There are no defined archetypes for the guilds. Instead I wanted people to make the aggro, control, or midrange decks possible. White/Red are primarily aggro. Blue/Black are primarily control. Green is primarily midrange/ramp.
If you feel like a card is weak or that a card is not the cube that should be in the cube let me know. I want to have a discussion about any and all cards :).
Cards I purposely excluded were
Skullclamp
Library of Alexandria
Force of Will
Mana Drain
Demonic Tutor
Strip Mine
Wasteland
Secondly, did you exclude the listed cards based on price or power level? I'm guessing power level, since you do run some other expensive cards. I think FoW and Demonic Tutor are both actually fine, because the best you're going to tutor for is an uncommon, and the best you'll FoW is an uncommon as well. Not to say uncs are by definition weak, but you won't get combo's that're too degenerate.
Furthermore, a lot of people here have found Loxodon Warhammer and Behemoth Sledge to be extremely strong cards, and I myself have banned them from my cube, since they tend to make games very one-sided.
Also, whilst not THE most important bit, I'd try to balance your guilds, as they are a bit unbalanced now. Most people here use a different system for Hybrids, where they count hybrids as half a card of each colour. So, for example, Kitchen Finks would take up half a green and half a white slot, so with a Kitchen Finks and a Dryad Militant you'd fill up a green and a white slot. This because of the fact that both Kitchen Finks and Militant can be played in non-Selesnya G and W decks.
Other than that, you just have to test a lot to see what works for you and your friends.
In Blue 1 you could include Cloudfin Raptor. Black's missing Gurmag Angler, although I haven't seen many ways of cheaply putting cards into your graveyard. Ashes to Ashes is a pretty spicy piece of removal that I don't see here. I'm not too sold on Enslave, 6 mana is so expensive even if you are stealing a creature. The two Shrines seem a bit too narrow. Black probably needs more sustain in terms of life gain or something so it can actually set up and begin doing Black things.
Honden of Seeing Winds cost 5 mana and takes several turns before it pays itself off. The Red Shrine is an unanswerable Prodigal Pyromancer. I would pay this with commons only, but I assume that the overall power level is substantially higher here.
I'm more of a Pauper person, so those are my thoughts at a glance.
Also in regards to people being removing Loxodon Warhammer. Really? Do people get that upset when they lose to life gain? I'm sorry to inform people who play aggro decks that there is a fatal flaw in their strategy and that is the opponent can just gain life back that you've painstakingly reduced. It definitely isn't nearly as broken as Skullclamp. What's the interaction there? Hope your opponent doesn't draw Skullclamp?
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There's no word in the goblin language for "strategy." Then again, there's no word in the goblin language for "word."
Also in regards to people being removing Loxodon Warhammer. Really? Do people get that upset when they lose to life gain? I'm sorry to inform people who play aggro decks that there is a fatal flaw in their strategy and that is the opponent can just gain life back that you've painstakingly reduced. It definitely isn't nearly as broken as Skullclamp. What's the interaction there? Hope your opponent doesn't draw Skullclamp?
The reason I removed it from me cube was that it is a bomb to which there are too few answers. Some colors have none at all. Moreover, most good asnwers are not maindeckable. So I had two choices: removing interesting cards for cards like Disenchant which will mostly end up in the sideboard or to just cut the Warhammer.
On the other hand, I do run Warhammer (and Skullclamp and Behemoth Sledge). Hammer and Sledge can really just run away with a game if they aren't answered in some way fairly quickly. The life gain combined with the buff and the trample makes them hard to fight against in combat. And if you can't answer them with a clean artifact killer, every creature your opponent plays after them turns into bomb stats even if it's just a plain bear. I've been on the other side of a Warhammer with no answer and felt like I just lost to that one card before, so I can understand why some groups choose to not run it.
For me, though, I enjoy having cards like that at the peasant level. Peasant cube in general feels like a very good very powerful limited format. All of the cards either contribute to a supported deck or archetype or are just really powerful in their own right. Cards like Warhammer and Clamp feel like you opened a bomb in your draft and I think that makes the format more appealing to my group specifically. We have several guys, myself included, who really enjoy regular old limited, so peasant cube with powerful cards like this is right up our alley.
There are cards that are way better than Warhammer as well. Grafted Wargear, Heirloom blade, and curse of predation to name a few. 3 mana to play and then 3 mana to equip Warhammer is a lot, and it your dude gets bounced or killed then it's a complete tempo blow out.
Loxodon Warhammer reminds me of Dream Trawler in standard. They are both difficult to answer (excludingcounterspelling them when they are attempted to cast) and both win due to swinging life totals and through card advantage. They are by no means undealable, however I find most players put their blinders on when deck building ignoring the format's major threats and instead focusing on min-maxing their own game plan. What ends up happening is you end up with a bunch of seemingly balanced decks until they actually run into something they can't deal with (which tends to happen when very good players are at the table).
The thing about being a cube maker is you tend to privy to the accumulated knowledge of years of people honing their archetypes (often with some very good players in the mix). So you tend to know what's very good, however the average player of your cube doesn't know these intricacies, so you need to be aware of that. I tend to explain what the typically power level is of the common bombs. I don't really go into detail about how strong Mana Leak is, players just have to learn that. However I will take the time to explain Guardian of the Guildpact and Blastoderm because it can feel unfair losing to these cards after passing them. Also I typically remind people Lightning Bolt exists.
The main issue with Loxodon Warhammer is that it has no generic answers. Artiact removal does exist, but even if you has access to it there's no guarantee that they have it in time considering 1-2 Warhammer swings can create a huge enough life swing to end the game shortly. Instant speed removal is also effective, but doesn't actually do anything unless you have a winning board state. Blocking can work in incredibly niche scenarios that typically lose to a single removal spell. Attacking is a joke unless you've already won. The only decks that can consistently deal with Warhammer is hard control or aggro decks that can reasonably win on t4-5.
Most other bombs in Peasant are generically answerable or have a lower floor. Curse of Predation can be answered through removal or combat, and is dead if you're on the backfoot. Grafted Wargear has difficulty with chump blockers and is almost purely offensive. Heirloom Blade might have a higher floor, but value can generally be answered with value. Skullclamp might be incredibly efficient, but it also can be interacted with on most axes. All these cards also need some degree of deckbuilding setup, which means they'll often be played in non-optimal situations due to their powerlevel. Warhammer's deckbuilding restriction is having a non-trivial number of creatures.
Of course you can include a lot of cards that make Warhammer worse like DJRedLantern has. Kor Sanctifiers, Reclaimation Sage, Thrashing Brontodon, Wickerbough Elder, Acidic Slime, Duress, Tumble Magnet, and Icy Manipulator all work very well against it. However, many of those cards aren't staples or their inclusion is dependent on one's philosophy around artifacts and enchantments and how to deal with them. I personally run none of those cards. Having a high amount of Nekrataal effects also makes it easier for the Warhammer player to run out of creatures, but having so many Nekrataals makes for incredibly bad gameplay in my experience. Having to make a number of changes to balance a card is not the sign of a healthy inclusion.
Even if you have a cube that is "Warhammer proof" where there are enough answers for it, why should you include it? Warhammer isn't terribly fun for either player. Whenever Warhammer was played in my cube all I thought was "that card is really dumb" and then wondered if the game was over or if they had an answer. Skullclamp, Curse of Predation, Heirloom Blade, etc. can all make reasonably interesting and fun games if they stick on the board, but an unanswered Warhammer + equip forces the game to end incredibly quickly. Even something like Sol Ring creates far fewer non-game scenarios than Warhammer.
Of course you can include a lot of cards that make Warhammer worse like DJRedLantern has. Kor Sanctifiers, Reclaimation Sage, Thrashing Brontodon, Wickerbough Elder, Acidic Slime, Duress, Tumble Magnet, and Icy Manipulator all work very well against it. However, many of those cards aren't staples or their inclusion is dependent on one's philosophy around artifacts and enchantments and how to deal with them. I personally run none of those cards. ... having so many Nekrataals makes for incredibly bad gameplay in my experience
In your opinion maybe it makes for bad gameplay, but in my experience its totally fine.
Maybe it comes from being a predominantly powered cube player, but members of my playgroup don't get upset about quick powerful wins or having an opponent play a bomb that they can't immediately answer. Making a claim that a card like Warhammer isn't fun for either player is incredibly hyperbolic. I honestly don't think my group would enjoy the peasant list as much as they do without cards like Warhammer being available. Like leadfeather89 says here, we just call it like it is, scoop 'em up, and go to the next game. We didn't pay money to enter this tournament. Nothing's on the line. We're probably literally in my basement drinking beers and using Magic as a way to hang out with each other. Maybe the games where my opponent goes creature into creature into Warhammer into swing a couple times for the win while I just try to durdle around aren't that interesting, but I'm sure my opponent had fun doing that. Maybe I didn't enjoy that specific game as much as I would some other game, but in the grand scheme, that one game didn't ruin my night. And for every one of those games with Warhammer, there's another one where I play in a complicated board state at parity and use it to break through. Or I have a bear facing down a couple 3/3's and I topdeck it to pull me back from behind.
Peasant is a relatively low power format, especially when compared to what people tend to think of when they think of cube. I like having bombs like Warhammer available. I think it adds a little something to the draft when you take it and think you got away with something.
When I go T1 Land + Aggressive Creature into T2 Land + Aggressive Creature followed by T3 Land + Loxodon Warhammer with the intention of swinging for a bunch T4, and my has/plays any of the following:...
Warhammer on t3 into t4 equip is quite slow; I'm mainly talking about cast + equip later in the game. Regardless, a lot of things on your list that don't directly answer the Warhammer are suboptimal and put you behind. Additionally, many of the cards on your list help Warhammer get through these "answers."
Can you elaborate a little more on why this is fun? Warhammer's gameplay is incredibly close to boggles, which is possibly the most hated archetype in magic's history. You could argue it's more interactable, but the core gameplay pattern it makes where the opponent can't engage favourably in combat is the same. Boggles is enjoyable for some people, but considering almost no cubes support boggles I have a hard time believing enough people enjoy it to claim Warhammer is generally fun.
Maybe it comes from being a predominantly powered cube player, but members of my playgroup don't get upset about quick powerful wins or having an opponent play a bomb that they can't immediately answer.
Most powered cube bombs are strategy based and non-games are incredibly quick (3-4 turns); Warhammer is not strategy based and doesn't make for incredibly quick games.
We just call it like it is, scoop 'em up, and go to the next game. We didn't pay money to enter this tournament. Nothing's on the line. We're probably literally in my basement drinking beers and using Magic as a way to hang out with each other. Maybe the games where my opponent goes creature into creature into Warhammer into swing a couple times for the win while I just try to durdle around aren't that interesting, but I'm sure my opponent had fun doing that. Maybe I didn't enjoy that specific game as much as I would some other game, but in the grand scheme, that one game didn't ruin my night. And for every one of those games with Warhammer, there's another one where I play in a complicated board state at parity and use it to break through. Or I have a bear facing down a couple 3/3's and I topdeck it to pull me back from behind.
Peasant is a relatively low power format, especially when compared to what people tend to think of when they think of cube. I like having bombs like Warhammer available. I think it adds a little something to the draft when you take it and think you got away with something.
This argument doesn't really work for me, as almost every card can be justified this way. Could you explain why Warhammer gets the nod in your cube, but Sol Ring is excluded? Would you play Library of Alexandria or Mana Drain if cost was no issue?
Cubes don't support Boggles as an archetype because there's really not enough good hexproof creatures out there to make it viable. Not to mention you'd have to litter your sections with Auras that only make the cut in that one deck. You might as well try to run Infect as a draftable archetype. Being unfun isn't why Boggles isn't a cube deck. It's just super parasitic and those types of archetypes are generally bad for cube in general.
This argument doesn't really work for me, as almost every card can be justified this way. Could you explain why Warhammer gets the nod in your cube, but Sol Ring is excluded? Would you play Library of Alexandria or Mana Drain if cost was no issue?
Well, you're comparing cards that are often excluded from even unpowered rare cubes because they're too powerful to a card that's often excluded from those same cubes for not being powerful enough. I want my peasant cube drafts to feel like a booster draft, but with the best cards and synergies. A card like Warhammer is a generically powerful card, especially in the peasant environment, but it's no where close to Sol Ring powerful.
Also, I'd add that desired cube power level, no matter your rarity restriction, is essentially an imaginary line in the sand that you draw kind of arbitrarily and say, "This is my power level. I won't cross this threshold." If that line is drawn just past Warhammer or just before it is up to you. For example, in addition to my powered and peasant cubes, I have a third cube I built that I can only refer to as a low power cube. It has rares, but it's not running Elesh Norn, for example. There's no Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but there is a Jace, Architect of Thought. The power level here is completely arbitrary and I know that. I can't really explain exactly where the line is drawn for this cube, but it's somewhere after Jace, Architect of Thought and somewhere before Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
I think Boggles are probably viable in Peasant after THB with only the Boggles themselves being parasitic, but that's not really the point. Invisible Stalker's absence from cubes is an easier cube example. Regardless, Boggles' gameplay is similar to Warhammer's, Boggles' gameplay is generally disliked, hence Warhammer's gameplay is generally disliked (note: not a proof).
Edit: I re-read your post: if you are excluding cards due to their power level in a vacuum rather than their effect on gameplay in context this argument is pointless.
Power level doesn't matter when discussing bombs; Craterhoof Behemoth is more powerful than Wurmcoil Engine, but both are bombs. Sol Ring is the more powerful card, but I think it can be justified using the previous reasoning as well or better than Warhammer can:
We just call it like it is, scoop 'em up, and go to the next game... Maybe the games where my opponent goes creature into creature into Warhammer (My Edit: Sol Ring into creature into creature) into swing a couple times for the win while I just try to durdle around aren't that interesting, but I'm sure my opponent had fun doing that. Maybe I didn't enjoy that specific game as much as I would some other game, but in the grand scheme, that one game didn't ruin my night.
In games where Sol Ring "goes off" and auto wins the game, the games are many times shorter than those where Warhammer does the same thing, so the victim isn't stuck in a lost game looking for 1 out. I also think it's hard to argue Warhammer is more fun to win with than Sol Ring; Sol Ring gives you a high, while Warhammer plays similar to a control wincon: it's just going through the motions.
And for every one of those games with Warhammer, there's another one where I play in a complicated board state at parity and use it to break through. Or I have a bear facing down a couple 3/3's and I topdeck it to pull me back from behind.
For every game Sol Ring pops off there's another that it's drawn late and is just a rock, or only accelerates a single card; it's harder to have an interactive game with Warhammer in play that Sol Ring. In my experience, most games Warhammer breaks a board stall become uninteresting afterwards, even more so than playing it on a small board, and comeback stories might be comebacks, but they are especially frustrating for the person playing against the Warhammer as it's a must answer card. On the other hand Sol Ring is notoriously easy to comeback against and isn't as frustrating for the Sol Ring player, as it incentivizes keeping hands with shaky mana and can be kept in parity with a good opposing interactive hand.
Peasant is a relatively low power format, especially when compared to what people tend to think of when they think of cube. I like having bombs like Warhammer available. I think it adds a little something to the draft when you take it and think you got away with something.
Sol Ring has the same effect but amplified 10x, especially considering people new to peasant often pass Warhammer; anyone familiar with magic would snap off a Sol Ring in any draft.
tl;dr: I think Sol Ring is a better choice for a bomb-esque card in Peasant than Warhammer, as bad games are faster, it's not a must answer card, it's easier to comeback against, and it's more fun for the user.
I apologize if I'm being too argumentative, but for a card that comes up as often as Warhammer does I want to make sure I'm considering it correctly regardless of how the cube is put together.
... cuz it’s fun to swing with a 3/3 trample lifelink...?
Why do you need Behemoth Sledge to do that or something similar? Because on the other side you have combat basically becoming irrelevant, and, considering this is the peasant cube forum, I think we can all agree combat is a very fun and important part of the game.
I think we can all agree combat is a very fun and important part of the game.
I do agree combat is a fun and important part of the game. It's fun to swing with big creatures. I enjoy it, my friends enjoy it. Behemoth Sledge makes it happen more often.
I apologize for not engaging in your argument, but put whatever cards you want in your cube and cube'll be a blast every single time you play, Behemoth Sledge or not.
Sol Ring is on completely different power level tier from Loxodon Warhammer. There is not a comparison to be made here. I said I like having a bomb type card in my peasant cube, but that doesn't mean I want something close to as powerful and game changing as Sol Ring.
For what it's worth, my group enjoys playing with Warhammer in my peasant cube and that's really the only argument to be made in favor of including it for me.
I personally like the enable win conditions that don't enable combat. Most of those games were long since won and now it is Welkin Tern's turn to put the even to a formal close. Not sure if anyone here plays Tern, but it represents a generic cheap flier that common control decks use to end games. Also does anyone run Capsize locks here? or I guess Forbid locks? I played a bit of Stasis when my friends use to play casual legacy, so I'm wondering what a control shell and finisher looks like at uncommon?
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There's no word in the goblin language for "strategy." Then again, there's no word in the goblin language for "word."
I personally like the enable win conditions that don't enable combat. Most of those games were long since won and now it is Welkin Tern's turn to put the even to a formal close. Not sure if anyone here plays Tern, but it represents a generic cheap flier that common control decks use to end games. Also does anyone run Capsize locks here? or I guess Forbid locks? I played a bit of Stasis when my friends use to play casual legacy, so I'm wondering what a control shell and finisher looks like at uncommon?
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/6j6
There are no defined archetypes for the guilds. Instead I wanted people to make the aggro, control, or midrange decks possible. White/Red are primarily aggro. Blue/Black are primarily control. Green is primarily midrange/ramp.
If you feel like a card is weak or that a card is not the cube that should be in the cube let me know. I want to have a discussion about any and all cards :).
Cards I purposely excluded were
Skullclamp
Library of Alexandria
Force of Will
Mana Drain
Demonic Tutor
Strip Mine
Wasteland
Thank you for looking and happy cubing!
Secondly, did you exclude the listed cards based on price or power level? I'm guessing power level, since you do run some other expensive cards. I think FoW and Demonic Tutor are both actually fine, because the best you're going to tutor for is an uncommon, and the best you'll FoW is an uncommon as well. Not to say uncs are by definition weak, but you won't get combo's that're too degenerate.
Furthermore, a lot of people here have found Loxodon Warhammer and Behemoth Sledge to be extremely strong cards, and I myself have banned them from my cube, since they tend to make games very one-sided.
Also, whilst not THE most important bit, I'd try to balance your guilds, as they are a bit unbalanced now. Most people here use a different system for Hybrids, where they count hybrids as half a card of each colour. So, for example, Kitchen Finks would take up half a green and half a white slot, so with a Kitchen Finks and a Dryad Militant you'd fill up a green and a white slot. This because of the fact that both Kitchen Finks and Militant can be played in non-Selesnya G and W decks.
Other than that, you just have to test a lot to see what works for you and your friends.
WiJ
Peasant 540 Cube
Rhystic Lightning is another 4 damage spell missing. Green three drops are way too thin. I'm not sure any deck will play Pilgrim's Eye or Meteor Golem.
Honden of Seeing Winds cost 5 mana and takes several turns before it pays itself off. The Red Shrine is an unanswerable Prodigal Pyromancer. I would pay this with commons only, but I assume that the overall power level is substantially higher here.
I'm more of a Pauper person, so those are my thoughts at a glance.
Also in regards to people being removing Loxodon Warhammer. Really? Do people get that upset when they lose to life gain? I'm sorry to inform people who play aggro decks that there is a fatal flaw in their strategy and that is the opponent can just gain life back that you've painstakingly reduced. It definitely isn't nearly as broken as Skullclamp. What's the interaction there? Hope your opponent doesn't draw Skullclamp?
The reason I removed it from me cube was that it is a bomb to which there are too few answers. Some colors have none at all. Moreover, most good asnwers are not maindeckable. So I had two choices: removing interesting cards for cards like Disenchant which will mostly end up in the sideboard or to just cut the Warhammer.
My C/Ube on Cube Cobra
My C/Ube on Cube Cobra
For me, though, I enjoy having cards like that at the peasant level. Peasant cube in general feels like a very good very powerful limited format. All of the cards either contribute to a supported deck or archetype or are just really powerful in their own right. Cards like Warhammer and Clamp feel like you opened a bomb in your draft and I think that makes the format more appealing to my group specifically. We have several guys, myself included, who really enjoy regular old limited, so peasant cube with powerful cards like this is right up our alley.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/djredpeasant
The thing about being a cube maker is you tend to privy to the accumulated knowledge of years of people honing their archetypes (often with some very good players in the mix). So you tend to know what's very good, however the average player of your cube doesn't know these intricacies, so you need to be aware of that. I tend to explain what the typically power level is of the common bombs. I don't really go into detail about how strong Mana Leak is, players just have to learn that. However I will take the time to explain Guardian of the Guildpact and Blastoderm because it can feel unfair losing to these cards after passing them. Also I typically remind people Lightning Bolt exists.
Most other bombs in Peasant are generically answerable or have a lower floor. Curse of Predation can be answered through removal or combat, and is dead if you're on the backfoot. Grafted Wargear has difficulty with chump blockers and is almost purely offensive. Heirloom Blade might have a higher floor, but value can generally be answered with value. Skullclamp might be incredibly efficient, but it also can be interacted with on most axes. All these cards also need some degree of deckbuilding setup, which means they'll often be played in non-optimal situations due to their powerlevel. Warhammer's deckbuilding restriction is having a non-trivial number of creatures.
Of course you can include a lot of cards that make Warhammer worse like DJRedLantern has. Kor Sanctifiers, Reclaimation Sage, Thrashing Brontodon, Wickerbough Elder, Acidic Slime, Duress, Tumble Magnet, and Icy Manipulator all work very well against it. However, many of those cards aren't staples or their inclusion is dependent on one's philosophy around artifacts and enchantments and how to deal with them. I personally run none of those cards. Having a high amount of Nekrataal effects also makes it easier for the Warhammer player to run out of creatures, but having so many Nekrataals makes for incredibly bad gameplay in my experience. Having to make a number of changes to balance a card is not the sign of a healthy inclusion.
Even if you have a cube that is "Warhammer proof" where there are enough answers for it, why should you include it? Warhammer isn't terribly fun for either player. Whenever Warhammer was played in my cube all I thought was "that card is really dumb" and then wondered if the game was over or if they had an answer. Skullclamp, Curse of Predation, Heirloom Blade, etc. can all make reasonably interesting and fun games if they stick on the board, but an unanswered Warhammer + equip forces the game to end incredibly quickly. Even something like Sol Ring creates far fewer non-game scenarios than Warhammer.
My friends have had fun going T1 Forest + Llanowar Elves into T2 Forest + Behemoth Sledge into T3 Mountain + equip, swing with 3/3 lifelink trample. In your opinion maybe it makes for bad gameplay, but in my experience its totally fine.
When I go T1 Land + Aggressive Creature into T2 Land + Aggressive Creature followed by T3 Land + Loxodon Warhammer with the intention of swinging for a bunch T4, and my has/plays any of the following:
Azorius Arrester
Consul's Lieutenant
Whitemane Lion
Attended Knight
Banisher Priest
Kor Hookmaster
Baird, Steward of Argive (sorta)
(kicked) Kor Sanctifiers
Harm's Way
Swords to Plowshares
Journey to Nowhere
Temporal Isolation
Ghostly Prison (sorta)
Oblivion Ring
Faith's Fetters
Quickling
Force of Will
Repeal
Unsummon
Condescend
Mana Drain
Mana Leak
Memory Lapse
Remand
Complicate
Psionic Blast
Repulse
Bone Shredder
Nekrataal
Skinrender
Shriekmaw
Snuff Out
Disfigure
Cast Down
Fireblast
Lightning Bolt
Abrade (maindeckable, btw)
Fire // Ice
Magma Jet
Stagger Shock
Firebolt
Flame Slash
Forked Bolt
Arc Trail
Pyroclasm
Arc Lightning
Slice and Dice
Icy Manipulator (kinda..)
Porcelain Legionnaire
Maze of Ith
(bottom of the bowl from here forward)
Reclamation Sage
Qasali Pridemage
Frilled Mystic
Electrolyze
Lightning Helix
Dismember
I go "aww shucks!" .... and continue playing.
Peasant is a relatively low power format, especially when compared to what people tend to think of when they think of cube. I like having bombs like Warhammer available. I think it adds a little something to the draft when you take it and think you got away with something.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Well, you're comparing cards that are often excluded from even unpowered rare cubes because they're too powerful to a card that's often excluded from those same cubes for not being powerful enough. I want my peasant cube drafts to feel like a booster draft, but with the best cards and synergies. A card like Warhammer is a generically powerful card, especially in the peasant environment, but it's no where close to Sol Ring powerful.
Also, I'd add that desired cube power level, no matter your rarity restriction, is essentially an imaginary line in the sand that you draw kind of arbitrarily and say, "This is my power level. I won't cross this threshold." If that line is drawn just past Warhammer or just before it is up to you. For example, in addition to my powered and peasant cubes, I have a third cube I built that I can only refer to as a low power cube. It has rares, but it's not running Elesh Norn, for example. There's no Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but there is a Jace, Architect of Thought. The power level here is completely arbitrary and I know that. I can't really explain exactly where the line is drawn for this cube, but it's somewhere after Jace, Architect of Thought and somewhere before Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Edit: I re-read your post: if you are excluding cards due to their power level in a vacuum rather than their effect on gameplay in context this argument is pointless.
Power level doesn't matter when discussing bombs; Craterhoof Behemoth is more powerful than Wurmcoil Engine, but both are bombs. Sol Ring is the more powerful card, but I think it can be justified using the previous reasoning as well or better than Warhammer can:
In games where Sol Ring "goes off" and auto wins the game, the games are many times shorter than those where Warhammer does the same thing, so the victim isn't stuck in a lost game looking for 1 out. I also think it's hard to argue Warhammer is more fun to win with than Sol Ring; Sol Ring gives you a high, while Warhammer plays similar to a control wincon: it's just going through the motions.
For every game Sol Ring pops off there's another that it's drawn late and is just a rock, or only accelerates a single card; it's harder to have an interactive game with Warhammer in play that Sol Ring. In my experience, most games Warhammer breaks a board stall become uninteresting afterwards, even more so than playing it on a small board, and comeback stories might be comebacks, but they are especially frustrating for the person playing against the Warhammer as it's a must answer card. On the other hand Sol Ring is notoriously easy to comeback against and isn't as frustrating for the Sol Ring player, as it incentivizes keeping hands with shaky mana and can be kept in parity with a good opposing interactive hand.
Sol Ring has the same effect but amplified 10x, especially considering people new to peasant often pass Warhammer; anyone familiar with magic would snap off a Sol Ring in any draft.
tl;dr: I think Sol Ring is a better choice for a bomb-esque card in Peasant than Warhammer, as bad games are faster, it's not a must answer card, it's easier to comeback against, and it's more fun for the user.
I apologize if I'm being too argumentative, but for a card that comes up as often as Warhammer does I want to make sure I'm considering it correctly regardless of how the cube is put together.
Why do you need Behemoth Sledge to do that or something similar? Because on the other side you have combat basically becoming irrelevant, and, considering this is the peasant cube forum, I think we can all agree combat is a very fun and important part of the game.
tl;dr: We disagree and I'm okay with it.
I apologize for not engaging in your argument, but put whatever cards you want in your cube and cube'll be a blast every single time you play, Behemoth Sledge or not.
For what it's worth, my group enjoys playing with Warhammer in my peasant cube and that's really the only argument to be made in favor of including it for me.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Skywise Teachings tends to do the trick for me.