So, here's a question for cubers in general. How do you keep red and burn from being the overwhelming favorite in a cube?
I've built a sleek, 180 card pauper cube, with the intention of bringing it up to 360 when the rest of my playgroup comes back in town, and when I figure out what direction I want for it. (The 360 version might be pauper, peasant, dollar bin... not sure yet.)
Right now, the cube is fun, but I've been tracking colors that have made it to the finals, and right now red is the only color that has 2-0'd 100% of the time. Green and white tend to also do well as main colors, and blue or black are generally somewhere you don't want to be.
It's possible that I'm overreacting to the results of a four man cube. I'll have to watch as more people draft the cube, and see if boros, zoo, and burn continue to dominate. Right now red is 5-for-5 in winning the finals, but bear in mind that there are only four people playing, and a lot of people are in three colors. It's not mono-red that's crushing constantly or anything like that.
The game that really made me wonder about red, was when two people were battling in the finals, and one had a really powerful mystical teaching deck, and his opponent was kind of random UGR aggro value. The teachings player has stabilized at nine, and the UGR player seems out of action. The teachings player went for an EOT capsize with buyback, and in response, the UGR player threw bolt, incinerate, and fireblast at the teaching's player's head.
I'm not really sure if I want people to randomly die EOT at nine. (Spoiler, neither person in this game was me, I was kibbitzing so four people could play.) A spell like bolt or fireblast just seems so good in a format where the black player is just playing chittering rats and ramping into a corrupt.
So, I'm wondering, is the solution just to take out clearly cube worthy red spells? Or do I need to give other colors more ways to combat this? Thoughts?
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Well, Im no expert at pauper as I dont have one but I think that most of Reds good cards are at common and uncommon whereas White and Black control cards are rare. White has no sweepers to keep aggro in check so aggro would run rampant. I think you need to go out of your way to add aggro nerfing cards like Ghostly Prison and other such cards to keep it balanced.
Sounds like red is good. I fail to see a problem. Make the other colors better?
Post a cube list and let the pauper cube dudes look over it. There may be some glaring reasons why red is the most powerful color, IDK.
Fair enough. The list has been in flux, quite a bit at first. I'm actually fine with people enjoying red and green, I consider it successful. Part of this is bias on my part. I'm a UB player at heart, so the fact that it's not much of a strategy is slightly disappointing.
The first time I had mono-black in the cube, I had tendrils of corruption, corrupt, phyrexian rager, pestilence, liliana's specter... essentially every constructed MBC card as a one-of, and it wasn't as much that I lost, but I just felt very underpowered. When my opponent went wall of roots into blastoderm, and then dropped two threats the next turn? I was pretty much dead.
Again, the cube is so new (five drafts, four 1v1 sealeds) that I guess I'll wait for more feedback from the players, and get it posted here so that I can get some thoughts.
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I'll be sad if people don't start calling The Chain Veil "Fleetwood Mac."
Ya, having black and blue be the weak colours sounds crazy to me. Maybe it's not that red is too powerful, but that blue and black are too weak?
Some slight changes have helped blue a lot, and the addition of twisted abomination in black has helped black considerably... but not as much as I would have liked. Obviously there is a little variance between the pilots and the decks. (I've seen the control players make horrible plays, where it's not too hard to know what to do with a staggershock when someone is at four... etc.)
I will say, though, that the first cube I ever drafted (360 unpowered), black was the color to avoid the most. The black reanimator/combo player would usually 1-2 or 0-3, and black shadow weenies were too mana intensive to work with other weenie colors and would 1-2... and the decks you always wanted to have were UGx ramp-into-bombs and RDW.
The group I'm cubing with now shares a lot of the same cubers as the people who played with that other cube... so maybe none of us know how to pilot black?
I'll post the list when I get home, and hopefully you guys will be able to help out then.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I'll be sad if people don't start calling The Chain Veil "Fleetwood Mac."
Playing a combo deck or a mono-colored control deck is a recipe for disaster imo. Try not being hell bent on playing MBC (hint: it's never been good in constructed, well, possibly in pauper) and instead utilize the good parts of black in your deck as you would any other color. I suppose that would be the removal mostly in this case, I dunno what sweet black finishers there are in pauper. Nothing like Grave Titan or Kokusho I suspect..
When I read this I was so sure it was about how red is the weakest color by far. It is in my cube, only once in a blue moon that someone gets a Mono-R deck which stomps the opposition.
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So, here's a question for cubers in general. How do you keep red and burn from being the overwhelming favorite in a cube?
I've built a sleek, 180 card pauper cube, with the intention of bringing it up to 360 when the rest of my playgroup comes back in town, and when I figure out what direction I want for it. (The 360 version might be pauper, peasant, dollar bin... not sure yet.)
Right now, the cube is fun, but I've been tracking colors that have made it to the finals, and right now red is the only color that has 2-0'd 100% of the time. Green and white tend to also do well as main colors, and blue or black are generally somewhere you don't want to be.
It's possible that I'm overreacting to the results of a four man cube. I'll have to watch as more people draft the cube, and see if boros, zoo, and burn continue to dominate. Right now red is 5-for-5 in winning the finals, but bear in mind that there are only four people playing, and a lot of people are in three colors. It's not mono-red that's crushing constantly or anything like that.
The game that really made me wonder about red, was when two people were battling in the finals, and one had a really powerful mystical teaching deck, and his opponent was kind of random UGR aggro value. The teachings player has stabilized at nine, and the UGR player seems out of action. The teachings player went for an EOT capsize with buyback, and in response, the UGR player threw bolt, incinerate, and fireblast at the teaching's player's head.
I'm not really sure if I want people to randomly die EOT at nine. (Spoiler, neither person in this game was me, I was kibbitzing so four people could play.) A spell like bolt or fireblast just seems so good in a format where the black player is just playing chittering rats and ramping into a corrupt.
So, I'm wondering, is the solution just to take out clearly cube worthy red spells? Or do I need to give other colors more ways to combat this? Thoughts?
Post a cube list and let the pauper cube dudes look over it. There may be some glaring reasons why red is the most powerful color, IDK.
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Fair enough. The list has been in flux, quite a bit at first. I'm actually fine with people enjoying red and green, I consider it successful. Part of this is bias on my part. I'm a UB player at heart, so the fact that it's not much of a strategy is slightly disappointing.
The first time I had mono-black in the cube, I had tendrils of corruption, corrupt, phyrexian rager, pestilence, liliana's specter... essentially every constructed MBC card as a one-of, and it wasn't as much that I lost, but I just felt very underpowered. When my opponent went wall of roots into blastoderm, and then dropped two threats the next turn? I was pretty much dead.
Again, the cube is so new (five drafts, four 1v1 sealeds) that I guess I'll wait for more feedback from the players, and get it posted here so that I can get some thoughts.
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Some slight changes have helped blue a lot, and the addition of twisted abomination in black has helped black considerably... but not as much as I would have liked. Obviously there is a little variance between the pilots and the decks. (I've seen the control players make horrible plays, where it's not too hard to know what to do with a staggershock when someone is at four... etc.)
I will say, though, that the first cube I ever drafted (360 unpowered), black was the color to avoid the most. The black reanimator/combo player would usually 1-2 or 0-3, and black shadow weenies were too mana intensive to work with other weenie colors and would 1-2... and the decks you always wanted to have were UGx ramp-into-bombs and RDW.
The group I'm cubing with now shares a lot of the same cubers as the people who played with that other cube... so maybe none of us know how to pilot black?
I'll post the list when I get home, and hopefully you guys will be able to help out then.
When I read this I was so sure it was about how red is the weakest color by far. It is in my cube, only once in a blue moon that someone gets a Mono-R deck which stomps the opposition.