MTG Salvation

Do you have a list for the UR ponza list? I have been trying to come up with a mana denial UG list that uses Early Frost, Hoodwink and Rishadan Cutpurse. Trying to integrate it into some sort of instant/flash deck with Growth Spiral and Ambush Viper

Quote from SaltMaster 5000 »

I'm not a casual.

My hatred of Tron is from competitive constructed Pauper. The competitive game would be better off without Ghostly Flicker because it makes playing the game less fun.

I love playing competitive Pauper. Here is my Mono Black Control deck that I top foured a Pauper 1k with: https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=20757&d=337081&f=PAUIf I had the opportunity to fire paid draft events with my cube, I would.

If the game is fun and fair and interactive at a competitive level, it will be fun and fair at the casual level.

When casuals get together and make a format, the result is a 100 card singleton format that's only held together by gentleman's agreement. Or in X-Wing's case, it's Mario Kart X-Wing.

I don't see why I can't build a cube -sans degeneracy- and play cards that simply do interesting things simply because they do interesting things. Coal Stoker? Huh, that card looks interesting, I'll put that into my cube.

I've won two games with Dash Hopes. Last time I played White I used Healing Salve on Standard Bearer and my Standard Bearer survived a Bolt. Last time I drafted my cube, I was playing Simic and had 5 Splice Onto Arcane cards. In two consecutive games my Splice cards did a ton of work. These cards are okay and seem to work just fine.

I understand that some (Splice Onto) Arcane cards in my cube aren't really that good, like Psychic Puppetry. But I'm hesitant to take them out since they give you extra copies of other, better Splice cards. Being able to play your Horobi's Whisper or Kodama's Might multiple times over the course of a game in a singleton cube is pretty good.

Battlebox is not my thing. I hated DC 10, I hated Commander. I hate playing my friend's Legacy/Vintage (not sure which one it is) cube and only play it out of fairness to him. I only like Magic that's fun, fair, and interactive.

I do not have a problem with the fact of how you build your cube or what cards you choose, however if you evaluate your cards in a this is not broken or this is a fun card kind of way. You should always add that to your question, otherwise it will result into a which card is the best, which obviously is not what you want for your cube. I have always been a more janky cube builder than the rest of the group here, trying things like an enchantment based cube, etc. But can you please consider the logic from the other side of the argument as well? This is for discussion of the cube itself and the last 3-4 pages have been a rather spiteful conversation.

So let's start over what is your main goal for this pauper cube?
Then we can maybe pitch in with our own advice, even if it is more related to pet cards than to staples.

Btw I do like the attempt with the splice cards, however in my view it is one of those mechanics where if you don't get enough of them during a draft you get stuck with the less playable ones. But then again I don't know with how many players your cube gets drafted regularly and hence what percentage gets left out. It's one of the mechanics in the group with infect, +1/+1 counters matter, etc. that I would love to play but that has too few playable cards in my eyes to truely make a draftable deck. If they ever return to Kamigawa however this might change drastically


Edit: unrelated to the previous paragraphs I can't remember can we get downshifts in the guild decks? Or do these remain the same?

so "inspired" by the latest discussions and because im bored, but also because it helps me keeping track of fringe archetypes and potential cards for my T2, I proudly present The Tier3 Cube

Features slivers, artifact matters, +1+1 counter theme, sacrifice and whatever else was left over from my other cubes. as always higher cube cards are excluded.

I discovererd pretty neat interaction between the Kor damage redirection and creatures that trigger upon damage like Spirit en-Kor + Overgrown Armasaur

its untested as of yet, but most cards have been played at some point already.

the problem with too specialized archetypes is that drafting becomes too railroading then. in my earlier versions of my cube i basically included preconstructed decks which pretty much assembled themselves during the draft after you got youve been into it in the first packs. this is fun for only so long, though. the upside it helps unexperienced drafters because they have it much easier then, but after a while you know all the decks and it becomes boring. while my cube still has certain "decks" its much more open now. pretty much also because we got tons of prints for the missing spots. red, black and blue has gotten playable 5+ creatures pretty recently for example.

Welcome to the world of cubing!
You probably found this thread because youre interested to build your first cube without spending insane amounts of money or the risk to lose cards during drafts. Well, its pretty simple to start a cube. Just start with cards from your collection and build something playable

The basics:

A cube is a customized singleton "expansion" made for limited games from all released card of magic, generally for drafts. A normal cube has 360 cards to provide 8 players with 3 "packs" at 15 cards each. Before you start, you just shuffle your cube and make the "packs". Its helpful to keep them in the center of the table, otherwise it might confuse players whats the pack and whats the drafted cards. Other common cubesizes are 540 and 720. The smaller the cube the better you can support archetype strategies, but after a couple of drafts it might become boring to always see the same mix of cards.

You can apply additional rules to your cube, like commons only (pauper) or uncommons as well (peasant) or only modern cards and so on. We are focussing on pauper here.


Card distribution:
An average draftdeck in normal limited formats consists 17 lands and 23 spells with the distribution:

CC1: 3
CC2: 6.5
CC3: 6.5
CC4: 4
CC5: 2
CC6+: 1

So when building your cube, you should scale up that ratio as a rule of thumb.
We are at a point in paupercubing where we can build a cube, Ill call the "SpikeCube(SC)" from now on, where the curve has become roughly 1 less mana on that distribution. So keep that in mind when your aiming for the "powered" cube we often refer to as well on this forum. The Spikecube basically just includes the strongest cards and archetypes. Another philosophy in building is the "JohnnyCube(JC)" which aims for a more thematic and varied meta.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2013-12-03

The archetypes:

Core archetypes:
There are 3 (4) core strategies in magic with 2 substrategies

Aggro (A): This archetype wants to win with creatures that basically always want to attack face. Spells are mainly used to clear blockers or burn the opponent down.
There also apply the 2 substrategies
Tempo: This strategy runs a very low and efficient manacurve and tries to cheat on mana while disrupting opponents development.
Ramp: This strategy also cheats on mana with effects that speed up the mana development to get higher costed spells faster than the opponent. Its not a viable approach in Spikecubes, because the removal is so efficient, that the tempostrategy always will be stronger.

Control (C): This strategy wants to control the board and trades or kills everything the opppnent plays. With cardadvantage effects you will win on ressources and eventually establish a finisher. It ususally runs more spells than aggro. To use this strategy you basically have to run boardwipes (sweeper) which pauper only has access to in black (weak ones in red)

Midrange (M): Basically the mix of both worlds. You trade spells and win with either with aggression and/or cardadvantage. In standard limited or Johnnycubes most decks end in this strategy.

(Combo) (O): This strategy want to win or turn the game with a big swing in one or very few turns. It usually uses hand and library manipulation to find its combo pieces and tries to ignore what the opponent does. There are no pure combodecks in pauper, alhtough there are winning card combinations that can be included in midrange or controldecks.

Theme archetypes (T):
These strategies dont focus too much on the gamepace, but on effects and keywords.
The best working themes in Spikecubes are:
Hexproof/Aura - more or less assambles itself in SC´s because it will contain some amount of hexproof and aura cards anyway.
Spells Matters - there are a bunch of very efficient creatures for that theme and will include itself most of the time as well
Otherwise the SC will focus on the core strategies.

Viable themes for JC´s can be found here


Card evaluation:
To find the best 360 cards for the SC, we already had an existing thread. It has become too inconsistend and outdated lately, because wizards changed a lot of its limited design philosophy in the last couple of years and to have a more updated and overseeable thread i started this one.



The categories:

Trash
below average,ignored, never cube it. mostly stuff before limited were a thing at all.

Filler
this card has the average value. Its usually included in every standard limited environment and mostly ignored in cubedesign. But they can be used when you start with your first cube. To save work I will not list those. Check gatherer or the old evaluation thread when youre missing a card. Feel free to demand borderline status.

Borderline
Average+0.5 - this card is slightly above curve and will often be an theme archetype card that will raise its value. Lately most filler cards in new sets are at least borderline.

Cubable
Average+1 - above curve, most of them time staple in the corearchetype

Staple
Average+1.5 - insane value for its casting cost and useful in any deckstrategy

When I feel like it, ill also add the strategy it belongs to (A,C,M,O,T - see above)

Comment Hidden

Comment Hidden

Quote from PyreDream »

I'm not terribly fond of Marshaling Cry (should be Inspired Charge or Fortify probably) or Marked by Honor.

Maybe the better card Borrowed grace?

It's a playable combat trick that also turns all your creatures into darkthicket wolf for free.

It's bonkers.

Have you considered getting a better wife?

Comment Hidden

I was really bored and was thinking about magic cards (of course), and my mind somehow got onto the thought of what a curve from a coreset would be. Like.. what does WotC's mana curves look like. I then was thinking if it would be good (or bad) to mimic that model. So I took a few minutes and found a way to get a list of all the cards from a set and get their curve using deckstats.

So idk, maybe this information will be helpful for others. I think I'm going to loosely follow it.

White Information
Blue Information
Black Information
Red Information
Green Information

The process I was doing was only allowing me to look at like 15 sets at a time, so these are all the commons and uncommons from Theros block to Zendikar block and M15 through M10.

Edit: It looks like the general data shows that everything is slower. less 2 drops and a few more 4, 5 and 6 drops for all the colors. I'm not sure. it's 4:30am, im gonna go to sleep now.