1. Punishing combat tricks and double-blocks
2. Saving your own stuff from removal / re-buying ETB effects
3. Making your opponent spend mana to re-cast something
Lathnu Sailback/fire elemental are worse, sure, but I'm not convinced they're 'bad'.
Take into custody has a couple of advantages over unsummon:
1. Prevents two turns of blocking/attacking, not one.
2. Doesn't retrigger ETB effects.
That's enough for the two effects to be mostly equivalent.
Aether Inspector: Borderline. It's expensive and not overly impressive, but swarm-heavy cubes may use it for the bodies it creates and the synergy with convoke because of vigilance.
This card really needs flying (or one more toughness) to be playable; it's bad
Again, comparison with other removal spells puts this at borderline.
* Implement of Malice: Borderline. 2 cards of advantage for 3 mana divided over 2 turns is not bad, but black has better cards for card advantage, namely those that come with bodies on its own.
Yes, but there's little difference between paying two and paying three for a falter, and being able to main deck artifact removal can be quite good - I'd put this at borderline.
Being strictly better than fire elemental makes this card borderline.
Druid of the Cowl: Bad. To block with this, you should forgo taking advantage of its mana ability, except for the few tricks that green plays on the defensive.
This is borderline, like the other two mana elves. 1/3 is more awkward than 2/1 or 0/4, but not enough to drop it down a level.
* Verdant Automaton: Borderline. Mana sink without protection that will be very fragile as a win condition. It doesn't even have trample.
This card is terrible - it takes several activations to be big enough to matter, at which point you've lost huge amounts of tempo. It's generally worse than a vanilla 3/4 for four, which is definitely not playable.
No disagreement here; it's just important we don't dismiss cards with improvise out of hand and miss something that's playable even if you never manage to discount its cost.
Sweatworks brawler is interesting as a middle ground between boggart brute and wayward giant. It's probably not as good as either of those cards (because improvise basically only works with equipment), but still seems ok.
How is this project going? Have you had the chance to try it out on any newbies yet?
Frustratingly, no, not yet. I've been chatting with people offline about this as well, so hopefully next weekend I'll get a chance to get some actual play in.
I had a thought relating to a previous comment I made about ending games: Beginners are notoriously unwilling to attack, or should I say, to recognize when it is profitable for them to attack in a complicated board state. This could perhaps interfere with the ability of large creatures that are mainly "large" to end games...
Apparently, playtest with non R&D people at WotC during ROE development showed that people would not attack with their Ulamog's Crusher. So they added the "must attack" clause to it.
This is potentially an issue (and one of the reasons for flameborn hellion over the strictly better tenement crasher (the other reason being flavour). I might need to go and add another overrun style effect, probably to green.
i dont think a pauper cube is the best environment teaching drafts beyond the basic concept of picking cards from packs and building a deck.
youre missing bombs and youre missing multiples. limited has very good design these days with synergies and archetypes (and flavor)
so id build a cube like innistrad limited with 3x commons, 2x uncommons 1x rare distribution or just build precon packs with standard rarity distribution. this way you get a better understanding of open archetypes, signals, etc.
I mostly disagree. You're correct in that a cube does not exactly replicate a draft format, both by not including duplicates and by generally having a flatter power curve. With this cube, I've tried to address the power curve part, hence cards like ancient carp sitting alongside cards like prescient chimera. One of those is definitely a bomb compared to the other. I don't believe that basic concepts like archetypes and basic signalling can't be covered by a cube.
that said, watering down complexity and difficulty doesnt help new players at all. you dont learn biking on a trike.
That is a very poor analogy. Reduced complexity and difficulty clearly does help new players; if you're looking to pick up a sense of how a draft works, being able to at least understand what all the cards do with a quick glance is going to make that much easier. And the board states generated by a cube like this are only slightly less complex than in a standard draft (mostly because there's fewer on-board tricks).
Ok, I've gone ahead and swapped in the OotG cards, and also made a couple of other changes based on things upthread. I'm hoping to get some live testing over the next couple of weeks; I'll post the results of that once it's happened.
I'm still interested in card suggestions for moving this from pauper to peasant, if anyone wants to have a go at making suggestions?
Hmm. Looking through Oath of the Gatewatch, which wasn't fully spoiled when I started this cube, there's a couple of changes I think would be good; let me know what you think.
Of these, the third is probably the only controversial one; I'd like to show that menance is not just in red, and also mark of the vampire is an absurdly swingy card.
Why is Ethereal Armor in the cube? There are so few enchantments besides this to make it matter. And then there is the slight complexity tied to the question of knowing whether it counts itself or not. I'd almost rather just run something simple like Armor of faith if you want a simple 1-drop white aura, or perhaps Glaring Aegis if you aren't scared of the word count. Perhaps the better option is to have a simple but impactful aura (maybe Armored Ascension) at a slightly higher casting cost.
Hmm. Ethereal Armor was originally put in when there were a few more enchantments running around; there's probably not quite enough now to justify it (although +1/+1 and first strike is still reasonable for one mana). I've just realised there aren't any non-aura enchantments in the cube - I'll see if I can add two or three. If not, then I'll swap the armor out for probably glaring aegis (there's no complexity concern here, given which card the aegis is replacing).
Edit: So, it looks like there aren't enough suitable enchantments, so glaring aegis it is.
A lot of the cards I mentioned are of course my opinion and not things I would categorically insist on. Just going to say some more things about the cards which are didactically close to my heart.
Zhur-Taa Swine: You have a certain amount of complexity you can confront new Magic players with. The gold cards are a really good choice for that, it makes them stand out and it makes them exciting to play with. Compare this to Traitorous Instinct vs Act of Treason. Instinct's added complexity adds nothing of note, it's not going to make it stand out in any way, but it asks that your players keep another clause in mind (+2/+0) when the card itself is already quite complex. So Instinct is a waste of your complexity budget. As for reminder text not mattering, you basically cannot give new players enough crutches to learn the rules, so having it there can only be a good thing. If they already know what haste does, the reminder text is at worst irrelevant and at best it lets them feel good, because they recognize they don't need it anymore. If they ever have to think about what haste is, they can simply look it up and don't need to ask you again. This is particularly helpful if you're playing actual games already and they would have to show you their hand or give away that they have haste creatures. Doesn't feel great.
You make good points here. I feel the swine is a big enough jump in complexity to cause problems, partly because it breaks the "only evergreen keywords" rule, and partly because bloodrush is actually fairly complicated by the standards of modern keywords. I'm leaning towards branching bolt as a replacement for the rhox; other options include ruination wurm, which is impressive even if it's not complicated, and colossal might. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
How are new players going to learn bad cards are bad if they don't get to play with them? I'd argue you don't want to turn your cube into a practical test for card evaluation, because you don't want to give your new players more rope to hang themselves with than they'll alrady have. Magic can be hard to learn anyway and drafting is another layer of complexity, so you want to make sure your players can pick better or worse cards, but that they're not going to be left out in the cold no matter what. That's just setting them up for a bad experience.
Compare the M15 starter decks which stores get to hand out for free to new players. The white deck has cards like Soulmender, but it also gives the player Ajani's Pridemate. So while Soulmender is bad, it actually has a point in this deck, it lets players discover synergy. Suntail Hawk has no such justification, just as Fugitive Wizard has no justification in the blue starter deck.
I don't think new players need to learn about hill giants by playing with them. I'd consider Wind Drake or Nimbus of the Isles to be some of those classic designs that I would want new players to play with, by contrast.
There's a big difference between suntail hawk, which wears pants well but doesn't do quite enough on its own, and a card like fugitive wizard which is never worth playing. The only card currently in the cube that is actually unplayable is ornithopter, with zephyr sprite and raging goblin being the next two worst cards - both the sprite and goblin are marginal, but neither is so bad that they will never make the cut in a more experienced player's deck. As I said upthread, I do wish red had better options for one drops. I might also swap the sprite out for caller of gales or kraken hatchling.
I'd cut Smite the Monstrous for Raise the Alarm. Keeping cards for sideboards in a 180 cube is not appealing to me. I'm not sure you need to be worried about the power level of Lone Missionary. I'd prefer it over Sunstriker for instance, because it instantly rewards you for playing it and new players absolutely love gaining life that way. It's an often repeated stereotype, but it's totally true.
That seems a reasonable swap; done. The other thing keeping the missionary out is that the cube already includes arashin cleric, which is the less absurd version of the same card.
Foresee: It's a logical extension of divination if you're a Magic player already. If you're dealing with players who are still struggling with the basic rules of the game, they won't see that. You're asking that they 0) read all that text at all and not just skip it to find out what the card does later. Then you're asking that they understand 1) how scry works 2) that scry 4 is good and not just an annyoing ability you have to read lots of reminder text for, 3) that they recognize Foresee's scry is interacting with the draw two at all, 4) that scry 4 with draw 2 is much better than either of those abilities alone and 5) that they pick up 4 (!) cards and actually pick which they want to keep. Compare to the thought process I described for Compulsive Research. There is a very good reason New World Order is a thing, and Foresee, no matter how much you or I like it as a card, is among its best advertisements.
To emphasize this point, I play my Peasant cube with a lot of players who are kitchen table players. They know the rules but they are either new to the game or don't get to play very often. So I play Anticipate instead of Impulse. Three is just enough for choice and just enough to not overwhelm, it's a number the human brain can instantly recognize, everything above it you actually have to start counting and you start generating unnecessary cognitive load. Avoiding this is good in an environment that is already asking quite a lot from the players I usually play with. Plus, losing 1 card is a hit, but Anticipate is still perfectly playable. In a teaching cube, I'd pick literally any other commonly played common draw spell over Foresee without even thinking about it.
Now, why am I suggesting a scry card like Gods Willing if scry is so hard? Gods Willing does something cool and then you also get to scry as a bonus afterwards. It's a two step card and the steps are not interacting, they just add up. So they get to save their creature (which is obviously awesome, so they already want this card), and only then do they get to pick up a single card (!) and decide if they want to draw that or not. See how much less of your complexity budget you have to spend for a card like Gods Willing? Protection is easy to explain, because it makes intuitive sense. Scry 4 in combination with draw 2 does not. Gods Willing gives them an effect they want anyway and then rewards them by giving them agency to shape their draw in a form that is easy to deal with. Foresee does not.
I am not convinced that foresee is that much more complicated than divination (or read the bones, which is also in the cube). I'll see how it goes in actual play; if it looks like it's causing trouble I'll swap it out for sift. I also disagree about protection making intuitive sense - why does it make enchantments fall off or prevent blocking? I'm still looking at adding protection (and regeneration and indestructible), but I don't consider it a simple mechanic. It's worth noting that scry 1 is much better for new players than 2+, mostly because there's no need to decide on order; it's a pity that most of the older scry cards are scry 2.
(Aside: foresee has been printed at common in a post-NWO core set.)
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This thread has been great for giving me things to think about. A question for any peasant players reading this - if you were to change this cube to add uncommons, what would you add first, and why?
Are you going to teach Magic or are you going to teach drafting? If you have players who are reasonably at home with the game but have never drafted before, I think you may up the complexity a fair bit with no worry. Just allow players sufficient time to read the cards and make a pick. Don't go and throw out all the vanillas though, as they do a good job in making it easier to (reasonably) quickly get an overview of a pack and compare cards against eachother.
Don't be afraid of traps. Unless there are too many of them, they can be a good teaching tool. If a player picks a card they think is good and it turns out not to be, that's fine. If a good chunk of their deck is like that, it may detract too much from their experience.
Do you have enough ways to end the game? Perhaps you should throw in one creature for each colour at high cost that is capable of ending board stalls/winning the game in those situations? Like maybe, Crimson Hellkite, or perhaps Bounty Hunter?
How are you going to make the packs? If completely random and a size of 7 (like on your cubetutor), I don't like the variance. Too many packs will just be void of a certain colour which will lead to dead picks. It's a bit of work, but if you can make sure that each pack has at least one card of each colour then the draft has a greater chance to be enjoyable I feel. (Case in point: I just drafted your deck with 7 cards/pack. I started drafting green and black but then saw very few cards in those colours for a pack or two. I figured it was being drafted by somebody else, but then in the next pack I had two black and two green cards that were all passable. Taking one, the remainder wheeled ...)
The intent is to use drafting to teach magic, if that makes sense. So there's an assumption that the players know how to play - they've got the basics, even if it's only from toying about with into decks, but they haven't necessarily done anything else. That said, I'm keeping an eye on the complexity, as it would be nice to be able to bump it up slightly.
Ways to end the game - I'm hoping the existing high-cost cards are sufficient for this. This is one area where moving from pauper to peasant would make things easier.
Packs: I've been using 4x11 card packs. These wheel slightly more than normal, but I feel that's actually a good thing with less experienced players, as it means they're evaluating fewer packs than the 'correct' 8x7 cards. 11 cards is also enough to generally ensure that packs contain cards of each colour.
I've taught people to play Magic with my pauper cube before. What I found was best was not to do anything resembling a regular limited format, but instead to make up lists of preconstructed "intro decks" that interact well against one another. That way, you can get decks that are fun and work well while also excluding cards that may be too complex (or use old templating that's long since been changed, etc.) for someone just learning Magic. The downside to this approach is that it takes a decent amount of time to design these sort of intro decks so that the decks are both balanced against one another and fun to play.
I'd like this cube to be able to do this also, but I think that drafting is where cubes really shine. Most of the basic concepts behind drafting extend into other formats (card quality, mana curves, focus, et cetera), and drfating is simple enough to pick up that, excepting absolute beginners, any new player should be able to participate.
Having said that, what sort of decks would you look at? Something like n00b1n8R's draft deck, or more tailored?
Vampire Interloper instead of Daggerdrome Imp. Pharika's Cure instead of Essence Drain.
I considered the vampire and decided against it mostly because of how odd it felt to include a small flying vampire alongside a large jumping vampire. Plus the imp is one of the few choices for lifelink in black. Essence drain is clearly a worse card than Pharika's Cure, but that's quite intentional. Plus Essence drain deals with more creatures in the cube, which helps distinguish it from debilitating injury and defeat.
Traitorous Instinct should just be Act of Treason for simplicity's sake and the reminder text in brackets. Raging Goblin is just a bad card. Goblin Arsonist if you want a red one-drop.
I'm not bothered either way with traitorous instinct and act of treason. That said, there's enough haste running around that its reminder text is unlikely to matter all that much. Speaking of haste, raging goblin is, as you said, a bad card. Sadly, that description applies to all of red's one drops.
Invasive Species is fairly pointless in a cube like this. It asks for basic understanding of etb effects and how they're worth replaying and then it doesn't get many worthwhile targets. It's also a typical blue effect. If you want a card like Lair Delve, just play Commune with the Gods or Mulch. Lair Delve is terrible and too wordy. Cloudcrown Oak is a really good choice.
For invasive species, I'm not convinced that it is 'pointless'. It's possible that there aren't enough good targets for it, although every colour has at least one etb. It's also as much a green effect as a blue one. With lair delve, you're right that it's not a particularly good card; the intent here is to show that green does card draw also, but that it doesn't do things quite like blue. I'll consider mulch as a replacement, although I'd prefer something more likely to produce multiple cards.
Zhur-Taa Swine for the Gruul slot. Ornithopter is beyond terrible. Hexplate Golem out-greens Green. Vial of Dragonfire and Traveler's Amulet are good and fairly easy to understand artifacts.
Why Zhur-Taa swine? I quite like the swine, but it introduces another, non-evergreen mechanic. You're quite right about ornithopter - it's by far the worst card in the cube; this is intentional, but there's no particular reason it needs to stay in the cube. Hexplate golem should possibly be something a bit smaller, possibly phyrexian hulk, although that card's most recent printing is uncommon.
Might want to set the default draft settings to reflect your design goals, at the moment it's 7 card packs, 3 packs, 8 players
I feel like a card like Castigate, while skill testing, is a pretty terrible card, especially in a format as homogeneous as this one is meant to be. Seems like a waste of a guild slot.
I drafted a UB control deck (because I always draft UB control decks). It felt more or less like drafting a generic core set. I also got the authentic feeling of disgust I get from putting cards like Bane Alley Blackguard in my deck, so yeah very "booster draft"-ey haha
Thanks for the feedback, and taking time to test a draft (it looks like I can't fix the default profile without subscribing, sadly). Regarding castigate, it felt like the most of interesting of a bad lot, unless I want to introduce non-evergreen keywords or upkeep triggers.
Teching Magic with a cube is a very cool idea. I started cubing with a Pauper cube and I've used my Pauper Cube to teach some friends Magic since switching to Peasant a few months ago. I didn't change the cards before I did that, which was a mistake and I learned a thing or two about teaching with a Pauper cube and now I have some strong opinions on how to do that, so don't take the feedback below too hard. I've written way too much and in the interest of keeping it short it may sound unintentionally harsh in places. A Modern Pauper Cube is a great basis for a teaching Magic in my opinion!
The most important thing: I don't think you should be playing terrible cards like Suntail Hawk, Zephyr Sprite, Peek or Fog, particularly in a cube you want people to teach Magic with. You want to teach good habits, not reinforce bad ideas and support common misevaluations. New players aren't dumb, you don't need to play terrible cards just beause they look less complex, people are going to figure things out.
Of these, zephyr sprite is closest to the cutting block. Suntail hawk and fog are included specifically because they represent basic concepts - players talk about "fog effects" and describe creatures as "suntail hawks" (or as "hill giants", et c.). I feel it's important to have cards that are poor, because otherwise how are new players going to learn that suntail hawk isn't good enough, if they never get to play with it?
Peek is a card that will actually make it into decks. It doesn't normally do enough to bother with, but it's actually pretty playable alongside prowess, which makes it interesting. I'm not especially attached to it, however.
I'd suggest a tapper, which introduces new players to a core white theme and is an actual card. Smite the Monstrous currently hits 12 creatures in this particular cube, isn't great in Pauper in general and ends up being a trap card for inexperienced drafters. Essentially, it kills big guys where there aren't any.
You're right about including a tapper, which is probably Gideon's lawkeeper. With smite the monstrous, I hadn't caught how few targets it has. I feel might still be worth including as a side-board card, however.
You're missing a protection effect, so I suggest playing Gods Willing, which introduces protection as a core white theme and teaches scry.
Protection really needs more than one card if it's going in, as it's fairly complex. Also missing are regeneration and indestructible. I'll need to give more thought to this.
Raise the Alarm should be in there, because the instant speed allows learning about holding up mana for something like Kill Shot and then doing something else with it. It also helps the pump spells, which there are probably too many of. Doomed Traveler and Lone Missionary are also easy to understand and good.
Raise the alarm is currently out because I didn't want to have a second 2 mana token maker (the other is dragon fodder). What would you cut for it? Doomed traveller is currently out for space reasons, and lone missionary for power level.
Foresee strikes me as an odd call. It asks that new players understand the value of scry 4 in combination with draw 2, which is a bit much complexity imo. Compulsive Research is much better for teaching, as drawing three and then being given the choice to discard a land you don't need is far more obviously good. Research also rewards new players for figuring it out, as "draw three, but wait, discard two? Oh but if I can just get rid of a land I get to keep all my cool cards!" is a train of thought that feels good.
I feel foresee is fine - it's a logical extension to divination, plus I just really like it.
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Sadly, I've now run out of time on my lunch break - it takes forever to edit posts on an ipad; I'll respond to the rest of the card suggestions (and to k!) a bit later today.
So, I've been thinking about cubing for a while now, and in want of a project* I decided to have a go at creating a teaching cube. As I see it, the purpose of a teaching cube is to provide newer players with a draft or sealed environment of controlled complexity, where they can learn how to draft, get experience with playing limited formats, and ideally get some exposure to concepts like card quality and pick orders.
My (currently in draft) cube is on cube tutor here: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/45480 - it's 180 cards, so set up for four people, and is currently both modern and pauper, although both of those are up for negotiation.
Anyway, what I'm hoping from this thread is that people might have a look at the cube, and then make either suggestions about its contents or more generally discuss the concept of a teaching cube. I'd also be keen to share some of the de facto rules behind the cube's card choices if anyone is interested.
* my other project being a high-complexity pauper cube with a high than usual number of older cards
Take into custody has a couple of advantages over unsummon:
1. Prevents two turns of blocking/attacking, not one.
2. Doesn't retrigger ETB effects.
That's enough for the two effects to be mostly equivalent.
I mostly disagree. You're correct in that a cube does not exactly replicate a draft format, both by not including duplicates and by generally having a flatter power curve. With this cube, I've tried to address the power curve part, hence cards like ancient carp sitting alongside cards like prescient chimera. One of those is definitely a bomb compared to the other. I don't believe that basic concepts like archetypes and basic signalling can't be covered by a cube.That is a very poor analogy. Reduced complexity and difficulty clearly does help new players; if you're looking to pick up a sense of how a draft works, being able to at least understand what all the cards do with a quick glance is going to make that much easier. And the board states generated by a cube like this are only slightly less complex than in a standard draft (mostly because there's fewer on-board tricks).
I'm still interested in card suggestions for moving this from pauper to peasant, if anyone wants to have a go at making suggestions?
(The other changes are adding blinding mage, ruination wurm, viashino fangtail, and lifespring druid in place of ajani's sunstriker, rhox brute, hill giant, and invasive species.)
Pulse of murasa in, lair delve out
Umara entangler in, plated seastrider out
Untamed hunger in, mark of the vampire out
Of these, the third is probably the only controversial one; I'd like to show that menance is not just in red, and also mark of the vampire is an absurdly swingy card.
Edit: So, it looks like there aren't enough suitable enchantments, so glaring aegis it is.
There's a big difference between suntail hawk, which wears pants well but doesn't do quite enough on its own, and a card like fugitive wizard which is never worth playing. The only card currently in the cube that is actually unplayable is ornithopter, with zephyr sprite and raging goblin being the next two worst cards - both the sprite and goblin are marginal, but neither is so bad that they will never make the cut in a more experienced player's deck. As I said upthread, I do wish red had better options for one drops. I might also swap the sprite out for caller of gales or kraken hatchling.
That seems a reasonable swap; done. The other thing keeping the missionary out is that the cube already includes arashin cleric, which is the less absurd version of the same card.
I am not convinced that foresee is that much more complicated than divination (or read the bones, which is also in the cube). I'll see how it goes in actual play; if it looks like it's causing trouble I'll swap it out for sift. I also disagree about protection making intuitive sense - why does it make enchantments fall off or prevent blocking? I'm still looking at adding protection (and regeneration and indestructible), but I don't consider it a simple mechanic. It's worth noting that scry 1 is much better for new players than 2+, mostly because there's no need to decide on order; it's a pity that most of the older scry cards are scry 2.
(Aside: foresee has been printed at common in a post-NWO core set.)
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This thread has been great for giving me things to think about. A question for any peasant players reading this - if you were to change this cube to add uncommons, what would you add first, and why?
Ways to end the game - I'm hoping the existing high-cost cards are sufficient for this. This is one area where moving from pauper to peasant would make things easier.
Packs: I've been using 4x11 card packs. These wheel slightly more than normal, but I feel that's actually a good thing with less experienced players, as it means they're evaluating fewer packs than the 'correct' 8x7 cards. 11 cards is also enough to generally ensure that packs contain cards of each colour.
Having said that, what sort of decks would you look at? Something like n00b1n8R's draft deck, or more tailored?
I'm not bothered either way with traitorous instinct and act of treason. That said, there's enough haste running around that its reminder text is unlikely to matter all that much. Speaking of haste, raging goblin is, as you said, a bad card. Sadly, that description applies to all of red's one drops.
For invasive species, I'm not convinced that it is 'pointless'. It's possible that there aren't enough good targets for it, although every colour has at least one etb. It's also as much a green effect as a blue one. With lair delve, you're right that it's not a particularly good card; the intent here is to show that green does card draw also, but that it doesn't do things quite like blue. I'll consider mulch as a replacement, although I'd prefer something more likely to produce multiple cards.
Why Zhur-Taa swine? I quite like the swine, but it introduces another, non-evergreen mechanic. You're quite right about ornithopter - it's by far the worst card in the cube; this is intentional, but there's no particular reason it needs to stay in the cube. Hexplate golem should possibly be something a bit smaller, possibly phyrexian hulk, although that card's most recent printing is uncommon.
Thanks for the feedback, and taking time to test a draft (it looks like I can't fix the default profile without subscribing, sadly). Regarding castigate, it felt like the most of interesting of a bad lot, unless I want to introduce non-evergreen keywords or upkeep triggers.
Of these, zephyr sprite is closest to the cutting block. Suntail hawk and fog are included specifically because they represent basic concepts - players talk about "fog effects" and describe creatures as "suntail hawks" (or as "hill giants", et c.). I feel it's important to have cards that are poor, because otherwise how are new players going to learn that suntail hawk isn't good enough, if they never get to play with it?
Peek is a card that will actually make it into decks. It doesn't normally do enough to bother with, but it's actually pretty playable alongside prowess, which makes it interesting. I'm not especially attached to it, however.
You're right about including a tapper, which is probably Gideon's lawkeeper. With smite the monstrous, I hadn't caught how few targets it has. I feel might still be worth including as a side-board card, however.
Protection really needs more than one card if it's going in, as it's fairly complex. Also missing are regeneration and indestructible. I'll need to give more thought to this.
Raise the alarm is currently out because I didn't want to have a second 2 mana token maker (the other is dragon fodder). What would you cut for it? Doomed traveller is currently out for space reasons, and lone missionary for power level.
I feel foresee is fine - it's a logical extension to divination, plus I just really like it.
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Sadly, I've now run out of time on my lunch break - it takes forever to edit posts on an ipad; I'll respond to the rest of the card suggestions (and to k!) a bit later today.
Thanks again all for the feedback!
So, I've been thinking about cubing for a while now, and in want of a project* I decided to have a go at creating a teaching cube. As I see it, the purpose of a teaching cube is to provide newer players with a draft or sealed environment of controlled complexity, where they can learn how to draft, get experience with playing limited formats, and ideally get some exposure to concepts like card quality and pick orders.
My (currently in draft) cube is on cube tutor here: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/45480 - it's 180 cards, so set up for four people, and is currently both modern and pauper, although both of those are up for negotiation.
Anyway, what I'm hoping from this thread is that people might have a look at the cube, and then make either suggestions about its contents or more generally discuss the concept of a teaching cube. I'd also be keen to share some of the de facto rules behind the cube's card choices if anyone is interested.
* my other project being a high-complexity pauper cube with a high than usual number of older cards