This thread's been dead for too long. Where's all the stuff?
Had a good mail day Friday with 6 upgrades for Peasant Cube arriving. Also managed to score a signed Worn Powerstone Artist Proof, so once that arrives it'll be a big acquisition down.
I'm going to try and update all the images in the coming days - depending on how many PreReleases I do. Ideally I'll pick up what I'm interested in for cube while I'm there.
Current signed percentage is 75%, so there should be a lot of new scan work to do.
Just signed up on Riptide to copy my cube blog over and can't say I'll be using it going forward.
No dedicated boards for different cube styles such as Peasant/Pauper, no general Magic discussion board, no one tagging their discussion posts or even damn cube blogs with the cube type either.
Just from looking at it, it looks fine. We can just be a collection of new faces that contribute in fantastic ways.
No dedicated board for Peasant cubes? I imagine making one wont be hard. Nobody posting their cube in their signature? I'm sure if a loudly spoken crowd of people start doing it, perhaps others will too.
No, I didn't mean linking to their cube in their signature, I meant actually labeling what their cube is.
Just going down the list in the Cube Blogs page we have the following, none of which tell me anything about the type of cube it is.
"The Train Station"
"Secret Project"
"N0oh's cube (permanent) rework"
"Erik's "The cool side of Magic" cube"
"Latro's cube (480)"
"Kirblinx's Type 4 Communal Stack" -- Finally, some context, thank you.
These issues go away if you either have distinct discussion boards to post in or support some form of labeling/tagging.
My issue is that this is a dedicated Cube forum, one that's been around for years, that doesn't seem to have any structure and is running on a horribly outdated version of XenForo.
Just signed up on Riptide to copy my cube blog over and can't say I'll be using it going forward.
No dedicated boards for different cube styles such as Peasant/Pauper, no general Magic discussion board, no one tagging their discussion posts or even damn cube blogs with the cube type either.
On top of that the rich text editor was infuriating to work with (with no preference to switch the default), the Edit popup box doesn't work at all and requires me to hit More Options to go to a separate page, decklist tags are a totally manual process and still come out with no clear way to create multiple columns, quick reply box retains the size of the last posting and freaks out when you touch it again, no styling options which means the light blue on white all blends together.
Sadly there just isn't a good option for cubes right now. Discord is just a constant stream of random thoughts with no filter, Reddit is ephemeral in design and doesn't work well for threads that will span years, and Twitter is similar.
And here's the second 8-man draft. Or most of it. I missed the basic lands for most of these decks and one or two were post-sideboard or taken apart already.
First my glorious 0-2 deck. Deck felt fine, made turn 4 Plated Crusher a couple times and still lost. Lurking was a 9/9.
Lurking doesn't like Maze of Ith
85% sure this was post-board.
This one got taken apart before I got to it.
And there was a Jund Aristocrats deck with Besmirch.
The beauty of a cube is that it can continue to evolve. Probably the best thing you can do, short of building and iterating on that, is to imagine what sample packs and what different kinds of decks might look like.
You've got archetypes listed on the side, but what do a couple different variations of a Ramp deck look like? What does a lifegain based deck look like it?
Keep in mind that it's unlikely that a player can get every card they want in a draft. Does a Storm deck just fall apart under that assumption?
I'm also a bit curious about what I would call pure hate cards.
You have Coffin Purge, Cremate, Crypt Incursion, Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, and Nihil Spellbomb for example. That's a lot of dedicated graveyard hate that I wouldn't consider mainboard. Narrow hate cards like this, I find, create some unfun draft experiences. What drafter is going to want to draft some pure Reanimator deck when they're opponent could just slap down a Relic of Progenitus out of the board and make that strategy feel invalidated?
You don't always need pure hate in Cube. The decks aren't as streamlined as in a constructed format. Having a Swords to Plowshares or a Doom Blade can often be enough to fight a reanimation strategy without resorting to niche cards that I wouldn't want in any other matchup.
You want your drafters to feel encouraged to try for different strategies, not deliberately avoid them after facing such targeted hate.
A cool thing you can do to help you understand how the cube drafts is to import it to http://cubetutor.com and run through some drafts. That'll give you a better idea what packs look like and how attainable certain combos and strategies are. It'll also help you see mana costs and other stats - which it looks like you were calculating in your spreadsheet.
Was fortunate enough to have a friend attending Gencon that could get some Wayne Reynolds signatures for me.
Also happened to find a Mesmeric Fiend on ebay by random chance.
This puts my cube at 64% signed with 15 more in progress. I've still got a lot of accessible artists left to do (Avon, Nielsen, Spencer), so I'm hoping to just buckle down and bump that number up (despite not drafting in months).
According to CubeTutor it's the following, Beta prices have really risen across the board since I picked this stuff up.
Swords to Plowshares, Beta - $208.00
Demonic Tutor, Beta - $207.49
Berserk, Beta - $199.75
Serendib Efreet, Arabian Nights - $149.76
City of Brass, Arabian Nights - $132.99
Well this has changed a bit since April 2017.
Here's an update using TCGPlayer Market Price, which might be completely inaccurate, but I don't know where else to get a single number.
Demonic Tutor, Beta - $399.95
Serendib Efreet, Arabian Nights - $343.64
City of Brass, Arabian Nights - $309.43
Swords to Plowshares, Beta - $299.95
Berserk, Beta - $229.98
Honorable Mention
Mishra's Factory (Winter), Antiquities - $226.85 (well maybe not mine, it's beat to piss)
Enter the Unknown won't be making my list.
The Chupacabra is a matter of finding space, I don't play Skinrender as I purposefully wanted to trim those types of effects, so I'd be forced to cut Nekrataal, Keening Banshee, Bone Shredder, or Shriekmaw - none of which I'm really that keen to do.
Had a good mail day Friday with 6 upgrades for Peasant Cube arriving. Also managed to score a signed Worn Powerstone Artist Proof, so once that arrives it'll be a big acquisition down.
Solid GU Pile with plenty of card draw.
This'll definitely help me bolster my considerations pile - there's a number of cards on here that I don't keep on hand.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/haganbmj
I'm going to try and update all the images in the coming days - depending on how many PreReleases I do. Ideally I'll pick up what I'm interested in for cube while I'm there.
Current signed percentage is 75%, so there should be a lot of new scan work to do.
Cards I'm interested in from Eldraine.
Ardenvale Tactician
Shepherd of the Flock
Witching Well
Syr Konrad, the Grim (ehh?)
Claim the Firstborn (?)
Embereth Shieldbreaker
Slaying Fire (?)
Thrill of Possibility
Beanstalk Giant
Flaxen Intruder
Once and Future (?)
Heraldic Banner
No, I didn't mean linking to their cube in their signature, I meant actually labeling what their cube is.
Just going down the list in the Cube Blogs page we have the following, none of which tell me anything about the type of cube it is.
"The Train Station"
"Secret Project"
"N0oh's cube (permanent) rework"
"Erik's "The cool side of Magic" cube"
"Latro's cube (480)"
"Kirblinx's Type 4 Communal Stack" -- Finally, some context, thank you.
These issues go away if you either have distinct discussion boards to post in or support some form of labeling/tagging.
My issue is that this is a dedicated Cube forum, one that's been around for years, that doesn't seem to have any structure and is running on a horribly outdated version of XenForo.
EDIT: Oh sweet, there's a 2013 admin thread that talks about some of the visual issues and already being out of date on XenForo versions.
https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/forum-aesthetics-and-usability.130/
Just signed up on Riptide to copy my cube blog over and can't say I'll be using it going forward.
No dedicated boards for different cube styles such as Peasant/Pauper, no general Magic discussion board, no one tagging their discussion posts or even damn cube blogs with the cube type either.
On top of that the rich text editor was infuriating to work with (with no preference to switch the default), the Edit popup box doesn't work at all and requires me to hit More Options to go to a separate page, decklist tags are a totally manual process and still come out with no clear way to create multiple columns, quick reply box retains the size of the last posting and freaks out when you touch it again, no styling options which means the light blue on white all blends together.
Sadly there just isn't a good option for cubes right now. Discord is just a constant stream of random thoughts with no filter, Reddit is ephemeral in design and doesn't work well for threads that will span years, and Twitter is similar.
First my glorious 0-2 deck. Deck felt fine, made turn 4 Plated Crusher a couple times and still lost. Lurking was a 9/9.
Lurking doesn't like Maze of Ith
85% sure this was post-board.
This one got taken apart before I got to it.
And there was a Jund Aristocrats deck with Besmirch.
I drafted a Jund Aristocrats deck in the first one and went a spectacular 0-2.
1 Elves of Deep Shadow
1 Thornweald Archer
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Zulaport Cutthroat
1 Bloodthrone Vampire
1 Jade Mage
1 Poison-Tip Archer
1 Nekrataal
1 Hissing Iguanar
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Ridgescale Tusker
1 Marsh Flitter
1 Merciless Executioner
1 Blazing Hellhound
1 Falkenrath Noble
1 Borderland Ranger
1 Predator's Howl
1 Necrogenesis
1 Mortarpod
1 Rabid Bite
1 Epic Confrontation
1 Vampiric Rites
1 City of Brass
1 Rakdos Carnarium
Lost to mostly White Tokens and a pretty sweet BUG list that went 2-0. First pick Shardless Agent!
1 Shardless Agent
1 Strangleroot Geist
1 Crystal Shard
1 Ultimate Price
1 Baleful Strix
1 Beast Within
1 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Remand
1 Man-o'-war
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Berserk
1 Wall of Blossoms
1 Opulent Palace
1 Coiling Oracle
1 Trygon Predator
1 Counterspell
1 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Clone
1 Augur of Bolas
1 Psionic Blast
1 Force of Will
1 Search for Tomorrow
1 More or Less
1 Shadowmage Infiltrator
Got to see Temporal Isolation on a Serendib Efreet - so that was a new one.
You've got archetypes listed on the side, but what do a couple different variations of a Ramp deck look like? What does a lifegain based deck look like it?
Keep in mind that it's unlikely that a player can get every card they want in a draft. Does a Storm deck just fall apart under that assumption?
I'm also a bit curious about what I would call pure hate cards.
You have Coffin Purge, Cremate, Crypt Incursion, Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, and Nihil Spellbomb for example. That's a lot of dedicated graveyard hate that I wouldn't consider mainboard. Narrow hate cards like this, I find, create some unfun draft experiences. What drafter is going to want to draft some pure Reanimator deck when they're opponent could just slap down a Relic of Progenitus out of the board and make that strategy feel invalidated?
You don't always need pure hate in Cube. The decks aren't as streamlined as in a constructed format. Having a Swords to Plowshares or a Doom Blade can often be enough to fight a reanimation strategy without resorting to niche cards that I wouldn't want in any other matchup.
You want your drafters to feel encouraged to try for different strategies, not deliberately avoid them after facing such targeted hate.
A cool thing you can do to help you understand how the cube drafts is to import it to http://cubetutor.com and run through some drafts. That'll give you a better idea what packs look like and how attainable certain combos and strategies are. It'll also help you see mana costs and other stats - which it looks like you were calculating in your spreadsheet.
I drafted BW tokens and won the best of the three in part due to some mana screw in the third game on his end.
Both seemed like pretty solid lists.
Was fortunate enough to have a friend attending Gencon that could get some Wayne Reynolds signatures for me.
Also happened to find a Mesmeric Fiend on ebay by random chance.
This puts my cube at 64% signed with 15 more in progress. I've still got a lot of accessible artists left to do (Avon, Nielsen, Spencer), so I'm hoping to just buckle down and bump that number up (despite not drafting in months).
Well this has changed a bit since April 2017.
Here's an update using TCGPlayer Market Price, which might be completely inaccurate, but I don't know where else to get a single number.
Demonic Tutor, Beta - $399.95
Serendib Efreet, Arabian Nights - $343.64
City of Brass, Arabian Nights - $309.43
Swords to Plowshares, Beta - $299.95
Berserk, Beta - $229.98
Honorable Mention
Mishra's Factory (Winter), Antiquities - $226.85 (well maybe not mine, it's beat to piss)
The Chupacabra is a matter of finding space, I don't play Skinrender as I purposefully wanted to trim those types of effects, so I'd be forced to cut Nekrataal, Keening Banshee, Bone Shredder, or Shriekmaw - none of which I'm really that keen to do.