I took the mtgs average cube, and at the recommendation of other users, added some more fixing (the khans taplands) and cut some colors to get it to 540 (current: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/98055).
I want to cut it down a bit, maybe even as low as 360, purely because I want to learn how to really build a cube up. I want to understand how to support proper archetypes, how to pick good cards for the cube, etc. I really want to understand the thought that goes into building a cube.
I do want to keep the power level quite high (Mana Drain/Warhammers/Land Tax/etc).
Are there good guidelines on evaluating cards when it comes to cut/add? I get the gist that guild cards should be powerful enough to pull you into a guild.
What's the reason for keeping the high power stuff? In my experience, only one person has fun when those cards hit the table, which can quickly dwindle a play group. (Or at least their interest in drafting your cube.) I'm not sure that Land Tax would fall in line with those two. (and people would prob argue that mana drain is better than warhammer?)
What's the reason for keeping the high power stuff? In my experience, only one person has fun when those cards hit the table, which can quickly dwindle a play group. (Or at least their interest in drafting your cube.) I'm not sure that Land Tax would fall in line with those two. (and people would prob argue that mana drain is better than warhammer?)
The thinking was to make the cube feel powerful, despite being a peasant cube. The only reason I didn't go with a non-peasant cube is that a have multiple friends with powered cubes that fill that niche.
I wanted a cube that would maybe be a bit more friendly with playgroups with less mtg experience (work group/gf and her friends) while being powerful enough to be fun for my normal legacy playgroup (does power always mean fun?).
[quote from="Salmo »" url="/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/pauper-peasant-discussion/789544-cube-noob-building-a-cube?comment=2"]
I wanted a cube that would maybe be a bit more friendly with playgroups with less mtg experience (work group/gf and her friends) while being powerful enough to be fun for my normal legacy playgroup (does power always mean fun?).
The people playing legacy already like magic if they're buying into those decks/cubes--you don't have to worry about them having fun with a peasant cube, they probably like drafting too if there are multiple cubes in your group and peasant is def more fun than RIX, the only thing that counts against it is that there's no value so the spikes might like cube less.
The people in the former group have less experience and are less committed to magic overall, and that's a much better reason to not run the stupid powerful cards than the other reasons for running them are. It's really not fun for people learning how to play magic or with less experience to get smoked, and it's even less fun when the cards smoking them make the player on the other side feel helpless.
The best thing is to give your playgroup a *different* experience (especially so when they have a bunch of reg cubes to choose from as is) and the broken cards don't really provide that. Like, what is Sol Ring accomplishing for your cube environment other than wins? What decks does it support? Is there any thought to drafting it (never pass it) or playing it (pay 1; win) and is that the type of card you really want next to [[insert card that only shows up in peasant lists here]]?
The cube is going to feel powerful. You're making a format full of essentially retail draft all-stars, and those cards certainly feel powerful when in similar company and don't need Sol Ring for them to be good.
[quote from="Salmo »" url="/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/pauper-peasant-discussion/789544-cube-noob-building-a-cube?comment=2"]
I wanted a cube that would maybe be a bit more friendly with playgroups with less mtg experience (work group/gf and her friends) while being powerful enough to be fun for my normal legacy playgroup (does power always mean fun?).
The people playing legacy already like magic if they're buying into those decks/cubes--you don't have to worry about them having fun with a peasant cube, they probably like drafting too if there are multiple cubes in your group and peasant is def more fun than RIX, the only thing that counts against it is that there's no value so the spikes might like cube less.
The people in the former group have less experience and are less committed to magic overall, and that's a much better reason to not run the stupid powerful cards than the other reasons for running them are. It's really not fun for people learning how to play magic or with less experience to get smoked, and it's even less fun when the cards smoking them make the player on the other side feel helpless.
The best thing is to give your playgroup a *different* experience (especially so when they have a bunch of reg cubes to choose from as is) and the broken cards don't really provide that. Like, what is Sol Ring accomplishing for your cube environment other than wins? What decks does it support? Is there any thought to drafting it (never pass it) or playing it (pay 1; win) and is that the type of card you really want next to [[insert card that only shows up in peasant lists here]]?
The cube is going to feel powerful. You're making a format full of essentially retail draft all-stars, and those cards certainly feel powerful when in similar company and don't need Sol Ring for them to be good.
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Awesome advice, thank you!
I do have Sol Ring dropped currently, with no plans to include it. Current cube has: Land Tax/Mana Drain/Behemoth/Luxodon/Skullclamp in the cube, in terms of powerful cards (unsure if there are more that I just missed).
Land Tax has some cool interactions with other cards like Forbid and can help some aggro decks cut on lands.
Mana Drain I just put in because I liked the card, hah.
Skullclamp is insane in any deck that has a ton of creatures and feels pretty great in token strategies.
Behemoth/Luxodon are interesting. They feel like they are just snap picks if you see them. But maybe since they have no real synergy, they aren't great to have?
I like your idea of a "different" experience. How can that be done in a Peasant cube? Supporting of more archetypes?
I like your idea of a "different" experience. How can that be done in a Peasant cube? Supporting of more archetypes?
All you have to do is run a cube that has the peasant restrictions and it'll be different than the powered/unpowered cubes your playgroup already has access to. The 'different' was just in regards to a peasant cube playing out a good amount differently than a reg cube overall, which you said you had multiple people already running those.
What you will see if you look at most cubes here is an experience kind of like the Masters sets - very powerful custom draft sets.
That's the experience I'd be going for in your situation, for the reasons that Salmo already talked about. Even with "normal" uncommons you'll get to do super stupid stuff (Temur Sabertooth plus Cloudgoat Ranger, Phantom Centaur plus pants), you don't need to run the "peasant power" cards for that. A lot of those cards simply prevent games of Magic, something that you don't want if you want your cube to be attractive to players who are kind of new to Magic or who just play for fun. Those people are very quick to say "well that's stupid, I'm done with this".
What you need to do to get there is cut the broken cards that prevent games from happening and add archetypes. As I said in the other thread, I'd recommend the tri-color theme method for that.
I like your idea of a "different" experience. How can that be done in a Peasant cube? Supporting of more archetypes?
All you have to do is run a cube that has the peasant restrictions and it'll be different than the powered/unpowered cubes your playgroup already has access to. The 'different' was just in regards to a peasant cube playing out a good amount differently than a reg cube overall, which you said you had multiple people already running those.
What you will see if you look at most cubes here is an experience kind of like the Masters sets - very powerful custom draft sets.
That's the experience I'd be going for in your situation, for the reasons that Salmo already talked about. Even with "normal" uncommons you'll get to do super stupid stuff (Temur Sabertooth plus Cloudgoat Ranger, Phantom Centaur plus pants), you don't need to run the "peasant power" cards for that. A lot of those cards simply prevent games of Magic, something that you don't want if you want your cube to be attractive to players who are kind of new to Magic or who just play for fun. Those people are very quick to say "well that's stupid, I'm done with this".
What you need to do to get there is cut the broken cards that prevent games from happening and add archetypes. As I said in the other thread, I'd recommend the tri-color theme method for that.
Thanks for the tips!
I found your post:
Pick a theme for each three-color pair (say reanimator control for Grixis, spells matter for Jeskai, Naya +1/+1 tokens,...) and you'll get overlapping archetypes in your guilds automatically while not shoehorning your guilds into being narrow one-trick ponies.
Should I just reference the archetype list and kind of go from there? Or take my 540 and cut down (is 540 ok or should I cut down? I've heard that bigger cubes are much harder to manage).
I've also stumbled upon Vari Sami's cube which seems to be one of the top drafted cubes out there (CT doesn't seem to just let me search for peasant cubes outside of just searching for the word). However his cube looks like it runs Library/Mana Drain and the other artifacts that seem pretty nuts.
The archetype list is helpful for sure. I don't think you have to cut down, but smaller cubes do make archetypes easier to support (consistency is easier to get basically).
Not saying including the power cards is wrong, you can do that of course. If you want an archetype driven cube, the powered cards are likely to get into the way of the archetypes though, because there is not as much of a reason to turn to the archetype cards if you can just run the broken cards.
Yeah at the end of the day it's your cube and you should do what you want, but the general intent with peasant cubes is to construct a fun uncommons-or-less format that doesn't contain stupid cards like sol ring/LoA/even skullclamp.
Those people are very quick to say "well that's stupid, I'm done with this".
I don't think you necessarily can assume that inexperienced or casual players don't like swingy games. Powerful cards can also be exciting and evocative.
Now, I agree with you that you want to keep your non-games to a minimum. A card like Sol Ring is so far above the peasant power level that it turns what would have been a perfectly good game into something ridiculously lopsided. Mana Drain and Library of Alexandriamight be in that category, but I don't know because I don't own them. Loxodon Warhammer though? Skullclamp? Insanely good, but I don't think they create non-games. Same goes for the curses. Will the run away with the game? If left unchecked, sure. Are they hard to deal with? Totally. But I've also won my fair share of cards through/against them.
I'd say if you want to be hesitant of cards it's the ones that are really efficient in not letting your opponent play out their strategy and are hard to deal with (Propaganda, Maze of Ith, Wall of Denial) or heavy resource denial that can randomly screw someone over (Hymn to Tourach, Strip Mine).
We still run all of these though while supporting multiple archetypes. Our experience is that the power cards either support and give a little oomph to the archetypes, or get matched in power by more synergistic decks.
Anyway, I'm not saying I totally disagree or misunderstand the point being made. The advice given is good. It's just that I also think the opposite can, paradoxically, be true simultaneously.
All those cards fall under the same umbrella but to differing degrees, and the key is where you draw that line, and the bigger key is not doing slight or massive mental gymnastics to justify the cards that fall past the point where you draw that line, or to miss the point of what you are actually looking for. The latter points are how Sol Ring/LoA/Mana Drain end up in environments where they do not belong.
Yeah, you might've won through multiple skullclamp activations, or hey maybe you even beat a t1 Sol Ring, but what did it require? Probably on average a massive effort on the non-clamp player's end if the opponent is paying 1, losing an X/1, and getting two cards out of it as that's an absurd rate. How often will the average peasant deck be able to contend with that? How often is the skullclamp deck just going to win? Is that a card you want in your environment?
Another key thing is to note that the last question in the last paragraph is not rhetorical: how much do you *actually* want that to happen? People often justify LoA/Mana Drain/Sol Ring by saying 'blow outs are OK sometimes', but what percentage of games where Sol Ring/LoA/Mana Drain showing up being a blowout are you OK with? Would you be OK with 1/5 games? 1/6? 1/8? If so, why are you crafting a cube environment where that percentage of games are non-games? Is it because you regularly play? (e.g. online cubes you can draft regularly with something like xmage.) Is it because all your players are asking for these cards to be included and understand that non-games will be a result a real percentage of the time? Or is it that you might not think it's that big of a deal?
And for some individuals, you really cannot undersell the concept of time spent being a #1 concern. If the problem cards make non-games two weeks in a row, how excited are people going to be to come over and spend X hours playing cube? Sometimes we have people drive an hour one-way to cube--how do I get that person to come back the next week or month when rd 1 they get smoked by Sol Ring and rd 2 they get smoked by Mana Drain? Will that happen each time? No. But are you willing to support an environment where cards like the above can provide *****ty nights? And if so, how do you plan to deal with the grumbles that come from the helpless feeling of looking down Sol Ring/Mana Drain/LoA across the table?
I agree that inexperienced players like big plays too--I learned how to play magic through cube, and I stuck with it because it was cool to see the crazy ***** you could do from the game's history all slammed together--but from that experience I can tell you that cards being way OP compared to the other options really makes cube night not fun when they dominate over and over, and if you're building a peasant cube those gaps in power level are really glaring. Cards like Hymn or Wall of Denial truly pale in comparison to Sol Ring/LoA/Mana Drain/clamp.
This post is replying to squirrely's, but it's mostly a group of questions every peasant (and any) cube owner should be asking themselves when determining what they want out of their cube. The 'you' is not really @squirrely but moreso the general reader, so excuse me if this comes across as me asking squirrely 20 million questions lol
And for some individuals, you really cannot undersell the concept of time spent being a #1 concern. If the problem cards make non-games two weeks in a row, how excited are people going to be to come over and spend X hours playing cube? Sometimes we have people drive an hour one-way to cube--how do I get that person to come back the next week or month when rd 1 they get smoked by Sol Ring and rd 2 they get smoked by Mana Drain? Will that happen each time? No. But are you willing to support an environment where cards like the above can provide *****ty nights? And if so, how do you plan to deal with the grumbles that come from the helpless feeling of looking down Sol Ring/Mana Drain/LoA across the table?
I can't quote this enough. Yes, broken stuff is exciting to new-ish players as well, but only to a certain extent. At least that's my experience. New players generally find a game rewarding because they learned something new or saw something they've never seen before. Broken cards are fine for the first time, but if there are regular occurences the game just doesn't feel rewarding or new, it feels repetitive and frustrating. That's what happened to Hearthstone, a lot of my friends used to play, but they all dropped out, one after the other, because of this feeling of frustration and repetitiveness. Tons of HS players used to complain about cards that were powerful but balanced, because they did not understand how to play against them. (I'm sure they still do btw, but I dropped out of HS years ago, so using the past tense here) Playing around these issues really isn't a thing unless you're already an experienced player.
I have an anecdote on Mana Drain and Library of Alexandria from today. Obviously, it is not rigorously collected evidence but it is something.
Basically, we had a 3-played sealed cube event with my CUbe earlier today, and one guy ended up with both in their pool and deck. They also had other very strong Dimir cards such as Psychatog, Nekrataal, Shriekmaw, and Whirler Rogue. So the rest of this cannot be discarded due to the rest of the deck having been bad.
They had either Mana Drain (and enough islands) or Library of Alexandria quite literally in each of their starting hands. Despite this, they lost their match to the third player and only barely won 2-1 over me, as in one game an untapped land would have stabilised my position (Shower of Coals) and the other, I would have won next turn if he had not topdecked Whirler Rogue and attacked with Psychatog for 15.
I think the main reason is how Peasant still has nothing truly broken to enable either by the extra mana or by the extra cards. You can be beaten to death as you tr to Library and most ramp targets enabled by Drain are easily removed.
However, I did admittedly have Thorn of the Black Rose to combat that. Monarch is such a silly mechanic.
Why do you guys keep bringing up Sol Ring when the OP already says that he never included it in the first place? It makes me think that y'all didn't even look at his c/ube before posting. I get that the power level discussion is important to you but it's not really relevant to this situation to keep bringing up a card that is so obviously too good that it was never on the table at all.
As to the OP, I don't want you to get the wrong impression based on the couple of posters who have taken the time to reply to you so far - it is not the general consensus that using cards like Library/Drain will ruin your c/ube. Far from it.
Not saying including the power cards is wrong, you can do that of course. If you want an archetype driven cube, the powered cards are likely to get into the way of the archetypes though, because there is not as much of a reason to turn to the archetype cards if you can just run the broken cards.
Are you saying this based on experience or are you just making an assumption? Based on how you seem to feel about high-power level cards, it seems unlikely to me that you have ever tried them in your own c/ube. I don't really see how a card being good enough to go into any deck is going to push players away from archetypes.
Coming from the other direction, I would adivse the OP to not go too hard on narrow, archetype-specific cards. The most powerful ones will naturally stand out and be high picks on their own, but after a certain point decks will start to feel very same-ey if you include too many cards that only one deck wants.
That's why I say that powerful cards don't hurt archetypes at all. If you pick a Skullclamp early, you can still go in any direction. If you pick up Guttersnipe or a +1/+1 counter lord, your draft is pretty much planned out for you from the get go.
Should I just reference the archetype list and kind of go from there? Or take my 540 and cut down (is 540 ok or should I cut down? I've heard that bigger cubes are much harder to manage).
The archetype list is a good start and I would first look for strong signal/payoff cards. Beyond that look for support that exists in cards that you would consider playing anyway.
As for c/ube size, the key is variance. How many drafters do you expect to have? If you draft a 360 with 8 players you'll see the whole c/ube every time, and I think you'll find that the "archetype" decks end up looking pretty similar each time they're drafted. Personally, I like to have some portion of my c/ube that doesn't get drafted, so if you have 8 players 540 is good, if you expect to get less then you can have a good amount of variance out of 360.
I'd say if you want to be hesitant of cards it's the ones that are really efficient in not letting your opponent play out their strategy and are hard to deal with (Propaganda, Maze of Ith, Wall of Denial) or heavy resource denial that can randomly screw someone over (Hymn to Tourach, Strip Mine).
Squirrely is absolutely right. I think cards like Land Tax, Mana Drain, and Library lose a lot of their power in Peasant because the cards surrounding them are not as good. A deck playing one mana down to Library can get run over much more easily because the comeback mechanics in Peasant are weaker. Mana Drain can be brutal but the things it powers out are weaker and more vulnerable to Peasant-level removal (which tends to be way, way stronger than the creatures unless you're building your c/ube deliberately away from that). Honestly, the most problematic card the OP is currently playing is probably Loxodon Warhammer, as it's nearly impossible for aggro decks to race and represents a hard counter.
The cards that Squirrely listed are far more problematic than the other cards that people have been complaining about so far. And the OP isn't playing Propaganda or Wall of Denial.
Now, if you are playing some of these more powerful cards, you absolutely should increase the asfan of artifact/enchantment removal in your c/ube so that your players feel as though there is counterplay available to them.
The best advice I can give the OP is just to draft the c/ube. The #1 way to get a feel for the environment and what is good/bad is to see it in action. Maybe you'll discover that you don't like the stronger cards once you play in this environment with or against them, who knows. The c/ube is an evolving thing. If you play with it once and your drafters don't love it, that doesn't mean that you have to be done with it forever. Listen to their feedback and make changes. The same goes for making cuts and additions - as you play you'll start to notice how decks come together, what cards tend to be low picks, etc.
When I start drafting this cube more, how do I adjust the cube based on card performance? Is it just based on asking the players how they felt? Do you guys keep track of stats in any way?
I don't personally keep notes but you absolutely could. It wouldn't be hard, I think, to jot down with each draft what decks got played (color combo and aggro, midrange, or control) and their record. Even without writing it down I think you would notice over multiple drafts if B/x control or R/x aggro was consistently going 3-0. As far as specific cards go, as you draft, you will notice what cards tend to stay in the packs until the very end. Then you have to figure whether they're not good enough or if your drafters just aren't evaluating them well.
Beyond that, yes, just talking to people about their experience is going to give you a lot to go on. If you play with the same people consistently, cubing can be a very personal thing. You'll likely find that your players love some less-than-optimal cards, and dislike some cards that the internet would tell you are absolutely fine. People tend to be vocal when they have a particularly good or bad experience so you shouldn't have to like, have in-depth psychotherapy with your drafters to get the picture.
I don't really see how a card being good enough to go into any deck is going to push players away from archetypes.
That's not what I'm saying. Jaytron was asking for an archetype driven cube. Running the "power" cards means they'll pretty much always end up being picked before the archetypes, so the archetypes are not really the "star" of that cube experience. That's not specific to peasant cube, the same is true even for retail draft sets. If you get Azor in a RIX draft he'll will win that game for you. Whatever else your deck did doesn't matter as much anymore. Same with powered cubes, you get those moxen you're probably doing well regardless of what exactly your deck is doing.
So it's not really about damaging archetypes, it's more about invalidating their importance for the cube experience you're creating (to a certain extent, not completely of course). And again, you might not have a problem with that or your group might prefer it that way, that's totally fine. I can't make that call for someone else, but in my experience the "power" cards get in the way if you want your cube to be about archetypes. And of course your cube doesn't have to be about that at all either, but that's what he was asking about.
I think the "power" cards generally detract from the nature of peasant. Low cost (mana and deckbuilding) game warping cards take away from the focus on interactions between cards, which is something that peasant typically exalts.
That being said, if you want to include Library/Drain/etc. go ahead. However, I would recommend playing without them first, as they do have a significant impact on the C/Ube.
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Most of my adjustments come from when I try to add things. If I haven't seen a card in a while or haven't been impressed by it I'll cut it for a card I'm trying to add.
I would recommend asking more directed questions if asking for feedback. The more general the questions are the harder it is to use the feedback.
I've tracked win rates before, but it didn't really tell me much I could directly affect. A lot of my playgroup tended towards certain colours, so that skewed a lot of my data.
As to the OP, I don't want you to get the wrong impression based on the couple of posters who have taken the time to reply to you so far - it is not the general consensus that using cards like Library/Drain will ruin your c/ube. Far from it.
This is the best overall point that any cube owner should take from this discussion, that is: don't follow any single cube owner's advice, take everything as a sum of their parts, and make your own decisions from there. Darcykun disagrees with some posters, and it's best to compare the reasoning and keep it in the back of your head vs the reasons another individual would advocate strongly against using these cards.
And @Jaytron, to expand on one of my own points, cards falling into environments where they do not belong is entirely dictated by the playgroup of that environment. As much as I disagree that drawing an extra card every turn off your land is still OK in a low-powered environment, you and your playgroup will come to your own decision and that can change and etc. If I did everything poster A did but ignored everything poster B did, I'm doing a huge disservice to my playgroup, and vice versa. Just run big changes by your group, it's a much bigger help than you'd think when you're faced with tough choice.
[quote from="Salmo »" url="/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/pauper-peasant-discussion/789544-cube-noob-building-a-cube?comment=5"]
Behemoth/Luxodon are interesting. They feel like they are just snap picks if you see them. But maybe since they have no real synergy, they aren't great to have?
These cards do synergize with things, just the broad category of "creatures that get into combat after turn 5". It's the lack of prerequisite strategy that is part of why these cards have historically caused problems.
Why do you guys keep bringing up Sol Ring when the OP already says that he never included it in the first place? It makes me think that y'all didn't even look at his c/ube before posting. I get that the power level discussion is important to you but it's not really relevant to this situation to keep bringing up a card that is so obviously too good that it was never on the table at all.
The conversation isn't one conversation. It's a string of miniature conversations, mostly about the OPs question but also laced with tangents. Using Sol ring as both a frame of reference and as a conversation piece isn't a problem.
Narrowing the conversation down to just the literal question being asked sterilizes the full breadth of what knowledge can be imparted on the person doing the asking.
I haven't read everything, but I'm not sure if beginners feel any worse for loosing to BustedCards(TM) than they feel about loosing every game because they are being outplayed by a better player. Having bombs also mean that they will win, and that they can hope to draw their bomb to get out of a game they are otherwise far behind.
I mean, there's definitely design articles on variance being a good thing for booster draft (Random FNM Lady can beat Jon Finkel if she has Tetzimoc, or if he gets mana screwed), and for games in general. And it makes sense, not many people have the mindset of wanting to play chess against a superior opponent repeatedly and... just... always... losing as their introduction to the game.
It doesn't really hold up to justifying otherwise unpalatable cube cards to me, though.
Also, beginners are far more likely to be the VICTIMS of shellackings from crazy bomb cards for a couple reasons -- first, they just miss a lot of them... Demonic Tutor is usually recognized and taken highly, but anything that has to be read for the first time gets glossed over, and you get 12th-pick Phantom Centaur or Curse of Predation; second, the beginner-level decks are just SO BAD that, say, a Loxodon Warhammer can't help you enough when your curve goes from Jackal Pup to Bane of Bala Ged and you're three colors with no fixing.
I haven't read everything, but I'm not sure if beginners feel any worse for loosing to BustedCards(TM) than they feel about loosing every game because they are being outplayed by a better player. Having bombs also mean that they will win, and that they can hope to draw their bomb to get out of a game they are otherwise far behind.
As someone who went through that, it's a lot easier to stomach losing for a reason the player can explain to me or I can learn and apply myself vs losing against better players AND their cards which are broken. The amount of times I've lost to better players/plays and then taken that knowledge and applied it to my own game far outweigh the amount of times I was able to do that while losing to T2-6 Sol Ring plays or Mana Drain extra mana or 3-7+ cards off library or etc.
I imagine if you feel worse or just as bad losing to good players as you do Sol Ring, then maybe cube (or magic/gaming in general) is not for that individual. Almost all my 'next level'/'level up' moments came from losing over the course of many many years which I imagine is the same for literally every magic player, but the only thing I've learned losing to Sol Ring is 'don't pass it'.
I've managed to test the cube a bit, and the powerful cards are a bit feelsbad in a 540 peasant cube. It felt like there weren't a high number of good cards in a cube that big, so the powerful cards stood out even more. I'm going to take a few of them out, but this has me thinking I wanna take my cube down to 360
Is there a good "rule of thumb" to cut down? Like X of each color X of each guild+ X colorless/artifacts/lands
I took the mtgs average cube, and at the recommendation of other users, added some more fixing (the khans taplands) and cut some colors to get it to 540 (current: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/98055).
I want to cut it down a bit, maybe even as low as 360, purely because I want to learn how to really build a cube up. I want to understand how to support proper archetypes, how to pick good cards for the cube, etc. I really want to understand the thought that goes into building a cube.
I do want to keep the power level quite high (Mana Drain/Warhammers/Land Tax/etc).
Are there good guidelines on evaluating cards when it comes to cut/add? I get the gist that guild cards should be powerful enough to pull you into a guild.
LegacyUBRDelverRBU
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The thinking was to make the cube feel powerful, despite being a peasant cube. The only reason I didn't go with a non-peasant cube is that a have multiple friends with powered cubes that fill that niche.
I wanted a cube that would maybe be a bit more friendly with playgroups with less mtg experience (work group/gf and her friends) while being powerful enough to be fun for my normal legacy playgroup (does power always mean fun?).
LegacyUBRDelverRBU
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
The people playing legacy already like magic if they're buying into those decks/cubes--you don't have to worry about them having fun with a peasant cube, they probably like drafting too if there are multiple cubes in your group and peasant is def more fun than RIX, the only thing that counts against it is that there's no value so the spikes might like cube less.
The people in the former group have less experience and are less committed to magic overall, and that's a much better reason to not run the stupid powerful cards than the other reasons for running them are. It's really not fun for people learning how to play magic or with less experience to get smoked, and it's even less fun when the cards smoking them make the player on the other side feel helpless.
The best thing is to give your playgroup a *different* experience (especially so when they have a bunch of reg cubes to choose from as is) and the broken cards don't really provide that. Like, what is Sol Ring accomplishing for your cube environment other than wins? What decks does it support? Is there any thought to drafting it (never pass it) or playing it (pay 1; win) and is that the type of card you really want next to [[insert card that only shows up in peasant lists here]]?
The cube is going to feel powerful. You're making a format full of essentially retail draft all-stars, and those cards certainly feel powerful when in similar company and don't need Sol Ring for them to be good.
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Awesome advice, thank you!
I do have Sol Ring dropped currently, with no plans to include it. Current cube has: Land Tax/Mana Drain/Behemoth/Luxodon/Skullclamp in the cube, in terms of powerful cards (unsure if there are more that I just missed).
Land Tax has some cool interactions with other cards like Forbid and can help some aggro decks cut on lands.
Mana Drain I just put in because I liked the card, hah.
Skullclamp is insane in any deck that has a ton of creatures and feels pretty great in token strategies.
Behemoth/Luxodon are interesting. They feel like they are just snap picks if you see them. But maybe since they have no real synergy, they aren't great to have?
I like your idea of a "different" experience. How can that be done in a Peasant cube? Supporting of more archetypes?
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All you have to do is run a cube that has the peasant restrictions and it'll be different than the powered/unpowered cubes your playgroup already has access to. The 'different' was just in regards to a peasant cube playing out a good amount differently than a reg cube overall, which you said you had multiple people already running those.
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That's the experience I'd be going for in your situation, for the reasons that Salmo already talked about. Even with "normal" uncommons you'll get to do super stupid stuff (Temur Sabertooth plus Cloudgoat Ranger, Phantom Centaur plus pants), you don't need to run the "peasant power" cards for that. A lot of those cards simply prevent games of Magic, something that you don't want if you want your cube to be attractive to players who are kind of new to Magic or who just play for fun. Those people are very quick to say "well that's stupid, I'm done with this".
What you need to do to get there is cut the broken cards that prevent games from happening and add archetypes. As I said in the other thread, I'd recommend the tri-color theme method for that.
Ah ok, thanks for that clarification!
Thanks for the tips!
I found your post:
Should I just reference the archetype list and kind of go from there? Or take my 540 and cut down (is 540 ok or should I cut down? I've heard that bigger cubes are much harder to manage).
I've also stumbled upon Vari Sami's cube which seems to be one of the top drafted cubes out there (CT doesn't seem to just let me search for peasant cubes outside of just searching for the word). However his cube looks like it runs Library/Mana Drain and the other artifacts that seem pretty nuts.
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Not saying including the power cards is wrong, you can do that of course. If you want an archetype driven cube, the powered cards are likely to get into the way of the archetypes though, because there is not as much of a reason to turn to the archetype cards if you can just run the broken cards.
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All those cards fall under the same umbrella but to differing degrees, and the key is where you draw that line, and the bigger key is not doing slight or massive mental gymnastics to justify the cards that fall past the point where you draw that line, or to miss the point of what you are actually looking for. The latter points are how Sol Ring/LoA/Mana Drain end up in environments where they do not belong.
Yeah, you might've won through multiple skullclamp activations, or hey maybe you even beat a t1 Sol Ring, but what did it require? Probably on average a massive effort on the non-clamp player's end if the opponent is paying 1, losing an X/1, and getting two cards out of it as that's an absurd rate. How often will the average peasant deck be able to contend with that? How often is the skullclamp deck just going to win? Is that a card you want in your environment?
Another key thing is to note that the last question in the last paragraph is not rhetorical: how much do you *actually* want that to happen? People often justify LoA/Mana Drain/Sol Ring by saying 'blow outs are OK sometimes', but what percentage of games where Sol Ring/LoA/Mana Drain showing up being a blowout are you OK with? Would you be OK with 1/5 games? 1/6? 1/8? If so, why are you crafting a cube environment where that percentage of games are non-games? Is it because you regularly play? (e.g. online cubes you can draft regularly with something like xmage.) Is it because all your players are asking for these cards to be included and understand that non-games will be a result a real percentage of the time? Or is it that you might not think it's that big of a deal?
And for some individuals, you really cannot undersell the concept of time spent being a #1 concern. If the problem cards make non-games two weeks in a row, how excited are people going to be to come over and spend X hours playing cube? Sometimes we have people drive an hour one-way to cube--how do I get that person to come back the next week or month when rd 1 they get smoked by Sol Ring and rd 2 they get smoked by Mana Drain? Will that happen each time? No. But are you willing to support an environment where cards like the above can provide *****ty nights? And if so, how do you plan to deal with the grumbles that come from the helpless feeling of looking down Sol Ring/Mana Drain/LoA across the table?
I agree that inexperienced players like big plays too--I learned how to play magic through cube, and I stuck with it because it was cool to see the crazy ***** you could do from the game's history all slammed together--but from that experience I can tell you that cards being way OP compared to the other options really makes cube night not fun when they dominate over and over, and if you're building a peasant cube those gaps in power level are really glaring. Cards like Hymn or Wall of Denial truly pale in comparison to Sol Ring/LoA/Mana Drain/clamp.
This post is replying to squirrely's, but it's mostly a group of questions every peasant (and any) cube owner should be asking themselves when determining what they want out of their cube. The 'you' is not really @squirrely but moreso the general reader, so excuse me if this comes across as me asking squirrely 20 million questions lol
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I can't quote this enough. Yes, broken stuff is exciting to new-ish players as well, but only to a certain extent. At least that's my experience. New players generally find a game rewarding because they learned something new or saw something they've never seen before. Broken cards are fine for the first time, but if there are regular occurences the game just doesn't feel rewarding or new, it feels repetitive and frustrating. That's what happened to Hearthstone, a lot of my friends used to play, but they all dropped out, one after the other, because of this feeling of frustration and repetitiveness. Tons of HS players used to complain about cards that were powerful but balanced, because they did not understand how to play against them. (I'm sure they still do btw, but I dropped out of HS years ago, so using the past tense here) Playing around these issues really isn't a thing unless you're already an experienced player.
Basically, we had a 3-played sealed cube event with my CUbe earlier today, and one guy ended up with both in their pool and deck. They also had other very strong Dimir cards such as Psychatog, Nekrataal, Shriekmaw, and Whirler Rogue. So the rest of this cannot be discarded due to the rest of the deck having been bad.
They had either Mana Drain (and enough islands) or Library of Alexandria quite literally in each of their starting hands. Despite this, they lost their match to the third player and only barely won 2-1 over me, as in one game an untapped land would have stabilised my position (Shower of Coals) and the other, I would have won next turn if he had not topdecked Whirler Rogue and attacked with Psychatog for 15.
I think the main reason is how Peasant still has nothing truly broken to enable either by the extra mana or by the extra cards. You can be beaten to death as you tr to Library and most ramp targets enabled by Drain are easily removed.
However, I did admittedly have Thorn of the Black Rose to combat that. Monarch is such a silly mechanic.
As to the OP, I don't want you to get the wrong impression based on the couple of posters who have taken the time to reply to you so far - it is not the general consensus that using cards like Library/Drain will ruin your c/ube. Far from it.
Are you saying this based on experience or are you just making an assumption? Based on how you seem to feel about high-power level cards, it seems unlikely to me that you have ever tried them in your own c/ube. I don't really see how a card being good enough to go into any deck is going to push players away from archetypes.
Coming from the other direction, I would adivse the OP to not go too hard on narrow, archetype-specific cards. The most powerful ones will naturally stand out and be high picks on their own, but after a certain point decks will start to feel very same-ey if you include too many cards that only one deck wants.
That's why I say that powerful cards don't hurt archetypes at all. If you pick a Skullclamp early, you can still go in any direction. If you pick up Guttersnipe or a +1/+1 counter lord, your draft is pretty much planned out for you from the get go.
The archetype list is a good start and I would first look for strong signal/payoff cards. Beyond that look for support that exists in cards that you would consider playing anyway.
As for c/ube size, the key is variance. How many drafters do you expect to have? If you draft a 360 with 8 players you'll see the whole c/ube every time, and I think you'll find that the "archetype" decks end up looking pretty similar each time they're drafted. Personally, I like to have some portion of my c/ube that doesn't get drafted, so if you have 8 players 540 is good, if you expect to get less then you can have a good amount of variance out of 360.
Squirrely is absolutely right. I think cards like Land Tax, Mana Drain, and Library lose a lot of their power in Peasant because the cards surrounding them are not as good. A deck playing one mana down to Library can get run over much more easily because the comeback mechanics in Peasant are weaker. Mana Drain can be brutal but the things it powers out are weaker and more vulnerable to Peasant-level removal (which tends to be way, way stronger than the creatures unless you're building your c/ube deliberately away from that). Honestly, the most problematic card the OP is currently playing is probably Loxodon Warhammer, as it's nearly impossible for aggro decks to race and represents a hard counter.
The cards that Squirrely listed are far more problematic than the other cards that people have been complaining about so far. And the OP isn't playing Propaganda or Wall of Denial.
Now, if you are playing some of these more powerful cards, you absolutely should increase the asfan of artifact/enchantment removal in your c/ube so that your players feel as though there is counterplay available to them.
The best advice I can give the OP is just to draft the c/ube. The #1 way to get a feel for the environment and what is good/bad is to see it in action. Maybe you'll discover that you don't like the stronger cards once you play in this environment with or against them, who knows. The c/ube is an evolving thing. If you play with it once and your drafters don't love it, that doesn't mean that you have to be done with it forever. Listen to their feedback and make changes. The same goes for making cuts and additions - as you play you'll start to notice how decks come together, what cards tend to be low picks, etc.
Draft my Peasant Cube.
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Beyond that, yes, just talking to people about their experience is going to give you a lot to go on. If you play with the same people consistently, cubing can be a very personal thing. You'll likely find that your players love some less-than-optimal cards, and dislike some cards that the internet would tell you are absolutely fine. People tend to be vocal when they have a particularly good or bad experience so you shouldn't have to like, have in-depth psychotherapy with your drafters to get the picture.
Draft my Peasant Cube.
That's not what I'm saying. Jaytron was asking for an archetype driven cube. Running the "power" cards means they'll pretty much always end up being picked before the archetypes, so the archetypes are not really the "star" of that cube experience. That's not specific to peasant cube, the same is true even for retail draft sets. If you get Azor in a RIX draft he'll will win that game for you. Whatever else your deck did doesn't matter as much anymore. Same with powered cubes, you get those moxen you're probably doing well regardless of what exactly your deck is doing.
So it's not really about damaging archetypes, it's more about invalidating their importance for the cube experience you're creating (to a certain extent, not completely of course). And again, you might not have a problem with that or your group might prefer it that way, that's totally fine. I can't make that call for someone else, but in my experience the "power" cards get in the way if you want your cube to be about archetypes. And of course your cube doesn't have to be about that at all either, but that's what he was asking about.
That being said, if you want to include Library/Drain/etc. go ahead. However, I would recommend playing without them first, as they do have a significant impact on the C/Ube.
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Most of my adjustments come from when I try to add things. If I haven't seen a card in a while or haven't been impressed by it I'll cut it for a card I'm trying to add.
I would recommend asking more directed questions if asking for feedback. The more general the questions are the harder it is to use the feedback.
I've tracked win rates before, but it didn't really tell me much I could directly affect. A lot of my playgroup tended towards certain colours, so that skewed a lot of my data.
This is the best overall point that any cube owner should take from this discussion, that is: don't follow any single cube owner's advice, take everything as a sum of their parts, and make your own decisions from there. Darcykun disagrees with some posters, and it's best to compare the reasoning and keep it in the back of your head vs the reasons another individual would advocate strongly against using these cards.
And @Jaytron, to expand on one of my own points, cards falling into environments where they do not belong is entirely dictated by the playgroup of that environment. As much as I disagree that drawing an extra card every turn off your land is still OK in a low-powered environment, you and your playgroup will come to your own decision and that can change and etc. If I did everything poster A did but ignored everything poster B did, I'm doing a huge disservice to my playgroup, and vice versa. Just run big changes by your group, it's a much bigger help than you'd think when you're faced with tough choice.
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These cards do synergize with things, just the broad category of "creatures that get into combat after turn 5". It's the lack of prerequisite strategy that is part of why these cards have historically caused problems.
The conversation isn't one conversation. It's a string of miniature conversations, mostly about the OPs question but also laced with tangents. Using Sol ring as both a frame of reference and as a conversation piece isn't a problem.
Narrowing the conversation down to just the literal question being asked sterilizes the full breadth of what knowledge can be imparted on the person doing the asking.
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
Cubetutor Peasant'ish-Funbox
Project: Khans of Tarkir Cube (cubetutor)
It doesn't really hold up to justifying otherwise unpalatable cube cards to me, though.
Also, beginners are far more likely to be the VICTIMS of shellackings from crazy bomb cards for a couple reasons -- first, they just miss a lot of them... Demonic Tutor is usually recognized and taken highly, but anything that has to be read for the first time gets glossed over, and you get 12th-pick Phantom Centaur or Curse of Predation; second, the beginner-level decks are just SO BAD that, say, a Loxodon Warhammer can't help you enough when your curve goes from Jackal Pup to Bane of Bala Ged and you're three colors with no fixing.
As someone who went through that, it's a lot easier to stomach losing for a reason the player can explain to me or I can learn and apply myself vs losing against better players AND their cards which are broken. The amount of times I've lost to better players/plays and then taken that knowledge and applied it to my own game far outweigh the amount of times I was able to do that while losing to T2-6 Sol Ring plays or Mana Drain extra mana or 3-7+ cards off library or etc.
I imagine if you feel worse or just as bad losing to good players as you do Sol Ring, then maybe cube (or magic/gaming in general) is not for that individual. Almost all my 'next level'/'level up' moments came from losing over the course of many many years which I imagine is the same for literally every magic player, but the only thing I've learned losing to Sol Ring is 'don't pass it'.
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I've managed to test the cube a bit, and the powerful cards are a bit feelsbad in a 540 peasant cube. It felt like there weren't a high number of good cards in a cube that big, so the powerful cards stood out even more. I'm going to take a few of them out, but this has me thinking I wanna take my cube down to 360
Is there a good "rule of thumb" to cut down? Like X of each color X of each guild+ X colorless/artifacts/lands
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