but most other decks value Proclamation higher. Still super strong.
Sentinel Dispatch
The only "fair" conspiracy from among these four. Usually a late pick, but has nice synergies with some cards.
And these are my draft altering cards:
Lore Seeker
- No memory/bookkeeping issues.
- Turned out more popular than I expected. My drafters love throwing a bonus booster into the draft. Especially cool with only 4 or 5 drafters.
- Has even been maindecked two or three times. (Aggro deck that didn't get enough 2-drops or artifact deck with few early artifacts.)
Deal Broker
- No memory/bookkeeping issues.
- There aren't any trades roughly half the time.
- Still fine as a colorless looter with a decent body.
Paliano, the High City
- Memory/bookkeeping issues. This is the reason why I initially didn't want to cube with this card. However, I came up with a solution that needs no writing: I just put five d6 in Magic's five colors into my dice bag and when someone drafts Paliano, he gets the three dice that correspond with the three chosen colors (while the other two stay in the bag). Almost everyone needs dice during play and it can be easily seen what colors the land can produce just by looking at the colored dice that are lying around.
- So far, I've never seen this land whiff. There were always at least two useful colors chosen. Three colors happened more often than I expected.
Æther Searcher
- Memory/bookkeeping issues. I didn't want to cube this card, because it seemed that it absolutely needed taking notes. But then I realized that if an awesome card is proclaimed as it is picked after the Searcher, even other players will remember it. This is also the only card that makes you remember a card name for the whole draft. Therefore, it is only a slight memory issue to remember what card is paired with Searcher and no real bookkeeping issue.
- For larger cubes, there aren't many 7+ mana artifact fatties. This is actually one of the best ones.
- This card can make for some awesome stories.
Paliano, the High City
- Memory/bookkeeping issues. This is the reason why I initially didn't want to cube with this card. However, I came up with a solution that needs no writing: I just put five d6 in Magic's five colors into my dice bag and when someone drafts Paliano, he gets the three dice that correspond with the three chosen colors (while the other two stay in the bag). Almost everyone needs dice during play and it can be easily seen what colors the land can produce just by looking at the colored dice that are lying around.
- So far, I've never seen this land whiff. There were always at least two useful colors chosen. Three colors happened more often than I expected.
That hasn't been my experience so far with Paliano. I've yet to see anyone be able to use all three of the colors named with this card, and it works as a dual land about half of the time and whiffing the rest. On top of that, it slows down the draft, and I get the feeling that drafters don't really like having to give clues to the rest of the table about what colors they're drafting. If it were consistently a dual land, it would be worth it, but as it is Paliano is on my watch list.
I agree with all of Starslayer's assessments on Conspiracies, except for Sentinel Dispatch, and only because I haven't tried it.
I've also really enjoyed a lot of the Hidden Agendas. Here's my take:
Brago's Favor - Excellent. Most cube cards are already incredibly efficient. Giving it a 1 discount makes one card in the deck truly insane. It's especially good with cards you expect to cast multiple times. I've had especially good results with Recurring Nightmare, Diabolic Servitude, Forbid, and Mardu Strike Leader.
Double Stroke - Insane. It's hard to imagine an instant or sorcery that a free Fork doesn't make incredible besides Wraths. Especially good with flashback spells, Demonic Tutor, or any removal spell.
Iterative Analysis - Solid. A free card is never a bad thing. This is obviously great with flashback spells, but I particularly like this with Mystical Tutor.
Muzzio's Preparations - Usually decent, sometimes insane. Just like with Brago's Favor, making any already efficient cube creature +1/+1 bigger is a solid floor. At its best with Persist creatures, making them virtually indestructible. Also, this Conspiracy naming any persist creature makes an infinite damage loop with Goblin Bombardment.
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.
That hasn't been my experience so far with Paliano. I've yet to see anyone be able to use all three of the colors named with this card, and it works as a dual land about half of the time and whiffing the rest. On top of that, it slows down the draft, and I get the feeling that drafters don't really like having to give clues to the rest of the table about what colors they're drafting. If it were consistently a dual land, it would be worth it, but as it is Paliano is on my watch list.
Iterative Analysis - Solid. A free card is never a bad thing. This is obviously great with flashback spells, but I particularly like this with Mystical Tutor.
Paliano slows down the draft for, at most, 10 seconds with my playgroup so I don't see how time is an issue. Do your players go into deep introspective thinking before picking one of five colors? Haha.
Also, Iterative Analysis doesn't really work that way with Tutor. You draw and then tutor.
Make sure to try out Power Play and Backup Plan. They're on the same power-level as power (I think they're better).
Commonly played? No.
Besides "Illusion", the one other example is Splintering Wind that creates tokens named Splinter. The other cases are tokens identical to actual cards (copies of things like Pack Rat or Rite of Replication, or virtual copies like Llanowar Mentor's Llanowar Elves tokens).
Interesting. So it basically functions as a free hate draft?
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We're afraid to take it early and have a lame useless card but we are also afraid to let it go too long and become a huge fatty. Its really hard to know when to take it and when to let it pass you by.
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-AA
I use descriptive language. Assume that I'm being nice and respectful. (I'll tell you when I'm not.)
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Card has been solid in our 540. It doesn't always make the decks but sometimes you need a big dude & this fits the bill. Combo this (or a huge Cogwork Grinder) with Lightning Greaves for extra hilarity.
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You guys are focusing too much on the exact numbers in my post. 7/7 is when it starts to get attractive, 15/15 is me saying there are tons of other cards that are way more valuable than this guy, even if he's at his best.
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I wasn't responding to your post at all.
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-AA
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Has that been your experience?
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Worldknit might be the absolute best card in Burnfour. It's very strong in Glimpse too, although it is a little worse.
I think Worldknit is actually the strongest in Burnfour/Glimpse compared to other formats, since you'll rarely (if ever) have a card in your card pool you don't want to play.
So umm, yeah. I think the card is ridiculously good if you use those drafting styles for your 2 man drafts.
When we were still doing Burnfour, I took Worldknit over Sol-Ring early and mid in the draft and I was never disappointed with my decision. I probably would have taken Sol Ring over it if it were late in the draft, but by that point Worldknit does get worse (even though it's still likely very strong), and Sol Ring stays the same in quality (maybe drops off a bit if you're playing a deck that doesn't want it).
In Glimpse, I've taken Worldknit over Sol Ring, and it's certainly not as much of a windmill slam, it is still on-par or slightly-better if taken early.
Worldknit's dream home is P1P1 Burnfour, and Glimpse isn't so much different that it makes it so much worse.
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I just cut Canal Dredger from my cube. While it usually netted an extra playable or two if picked early enough, people are rarely starved for playables, and everyone having to remember to show the next person the last card that they won't be getting before handing it over to the drafter who got Canal Dredger is kind of annoying for everyone.
The Conspiracies I'm running - Advantageous Proclamation, Brago's Favor, Double Stroke, Iterative Analysis, Muzzio's Preparations, Power Play, and Unexpected Potential have all proven to be either strong or downright broken. I'm a fan.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Disclaimer: I don't run conspiracies or the draft altering cards as they don't appeal to me or my group so feel free to ignore my post. Just wanted to throw my $0.02 in from what little experience I have playing other cubes as maybe it'll be useful for someone.
Cogwork Librarian was fine in Conspiracy draft, but it feels like revealing it, and shuffling cards around in packs gums up the draft. Got to draft him in another cube, and he still didn't do much. I basically just held onto him since I got him too late to really use his ability.
I also got to draft Canal Dredger last night and all he ended up giving me was a bunch of assorted slivers. Probably wouldn't recommend this one for cube.
Backup Plan is ridiculous from what I saw.
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I could see myself cutting the ones that never end in decks (Seeker, Librarian). Deal Broker is a reasonable Looter for non-blue decks, and Paliano is still a better fixer than other lands I still run. But for us, the star of the group is Aether Searcher. Tinker into an Aetherling plus a Craw Wurm extra body? Animate Dead that comes with its own Sword? I've done both.
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I also had the idea recently of blanking another foil and sharpie-ing it gold, with that one pulling a random card out of a pool of about 50 from my on-deck binder. So there could be a rare chance of playing with power, historical cards that have been cut, or joke cards like Cheatyface without them taking up actual slots in the cube.
These are the conspiracies that I run (roughly ranked by power level):
Backup Plan
Being able to pick the better of two possible starting hands is freaking amazing. All types of decks love this and it is usually first-picked.
Advantageous Proclamation
A strong effect that makes decks more consistent and powerful. Gets picked a bit lower, since it is not as insane as the Plan.
Power Play
In dedicated aggro decks, this is even better than Proclamation, but most other decks value Proclamation higher. Still super strong.
Sentinel Dispatch
The only "fair" conspiracy from among these four. Usually a late pick, but has nice synergies with some cards.
And these are my draft altering cards:
Lore Seeker
- No memory/bookkeeping issues.
- Turned out more popular than I expected. My drafters love throwing a bonus booster into the draft. Especially cool with only 4 or 5 drafters.
- Has even been maindecked two or three times. (Aggro deck that didn't get enough 2-drops or artifact deck with few early artifacts.)
Deal Broker
- No memory/bookkeeping issues.
- There aren't any trades roughly half the time.
- Still fine as a colorless looter with a decent body.
Paliano, the High City
- Memory/bookkeeping issues. This is the reason why I initially didn't want to cube with this card. However, I came up with a solution that needs no writing: I just put five d6 in Magic's five colors into my dice bag and when someone drafts Paliano, he gets the three dice that correspond with the three chosen colors (while the other two stay in the bag). Almost everyone needs dice during play and it can be easily seen what colors the land can produce just by looking at the colored dice that are lying around.
- So far, I've never seen this land whiff. There were always at least two useful colors chosen. Three colors happened more often than I expected.
Æther Searcher
- Memory/bookkeeping issues. I didn't want to cube this card, because it seemed that it absolutely needed taking notes. But then I realized that if an awesome card is proclaimed as it is picked after the Searcher, even other players will remember it. This is also the only card that makes you remember a card name for the whole draft. Therefore, it is only a slight memory issue to remember what card is paired with Searcher and no real bookkeeping issue.
- For larger cubes, there aren't many 7+ mana artifact fatties. This is actually one of the best ones.
- This card can make for some awesome stories.
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
That hasn't been my experience so far with Paliano. I've yet to see anyone be able to use all three of the colors named with this card, and it works as a dual land about half of the time and whiffing the rest. On top of that, it slows down the draft, and I get the feeling that drafters don't really like having to give clues to the rest of the table about what colors they're drafting. If it were consistently a dual land, it would be worth it, but as it is Paliano is on my watch list.
I agree with all of Starslayer's assessments on Conspiracies, except for Sentinel Dispatch, and only because I haven't tried it.
I've also really enjoyed a lot of the Hidden Agendas. Here's my take:
Brago's Favor - Excellent. Most cube cards are already incredibly efficient. Giving it a 1 discount makes one card in the deck truly insane. It's especially good with cards you expect to cast multiple times. I've had especially good results with Recurring Nightmare, Diabolic Servitude, Forbid, and Mardu Strike Leader.
Double Stroke - Insane. It's hard to imagine an instant or sorcery that a free Fork doesn't make incredible besides Wraths. Especially good with flashback spells, Demonic Tutor, or any removal spell.
Iterative Analysis - Solid. A free card is never a bad thing. This is obviously great with flashback spells, but I particularly like this with Mystical Tutor.
Muzzio's Preparations - Usually decent, sometimes insane. Just like with Brago's Favor, making any already efficient cube creature +1/+1 bigger is a solid floor. At its best with Persist creatures, making them virtually indestructible. Also, this Conspiracy naming any persist creature makes an infinite damage loop with Goblin Bombardment.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Paliano slows down the draft for, at most, 10 seconds with my playgroup so I don't see how time is an issue. Do your players go into deep introspective thinking before picking one of five colors? Haha.
Also, Iterative Analysis doesn't really work that way with Tutor. You draw and then tutor.
Make sure to try out Power Play and Backup Plan. They're on the same power-level as power (I think they're better).
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