A few alters for my pauper cube from SCG Providence yesterday.
Naturally, once I got home I realized I also run Act of Treason, by the same artist, so for the sake of completeness I'll have to drop him an email and see if he'll alter that one through the mail...
It seems like there are at least a few people around here who are working on winston/winchester stacks, essentially tiny cubes that are intended for 1:1 drafting (usually winston or winchester drafts, or sealed). There are a couple of threads about them (magicmerl's, DavFlamerock's, erberus91's, theastro's, damagedirect's tiny mono-white stack and lvg's work in progress), and it's not terribly rare for comments in those threads to include things along the lines of "hey, I was thinking of building something like that" or "wow, that's neat, how does it work..." but there don't appear to be any threads for just discussing those type of cubes in general, as opposed to one specific one. Since I've been thinking about this a bit lately while working on my (not posted anywhere) peasant 1:1 stack, I thought I'd pose some questions I've been thinking about and see if anyone had any answers for me.
First, obviously, is the question of how many cards you want. Among the stacks we see here, the smallest is 90 cards, so just enough to do a "regulation" 1:1 winston or winchester draft, although when you're building packs from a cube there's really nothing that says you must draft with 90 cards. The majority seem to be 180 cards though, enough to do 1:1 sealed deck. I'm currently at that point, but I'm considering bumping up to 200, and I'm wondering at what point you start to see issues due to increased variance in the draft pool.
Next there's the question of proportions. How many cards in each color, how many lands, how many artifacts, is there a multicolor section at all? I'm currently doing 30 per color, 15 artifacts, 15 lands, but I can see a strong argument for wanting more lands if you're in a non-pauper/peasant environment and want 10 fetches and 10 duals, plus some other stuff. At what point do you run out of space in the color sections for the "usual suspects" that you need? Similarly, within each color what sort of spell/creature ratio are you looking for? The typical 1:1 except blue gets more spells and green gets more creatures? Mine tends to lean more towards creatures, but maybe that's just an artifact of sticking to commons and uncommons.
Then you come to the aggro/midrange/control ratio question. Cube theory seems to say you need 2x the number of aggro cards as you have control cards. Does that break down at this small a size? Our decks seem to lean more aggro, maybe it's a function of color density, since aggro stuff seems to be more splashable and control stuff seems to require more multiple colored mana casting costs.
That of course leads to the question of color density. 1:1 draft formats seem to lend themselves to 2-3 color decks as the norm, so making cards easier to splash is desirable. I've been trying to minimize the number of cards that require 2 or more colored mana to cast as a result, but there are a lot of canonical cards that do need that (and as I've said, they tend to swing towards control). What's the line? Similarly, how does this impact multicolor and hybrid cards? Hybrids with only 1 hybrid mana in their cost are clearly even more splashable, which is awesome, but multicolor is even harder to use than in a normal cube, to the point where I'm not currently including any at all. Is it worth having a section?
Finally, there are various things related to the "themes" you want to support. We're finding burn to be extremely strong, even with only 1/3 of red's cards being actual burn spells it tends to dominate. If it gets drafted by one player and not the other it's just game over, and if it gets drafted by both things tend to swing towards the guy who got both of the X spells. Other things I've tried to support are token heavy strategies (which are awesome, and works well) and a light reanimator theme in black (which hasn't worked well at all, it's not clear there's room to support it well).
Anyway, I'd love to hear from other people who've built this sort of thing. It's a neat design space, there's so little wiggle room in a set this size, but it's a lot of fun to draft.
Hi, nice to see someone else working on a 2 player cube. I'm currently putting together a 2 player peasant cube myself, and it's nice to see what other people are doing in this area.
How useful are you finding the (relatively large) hybrid mana section? Do the cards get played regularly? I'm trying to decide between entirely eliminating multicolor from mine, making it extremely small, or limiting it entirely to hybrid or off-color-flashback type stuff that can theoretically see play in decks that only play one of the colors.
Also, how much variation do you see in archetypes? Is there enough to keep people coming back for more? I worry that every deck of a particular color will look approximately the same, although I suppose since you're only seeing half the cards in a typical draft or sealed deck it's probably not a big deal.
I'm sort of curious what people think about Morph in Pauper cubes. I've got a rather small (285 cards at the moment, I'm slowly letting it grow, eventual cap being 360 or so) pauper cube, and I've tried to keep a reasonable level of support for Morph creatures. In order to do this, I've basically been starting from the assumption that you really want to have at least a couple of creatures with Morph in each color, so you don't get into the situation where it's incredibly obvious what that face down creature your opponent just cast is.
Here's the current roster of Morph creatures I'm playing:
The down side of this is I basically end up playing stuff that probably wouldn't make the cut if I wasn't trying to maintain a critical mass of Morph creatures. It's not like it's a ton of room, but it's not nothing either.
What do people think? Is it worth maintaining a critical mass of Morph in a cube? Do you really lose a lot by dropping down to just the awesome ones? Are there any that I'm playing that I could cut without jeopardizing the integrity of Morph as a theme? Anything on the bench that should clearly be played? Any that I'm not playing or watching but clearly should? Inquiring minds want to know.
Ok, time for an overhaul of my Winston Stack list.
The fast artifact mana and equipment were just too prevalent. So, they go. And with Diregraf Ghoul I want to see if it's possible for black aggro to actually succeed. Out go the marginal green aggro elements, and green gets more mana ramp. The extra artifact removal can be culled then too. That would make this:
With the smaller number of artifacts is Tinker really all that useful anymore? There are fewer artifacts to sac to it, and not a huge number of targets anyway.
How do you guys fit top-loaders into the ends of a fat pack box? I have to angle the top-loader and obviously that takes away space for the actual cards.
I just stick them along the side, rather than on the end. No need to cut the top-loader that way. There's plenty of space next to the sleeved cards anyway.
Back again while I have a moment. The evaluation is looking great, guys.
Quick question Lanxal: I don't get how in the closing notes you said Thornweald Archer "is both effective on the offence and the defence. Cubeable.," yet Deadly Recluse "is not good. Seriously." Does the creature type really make that much difference?
The Archer is 2/1, the Recluse is 1/2. Beating for 2 is better than beating for 1, and other than being picked off by pingers 1 toughness isn't hugely worse than 2.
tetra (my name for a cube with only four colors, because a tetrahedron only has four sides. Although a cube has six, so that doesn't really make any sense, but my answer to that is let's just ignore it)
FWIW, if you want to justify the name "cube" just use the points (aka the corners), as opposed to the sides. Cubes have 8 points, I have 8 major categories in my cube (WUBRG, Multicolor, Colorless, Land). Hadn't thought of that until you mentioned sides on a tetrahedron...
No talk of Twinblade Slasher? The card is very similar to Basking Rootwalla, except with wither instead of madness. Outside of having a looter or mongrel, I find it hard to make a case for Rootwalla and not Slasher.
Don't forget, if your playing opaque sleeves a CE version is always useable also.
Good call. I'll have to keep an eye out for a reasonably priced one. Gotta love the people who're trying to get 50 bucks for them on ebay... I mean I can order from starcitygames.com for less than that including shipping!
One of the nice things about my current project (a pauper micro cube, only 270 cards) is the relative ease of foiling it out. For the vast majority of the cards you can grab a foil version for under a buck from any number of places online, and at that price it isn't even a tragedy if you end up cutting the card later. Now, there are clearly counterexamples where foils for a staple common actually cost money, but that just leaves me with some things to watch out for in trade binders.
As for my hierarchy:
1) Old stuff (A/B, The Dark or earlier).
2) Whichever foil or promo has the best art.
3) A nice alter.
4) Whatever version of the card has the best art.
5) Anything white bordered.
So far the only real cost issue I've run into is Sinkhole, it's the most expensive card in the cube, and the only remotely affordable version is white bordered. I'll probably end up getting my unlimited one altered at some point, but at the moment it sits on the sidelines because it stands out like a sore thumb.
Another nice thing about a pauper cube: Keeping a non-foil copy of the cube around is a reasonable possibility if you want to play with people you don't know well.
6 Pouncing Jaguar - A must have, beating for two on turn two is awesome.
4 Jungle Lion - Ditto. I assume the people who don't run it either don't have one or don't like portal cards?
5 Basking Rootwalla - The madness ability never seems to matter, but it's still awesome.
These two are pretty similar, so lets talk about them together...
5 Wild Dogs - A nice aggressive card with a cycling kicker if you're not ahead in the life race. I should get one.
1 Ghazban Ogre - Like wild dogs, but without the cycling. I expect it gets played for nostalgia reasons more than anything else. It does have that extra toughness though, so maybe it's good enough?
Next up are the mana elves. The question is really just how many should you play I suppose.
1 Quirion Ranger - Similar to the mana elves, enables some interesting tricks. I don't run one though.
3 Durkwood Baloth - I should consider picking this up. Big beaters are nice to have.
1 Rogue Elephant - Why play this over Scythe Tiger? Is the extra toughness worth more than shroud? In any event, why play either? Is the speed worth the tempo loss of having one less land?
An interesting question, which as been posed in the normalist cube discussions, and would be pretty cool in Pauper: if you were given the entire cube to play a game of Sealed with, how would you build your deck? Effectivelly, how would you play Rotisserie Sealed?
It doesn't matter whose cube you use, as long as it's Pauper, but the probable choice would be your own, since you'd know the nuances of your own cube better than others.
I'd have to give it some thought, but I'm leaning towards an UB Control deck that uses Pestilence and Capsize. Besides the fact that I'm using the two most absurdly powerful cards in Pauper (debateable, I guess), I've played UB before and it is a freaking beast. Card advantage + counters + removal = Thank you, come again.
Secondary choices would probably be either UR Aggro Control with plentiful burn and counters, UG Ramp Control with Sprout Swarm and some of the ridiculous green cards, and maybe a ridiculously aggressive deck (I can't give specifications since I have indeed played both UR and UG before, and yet I've never actually played a naturally aggressive deck. I think that might be a cause for concern, but I don't know whether it means that blue is too powerful or the cube doesn't support aggro well).
Huh. No surprises that it's pretty much all blue decks, right?
I might put up a decklist later.
I'd lean towards UB control as well, but the blue would be for Flood, not Capsize. Not that Capsize isn't awesome, but Flood starts to get useful way earlier.
You can figure that out based on the standings by format: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptrtr12/standformat&tablesort=3
Naturally, once I got home I realized I also run Act of Treason, by the same artist, so for the sake of completeness I'll have to drop him an email and see if he'll alter that one through the mail...
First, obviously, is the question of how many cards you want. Among the stacks we see here, the smallest is 90 cards, so just enough to do a "regulation" 1:1 winston or winchester draft, although when you're building packs from a cube there's really nothing that says you must draft with 90 cards. The majority seem to be 180 cards though, enough to do 1:1 sealed deck. I'm currently at that point, but I'm considering bumping up to 200, and I'm wondering at what point you start to see issues due to increased variance in the draft pool.
Next there's the question of proportions. How many cards in each color, how many lands, how many artifacts, is there a multicolor section at all? I'm currently doing 30 per color, 15 artifacts, 15 lands, but I can see a strong argument for wanting more lands if you're in a non-pauper/peasant environment and want 10 fetches and 10 duals, plus some other stuff. At what point do you run out of space in the color sections for the "usual suspects" that you need? Similarly, within each color what sort of spell/creature ratio are you looking for? The typical 1:1 except blue gets more spells and green gets more creatures? Mine tends to lean more towards creatures, but maybe that's just an artifact of sticking to commons and uncommons.
Then you come to the aggro/midrange/control ratio question. Cube theory seems to say you need 2x the number of aggro cards as you have control cards. Does that break down at this small a size? Our decks seem to lean more aggro, maybe it's a function of color density, since aggro stuff seems to be more splashable and control stuff seems to require more multiple colored mana casting costs.
That of course leads to the question of color density. 1:1 draft formats seem to lend themselves to 2-3 color decks as the norm, so making cards easier to splash is desirable. I've been trying to minimize the number of cards that require 2 or more colored mana to cast as a result, but there are a lot of canonical cards that do need that (and as I've said, they tend to swing towards control). What's the line? Similarly, how does this impact multicolor and hybrid cards? Hybrids with only 1 hybrid mana in their cost are clearly even more splashable, which is awesome, but multicolor is even harder to use than in a normal cube, to the point where I'm not currently including any at all. Is it worth having a section?
Finally, there are various things related to the "themes" you want to support. We're finding burn to be extremely strong, even with only 1/3 of red's cards being actual burn spells it tends to dominate. If it gets drafted by one player and not the other it's just game over, and if it gets drafted by both things tend to swing towards the guy who got both of the X spells. Other things I've tried to support are token heavy strategies (which are awesome, and works well) and a light reanimator theme in black (which hasn't worked well at all, it's not clear there's room to support it well).
Anyway, I'd love to hear from other people who've built this sort of thing. It's a neat design space, there's so little wiggle room in a set this size, but it's a lot of fun to draft.
How useful are you finding the (relatively large) hybrid mana section? Do the cards get played regularly? I'm trying to decide between entirely eliminating multicolor from mine, making it extremely small, or limiting it entirely to hybrid or off-color-flashback type stuff that can theoretically see play in decks that only play one of the colors.
Also, how much variation do you see in archetypes? Is there enough to keep people coming back for more? I worry that every deck of a particular color will look approximately the same, although I suppose since you're only seeing half the cards in a typical draft or sealed deck it's probably not a big deal.
Here's the current roster of Morph creatures I'm playing:
1 Wingbeat Warrior
1 Aven Liberator
1 Daru Lancer
Blue
1 Aquamorph Entity
1 Echo Tracer
1 Fathom Seer
1 Haunted Cadaver
1 Zombie Cutthroat
1 Sootfeather Flock
1 Skinthinner
Red
1 Gathan Raiders
1 Shaleskin Plower
1 Skirk Commando
1 Skirk Marauder
1 Snarling Undorak
1 Nantuko Vigilante
1 Disruptive Pitmage
1 Lumithread Field
1 Patron of the Wild
1 Shaper Parasite
1 Spitting Gourna
1 Voidmage Apprentice
1 Woodcloaker
What do people think? Is it worth maintaining a critical mass of Morph in a cube? Do you really lose a lot by dropping down to just the awesome ones? Are there any that I'm playing that I could cut without jeopardizing the integrity of Morph as a theme? Anything on the bench that should clearly be played? Any that I'm not playing or watching but clearly should? Inquiring minds want to know.
With the smaller number of artifacts is Tinker really all that useful anymore? There are fewer artifacts to sac to it, and not a huge number of targets anyway.
2) Disturbed Burial - Inevitability is awesome.
3) Memory Lapse - Fits into basically any deck that includes blue IMO.
4) Leonin Skyhunter - An early decision to force white weenie makes this a very strong pick IMO.
I just stick them along the side, rather than on the end. No need to cut the top-loader that way. There's plenty of space next to the sleeved cards anyway.
The Archer is 2/1, the Recluse is 1/2. Beating for 2 is better than beating for 1, and other than being picked off by pingers 1 toughness isn't hugely worse than 2.
FWIW, if you want to justify the name "cube" just use the points (aka the corners), as opposed to the sides. Cubes have 8 points, I have 8 major categories in my cube (WUBRG, Multicolor, Colorless, Land). Hadn't thought of that until you mentioned sides on a tetrahedron...
Twinblade Slasher is an Uncommon
Good call. I'll have to keep an eye out for a reasonably priced one. Gotta love the people who're trying to get 50 bucks for them on ebay... I mean I can order from starcitygames.com for less than that including shipping!
As for my hierarchy:
1) Old stuff (A/B, The Dark or earlier).
2) Whichever foil or promo has the best art.
3) A nice alter.
4) Whatever version of the card has the best art.
5) Anything white bordered.
So far the only real cost issue I've run into is Sinkhole, it's the most expensive card in the cube, and the only remotely affordable version is white bordered. I'll probably end up getting my unlimited one altered at some point, but at the moment it sits on the sidelines because it stands out like a sore thumb.
Another nice thing about a pauper cube: Keeping a non-foil copy of the cube around is a reasonable possibility if you want to play with people you don't know well.
6 Pouncing Jaguar - A must have, beating for two on turn two is awesome.
4 Jungle Lion - Ditto. I assume the people who don't run it either don't have one or don't like portal cards?
5 Basking Rootwalla - The madness ability never seems to matter, but it's still awesome.
These two are pretty similar, so lets talk about them together...
5 Wild Dogs - A nice aggressive card with a cycling kicker if you're not ahead in the life race. I should get one.
1 Ghazban Ogre - Like wild dogs, but without the cycling. I expect it gets played for nostalgia reasons more than anything else. It does have that extra toughness though, so maybe it's good enough?
Next up are the mana elves. The question is really just how many should you play I suppose.
5 Llanowar Elves - Staple.
5 Arbor Elf - If you've got wild growth effects this can be better than a typical mana elf.
4 Fyndhorn Elves - Staple.
And some random stuff:
1 Quirion Ranger - Similar to the mana elves, enables some interesting tricks. I don't run one though.
3 Durkwood Baloth - I should consider picking this up. Big beaters are nice to have.
1 Rogue Elephant - Why play this over Scythe Tiger? Is the extra toughness worth more than shroud? In any event, why play either? Is the speed worth the tempo loss of having one less land?
I'd lean towards UB control as well, but the blue would be for Flood, not Capsize. Not that Capsize isn't awesome, but Flood starts to get useful way earlier.