By that definition, I think it's not fun at all to build a cube without parasitic cards. Parasitic cards are harder to evaluate, since you'll have to take into consideration what synergies you have and are hoping to pick up later in the draft, more so with cards that are just good regardless. I don't want my drafts turning into 'pick the best cards and win'.
EDIT: I dislike the term 'parasitic' for these cards. Can we call them 'archetype cards' or 'archetype-specific cards'. Parasitic is a word used to discribe things like the Energy mechanic from Kaladesh, not for individual cards.
It's a term commonly used in Magic for cards of the type described. It refers to mechanics, and cards that use these mechanics. It doesn't matter anyway how you call it, doesn't it? Does an umbrella become something else if you call it portable roof?
No one said you can't/shouldn't have parasitic cards in your cube, but the more you add, the more linear and boring the drafting/deck building experience will naturally become. If you add too many parasitic cards it's like shuffling 10 constructed decks together and making a cube out of it. The decks that come out of that may look very smart and will have a lot of strong synergies, but in the end they always look the same and you don't really have a choice what to pick after the first 2 picks.
Cards that are 'good regardless' actually require more and not less thinking when you draft them than parasitic/archetype cards. If you pick Exhume you will only look for UB reanimator cards afterwards and many packs will only have one card that makes sense. If you pick Incinerate instead you can still go into any direction you want with your deck and you will see a lot of cards that make sense in each pack.
Apart from that the whole discussion was about whether parasitic cards like Exhume are playable outside of their archetypes, which they are not. That's basically the definition of parasitic, though there are of course varying degrees of parasitic. A card like Lightning Bolt is universally playable, a card like Carnophage only makes sense in a specific, but broad strategy and a card like Exhume only makes sense in a very specific deck.
Yeah, a mechanic is basically parasitic when it does not support anything outside itself. Decks built around such mechanics are able to utilise cards from the rest of the pool but no other deck is able to get value off their archetype-supporting cards. A card which only offers value for a specific archetype in that manner is similarly parasitic which is distinct from just supporting an archetype since many cards that support specific archetypes also have more general value.
A really good example is 'Infect' as a mechanic. Adding these cards to your deck as anything but defenders with Wither or an alternative win con stifles any strategy outside an Infect win.
By that definition, I think it's not fun at all to build a cube without parasitic cards. Parasitic cards are harder to evaluate, since you'll have to take into consideration what synergies you have and are hoping to pick up later in the draft, more so with cards that are just good regardless. I don't want my drafts turning into 'pick the best cards and win'.
EDIT: I dislike the term 'parasitic' for these cards. Can we call them 'archetype cards' or 'archetype-specific cards'. Parasitic is a word used to discribe things like the Energy mechanic from Kaladesh, not for individual cards.
Nope, parasitic is a great term with a very specific meaning and can certainly be applied to individual cards - in fact, the whole reason they are parasitic is because they generally don't work well as individual cards.
Take Evermind and Kodama's Might as examples. Both use the same mechanic. Evermind is entirely parasitic and a terrible card without a huge as-fan of arcane spells (arguably bad even with that). Kodama's Mightcould be played as a mediocre pump spell while completely ignoring the splice part of the text (and be strictly worse than Giant Growth, but that's not what we're discussing). One is parasitic because it can't work on its own. The other isn't good, but it isn't necessarily parasitic.
As for energy, I run Aether Hub as a land with a one-time mana fixing ability that can go in any deck (with no other energy cards in the cube). It would certainly be even better with other sources of energy, but it does its thing without needing other specific cards.
Parasitic cards are generally bad in limited because you waste picks if you can't get enough support. They make it hard to build a cube because they require so many support slots, and they often lead to very specific card selections and determine your drafting choices for you, rather than allowing for interesting decision-making, which reduces the re-playability of the cube as a whole. One of my cubes is a silver border Un-cube. Unstable had a couple parasitic mechanics in Host/Augment and Contraptions, which meant I had to run a high number of each to make it work, even the ones that I don't think are good. Augment cards are useless without enough Hosts, and you need to pick both Contraptions and the things that assemble them. It's fun and crazy at first, but after three drafts in a row, I was getting sick of it and had to tell my group that we weren't using that cube for a while.
That doesn't mean you should never build a cube with parasitic mechanics; it just means that you need to recognize them for what they are and accept the downsides and limitations.
There are definitely degrees. Just because something supports a specific archetype doesn't mean it's useless everywhere else. This discussion started with Mesa Enchantress, and I think that's a good example of an archetype card that is totally unplayable anywhere else. If it manages to be playable, it's because you forced GW or Bant enchantress to be a buildable archetype. Whereas Eidolon of Blossoms (pretending it gets downshifted, which isn't impossible) is an entirely different story. It's playable with blink synergy, and it's decent as a generic midrange card. If you have a lot of enchantment based removal, you don't have to change your strategy to get value. Sure you'll change your picks, but you don't need to assemble all the cookie cutter pieces of the supported enchantress deck like you do with Mesa Enchantress. You don't even need to have those cards in your cube, you just need decent enchantments. I found enchantments to be an unbuildable theme without rares because the support looks more like Mesa Enchantress than Eidolon of Blossoms.
This friction is natural. Guttersnipe is a staple because it's just good. It's not only good in a spells archetype that you have to build intentionally into the cube. Young Pyromancer and Murmuring Mystic too. Pyre Hound and Spellgorger Weird are on the same spectrum, but they cling harder to the archetype. You need to build around them to make it work, and it'll feel a bit more like you're building the same deck in different drafts. The difference is more subtle than people are making it out to be. It has to do with a card's floor more than anything else. Mesa Enchantress has a laughably bad floor. But Spellgorger Weird and Guttersnipe have the same floor, and Weird's trigger is even easier to achieve. It turns out that Guttersnipe is the more universally playable card, but it's not completely clearcut, and it's not inherently obvious.
I think infect is a perfect example of this concept, since it seems like it should be really parasitic, but that's not my experience. I was drafting back in SOM days, and "infect lite" was extremely common. There are a few infect card in my main cube, but it's not even close to a buildable archetype. Phyrexian Juggernaut still wins games. That's just because of the individual build of the card, and doesn't have to do with how an infect archetype works. Now Glistener Elf is a different story. Either it's a 1/1 wither that can't damage the opponent (still not awful) or you are building an archetype, and it's probably going to feel like you are trying to get the same Hatred or infect deck every time you draft it. Energy is another easy example, since it's the textbook parasitic mechanic. Aether Chaser is perfectly viable without any additional energy in the environment. Thriving Grubs is not. Aether Chaser is potentially part of a clearly parasitic archetype, but it's not parasitic in itself just because it's good. Actually, it supports aggro, swarm, and even artifacts, so it's a multi-synergistic card, which is the opposite of parasitic.
It's all up to individual card quality. People have mentioned Exhume as a parasitic card. Maybe that's true, but nobody is arguing that Animate Dead is parasitic because it isn't. Animate Dead goes in all kinds of non-reanimator decks. On the face, these cards serve exactly the same function. It's just that one in better than the other in a vacuum. I'll note that I added Exhume to my new cube, but that's just because I don't have an extra copy of Dread Return, Victimize, or Diabolic Servitude.
It's also not obvious or inherently true that Exhume only works in blue black reanimator. You only know that because you have experience with it. It seems strange to me that it would be unplayable in other color combinations if reanimator is viable in those colors. That seems like something that's specific to the cube environment. Green and red have plenty of ways to fill the grave early. But I'm not saying it's untrue. Certainly, it's one of the weaker reanimate effects unless you are actually getting it on the first few turns.
It has to do with a card's floor more than anything else... It's all up to individual card quality.
That's an excellent way to put it. Because parasitic cards and mechanics can be powerful in constructed, where you use multiples and sculpt the perfect balance to reach the cards' ceiling, but in limited, you are more likely to experience their floor. And playing at a really bad floor level just leads to feel-bads.
It's also not obvious or inherently true that Exhume only works in blue black reanimator. You only know that because you have experience with it. It seems strange to me that it would be unplayable in other color combinations if reanimator is viable in those colors. That seems like something that's specific to the cube environment.
We are talking about a typical cube here, one that is at least similar to the average list of forum members or the average lists on cubetutor. In a specific cube environment everything can work, if 50% of the cards in your cube are enchantments you would play Mesa Enchantress without even thinking about it.
I already mentioned that Exhume is fringe playable in GB graveyard value decks, but neither red nor green have the discard outlets for a full-blown reanimator deck. Red has exactly one great card for that (Faithless Looting), the rest is either mediocre at best and slightly parasitic by itself (like Tormenting Voice and friends) or not a very good outlet to begin with (like Burning-Fist Minotaur or Bloodrage Brawler) or even both.
For green it's the same, but a green self-mill midrange value deck usually has some good 5-6 cmc creatures that are worth exhuming. I would still take any other reanimation spell here over Exhume and reanimation spells aren't even needed for this kind of deck. But it can end up in such a deck in some rare cases.
But without nitpicking you can say that Exhume is only playable in UB reanimator in a typical peasant cube. Pretty sure I've never seen it getting used anywhere else either during an actual game, at least not by an experienced player.
What I like about Exhume and the reason why I run it is that it's actually the best of the few playable reanimation spells there is for a true reanimator deck while it's (more or less, see above) unplayable anywhere else. That's how I like my parasitic cards, Exhume is invaluable if you want to support reanimator and it's just one card that does so much for the archetype without affecting your overall cube design.
On a sidenote, Thriving Grubs is a decent card. Nothing to write home about, but it's not worse than pretty much any of the other playable red 3/2s. I had it in my cube for a short while and I know that some people with larger cubes still run it.
I continue to retain that of the old trio of 3/2 attackers for 2 in red, Thriving Grubs is the best. Energy would be parasitic were it not for the fact that most energy cards are built to provide their own minimal energy investment to make them between playable and strong even without any further archetype support in your deck.
With regard to Infect and cards like Phyrexian Juggernaut: I specifically pointed out that the singular cards can work out as alt win cons on occasion. In EDH, for instance, people occasionally throw in Tainted Strike, Triumph of the Hordes, or Grafted Exoskeleton for similar reasons, and I have considered the last one of these even in CU/be.
I'll add that in some cases it can be right to add the more parasitic card(s). If you have a deck that is struggling with almost getting there, it might not be a bad idea to swap e.g Animate Dead for Exhume, to ensure that the key card drifts to the "right" deck, rather than being picked up by anyone at the table just for being value. You don't want too many of these cards, but a few can be correct, especially if the deck/archetype is struggling a bit.
Ok, so archetype cards don't have to be parasitic. I think the most interesting cubing experience is one where lot of cards are decent on their own, but can be very good when the right synergy is there. Mix those in with your staples, and some truly parasitic cards. These parasitic cards can be helpful as signposts to the players, like 'see this Intangible Virtue? Tokens is a thing you could go for!'.
Ok, so archetype cards don't have to be parasitic. I think the most interesting cubing experience is one where lot of cards are decent on their own, but can be very good when the right synergy is there. Mix those in with your staples, and some truly parasitic cards. These parasitic cards can be helpful as signposts to the players, like 'see this Intangible Virtue? Tokens is a thing you could go for!'.
I tend to be further away on that spectrum - I look at how many ways a purely parasitic card can just be a dead card. What happens if Intangible Virtue is in the third pack, so it doesn't signal until it's too late? What happens if it's in the first pack and you take it, only to get no more than one or two mediocre token producers for the rest of the draft? What happens if, while playing, you drop it but then never draw into token makers? What if you're playing defensively, chump blocking with tokens that never survive long enough to take advantage of the vigilance?
I'd like to compare Favorable Winds and Empyrean Eagle.
- Favorable Winds is 100% parasitic - it's a do-nothing card unless you get out flyer. In a vacuum, it costs two mana, takes up possibly an entire turn, and does absolutely nothing - it doesn't affect the opponent's board, and it doesn't help you win the game by itself. If you never draw a flyer, it's a dead card. If you have one flyer but the opponent kills or counters it, they've essentially gotten a free 2-for-1. Sure, it says "flyers is a thing," but it can lead you astray.
- Empyrean Eagle also says "go flyers," but it provides a resonable threat on its own. You could never draw another flyer and yet still be happy having cast this. It's a reasonable blocker, and it's a pretty decent attacker. I've won many drafts on the back of a WUflying deck; evasion is not to be underestimated. If you get a second flyer out, it shines all the more. If they kill this, it's just a 1-for-1 and you've maintained parity (or even gotten in for a hit or two before they killed it).
Of the two, I prefer the archetype card that always represents some value over the parasitic card that potentially represents a wasted pick, wasted resources, or a wasted turn.
When you consider the drafting acronym BREAD (Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Advantage, Dudes), a purely parasitic card doesn't even place over a vanilla Grizzly Bears. Try to place Intangible Virtue or Favorable Winds in that acronym - unless the cube is The Token Cube or The Flying Cube, they don't fit; without support, they actually provide DisAdvantage, which is a really low floor. Phantom General is at the very minimum a Dude, and Empyrean Eagle is both Evasion and a Dude. Which card is going to lead to less feel-bads?
Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game by definition, so the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is.
What I mean by this is that if people have to actually work for synergies and earn neat combos as opposed to drafting EZmode cards and goodstuff piles, you're doing things right.
Restrictions breed creativity and you're going to have more interesting games when you don't give everyone unfettered access to *all* of the toys. If people have to work to get Bridge From Below into their graveyard or have to make voltrons out of non-hexproof creatures you'll end up with more fun stories than, "My good stuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse goodstuf pile to ValuTown faster."
If you need parasitic cards for decks to have synergies I don't want to play your cube. Cards like Intangible Virtue are incredibly inelegant ways to add synergy into your cube because there's no real thinking involved in playing or drafting the card. You either pick it early and then proceed to pick every card that has the word token in the text or just don't pick it at all. They are similarly mindless to play, as if you go Intangible Virtue -> Spectral Procession you likely win on the spot if your opponent doesn't have enchantment removal. There are so many other ways to increase synergies that go beyond narrow bands like tokens or flyers.
Peasant especially is so rich with minor synergies that you don't need parasitic cards to enable synergies. The vast majority of peasant cards have niche synergies that can potentially be game winning while still being solid cards without them. In my experience, more often than not it's not the good stuff piles that win but instead the decks that can eek out minor advantages from all these synergies.
Synergies are what makes decks play smoothly (there's a reason why basically all constructed decks are rife with minor interactions). Making people work for their synergies is putting them on the fast track to unexciting decks that don't play well.
Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game
Repeating this over and over in every thread you post in isn't going to make it true. And saying "by definition" doesn't add any truth, authority, or dictionary reference to your statement.
Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game
Repeating this over and over in every thread you post in isn't going to make it true. And saying "by definition" doesn't add any truth, authority, or dictionary reference to your statement.
If you cared about substance you would have addressed my whole post instead of just focusing on the style of the first sentence of it like a sophist.
If you're just trying to play stuff people hate, you'll end up with a pile of Strip Mines, Chalice of the Voids, and Bridge From Belows. Nobody will ever win, and everyone will be mad about it. All things in moderation.
Grief cards have their place, as do archetype cards, but the environment needs to be built on the back of baseline playable cards, just like any draftable set should be. Pure build-around cards need to be rare. You can really have your cake and eat it too if you construct carefully. Make sure your goodstuff is also kinda synergistic and your synergy is also kinda goodstuff and you're golden.
Slots are few and precious. Cut the ultra-specific build-around in favor of the more draftable card on the same theme. That doesn't mean you need to listen when people say "that's not playable because X, Y, and Z are staples and they're better." Those people may be right, but that doesn't mean whatever card is bad. Just don't play cards that have a bad floor and require very specific lines of play.
Years ago, in the early days of my cube, I played Primalcrux, though my sister protested. I wanted somebody to be able to build monogreen someday and win! Someday somebody did build monogreen, and they didn't get Primalcrux. In fact, I realized that the deck didn't need it at all. Everything Primalcrux can do, that deck could do better. The only thing it had going for it was that it was super cool to play a 6xG card. Karametra's Acolyte was the card that made the deck, and that card is very playable outside of monogreen. We must cut the proverbial Primalcrux, and play the proverbial Karamatra's Acolyte.
People might tell us that Acolyte is unplayable, but they're wrong. They're wrong because Acolyte has a decent floor and a high ceiling. It's a synergistic card that promotes turbo-ramp, and works wonders with untappers while synergizing generically with all manner of good green cards. It may not be playable in tier 1 cubes (I don't really know), but it's a great card. But Primalcrux and cards like it really are harmful to the environment. Not because they can't ever work, but because they seldom do.
If you are playing a cube that actually makes Bridge from Below work, it's almost certainly a gimmick cube. Pawn of Ulamog will almost always play better. I theorycrafted an all-black cube that plays Bridge, and I think it really works there, but I doubt I'll really ever build that cube. I'd never get anybody to draft it. It's not a bad thing to build a gimmick cube, but you need a lot of friends who are open to really wacky games of Magic. That's a social requirement most of us probably can't fill.
If you cared about substance you would have addressed my whole post instead of just focusing on the style of the first sentence of it like a sophist.
I've posted substance already, which I felt was decently explained. I'm just getting sick of your trite "anything that magic players hate is good for the game" line. I could quote my previous replies to your repetitious statement, if you like. It's derailed more than one thread and been refuted by multiple people. But you've proven again and again that you just want to be contrarian, make inflammatory statements, and then play the victim - "Oh, I got banned for having an opinion."
Saying true things that people don't want to hear isn't allowed of course, so I'm being branded a troll despite me genuinely holding these views.
It's less what you say and more how you say it. Being abrasive isn't the same as being truthful. I'm totally fine with people having opinions that oppose my own - but when they declare their own opinion as self-evident truth and act like every one else is an idiot, it gets really obnoxious.
You want a focused debate on the rest of your post? You got it.
Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game by definition, so the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is.
I suppose that depends on your purpose for building and playing a cube. My purpose is to have fun, to play limited, and to attempt to build a deck capable of creating the best game I can, to have the best memories afterward. The people I play with share that purpose. If every game is just a sequence of feel-bads, players will despair at the lack of strategic depth and grow bored at the lack of progress. They won't want to draft again. The cube will have killed itself.
So, I take issue with your statement that "the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is." I believe it to be based on a faulty premise, namely that "Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game by definition." Not only is this a reductive statement, mashing all Magic players into one nebulous hive-mind, as if there were no opposing opinions among them, but it also lacks coherent logic. Magic players like to play Magic, therefore, they want the game to continue and to be healthy; ergo, they would hate for the game to die, which by definition would be the opposite of being "good for the game."
Even disregarding the faulty premise, let's address "the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is." Allow me to present a hypothetical cube designed with the maximum of feel-bads.
- You draft Training Drone, but there are no equipment in the cube.
- Blind-Spot Giant is the only member of his species to be found.
- Spatial Binding has no need to ever be activated, as there are no cards with phasing.
- Bogbrew Witchis an overcosted 1/3 with nothing in the cube to search for.
- Tombfire has no cards to remove, anywhere.
- Great Wall again serves zero purpose.
- Break Open doesn't have a single legal target in the cube.
- etc.
I think most people would agree that this is a steaming pile of unplayable garbage guaranteed to create a maximum of feel-bads. Is it well designed? I suppose if your purpose is to provide a miserable experience for all involved, then yes.
Is this extreme? Yes, it's more a caricature of a cube than an actual cube. But it makes a point.
What I mean by this is that if people have to actually work for synergies and earn neat combos as opposed to drafting EZmode cards and goodstuff piles, you're doing things right.
What makes you think people don't have to work for synergies when presented with 15 good choices? How is it only work when they get 2 options with 13 obvious bad choices that can be thrown out without consideration? Seems to me that it's more work selecting the right thing when so many other amazing options present themselves and tempt you to stray in other directions.
Restrictions breed creativity and you're going to have more interesting games when you don't give everyone unfettered access to *all* of the toys.
I agree that restrictions breed creativity. Given that this is in the Peasant Cube subforum, one of the generally agreed upon restrictions is no rares. Pauper cubes take it even further. Given that cube is designed for draft or limited, another restriction is that you can only use cards opened in the packs, so you don't get access to all the toys. From there, you are correct that the cube builder can place restrictions on which cards they include, and which cards they exclude. Curating a cube is a very personal thing with near-infinite possibilities.
But what determines "more interesting"? That's not an objective term - it's entirely subjective. What one Magic player finds interesting, another may not. One player may even find something interesting for a while and then grow dissatisfied with it over time. Years ago, I found group hug to be interesting in multi-player Commander; now I despise it and actively target anyone playing it.
Maybe you prefer very low power, low floor cards. Maybe someone else doesn't find that interesting at all. Personally, I love building constructed decks designed to make bad cards shine, to hit their ceiling. But in limited, I want to play it a little safer. The added variance and loss of control by randomizing which cards you have access to means that you are far, far more likely to operate near floor level than ceiling level.
If people have to work to get Bridge From Below into their graveyard or have to make voltrons out of non-hexproof creatures you'll end up with more fun stories than, "My good stuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse goodstuf pile to ValuTown faster."
Again, you're forgetting different player psychographics. Maybe you find one situation to be a more fun story than someone else, but how is "My good stuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse goodstuf pile to ValuTown faster" any less valid than "My jankstuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse jankstuff pile to a ValuTown slightly faster"?
I believe that the key to any good game is the challenge, the potential for either party to win or lose, and this requires relative balance. If one party has the clear advantage and never loses it, it makes for a bad game and, generally, a bad story (think of anytime one player was mana-screwed and just couldn't play - was it fun for either player?). This is true at every power level - two casual decks that are evenly pitted can create the same type of games as two competitive decks that are evenly matched.
And part of making sure decks are evenly matched in a cube is to control levels of variance. We talk about a card's floor and ceiling - which do you think is more erratically variable?
Bad floor, high ceiling OR Good floor, high ceiling
Do you really want to leave it all to the luck of the draw whether you can even use one card because you did or didn't draw another? If you set a baseline that every card has to do something on its own, you aren't removing strategy from the equation; you're removing dumb luck. That's why some of us don't like parasitic cards that lead to more feel-bads.
If you're just trying to play stuff people hate, you'll end up with a pile of Strip Mines, Chalice of the Voids, and Bridge From Belows. Nobody will ever win, and everyone will be mad about it. All things in moderation.
Grief cards have their place, as do archetype cards, but the environment needs to be built on the back of baseline playable cards, just like any draftable set should be. Pure build-around cards need to be rare. You can really have your cake and eat it too if you construct carefully. Make sure your goodstuff is also kinda synergistic and your synergy is also kinda goodstuff and you're golden.
Slots are few and precious. Cut the ultra-specific build-around in favor of the more draftable card on the same theme. That doesn't mean you need to listen when people say "that's not playable because X, Y, and Z are staples and they're better." Those people may be right, but that doesn't mean whatever card is bad. Just don't play cards that have a bad floor and require very specific lines of play.
Years ago, in the early days of my cube, I played Primalcrux, though my sister protested. I wanted somebody to be able to build monogreen someday and win! Someday somebody did build monogreen, and they didn't get Primalcrux. In fact, I realized that the deck didn't need it at all. Everything Primalcrux can do, that deck could do better. The only thing it had going for it was that it was super cool to play a 6xG card. Karametra's Acolyte was the card that made the deck, and that card is very playable outside of monogreen. We must cut the proverbial Primalcrux, and play the proverbial Karamatra's Acolyte.
People might tell us that Acolyte is unplayable, but they're wrong. They're wrong because Acolyte has a decent floor and a high ceiling. It's a synergistic card that promotes turbo-ramp, and works wonders with untappers while synergizing generically with all manner of good green cards. It may not be playable in tier 1 cubes (I don't really know), but it's a great card. But Primalcrux and cards like it really are harmful to the environment. Not because they can't ever work, but because they seldom do.
If you are playing a cube that actually makes Bridge from Below work, it's almost certainly a gimmick cube. Pawn of Ulamog will almost always play better. I theorycrafted an all-black cube that plays Bridge, and I think it really works there, but I doubt I'll really ever build that cube. I'd never get anybody to draft it. It's not a bad thing to build a gimmick cube, but you need a lot of friends who are open to really wacky games of Magic. That's a social requirement most of us probably can't fill.
It's not really about playing degenerate, unfun cards and griefing Magic players. It's about forcing them to play games of fun, fair interactive Magic. When a Magic player opens a pack with Kjeldoran Skycaptain and One with Nothing and a bunch of pushed Arcane cards, it's like sprinkling holy water on a vampire.
The last time I played my cube, I Winston drafted with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I drafted a deck with an Arcane Dampen Thought sub-theme. The board was at parity a few turns in, and I played my first spliced Dampen Thought and milled a Bridge From Below into my opponent's graveyard and gave my opponent 4 zombies. I tried to hold on by splicing Candle's Glow a bunch of times but I couldn't.
You don't really get games like that in other cubes which are just good stuff piles.
By the way, I did meet up with someone from the mtgcube Subreddit who had a mono-black cube a few times. It was pretty cool actually, you should try it out.
Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game by definition, so the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is.
What I mean by this is that if people have to actually work for synergies and earn neat combos as opposed to drafting EZmode cards and goodstuff piles, you're doing things right.
Restrictions breed creativity and you're going to have more interesting games when you don't give everyone unfettered access to *all* of the toys. If people have to work to get Bridge From Below into their graveyard or have to make voltrons out of non-hexproof creatures you'll end up with more fun stories than, "My good stuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse goodstuf pile to ValuTown faster."
This is a great argument. I disagree with how you word the first sentence. 'Feel bads' aren't fun, and you shouldn't strive for them. Parasitic cards however, are a great test for your players. If a player has to pick between a parasitic card with potentially higher upside and a good less parasitic card, I think that choice is more interesting than choosing between Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter. Half of my archetypes in colorcombinations involving white involve tokens, so a card like Intangible Virtue makes a player ask themself: 'am I a real tokens deck or just a general go-wide aggro deck' or 'do I really need to win through combat with tokens or can I just get by on Blood Artist effects'. To really make draft choices matter, the card pool must be diverse. My archetype cards are not parasitic for the most part, but every color has a few parasitic cards. These parasitic cards fit into well supported themes, and sometimes in various different color combinations.
Edit: Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter are in my cube though, I also like the staples, but a cube shouldn't be just the staples and the next best unsituational cards after that, in my opinion.
When a Magic player opens a pack with Kjeldoran Skycaptain and One with Nothing and a bunch of pushed Arcane cards, it's like sprinkling holy water on a vampire.
Because such a pack screams 'hey, I'm uninteractive and unfun'. If you pick an arcane card you have to mindlessly pick more arcane cards for the rest of the draft as splice onto arcane is one of the most parasitic mechanics ever invented for Magic, can't get more linear and boring than that.
Oh, wait, apparently it can since if you want to make use of One with Nothing you have to pick exactly the cards the cube designer wanted you to pick (whatever these are...) when he put the card in or else it will be more than completely useless. If you don't draft the whole cube you may even end up with a steaming pile of garbage and can't build a working deck with your cards at all, but who cares.
Last, but not least you could pick Kjeldoran Skycaptain. In that case you can only hope that the power level of the rest of the cube is just as low, in which case it would be the only decent card in the pack and the only one that allows you to actually pick a card of your own choice in the next pack.
The last time I played my cube, I Winston drafted with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I drafted a deck with an Arcane Dampen Thought sub-theme. The board was at parity a few turns in, and I played my first spliced Dampen Thought and milled a Bridge From Below into my opponent's graveyard and gave my opponent 4 zombies. I tried to hold on by splicing Candle's Glow a bunch of times but I couldn't.
Your gameplay example is about as exciting as rolling dice, but it has nothing to do with an intelligent and challenging game of Magic. You randomly mill Bridge from Below into your opponent's yard, a card that is completely impossible to set up in a cube environment, and he is lucky enough that you apparently don't run any creatures, most likely because you play the ultra linear arcane mechanic deck that was shuffled into the cube, and there is no place for creatures in that deck. At which point did you or your opponent actually do something meaningful? Maybe you think it's funny that you helped him win by accident, but...it just happened.
Cool and surprising synergies you never really thought of happen in regular CU/bes as well, but usually they don't come out of nowhere, instead it's a mixture of skill, drafting the right cards and a bit of luck.
Fun is purely subjective, but most of the evil Magic players who don't know what is good for the game simply want Magic games where you win by building a good, synergistic deck after picking the right cards for it out of many possible options during the draft and then playing a smart and strategical game of Magic. And not because of some weird, totally random crap that happens with cards that can only ever work as intended in constructed combo decks. That may be fun for the giggles if you are drunk, but it gets old really fast for most people.
When you talk about the mono black cube it sounds as if you think people have problems with cubes that are different from the typcial run-off-the-mill cube (be it rare, peasant or pauper), which is absolutely not the case. There are millions of fun ways to build a cube as long as the cube is well designed. But simply shuffling a pile of random cards together because they're 'cool' doesn't cut it, at least not for the average Magic player who doesn't know what is good for the game (tm).
You don't have to play useless cards to build an archetype. One With Nothing is a great example of a card that belongs in no cubes. There have to be a dozen cards that fulfill the same purpose without wasting a precious cube slot just to play a funky card. Great cards you're probably not playing, like Putrid Imp, Tortured Existence, Undertaker, Olivia's Dragoon, etc.
Tortured Existence is an awesome engine card that can be used in a number of different places to much greater effectiveness than One With Nothing. Putrid Imp is just a straight up better card, and isn't any kind of overpowered. Or if you want a weaker card with some pizzazz, play any of the wacky, janky spellshapers. They range from Notorious Assassin levels of pretty good to Greel, Mind Raker levels of total jank. They can all coexist at the same level as Kjeldoran Skycaptain. All One With Nothing has going for it is the swag of being legendarily bad. Heck, One With Nothing is unplayable in "Bad On Purpose" cubes. It's hard to even design a less playable card.
There's nothing wrong with playing banding cards. That's a viable choice as long as creature quality is low. Lots of people play old-school cubes with banding creatures. There is something wrong with spending space on One With Nothing. Wasting one slot like that is okay I guess, but wasting several is a problem.
I've never been a proponent of playing a traditional, high-power, goodstuff cube, but playing cards like One With Nothing is not the way to rebel against that paradigm.
I'm just getting sick of your trite "anything that magic players hate is good for the game" line.... But you've proven again and again that you just want to be contrarian, make inflammatory statements, and then play the victim - "Oh, I got banned for having an opinion."
Spooky
Just about the day this exchange happened, I had my own with this guy. This is eerily similar to what I said, down to calling it "trite", repetitive, and saying he "plays the victim".
...
Never mind the fact that you can't make a cube that fits his standard of "everything magic players hate is good". He is, presumably, a magic player. So only cards he doesnt want to put in a cube should be cards he wants to put into his cube. Unless of course he's the only magic player who knows better.
On top of that, different players hate different things. If he's going to defend One with nothing, should he defend coin flip cards? Dexterity cards? Voltaic key into time vault? Un cards? Tibalt? Winston draft? Combat damage on the stack? Where in that oft repeated line is anything actionable that anyone else can work with?
So what do you guys think about graveyard and artifact hate? How much do you guys play, and what sort? I have found the initial build of my new cube to be a little light on both.
For artifact hate, I think I'll just re-add Manic Vandal and call it a day.
Graveyard hate is a big no for me unless it comes as a side effect. Unless I'm mistaken Nezumi Graverobber is the only card in my cube that has such an effect. There are no super broken cards like in powered cubes that win the game on turn 2 or 3 without graveyard hate, so it isn't needed either. A card like Relic of Progenitus is pure sideboard material and it won't see play at all in more than 1 out of 10 games (if at all) unless your cube has a heavy graveyard theme.
For a while I ran cards like Disenchant and Naturalize, but ultimately hardly anyone ever maindecked them (and rightly so). Even Reclamation Sage and friends aren't the most picked cards, but at least you can maindeck them. I think it's easier to simply not run any op artifacts (or enchantments) like Loxodon Warhammer or Skullclamp than trying to force a critical amount of artifact or enchantment hate into the cube, which will never work out well.
I still don't mind artifact removal if it is maindeckable, and red got two cool new toys lately with Goblin Cratermaker and Abrade, which are CU/be staples from my pov.
Peasant has an inherent problem with graveyard hate. All the cards that deal with the graveyard in Peasant are just so narrow and it always feels bad to put them in the cube.
They are almost always sideboard cards.
Instead of justifying putting in graveyard hate, I instead steer away from cards and strategies that rely heavily on the graveyard. This is why I won't include big 2 for 1 reanimate/recursion spells in the cube, like Victimize, Deadwood Treefolk, Baloth Null or even cards like Rise from the Tides.
Since we can't fight the graveyard efficiently, I try to avoid cards that really focus on the graveyard. I rather play a few reanimate spells for value and a few recursion creatures like Witness and Vesperlark.
There have been times I have thought about completely taking out the reanimate spells from black just for this reason.
It's a term commonly used in Magic for cards of the type described. It refers to mechanics, and cards that use these mechanics. It doesn't matter anyway how you call it, doesn't it? Does an umbrella become something else if you call it portable roof?
No one said you can't/shouldn't have parasitic cards in your cube, but the more you add, the more linear and boring the drafting/deck building experience will naturally become. If you add too many parasitic cards it's like shuffling 10 constructed decks together and making a cube out of it. The decks that come out of that may look very smart and will have a lot of strong synergies, but in the end they always look the same and you don't really have a choice what to pick after the first 2 picks.
Cards that are 'good regardless' actually require more and not less thinking when you draft them than parasitic/archetype cards. If you pick Exhume you will only look for UB reanimator cards afterwards and many packs will only have one card that makes sense. If you pick Incinerate instead you can still go into any direction you want with your deck and you will see a lot of cards that make sense in each pack.
Apart from that the whole discussion was about whether parasitic cards like Exhume are playable outside of their archetypes, which they are not. That's basically the definition of parasitic, though there are of course varying degrees of parasitic. A card like Lightning Bolt is universally playable, a card like Carnophage only makes sense in a specific, but broad strategy and a card like Exhume only makes sense in a very specific deck.
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A really good example is 'Infect' as a mechanic. Adding these cards to your deck as anything but defenders with Wither or an alternative win con stifles any strategy outside an Infect win.
Take Evermind and Kodama's Might as examples. Both use the same mechanic. Evermind is entirely parasitic and a terrible card without a huge as-fan of arcane spells (arguably bad even with that). Kodama's Might could be played as a mediocre pump spell while completely ignoring the splice part of the text (and be strictly worse than Giant Growth, but that's not what we're discussing). One is parasitic because it can't work on its own. The other isn't good, but it isn't necessarily parasitic.
As for energy, I run Aether Hub as a land with a one-time mana fixing ability that can go in any deck (with no other energy cards in the cube). It would certainly be even better with other sources of energy, but it does its thing without needing other specific cards.
Parasitic cards are generally bad in limited because you waste picks if you can't get enough support. They make it hard to build a cube because they require so many support slots, and they often lead to very specific card selections and determine your drafting choices for you, rather than allowing for interesting decision-making, which reduces the re-playability of the cube as a whole. One of my cubes is a silver border Un-cube. Unstable had a couple parasitic mechanics in Host/Augment and Contraptions, which meant I had to run a high number of each to make it work, even the ones that I don't think are good. Augment cards are useless without enough Hosts, and you need to pick both Contraptions and the things that assemble them. It's fun and crazy at first, but after three drafts in a row, I was getting sick of it and had to tell my group that we weren't using that cube for a while.
That doesn't mean you should never build a cube with parasitic mechanics; it just means that you need to recognize them for what they are and accept the downsides and limitations.
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This friction is natural. Guttersnipe is a staple because it's just good. It's not only good in a spells archetype that you have to build intentionally into the cube. Young Pyromancer and Murmuring Mystic too. Pyre Hound and Spellgorger Weird are on the same spectrum, but they cling harder to the archetype. You need to build around them to make it work, and it'll feel a bit more like you're building the same deck in different drafts. The difference is more subtle than people are making it out to be. It has to do with a card's floor more than anything else. Mesa Enchantress has a laughably bad floor. But Spellgorger Weird and Guttersnipe have the same floor, and Weird's trigger is even easier to achieve. It turns out that Guttersnipe is the more universally playable card, but it's not completely clearcut, and it's not inherently obvious.
I think infect is a perfect example of this concept, since it seems like it should be really parasitic, but that's not my experience. I was drafting back in SOM days, and "infect lite" was extremely common. There are a few infect card in my main cube, but it's not even close to a buildable archetype. Phyrexian Juggernaut still wins games. That's just because of the individual build of the card, and doesn't have to do with how an infect archetype works. Now Glistener Elf is a different story. Either it's a 1/1 wither that can't damage the opponent (still not awful) or you are building an archetype, and it's probably going to feel like you are trying to get the same Hatred or infect deck every time you draft it. Energy is another easy example, since it's the textbook parasitic mechanic. Aether Chaser is perfectly viable without any additional energy in the environment. Thriving Grubs is not. Aether Chaser is potentially part of a clearly parasitic archetype, but it's not parasitic in itself just because it's good. Actually, it supports aggro, swarm, and even artifacts, so it's a multi-synergistic card, which is the opposite of parasitic.
It's all up to individual card quality. People have mentioned Exhume as a parasitic card. Maybe that's true, but nobody is arguing that Animate Dead is parasitic because it isn't. Animate Dead goes in all kinds of non-reanimator decks. On the face, these cards serve exactly the same function. It's just that one in better than the other in a vacuum. I'll note that I added Exhume to my new cube, but that's just because I don't have an extra copy of Dread Return, Victimize, or Diabolic Servitude.
It's also not obvious or inherently true that Exhume only works in blue black reanimator. You only know that because you have experience with it. It seems strange to me that it would be unplayable in other color combinations if reanimator is viable in those colors. That seems like something that's specific to the cube environment. Green and red have plenty of ways to fill the grave early. But I'm not saying it's untrue. Certainly, it's one of the weaker reanimate effects unless you are actually getting it on the first few turns.
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We are talking about a typical cube here, one that is at least similar to the average list of forum members or the average lists on cubetutor. In a specific cube environment everything can work, if 50% of the cards in your cube are enchantments you would play Mesa Enchantress without even thinking about it.
I already mentioned that Exhume is fringe playable in GB graveyard value decks, but neither red nor green have the discard outlets for a full-blown reanimator deck. Red has exactly one great card for that (Faithless Looting), the rest is either mediocre at best and slightly parasitic by itself (like Tormenting Voice and friends) or not a very good outlet to begin with (like Burning-Fist Minotaur or Bloodrage Brawler) or even both.
For green it's the same, but a green self-mill midrange value deck usually has some good 5-6 cmc creatures that are worth exhuming. I would still take any other reanimation spell here over Exhume and reanimation spells aren't even needed for this kind of deck. But it can end up in such a deck in some rare cases.
But without nitpicking you can say that Exhume is only playable in UB reanimator in a typical peasant cube. Pretty sure I've never seen it getting used anywhere else either during an actual game, at least not by an experienced player.
What I like about Exhume and the reason why I run it is that it's actually the best of the few playable reanimation spells there is for a true reanimator deck while it's (more or less, see above) unplayable anywhere else. That's how I like my parasitic cards, Exhume is invaluable if you want to support reanimator and it's just one card that does so much for the archetype without affecting your overall cube design.
On a sidenote, Thriving Grubs is a decent card. Nothing to write home about, but it's not worse than pretty much any of the other playable red 3/2s. I had it in my cube for a short while and I know that some people with larger cubes still run it.
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With regard to Infect and cards like Phyrexian Juggernaut: I specifically pointed out that the singular cards can work out as alt win cons on occasion. In EDH, for instance, people occasionally throw in Tainted Strike, Triumph of the Hordes, or Grafted Exoskeleton for similar reasons, and I have considered the last one of these even in CU/be.
I'll add that in some cases it can be right to add the more parasitic card(s). If you have a deck that is struggling with almost getting there, it might not be a bad idea to swap e.g Animate Dead for Exhume, to ensure that the key card drifts to the "right" deck, rather than being picked up by anyone at the table just for being value. You don't want too many of these cards, but a few can be correct, especially if the deck/archetype is struggling a bit.
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I'd like to compare Favorable Winds and Empyrean Eagle.
- Favorable Winds is 100% parasitic - it's a do-nothing card unless you get out flyer. In a vacuum, it costs two mana, takes up possibly an entire turn, and does absolutely nothing - it doesn't affect the opponent's board, and it doesn't help you win the game by itself. If you never draw a flyer, it's a dead card. If you have one flyer but the opponent kills or counters it, they've essentially gotten a free 2-for-1. Sure, it says "flyers is a thing," but it can lead you astray.
- Empyrean Eagle also says "go flyers," but it provides a resonable threat on its own. You could never draw another flyer and yet still be happy having cast this. It's a reasonable blocker, and it's a pretty decent attacker. I've won many drafts on the back of a WUflying deck; evasion is not to be underestimated. If you get a second flyer out, it shines all the more. If they kill this, it's just a 1-for-1 and you've maintained parity (or even gotten in for a hit or two before they killed it).
Of the two, I prefer the archetype card that always represents some value over the parasitic card that potentially represents a wasted pick, wasted resources, or a wasted turn.
When you consider the drafting acronym BREAD (Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Advantage, Dudes), a purely parasitic card doesn't even place over a vanilla Grizzly Bears. Try to place Intangible Virtue or Favorable Winds in that acronym - unless the cube is The Token Cube or The Flying Cube, they don't fit; without support, they actually provide DisAdvantage, which is a really low floor. Phantom General is at the very minimum a Dude, and Empyrean Eagle is both Evasion and a Dude. Which card is going to lead to less feel-bads?
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What I mean by this is that if people have to actually work for synergies and earn neat combos as opposed to drafting EZmode cards and goodstuff piles, you're doing things right.
Restrictions breed creativity and you're going to have more interesting games when you don't give everyone unfettered access to *all* of the toys. If people have to work to get Bridge From Below into their graveyard or have to make voltrons out of non-hexproof creatures you'll end up with more fun stories than, "My good stuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse goodstuf pile to ValuTown faster."
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.
Peasant especially is so rich with minor synergies that you don't need parasitic cards to enable synergies. The vast majority of peasant cards have niche synergies that can potentially be game winning while still being solid cards without them. In my experience, more often than not it's not the good stuff piles that win but instead the decks that can eek out minor advantages from all these synergies.
Synergies are what makes decks play smoothly (there's a reason why basically all constructed decks are rife with minor interactions). Making people work for their synergies is putting them on the fast track to unexciting decks that don't play well.
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If you cared about substance you would have addressed my whole post instead of just focusing on the style of the first sentence of it like a sophist.
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.
Grief cards have their place, as do archetype cards, but the environment needs to be built on the back of baseline playable cards, just like any draftable set should be. Pure build-around cards need to be rare. You can really have your cake and eat it too if you construct carefully. Make sure your goodstuff is also kinda synergistic and your synergy is also kinda goodstuff and you're golden.
Slots are few and precious. Cut the ultra-specific build-around in favor of the more draftable card on the same theme. That doesn't mean you need to listen when people say "that's not playable because X, Y, and Z are staples and they're better." Those people may be right, but that doesn't mean whatever card is bad. Just don't play cards that have a bad floor and require very specific lines of play.
People might tell us that Acolyte is unplayable, but they're wrong. They're wrong because Acolyte has a decent floor and a high ceiling. It's a synergistic card that promotes turbo-ramp, and works wonders with untappers while synergizing generically with all manner of good green cards. It may not be playable in tier 1 cubes (I don't really know), but it's a great card. But Primalcrux and cards like it really are harmful to the environment. Not because they can't ever work, but because they seldom do.
If you are playing a cube that actually makes Bridge from Below work, it's almost certainly a gimmick cube. Pawn of Ulamog will almost always play better. I theorycrafted an all-black cube that plays Bridge, and I think it really works there, but I doubt I'll really ever build that cube. I'd never get anybody to draft it. It's not a bad thing to build a gimmick cube, but you need a lot of friends who are open to really wacky games of Magic. That's a social requirement most of us probably can't fill.
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I still stand by this statement:
You want a focused debate on the rest of your post? You got it.I suppose that depends on your purpose for building and playing a cube. My purpose is to have fun, to play limited, and to attempt to build a deck capable of creating the best game I can, to have the best memories afterward. The people I play with share that purpose. If every game is just a sequence of feel-bads, players will despair at the lack of strategic depth and grow bored at the lack of progress. They won't want to draft again. The cube will have killed itself.
So, I take issue with your statement that "the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is." I believe it to be based on a faulty premise, namely that "Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game by definition." Not only is this a reductive statement, mashing all Magic players into one nebulous hive-mind, as if there were no opposing opinions among them, but it also lacks coherent logic. Magic players like to play Magic, therefore, they want the game to continue and to be healthy; ergo, they would hate for the game to die, which by definition would be the opposite of being "good for the game."
Even disregarding the faulty premise, let's address "the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is." Allow me to present a hypothetical cube designed with the maximum of feel-bads.
- You draft Training Drone, but there are no equipment in the cube.
- Blind-Spot Giant is the only member of his species to be found.
- Spatial Binding has no need to ever be activated, as there are no cards with phasing.
- Bogbrew Witchis an overcosted 1/3 with nothing in the cube to search for.
- Tombfire has no cards to remove, anywhere.
- Great Wall again serves zero purpose.
- Break Open doesn't have a single legal target in the cube.
- etc.
I think most people would agree that this is a steaming pile of unplayable garbage guaranteed to create a maximum of feel-bads. Is it well designed? I suppose if your purpose is to provide a miserable experience for all involved, then yes.
Is this extreme? Yes, it's more a caricature of a cube than an actual cube. But it makes a point.What makes you think people don't have to work for synergies when presented with 15 good choices? How is it only work when they get 2 options with 13 obvious bad choices that can be thrown out without consideration? Seems to me that it's more work selecting the right thing when so many other amazing options present themselves and tempt you to stray in other directions.
I agree that restrictions breed creativity. Given that this is in the Peasant Cube subforum, one of the generally agreed upon restrictions is no rares. Pauper cubes take it even further. Given that cube is designed for draft or limited, another restriction is that you can only use cards opened in the packs, so you don't get access to all the toys. From there, you are correct that the cube builder can place restrictions on which cards they include, and which cards they exclude. Curating a cube is a very personal thing with near-infinite possibilities.
But what determines "more interesting"? That's not an objective term - it's entirely subjective. What one Magic player finds interesting, another may not. One player may even find something interesting for a while and then grow dissatisfied with it over time. Years ago, I found group hug to be interesting in multi-player Commander; now I despise it and actively target anyone playing it.
Maybe you prefer very low power, low floor cards. Maybe someone else doesn't find that interesting at all. Personally, I love building constructed decks designed to make bad cards shine, to hit their ceiling. But in limited, I want to play it a little safer. The added variance and loss of control by randomizing which cards you have access to means that you are far, far more likely to operate near floor level than ceiling level.Again, you're forgetting different player psychographics. Maybe you find one situation to be a more fun story than someone else, but how is "My good stuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse goodstuf pile to ValuTown faster" any less valid than "My jankstuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse jankstuff pile to a ValuTown slightly faster"?
I believe that the key to any good game is the challenge, the potential for either party to win or lose, and this requires relative balance. If one party has the clear advantage and never loses it, it makes for a bad game and, generally, a bad story (think of anytime one player was mana-screwed and just couldn't play - was it fun for either player?). This is true at every power level - two casual decks that are evenly pitted can create the same type of games as two competitive decks that are evenly matched.
And part of making sure decks are evenly matched in a cube is to control levels of variance. We talk about a card's floor and ceiling - which do you think is more erratically variable?
Bad floor, high ceiling OR Good floor, high ceiling
Do you really want to leave it all to the luck of the draw whether you can even use one card because you did or didn't draw another? If you set a baseline that every card has to do something on its own, you aren't removing strategy from the equation; you're removing dumb luck. That's why some of us don't like parasitic cards that lead to more feel-bads.
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It's not really about playing degenerate, unfun cards and griefing Magic players. It's about forcing them to play games of fun, fair interactive Magic. When a Magic player opens a pack with Kjeldoran Skycaptain and One with Nothing and a bunch of pushed Arcane cards, it's like sprinkling holy water on a vampire.
The last time I played my cube, I Winston drafted with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I drafted a deck with an Arcane Dampen Thought sub-theme. The board was at parity a few turns in, and I played my first spliced Dampen Thought and milled a Bridge From Below into my opponent's graveyard and gave my opponent 4 zombies. I tried to hold on by splicing Candle's Glow a bunch of times but I couldn't.
You don't really get games like that in other cubes which are just good stuff piles.
By the way, I did meet up with someone from the mtgcube Subreddit who had a mono-black cube a few times. It was pretty cool actually, you should try it out.
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.
This is a great argument. I disagree with how you word the first sentence. 'Feel bads' aren't fun, and you shouldn't strive for them. Parasitic cards however, are a great test for your players. If a player has to pick between a parasitic card with potentially higher upside and a good less parasitic card, I think that choice is more interesting than choosing between Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter. Half of my archetypes in colorcombinations involving white involve tokens, so a card like Intangible Virtue makes a player ask themself: 'am I a real tokens deck or just a general go-wide aggro deck' or 'do I really need to win through combat with tokens or can I just get by on Blood Artist effects'. To really make draft choices matter, the card pool must be diverse. My archetype cards are not parasitic for the most part, but every color has a few parasitic cards. These parasitic cards fit into well supported themes, and sometimes in various different color combinations.
Edit: Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter are in my cube though, I also like the staples, but a cube shouldn't be just the staples and the next best unsituational cards after that, in my opinion.
Because such a pack screams 'hey, I'm uninteractive and unfun'. If you pick an arcane card you have to mindlessly pick more arcane cards for the rest of the draft as splice onto arcane is one of the most parasitic mechanics ever invented for Magic, can't get more linear and boring than that.
Oh, wait, apparently it can since if you want to make use of One with Nothing you have to pick exactly the cards the cube designer wanted you to pick (whatever these are...) when he put the card in or else it will be more than completely useless. If you don't draft the whole cube you may even end up with a steaming pile of garbage and can't build a working deck with your cards at all, but who cares.
Last, but not least you could pick Kjeldoran Skycaptain. In that case you can only hope that the power level of the rest of the cube is just as low, in which case it would be the only decent card in the pack and the only one that allows you to actually pick a card of your own choice in the next pack.
Your gameplay example is about as exciting as rolling dice, but it has nothing to do with an intelligent and challenging game of Magic. You randomly mill Bridge from Below into your opponent's yard, a card that is completely impossible to set up in a cube environment, and he is lucky enough that you apparently don't run any creatures, most likely because you play the ultra linear arcane mechanic deck that was shuffled into the cube, and there is no place for creatures in that deck. At which point did you or your opponent actually do something meaningful? Maybe you think it's funny that you helped him win by accident, but...it just happened.
Cool and surprising synergies you never really thought of happen in regular CU/bes as well, but usually they don't come out of nowhere, instead it's a mixture of skill, drafting the right cards and a bit of luck.
Fun is purely subjective, but most of the evil Magic players who don't know what is good for the game simply want Magic games where you win by building a good, synergistic deck after picking the right cards for it out of many possible options during the draft and then playing a smart and strategical game of Magic. And not because of some weird, totally random crap that happens with cards that can only ever work as intended in constructed combo decks. That may be fun for the giggles if you are drunk, but it gets old really fast for most people.
When you talk about the mono black cube it sounds as if you think people have problems with cubes that are different from the typcial run-off-the-mill cube (be it rare, peasant or pauper), which is absolutely not the case. There are millions of fun ways to build a cube as long as the cube is well designed. But simply shuffling a pile of random cards together because they're 'cool' doesn't cut it, at least not for the average Magic player who doesn't know what is good for the game (tm).
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
Tortured Existence is an awesome engine card that can be used in a number of different places to much greater effectiveness than One With Nothing. Putrid Imp is just a straight up better card, and isn't any kind of overpowered. Or if you want a weaker card with some pizzazz, play any of the wacky, janky spellshapers. They range from Notorious Assassin levels of pretty good to Greel, Mind Raker levels of total jank. They can all coexist at the same level as Kjeldoran Skycaptain. All One With Nothing has going for it is the swag of being legendarily bad. Heck, One With Nothing is unplayable in "Bad On Purpose" cubes. It's hard to even design a less playable card.
There's nothing wrong with playing banding cards. That's a viable choice as long as creature quality is low. Lots of people play old-school cubes with banding creatures. There is something wrong with spending space on One With Nothing. Wasting one slot like that is okay I guess, but wasting several is a problem.
I've never been a proponent of playing a traditional, high-power, goodstuff cube, but playing cards like One With Nothing is not the way to rebel against that paradigm.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
Spooky
Just about the day this exchange happened, I had my own with this guy. This is eerily similar to what I said, down to calling it "trite", repetitive, and saying he "plays the victim".
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Never mind the fact that you can't make a cube that fits his standard of "everything magic players hate is good". He is, presumably, a magic player. So only cards he doesnt want to put in a cube should be cards he wants to put into his cube. Unless of course he's the only magic player who knows better.
On top of that, different players hate different things. If he's going to defend One with nothing, should he defend coin flip cards? Dexterity cards? Voltaic key into time vault? Un cards? Tibalt? Winston draft? Combat damage on the stack? Where in that oft repeated line is anything actionable that anyone else can work with?
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
For artifact hate, I think I'll just re-add Manic Vandal and call it a day.
The graveyard is a five color theme in my cube, so I think I need more easily available grave hate. I'm playing Phyrexian Furnace and Vessel of Endless Rest, and I think I'm going to add Bojuka Bog and Relic of Progenitus. I think Tormod's Crypt is just a little too useless on its own. Maybe I should acquire an Ashiok, Dream Render instead of playing Bojuka Bog.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
For a while I ran cards like Disenchant and Naturalize, but ultimately hardly anyone ever maindecked them (and rightly so). Even Reclamation Sage and friends aren't the most picked cards, but at least you can maindeck them. I think it's easier to simply not run any op artifacts (or enchantments) like Loxodon Warhammer or Skullclamp than trying to force a critical amount of artifact or enchantment hate into the cube, which will never work out well.
I still don't mind artifact removal if it is maindeckable, and red got two cool new toys lately with Goblin Cratermaker and Abrade, which are CU/be staples from my pov.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
They are almost always sideboard cards.
Instead of justifying putting in graveyard hate, I instead steer away from cards and strategies that rely heavily on the graveyard. This is why I won't include big 2 for 1 reanimate/recursion spells in the cube, like Victimize, Deadwood Treefolk, Baloth Null or even cards like Rise from the Tides.
Since we can't fight the graveyard efficiently, I try to avoid cards that really focus on the graveyard. I rather play a few reanimate spells for value and a few recursion creatures like Witness and Vesperlark.
There have been times I have thought about completely taking out the reanimate spells from black just for this reason.
My Peasant Cube thread !!! (380 cards)
Draft my Peasant Cube on Cube Cobra !!!