Bramblebrush is worse than creeping mold, since it hits planeswalkers but not artifact creatures. Wrong cube, cali
The waif is easily the best werewolf for us. It definitely doesn't want to have to deal with Top, though. Shudder...
cloistered youth is probably the best card for us in the whole set. She is crazy.
fiend hunter will see a test but I don't know what to replace. Kor hookmaster has been good, but this is sick with blink.
Vampire interloper is lucky that I'm probably upping the card count by about 3 per color, or else he'd be in direct competition with fledgling djinn, and to me it loses that battle. Even though the jump from 1 to 2 toughness is minor, blocking is a nice option.
Midnight haunting does a great spectral procession impression, and will certainly give celestial crusader job security.
The Demonmail looks subpar to me. Grafted wargear is absolutely stellar and it would appear to me that I'd rather not force myself to pick up random token generators.
galvanic juggernaut will be tested in mine, even though that drawback is harsh. 5/5s for 4, however, are terrifying. We'll see.
Forbidden alchemy is going in faster than I can say "forbidden alchemy is going in faster than I can say..."
Stitched Drake has direct competition with serendib efreet. I don't know what to do on this one, as much as I like bluggro,there is too much of a good thing.
Crossway vampire is iffy for me. the double red makes it hard for the big green, white and black two drops to be helped by her. The effect would've been more helpful on a hasted 4 drop.
I have a lot of green tricks which give rangers guile trouble. Withstand death is comparable in effectiveness, and I don't play that.
I prefer trusty machete to silver-inlaid dagger, for statistical reasons.
Dead weight or disfigure... I don't know which is better, but I do know that I'm not currently running disfigure. They both have to match up to fume spitter, and its a hard fight. I'm not exactly sure which upside are more important.
the 2/3 flier Chapel Geist is going to be amazing in innistrad, but I'm not sold on it for the cube.
Cloistered Youth - good cost/benefit, minimal drawback, cool flavor - the works.
Diregraf Ghoul - helps shore up black aggro.
Fiend Hunter - I think this guy is a lot better than Faceless Butcher for a couple of reasons. First, he's cheaper, and in the decks that want him, I think that will be better than +1/+0. Second, he's in the color for blink and abusing his effect.
Forbidden Alchemy - I like this over Thirst for Knowledge or Compulsive Research.
Stitched Drake - think I will probably have both this guy and Skaab Goliath. I like how they subtly support reanimator. Probably will try to bring in some more blue draw/discard with this update and put Exhume back in.
Vampire interloper is lucky that I'm probably upping the card count by about 3 per color, or else he'd be in direct competition with fledgling djinn, and to me it loses that battle. Even though the jump from 1 to 2 toughness is minor, blocking is a nice option.
My 2-drop aggro guys don't normally care too much about blocking. That's why things like Nezumi Cutthroat and Jungle Lion are still good. I'd much rather have the guy that's not pinging me for one each turn.
Maybe its easier for me cause i am running a 12 man cube, but i have both faceless butcher and Fiend hunter in. My cube has a madness/discard and reanimation theme, so ill probably add skaab goliath, but idk if he'll last more than a few games.
What do you guys think about Trepanation Blade? I think it's amazing, but it could be one of those star cards that just dont make it irl.
Trepanation Blade seems to cost too much mana for giving +3/+0 against a deck that's 1/3rds lands. Most decks seem to run more than that, so I'd only really expect an average bonus power of +2.5 against most decks. It only works on attacking, and milling is irrelevant unless it outright kills them. The card will kill through lethal before killing through milling unless you put it on a really tough 0 power attacker which keeps getting blocked. I really liked it at first, and the art's great, but I think it's just too expensive for a big bonesplitter. If only wotc could just straight up give us an equipment that costed 2, equip cost of 1 or 2 which boosted power by 3. (Greatsword? Haha.)
Vampire Interloper is good, for sure. The flying ponies were never doing much blocking anyways, and it beats out getting pinged for 1 every turn. 2 power evasive beaters for 2 mana are always loved by aggro.
trepanation blade is probably the worst equipment I've read since the comically bad Razor Boomarang. I'm paying how much mana to get +2/+0 on only an attacking creature? More than 2. More than 2 by 3?
Underestimated the interloper. However, I'd like to point out that it seems as though everyone else is psyched about making their black aggro better, while my black aggro is easily my best aggro. I need more support in red, actually.
Cali, would you run the 2/3 over the mini spectral procession?
Big Jim, correction, the skaabs are supported by reanimator, not the other way around.
If you could only pick one, which would it be?
Fume spitter
Dead weight
Disfigure
I chose options A because it can do the most work.
trepanation blade is probably the worst equipment I've read since the comically bad Razor Boomarang. I'm paying how much mana to get +2/+0 on only an attacking creature? More than 2. More than 2 by 3?
The more I look at it, the more I agree with you. That card is terribad.
Underestimated the interloper. However, I'd like to point out that it seems as though everyone else is psyched about making their black aggro better, while my black aggro is easily my best aggro. I need more support in red, actually.
I feel like my black aggro is already really good, but that there's nothing wrong with making it better.
Cali, would you run the 2/3 over the mini spectral procession?
That's actually not a bad comparison. I think I would. The three toughness allows him to block or swing into several flyers and live through it. Then again, having two bodies swinging for two in an aggro deck is probably better than one. Honestly, it could probably go either way.
For my regular cube, I think Disfigure is slightly stronger than Fume Spitter, but I would cube with both. They both go into a variety of decks and are both great at their jobs.
Dead Weight seems like a good way to get even more of that kind of effect in. I could see running it over the others depending on how good aggro is in general and how much you want to support it (Spitter).
there are a few other oddballs in the CMC department, like capsize not being in at 6.
I never posted my cube. No way I'm typing all of that out on my phone. not without cash incentives, at least.
You and I will forever disagree on the categorization of the phyrexian mana cards, so I wont even bring that up further.
Interestingly we both put wall of tanglecord in as a nongreen creature though.
The main thing that stands out is the saturation of mana fixing in your cube. My drafts are 98.5% of the time between two people, in a nonwinston manner, so perhaps that's why our numbers are so incredibly different... but I only have;
Shardlands
Refuges
Vivids
terramorphic twins
the panoramas
gemstone mine
city of brass
sphere of suns
armillary sphere
the four blue signets
Pilgrims eye
manalith (which should be darksteel ingot)
in my cube. Mirrodins core and warfarers bauble will both go in when found, but at first blush I appear to be running nearly THIRTY less cards in my cube to fix mana. Why do you feel this abundance of mana fixing to be necessary? In my cube, one can reasonably assume a deck has 1-2 fixing pieces in it on average, though it isn't uncommon to see decks with zero or three or four. I like the stress of knowing that this kazandu refuge might be important enough to draft over a beastbreaker of bala ged because I want to feel better about splashing this late Fireball I just scooped up. There is always a bit of a tense moment when a land is taken over a spell, and to increase their value I increased their scarcity.
Also, this may be why my aggro fares so well in my cube. Less lands = more chances to pick up that second or third one drop.
I play the panoramas because they make plated geopede, steppe lynx, and Top better, as well as serving a role as another set of enemy lands.
there are a few other oddballs in the CMC department, like capsize not being in at 6.
I always put Capsize in the 3cc category when I'm deck building, so that's where it ended up in cube organization. I see the buyback as an added bonus, not a requirement. Granted, casting it with buyback and getting a softlock is ideal.
You and I will forever disagree on the categorization of the phyrexian mana cards, so I wont even bring that up further.
Cards get categorized where they are best. Porcelain Legionnaire can be played by RB aggro decks, but it will see the most play and be at its best in a deck that has access to white.
Why do you feel this abundance of mana fixing to be necessary?
Because it's proven to be necessary? I like being able to cast my spells and I rank fixing quite highly in both drafting and deck building. I'm only running 45 lands in a 380 card cube. I really don't think that's an "abundance". That feels about right. Compare that to Sexyindiancurry's 360 powered list. He's running 43 lands. You can also compare it to klug's 396 card C/U list. He's running 40 lands. So for the size of my cube, that's pretty much where I want to be. Running that many lands isn't exactly an odd thing. I could probably go to 40 and still be ok, but I really value fixing highly, so I like 45. I guess the better question is why do you feel like you need so little fixing? Or rather how do you two person draft that that's not Winston that allows you to have so little fixing?
wait, why do you say cards should get categorized where they are best, but put wall of tanglecord in artifacts, the colored manlands in lands, crystal shard in artifacts, Shrine of burning rage in artifacts, and forbidden alchemy in blue?
*Shakes fist at your inconsistentcy*
Also, the color order in which my phyrexian mana cards get picked and played are as follows:
Porcelain Legionnaire and Spined thopter
Green
Black
Red
White
Blue (significantly less)
Act of aggression
Red
Blue
White/black (controlling builds, significantly less)
Green (this card has been behaving oddly)
Mutagenic growth
green
all other colors fairly evenly
Tezzerets Gambit
All colors fairly evenly (preference in nonaggro)
Dismember
All nonwhite colors fairly evenly
white
So, from what I've seen, the cards have been behaving as I predicted (except act of aggression). As the usefulness of the card increases, colors that would want access to the card pick it much more frequently than colors who don't value that effect as much due to the fact that they can get similar abilities out of cheaper cards and more cards. Green jumps on spined thopter and porcelain legionnaire because those cards at 2 mana are way more relevant than whatever fatties it can spend the rest of the draft picking up. Blue based decks take dismember and act of aggression like they need it to live. And most decks don't need a pump spell, so mutagenic growth gets all of its pick value out of the options.
...
I know I ran this thought experiment with you months ago. Imagine if half of the cards in a color (say, white) were phyrexian, and they were all high caliber cards. If you wanted to build a white deck, you get significantly less cards because everyone else is taking them away from you. If I'm building a red deck, I go from 20% of the spells being in my color to 25%. That's significant.
I also went over another issue. The life payment don't matter very often. What I mean is this; The life payment only matters if you are forced to pay the two life and you actually lose the game ENTIRELY because you had two less life. This is a very, very, very specific case, and I'd argue that it's as rare (if not rarer) than not being able to block fliers with wall of tanglecord. It requires you to
A: Be in a situation where you can pay 3 instead of 2.
B: want to pay 3 instead of 2.
C: Lose the game by being put to exactly 0 or -1.
D: (This is the most important thing) Definitively would have won the game if A, B, and C had not occurred.
That's all that matters. If all of those things happen often, then it would have relevance. But it doesn't. Since it's mana cost has next to zero relevance on both picking habits and game outcomes, I can't do anything but put it in artifacts.
I don't know how anyone can look at all this data and see it differently.
wait, why do you say cards should get categorized where they are best, but put wall of tanglecord in artifacts, the colored manlands in lands, crystal shard in artifacts, Shrine of burning rage in artifacts, and forbidden alchemy in blue?
*Shakes fist at your inconsistentcy*
Because I find it much harder to fill up artifacts that I do to fill up the colored sections. If artifacts at common/uncommon had as many amazing and powerful options as there are at rare, then I would be running stuff like Tanglecord in green and Shrine of Burning Rage in red. Doing it this way, though, means that I can fill up my artifact section with good useful cards. It does bother me slightly, but when I think about the options for artifacts to replace Tanglecord with, it bothers me a lot less.
So, from what I've seen, the cards have been behaving as I predicted (except act of aggression). As the usefulness of the card increases, colors that would want access to the card pick it much more frequently than colors who don't value that effect as much due to the fact that they can get similar abilities out of cheaper cards and more cards. Green jumps on spined thopter and porcelain legionnaire because those cards at 2 mana are way more relevant than whatever fatties it can spend the rest of the draft picking up. Blue based decks take dismember and act of aggression like they need it to live. And most decks don't need a pump spell, so mutagenic growth gets all of its pick value out of the options.
And that's just not the case here. Dismember does see play in nonblack decks, but paying four life for removal can be a lot. Because of this it's predominantly played in black decks. Porcelain Legionnaire is a bit different. It's played in a lot of off color decks because it's easy to cast even with the Phyrexian cost and it's a 3/1 first striker (aka awesome for aggro). But it's a white card. And because of that it predominantly sees play in WX aggro decks. So I suppose it's just a difference in play groups.
I know I ran this thought experiment with you months ago. Imagine if half of the cards in a color (say, white) were phyrexian, and they were all high caliber cards. If you wanted to build a white deck, you get significantly less cards because everyone else is taking them away from you. If I'm building a red deck, I go from 20% of the spells being in my color to 25%. That's significant.
Sure, but that's not the way things are. Phyrexian mana is not that abundant. There's one (1) white Phyrexian card. If the RB aggro deck takes it form the white aggro deck, it's really not any different than than the RB aggro deck hating the Faith's Fetters from the white control deck. The white aggro deck still performs fine.
I also went over another issue. The life payment don't matter very often. What I mean is this; The life payment only matters if you are forced to pay the two life and you actually lose the game ENTIRELY because you had two less life. This is a very, very, very specific case, and I'd argue that it's as rare (if not rarer) than not being able to block fliers with wall of tanglecord. It requires you to
A: Be in a situation where you can pay 3 instead of 2.
B: want to pay 3 instead of 2.
C: Lose the game by being put to exactly 0 or -1.
D: (This is the most important thing) Definitively would have won the game if A, B, and C had not occurred.
That's all that matters. If all of those things happen often, then it would have relevance. But it doesn't. Since it's mana cost has next to zero relevance on both picking habits and game outcomes, I can't do anything but put it in artifacts.
The life payment doesn't usually matter when it's only two life. But for the cards that require four life, it can be quite significant.
I'm going to try something new in my Innistrad update by balancing the Phyrexian and more flexible cards. The idea is that all the cards are castable and usable in all colors, but best in a deck of their color identity. It's not totally balanced, but I'm looking forward to trying it and freeing up some space in the regular color sections
Cali, why do need to have your artifact section set at a specific number? Their numbers can grow or shrink with zero effect on balance (except for the capacity of drafting a monocolored deck). Everybody has more options, everybody has less options, it's fine. You could ignore a lot of awkward misplaced numbers by putting them where they should go and having an artifact section that just isn't a round number. It is logical. Things like having crystal shard and faerie conclave not in blue with zero extra cards for white are blatant imperfections that statistically add up. A few percentage points is not insignificant. Those are wins and losses. There are some things that we can't solve, but we should still try to have as many of the discrepancies ironed out as possible.
Jim, at first I didn't like the system you put up, but in the end I like it more than the one I saw in calibretto's list. At least it gives a nod to color balancing. I try to use my cold hard numbers to solve every issue (because there is nary a nonhuman problem that isn't solved by numbers), but at least this gives me some breathing room when I want to categorize cards like dismember. The issue here would be the same as having a big enemy colored section. I don't want to play X or Y, but I do want to play Z so I have to even out the numbers. It is, however, not a bad direction.
I draft as follows.
Each player takes a pack of 6 cards, chooses 1, and passes the other 6 cards. When you pass, you pass them in two piles (which we can call known and unknown). Now you look at your known pile, and choose between any 1 card from there or you can instead take the entire unknown pile. Most splits are 4/1, but you can split them up however you want.
All cards that were not chosen become trashed and a new round begins. 16 rounds means that you get about 33 cards to work with. Allowing 2-3 packs with no good cards for you, 0-1 picks for hatedrafting, 3-5 picks for perhaps switching a color, and 1-3 picks for whatever else can happen that I missed, you average 24 cards in your pool if you change color, 28 if you don't. Of course, you see drafts where someone is being forced to splash a color to get those last two playables, or drafts where someone has to cut 10 cards. But it is this strict numerical structure that makes me so opinionated on the categorization of cards. Being short one playable is the difference between being able to hate a card or not, taking a land over a spell, or having to splash a color. I need to have the colors as even as humanly possible or else the imbalances are very apparent. I need as close to a perfect system as I can create.
I am always tweaking the draft format but the basic pick-pass-trash structure has been in use by my group for over a year now.
Most decks get between 1 and 3 forms of nongreen fixing. Some get zero, some get more. I have it set up this way to give green more identity, to make lands more valuable in drafting for those who need them, and to make the two color and mono colored decks run smoother than the more powerful three and four color arrangements.
Now
I want to get past this discussion by tomorrow so we can focus on the title of the thread, or we can put it on hiatus (just as I asked Jim to do) until we hit the next lull season.
Cali, why do need to have your artifact section set at a specific number? Their numbers can grow or shrink with zero effect on balance (except for the capacity of drafting a monocolored deck). Everybody has more options, everybody has less options, it's fine. You could ignore a lot of awkward misplaced numbers by putting them where they should go and having an artifact section that just isn't a round number. It is logical. Things like having crystal shard and faerie conclave not in blue with zero extra cards for white are blatant imperfections that statistically add up. A few percentage points is not insignificant. Those are wins and losses. There are some things that we can't solve, but we should still try to have as many of the discrepancies ironed out as possible.
Putting a Faerie Conclave in the land section and essentially giving myself one extra blue card is not much different that you putting Porcelain Legionnaire in colorless and essentially giving yourself one extra white card. I put (somewhat) arbitrary numbers on my sections because it makes me feel better about my cube.
I originally modeled my C/U list after klug's list. From there it's evolved to what my group and I feel should be in a nonrare cube. So from the beginning I knew basically what size I wanted. So I took that initial size and split it up. I already had a rare cube where I sort things like Crystal Shard as a blue card, so I totally agree with your reasoning there. I wanted to make sure each color had equal support (i.e. the same amount of cards per section) while still leaving plenty of room for artifacts, lands, and multicolor. Once I started filling out lands and artifacts, I realized that this rarity ran quite short on playables in those sections.
In the case of lands, there's not an abundance of dual lands like there are for rare cubes, nor is there an abundance of color aligned lands that are good enough. In order to fill out my land section, I had to include the three man lands and a couple others that I'm honestly not too happy with. I realize that running the three man lands in my land section as opposed to the colored section creates a slight imbalance, but I'm ok with that imbalance because it means I don't have to run three sub par lands to fill my cube out. I already feel like I had to stretch pretty far to get to 45.
The same exact thing can be said for artifacts. I would feel much better about things if I were running Crystal Shard as a blue card, Shrine of Burning Rage as a red card, etc, but I can't. Not without dropping the amount of artifacts I'm running to a number I'm not comfortable with. There aren't enough decent artifacts, IMO, to fill up those slots if I moved those cards to their respective colors, so I'd rather just have a slight imbalance and have a cube that's the size I like.
Jim, at first I didn't like the system you put up, but in the end I like it more than the one I saw in calibretto's list. At least it gives a nod to color balancing. I try to use my cold hard numbers to solve every issue (because there is nary a nonhuman problem that isn't solved by numbers), but at least this gives me some breathing room when I want to categorize cards like dismember. The issue here would be the same as having a big enemy colored section. I don't want to play X or Y, but I do want to play Z so I have to even out the numbers. It is, however, not a bad direction.
My cube will be fully color balanced (outside of Phyrexian cards, which we'll never agree on) when WotC prints enough really good common and uncommon artifacts and lands to fill out my cube. Until then the color imbalance is so miniscule that it's literally unnoticeable during draft.
I draft as follows.
Each player takes a pack of 6 cards, chooses 1, and passes the other 6 cards. When you pass, you pass them in two piles (which we can call known and unknown). Now you look at your known pile, and choose between any 1 card from there or you can instead take the entire unknown pile. Most splits are 4/1, but you can split them up however you want.
All cards that were not chosen become trashed and a new round begins. 16 rounds means that you get about 33 cards to work with. Allowing 2-3 packs with no good cards for you, 0-1 picks for hatedrafting, 3-5 picks for perhaps switching a color, and 1-3 picks for whatever else can happen that I missed, you average 24 cards in your pool if you change color, 28 if you don't. Of course, you see drafts where someone is being forced to splash a color to get those last two playables, or drafts where someone has to cut 10 cards. But it is this strict numerical structure that makes me so opinionated on the categorization of cards. Being short one playable is the difference between being able to hate a card or not, taking a land over a spell, or having to splash a color. I need to have the colors as even as humanly possible or else the imbalances are very apparent. I need as close to a perfect system as I can create.
I don't care for this system at all. When I draft I enjoy my freedom. I don't want each and every pick to be a nail biter. If I see a pack that's got a Serra Angel in it, so I take that one card, but then white doesn't really pan out for me, I don't want to be short on playables because I thought I might take the angel and play white. We either 3x15 draft or Winston. When we Winston we do it with a 120 card stack. We used to draft with the "normal" 90 cards, but we kept building decks that were short on playables or didn't have much of a focus. It was near impossible to build anything but midrange and it was usually at least three colors. That wasn't fun for me (or my crew), so we added more cards to the stack. More cards lets me build a deck that's more focused and isn't just a stack of good cards that share a color.
I am always tweaking the draft format but the basic pick-pass-trash structure has been in use by my group for over a year now.
And I don't doubt that it works for you, but it doesn't sound like something that my group and I would enjoy. Our drafts are very laid back and damn near a negative amount of competitive, so I don't worry too much about allotting X picks for hate drafts and making sure every pick matters and all that. Just pick the cards you like, build the best deck you can, and enjoy yourself.
Most decks get between 1 and 3 forms of nongreen fixing. Some get zero, some get more. I have it set up this way to give green more identity, to make lands more valuable in drafting for those who need them, and to make the two color and mono colored decks run smoother than the more powerful three and four color arrangements.
And that's fine... for your group. To quote one of my regulars, "I want to be able to play my cards." I run enough lands to allow for a reasonable amount of fixing across the board. It's not excessive unless one person is snatching up all the fixing and building four or five color good stuff, but in that case, the rest of the board gets punished for not valuing their fixing higher. I want my drafters to realize the value of a good fixer, but I don't want them to go through an entire draft and not at least have the chance to pick up two or three decent options. If they pass on those options, then that's on them. But I want to give them the option.
Now
I want to get past this discussion by tomorrow so we can focus on the title of the thread, or we can put it on hiatus (just as I asked Jim to do) until we hit the next lull season.
I don't mean to be a dick, but I really dislike your outlook on this, seeing as how this is basically the only place we peasant cubers have to discuss anything about peasant cube. For months my cube thread got no attention and my only peasant cube interaction came when a new member posted their peasant cube. Now we have a nice little peasant cube community that congregates in this thread and I don't think our discussion should be limited to just new cards regardless of how close to rumor season it is. Also, I'm pretty sure we've said pretty much all we can about the cubeable peasant cards from Innistrad.
Jim, at first I didn't like the system you put up, but in the end I like it more than the one I saw in calibretto's list. At least it gives a nod to color balancing. I try to use my cold hard numbers to solve every issue (because there is nary a nonhuman problem that isn't solved by numbers), but at least this gives me some breathing room when I want to categorize cards like dismember. The issue here would be the same as having a big enemy colored section. I don't want to play X or Y, but I do want to play Z so I have to even out the numbers. It is, however, not a bad direction.
Yeah, I came to this idea because I really want to balance everything. I don't think it matter much, and I think that the variance inherent in drafting probably drowns out the impact of where phyrexian mana cards are put. I just do it from an aesthetic standpoint. I like everything to line up. I'm also not disappointed to be playing any of those cards. I think they all offer interesting effects to colors that might not have them, and I'm curious to see it play out. Some may prove too weak, but I'll wait and see.
I originally modeled my C/U list after klug's list. ...
My cube will be fully color balanced (outside of Phyrexian cards, which we'll never agree on) when WotC prints enough really good common and uncommon artifacts and lands to fill out my cube. Until then the color imbalance is so miniscule that it's literally unnoticeable during draft.
I really appreciate you having your list posted, I refer to it when I'm considering changes. I feel like you are more "conservative" than me, or Klug for that matter, and so it's a good check to see if a card is powerful. I tend to want to include cards that are interesting or risky, and so I like being able to use your list to weed some of those out and maintain a higher overall power level. I am planning on posting my list after the Innistrad update.
Now
I want to get past this discussion by tomorrow so we can focus on the title of the thread, or we can put it on hiatus (just as I asked Jim to do) until we hit the next lull season.
I don't mean to be a dick, but I really dislike your outlook on this, seeing as how this is basically the only place we peasant cubers have to discuss anything about peasant cube. For months my cube thread got no attention and my only peasant cube interaction came when a new member posted their peasant cube. Now we have a nice little peasant cube community that congregates in this thread and I don't think our discussion should be limited to just new cards regardless of how close to rumor season it is. Also, I'm pretty sure we've said pretty much all we can about the cubeable peasant cards from Innistrad.
I like that Leelue is serving as a moderator of sorts, and I like the idea of going "in depth" on card choices. I appreciate that you sort of took charge of this thread, Leelue, and have been helping to guide the discussion. I like having a leader. I also think Cali has a lot of interesting stuff to say, so I don't want Cali to stop checking in here. It is a cool little community we've got here.
I also think there's not really a way for the rest of us to know if the discussion on new cards is done yet, so we don't know when to bring up other random stuff. I've really liked reading this discussion on phy mana cards, for instance, and I've already decided on the cards I'm probably going to test from Inn. I am curious to hear the results of others' testing.
Are there new cards or things you think we should talk about Leelue?
I figure I'd chime in with my thoughts on Phyrexian mana cost cards and color sorting: I'm pretty strict on just setting everything to exactly what their printed stats say. Porcelain Legionnaire is a white card, so it is in the white section. It has a converted mana cost of 3, so it's cataloged as such. Cards with X in their costs have X as 0 for CMC calculating purposes. Kicker is not counted for CMC. Multicolor cards are only those which have the cost for it in the upper right, regardless of flashback costs or what have you. This is so I don't have to think about the corner cases, and everything is systematically categorized. I think most of the imbalances that are caused by this are kinda smoothed out overall, so I've never noticed this causing an issue.
I'm up for discussing anything Leelue wants to bring up, but I think it's also good to talk about anything the thread happens to cough up. There's not that much peasant discussion as is, so I'll take anything we can get.
Edit - Wow, I just really noticed that I run very very few lands compared to everyone else. In my 450 cube, I run only 23 nonbasics. However, I do run all 10 signets. Perhaps I'll swap them out for 10 more fixing lands?
The reasons why I wanted to move past the phyrexian mana discussion by tomorrow is because
A: I know he and I won't ever agree on phyrexian cards, so it just becomes me saying stuff, him rebutting, and me attacking his rebuttal. Rinse repeat so on. I feels less.... friendly.
B: Tomorrow is the last day before cards are in sleeves and testing starts. The phyrexian debates can and do drag on ad infinatum (at least if im in it), so that particular topic would have cut into the prime time for the thread. It was a smaller issue with Jim's rare discussion. I had no idea how long that would go, and it seemed to kinda spring up in the middle of the main discussion. Jim, I do want to finish that because I had a similar issue, but it seemed to me at the time to be bad timing. I don't want to be totalitarian, of course, but I obsess over the new card discussion. One of the problems is, like you said, it is impossible to tell when topics end sometimes, so its hard to know what to do in order to keep all four of us happy, while also letting the randoms find the thread and talking about topics related to the title.
-----------------------
I am a builder. I get my enjoyment not necessarily out of playing the cube, but out of making a perfect machine. That's why I like the nuts and bolts talk so much. Why this over that. The pros and cons of redundancy. What to replace. Etc. For example, while we all said what we would like to test, nobody talked about what cards would have to get the boot. Well, calibretto did on his thread, to be fair.
I mean, we all want Diregraf ghoul and Reckless Waif, but what spots do they take? Why? That's where I was hoping to carry the thread over the next couple of days.
--------------
Now take tReason's question. That looks like a fairly straightforward query. The last two offshoots may have been three or four days of discussion material apiece (or not, who knows), so I was merely transposing them until later next week when the season died down. I don't think that is too much to ask. Also, I have made sure nor to shut down other queries without at least allowing some back and forth. I like the talks as much as the next guy. But I made this thread for these four times of year, and this is when I care most.
ANYWAY
TReason, how many cards of those get you multiple colors of mana? My cube is a bit over 500 I believe, and I have the vivids, refuges, shardlands, panoramas, terramorphic twins, city of brass and gemstone mine. When I get a mirrodins core, that'll push my fixing lands to 25 (tryin to remember off the top of my head). As for nongreen fixers, I have a ragtag bunch of cards like pilgrims eye and sphere of suns, but only the blue signets. Since I have them in their color combination section, fitting the other signets was hard. Blue decks wanted them the most, but besides b/w, I hardly ever saw them in play (useful) outside of 3+ color control, which doesn't happen a whole lot. Even still, most of those decks are blue aligned anyway.
In any case, it is like this. I want my decks with fewer colors to run more smoothly than my more powerful 4 color decks. I want that trade. I also want green to be special like that. Calibretto is on the other side of the fence; he wants as little interference between his spells and casting them.
If your cube plays in a way you want it to then you have a good thing going. I suppose you can try a philosophy and see if It's enjoyable. Me, I like cutthroat games and drafts, because I do absolutely nothing in a way that can be considered casual. My friends are all very, very competitive, and we love to weigh pros and cons in the intricacies. Everything is very precise.
I don't know what exactly to give you besides that. Talk to your group. If anything, you can up your land count to 45 and see if you guys hate it or not.
To reiterate, I don't mind talking about many things in here, I just didn't want to get totally derailed. I want this thread to live for longer than I will be active in it, and keeping you guys coming in here is the only way to do so. I don't want to alienate anyone, at all.
I'm up for discussing anything Leelue wants to bring up, but I think it's also good to talk about anything the thread happens to cough up. There's not that much peasant discussion as is, so I'll take anything we can get.
I think we should just be discussing whatever the current topic at hand is. Moderating what we can and can't discuss here seems like a good way to kill the thread, IMO.
Edit - Wow, I just really noticed that I run very very few lands compared to everyone else. In my 450 cube, I run only 23 nonbasics. However, I do run all 10 signets. Perhaps I'll swap them out for 10 more fixing lands?
That seems incredibly low. I have 45 nonbasics plus all ten signets. To be honest, though, I'd love to cut the signets, or at least some of the signets, but for now I feel they're necessary to fill out the artifact section.
One of the problems is, like you said, it is impossible to tell when topics end sometimes, so its hard to know what to do in order to keep all four of us happy, while also letting the randoms find the thread and talking about topics related to the title.
I think it's pretty easy to keep all four of us happy. Just let the discussion flow. I mean, we don't wanna dead horse phyrexian mana into the ground, sure, but I think we've both said our peace about it. Neither of us is wrong. We're just discussing how we choose to do it within our particular group and gaining a better understanding of what works for someone else and why. As long as the discussion doesn't become childish and immature, it's all good.
Now take tReason's question. That looks like a fairly straightforward query. The last two offshoots may have been three or four days of discussion material apiece (or not, who knows), so I was merely transposing them until later next week when the season died down. I don't think that is too much to ask. Also, I have made sure nor to shut down other queries without at least allowing some back and forth. I like the talks as much as the next guy. But I made this thread for these four times of year, and this is when I care most.
And these four times a year is when this thread is probably going to be the most active. But sometimes it's hard to keep a conversation on the same path. Someone says they're cutting this old card for this new card and suddenly the discussion goes from being about new cards to being about that specific old card. And it can "derail" even further from there, but still remain relevant to the topic at hand. It might also veer off onto a topic that has nothing to do with the new cards, but is still a valid topic that has several people involved and interested. I don't see a reason to stop that conversation just because it's not about the topic you specifically want to discuss, regardless of who started the thread.
In any case, it is like this. I want my decks with fewer colors to run more smoothly than my more powerful 4 color decks. I want that trade. I also want green to be special like that. Calibretto is on the other side of the fence; he wants as little interference between his spells and casting them.
I'm not necessarily on the other side of the fence. I just don't see a reason to force my two color players to play there decks off of only basics. I think fixing is a big part of deck building and can often be what makes or breaks a good deck. Lots of color combinations have awkward casting costs. Take WB aggro for instance. Several of the white weenie guys are WW. Several of the black weenie guys are BB. When that deck comes together it can be beastly. You're opponent is faced with a barrage of Soltaris and Knights. Specters and Vampires. But those cards can't come down on curve without proper fixing. And so without those nonbasics, the deck becomes much much weaker. RW aggro can often be the same way. Without access to proper fixing those decks either cease to exist or just perform a lot worse than they should.
Me, I like cutthroat games and drafts, because I do absolutely nothing in a way that can be considered casual. My friends are all very, very competitive, and we love to weigh pros and cons in the intricacies. Everything is very precise.
This is almost the exact opposite of my group. The only competitive aspect of our cube nights are that we all want to win (which is a default from any Magic game). But if I lose that doesn't mean I didn't have fun playing. Most of our cube nights consist of rocking some sort of metal in the background, beer and junk food, and lots and lots of Magic. It's very laid back and there's always a ton of laughter.
Here's an example of a play that I feel would have gone quite differently between our two groups (from my rare cube). My opponent is BG midrange. I'm WX aggro. He's got 4-5 cards in hand. His only creature is a Wild Mongrel. My board is a lone Savannah Lions. I don't remember exact life totals, but he's at a higher life than I am. I neglect to swing into his Mongrel and pass the turn. He draws, taps six and play Yawgmoth's Bargain. He turns his Mongrel sideways and says, "Attack." I think on it for a minute, examine the cards in his hand, do the math in my head and then say, "No blocks." He goes... "Uhm... Kill you?" and points to the Bargain. He then let me block with the Lions because it was such a stupid and obvious mistake. I have a feeling your crew wouldn't have allowed that do-over.
To reiterate, I don't mind talking about many things in here, I just didn't want to get totally derailed. I want this thread to live for longer than I will be active in it, and keeping you guys coming in here is the only way to do so. I don't want to alienate anyone, at all.
As I said, the best way to keep from alienating people is to just let the conversation flow. Don't try to moderate what we can and can't discuss. If you tell people they can only discuss one thing, then when that discussion dies down, those people aren't going to move on to something else. If you want to move the conversation from one topic to another, then move it there. Just try not to do it in a way that paints you as bossy.
Actually, Calibretto, we have a saying in our cube "you never lose to on-board tricks". We will rewind clearly dumb mistakes like that. There is no real victory there when your opponent misses obvious information. Winning due to absent mindedness is lame.
You never stated why you feel the need to keep your artifact section at an arbitrary number. It seems especially intrusive. Have you ever tried running less?
My most experienced friend and i found that having too many colorless cards diluted the cardpool. Not enough bang for your pack, it seemed.
---------------
And I'm sorry Calibretto but the main purpose of the thread's existence is so there is a place to discuss what people do with new cards, in detail. We use it however we please, which is and has always been fine. I only outwardly moved the discussion twice.
Once because it was potentially a fairly deep topic and I had a choice between going through it and losing where we were in the relevant conversation; interrupting it and not going over it fully; or civilly asking to just wait a little bit of time before we go over it in detail. Which we will. I don't think there is any way to ask someone to stop talking that doesn't come off as bossy, but I tried. I even added a little "for science" inside joke to ease tension (assuming, perhaps wrongly, that people here have played portal 2.)
The second time I did it was because I honestly knew we would get nowhere. I gave us a day and a half of extra time to spend time on it because tReason and Big Jim hadn't really had a say. I didn't want the thread to become a stubborn logic match, so I ***** smacked it out of the way. If you look at the two cases, I hope you'll see that this isn't as big a deal as you think it is.
I want us to talk about what pieces move out of each of our lists and for what reason. You say that you figure that the relevant conversation about the topic had run its course, and if this was any other thread, then you may have been right. But I'm fairly certain that from the get-go I made it clear that we weren't supposed to be just writing in any other thread. This was the thread for depth and detail and defining/defending your reasoning. So when someone says that they like Galvanic juggernaut, at some point in time the idea is to go into why, how it'll play, what is it better than, pros and cons, etc. The entire site is rife with casual analysis, and I'm guilty of it too. But this thread wasn't supposed to do that as much, which is why I wanted to keep us focused more than normal - because that was the entire point. Especially now.
I wish I didnt have to reiterate, but i really dont mind having side conversations. This should havent had been an issue.
The waif is easily the best werewolf for us. It definitely doesn't want to have to deal with Top, though. Shudder...
cloistered youth is probably the best card for us in the whole set. She is crazy.
fiend hunter will see a test but I don't know what to replace. Kor hookmaster has been good, but this is sick with blink.
Vampire interloper is lucky that I'm probably upping the card count by about 3 per color, or else he'd be in direct competition with fledgling djinn, and to me it loses that battle. Even though the jump from 1 to 2 toughness is minor, blocking is a nice option.
Midnight haunting does a great spectral procession impression, and will certainly give celestial crusader job security.
The Demonmail looks subpar to me. Grafted wargear is absolutely stellar and it would appear to me that I'd rather not force myself to pick up random token generators.
galvanic juggernaut will be tested in mine, even though that drawback is harsh. 5/5s for 4, however, are terrifying. We'll see.
Forbidden alchemy is going in faster than I can say "forbidden alchemy is going in faster than I can say..."
Stitched Drake has direct competition with serendib efreet. I don't know what to do on this one, as much as I like bluggro,there is too much of a good thing.
Crossway vampire is iffy for me. the double red makes it hard for the big green, white and black two drops to be helped by her. The effect would've been more helpful on a hasted 4 drop.
I have a lot of green tricks which give rangers guile trouble. Withstand death is comparable in effectiveness, and I don't play that.
I prefer trusty machete to silver-inlaid dagger, for statistical reasons.
Dead weight or disfigure... I don't know which is better, but I do know that I'm not currently running disfigure. They both have to match up to fume spitter, and its a hard fight. I'm not exactly sure which upside are more important.
the 2/3 flier Chapel Geist is going to be amazing in innistrad, but I'm not sold on it for the cube.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
Cloistered Youth - good cost/benefit, minimal drawback, cool flavor - the works.
Diregraf Ghoul - helps shore up black aggro.
Fiend Hunter - I think this guy is a lot better than Faceless Butcher for a couple of reasons. First, he's cheaper, and in the decks that want him, I think that will be better than +1/+0. Second, he's in the color for blink and abusing his effect.
Forbidden Alchemy - I like this over Thirst for Knowledge or Compulsive Research.
Stitched Drake - think I will probably have both this guy and Skaab Goliath. I like how they subtly support reanimator. Probably will try to bring in some more blue draw/discard with this update and put Exhume back in.
I think the other ones I already talked about.
Hm. Well, can't argue with a damn good point.
My 2-drop aggro guys don't normally care too much about blocking. That's why things like Nezumi Cutthroat and Jungle Lion are still good. I'd much rather have the guy that's not pinging me for one each turn.
Me either. But it looks like a solid dude. I'll have to review my list before I make a final decision on that one.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
What do you guys think about Trepanation Blade? I think it's amazing, but it could be one of those star cards that just dont make it irl.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
Vampire Interloper is good, for sure. The flying ponies were never doing much blocking anyways, and it beats out getting pinged for 1 every turn. 2 power evasive beaters for 2 mana are always loved by aggro.
Cubetutor link - 380 Peasant Cube
Underestimated the interloper. However, I'd like to point out that it seems as though everyone else is psyched about making their black aggro better, while my black aggro is easily my best aggro. I need more support in red, actually.
Cali, would you run the 2/3 over the mini spectral procession?
Big Jim, correction, the skaabs are supported by reanimator, not the other way around.
If you could only pick one, which would it be?
Fume spitter
Dead weight
Disfigure
I chose options A because it can do the most work.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
The more I look at it, the more I agree with you. That card is terribad.
I feel like my black aggro is already really good, but that there's nothing wrong with making it better.
That's actually not a bad comparison. I think I would. The three toughness allows him to block or swing into several flyers and live through it. Then again, having two bodies swinging for two in an aggro deck is probably better than one. Honestly, it could probably go either way.
Fume Spitter. It's better in every single archetype.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
Dead Weight seems like a good way to get even more of that kind of effect in. I could see running it over the others depending on how good aggro is in general and how much you want to support it (Spitter).
My Cube Blog @theCubeMiser on Twitter
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
also
you have breath of darigaaz in at 6cmc
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
Bring on the discussion, man! I think I said quite a bit concerning your cube when you posted it. I can take it as good as I can dish it out.
And I don't know why BoD is at 6cmc. It should definitely be at 4cmc.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
I never posted my cube. No way I'm typing all of that out on my phone. not without cash incentives, at least.
You and I will forever disagree on the categorization of the phyrexian mana cards, so I wont even bring that up further.
Interestingly we both put wall of tanglecord in as a nongreen creature though.
The main thing that stands out is the saturation of mana fixing in your cube. My drafts are 98.5% of the time between two people, in a nonwinston manner, so perhaps that's why our numbers are so incredibly different... but I only have;
Shardlands
Refuges
Vivids
terramorphic twins
the panoramas
gemstone mine
city of brass
sphere of suns
armillary sphere
the four blue signets
Pilgrims eye
manalith (which should be darksteel ingot)
in my cube. Mirrodins core and warfarers bauble will both go in when found, but at first blush I appear to be running nearly THIRTY less cards in my cube to fix mana. Why do you feel this abundance of mana fixing to be necessary? In my cube, one can reasonably assume a deck has 1-2 fixing pieces in it on average, though it isn't uncommon to see decks with zero or three or four. I like the stress of knowing that this kazandu refuge might be important enough to draft over a beastbreaker of bala ged because I want to feel better about splashing this late Fireball I just scooped up. There is always a bit of a tense moment when a land is taken over a spell, and to increase their value I increased their scarcity.
Also, this may be why my aggro fares so well in my cube. Less lands = more chances to pick up that second or third one drop.
I play the panoramas because they make plated geopede, steppe lynx, and Top better, as well as serving a role as another set of enemy lands.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
I always put Capsize in the 3cc category when I'm deck building, so that's where it ended up in cube organization. I see the buyback as an added bonus, not a requirement. Granted, casting it with buyback and getting a softlock is ideal.
Hm... I thought you did. I could've sworn you were the person who insisted on running fully cycles (Guildmages). I guess I'm mistaken.
Cards get categorized where they are best. Porcelain Legionnaire can be played by RB aggro decks, but it will see the most play and be at its best in a deck that has access to white.
It won't play much differently in a nongreen deck.
Because it's proven to be necessary? I like being able to cast my spells and I rank fixing quite highly in both drafting and deck building. I'm only running 45 lands in a 380 card cube. I really don't think that's an "abundance". That feels about right. Compare that to Sexyindiancurry's 360 powered list. He's running 43 lands. You can also compare it to klug's 396 card C/U list. He's running 40 lands. So for the size of my cube, that's pretty much where I want to be. Running that many lands isn't exactly an odd thing. I could probably go to 40 and still be ok, but I really value fixing highly, so I like 45. I guess the better question is why do you feel like you need so little fixing? Or rather how do you two person draft that that's not Winston that allows you to have so little fixing?
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
*Shakes fist at your inconsistentcy*
Also, the color order in which my phyrexian mana cards get picked and played are as follows:
Porcelain Legionnaire and Spined thopter
Green
Black
Red
White
Blue (significantly less)
Act of aggression
Red
Blue
White/black (controlling builds, significantly less)
Green (this card has been behaving oddly)
Mutagenic growth
green
all other colors fairly evenly
Tezzerets Gambit
All colors fairly evenly (preference in nonaggro)
Dismember
All nonwhite colors fairly evenly
white
So, from what I've seen, the cards have been behaving as I predicted (except act of aggression). As the usefulness of the card increases, colors that would want access to the card pick it much more frequently than colors who don't value that effect as much due to the fact that they can get similar abilities out of cheaper cards and more cards. Green jumps on spined thopter and porcelain legionnaire because those cards at 2 mana are way more relevant than whatever fatties it can spend the rest of the draft picking up. Blue based decks take dismember and act of aggression like they need it to live. And most decks don't need a pump spell, so mutagenic growth gets all of its pick value out of the options.
...
I know I ran this thought experiment with you months ago. Imagine if half of the cards in a color (say, white) were phyrexian, and they were all high caliber cards. If you wanted to build a white deck, you get significantly less cards because everyone else is taking them away from you. If I'm building a red deck, I go from 20% of the spells being in my color to 25%. That's significant.
I also went over another issue. The life payment don't matter very often. What I mean is this; The life payment only matters if you are forced to pay the two life and you actually lose the game ENTIRELY because you had two less life. This is a very, very, very specific case, and I'd argue that it's as rare (if not rarer) than not being able to block fliers with wall of tanglecord. It requires you to
A: Be in a situation where you can pay 3 instead of 2.
B: want to pay 3 instead of 2.
C: Lose the game by being put to exactly 0 or -1.
D: (This is the most important thing) Definitively would have won the game if A, B, and C had not occurred.
That's all that matters. If all of those things happen often, then it would have relevance. But it doesn't. Since it's mana cost has next to zero relevance on both picking habits and game outcomes, I can't do anything but put it in artifacts.
I don't know how anyone can look at all this data and see it differently.
Mana fixing done when my phone stops buggin out.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
Because I find it much harder to fill up artifacts that I do to fill up the colored sections. If artifacts at common/uncommon had as many amazing and powerful options as there are at rare, then I would be running stuff like Tanglecord in green and Shrine of Burning Rage in red. Doing it this way, though, means that I can fill up my artifact section with good useful cards. It does bother me slightly, but when I think about the options for artifacts to replace Tanglecord with, it bothers me a lot less.
And that's just not the case here. Dismember does see play in nonblack decks, but paying four life for removal can be a lot. Because of this it's predominantly played in black decks. Porcelain Legionnaire is a bit different. It's played in a lot of off color decks because it's easy to cast even with the Phyrexian cost and it's a 3/1 first striker (aka awesome for aggro). But it's a white card. And because of that it predominantly sees play in WX aggro decks. So I suppose it's just a difference in play groups.
Sure, but that's not the way things are. Phyrexian mana is not that abundant. There's one (1) white Phyrexian card. If the RB aggro deck takes it form the white aggro deck, it's really not any different than than the RB aggro deck hating the Faith's Fetters from the white control deck. The white aggro deck still performs fine.
The life payment doesn't usually matter when it's only two life. But for the cards that require four life, it can be quite significant.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
Proposed list:
White
Blue
Black
Red
Green
Jim, at first I didn't like the system you put up, but in the end I like it more than the one I saw in calibretto's list. At least it gives a nod to color balancing. I try to use my cold hard numbers to solve every issue (because there is nary a nonhuman problem that isn't solved by numbers), but at least this gives me some breathing room when I want to categorize cards like dismember. The issue here would be the same as having a big enemy colored section. I don't want to play X or Y, but I do want to play Z so I have to even out the numbers. It is, however, not a bad direction.
I draft as follows.
Each player takes a pack of 6 cards, chooses 1, and passes the other 6 cards. When you pass, you pass them in two piles (which we can call known and unknown). Now you look at your known pile, and choose between any 1 card from there or you can instead take the entire unknown pile. Most splits are 4/1, but you can split them up however you want.
All cards that were not chosen become trashed and a new round begins. 16 rounds means that you get about 33 cards to work with. Allowing 2-3 packs with no good cards for you, 0-1 picks for hatedrafting, 3-5 picks for perhaps switching a color, and 1-3 picks for whatever else can happen that I missed, you average 24 cards in your pool if you change color, 28 if you don't. Of course, you see drafts where someone is being forced to splash a color to get those last two playables, or drafts where someone has to cut 10 cards. But it is this strict numerical structure that makes me so opinionated on the categorization of cards. Being short one playable is the difference between being able to hate a card or not, taking a land over a spell, or having to splash a color. I need to have the colors as even as humanly possible or else the imbalances are very apparent. I need as close to a perfect system as I can create.
I am always tweaking the draft format but the basic pick-pass-trash structure has been in use by my group for over a year now.
Most decks get between 1 and 3 forms of nongreen fixing. Some get zero, some get more. I have it set up this way to give green more identity, to make lands more valuable in drafting for those who need them, and to make the two color and mono colored decks run smoother than the more powerful three and four color arrangements.
Now
I want to get past this discussion by tomorrow so we can focus on the title of the thread, or we can put it on hiatus (just as I asked Jim to do) until we hit the next lull season.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
Putting a Faerie Conclave in the land section and essentially giving myself one extra blue card is not much different that you putting Porcelain Legionnaire in colorless and essentially giving yourself one extra white card. I put (somewhat) arbitrary numbers on my sections because it makes me feel better about my cube.
I originally modeled my C/U list after klug's list. From there it's evolved to what my group and I feel should be in a nonrare cube. So from the beginning I knew basically what size I wanted. So I took that initial size and split it up. I already had a rare cube where I sort things like Crystal Shard as a blue card, so I totally agree with your reasoning there. I wanted to make sure each color had equal support (i.e. the same amount of cards per section) while still leaving plenty of room for artifacts, lands, and multicolor. Once I started filling out lands and artifacts, I realized that this rarity ran quite short on playables in those sections.
In the case of lands, there's not an abundance of dual lands like there are for rare cubes, nor is there an abundance of color aligned lands that are good enough. In order to fill out my land section, I had to include the three man lands and a couple others that I'm honestly not too happy with. I realize that running the three man lands in my land section as opposed to the colored section creates a slight imbalance, but I'm ok with that imbalance because it means I don't have to run three sub par lands to fill my cube out. I already feel like I had to stretch pretty far to get to 45.
The same exact thing can be said for artifacts. I would feel much better about things if I were running Crystal Shard as a blue card, Shrine of Burning Rage as a red card, etc, but I can't. Not without dropping the amount of artifacts I'm running to a number I'm not comfortable with. There aren't enough decent artifacts, IMO, to fill up those slots if I moved those cards to their respective colors, so I'd rather just have a slight imbalance and have a cube that's the size I like.
My cube will be fully color balanced (outside of Phyrexian cards, which we'll never agree on) when WotC prints enough really good common and uncommon artifacts and lands to fill out my cube. Until then the color imbalance is so miniscule that it's literally unnoticeable during draft.
I don't care for this system at all. When I draft I enjoy my freedom. I don't want each and every pick to be a nail biter. If I see a pack that's got a Serra Angel in it, so I take that one card, but then white doesn't really pan out for me, I don't want to be short on playables because I thought I might take the angel and play white. We either 3x15 draft or Winston. When we Winston we do it with a 120 card stack. We used to draft with the "normal" 90 cards, but we kept building decks that were short on playables or didn't have much of a focus. It was near impossible to build anything but midrange and it was usually at least three colors. That wasn't fun for me (or my crew), so we added more cards to the stack. More cards lets me build a deck that's more focused and isn't just a stack of good cards that share a color.
And I don't doubt that it works for you, but it doesn't sound like something that my group and I would enjoy. Our drafts are very laid back and damn near a negative amount of competitive, so I don't worry too much about allotting X picks for hate drafts and making sure every pick matters and all that. Just pick the cards you like, build the best deck you can, and enjoy yourself.
And that's fine... for your group. To quote one of my regulars, "I want to be able to play my cards." I run enough lands to allow for a reasonable amount of fixing across the board. It's not excessive unless one person is snatching up all the fixing and building four or five color good stuff, but in that case, the rest of the board gets punished for not valuing their fixing higher. I want my drafters to realize the value of a good fixer, but I don't want them to go through an entire draft and not at least have the chance to pick up two or three decent options. If they pass on those options, then that's on them. But I want to give them the option.
I don't mean to be a dick, but I really dislike your outlook on this, seeing as how this is basically the only place we peasant cubers have to discuss anything about peasant cube. For months my cube thread got no attention and my only peasant cube interaction came when a new member posted their peasant cube. Now we have a nice little peasant cube community that congregates in this thread and I don't think our discussion should be limited to just new cards regardless of how close to rumor season it is. Also, I'm pretty sure we've said pretty much all we can about the cubeable peasant cards from Innistrad.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
Yeah, I came to this idea because I really want to balance everything. I don't think it matter much, and I think that the variance inherent in drafting probably drowns out the impact of where phyrexian mana cards are put. I just do it from an aesthetic standpoint. I like everything to line up. I'm also not disappointed to be playing any of those cards. I think they all offer interesting effects to colors that might not have them, and I'm curious to see it play out. Some may prove too weak, but I'll wait and see.
I really appreciate you having your list posted, I refer to it when I'm considering changes. I feel like you are more "conservative" than me, or Klug for that matter, and so it's a good check to see if a card is powerful. I tend to want to include cards that are interesting or risky, and so I like being able to use your list to weed some of those out and maintain a higher overall power level. I am planning on posting my list after the Innistrad update.
I like that Leelue is serving as a moderator of sorts, and I like the idea of going "in depth" on card choices. I appreciate that you sort of took charge of this thread, Leelue, and have been helping to guide the discussion. I like having a leader. I also think Cali has a lot of interesting stuff to say, so I don't want Cali to stop checking in here. It is a cool little community we've got here.
I also think there's not really a way for the rest of us to know if the discussion on new cards is done yet, so we don't know when to bring up other random stuff. I've really liked reading this discussion on phy mana cards, for instance, and I've already decided on the cards I'm probably going to test from Inn. I am curious to hear the results of others' testing.
Are there new cards or things you think we should talk about Leelue?
I'm up for discussing anything Leelue wants to bring up, but I think it's also good to talk about anything the thread happens to cough up. There's not that much peasant discussion as is, so I'll take anything we can get.
Edit - Wow, I just really noticed that I run very very few lands compared to everyone else. In my 450 cube, I run only 23 nonbasics. However, I do run all 10 signets. Perhaps I'll swap them out for 10 more fixing lands?
Cubetutor link - 380 Peasant Cube
A: I know he and I won't ever agree on phyrexian cards, so it just becomes me saying stuff, him rebutting, and me attacking his rebuttal. Rinse repeat so on. I feels less.... friendly.
B: Tomorrow is the last day before cards are in sleeves and testing starts. The phyrexian debates can and do drag on ad infinatum (at least if im in it), so that particular topic would have cut into the prime time for the thread. It was a smaller issue with Jim's rare discussion. I had no idea how long that would go, and it seemed to kinda spring up in the middle of the main discussion. Jim, I do want to finish that because I had a similar issue, but it seemed to me at the time to be bad timing. I don't want to be totalitarian, of course, but I obsess over the new card discussion. One of the problems is, like you said, it is impossible to tell when topics end sometimes, so its hard to know what to do in order to keep all four of us happy, while also letting the randoms find the thread and talking about topics related to the title.
-----------------------
I am a builder. I get my enjoyment not necessarily out of playing the cube, but out of making a perfect machine. That's why I like the nuts and bolts talk so much. Why this over that. The pros and cons of redundancy. What to replace. Etc. For example, while we all said what we would like to test, nobody talked about what cards would have to get the boot. Well, calibretto did on his thread, to be fair.
I mean, we all want Diregraf ghoul and Reckless Waif, but what spots do they take? Why? That's where I was hoping to carry the thread over the next couple of days.
--------------
Now take tReason's question. That looks like a fairly straightforward query. The last two offshoots may have been three or four days of discussion material apiece (or not, who knows), so I was merely transposing them until later next week when the season died down. I don't think that is too much to ask. Also, I have made sure nor to shut down other queries without at least allowing some back and forth. I like the talks as much as the next guy. But I made this thread for these four times of year, and this is when I care most.
ANYWAY
TReason, how many cards of those get you multiple colors of mana? My cube is a bit over 500 I believe, and I have the vivids, refuges, shardlands, panoramas, terramorphic twins, city of brass and gemstone mine. When I get a mirrodins core, that'll push my fixing lands to 25 (tryin to remember off the top of my head). As for nongreen fixers, I have a ragtag bunch of cards like pilgrims eye and sphere of suns, but only the blue signets. Since I have them in their color combination section, fitting the other signets was hard. Blue decks wanted them the most, but besides b/w, I hardly ever saw them in play (useful) outside of 3+ color control, which doesn't happen a whole lot. Even still, most of those decks are blue aligned anyway.
In any case, it is like this. I want my decks with fewer colors to run more smoothly than my more powerful 4 color decks. I want that trade. I also want green to be special like that. Calibretto is on the other side of the fence; he wants as little interference between his spells and casting them.
If your cube plays in a way you want it to then you have a good thing going. I suppose you can try a philosophy and see if It's enjoyable. Me, I like cutthroat games and drafts, because I do absolutely nothing in a way that can be considered casual. My friends are all very, very competitive, and we love to weigh pros and cons in the intricacies. Everything is very precise.
I don't know what exactly to give you besides that. Talk to your group. If anything, you can up your land count to 45 and see if you guys hate it or not.
To reiterate, I don't mind talking about many things in here, I just didn't want to get totally derailed. I want this thread to live for longer than I will be active in it, and keeping you guys coming in here is the only way to do so. I don't want to alienate anyone, at all.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
I think we should just be discussing whatever the current topic at hand is. Moderating what we can and can't discuss here seems like a good way to kill the thread, IMO.
That seems incredibly low. I have 45 nonbasics plus all ten signets. To be honest, though, I'd love to cut the signets, or at least some of the signets, but for now I feel they're necessary to fill out the artifact section.
I think it's pretty easy to keep all four of us happy. Just let the discussion flow. I mean, we don't wanna dead horse phyrexian mana into the ground, sure, but I think we've both said our peace about it. Neither of us is wrong. We're just discussing how we choose to do it within our particular group and gaining a better understanding of what works for someone else and why. As long as the discussion doesn't become childish and immature, it's all good.
And these four times a year is when this thread is probably going to be the most active. But sometimes it's hard to keep a conversation on the same path. Someone says they're cutting this old card for this new card and suddenly the discussion goes from being about new cards to being about that specific old card. And it can "derail" even further from there, but still remain relevant to the topic at hand. It might also veer off onto a topic that has nothing to do with the new cards, but is still a valid topic that has several people involved and interested. I don't see a reason to stop that conversation just because it's not about the topic you specifically want to discuss, regardless of who started the thread.
I'm not necessarily on the other side of the fence. I just don't see a reason to force my two color players to play there decks off of only basics. I think fixing is a big part of deck building and can often be what makes or breaks a good deck. Lots of color combinations have awkward casting costs. Take WB aggro for instance. Several of the white weenie guys are WW. Several of the black weenie guys are BB. When that deck comes together it can be beastly. You're opponent is faced with a barrage of Soltaris and Knights. Specters and Vampires. But those cards can't come down on curve without proper fixing. And so without those nonbasics, the deck becomes much much weaker. RW aggro can often be the same way. Without access to proper fixing those decks either cease to exist or just perform a lot worse than they should.
This is almost the exact opposite of my group. The only competitive aspect of our cube nights are that we all want to win (which is a default from any Magic game). But if I lose that doesn't mean I didn't have fun playing. Most of our cube nights consist of rocking some sort of metal in the background, beer and junk food, and lots and lots of Magic. It's very laid back and there's always a ton of laughter.
Here's an example of a play that I feel would have gone quite differently between our two groups (from my rare cube). My opponent is BG midrange. I'm WX aggro. He's got 4-5 cards in hand. His only creature is a Wild Mongrel. My board is a lone Savannah Lions. I don't remember exact life totals, but he's at a higher life than I am. I neglect to swing into his Mongrel and pass the turn. He draws, taps six and play Yawgmoth's Bargain. He turns his Mongrel sideways and says, "Attack." I think on it for a minute, examine the cards in his hand, do the math in my head and then say, "No blocks." He goes... "Uhm... Kill you?" and points to the Bargain. He then let me block with the Lions because it was such a stupid and obvious mistake. I have a feeling your crew wouldn't have allowed that do-over.
As I said, the best way to keep from alienating people is to just let the conversation flow. Don't try to moderate what we can and can't discuss. If you tell people they can only discuss one thing, then when that discussion dies down, those people aren't going to move on to something else. If you want to move the conversation from one topic to another, then move it there. Just try not to do it in a way that paints you as bossy.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
You never stated why you feel the need to keep your artifact section at an arbitrary number. It seems especially intrusive. Have you ever tried running less?
My most experienced friend and i found that having too many colorless cards diluted the cardpool. Not enough bang for your pack, it seemed.
---------------
And I'm sorry Calibretto but the main purpose of the thread's existence is so there is a place to discuss what people do with new cards, in detail. We use it however we please, which is and has always been fine. I only outwardly moved the discussion twice.
Once because it was potentially a fairly deep topic and I had a choice between going through it and losing where we were in the relevant conversation; interrupting it and not going over it fully; or civilly asking to just wait a little bit of time before we go over it in detail. Which we will. I don't think there is any way to ask someone to stop talking that doesn't come off as bossy, but I tried. I even added a little "for science" inside joke to ease tension (assuming, perhaps wrongly, that people here have played portal 2.)
The second time I did it was because I honestly knew we would get nowhere. I gave us a day and a half of extra time to spend time on it because tReason and Big Jim hadn't really had a say. I didn't want the thread to become a stubborn logic match, so I ***** smacked it out of the way. If you look at the two cases, I hope you'll see that this isn't as big a deal as you think it is.
I want us to talk about what pieces move out of each of our lists and for what reason. You say that you figure that the relevant conversation about the topic had run its course, and if this was any other thread, then you may have been right. But I'm fairly certain that from the get-go I made it clear that we weren't supposed to be just writing in any other thread. This was the thread for depth and detail and defining/defending your reasoning. So when someone says that they like Galvanic juggernaut, at some point in time the idea is to go into why, how it'll play, what is it better than, pros and cons, etc. The entire site is rife with casual analysis, and I'm guilty of it too. But this thread wasn't supposed to do that as much, which is why I wanted to keep us focused more than normal - because that was the entire point. Especially now.
I wish I didnt have to reiterate, but i really dont mind having side conversations. This should havent had been an issue.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
540+, Peasant
Take your hybrids out of your gold section
Mana-math Article
My cube is 360 and I run 25 non-basics. I run the shard lands, vivids, and these special lands:
I'd be interested in cutting 1-2 of these for Mirrodin's Core and Rupture Spire. I'm considering cutting Dread Statuary and Quicksand.