I mean, that's all fine, and I don't want to poke the bear. But... Do you seriously not think that's how you come across here?
I think that there is a false dichotomy between fun and winning/competition.
I could see how someone would think I was either. In the X-Wing community I was branded as quite the opposite of casual.
But yes, I understand why you would assume I was a casual based upon our interactions in this thread.
But to me, cube building is entirely separate from serious competition or even casual. One could theoretically seriously compete with a cube or just order pizza and play it on a kitchen table. It's just limited with a pool of cards you enjoy. I don't particularly see why it's relevant that Vapor Snag is a better card than Unsummon if Vapor Snag isn't in the cube. It's only relevant how powerful it is relative to the other cards in the cube.
This is why I try to participate in these discussions. I already know which cards are the best and as such I don't really need all that much advice in that area.
That's all fine, but like, lots of the behavior that you describe sounds almost exactly like the sort of thing that you regularly do and that is so off-putting here. Like, with embarrassing levels of specificity. Hating the player, not the game, a strong emphasis on how the game looks versus how it actually plays, etc. I do think you're a more casual Magic player, and the things that you say every time this comes up line up pretty much exactly with what casual Magic players say. I don't really care whether you are or are not a casual player, I would like more casual players here. But if you want to know why people respond so negatively to you, and you don't think that most of the behaviors that you described hating so much aren't also behaviors that you demonstrate regularly here, then I don't really know what to say to you.
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to throw another 5 cents in the round, what izor and me were trying to say about common ground that its not wrong to post about fringe cubeideas here, al for example runs an artifact based cube, but dont expect much help there, because although we experienced a lot of cards the individual cube meta is something that have to be balanced through playtestings. we can only hint at cards that might be under/overpowered or help certain strategies, but we usually chose the card based on powerlevel and not other characteristics.
about the casual definition, to me, non-casual play is winning first, fun second, or better say the fun comes from winning first. everything not focusing on winning aka best strategies, best cards etc is casual. but ofc there are grades of casuals. while the "competitive casual" still follows the rules and still wants to win, but also wants to have fun while playing (i put salt here), the "super casual" just wants to socialize and doesnt care much about the rest (rules and whatnot), everything can be bend to have a good time (some of the gameshop guys)
that said, battlebox is or can be still as competitive as you chose to play it, but ofc it doesnt have the drafting experience. which depending on the situation is a good thing though. (less time investment, less balancing difficulties)
OK, that did not really come through at all for me. I also think that some of the interaction on this forum really pushes against the idea that that's where you're coming from, but I'm very, very OK with the idea that people will ask Cube questions that maybe not all members of the forum feel the need to comment on. Frankly, I think that my opinion of you would go up dramatically if we talked about the Medieval Cube more often on this forum (not kidding about how much of Izor's post I disagreed with). If talking about your more interesting Cube with us interests you, I hope that you will.
I don't honestly care about who is or is not casual. I just care about how we treat each other and making an environment where lots of people can work towards their own individual goals. Which is probably a pretty casual attitude.
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EDIT: I disagree with pretty much every part of Izor's post. I think there is plenty of room for the sorts of discussions that he is talking about, so long as we are all on the same page about the specific Cube that we are talking about. It doesn't even require the dissolution of the forum. I think the fact that that does seem necessary speaks to just how incredibly insular this forum has become. Maybe we should talk about it in other threads, I don't know (although I personally don't think this). But the idea that it is just unreasonable to talk about anything other than power when the (generally, seemingly, much more popular, friendly, and active) Peasant thread is right there seems... Pretty disingenuous. At this point I'm almost tempted to just say post off-beat Pauper cubes in the Peasant thread because they might actually be helpful, but I think that's extremely unfair to the Peasant people. We can and should be doing that work.
I don't think you understand what I meant.
How exactly would anyone comment on a card for a format he has absolutely no experience in and thus zero qualification to have an opinion on? If I ask you whether I should play X or Y in my whatever-themed cube where X and Y are cards you have never seen or heard of before, am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that this is just people getting a little hyped for a new format and instead of listening to anything people who have played and tested that format for 10 years say we try to be the innovators by going on the Gatherer real quick and deciding that card X and Y look so interesting that they clearly must make the format better. Our previous experience from some other games that have nothing to do with MtG (at least I would assume so because I haven't heard about them ever before) will surely qualify.
I'm just curious at this point. Have you actually ever played those cards and cubes in question with 8 human beings?
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"Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today, and it won't be you."
If I ask you whether I should play X or Y in my whatever-themed cube where X and Y are cards you have never seen or heard of before, am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
Honestly don't really understand the statement what are you trying to say with that?
The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that this is just people getting a little hyped for a new format and instead of listening to anything people who have played and tested that format for 10 years say we try to be the innovators by going on the Gatherer real quick and deciding that card X and Y look so interesting that they clearly must make the format better.
I Agree to the not listening part but testing/playing cube IMO doesn't make you an expert in all cubes or even all pauper cubes as cubes are intricate things and synergies/anti synergies play are role in it too. If your cube is filled with 2/1s for 2 that makes a 1/3 better overall if your cube is full of 2/2s that makes 1/3s worse. Powelevel is relative to the other cards in the cube. So pure powerlevel is a shaky common ground if any at all. I agree the expierience helps to evaluate cards quicker and with less testing but only for cubes similar to yours. We can look at cards in a vacuum and see their floor and ceiling, and that is a good discussion. And we can look at a cube and due to expierience imagine what problems might occur, but in the end if we didn't test that specific cube we do not know it it works out. And if it looks like a cube we personally would not play we can reason why we would not do so and even that can be of great help for everyone.
How exactly would anyone comment on a card for a format he has absolutely no experience in and thus zero qualification to have an opinion on? If I ask you whether I should play X or Y in my whatever-themed cube where X and Y are cards you have never seen or heard of before, am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
Nope, I feel like I understood you perfectly, and care for it even less on repeat. Yes, I do think you should take that commentary seriously, albeit with a grain of salt. The problem with this forum, IMO, is that it only has feedback from an extraordinarily narrow viewpoint. That viewpoint is important (It's extremely helpful for Evaluate Everything, for instance), but it is far from the only way to approach the format. Feedback from lots of different perspectives makes better Cubes, IMO, even if they're on the sillier side. Maybe even especially when they're on the sillier side? Creativity is a collaborative process.
EDIT: I want to rephrase this to reflect that I would take it seriously. Every time that I draft, I try to get a feedback from each drafter. This is especially important for newer drafters. I ask them if anything stood out as exceptional or like they weren't sure why it was in the pack, anything that they expected to see that they didn't, etc. The less experienced the drafter, the more interesting I find their feedback. I don't always use it, but I do always consider it.
The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that this is just people getting a little hyped for a new format and instead of listening to anything people who have played and tested that format for 10 years say we try to be the innovators by going on the Gatherer real quick and deciding that card X and Y look so interesting that they clearly must make the format better. Our previous experience from some other games that have nothing to do with MtG (at least I would assume so because I haven't heard about them ever before) will surely qualify.
I'm just curious at this point. Have you actually ever played those cards and cubes in question with 8 human beings?
I have played my Cube hundreds times, in multiple iterations, with multiple groups of people. I think that this forum's elitist and unpleasant attitude has cut us off from popularity that really is ours to claim if we want it. I would like for this forum to be a place where people can go to get feedback on their Cube and not feel ashamed for wanting to do something different, even if it doesn't work. Cube is a personal process that requires feedback to thrive. I want this forum to be one potential source of feedback. If you don't like it, well, you and I can talk about different Cubes and questions.
I don't think that running cards based on aesthetics or based on how interesting they are makes one a casual since the power level of cards isn't relevant, only the power level of cards relative to the other cards in the cube. It would make me a casual if I did that in constructed, sure, but in cube I control which cards are in the pool.
When I complain about Tron players for example, it's not that I'm hating the player per se. People will play what's best and I can't blame them for it. It's more that I hate apologists for Tron. If a Tron player said, "Yeah, Ghostly Flicker is broken and Tron ruins the game but I play what's best." then I wouldn't have any issue with them. It's the, "Tron is fun and fair, git gud nothing ever needs to be banned." attitude that I have a problem with.
I'm sorry to drag you into this dumb pointless argument about semantics.
The issues I see with the viewpoint opposite mine is that everyone's cube is the exact same, people only play the same default cards because for whatever reason what's best is the only relevant metric to them. Every cube has to have Pestilence, has to have Ghostly Flicker, has to have, "these 10 constructed Mono Green Stompy staples" etc. So it ends up looking like someone took the top 360 Pauper cards and put them together and if you want to run Phantom Tiger instead of Silhana Ledgewalker you can't because that's #465 and therefore unplayable trash.
And then when your cube is mostly cards at or roughly around that power level, people will then shift to, "Your cube is bad I'd never draft it why can't I cheat out Kozilek on turn 2 like I can in Vintage Cube?"
Even though the cube is relatively balanced, it being a lower power level is somehow beneath them.
Could the guys who want to write 1000 word posts possibly start their own thread or perhaps a Subforum called Philosophy of Cube? "Challenging the parameters" is fine but you already did that about a million words ago. I want to say there is nothing more to be said here but that doesn't seem to be an obstacle..
I think that this forum's elitist and unpleasant attitude has cut us off from popularity that really is ours to claim if we want it.
I for one can't wait to claim all of the extra "popularity" that entails even more people call us elist pricks. You can't honestly think you're the first Critical Cube Critics to hit these forums. For the most part they say their piece (we can check that part off the list) which includes much air of grievances (again, big checkmark) before they retire to their own gated communities to further discuss their thoughts of what Cube should be and denounce anyone who isn't there brand of Cube libertine.
You know what's great, though? I don't actually know that my Cube philosophy is all that much different from yours. My Cube, by at least one critic's estimation, looks pretty basic "good stuff with no real archetypes." There's a reason for that. I take the more power-driven approach that you guys have built up seriously, with reservations. I don't have a problem with how you build Cubes. What I do have a problem with was the way that the forum was interacting with someone who was himself a bit of a problem, who I have also spent some time talking about. I have seen these people come and go, but I have never gotten the sense that they left because they were done talking. I got the sense that they left because they were tired of the way this forum treated them. It's a two-way street, and I know I'm probably over the edge of it right now the other way. But I'd be lying if I said any of the subsequent explanations changed my underlying position.
EDIT: With that said, I am sorry I am easy to provoke back into action. I honestly have tried to wrap it up a couple of times, most recently with my response to Humphrey. I will need to work on this.
DOUBLE EDIT: SaltMaster, I don't care if you're casual or not. At all. Continuing to talk about why you are not does not help either of us. I would like to transition away from criticizing this board to being the change I want to see and just give feedback when you look for it. I think that you were not getting good feedback in part because you responded to lots of the feedback that you did receive (and it was not all bad as the worst examples of it) like the "casuals" who you claim to hate. That is the extent of my argument. The more you argue about how terrible casuals are and how you are not one of them, the harder it gets to see your side of the argument.
but I have never gotten the sense that they left because they were done talking.
They're never done talking and even if they were they would probably just find an old phone book and start reading from that. Despite which, there is definitely a limit where discourse ceases to be productive. After that, its just verbiage (quack quack quack)
EDIT: also, I don't have a concrete philosophy of Cube because I don't have a fixed Cube. I have a bunch of commons set aside in specially colored sleeves that more or less comprise all of the cards I and/or my small group would consider Pauper Cube material. To be honest, the most success we've had getting Cube sessions going is with an Unserious Cube of all rarities. The biggest thing is that it turns out that probably the entire Top 20 most broken cards ever printed in Magic are Unserious.
I disagree strongly but see your point and think that's a fine transition. Are there any particular Commons that stand out in the Unserious Cube? I keep on thinking about whether it is worth it to add Un or not. I keep on considering them, because the power is clearly there, but most of the worthwhile additions always feel actively unfun. Were there any that both played well and were strong enough to warrant consideration?
EDIT: Or, for a more specific transition that I am working on right now: I'm working on filling out those last 22 slots. Color balance seems pretty good right now, but Blue and Red need a few more cards than the others. One thing I'm thinking of is throwing a couple more X-Spells in there to give Ramp strategies (and possibly spell strategies) a bit more payoff. If Fireball and Rolling Thunder are effectively staples at 360, about how many do you think gives enough for consistent but not oppressive presence in drafts at 450? I think definitely Disintegrate- maybe one more?
Also, walk me off the ledge, I'm looking at Footlight Fiends again. Card seems to be overperforming in exactly the way I figured it might.
ANOTHER EDIT: Another way to get back on track, and probably the best one? SaltMaster, how would you respond to Brainz' comments here? If there was a more specific question here (I think artifacts were where things got dicey?), feel free to go into that too.
I do not have a problem with the fact of how you build your cube or what cards you choose, however if you evaluate your cards in a this is not broken or this is a fun card kind of way. You should always add that to your question, otherwise it will result into a which card is the best, which obviously is not what you want for your cube. I have always been a more janky cube builder than the rest of the group here, trying things like an enchantment based cube, etc. But can you please consider the logic from the other side of the argument as well? This is for discussion of the cube itself and the last 3-4 pages have been a rather spiteful conversation.
So let's start over what is your main goal for this pauper cube?
Then we can maybe pitch in with our own advice, even if it is more related to pet cards than to staples.
Btw I do like the attempt with the splice cards, however in my view it is one of those mechanics where if you don't get enough of them during a draft you get stuck with the less playable ones. But then again I don't know with how many players your cube gets drafted regularly and hence what percentage gets left out. It's one of the mechanics in the group with infect, +1/+1 counters matter, etc. that I would love to play but that has too few playable cards in my eyes to truely make a draftable deck. If they ever return to Kamigawa however this might change drastically Smile
Edit: unrelated to the previous paragraphs I can't remember can we get downshifts in the guild decks? Or do these remain the same?
Specifically, SaltMaster, I think it would be extremely helpful for me to figure out 3-4 themes and/or maybe a handful of cards that you WANT to include for the play that you are going for with your Cube. For instance, I never want Ulamog's Crusher to be unplayable in mine. Looking at the sample decks that Humphrey drafted, I would definitely cut down on your low drops. I do think it's probably too easy to get an accidental aggro deck going with the number and quality of lower cost creatures in your Cube. I find a large number of the "traditional Cube" cards in your Cube extremely uninteresting, and I think that it might help to think of "traditionally Cubeworthy" cards as your rares, the spice that you can prop up with some of your weirder picks. So: What are the cards that make you WANT to play Pauper?
MOST EDITED POST IN HISTORY: It seems like Banding was one of the first things that made people really turn their head and say "what?!" about your Cube. One of my favorite interactions with Banding is Provoke. Have you explored this interaction at all? It seems like you have some, but Lowland Tracker is one of the better ones for the combo and Goblin Grappler feels like obvious overlap with other synergies.
Also, your cube is so unusual that it would be extremely helpful for reference purposes if you linked to it in your Sig.
I actually think this thread is the place to discuss pauper cube philosophies, why shouldnt we. The other topics are there for card discussions.
So, when I started to build the T1 cube, I wanted to create a meta thats as fast and "powerful" as legacy, because thats where I come from. And with powerful I mean each card has an actual impact on the game. Handle it or die. So at best each played card swings around the whole game.
This fast paced low curved gameplay actually involves a lot of interactions, while it also lowers a bad side of magic in manascrew. Having such a low curve, that decks easily function on 15 lands, can play most spells and win sometimes with only 2-3 lands in play. Thats fun for me.
The downside though, is that games can be over real quick since you can kill as fast as Turn 4 or 5, control matches are still a thing though.
The T2 started basically with all the leftovers and cuts from the T1 and that opened a lot of slower archetypes to work. With time it evolved more into a synergy driven cube, so instead of just adding "T2-in a vacuum" cards, I wanted to have all the cool mechanics working that pauper offers. Like Dredge, Madness, Swarm and some combos. To allow those archetype I also had to cut a lot of removal that would initially fall into the T2-power category.
Because almost all tempo cards end in the T1 cube, most cards are value cards, which is basically the other end of the powerspectrum. In this cube the focus is decreasing the other unfun aspect of magic in manaflood. A lot of cards have added benefits in the lategame, while also not dead in the early, like cycling. It also had the added benefit that you actually wont see all the common cards from the average paupercube.
That said, to me the actual fun comes from playing cards that actually do something in every or most situations. I feel it pretty unexciting to draw-go and play irrelevant spells that only do something every other turn or even match.
And I tried a lot of weird cards by now. I even had Tron in my cube at one point, which added a lot of laughter and tension to the draft. One guy even pulled of Tron into Eldrazi Devastator, that was insane. In the end too unreliable though.
I also want to add that certain strategies in the cube that you dont like can easily be hatepicked. So if you dont want to see infinite Flicker, either hatepick that or the Drake.
Haha OK, I'll take it. (This is still interesting to me, I just do feel like I've said my piece and want to move along if people are past it). Although my thoughts from your post are Cube-related anyway.
How did you handle Tron? One thing that I did at one point was run 4x Squadron Hawk to create a mini-game because I found it so incredibly boring to draft White any other way. This change ultimately didn't last, but I like it in principle. How many pieces of each piece of Tron do you think would be enough to make it a fun, strong, but ultimately niche strategy? Maybe 2-3x of each? That's a tough sell for 6-9 picks, but at the same time... caliente.
For reference, I ran 4x Squadron Hawk in my White section. If you drafted every Hawk, it gave you an average of around 3 Hawks per draft. My idea here would be to add 2-3X of each Tron piece and just shuffle it in with the rest of the Cube. Players have to draft Tron, but they can draft Tron.
The difficulty of assembling the Flicker combo at 428 (ideally 450) has pretty much sold me on the combo. It takes so much work, and you still want to play most of the cards anyway. I'm considering Chronarch as well, but that's not the effect that I'm having a tough time wheeling.
I only had one of each piece, I think you want at least 2 of each to have a player even get all 3 most drafts. At 3 pieces you established it I guess, but than you want to have a bigger colorless section and/or stuff that turns colorless into colored mana. It can definitely be done, but you have to bend the cube rules too much for my taste and it also takes a lot of slots.
I also like the idea of all those collectible cards in the cube. For example I have a multiplayer cube that has like 10 Kindle and 10 Accumulated Knowledge. There are definitely a lot of rules in cubedesign that can be bend to create new interesting metas. I could easily design 2 other paupercubes with new ideas.
But then again, I dont think you want to limit yourself to commons when you want to create exciting metas. While I see the critic that most paupercubes look similiar you only have so much options, at least what most people would consider playable. Look at Vintage cubes, they have all the cards but many also run the same cards. There is infinite designspace.
What I like so much about Pauper cube is that it is basically just rock solid, meat and potatoes Magic, but it has just enough history to it to make one or two "gimmick decks" for Cube. Tron is a dubious strategy that I find pretty repellent in almost every format, but it is a Pauper strategy that gives me an excuse to run a lot of iconic, generally unplayable cards (for instance, Ancient Stirrings would go from "unplayable" to "auto include" if I supported Tron). Basically, I like Pauper so much more than other Cubes because it gives you a strong baseline for "this is still Magic" while letting you stretch the format in other ways. I don't know how common I want you to be able to assemble the deck. But I've submitted the idea to some of my most frequent drafters. I'm curious how they'll respond to the idea.
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There are tons of rares and uncommons that are still meat and potatoes though. And there are so many iconic cards that are almost worse than commons now like Juzam Djinn. Also the whole medieval cube is basically just meat and potatoes. Or better say humans with pitchforks and other tools against bears, boars and squirrels
If I were to support Tron it would be one of two things:
1.) 1 of each Tron piece in the draft, which you're then allowed to run up to 3 copies of each Tron piece when deck building. Kind of like how some people house rule Squadron Hawk for cube. The reason I cap it at 3 copies is because the average Pauper Tron deck runs 24 lands, half of which are Tron pieces. The average cube deck runs 17 (That seems way too high for most decks IMO, but I digress) and 9 Tron lands is roughly half of that.
Singleton Tron seems like too much effort for too little gain. But getting 3 Urza's Towers when you draft the one in the cube seems worth it.
2.) Just put multiple copies of Cloud and Glimmerpost in the cube. I'm not comfortable breaking singleton, but Better Tron(tm) only requires finding 2 pieces and as a result is easier to assemble and more desriable. Maybe you could get wacky with it and put a bunch of copies of it in your cube, that way there is a Hungry Hungry Hippos scramble to gobble up as many as you can find and they become more and more desirable as more and more are found.
My hatred of Tron is from competitive constructed Pauper. The competitive game would be better off without Ghostly Flicker because it makes playing the game less fun.
If the game is fun and fair and interactive at a competitive level, it will be fun and fair at the casual level.
When casuals get together and make a format, the result is a 100 card singleton format that's only held together by gentleman's agreement. Or in X-Wing's case, it's Mario Kart X-Wing.
I don't see why I can't build a cube -sans degeneracy- and play cards that simply do interesting things simply because they do interesting things. Coal Stoker? Huh, that card looks interesting, I'll put that into my cube.
I've won two games with Dash Hopes. Last time I played White I used Healing Salve on Standard Bearer and my Standard Bearer survived a Bolt. Last time I drafted my cube, I was playing Simic and had 5 Splice Onto Arcane cards. In two consecutive games my Splice cards did a ton of work. These cards are okay and seem to work just fine.
I understand that some (Splice Onto) Arcane cards in my cube aren't really that good, like Psychic Puppetry. But I'm hesitant to take them out since they give you extra copies of other, better Splice cards. Being able to play your Horobi's Whisper or Kodama's Might multiple times over the course of a game in a singleton cube is pretty good.
Battlebox is not my thing. I hated DC 10, I hated Commander. I hate playing my friend's Legacy/Vintage (not sure which one it is) cube and only play it out of fairness to him. I only like Magic that's fun, fair, and interactive.
I do not have a problem with the fact of how you build your cube or what cards you choose, however if you evaluate your cards in a this is not broken or this is a fun card kind of way. You should always add that to your question, otherwise it will result into a which card is the best, which obviously is not what you want for your cube. I have always been a more janky cube builder than the rest of the group here, trying things like an enchantment based cube, etc. But can you please consider the logic from the other side of the argument as well? This is for discussion of the cube itself and the last 3-4 pages have been a rather spiteful conversation.
So let's start over what is your main goal for this pauper cube?
Then we can maybe pitch in with our own advice, even if it is more related to pet cards than to staples.
Btw I do like the attempt with the splice cards, however in my view it is one of those mechanics where if you don't get enough of them during a draft you get stuck with the less playable ones. But then again I don't know with how many players your cube gets drafted regularly and hence what percentage gets left out. It's one of the mechanics in the group with infect, +1/+1 counters matter, etc. that I would love to play but that has too few playable cards in my eyes to truely make a draftable deck. If they ever return to Kamigawa however this might change drastically
Edit: unrelated to the previous paragraphs I can't remember can we get downshifts in the guild decks? Or do these remain the same?
That's a fair point, I should specify that I want cards evaluated on a Fun or Degeneracy scale, not neccesarily power scale.
My main goal with the cube is to have as many quirky interactions as possible. That's the theme of my cube, that's why I like Morph, Planar Chaos cards, banding, cards like Oasis or Vulshhok Gauntlets, Ninjutsu, etc. In one game I had a morph creature attack in a band with a Kjeldoran Skycaptain. The morph creature was a Ruthless Ripper, so mid-combat I morphed the RR and then Ninjutsu'ed away the RR with Okiba Gang Shinobi and made my opponent discard 2 cards and I got to play my Ruthless Ripper again for 2 extra burn damage. Imagine Pee-Wee's Playhouse, except it's a Magic cube. That's what I want.
If sharazod was Pauper legal/not hundreds of dollars it would be in my cube, for example.
I'm basically looking to support as many silly or cool mechanics as possible but in a manner that's not degenerate where even the loser will enjoy the game. That's why I've taken out the bombs from the cube and things like Hexproof or Flicker and ddn't intend to ever support combo.
Splice started out as an extra 15 cards in order to support Booster Tutor at the full 8 players. These were the 3 best (Splice Onto) Arcane cards in each color. The idea was that these would be playable by themselves even if they could never be Spliced. When I expanded to 9 players in order to get to 420 cards, I put a bunch more of the common (Splice Onto) Arcane cards into the 45 card addition. These are of varying quality and I'm trying them out. The reason I'm okay with some of them being mediocre is because they're potentially extra copies of the other, better Splice cards.
In a game I played, I had Inner Calm, Outer Strength , Consuming Vortex, and Kodama's Might in my hand at the same time. I could splice so much that my opponent conceeded.
Ethereal Haze is there because Prismatic Strands used to be in the cube. My friend wasn't having any fun playing against it, so I took it out and swapped it for a normal fog. Since it's Arcane you can Splice something onto it I guess.
Aditionally, some of these cards are (likely) playable despite the perception that they're not. Spiraling Embers is just a pricey burn spell that hypothetically could just burn for 7+, Ideas Unbound is a 2 mana Ancestral Recall and if Gush ever gets banned I could see this becoming a replacement in constructed decks like Izzet Blitz and Inside Out Combo. Even something like Crushing Pain could allow one to trade a Goblin with a fatty.I say that they're likely playable is because I've been able to test a few of them out, but not all of them yet.
The next mechanic I have my eye on to support is Spirits/Soulshift, althoguh I'm happy with most of the cards in my cube currently and I like my current cube's size, so I'm not going to expand. It's one thing to throw a few cumulative upkeep or Horsemanship cards in, it's another to add entire synergy packages without expanding the size of the cube.
I also like the idea of all those collectible cards in the cube. For example I have a multiplayer cube that has like 10 Kindle and 10 Accumulated Knowledge. There are definitely a lot of rules in cubedesign that can be bend to create new interesting metas. I dont think you want to limit yourself to commons when you want to create exciting metas.
I kind of came to the same conclusion for multiple copies matter there are some neat support cards in higher rarities and in lower rarities while fun at first became stale fast. Also rather difficult to find the correct number of copies in very small cubes so that you dont get the feel bads when you see the same card in alot of packs.
If I ask you whether I should play X or Y in my whatever-themed cube where X and Y are cards you have never seen or heard of before, am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
Honestly don't really understand the statement what are you trying to say with that?
That if you're evaluating cards on a different basis than anyone else you can't get any informed feedback.
What am I supposed to tell Humphrey (sorry for taking you as an example all the time, your just seems one of the longer lasting non-standard cubes I can think of) if he comes here and asks what his red 2 drop section should look like in his Medieval Cube?
If I evaluate cards with my own power based cube in mind I'd have to tell him to cut all but one (in this case Chainwalker) and play 8 completely different cards.
If I want to evaluate cards based on his own philosophy with that cube I'd have to 1) be interested enough and actually make the effort to ask him exactly what criteria he has for choosing cards and 2) probably scan the whole Gatherer to even get the slightest idea about what cards exist that fit those criteria.
Or I can just tell him I don't know and that he should choose for himself, at which point both his post and my answer were 100% useless.
Is it really that hard to understand what I mean with common ground? I have absolutely nothing against creative cubes. I'd probably have built some myself if I had the time any more, an artifact flavored one comes to mind for instance, or an old school one where only old pre-8th Edition borders are allowed. I would love that stuff, but the last thing I'd do is come to a general cube forum and ask people with completely different cubes for opinions or help. maybe I'd find a soul or two who are doing the same thing, then I could talk to them in PMs or if there's more people open our own thread or something. You have to do research and testing to evaluate cards. We may all have looked through all the existing commons, but if one guy looked only for anything that says the word artifact on the card, another guy looked only for old borders, and the third guy looked only for some medieval flavor, those three people can't really discuss much of anything together.
This is why I think we have to focus on something that is universally applicable, and that is power level. If we discuss the overall 'best' cards, people with different flavored cubes can at least participate and use the info to decide where they want to draw the line, how many slots in each sections they want to dedicate to overall goodness and how many to pure flavor, etc.
Private Mod Note
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"Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today, and it won't be you."
I think one core disagreement between us, Humphrey, is that I just find Commons more interesting than other rarities. Even the silly would-never-be-commons-today commons in our Cubes feel like they were designed with a particular sensibility about what a Common was. I like that they feel like building blocks, and I like our "Ultimate Limited" environment. I could probably think of higher rarity cards that I could add that would help that feeling and that I would enjoy, but then I think I would bump into SaltMaster's problem where I'm just designing to a feeling that would be hard to explain and may not be the same for all people. Keeping it Pauper just sort of gives me that feeling with an easy rule to explain, and also lets me experiment with the rules that I don't think matter as much. I don't know, I've been playing this Cube for at least 10 years and I've never been bored with it.
Whenever people say "interesting," especially in the same word as "archetype," I get wary. I also like interesting things, but when people say "interesting archetype" in MTG I often get flashbacks to BFZ, the worst set in recorded history. I don't find combos of bad cards interesting, which is why I've never really liked basic Cube. I do find synergies of good cards interesting, which is why I like Pauper. I don't actually know if that makes sense, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I think Cloudpost might actually be a more sensible inclusion than Tron. It's probably a little lower power level, but it also screams "you probably want to look out for more cards called Cloudpost!" I generally feel like this balances my very mixed feelings on archetypes with my desire to just put a glowing sign in packs that tells first time drafters "this is a strategy that you could pursue." Do you think 4 would be enough for it to be worth it consistently? I don't really like the "draft 1, get 3" option, although it does resolve my issue- I guess I like that Hungry Hungry Hippos feeling.
@SaltMaster: I haven't done the card-by-card breakdown, but one card that I am very curious about in your Cube is Blastoderm. It seems like it's almost designed in a vat to avoid many of the cool interactions that you are looking for, and is notably higher power level than many of the cards in your Cube. How has it played out for you?
EDIT: @Izor, I ignored your post at first because I am trying to move past this conversation, but that felt jerkier than I wanted it to. No, you're not hard to understand. I just fundamentally disagree with almost every part of your statement. Other casual forums (I consider Cube a casual format) do not have huge problems with this. We have tools that SHOULD be all about power level, like the Evaluate Everything project. But I just don't see why it's so important for the whole forum to run that way, or why it's so important to just deny specialized Cubes a public forum. I find many of the things that you consider worthless extremely valuable and informative. If I were to design a specialized Cube again, the first thing I would do once I had a serviceable list is post it in some sort of forum so that I could get at least rudimentary feedback.
My hatred of Tron is from competitive constructed Pauper. The competitive game would be better off without Ghostly Flicker because it makes playing the game less fun.
If the game is fun and fair and interactive at a competitive level, it will be fun and fair at the casual level.
When casuals get together and make a format, the result is a 100 card singleton format that's only held together by gentleman's agreement. Or in X-Wing's case, it's Mario Kart X-Wing.
I don't see why I can't build a cube -sans degeneracy- and play cards that simply do interesting things simply because they do interesting things. Coal Stoker? Huh, that card looks interesting, I'll put that into my cube.
I've won two games with Dash Hopes. Last time I played White I used Healing Salve on Standard Bearer and my Standard Bearer survived a Bolt. Last time I drafted my cube, I was playing Simic and had 5 Splice Onto Arcane cards. In two consecutive games my Splice cards did a ton of work. These cards are okay and seem to work just fine.
I understand that some (Splice Onto) Arcane cards in my cube aren't really that good, like Psychic Puppetry. But I'm hesitant to take them out since they give you extra copies of other, better Splice cards. Being able to play your Horobi's Whisper or Kodama's Might multiple times over the course of a game in a singleton cube is pretty good.
Battlebox is not my thing. I hated DC 10, I hated Commander. I hate playing my friend's Legacy/Vintage (not sure which one it is) cube and only play it out of fairness to him. I only like Magic that's fun, fair, and interactive.
I do not have a problem with the fact of how you build your cube or what cards you choose, however if you evaluate your cards in a this is not broken or this is a fun card kind of way. You should always add that to your question, otherwise it will result into a which card is the best, which obviously is not what you want for your cube. I have always been a more janky cube builder than the rest of the group here, trying things like an enchantment based cube, etc. But can you please consider the logic from the other side of the argument as well? This is for discussion of the cube itself and the last 3-4 pages have been a rather spiteful conversation.
So let's start over what is your main goal for this pauper cube?
Then we can maybe pitch in with our own advice, even if it is more related to pet cards than to staples.
Btw I do like the attempt with the splice cards, however in my view it is one of those mechanics where if you don't get enough of them during a draft you get stuck with the less playable ones. But then again I don't know with how many players your cube gets drafted regularly and hence what percentage gets left out. It's one of the mechanics in the group with infect, +1/+1 counters matter, etc. that I would love to play but that has too few playable cards in my eyes to truely make a draftable deck. If they ever return to Kamigawa however this might change drastically
Edit: unrelated to the previous paragraphs I can't remember can we get downshifts in the guild decks? Or do these remain the same?
That's a fair point, I should specify that I want cards evaluated on a Fun or Degeneracy scale, not neccesarily power scale.
My main goal with the cube is to have as many quirky interactions as possible. That's the theme of my cube, that's why I like Morph, Planar Chaos cards, banding, cards like Oasis or Vulshhok Gauntlets, Ninjutsu, etc. In one game I had a morph creature attack in a band with a Kjeldoran Skycaptain. The morph creature was a Ruthless Ripper, so mid-combat I morphed the RR and then Ninjutsu'ed away the RR with Okiba Gang Shinobi and made my opponent discard 2 cards and I got to play my Ruthless Ripper again for 2 extra burn damage. Imagine Pee-Wee's Playhouse, except it's a Magic cube. That's what I want.
If sharazod was Pauper legal/not hundreds of dollars it would be in my cube, for example.
I'm basically looking to support as many silly or cool mechanics as possible but in a manner that's not degenerate where even the loser will enjoy the game. That's why I've taken out the bombs from the cube and things like Hexproof or Flicker and ddn't intend to ever support combo.
Splice started out as an extra 15 cards in order to support Booster Tutor at the full 8 players. These were the 3 best (Splice Onto) Arcane cards in each color. The idea was that these would be playable by themselves even if they could never be Spliced. When I expanded to 9 players in order to get to 420 cards, I put a bunch more of the common (Splice Onto) Arcane cards into the 45 card addition. These are of varying quality and I'm trying them out. The reason I'm okay with some of them being mediocre is because they're potentially extra copies of the other, better Splice cards.
In a game I played, I had Inner Calm, Outer Strength , Consuming Vortex, and Kodama's Might in my hand at the same time. I could splice so much that my opponent conceeded.
Ethereal Haze is there because Prismatic Strands used to be in the cube. My friend wasn't having any fun playing against it, so I took it out and swapped it for a normal fog. Since it's Arcane you can Splice something onto it I guess.
Aditionally, some of these cards are (likely) playable despite the perception that they're not. Spiraling Embers is just a pricey burn spell that hypothetically could just burn for 7+, Ideas Unbound is a 2 mana Ancestral Recall and if Gush ever gets banned I could see this becoming a replacement in constructed decks like Izzet Blitz and Inside Out Combo. Even something like Crushing Pain could allow one to trade a Goblin with a fatty.I say that they're likely playable is because I've been able to test a few of them out, but not all of them yet.
The next mechanic I have my eye on to support is Spirits/Soulshift, althoguh I'm happy with most of the cards in my cube currently and I like my current cube's size, so I'm not going to expand. It's one thing to throw a few cumulative upkeep or Horsemanship cards in, it's another to add entire synergy packages without expanding the size of the cube.
I have thought about including the Spirits/Soulshift, but decided against it, can't remember why.
I do remember at a certain time that I was set on including 1 card representing each possible keyword in magic available at common, it was an amazing thought experiment, but not really optimal, imagine splice but no other arcane spells, Soulshift, but no spirits
A Brain(z)twister cube.
At the moment I am thinking of adding a couple more interesting cards to the cube, stuff like Brine Shaman as Al mentionned, really curious about it's performance and Extremely Slow Zombie and some other Un-cards. I am however working to a cube that can perform both as a draftable cube or as a Big Deck. Since we mostly come together to draft the newer sets and fill in the gaps with EDH or pauper cube. And since drafting sometimes takes to long, Big Deck is sweet since anyone can join/leave at anytime.
I tried Brine a couple of times, because its a pet card from my old playgroups member. It never did anything In the end even the guy himself never played it ^^
I think that there is a false dichotomy between fun and winning/competition.
I could see how someone would think I was either. In the X-Wing community I was branded as quite the opposite of casual.
But yes, I understand why you would assume I was a casual based upon our interactions in this thread.
But to me, cube building is entirely separate from serious competition or even casual. One could theoretically seriously compete with a cube or just order pizza and play it on a kitchen table. It's just limited with a pool of cards you enjoy. I don't particularly see why it's relevant that Vapor Snag is a better card than Unsummon if Vapor Snag isn't in the cube. It's only relevant how powerful it is relative to the other cards in the cube.
This is why I try to participate in these discussions. I already know which cards are the best and as such I don't really need all that much advice in that area.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
about the casual definition, to me, non-casual play is winning first, fun second, or better say the fun comes from winning first. everything not focusing on winning aka best strategies, best cards etc is casual. but ofc there are grades of casuals. while the "competitive casual" still follows the rules and still wants to win, but also wants to have fun while playing (i put salt here), the "super casual" just wants to socialize and doesnt care much about the rest (rules and whatnot), everything can be bend to have a good time (some of the gameshop guys)
that said, battlebox is or can be still as competitive as you chose to play it, but ofc it doesnt have the drafting experience. which depending on the situation is a good thing though. (less time investment, less balancing difficulties)
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
I don't honestly care about who is or is not casual. I just care about how we treat each other and making an environment where lots of people can work towards their own individual goals. Which is probably a pretty casual attitude.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
I don't think you understand what I meant.
How exactly would anyone comment on a card for a format he has absolutely no experience in and thus zero qualification to have an opinion on? If I ask you whether I should play X or Y in my whatever-themed cube where X and Y are cards you have never seen or heard of before, am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that this is just people getting a little hyped for a new format and instead of listening to anything people who have played and tested that format for 10 years say we try to be the innovators by going on the Gatherer real quick and deciding that card X and Y look so interesting that they clearly must make the format better. Our previous experience from some other games that have nothing to do with MtG (at least I would assume so because I haven't heard about them ever before) will surely qualify.
I'm just curious at this point. Have you actually ever played those cards and cubes in question with 8 human beings?
- Last Word
Honestly don't really understand the statement what are you trying to say with that?
I Agree to the not listening part but testing/playing cube IMO doesn't make you an expert in all cubes or even all pauper cubes as cubes are intricate things and synergies/anti synergies play are role in it too. If your cube is filled with 2/1s for 2 that makes a 1/3 better overall if your cube is full of 2/2s that makes 1/3s worse. Powelevel is relative to the other cards in the cube. So pure powerlevel is a shaky common ground if any at all. I agree the expierience helps to evaluate cards quicker and with less testing but only for cubes similar to yours. We can look at cards in a vacuum and see their floor and ceiling, and that is a good discussion. And we can look at a cube and due to expierience imagine what problems might occur, but in the end if we didn't test that specific cube we do not know it it works out. And if it looks like a cube we personally would not play we can reason why we would not do so and even that can be of great help for everyone.
Nope, I feel like I understood you perfectly, and care for it even less on repeat. Yes, I do think you should take that commentary seriously, albeit with a grain of salt. The problem with this forum, IMO, is that it only has feedback from an extraordinarily narrow viewpoint. That viewpoint is important (It's extremely helpful for Evaluate Everything, for instance), but it is far from the only way to approach the format. Feedback from lots of different perspectives makes better Cubes, IMO, even if they're on the sillier side. Maybe even especially when they're on the sillier side? Creativity is a collaborative process.
EDIT: I want to rephrase this to reflect that I would take it seriously. Every time that I draft, I try to get a feedback from each drafter. This is especially important for newer drafters. I ask them if anything stood out as exceptional or like they weren't sure why it was in the pack, anything that they expected to see that they didn't, etc. The less experienced the drafter, the more interesting I find their feedback. I don't always use it, but I do always consider it.
I have played my Cube hundreds times, in multiple iterations, with multiple groups of people. I think that this forum's elitist and unpleasant attitude has cut us off from popularity that really is ours to claim if we want it. I would like for this forum to be a place where people can go to get feedback on their Cube and not feel ashamed for wanting to do something different, even if it doesn't work. Cube is a personal process that requires feedback to thrive. I want this forum to be one potential source of feedback. If you don't like it, well, you and I can talk about different Cubes and questions.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
When I complain about Tron players for example, it's not that I'm hating the player per se. People will play what's best and I can't blame them for it. It's more that I hate apologists for Tron. If a Tron player said, "Yeah, Ghostly Flicker is broken and Tron ruins the game but I play what's best." then I wouldn't have any issue with them. It's the, "Tron is fun and fair, git gud nothing ever needs to be banned." attitude that I have a problem with.
I'm sorry to drag you into this dumb pointless argument about semantics.
The issues I see with the viewpoint opposite mine is that everyone's cube is the exact same, people only play the same default cards because for whatever reason what's best is the only relevant metric to them. Every cube has to have Pestilence, has to have Ghostly Flicker, has to have, "these 10 constructed Mono Green Stompy staples" etc. So it ends up looking like someone took the top 360 Pauper cards and put them together and if you want to run Phantom Tiger instead of Silhana Ledgewalker you can't because that's #465 and therefore unplayable trash.
And then when your cube is mostly cards at or roughly around that power level, people will then shift to, "Your cube is bad I'd never draft it why can't I cheat out Kozilek on turn 2 like I can in Vintage Cube?"
Even though the cube is relatively balanced, it being a lower power level is somehow beneath them.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
I for one can't wait to claim all of the extra "popularity" that entails even more people call us elist pricks. You can't honestly think you're the first Critical Cube Critics to hit these forums. For the most part they say their piece (we can check that part off the list) which includes much air of grievances (again, big checkmark) before they retire to their own gated communities to further discuss their thoughts of what Cube should be and denounce anyone who isn't there brand of Cube libertine.
EDIT: With that said, I am sorry I am easy to provoke back into action. I honestly have tried to wrap it up a couple of times, most recently with my response to Humphrey. I will need to work on this.
DOUBLE EDIT: SaltMaster, I don't care if you're casual or not. At all. Continuing to talk about why you are not does not help either of us. I would like to transition away from criticizing this board to being the change I want to see and just give feedback when you look for it. I think that you were not getting good feedback in part because you responded to lots of the feedback that you did receive (and it was not all bad as the worst examples of it) like the "casuals" who you claim to hate. That is the extent of my argument. The more you argue about how terrible casuals are and how you are not one of them, the harder it gets to see your side of the argument.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
They're never done talking and even if they were they would probably just find an old phone book and start reading from that. Despite which, there is definitely a limit where discourse ceases to be productive. After that, its just verbiage (quack quack quack)
EDIT: also, I don't have a concrete philosophy of Cube because I don't have a fixed Cube. I have a bunch of commons set aside in specially colored sleeves that more or less comprise all of the cards I and/or my small group would consider Pauper Cube material. To be honest, the most success we've had getting Cube sessions going is with an Unserious Cube of all rarities. The biggest thing is that it turns out that probably the entire Top 20 most broken cards ever printed in Magic are Unserious.
EDIT: Or, for a more specific transition that I am working on right now: I'm working on filling out those last 22 slots. Color balance seems pretty good right now, but Blue and Red need a few more cards than the others. One thing I'm thinking of is throwing a couple more X-Spells in there to give Ramp strategies (and possibly spell strategies) a bit more payoff. If Fireball and Rolling Thunder are effectively staples at 360, about how many do you think gives enough for consistent but not oppressive presence in drafts at 450? I think definitely Disintegrate- maybe one more?
Also, walk me off the ledge, I'm looking at Footlight Fiends again. Card seems to be overperforming in exactly the way I figured it might.
ANOTHER EDIT: Another way to get back on track, and probably the best one? SaltMaster, how would you respond to Brainz' comments here? If there was a more specific question here (I think artifacts were where things got dicey?), feel free to go into that too.
Specifically, SaltMaster, I think it would be extremely helpful for me to figure out 3-4 themes and/or maybe a handful of cards that you WANT to include for the play that you are going for with your Cube. For instance, I never want Ulamog's Crusher to be unplayable in mine. Looking at the sample decks that Humphrey drafted, I would definitely cut down on your low drops. I do think it's probably too easy to get an accidental aggro deck going with the number and quality of lower cost creatures in your Cube. I find a large number of the "traditional Cube" cards in your Cube extremely uninteresting, and I think that it might help to think of "traditionally Cubeworthy" cards as your rares, the spice that you can prop up with some of your weirder picks. So: What are the cards that make you WANT to play Pauper?
MOST EDITED POST IN HISTORY: It seems like Banding was one of the first things that made people really turn their head and say "what?!" about your Cube. One of my favorite interactions with Banding is Provoke. Have you explored this interaction at all? It seems like you have some, but Lowland Tracker is one of the better ones for the combo and Goblin Grappler feels like obvious overlap with other synergies.
Also, your cube is so unusual that it would be extremely helpful for reference purposes if you linked to it in your Sig.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
So, when I started to build the T1 cube, I wanted to create a meta thats as fast and "powerful" as legacy, because thats where I come from. And with powerful I mean each card has an actual impact on the game. Handle it or die. So at best each played card swings around the whole game.
This fast paced low curved gameplay actually involves a lot of interactions, while it also lowers a bad side of magic in manascrew. Having such a low curve, that decks easily function on 15 lands, can play most spells and win sometimes with only 2-3 lands in play. Thats fun for me.
The downside though, is that games can be over real quick since you can kill as fast as Turn 4 or 5, control matches are still a thing though.
The T2 started basically with all the leftovers and cuts from the T1 and that opened a lot of slower archetypes to work. With time it evolved more into a synergy driven cube, so instead of just adding "T2-in a vacuum" cards, I wanted to have all the cool mechanics working that pauper offers. Like Dredge, Madness, Swarm and some combos. To allow those archetype I also had to cut a lot of removal that would initially fall into the T2-power category.
Because almost all tempo cards end in the T1 cube, most cards are value cards, which is basically the other end of the powerspectrum. In this cube the focus is decreasing the other unfun aspect of magic in manaflood. A lot of cards have added benefits in the lategame, while also not dead in the early, like cycling. It also had the added benefit that you actually wont see all the common cards from the average paupercube.
That said, to me the actual fun comes from playing cards that actually do something in every or most situations. I feel it pretty unexciting to draw-go and play irrelevant spells that only do something every other turn or even match.
And I tried a lot of weird cards by now. I even had Tron in my cube at one point, which added a lot of laughter and tension to the draft. One guy even pulled of Tron into Eldrazi Devastator, that was insane. In the end too unreliable though.
I also want to add that certain strategies in the cube that you dont like can easily be hatepicked. So if you dont want to see infinite Flicker, either hatepick that or the Drake.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
How did you handle Tron? One thing that I did at one point was run 4x Squadron Hawk to create a mini-game because I found it so incredibly boring to draft White any other way. This change ultimately didn't last, but I like it in principle. How many pieces of each piece of Tron do you think would be enough to make it a fun, strong, but ultimately niche strategy? Maybe 2-3x of each? That's a tough sell for 6-9 picks, but at the same time... caliente.
For reference, I ran 4x Squadron Hawk in my White section. If you drafted every Hawk, it gave you an average of around 3 Hawks per draft. My idea here would be to add 2-3X of each Tron piece and just shuffle it in with the rest of the Cube. Players have to draft Tron, but they can draft Tron.
The difficulty of assembling the Flicker combo at 428 (ideally 450) has pretty much sold me on the combo. It takes so much work, and you still want to play most of the cards anyway. I'm considering Chronarch as well, but that's not the effect that I'm having a tough time wheeling.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
I also like the idea of all those collectible cards in the cube. For example I have a multiplayer cube that has like 10 Kindle and 10 Accumulated Knowledge. There are definitely a lot of rules in cubedesign that can be bend to create new interesting metas. I could easily design 2 other paupercubes with new ideas.
But then again, I dont think you want to limit yourself to commons when you want to create exciting metas. While I see the critic that most paupercubes look similiar you only have so much options, at least what most people would consider playable. Look at Vintage cubes, they have all the cards but many also run the same cards. There is infinite designspace.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
1.) 1 of each Tron piece in the draft, which you're then allowed to run up to 3 copies of each Tron piece when deck building. Kind of like how some people house rule Squadron Hawk for cube. The reason I cap it at 3 copies is because the average Pauper Tron deck runs 24 lands, half of which are Tron pieces. The average cube deck runs 17 (That seems way too high for most decks IMO, but I digress) and 9 Tron lands is roughly half of that.
Singleton Tron seems like too much effort for too little gain. But getting 3 Urza's Towers when you draft the one in the cube seems worth it.
2.) Just put multiple copies of Cloud and Glimmerpost in the cube. I'm not comfortable breaking singleton, but Better Tron(tm) only requires finding 2 pieces and as a result is easier to assemble and more desriable. Maybe you could get wacky with it and put a bunch of copies of it in your cube, that way there is a Hungry Hungry Hippos scramble to gobble up as many as you can find and they become more and more desirable as more and more are found.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
That's a fair point, I should specify that I want cards evaluated on a Fun or Degeneracy scale, not neccesarily power scale.
My main goal with the cube is to have as many quirky interactions as possible. That's the theme of my cube, that's why I like Morph, Planar Chaos cards, banding, cards like Oasis or Vulshhok Gauntlets, Ninjutsu, etc. In one game I had a morph creature attack in a band with a Kjeldoran Skycaptain. The morph creature was a Ruthless Ripper, so mid-combat I morphed the RR and then Ninjutsu'ed away the RR with Okiba Gang Shinobi and made my opponent discard 2 cards and I got to play my Ruthless Ripper again for 2 extra burn damage. Imagine Pee-Wee's Playhouse, except it's a Magic cube. That's what I want.
If sharazod was Pauper legal/not hundreds of dollars it would be in my cube, for example.
I'm basically looking to support as many silly or cool mechanics as possible but in a manner that's not degenerate where even the loser will enjoy the game. That's why I've taken out the bombs from the cube and things like Hexproof or Flicker and ddn't intend to ever support combo.
Splice started out as an extra 15 cards in order to support Booster Tutor at the full 8 players. These were the 3 best (Splice Onto) Arcane cards in each color. The idea was that these would be playable by themselves even if they could never be Spliced. When I expanded to 9 players in order to get to 420 cards, I put a bunch more of the common (Splice Onto) Arcane cards into the 45 card addition. These are of varying quality and I'm trying them out. The reason I'm okay with some of them being mediocre is because they're potentially extra copies of the other, better Splice cards.
In a game I played, I had Inner Calm, Outer Strength , Consuming Vortex, and Kodama's Might in my hand at the same time. I could splice so much that my opponent conceeded.
Ethereal Haze is there because Prismatic Strands used to be in the cube. My friend wasn't having any fun playing against it, so I took it out and swapped it for a normal fog. Since it's Arcane you can Splice something onto it I guess.
Aditionally, some of these cards are (likely) playable despite the perception that they're not. Spiraling Embers is just a pricey burn spell that hypothetically could just burn for 7+, Ideas Unbound is a 2 mana Ancestral Recall and if Gush ever gets banned I could see this becoming a replacement in constructed decks like Izzet Blitz and Inside Out Combo. Even something like Crushing Pain could allow one to trade a Goblin with a fatty.I say that they're likely playable is because I've been able to test a few of them out, but not all of them yet.
The next mechanic I have my eye on to support is Spirits/Soulshift, althoguh I'm happy with most of the cards in my cube currently and I like my current cube's size, so I'm not going to expand. It's one thing to throw a few cumulative upkeep or Horsemanship cards in, it's another to add entire synergy packages without expanding the size of the cube.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
I kind of came to the same conclusion for multiple copies matter there are some neat support cards in higher rarities and in lower rarities while fun at first became stale fast. Also rather difficult to find the correct number of copies in very small cubes so that you dont get the feel bads when you see the same card in alot of packs.
That if you're evaluating cards on a different basis than anyone else you can't get any informed feedback.
What am I supposed to tell Humphrey (sorry for taking you as an example all the time, your just seems one of the longer lasting non-standard cubes I can think of) if he comes here and asks what his red 2 drop section should look like in his Medieval Cube?
If I evaluate cards with my own power based cube in mind I'd have to tell him to cut all but one (in this case Chainwalker) and play 8 completely different cards.
If I want to evaluate cards based on his own philosophy with that cube I'd have to 1) be interested enough and actually make the effort to ask him exactly what criteria he has for choosing cards and 2) probably scan the whole Gatherer to even get the slightest idea about what cards exist that fit those criteria.
Or I can just tell him I don't know and that he should choose for himself, at which point both his post and my answer were 100% useless.
Is it really that hard to understand what I mean with common ground? I have absolutely nothing against creative cubes. I'd probably have built some myself if I had the time any more, an artifact flavored one comes to mind for instance, or an old school one where only old pre-8th Edition borders are allowed. I would love that stuff, but the last thing I'd do is come to a general cube forum and ask people with completely different cubes for opinions or help. maybe I'd find a soul or two who are doing the same thing, then I could talk to them in PMs or if there's more people open our own thread or something. You have to do research and testing to evaluate cards. We may all have looked through all the existing commons, but if one guy looked only for anything that says the word artifact on the card, another guy looked only for old borders, and the third guy looked only for some medieval flavor, those three people can't really discuss much of anything together.
This is why I think we have to focus on something that is universally applicable, and that is power level. If we discuss the overall 'best' cards, people with different flavored cubes can at least participate and use the info to decide where they want to draw the line, how many slots in each sections they want to dedicate to overall goodness and how many to pure flavor, etc.
- Last Word
Whenever people say "interesting," especially in the same word as "archetype," I get wary. I also like interesting things, but when people say "interesting archetype" in MTG I often get flashbacks to BFZ, the worst set in recorded history. I don't find combos of bad cards interesting, which is why I've never really liked basic Cube. I do find synergies of good cards interesting, which is why I like Pauper. I don't actually know if that makes sense, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I think Cloudpost might actually be a more sensible inclusion than Tron. It's probably a little lower power level, but it also screams "you probably want to look out for more cards called Cloudpost!" I generally feel like this balances my very mixed feelings on archetypes with my desire to just put a glowing sign in packs that tells first time drafters "this is a strategy that you could pursue." Do you think 4 would be enough for it to be worth it consistently? I don't really like the "draft 1, get 3" option, although it does resolve my issue- I guess I like that Hungry Hungry Hippos feeling.
@SaltMaster: I haven't done the card-by-card breakdown, but one card that I am very curious about in your Cube is Blastoderm. It seems like it's almost designed in a vat to avoid many of the cool interactions that you are looking for, and is notably higher power level than many of the cards in your Cube. How has it played out for you?
EDIT: @Izor, I ignored your post at first because I am trying to move past this conversation, but that felt jerkier than I wanted it to. No, you're not hard to understand. I just fundamentally disagree with almost every part of your statement. Other casual forums (I consider Cube a casual format) do not have huge problems with this. We have tools that SHOULD be all about power level, like the Evaluate Everything project. But I just don't see why it's so important for the whole forum to run that way, or why it's so important to just deny specialized Cubes a public forum. I find many of the things that you consider worthless extremely valuable and informative. If I were to design a specialized Cube again, the first thing I would do once I had a serviceable list is post it in some sort of forum so that I could get at least rudimentary feedback.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
I have thought about including the Spirits/Soulshift, but decided against it, can't remember why.
I do remember at a certain time that I was set on including 1 card representing each possible keyword in magic available at common, it was an amazing thought experiment, but not really optimal, imagine splice but no other arcane spells, Soulshift, but no spirits
A Brain(z)twister cube.
At the moment I am thinking of adding a couple more interesting cards to the cube, stuff like Brine Shaman as Al mentionned, really curious about it's performance and Extremely Slow Zombie and some other Un-cards. I am however working to a cube that can perform both as a draftable cube or as a Big Deck. Since we mostly come together to draft the newer sets and fill in the gaps with EDH or pauper cube. And since drafting sometimes takes to long, Big Deck is sweet since anyone can join/leave at anytime.
Brainz Archetypes/Synergies Thread [WIP]
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t