1.) You guys are bad at evaluating cards. Everything that doesn't single handedly win you the game is deemed unplayable trash.
You Imply that but that is not the case. Most of the people here think Elite vanguard is a good card. Does it single handedly win you the game? No. Is it a dud because of it? No.
And If you think the people here are bad for evaluating cards why do you ask them? If you already think something is a reasonable card go ahead and test/play it, if you still want feedback then accept the feedback (You don't have to agree but why ask for feedback if nobody can change your mind on a card anyways)
This notion that this forum is only for powered cubes, and that powered cubes are the only balanced ones holds the community back.
Agreed, but nobody here is saying that powered cubes are the only balanced cubes.
Whereas my cube has some dud cards in it, powered cubes are basically, Everything that's not Pestilence% is a dud.
Again you imply that but nobody said that and even if they did that wouldn't be true, you have to draft a specific deck for pestilence to shine. And Pestilence is not "unbeatable" by any means.
So what you consider, a "tuned" Pauper cube is in reality just Pestilence, Crypt Rats, Evincar's Justice, Sprout Swarm, Guardian of the Guildpact, etc. + 340~ cards that are unplayable trash in comparison
No again you imply that that is the case but it is not ( the unplayable trash in comparison part). To most people here a tuned cube is a cube where you can draft multiple strategies that can be on even footing. Yes some cards are more powerful than others but Pestilence [or other cards you mentioned] should always be beatable in a tuned cube even without one of the other cards you mentioned. And for that the other cards are neccesary by either being good cards themselves or synergize well with the rest of your drafted cards.
3.) It's better to have 2 dud cards and 13 decent cards in each pack than it is to have 13 decent cards and 2 obnoxious bomb cards.
The Obnoxius part is your personal view on some of the cards and that is fine, but the more duds you play the more your decent cards become the
cards that you always draft and that always dominate games
thats why balance is neccesary.
multiple decent cards can beat the "bomb" cards. It's harder (however possible) to beat decent cards with duds. But then again having only decent cards or only duds is easier to balance.
All a dud card does is waste a draft pick. A bomb on the other hand utterly dominates the game. From a balance perspective, an individual dud has far less of an impact on cube balance than an individual bomb does.
I'd argue if its just one bomb vs. one dud balance wise both have litte impact. But from a "feels bad" perspective (which is subjective) I'd rather have my opponent draft that bomb than having to waste a pick, since in the games they still have to draw it and might not even win if they play it but a dud will most likely not even see the deck so the only impact it had was "somebody needed to draft this" instead of "somebody wanted to draft this".
Yeah I'll also step away when you say there are only those three "loaded" outcomes while having different outcomes within this forum.
2.) You make the Procol Harum or Neutral Milk Hotel of cubes and it's decently balanced, but everyone assumes its terrible unplayable garbage because its different.
Me and a lot of other people here have stated the reason of why we think some of the cards are subpar or why we think some cards are better in a different environment. The discussion of garbage because of different was over a long time ago since then we (think we) got your viewpoint and started saying through our expierience and your viewpoint why cards might be suppar/op for your cubes balance. You hardly listen to that and you hardly test neither our recommodations nor your own. Intuition is a good heuristic but its just that definitive results can only be gained trough testing in the envioronment its designed for. Thats where expierience helps.
I "dismiss" a cube if I think it's unbalanced because for me the fun in draft is to build different decks, but if it's unbalanced it basically boils down to get the one dominant strategy and build a slightly different variant of the same deck. It gets even worse if more people caught on then there are X Players fighting for the same cards you get a whole lot of "mirror" matches. Or one player gets the better versions of the needed cards and is more likely to dominate the others. All of that doesn't sound fun to me.
But for an outright dismissal of a whole cube I either need to draft the cube atleast once or have the expierience with similar cards.
If you wanna try something go for it, but if you wanna get feedback from people who tried it out before, but then don't want to take their expierience as valid feedback please don't ask for feedback.
If you wanna give feedback after trying something out (In a draft and games) be our gest as feedback is always valuable even if its coming from another lens.
And if you just want to rant please do that in the appropriate channel. (Rant != Discussion)
It is unlikely that you or I get something from this discussion, I tried to see your points but you won't do the reverse and that won't lead to a healthy discussion, thats why I am also out.
See, cubes don't actually have to be balanced, have to have equal amounts of every color, have to have bombs, etc. No matter how unbalanced they are, the fact that everyone gets access to the same pool of cards balances it by default.
So if you take an already balanced cube and make some minor changes, you're not going to magically ruin the cube. Feel free to make as many changes as you want.
Not entirely sure there is inherent gravitation to balance in the form of luck when drafting an unbalanced cube. Sometimes you get the better cards sometimes you don't because sometimes you are tho one opening the booster sometimes you aren't. And if the unbalance is just a couple of cards and the rest is pretty balanced you also need to draw the stonger stuff / the synergies and while not doing so decks tend to be even. But if neither the colors nor the archetypes are balanced and people know about that thats when a cube breaks down to well either I try drafting that or I'll likely lose.
A couple of cards don't break the balance of an already balanced cube so much that it becomes unbalanced but at a certain point it might.
So kind of like a Theseus Cube.
As far as the fixing goes, I cut the Obelisks and the Prophetic Prisms on sticks because no one drafted them and 3 colors while doable in my cube just ends up as a worse deck than a mono or dual colored deck. I replaced them with the Signets
Signets are the better ramp and fixing IMO anyways even for 2.5 or 3 color decks as they come down earlier and always get 2 different colors ionstead of the obelisks while higer variety in colors always only give you one of those.
Magic is complex not as complex as brain surgery but still complex. And even Mundane things can be done better with more expierience*.
But Expierience alone is not that useful without any retrospection to that expierience.
If you keep making the same mistakes without thinking about them no amount of expierience helps you with that, but the more you tink about why those expieriences occur the more you can increase your skill.
That is one of the reasons I think discussing stuff is beneficial to all if done right.
So I just think certain things are right or wrong independent of how much experience someone has.
So do those that argue with you.
It depends on the decks, for fair decks I'd say that's accurate, for matchups between brain dead count to 20 decks like Burn or Bogles it's essentially a coin flip.
Reading meta is also a skill, I agree that some decks are easier to pilot and that in sealed you might get a bad pool but in general skill is still needed. Especially to succeed continuosly.
In fact, the more experienced someone is at this game, the more crusty their views get. Right now Pauper is utterly dominated by Gush + Foil and yet there are still people that will say, "Foil? Bad card, 3 for 1'ing yourself is never good"
Yes but as i said beforeif you take things in a vaacuum you will always be surprised if it doesn't work out or works out better than expected foil by itself is not that great by itself (still a free spell though) but with gush it becomes a decent card.
Saying magic is 60% luck is just a disservice to both your own skill and other peoples skill saying that is also wrong.Sure Magic involves luck but If that 60% were correct you wouldn't see the same people winning a lot more that other people which is a thing that happens and if a game is more than half luck based you'd see way more random winners and that is a statistical fact.
There is also a huge difference in bolt vs. hammer not all the time but in the critical times aka the early turns.
Being an instant you can react to stuff which means it's less likely they can bait out removal since you can just wait and see what they play before commiting. It also saves you your mana on your turn for cards you can only play there so it's a more efficient mana usage as well.
T1
Usually not the time to play either but you could play bolt.
T2
If there is a need to kill a creature with bolt you can follow up with a one drop and increase the pressure with a hammer the opponent is the first with the opportunity to increase pressure.
T3
With both you can have a followup but with bolt it can be up to 3 mana (due to the fact it is an instant) with hammer 1.
and so on until T7-8 where there is still a difference in power but not so pronounced because the average number of 5-8 drops in a deck and the likelihood of having multiple lower drops still in hand.
If the board has stabilized and I have a card like Lab Rats or Sprout Swarm and you don't, eventually I will win whether I make (potentially multiple) tokens at instant speed or 1 token a turn at sorcery speed. Both are the same sort of end game finisher card.
That is kind of true for an empty stabilized board but sprout swarm allows you to catch up on a board by being able to snatch up attackers due to instant speed and also making tokens much much faster than what labrat can do so in general sprout swarm does more than lab rats.
EDIT:
Volcanic Hammer is essentially a carbon copy of Lightning Bolt in limited. Obviously if both were in the same pack I'd choose Bolt, but if I was in red and Volcanic Hammer was in a pack, it would be my first pick just like Bolt is a first pick.
Yes but that alone doesn't mean it's the same hammer is still a good card but just because both are first pickable doesn't mean they are the same.
Edit2:
Oh and just as swarm bolt interacts better in combat than hammer as it does have more opportunity to kill larger threats, also way cooler with first strike creatures than the hammer.
BREAD is a guideline not stone cold fact. Not every removal is is worse than a bomb or vice versa same is true for everything else. Just like with cube drafting also depens on what you already drafted less of a vacuum.
However, tutoring for a removal spell or countermagic just seems always decent.
In slower cubes such as yours that might be the case in my first pauper cube teachings was ok not great but card inclusion 22-23 most of the time if the games go faster however spending 2 turns or a significant amount of mana to 2 for 1 yourself isn't that great.
Many cards or many interactions between cards are going to be good regardless of whether or not they're constructed or drafted.
Yes but many is not all like you said a lightning bolt is still a lightning bolt but stuff like combat tricks are usually stronger in limited while stuff that require more stuff to get going tend to be weaker in limited e.g. slivers.
Why is single-use Teachings bad, but Fierce Empath or Heliod's Pilgrim or Goblin Matron not bad? Do you consider these to be bad cards too?
Like I said it depends on the cube I personally don't find Matron that good in your cube even if it is a slower one as its 3 mana for a 1/1 that gets you best case scenario a beetleback chief which is okay but most other things you can get reqire a very limited very specific board to be useful. I am actually thinking about cutting Pilgrim im my cube for the same reason and that has more universal stuff to look for.
And even then with sthe single use of Matron,Pilgrim and empath you still leave an (abeit small) body behind while also beeing cheaper.
I would actually play Teachings in your cube, but in faster cubes and comboless cubes I wouldn't.
For me it depends on the card. Travel Preparations plays more like a Selesnya card. While Mystical Teachings plays more like a monocolored card. Reason being basically a mix of what humphrey and Al said. With Teachings it's fine if you can play only one half or make a small splash if you have the fixing for it. While Preparations pretty much demand that you play white as the longer you need to find the white source the less usful it becomes.
But for "ODC" reasons I count them all as multicolor.
i also agree that shroud is the "better" hexproof in actual gameplay. on the other hand hexproof at least gives auras a reason to be played.
Couldn't agree more :D.
Hexproof would have been fine as maybe a set mechanic but not as an evergreen.
Quote from SaltMaster5000 »
I feel that Counterspell, Doom Blade, Terror, etc. are just 1 for 1 exchanges of cards. So I'm okay with them. I don't see why it's necessary that they all be at the same power level.
Quote from "SaltMaster5000" »
Furthermore, your opponent still being able to keep their blocker with a card like Demonic Torment makes me want it in my cube more, not less. That makes for more interesting board states than just casting Hand of Death #15/27. So having a variety of different removal spells spices things up more.
If not Powerlevel then that might be a reason to change them out even more maybe try to not have functional reprints so just one Terror like effect and remove others for stuff like Grave Peril
For me there is no inherent reason to pick up the Demonic Torment in a cube where it is likely that i can pick up a better removal spell, unless I am really light on removal spells. If I know there are edict effects in the cube it makes it even unliklier that I pick it up. But if premium removal is low I'd happily pick the Demonic Torment.
EDIT: Took so long to write that i didnt see you there Marl:
The idea that Shroud is better than Hexproof doesn't make sense to me (and I do realize you mean better in "gameplay" terms). Shroud is just a defensive ability that doesn't have much design space to play with -- there are no playable hexproof creatures that could be viewed as defacto shroud creatures.
Yeah Shroud doesn't have much design space but hexproof is the same in that regard. But hexproof limits the Design on other cards as well while shroud doesn't as much.
That's why I think as a set mechanic it would probably have worked better imo
I also like the idea of all those collectible cards in the cube. For example I have a multiplayer cube that has like 10 Kindle and 10 Accumulated Knowledge. There are definitely a lot of rules in cubedesign that can be bend to create new interesting metas. I dont think you want to limit yourself to commons when you want to create exciting metas.
I kind of came to the same conclusion for multiple copies matter there are some neat support cards in higher rarities and in lower rarities while fun at first became stale fast. Also rather difficult to find the correct number of copies in very small cubes so that you dont get the feel bads when you see the same card in alot of packs.
If I ask you whether I should play X or Y in my whatever-themed cube where X and Y are cards you have never seen or heard of before, am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?
Honestly don't really understand the statement what are you trying to say with that?
The more I read this thread the more I get the feeling that this is just people getting a little hyped for a new format and instead of listening to anything people who have played and tested that format for 10 years say we try to be the innovators by going on the Gatherer real quick and deciding that card X and Y look so interesting that they clearly must make the format better.
I Agree to the not listening part but testing/playing cube IMO doesn't make you an expert in all cubes or even all pauper cubes as cubes are intricate things and synergies/anti synergies play are role in it too. If your cube is filled with 2/1s for 2 that makes a 1/3 better overall if your cube is full of 2/2s that makes 1/3s worse. Powelevel is relative to the other cards in the cube. So pure powerlevel is a shaky common ground if any at all. I agree the expierience helps to evaluate cards quicker and with less testing but only for cubes similar to yours. We can look at cards in a vacuum and see their floor and ceiling, and that is a good discussion. And we can look at a cube and due to expierience imagine what problems might occur, but in the end if we didn't test that specific cube we do not know it it works out. And if it looks like a cube we personally would not play we can reason why we would not do so and even that can be of great help for everyone.
Woah been gone for a couple of days and had to read alot :D.
First of all I hope that Charity thing turned out alright.
Secondly As everyone else basically stated in their own ways this seems like a huge miscommunication between all of us.
One guy stated that upon returning to competetive play he came across some elitist people telling him what he can ant can't play. And I feel the need to apologize because that is something I actually to in my casual playgroups as well (I do give my resoning for why I think some cards are "unplayable" IMO, but also say if you wanna play it play it). That is also my approach here. I already said I don't like statements without the resoning behind them because that helps noone.
In the end Everyone will build their cube the way they want it we can say what problems one might run into based on our own expierience, and tell how we solved/tried to solve those. I do think we can all get something from this discussion, so I hope we can continue calmly without the spite. And I apologize if I made some comments that sounded spiteful, that was not the intend.
Out of that pack I would Ignore The Matron,darkness, sunken city, and demonic Torment.
Matron has no real payoff, Darkness i'd maybe take as a sideboard card but then nothing else has to be in the pack, sunken citys upkeep cost is to steep in a color where it doesnt helt that much and demonic Torment is not that good in black the color with better hard removal.
If this was P1P1 I'd probably take Chain lightning or Blastoderm
Even when just considering Standard having Niche cards is also Part of discovery. As you need to find ways of making them work and for as long those cards are in Standard every new set you can check back and either try to make it work with the newer cards. Even in Standard sometimes it takes a while for cards to go off.
Sets are designed for Limited, Standard and to a minimal extend Eternal formats. (and to make money) If you just designed for standard Sets would be significantly smaller since there is rarely a need to add lets say a Catacomb Slug to a Standard environment. Furthermore there would still be bad cards in the set, unless you power creep every card. So the only ways to do new cards is either make them stronger than previous cards, make the same cards, or make different cards ( in the sense of new stuff unexplored design space). Doing only the first leads to power creep making old cards bad cards, the second leads to boring gameplay and cards which are bad stay bad, the third leads to cards like axis of immortality which might become bad cards or to Smugglers copter which might become op cards.
So I think its a smart desicion to design Sets for multiple formats so there is more for everyone and they need to think more about balancing.
My Cube is 360 Cards, I don't run any Un-Cards But I have an Unset Cube. No Out of the Ordinary strategies in my Pauper Cube. And I do not make exceptions to rares uncommons, in fact I am currently restructuring to Pure Pauper in the sense that highest rarity in print counts. So I can't play savannah lions since it was also printed at unc and rare.
While I think theres plenty of good art on new cards I agree wholehartedly on this
Firstly, this is a card game. If the art looks bad shrunk down on a trading card you've failed.
An artist should understand their medium.
At a certain point it stopped being a guy behind a canvas or drawing at an actual table and it started to be entirely done on a computer. It's lost its humanity.
You are not alone on this point but I never understood it how has it lost its humanity There is still a human behind who dedicates the same effort into creating art, just because he uses different tools does not mean less is put into it. Yes the resulting art will look different but that is always true if you use different tools. Just like an oil painting will look different than a crayon one, that doesnt mean one is less human.
But its nice to see more people caring about the art on their luxury cardboard you might be interested in the Rhystic studies videos about the magic artists.
You Imply that but that is not the case. Most of the people here think Elite vanguard is a good card. Does it single handedly win you the game? No. Is it a dud because of it? No.
And If you think the people here are bad for evaluating cards why do you ask them? If you already think something is a reasonable card go ahead and test/play it, if you still want feedback then accept the feedback (You don't have to agree but why ask for feedback if nobody can change your mind on a card anyways)
Agreed, but nobody here is saying that powered cubes are the only balanced cubes.
Again you imply that but nobody said that and even if they did that wouldn't be true, you have to draft a specific deck for pestilence to shine. And Pestilence is not "unbeatable" by any means.
No again you imply that that is the case but it is not ( the unplayable trash in comparison part). To most people here a tuned cube is a cube where you can draft multiple strategies that can be on even footing. Yes some cards are more powerful than others but Pestilence [or other cards you mentioned] should always be beatable in a tuned cube even without one of the other cards you mentioned. And for that the other cards are neccesary by either being good cards themselves or synergize well with the rest of your drafted cards.
The Obnoxius part is your personal view on some of the cards and that is fine, but the more duds you play the more your decent cards become the thats why balance is neccesary.
multiple decent cards can beat the "bomb" cards. It's harder (however possible) to beat decent cards with duds. But then again having only decent cards or only duds is easier to balance.
I'd argue if its just one bomb vs. one dud balance wise both have litte impact. But from a "feels bad" perspective (which is subjective) I'd rather have my opponent draft that bomb than having to waste a pick, since in the games they still have to draw it and might not even win if they play it but a dud will most likely not even see the deck so the only impact it had was "somebody needed to draft this" instead of "somebody wanted to draft this".
Me and a lot of other people here have stated the reason of why we think some of the cards are subpar or why we think some cards are better in a different environment. The discussion of garbage because of different was over a long time ago since then we (think we) got your viewpoint and started saying through our expierience and your viewpoint why cards might be suppar/op for your cubes balance. You hardly listen to that and you hardly test neither our recommodations nor your own. Intuition is a good heuristic but its just that definitive results can only be gained trough testing in the envioronment its designed for. Thats where expierience helps.
I "dismiss" a cube if I think it's unbalanced because for me the fun in draft is to build different decks, but if it's unbalanced it basically boils down to get the one dominant strategy and build a slightly different variant of the same deck. It gets even worse if more people caught on then there are X Players fighting for the same cards you get a whole lot of "mirror" matches. Or one player gets the better versions of the needed cards and is more likely to dominate the others. All of that doesn't sound fun to me.
But for an outright dismissal of a whole cube I either need to draft the cube atleast once or have the expierience with similar cards.
If you wanna try something go for it, but if you wanna get feedback from people who tried it out before, but then don't want to take their expierience as valid feedback please don't ask for feedback.
If you wanna give feedback after trying something out (In a draft and games) be our gest as feedback is always valuable even if its coming from another lens.
And if you just want to rant please do that in the appropriate channel. (Rant != Discussion)
It is unlikely that you or I get something from this discussion, I tried to see your points but you won't do the reverse and that won't lead to a healthy discussion, thats why I am also out.
Not entirely sure there is inherent gravitation to balance in the form of luck when drafting an unbalanced cube. Sometimes you get the better cards sometimes you don't because sometimes you are tho one opening the booster sometimes you aren't. And if the unbalance is just a couple of cards and the rest is pretty balanced you also need to draw the stonger stuff / the synergies and while not doing so decks tend to be even. But if neither the colors nor the archetypes are balanced and people know about that thats when a cube breaks down to well either I try drafting that or I'll likely lose.
A couple of cards don't break the balance of an already balanced cube so much that it becomes unbalanced but at a certain point it might.
So kind of like a Theseus Cube.
Signets are the better ramp and fixing IMO anyways even for 2.5 or 3 color decks as they come down earlier and always get 2 different colors ionstead of the obelisks while higer variety in colors always only give you one of those.
But Expierience alone is not that useful without any retrospection to that expierience.
If you keep making the same mistakes without thinking about them no amount of expierience helps you with that, but the more you tink about why those expieriences occur the more you can increase your skill.
That is one of the reasons I think discussing stuff is beneficial to all if done right.
So do those that argue with you.
Reading meta is also a skill, I agree that some decks are easier to pilot and that in sealed you might get a bad pool but in general skill is still needed. Especially to succeed continuosly.
Yes but as i said beforeif you take things in a vaacuum you will always be surprised if it doesn't work out or works out better than expected foil by itself is not that great by itself (still a free spell though) but with gush it becomes a decent card.
There is also a huge difference in bolt vs. hammer not all the time but in the critical times aka the early turns.
Being an instant you can react to stuff which means it's less likely they can bait out removal since you can just wait and see what they play before commiting. It also saves you your mana on your turn for cards you can only play there so it's a more efficient mana usage as well.
T1
Usually not the time to play either but you could play bolt.
T2
If there is a need to kill a creature with bolt you can follow up with a one drop and increase the pressure with a hammer the opponent is the first with the opportunity to increase pressure.
T3
With both you can have a followup but with bolt it can be up to 3 mana (due to the fact it is an instant) with hammer 1.
and so on until T7-8 where there is still a difference in power but not so pronounced because the average number of 5-8 drops in a deck and the likelihood of having multiple lower drops still in hand.
That is kind of true for an empty stabilized board but sprout swarm allows you to catch up on a board by being able to snatch up attackers due to instant speed and also making tokens much much faster than what labrat can do so in general sprout swarm does more than lab rats.
EDIT:
Yes but that alone doesn't mean it's the same hammer is still a good card but just because both are first pickable doesn't mean they are the same.
Edit2:
Oh and just as swarm bolt interacts better in combat than hammer as it does have more opportunity to kill larger threats, also way cooler with first strike creatures than the hammer.
In slower cubes such as yours that might be the case in my first pauper cube teachings was ok not great but card inclusion 22-23 most of the time if the games go faster however spending 2 turns or a significant amount of mana to 2 for 1 yourself isn't that great.
Yes but many is not all like you said a lightning bolt is still a lightning bolt but stuff like combat tricks are usually stronger in limited while stuff that require more stuff to get going tend to be weaker in limited e.g. slivers.
Like I said it depends on the cube I personally don't find Matron that good in your cube even if it is a slower one as its 3 mana for a 1/1 that gets you best case scenario a beetleback chief which is okay but most other things you can get reqire a very limited very specific board to be useful. I am actually thinking about cutting Pilgrim im my cube for the same reason and that has more universal stuff to look for.
And even then with sthe single use of Matron,Pilgrim and empath you still leave an (abeit small) body behind while also beeing cheaper.
I would actually play Teachings in your cube, but in faster cubes and comboless cubes I wouldn't.
But for "ODC" reasons I count them all as multicolor.
Couldn't agree more :D.
Hexproof would have been fine as maybe a set mechanic but not as an evergreen.
If not Powerlevel then that might be a reason to change them out even more maybe try to not have functional reprints so just one Terror like effect and remove others for stuff like Grave Peril
For me there is no inherent reason to pick up the Demonic Torment in a cube where it is likely that i can pick up a better removal spell, unless I am really light on removal spells. If I know there are edict effects in the cube it makes it even unliklier that I pick it up. But if premium removal is low I'd happily pick the Demonic Torment.
EDIT: Took so long to write that i didnt see you there Marl:
Yeah Shroud doesn't have much design space but hexproof is the same in that regard. But hexproof limits the Design on other cards as well while shroud doesn't as much.
That's why I think as a set mechanic it would probably have worked better imo
I kind of came to the same conclusion for multiple copies matter there are some neat support cards in higher rarities and in lower rarities while fun at first became stale fast. Also rather difficult to find the correct number of copies in very small cubes so that you dont get the feel bads when you see the same card in alot of packs.
Honestly don't really understand the statement what are you trying to say with that?
I Agree to the not listening part but testing/playing cube IMO doesn't make you an expert in all cubes or even all pauper cubes as cubes are intricate things and synergies/anti synergies play are role in it too. If your cube is filled with 2/1s for 2 that makes a 1/3 better overall if your cube is full of 2/2s that makes 1/3s worse. Powelevel is relative to the other cards in the cube. So pure powerlevel is a shaky common ground if any at all. I agree the expierience helps to evaluate cards quicker and with less testing but only for cubes similar to yours. We can look at cards in a vacuum and see their floor and ceiling, and that is a good discussion. And we can look at a cube and due to expierience imagine what problems might occur, but in the end if we didn't test that specific cube we do not know it it works out. And if it looks like a cube we personally would not play we can reason why we would not do so and even that can be of great help for everyone.
First of all I hope that Charity thing turned out alright.
Secondly As everyone else basically stated in their own ways this seems like a huge miscommunication between all of us.
One guy stated that upon returning to competetive play he came across some elitist people telling him what he can ant can't play. And I feel the need to apologize because that is something I actually to in my casual playgroups as well (I do give my resoning for why I think some cards are "unplayable" IMO, but also say if you wanna play it play it). That is also my approach here. I already said I don't like statements without the resoning behind them because that helps noone.
In the end Everyone will build their cube the way they want it we can say what problems one might run into based on our own expierience, and tell how we solved/tried to solve those. I do think we can all get something from this discussion, so I hope we can continue calmly without the spite. And I apologize if I made some comments that sounded spiteful, that was not the intend.
Out of that pack I would Ignore The Matron,darkness, sunken city, and demonic Torment.
Matron has no real payoff, Darkness i'd maybe take as a sideboard card but then nothing else has to be in the pack, sunken citys upkeep cost is to steep in a color where it doesnt helt that much and demonic Torment is not that good in black the color with better hard removal.
If this was P1P1 I'd probably take Chain lightning or Blastoderm
@Humphrey: nice find there are some nice ones in that cube
Sets are designed for Limited, Standard and to a minimal extend Eternal formats. (and to make money) If you just designed for standard Sets would be significantly smaller since there is rarely a need to add lets say a Catacomb Slug to a Standard environment. Furthermore there would still be bad cards in the set, unless you power creep every card. So the only ways to do new cards is either make them stronger than previous cards, make the same cards, or make different cards ( in the sense of new stuff unexplored design space). Doing only the first leads to power creep making old cards bad cards, the second leads to boring gameplay and cards which are bad stay bad, the third leads to cards like axis of immortality which might become bad cards or to Smugglers copter which might become op cards.
So I think its a smart desicion to design Sets for multiple formats so there is more for everyone and they need to think more about balancing.
While I think theres plenty of good art on new cards I agree wholehartedly on this
An artist should understand their medium.
You are not alone on this point but I never understood it how has it lost its humanity There is still a human behind who dedicates the same effort into creating art, just because he uses different tools does not mean less is put into it. Yes the resulting art will look different but that is always true if you use different tools. Just like an oil painting will look different than a crayon one, that doesnt mean one is less human.
But its nice to see more people caring about the art on their luxury cardboard you might be interested in the Rhystic studies videos about the magic artists.
Artistic Studies