Several of your cards from the maybe list are good. You can't go wrong with Nekrataal or Hordeling Outburst.
It's weird that I don't see Nekrataal in almost any lists here. I'm curious about what peasant 187 cards are ahead of this guy that he can't crack a 450 list anymore. I'm also just imagining Hordeling Outburst paired with Skullclamp
The only one that I would call a "hell yes" would be Phyrexian Reclamation. That card is such a delight to play with. Tortured Existence too, although you may not want both of them.
I love Reclamation, it'll find a way in. Tortured Existence is a pauper staple, so although I don't want it, it's mostly because I want it to shine in another specific format.
I also noticed a nonzero amount of cubers here running Haunted Crossroads, which seemed a bit strange to me with all the more efficient recursion running around.
For tier two white removal, I'm a really big fan of Bound by Moonsilver. The ability to sacrifice any permanent is very rare, especially in white. I've seen it come up a lot of times in decks that have absolutely no aristocrats theme. Sometimes you just want to sacrifice your Stab Wounded creature. Obviously just being able to switch targets is also good.
Actually, this discussion reminded me of my favorite moving removal in Prison Term. Would you not put it ahead of Bound by Moonsilver? The extra pip in the cost is paltry in return for the upgrade to stopping abilities and switching targets without sacrificing resources. I suppose if you view it as a white sac outlet, Bound has extra value. It certainly is a rarer effect (it's why I like running Extricator of Sin).
Thank you to everyone who responded to my query. I took under advisement every poster's input, and I finally have a tentative working list on cubetutor!
I do have some follow-up questions, but first, some background (feel free to skip to the questions below):
It's uncommon-only. In the grim darkness of the far future, I may eventually decide to smash together my pauper cube and uncommon cube, but for now I like the ability to differentiate between them and give them two distinct identities.
It does break the uncommon rule in two places, though.
1. Mana dorks. I include three elves (Llanowar, Fyndhorn and Mystic). At uncommon-only, the vast majority of green manafixing costs three mana or more, and it's worse than Cultivate. This is a small concession to what should be one of green's greatest strengths.
2. Nonbasic fixing. I include Temples over Guildgates. This is also another way for me to differentiate this cube from pauper. Common cubes have access to something like five different guild cycles of lands, plus signets. Whereas peasant is in a really weird place when it comes to nonbasics, it's essentially common fixing + trilands and vivids. I was looking for another way to differentiate from pauper, and it came down to Temples or painlands. Ultimately I had to listen to my cubing experience. Painlands are very much rare-level manafixing due to their untapped nature and the colorless ability (two benefits compared to the Temples' singular - a big distinction between rare and uncommon manafixers). I want to hit that sweet spot of better-than-pauper-fixing but not rare-level fixing a la shocklands.
I was going to break the rule in a third place - for edicts. My tendency as time goes on and cube design evolves is to trend towards simplicity. Liliana's Triumph has two thirds of its rules text that's irrelevant in peasant, and potentially confusing to new players wondering where the Liliana is hiding. Whereas Diabolic Edict is simple and grokkable. I'm leaving both out for now because peasant doesn't seem to center around hexproof or (reanimated) giant unbeatable threats, and it's just one card.
1. Are there any cards currently in the list you would consider a one-star (cuttable)? Something for me to keep in mind moving forward with cuts. (There's currently an overabundance of multicolor, but keep in mind this is just a preliminary list and I'll be doing another pass on this section soon, either before or after the first draft).
2. Are there any cards from the list below that you would strongly recommend including? I know they're all decent, but I'm looking for the ones that excel. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no.
I'm honestly (not) surprised this is still ongoing. You're not remotely interested in improvement through discussion. You are here to be contrarian and make grossly inaccurate generalizations about a hobby you have barely started to understand, just like I assume every other hobby with an online forum you've gotten into. The real MagicTM here is that you've managed to avoid a permaban until now by just barely being on the right side of obnoxious.
For the adults in the thread, I'm actually considering a foray into peasant cube after several days thinking about making a list, yay! Here's some cards I saw in a few lists, I think they're a bit weird and could use a word or two on why they see inclusion:
Indulgent Tormentor - kind of a punisher card, but it avoids the Desecration Demon problem because you get both the punishment and the creature. Is it correct to run this at 360, d'you think? Quest for the Gravelord - kind of puzzling because uncommon creatures already seem efficient enough to avoid jumping through hoops for this one, no? Hoarding Dragon - seems borderline at best. Shower of Coals - how good is this really at hitting three relevant targets? Looks like that's the only scenario worth including it for. Lust for War - I know it's popular here, just wondering if it would shine more in a fast meta or a slower one. Roar of the Wurm - paying seven for a vanilla 6/6, really? I guess when you reach that kind of mana it actually represents two fatties, but I'm fairly certain the only reason to include this is so you can cheat it into the grave to cast it off the flashback. Weaver of Lightning - overly defensive statline, but I wonder how well spells-matter works at peasant level and if this is a big help. Baleful Ammit - ends up as a bad 3/2 lifelinker for three, or ends up killing/nerfing one of your early game dorks. Is either scenario worth playing this?
Also, I don't see a reason why you would even tutor up value cards like Mulldrifter. The reason why they're good is that they provide good value for a low cost, but if you need 8 mana over two turns to play Mulldrifter with a 1/1 as a bonus then the ratio becomes terrible and you would have gotten more value by simply playing a 'real' three drop, even if it's one tier below Mulldrifter.
So the value of Imperial Recruiter seems to come from having a lot of high-impact cards you can fetch. Ravenous Chupacabra or Nekrataal is a much better target than you've made it out to be, because it changes the board so drastically (-1 to your opponent's board and +1 to yours, putting them back and getting ahead at the same time) so it's better than something durdly like Mulldrifter, but to me it's still not quite enough. In regular powered/unpowered, the kind of target you're looking for is something like Deranged Hermit/Angel of Invention, Phantasmal Image, Sower of Temptation, etc. Palace Jailer is another good one that's accessible to peasant. Basically, I can see Recruiter being an acceptable role-player but not the kind of "glue" card that really brings flexibility to a deck.
Magic players are in denial about what their best cards are. I've heard Legacy players call Force of Will a bad card, Pauper Delver players cut Delver from their decks, etc. So it seems natural that people would be in denial about cards that fundamentally break the game.
Jesus christ, here we go again. You have no idea what you're talking about, man.
Force of Will is horrifically bad against fair decks. Its main use is to stop game-winning combos. Consider the difference between countering a first-turn Mother of Runes vs a first-turn Show and Tell. FoW's play value has been over-inflated by casual gamers like you due to its reputation as a combo-breaker and its associated monetary price. And if combo didn't exist or was reduced in speed, it would almost certainly not be as prevalent as it is now.
I can't speak to pauper strategies, but I could spend ten minutes browsing the forums or conferring with some of my high-level pauper friends and learn something new about the game to help improve my skill, instead of coming here to ***** about it. Or, you know, using some of that established knowledge and realizing that you need different tools to attack different decks. Magic is an intensely crowd-sourced game, you have thousands of players playing millions of matches over years of play to figure out best practices but somehow, the one guy insisting it's the wrong call is you. Yeah.
You're drawing all kinds of baseless conclusions based on hilariously erroneous foundations, which might be a good start to discussion if you weren't then trying to pass it off as fact and insulting the entire forum by doubling down on this misguided view.
You make some decent points about tempo and value plays regarding tutors, but goddamn if it doesn't get lost in the morass of the rest of your posts.
Glassdust Hulk would be a neat signpost card, but at that casting cost, the weakness to double type removal really hurts. Worth considering if you have a higher incidence of artifact token generators, I suppose.
For what it's worth, I do agree with Humphrey that tagging cards is pretty important, though I wouldn't have put it quite so passive-aggressively as him. I love Sanctum Gargoyle, but it's not close to being a flying Gravedigger. There's not enough artifact creature density to make it so. It's more of a value card in an Artifactocrats archetype, where you're bringing back stuff like Spellbombs for value.
Come to think of it, having more artifactocrats stuff at common would really help. I see it more as a red theme (see stuff like Atog, Artillerize, Destructive Digger). Carrion Feeder is such a simple, iconic design at this point. They can riff on it by using different card types in other colors, like:
Scrap FeederR
Creature - Gremlin
Scrap Feeder can't block.
Sacrifice an artifact: Put a +1/+1 counter on Scrap Feeder.
1/1
If it's artifact aggro you want, I'm baffled as to why you'd want to limit it to UW. Sure you have Court Homunculus and Gearsmith Prodigy, but some of the greatest artifact aggro cards are in other colors. Reckless Fireweaver and Carapace Forger in particular come to mind as killer two-drops.
Not only is there a lack of two-drops, which is critical for aggro, but you also need enough cheap artifacts AND they have to be relevant to aggro. Dropping Gearsmith followed by a signet would just be silly. You want to drop either a well-statted artifact creature or an equipment. The first doesnt really exist at common, and pauper cubers dont run nearly enough equipment, even though they should (Leonin Scimitar in multiples is great - imagine dropping Gearsmith, then Scimitar + equip next turn!).
If it's artifact aggro you want, I think that archetype is better off sprinkled in every color, because the card type that matters (artifacts) is colorless and thus accessible to everyone. You also want players to be able to pivot into a backup color if blue or white ends up fizzling out on the artifact-matters cards (highly likely to me, considering the lack of decent support). If it's an update to the Azorius guild you want, I think UW is far too well off to consider artifact aggro as it looks right now.
It's a nice idea, but two problems crop up for me.
1. What's the payoff?
You need a reward for going deep on artifacts. I only see (in these colors obv) Vedalken Certarch, Ardent Recruit and Rusted Relic/Myr Enforcer. You already noted Ethersworn Shieldmage which I like - it's a card I wish was just a little more pushed. If it had been a 2/2 for UW it could easily be a power common and a guild icon. Or it could have been a 2/3 for 1UW, slightly more realistic and more in the realm of playable. Even more interesting, give it affinity and something like a 3UW cost as a way to make you work for that UW flash bear.
Interesting to note that a card like Esper Cormorants isn't much of a payoff (especially with Phantom Monster floating around) but the artifact tag actually makes it an enabler. So I think you have to consider what role your artifact-matters cards are gonna play in practice, and make sure you have enough payoff cards and make it rewarding enough to build around them.
2. What does artifacts matter actually mean?
Look at the cards I mentioned above. What decks do they actually fit in? Certarch is a control tool, Recruit is aggro, Rusted Relic/Enforcer are midrange beatsticks. They're all over the place. Once you have a bunch of artifacts, what are you actually doing with them? You want an engine. You want some glue to bring the deck together. The best you can do in these colors is something like Artificer's Epiphany, Sage of Lat-Nam or Gearseeker Serpent.
I would look to Al's pauper artifact cube for ideas. He has a ton of incidental artifact generation in the form of clues, contraptions and fabricators, to guarantee a suitable number of artifacts for whatever shenanigans your deck wants to do (it doesn't look like it was updated after Ixalan or we would probably see Treasure tokens too). But when the whole cube is about artifacts, the need for payoffs doesn't really matter as much. Your default mode is "I'm an artifact deck". In a regular pauper cube, I might ask myself some questions. What distinguishes an artifact deck, specifically a UW one, from other decks? What does it do better? Questions like that.
My own opinion is that it's not really there yet compared to the current skies or flash archetypes. But it would be great to visit an artifact-centric set with the New New World Order that's giving us such decent commons lately. Things might change after a set like that
The level of delusion is absolutely shocking. Like, he hasn't changed a single thing in his thought process despite people patiently trying to discuss cubing rationale with someone who clearly hasn't been playing for long. Instead, he's doubled down on the victim attitude. He's hell-bent on taking the absolute worst things that happened to him in Magic, or that people have said to him, and pretending it's the default environment. Or using any opportunity to go on tirades with his hate-filled nonsense theory of Magic players. It would be sad to see if it weren't so darn insulting.
At this point, I seriously fear that the poster has some sort of mental problem that extends beyond their hobby (Bogles "ruined" their previous hobby, they're "ruining" Magic now, Bogles will probably find ways to ruin their future hobby, and somehow this person is the only one with the "right" opinion about them). If you think everyone around you is the problem, maybe you're the problem. The forum does not have a responsibility to humor trolls like this, and constantly derailing threads with this nonsense is getting tiresome.
I would feel terrible going into a pauper cube draft and having these rare conspiracies used against me. They don't feel like pauper at all.
I take exception to Summoner's Bond being labeled "just" a value card. Free creature tutoring (as in, not even taking up space in your deck or mana to cast!) is not even close to common power level.
And I really shouldn't need to explain how powerful the rare/mythic conspiracies are. Like, I'm wondering if anyone has bothered to ask themselves why Wizards would want to increase the rarity of Backup Plan and decrease the rarity of Brago's Favor.
Finally, what you call middling, I call appropriate. Check these out:
I feel like you haven't really considered all the unique synergies that come up when you have all the best pauper cards to play around with. Or maybe you have, and y'all are bored with pauper, in which case I humbly recommend trying out powered or peasant cubes instead of trying to force pauper cubes to be something they're not. Those other cubes are a blast too.
Man, I was really worried that Al was kaput for good thanks to the Great MTGSal Deletion of 2019. Most of his stuff lines up with what I was gonna say. Just pretend I said it again so you know it's not a one-off
I just removed Leonin Skyhunter for the same reasons. IMO, this + Silverbeak Griffin should really only be run if you already run both Pegasi + Soltari Trooper and need more evasion. This would probably only be for larger cubes at this point. If we eventually get a common white devotion card on the same level as Gray Merchant of Asphodel, these guys could get a new lease on life. But I feel safe in saying that, for 360 to 450 at least, they're pretty much dead.
RE: red pump - pretty much only if you want to deliberately kneecap red at this point. There's too much burn to really want to play a more restrictive removal that occasionally doubles as creature protection.
Deprive I like as a landfall enabler and for larger cubes like mine, but even there blue spells are stacked. I'm ok with countermagic having a slight premium attached to it by having a bit less of it. (y'all might find this weird, but I find the trinket text on Rune Snag in a singleton format really cumbersome, and if I had to add another countermagic slot, Quench would be in serious contention against Deprive).
Also fun to see someone else try to be slightly more statistical about their inclusions. I've done the exact same notation for how many cubes run which cards, yet somehow I'm still over the limit because cuts are hard lol.
As for other cuts:
Paralyze! Soft removal in a color full of hard removal.
Everything else in that list of potential cuts I like too much to recommend cuts. You can take a look at my list in my sig and see which ones I don't run if that helps your decision-making
Anyway, this will be my last post for the foreseeable future. I'll be going on hiatus from the forums for many reasons, mainly for my mental health, diminishing returns from discussion here, and now the Great Deletion of 2019 that just invalidated years (decades?) of work.
Hussar is more a case of Azorius not being particularly great. If you really want to be critical, some cubers might point out that Azorius still has this issue all the way up to regular powered cubes (Oblivion Ring / Detention Sphere, Wrath of God / Supreme Verdict). To me, it's more a case of wanting extras of that effect. The body is good at holding off attackers and the ETB puts you ahead on card selection. But its stock would probably go down dramatically if we got a second Oracle (Dimir Informant didn't cut it, sadly).
RE: Augur of Bolas - as the joke goes, this card's text really says: When Augur of Bolas enters the battlefield, look at the bottom three cards of your library. Then again, I consider Delver a bit of a miss for most cubes, but if cubers really want to contort their blue sections into something that can accommodate more of a spells-matters theme, I suppose it's possible to make it work.
No, dude. Ivory Giant is super overcosted and slow at this point. It has corner cases where it can shine, but that doesn't make it 360 worthy. It's the definition of a role-player. Similarly, I might recommend Acridian to players looking for an early control creature in an aggro-heavy cube, but I won't pretend that it's 360 material.
Whatever problem you have with cubetutor, I hope you get over it someday. It's far too useful to just ignore.
Oh yeah, I was looking at Ill-Tempered Cyclops for potential inclusion. I still see it in quite a few lists online, but it seems very meh. No haste, under-curved, no real abilities to speak of aside from a late-game mana-sink.
I dunno, I like the fire-and-forget style, but it is overcosted by about one mana. Sanitarium Skeleton was far too overcosted to be worth it either unless you were pairing it with spellshapers or something.
Plague Wight pretty good if you want to support black aggro and are not shy to run x/1s.
I don't know if this is actually better than a 2/1 with real evasion. That's almost my entire black 2CC section at this point.
Wrecking Beast really good, but 7 is too much for the powered cube. For ramp it seems nice.
Trample and haste is a great combo. At the very least, it could push out Havenwood Wurm for anyone still running it.
A bit overcosted as a trick, but to rebuy ETB effects, untap a creature, or save a creature from removal, I think two mana is still mostly acceptable. I'm really curious how often you can combine that with the first strike to do real damage.
Aside from hitting mana dorks, I don't see how it's better than Gideon's Reproach - semi-decent sounds about right.
Knight of Sorrows doenst even have a big butt. Pretty meh
Yeah, it's very bad on this guy and the 5/3 Thrull in black. I think they both needed at least a small bump in toughness before they could be considered.
Tenth District Veteran indeed seems interesting. but beside 2 exterts there is not much payoff and i think we already have a similar card. *the aven right.
Dauntless Aven and this guy could form a sort of tag team package with the exerters, but it seems iffy. There's actually three exerters in white that see scattered inclusion (Gust Walker/Oketra's Avenger/Tah-Crop Elite) but red and green have their own and it might actually be ok considering the other tappers in these colors (I'm thinking Fireslinger, Gideon's Lawkeeper, Sparksmith, mana dorks...)
phantom monster cost 4, much better
People ran Aven Surveyor for a while and Chillbringer seems better, since it gives you both effects and is slightly easier to cast (bounce is usually seen as better, but it allows opponents to replay an untapped blocker/haster and rebuy potential ETBs, so I would consider it a wash). Don't underestimate having a critical mass of these fellows either. Getting every threat you play nailed down or bounced turn after turn while your opponent curves out is pretty backbreaking.
Yes it is. We've never seen haste on such decently sized bodies in green though. It's got potential.
Lawmage's Binding dont need more enchantment based removal that also occupies a guild slot tbh, but its good
I actually cut Arrest recently in favor of Cage of Hands (a card I highly recommend since I ran Prison Term in my regular cube and both were great) since three mana is a lot to ask for this effect. Getting flash changes the evaluation though.
Yeah the average cube can be a pile, but with enough data it averages out. That's the whole point.
Case in point:
On cubetutor, there are 3,401 cubes with Pauper in their name at the time of this post.
Out of those, 58 of them run Dash Hopes.
Out of those, 20 of them can be considered recent (updated since 2018).
In total, only 1.7% of all pauper cubes on cubetutor run the card. That's a fraction of the playerbase.
If we're talking about current, updated cubes, the number drops to 0.58%. That's a fraction of a fraction.
I don't know about you, but that seems pretty much in line with my previous conclusion. Like I said, opinion doesn't need to be taken as factual, but I think the data speaks for itself. And it's an essential tool in these conversations because now our ideas can be supported by evidence. It can help confirm what we already knew, or disprove an old idea and force us to rethink inclusions.
The best part? This work took me all of five minutes. How would you even begin to collect this data without a site like cubetutor?
It's weird that I don't see Nekrataal in almost any lists here. I'm curious about what peasant 187 cards are ahead of this guy that he can't crack a 450 list anymore. I'm also just imagining Hordeling Outburst paired with Skullclamp
I love Reclamation, it'll find a way in. Tortured Existence is a pauper staple, so although I don't want it, it's mostly because I want it to shine in another specific format.
I also noticed a nonzero amount of cubers here running Haunted Crossroads, which seemed a bit strange to me with all the more efficient recursion running around.
Actually, this discussion reminded me of my favorite moving removal in Prison Term. Would you not put it ahead of Bound by Moonsilver? The extra pip in the cost is paltry in return for the upgrade to stopping abilities and switching targets without sacrificing resources. I suppose if you view it as a white sac outlet, Bound has extra value. It certainly is a rarer effect (it's why I like running Extricator of Sin).
I do have some follow-up questions, but first, some background (feel free to skip to the questions below):
It does break the uncommon rule in two places, though.
1. Mana dorks. I include three elves (Llanowar, Fyndhorn and Mystic). At uncommon-only, the vast majority of green manafixing costs three mana or more, and it's worse than Cultivate. This is a small concession to what should be one of green's greatest strengths.
2. Nonbasic fixing. I include Temples over Guildgates. This is also another way for me to differentiate this cube from pauper. Common cubes have access to something like five different guild cycles of lands, plus signets. Whereas peasant is in a really weird place when it comes to nonbasics, it's essentially common fixing + trilands and vivids. I was looking for another way to differentiate from pauper, and it came down to Temples or painlands. Ultimately I had to listen to my cubing experience. Painlands are very much rare-level manafixing due to their untapped nature and the colorless ability (two benefits compared to the Temples' singular - a big distinction between rare and uncommon manafixers). I want to hit that sweet spot of better-than-pauper-fixing but not rare-level fixing a la shocklands.
I was going to break the rule in a third place - for edicts. My tendency as time goes on and cube design evolves is to trend towards simplicity. Liliana's Triumph has two thirds of its rules text that's irrelevant in peasant, and potentially confusing to new players wondering where the Liliana is hiding. Whereas Diabolic Edict is simple and grokkable. I'm leaving both out for now because peasant doesn't seem to center around hexproof or (reanimated) giant unbeatable threats, and it's just one card.
1. Are there any cards currently in the list you would consider a one-star (cuttable)? Something for me to keep in mind moving forward with cuts. (There's currently an overabundance of multicolor, but keep in mind this is just a preliminary list and I'll be doing another pass on this section soon, either before or after the first draft).
2. Are there any cards from the list below that you would strongly recommend including? I know they're all decent, but I'm looking for the ones that excel. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no.
Memorial to Glory
The second tier of white removal (Pacifism, Valorous Stance, Immolating Glare, Blessed Alliance)
Arrest / Bound by Moonsilver
Otherworldly Journey / Long Road Home
Mindclaw Shaman (seems super fun but very binary too)
Elemental Bond / Garruk's Packleader
Elephant Guide / Moldervine Cloak
3. Are there any other cards you feel worth including that I missed?
Thanks again for the help!
For the adults in the thread, I'm actually considering a foray into peasant cube after several days thinking about making a list, yay! Here's some cards I saw in a few lists, I think they're a bit weird and could use a word or two on why they see inclusion:
Indulgent Tormentor - kind of a punisher card, but it avoids the Desecration Demon problem because you get both the punishment and the creature. Is it correct to run this at 360, d'you think?
Quest for the Gravelord - kind of puzzling because uncommon creatures already seem efficient enough to avoid jumping through hoops for this one, no?
Hoarding Dragon - seems borderline at best.
Shower of Coals - how good is this really at hitting three relevant targets? Looks like that's the only scenario worth including it for.
Lust for War - I know it's popular here, just wondering if it would shine more in a fast meta or a slower one.
Roar of the Wurm - paying seven for a vanilla 6/6, really? I guess when you reach that kind of mana it actually represents two fatties, but I'm fairly certain the only reason to include this is so you can cheat it into the grave to cast it off the flashback.
Weaver of Lightning - overly defensive statline, but I wonder how well spells-matter works at peasant level and if this is a big help.
Baleful Ammit - ends up as a bad 3/2 lifelinker for three, or ends up killing/nerfing one of your early game dorks. Is either scenario worth playing this?
So the value of Imperial Recruiter seems to come from having a lot of high-impact cards you can fetch. Ravenous Chupacabra or Nekrataal is a much better target than you've made it out to be, because it changes the board so drastically (-1 to your opponent's board and +1 to yours, putting them back and getting ahead at the same time) so it's better than something durdly like Mulldrifter, but to me it's still not quite enough. In regular powered/unpowered, the kind of target you're looking for is something like Deranged Hermit/Angel of Invention, Phantasmal Image, Sower of Temptation, etc. Palace Jailer is another good one that's accessible to peasant. Basically, I can see Recruiter being an acceptable role-player but not the kind of "glue" card that really brings flexibility to a deck.
Jesus christ, here we go again. You have no idea what you're talking about, man.
Force of Will is horrifically bad against fair decks. Its main use is to stop game-winning combos. Consider the difference between countering a first-turn Mother of Runes vs a first-turn Show and Tell. FoW's play value has been over-inflated by casual gamers like you due to its reputation as a combo-breaker and its associated monetary price. And if combo didn't exist or was reduced in speed, it would almost certainly not be as prevalent as it is now.
I can't speak to pauper strategies, but I could spend ten minutes browsing the forums or conferring with some of my high-level pauper friends and learn something new about the game to help improve my skill, instead of coming here to ***** about it. Or, you know, using some of that established knowledge and realizing that you need different tools to attack different decks. Magic is an intensely crowd-sourced game, you have thousands of players playing millions of matches over years of play to figure out best practices but somehow, the one guy insisting it's the wrong call is you. Yeah.
You're drawing all kinds of baseless conclusions based on hilariously erroneous foundations, which might be a good start to discussion if you weren't then trying to pass it off as fact and insulting the entire forum by doubling down on this misguided view.
You make some decent points about tempo and value plays regarding tutors, but goddamn if it doesn't get lost in the morass of the rest of your posts.
I wonder why.
For what it's worth, I do agree with Humphrey that tagging cards is pretty important, though I wouldn't have put it quite so passive-aggressively as him. I love Sanctum Gargoyle, but it's not close to being a flying Gravedigger. There's not enough artifact creature density to make it so. It's more of a value card in an Artifactocrats archetype, where you're bringing back stuff like Spellbombs for value.
Come to think of it, having more artifactocrats stuff at common would really help. I see it more as a red theme (see stuff like Atog, Artillerize, Destructive Digger). Carrion Feeder is such a simple, iconic design at this point. They can riff on it by using different card types in other colors, like:
Scrap Feeder R
Creature - Gremlin
Scrap Feeder can't block.
Sacrifice an artifact: Put a +1/+1 counter on Scrap Feeder.
1/1
Not only is there a lack of two-drops, which is critical for aggro, but you also need enough cheap artifacts AND they have to be relevant to aggro. Dropping Gearsmith followed by a signet would just be silly. You want to drop either a well-statted artifact creature or an equipment. The first doesnt really exist at common, and pauper cubers dont run nearly enough equipment, even though they should (Leonin Scimitar in multiples is great - imagine dropping Gearsmith, then Scimitar + equip next turn!).
If it's artifact aggro you want, I think that archetype is better off sprinkled in every color, because the card type that matters (artifacts) is colorless and thus accessible to everyone. You also want players to be able to pivot into a backup color if blue or white ends up fizzling out on the artifact-matters cards (highly likely to me, considering the lack of decent support). If it's an update to the Azorius guild you want, I think UW is far too well off to consider artifact aggro as it looks right now.
1. What's the payoff?
You need a reward for going deep on artifacts. I only see (in these colors obv) Vedalken Certarch, Ardent Recruit and Rusted Relic/Myr Enforcer. You already noted Ethersworn Shieldmage which I like - it's a card I wish was just a little more pushed. If it had been a 2/2 for UW it could easily be a power common and a guild icon. Or it could have been a 2/3 for 1UW, slightly more realistic and more in the realm of playable. Even more interesting, give it affinity and something like a 3UW cost as a way to make you work for that UW flash bear.
Interesting to note that a card like Esper Cormorants isn't much of a payoff (especially with Phantom Monster floating around) but the artifact tag actually makes it an enabler. So I think you have to consider what role your artifact-matters cards are gonna play in practice, and make sure you have enough payoff cards and make it rewarding enough to build around them.
2. What does artifacts matter actually mean?
Look at the cards I mentioned above. What decks do they actually fit in? Certarch is a control tool, Recruit is aggro, Rusted Relic/Enforcer are midrange beatsticks. They're all over the place. Once you have a bunch of artifacts, what are you actually doing with them? You want an engine. You want some glue to bring the deck together. The best you can do in these colors is something like Artificer's Epiphany, Sage of Lat-Nam or Gearseeker Serpent.
I would look to Al's pauper artifact cube for ideas. He has a ton of incidental artifact generation in the form of clues, contraptions and fabricators, to guarantee a suitable number of artifacts for whatever shenanigans your deck wants to do (it doesn't look like it was updated after Ixalan or we would probably see Treasure tokens too). But when the whole cube is about artifacts, the need for payoffs doesn't really matter as much. Your default mode is "I'm an artifact deck". In a regular pauper cube, I might ask myself some questions. What distinguishes an artifact deck, specifically a UW one, from other decks? What does it do better? Questions like that.
My own opinion is that it's not really there yet compared to the current skies or flash archetypes. But it would be great to visit an artifact-centric set with the New New World Order that's giving us such decent commons lately. Things might change after a set like that
The level of delusion is absolutely shocking. Like, he hasn't changed a single thing in his thought process despite people patiently trying to discuss cubing rationale with someone who clearly hasn't been playing for long. Instead, he's doubled down on the victim attitude. He's hell-bent on taking the absolute worst things that happened to him in Magic, or that people have said to him, and pretending it's the default environment. Or using any opportunity to go on tirades with his hate-filled nonsense theory of Magic players. It would be sad to see if it weren't so darn insulting.
At this point, I seriously fear that the poster has some sort of mental problem that extends beyond their hobby (Bogles "ruined" their previous hobby, they're "ruining" Magic now, Bogles will probably find ways to ruin their future hobby, and somehow this person is the only one with the "right" opinion about them). If you think everyone around you is the problem, maybe you're the problem. The forum does not have a responsibility to humor trolls like this, and constantly derailing threads with this nonsense is getting tiresome.
I take exception to Summoner's Bond being labeled "just" a value card. Free creature tutoring (as in, not even taking up space in your deck or mana to cast!) is not even close to common power level.
And I really shouldn't need to explain how powerful the rare/mythic conspiracies are. Like, I'm wondering if anyone has bothered to ask themselves why Wizards would want to increase the rarity of Backup Plan and decrease the rarity of Brago's Favor.
Finally, what you call middling, I call appropriate. Check these out:
Brago's Favor naming Capsize or Sprout Swarm. Or Cage of Hands. Or any of those awesome common flashback spells.
Immediate Action naming Sparksmith or Rhox Veteran. Or literally any fatty.
Muzzio's Preparations naming Viashino Slaughtermaster or Ainok Bond-Kin.
Secrets of Paradise naming Wall of Roots. Or literally any one-drop/two-drop that's not a mana dork.
Sentinel Dispatch with exploit and the significant increase in sac outlets that have cropped up since its printing (Spark Reaper being the most recent).
I feel like you haven't really considered all the unique synergies that come up when you have all the best pauper cards to play around with. Or maybe you have, and y'all are bored with pauper, in which case I humbly recommend trying out powered or peasant cubes instead of trying to force pauper cubes to be something they're not. Those other cubes are a blast too.
Can't you:
A. bounce it with Snap
B. race it with Blastoderm
?
Feed the Clan looks bad. Sideboard card against burn imo.
p.s. card tags are your friend.
I just removed Leonin Skyhunter for the same reasons. IMO, this + Silverbeak Griffin should really only be run if you already run both Pegasi + Soltari Trooper and need more evasion. This would probably only be for larger cubes at this point. If we eventually get a common white devotion card on the same level as Gray Merchant of Asphodel, these guys could get a new lease on life. But I feel safe in saying that, for 360 to 450 at least, they're pretty much dead.
RE: red pump - pretty much only if you want to deliberately kneecap red at this point. There's too much burn to really want to play a more restrictive removal that occasionally doubles as creature protection.
Deprive I like as a landfall enabler and for larger cubes like mine, but even there blue spells are stacked. I'm ok with countermagic having a slight premium attached to it by having a bit less of it. (y'all might find this weird, but I find the trinket text on Rune Snag in a singleton format really cumbersome, and if I had to add another countermagic slot, Quench would be in serious contention against Deprive).
Also fun to see someone else try to be slightly more statistical about their inclusions. I've done the exact same notation for how many cubes run which cards, yet somehow I'm still over the limit because cuts are hard lol.
As for other cuts:
Paralyze! Soft removal in a color full of hard removal.
Everything else in that list of potential cuts I like too much to recommend cuts. You can take a look at my list in my sig and see which ones I don't run if that helps your decision-making
Anyway, this will be my last post for the foreseeable future. I'll be going on hiatus from the forums for many reasons, mainly for my mental health, diminishing returns from discussion here, and now the Great Deletion of 2019 that just invalidated years (decades?) of work.
Cheers, and happy cubing!
RE: Augur of Bolas - as the joke goes, this card's text really says: When Augur of Bolas enters the battlefield, look at the bottom three cards of your library. Then again, I consider Delver a bit of a miss for most cubes, but if cubers really want to contort their blue sections into something that can accommodate more of a spells-matters theme, I suppose it's possible to make it work.
I know some cubers have enjoyed success with the sac bears, stuff like Sultai Emissary, Doomed Dissenter, Butcher Ghoul, maybe more niche stuff like Abyssal Gatekeeper. You can overlap a bit with green/white thanks to stuff like Young Wolf/Brindle Shoat and Martyr of Dusk/Doomed Traveler/Hunted Witness, plus all of white's Raise the Alarm-type spells. It looks like you already have two premium sac outlets in the form of Carrion Feeder and Plagued Rusalka, but I think Phyrexian Ghoul / Nantuko Husk are sort of the poster boys for this kind of deck at common. If you really want to signpost it you also have Golgari Rotwurm in GB. Grim Harvest used to be a strong card (it might still be, but the Recover rules text was far too much of a hassle for us), so bringing back essentially double the creature in the form of sac bears could do some work.
Whatever problem you have with cubetutor, I hope you get over it someday. It's far too useful to just ignore.
Oh yeah, I was looking at Ill-Tempered Cyclops for potential inclusion. I still see it in quite a few lists online, but it seems very meh. No haste, under-curved, no real abilities to speak of aside from a late-game mana-sink.
I dunno, I like the fire-and-forget style, but it is overcosted by about one mana. Sanitarium Skeleton was far too overcosted to be worth it either unless you were pairing it with spellshapers or something.
I don't know if this is actually better than a 2/1 with real evasion. That's almost my entire black 2CC section at this point.
Trample and haste is a great combo. At the very least, it could push out Havenwood Wurm for anyone still running it.
I wouldn't be so sure. It only triggers on your own creatures, so I question how often it'll even be better than something like Bishop's Soldier.
A bit overcosted as a trick, but to rebuy ETB effects, untap a creature, or save a creature from removal, I think two mana is still mostly acceptable. I'm really curious how often you can combine that with the first strike to do real damage.
Aside from hitting mana dorks, I don't see how it's better than Gideon's Reproach - semi-decent sounds about right.
Yeah, it's very bad on this guy and the 5/3 Thrull in black. I think they both needed at least a small bump in toughness before they could be considered.
Dauntless Aven and this guy could form a sort of tag team package with the exerters, but it seems iffy. There's actually three exerters in white that see scattered inclusion (Gust Walker/Oketra's Avenger/Tah-Crop Elite) but red and green have their own and it might actually be ok considering the other tappers in these colors (I'm thinking Fireslinger, Gideon's Lawkeeper, Sparksmith, mana dorks...)
People ran Aven Surveyor for a while and Chillbringer seems better, since it gives you both effects and is slightly easier to cast (bounce is usually seen as better, but it allows opponents to replay an untapped blocker/haster and rebuy potential ETBs, so I would consider it a wash). Don't underestimate having a critical mass of these fellows either. Getting every threat you play nailed down or bounced turn after turn while your opponent curves out is pretty backbreaking.
Seems extremely reasonable, especially with token makers like Fungal Infection, Wakedancer and Moan of the Unhallowed now in black.
I actually like it a lot. Seems better than Ill-Tempered Cyclops and at least a little bit better than Hostile Minotaur. Could use the testing.
Haha yeah, I don't even have room for actual burn at this point.
Yes it is. We've never seen haste on such decently sized bodies in green though. It's got potential.
I actually cut Arrest recently in favor of Cage of Hands (a card I highly recommend since I ran Prison Term in my regular cube and both were great) since three mana is a lot to ask for this effect. Getting flash changes the evaluation though.
Case in point:
On cubetutor, there are 3,401 cubes with Pauper in their name at the time of this post.
Out of those, 58 of them run Dash Hopes.
Out of those, 20 of them can be considered recent (updated since 2018).
In total, only 1.7% of all pauper cubes on cubetutor run the card. That's a fraction of the playerbase.
If we're talking about current, updated cubes, the number drops to 0.58%. That's a fraction of a fraction.
I don't know about you, but that seems pretty much in line with my previous conclusion. Like I said, opinion doesn't need to be taken as factual, but I think the data speaks for itself. And it's an essential tool in these conversations because now our ideas can be supported by evidence. It can help confirm what we already knew, or disprove an old idea and force us to rethink inclusions.
The best part? This work took me all of five minutes. How would you even begin to collect this data without a site like cubetutor?