Had a thread idea earlier today and wanted to gauge whether there's interest for something like this.
This forum does an excellent job of evaluating cards during spoiler season. But, we don't really have much discussion revisiting those sets and talking about which cards are working, which cards aren't working, and why. The closest thing we have to that is the annual Average Cube posts (which are great btw). What if we did something every 3-6 months that revisited a group of recent sets?
A general testing thread is a great idea. It would be an excellent place for people to post whenever they get the chance to test. I know I cube infrequently and I always have the interesting cards seeded in packs. I also have gotten to play the retail limited environments and would be happy to add any insight I have gleaned.
Does anyone have a strong opinion about Wonder? It's a card that has interested me for a while, but very few seem to include it in their cubes. Not especially hard to get into the graveyard and is a reasonable (although not great) rattlesnake. Anger is also interesting, but red's move towards impulse drawing makes it less appealing.
I remain a big fan of the GY Incarnations and still even run Valor since the effects are just so strong. I also have live experience playing with them and I think that they remain really strong. Wonder, in particular, can help any big finishers that have their other bases covered also get evasion in decks like Reanimator. Given how much more (aggressive) looting we have access to these days, the incarnations ought to be better than they have ever been, unless the corresponding proliferation of associated keywords counts as a larger opposite factor.
I imagine you guys are going to include Mentor of the Meek now that it was downgraded to uncommon, right? I have it in my list since I started cubing and it's been very useful.
I recently cut it from my Peasant 540 Cube because it felt overpowered most of the times, and we decided that having only one silvered border card wasn't even that instersting at all. At first it was novelty, it was first picked from every pack most of the times and we had much fun looking at the booster the caster opened. Nevertheless, the novelty went away pretty fast and it started getting annoying; the whole process of opening a pack, looking at the cards, and deciding on what was the best option usually took a longer time than we liked. Also, the effect is pretty powerful and the person casting it usually took the game.
In the beginning, our rule zero was to maintain the chosen cards in the draft deck, but that was changed quickly when decks started getting obscene by round 3. We found out pretty easily that we had made a mistake with this rule, lol.
Being that I own a 540 card Cube and we usually play 6-player pods, there were generally many boosters to pick from, so that wasn't a problem. But, I do realize that for 360 Cubes that play in 8-player pods, the number of remaining boosters is a problem. Another negative point towards Booster Tutor.
What is the forum's general consensus on Booster Tutor?
What is your rule zero regarding if the cards stay or not in the deck?
Do you still run it in general, or have you guys cut it from your Cubes aswell?
Booster Tutor doesn't have that 'obviously funny' vibe, so I don't mind it as a silver-bordered card. It is not a card I would never cut, but it's fun and I'd rather keep it before I add a mediocre filler card to my black section.
Booster Tutor is basically a cantrip like Preordain. Only at instant speed and with more cards you see. But considering that in a 15 card pack there are usually ~10 cards that don't fit into your deck, either because they're not in your colors or because they just don't fit your game plan I would say that it's like instant speed Preordain with scry 4 instead of 2, but you can't draw a basic land. Is that good? Sure. Is is gamebreaking? Not from my pov.
You can always reduce the size of the packs opened if you think 15 cards is too much. We burn draft with 12 card packs and so Booster Tutor packs are 12 cards as well.
Never had a problem with the time it takes to choose a card, it's fun to look at the pack and choosing a card doesn't take long if the player knows the cube and how to play Magic.
I love my Booster Tutor specifically, signed by Christopher Rush with the added text of "Draft a Land!" written out.
It's also a very fun card because you are allowed to buy a booster as normally intended and add that card. I remember the time I needed a black-mana producing land from a Khans of Tarkir pack and opening a Bloodfell Caves, an Opulent Palace, and the Bloodstained Mire I eventually placed and cracked for a basic Swamp.
Came across this article today about cube manabases, and wanted to put it out for our consideration. The author is one of the co-hosts of the lucky paper radio podcast and they recommend quite a bit more lands/fixing than seems to be common practice for us peasant cubers.
In the article and in the most recent episode of their podcast, they recommend that approximately 17% of the cube be lands (e.g., 60 lands in a 360 card cube). They also note that after looking at many lists on CubeCobra, ~8% seems to be the most commonly used % for lands, but they argue that number may be based on cubetutor's old average cube feature, the number of top-tier lands available in non-rarity restricted cubes, and inertia (people copying/building off of other people's lists). I found that interesting because, after a quick look at some of the 360 and 450 card lists on here, most of us seem to be running 20-30 lands. That works out to about 4.5% to 8.3% lands.
Anyways, this got me thinking, could we/should we run a higher percentage of lands than we do at Peasant? 17% seems excessively high, especially since Peasant tends to play more like high-powered limited vs. the way a legacy cube plays more like constructed. But, maybe there's a sweet spot between where we're at and 17% that would open up new design space/play options for our drafters. I just don't know and wanted to throw it out there to see what others think.
As for me, I've never felt like my drafters or decks have hurt for fixing, but I've also intentionally limited the number of double-pipped cards in my list, especially at 2 cmc. I'm also concerned that adding more fixing will disproportionately benefits midrange and control decks compared to aggro since most of our fixing lands ETB tapped (which isn't a concern for the author). And, having made this mistake before, if you don't take steps to ensure that aggro is viable, things can turn into Sultai slogfests while aggressive cards consistently wheel.
Interesting article, but I don't know that I would enjoy a draft where too many playable cards were replaced with lands. I run 33/405 (just over 8%), and I'm never excited to see lands. I accept that they are important, but they aren't exciting.
From the article:
There is a common misconception that an abundance of mana fixing causes a cube to devolve into “five-color good stuff” decks, which many designers abhor. The theory is that with enough mana-fixing lands, players can just take any and all non-basics and every powerful card they’re passed, regardless of color, and wind up with a competitive deck.
I'll admit, this was the first place my mind went. I've had a couple players successfully draft 4- or 5-color goodstuff on less fixing than I currently run (I recently straight-up added the 5 Thriving Gates to my cube card count). Given that, if I were to double the amount of fixing land, it seems inevitable that more people would attempt this and would do so even more successfully.
I suppose it depends on what your cube goals are. In Peasant, I expect most people to draft 2-color and maybe occasionally splash a third. So, yes, I've deliberately kept fixing at a level that feels adequate without making it too easy. Compare that to my Tiny Leaders cube, where I expect and encourage 3-4 color decks, and I chose to artificially inflate access by giving every player 4 mana-fixing lands that were not in the draft pool (in part to speed up an already slow draft).
And yes, my experience may be skewed by a cube that is, by design, a bit weaker on pure aggro.
It seems like I have around 9,0% and honestly, there has been no issue with that thus far. Though, I also think that most Peasant lists have something rather important over standard Cubes in this respect: we include a lot fewer strictly colour-paired duals. Most of our fixing tends to be more flexible than that which likely results in higher percentages of maindecked fixing. Additionally, the article seems to be striving towards something more similar to constructed whereas Peasant is still largely more akin to standard drafts by default.
I had thought my Cube was relatively high on mana-fixing lands, but actually sat under 10% (48/512). I am now raising that up to replace the 5 non-guild lands I had previously cut when adding the Gates from CLB, to get myself up to 10.35%. Honestly, I could see myself trying even another cycle of guild lands to push myself over 12%. The most striking part of the article to me was the analysis of "uncastable" cards per draft pool based on the density of fixing lands in cube, ranging from 2-3% up to 18-19%, which ranged from 6.45 to 8.23 based on CubeCobra deck analysis.
["Uncastable" was defined as "if it was in the sideboard of the deck in question and of a color matching two or fewer maindeck cards (excluding colorless spells.)"]
Taking it as a given that any draft pool has ~31 cards between maindeck spells (23-24) and uncastable spells (7-8), what should those other ~14 cards be? The article breaks those into 5 likely categories: ALL lands (fixing or not), conditional spells for the sideboard, archetype-support cards, hard to cast spells in your colors, and relative weak spells. For cube in general, we do not want any cards in last category. For Peasant, we have already cut a lot of the double-pip spells at 2 and 3 mana. This leaves lands, conditional spells, and archetype-support cards.
In my mind, I think fixing lands should count like archetype-support cards, given how much their presence can improve the deck quality for specific colors. I also believe "fixing as archetype-support" helps re-conceptualize seeing lands late in packs. What does it mean about a draft if Ainok Bond-Kin goes late? Or Exhume? Or Kiln Fiend? Typically, it means that archetype is not being drafted. So why should a late Simic Growth Chamber feel any different?
I do also think the limits of Peasant cap the true upside of fixing for our CUbes. The lack of non-ETB fixing does limit the ability for aggro to benefit from good fixing. The Fetch-Shock lands in particular can actually benefit aggro vs control, since it forces control decks to lose life in order to keep up with good early game fixing. As mentioned before, we have also reduced the double-colored spells at lower mana values, which reflects the lower-quality fixing that we have.
To fight the 4- to 5-color menace, it is recommended to continue buffing aggro and replace generic value spells which better archetype support. Taking out the least-powered generic value spells is already a great way to find room for more fixing as well. I am already noting plenty of things that can come out of my Cube if I ever want to dive into a further cube revamp.
I doubt that we will get enough cards for a proper thread from the WH40K commander stuff (unless they go heavy on the non-rares) but damn, Noise Marine is tempting.
We used to have threads for the annual commander releases, even if the only real card we got some years was just Heirloom Blade or Ash Barrens. Noise Marine seems cubeable to me so I think we should make a thread.
Can we just do like a homing beacon? I know that a long time ago I did meet someone from this forum (and had a nice day out of it), and it's been long enough that it's possible two of our.... baker's dozen members are within driving distance of one another. Other than N00binator, of course.
I wish all archetypes could be equally hated. Or loved, but the former better reflects the mindset of the vocal portion of the player base. My 540ish Peasant Cube on Cubetutor
Though, I specifically live in Kuopio which is far from most places and would have to physically update my CU/be since I have not been keeping it up to date because of stuff like covid.
Though, I specifically live in Kuopio which is far from most places and would have to physically update my CU/be since I have not been keeping it up to date because of stuff like covid.
I would be game to make the trip at some point (from Turku)
It's not like Kuopio's unfamiliar to me, I'm originally from the area!
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I wish all archetypes could be equally hated. Or loved, but the former better reflects the mindset of the vocal portion of the player base. My 540ish Peasant Cube on Cubetutor
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A general testing thread is a great idea. It would be an excellent place for people to post whenever they get the chance to test. I know I cube infrequently and I always have the interesting cards seeded in packs. I also have gotten to play the retail limited environments and would be happy to add any insight I have gleaned.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
My 2-Player Signed Legacy Cube
My Lord of the Rings Cube
(360, Peasant, Unpowered)
My 2-Player Signed Legacy Cube
My Lord of the Rings Cube
I wanted to start a discussion on Booster Tutor.
I recently cut it from my Peasant 540 Cube because it felt overpowered most of the times, and we decided that having only one silvered border card wasn't even that instersting at all. At first it was novelty, it was first picked from every pack most of the times and we had much fun looking at the booster the caster opened. Nevertheless, the novelty went away pretty fast and it started getting annoying; the whole process of opening a pack, looking at the cards, and deciding on what was the best option usually took a longer time than we liked. Also, the effect is pretty powerful and the person casting it usually took the game.
In the beginning, our rule zero was to maintain the chosen cards in the draft deck, but that was changed quickly when decks started getting obscene by round 3. We found out pretty easily that we had made a mistake with this rule, lol.
Being that I own a 540 card Cube and we usually play 6-player pods, there were generally many boosters to pick from, so that wasn't a problem. But, I do realize that for 360 Cubes that play in 8-player pods, the number of remaining boosters is a problem. Another negative point towards Booster Tutor.
What is the forum's general consensus on Booster Tutor?
What is your rule zero regarding if the cards stay or not in the deck?
Do you still run it in general, or have you guys cut it from your Cubes aswell?
My Peasant Cube - CubeCobra
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
Booster Tutor is basically a cantrip like Preordain. Only at instant speed and with more cards you see. But considering that in a 15 card pack there are usually ~10 cards that don't fit into your deck, either because they're not in your colors or because they just don't fit your game plan I would say that it's like instant speed Preordain with scry 4 instead of 2, but you can't draw a basic land. Is that good? Sure. Is is gamebreaking? Not from my pov.
You can always reduce the size of the packs opened if you think 15 cards is too much. We burn draft with 12 card packs and so Booster Tutor packs are 12 cards as well.
Never had a problem with the time it takes to choose a card, it's fun to look at the pack and choosing a card doesn't take long if the player knows the cube and how to play Magic.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
It's also a very fun card because you are allowed to buy a booster as normally intended and add that card. I remember the time I needed a black-mana producing land from a Khans of Tarkir pack and opening a Bloodfell Caves, an Opulent Palace, and the Bloodstained Mire I eventually placed and cracked for a basic Swamp.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
In the article and in the most recent episode of their podcast, they recommend that approximately 17% of the cube be lands (e.g., 60 lands in a 360 card cube). They also note that after looking at many lists on CubeCobra, ~8% seems to be the most commonly used % for lands, but they argue that number may be based on cubetutor's old average cube feature, the number of top-tier lands available in non-rarity restricted cubes, and inertia (people copying/building off of other people's lists). I found that interesting because, after a quick look at some of the 360 and 450 card lists on here, most of us seem to be running 20-30 lands. That works out to about 4.5% to 8.3% lands.
Anyways, this got me thinking, could we/should we run a higher percentage of lands than we do at Peasant? 17% seems excessively high, especially since Peasant tends to play more like high-powered limited vs. the way a legacy cube plays more like constructed. But, maybe there's a sweet spot between where we're at and 17% that would open up new design space/play options for our drafters. I just don't know and wanted to throw it out there to see what others think.
As for me, I've never felt like my drafters or decks have hurt for fixing, but I've also intentionally limited the number of double-pipped cards in my list, especially at 2 cmc. I'm also concerned that adding more fixing will disproportionately benefits midrange and control decks compared to aggro since most of our fixing lands ETB tapped (which isn't a concern for the author). And, having made this mistake before, if you don't take steps to ensure that aggro is viable, things can turn into Sultai slogfests while aggressive cards consistently wheel.
From the article:
I'll admit, this was the first place my mind went. I've had a couple players successfully draft 4- or 5-color goodstuff on less fixing than I currently run (I recently straight-up added the 5 Thriving Gates to my cube card count). Given that, if I were to double the amount of fixing land, it seems inevitable that more people would attempt this and would do so even more successfully.
I suppose it depends on what your cube goals are. In Peasant, I expect most people to draft 2-color and maybe occasionally splash a third. So, yes, I've deliberately kept fixing at a level that feels adequate without making it too easy. Compare that to my Tiny Leaders cube, where I expect and encourage 3-4 color decks, and I chose to artificially inflate access by giving every player 4 mana-fixing lands that were not in the draft pool (in part to speed up an already slow draft).
And yes, my experience may be skewed by a cube that is, by design, a bit weaker on pure aggro.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
I only skimmed through it, though.
["Uncastable" was defined as "if it was in the sideboard of the deck in question and of a color matching two or fewer maindeck cards (excluding colorless spells.)"]
Taking it as a given that any draft pool has ~31 cards between maindeck spells (23-24) and uncastable spells (7-8), what should those other ~14 cards be? The article breaks those into 5 likely categories: ALL lands (fixing or not), conditional spells for the sideboard, archetype-support cards, hard to cast spells in your colors, and relative weak spells. For cube in general, we do not want any cards in last category. For Peasant, we have already cut a lot of the double-pip spells at 2 and 3 mana. This leaves lands, conditional spells, and archetype-support cards.
In my mind, I think fixing lands should count like archetype-support cards, given how much their presence can improve the deck quality for specific colors. I also believe "fixing as archetype-support" helps re-conceptualize seeing lands late in packs. What does it mean about a draft if Ainok Bond-Kin goes late? Or Exhume? Or Kiln Fiend? Typically, it means that archetype is not being drafted. So why should a late Simic Growth Chamber feel any different?
I do also think the limits of Peasant cap the true upside of fixing for our CUbes. The lack of non-ETB fixing does limit the ability for aggro to benefit from good fixing. The Fetch-Shock lands in particular can actually benefit aggro vs control, since it forces control decks to lose life in order to keep up with good early game fixing. As mentioned before, we have also reduced the double-colored spells at lower mana values, which reflects the lower-quality fixing that we have.
To fight the 4- to 5-color menace, it is recommended to continue buffing aggro and replace generic value spells which better archetype support. Taking out the least-powered generic value spells is already a great way to find room for more fixing as well. I am already noting plenty of things that can come out of my Cube if I ever want to dive into a further cube revamp.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/peasantsnowcube
-- Updated with Outlaws of Thunder Junction
The PioneWer Peasant CUbe
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pionewer
-- Updated with Murders at Karlov Manor
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
I'm right by NYC
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
My 540ish Peasant Cube on Cubetutor
Though, I specifically live in Kuopio which is far from most places and would have to physically update my CU/be since I have not been keeping it up to date because of stuff like covid.
I would be game to make the trip at some point (from Turku)
It's not like Kuopio's unfamiliar to me, I'm originally from the area!
My 540ish Peasant Cube on Cubetutor