You don't even run Exalted Angel? She's good enough for 360 powered, I'd definitely play her at 360 unpowered.
Nope. It wasn't as though it was ever successfully hidden anyway, and I would only be willing to sink the mana into it if there was a way to protect it. It's a very swingy card, and there are so many great cards at both the 3 and 4 slot that I just don't think it's needed anymore in a 360. The cincher is that it just allows me to clear the morph mechanic out of the cube entirely, which makes it a tad easier for newer players.
3 + 4 is just wayyy to much to be paying for this body. I think the body itself is just slightly better than Hero of Bladehold, and at 4 Mana alone it'd be worse than basically every 4CC white spell I run besides Ajani.
Have you thought about cutting a creature instead of BSZ? I may be in the minority here, but I think BSZ is better or more essential than these cards in your cube > 2CMC: Liliana's Specter, Tombstalker, Phyrexian Arena, maybe even Nekrataal or Kokusho.
Pushing the hybrids into a single color feels like an exercise in symantics to fit color balance -- like classifying them with a mono-color errata without the errata. It's like having the peace of mind knowing your cube is balanced... without it really being balanced.
The truth is that your cube either has all its hybrid cards balanced (along with off color flashback, kicker, and any other card that requires an off-color activation for that matter) or your accept the fact that your cube isn't truly balanced.
People should just add the few of these cards as they want and label their cubes as 99% balanced or 98% balanced or whatever; be happy about it and never give it another thought. They should do this not because they didn't put enough effort into getting it perfectly balanced, but because the pool of existing Magic cards just happens to be the way it is.
Anyway...
The truth is no cube is truly "balanced." Some colors will always be stronger than others and some color combinations will be stronger than others and some archetypes will be stronger than others. Many cubers on this forum subscribe to the "be OCD or your cube is a mishmash" ideology, when in practice it may be the OCD types who have a truly imbalanced cubes and the cubers who mishmash a bit that have a more balanced cube. Let's make it clear that numerical symmetry does not equate to balance. If you want to wear that badge proudly, you can label your cube 100% numerically symmetrical (tongue-in-cheek of course).
---
As to the article:
I think the draftability of the various guild cards needs to be taken into consideration. It's well and all to expand the multicolor section or to reclassify the individual cards, but the end all be all is the drafting experience. It's clear that some cards will draft differently from others. Dreadbore, for example, will go in nearly every RB deck and the fact that it's so widely playable will make up in part for the fact that it's gold. Same with cards like Maelstrom Pulse, Qasali Pridemage, etc. If you're in that color, you'll play them. So those cards should not be ending up as "dregs", right? Or is it the other way around? That people aren't really looking for "roleplayer" gold cards but instead are drafting gold cards only when theyre megabombs, so they're willing to splash into those colors? I actually don't know the answer to this question, but its certainly relevant for designing any multicolor section, or even in deciding how to slot different hybrid cards into different sections.
I don't think a debate over the value of Stormfront Pegasus is influenced by subjective perspectives when there are objective facts available. It's pretty demonstrable that an early beater with evasion will statistically do way more damage to a player than more expensive or weaker or non-evasive creatures.
It completely is because if you might not care at all about the statistical amount of damage that the early beater will do. My point is that people are looking for different experiences when they build their cubes, so what might seem objectively better to you from one frame of view doesn't necessarily count very highly in other frames of view.
I don't agree. I think it's one of green's best and most important cards. I think it's quite uncuttable. Even if you have other creatures out, every deck cares about being able to attack with an extra 3/3. Just because it's not a 6/6 doesn't mean it's not relevant. A 3/3 trample is always relevant at every stage of the game.
Not if you need to kill a Mother of Runes on turn 1.
Well the "Rebel Cube" I'm thinking of is a bit more top-heavy than most of the cubes here. It's not surprising that white aggro might not work out quite the same way as it does here. But I suppose that they enjoy more grindy, midrange-control games, so for them, rebelizing white is a good way of making WW more playable without having to compromise the midrangeyness of those cubes.
Keep in mind that "works" and "doesn't work" are subjective terms. For some people, having to draft stormfront pegasus is an example of "doesn't work," because they hate the idea of having to pick up such a filler card in cube. Others are perfectly fine with it, and even encourage it. If you're in the former camp, then rebelizing the cube probably works for you. If you're in the latter, there's no need. I think people in both camps are being too dismissive of each other's opinions, sometimes in a very condescending way.
I don't really see how your proposed changes will fix your green, to be honest. You're cutting not-that-exciting cards to put in not-that-exciting cards. Land D is still basically 1-for-1 unless you've got critical mass, then it becomes more than the sum of its parts. Harmonize is pretty ho-hum by a lot of measures, unless you have something that you look forward to drawing into. Oracle I think is a good add, because even thought it's "just ramp" it gives you the ability to really break open a game. Stunted Growth is a good addition because it can be unfair at the right times. Edge of Autumn is yet another ramp spell, but I think you have to really ask yourself what are you ramping into that's so exciting?
Green isn't fabulous but it gets the job done in my cube. Mayor of Avabruk is definitely a card to look into. I know people are down on Ambush Viper but I actually think it's serviceable. One of my favorite archetypes to play is white-green faster midrange. I run all the mana elves I can but stop the curve at 4 or 5, and run maybe 14-15 lands. I suppose it's not that exciting, but maybe that's just green's identity: boring but serviceable.
You know, just to be candid, a lot of the cards in your green spell section just look...boring. I'm especially talking about that block of cards that is:
Naturalize
Beast Within
Cultivate
Krosan Grip
Call of the Herd
One of the most boring things in cube, in my opinion, are straight one-for-ones, especially when they are utility cards. Who really feels excited when you Krosan Grip something? Doesn't it feel like much more of a victory when you GSZ for a Orangutan? Maybe that's what I like about playing green sometimes; I just get giddy when thinking about the surfeit of unfair card advantage I'm about to unleash on my french vanilla playing opponent.
That's part of what I like about the idea of Yeva (even though I haven't gotten testing in). She might not be great on her own but she offers the potential for blowing out your opponent, in a much more interesting way than Beast Withining them, or even gliding through their black defenses with Colossus.
I'm getting into ramblezone now, but whenever I see someone drafting UG ramp on the modo cube I just shut it off. The only entertaining one I've seen is the Genesis Wave one (I'm sure there are some good Upheaval ones as well). That's because Genesis Wave can be a very unfair card, even though it's not very good.
Anyway, I've gotten a bit off track, so let me end with the cards that make want to go into green: Garruk Relentless by far, then Plow Under, Acidic Slime, Birds/Noble.
That's why I like to support things like Blink, Tokens, Artifact.dec and Reanimator. All of those cards are good even if they're only partially developed during the draft, and if you come up short, the holes can be filled with generic goodstuff and the deck can still win drafts. Storm ...doesn't do that really. If you come up short with Storm, you need to get lucky or you just get rolled over.
Well again, I run many of these same mini-archetypes as well, but I think the point still stands. There is a danger to over-committing cube slots to any archetype, whether it be blink, artifact, reanimator, whatever. If you over-commit, you'll probably have to gut some vital aspect of the color (most likely aggro). So, as in all things, there must be balance.
Some things balance more easily than others. As you said, Storm cards generally don't mesh up well with other cube cards we run (besides ramp). Tribal meshes up with aggro but not with control. And they're both more linear than strategies like tokens, which can often just be a goodstuff.dec.
I'm speaking in generalities here, not about any one person's cube, so I can address OP's question.
I don't do heavy archetype support, and I mainly winston, so take my advice with a grain of salt:
As in everything cube-wise, everything is a trade-off. If you bump up storm or tribal support, what are you going to cut for it? The problem is that very few of the cards that are good for storm are good for aggro, for example. If you cut aggro support, then you're not going to see that theater of deck as much. It might lead to control or even storm decks dominating every draft. If you cut the ramp or control cards instead, then the storm support will be much weaker.
Another consideration if you put too much emphasis on archetype in the cube is that you may find that strategies become too linear, especially if the archetypes don't overlap each other that well. That's one thing I noticed when watching people try to draft storm on MTGO: they're successful only if they go into it right at the beginning, and then it becomes a game of let's hope we can pick up all the appropriate storm pieces. It's not necessarily a negative thing, but I personally think that draft environments are a bit less fun when people have to get heavily cabined into draft archetypes right from the beginning.
No, you don't have to edit much or re-record the audio. In fact, it's better if you just speed up the existing audio along with the rest of the video. I guarantee you that most people will be able to follow what you are saying even at 1.5 speed.
I offer my experience as someone who had to watch bar lectures while studying for the bar this summer - me and most of my friends would watch the videos at 2x-3x speed. It's easy to do because most people can process speech much more quickly than people can figure out what to say. Sometimes, it's even easier to follow at a higher speed than a lower one, simply because you don't get too bored.
Give it a shot. Rewatch your own videos in VLC player sped up. I think you'll be surprised at how easy it is to follow still.
Is it possible to speed up the videos before you upload them? I'm sure they'd still be more than watchable at 1.3x-1.5x speed, but it'd make it more efficient for viewers. I'm actually much more likely to watch a cube video if its a bit sped up -- I know there's external software that allows me to do it on my end, but maybe you could try it as an experiment to see whether your viewers prefer it.
My requirement to remove Mogg Fanatic: Print something strictly better than Mogg Fanatic. Boom. There. Until I get one, I'm going to cube the Mogg, because it does stuff that no other card like it can do, and I think all the flexibility and versatility of the card is important.
Quoted for posterity, for when they print 10 new red 2/2s for 1.
I think wtwlf can afford to be concise in his reviews because most people on this forum run a cube at least somewhat similar to his and his views are rarely going to be very idiosyncratic. If you like writing about the cube (great!) and run a more idiosyncratic cube (great!) I think you should definitely throw in a heavy dose of your own perspective. If I just want a quick run-by of the MTGS general consensus, I can read wtwlf's or any of the other 20 set reviews that will be sure to crop up soon. I clicked this link specifically because I knew that your philosophy deviates significantly from the norm here.
Nope. It wasn't as though it was ever successfully hidden anyway, and I would only be willing to sink the mana into it if there was a way to protect it. It's a very swingy card, and there are so many great cards at both the 3 and 4 slot that I just don't think it's needed anymore in a 360. The cincher is that it just allows me to clear the morph mechanic out of the cube entirely, which makes it a tad easier for newer players.
3 + 4 is just wayyy to much to be paying for this body. I think the body itself is just slightly better than Hero of Bladehold, and at 4 Mana alone it'd be worse than basically every 4CC white spell I run besides Ajani.
The truth is no cube is truly "balanced." Some colors will always be stronger than others and some color combinations will be stronger than others and some archetypes will be stronger than others. Many cubers on this forum subscribe to the "be OCD or your cube is a mishmash" ideology, when in practice it may be the OCD types who have a truly imbalanced cubes and the cubers who mishmash a bit that have a more balanced cube. Let's make it clear that numerical symmetry does not equate to balance. If you want to wear that badge proudly, you can label your cube 100% numerically symmetrical (tongue-in-cheek of course).
---
As to the article:
I think the draftability of the various guild cards needs to be taken into consideration. It's well and all to expand the multicolor section or to reclassify the individual cards, but the end all be all is the drafting experience. It's clear that some cards will draft differently from others. Dreadbore, for example, will go in nearly every RB deck and the fact that it's so widely playable will make up in part for the fact that it's gold. Same with cards like Maelstrom Pulse, Qasali Pridemage, etc. If you're in that color, you'll play them. So those cards should not be ending up as "dregs", right? Or is it the other way around? That people aren't really looking for "roleplayer" gold cards but instead are drafting gold cards only when theyre megabombs, so they're willing to splash into those colors? I actually don't know the answer to this question, but its certainly relevant for designing any multicolor section, or even in deciding how to slot different hybrid cards into different sections.
It completely is because if you might not care at all about the statistical amount of damage that the early beater will do. My point is that people are looking for different experiences when they build their cubes, so what might seem objectively better to you from one frame of view doesn't necessarily count very highly in other frames of view.
Not if you need to kill a Mother of Runes on turn 1.
Keep in mind that "works" and "doesn't work" are subjective terms. For some people, having to draft stormfront pegasus is an example of "doesn't work," because they hate the idea of having to pick up such a filler card in cube. Others are perfectly fine with it, and even encourage it. If you're in the former camp, then rebelizing the cube probably works for you. If you're in the latter, there's no need. I think people in both camps are being too dismissive of each other's opinions, sometimes in a very condescending way.
You know, just to be candid, a lot of the cards in your green spell section just look...boring. I'm especially talking about that block of cards that is:
Naturalize
Beast Within
Cultivate
Krosan Grip
Call of the Herd
One of the most boring things in cube, in my opinion, are straight one-for-ones, especially when they are utility cards. Who really feels excited when you Krosan Grip something? Doesn't it feel like much more of a victory when you GSZ for a Orangutan? Maybe that's what I like about playing green sometimes; I just get giddy when thinking about the surfeit of unfair card advantage I'm about to unleash on my french vanilla playing opponent.
That's part of what I like about the idea of Yeva (even though I haven't gotten testing in). She might not be great on her own but she offers the potential for blowing out your opponent, in a much more interesting way than Beast Withining them, or even gliding through their black defenses with Colossus.
I'm getting into ramblezone now, but whenever I see someone drafting UG ramp on the modo cube I just shut it off. The only entertaining one I've seen is the Genesis Wave one (I'm sure there are some good Upheaval ones as well). That's because Genesis Wave can be a very unfair card, even though it's not very good.
Anyway, I've gotten a bit off track, so let me end with the cards that make want to go into green: Garruk Relentless by far, then Plow Under, Acidic Slime, Birds/Noble.
Well again, I run many of these same mini-archetypes as well, but I think the point still stands. There is a danger to over-committing cube slots to any archetype, whether it be blink, artifact, reanimator, whatever. If you over-commit, you'll probably have to gut some vital aspect of the color (most likely aggro). So, as in all things, there must be balance.
Some things balance more easily than others. As you said, Storm cards generally don't mesh up well with other cube cards we run (besides ramp). Tribal meshes up with aggro but not with control. And they're both more linear than strategies like tokens, which can often just be a goodstuff.dec.
I'm speaking in generalities here, not about any one person's cube, so I can address OP's question.
As in everything cube-wise, everything is a trade-off. If you bump up storm or tribal support, what are you going to cut for it? The problem is that very few of the cards that are good for storm are good for aggro, for example. If you cut aggro support, then you're not going to see that theater of deck as much. It might lead to control or even storm decks dominating every draft. If you cut the ramp or control cards instead, then the storm support will be much weaker.
Another consideration if you put too much emphasis on archetype in the cube is that you may find that strategies become too linear, especially if the archetypes don't overlap each other that well. That's one thing I noticed when watching people try to draft storm on MTGO: they're successful only if they go into it right at the beginning, and then it becomes a game of let's hope we can pick up all the appropriate storm pieces. It's not necessarily a negative thing, but I personally think that draft environments are a bit less fun when people have to get heavily cabined into draft archetypes right from the beginning.
I offer my experience as someone who had to watch bar lectures while studying for the bar this summer - me and most of my friends would watch the videos at 2x-3x speed. It's easy to do because most people can process speech much more quickly than people can figure out what to say. Sometimes, it's even easier to follow at a higher speed than a lower one, simply because you don't get too bored.
Give it a shot. Rewatch your own videos in VLC player sped up. I think you'll be surprised at how easy it is to follow still.
Is it possible to speed up the videos before you upload them? I'm sure they'd still be more than watchable at 1.3x-1.5x speed, but it'd make it more efficient for viewers. I'm actually much more likely to watch a cube video if its a bit sped up -- I know there's external software that allows me to do it on my end, but maybe you could try it as an experiment to see whether your viewers prefer it.
Quoted for posterity, for when they print 10 new red 2/2s for 1.