I know everyone wants to see Stoneforge Mystic unbanned, but what about Green Sun's Zenith? I'm curious to hear your arguments for and against unbanning it.
London mulligan in cube? I think it is clearly better than the Vancouver mull for the enjoyment of your players. Less mulls to 5, less nongames, so nothing but positives.
When your peasant cube has an aristocrats theme in BW, you don't want Skullclamp in your cube. It's just too good with Hidden Stockpile or Reassembling Skeleton, or even Pawn of Ulamog or Oketra's Monument. If Skullclamp feels like a fair card in your cube, it's fine to run it in my opinion.
Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game by definition, so the more 'feel bads' you have in your cube, the better designed your cube is.
What I mean by this is that if people have to actually work for synergies and earn neat combos as opposed to drafting EZmode cards and goodstuff piles, you're doing things right.
Restrictions breed creativity and you're going to have more interesting games when you don't give everyone unfettered access to *all* of the toys. If people have to work to get Bridge From Below into their graveyard or have to make voltrons out of non-hexproof creatures you'll end up with more fun stories than, "My good stuff pile took my opponent's slightly worse goodstuf pile to ValuTown faster."
This is a great argument. I disagree with how you word the first sentence. 'Feel bads' aren't fun, and you shouldn't strive for them. Parasitic cards however, are a great test for your players. If a player has to pick between a parasitic card with potentially higher upside and a good less parasitic card, I think that choice is more interesting than choosing between Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter. Half of my archetypes in colorcombinations involving white involve tokens, so a card like Intangible Virtue makes a player ask themself: 'am I a real tokens deck or just a general go-wide aggro deck' or 'do I really need to win through combat with tokens or can I just get by on Blood Artist effects'. To really make draft choices matter, the card pool must be diverse. My archetype cards are not parasitic for the most part, but every color has a few parasitic cards. These parasitic cards fit into well supported themes, and sometimes in various different color combinations.
Edit: Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter are in my cube though, I also like the staples, but a cube shouldn't be just the staples and the next best unsituational cards after that, in my opinion.
Ok, so archetype cards don't have to be parasitic. I think the most interesting cubing experience is one where lot of cards are decent on their own, but can be very good when the right synergy is there. Mix those in with your staples, and some truly parasitic cards. These parasitic cards can be helpful as signposts to the players, like 'see this Intangible Virtue? Tokens is a thing you could go for!'.
Phitt's definition of parasitic makes sense to me. If something is unplayable outside of the normal aggro-to-control schemes, that's parasitic.
By that definition, I think it's not fun at all to build a cube without parasitic cards. Parasitic cards are harder to evaluate, since you'll have to take into consideration what synergies you have and are hoping to pick up later in the draft, more so with cards that are just good regardless. I don't want my drafts turning into 'pick the best cards and win'.
EDIT: I dislike the term 'parasitic' for these cards. Can we call them 'archetype cards' or 'archetype-specific cards'. Parasitic is a word used to discribe things like the Energy mechanic from Kaladesh, not for individual cards.
Black drafters at the table undervalued removal spells and blue drafters at the table undervalued card advantage/selection. If you can keep control over the board and recycle all your removal and carddraw, you can do whatever you want.
I want to do what Hasted here says. Actually compare my cube with cubes that have a lot of overlap in cards, not just format and cube size. My themes are different from other cubes. This system tells me that it's weird that I don't run Thunderclap Wyvern, while flyers just isn't a supported theme in my cube.
I can't find this feature. Can you explain where I can find it?
edit: I found this (http://www.cubetutor.com/comparecubes/132849/494) but this does not compare my cube to similar ones, just to 'the average' 360 card peasant cube. Feels pretty pointless
Ok, so I know this thread is pretty dead, but I have a nice Elixir of Immortality story. When drafting my cube with friends, one friend thought to himself: I'll just draft good control cards, and maybe I'll pick a finisher later. Once he got passed Elixir he started to grin. He ended up with counterspells, removal, two creatures (Man-o'-War and Dinrova Horror) and the Elixir. He killed and countered all his opponents creatures and activated Elixir like 5 times per game on average. After the draft I found out that the other drafters have been picking synergy cards over interaction, so all the interaction in Black and Blue ended up with the control player.
All the options you mentioned can bee done. If you don't want to buy extra cards, the best option really depends on the cards you have. If you are ok with buying more cards (specific cards for the cube you're building) you should go with whatever you think would be the most fun.
EDIT: sorry fixed the cardnames
This is a great argument. I disagree with how you word the first sentence. 'Feel bads' aren't fun, and you shouldn't strive for them. Parasitic cards however, are a great test for your players. If a player has to pick between a parasitic card with potentially higher upside and a good less parasitic card, I think that choice is more interesting than choosing between Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter. Half of my archetypes in colorcombinations involving white involve tokens, so a card like Intangible Virtue makes a player ask themself: 'am I a real tokens deck or just a general go-wide aggro deck' or 'do I really need to win through combat with tokens or can I just get by on Blood Artist effects'. To really make draft choices matter, the card pool must be diverse. My archetype cards are not parasitic for the most part, but every color has a few parasitic cards. These parasitic cards fit into well supported themes, and sometimes in various different color combinations.
Edit: Flametongue Kavu and Muldrifter are in my cube though, I also like the staples, but a cube shouldn't be just the staples and the next best unsituational cards after that, in my opinion.
By that definition, I think it's not fun at all to build a cube without parasitic cards. Parasitic cards are harder to evaluate, since you'll have to take into consideration what synergies you have and are hoping to pick up later in the draft, more so with cards that are just good regardless. I don't want my drafts turning into 'pick the best cards and win'.
EDIT: I dislike the term 'parasitic' for these cards. Can we call them 'archetype cards' or 'archetype-specific cards'. Parasitic is a word used to discribe things like the Energy mechanic from Kaladesh, not for individual cards.
edit: I found this (http://www.cubetutor.com/comparecubes/132849/494) but this does not compare my cube to similar ones, just to 'the average' 360 card peasant cube. Feels pretty pointless