I like Ethereal Ambush, especially since you're running a little long on Morphs and the card gets notably better (and more interesting) if you have Morph support. I don't like Coiling Oracle really at all- I think its popularity is a testament to balanced gold sections, and we all know how I feel about those.
We discussed the card before and kinda agreed its often worse than Elvish Visionary. The card was strong in constructed, so maybe thats why many stuck to it. I tried it for ramp lately in my T2, but more or less because the better guild cards are in my T1.
Speaking of weird color counting, I want to see if Hybrids can fill any of the holes in my Cube. The specific card that I am thinking about is Safehold Elite as a two drop that is one half of a Green card and one half of a White card. I feel like White would definitely run it, Green might, and BG or BW might for sacrifice synergy? (Although I don't like it with Soulstinger. More generally, are there hybrids that feel good enough to you if they weren't competing for gold slots, but basically artifact slots? Here are some of the ones on my radar:
Cultbrand Cinder- Worse than Pith Driller, but by how much? Pith Driller is really good...
Driller is colorless and costs 4. Rakdos has a lot of playables..
Barkshell Blessing- a decent trick in two colors that like tricks. I keep on trying to sneak in a +2/+2 for W: Maybe this is the answer? its fine, but there are better pumpspells Gather Courage
Dimir Guildmage- Honestly, the only thing holding this back is whether it's closer to Hybrid or Gold. more of a gold card, but you can pretty much put it everywhere
Shielding Plax- I'm not loving some of my aura inclusions, but is this card OK? pretty decent, a little slow though
Piston-Fist Cyclops- I have this nagging suspicion that this just ends up playing as a Gold card, in which case it's not good enough. i can see it in monored decks
Pitiless Gorgon- You all seem to like Deathtouch more than I do, so this is mostly to see where you all would rank this sort of body. 2/2s for 3 are not very interesting, especially if you want to trade with them, there are better deathtoucher for 1 or 2.
Whisper Agent- Another set of stats that I feel lower on than you all, but how much better is this than a bad removal spell? I like it very much for draw-go
Senate Griffin- This doesn't actually fill any holes, my curve is probably a touch too high, and it seems fragile. BUT IF NONE OF THOSE THINGS WERE TRUE, a 3/2 for 4 with evasion and some deck manipulation- good enough? meh
Just to be clear- The cards I listed are hybrids I'm not already running or planning on running. I'm running all of the ones that you mentioned already, Saltmaster.
EDIT:
Here's the list of Hybrids that I'm looking at running for now. I think I've been talked off the Footlight Fiends ledge... for now.
I am very, very on board for the Denizen combo. I'm not sure I have enough infinite sac engines to support the combo YET, but it is very much on my radar. All told, though, I'm not hearing much pushback on Elite, and I like the work it does. Seems like a safe inclusion for me.
Driller is definitely better than Cinder, no question. It also actually competes on a similar but different axis, which is just kind of weird. BUT I don't think the number of playables in Rakdos is really the question there. Would slower Black, Red, or Black/Red decks run it? My inclination is yes, but as something of a 20-23rd card in one pretty common archetype and one pretty uncommon one, so I'm currently leaning no.
I actually like Blessing more and more the more I think about it. There are better tricks, but not that many of them are really worth running because they belong in too few place. How does it stack up to the tricks worth running in White?
Guildmage has always felt more gold to me, in which case I don't think it's good enough. But I think most mostly-Blue or Black decks would run it? I should probably just throw it in and see what sort of response it gets.
I suspect Plax is fine but just the exact opposite of the sort of card that I like. Maybe I should run it and just be too willing to listen when people don't like it.
I could see Piston-Fist in monored, but eh... I feel like I'm imagining quite a bit there. I'll keep my eyes on how those decks play, though. I don't think it's particularly hard to turn on in my Cube if you want to, you just have to want to.
Pitiless Gorgon is extremely underwhelming to me, and I think double-hybrid in its cost kills it. But does the average Black and/or Green deck want a 3-cost deathtoucher? I think the answer to that question is no, but I also don't think Deathtouch is much more than blank text unless it's doing something I don't want to encourage, so I figured I'd run it by you folks who like it more.
I think I'm convinced that Whisper Agent is worth a trial run. People seem to like it and it even has some grave synergy. I'll give it a shot.
I think the "meh" on Senate Griffin speaks to what I'm hoping for with hybrids, though! They're the cards that aren't exciting, the "mehs" that never really warrant inclusion... But some of those effects are also the glue that holds formats together, like 4 cost fliers with modest value attached. I think two toughness is what ultimately does it in, plus I just don't think Blue would ever play it given that color's ridiculous top-end, but it's the sort of card that intrigues me the most.
not sure why you want to push hybrids that much. Usually the ultimative density of strong cards in each color doesnt need any crosscolor cards. Except very few theyre pretty much always worse than their monocolored variation and might get just ignored. I think you have to decrease powerlevel by a lot to make them viable.
Im interested how the meta turns out in the end though and id be totally up for an xmage draft if you want to fire one.
Regarding Deathtouch. I like them because they interact with hexproof, always trade in combat and can be abused with Viridian Longbow or Fire Whip
The context-free version is that it lets me run effects that I'm not otherwise interested in running. I'll use this example again because I think it reflects it well: Noggle Bandit has lots of competition in Blue and Blue Red (and some in Red, but notably less). It's not good enough for any color's slot, really by quite a bit. But it gets played pretty much every time that it shows up in the draft, because some combination of Blue, Red, or Blue/Red decks wants a mostly unblockable 2/2. The Cube is a better experience with these sorts of lower power, high utility cards in it. It doesn't hurt here that Hybrid effects at common tend to be pretty basic, largely because of how they're designed in sets that aren't Shadowmoor or Eventide.
It should also be said that I don't mind depowering the environment enough for them to be playable. I don't think it's particularly hard to do- most of the cards I listed above appear in at least a few competitive gold sections. Even if it is, I think it's worth it. The point of a Cube designed to be as powerful as possible escapes me entirely if the format isn't fun to play, and it seems like there is a definite power/fun line that is very easy to cross if you're not looking at every decision at a pretty holistic level. I've done it more than once!
With some extra context, I would rather error towards inclusion than against with hybrids. A lot of the conversation surrounding hybrids has born out the idea that we as a group are just sort of used to treating Hybrid cards like gold, which I don't really think makes any sense. They're closer to artifacts than gold most of the time. Because of this shorthand, though, the data we have available for Hybrids is... Extremely bad? Like it's weird theorycrafting that seems to mostly be based on questions that are only somewhat relevant. I would rather get more data and know that these things don't work (which experience has not born out yet, but keep pushing and it will burn me- I might even run Footlight Fiends!) then just sort of guess that they won't because of shaky theoretical comparisons.
And yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking of, actually. I would like to try to move my meta away from one where bad-looking, format underperforming Hexproof creatures are top tier, and Deathtouch on pinger tech is fun in formats like EDH where pingers are underdogs but mostly seems like beating up on middling strategies in our format. There's a long way to go on that first question in particular, but I don't see a reason to make it worse.
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What about just not running any gainlands/bouncelands/gates? This makes mana dorks/mana filter creatures more desirable, and makes the 5 Panoramas prime real estate. Instead of of a Golgari land for example, Elves of Deep Shadow would be more desirable. Or Fire Sprites or Orcish Lumberjack. They're also just not very interesting, I could jam 10 more fun cards in my cube.
And for my cube, I kind of don't like Crypt Rats, Pestilence, or Evincar's Justice. I took out the other power cards like Guardian of the Guildpact, Sprout Swarm, etc. so these kind of stick out as A+ cards in a sea of B-, C cards.
I want to keep the level of removal the same so they'd just be swapped for more black removal.
I don't like cutting down on power by making fixing worse. Limited mana bases are pretty bad, and games that end because of shaky mana, while a part of Magic, are not games that really leave a great taste in anyone's mouth. The bouncelands might be too good, but at the very least I'd want to leave one set of taplands in if you wanted to support any sort of multicolored play.
I'd be tempted to leave in Justice, personally. While I see why you'd cut Rats and Pestilence, I do think that access to some sort of Wrath effect is pretty important to keep wider strategies from becoming overwhelming. You don't support a go-wide strategy in the same way that I do, so it may be less essential than normal.
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I don't like cutting down on power by making fixing worse. Limited mana bases are pretty bad, and games that end because of shaky mana, while a part of Magic, are not games that really leave a great taste in anyone's mouth. The bouncelands might be too good, but at the very least I'd want to leave one set of taplands in if you wanted to support any sort of multicolored play.
I'd be tempted to leave in Justice, personally. While I see why you'd cut Rats and Pestilence, I do think that access to some sort of Wrath effect is pretty important to keep wider strategies from becoming overwhelming. You don't support a go-wide strategy in the same way that I do, so it may be less essential than normal.
I'm not cutting power by making fixing worse, I'm replacing the 3 black sweepers with other cards and making fixing worse.
My feeling on Evincar's is that I don't like buyback in my cube. You should have to work to use a spell multiple times, not have it be a self contained bomb that's essentially a Pauper legal Planeswalker. If I were to keep a black sweeper it would probably be Pestilence because not much can recur it and it's double black. I took out Ghostly Flicker and Angelic Renewal and Sprout Swarm and Capsize, so any sort of infinite loop I don't like.
When the cube had more power in it these were more acceptable but when I'm putting in cards like Giant Tortoise and Benalish Hero or Mana Chains there is too much of a disparity between the top tier and everything else.
"Whatever happens we have got/the Maxim gun and they have not." situations are not something I want to happen with my cube.
I do run Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, Ash Barrens, the 5 Shards of Alara 3 color Panoramas, Prophetic Prism, Scuttlemutt, and cards like Helionaut or Dream Thrush in every color except red which doesn't have 5 color ones. So the fixing is worse but it's still there.
Having a certain amount of lands in the cube is good not only for improving the mana flow in the games, but also to reward good drafting. As you end up with 42-45 cards at the end of a draft, but only use ~23 spells and ~17 lands, a good drafter will pick lands before, e.g., another cmc2 creature, if it suits its deck, as lands don't compete with spells for those ~23 slots.
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Holiday Armadillo... Cloak
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
i tried to cut all duals from my T2 once and would only run some rainbow lands, signets and a bunch of fixing in green. i got the feedback that it feels bad to waste deckslots on fixing and that duals do it much smoother. Now im the complete opposite and would like to run 3 full sets of duals but decided to run 2.5 and give green some lockets, since the ability to turn them into drawspells is nice for ramp strategies.
As said, in my T1 I only run the bouncelands and some fetches and stuff and the signets got promoted into it. Basically only control wants the duals there anyway.
Rule of thumb, Id advice to run 2 sets of duals of your choice and at least 10 other ways of manafixing, be it manastones, fetches, more duals
I don't like cutting down on power by making fixing worse. Limited mana bases are pretty bad, and games that end because of shaky mana, while a part of Magic, are not games that really leave a great taste in anyone's mouth. The bouncelands might be too good, but at the very least I'd want to leave one set of taplands in if you wanted to support any sort of multicolored play.
I'd be tempted to leave in Justice, personally. While I see why you'd cut Rats and Pestilence, I do think that access to some sort of Wrath effect is pretty important to keep wider strategies from becoming overwhelming. You don't support a go-wide strategy in the same way that I do, so it may be less essential than normal.
I'm not cutting power by making fixing worse, I'm replacing the 3 black sweepers with other cards and making fixing worse.
I'm not sure that I get the first part of your comment, Saltmaster. I was referring exclusively to the lands in the first response. If you're trying to open up slots and bring in interesting cards at the expense of your mana base, I think that the end result will just be players going multicolor less often. A good example would be the Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas Planeswalker duel decks. These were actually surprisingly well balanced, maybe among the more balanced of the Duel Decks series. But they would be lower on the rankings than their balance might suggest, because the reason for their balance was basically that both decks had equally bad mana and lots of games were decided by people stumbling rather than showing off the themes of their Planeswalkers.
My feeling on Evincar's is that I don't like buyback in my cube. You should have to work to use a spell multiple times, not have it be a self contained bomb that's essentially a Pauper legal Planeswalker. If I were to keep a black sweeper it would probably be Pestilence because not much can recur it and it's double black. I took out Ghostly Flicker and Angelic Renewal and Sprout Swarm and Capsize, so any sort of infinite loop I don't like.
If that's your preference, that's your call, but Pestilence feels orders of magnitude more powerful and less fun to me. It does more damage and recurs by you keeping a creature in play, which isn't really hard to do (and makes it even more backbreaking). Still, maybe arguing on the margins here.
When the cube had more power in it these were more acceptable but when I'm putting in cards like Giant Tortoise and Benalish Hero or Mana Chains there is too much of a disparity between the top tier and everything else.
"Whatever happens we have got/the Maxim gun and they have not." situations are not something I want to happen with my cube.
If this is the problem for you, then I think you'll want to keep a close eye on some of your other inclusions. By cutting all of your Wraths, I think that you are giving aggressive strategies (particularly those that go wide) a significant leg up over slower or controlling strategies.
I do run Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, Ash Barrens, the 5 Shards of Alara 3 color Panoramas, Prophetic Prism, Scuttlemutt, and cards like Helionaut or Dream Thrush in every color except red which doesn't have 5 color ones. So the fixing is worse but it's still there.
This is good in that it hurts aggressive strategies way more than controlling strategies, but my experience with many of these fixers is that they have been unreliable and are often weak enough to just go unusued or underdrafted, and by extension that any sort of multicolor card or strategy will be less used or underplayed.
EDIT: Right now I'm looking at filling in my Cube with a few "basic" cards. This is tough to define, but basically Stormfront Pegasus-equivalent cards that kind of define the "pure limited" feel of the Cube. Does anyone have any favorites that seem like they might fit that bill?
It's been my experience with my cube that you often fall short of mono color and have to play 2 color, especially with a 4 person draft of half of the cube. So supporting mono color a little more doesn't bother me. Maybe the last few mono colored slots you need end up being filled by a colorless creature or equipment or whatever.
It may actually end up depowering certain things. If less decks are Black Removal + _______ or Blue draw + _______ then okay.
Last time I drafted 3 of the 4 players were black white. It ended up being balanced because we were all fighting over the same cards while the 4th player built Simic beaters unabated but that's still not as desirable as having a cube that's actually balanced.
So far I feel like red is the worst color in my cube, green's big dumb beaters are great, blue is good splashed with anything, and Orzhov decks are top tier. The best thing you could possibly be doing in my cube is using Custodi Squire to recur Pestilence or Crypt Rats.
The discussion about Hybrids and my insecurity about whether Curse of Chains or Lawmage's Binding is better made me think. Since I deeply care about balancing I thought instead of adding a 4th Guild slot I could add a seperate slot for hybdrid cards/cards that can be played in either color, but are technically multicolor. This means, that these cards don't have the same problem as too many guild cards have, which is, that they often aren't drafted, because there is simply no one in that color combination. So far I'm considering this:
Dimir: Brine Shaman: Technically not a hybrid, but a pet card of mine I would really like to add and I could see it being played just in a Bx sac deck.
Rakdos: Strangling Soot: I'm not sure if this would actually make the cut for any non-red deck, but this is technically a viable removal even without flashing it back.
Gruul: Burning-Tree Emissary: This frees up a slot for another multicolor card. I currently also run Giantbaiting, but with conspire needing 2 red and/or green creatures this is really more of a guild card.
Selesnya: Avacyn's Pilgrim: This can easily be played in any Gx deck.
Orzhov: Gift of Orzhova: I run this as a mostly white aura anyway and this frees up another guild slot.
Golgari: Rendclaw Trow: This is kind of interesting with my sac archetype.
Simic: Snakeform or Shielding Plax: Booth of these can take the slot. This also frees up a guild slot currently taken.
Izzet: Frostburn Weird: I actually haven't seen this really outside of it's colors, but it's theoretically viable. This is another guild slot I can really use.
Boros: Rally the Peasants: Again not really a hybrid, but I run several similar effects in white and red. This is again a guild slot I could put to good use.
My current thoughts are if I should strictly follow the rule of trying to play monocolored-multicolor cards or simply add a 4th guild slot and try to mostly have at least 1 per guild. In Dimir for example I would really like to play Cavern Harpy even before Brine Shaman.
What do you think of this idea of a 4th flex guild slot, aka. a section specifically for hybrids?
I do something similar. I have a 480 cube and 6 guild slots, 4 of which are "true" gold (including flashback and so) and the other 2 are hybrid gold. That also keeps it simple to store the cards and reorder them after playing.
Keep in mind though, that I moved into modern-paper-comon recently, so you will find some obvious differences with your cube.
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My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
My preference is to discard the structure altogether, but if you value that structure a bit more than I do I think that this is a solid compromise. Following up on Merovingian, I would probably expand the section to two slots per color if you have enough inclusions, but I would only do that once I had a "critical mass" on the fringes.
Of your picks, the only two that I'm not sure about are Brine Shaman and Avacyn's Pilgrim. I can respect that Brine Shaman is a pet card that works with the themes of your Cube, so I think just trying it out seems solid. I don't like Pilgrim in the slot, though. It just feels like at that point you're using a pretty primo slot (I like Safehold Elite for the sac archetype, for example) to basically play Boreal Druid.
EDIT: I should probably just clarify that, if I were assigning color points to Pilgrim, I'd give it .5 White at the absolute most, and would probably just count it as a Green card. If you want that, though, great!
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As far as hybrid mana vs. normal dual colored cards go, I don't see any reason why you couldn't cut mono colored slots for hybrid mana cards as long as you kept the amounts even. If you cut 1 green card and 1 white card you could put two hybrid Selesneya cards in their place.
There are a bunch of Pauper legal hybrid mana cards that say things like, "If you cast a green spell this turn, this creature gets +1 +1 and gains reach.
If you played a blue spell, this creature gains +1 +1 and gains flying until end of turn" or whatever. There are some enchantment auras that give your creatures different buffs depending on what color the creature is.
So a cube that was built around those cards would be real cool. That's a better way to support guilds than cards like Skyknight Legionnaire. Those cards have synergy with every colored card in your deck as opposed to being just random effects that happen to require two different colors like Temporal Spring.
[quote from="Waymarsh »" url="/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/pauper-peasant-discussion/193989-the-pauper-cube-discussion-thread-commons-only?comment=6851"]I don't like cutting down on power by making fixing worse. Limited mana bases are pretty bad, and games that end because of shaky mana, while a part of Magic, are not games that really leave a great taste in anyone's mouth. The bouncelands might be too good, but at the very least I'd want to leave one set of taplands in if you wanted to support any sort of multicolored play.
I'd be tempted to leave in Justice, personally. While I see why you'd cut Rats and Pestilence, I do think that access to some sort of Wrath effect is pretty important to keep wider strategies from becoming overwhelming. You don't support a go-wide strategy in the same way that I do, so it may be less essential than normal.
I'm not cutting power by making fixing worse, I'm replacing the 3 black sweepers with other cards and making fixing worse.
I'm not sure that I get the first part of your comment, Saltmaster. I was referring exclusively to the lands in the first response. If you're trying to open up slots and bring in interesting cards at the expense of your mana base, I think that the end result will just be players going multicolor less often. A good example would be the Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas Planeswalker duel decks. These were actually surprisingly well balanced, maybe among the more balanced of the Duel Decks series. But they would be lower on the rankings than their balance might suggest, because the reason for their balance was basically that both decks had equally bad mana and lots of games were decided by people stumbling rather than showing off the themes of their Planeswalkers.
My feeling on Evincar's is that I don't like buyback in my cube. You should have to work to use a spell multiple times, not have it be a self contained bomb that's essentially a Pauper legal Planeswalker. If I were to keep a black sweeper it would probably be Pestilence because not much can recur it and it's double black. I took out Ghostly Flicker and Angelic Renewal and Sprout Swarm and Capsize, so any sort of infinite loop I don't like.
If that's your preference, that's your call, but Pestilence feels orders of magnitude more powerful and less fun to me. It does more damage and recurs by you keeping a creature in play, which isn't really hard to do (and makes it even more backbreaking). Still, maybe arguing on the margins here.
When the cube had more power in it these were more acceptable but when I'm putting in cards like Giant Tortoise and Benalish Hero or Mana Chains there is too much of a disparity between the top tier and everything else.
"Whatever happens we have got/the Maxim gun and they have not." situations are not something I want to happen with my cube.
If this is the problem for you, then I think you'll want to keep a close eye on some of your other inclusions. By cutting all of your Wraths, I think that you are giving aggressive strategies (particularly those that go wide) a significant leg up over slower or controlling strategies.
EDIT: Right now I'm looking at filling in my Cube with a few "basic" cards. This is tough to define, but basically Stormfront Pegasus-equivalent cards that kind of define the "pure limited" feel of the Cube. Does anyone have any favorites that seem like they might fit that bill?
Take a look at the Pauper legal Alpha/Beta cards. Raise Dead, Healing Salve, Lightning Bolt, Giant Growth, Giant Spider, Spell Blast, Terror, Dark Ritual, etc. You don't have to get fancy either, if you want to save money just sharpie white bordered versions. These cards are Magic at its core.
Colorless cards are pretty vanilla. sparring construct, anything with Myr in it's title, etc. Primal Clay, Elven Lyre, Flying Carpet, etc.
Portal, Portal Second Age, and Portal Three Kingdoms are basically all vanilla cards and if you want vanilla cards those are the sets for you. They were designed to get new players into the game and as such are all Grizzly Bear-ish. Portal cards are so vanilla that there aren't even instants, instead Portal sets have sorcery cards with specific timing instructions that allow you to play them as instants like false summoning, lol. Portal sets have great art and their basic land arts are some of the best the game has to offer.
Additionally, many Portal cards were reprinted between multiple portal sets with different names so you get to have multiple copies of some spells without breaking singleton. hand of deathghostly visitvolcanic hammerfiery ambush
Regarding Hybrids. I think it works if you add real Hybrid cards to that subsection which means to me the card can be played in either color with full functionality. Most of those cards are either "gold" cards or can be put/cheated into the monocolor section.
In the end its just a definition thing anyway. Put them in Hybrids, Gold or Rainbow or whereever
As I said to Izor, nobody will ever notice a slight imbalance in the guildsections. Id say anything from 3-6 is fine to have and wont imbalance anything. I think even WotC does it that way.
I would know and it would bother be, as I am deeply perfectionistic.
I've decided to simply do it and made some major changes together with it, like adding the Ravnica Allegiance cards and also readding the 5 Signets I wasn't running for a long time. The changes can be seen in my blog
I've gone with what I planned, except, that I Safehold Elite instead of Avacyn's Pilgrim together with Ivy Lane Denizen, to see how people respond to an infinite combo like this. If it doesn't work out, I will probably cut the Elite again, because I feel like it's underpowered and boring on it's own for a multicolor card.
If you don't like Elite, I just feel like you have better options for the slot than Pilgrim. Travel Preparations is Gold in approximately the same way as other cards that you're running, so moving it to that slot could open up a "Pure" gold slot in one of the stronger slots for them too.
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Draw 15 cards from the unused portion of the cube, or tutor from the entire unused portion of the cube?
Additionally, should I go to 375 to support Booster Tutor at 8 players?
And what are some thoughts on supporting Splice Onto Arcane in a cube? Last I checked there are enough Pauper legal ones that are playable enough independent of having other arcane spells to splice onto, so I don't really need to have a ton of splice/arcane spells in the cube.
I asked a friend what his favorite (pauper legal) obscure keyword/ability was and he said Splice Onto Arcane. It checks all my boxes as far as cool mechanics go.
Booster Tutor is an uncommon though
You said you wont draft with 8 ppl, so just add it. Otherwise its a good excuse to run 375 cards.
Splice can barely be used as you noticed, but since you already run a bunch of very fringe synergies you could still just add them. If you want to bend some rules there is also always the option to add multiples of certain cards to spice things up.
Enchantment and artifact hate: yes, no, how much? I've been looking at the lists of the members of this forum and seen that many of those cards have been removed. Is it necesary to have that kind of hate, or is it not?
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My 490 Pauper Cube
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Enchantment and artifact hate: yes, no, how much? I've been looking at the lists of the members of this forum and seen that many of those cards have been removed. Is it necesary to have that kind of hate, or is it not?
Most of the enchantments in my cube are either Voltron cards, or Pacifisms/O-Ring type cards that are meant to function as hard removal, so cards that specifically target them are simultaneously too narrow and make removal worse which is something I don't want.
Since I don't have any hexproof in my cube, normal removal/bounce functions as Voltron enchantment destruction.
Most of the artifacts in my cube are creatures or innocuous things like Bonesplitter or Elven Lyre so artifact removal would just be bad removal.
I have Nantuko Vigilante, Qasali Pridemage, Mold Shambler, and Oblivion Ring in my cube but that's it.
I definitely want answers for those, some are just too strong. But I never liked running sideboard cards, so I have a bunch of creatures that can deal with them.
Draw 15 cards from the unused portion of the cube, or tutor from the entire unused portion of the cube?
Additionally, should I go to 375 to support Booster Tutor at 8 players?
It's an uncommon, so there are house rules to get it in in the first place. However, if you want to run it, I think I'd allow any pack (you would probably have to retain a random selection) or an extra Cube pack. I do also think you need to be able to Tutor for an extra pack of Cube- it's just thematic.
And what are some thoughts on supporting Splice Onto Arcane in a cube? Last I checked there are enough Pauper legal ones that are playable enough independent of having other arcane spells to splice onto, so I don't really need to have a ton of splice/arcane spells in the cube.
I asked a friend what his favorite (pauper legal) obscure keyword/ability was and he said Splice Onto Arcane. It checks all my boxes as far as cool mechanics go.
Splice is awesome (one of my go-to casual decks is UB Dampen Thought), but I am wary of it in Cube. By being limited to singleton and such a small supply of cards, there just isn't very much choice to the archetype other than "draft Splice or don't." Plus, because of some flavor design decisions, a lot of Arcane effects end up being pretty similar to one another. It's a cool idea, but I think it's one that's best left to more expansion-like Cubes.
Enchantment and artifact hate: yes, no, how much? I've been looking at the lists of the members of this forum and seen that many of those cards have been removed. Is it necesary to have that kind of hate, or is it not?
Yes and I want more. I like it so much that it's debatable responsible for my Morph subtheme- those are so relevant to me that I wanted to put other Morphs in to cover for them when the situation called for it. I am also strongly considering how many Kami of Ancient Law-type effects I can get away with running in my White section. I like our weird bomb enchantments and artifacts, but they can be disruptive and I want there to be answers.
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My 450 Card Pauper Cube is going through major renovations. Feedback appreciated!
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
EDIT:
Here's the list of Hybrids that I'm looking at running for now. I think I've been talked off the Footlight Fiends ledge... for now.
I am very, very on board for the Denizen combo. I'm not sure I have enough infinite sac engines to support the combo YET, but it is very much on my radar. All told, though, I'm not hearing much pushback on Elite, and I like the work it does. Seems like a safe inclusion for me.
Driller is definitely better than Cinder, no question. It also actually competes on a similar but different axis, which is just kind of weird. BUT I don't think the number of playables in Rakdos is really the question there. Would slower Black, Red, or Black/Red decks run it? My inclination is yes, but as something of a 20-23rd card in one pretty common archetype and one pretty uncommon one, so I'm currently leaning no.
I actually like Blessing more and more the more I think about it. There are better tricks, but not that many of them are really worth running because they belong in too few place. How does it stack up to the tricks worth running in White?
Guildmage has always felt more gold to me, in which case I don't think it's good enough. But I think most mostly-Blue or Black decks would run it? I should probably just throw it in and see what sort of response it gets.
I suspect Plax is fine but just the exact opposite of the sort of card that I like. Maybe I should run it and just be too willing to listen when people don't like it.
I could see Piston-Fist in monored, but eh... I feel like I'm imagining quite a bit there. I'll keep my eyes on how those decks play, though. I don't think it's particularly hard to turn on in my Cube if you want to, you just have to want to.
Pitiless Gorgon is extremely underwhelming to me, and I think double-hybrid in its cost kills it. But does the average Black and/or Green deck want a 3-cost deathtoucher? I think the answer to that question is no, but I also don't think Deathtouch is much more than blank text unless it's doing something I don't want to encourage, so I figured I'd run it by you folks who like it more.
I think I'm convinced that Whisper Agent is worth a trial run. People seem to like it and it even has some grave synergy. I'll give it a shot.
I think the "meh" on Senate Griffin speaks to what I'm hoping for with hybrids, though! They're the cards that aren't exciting, the "mehs" that never really warrant inclusion... But some of those effects are also the glue that holds formats together, like 4 cost fliers with modest value attached. I think two toughness is what ultimately does it in, plus I just don't think Blue would ever play it given that color's ridiculous top-end, but it's the sort of card that intrigues me the most.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
Im interested how the meta turns out in the end though and id be totally up for an xmage draft if you want to fire one.
Regarding Deathtouch. I like them because they interact with hexproof, always trade in combat and can be abused with Viridian Longbow or Fire Whip
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
It should also be said that I don't mind depowering the environment enough for them to be playable. I don't think it's particularly hard to do- most of the cards I listed above appear in at least a few competitive gold sections. Even if it is, I think it's worth it. The point of a Cube designed to be as powerful as possible escapes me entirely if the format isn't fun to play, and it seems like there is a definite power/fun line that is very easy to cross if you're not looking at every decision at a pretty holistic level. I've done it more than once!
With some extra context, I would rather error towards inclusion than against with hybrids. A lot of the conversation surrounding hybrids has born out the idea that we as a group are just sort of used to treating Hybrid cards like gold, which I don't really think makes any sense. They're closer to artifacts than gold most of the time. Because of this shorthand, though, the data we have available for Hybrids is... Extremely bad? Like it's weird theorycrafting that seems to mostly be based on questions that are only somewhat relevant. I would rather get more data and know that these things don't work (which experience has not born out yet, but keep pushing and it will burn me- I might even run Footlight Fiends!) then just sort of guess that they won't because of shaky theoretical comparisons.
And yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking of, actually. I would like to try to move my meta away from one where bad-looking, format underperforming Hexproof creatures are top tier, and Deathtouch on pinger tech is fun in formats like EDH where pingers are underdogs but mostly seems like beating up on middling strategies in our format. There's a long way to go on that first question in particular, but I don't see a reason to make it worse.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
What about just not running any gainlands/bouncelands/gates? This makes mana dorks/mana filter creatures more desirable, and makes the 5 Panoramas prime real estate. Instead of of a Golgari land for example, Elves of Deep Shadow would be more desirable. Or Fire Sprites or Orcish Lumberjack. They're also just not very interesting, I could jam 10 more fun cards in my cube.
And for my cube, I kind of don't like Crypt Rats, Pestilence, or Evincar's Justice. I took out the other power cards like Guardian of the Guildpact, Sprout Swarm, etc. so these kind of stick out as A+ cards in a sea of B-, C cards.
I want to keep the level of removal the same so they'd just be swapped for more black removal.
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/129072
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
I'd be tempted to leave in Justice, personally. While I see why you'd cut Rats and Pestilence, I do think that access to some sort of Wrath effect is pretty important to keep wider strategies from becoming overwhelming. You don't support a go-wide strategy in the same way that I do, so it may be less essential than normal.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
I'm not cutting power by making fixing worse, I'm replacing the 3 black sweepers with other cards and making fixing worse.
My feeling on Evincar's is that I don't like buyback in my cube. You should have to work to use a spell multiple times, not have it be a self contained bomb that's essentially a Pauper legal Planeswalker. If I were to keep a black sweeper it would probably be Pestilence because not much can recur it and it's double black. I took out Ghostly Flicker and Angelic Renewal and Sprout Swarm and Capsize, so any sort of infinite loop I don't like.
When the cube had more power in it these were more acceptable but when I'm putting in cards like Giant Tortoise and Benalish Hero or Mana Chains there is too much of a disparity between the top tier and everything else.
"Whatever happens we have got/the Maxim gun and they have not." situations are not something I want to happen with my cube.
I do run Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, Ash Barrens, the 5 Shards of Alara 3 color Panoramas, Prophetic Prism, Scuttlemutt, and cards like Helionaut or Dream Thrush in every color except red which doesn't have 5 color ones. So the fixing is worse but it's still there.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
As said, in my T1 I only run the bouncelands and some fetches and stuff and the signets got promoted into it. Basically only control wants the duals there anyway.
Rule of thumb, Id advice to run 2 sets of duals of your choice and at least 10 other ways of manafixing, be it manastones, fetches, more duals
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
I'm not sure that I get the first part of your comment, Saltmaster. I was referring exclusively to the lands in the first response. If you're trying to open up slots and bring in interesting cards at the expense of your mana base, I think that the end result will just be players going multicolor less often. A good example would be the Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas Planeswalker duel decks. These were actually surprisingly well balanced, maybe among the more balanced of the Duel Decks series. But they would be lower on the rankings than their balance might suggest, because the reason for their balance was basically that both decks had equally bad mana and lots of games were decided by people stumbling rather than showing off the themes of their Planeswalkers.
If that's your preference, that's your call, but Pestilence feels orders of magnitude more powerful and less fun to me. It does more damage and recurs by you keeping a creature in play, which isn't really hard to do (and makes it even more backbreaking). Still, maybe arguing on the margins here.
If this is the problem for you, then I think you'll want to keep a close eye on some of your other inclusions. By cutting all of your Wraths, I think that you are giving aggressive strategies (particularly those that go wide) a significant leg up over slower or controlling strategies.
This is good in that it hurts aggressive strategies way more than controlling strategies, but my experience with many of these fixers is that they have been unreliable and are often weak enough to just go unusued or underdrafted, and by extension that any sort of multicolor card or strategy will be less used or underplayed.
EDIT: Right now I'm looking at filling in my Cube with a few "basic" cards. This is tough to define, but basically Stormfront Pegasus-equivalent cards that kind of define the "pure limited" feel of the Cube. Does anyone have any favorites that seem like they might fit that bill?
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
It may actually end up depowering certain things. If less decks are Black Removal + _______ or Blue draw + _______ then okay.
Last time I drafted 3 of the 4 players were black white. It ended up being balanced because we were all fighting over the same cards while the 4th player built Simic beaters unabated but that's still not as desirable as having a cube that's actually balanced.
So far I feel like red is the worst color in my cube, green's big dumb beaters are great, blue is good splashed with anything, and Orzhov decks are top tier. The best thing you could possibly be doing in my cube is using Custodi Squire to recur Pestilence or Crypt Rats.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Azorius:
Curse of Chains: Obviously.
Dimir:
Brine Shaman: Technically not a hybrid, but a pet card of mine I would really like to add and I could see it being played just in a Bx sac deck.
Rakdos:
Strangling Soot: I'm not sure if this would actually make the cut for any non-red deck, but this is technically a viable removal even without flashing it back.
Gruul:
Burning-Tree Emissary: This frees up a slot for another multicolor card. I currently also run Giantbaiting, but with conspire needing 2 red and/or green creatures this is really more of a guild card.
Selesnya:
Avacyn's Pilgrim: This can easily be played in any Gx deck.
Orzhov:
Gift of Orzhova: I run this as a mostly white aura anyway and this frees up another guild slot.
Golgari:
Rendclaw Trow: This is kind of interesting with my sac archetype.
Simic:
Snakeform or Shielding Plax: Booth of these can take the slot. This also frees up a guild slot currently taken.
Izzet:
Frostburn Weird: I actually haven't seen this really outside of it's colors, but it's theoretically viable. This is another guild slot I can really use.
Boros:
Rally the Peasants: Again not really a hybrid, but I run several similar effects in white and red. This is again a guild slot I could put to good use.
My current thoughts are if I should strictly follow the rule of trying to play monocolored-multicolor cards or simply add a 4th guild slot and try to mostly have at least 1 per guild. In Dimir for example I would really like to play Cavern Harpy even before Brine Shaman.
What do you think of this idea of a 4th flex guild slot, aka. a section specifically for hybrids?
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
Interested in building your own Pauper Cube? Take a look at some of the lists and the following project: The "Evaluate Everything" Project (updated to M21/JMP)
Keep in mind though, that I moved into modern-paper-comon recently, so you will find some obvious differences with your cube.
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
Of your picks, the only two that I'm not sure about are Brine Shaman and Avacyn's Pilgrim. I can respect that Brine Shaman is a pet card that works with the themes of your Cube, so I think just trying it out seems solid. I don't like Pilgrim in the slot, though. It just feels like at that point you're using a pretty primo slot (I like Safehold Elite for the sac archetype, for example) to basically play Boreal Druid.
EDIT: I should probably just clarify that, if I were assigning color points to Pilgrim, I'd give it .5 White at the absolute most, and would probably just count it as a Green card. If you want that, though, great!
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&order=name&q=legal:pauper is:splitmana
As far as hybrid mana vs. normal dual colored cards go, I don't see any reason why you couldn't cut mono colored slots for hybrid mana cards as long as you kept the amounts even. If you cut 1 green card and 1 white card you could put two hybrid Selesneya cards in their place.
There are a bunch of Pauper legal hybrid mana cards that say things like, "If you cast a green spell this turn, this creature gets +1 +1 and gains reach.
If you played a blue spell, this creature gains +1 +1 and gains flying until end of turn" or whatever. There are some enchantment auras that give your creatures different buffs depending on what color the creature is.
So a cube that was built around those cards would be real cool. That's a better way to support guilds than cards like Skyknight Legionnaire. Those cards have synergy with every colored card in your deck as opposed to being just random effects that happen to require two different colors like Temporal Spring.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
I'm not sure that I get the first part of your comment, Saltmaster. I was referring exclusively to the lands in the first response. If you're trying to open up slots and bring in interesting cards at the expense of your mana base, I think that the end result will just be players going multicolor less often. A good example would be the Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas Planeswalker duel decks. These were actually surprisingly well balanced, maybe among the more balanced of the Duel Decks series. But they would be lower on the rankings than their balance might suggest, because the reason for their balance was basically that both decks had equally bad mana and lots of games were decided by people stumbling rather than showing off the themes of their Planeswalkers.
If that's your preference, that's your call, but Pestilence feels orders of magnitude more powerful and less fun to me. It does more damage and recurs by you keeping a creature in play, which isn't really hard to do (and makes it even more backbreaking). Still, maybe arguing on the margins here.
If this is the problem for you, then I think you'll want to keep a close eye on some of your other inclusions. By cutting all of your Wraths, I think that you are giving aggressive strategies (particularly those that go wide) a significant leg up over slower or controlling strategies.
Take a look at the Pauper legal Alpha/Beta cards. Raise Dead, Healing Salve, Lightning Bolt, Giant Growth, Giant Spider, Spell Blast, Terror, Dark Ritual, etc. You don't have to get fancy either, if you want to save money just sharpie white bordered versions. These cards are Magic at its core.
Planar Chaos also has some color shifted versions of these, like Brute Force or Healing Leaves.
Colorless cards are pretty vanilla. sparring construct, anything with Myr in it's title, etc. Primal Clay, Elven Lyre, Flying Carpet, etc.
Portal, Portal Second Age, and Portal Three Kingdoms are basically all vanilla cards and if you want vanilla cards those are the sets for you. They were designed to get new players into the game and as such are all Grizzly Bear-ish. Portal cards are so vanilla that there aren't even instants, instead Portal sets have sorcery cards with specific timing instructions that allow you to play them as instants like false summoning, lol. Portal sets have great art and their basic land arts are some of the best the game has to offer.
Additionally, many Portal cards were reprinted between multiple portal sets with different names so you get to have multiple copies of some spells without breaking singleton. hand of death ghostly visit volcanic hammer fiery ambush
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
In the end its just a definition thing anyway. Put them in Hybrids, Gold or Rainbow or whereever
As I said to Izor, nobody will ever notice a slight imbalance in the guildsections. Id say anything from 3-6 is fine to have and wont imbalance anything. I think even WotC does it that way.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
I've decided to simply do it and made some major changes together with it, like adding the Ravnica Allegiance cards and also readding the 5 Signets I wasn't running for a long time. The changes can be seen in my blog
I've gone with what I planned, except, that I Safehold Elite instead of Avacyn's Pilgrim together with Ivy Lane Denizen, to see how people respond to an infinite combo like this. If it doesn't work out, I will probably cut the Elite again, because I feel like it's underpowered and boring on it's own for a multicolor card.
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
Interested in building your own Pauper Cube? Take a look at some of the lists and the following project: The "Evaluate Everything" Project (updated to M21/JMP)
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)
Draw 15 cards from the unused portion of the cube, or tutor from the entire unused portion of the cube?
Additionally, should I go to 375 to support Booster Tutor at 8 players?
And what are some thoughts on supporting Splice Onto Arcane in a cube? Last I checked there are enough Pauper legal ones that are playable enough independent of having other arcane spells to splice onto, so I don't really need to have a ton of splice/arcane spells in the cube.
I asked a friend what his favorite (pauper legal) obscure keyword/ability was and he said Splice Onto Arcane. It checks all my boxes as far as cool mechanics go.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
You said you wont draft with 8 ppl, so just add it. Otherwise its a good excuse to run 375 cards.
Splice can barely be used as you noticed, but since you already run a bunch of very fringe synergies you could still just add them. If you want to bend some rules there is also always the option to add multiples of certain cards to spice things up.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
My 490 Pauper Cube
Modern frame only- Common on paper only - no functional copies, no strictly-betters - no subtype-matters
Most of the enchantments in my cube are either Voltron cards, or Pacifisms/O-Ring type cards that are meant to function as hard removal, so cards that specifically target them are simultaneously too narrow and make removal worse which is something I don't want.
Since I don't have any hexproof in my cube, normal removal/bounce functions as Voltron enchantment destruction.
Most of the artifacts in my cube are creatures or innocuous things like Bonesplitter or Elven Lyre so artifact removal would just be bad removal.
I have Nantuko Vigilante, Qasali Pridemage, Mold Shambler, and Oblivion Ring in my cube but that's it.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
It's an uncommon, so there are house rules to get it in in the first place. However, if you want to run it, I think I'd allow any pack (you would probably have to retain a random selection) or an extra Cube pack. I do also think you need to be able to Tutor for an extra pack of Cube- it's just thematic.
Splice is awesome (one of my go-to casual decks is UB Dampen Thought), but I am wary of it in Cube. By being limited to singleton and such a small supply of cards, there just isn't very much choice to the archetype other than "draft Splice or don't." Plus, because of some flavor design decisions, a lot of Arcane effects end up being pretty similar to one another. It's a cool idea, but I think it's one that's best left to more expansion-like Cubes.
Yes and I want more. I like it so much that it's debatable responsible for my Morph subtheme- those are so relevant to me that I wanted to put other Morphs in to cover for them when the situation called for it. I am also strongly considering how many Kami of Ancient Law-type effects I can get away with running in my White section. I like our weird bomb enchantments and artifacts, but they can be disruptive and I want there to be answers.
Commanders:
Toshiro Umezawa
Rona, Disciple of Gix (Pauper)