So -- sitting innocuously at common from the original Ravnica block, there's the best mana artifact cycle ever made aside from the original Moxes. I'm talking, of course, about the Signets. Two mana, they enter untapped, and fix for TWO different colors (with the occasional drawback of how they filter mana, of course). They're crazy powerful, and can singlehandedly warp cube environments to be piles of midrange and multi-color nonsense. So, Peasant cubers, I ask:
Do you play them?
How many?
Why or why not?
Do you balance the colors of the signets?
How do you classify them in CubeTutor?
Do you play green ones? "Aggro" color ones?
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I currently have five, listed as artifacts the same way that Sphere of the Suns or Bonesplitter would be. The five are Simic, Selesnya, Boros, Rakdos, and Dimir -- five guilds so each color would show up twice. Of our usual cubing group, I'm by far the one most inclined to draft and use them. Boros has probably been the worst, though it still shows up in the occasional Pyroclasm-Serra Angel type deck (as well as 4-5C piles). I'm tempted to switch to an imbalanced setup, cutting something like Simic and Boros for Azorius/Orzhov, and listing them as hybrid cards similar to Murderous Redcap, but for right now will stick with the current five guilds. No real interest in a full ten.
Too much of a hassle to cube.
Do you cube all 10? That's a lot.
Do you only cube some? That's a huge boon to any of the colours that you put signets in for. Obviously some colours are better than others but it's super difficult to ballance stuff like this and in the end it's all subjective.
Do I really want to push 5colour piles?
Do I really want to let any colour deck ramp super effeciently?
They're so strong, require so many cards dedicated to them to maintain some semblance of ballance and warp the format towards multicolour too much for me to touch them.
I run them as hybrids, since not many/any decks would play them as a bad mind stone.
Funny, boros is the one I made sure to forcefully include. I reject calling colors "aggro" in my list, so I don't care much after that.
I think I'm running... 5? I haven't run more than 6 in a long time, and probably would find a number greater than 5 or 6 excessively diluting to the pool and overly supportive of easycolorsdotdeck
I play all 10.
I have slow decks in all 5 colors, and they are also much better fixers than the khans life gain lands. Including them for me is a no brainer. Unlike Leelue, a lot of my decks are totally ok with a bad Mind Stone. In fact, I would rank the signets higher than Mind Stone. The only mana rock that's better is Prismatic Lens. I'm at 540 as well, meaning I have a lot more room to run all ten. At 360 you would have to cut a lot of non-basics to justify them all. They don't always don't get played on turn two, since that can be kind of dangerous. Signet plus 2 drop on three into 5 drop on 4 is more common. I just mark them as colorless on Cubetutor since I run the full cycle.
I run the green ones, but I also don't run Rampant Growth or Explore. I don't support ramp as an archetype at all really. It's pretty low powered in peasant so I don't care for it. I also run quite a large number of CC cards and very sketchy non-basics, so it's very difficult/very low payoff to draft a five color pile in my cube.
I think most 360 lists would be fine running Talismans, or just a half cycle of Signets (messy). When I cut to 360 I left all my signets in.
Notable mana rocks: Mind Stone, Prismatic Lens, Sphere of the Suns, Coldsteel Heart, and the non ramping Prophetic Prism
Why or why not?
Blue is the only color whose deck archetype % skews heavily towards control (although blue aggro decks have an abnormally high win %). I have been thinking about cutting Simic Signet simply because that color combo doesn't really need the effect.
Do you balance the colors of the signets?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this one but...maybe? I count them as a guild card, of which I play 4 per guild. So they are basically taking up a two color spell slot.
How do you classify them in CubeTutor?
Guild section.
Do you play green ones? "Aggro" color ones?
Green ones? Only simic.
Aggro color pair ones? No.
If I was fored to make a tier list for signets it would be something like this.
My first attempt at cube ran all ten. At 360, I took them out for space, but I can see the reasons why some would only include blue ones for example. I don't recall Rakdos ever getting played.
Rakdos is my most played, followed closely by Izzet and Dimir. Gruul and Simic are least frequently played.
Rakdos being #1 played isn't that surprising. The problem I have with this though is that it probably isn't played in Rakdos decks but Grixis control decks. Maybe I am wrong though and Rakdos control/midrange is a thing in your cube.
I hate including cards in section X that see play in deck Y. You're basically stealing a card from Rakdos to give to Dimir/Izzet/Grixis. If you're ok with an imbalanced cube number wise I can see this not bothering you but it bothers me. And realistically if Rakdos Signet is really BadDimir Signet it is a Dimir card. A 1-offcolor signet is probably not good enough for cube guild/hybrid sections. (This is why for years I hated Boros Garrison)
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I write about cube and run cube drafts on magic online.
Obviously all my evaluations of things are skewed based on my cube.
Yep me too. Although I do think that black control is more powerful than black aggro at the peasant level, and that signets will perform well in almost any defensive deck regardless of cube configuration.
My signets take up fixing slots in my cube, so I really don't have to worry about that. Picking up a Golgari Signet after drafting all white cards in pack 1 is a lot like picking up a Sandsteppe Citadel.
Obviously all my evaluations of things are skewed based on my cube.
Yep me too. Although I do think that black control is more powerful than black aggro at the peasant level, and that signets will perform well in almost any defensive deck regardless of cube configuration.
My signets take up fixing slots in my cube, so I really don't have to worry about that. Picking up a Golgari Signet after drafting all white cards in pack 1 is a lot like picking up a Sandsteppe Citadel.
I agree about black aggro being underwhelming at peasant. For me black is a midrange/support/allrounder color. I guess if you treat signets as fixing and not as spells that makes sense. Not sure how I feel about that in general though, never thought about doing it that way.
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I write about cube and run cube drafts on magic online.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
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Do you play them?
How many?
Why or why not?
Do you balance the colors of the signets?
How do you classify them in CubeTutor?
Do you play green ones? "Aggro" color ones?
--
I currently have five, listed as artifacts the same way that Sphere of the Suns or Bonesplitter would be. The five are Simic, Selesnya, Boros, Rakdos, and Dimir -- five guilds so each color would show up twice. Of our usual cubing group, I'm by far the one most inclined to draft and use them. Boros has probably been the worst, though it still shows up in the occasional Pyroclasm-Serra Angel type deck (as well as 4-5C piles). I'm tempted to switch to an imbalanced setup, cutting something like Simic and Boros for Azorius/Orzhov, and listing them as hybrid cards similar to Murderous Redcap, but for right now will stick with the current five guilds. No real interest in a full ten.
Thoughts? Ideas? Discussions?
Thx bros.
Do you cube all 10? That's a lot.
Do you only cube some? That's a huge boon to any of the colours that you put signets in for. Obviously some colours are better than others but it's super difficult to ballance stuff like this and in the end it's all subjective.
Do I really want to push 5colour piles?
Do I really want to let any colour deck ramp super effeciently?
They're so strong, require so many cards dedicated to them to maintain some semblance of ballance and warp the format towards multicolour too much for me to touch them.
Draft it on Cubetutor here, and CubeCobra here.
Treasure Cruise did nothing wrong.
Funny, boros is the one I made sure to forcefully include. I reject calling colors "aggro" in my list, so I don't care much after that.
I think I'm running... 5? I haven't run more than 6 in a long time, and probably would find a number greater than 5 or 6 excessively diluting to the pool and overly supportive of easycolorsdotdeck
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
I play all 10.
I have slow decks in all 5 colors, and they are also much better fixers than the khans life gain lands. Including them for me is a no brainer. Unlike Leelue, a lot of my decks are totally ok with a bad Mind Stone. In fact, I would rank the signets higher than Mind Stone. The only mana rock that's better is Prismatic Lens. I'm at 540 as well, meaning I have a lot more room to run all ten. At 360 you would have to cut a lot of non-basics to justify them all. They don't always don't get played on turn two, since that can be kind of dangerous. Signet plus 2 drop on three into 5 drop on 4 is more common. I just mark them as colorless on Cubetutor since I run the full cycle.
I run the green ones, but I also don't run Rampant Growth or Explore. I don't support ramp as an archetype at all really. It's pretty low powered in peasant so I don't care for it. I also run quite a large number of CC cards and very sketchy non-basics, so it's very difficult/very low payoff to draft a five color pile in my cube.
I think most 360 lists would be fine running Talismans, or just a half cycle of Signets (messy). When I cut to 360 I left all my signets in.
Notable mana rocks: Mind Stone, Prismatic Lens, Sphere of the Suns, Coldsteel Heart, and the non ramping Prophetic Prism
Yes
How many?
Only and all of the blue ones.
Why or why not?
Blue is the only color whose deck archetype % skews heavily towards control (although blue aggro decks have an abnormally high win %). I have been thinking about cutting Simic Signet simply because that color combo doesn't really need the effect.
Do you balance the colors of the signets?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this one but...maybe? I count them as a guild card, of which I play 4 per guild. So they are basically taking up a two color spell slot.
How do you classify them in CubeTutor?
Guild section.
Do you play green ones? "Aggro" color ones?
Green ones? Only simic.
Aggro color pair ones? No.
If I was fored to make a tier list for signets it would be something like this.
Tier1:Izzet/Azorius/Dimir
Tier1.5:Simic
Tier2:Orzhov/Rakdos/Boros
Tier3:Gruul/Selesnya
Tier3.5:Golgari
The half tiers are really only there to indicate how close I think the tiers are in power/playability.
I wouldn't fault people for playing 0, all 10, or only some of them.
peasantcube.blogspot.com
Rakdos being #1 played isn't that surprising. The problem I have with this though is that it probably isn't played in Rakdos decks but Grixis control decks. Maybe I am wrong though and Rakdos control/midrange is a thing in your cube.
I hate including cards in section X that see play in deck Y. You're basically stealing a card from Rakdos to give to Dimir/Izzet/Grixis. If you're ok with an imbalanced cube number wise I can see this not bothering you but it bothers me. And realistically if Rakdos Signet is really BadDimir Signet it is a Dimir card. A 1-offcolor signet is probably not good enough for cube guild/hybrid sections. (This is why for years I hated Boros Garrison)
peasantcube.blogspot.com
Sure, that is fair. Obviously all my evaluations of things are skewed based on my cube.
I still don't like playing XY color cards that see the majority of their play in XZ or XN decks.
peasantcube.blogspot.com
My signets take up fixing slots in my cube, so I really don't have to worry about that. Picking up a Golgari Signet after drafting all white cards in pack 1 is a lot like picking up a Sandsteppe Citadel.
I agree about black aggro being underwhelming at peasant. For me black is a midrange/support/allrounder color. I guess if you treat signets as fixing and not as spells that makes sense. Not sure how I feel about that in general though, never thought about doing it that way.
peasantcube.blogspot.com