If I really needed a colorless way to wipe out everything including planeswalkers, I'd play Perilous Vault or O-Stone. A mechanic that has me flipping coins to decide whether an effect even happens would have to have some pretty amazing expected value.
I would cut Lantern for the Crawler for sure. 3cc ramp cards that only give you 1 extra mana just aren't very good.
I've always thought of the Lantern as an ultra-fixer for 3+c decks. That's what makes it cubeable.
I've seen many people cut it, though. How do people rate Lantern nowadays? Would you cut Chromatic Lantern for Crystalline Crawler in a vacuum, assuming other cards in the artifact section aren't bad, or just in the case when the option is to cut either Lantern, Masticore or Mantipulator?
Discussed this card with a fellow cube manager, some points came up:
1) It's in an extremely competed spot.
2) It's better than Conscripts in the sense that it repeats itself without shenanigans and costs one mana less. It's worse than Conscripts in the sense that it doesn't attack and doesn't combo with Twin or Kiki, if you run those.
3) It's a bit inconsistent & situational. It's at its best when you can steal a PW about to ultimate or a huge creature that's blocking your alpha strike and threatening lethal on the crackback. This makes me unsure about which deck would actually want this: I see it probably working best in an aggressive deck where it's a curve topper, because a slower deck can't really afford to get rid of a problem permanent for only half of the turns with the opponent still getting to use it on their turns (it might be great at times, but they'd still rather play Terminate). But an aggressive red deck with a curve topping at 4 would probably much rather play Koth or Hero than this, right?
I agree that the card is extremely cool and unique, but I'm really not sure what I'd cut for it. It feels like a standard powered/unpowered cube would have to either cut an aggro creature or an archetype-enabler (in favor of good but weird pseudo-removal).
I appreciate all the responses my message got. No point quoting all of you to respond separately, but really, thank you people for taking the time to explain this stuff to a noob. I feel I understand a bit more, and funnily, a bit less, in the sense that your responses make this place feel even less like the culty hivemind some seem to see it as.
I too got the feeling that people associate this board with super-mega-powermaxing that they see as an unbalanced drafting environment, and I guess it's not even that long ago that powered cubes might have been like that. It seems to me that many of the great cards that have helped balance powered and "standard" unpowered cubes are pretty new inclusions (e.g. much of the black aggro cards), and cubing used to be much more of a MTGO-cube-ish midrange festival.
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About players complaining, playgroup managing etc: I find that even if people check out the cube contents on CT, people who are new to cube or e.g. don't know that much about old constructed formats tend to shy away from some archetypes and either try and stay with safe aggro-midrange picks (which can screw their draft if there's competition for these cards) or make interesting and weird but in the end dysfunctional mishmash decks. Anyone else have a similar issue? I've been considering having a casual draft where any and all players are encouraged to ask questions during the draft, like "why on earth is this card here" or "how do I even use this". Do you have any general tips on how to teach the format to newer people without making it seem like a chore?
I've been wondering about something related to internet cube communities in general and I thought this would be as good a place as any to ask, certainly not worth its own thread. I hope this doesn't spark anger, but...
Can someone who's been involved with this cube forum and/or others for a long time explain why there's so much animosity towards MTGS on other forums or reddit? And why, in general, cube forums seem kind of isolated from each other? I've been going through reddit, RiptideLab etc. and people seem to generally have negative opinions of other communities, this one in particular, but rarely really explain why this is. I understand that people can feel strongly about their design philosophies and not want to associate with people who feel differently, but is this the only reason or has something happened in the past? Even given design philosophies it seems to me that the most respected cube managers on e.g. reddit don't differ THAT much from people here.
I haven't posted much here but I've been pretty happy with this forum. People seem helpful, and I've found tons of useful information for putting together my own cube. It feels so weird to see the comments about this place in other communities.
Glad I could help. Note that Chirdaki has a few pretty unconventional card choices such as Frostburn Weird and a blue/black devotion package. Also, the cube doesn't support some combo decks as much as other cubes, e.g. there is just one Wildfire instead of Wildfire plus Burning of Xinye. That said, FWIW he has tested the cube a lot and he's explained his design philosophy pretty well on Reddit if you want to understand the cube better.
^ Sounds like you're looking for a pretty "standard" unpowered cube in the 450-540 range, i.e. good aggro support without the Power 9 or "cube power" (Library of Alexandria, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault & the like). If you're being strict with the "no card that produce more mana than they cost" rule you'd have to also take away Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond from the basic unpowered list (but those cards are pretty fair in that you lose a card if you want to use them).
The problem here is that it's hard to know where exactly you set the bar when it comes to first-pickable-ness or interactiveness or whether games are luck-based or not. There's always an element of luck in Magic, and a card being first-pickable in a cube, even one with the Swords, really depends on a lot of factors (IMHO the Swords can be too slow in aggro, and they're completely unnecessary in control and combo, so I don't consider them nearly as flexible as picks as some do). I'm going to answer assuming you might consider some combo archetypes as uninteractive:
I can't recall any particular unpowered list without some combo cards some could consider uninteractive, but removing those doesn't really necessitate that much tweaking. You could check the CubeTutor unpowered average cubes, or really any well-balanced unpowered cube from these forums, and swap some cards. (Or you could take the cube Chirdaki, the "Unpopular Cube Opinions" guy from /r/mtgcube has: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/1001. This is a bit different and the cube manager at least states that he tries to keep the cube as competitive as possible with as few "high variance" cards as possible.)
You just take away the combo cards, and e.g. in the case of the fatty cheat deck swap some of the fatties out for more reasonable ramp targets. You can replace the combo cards themselves with some general utility cards, e.g. some more card draw or some quirky creature for blue instead of Show and Tell, an extra planeswalker or modal spell or maybe Outpost Siege for red instead of Sneak Attack. Same with black reanimation, swap the spells for some more value, or maybe Pox, Smallpox etc. for a different archetype. You take away the "unpowered" fast mana such as the two fair Moxen and Grim Monolith and replace them with some random value artifacts or help them make room for the signets if you want to run those.
YMMV, but I think an unpowered cube needs some combo possibilities - not Storm of course, Storm is absolutely woeful even in powered, but some sort of cheaty options. Aggro in unpowered can be almost as good as in powered since aggro doesn't benefit that much from the unfair colorless ramp in any case (aggro has huge demand for colored mana). The lack of unfair colorless mana hits control and midrange more, and aggro can just bulldoze over the control player that's waiting to make their 4th land drop and draw a Wrath. But if you add a couple of ways for the slower decks to get a fast win, you level the playing field a bit. And the lack of fast mana artifacts makes Tinker absolutely fair in my book.
The point of skill and fun is really subjective. The last time me and my group drafted my 540 unpowered, I had a lot of fun reanimating Myr Battlesphere on turn 2, granted my BG midrange opponent wasn't exactly thrilled. You could say it didn't require any skill, but neither does T1 Goblin Guide, T2 Ash Zealot, T3 Sulfuric Vortex - and I'd say drafting and building either of those decks does require skill. Actually, the point about interactivity and its relation to fun and skill is also pretty hard, since there can be a lot of really interactive games where the outcome has been decided many turns before the game actually ends. Games in formats with bad removal, lots of creatures and no combo (Standard) can take a huge amount of turns and involve lots of decisions, but it's not a given that most of those decisions mean anything in the grand scheme of things. And even in powered, there are often ways to interact with ridiculous starts. T1 Island, Mana Crypt into Tinker a Blightsteel Colossus? Path to Exile. Do what you feel is fun for you and/or your group.
Finally, I'm a newbie when it comes to managing a cube, so you can and should take everything I've said here with a grain of salt.
I'm skeptical. How often does a deck that wants a 3cmc rock have 3 or more power on board that they don't want to attack with? I usually see Coalition Relic or Chromatic Lantern in either Wildfire/Upheaval, Green Ramp, 3+c Control or Reanimator. I guess the ramp deck might have this as a backup plan, tap its dorks in order to have big attacker/blocker before getting any of the big wincons out, but to me that seems pretty fringe. The other decks usually have one or two creatures on board, and they'd rather attack with those.
In what archetypes do you see this card? (I'm trying to get better at card evaluation, and since more experienced people seem to like this there's probably a lot I'm missing.)
I feel like people are focusing on the artifact aspect of this card too much. It's gravy, not the main selling point.
Second that. I don't want to get too hyped up about a new card before I try it, but I'm just really excited about this one since I can really see it going into several different decks and giving RB some much needed variety.
Yes, RB is most usually aggro since it does it so well. But it can also be grindy RB Stax, where I think this card will shine. It can be Sneak/Reanimate, where this card can still be pretty good since most of those decks want to play at least some artifacts that they can sacrifice in a pinch to remove a threat (or that they want to copy, if the ult ever comes online). It can be Wildfire, where this card buys time, survives the fires, and likely spends the rest of the game sacrificing mana rocks to destroy any threat/chumper the opponent is able to play. And as stated so many times now, it's awesome in the dedicated Grixis artifact shell.
I think gold cards should allow for a couple different archetypes in their respective color combinations either by being flexible (Vindicate) or by being crazy bombs in certain decks (Tezzeret AoB). I guess Kolaghan's Command might be the most universally good RB card, but I'd still most likely run it in strict RB aggro shells. Daretti II is the first RB card I wouldn't run in aggro, and I really see this as a positive. I'd run it for the same reason I'd run Sneak Attack or Geist of St. Traft - I don't want red to be just burn, UW to be just wraths and big threats, or indeed for RB to be just Bob and Guide.
There's a psychological aspect to it too, I'd say: when a new drafter sees a card like Daretti II they will (correctly) guess that there is a fun RB non-aggro deck that they can draft. Even if it was already viable in the cube, it might be much less likely to happen without a gold card that screams BUILD AROUND ME.
Am I the only one who thinks the green one seems worse than the black one, or at least not that great? Both of these cards demand that you have mana to spare, but the green one can only be used at the beginning of your combat. That seems much more restrictive to me than having B open at a point when a creature might die. You can't play with the stack and the opponent can respond to it much more easily. This makes the possibility of Finks shenanigans seem pretty low to me, I would much rather name Thrun or TNN with this. Maybe I'm missing something.
They both seem like pretty ok cards but as said, cards that don't actually go into your deck AND demand certain colors seem weaker than the more general conspiracies. Not sure if I'd run them (540 unpowered). How many Conspiracy/Draft-matters cards do people generally run in their sections?
Like I said, Jitte is more oppressive when the protections of the swords aren't relevant against you. If you're playing counterburn, I bet you'd like to see an Umezawa's Jitte more than a Sword of Fire and Ice. Not that either would be particularly appealing....
I agree though, on the whole, Jitte is stronger than the whole cycle. For me, as I've said three times now, it comes down to the one obscenely powerful equipment versus six that will show up in every single draft in multiples thing.
What other equipment do you run, and how highly is Jitte picked over any of those? I was considering something like this myself since I kind of dislike color protection, though not enough to make it a strict rule to never have any protection cards in my cube. What worried me was that I predicted that Jitte would be such an absurdly high pick and great compared to any other equipment it's not even funny (yes, even compared to Skullclamp - the clamp works best with lots of abusable creatures, while Jitte works best with... creatures). I assume many people run the Swords or at least some of them in addition to Jitte because that ensures a more even spread of powerful equipment for all drafters, not just the one who happens to P1P1 Jitte. The diffrence here to cards like Sylvan Library, IMHO, is it's much more ok to have insane and easily first-pickable colored cards, because they limit your other draft decisions much more than equipment.
Ok, thank you very much. So I can't get value by exiling my opponents spells permanently. Still a fun card I want to include.
You actually can, if you have instant speed bounce, since for whatever reason they made this card with the old Oblivion Ring type of wording that they clearly have tried to avoid with temporary exile effects lately.
(So it works like this, unless I'm mistaken: let's say you have Crystal Shard in play. Opponent casts a spell, you cast Spell Queller, it resolves, and enters the battlefield. You put the ETB ability on the stack, and respond to that by bouncing Spell Queller with Shard. Once that resolves, Spell Queller's LTB goes on the stack: it lets your opponent cast "the exiled spell", but there's no exiled spell yet, so it fizzles. Then, the actual ETB effect happens, and the spell is permanently exiled.)
All relevant points, but at the end of the day for me, the primary function of all these cards are to be discard outlets. Black has Heir of Falkenrath / Oona's Prowler and now green has Wild Mongrel #2.
Good point - I have yet to make my SOI update, but by the time I have Heir of Falkenrath and possibly the 3/3 skulk guy, in addition to Oona's Prowler that makes three aggressive discard outlets in black. With Mongrel #2, I guess the BG aggro-reanimator works just fine without Troll.
(OT, but being a reanimation junkie myself: how often do people actually cast Life from Life // Death?)
Also worth mentioning: this being mono green allows you to alleviate Lotleh Troll in the Golgari section.
I might cut Troll, but I'm hesitant. I think trample, permanent stat boosts and regeneration will be relevant. Troll can keep beating down even if the opponent removes all the reanimated creatures, whereas Mongrel/Constrictor will just kind of stand there. Even though the troll has restrictions in what you can discard, there's an element of uncertainty in blocking it unless the defending player has perfect info on your hand. I think the ceiling for an unanswered Lotleth Troll is much higher than for either of the mono green options. Am I missing something here?
In the last decks where I played blue, I had 8-9 Creatures. I would see it as downgrade to discard them and pay 2 mana for a 3/2. Yes, the drawn card is obviously good to offset this. I also usually don't want to spend my mana in my combat phase, or on a 3/2 when I'm holding other cards. Late game, when you have some board presence, this will obviously help to keep that presence and then some of the others issues will not be a problem.
Wharf Infiltrator probably won't be stellar in low creature blue decks, but it's still one more looter for blue control and combo decks (Tinker/Reanimate/Tezzeret/Daretti), if those decks need one more. I guess it depends on what archetypes you want to support. That said, I could see the card functioning really well in a creature heavy BU aggro/tempo, in addition to the Survival decks that have already been mentioned.
Sometimes the extra ability will be just flavor text, but the card might still serve its purpose. What makes this card interesting to me is that I could see both abilities in and of themselves being relevant in different decks, with the other ability being basically flavor text. Cards that can serve multiple purposes are always nice.
I've always thought of the Lantern as an ultra-fixer for 3+c decks. That's what makes it cubeable.
I've seen many people cut it, though. How do people rate Lantern nowadays? Would you cut Chromatic Lantern for Crystalline Crawler in a vacuum, assuming other cards in the artifact section aren't bad, or just in the case when the option is to cut either Lantern, Masticore or Mantipulator?
1) It's in an extremely competed spot.
2) It's better than Conscripts in the sense that it repeats itself without shenanigans and costs one mana less. It's worse than Conscripts in the sense that it doesn't attack and doesn't combo with Twin or Kiki, if you run those.
3) It's a bit inconsistent & situational. It's at its best when you can steal a PW about to ultimate or a huge creature that's blocking your alpha strike and threatening lethal on the crackback. This makes me unsure about which deck would actually want this: I see it probably working best in an aggressive deck where it's a curve topper, because a slower deck can't really afford to get rid of a problem permanent for only half of the turns with the opponent still getting to use it on their turns (it might be great at times, but they'd still rather play Terminate). But an aggressive red deck with a curve topping at 4 would probably much rather play Koth or Hero than this, right?
I agree that the card is extremely cool and unique, but I'm really not sure what I'd cut for it. It feels like a standard powered/unpowered cube would have to either cut an aggro creature or an archetype-enabler (in favor of good but weird pseudo-removal).
I too got the feeling that people associate this board with super-mega-powermaxing that they see as an unbalanced drafting environment, and I guess it's not even that long ago that powered cubes might have been like that. It seems to me that many of the great cards that have helped balance powered and "standard" unpowered cubes are pretty new inclusions (e.g. much of the black aggro cards), and cubing used to be much more of a MTGO-cube-ish midrange festival.
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About players complaining, playgroup managing etc: I find that even if people check out the cube contents on CT, people who are new to cube or e.g. don't know that much about old constructed formats tend to shy away from some archetypes and either try and stay with safe aggro-midrange picks (which can screw their draft if there's competition for these cards) or make interesting and weird but in the end dysfunctional mishmash decks. Anyone else have a similar issue? I've been considering having a casual draft where any and all players are encouraged to ask questions during the draft, like "why on earth is this card here" or "how do I even use this". Do you have any general tips on how to teach the format to newer people without making it seem like a chore?
Can someone who's been involved with this cube forum and/or others for a long time explain why there's so much animosity towards MTGS on other forums or reddit? And why, in general, cube forums seem kind of isolated from each other? I've been going through reddit, RiptideLab etc. and people seem to generally have negative opinions of other communities, this one in particular, but rarely really explain why this is. I understand that people can feel strongly about their design philosophies and not want to associate with people who feel differently, but is this the only reason or has something happened in the past? Even given design philosophies it seems to me that the most respected cube managers on e.g. reddit don't differ THAT much from people here.
I haven't posted much here but I've been pretty happy with this forum. People seem helpful, and I've found tons of useful information for putting together my own cube. It feels so weird to see the comments about this place in other communities.
The problem here is that it's hard to know where exactly you set the bar when it comes to first-pickable-ness or interactiveness or whether games are luck-based or not. There's always an element of luck in Magic, and a card being first-pickable in a cube, even one with the Swords, really depends on a lot of factors (IMHO the Swords can be too slow in aggro, and they're completely unnecessary in control and combo, so I don't consider them nearly as flexible as picks as some do). I'm going to answer assuming you might consider some combo archetypes as uninteractive:
I can't recall any particular unpowered list without some combo cards some could consider uninteractive, but removing those doesn't really necessitate that much tweaking. You could check the CubeTutor unpowered average cubes, or really any well-balanced unpowered cube from these forums, and swap some cards. (Or you could take the cube Chirdaki, the "Unpopular Cube Opinions" guy from /r/mtgcube has: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/1001. This is a bit different and the cube manager at least states that he tries to keep the cube as competitive as possible with as few "high variance" cards as possible.)
You just take away the combo cards, and e.g. in the case of the fatty cheat deck swap some of the fatties out for more reasonable ramp targets. You can replace the combo cards themselves with some general utility cards, e.g. some more card draw or some quirky creature for blue instead of Show and Tell, an extra planeswalker or modal spell or maybe Outpost Siege for red instead of Sneak Attack. Same with black reanimation, swap the spells for some more value, or maybe Pox, Smallpox etc. for a different archetype. You take away the "unpowered" fast mana such as the two fair Moxen and Grim Monolith and replace them with some random value artifacts or help them make room for the signets if you want to run those.
YMMV, but I think an unpowered cube needs some combo possibilities - not Storm of course, Storm is absolutely woeful even in powered, but some sort of cheaty options. Aggro in unpowered can be almost as good as in powered since aggro doesn't benefit that much from the unfair colorless ramp in any case (aggro has huge demand for colored mana). The lack of unfair colorless mana hits control and midrange more, and aggro can just bulldoze over the control player that's waiting to make their 4th land drop and draw a Wrath. But if you add a couple of ways for the slower decks to get a fast win, you level the playing field a bit. And the lack of fast mana artifacts makes Tinker absolutely fair in my book.
The point of skill and fun is really subjective. The last time me and my group drafted my 540 unpowered, I had a lot of fun reanimating Myr Battlesphere on turn 2, granted my BG midrange opponent wasn't exactly thrilled. You could say it didn't require any skill, but neither does T1 Goblin Guide, T2 Ash Zealot, T3 Sulfuric Vortex - and I'd say drafting and building either of those decks does require skill. Actually, the point about interactivity and its relation to fun and skill is also pretty hard, since there can be a lot of really interactive games where the outcome has been decided many turns before the game actually ends. Games in formats with bad removal, lots of creatures and no combo (Standard) can take a huge amount of turns and involve lots of decisions, but it's not a given that most of those decisions mean anything in the grand scheme of things. And even in powered, there are often ways to interact with ridiculous starts. T1 Island, Mana Crypt into Tinker a Blightsteel Colossus? Path to Exile. Do what you feel is fun for you and/or your group.
Finally, I'm a newbie when it comes to managing a cube, so you can and should take everything I've said here with a grain of salt.
In what archetypes do you see this card? (I'm trying to get better at card evaluation, and since more experienced people seem to like this there's probably a lot I'm missing.)
Second that. I don't want to get too hyped up about a new card before I try it, but I'm just really excited about this one since I can really see it going into several different decks and giving RB some much needed variety.
Yes, RB is most usually aggro since it does it so well. But it can also be grindy RB Stax, where I think this card will shine. It can be Sneak/Reanimate, where this card can still be pretty good since most of those decks want to play at least some artifacts that they can sacrifice in a pinch to remove a threat (or that they want to copy, if the ult ever comes online). It can be Wildfire, where this card buys time, survives the fires, and likely spends the rest of the game sacrificing mana rocks to destroy any threat/chumper the opponent is able to play. And as stated so many times now, it's awesome in the dedicated Grixis artifact shell.
I think gold cards should allow for a couple different archetypes in their respective color combinations either by being flexible (Vindicate) or by being crazy bombs in certain decks (Tezzeret AoB). I guess Kolaghan's Command might be the most universally good RB card, but I'd still most likely run it in strict RB aggro shells. Daretti II is the first RB card I wouldn't run in aggro, and I really see this as a positive. I'd run it for the same reason I'd run Sneak Attack or Geist of St. Traft - I don't want red to be just burn, UW to be just wraths and big threats, or indeed for RB to be just Bob and Guide.
There's a psychological aspect to it too, I'd say: when a new drafter sees a card like Daretti II they will (correctly) guess that there is a fun RB non-aggro deck that they can draft. Even if it was already viable in the cube, it might be much less likely to happen without a gold card that screams BUILD AROUND ME.
They both seem like pretty ok cards but as said, cards that don't actually go into your deck AND demand certain colors seem weaker than the more general conspiracies. Not sure if I'd run them (540 unpowered). How many Conspiracy/Draft-matters cards do people generally run in their sections?
What other equipment do you run, and how highly is Jitte picked over any of those? I was considering something like this myself since I kind of dislike color protection, though not enough to make it a strict rule to never have any protection cards in my cube. What worried me was that I predicted that Jitte would be such an absurdly high pick and great compared to any other equipment it's not even funny (yes, even compared to Skullclamp - the clamp works best with lots of abusable creatures, while Jitte works best with... creatures). I assume many people run the Swords or at least some of them in addition to Jitte because that ensures a more even spread of powerful equipment for all drafters, not just the one who happens to P1P1 Jitte. The diffrence here to cards like Sylvan Library, IMHO, is it's much more ok to have insane and easily first-pickable colored cards, because they limit your other draft decisions much more than equipment.
You actually can, if you have instant speed bounce, since for whatever reason they made this card with the old Oblivion Ring type of wording that they clearly have tried to avoid with temporary exile effects lately.
(So it works like this, unless I'm mistaken: let's say you have Crystal Shard in play. Opponent casts a spell, you cast Spell Queller, it resolves, and enters the battlefield. You put the ETB ability on the stack, and respond to that by bouncing Spell Queller with Shard. Once that resolves, Spell Queller's LTB goes on the stack: it lets your opponent cast "the exiled spell", but there's no exiled spell yet, so it fizzles. Then, the actual ETB effect happens, and the spell is permanently exiled.)
Good point - I have yet to make my SOI update, but by the time I have Heir of Falkenrath and possibly the 3/3 skulk guy, in addition to Oona's Prowler that makes three aggressive discard outlets in black. With Mongrel #2, I guess the BG aggro-reanimator works just fine without Troll.
(OT, but being a reanimation junkie myself: how often do people actually cast Life from Life // Death?)
I might cut Troll, but I'm hesitant. I think trample, permanent stat boosts and regeneration will be relevant. Troll can keep beating down even if the opponent removes all the reanimated creatures, whereas Mongrel/Constrictor will just kind of stand there. Even though the troll has restrictions in what you can discard, there's an element of uncertainty in blocking it unless the defending player has perfect info on your hand. I think the ceiling for an unanswered Lotleth Troll is much higher than for either of the mono green options. Am I missing something here?
Wharf Infiltrator probably won't be stellar in low creature blue decks, but it's still one more looter for blue control and combo decks (Tinker/Reanimate/Tezzeret/Daretti), if those decks need one more. I guess it depends on what archetypes you want to support. That said, I could see the card functioning really well in a creature heavy BU aggro/tempo, in addition to the Survival decks that have already been mentioned.
Sometimes the extra ability will be just flavor text, but the card might still serve its purpose. What makes this card interesting to me is that I could see both abilities in and of themselves being relevant in different decks, with the other ability being basically flavor text. Cards that can serve multiple purposes are always nice.