MTG Salvation

Quote from n00b1n8R »

Cryptic Caves reminds me a lot Blighted Cataract. Obviously it's cheaper and colourless but is that enough of an upside to bump out a low-tier artifact or one of the other utility lands?

I think the difference between having seven mana (most likely lands unless you play UG) minimum and tapping out with all you've got versus having five lands and tapping only two of them is a huge difference. There are only few decks that can achieve the former reliably while getting a true benefit out of it while pretty much every midrange or control deck should be able to do the latter eventually. I think Caves are probably even playable in aggro.

Then there is of course the color restriction, in my cube at least it's far easier to find a colorless spot for such a card than making room for it in the blue section. On top of that blue is a color that doesn't really need more card draw.

Quote from Feyd_Ruin »

We've heard back from the legal team, and because you did not explicitly Accept the transfer, the deletion of your posts are threads are permanent.

First off I know this is not your (the moderators) personal fault, so my rant is directed at the people who run this site.

I'm the first one to say that EU data laws are made by paranoid idiots, but it's not the EU law that caused this mess. You sent an automated email from 'curse' that said something about an account getting suspended. And that's all you did to inform us about this serious issue. This email probably went directly to the spam folder of many people. When I see an email from an unknown origin in my spam folder that says something about my account getting suspended and me needing to verify information then I just delete it immediately. This is what most sane people would do since it is almost always some kind of phishing attempt. I didn't even know this site was run by a company called Curse and I don't care about it either.

There would have been many reasonable ways to ensure everyone gets informed properly. You could have automatically logged out people who were affected by this and then asked them on login whether they would agree to have their data transferred. Problem solved. But it seems you simply didn't care and now tens of thousands of posts and even more importantly many carefully crafted threads are gone forever.

This is unacceptable and that's why personally I'm done with this forum. I did create a Twitch account when I had to even though I don't use it and just a few months later everything I posted gets deleted because of some other bs. What's next? I don't want to find out.

I would like to have my account restored if possible. Username was Phitt77.

Seriously, what the hell. The notifications from Curse apparently landed in my spam folder and I never saw them. Only found out about them now by doing some detective work on my own. Sending an autmated email to my spam folder from 'Curse' (wouldn't even have known it was related to MTGSalvation even if I would have seen it) was the only way to inform me that everything I ever posted on this forum within the last few years would be deleted? Unbelievable.

The initial events of Dominaria have mostly been sealed, yes? so even slower than a normal limited environment. Probably too slow for us, but I don't think it's an objectively bad card and G/U has always had like one card worth of wiggle room if you want to try it.

A tad late to the party, but I have my customary spoiler release day top 20, including some comments where relevant. I always rank based on my excitement to CUbe, so there are some weird results higher on my list. Your mileage may vary.

A couple notable outside the top 20:
Seal Away- Due to the tapped restrictions, I think this is almost always worse than the other 2-mana options we have. Small bonuses for nabbing utility creatures which tap.
Garna, the Bloodflame- It does a lot, but mostly in weird combinations that have anti-synergy. If I want to get creatures back, I usually have to wait until after combat, which means your 5 drop fails to impact the board the turn you play it. Giving other creatures haste at 5 mana feels too late. I have never liked the sacrifice deck and agree with _i0 that it doesn't even help that deck much.

20-18) Stronghold Confessor, Ghitu Lavarunner, Sparring Construct- I am always keen on one drops, and I like all of these for having some utility early and late in the game.
17-13) Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage, Valduk, Keeper of the Flame, Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive, Whisper, Blood Liturgist and Slimefoot, the Stowaway- I love, love, love that this set has so many interesting uncommon build arounds. I will not be playing any of these myself, but could easily see a world where a CUbe more focused on artifacts, auras, blue aggro, black tokens, or Golgari ramp would want these cards (and I was close on Slimefoot for just that reason).
12) Merfolk Trickster- The double blue restriction makes it feel like a spell you often cast on turn 3 or 4, where the impact is good, but weaker than other 3- or 4-mana spells.
11) Memorial to Glory- Shout-outs to the blue, black, and green Memorials as well. The white Memorial is the one for which I most like what you are getting out of the land. All of the others have that weird issue where you sacrifice a land just as you might need that land to press your new card advantage.
10) Adventurous Impulse- Green Ponder sounds about right. For all gamestates, an easy way to find a card that is better than the average card from your deck.
9-8) Knight of Malice and Knight of Grace- I am interested enough in the base mode (2/2 first striker for 1M) to try both out. Obviously the upside is also nice, especially because you can take steps to make it happen yourself.
7) Chainer's Torment- Taking a big swing for the fences on this one. I hope it can be a good curve-topper for aggro decks to provide reach with 4 points of direct damage to the opponent and a (hopefully) board dominating creature. Totally prepared for this to fail.
6) Fight With Fire- I understand all the complaints about its power level and do not fully disagree with them. That said, one of my most frequent CUbers has expressed an interested in the Red X-Spells as a finisher for both ramp and control decks, and I think this is just better than Fireball or Rolling Thunder in that role. Another card I can see failing in CUbe.
5-4) Baird, Steward of Argive andDanitha Capashen, Paragon- Another two cards that could be good, but will likely end up being replaceable. I am quite a bit higher on Danitha because of the potential to get there with aura, equipment, or +1/+1 counters.
3-1) Untamed Kavu, Dauntless Bodyguard, Cast Down- The hands-down best cards in the set (and by a wide margin, I say). All of them should be in CUbes for a very long time and will be useful in all varieties of decks.

Overall, a super deep set for interesting cards that will likely be very shallow on actual impact. I think only 3 cards will stick around long-term, which makes this strangely similar to Rivals, which I also feel had 3 cards that were head-and-shoulders above the rest (also in green, white, and black, respectively). Please let me know if you have any comments on these rankings.

Quote from Phitt77 »

Tatyova is slow, but she doesn't require any mana investment and green (especially Simic) decks don't stop playing lands when they hit 5 mana. If not answered she can easily generate 3-4 cards/life in a completely average game. Cards with a repeatable effect always have a low floor, but also a high ceiling. A 5 mana card draw engine is reasonably costed for a green deck. She is slow, but she certainly doesn't suuuuuck.

Especially because those ramp spells that didn't really do anything anymore now draw you cards.

Comment Hidden

Quote from Humphrey »

im fine with discussion but not over details that havent been sorted out 100% as i mentioned earlier. instead you started nitpicking. so let me just sort things out and youre welcome to give your input after its done

I disagree that it's nitpicking, the details are important when you assign number grades to cards instead of loose justifications. I can get behind 'cubeable' and 'staple' without concrete values, but the values mean things when you assign them and as someone who is excited to see the end results of this project I would be remiss to not mention the lack of weight certain values carry.

But again, this is why you complete projects like these before sharing them, since the 'nitpicking' occurs a bit less when the cards have actual values to weigh against each other, or rather you can actually have justifications for arguments against the nitpicking other than 'I'm not done yet', in which case there's not really much point to sharing the project if you don't want to discuss it beyond that yet. When you decided to share this on the forums, you decided to let me and others put our input in; you may not have literally said that, but MTGSalvation is a public forum and there's no rule saying I can't give input onto a project, and I don't think anyone would want that rule to exist because that would be crazy.

Again, this comes from experience! If I could go back in time, there are a million projects I would've shown to nobody because I would want the final product to be the discussion instead of the breaking down of the variables, and I think this would be better for this too. But when you share only the process for something as exciting as this, then you get comments on the process--like it or not, but that's how it goes.

Also-also: I'm not your enemy or adversary, man, I talk to you like I'd talk to anyone else, and if you attach negative tone then you're adding something that is generally never there. Whatever happened in the past is the past if you're willing to bury the hatchet like I already have--I give criticism because I'm passionate about cubes of all types, and if someone shares something like this then I expect them to be ready to engage in conversation about the work.

If you think I'm attacking you in the future, do the Mr. Rogers test: if you read what I say in the Mr. Rogers voice and it somehow still sounds aggressive, then maybe it is and at that point I need to chill the **** out, but most of the time that's never the case since magic players are more robotic then anything when talking about the cards (myself included), and if you hear the sentences with a positive tinge behind them--even if they're being critical--then it's harder to go down the paths that you've been going during this conversation. Like when I say 'finish the project first', it's said in a positive tone, despite whatever may be attached there that, while I'm not surprised is attached, is off.

Quote from Humphrey »

so silent artisan is just a wrong example then.
maybe you just dont argue over 2 pages when the title says under construction and the thread is in progress? its easier for me to actually edit a running topic than to try to edit it in word or something.
it definitely was a mistake to remove you from my ignore list and start replying..

Hey man, if you don't want to discuss these types of projects, sharing them on a discussion board might not be the best course of action. When I say 'complete the project', it's not to be snarky but it comes from a place of experience as someone who has written a guide on cube and wanted to do it a specific way, and I wasn't willing to debate the process but was happily willing to debate the results, so I didn't share a word of it until I felt it was ready to be shared. Because it would be silly to share my idea and then get mad when people poked hole in the ideas, when in reality I just wanted to do it my way and discuss the end result, like you clearly want to do here.

I've really been civil other than in response to that snarky comment you made about the math, say whatever you want but I didn't do anything wrong here. If you want to share your project, be ready to discuss it, but don't get mad just because we're finding flaws.

And, emphasis on the 'we' here--I'm not the only one pointing this stuff out.

Quote from Humphrey »

uhm if anything there should be way less staples at higher cost because there are way less spots??!!

Not true, the number of spots you have don't determine the quality of the card, which is why what a 'staple' is probably needs to be higher than what you have for a 5 drop vs a 2 drop if the numbers come together the same way i.e. the average. Just because there are less spots doesn't mean that the number of staple-quality cards don't exist beyond that number of spots. If there are 20 incredible green creatures that all rate similarly, I'm not running 20, I'm running the amount that I want for green 5s in my cube. So if your criteria for a staple is 9+ and there are 10 9+ cards, then saying that they all grade as 'staples' means you have to adjust the numbers after the fact way more so than however you got those average numbers. Add to that it being easier to print stronger cards at higher costs because they have less of an impact on limited/constructed formats generally, and it makes a lot of sense to have an abundance of options for higher costs vs typically a number of cards you'd happily cut at lower costs.

And then there's the other issue of how the grades play out, like is Silent Artisan really a 7.5 when Sentinel Spider is an 8?! That seems absurd. Sentinel Spider is barely above average? It's Borderline? It may be worse than other green 5s, but it as a creature is not bad and it sends a weird message to see it so close to something I wouldn't play in any deck ever. You might want to finish a project like this before sharing it, because the results for what you have so far make it tough to put much weight behind it if Sentinel Spider is borderline and something like Silent Artisan is average, because if that was the conclusion I came to on my own I would immediately say 'ok something isn't right here'. I mean, it seems like you have two cubes' worth of green 5s, and you would be hard-pressed to get a similar ratio with lower parts of your curve in green.

And it's like +75% to hit X by turn 5 if I have 9 sources of X mana according to wtwlf's mana short article, which is pretty reliable. Obviously it would be more for X, but it's not hard to get 9 sources of green in a green deck between elves/the limited number of duals/other fixing. Even without any elves or fixing--which is the most massive stretch to make for a green deck, but still--I don't think a 9/8 split would be asking a lot, and that's an absolute floor. Maybe put less weight on GG costs at higher CMC vs other colors?

Quote from Humphrey »

that reduction makes no sense (google relative and absolute values) and i also disagree with the impact of XX costs you assume. phitt already posted the math behind it. you would also end with way too many staples, which theyre not anymore thanks to powercreep

see
Sentinel Spider v=8 cubable vs Bitterbow Sharpshooters v=9 staple

Like I said, there's definitely a solution and I'm just tossing things out there to think about so the numbers aren't set in stone, but perhaps the solution is raising your amount for 'staple' the higher you get on the curve, or changing those numbers that I suggested. Yes, it will have an impact to have one vs another, but in practice a two color Gx deck will barely notice the difference between Sentinel Spider and Bitterbow Sharpshooters, at least not enough to reduce it by 10%/etc.

Frankly, there *should* be a lot of cards close to staple status at the higher cost since there are less spots, kind of like white 5s in a regular cube, at least in comparison percentage-wise to the lower-curved spots. Just because there are better options doesn't mean the older options are so much worse now. Like, when Sentinel Spider hits the battlefield, it's the same card as Bitterbow Sharpshooters, and the only thing stopping it from doing that is variance which should have an impact but really not that big of one between 4G and 3GG. The only reason Spider is no longer a staple is the proverbial gun-to-the-head that Sharpshooters forces you to put there, and they don't feel ~10% different in actual practice. Outside of horrendous variance, I don't think I've ever missed the GG aspect of Sentinel Spiders by a turn I should've cast them, and that's even more true since it's a green card and is often cast off an elf. (Yet another wrinkle that needs to be addressed, how less weight you need to put on 4+ costed creatures with multiple green symbols in their cost due to elves.) I don't think that's as much of a problem as you're making it out to be, some sections aren't going to be even and the amount of staples (or close to) will be higher in some sections than others.

Quote from Humphrey »

Its not about game situations, its about the value of a card in a vaccuum. Otherwise evaluation would make zero sense, because a 1/1 vanilla for 5 can kill the opponent if he doesnt find the answer.
Ofc its kinda subjective to value random abilities, but we can compare them to the basic ones and give them a value of 0.25 steps. only that makes sense here. Nontheless the cards will end in a more objective category.

Again, I don't believe you'll end up with anything you can call objective to any degree. If you assign values subjectively, you'll end up with subjective results. The fact that you're thinking about introducing new rules to have Companion end up in the category you feel should be right shows how difficult that kind of task is, and how much it is guided by your subjective judgement of where Companion should end up.

Salmo is right, I think. If you actually want to do this calculation thing properly, you need a lot of gradation, which makes the system very complex and unwieldy, ideally you'd want a program you can enter these parameters into to calculate lots of cards at the same time to see if you need to tinker with the parameters. If you don't want that kind of complex system, you're just going to end up with a subjective list that has some random numbers in it. I feel like you really need to ask yourself what kind of benefit this kind of system can bring to the table before you start calculating. Currently, you seem to be using it to get more objective ratings, but the ratings you end up with aren't really more objective, they just have a number with them, so you're actually doing a lot of work without any apparent benefit.

As it should, but it shouldn't have that sort of impact on a 5 drop regardless. It should be more like skeeball than basketball, in that the further you get from the smaller targets/values, the lesser those modifiers come into place vs the black and white nature of WW = -1 no matter what

It could be something like

XX: -1
1XX: -.75
2XX: -.5
3XX: -.25

And that would be *much* more accurate in actually assigning the demerits of those costs in practice. You have a million scores as is, might as well go all-out and improve ones when there are obvious ways to improve them.

And then there's the other aspects of how much better abilities get when combined, or how certain abilities aren't as useful in conjunction with one another. Like, death strike and first strike, and the inverse to a degree of how much less weight trample carries if a creature already has flying or whatever. There are a lot of things to consider, and the values miss a decent amount if they don't reflect that too. I'm sure there are less examples of these making a difference, but it's one of those things where I would put *way* more points in the respective 'death touch' value of a first strikers vs the death touch on a random otherwise vanilla creature.

Or you can be snarky to other's suggestions with the 'math guys' comments and continue to miss the point. Whatever works.