Although I consider my Cube "Tier1" powerlevel first. I must admit, that i cut some archetypes that felt too good.
-RB sac with treaten.
Probably the most op of them all and just unfair. Stealing attacking and then saccing for an advantage is soo unfair it makes you cry.
UG Aura Hexproof
zero interaction.
5/5 flyer with hexproof you can ramp into close the game too quick and edicts are limited (and bad)
U Bounce
Manowars on every slot on the curve, so your opponent never gets a board.
Threaten Sac: It sure fells broken, but at the end of the day you are still only trading your threaten for their creature (blocker) and push through some damage. It's strong, but not too strong, but never as broken as any type of undercosted Control Magic, which straight up removes your opponents best creature and adds it to your side of the field.
Aura/Hexproof: It's incredbily strong, but without a lifelink aura (e.g. Armadillo Cloak) you can race it with fast aggressive decks. I didn't cut it, because it was too strong, but rather non interactive and thus boring and unenjoyable for drafters.
U Tempo with Bounce: There are usually 2 different approaches to win a game. One is to make high quality trades and get ahead on card advantage to value your opponent out and the other is to win before your opponent gets the chance to play their hand. Bounce sure is a useful tool to archive the latter, but aggainst fast aggressive strategies it's far less viable.
I think all of your problem archetypes could be countered by a strong swarm archetype.
A Swarm deck often doesn't give you a good threaten target and in case there is, there is always a token, that can jump in front of an incoming big threat.
Aura Hexproof isn't the fastest and a single unkillable threat can't stop a whole army on its own (again without lifelink).
Bouncing a 1/1 Goblin token technically trades for half a card, but it also doesn't slow down a growing swarm too much.
The problem is, that with your mtgo-exclude rule you don't have access to Battle Screech and Beetleback Chief, which are 2 of the absolute role players for that archetype in their respective color. You could consider making an exception for these 2 and build a strong Boros (Green also has a decent amount of support) swarm archetype and see how it performs against these archetypes.
It is of course your choice if you want to include mtgo exclusives, but from a logical perspective it's not really a stretch, since WOTC officially merged paper and online pauper. Battle Screech is also an Iconic card for constructed pauper and as far as I can say from the top of my head, these 2 are the only really releveant mtgo exclusives for cube.
hm yeah, good point. although i might even add tokens to the list as well lol. the archetype is strong even without the mtgo staples. and unless they dont see print as common i ignore them.
i pretty muched moved all those archetypes to t2 and see how they compete there, because hexproof and threaten kinda cancel each out. ofc threaten is no control magic, but often you can gain too much ressources. especially Bushmeat Poacher is just unfair lol.
hm yeah, good point. although i might even add tokens to the list as well lol. the archetype is strong even without the mtgo staples. and unless they dont see print as common i ignore them.
i pretty muched moved all those archetypes to t2 and see how they compete there, because hexproof and threaten kinda cancel each out. ofc threaten is no control magic, but often you can gain too much ressources. especially Bushmeat Poacher is just unfair lol.
With pauper officially defined and sanctioned the way it is you're basically playing house rules.
Also, I would think your spike cube with an emphasis on fast aggro would be among the most resilient environments against the archetypes you name. I would expect all of them to underperform a bit in that situation acutally.
granted, rb sac always have been in my t2 and rules the meta there, so i never bothered to move it to tier1. its just not very funny. hexproof and bounce on the other hand have been and were very good.
although i run a fast aggro meta, the removal is efficient as well, so you can survive it until the attrition game sets in. And a 5/5 hexproof flyer (usually spectral flight+Primal Huntbeast closes the game quickly without much counterplay.
playing it from manaelves is fast enough.
bounce.dec is also annoying af. since at one point i had a bounce on every spot on the curve. I since then removed a lot, just to readd them later, since blue needs them. replaying 2 drops eats a lot of tempo still, so you dont aggro very well.
remember, aggro usually needs to close the game quick or runs out of steam.
This is definitely an interesting topic. I feel like we've kind of been discussing the archetype topic for years and there's never been a definitive way to do it.
If you don't include them at all and go vacuum power level only, you greatly reduce the skill factor in deck construction. You literally can't go wrong just picking two colors early and sticking with them throughout, and chances are your deck won't be much better or worse than anyone else's and games are going to come down to draw luck more than matchups and decision making.
If you support them too heavily you create a boring environment too, because you'll get the same decks every draft. Just like many of the past sets that had a heavy tribal or other archetype support got old pretty quickly.
I think the beauty lies in getting the best of both worlds and trying to support archetypes, but not support them so heavily that goodstuff decks can't compete with them at all. For me this means that I'll still include the most powerful cards for the archetypes, but I'll cut down on their depth making it harder to get a critical mass of enablers, especially with 'goodtuff' decks potentially fighting over the best payoffs like Armadillo Cloak, Battle Screech or whatever.
I'm pretty happy with this approach though I'd never claim that I've found the ultimate perfect balance. But I'm happier now than I was both when I didn't support archetypes at all and when I supported them too much. Honestly, most of the viable archetypes can be supported to the point where they become too powerful for goodstuff decks. Auras is at the top of the list, obviously. RW Tokens routinely attacks for 20ish on turn 5 with a perfect curve too (Raise the Alarm into Hordeling Outburst into Beetleback into +2 power mass pump is 25 points of power spread across 8 bodies...). The self-mill deck casts the Delve spells on turn 3. You can make all archetypes so powerful that none of them is op any more, but then you create the format I mentioned above where you're basically fighting over preconstructed decks in an 8-man draft.
I think a good rule of thumb is: If a well-built midrange/control deck with a high card power level but without any major archetype synergies can still beat the average archetype deck, you're probably in a good spot. If the archetype comes together perfectly and/or you draw your synergistic cards in the right combinations you should win. But if that isn't the case you should lose. This, in theory, creates a format where archetypes are perfectly balanced because they merely provide a higher-risk/higher-reward approach that people can take when they want (and/or are given the chance).
You have to remember: The more redundant archetype enablers/payoffs you include, the more universally and individually powerful cards you're cutting for them. You have to be mindful not to create a format where even below average archetype decks beat the goodstuff decks because the latter had to fill up their 23 with leftover archetype stuff they got late. If the Aura deck gets Empyrial Armor on a Ledgewalker and clocks you for 6 a turn by turn 3 you should lose as a non-archetype deck. But you shouldn't lose to a Gladecover Scout with Spectral Flight on it because you got nothing but Raise the Alarm, Jackal Pup and Threaten effects to defend with, if you know what I mean. Give them a Crocanura and they're fine. Or give them a Brazen Wolves and they'll race you. That kind of thing.
when it comes to goodstuff and easy drafts, I think thats part of an upside, because it allows unexperienced drafters to join the fun and not lose completely.
if you want a more challenging environment, my approach kinda is to spread powerlevel between tempo and value. Value ususally loses to tempo, thats why my "Spike" cube heavily focus on that, but its kinda easy to misbuild a deck still. For example Daze is horrible in controldecks. Even if a card is awesome in a vaccuum it can be bad in a certain deck. Like I said once, even Hymn to Tourach is kinda bad in certain shells, because it doesnt affect the board and costs BB. Its often also a value card that loses to tempo. And if you dont play "mediocre" cards like Wall of Runes you will get steamrolled by sligh..
Archetypes are best supported crosscolor/crossarchetype. Like tokens can be W/R or x/G and it interacts well with the sac cards. That allows players to build different decks within the same themes. Lastly I also already mentioned that you dont need to go all-in on the archetypes. Small synergies between 2 cards is often still a strong play and since I (we?) draft the whole cube its guaranteed to come around unless another drafter goes for it.
I agree with Izor that it's probably the most interesting draft envorinment, when you have a good mix of good stuff and archetype cards and cards should probably overlap (e.g. Battle Screech is amazing in any white deck, but the best in Swarm).
The goal is not to go too deep, but neither to shallow, so you don't railroad the drafters nor simply encourage them to always pick the strongest card in their color. Finding this balance is really hard and requires a lot of testing.
when it comes to goodstuff and easy drafts, I think thats part of an upside, because it allows unexperienced drafters to join the fun and not lose completely.
if you want a more challenging environment, my approach kinda is to spread powerlevel between tempo and value. Value ususally loses to tempo, thats why my "Spike" cube heavily focus on that, but its kinda easy to misbuild a deck still. For example Daze is horrible in controldecks. Even if a card is awesome in a vaccuum it can be bad in a certain deck. Like I said once, even Hymn to Tourach is kinda bad in certain shells, because it doesnt affect the board and costs BB. Its often also a value card that loses to tempo. And if you dont play "mediocre" cards like Wall of Runes you will get steamrolled by sligh..
Archetypes are best supported crosscolor/crossarchetype. Like tokens can be W/R or x/G and it interacts well with the sac cards. That allows players to build different decks within the same themes. Lastly I also already mentioned that you dont need to go all-in on the archetypes. Small synergies between 2 cards is often still a strong play and since I (we?) draft the whole cube its guaranteed to come around unless another drafter goes for it.
Goodstuff cubes are definitely easier for beginners, that's true. Part of my ambition to keep goodstuff non-archetype decks viable at all times is exactly that reason. Though I think it also doesn't hurt if a more experienced player's deck will be just that little bit stronger on average. A 60/40 matchup is still nowhere near unwinnable from a beginner's perspective and an experienced player will see more of a reward for being experienced. Again, a matter of balancing which is always very difficult and impossible to do perfectly. I don't want drafting to be meaningless because everything is equally good individually, but I also don't want people drafting preconstructed decks all the time putting beginners at a disadvantage because they don't know those decks in advance.
It's also true that it's desirable to support archetypes across different colors, though I think you shouldn't force yourself to do that if you either have to go too deep on redundancy to make it viable in a third color or of you have to cut too deep into a color's other archetypes to enable it. An example would be tokens, which can be supported in green as well, at least on paper. Though you quickly realize that the green token producers are significantly weaker than red's and white's and green also doesn't have a playable mass pump effect, so I found myself having to cut too deep into green's actual strengths in order to make it viable.
I like your last point about not only supporting archetypes, but also synergies between small subsets of cards. That's an approach I've also been taking with recent updates where I tried to make drafting more interesting by adding more high risk-high reward cards that still have a similar average power level as the other 'goodstuff' cards. Those are usually cards that I had previously cut, sometimes a long time ago, because on average they just weren't quite as strong as something else, but now I reincluded them because they have a much higher ceiling and aren't that far off on average either, which doesn't only reward good synergy awareness in drafting but also makes it possible for less experienced players to get those out-of-the-blue victories and those well-it-was-pretty-busted-this-game moments neither they or their opponents saw coming. Examples are the ping+deathtouch synergies, which is actually an idea I took from your cube, but also things like Sigil of Sleep, Leonin Bola (pseodo-Opposition in Tokens), Ghostly Flicker, Breath of Life + cycling fatties, Spikeshot Goblin, etc.
Let's be honest, it's already easy enough to get 23 playables in Pauper Cube drafts, it really doesn't hurt to have some narrower cards go late sometimes if they are super busted at other times.
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"Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today, and it won't be you."
I think my most overarching archetype in Johnnycube is Selfmill/Selfdiscard/Madness/Recurring Dead/Looting, only white doesnt really support it, but at least got 2x Breath of Life
-RB sac with treaten.
Probably the most op of them all and just unfair. Stealing attacking and then saccing for an advantage is soo unfair it makes you cry.
UG Aura Hexproof
zero interaction.
5/5 flyer with hexproof you can ramp into close the game too quick and edicts are limited (and bad)
U Bounce
Manowars on every slot on the curve, so your opponent never gets a board.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
Aura/Hexproof: It's incredbily strong, but without a lifelink aura (e.g. Armadillo Cloak) you can race it with fast aggressive decks. I didn't cut it, because it was too strong, but rather non interactive and thus boring and unenjoyable for drafters.
U Tempo with Bounce: There are usually 2 different approaches to win a game. One is to make high quality trades and get ahead on card advantage to value your opponent out and the other is to win before your opponent gets the chance to play their hand. Bounce sure is a useful tool to archive the latter, but aggainst fast aggressive strategies it's far less viable.
I think all of your problem archetypes could be countered by a strong swarm archetype.
A Swarm deck often doesn't give you a good threaten target and in case there is, there is always a token, that can jump in front of an incoming big threat.
Aura Hexproof isn't the fastest and a single unkillable threat can't stop a whole army on its own (again without lifelink).
Bouncing a 1/1 Goblin token technically trades for half a card, but it also doesn't slow down a growing swarm too much.
The problem is, that with your mtgo-exclude rule you don't have access to Battle Screech and Beetleback Chief, which are 2 of the absolute role players for that archetype in their respective color. You could consider making an exception for these 2 and build a strong Boros (Green also has a decent amount of support) swarm archetype and see how it performs against these archetypes.
It is of course your choice if you want to include mtgo exclusives, but from a logical perspective it's not really a stretch, since WOTC officially merged paper and online pauper. Battle Screech is also an Iconic card for constructed pauper and as far as I can say from the top of my head, these 2 are the only really releveant mtgo exclusives for cube.
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
Interested in building your own Pauper Cube? Take a look at some of the lists and the following project: The "Evaluate Everything" Project (updated to M21/JMP)
i pretty muched moved all those archetypes to t2 and see how they compete there, because hexproof and threaten kinda cancel each out. ofc threaten is no control magic, but often you can gain too much ressources. especially Bushmeat Poacher is just unfair lol.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
With pauper officially defined and sanctioned the way it is you're basically playing house rules.
Also, I would think your spike cube with an emphasis on fast aggro would be among the most resilient environments against the archetypes you name. I would expect all of them to underperform a bit in that situation acutally.
although i run a fast aggro meta, the removal is efficient as well, so you can survive it until the attrition game sets in. And a 5/5 hexproof flyer (usually spectral flight+Primal Huntbeast closes the game quickly without much counterplay.
playing it from manaelves is fast enough.
bounce.dec is also annoying af. since at one point i had a bounce on every spot on the curve. I since then removed a lot, just to readd them later, since blue needs them. replaying 2 drops eats a lot of tempo still, so you dont aggro very well.
remember, aggro usually needs to close the game quick or runs out of steam.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
If you don't include them at all and go vacuum power level only, you greatly reduce the skill factor in deck construction. You literally can't go wrong just picking two colors early and sticking with them throughout, and chances are your deck won't be much better or worse than anyone else's and games are going to come down to draw luck more than matchups and decision making.
If you support them too heavily you create a boring environment too, because you'll get the same decks every draft. Just like many of the past sets that had a heavy tribal or other archetype support got old pretty quickly.
I think the beauty lies in getting the best of both worlds and trying to support archetypes, but not support them so heavily that goodstuff decks can't compete with them at all. For me this means that I'll still include the most powerful cards for the archetypes, but I'll cut down on their depth making it harder to get a critical mass of enablers, especially with 'goodtuff' decks potentially fighting over the best payoffs like Armadillo Cloak, Battle Screech or whatever.
I'm pretty happy with this approach though I'd never claim that I've found the ultimate perfect balance. But I'm happier now than I was both when I didn't support archetypes at all and when I supported them too much. Honestly, most of the viable archetypes can be supported to the point where they become too powerful for goodstuff decks. Auras is at the top of the list, obviously. RW Tokens routinely attacks for 20ish on turn 5 with a perfect curve too (Raise the Alarm into Hordeling Outburst into Beetleback into +2 power mass pump is 25 points of power spread across 8 bodies...). The self-mill deck casts the Delve spells on turn 3. You can make all archetypes so powerful that none of them is op any more, but then you create the format I mentioned above where you're basically fighting over preconstructed decks in an 8-man draft.
I think a good rule of thumb is: If a well-built midrange/control deck with a high card power level but without any major archetype synergies can still beat the average archetype deck, you're probably in a good spot. If the archetype comes together perfectly and/or you draw your synergistic cards in the right combinations you should win. But if that isn't the case you should lose. This, in theory, creates a format where archetypes are perfectly balanced because they merely provide a higher-risk/higher-reward approach that people can take when they want (and/or are given the chance).
You have to remember: The more redundant archetype enablers/payoffs you include, the more universally and individually powerful cards you're cutting for them. You have to be mindful not to create a format where even below average archetype decks beat the goodstuff decks because the latter had to fill up their 23 with leftover archetype stuff they got late. If the Aura deck gets Empyrial Armor on a Ledgewalker and clocks you for 6 a turn by turn 3 you should lose as a non-archetype deck. But you shouldn't lose to a Gladecover Scout with Spectral Flight on it because you got nothing but Raise the Alarm, Jackal Pup and Threaten effects to defend with, if you know what I mean. Give them a Crocanura and they're fine. Or give them a Brazen Wolves and they'll race you. That kind of thing.
- Last Word
if you want a more challenging environment, my approach kinda is to spread powerlevel between tempo and value. Value ususally loses to tempo, thats why my "Spike" cube heavily focus on that, but its kinda easy to misbuild a deck still. For example Daze is horrible in controldecks. Even if a card is awesome in a vaccuum it can be bad in a certain deck. Like I said once, even Hymn to Tourach is kinda bad in certain shells, because it doesnt affect the board and costs BB. Its often also a value card that loses to tempo. And if you dont play "mediocre" cards like Wall of Runes you will get steamrolled by sligh..
Archetypes are best supported crosscolor/crossarchetype. Like tokens can be W/R or x/G and it interacts well with the sac cards. That allows players to build different decks within the same themes. Lastly I also already mentioned that you dont need to go all-in on the archetypes. Small synergies between 2 cards is often still a strong play and since I (we?) draft the whole cube its guaranteed to come around unless another drafter goes for it.
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t
The goal is not to go too deep, but neither to shallow, so you don't railroad the drafters nor simply encourage them to always pick the strongest card in their color. Finding this balance is really hard and requires a lot of testing.
Pauper Cube & Artifact Pauper Cube & Multiplayer Cube
Interested in building your own Pauper Cube? Take a look at some of the lists and the following project: The "Evaluate Everything" Project (updated to M21/JMP)
Goodstuff cubes are definitely easier for beginners, that's true. Part of my ambition to keep goodstuff non-archetype decks viable at all times is exactly that reason. Though I think it also doesn't hurt if a more experienced player's deck will be just that little bit stronger on average. A 60/40 matchup is still nowhere near unwinnable from a beginner's perspective and an experienced player will see more of a reward for being experienced. Again, a matter of balancing which is always very difficult and impossible to do perfectly. I don't want drafting to be meaningless because everything is equally good individually, but I also don't want people drafting preconstructed decks all the time putting beginners at a disadvantage because they don't know those decks in advance.
It's also true that it's desirable to support archetypes across different colors, though I think you shouldn't force yourself to do that if you either have to go too deep on redundancy to make it viable in a third color or of you have to cut too deep into a color's other archetypes to enable it. An example would be tokens, which can be supported in green as well, at least on paper. Though you quickly realize that the green token producers are significantly weaker than red's and white's and green also doesn't have a playable mass pump effect, so I found myself having to cut too deep into green's actual strengths in order to make it viable.
I like your last point about not only supporting archetypes, but also synergies between small subsets of cards. That's an approach I've also been taking with recent updates where I tried to make drafting more interesting by adding more high risk-high reward cards that still have a similar average power level as the other 'goodstuff' cards. Those are usually cards that I had previously cut, sometimes a long time ago, because on average they just weren't quite as strong as something else, but now I reincluded them because they have a much higher ceiling and aren't that far off on average either, which doesn't only reward good synergy awareness in drafting but also makes it possible for less experienced players to get those out-of-the-blue victories and those well-it-was-pretty-busted-this-game moments neither they or their opponents saw coming. Examples are the ping+deathtouch synergies, which is actually an idea I took from your cube, but also things like Sigil of Sleep, Leonin Bola (pseodo-Opposition in Tokens), Ghostly Flicker, Breath of Life + cycling fatties, Spikeshot Goblin, etc.
Let's be honest, it's already easy enough to get 23 playables in Pauper Cube drafts, it really doesn't hurt to have some narrower cards go late sometimes if they are super busted at other times.
- Last Word
Lightning Axe + Reckless Wurm or madness cards in general.
Its true that greens token stuff is a little lackluster, but they still got some solid staples for it
Nest Invader
Saproling Migration
and Sprout Swarm
come to my mind
I think my most overarching archetype in Johnnycube is Selfmill/Selfdiscard/Madness/Recurring Dead/Looting, only white doesnt really support it, but at least got 2x Breath of Life
powpercube Johnny https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/37t