"You hold a controversial viewpoint that I disagree with, therefore you're a troll."
Um, okay.
See, this topic really isn't controversial in the slightest. Lab Rats is a total garbage card and Sprout Swarm is one of the strongest cards that has ever been printed with a black symbol. A controversial topic is by definition something that causes public debate. There was never any public debate on Swarm vs Lab Rats, because everyone who has ever played with at least one of them and has some experience and/or a sane mind would know how different they are.
And this is true for every statement you've made on this thread. You bring up utter garbage and defend it with totally uninformed as well as straight up wrong theories, and every time someone has a valid argument against you you play the "don't hate me just because my opinion is different" card.
To be fair, you can't handle the fact that I disagree with you, therefore you just assume I'm trolling despite me genuinely holding these views. Maybe if I wasn't branded a troll I wouldn't feel persecuted.
"Card A is great!"
"What does Card B do? 80% of the same thing as Card A? Total garbage card why don't you play a game of Magic first."
This is the attitude that I find rather frustrating.
Yeah, I'm going to eat some crow here as well. I keep on wanting to stand up for Saltmaster (I actually don't think the Bolt vs. Hammer example is a bad one as far as his Cube goes and parts of his design philosophy, but it's not very on-point as a comparison for Lab Rats vs. Sprout Swarm), but the "Magic is 60% luck" thing really just speaks to a core problem that I don't see changing any time soon. Magic is a game in which luck plays a significant role, but saying that success and failure is largely a matter of fate just feels like a way to avoid introspection and helps to make sure that your play skill never improves. Experience isn't the only thing that matters, but it matters a lot. To the extent that it doesn't matter, where a newer player quickly rises to the top, it's because they evaluate their play and the game very critically and have a particular attitude towards the game. You have shown little interest in this sort of analysis.
It doesn't help that you have chosen to approach the game on an axis where experience becomes way more important. It seems like you're interested in building your Cube to make a specific play experience divorced from power level, but it never feels like you have played that much with it. Knowing how something plays is a question that only experience will teach you. I don't think that this forum should make experience a prerequisite for participation, but you should be aware that I find your commentary on my Cube most helpful as "this is how a newer or less experienced player would approach the Cube and what they would think." That is actually extremely helpful for me, because I treat my Cube as a bit more of a "travelling roadshow" that I regularly play with newer or less experienced players, but not everyone here is interested in that perspective and you don't seem particularly aware that you are providing it.
I mean, a significant portion of games are luck based. I'd say your individual game is majority skill, probably like 65% skill, 35% luck. It depends on the decks, for fair decks I'd say that's accurate, for matchups between brain dead count to 20 decks like Burn or Bogles it's essentially a coin flip. You have no control over the board state because your deck plays itself, and so does your opponent. So the luck percentage for those decks is like 90% as long as no ones makes any blunders mulliganing.
Where I get the 60% number is matchup luck. If I play a deck that autoloses to Tron but I never face Tron, then luck has carried me. I have no qualms admitting that I get lucky. When I top foured a Pauper 1k the streamers interviewed me and they pointed out an error in my play that I wasn't punished for or whatever and I said, "Better lucky than good."
To be clear, that 60% number doesn't translate to cube unless you have a particularly degenerate cube (say, vintage cube). Luck is at a minimum in cube since it's all fair decks facing each other and there is no netdecking, just card evaluation skill and working with what you have.
I'm aware that I'm providing that. I don't really value anyone's experience with this game, it's not Chess. It's just a dumb card game. So I just think certain things are right or wrong independent of how much experience someone has. Experience only matters for complex things like chess, brain surgery, etc. Otherwise it's just an ad hominem to attack others for their lack of experience.
In fact, the more experienced someone is at this game, the more crusty their views get. Right now Pauper is utterly dominated by Gush + Foil and yet there are still people that will say, "Foil? Bad card, 3 for 1'ing yourself is never good" even though discarding extra cards you don't need doesn't matter and isn't card disadvantage. But since someone wrote about card advantage doctrine on The Dojo 20 years ago, all that matters is repeating doctrine in order to sound smart.
Magic is complex not as complex as brain surgery but still complex. And even Mundane things can be done better with more expierience*.
But Expierience alone is not that useful without any retrospection to that expierience.
If you keep making the same mistakes without thinking about them no amount of expierience helps you with that, but the more you tink about why those expieriences occur the more you can increase your skill.
That is one of the reasons I think discussing stuff is beneficial to all if done right.
So I just think certain things are right or wrong independent of how much experience someone has.
So do those that argue with you.
It depends on the decks, for fair decks I'd say that's accurate, for matchups between brain dead count to 20 decks like Burn or Bogles it's essentially a coin flip.
Reading meta is also a skill, I agree that some decks are easier to pilot and that in sealed you might get a bad pool but in general skill is still needed. Especially to succeed continuosly.
In fact, the more experienced someone is at this game, the more crusty their views get. Right now Pauper is utterly dominated by Gush + Foil and yet there are still people that will say, "Foil? Bad card, 3 for 1'ing yourself is never good"
Yes but as i said beforeif you take things in a vaacuum you will always be surprised if it doesn't work out or works out better than expected foil by itself is not that great by itself (still a free spell though) but with gush it becomes a decent card.
Your insistence that it is not Chess speaks to the core problem. I think that Magic is a much better game than Chess, for a few different reasons. One of them is the skills that both games test. Secret information and randomness is a core component of Magic. It is not a component of Chess. A lot, I would even say most, of the skill in Magic comes from figuring out how to play the odds and take as much control of chance as you can. This sort of skill does not appear to interest you, and you regularly make decisions that undervalue minimizing risk (for instance, your approach to mana fixing). You don't approach the game like someone who wants to be good at it, and that's OK by me. But it does make a lot of your theory-crafting, especially when it comes to whether or not a card is good, less helpful.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My 450 Card Pauper Cube is going through major renovations. Feedback appreciated!
1) Besides drafting, what other things do folks do to fine-tune a cube? I added a few archetype support cards, and I found it useful to do a test draft on CubeTutor to get a quick sense of whether the archetype is draft-able; the sample pack feature is also useful to identify any outlier cards. Anything else?
2) When drafting sets/cube with 2 players, I usually Winchester. However, when doing Winchester with a Pauper cube, I find the decks are a little shallow, as seeing only 90 cards (and drafting about 45 each) makes it hard to go deep on any archetype/synergy. 2-player sealed (90 each), on the other hand, seems to produce more interesting decks. The problem with sealed in other formats is usually that one pool is unfairly better (e.g. has good rares in its most common colors), but so far I feel like the pools tend to be evenly matched at Pauper cube's power level. What are others' experiences at 2-player cube?
I'm partial to Solomon for two-player drafting: shuffle the pool of cards together, then take turns with one player flipping some number of cards (apparently 8 is the official number, I've always been partial to 5) into two different piles, then the other player picks one of the piles and the unpicked pile goes to the pile maker. This usually produces weaker-than-average decks, but it's usually not ridiculous. You will still probably have issues with archetypes, though, so I'm not sure if that's a solution to your problem.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My 450 Card Pauper Cube is going through major renovations. Feedback appreciated!
Your insistence that it is not Chess speaks to the core problem. I think that Magic is a much better game than Chess, for a few different reasons. One of them is the skills that both games test. Secret information and randomness is a core component of Magic. It is not a component of Chess. A lot, I would even say most, of the skill in Magic comes from figuring out how to play the odds and take as much control of chance as you can. This sort of skill does not appear to interest you, and you regularly make decisions that undervalue minimizing risk (for instance, your approach to mana fixing). You don't approach the game like someone who wants to be good at it, and that's OK by me. But it does make a lot of your theory-crafting, especially when it comes to whether or not a card is good, less helpful.
I prefer Magic to Chess but do acknowledge that my tastes in this matter are lesser and that Chess is objectively the best game.
I'll spare you the rant on how I don't think art or human experience in general is subjective.
Maximizing the odds are why I play this game. That's something I care about. The (pre-soulless PhotoShop garbage) cards are pretty sure, but I'm not going to play a game with an equal amount of depth as Candyland.
As far as the fixing goes, I cut the Obelisks and the Prophetic Prisms on sticks because no one drafted them and 3 colors while doable in my cube just ends up as a worse deck than a mono or dual colored deck. I replaced them with the Signets because I like the art on them.
I don't approach the game from a perspective of trying to get better at it here because I'm discussing cube. Otherwise I like playing competitive pauper (despite the likes of bull***** decks like Tron). Here is the Mono Black Control deck that I top foured a 1k with: https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=20757&d=337081&f=PAU
1) Besides drafting, what other things do folks do to fine-tune a cube? I added a few archetype support cards, and I found it useful to do a test draft on CubeTutor to get a quick sense of whether the archetype is draft-able; the sample pack feature is also useful to identify any outlier cards. Anything else?
2) When drafting sets/cube with 2 players, I usually Winchester. However, when doing Winchester with a Pauper cube, I find the decks are a little shallow, as seeing only 90 cards (and drafting about 45 each) makes it hard to go deep on any archetype/synergy. 2-player sealed (90 each), on the other hand, seems to produce more interesting decks. The problem with sealed in other formats is usually that one pool is unfairly better (e.g. has good rares in its most common colors), but so far I feel like the pools tend to be evenly matched at Pauper cube's power level. What are others' experiences at 2-player cube?
1.) Either during actual drafts or test drafts on cubetutor I'll make a mental note of which cards are too good or too bad. If something is unfun or too dominant it gets taken out, and likewise if something is truly unplayable where I can't even convince myself to play it (say, something like Ghazban Ogre or Tolarian Drake) then I take it out. There is also just plain intuition. Swapping a Doom Blade for an edict or for something like Demonic Torment can just be done without any testing.
See, cubes don't actually have to be balanced, have to have equal amounts of every color, have to have bombs, etc. No matter how unbalanced they are, the fact that everyone gets access to the same pool of cards balances it by default.
So if you take an already balanced cube and make some minor changes, you're not going to magically ruin the cube. Feel free to make as many changes as you want.
2.) At 2 players I've only ever played sealed, so I wouldn't know.
See, cubes don't actually have to be balanced, have to have equal amounts of every color, have to have bombs, etc. No matter how unbalanced they are, the fact that everyone gets access to the same pool of cards balances it by default.
I think here lies a core disagreement. If someone happened to open something like Mulldrifter in his packs in your cube, he has a significant advantage. For me cube is all about balancing. It doesn't have to be and never can be perfect, but e.g. in my cube I test all the cards compared to the strongest cards in my cube and see if they can compete with these, so that when someone opens a "bomb" the other decks can still overpower it with their overall card quality. My aim is to come as close to a perfect balance as possible, which for me is the biggest part of a good draft experience. Of course you can play some pet cards, but when 30%-50% of your cube are just strictly better versions of the rest it leads to unbalanced decks, depending on who was lucky enough to open a staple or just randomly be in the right color/seat, when one is passed to him. I think it's a fine attempt to try and cut cards, that win the game on their own, but I think you should try and balance the rest as good as possible.
When 2 cards have a very similar powerlevel I usually go for the one with the more interesting effect. In case of my black section I decided to heavily support the sacrifice theme, which is not only a lot more interesting than the mediocre creatures black offers otherwise, but to my surprise, was actually pretty viable and might even be stronger. At the end of the day synergy is often stronger than individual powerlevel.
Edit: I put "bomb" in brackets because I think there isn't really such a thing in a well balanced cube. This incent came from Humphrey in the evaluate everything project, which is why the bomb category was removed and simply switched to staple. Cards like Guardian of the Guildpact and Sprout Swarm are ridiculously strong, but can be beaten. Guardian of the Guildpact has several answers in my cube and as a 2/3 for 4 can be overpowered. Sprout Swarm is mostly a problem against very slow decks, but an aggro can pressure you as much, that it's just too slow to save you and when you only put out a single 1/1 on chump blocking duty for 5 mana each turn, while your opponent continues deploying pressure it can't save you. Blue decks can also just counter it.
See, cubes don't actually have to be balanced, have to have equal amounts of every color, have to have bombs, etc. No matter how unbalanced they are, the fact that everyone gets access to the same pool of cards balances it by default.
So if you take an already balanced cube and make some minor changes, you're not going to magically ruin the cube. Feel free to make as many changes as you want.
Not entirely sure there is inherent gravitation to balance in the form of luck when drafting an unbalanced cube. Sometimes you get the better cards sometimes you don't because sometimes you are tho one opening the booster sometimes you aren't. And if the unbalance is just a couple of cards and the rest is pretty balanced you also need to draw the stonger stuff / the synergies and while not doing so decks tend to be even. But if neither the colors nor the archetypes are balanced and people know about that thats when a cube breaks down to well either I try drafting that or I'll likely lose.
A couple of cards don't break the balance of an already balanced cube so much that it becomes unbalanced but at a certain point it might.
So kind of like a Theseus Cube.
As far as the fixing goes, I cut the Obelisks and the Prophetic Prisms on sticks because no one drafted them and 3 colors while doable in my cube just ends up as a worse deck than a mono or dual colored deck. I replaced them with the Signets
Signets are the better ramp and fixing IMO anyways even for 2.5 or 3 color decks as they come down earlier and always get 2 different colors ionstead of the obelisks while higer variety in colors always only give you one of those.
You keep on pointing out that you have played a constructed deck competitively, and I just want to repeat that that doesn't really mean anything to me (and I assume most of us). If anything, it kind of proves that you're not very good at Magic. Your comments regularly reflect a complete misunderstanding of Limited, and I think that the amount of time that we have spent discussing basic concepts of Limited play, much less Cube play with you, is wearing thin for some of our users. Your lack of interest in getting better at it is frustrating for me.
I have a few questions for you, but otherwise I'm going to step away: If I recall correctly, you got into Cube because you were invited to draft a Cube after a Constructed event and you liked the drafting process. Have you ever drafted a regular MTG set? How often have you done this? Whatever your answer to both questions, I would strongly, strongly encourage you to do it at least 30 more times, ideally over multiple sets. This does not have to replace Cube experience, but I think Cube design (especially Pauper cubes) requires some familiarity with the basic gist of limited. Right now it feels like you're kind of doing a riff on a theme with little to no understanding of the theme itself .
You keep on pointing out that you have played a constructed deck competitively, and I just want to repeat that that doesn't really mean anything to me (and I assume most of us). If anything, it kind of proves that you're not very good at Magic. Your comments regularly reflect a complete misunderstanding of Limited, and I think that the amount of time that we have spent discussing basic concepts of Limited play, much less Cube play with you, is wearing thin for some of our users. Your lack of interest in getting better at it is frustrating for me.
I have a few questions for you, but otherwise I'm going to step away: If I recall correctly, you got into Cube because you were invited to draft a Cube after a Constructed event and you liked the drafting process. Have you ever drafted a regular MTG set? How often have you done this? Whatever your answer to both questions, I would strongly, strongly encourage you to do it at least 30 more times, ideally over multiple sets. This does not have to replace Cube experience, but I think Cube design (especially Pauper cubes) requires some familiarity with the basic gist of limited. Right now it feels like you're kind of doing a riff on a theme with little to no understanding of the theme itself .
No, I've never drafted an actual MTG set. I've never even opened a pack for this game. Whenever I win them I insist on trading them in for store credit. Why would I pay money to gamble, only to get terrible looking soulless PhotoShop garbage?
I almost drafted Ravnica Allegiance once. After the event I was handed a deck someone made and played with that. It was pretty fun. It's the kind of fun, fair, interactive midrange grind that I consider to be Actually Playing Magic(tm). Maybe I'll draft the next set, idk.
The reason why I'm hesitant to draft is because I could instead be doing it with exclusively commons and cards that don't look like dog*****. $12 could get me a foil Ninja of the Deep Hours or old bordered foil Unearth or both an older bordered foil Terminate and an old bordered foil promo Bottle Gnomes.
I don't see why you have to have much experience at this. Cube is just a limited environment for cards you like. If a card is clearly OP or truly unplayable just take it out and put another interesting card in its slot.
There are 3 different outcomes for a Pauper cube:
1.) You build the Nickelback of cubes with 80% of the same cards as everyone else. Someone else made this cube already, so just xerox it. No experience needed here.
2.) You make the Procol Harum or Neutral Milk Hotel of cubes and it's decently balanced, but everyone assumes its terrible unplayable garbage because its different. People will poo-poo any card that's not part of the One True Three Hundred And Sixty anyways, so the criticism you will receive for Pauper cube #2 is indistinguishable from #3. Experience maybe is needed for needed for this, maybe not. But then again, the people shouting you down are experienced and that's only given them their Nickelback cube. Your #2 cube can even start out as a #1 cube, so you don't need any experience for this one.
3.) Your wacky cube is actually very unbalanced and not put together well and everyone dismissing your cube is right by accident because they dismiss everything that's not a powered cube by default. No experience is needed for this.
So in what circumstance is experience needed to cube?
The reason that I think that experience is necessary for Cube design is that it helps you establish a frame of reference for what you like. You don't need to reinvent the wheel like you are since the part of the game that you enjoy already basically exists. Anyone can Cube, and they'll probably figure it out. But I think they'll figure it out quicker if they are starting with a stronger idea of what they are actually looking for, which draft experience (particularly with multiple sets) can help you with.
I would encourage you to draft. It's not too hard to go infinite or semi-infinite on MTGO once you get good, and I don't know how expensive it is to do on Arena. Or, just do what I used to and think of it like entertainment value- paying $10-15 for a night of entertainment plus some chance to recoup your expenses by selling cards back to the store is a pretty good deal. But I think it would make the experience better for you.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My 450 Card Pauper Cube is going through major renovations. Feedback appreciated!
Yeah I'll also step away when you say there are only those three "loaded" outcomes while having different outcomes within this forum.
2.) You make the Procol Harum or Neutral Milk Hotel of cubes and it's decently balanced, but everyone assumes its terrible unplayable garbage because its different.
Me and a lot of other people here have stated the reason of why we think some of the cards are subpar or why we think some cards are better in a different environment. The discussion of garbage because of different was over a long time ago since then we (think we) got your viewpoint and started saying through our expierience and your viewpoint why cards might be suppar/op for your cubes balance. You hardly listen to that and you hardly test neither our recommodations nor your own. Intuition is a good heuristic but its just that definitive results can only be gained trough testing in the envioronment its designed for. Thats where expierience helps.
I "dismiss" a cube if I think it's unbalanced because for me the fun in draft is to build different decks, but if it's unbalanced it basically boils down to get the one dominant strategy and build a slightly different variant of the same deck. It gets even worse if more people caught on then there are X Players fighting for the same cards you get a whole lot of "mirror" matches. Or one player gets the better versions of the needed cards and is more likely to dominate the others. All of that doesn't sound fun to me.
But for an outright dismissal of a whole cube I either need to draft the cube atleast once or have the expierience with similar cards.
If you wanna try something go for it, but if you wanna get feedback from people who tried it out before, but then don't want to take their expierience as valid feedback please don't ask for feedback.
If you wanna give feedback after trying something out (In a draft and games) be our gest as feedback is always valuable even if its coming from another lens.
And if you just want to rant please do that in the appropriate channel. (Rant != Discussion)
It is unlikely that you or I get something from this discussion, I tried to see your points but you won't do the reverse and that won't lead to a healthy discussion, thats why I am also out.
The reason that I think that experience is necessary for Cube design is that it helps you establish a frame of reference for what you like. You don't need to reinvent the wheel like you are since the part of the game that you enjoy already basically exists. Anyone can Cube, and they'll probably figure it out. But I think they'll figure it out quicker if they are starting with a stronger idea of what they are actually looking for, which draft experience (particularly with multiple sets) can help you with.
I would encourage you to draft. It's not too hard to go infinite or semi-infinite on MTGO once you get good, and I don't know how expensive it is to do on Arena. Or, just do what I used to and think of it like entertainment value- paying $10-15 for a night of entertainment plus some chance to recoup your expenses by selling cards back to the store is a pretty good deal. But I think it would make the experience better for you.
I already have a frame of reference for what I like: Fun, fair, interactive Magic with interesting effects (and good looking card art too).
I got this from constructed Pauper.
Maybe I'll draft the next set when I get the chance. I'm sure it's fun. I just don't see why I need experience drafting sets to put Primal Clay or Wei Strike Force in my cube.
IM going to ask everyone to take a set back for a bit on this. We are getting off topic in the offtopic thread... While offtopic has some wiggleroom on what can be posted it does need to remain focused on Pauper and not the impact of draft experience in cube. That belongs in general cube settings. Now we are entering page 4 of the same argument so Im asking all to move past it and continue to refocus on pauper.
If you have questions on this, please PM me so we can discuss this further.
IM going to ask everyone to take a set back for a bit on this. We are getting off topic in the offtopic thread... While offtopic has some wiggleroom on what can be posted it does need to remain focused on Pauper and not the impact of draft experience in cube. That belongs in general cube settings. Now we are entering page 4 of the same argument so Im asking all to move past it and continue to refocus on pauper.
If you have questions on this, please PM me so we can discuss this further.
Ulka
Okay.
Has anyone tried out Flood? Has it been OP/just unfun like I imagine it could get? Has it been underwhelming?
I'll second Al completely- Flood is very strong, but can very easily lead to game states that people find unfun. Tying it back in to a couple of earlier conversations: Flood is one of the cards that makes me wish enchantment destruction was generally more worthwhile for us, because it can define the game in a way that can be difficult for a lot of decks to answer. The reason to run Flood, aside from its raw power level, is that it encourages the drafter to draft Mono- or Mostly-Blue Control, which is a deck that I personally really enjoy drafting. I nearly recommended it for Brainz' Enchantment cube as an archetype enchantment (to support any sort of Blue devotion theme), but decided against it because of its outsized effect on game play.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My 450 Card Pauper Cube is going through major renovations. Feedback appreciated!
I'll second Al completely- Flood is very strong, but can very easily lead to game states that people find unfun. Tying it back in to a couple of earlier conversations: Flood is one of the cards that makes me wish enchantment destruction was generally more worthwhile for us, because it can define the game in a way that can be difficult for a lot of decks to answer. The reason to run Flood, aside from its raw power level, is that it encourages the drafter to draft Mono- or Mostly-Blue Control, which is a deck that I personally really enjoy drafting. I nearly recommended it for Brainz' Enchantment cube as an archetype enchantment (to support any sort of Blue devotion theme), but decided against it because of its outsized effect on game play.
Hmm, yeah. I've been considering it to incentivize mono blue in my cube. Blue is a strong color in my cube but only as splash, not by itself.
The only point at which I'd consider it to be fun, fair, and interactive is when it's only tapping one creature down a turn, ala goldmeadow harrier. I think that there is a blue Goldmeadow Harrier in Planar Chaos, should probably play that instead.
Should it ever tap down more than that it's a problem.
My friend has a more powered Pauper cube with Flood in it, I'll try and look out for it and see how it performs.
I do actually run wear away and rending vines in my cube along with staples like Kor Sanctifiers so there are actually answers for it, but I'm not the biggest fan of rock paper scissors, "have an answer or lose" type of situations.
I have the Reality Acid package in my cube, that's a bit softer of an incentive to run a majority blue deck.
Just like with every single card people tend to loosely call 'op' Flood can be perfectly balanced by giving making other things stronger. Your flood won't do much against 3 aggressive creatures on turn 4 with you having like 3 blue sources in play, but it will surely dominate games in formats where people durdle around.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today, and it won't be you."
What enchantments /artifacts do you consider that deserve having specific responses in a cube? I ask because I have now a modern-only cube, so artifacts like flood are no longer present. So I wan to know if i can excempt myself from having some hate efects just for the sake of having them.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Holiday Armadillo... Cloak
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
I think you're safe. There aren't even that many pre-Modern, and they realized that this was a bad way to design sets somewhere around Masques block. Looking through your Cube, I think you have enough enchantment/artifact stuff going on that the incidental hate is worth running anyway just because it will make gameplay better. But I don't see anything that demands running answers. The better Equipment probably come closest, but I think once creatures are involved, it's pretty easy for people who drafted normally to interact with your game plan.
EDIT: Looking at your Cube, I love the 4x Evolving Wilds. Nice call.
It is not that I am considering adding even more answers, but that I would like to know if, in the case I have to consider in the future maybe removing some of the answers that are there right now, It should really weight against cuting them.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Holiday Armadillo... Cloak
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
Just like with every single card people tend to loosely call 'op' Flood can be perfectly balanced by giving making other things stronger. Your flood won't do much against 3 aggressive creatures on turn 4 with you having like 3 blue sources in play, but it will surely dominate games in formats where people durdle around.
I disagree about bombs in Pauper. You can't actually bring everything up to the level of say, Pestilence. Unlike Vintage cube you can't make the other 359 cards also obnoxious bombs. So the entire format is utterly dominated by the half dozen, dozen bomb cards that are available.
Few things, if any in a Pauper cube will ever rival recurring Crypt Rats with Custodi Squire.
I find it much easier to take these cards out than to try and figure out how to boost the rest of the cube up to their level, even if it's possible.
The cube mine started out as was a powered cube, and it was even more unbalanced than my current Pee-Wee's Playhouse version of it. Nothing could stop an Orzhov deck because those were the two colors with the most bombs.
To be fair, you can't handle the fact that I disagree with you, therefore you just assume I'm trolling despite me genuinely holding these views. Maybe if I wasn't branded a troll I wouldn't feel persecuted.
"Card A is great!"
"What does Card B do? 80% of the same thing as Card A? Total garbage card why don't you play a game of Magic first."
This is the attitude that I find rather frustrating.
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 mean, a significant portion of games are luck based. I'd say your individual game is majority skill, probably like 65% skill, 35% luck. It depends on the decks, for fair decks I'd say that's accurate, for matchups between brain dead count to 20 decks like Burn or Bogles it's essentially a coin flip. You have no control over the board state because your deck plays itself, and so does your opponent. So the luck percentage for those decks is like 90% as long as no ones makes any blunders mulliganing.
Where I get the 60% number is matchup luck. If I play a deck that autoloses to Tron but I never face Tron, then luck has carried me. I have no qualms admitting that I get lucky. When I top foured a Pauper 1k the streamers interviewed me and they pointed out an error in my play that I wasn't punished for or whatever and I said, "Better lucky than good."
To be clear, that 60% number doesn't translate to cube unless you have a particularly degenerate cube (say, vintage cube). Luck is at a minimum in cube since it's all fair decks facing each other and there is no netdecking, just card evaluation skill and working with what you have.
I'm aware that I'm providing that. I don't really value anyone's experience with this game, it's not Chess. It's just a dumb card game. So I just think certain things are right or wrong independent of how much experience someone has. Experience only matters for complex things like chess, brain surgery, etc. Otherwise it's just an ad hominem to attack others for their lack of experience.
In fact, the more experienced someone is at this game, the more crusty their views get. Right now Pauper is utterly dominated by Gush + Foil and yet there are still people that will say, "Foil? Bad card, 3 for 1'ing yourself is never good" even though discarding extra cards you don't need doesn't matter and isn't card disadvantage. But since someone wrote about card advantage doctrine on The Dojo 20 years ago, all that matters is repeating doctrine in order to sound smart.
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.
But Expierience alone is not that useful without any retrospection to that expierience.
If you keep making the same mistakes without thinking about them no amount of expierience helps you with that, but the more you tink about why those expieriences occur the more you can increase your skill.
That is one of the reasons I think discussing stuff is beneficial to all if done right.
So do those that argue with you.
Reading meta is also a skill, I agree that some decks are easier to pilot and that in sealed you might get a bad pool but in general skill is still needed. Especially to succeed continuosly.
Yes but as i said beforeif you take things in a vaacuum you will always be surprised if it doesn't work out or works out better than expected foil by itself is not that great by itself (still a free spell though) but with gush it becomes a decent card.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
2) When drafting sets/cube with 2 players, I usually Winchester. However, when doing Winchester with a Pauper cube, I find the decks are a little shallow, as seeing only 90 cards (and drafting about 45 each) makes it hard to go deep on any archetype/synergy. 2-player sealed (90 each), on the other hand, seems to produce more interesting decks. The problem with sealed in other formats is usually that one pool is unfairly better (e.g. has good rares in its most common colors), but so far I feel like the pools tend to be evenly matched at Pauper cube's power level. What are others' experiences at 2-player cube?
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
I prefer Magic to Chess but do acknowledge that my tastes in this matter are lesser and that Chess is objectively the best game.
I'll spare you the rant on how I don't think art or human experience in general is subjective.
Maximizing the odds are why I play this game. That's something I care about. The (pre-soulless PhotoShop garbage) cards are pretty sure, but I'm not going to play a game with an equal amount of depth as Candyland.
As far as the fixing goes, I cut the Obelisks and the Prophetic Prisms on sticks because no one drafted them and 3 colors while doable in my cube just ends up as a worse deck than a mono or dual colored deck. I replaced them with the Signets because I like the art on them.
I don't approach the game from a perspective of trying to get better at it here because I'm discussing cube. Otherwise I like playing competitive pauper (despite the likes of bull***** decks like Tron). Here is the Mono Black Control deck that I top foured a 1k with: https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=20757&d=337081&f=PAU
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.
1.) Either during actual drafts or test drafts on cubetutor I'll make a mental note of which cards are too good or too bad. If something is unfun or too dominant it gets taken out, and likewise if something is truly unplayable where I can't even convince myself to play it (say, something like Ghazban Ogre or Tolarian Drake) then I take it out. There is also just plain intuition. Swapping a Doom Blade for an edict or for something like Demonic Torment can just be done without any testing.
See, cubes don't actually have to be balanced, have to have equal amounts of every color, have to have bombs, etc. No matter how unbalanced they are, the fact that everyone gets access to the same pool of cards balances it by default.
So if you take an already balanced cube and make some minor changes, you're not going to magically ruin the cube. Feel free to make as many changes as you want.
2.) At 2 players I've only ever played sealed, so I wouldn't know.
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.
When 2 cards have a very similar powerlevel I usually go for the one with the more interesting effect. In case of my black section I decided to heavily support the sacrifice theme, which is not only a lot more interesting than the mediocre creatures black offers otherwise, but to my surprise, was actually pretty viable and might even be stronger. At the end of the day synergy is often stronger than individual powerlevel.
Edit: I put "bomb" in brackets because I think there isn't really such a thing in a well balanced cube. This incent came from Humphrey in the evaluate everything project, which is why the bomb category was removed and simply switched to staple. Cards like Guardian of the Guildpact and Sprout Swarm are ridiculously strong, but can be beaten.
Guardian of the Guildpact has several answers in my cube and as a 2/3 for 4 can be overpowered.
Sprout Swarm is mostly a problem against very slow decks, but an aggro can pressure you as much, that it's just too slow to save you and when you only put out a single 1/1 on chump blocking duty for 5 mana each turn, while your opponent continues deploying pressure it can't save you. Blue decks can also just counter it.
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
Interested in building your own Pauper Cube? Take a look at some of the lists and the following project: The "Evaluate Everything" Project (updated to M21/JMP)
Not entirely sure there is inherent gravitation to balance in the form of luck when drafting an unbalanced cube. Sometimes you get the better cards sometimes you don't because sometimes you are tho one opening the booster sometimes you aren't. And if the unbalance is just a couple of cards and the rest is pretty balanced you also need to draw the stonger stuff / the synergies and while not doing so decks tend to be even. But if neither the colors nor the archetypes are balanced and people know about that thats when a cube breaks down to well either I try drafting that or I'll likely lose.
A couple of cards don't break the balance of an already balanced cube so much that it becomes unbalanced but at a certain point it might.
So kind of like a Theseus Cube.
Signets are the better ramp and fixing IMO anyways even for 2.5 or 3 color decks as they come down earlier and always get 2 different colors ionstead of the obelisks while higer variety in colors always only give you one of those.
I have a few questions for you, but otherwise I'm going to step away: If I recall correctly, you got into Cube because you were invited to draft a Cube after a Constructed event and you liked the drafting process. Have you ever drafted a regular MTG set? How often have you done this? Whatever your answer to both questions, I would strongly, strongly encourage you to do it at least 30 more times, ideally over multiple sets. This does not have to replace Cube experience, but I think Cube design (especially Pauper cubes) requires some familiarity with the basic gist of limited. Right now it feels like you're kind of doing a riff on a theme with little to no understanding of the theme itself .
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
No, I've never drafted an actual MTG set. I've never even opened a pack for this game. Whenever I win them I insist on trading them in for store credit. Why would I pay money to gamble, only to get terrible looking soulless PhotoShop garbage?
I almost drafted Ravnica Allegiance once. After the event I was handed a deck someone made and played with that. It was pretty fun. It's the kind of fun, fair, interactive midrange grind that I consider to be Actually Playing Magic(tm). Maybe I'll draft the next set, idk.
The reason why I'm hesitant to draft is because I could instead be doing it with exclusively commons and cards that don't look like dog*****. $12 could get me a foil Ninja of the Deep Hours or old bordered foil Unearth or both an older bordered foil Terminate and an old bordered foil promo Bottle Gnomes.
I don't see why you have to have much experience at this. Cube is just a limited environment for cards you like. If a card is clearly OP or truly unplayable just take it out and put another interesting card in its slot.
There are 3 different outcomes for a Pauper cube:
1.) You build the Nickelback of cubes with 80% of the same cards as everyone else. Someone else made this cube already, so just xerox it. No experience needed here.
2.) You make the Procol Harum or Neutral Milk Hotel of cubes and it's decently balanced, but everyone assumes its terrible unplayable garbage because its different. People will poo-poo any card that's not part of the One True Three Hundred And Sixty anyways, so the criticism you will receive for Pauper cube #2 is indistinguishable from #3. Experience maybe is needed for needed for this, maybe not. But then again, the people shouting you down are experienced and that's only given them their Nickelback cube. Your #2 cube can even start out as a #1 cube, so you don't need any experience for this one.
3.) Your wacky cube is actually very unbalanced and not put together well and everyone dismissing your cube is right by accident because they dismiss everything that's not a powered cube by default. No experience is needed for this.
So in what circumstance is experience needed to 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 would encourage you to draft. It's not too hard to go infinite or semi-infinite on MTGO once you get good, and I don't know how expensive it is to do on Arena. Or, just do what I used to and think of it like entertainment value- paying $10-15 for a night of entertainment plus some chance to recoup your expenses by selling cards back to the store is a pretty good deal. But I think it would make the experience better for you.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
Me and a lot of other people here have stated the reason of why we think some of the cards are subpar or why we think some cards are better in a different environment. The discussion of garbage because of different was over a long time ago since then we (think we) got your viewpoint and started saying through our expierience and your viewpoint why cards might be suppar/op for your cubes balance. You hardly listen to that and you hardly test neither our recommodations nor your own. Intuition is a good heuristic but its just that definitive results can only be gained trough testing in the envioronment its designed for. Thats where expierience helps.
I "dismiss" a cube if I think it's unbalanced because for me the fun in draft is to build different decks, but if it's unbalanced it basically boils down to get the one dominant strategy and build a slightly different variant of the same deck. It gets even worse if more people caught on then there are X Players fighting for the same cards you get a whole lot of "mirror" matches. Or one player gets the better versions of the needed cards and is more likely to dominate the others. All of that doesn't sound fun to me.
But for an outright dismissal of a whole cube I either need to draft the cube atleast once or have the expierience with similar cards.
If you wanna try something go for it, but if you wanna get feedback from people who tried it out before, but then don't want to take their expierience as valid feedback please don't ask for feedback.
If you wanna give feedback after trying something out (In a draft and games) be our gest as feedback is always valuable even if its coming from another lens.
And if you just want to rant please do that in the appropriate channel. (Rant != Discussion)
It is unlikely that you or I get something from this discussion, I tried to see your points but you won't do the reverse and that won't lead to a healthy discussion, thats why I am also out.
I already have a frame of reference for what I like: Fun, fair, interactive Magic with interesting effects (and good looking card art too).
I got this from constructed Pauper.
Maybe I'll draft the next set when I get the chance. I'm sure it's fun. I just don't see why I need experience drafting sets to put Primal Clay or Wei Strike Force in my 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.
If you have questions on this, please PM me so we can discuss this further.
Ulka
Okay.
Has anyone tried out Flood? Has it been OP/just unfun like I imagine it could get? Has it been underwhelming?
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.
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
Interested in building your own Pauper Cube? Take a look at some of the lists and the following project: The "Evaluate Everything" Project (updated to M21/JMP)
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
Hmm, yeah. I've been considering it to incentivize mono blue in my cube. Blue is a strong color in my cube but only as splash, not by itself.
The only point at which I'd consider it to be fun, fair, and interactive is when it's only tapping one creature down a turn, ala goldmeadow harrier. I think that there is a blue Goldmeadow Harrier in Planar Chaos, should probably play that instead.
Should it ever tap down more than that it's a problem.
My friend has a more powered Pauper cube with Flood in it, I'll try and look out for it and see how it performs.
I do actually run wear away and rending vines in my cube along with staples like Kor Sanctifiers so there are actually answers for it, but I'm not the biggest fan of rock paper scissors, "have an answer or lose" type of situations.
I have the Reality Acid package in my cube, that's a bit softer of an incentive to run a majority blue deck.
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.
- Last Word
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
EDIT: Looking at your Cube, I love the 4x Evolving Wilds. Nice call.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
It is not that I am considering adding even more answers, but that I would like to know if, in the case I have to consider in the future maybe removing some of the answers that are there right now, It should really weight against cuting them.
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
I disagree about bombs in Pauper. You can't actually bring everything up to the level of say, Pestilence. Unlike Vintage cube you can't make the other 359 cards also obnoxious bombs. So the entire format is utterly dominated by the half dozen, dozen bomb cards that are available.
Few things, if any in a Pauper cube will ever rival recurring Crypt Rats with Custodi Squire.
I find it much easier to take these cards out than to try and figure out how to boost the rest of the cube up to their level, even if it's possible.
The cube mine started out as was a powered cube, and it was even more unbalanced than my current Pee-Wee's Playhouse version of it. Nothing could stop an Orzhov deck because those were the two colors with the most bombs.
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.