I'm leaning towards including the mauler because I think the morph package needs a couple more really big beaters to make the block-or-not decision harder.
I was wondering if you could give a run-down of why you enjoy Eternal Dragon? I could not find a SCD on the card.
I recently got my hand on a pack foil, which I would love to run in my 540 cube, but during the cube league I ran last semester, it did seem a bit lackluster. I've also seen a lot of other cubes have started cutting her for other value, but I've always liked the dragon, so I just need someone to convince me to keep her around!
I don't have an updated cube-list, but it's a 540 Unpowered. It looks a lot like yours, with the power replaced.
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With the inclusion of morph's in all 5 colors have you considered adding Rattleclaw Mystic to your tricolor section?
Yes, I considered it. If Sarkhan turns out to underperform, it'll likely be the replacement. But the rest of the cards in that section I like more. Similarly, Sagu Mauler was up for consideration too, but I couldn't find a cut my group would be happy with.
I was wondering if you could give a run-down of why you enjoy Eternal Dragon? I could not find a SCD on the card.
I recently got my hand on a pack foil, which I would love to run in my 540 cube, but during the cube league I ran last semester, it did seem a bit lackluster. I've also seen a lot of other cubes have started cutting her for other value, but I've always liked the dragon, so I just need someone to convince me to keep her around!
I don't have an updated cube-list, but it's a 540 Unpowered. It looks a lot like yours, with the power replaced.
2cc uncounterable instant-speed dual-land grabber that also wins grindy games and control mirrors. When you just play it as a dragon, it's not spectacular, but it's still a 5/5 flying body. It also dumps itself to the 'yard for early reanimation if you have the option. It can also pay Masticore upkeeps and stuff for 3WW, or bring itself back to make your Survival live ...things like that. It does a lot of random stuff, but mostly it secures land drops, grabs dual lands for fixing and closes out long games.
wtfwlf is there a card you would suggest if you decided not to include Imperial Seal in the cube? I ask because I've decided to buy CE P9 and Duals, so the most expensive cards are going to be Library and Ravages at 300-350 a piece. Seal is sitting at around 600 these days and I'm not sure I'll be able to find one in decent shape that I'll want to drop that much money on.
Also, have you considered Bazaar of Baghdad? Seems good in the Powered Cube.
wtfwlf is there a card you would suggest if you decided not to include Imperial Seal in the cube? I ask because I've decided to buy CE P9 and Duals, so the most expensive cards are going to be Library and Ravages at 300-350 a piece. Seal is sitting at around 600 these days and I'm not sure I'll be able to find one in decent shape that I'll want to drop that much money on.
Also, have you considered Bazaar of Baghdad? Seems good in the Powered Cube.
You could try Tainted Pact in its place instead. It's okay-ish enough if you wanted to get another tutor in there. Parsonally, I'd get a Cruel Tutor, and alter over the name and the 2. Viola! An imperial seal for like $20 plus the alter commission.
Bazaar was in for a while, but got because it was too narrow.
So far so good. The megamorph creatures are all solid value guys, the 2-power 1-drops are ...as expected, the Command is a good value spell, and Sarkhan is a decent enough value engine to justify trying to splash him if you're in 2 of the 3 colors. I would still recommend them all.
Hi! Congratulations for the cube and the thread, I've been following your cube and your articles for the last few years, and it's been always inspiring my cube.
The idea is to include the 10 best cards with 3+ colors in their identity. Tribrid cards screw up the balance in a big way, because none of the cards really work as 3-color cards anyways. So putting one in each shard/wedge when some are 3-color cards and some are tribrid cards was just arbitrary anyways. In fact, the cards don't create color balance that way, because of how differently tribrid cards actually play. Even if I cut Sarkhan and Rhino for a Jund card and a Grixis card, there are still two 2-color guilds that can't be represented by any of the cards in the multicolor section (Izzet and Orzhov). So even the "balance" that would be desired by running an "even" shard/wedge section isn't any more balanced for the average 2-color deck than it is with a freeform multicolor section. So instead of worrying about including an arbitrary balance of shard/wedge cards, the "multicolor" section allows me to run the 10 best 3+ color cards, which allows me to cut bad Jund and Grixis options for tri-color cards that are actually good.
I wanted to share with you my ideas, I don't know if you have ever thought about it that way.
Thanks for sharing! I have, and I like the method of sorting hybrids that way, but I don't like how they can be stolen by other colors in the guilds that don't have an even number of hybrids to share between colors. For example, it might work for BR or WG because there's exactly 2 great options, but for the guilds that have 0, 1 or even 3 options, things get a little fuzzy. And as you mentioned, not all hybrids are created equal. Something like Rakdos Cackler can really be either color, whereas something like Demigod of Revenge, for example, cannot. I find it easier to simply sort all cards that are classified as RG cards in my Gruul section, rather than trying to balance them out and split them up.
Quote from armando_zuffi »
1 - What cube size will usually use signets?
2 - which cards usually select lands.deck archetype?
1 - It depends on the Signet, and it depends on the composition of the cube. For unpowered, it could be as low as 360-450 for some of the blue ones. For powered, it's probably more of a 540-630 size for me, and maybe 720-810 for the other ones (if they get included at all). But that's just for me and the environment I want to create. Other playgroups want to support more manarock.dec decks at the table, and they'll run more of them, and smaller in size than I do.
2 - You mean cards that are exclusive to the land archetype? Things like Titania & Knight of the Reliquary? Or cards that are good enough but get better with a land theme like Loam and Crucible?
Considering a bump in cube size. We've been doing a lot of 4-player drafting, which is typically my most demanding draft format, using only 40% of the pool. It makes drafting aggro and archetypes harder, and I was wondering how I could increase that percentage. Glimpse Drafting has really improved the quality of our 2-3 person events, so much so that Glimpsing a 4-man event would solve any/all consistency issues that we might run into for those events. At 540, I can do a 4-man Glimpse Draft that would use 100% of the cube list! The impact to the other draft events would be pretty minimal, but the increase to our 4-mans would be tremendous. 5-player events would become our new most-demanding event, and it would actually be a better WCS than our current most demanding draft is. Which means that we wouldn't have an increase in the demand for 2-power 1-drops or archetype support cards even though there's an increase in size.
I'm still hashing out what an increase might look like, but there may be a change on the horizon. Glimpse Drafting has really made an impact on the way we can cube.
1-drop demand is based on the percentage of the cube that gets drafted in its most demanding format. Which for me currently is 4-players (4-players in a 450 card cube uses 40% of the list). With an increase to 540, the 4-man regular draft event is replaced with a Glimpse Draft event, which uses 100% of the cube at that size. The new most demanding draft becomes a 5-man, which in a 540 card cube uses 42% of the pool. So, because of the format change (standard to glimpse) in the most demanding environment, the demand actually goes down.
Requirements for redundancy and minimum represented copies of cards are all based on the percentage of cards drafted during an event. If the percentage of the drafted cards doesn't go down, the demand doesn't go up.
Example: Currently, when we do a 4-player draft, we see 40% of the cube. Which means I need 9 2-power 1-drops in each color that supports aggro to get 7 2-power 1-drops for any given 2-color aggro deck. That's because 40% of 9 is 3.6, and 3.6 x2 is 7.2, which is ≥7. Now, a 4-player Glimpse draft uses 100% of the cube, so I'll have more 2-power 1-drops than I need, since the minimum number required is based on my most demanding draft, which is 40% of the pool. After the rise to 540, my most demanding draft will no longer be my 4-mans, because those increased to 100%. So my 5-mans are my most demanding event, and those will see 41.6% of the pool. Which is still a better scenario for finding my minimum number of aggro critters, because 42% > 40%. The increase from 40% to 42% isn't enough to reduce my demand, but it's enough to keep the demand where it currently is, thanks to Glimpse Drafts using a much higher percentage of the pool.
Basically, the assumption that the demand gets higher as the cube gets bigger is based on the assumption that you'll be drafting the same way, which would mean that the percentage of the cube that you see would go down, and the demand would go up. But if the format changes too, this doesn't have to be the case.
Assuming the seen percentage of the cube included in a given draft stays the same or goes up, the percentages of any type of desired effect will at least stay the same if not go down. The change to my new most demanding draft doesn't increase by enough for me to reduce demand anywhere, but I can keep my demand the same because the change goes from 40% (current 4-man) to 42% (new 5-man).
Interesting. When you guys do run a 4-man Glimpse draft, would you still play the person you drafted against or would you switch partners after the draft? Actually, do you still Glimpse normally with Player A and Player B passing back and forth and Player C and Player D doing the same? With 4-man drafts we normally just do three rounds and everyone eventually plays against everyone else. Glimpse definitely seems like the best way to do a 4-man as I've found that the card pool in a small draft can often just make good decks hard to build. You try to build Wildfire and end up in good old Blue/Red Stuff'n'Ramp. Sometimes things come together, but normally the decks have a much lower power level. We only get to really get a draft together about once a month nowadays, but if we end up with four, I'll definitely try to convince the guys to Glimpse instead. Either way, I'm definitely curious to see what your 540 looks like now compared to what it looked like in its last iteration.
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I recently got my hand on a pack foil, which I would love to run in my 540 cube, but during the cube league I ran last semester, it did seem a bit lackluster. I've also seen a lot of other cubes have started cutting her for other value, but I've always liked the dragon, so I just need someone to convince me to keep her around!
I don't have an updated cube-list, but it's a 540 Unpowered. It looks a lot like yours, with the power replaced.
Yes, I considered it. If Sarkhan turns out to underperform, it'll likely be the replacement. But the rest of the cards in that section I like more. Similarly, Sagu Mauler was up for consideration too, but I couldn't find a cut my group would be happy with.
2cc uncounterable instant-speed dual-land grabber that also wins grindy games and control mirrors. When you just play it as a dragon, it's not spectacular, but it's still a 5/5 flying body. It also dumps itself to the 'yard for early reanimation if you have the option. It can also pay Masticore upkeeps and stuff for 3WW, or bring itself back to make your Survival live ...things like that. It does a lot of random stuff, but mostly it secures land drops, grabs dual lands for fixing and closes out long games.
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!
Also, have you considered Bazaar of Baghdad? Seems good in the Powered Cube.
You could try Tainted Pact in its place instead. It's okay-ish enough if you wanted to get another tutor in there. Parsonally, I'd get a Cruel Tutor, and alter over the name and the 2. Viola! An imperial seal for like $20 plus the alter commission.
Bazaar was in for a while, but got because it was too narrow.
Thanks! I'm stoked with the way it came out. Klug is a master of his craft.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
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My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
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!
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My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
It has 6 different ways to generate instant-speed card advantage. Card's awesome.
Glad to hear! Thanks for posting.
The idea is to include the 10 best cards with 3+ colors in their identity. Tribrid cards screw up the balance in a big way, because none of the cards really work as 3-color cards anyways. So putting one in each shard/wedge when some are 3-color cards and some are tribrid cards was just arbitrary anyways. In fact, the cards don't create color balance that way, because of how differently tribrid cards actually play. Even if I cut Sarkhan and Rhino for a Jund card and a Grixis card, there are still two 2-color guilds that can't be represented by any of the cards in the multicolor section (Izzet and Orzhov). So even the "balance" that would be desired by running an "even" shard/wedge section isn't any more balanced for the average 2-color deck than it is with a freeform multicolor section. So instead of worrying about including an arbitrary balance of shard/wedge cards, the "multicolor" section allows me to run the 10 best 3+ color cards, which allows me to cut bad Jund and Grixis options for tri-color cards that are actually good.
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!
1 - What cube size will usually use signets?
2 - which cards usually select lands.deck archetype?
Thanks for sharing! I have, and I like the method of sorting hybrids that way, but I don't like how they can be stolen by other colors in the guilds that don't have an even number of hybrids to share between colors. For example, it might work for BR or WG because there's exactly 2 great options, but for the guilds that have 0, 1 or even 3 options, things get a little fuzzy. And as you mentioned, not all hybrids are created equal. Something like Rakdos Cackler can really be either color, whereas something like Demigod of Revenge, for example, cannot. I find it easier to simply sort all cards that are classified as RG cards in my Gruul section, rather than trying to balance them out and split them up.
1 - It depends on the Signet, and it depends on the composition of the cube. For unpowered, it could be as low as 360-450 for some of the blue ones. For powered, it's probably more of a 540-630 size for me, and maybe 720-810 for the other ones (if they get included at all). But that's just for me and the environment I want to create. Other playgroups want to support more manarock.dec decks at the table, and they'll run more of them, and smaller in size than I do.
2 - You mean cards that are exclusive to the land archetype? Things like Titania & Knight of the Reliquary? Or cards that are good enough but get better with a land theme like Loam and Crucible?
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!
Tks wtwlf123 !!
Gaea's Cradle, Birthing Pod, Berserk ? What think about them ? What has been the most relevant?
@Bigmanaplays.com: Saw it when it was spoiled, but never really considered it for the cube.
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I'm still hashing out what an increase might look like, but there may be a change on the horizon. Glimpse Drafting has really made an impact on the way we can cube.
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!
Sounds cool. I just don't understand how you could do this without increasing the number of 1 drops, etc. Do you mind explaining the math behind this?
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Basically, the assumption that the demand gets higher as the cube gets bigger is based on the assumption that you'll be drafting the same way, which would mean that the percentage of the cube that you see would go down, and the demand would go up. But if the format changes too, this doesn't have to be the case.
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!
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!
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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