Welcome to the world of cubing!
You probably found this thread because youre interested to build your first cube without spending insane amounts of money or the risk to lose cards during drafts. Well, its pretty simple to start a cube. Just start with cards from your collection and build something playable
The basics:
A cube is a customized singleton "expansion" made for limited games from all released card of magic, generally for drafts. A normal cube has 360 cards to provide 8 players with 3 "packs" at 15 cards each. Before you start, you just shuffle your cube and make the "packs". Its helpful to keep them in the center of the table, otherwise it might confuse players whats the pack and whats the drafted cards. Other common cubesizes are 540 and 720. The smaller the cube the better you can support archetype strategies, but after a couple of drafts it might become boring to always see the same mix of cards.
You can apply additional rules to your cube, like commons only (pauper) or uncommons as well (peasant) or only modern cards and so on. We are focussing on pauper here.
Card distribution:
An average draftdeck in normal limited formats consists 17 lands and 23 spells with the distribution:
CC1: 3
CC2: 6.5
CC3: 6.5
CC4: 4
CC5: 2
CC6+: 1
So when building your cube, you should scale up that ratio as a rule of thumb.
We are at a point in paupercubing where we can build a cube, Ill call the "SpikeCube(SC)" from now on, where the curve has become roughly 1 less mana on that distribution. So keep that in mind when your aiming for the "powered" cube we often refer to as well on this forum. The Spikecube basically just includes the strongest cards and archetypes. Another philosophy in building is the "JohnnyCube(JC)" which aims for a more thematic and varied meta. https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03
The archetypes:
Core archetypes:
There are 3 (4) core strategies in magic with 2 substrategies
Aggro (A): This archetype wants to win with creatures that basically always want to attack face. Spells are mainly used to clear blockers or burn the opponent down.
There also apply the 2 substrategies Tempo: This strategy runs a very low and efficient manacurve and tries to cheat on mana while disrupting opponents development. Ramp: This strategy also cheats on mana with effects that speed up the mana development to get higher costed spells faster than the opponent. Its not a viable approach in Spikecubes, because the removal is so efficient, that the tempostrategy always will be stronger.
Control (C): This strategy wants to control the board and trades or kills everything the opppnent plays. With cardadvantage effects you will win on ressources and eventually establish a finisher. It ususally runs more spells than aggro. To use this strategy you basically have to run boardwipes (sweeper) which pauper only has access to in black (weak ones in red)
Midrange (M): Basically the mix of both worlds. You trade spells and win with either with aggression and/or cardadvantage. In standard limited or Johnnycubes most decks end in this strategy.
(Combo) (O): This strategy want to win or turn the game with a big swing in one or very few turns. It usually uses hand and library manipulation to find its combo pieces and tries to ignore what the opponent does. There are no pure combodecks in pauper, alhtough there are winning card combinations that can be included in midrange or controldecks.
Theme archetypes (T):
These strategies dont focus too much on the gamepace, but on effects and keywords.
The best working themes in Spikecubes are:
Hexproof/Aura - more or less assambles itself in SC´s because it will contain some amount of hexproof and aura cards anyway.
Spells Matters - there are a bunch of very efficient creatures for that theme and will include itself most of the time as well
Otherwise the SC will focus on the core strategies.
Card evaluation:
To find the best 360 cards for the SC, we already had an existing thread. It has become too inconsistend and outdated lately, because wizards changed a lot of its limited design philosophy in the last couple of years and to have a more updated and overseeable thread i started this one.
to be somewhat objective Ill try to use the value to casting cost ratio. since there directly started a discussion about it. the system normalizes evaluation and uses p/t to CC ratio as the basevalue of a card and than adds or substracts its abilities. it makes evaluation more consistent, since similiar effects get the same ratings as well.
Values:
Power: 1.25
Toughness: 0.75
Flying: 1.25
Unblockable 1.5
Trample: 0.5
Reach: 0.75
First Strike: 1.25
Lifelink 1.0
Flanking 1.0
Exalted 1.75
Vigilance: 0.25
Haste: 0.5
Deathtouch: 1.0
useful abilitiy: variable (slightly subjective. old evaluation and actual experience based)
or compared to the cc/spellratio it has attached on
relevant creature type: 0.25
Modifier:
double mana or multicolor: -1
drawback: variable (slightly subjective. old evaluation and actual experience based)
Average spell values:
Due to the variety of effects spells are harder to form a scheme. But there are some effects we know the average casing cost of.
like:
Draw 1 at instant: CC1 Inspiration
Draw 1 at sorcery: CC0.75 Divination
Deal 2 at instant: CC1 Shock
Deal 3 at sorcery: CC2 Volcanic Hammer
Deal 3 at instant: CC3 Yamabushi's Flame
usually the value will go up by 1 for each point of manareduction the spell has.
The categories:
Trash
below average,ignored, never cube it. mostly stuff before limited were a thing at all.
Filler
this card has the average value. Its usually included in every standard limited environment and mostly ignored in cubedesign. But they can be used when you start with your first cube. To save work I will not list those. Check gatherer or the old evaluation thread when youre missing a card. Feel free to demand borderline status.
Borderline
Average+0.5 - this card is slightly above curve and will often be an theme archetype card that will raise its value. Lately most filler cards in new sets are at least borderline.
Cubable
Average+1 - above curve, most of them time staple in the corearchetype
Staple
Average+1.5 - insane value for its casting cost and useful in any deckstrategy
When I feel like it, ill also add the strategy it belongs to (A,C,M,O,T - see above)
Shouldn't green's creatures being inherently better in that regard when that occurs be reflected in the scores for said creatures? That's not really being objective at that point, as the cards are losing points for doing things better than other cards solely because of their color. I would expect the removal suites of other colors to be better than green's, and I think this follows the same line of thought.
Unless I'm missing something, which leads to the other end of it being kind of confusing how these values ended up this way without too much of an explanation.
the values and modification are a direct result of the average value of vanilla/filler creatures. since nobody compares a green creature to another colored one directly its totally fine to apply that modifier.
removal with slight conditions equals CC3 throughout all colors btw.
So what are the justifications for the gradings? Are they explained somewhere else? How did you come up with those numbers? Curious of the process, seems really thought out.
i dont think theyve explained somewhere else, but basically its simple math you can apply how creatures are designed. the values might not be perfect for now (+-0.25)(white might also need a small modifier on creatures), but im sure wizards have a comparable system to design its cards.
Right I get that you just add them off as if it's a check list, I was more wondering why flying is 1/unblockable is 1.5/etc. and what the reasons are, or if it's a more arbitrary set of decisions that you'll edit as you go through the project and see it more in action.
Stormfront Pegasus
As we see the card trades 1 toughness for flying compared to the bear. So we can approximate 1 toughness equals flying and treated both value 1. Since power is stronger in combat than toughness, we know that toughness only equals 0.75. So is flying only worth 0.75 then? No, we know that flying is worth more in games and more likely to equal power. Card would be a 4.5 now, thats staple. So we have to add a modifier that take the drawback of the card into account, the toughness of 1 and get to our correct equasion
2power*1.25 + 1toughness*0.75 + Flying*1.25 -1toughnessmod*-1=3.5
So although the card is treated cubable, the card is in fact close to average and indeed I dont run it in any of my cubes.
As we see here, the toughness modification should only be -0.75 to get a clean 3.75 borderline rating or flying should be 1.5 and I will see in further equasions if its more correct.
Leonin Skyhunter gets 1 toughness for the cost of doublewhite manacost. So a simpler value table can treat both equal = 1. Compare to Armored Warhorse
The fact that Skyhunter loses the 1toughness malus makes it much stronger in the end, though. And the more correct math is
2*1.25+2*0.75+1.25-1(doubleW)=4.25 which makes it exactly cubable.
Devilthorn Fox Card trades flying for 1 more power, which leads to the assumption that flying equals power in value.
3*1.25+0.75-1=3.5 So also close to average and weve seen lately that the statline has become filler material.
Dromoka Warrior more relevant creature type +0.25=3.75 borderline
Daring Skyjek gets 0.5 for its ability (sometimes flying) and also 0.25 for the more relevant creature type=4.25 exactly cubable.
The double mana aspect is tough when you get to higher costs. On Skyhunter, having WW is a legit concern, whereas on Cloudgoat Ranger it's way less impactful/almost negligent. There's probably a solution to that, like taking .25 away per total CMC maybe.
the fact that double costs makes it impossible to splash as a third color and the risk of colorscrew makes doubled costs a legit concern on higher CC as well. Also high cost cards need to be even stronger than 2 drops to cross the line into cubable, because you will run less of them.
Right but WW by t2 vs t5 in a two color deck is so drastically different that it's probably not objective to take away the same value from both of those cards. Not having WW is way more likely than not having WW by t5. If I'm consistently not getting to WW by 5 mana, it's a stretch for me to take away as many points as I would for something like Skyhunter's cost at its spot in the curve. An objectively worse card than Cloudgoat still can't compete with cloudgoat even if it cost 4W, whereas there's a legitimate argument for 1W cards vs WW ones as they're soooo much easier to cast on curve.
A flat modifier doesn't really work for the abilities either, at least that seems to be the case. Some creatures have vigilance, but for all situations that matter they might as well not have it. On other creatures it's genuinely useful.
Seems like there are so many corner cases (sometimes flying 0.5? why not 0.3 or 0.625?) and so many in-game situations and deck building considerations to take into account that outright calculating the value of a card is likely to prove a fool's errand. But hey, good luck, maybe it does work.
Its not about game situations, its about the value of a card in a vaccuum. Otherwise evaluation would make zero sense, because a 1/1 vanilla for 5 can kill the opponent if he doesnt find the answer.
Ofc its kinda subjective to value random abilities, but we can compare them to the basic ones and give them a value of 0.25 steps. only that makes sense here. Nontheless the cards will end in a more objective category.
Garruks Companion on the other hand is indeed a tough rating subject, because based on the values it ends at 4.75 which would be staple and it was treated that way for long. Its not a bad card though and can be as useful in an aggrodeck as every other 2 drop in the later stages of the game. I can see counting trample for value only on creatures with power >3 though, so the card ends up cubable which indeed it still is. Various manaeffects in green also compensate for the drawback in real scenarios.
Double Colored requirements automatically add more stats or better effects to the card, so no problem on the rating here. There should be no question that a 4W Cloudgoat or a 1U Counterspell would be stronger, no matter what.
Double Colored requirements automatically add more stats or better effects to the card, so no problem on the rating here. There should be no question that a 4W Cloudgoat or a 1U Counterspell would be stronger, no matter what.
The point is that there's no difference with the current ratings for the detriments of having a WW two drop vs a 3WW 5 drop, when in reality the issue of having WW on a 5 drop is so much less. So you end up with ratings that don't accurately take into account those factors. Like, there's almost nothing outside of a horrendous manabase or awful luck stopping you from landing Cloudgoat t5, but there are real odds that work against Skyhunter, but they still both get -1? That doesn't make sense, if evaluating the card in an objective manner. I don't know what the solution is--maybe assign values to each colored source divided by total amount of mana? That probably doesn't work too I don't know what the actual solution would be, but currently they both get -1 for having WW, and it's hard to argue that Cloudgoat should lose the same amount of points for being 3WW as skyhunter for being a two drop that costs WW, and there's a solution that accounts for the fact that a hypothetical Cloudgoat that costs 4W would grade better.
Otherwise you're weighing the WW cost of the Skyhunter as much as the WW cost of Cloudgoat, which is tough to take seriously as a legit grading system, which is also another tough aspect of assigning values to every possible aspect of a card without taking the whole thing into consideration, but that's also why talking about this stuff before you start is good since you can smooth out the wrinkles that come with working in the lab alone.
since 2 drops only scale from 3.25 to 4.75 a whole point loss has way more impact than on a 5 drop that scales from 7 to 9
in other words, doubled manacost on a 2 drops its value by roughly 30% whereas on a 5 drop it only affects it by 12.5%
math guys
As it should, but it shouldn't have that sort of impact on a 5 drop regardless. It should be more like skeeball than basketball, in that the further you get from the smaller targets/values, the lesser those modifiers come into place vs the black and white nature of WW = -1 no matter what
It could be something like
XX: -1
1XX: -.75
2XX: -.5
3XX: -.25
And that would be *much* more accurate in actually assigning the demerits of those costs in practice. You have a million scores as is, might as well go all-out and improve ones when there are obvious ways to improve them.
And then there's the other aspects of how much better abilities get when combined, or how certain abilities aren't as useful in conjunction with one another. Like, death strike and first strike, and the inverse to a degree of how much less weight trample carries if a creature already has flying or whatever. There are a lot of things to consider, and the values miss a decent amount if they don't reflect that too. I'm sure there are less examples of these making a difference, but it's one of those things where I would put *way* more points in the respective 'death touch' value of a first strikers vs the death touch on a random otherwise vanilla creature.
Or you can be snarky to other's suggestions with the 'math guys' comments and continue to miss the point. Whatever works.
Its not about game situations, its about the value of a card in a vaccuum. Otherwise evaluation would make zero sense, because a 1/1 vanilla for 5 can kill the opponent if he doesnt find the answer.
Ofc its kinda subjective to value random abilities, but we can compare them to the basic ones and give them a value of 0.25 steps. only that makes sense here. Nontheless the cards will end in a more objective category.
Again, I don't believe you'll end up with anything you can call objective to any degree. If you assign values subjectively, you'll end up with subjective results. The fact that you're thinking about introducing new rules to have Companion end up in the category you feel should be right shows how difficult that kind of task is, and how much it is guided by your subjective judgement of where Companion should end up.
Salmo is right, I think. If you actually want to do this calculation thing properly, you need a lot of gradation, which makes the system very complex and unwieldy, ideally you'd want a program you can enter these parameters into to calculate lots of cards at the same time to see if you need to tinker with the parameters. If you don't want that kind of complex system, you're just going to end up with a subjective list that has some random numbers in it. I feel like you really need to ask yourself what kind of benefit this kind of system can bring to the table before you start calculating. Currently, you seem to be using it to get more objective ratings, but the ratings you end up with aren't really more objective, they just have a number with them, so you're actually doing a lot of work without any apparent benefit.
that reduction makes no sense (google relative and absolute values) and i also disagree with the impact of XX costs you assume. phitt already posted the math behind it. you would also end with way too many staples, which theyre not anymore thanks to powercreep
You probably found this thread because youre interested to build your first cube without spending insane amounts of money or the risk to lose cards during drafts. Well, its pretty simple to start a cube. Just start with cards from your collection and build something playable
The basics:
A cube is a customized singleton "expansion" made for limited games from all released card of magic, generally for drafts. A normal cube has 360 cards to provide 8 players with 3 "packs" at 15 cards each. Before you start, you just shuffle your cube and make the "packs". Its helpful to keep them in the center of the table, otherwise it might confuse players whats the pack and whats the drafted cards. Other common cubesizes are 540 and 720. The smaller the cube the better you can support archetype strategies, but after a couple of drafts it might become boring to always see the same mix of cards.
You can apply additional rules to your cube, like commons only (pauper) or uncommons as well (peasant) or only modern cards and so on. We are focussing on pauper here.
Card distribution:
An average draftdeck in normal limited formats consists 17 lands and 23 spells with the distribution:
CC1: 3
CC2: 6.5
CC3: 6.5
CC4: 4
CC5: 2
CC6+: 1
So when building your cube, you should scale up that ratio as a rule of thumb.
We are at a point in paupercubing where we can build a cube, Ill call the "SpikeCube(SC)" from now on, where the curve has become roughly 1 less mana on that distribution. So keep that in mind when your aiming for the "powered" cube we often refer to as well on this forum. The Spikecube basically just includes the strongest cards and archetypes. Another philosophy in building is the "JohnnyCube(JC)" which aims for a more thematic and varied meta.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03
The archetypes:
Core archetypes:
There are 3 (4) core strategies in magic with 2 substrategies
Aggro (A): This archetype wants to win with creatures that basically always want to attack face. Spells are mainly used to clear blockers or burn the opponent down.
There also apply the 2 substrategies
Tempo: This strategy runs a very low and efficient manacurve and tries to cheat on mana while disrupting opponents development.
Ramp: This strategy also cheats on mana with effects that speed up the mana development to get higher costed spells faster than the opponent. Its not a viable approach in Spikecubes, because the removal is so efficient, that the tempostrategy always will be stronger.
Control (C): This strategy wants to control the board and trades or kills everything the opppnent plays. With cardadvantage effects you will win on ressources and eventually establish a finisher. It ususally runs more spells than aggro. To use this strategy you basically have to run boardwipes (sweeper) which pauper only has access to in black (weak ones in red)
Midrange (M): Basically the mix of both worlds. You trade spells and win with either with aggression and/or cardadvantage. In standard limited or Johnnycubes most decks end in this strategy.
(Combo) (O): This strategy want to win or turn the game with a big swing in one or very few turns. It usually uses hand and library manipulation to find its combo pieces and tries to ignore what the opponent does. There are no pure combodecks in pauper, alhtough there are winning card combinations that can be included in midrange or controldecks.
Theme archetypes (T):
These strategies dont focus too much on the gamepace, but on effects and keywords.
The best working themes in Spikecubes are:
Hexproof/Aura - more or less assambles itself in SC´s because it will contain some amount of hexproof and aura cards anyway.
Spells Matters - there are a bunch of very efficient creatures for that theme and will include itself most of the time as well
Otherwise the SC will focus on the core strategies.
Viable themes for JC´s can be found here
Card evaluation:
To find the best 360 cards for the SC, we already had an existing thread. It has become too inconsistend and outdated lately, because wizards changed a lot of its limited design philosophy in the last couple of years and to have a more updated and overseeable thread i started this one.
to be somewhat objective Ill try to use the value to casting cost ratio. since there directly started a discussion about it. the system normalizes evaluation and uses p/t to CC ratio as the basevalue of a card and than adds or substracts its abilities. it makes evaluation more consistent, since similiar effects get the same ratings as well.
Values:
Power: 1.25
Toughness: 0.75
Flying: 1.25
Unblockable 1.5
Trample: 0.5
Reach: 0.75
First Strike: 1.25
Lifelink 1.0
Flanking 1.0
Exalted 1.75
Vigilance: 0.25
Haste: 0.5
Deathtouch: 1.0
useful abilitiy: variable (slightly subjective. old evaluation and actual experience based)
or compared to the cc/spellratio it has attached on
relevant creature type: 0.25
Modifier:
double mana or multicolor: -1
drawback: variable (slightly subjective. old evaluation and actual experience based)
basic creature values:
CC1: 2.75 - example: Devoted Hero
CC2: 4 - example: Glory Seeker
CC3: 4.75 - example: Alaborn Trooper
CC4: 6 - example: Trokin High Guard
CC5: 7.5 - example: Ghostly Sentinel
CC6: 10.5 - example: Barbtooth Wurm
1/1 token: 1 (with flying 2)
1/1 =2
2/1 =3.25
3/1 =4.5
4/1 =5.75
5/1 =7
1/2 =2.75
2/2 =4
3/2 =5.25
4/2 =6.5
5/2 =7.75
1/3 =3.5
2/3 =4.75
3/3 =6
4/3 =7.25
5/3 =8.5
1/4 =4.25
2/4 =5.5
3/4 =6.75
4/4 =8
5/4 =9.25
1/5 =5
2/5 =6.25
3/5 =7.5
4/5 =8.75
5/5 =10
Average spell values:
Due to the variety of effects spells are harder to form a scheme. But there are some effects we know the average casing cost of.
like:
Draw 1 at instant: CC1 Inspiration
Draw 1 at sorcery: CC0.75 Divination
Deal 2 at instant: CC1 Shock
Deal 3 at sorcery: CC2 Volcanic Hammer
Deal 3 at instant: CC3 Yamabushi's Flame
usually the value will go up by 1 for each point of manareduction the spell has.
The categories:
Trash
below average,ignored, never cube it. mostly stuff before limited were a thing at all.
Filler
this card has the average value. Its usually included in every standard limited environment and mostly ignored in cubedesign. But they can be used when you start with your first cube. To save work I will not list those. Check gatherer or the old evaluation thread when youre missing a card. Feel free to demand borderline status.
Borderline
Average+0.5 - this card is slightly above curve and will often be an theme archetype card that will raise its value. Lately most filler cards in new sets are at least borderline.
Cubable
Average+1 - above curve, most of them time staple in the corearchetype
Staple
Average+1.5 - insane value for its casting cost and useful in any deckstrategy
When I feel like it, ill also add the strategy it belongs to (A,C,M,O,T - see above)
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Staple:
Doomed Traveler
Deftblade Elite
Cubable:
Akrasan Squire
Benevolent Bodyguard
Caravan Escort
Elite Vanguard
Goldmeadow Harrier, Gideon's Lawkeeper
Icatian Javelineers
War Falcon
Shade of Trokair
Ivory Giant
Borderline:
Soltari Foot Soldier
Infantry Veteran
Thraben Inspector
Fan Bearer
Loyal Pegasus
Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
Kjeldoran Warrior
Nyxborn Shieldmate
Sacred Cat
Hopeful Eidolon
Tundra Wolves, Warclamp Mastiff, Boros Recruit
Wall of Hope
Sidewinder Sliver
Pride Guardian
Dragon's Eye Sentry
Aven Skirmisher, Kitesail Scout, Suntail Hawk, Lantern Kami
Staple:
Syndic of Tithes
Kor Skyfisher
Porcelain Legionnaire
Cubable:
Aven Squire
Benalish Cavalry
Bishop's Soldier
Daring Skyjek
Gust Walker
Knight of Cliffhaven
Lone Missionary
Oketra's Avenger
Phantom Nomad
Seeker of the Way
Standard Bearer
Topan Freeblade
Veteran Armorer
Whitemane Lion
Youthful Knight
Ronom Unicorn, Kami of Ancient Law, Keening Apparition, Felidar Cub
Safehold Elite GW
Borderline:
Soltari Trooper
Leonin Skyhunter
Veteran Armorsmith
Suture Priest
Sunscape Familiar
Wings of the Guard
Ainok Bond-Kin
Azorius Arrester
Stormfront Pegasus, Mistral Charger
Herald of Dromoka
Ajani's Sunstriker
Angelic Page
Ballyrush Banneret
Blinding Mage, Master Decoy, Benalish Trapper
Boros Mastiff
Expendable Troops
Obsidian Acolyte, Crimson Acolyte
Sinew Sliver
Sentinel Sliver
Squall Drifter
Wall of Glare
Makindi Aeronaut, Territorial Roc, Skyblade of the Legion
Fledgling Griffin
Order of the Golden Cricket
Ninth Bridge Patrol
Anointer Priest
Audacious Infiltrator, Blade of the Sixth Pride, Devilthorn Fox, Dromoka Warrior, Kor Castigator, Oreskos Swiftclaw, Raptor Companion
Sighted-Caste Sorcerer
Leonin Squire
Loyal Cathar
Moorland Drifter
Moorland Inquisitor
Oreskos Sun Guide
Sungrace Pegasus
Countless Gears Renegade
Sunspear Shikari
Staple:
Cubable:
Attended Knight
Apex Hawks
Aven Riftwatcher
Ballynock Cohort
Basilica Guards
Cloudchaser Kestrel
Desperate Sentry
Glint-Sleeve Artisan
Ironclad Slayer
Kor Sanctifiers
Territorial Hammerskull
Troubled Healer insane effect
Veteran Swordsmith
Midnight Guard Combo with Presence of Gond
Borderline:
Auramancer Monk Idealist
Avian Changeling
Burrenton Bombardier
Dauntless Aven
Dauntless Cathar
Dawnglare Invoker
Elder Cathar
Heliod's Pilgrim O
Kabuto Moth
Mardu Hordechief
Sandsteppe Outcast
Soltari Visionary
Icatian Crier
Staple:
Coalition Honor Guard
Guardian of the Guildpact
Cubable:
Heavy Ballista
Inspiring Captain
Palace Sentinels
Seraph of Dawn
Thraben Sentry
Borderline:
Aven Cloudchaser
Elgaud Inquisitor
Griffin Protector
Inquisitor's Ox
Makindi Griffin
Ondu Greathorn
Paladin of the Bloodstained
Rhox Meditant GW
Rune-Cervin Rider GW
Salt Road Patrol
Sanctum Gargoyle
Tah-Crop Elite
Thriving Ibex
Staple
Custodi Squire
Cubable:
Aven of Enduring Hope, Angel of Mercy
Dawnfeather Eagle
Totem-Guide Hartebeest
Borderline:
Shining Aerosaur, Skyswirl Harrier
Supply-Line Cranes
Staple:
Cubable:
Winged Shepherd
Borderline:
Noble Templar
Yoked Plowbeast
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Staple:
Granger Guildmage RG
Wild Nacatl RGW
Cubable:
Arbor Elf, Elvish Mystic, Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves
Avacyn's Pilgrim GW
Basking Rootwalla, Frilled Sandwalla
Ghazbán Ogre
Quirion Ranger
Pouncing Jaguar
Sedge Scorpion
Borderline:
Birchlore Rangers
Boreal Druid
Caustic Caterpillar
Diligent Farmhand
Elves of Deep Shadow
Gladecover Scout
Greenseeker
Nettle Sentinel
Renowned Weaver
Rogue Elephant
Scryb Sprites
Skarrgan Pit-Skulk
Tinder Wall
Tukatongue Thallid
Wild Dogs
Young Wolf
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
thats because green has a bonus on creatures that equals an extra point of toughness.
Grizzly Bears vs Goblin Piker
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Unless I'm missing something, which leads to the other end of it being kind of confusing how these values ended up this way without too much of an explanation.
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
removal with slight conditions equals CC3 throughout all colors btw.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Also, follow us on twitter! @TurnOneMagic
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
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Stormfront Pegasus
As we see the card trades 1 toughness for flying compared to the bear. So we can approximate 1 toughness equals flying and treated both value 1. Since power is stronger in combat than toughness, we know that toughness only equals 0.75. So is flying only worth 0.75 then? No, we know that flying is worth more in games and more likely to equal power. Card would be a 4.5 now, thats staple. So we have to add a modifier that take the drawback of the card into account, the toughness of 1 and get to our correct equasion
2power*1.25 + 1toughness*0.75 + Flying*1.25 -1toughnessmod*-1=3.5
So although the card is treated cubable, the card is in fact close to average and indeed I dont run it in any of my cubes.
As we see here, the toughness modification should only be -0.75 to get a clean 3.75 borderline rating or flying should be 1.5 and I will see in further equasions if its more correct.
Leonin Skyhunter gets 1 toughness for the cost of doublewhite manacost. So a simpler value table can treat both equal = 1. Compare to Armored Warhorse
The fact that Skyhunter loses the 1toughness malus makes it much stronger in the end, though. And the more correct math is
2*1.25+2*0.75+1.25-1(doubleW)=4.25 which makes it exactly cubable.
Devilthorn Fox Card trades flying for 1 more power, which leads to the assumption that flying equals power in value.
3*1.25+0.75-1=3.5 So also close to average and weve seen lately that the statline has become filler material.
Dromoka Warrior more relevant creature type +0.25=3.75 borderline
Daring Skyjek gets 0.5 for its ability (sometimes flying) and also 0.25 for the more relevant creature type=4.25 exactly cubable.
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Seems like there are so many corner cases (sometimes flying 0.5? why not 0.3 or 0.625?) and so many in-game situations and deck building considerations to take into account that outright calculating the value of a card is likely to prove a fool's errand. But hey, good luck, maybe it does work.
Ofc its kinda subjective to value random abilities, but we can compare them to the basic ones and give them a value of 0.25 steps. only that makes sense here. Nontheless the cards will end in a more objective category.
Garruks Companion on the other hand is indeed a tough rating subject, because based on the values it ends at 4.75 which would be staple and it was treated that way for long. Its not a bad card though and can be as useful in an aggrodeck as every other 2 drop in the later stages of the game. I can see counting trample for value only on creatures with power >3 though, so the card ends up cubable which indeed it still is. Various manaeffects in green also compensate for the drawback in real scenarios.
Double Colored requirements automatically add more stats or better effects to the card, so no problem on the rating here. There should be no question that a 4W Cloudgoat or a 1U Counterspell would be stronger, no matter what.
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
The point is that there's no difference with the current ratings for the detriments of having a WW two drop vs a 3WW 5 drop, when in reality the issue of having WW on a 5 drop is so much less. So you end up with ratings that don't accurately take into account those factors. Like, there's almost nothing outside of a horrendous manabase or awful luck stopping you from landing Cloudgoat t5, but there are real odds that work against Skyhunter, but they still both get -1? That doesn't make sense, if evaluating the card in an objective manner. I don't know what the solution is--maybe assign values to each colored source divided by total amount of mana? That probably doesn't work too I don't know what the actual solution would be, but currently they both get -1 for having WW, and it's hard to argue that Cloudgoat should lose the same amount of points for being 3WW as skyhunter for being a two drop that costs WW, and there's a solution that accounts for the fact that a hypothetical Cloudgoat that costs 4W would grade better.
Otherwise you're weighing the WW cost of the Skyhunter as much as the WW cost of Cloudgoat, which is tough to take seriously as a legit grading system, which is also another tough aspect of assigning values to every possible aspect of a card without taking the whole thing into consideration, but that's also why talking about this stuff before you start is good since you can smooth out the wrinkles that come with working in the lab alone.
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in other words, doubled manacost on a 2 drops its value by roughly 30% whereas on a 5 drop it only affects it by 12.5%
math guys
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
It could be something like
XX: -1
1XX: -.75
2XX: -.5
3XX: -.25
And that would be *much* more accurate in actually assigning the demerits of those costs in practice. You have a million scores as is, might as well go all-out and improve ones when there are obvious ways to improve them.
And then there's the other aspects of how much better abilities get when combined, or how certain abilities aren't as useful in conjunction with one another. Like, death strike and first strike, and the inverse to a degree of how much less weight trample carries if a creature already has flying or whatever. There are a lot of things to consider, and the values miss a decent amount if they don't reflect that too. I'm sure there are less examples of these making a difference, but it's one of those things where I would put *way* more points in the respective 'death touch' value of a first strikers vs the death touch on a random otherwise vanilla creature.
Or you can be snarky to other's suggestions with the 'math guys' comments and continue to miss the point. Whatever works.
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Again, I don't believe you'll end up with anything you can call objective to any degree. If you assign values subjectively, you'll end up with subjective results. The fact that you're thinking about introducing new rules to have Companion end up in the category you feel should be right shows how difficult that kind of task is, and how much it is guided by your subjective judgement of where Companion should end up.
Salmo is right, I think. If you actually want to do this calculation thing properly, you need a lot of gradation, which makes the system very complex and unwieldy, ideally you'd want a program you can enter these parameters into to calculate lots of cards at the same time to see if you need to tinker with the parameters. If you don't want that kind of complex system, you're just going to end up with a subjective list that has some random numbers in it. I feel like you really need to ask yourself what kind of benefit this kind of system can bring to the table before you start calculating. Currently, you seem to be using it to get more objective ratings, but the ratings you end up with aren't really more objective, they just have a number with them, so you're actually doing a lot of work without any apparent benefit.
see
Sentinel Spider v=8 borderline vs Bitterbow Sharpshooters v=9 staple
T2 powpercube Value https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t