Most fun thing I've researched (by proxie) is the use of induced pluripotent stem cells to repopulate a decellularized "ghost" heart for use as an autologous transplant. University of Pittsburgh has done this with a mouse sized model, and it's a long way away from being scaled up to either a swine ghost or human ghost, but is nevertheless incredibly interesting. Here's the Nature article discussing it, if any of you are really into reading research journals.
I've never run Compulsive Research, but I've seen some of the CFB pros picking it very highly in the Vintage Cube. How would you guys say it compares with Deep Analysis or Treasure Cruise?
I'm really impressed by the research stories the rest of you have. I shouldn't be surprised, though, cube designers are a pretty smart bunch.
My most compelling research topic was ants. I'd applied for a Korean government grant to translate one of the books that was going to be showcased in a book fair into English and was assigned a book about ants written by a an animal behavioral specialist at Seoul National University. I'd only taken two freshman biology classes in university, so entymology wasn't exactly my forte in any language but money is money and I had a year to translate the book so I went for it. As I translated the book I had to do quite a bit of research to learn about ant social organization, ant anatomy, ant genetics, ant parasites, ant predators, ant symbiotic relationships with other animals and plants, ant mating habits, ants' scent-based chemical language, and more. I don't do Korean translation work anymore, it's awfully time-consuming for what it pays so I now focus on teaching, but it was a great learning experience. It took a few years, but the book did get published! It's called the Secret Lives of Ants by Jae Choe.
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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.
Puppeteer Clique has always been very hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes it provided a ton of value, and other times it was a complete blank. Being limited to just the opponent's graveyard as a pool relegated it to being pretty much just a sideboard card. And since this was a cube playable, there's been a lot of stuff printed that the opponent can use to mitigate its effect, from revisiting delve (and all the playables that has brought) to an increase in planeswalkers (lowering the creature count even further for slow midrange and control decks) and additional graveyard hate that can be used defensively (like Ooze and Shaman, etc).
My black 5-drops are just Shriekmaw and Custodi Lich, and doesn't appear to be changing. Stupid black Gearhulk costing 6...
Yoda is my favorite puppet.
I've never run Compulsive Research, but I've seen some of the CFB pros picking it very highly in the Vintage Cube. How would you guys say it compares with Deep Analysis or Treasure Cruise?
I prefer Analysis and Cruise. The raw card advantage is just too good. Research is better when the graveyard matters to you, but I've found other filtering effects and draw/discard effects to simply play better for me.
I've never been a big fan of Puppeteer Clique because of the opponent's graveyard restriction. It makes the effect so much more random. I think at 3BB this should have hit my graveyard or even both graveyards. As is, I think it's overpriced by at least one mana, especially by today's creature standards. I would run most of the current commonly seen black five drops over this. I'm currently only running Shriekmaw in the black five drop section.
As for favorite puppet, I gotta go with Cookie Monster. Nice guy, loves cookies. I can relate.
Compulsive Research is just redundancy to other draw effects. Good, but does not make the cut if you have multiple better other options. I prefer it to Treasure Cruise and Deep Analysis, mostly for curve considerations, but it is not inherently more powerful.
I agree with Puppeteer Clique being too inconsistent. It created good stories in the dragon days.
Puppeteer Clique is another card I've never run, but as I was building my cube it seemed like other cube managers were cutting it to try other black 5-drops like Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath and Priest of the Blood Rite. Even with Persist, it seem like it would be difficult to take advantage of the 2nd ETB trigger unless you're running a sac outlet. I'm really wondering what MTGO's thinking by bringing this in over Ob Nixilis or Priest.
Clique is a very underrated card IMO. Most cube games are based on creature combat, and this card is really great in midrange/control decks (where you have removal and are almost guaranteed to have targets in your opponent's yard). It's especially good following a wrath.
It's not quite the same level obviously, but it can often play a bit like a two-shot temporary Bribery effect with a 3/2 flying body attached. Swingy at times (much like Bribery) but generally pretty easy to get value out of. I believe this has only become more true as creatures have gotten better and with all the ETB/spell effects stapled to virtually every dude in cube.
Sneak and show is the reason I made my cube. This is Timmy, Johnny and spike all in one card. Made a deck this weekend where I sneaked out an emrakul and Venser, blinked it after attacking, it felt good. Venser might not be a top 4 azorious in power level anymore but after reintroducing him I've loved him.
While I understand it's not a deck that can always win, I love Sneak Attack. I actually drafted it last night with cuttups' cube, using Worldspire Wurm and Ulamog as the ultimate big fatties. I also had Fauna Shaman to continually find the Wurm, which was sweet. Pretty much a permanent inclusion in my cube.
Maybe not the sneakiest, but the other week I was at Ikea and I was dicking around with a friend and decided to hide in a stand-up armoire/cabinet/bureau and scare people. Eventually this family comes by and the wife moves to the door. As she's saying "look how tall these are" a couple feet away I step out and say "and there's so much room on the inside!" and scare the ***** out of her. It was awesome, I wish I had video of it.
That's awesome, what exactly have you gotten published?
Thanks! A short story, it will be published in a newer journal called Outlook Springs. They're paying me too so I am technically a professional writer now. It is not enough to make a profession off it at all, but those technicalities--you gotta rock 'em.
And that's great! I've tried writing novels in the past (and have been working on a cube one on-and-off for the past bit of time) and they're a lot for me at this point in my life; I think in the future I'll try it again once I've honed my talents a bit more. Will it be in German or English?
(sorry for the double post, feel free to merge these)
I love Sneak Attack. I especially love it with cards with powerful death triggers, like Woodfall Primus and Sundering Titan.
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I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Sneak Attacking Eldrazi, giant robots, and Griselbrand into play is incredibly popular in my cube drafts. I'm not in the habit of first picking this type of card, but if I ever want to play Sneak Attack I might have to because it never gets passed to me. I assume MTGO won't also cut this from their Vintage Cube, but this kind of strategy is still very popular in my unpowered cube so I really can't imagine why they cut it. I don't see it ever getting cut from mine.
Aesthetically, I also can't imagine ever running anything but the original Urza's Saga version of this. Old frame, way better art, and fun flavor text.... who could ask for anything else?
Probably the sneakiest thing I ever did was grow a beard so I could buy booze when I was in high school. I doubt that would work in this day and age, but it worked then. I'm really not good at sneaking. In fact, I'm pretty loud by nature. I'd be the worst cat burglar ever.
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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 many years, I was iffy on Sneak Attack and thought it was too hard to get it to function in a one-off draft format like cube. When some friends urged me to include some Eldrazi Titans in my cube, I also gave SA a try. And was pleasantly surprised. You can build pretty neat decks around this card. I wish we had one or two more of this effect to make that deck more reliable in cube though. I run Through the Breach, Cauldron Dance and (to a lesser extent) Generator Servant to compliment SA.
Doesn't always get played when drafted, but it's the focal point of its decks when it does. Generally fits into a reanimator or with Eureka/Show effects for redundancy. It's loads of fun to build around and play, so I can't see cutting it... ever, really.
There is some amount of redundancy, although the effects are all a bit different and require different decks: Eureka, Show and Tell, Oath of Druids, Selvala's Stampede, Natural Order, Tooth and Nail, and all the reanimation effects.
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I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Has been in my cube since Day One. The newer versions need the original flavour text hard.
Every couple of drafts, someone makes a go of it. I got scalped by a mono-red deck a couple of months back that used it - it went T4 Sneak, T5 drop five different dragons (including Utvara Hellkite) and take names, T6 Feldon.
Collected Company dominated Standard for quite some time, and MTGO is cutting it from the Legacy Cube just as it's about to rotate out of Standard. What kind of impact does the Standard format have on the cards you put into your cube?
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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.
Probably worth consideration, since I have a lot of utility dorks in the green three drop spot. Still, doesn't feel like a good fit in my splashy EDH cube and probably not nearly as consistent as it would be in any other cube. Curious how some normal cube managers see it.
To answer the question, standard doesn't affect me much beyond budgetary restrictions. I suppose that's also mostly a result of my cube being based on a farmat drastically different from most standards.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I would actually love this card in an Edric or Karametra deck. Maybe it's not so bad.
I cubed it for a while and ultimately cut it. It was hard to cobble together a deck that both had the creature saturation and the number of 2-3cc impact creatures required to make this work right. More often than not, you'd be better off with something like a Ranger of Eos in the same kinds of situations.
Standard doesn't play much of an impact on the cube at all, but sometimes it's worthwhile to see how certain cards are used by top players at the pro tour level. Sometimes function can be emulated on cards in the cube that get overlooked by a lot of folks up front.
I take notice of powerful standards cards, and test most of them, but it's not an automatic inclusion.
CoCo is decent, I cut it from a lot of decks though due to the chance of missing, so I may cut it soon.
Most fun thing I've researched (by proxie) is the use of induced pluripotent stem cells to repopulate a decellularized "ghost" heart for use as an autologous transplant. University of Pittsburgh has done this with a mouse sized model, and it's a long way away from being scaled up to either a swine ghost or human ghost, but is nevertheless incredibly interesting. Here's the Nature article discussing it, if any of you are really into reading research journals.
I'm really impressed by the research stories the rest of you have. I shouldn't be surprised, though, cube designers are a pretty smart bunch.
My most compelling research topic was ants. I'd applied for a Korean government grant to translate one of the books that was going to be showcased in a book fair into English and was assigned a book about ants written by a an animal behavioral specialist at Seoul National University. I'd only taken two freshman biology classes in university, so entymology wasn't exactly my forte in any language but money is money and I had a year to translate the book so I went for it. As I translated the book I had to do quite a bit of research to learn about ant social organization, ant anatomy, ant genetics, ant parasites, ant predators, ant symbiotic relationships with other animals and plants, ant mating habits, ants' scent-based chemical language, and more. I don't do Korean translation work anymore, it's awfully time-consuming for what it pays so I now focus on teaching, but it was a great learning experience. It took a few years, but the book did get published! It's called the Secret Lives of Ants by Jae Choe.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Puppeteer Clique
BONUS QUESTION
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
My black 5-drops are just Shriekmaw and Custodi Lich, and doesn't appear to be changing. Stupid black Gearhulk costing 6...
Yoda is my favorite puppet.
I prefer Analysis and Cruise. The raw card advantage is just too good. Research is better when the graveyard matters to you, but I've found other filtering effects and draw/discard effects to simply play better for me.
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!
As for favorite puppet, I gotta go with Cookie Monster. Nice guy, loves cookies. I can relate.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
I agree with Puppeteer Clique being too inconsistent. It created good stories in the dragon days.
The list on cube cobra
Read my blog on cube - Latest post June 2nd 2022
Currently my only black 5 is Shriekmaw.
My favorite puppet is Spottswoode, the foul-mouthed hard-drinking leader of Team America: World Police.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
It's not quite the same level obviously, but it can often play a bit like a two-shot temporary Bribery effect with a 3/2 flying body attached. Swingy at times (much like Bribery) but generally pretty easy to get value out of. I believe this has only become more true as creatures have gotten better and with all the ETB/spell effects stapled to virtually every dude in cube.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/
Sneak Attack
BONUS QUESTION
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=484979
Maybe not the sneakiest, but the other week I was at Ikea and I was dicking around with a friend and decided to hide in a stand-up armoire/cabinet/bureau and scare people. Eventually this family comes by and the wife moves to the door. As she's saying "look how tall these are" a couple feet away I step out and say "and there's so much room on the inside!" and scare the ***** out of her. It was awesome, I wish I had video of it.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
Thanks! A short story, it will be published in a newer journal called Outlook Springs. They're paying me too so I am technically a professional writer now. It is not enough to make a profession off it at all, but those technicalities--you gotta rock 'em.
And that's great! I've tried writing novels in the past (and have been working on a cube one on-and-off for the past bit of time) and they're a lot for me at this point in my life; I think in the future I'll try it again once I've honed my talents a bit more. Will it be in German or English?
(sorry for the double post, feel free to merge these)
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Aesthetically, I also can't imagine ever running anything but the original Urza's Saga version of this. Old frame, way better art, and fun flavor text.... who could ask for anything else?
Probably the sneakiest thing I ever did was grow a beard so I could buy booze when I was in high school. I doubt that would work in this day and age, but it worked then. I'm really not good at sneaking. In fact, I'm pretty loud by nature. I'd be the worst cat burglar ever.
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!
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
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
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
Every couple of drafts, someone makes a go of it. I got scalped by a mono-red deck a couple of months back that used it - it went T4 Sneak, T5 drop five different dragons (including Utvara Hellkite) and take names, T6 Feldon.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Modern: Jund
Collected Company
BONUS QUESTION
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
To answer the question, standard doesn't affect me much beyond budgetary restrictions. I suppose that's also mostly a result of my cube being based on a farmat drastically different from most standards.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I would actually love this card in an Edric or Karametra deck. Maybe it's not so bad.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
Standard doesn't play much of an impact on the cube at all, but sometimes it's worthwhile to see how certain cards are used by top players at the pro tour level. Sometimes function can be emulated on cards in the cube that get overlooked by a lot of folks up front.
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!
CoCo is decent, I cut it from a lot of decks though due to the chance of missing, so I may cut it soon.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=484979