So typically when people run a powered cube, they run all the Power 9, fast mana, and powerful spells like Mana Drain and Mind Twist... Has anybody experimented playing all the powered spells (Ancestral Recall / Time Walk / etc) without all the fast mana? Can't say I remember seeing a cube like that before, I'm thinking about adding the following to my cube:
I run Mind Twist in my unpowered cube, and while it's at the upper limits of my cube's power level, I don't feel it's overpowered. If you're trying to Twist away someone's entire hand it does require some work to ramp it out with Signets and mana elves, and it's a miserable top deck so running it does require some risk. However, if you want to nerf Mind Twist a bit you could always try Mind Shatter.
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I have the same experience as Spike with Mind Twist in an unpowered cube. I'd also play Timetwister without hesitation if I had one. The other spells seem a bit more broken, even without fast mana. It seems worth trying out, though.
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I have Mana Drain and Mind Twist in my unpowered cube. Both are powerful but not overly so. Of the P9 non-fast-mana spells, I think Timetwister is probably OK to run by itself. Ancestral and Walk are too good without the full Power suite, IMO.
Recall, Drain and Timewalk are all broken auto first picks. I think first question you have to ask yourself is if you are looking to add more of those to your cube. Whether you run fast mana or not, those cards are completely unfair. IMO, the worst part is that it just makes blue that much better, furthering the color balance issue most cubes face (blue is the best color and RDW is the best deck in a lot of cubes).
Twist is a high variance card. Early (especially with fast mana) it wins the game in arguably one of the most unfun ways possible. Without fast mana, it can be a clumsy Hymn to Tourach. If people are excited to draft it, don't mind the variance, and don't mind losing to it, it's certainly good enough. It's a card that could drag people into black (assuming that is something your cube needs to encourage).
Channel is super narrow, but very broken in a deck that can cast it early and to good effect. Another very high variance card even in that deck, though it can often just win the game.
Those types of cards are "season to taste" IMO. No right or wrong answer really. They are generally very powerful so there's no argument to be made about inclusion on that basis alone. It's really about how narrow they are, how much variance, and whether those factors are important enough to pass on the raw power the card offers. I think many of these will get a lot of decenting opinions.
In defense of cards like this, there's an excitement to getting what amounts to a free win off of a card like this. It's combo essentially. Combo's pretty sexy. A lot of groups are unhappy playing those kinds of games though because they feel entirely luck based sometimes. Though if you have a clumsy deck, it can make your night better when you slide in a win off of something bogus like a T3 twist someones entire hand.
I can't imagine an environment where players are uncomfortable with a Mox but are somehow okay with their opponent resolving an Ancestral Recall against them...
Mind Twist felt too strong for my unpowered cube, even without fast mana from Signets. Interesting that multiple in here have found it to be OK. Maybe I was too quick to cut it.
I'm pretty sure Ancestral might be just too good, but I might be willing to at least consider all of the others myself. Maybe. I generally think that many cards and strategies become better (or viable) in a powered environment, and in unpowered are extremely fair in that you have to get lucky or jump through hoops to get the payoff, Mind Twist being a great example. I see you're running Jitte in unpowered: FWIW I agree with the choice, but I also think that a cube that's fine with Jitte (and Grim Monolith) should be okay with Mind Twist. Jitte can get out of hand with arguably less work than Mind Twist in unpowered. Mind Twist is like Tinker, in that it can be ridiculously good early on with fast mana and "just good" without it.
Channel is a difficult beast and I have no experience with it outside of powered. I guess here you'll just have to ask if your cube is okay with a potential turn 2 Newlamog. It does limit your choices though, less so than e.g. Show and Tell.
Time Walk and Mana Drain are silly, but at least Mana Drain makes you commit to blue to some extent. It's... weirdly conditional removal and fast mana in the same card? Time Walk is probably too busted since a standard unpowered cube has all the general ways to abuse it, but I'd argue it's still not as silly as drawing three for one mana.
About Library: Nick Nobody of the MTG Cube Blog actually argued that Library is A-OK and fair in unpowered (http://mtgcube.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/card-spotlight-library-of-alexandria.html). Interesting arguments, but I personally would say that Library is one of the few cards that actually becomes more broken in unpowered because of the different environment. Namely, since unpowered (usually) has no fast mana, control decks can't play the alternative cheaty route as easily - meaning a deck can't have a potential turn 1 Blightsteel through Tinker - and thus won't usually be dumping their hand fast. This makes Library just universally better, because while you're right to first-pick it and build with the card in mind, you won't be faced with the temptation of also picking all the power and trying to play a turn 2 Karn. Library is hands down the best card a slow deck in an unpowered environment could ever play by a ridiculously wide margin.
Kind of related to the subject: I can't be bothered to find it now, but there was once a great discussion on the cube subreddit about "the perceived fairness of a format vs. the actual fairness". The idea was that few people can take games as analytically as some more abstractly oriented, competitive folks. Many people react with more bad feelings to getting their creatures countered than getting their creatures killed; many people decide to not run Mill Jace due to unfairness or uninteractivity instead of the card being hit-or-miss, because milling is just "annoyingly boring"; I assume people would also rather lose to a perfect aggro curve-out than a ridiculously early fatty. In short, people like "interactivity" and not losing early even though some games that take several turns may actually have been decided on turn 2 already, the player(s) just didn't acknowledge this. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but ultimately the choice should be made with your players' preferences and psychologies in mind.
Mind Twist is the only card from that list that I like playing in an "unpowered" Cube with no fast mana. To me it feels slightly broken without being too broken. Cards like Mind Shatter and Stupor in comparison to Mind Twist and Hymn to Tourach show, how difficult it is to price discard in a competitive, but non-broken way.
I have tried Channel and Mana Drain in an environment with no fast mana, but I did not like how they played. Channel allows broken early game plays, which imo is counter to the whole idea of excluding fast mana. Mana Drain is just absurd now that mana burn no longer is a thing: the worst case scenario is Counterspell, which is a very good Cube card already.
I think Channel, Mana Drain and Time Walk qualify as fast mana. The only reason that I even gave Channel and Mana Drain a shot is the heavier color commitment they seem to require. But the cards are powerful enough and mostly green/mostly blue decks respectively are strong enough even without them, so the color requirements are not enough of a drawback.
Ancestral Recall and Time Walk are some of the few cards that always feel like game changers when they're cast, I don't think an environment with a lower power is right for them. Library would absolutely feast upon said format too.
I've run Time twister in my unpowered cube since the beginning and has never been broken. It's really good in the deck that wants draw 7s, but not every blue deck can take advantage of that. The power level is absolutely there, but not as mindlessly as recall or time walk.
It's worth mentioning too that cards like Tinker, Channel (even Mana Drain to some extent) have ceilings that are largely driven by what else you run in your cube. My combo cube is built on the premise of high powered spells but low(ish) powered creatures. The worst thing you can cast off of channel is Sundering Titan - still scary of course on T2, but substantially less game ending than a T2 Eldrazi. A T3 Grave Titan (off a Mana Drain) is considerably more devastating on T3 than say Kokusho.
I often feel I'd rather have a Time Spiral when holding Timetwister in my hand in most blue decks. I'm considering making the switch in my powered cube but it does mean aggro and tempo (not all) will lose a tool. I'd say the two are very close so if your group is okay with Time Spiral I'd expect them to be okay with Timetwister.
There are definitely games where Mind Twist feels more on the fair side due to not having any rocks in play, but Ancestral, Timewalk and Mana Drain are absurd cards no matter what.
I think there's a good reason why most cubes are powered or unpowered and not in between.
Ancestral, Time Walk and Library are just too broken for unpowered, imo. They would feel even more unfair in an unpowered environment, because there'd be fewer broken pieces overall, so you'd be less likely to have any yourself when facing them.
Mana Drain and Channel seem very out of place when you're banning fast mana.
Mind Twist might be okay, still a feel-bad card, but less back-breaking without fast mana. Tinker is fine (and you can tweak the powerlevel with the targets).
Disagree with wtwlf and voiddisciple. I ran a 'semi-powered' cube for a number of years as we found that whereas broken spells have a one-off broken effect, broken fast mana breaks the remainder of your entire curve. There is no cognitive dissonance involved in seeing Lotus and Sol Ring as unfun, but still wanting to run Time Walks, Jittes etc. That said we do run fast mana at the moment for a change of pace, and that's really fun to have back. And of course like everything there is a lot of nuance to all of this. Some cards get better/worse with fast mana around. For example, I really wouldn't advocate running Library of Alexandria in an unpowered cube. The cards that Konfusius mentioned, too. Just my two pence...
- Ancestral Recall
- Mana Drain
- Time Walk
- Mind Twist
- Channel
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Library of Alexandria(ehh probably not)I'm already playing Tinker, just trying to think of ways to
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Twist is a high variance card. Early (especially with fast mana) it wins the game in arguably one of the most unfun ways possible. Without fast mana, it can be a clumsy Hymn to Tourach. If people are excited to draft it, don't mind the variance, and don't mind losing to it, it's certainly good enough. It's a card that could drag people into black (assuming that is something your cube needs to encourage).
Channel is super narrow, but very broken in a deck that can cast it early and to good effect. Another very high variance card even in that deck, though it can often just win the game.
Those types of cards are "season to taste" IMO. No right or wrong answer really. They are generally very powerful so there's no argument to be made about inclusion on that basis alone. It's really about how narrow they are, how much variance, and whether those factors are important enough to pass on the raw power the card offers. I think many of these will get a lot of decenting opinions.
In defense of cards like this, there's an excitement to getting what amounts to a free win off of a card like this. It's combo essentially. Combo's pretty sexy. A lot of groups are unhappy playing those kinds of games though because they feel entirely luck based sometimes. Though if you have a clumsy deck, it can make your night better when you slide in a win off of something bogus like a T3 twist someones entire hand.
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Channel is a difficult beast and I have no experience with it outside of powered. I guess here you'll just have to ask if your cube is okay with a potential turn 2 Newlamog. It does limit your choices though, less so than e.g. Show and Tell.
Time Walk and Mana Drain are silly, but at least Mana Drain makes you commit to blue to some extent. It's... weirdly conditional removal and fast mana in the same card? Time Walk is probably too busted since a standard unpowered cube has all the general ways to abuse it, but I'd argue it's still not as silly as drawing three for one mana.
About Library: Nick Nobody of the MTG Cube Blog actually argued that Library is A-OK and fair in unpowered (http://mtgcube.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/card-spotlight-library-of-alexandria.html). Interesting arguments, but I personally would say that Library is one of the few cards that actually becomes more broken in unpowered because of the different environment. Namely, since unpowered (usually) has no fast mana, control decks can't play the alternative cheaty route as easily - meaning a deck can't have a potential turn 1 Blightsteel through Tinker - and thus won't usually be dumping their hand fast. This makes Library just universally better, because while you're right to first-pick it and build with the card in mind, you won't be faced with the temptation of also picking all the power and trying to play a turn 2 Karn. Library is hands down the best card a slow deck in an unpowered environment could ever play by a ridiculously wide margin.
Kind of related to the subject: I can't be bothered to find it now, but there was once a great discussion on the cube subreddit about "the perceived fairness of a format vs. the actual fairness". The idea was that few people can take games as analytically as some more abstractly oriented, competitive folks. Many people react with more bad feelings to getting their creatures countered than getting their creatures killed; many people decide to not run Mill Jace due to unfairness or uninteractivity instead of the card being hit-or-miss, because milling is just "annoyingly boring"; I assume people would also rather lose to a perfect aggro curve-out than a ridiculously early fatty. In short, people like "interactivity" and not losing early even though some games that take several turns may actually have been decided on turn 2 already, the player(s) just didn't acknowledge this. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but ultimately the choice should be made with your players' preferences and psychologies in mind.
I have tried Channel and Mana Drain in an environment with no fast mana, but I did not like how they played. Channel allows broken early game plays, which imo is counter to the whole idea of excluding fast mana. Mana Drain is just absurd now that mana burn no longer is a thing: the worst case scenario is Counterspell, which is a very good Cube card already.
I think Channel, Mana Drain and Time Walk qualify as fast mana. The only reason that I even gave Channel and Mana Drain a shot is the heavier color commitment they seem to require. But the cards are powerful enough and mostly green/mostly blue decks respectively are strong enough even without them, so the color requirements are not enough of a drawback.
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I've run Time twister in my unpowered cube since the beginning and has never been broken. It's really good in the deck that wants draw 7s, but not every blue deck can take advantage of that. The power level is absolutely there, but not as mindlessly as recall or time walk.
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There are definitely games where Mind Twist feels more on the fair side due to not having any rocks in play, but Ancestral, Timewalk and Mana Drain are absurd cards no matter what.
Ancestral, Time Walk and Library are just too broken for unpowered, imo. They would feel even more unfair in an unpowered environment, because there'd be fewer broken pieces overall, so you'd be less likely to have any yourself when facing them.
Mana Drain and Channel seem very out of place when you're banning fast mana.
Mind Twist might be okay, still a feel-bad card, but less back-breaking without fast mana. Tinker is fine (and you can tweak the powerlevel with the targets).
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