The article in question was reproduced here, I believe. As to the exact quote:
Quote from Interview »
Goudie: After your experience creating Magic, what were you hoping to do differently or possibly better when you created Jyhad?
Garfield: There were a lot of things I wanted to improve on or at least do differently in Jyhad. After all - Jyhad was my second TCG, and I wanted to prove that TCGs were a form of game as potentially diverse as board games. Here are some of the things I wanted to change: I wanted no land - I didn't like that Magic had about 40% boring resource cards in the deck.
I wanted a game that was dedicated multiplayer, complete with cards just for multiplayer play.
I wanted a game to let players fill their hand rather than draw one card a turn, in order to make the play more dynamic and allow players to speculate on cards that may be a little more specialized, without losing a whole turn to them.
I think MM was a huge flop purely on the fact that since the cards have not depreciated in value at all
As far as I can tell, most of the cards reprinted in MM have dropped in price. The mythics have not dropped by much, it's true (though Tarmogoyfs are back under $100), but the rares have dropped, and noticeably; a cursory look at TCGPlayer shows that Arcbound Ravager is down to about $14 (and I've seen them down as far as $12 in the past few days), Cryptic Commands are down a few bucks to around $20 (granted, this drop occurred after the price has been rising for a while, so the price is still up from where it was a year ago, say), Glen Elendra Archmage, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Maelstrom Pulse, Academy Ruins, and Glimmervoid are down to about $7, Knight of the Reliquary and Lotus Bloom are at about $4, and I know that a lot of other cards in the set have gone down a dollar or two from where they were (casual cards, like Doubling Season or Divinity of Pride, have dropped significantly, also). The commons and uncommons in MM, moreover, have gone down by a lot. You can get Spell Snares, Kitchen Finks, and Path to Exiles for about $3 each, Street Wraith and Lava Spike are under a dollar, and basically any of the other commons/uncommons you can get for a quarter (with, again, casual cards dropping more significantly; Mind Funeral is under a dollar, e.g.).
Sure, I'm not ecstatic about MM's overall effect on Modern, because there were a lot of cards that I wish had gotten into the set over random giants and rebels, and I would very much have liked for a larger print run, but it has had a noticeable impact on card prices, particularly right now as the new supply of cards is entering the market.
You have a nice argument, but seriously, tarmogoyf didn't even go down a single bit.
Actually, you can get MM Goyfs for about $5-$10 below normal Goyf prices. Try looking at the prices listed here versus here, for example. Also, given the set's limited print run, Tarmogoyf's mythic rarity, and alternate art, it's not terribly surprising that Goyf's price hasn't moved much. Unfortunate, perhaps, but not surprising.
first picking a CCC card is not typically a move i'd do in a normal cube....this pack makes me think the cube would be more multicolor-oriented than the average cube, making that trips green cost even more difficult.....not to mention someone will snap up that putrefy and maybe the hedge troll quickly and green could be cut in the next round.
This might just be my experiences with multicolor-heavy cubes talking (my friends are obsessed with the concept); when a cube is deliberately designed with a lot of gold cards in mind, and it isn't someone's first attempt at making a cube, there tends to be a good deal more fixing than normal. Were that not the case for this cube (and, thinking about it and the presence of cards like Slippery Bogle and Golgari Longlegs, I'm inclined to be less optimistic about fixing prospects), I'd definitely pass on Overrun and go with one of the two removal spells first.
Overrun would be my pick, though given some of the cards in the pack I'm a little wary of going into heavy green so early; if I knew the cube a little better I'd be better able to judge. Putrefy or Chainer's Edict would probably be my next choices, like Inscho said.
Also, in another thread you said that Warleader's Helix has been working out pretty well for you. How would you rate it compared to the other cards in Boros?
I'm pretty sure that the Cube Tutor site is soon going to have more in depth analytics, including a card's % included in cubes, which should be 99% as good as a manual rating system with 1% of the effort.
Assuming that it differentiates between Peasant, Pauper, and normal cubes, anyway.
Opinions on this dude: Inkfathom Witch? I haven't really seen anyone play him, but he was awesome in the u/b tempo dudes deck I drafted last night. There were multiple games that ended t6 out of nowhere because he showed up and acted like an overrun for my Baleful Strix + Welkin Tern + random unblockable dude army. I also wanted to live the dream of Darkblast-ing my opponents fat creatures but it did not happen.
One of the main reasons that I said that aggro looked bad in your cube is that you have a lot of expensive (mana-wise) cards in the cube, combined with a ton of ramp, both in green and in artifacts, which generally promotes a "going big" environment. I count 17 colorless ramp cards, for instance (not counting things like Armillary Sphere and Pilgrim's Eye that don't strictly ramp), which is way more than I am used to seeing. Those cards are traditionally associated with control decks that survive by powering out expensive cards like sweepers, creatures with big butts, and two-for-ones to keep up with faster decks (though the relative shortage of sweepers may be one reason why this doesn't work so well in your cube).
Also, if your multicolor sections are each 7 cards (which is what it looks like?), I would suggest cutting at least 1, and probably 2, cards from each section to add in more cards in the actual colors. Conventional wisdom (around these parts, anyway) suggests that multicolor sections should be a little over 10% of the cube (so, around 5 cards per guild at 420, not counting fixing).
Your cube looks a good deal slower than most I've played with before, so it might be the format differences, but here are some questionable cards that caught my attention while looking through your list:
General comments:
-Aggro looks unplayably bad in your cube. Does it come together very often? How well does it do when someone puts together an aggro deck?
-Your multicolor section is looking pretty big, which is generally unhealthy for a draft format. Similarly, how exactly are you organizing multicolored cards? Cube Tutor makes it really hard to tell.
-Running all of the signets is really not necessary, and boosts control by a lot. When was the last time you saw a straight Boros deck run Boros Signet, for example? In general, you also have a lot of colorless ramp on top of the signets.
-Some colors, particularly aggro combinations, probably don't want bouncelands. Boros Garrison in particular is notorious for only enabling 5CC decks.
While they were written for general cube advice (and not peasant/pauper specifically), Salvation forum-user Usman has written a number of excellent articles for SCG about building/maintaining a cube. Wtwlf123 also wrote his own article about cube design philosophy.
While it's not technically a sweeper, I think that Shower of Coals usually hits enough, and is good enough all-around, to bear mentioning for this archetype.
I feel like Shower of Coals is much closer to a playable Peasant Plague Wind than Flame Wave, though I will admit that my experience with the latter is pretty limited.
It's the primary reason why I still run Fleshbag marauder.
I recently re-did my black section to have more of an emphasis on graveyard shenanigans, and I drafted an almost mono-black deck where I got Fleshbag Marauder into play six times in a single game. He does some serious work, and if you want to support a graveyard-based deck, I think that he's one of the best creatures for the archetype.
Also, I'm pretty psyched to be getting Epochrasite for pox/recursion decks.
Has anybody tested Death-Mask Duplicant as a potential finisher? If it costed one less or had a hexproof/shroud clause it would be a lot more impressive, but I feel like it could do a bit of work.
I've had it in my cube for a while, from back when I was interested in how a Tinker package would work in a Peasant cube (answer: very poorly), and it's been pretty mediocre. Most of the time you can get it one keyword (flying being fairly common), but any more than that is rare, and it's been a seven-mana vanilla more than I'd like. When it's good, it's really good (I saw it become a flying, pro-black, first-striking trampler once), but the downside is bad enough and common enough that I'll be cutting it in my next round of updates if it doesn't perform better soon.
Also, after months of not being able to play Magic, I have cubed about 4 times in the past week and a half. I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed cube drafting, and how much more fun peasant cubes are than powered ones.
Angelic Page is also completely ambiguous as to gender. Or am I being too pedantic?
There is a huge differnence between promoting sensitivity and simply being didactic
Actually, Angelic Page is pretty clearly female in her original art. And the vast majority of angels in Magic are female. Nof's being polite with the suggestions, so I'd suggest just ignoring them if they're bothering you.
Pristine Angel's time has passed, though (at least in cube); white's best finishers are Elesh Norn and Sun Titan, with Angel of Serenity probably being third. Eternal Dragon is only sort of a finisher (it's not good enough to run without the cycling stuff), but I think that it's definitely worth running.
Nof summarized this pretty well (thanks, Nof!), but we had a pretty in-depth discussion about this in a different thread recently. Some relevant posts from that discussion:
[T]here is a very valid point around multicolor card quality: If a card isn't good enough on its own to 'draw' players into the color pair, then it is essentially a dead card if nobody is in those colors.
An example: Ajani Vengeant is good enough that it could entice a drafter in one of the colors to pick it up and go into R/W. Or splash a 3rd color to support it and then look for additional splash cards as the draft progresses. Some of the charms, Rakdos charm in particular, aren't going to have that effect, which means they dillute the cube if nobody is in those colors. Now if you typically draft with 8 or more people, then the likelyhood of nobody being in a color pair is small, and in a very large cube, the opportunity cost of including Rakdos charm over what may be a 'higher powered' R/B card would be difficult to notice as it would be minor.
Multicolor cards (well, not hybrid ones, but you know what I mean) are inherently less able to be played in a variety of decks because of their more restrictive mana costs. Gold cards, then, need to be better than an average to merit inclusion, because all other things equal, their mana cost makes them worse than an equivalent single-colored card. Additionally, putting a multicolored card in your cube runs an opportunity cost of not running another card in the same color combination. The same is true with any card, actually, but given size constraints it's much more pressing in gold sections.
If multicolored cards are very good, they will generally not clog up packs; people will pick them early and go into those colors, or they will try for a splash because they want to play the card. When they are not good, conversely, not only will decks not splash for the card, but decks on-color will hesitate to pick the cards, and the cards will go late and clog up packs.
Adding more multicolor cards means there will be fewer pickable cards in packs, and vice versa. Try it out: Add five (or even ten) cards per guild that are solid, but not amazing, about the power level of monocolored cards. Cut monocolored cards for them. There will be a lot more "dead picks". What this means is that you should limit the number of multicolor cards in your cube[.]
(Emphasis mine)
As far as I can tell, most of the cards reprinted in MM have dropped in price. The mythics have not dropped by much, it's true (though Tarmogoyfs are back under $100), but the rares have dropped, and noticeably; a cursory look at TCGPlayer shows that Arcbound Ravager is down to about $14 (and I've seen them down as far as $12 in the past few days), Cryptic Commands are down a few bucks to around $20 (granted, this drop occurred after the price has been rising for a while, so the price is still up from where it was a year ago, say), Glen Elendra Archmage, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, Maelstrom Pulse, Academy Ruins, and Glimmervoid are down to about $7, Knight of the Reliquary and Lotus Bloom are at about $4, and I know that a lot of other cards in the set have gone down a dollar or two from where they were (casual cards, like Doubling Season or Divinity of Pride, have dropped significantly, also). The commons and uncommons in MM, moreover, have gone down by a lot. You can get Spell Snares, Kitchen Finks, and Path to Exiles for about $3 each, Street Wraith and Lava Spike are under a dollar, and basically any of the other commons/uncommons you can get for a quarter (with, again, casual cards dropping more significantly; Mind Funeral is under a dollar, e.g.).
Sure, I'm not ecstatic about MM's overall effect on Modern, because there were a lot of cards that I wish had gotten into the set over random giants and rebels, and I would very much have liked for a larger print run, but it has had a noticeable impact on card prices, particularly right now as the new supply of cards is entering the market.
Actually, you can get MM Goyfs for about $5-$10 below normal Goyf prices. Try looking at the prices listed here versus here, for example. Also, given the set's limited print run, Tarmogoyf's mythic rarity, and alternate art, it's not terribly surprising that Goyf's price hasn't moved much. Unfortunate, perhaps, but not surprising.
This might just be my experiences with multicolor-heavy cubes talking (my friends are obsessed with the concept); when a cube is deliberately designed with a lot of gold cards in mind, and it isn't someone's first attempt at making a cube, there tends to be a good deal more fixing than normal. Were that not the case for this cube (and, thinking about it and the presence of cards like Slippery Bogle and Golgari Longlegs, I'm inclined to be less optimistic about fixing prospects), I'd definitely pass on Overrun and go with one of the two removal spells first.
Norb, actually.
Also, in another thread you said that Warleader's Helix has been working out pretty well for you. How would you rate it compared to the other cards in Boros?
Assuming that it differentiates between Peasant, Pauper, and normal cubes, anyway.
UB is a pretty deep color combination. It has cards like Ribbons of Night, Baleful Strix, Agony Warp, Far/Away, Moroii, Mystical Teachings, Dinrova Horror; the list goes on and on. A card like Inkfathom Witch that's really only good in one deck, and has a very good shot at doing nothing, just doesn't make the cut for me.
Also, if your multicolor sections are each 7 cards (which is what it looks like?), I would suggest cutting at least 1, and probably 2, cards from each section to add in more cards in the actual colors. Conventional wisdom (around these parts, anyway) suggests that multicolor sections should be a little over 10% of the cube (so, around 5 cards per guild at 420, not counting fixing).
Zealous Strike
Iona's Judgment
Inaction Injunction
Runeboggle (Complicate is better)
Child of Night
Blind Zealot
Devour Flesh (you don't seem to be playing Diabolic Edict)
Driver of the Dead
Vampire Outcasts
Despise
Distress
Curse of Wizardry
Skitter of Lizards
Ashmouth Hound
Viashino Slaughtermaster
Changeling Berserker
Heirs of Stromkirk
Deathforge Shaman
Mindclaw Shaman
Rage Thrower
Weapon Surge
Raid Bombardment
Boreal Druid (try Fyndhorn Elves, or the new Elvish Mystic, once M14 hits)
Fertile Ground
Minister of Impediments
Countersquall
Consult the Necrosages
Augur Spree
Castigate
Coiling Oracle
Assault Zeppelid
Izzet Guildmage
Izzet Staticaster (Gelectrode will probably do what you want with this card, and more)
Skyknight Legionnaire
Warleader's Helix
Giant Ambush Beetle
Inquisitor's Flail
Darksteel Ingot
Manalith
Phyrexian Totem
Khalni Gem
New Benalia
Stalking Stones
Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
Some notable absences from your list, just off the top of my head:
Archaeomancer
Calcite Snapper
Control Magic, like Leelue said
Fact or Fiction
Carnophage
Nekrataal
Mark of the Vampire
Pestilence
Ribbons of Night
Jackal Pup
Flame Jab
Shower of Coals
Slice and Dice
Mishra's Factory
General comments:
-Aggro looks unplayably bad in your cube. Does it come together very often? How well does it do when someone puts together an aggro deck?
-Your multicolor section is looking pretty big, which is generally unhealthy for a draft format. Similarly, how exactly are you organizing multicolored cards? Cube Tutor makes it really hard to tell.
-Running all of the signets is really not necessary, and boosts control by a lot. When was the last time you saw a straight Boros deck run Boros Signet, for example? In general, you also have a lot of colorless ramp on top of the signets.
-Some colors, particularly aggro combinations, probably don't want bouncelands. Boros Garrison in particular is notorious for only enabling 5CC decks.
While they were written for general cube advice (and not peasant/pauper specifically), Salvation forum-user Usman has written a number of excellent articles for SCG about building/maintaining a cube. Wtwlf123 also wrote his own article about cube design philosophy.
I recently re-did my black section to have more of an emphasis on graveyard shenanigans, and I drafted an almost mono-black deck where I got Fleshbag Marauder into play six times in a single game. He does some serious work, and if you want to support a graveyard-based deck, I think that he's one of the best creatures for the archetype.
Also, I'm pretty psyched to be getting Epochrasite for pox/recursion decks.
I've had it in my cube for a while, from back when I was interested in how a Tinker package would work in a Peasant cube (answer: very poorly), and it's been pretty mediocre. Most of the time you can get it one keyword (flying being fairly common), but any more than that is rare, and it's been a seven-mana vanilla more than I'd like. When it's good, it's really good (I saw it become a flying, pro-black, first-striking trampler once), but the downside is bad enough and common enough that I'll be cutting it in my next round of updates if it doesn't perform better soon.
Also, after months of not being able to play Magic, I have cubed about 4 times in the past week and a half. I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed cube drafting, and how much more fun peasant cubes are than powered ones.
From earlier in the thread:
Actually, Angelic Page is pretty clearly female in her original art. And the vast majority of angels in Magic are female. Nof's being polite with the suggestions, so I'd suggest just ignoring them if they're bothering you.
Pristine Angel's time has passed, though (at least in cube); white's best finishers are Elesh Norn and Sun Titan, with Angel of Serenity probably being third. Eternal Dragon is only sort of a finisher (it's not good enough to run without the cycling stuff), but I think that it's definitely worth running.