Unpopular opinion: Aesthetics are overrated. Does it really matter that that your card is foil when you're getting beaten down by your opponent? On the flipside, does it matter if your card isn't foil if you're getting the thrill of victory? Aesthetics only matter when gameplay is not interesting or engaging, and if that's happening, then you have bigger problems.
I disagree.
I would counter your unpopular opinion with my own unpopular opinion:
Your opinion isn't actually that unpopular. If a Magic artist literally smeared ***** on a canvas, Magic players would buy deckboxes and playmats with that card's garbage art if the card did something sufficiently powerful. Magic players don't give a damn about the art on the cards, that's why it's all soulless homogenized garbage now. You know, before I played Magic I would walk past the card showcase or someone playing a game and look at a card like Serra's Sanctum and say, "That's a beautiful card." The only Magic card I owned for years until I got into the game was a Kev Walker 1/1 flying spirit token that was given to me.
Magic players only want to play with things at maximum power. Which means they have a smaller pool of cards to work with when building a cube (and therefore less room for interesting and engaging gameplay). If you play (worse) cards with art that you like, you can build around that lower power level and still have interesting and engaging gameplay. Playing a mediocre card (with nice art) opens up possibilities, now one has to get creative and try to support it.
Look at Suture Spirit. The art on this card is amazing. And wouldn't you know, it has synergy with other cards in my cube. Suture Spirit has 3 things going for it:
1.) It regenerates, so it's real good with Banding, the quintessential white ability.
2.) It's a spirit, so it has synergy with the Arcane/Spirit craft theme I have going in my cube.
2.) It makes an artifact, so it has synergy with artifact matters.
3.) I ******* hate looking at it.
Why would I play with cards that I hate looking at? Why?! I don't care how infrequently Oasis is playable in my cube, looking at it pleases me very much and brings the Lawrence of Arabia theme to mind. It's also occasionally very good, it allows Crypt Rats to be repeatable or turns into the Death Star if Horobi, Death's Wail is on the battlefield.
Frenzied Goblin Keep in mind you can only activate him once per turn, you can't just dump mana into him. Regardless, still pretty good.
Frostling I play with damage on the stack so this can 2 for 1 like Mogg Fanatic. I also have a bunch of COK Block spirit synergies going on. It's okay.
Geometric Weird No one respects this card for whatever reason, maybe they don't read it and realize that it works with anything on the stack, not just spells.
Glitterfang Since I have COK Block spirit/arcane craft going on in my cube, this is great for that. The ability which looks like a downside at first allows it to be hexproof from sorceries.
Goblin Bushwhacker You don't normally cast this without the kicker, but it gets a mention anyways.
Genju of the Spires This card is pretty gross. Like Glitterfang, it costs mana to attack with it each turn but in exchange it gains hexproof from sorcery speed.
Mogg Alarm It can be cast for 0 mana. I have it in to support storm.
Grinning Ignus This costs 3 mana obviously, but you can use its ability to pick it up and replay it for a single mana. Another Storm card.
Goblin Guide It's pretty good, the best one. This one is a rare but I'm going to mention it anyways.
Vexing Devil I haven't seen this played yet, but I do love me some punisher cards and this one seems pretty savage. 1 mana 4 damage is good, 1 mana for a 4/3 is ******* insane. Even in the worst case scenario where they choose 4/3 and then play a removal spell it's still a Duress. This one is also a rare.
Ones I've played with before:
Goblin Champion This guy is so gross when combined with something like Skittering Skirge. I want to put him back in but I'm not sure what I want to cut for it.
Goblin Cohort This is a Pauper constructed staple in the RDW/Goblins deck. In my cube however, only 41%~ of the cards are creatures so it's a little harder to activate so I ended up cutting him. In your average cube he should be good though.
Because tapping for C sucks... A land has to be insanely powerful to justify that kind of drawback, and Hollow just isn't.
Being able to regenerate any of your creatures for 1 green is not insanely powerful? With also the ability to tap for 1 colorless otherwise? In our group it is a beast, just very surprising that it is not viewed similarly here.
I agree with you, it seems like a great card. Often times regeneration is just indestructible. It's a land, so it's a free inclusion most of the time.
Magic players will bend over backwards to reason themselves out of playing good cards.
I'm curious about people's experiences with the following cards: Genju of the Fields and Genju of the Cedars - In both enchantress and non-enchantress contexts
I've played with:
White Genju - Probably the best of the bunch, it has non-keyworded lifelink so you can activate it multiple times a turn and gain 2-4-6-8 etc. life with each combat it's in.
Red Genju - It's a one drop 6/1, pretty good. While it does eat up your turn 2 play, you're still presenting 6 power on turn 2. Ball Lightning is RRR. Another interesting card of note is Zektar Shrine Expedition, it's also pretty good. If they have an open board you can swing for wumbo damage and if not you can start trading extra mountains for their creatures.
Green Genju - It's more durable than the red Genju. It only saw play once in my cube before I ended up cutting it. What happened was that I just happened to rip a Rishadan Port top deck the turn after my friend played it. That doesn't mean it's a bad card, I just wanted another grteen spirit or arcane spell or whatever and needed to make room.
Rainbow Genju - When my cube was still limited to Pauper I added this in as an incentive to go for 5 color. It was pretty awesome but by the time you set it up you were often almost dead so it wasn't unfair. Now that my cube has expanded to 720 cards I just haven't seen it in a while. It's probably a little worse in relation to the rest of my cards because I play cards of all rarities now but on the other hand I'm playing better fixing so it should be easier to cast. IMO I'd break rarity for this card, it's not really overpowered, it's a fun card.
I ended up cutting the white one because I wanted white creatures to be overall pretty bad and require synergy like Banding, Flagbearers, or Crusade effects to function well, so having white Genju actually be good on its own as opposed to a 5 mana 3/3 Banding Sliver or whatever didn't really appeal to me. I cut the green one not because it's a bad card, but because I have a heavy Spirit/Arcane Craft theme in my cube and even though the Genjus turn into spirits, they don't count for Spirit craft upon ETB. I still play the red and rainbow one, I've never tried the blue or black one.
I'm glad you brought them up, the concept is real cool. I should add some more of them back in.
Commander is the worst format of Magic that there is and it reinforces my belief that there is nothing that a Magic player hates more than having to play fun, fair, interactive Magic as Richard Garfield intended. Everything about it is awful and its neat rules are there just to hide the fact that it's Thermonuclear Chaos Vintage. Even the community is the worst that there is.
There are numerous reasons why I hate it. Let's start with the format itself:
1.) Having to shuffle 100 cards is an abomination. I just kind of pretend that my minimal shuffling is sufficient and everyone else also seems to have mutually agreed.
2.) It's 4 players, so what happens in the game is irrelevant. Only politics matter. But everyone will get angry with you if you openly team up with someone or kingmake even though that's politics.
The format should be 2v2.
3.) Commander damage requires an entire spread sheet. Why? It's not like you're going to make is past turn 4.
4.) Because everyone has 40 life and there are 3 other players at the table, playing fun, fair, interactive Magic becomes impossible and the only reasonably effective way of killing other players is to play some sort of broken combo. Another issue with players having 40 life is that your life total is absolutely meaningless, so **** it, why not Necro for 39?
Players should have 20 or less life.
5.) You should be able to kill, exile, tuck, etc. a Commander. If players had to actively work to keep their commander safe it would be better.
In general, Magic players want the easiest, low effort way of winning the game possible. Any card with any degree of risk or downside associated with it is immediately shunned. This attitude is why Shroud was replaced with Hexproof and why having your commander die comes with little consequence. Having to manage risk is good game design, Bumper Bowling isn't.
Let's talk about what cards are allowed in the format:
1.) Why are Sundering Titan or Armageddon or Sway of the Stars seen as bad but not Wheel of Fortune? Man, I sure do love having the most important decision I will make all game (mulligan) rendered meaningless. Wow, I got a no land hand off of this Wheel on turn two before I could do anything, what fun! In half of the dozen or so games of Commander that I've played, I end up not being able to plan on having any of the cards currently in my hand. If they're going to ban cards because they're not fun, then they should go ahead and ban a lot more things.
2.) Why bother playing 100 card singleton if you're allowed to have 16 copies of each card because you're playing the original card + 15 tutors? Plus, your commander. So all of this 100 card nonsense is just a charade, after your lands and autoinclude mana (birds of paradise, mana elves, sol ring, mana crypt, mox diamond, etc.) and tutors you're really only playing with a 20-30 card deck.
They should ban everything that tutors for non-lands. Yes, everything. There will be some collateral damage, but it will be worth it. Then maybe these non-interactive combo decks won't be consistent.
3.) Why bother playing anything that's not an infinite combo? They should ban all of those too.
Combo doesn't actually count as Magic. All combo decks without exception* are merely accidents as a result of this game being around for 27 years with 20,000 unique cards in it. Kiki Jiki was not designed with Pestermite in mind, it was just a value card. Dark Depths was designed to require actually paying 30 mana over the course of multiple turns to summon a huge monster, it was not intended that you could instead just slap down Vampire Hexmage. Tinker was not designed with Blightseel Colossus in mind. Protean Hulk was not intended to work with Flash. Nomads en-Kor is a 1 mana 1/1 with, "fixed banding" on it, it was not designed as combo enabler.
This is just blatant fact. Through the Breach was from the COK Block, from 2005. Emrakul is from Rise of the Eldrazi, from 2012 I believe. They were never intended to work with one another.
*To be fair, Hidetsugu and Hidetsugu's Second Rite were in the same set. So it's not as if combo is absolutely never intended, it's just kind of rare and harder to pull off when it is. Maybe I'm wrong about this, I've only been playing magic for 2 years but that's how combo seems to me - 95% mistakes - because all of the notable ones and even a bunch of the ones in Pauper use weird cards made years apart that were never designed with each other in mind.
Now let's get to the playerbase. Yes, that's awful too.
1.) It's the least balanced, most rapacious format that exists but it has the most casuals playing it. So instead of playing a fair format and having fun games, casuals would rather play the most broken format possible and then get mad at your when you play a deck that's actually good. They hate the player instead of the game. If you've ever read Ender's Game, all casual commander players are Bonzo Madrid.
2.) There are three types of Commander players:
a.) Casuals who want to play dumb ***** and jack up the price of random cards like Forest Bears or Three Visits. Yes, let's spend a ton of money just to lose every single game with Squirrel Tribal, neat. They've correctly determined that top tier decks are awful but they refuse to ensconce what they want the format to be into any sort of actual change to the rules. When something is broken in Legacy or Standard or Modern or Pauper and people don't want it ruining the game anymore, they want it banned. They don't shame people for playing the overpowered deck in question. Players of every other constructed format in Magic hate the game, not the player.
b.) Spikes who play the top tier decks because they're legal but their libertarianism/aspergers prevents them from acknowledging that the game would be better without unfun things that ruin the game, instead preferring a laissez-faire free-for-all where anything goes (as long as it's flash hulk) and the only viable deck is Flash Hulk because god forbid we ever ban cards. I died on turn 4, I had to shuffle my entire 100 card deck 1.5 times a turn because I have all 10 fetches and 15 tutors, I spent more time shuffling than I actually did playing. I tried to go off with my Flash Hulk on turn 3 but everyone else Force of Willed me and then someone else Flash Hulked a turn later. Yay! What an, "interactive" game!
c.) People who play with group A and purport to hate CEDH players and infinite combo, but then assemble an infinite combo and kill everyone anyways. I was going to insult group C, but then I realized that the wildly fluctuating power level expectations of everyone that plays this format (in lieu of just changing what's legal, like literally every other format of Magic does) make it impossible to have a deck that's aligned with everyone else's power level. Group C players are just a result of this format's awful playerbase and wild west nature.
3.) The format is sold as this fun intro format... despite being the least balanced, most chaotic, biggest money pit imaginable. It's the worst introduction to Magic I could possibly think of. Buy this $40 precon so I can rip off your head and ***** down your neck with my $243 copy of Mana Crypt that I got from an out of print book that I purchased over 20 years ago!!! Awesome!
Group A commander players just want to control what everyone else can and cannot play (which is what cube is all about) so they can play some stupid gimmick. Group B just wants to play with broken cards that ruin the game. Group C wants neither or is somewhere in-between. All three of these groups I think would enjoy playing/curating their own cube far more than commander.
Group A can put Squirrel Tribal and 300 other silly gimmick cards into their cube, Group B can build the MTGO Vintage cube.
But because commander has become so popular, it's choking out other forms of non-competition Magic. That's a shame. Even commander players I think would enjoy cube more than commander.
Reckless Racer seems like a great card power-wise, I don't understand why it would be deemed sub-optimal.
Two issues I have with this entire community:
1.) The whole purpose of cube is to create a custom limited environment, not min-maxing everything. If you have Ghostfire instead of normal bolt it doesn't mean anything. Why not have aim for a middle of the road power level? Who cares if Benalish Infantry costs 1 more mana that it should? Ghost-Lit Raider is fine.
2.) The people who purport to only want to play with min-maxed cards can't properly evaluate certain cards. Like Skittering Skirge, Rogue Elephant, and Utopia Vow. These are all good limited cards.
[quote from="MechanicalMech »" url="/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/pauper-peasant-discussion/193990-the-peasant-cube-discussion-thread-c-u?comment=15005"]In constructed Pauper for example, midrange Boros decks will play the 2 mana Journey to Nowhere over the 3 mana Oblivion Ring. Even though the deck has zero mana problems and paying the extra mana is usually irrelevant, people still act as if O-Ring is completely unplayable even though it's the better card and is essentially Vindicate at common.
Posts like this really don't do a lot to add to your credibility. What cards are you worried about Journey to Nowhere missing that you would be happy using Oblivion Ring to get rid of? I've played a lot of Pauper between 2013-2017 and I just checked the top 12 decks in the MTGGoldfish meta. There's no non-creature cards in those decks that I would be happy (or even feel the need) to answer with an O-ring. It costs more and the added flexibility isn't worth it.
Monastery Swiftspear is a high pick in my cube for R or RW burn or RU spells matters. It's an amazing one drop compared to jackal pup or reckless waif. It makes blocking difficult for your opponent and gets in for the early damage.
At worse it's just Raging Goblin, and it's a nice storm/spells matter card.
I'd play it if I liked the art on it. Seeker of the Way is also a pretty good card, Prowess is a good ability on its own and any other abilities that are tacked onto the creature are just gravy.
To go back to Ghost -Lit Raider, there is something to be said for versatility.
In constructed Pauper for example, midrange Boros decks will play the 2 mana Journey to Nowhere over the 3 mana Oblivion Ring. Even though the deck has zero mana problems and paying the extra mana is usually irrelevant, people still act as if O-Ring is completely unplayable even though it's the better card and is essentially Vindicate at common.
Sure, since the card is from 15 years ago, Ghost-Lit Raider is not a 2 mana 2/2 with haste but it's still a versatile card. It can shock, it can be a Gray Ogre if the board is clear, and you can Channel it in a pinch. This versatility is worth the extra mana.
What do people think about Ghost-Lit Raider? It's certainly no FTK but it looks like it has potential as a kind of kill-it-or-lose-to-it level threat in a lot of match-ups, and has a solid fallback as Flatten in other matchups. I'm surprised it's so absent from players' lists.
I think that it's a solid card along with the rest of the Ghost-Lit cycle. Getting repeated uses out of one card is great in cube, and the Channel mechanic is cool and useful. It has fantastic pre-soulles Photoshop garbage art from the COK Block.
1.) When you pay 3 mana for the creature, and 3 mana to activate it twice, you haven't paid 9 mana. You've paid 3 mana 3 times. That's a rather absurd way of calculating the mana costs of things like Echo creatures and it's not how the game works. Mana is a renewable resource, you get to untap your lands at the beginning of each of your turns.
2.) In many cube games you end up in situations where you have extra mana and nothing else to spend it on. Why not shock a creature?
3.) You can use the Channel mode as just a normal burn spell.
4.) Yeah, there may be better cards than it, but why not have both the better version of the card and Ghost-Lit Red Guy? You're not building a constructed deck, min maxing doesn't matter. If you have the #1 pinger card and the #4 red Peasant legal pinger card in your cube, I'll still pick #4 and play both if I find both in the draft. If Ghostfire and Bolt are in the same draft, I'll still draft and play both, sure, why not?
5.) Everything dies to removal. Why play any creatures at all, after all Tarmogoyf just dies to removal amirite?
But then again, everything that's not Mulldrifter, Flametongue Kavu, Sprout Swarm, Sol Ring, and Pack Rat is literally unplayable garbage so I definitely would avoid trying the card out.
Thanks to the most recent $3 off orders from Ebay from the other week, I am now 14 Snow lands away from being fully Full Art Snow! NOW! I need to look at the Snow matters lands to see what could / should fit into a Cube that has gone this route!
Abominable Treefolk - Looks like it can get huge pretty easily... but do I want to devote a guild slot to that? Winter's Rest - Seems like a great "removal" Arcum's Astrolabe - I heard this card was doing things in other formats. Frostwalk Bastion - Having issues with which lands to put where as it is. Could be great at slowing down aggro decks. Icehide Golem - Speaking of aggro...
I looked through older snow permanents, but nothing caught my eye.
What is your opinions on snow stuff? I already have the lands (as mentioned) so that is not an issue. I am keeping the lands in the deck regardless if I add any snow stuff or not, so not going to FORCE anything in.
Also, if anyone is ever wanting to upgrade to snow lands like I have... the $3 off Ebay code is insane. I was getting 4 Snow Plains for 31 cents total, 8 Snow Mountains for 36 cents total. Forests were the most expensive at 80 cents for 4. Keep an eye out for the next time they do that sale and eat it up!
Astrolabe was ruining Pauper until they banned it. I hear it's playable in other formats, a Plateau doesn't replace itself, after all. It's not broken in cube, it's just a one mana Prophetic Prism. It's a strong turn 1 play.
Skred is one of the best removal spells in the game. It's the best one in Pauper at least.
Since I treat all my basic lands as snow lands, all the snow cards are just normal cards. It occasionally becomes an issue if you draft so many non-basic lands that you're not playing any basics but whatever. I don't have actual snow basics in my cube, I just have, "Damage is on the Stack, All basics are snow, Chaos Orb uses Old School Format rules." written on one of the longboxes that holds my cube and I try to remember to tell everyone beforehand.
Coldsnap is a cool set (pun intended) but I've crammed my cube so full of COK Block cards that I don't have much room for snow cards, Time Spiral block cards, Theros enchantment *****, and other quirky themed sets that I like. I say go for it, most things I've been told not to do regarding cube design have been just fine and for whatever reason Snow is a controversial theme.
Convoke also synergizes with tokens. If you play a bunch of tokens you'll be able to shove something like Autochthon Wurm easier.
The best banding card in a limited environment is probably Master of the Hunt since it can make an unlimited amount of creatures. Banding gives an entire group of creatures pants, that's why I like it so much. You could give that a try, it's the one banding creature I don't have in my cube since I try to stay away from cards that make infinite amounts of tokens.
Lately I've been toying with a way to give Selesnya what feels like a real, synergistic identity while also being powerful enough to compete with other strategies.
Rather than trying to make Selesnya about tokens OR about +1/+1 counters, which were two of my main approaches, I realized I can do both at once. Tokens actually work really well with the Selesnya +1/+1 counter cards, as most of them focus on spreading the buffs around rather than putting a lot of counters on one specific creature.
The idea is instead of making a army of dorky 1/1 and then trying to trumpet blast your opponent, you can make an army of 2/2s and 3/3s and beat them down with pure stat advantage. The supporting cast would look something like:
What 2 (or 3) player draft format do you guys use?
I've noticed with the disparate power level of cards in my cube, the nature of Winston drafting means that one person will end up with a bunch of good cards the other had no real chance to draft.
There is more of a smoothing effect in an actual draft. Winston kind of turns it into a coin flip. When every card is generic good stuff it doesn't matter, when you have both Balance and Call for Blood in the same draft, it gets a bit swingy. Maybe the coin flip goes a certain way a few more times and the person that rips the Balance also rips other bombs.
This seemed to happen much less last time I actually drafted. There was a more even spread of power cards. Is there a 2 player draft format that mitigates this?
My view on pet cards is that since it's not sanctioned play, it doesn't matter. Run the cards you enjoy, that's the whole purpose of cube. Min maxing everything is for constructed, cube is for playing the cards you like playing.
My overall view on cube balance is that the act of drafting inherently balances things out, so unless something is egregiously broken it should be fine.
And if a card is genuinely unplayable garbage, it's okay because it doesn't really effect the draft all that much. Having a dead card in your cube is equivalent to playing with 359 cards. At that point it's not a balance question, it's more of a, "How many slots do you want to waste on blank cards as opposed to interesting cards that may actually see play" question.
I've noticed that people give equal weight to criticism of bad cards and cards that are too good. That's wrong IMO. Ebony Horse is a bad card but it's not ruining any drafts.
I'm really curious about what you're trying to illustrate by comparing Dash Hopes with Carnage Tyrant. Care to elaborate?
I only follow this 'discussion' by reading quoted comments from you know who, but I think I can answer it for you.
Magic players hate the game and that's why Wizards replaced shroud with hexproof. And that's why Magic players, who hate the game, love cards like Carnage Tyrant because it has hexproof and can't be countered and thus is uninteractive and unfun. And that's why playing a card like Dash Hopes is like sprinkling holy water on a vampire to most Magic players because it's so damn interactive!!1 And, you know, Magic players HATE interactivity! Because they hate the game! Because they replaced shroud with hexproof! And everything Magic players hate is good for the game and that's why you should fill your cube with arcane cards and One with Nothing just because it's something Magic players hate.
I mean, that's bascially everything this guy has been saying over and over and over since he started posting in the peasant section of this forum (and I assume he posted the same nonsense elsewhere before). And that's all you'll ever hear from him.
It's not that Magic players hate the game and that's why they like dumb uninteractive nonsense like Carnage Tyrant, it's that they prefer having their wins handed to them and prefer showing you their Cool Thing(tm) even if it's at the expense of everyone else playing the game. As opposed to playing a long interactive game where decisions matter.
So instead of winning by actually playing the game and making decisions, they'd rather just put Ethereal Armor and 3 Rancors on Bogles and Louis C.K. you. A lot of Magic games mirror modern board game design where no one truly interacts with each other, they're just playing "Multiplayer Solitaire".
The guy with the turn one bull***** combo deck is enjoying himself, no doubt. But his fun is at the expense of everyone else and he isn't truly playing the game, he's just playing with infinite ammo, all guns unlocked, and invincibility cheats enabled. And that's why Dash Hopes, Banding, Splice Onto Arcane, etc. are things that I like, because they're the polar opposite of that.
As far as Dash Hopes being a usable card, generally no. But in a burn deck it's fine. If you're swinging with a Skittering Skirge and they go to remove it, protecting it with Dash Hopes presents them with a situation where neither option is desirable and the lesser of the two evils is still 2 mana 5 damage.
My argument isn't that it's a generally competitive card, it's that it's a well designed one and its "flaws" are what make it well designed as opposed to a card that has zero ways to play around it, like Carnage Tyrant. It creates a more interesting, more fun and interactive game state than an uncounterable hexproof above curve trampler does.
One was designed by someone who put thought into card design.
Another was designed by a 7 year old smearing ice cream on his face.
Magic is game full of cards which serve multiple roles. It's expected that all players will find some cards useless, bad or poorly designed. Wizards goal though is that every card will be loved by at least a few players (I'm still waiting to hear from any fans of Loathsome Catoblepas). While you (and I) don't find Carnage Tyrant to be an interesting card from a design perspective, I certainly can't deny that it does some things well. Namely:
Be a big mythic T-Rex for the Timmy's out there who get off on the experience of playing powerful cards
Keep certain constructed decks in check
I think the first point is pretty self evident so I won't go into it further. To give you some context on the second point - Carnage Tyrant actually served a crucial role in Standard during Kaladesh-Ixalan standard (the only standard format I've played much of in the last few years). I was playing one of the best decks in the format at the time - UWx control (specifically UWB in my case). That deck aimed to leverage the card and mana advantage of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria to kill or counter the opponent's entire deck until winning with either Torrential Gearhulk or milling them out. Once you finally take control with the UWx deck, the game is over in 90% of cases. The only card I feared in those situations was Carnage Tyrant and as a result it kept my deck honest and prevented it from taking over even more of the meta. Sure, they could have designed some other more complicated and "interesting" card to bully my Teferi deck, but they didn't have to and plenty of people had a lot of fun casting their Tyrants. I certainly had a lot of fun wrecking them.
I agree with you that Dash Hopes is a more interesting design from a cerebral point of view, but that's only one way to evaluate a card. Additionally, the choice with Dash Hopes (and punisher cards more generally) is not a difficult one in most cases for anyone who understands the relative value of resources in Magic. Generally the card just says "the controller of target spell loses 5 life".
Just because you value one attribute of a card doesn't mean that people are "wrong" or "stupid" or "hate magic" for valuing other attributes. It's little wonder that people here have been treating you like a pariah when you go out of your way to:
Insult magic players in general, while being one yourself
Insist that you've attained enlightenment about what is and isn't good for the game
Flaunt your own ignorance about strategy, card and cube design
Constantly bring up your own unrelated and often bizarre opinions that nobody asked for, while implying that anyone who disagrees is objectively wrong
I really do wonder if this is just a persona you've put on for the forums, or if you're actually this antisocial in real life. I have to believe it's the former. You've claimed to play magic with people IRL from time to time and I can't imagine somebody who acts the way you do in their daily life successfully forming and maintaining friendships.
You misread his post. He was talking about modern board games, not the format.
If a degenerate card was needed to keep another degenerate card in check, I'd rather the original degeneracy just not exist in the first place. If Teferi was so degenerate that a card like Carnage Tyrant was needed, they should have just banned Teferi instead of swallowing the spider to catch the fly.
Before I played Magic, I played X-Wing Miniatures. The problem with that game was that instead of banning or nerfing degeneracy, they just kept on printing answers that were themselves degenerate. After a while the game became a Russian nesting doll of cancer where none of the core game mechanics mattered anymore.
I occasionally state my opinions in real life. I try to be polite about it, I don't call people knuckledraggers to their face and I hate the game, not the player. I have friends that I play the game with, I don't get to see many of them as much as I used to a year ago when I didn't work from 6pm until 2am M-F. Before work I hangout with my best friend a few times a week and we Winston draft each others cubes.
Also, insulting Magic players while being one, sure. I got suspended from the forums for saying that Magic players are incapable of nuance and that's why they won't play with rares because they can't control themselves and recently I had to be talked out of having Armageddon in my cube and have to fight the urge to put Stasis in my cube. I'm being corrupted too, lol.
Mana rocks also get much better once you start having a critical mass of them. It's one thing to have an extra land drop or two early, it's another to have 5 mana on turn 2.
This is an odd statement to make in the same breath as Sol Ring. Sol Ring is two moxen, but wrapped in one card.
I can agree that when the power level of the spells is lower, the power level of ramp is lower. But these cards are still very very good. Llanowar Elves is already one of the best cards in peasant and moxen are meaningfully better than Llanowar Elves for the color fixing aspect and how hard they are to disrupt.
I'd draft Ninja of the Deep Hours before I'd draft Mox Sapphire. It would be a toss up if it was between The One True Ninja and Sol Ring. If I found a Sol Ring late in the draft and I was already in Blue, Ninja. If it was early in the draft and I hadn't committed to a color yet, probably Sol Ring although that's tough.
You can have all the mana you want but you still need an actual deck for it to power. You could slot the MTGO Vintage cube mana base and mana rock suite into your average Pauper cube and besides for the worldwake man lands it wouldn't make much of a difference.
I've created "Package Deal" cards for Tron and Cloudpost. One adds 3 of each Tron land to your draft pool, the other adds 3 of each Locus land to your pool. It ends up being okay, having a million mana on turn 6 doesn't give your War Elephant or Keiga, Tide Star extra +1/+1 counters on it or whatever. You still have to draw cards and unless your cube is filled with bomb 4-5 drops it'll be fine.
About the blocking and flaming: Stop it please? While making controversial statements generalizing magic players is pointless, reacting to it in this way only sustains it. These posts are a report of a person's experience. Even if we experience things differently, isn't there something to be learned?
Have to agree with Phitt77 here. I've been tangled up in debates multiple times with SaltMaster (both here and elsewhere), and it has never once been productive. That's because Salt doesn't want an open-minded discussion; he wants to repeat trite accusations and contrarian claims. Phitt wasn't kidding with the "hate the game, shroud/hexproof, holy water" rant; it's almost word-for-word.
I blocked him once, but MTGSalvation kept notifying me when he posted here, and out of morbid curiosity, I was fool enough to get baited again. I was chastised for how I responded (and rightly so - I'll admit I should have just ignored him rather than lashing out), so I blocked him again and have abstained from further commentary.
As for learning - we can only learn from people who are likewise willing and able to learn. If you disagree with me on a card's value and communicate reasonably what your experience has been, you could change my mind. If I have a different experience and communicate that, maybe I can convince you to try a card you wouldn't have otherwise. But if we give a well-reasoned post with rational statements to Salt, we are met with "anything Magic players hate is good for the game" - over and over, ad nauseam, sine fine, in perpetuum.
As for discussion of actual peasant cards - we've discussed Sol Ring a few times, and I wanted to bring it back because of my latest draft experience. It's the game I previously mentioned where I built a mono-black removal deck and lost a game to a roided up Kavu wearing Boots and a Warhammer while sneaking through the Rogue's Passage. I've reviewed the game multiple times in my head and came to one ironic conclusion - I lost the game because I pulled Sol Ring.
In pack three, I had fifteen choices, including Sol Ring and Swiftfoot Boots. Remembering our discussions here, I grabbed Sol Ring to see how much it would accelerate my deck, and I foolishly passed Swiftfoot Boots. Considering how much targeted removal I was packing, I should have at least hate-drafted the Boots (I did hate-draft Vine Mare, but that was later in a pack with less viable options for my own deck), but I chose not to for two specific reasons: 1) I wanted to consciously check the power level of Sol Ring, and 2) the odds are against me playing whoever pulls the Boots and even further against them pulling the card when it actually matters in a game against me.
Well, the Sol Ring was alright for me, even landing it turn one in a game or two, but it never directly contributed to a win for me - I couldn't be color-screwed thanks to a mono-color deck, I was only mana-screwed one game where I kept a one-land hand (no Ring) because I only needed to draw one more to get rolling, and I had plenty of removal for whatever my opponents threw at me in practically every game. Even against the Kavu, I had removal in hand before it killed me, but the Boots kept it safe. Honestly, if any one component (vigilance, hexproof, lifelink, unblockable) had been missing, I could have won by out-racing the Kavu or killing it through blocks or removal, but it was the perfect storm of abilities to foil my deck (such an epic thing to die from). And I would have won it with ease had I picked Swiftfoot Boots over Sol Ring. I still plan to actively monitor every draft where Sol Ring sees play, but at this point, I'm less concerned about its power level than I was before.
I don't have any experience with Sol Ring, but I do have experience with the 5 Moxes.
I was reasoned out of it with, "You'll be behind all game they're soo broken!"
Then I actually tried them out and they're okay. So you get to play a 5 drop on turn 4, who cares. They're just moderately better basic lands and no different than Llanowar Elves.
The only problem I've had with them is when someone drafted them all and a bunch of Talismans and slammed Armageddon. Yeah, that's obnoxious, but without that cards like Sol Ring are just fine.
Mana rocks also get much better once you start having a critical mass of them. It's one thing to have an extra land drop or two early, it's another to have 5 mana on turn 2.
I disagree.
I would counter your unpopular opinion with my own unpopular opinion:
Your opinion isn't actually that unpopular. If a Magic artist literally smeared ***** on a canvas, Magic players would buy deckboxes and playmats with that card's garbage art if the card did something sufficiently powerful. Magic players don't give a damn about the art on the cards, that's why it's all soulless homogenized garbage now. You know, before I played Magic I would walk past the card showcase or someone playing a game and look at a card like Serra's Sanctum and say, "That's a beautiful card." The only Magic card I owned for years until I got into the game was a Kev Walker 1/1 flying spirit token that was given to me.
Magic players only want to play with things at maximum power. Which means they have a smaller pool of cards to work with when building a cube (and therefore less room for interesting and engaging gameplay). If you play (worse) cards with art that you like, you can build around that lower power level and still have interesting and engaging gameplay. Playing a mediocre card (with nice art) opens up possibilities, now one has to get creative and try to support it.
Look at Suture Spirit. The art on this card is amazing. And wouldn't you know, it has synergy with other cards in my cube. Suture Spirit has 3 things going for it:
1.) It regenerates, so it's real good with Banding, the quintessential white ability.
2.) It's a spirit, so it has synergy with the Arcane/Spirit craft theme I have going in my cube.
3.) The art is beautiful.
Contrast this with something more standard, say Thraben Inspector.
1.) It draws you a card.
2.) It makes an artifact, so it has synergy with artifact matters.
3.) I ******* hate looking at it.
Why would I play with cards that I hate looking at? Why?! I don't care how infrequently Oasis is playable in my cube, looking at it pleases me very much and brings the Lawrence of Arabia theme to mind. It's also occasionally very good, it allows Crypt Rats to be repeatable or turns into the Death Star if Horobi, Death's Wail is on the battlefield.
Frenzied Goblin Keep in mind you can only activate him once per turn, you can't just dump mana into him. Regardless, still pretty good.
Frostling I play with damage on the stack so this can 2 for 1 like Mogg Fanatic. I also have a bunch of COK Block spirit synergies going on. It's okay.
Geometric Weird No one respects this card for whatever reason, maybe they don't read it and realize that it works with anything on the stack, not just spells.
Glitterfang Since I have COK Block spirit/arcane craft going on in my cube, this is great for that. The ability which looks like a downside at first allows it to be hexproof from sorceries.
Goblin Bushwhacker You don't normally cast this without the kicker, but it gets a mention anyways.
Genju of the Spires This card is pretty gross. Like Glitterfang, it costs mana to attack with it each turn but in exchange it gains hexproof from sorcery speed.
Mogg Alarm It can be cast for 0 mana. I have it in to support storm.
Grinning Ignus This costs 3 mana obviously, but you can use its ability to pick it up and replay it for a single mana. Another Storm card.
Goblin Guide It's pretty good, the best one. This one is a rare but I'm going to mention it anyways.
Vexing Devil I haven't seen this played yet, but I do love me some punisher cards and this one seems pretty savage. 1 mana 4 damage is good, 1 mana for a 4/3 is ******* insane. Even in the worst case scenario where they choose 4/3 and then play a removal spell it's still a Duress. This one is also a rare.
Ones I've played with before:
Goblin Champion This guy is so gross when combined with something like Skittering Skirge. I want to put him back in but I'm not sure what I want to cut for it.
Goblin Cohort This is a Pauper constructed staple in the RDW/Goblins deck. In my cube however, only 41%~ of the cards are creatures so it's a little harder to activate so I ended up cutting him. In your average cube he should be good though.
Intimidator Initiate This one is in my friend's cube. It's pretty good.
Boros Recruit This used to be in my cube but I cut it for a more interesting card. It was still decent though.
I agree with you, it seems like a great card. Often times regeneration is just indestructible. It's a land, so it's a free inclusion most of the time.
Magic players will bend over backwards to reason themselves out of playing good cards.
I've played with:
White Genju - Probably the best of the bunch, it has non-keyworded lifelink so you can activate it multiple times a turn and gain 2-4-6-8 etc. life with each combat it's in.
Red Genju - It's a one drop 6/1, pretty good. While it does eat up your turn 2 play, you're still presenting 6 power on turn 2. Ball Lightning is RRR. Another interesting card of note is Zektar Shrine Expedition, it's also pretty good. If they have an open board you can swing for wumbo damage and if not you can start trading extra mountains for their creatures.
Green Genju - It's more durable than the red Genju. It only saw play once in my cube before I ended up cutting it. What happened was that I just happened to rip a Rishadan Port top deck the turn after my friend played it. That doesn't mean it's a bad card, I just wanted another grteen spirit or arcane spell or whatever and needed to make room.
Rainbow Genju - When my cube was still limited to Pauper I added this in as an incentive to go for 5 color. It was pretty awesome but by the time you set it up you were often almost dead so it wasn't unfair. Now that my cube has expanded to 720 cards I just haven't seen it in a while. It's probably a little worse in relation to the rest of my cards because I play cards of all rarities now but on the other hand I'm playing better fixing so it should be easier to cast. IMO I'd break rarity for this card, it's not really overpowered, it's a fun card.
I ended up cutting the white one because I wanted white creatures to be overall pretty bad and require synergy like Banding, Flagbearers, or Crusade effects to function well, so having white Genju actually be good on its own as opposed to a 5 mana 3/3 Banding Sliver or whatever didn't really appeal to me. I cut the green one not because it's a bad card, but because I have a heavy Spirit/Arcane Craft theme in my cube and even though the Genjus turn into spirits, they don't count for Spirit craft upon ETB. I still play the red and rainbow one, I've never tried the blue or black one.
I'm glad you brought them up, the concept is real cool. I should add some more of them back in.
Commander is the worst format of Magic that there is and it reinforces my belief that there is nothing that a Magic player hates more than having to play fun, fair, interactive Magic as Richard Garfield intended. Everything about it is awful and its neat rules are there just to hide the fact that it's Thermonuclear Chaos Vintage. Even the community is the worst that there is.
There are numerous reasons why I hate it. Let's start with the format itself:
1.) Having to shuffle 100 cards is an abomination. I just kind of pretend that my minimal shuffling is sufficient and everyone else also seems to have mutually agreed.
2.) It's 4 players, so what happens in the game is irrelevant. Only politics matter. But everyone will get angry with you if you openly team up with someone or kingmake even though that's politics.
The format should be 2v2.
3.) Commander damage requires an entire spread sheet. Why? It's not like you're going to make is past turn 4.
4.) Because everyone has 40 life and there are 3 other players at the table, playing fun, fair, interactive Magic becomes impossible and the only reasonably effective way of killing other players is to play some sort of broken combo. Another issue with players having 40 life is that your life total is absolutely meaningless, so **** it, why not Necro for 39?
Players should have 20 or less life.
5.) You should be able to kill, exile, tuck, etc. a Commander. If players had to actively work to keep their commander safe it would be better.
In general, Magic players want the easiest, low effort way of winning the game possible. Any card with any degree of risk or downside associated with it is immediately shunned. This attitude is why Shroud was replaced with Hexproof and why having your commander die comes with little consequence. Having to manage risk is good game design, Bumper Bowling isn't.
Let's talk about what cards are allowed in the format:
1.) Why are Sundering Titan or Armageddon or Sway of the Stars seen as bad but not Wheel of Fortune? Man, I sure do love having the most important decision I will make all game (mulligan) rendered meaningless. Wow, I got a no land hand off of this Wheel on turn two before I could do anything, what fun! In half of the dozen or so games of Commander that I've played, I end up not being able to plan on having any of the cards currently in my hand. If they're going to ban cards because they're not fun, then they should go ahead and ban a lot more things.
2.) Why bother playing 100 card singleton if you're allowed to have 16 copies of each card because you're playing the original card + 15 tutors? Plus, your commander. So all of this 100 card nonsense is just a charade, after your lands and autoinclude mana (birds of paradise, mana elves, sol ring, mana crypt, mox diamond, etc.) and tutors you're really only playing with a 20-30 card deck.
They should ban everything that tutors for non-lands. Yes, everything. There will be some collateral damage, but it will be worth it. Then maybe these non-interactive combo decks won't be consistent.
3.) Why bother playing anything that's not an infinite combo? They should ban all of those too.
Combo doesn't actually count as Magic. All combo decks without exception* are merely accidents as a result of this game being around for 27 years with 20,000 unique cards in it. Kiki Jiki was not designed with Pestermite in mind, it was just a value card. Dark Depths was designed to require actually paying 30 mana over the course of multiple turns to summon a huge monster, it was not intended that you could instead just slap down Vampire Hexmage. Tinker was not designed with Blightseel Colossus in mind. Protean Hulk was not intended to work with Flash. Nomads en-Kor is a 1 mana 1/1 with, "fixed banding" on it, it was not designed as combo enabler.
This is just blatant fact. Through the Breach was from the COK Block, from 2005. Emrakul is from Rise of the Eldrazi, from 2012 I believe. They were never intended to work with one another.
*To be fair, Hidetsugu and Hidetsugu's Second Rite were in the same set. So it's not as if combo is absolutely never intended, it's just kind of rare and harder to pull off when it is. Maybe I'm wrong about this, I've only been playing magic for 2 years but that's how combo seems to me - 95% mistakes - because all of the notable ones and even a bunch of the ones in Pauper use weird cards made years apart that were never designed with each other in mind.
Now let's get to the playerbase. Yes, that's awful too.
1.) It's the least balanced, most rapacious format that exists but it has the most casuals playing it. So instead of playing a fair format and having fun games, casuals would rather play the most broken format possible and then get mad at your when you play a deck that's actually good. They hate the player instead of the game. If you've ever read Ender's Game, all casual commander players are Bonzo Madrid.
2.) There are three types of Commander players:
a.) Casuals who want to play dumb ***** and jack up the price of random cards like Forest Bears or Three Visits. Yes, let's spend a ton of money just to lose every single game with Squirrel Tribal, neat. They've correctly determined that top tier decks are awful but they refuse to ensconce what they want the format to be into any sort of actual change to the rules. When something is broken in Legacy or Standard or Modern or Pauper and people don't want it ruining the game anymore, they want it banned. They don't shame people for playing the overpowered deck in question. Players of every other constructed format in Magic hate the game, not the player.
b.) Spikes who play the top tier decks because they're legal but their libertarianism/aspergers prevents them from acknowledging that the game would be better without unfun things that ruin the game, instead preferring a laissez-faire free-for-all where anything goes (as long as it's flash hulk) and the only viable deck is Flash Hulk because god forbid we ever ban cards. I died on turn 4, I had to shuffle my entire 100 card deck 1.5 times a turn because I have all 10 fetches and 15 tutors, I spent more time shuffling than I actually did playing. I tried to go off with my Flash Hulk on turn 3 but everyone else Force of Willed me and then someone else Flash Hulked a turn later. Yay! What an, "interactive" game!
c.) People who play with group A and purport to hate CEDH players and infinite combo, but then assemble an infinite combo and kill everyone anyways. I was going to insult group C, but then I realized that the wildly fluctuating power level expectations of everyone that plays this format (in lieu of just changing what's legal, like literally every other format of Magic does) make it impossible to have a deck that's aligned with everyone else's power level. Group C players are just a result of this format's awful playerbase and wild west nature.
3.) The format is sold as this fun intro format... despite being the least balanced, most chaotic, biggest money pit imaginable. It's the worst introduction to Magic I could possibly think of. Buy this $40 precon so I can rip off your head and ***** down your neck with my $243 copy of Mana Crypt that I got from an out of print book that I purchased over 20 years ago!!! Awesome!
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Group A commander players just want to control what everyone else can and cannot play (which is what cube is all about) so they can play some stupid gimmick. Group B just wants to play with broken cards that ruin the game. Group C wants neither or is somewhere in-between. All three of these groups I think would enjoy playing/curating their own cube far more than commander.
Group A can put Squirrel Tribal and 300 other silly gimmick cards into their cube, Group B can build the MTGO Vintage cube.
But because commander has become so popular, it's choking out other forms of non-competition Magic. That's a shame. Even commander players I think would enjoy cube more than commander.
Two issues I have with this entire community:
1.) The whole purpose of cube is to create a custom limited environment, not min-maxing everything. If you have Ghostfire instead of normal bolt it doesn't mean anything. Why not have aim for a middle of the road power level? Who cares if Benalish Infantry costs 1 more mana that it should? Ghost-Lit Raider is fine.
2.) The people who purport to only want to play with min-maxed cards can't properly evaluate certain cards. Like Skittering Skirge, Rogue Elephant, and Utopia Vow. These are all good limited cards.
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An opponent's Journey to Nowhere or Oubliette.
A Tortured Existence.
Bogles enchantments.
A Prophetic Prism.
The card is basically Pauper legal Vindicate.
I'd play it if I liked the art on it. Seeker of the Way is also a pretty good card, Prowess is a good ability on its own and any other abilities that are tacked onto the creature are just gravy.
To go back to Ghost -Lit Raider, there is something to be said for versatility.
In constructed Pauper for example, midrange Boros decks will play the 2 mana Journey to Nowhere over the 3 mana Oblivion Ring. Even though the deck has zero mana problems and paying the extra mana is usually irrelevant, people still act as if O-Ring is completely unplayable even though it's the better card and is essentially Vindicate at common.
Sure, since the card is from 15 years ago, Ghost-Lit Raider is not a 2 mana 2/2 with haste but it's still a versatile card. It can shock, it can be a Gray Ogre if the board is clear, and you can Channel it in a pinch. This versatility is worth the extra mana.
I think that it's a solid card along with the rest of the Ghost-Lit cycle. Getting repeated uses out of one card is great in cube, and the Channel mechanic is cool and useful. It has fantastic pre-soulles Photoshop garbage art from the COK Block.
1.) When you pay 3 mana for the creature, and 3 mana to activate it twice, you haven't paid 9 mana. You've paid 3 mana 3 times. That's a rather absurd way of calculating the mana costs of things like Echo creatures and it's not how the game works. Mana is a renewable resource, you get to untap your lands at the beginning of each of your turns.
2.) In many cube games you end up in situations where you have extra mana and nothing else to spend it on. Why not shock a creature?
3.) You can use the Channel mode as just a normal burn spell.
4.) Yeah, there may be better cards than it, but why not have both the better version of the card and Ghost-Lit Red Guy? You're not building a constructed deck, min maxing doesn't matter. If you have the #1 pinger card and the #4 red Peasant legal pinger card in your cube, I'll still pick #4 and play both if I find both in the draft. If Ghostfire and Bolt are in the same draft, I'll still draft and play both, sure, why not?
5.) Everything dies to removal. Why play any creatures at all, after all Tarmogoyf just dies to removal amirite?
But then again, everything that's not Mulldrifter, Flametongue Kavu, Sprout Swarm, Sol Ring, and Pack Rat is literally unplayable garbage so I definitely would avoid trying the card out.
Astrolabe was ruining Pauper until they banned it. I hear it's playable in other formats, a Plateau doesn't replace itself, after all. It's not broken in cube, it's just a one mana Prophetic Prism. It's a strong turn 1 play.
Into the North is a good one. It can fetch Dark Depths, Mouth of Ronom, Scrying Sheets, the snow taplands, and basic lands if you treat all the basics as snow.
Skred is one of the best removal spells in the game. It's the best one in Pauper at least.
Since I treat all my basic lands as snow lands, all the snow cards are just normal cards. It occasionally becomes an issue if you draft so many non-basic lands that you're not playing any basics but whatever. I don't have actual snow basics in my cube, I just have, "Damage is on the Stack, All basics are snow, Chaos Orb uses Old School Format rules." written on one of the longboxes that holds my cube and I try to remember to tell everyone beforehand.
Coldsnap is a cool set (pun intended) but I've crammed my cube so full of COK Block cards that I don't have much room for snow cards, Time Spiral block cards, Theros enchantment *****, and other quirky themed sets that I like. I say go for it, most things I've been told not to do regarding cube design have been just fine and for whatever reason Snow is a controversial theme.
May I suggest cards that give you +1/+1 for how many creatures you have?
Eidolon of Countless Battles and Veteran Armaments for example. There is a green */* creature called Scion of whatever that's has P/T equal to the amount of creatures you control.
Convoke also synergizes with tokens. If you play a bunch of tokens you'll be able to shove something like Autochthon Wurm easier.
The best banding card in a limited environment is probably Master of the Hunt since it can make an unlimited amount of creatures. Banding gives an entire group of creatures pants, that's why I like it so much. You could give that a try, it's the one banding creature I don't have in my cube since I try to stay away from cards that make infinite amounts of tokens.
I've noticed with the disparate power level of cards in my cube, the nature of Winston drafting means that one person will end up with a bunch of good cards the other had no real chance to draft.
There is more of a smoothing effect in an actual draft. Winston kind of turns it into a coin flip. When every card is generic good stuff it doesn't matter, when you have both Balance and Call for Blood in the same draft, it gets a bit swingy. Maybe the coin flip goes a certain way a few more times and the person that rips the Balance also rips other bombs.
This seemed to happen much less last time I actually drafted. There was a more even spread of power cards. Is there a 2 player draft format that mitigates this?
My overall view on cube balance is that the act of drafting inherently balances things out, so unless something is egregiously broken it should be fine.
And if a card is genuinely unplayable garbage, it's okay because it doesn't really effect the draft all that much. Having a dead card in your cube is equivalent to playing with 359 cards. At that point it's not a balance question, it's more of a, "How many slots do you want to waste on blank cards as opposed to interesting cards that may actually see play" question.
I've noticed that people give equal weight to criticism of bad cards and cards that are too good. That's wrong IMO. Ebony Horse is a bad card but it's not ruining any drafts.
If a degenerate card was needed to keep another degenerate card in check, I'd rather the original degeneracy just not exist in the first place. If Teferi was so degenerate that a card like Carnage Tyrant was needed, they should have just banned Teferi instead of swallowing the spider to catch the fly.
Before I played Magic, I played X-Wing Miniatures. The problem with that game was that instead of banning or nerfing degeneracy, they just kept on printing answers that were themselves degenerate. After a while the game became a Russian nesting doll of cancer where none of the core game mechanics mattered anymore.
I occasionally state my opinions in real life. I try to be polite about it, I don't call people knuckledraggers to their face and I hate the game, not the player. I have friends that I play the game with, I don't get to see many of them as much as I used to a year ago when I didn't work from 6pm until 2am M-F. Before work I hangout with my best friend a few times a week and we Winston draft each others cubes.
Also, insulting Magic players while being one, sure. I got suspended from the forums for saying that Magic players are incapable of nuance and that's why they won't play with rares because they can't control themselves and recently I had to be talked out of having Armageddon in my cube and have to fight the urge to put Stasis in my cube. I'm being corrupted too, lol.
I'd draft Ninja of the Deep Hours before I'd draft Mox Sapphire. It would be a toss up if it was between The One True Ninja and Sol Ring. If I found a Sol Ring late in the draft and I was already in Blue, Ninja. If it was early in the draft and I hadn't committed to a color yet, probably Sol Ring although that's tough.
You can have all the mana you want but you still need an actual deck for it to power. You could slot the MTGO Vintage cube mana base and mana rock suite into your average Pauper cube and besides for the worldwake man lands it wouldn't make much of a difference.
I've created "Package Deal" cards for Tron and Cloudpost. One adds 3 of each Tron land to your draft pool, the other adds 3 of each Locus land to your pool. It ends up being okay, having a million mana on turn 6 doesn't give your War Elephant or Keiga, Tide Star extra +1/+1 counters on it or whatever. You still have to draw cards and unless your cube is filled with bomb 4-5 drops it'll be fine.
I don't have any experience with Sol Ring, but I do have experience with the 5 Moxes.
I was reasoned out of it with, "You'll be behind all game they're soo broken!"
Then I actually tried them out and they're okay. So you get to play a 5 drop on turn 4, who cares. They're just moderately better basic lands and no different than Llanowar Elves.
The only problem I've had with them is when someone drafted them all and a bunch of Talismans and slammed Armageddon. Yeah, that's obnoxious, but without that cards like Sol Ring are just fine.
Mana rocks also get much better once you start having a critical mass of them. It's one thing to have an extra land drop or two early, it's another to have 5 mana on turn 2.