|
How does everyone feel about Un-cards? I'm currently using Booster Tutor, Common Courtesy, Symbol Status, and Blast from the Past. Booster Tutor is so fun I'm considering making four custom cards to complete a booster-meddling cycle. I think Symbol Status is too drat much of a bomb, but I suppose that's my fault for using a mishmash of lands. Toy Boat is a good generic guy, but I found Duh just didn't end up worth it my cube.
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2013 23:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
I think Gotcha cards just end up being annoying, while Blast from the Past is hilarious. Booster Tutor is always good. Farewell to Arms is one I like though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2013 23:24
|
|
|
I don't like the feel/flavor of Un- cards, so I don't use them in my cube. But there are certainly some worthwhile ones to include if you decide to go that route (Booster Tutor, Blast From the Past, City of rear end and Gifts Given being at the top of my list). Magical Hacker does stupid things with planeswalkers...
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2013 01:24
|
|
|
I had cheatyface in my cube because I absolutely love the card, and it doesn't exactly break apart the format as a 2/2 flying for 0. Firstpick worthy though. We all had tons of fun with it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2013 10:09
|
|
|
Serious question: How do EDH Cube get togethers not run over like 5 hours?
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2013 14:57
|
|
|
Often you'd only do maybe one "best of 3" before drafting again. Spending over 5 hours cubing is fantastic though 
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2013 15:31
|
|
|
weekly font posted:Serious question: How do EDH Cube get togethers not run over like 5 hours? We pretty much always bullshit a lot, drink good beer & make lunch/dinner for the lot of us though, plus there's a couple people that reaaaaallly have to think about their picks/construction that slow it down a bit. I could only imagine if we were playing an EDH cube, poo poo would take days. edit: on another topic, I'm looking at building another cube, 400-450 count and hoping to introduce a lot of tribal synergy into each two-color combination with some bleed-through into a third. Purely for example, humans in WRg, zombies in BUg or BGu, spirits in UWb, treefolk in GWb, whatever. I'm worried about trying to provide a specific synergy/tribe to each color combo without a) pushing some colors too hard, making them better options than others, b) pushing every theme too hard, making it the only deck available in a given color combo or c) having each theme be weak enough as to be totally ignorable. I mean, I guess that's the problem with trying to balance any cube, but I feel like it'll be a bit more difficult if I'm trying to jam in "<type> matters" cards into every color. So that said, does anyone know of cube lists that do something similar that I should take a look at? I typed a bunch of words about our other cube versus my intentions with this new one, but it seemed largely irrelevant in retrospect. So far I've been idly looking over CHK/BK?, ISD/DKA, both Ravnica cycles, MMA and Lorwyn block a bit for ideas, but there's an overwhelming amount of poo poo to process before I can even nail down specific tribes or themes to look into. Hauki fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jul 27, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2013 17:10
|
|
|
I think the main problem you're going to run into (besides not having enough tribes--WB has had rebels, but I'm pretty sure we haven't had a UG tribe before) is that the cards you're going to want to make the whole thing fit together are cards that haven't been printed yet. The changelings were hugely important to Lorwyn, because they were simple and versatile, not being locked into a single tribe. As you pointed out, a tribal draft can be really linear, and the changelings helped with that... but there's only so many of them. I think rather than out-and-out tribes, I'd look at MMA's way of doing archetypes. DII had a neat sort of cult-based tribal in limited, in that there were a lot of cards that wanted human sacrifice: Skirsdag Flayer, Village Cannibals, and Falkenrath Torturer, or Ravenous Demon in the rare slot. By not being straight-up tribal, it had cards that were more able to slot into other decks: Skirsdag Flayer can at least sac himself, Falkenrath Torturer could just fly without growing if you sacrificed other things, and so forth. Basically, you were rewarded for being the WB deck, but it wasn't required of you. Straight-up tribal tends to lean more on the "requirement" side of things, like Slivers in M14.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2013 22:30
|
|
|
So I've been thinking about making a relatively small "brutal cube" around ridiculous unfair cards. In powered cubes it seems like traditional "aggro" just gets outclassed by inconsiderate decks, and even in un-powered cubes facilitating successful aggro decks can be rough, so I decided a powered cube shouldn't be implementing those pitfalls in the first place. Beaters are still present, but I held them to a high standard. Isamaru is the only one-mana nonred dumb creature, because white decks seem like they can sometimes use a one mana 2/1, and far better than the Black decks. I'd really like some feedback. I'm a terrible monster who liked the MTGO Holiday Cube, so I'd like to try this out.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2013 23:27
|
|
|
KasaiAisu posted:Often you'd only do maybe one "best of 3" before drafting again. Spending over 5 hours cubing is fantastic though No, I get that when you've got a group of 8 and it's round robin or elimination style. But drafting over 100 cards and a multiplayer match is probably five hours for one game of which two people are probably sitting out a third of.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
Death Pits of Crap posted:So I've been thinking about making a relatively small "brutal cube" around ridiculous unfair cards. In powered cubes it seems like traditional "aggro" just gets outclassed by inconsiderate decks, and even in un-powered cubes facilitating successful aggro decks can be rough, so I decided a powered cube shouldn't be implementing those pitfalls in the first place. Aggro Decks with good beaters (wild nacatl, goblin guide, figure of destiny) and good hatebears (Kataki, Thalia, Ethersworn Canonist, Gaddock Teeg, Aven Mindcensor, Linvala, Hokori) really pressure 'unfair decks' pretty hard. Armageddon + Aether Vial is the ultimate weapon an aggro deck has against an otherwise unfair deck. Voice of Resurgence is also a strong tool against 'unfair' decks. Dryad Militant probably makes Yawgmoth's Will (and Kitchen Finks, to an extent). I played a powered cube and the guy that consistently drafted R/g with Tin Street Hooligan, Burning Tree Shaman, and land destruction put up good results pretty consistently. Look at Kataki for example, he just invalidates Moxen. Ethersworn Canonist says "shoot me" or don't combo. Gaddock Teeg shuts off most strong effects. Thalia makes brainstorming awful.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2013 23:38
|
|
|
I'm working on brewing up a small custom card expansion for my peasant cube. I'm looking for a few people to play developer and help me balance/edit what I've got so far, PM me and I'll send you a link to my google doc. I'm also open to being pitched some cards if you want to play at design, but I can't promise anything will make it in. I'll post a public link once I'm closer to proxying them up for real.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 00:43
|
|
|
Aggro is a powerful and important component to add to any cube, powered or otherwise. And having Isamaru as your only aggro beater is much more of a trap than not supporting aggro at all. Either provide aggro with the tools it needs to win, or don't support it at all. The pitfall that the vast majority of cube lists run into is giving them lovely half-assed support. The MTGO cube is a perfect example of where aggro is terrible. And since that's most people's experience with cubing, they assume that aggro sucks in the cube, when that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, having aggro as a dominant theater is critical to prevent control from dominating the cube. Without the threat of aggro decks crushing them, control will beat all the midrange goodstuff decks the cube churns out, and will be uncontested in pretty much every draft.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 01:42
|
|
|
None of the creatures Zoness suggested are what I would describe as "dumb aggro beaters." They're aggro beaters that stifle powerful effects. The only cube archetype that seems able to make good use of multiple vanilla creatures is mono-red. When I've seen Savannah Lions be good, it's been sideboarded in by U/W midrange tempo decks against very slow decks or mono-red, getting in for six to eight damage as an opponent makes mana rocks or blocking X/2's. White decks with multiple two-power one drops just don't seem good to me, but I thought it was a nice inclusion as that specific sideboard option. I'm not totally hot on Linvala as a hate-creature. My understanding of the crazy things that could be expected in power-cube doesn't include activated abilities of creatures except for Griselbrand. What does Linvala stop that isn't a Red creature? Death Pits of Crap fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jul 30, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 02:27
|
|
|
Death Pits of Crap posted:None of the creatures Zoness suggested are what I would describe as "dumb aggro beaters." They're aggro beaters that stifle powerful effects. The only cube archetype that seems able to make good use of multiple vanilla creatures is mono-red. Sounds like you have experiences drafting cubes where aggro is bad. Every aggro/tempo deck created in a cube where aggro is capable of winning drafts wants 2-power 1-drop beaters.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 03:26
|
|
|
Kasonic posted:How does everyone feel about Un-cards? I'm currently using Booster Tutor, Common Courtesy, Symbol Status, and Blast from the Past. Booster Tutor is so fun I'm considering making four custom cards to complete a booster-meddling cycle. I think Symbol Status is too drat much of a bomb, but I suppose that's my fault for using a mishmash of lands. Toy Boat is a good generic guy, but I found Duh just didn't end up worth it my cube. My cube is true* singleton. When you cast Symbol Status, you can be sure that you will be making the maximum number of tokens. And Booster Tutor is always fun. For me, fun = stories. (Also, fun = winning, but that's different). Such as: I cast Booster Tutor EOT. I open an Avacyn pack. Several choices, but I go with Grave Exchange (again, for fun). Untap, cast it. My opponent has 2 mid-range creatures, I have none. Suddenly, I have Griselbrand in my hand and he goes down to one creature; I cast Grisy the following turn and go on to win the game. Is Grave Exchange Cube worthy? No. But Booster Tutor is! *(Ok, my land base is 97% there; just give it a few more sets)
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 04:02
|
|
|
logis posted:My cube is true* singleton. When you cast Symbol Status, you can be sure that you will be making the maximum number of tokens. We generally use Booster Tutor to pull a pack of 15 random cards from undrafted parts of the cube, but if you always draft the whole cube then yeah other boosters would be a thing. Death Pits of Crap posted:None of the creatures Zoness suggested are what I would describe as "dumb aggro beaters." They're aggro beaters that stifle powerful effects. The only cube archetype that seems able to make good use of multiple vanilla creatures is mono-red. Stoneforge Mystic, Goblin Welder, and Grim Lavamancer are all creatures that can give beatdown decks fits (although there are probably better tools to shut them down that don't cost 2WW, I kind of just pulled that from a constructed hatebear list admittedly). I'm going off of WhiteWolf's cube here just as an example, I feel like there are some drops I used to like in aggro that are missing here. I've noticed that people have cut Slith Firewalker and Stingscourger (and Tin Street Hooligan!) a lot, they were potent aggro drops back in my cubing days. I really don't think Mogg Fanatic is particularly impressive any more (but neither is Goblin Arsonist  ). I think Blood Knight and Fulminator Mage should see more inclusion. Rift Bolt would help bring up the number of good burn spells and Banefire still has advantages over some of its other fireball-related counterparts.I like the inclusion of Cursed Scroll and think that Karrgan Dragonrider, Burning-Tree Emissary, and Boggart Ram-Gang would probably help aggro decks a bunch. Just an idea of what red creatures I like playing in a cube.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 07:11
|
|
|
I think most of those cards have been outclassed for a while now. There's only so many cube slots available  . Count up the number of creatures that Fanatic kills in the cube still. It's probably more than you'd first guess. Aggro decks are beastly, and they win about 1/3 of the drafts around here. And efficient 1-2cc beaters are a critical part of their success.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 13:39
|
|
|
Student of war is a good 1 drop in aggro isn't he?
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 14:00
|
|
|
Molybdenum posted:Student of war is a good 1 drop in aggro isn't he? Most definitely. The Student plays really well in WW/x aggro shells, and similarly to Figure, he can provide value into the later stages of the game, where a lot of other aggressive creature options cannot.
|
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 14:05
|
|
|
I finally got around to uploading my cube to that cube tutor site, which seems pretty awesome. It's my first cube and definitely a work in progress. I made it for work, where there's like 5–6 other people who are either old casuals or new to the game. I kind of like having a large cube, because it seems like it'll take longer to get bored with it, but I could probably pare it down a bit. I have been spending an inexcusable amount of time tweaking it recently and probably need to stop. I tried to keep aggro a viable strategy where possible, but nobody has really drafted it yet. I'm not sure if it's because the numbers don't work out, or if most people just hate aggro. Thoughts? Edit: here, have some free High Art proxies, so as to enrich your own cube: 
rinski fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jul 30, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2013 17:31
|
|
|
I gave aggro a try but mostly ended up with this. A bunch of 2 mana 2/1s is not where I wanted to be in aggro deck, but I just never saw anything really worth it. Most of the cards I saw were expensive and splashy with very little to actually help me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 07:24
|
|
|
Jenx posted:I gave aggro a try but mostly ended up with this. A bunch of 2 mana 2/1s is not where I wanted to be in aggro deck, but I just never saw anything really worth it. Most of the cards I saw were expensive and splashy with very little to actually help me. That deck needs aggressive 1-drops. Without them, you lose the early pressure against control; which is the reason to play aggro to begin with. A 40-card deck needs 7 aggressive 1-drops to have a 75% chance of applying pressure from the beginning of the game. That decklist above would be too slow to beat control and too small to combat midrange. And it would lose. That's the problem that average cubes have with aggressive decks, they don't play enough aggro cards to make it competitive in the environment.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 19:36
|
|
|
Well that's my point and that's why I posted this. I just honestly never got to see any good aggressive cards, ending up with this mess. (Obviously I could have just drafted control and I would have been fine, but the idea behind this experiment was to force aggro no matter what) I tried it again, this time going into red as well and I had basically the same result - I never saw any actually good aggro cards, just okay 2 drops that do stuff, sometimes. I literally had no one drops in drafting Naya.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 21:37
|
|
|
Ya, if the cube isn't designed to support aggro (with a good amount of aggressive 1cc cards) it can be a trap, and you can wind up with a terrible pile. Talk to the cube manager before the drafts and find out how well they support aggro. Without a grip of decent aggressive beaters (in your example, no Naya aggro 1-drops?!) you're better off just forcing control. Hatebears are cool and all, but without the rest of the aggressive deck shell available, you wind up just playing a bad midrange deck.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 21:40
|
|
|
Please do a set of power, I'll throw my excellent fakes into the trash and run them forever
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 21:54
|
|
|
I'm not a fan of running aggro in anything that isn't constructed, just because it's not consistent enough. Even if you do get a couple good 1 drops, they need to be in your opening hand to be worthwhile. Midrange dinosaurs or bust 
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 22:04
|
|
|
Is this high one-drop count suggestion true for peasant as well?
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 22:24
|
|
|
rinski posted:I finally got around to uploading my cube to that cube tutor site, which seems pretty awesome. It's my first cube and definitely a work in progress. I made it for work, where there's like 5–6 other people who are either old casuals or new to the game. I kind of like having a large cube, because it seems like it'll take longer to get bored with it, but I could probably pare it down a bit. I have been spending an inexcusable amount of time tweaking it recently and probably need to stop. Out of 844 cards, you have 32 one-drop creatures, many of whom aren't aggressive. Assuming a 6-man draft, that's going to be around 10-one drops in a given draft, who are just as likely to be Enclave Cryptologist or a mana dork as they are to be an Isamaru. I think aggro is something you have to be very careful about supporting, because it doesn't really happen naturally. It really does rely on critical mass more so than control, which only needs to last just long enough for a finisher. I'd suggest cutting down to around 720-- still well over twice your typical draft size, but not so large that Chronomaton and StrongholdnRats are sneaking in. In particular, I'd suggest cutting cards like Timely Reinforcements and Wall of Denial, which exist for the sole purpose of kicking aggro in the dick, and re-evaluating the creatures in colors you want to be aggressive. A red aggro deck probably isn't going to want Tuktuk that much (as much as Tuktuk does own), but he's still there eating up a 3-drop slot that could go to, say, Mindsparker. It also felt like there were more mana rocks than is really necessary, but that might just be me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 22:26
|
|
|
Kasonic posted:Is this high one-drop count suggestion true for peasant as well? Control is generally less ridiculously powerful in peasant since there aren't too many great card draw effects at common. There also aren't that many great 1-drops at common.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 22:27
|
|
|
Been working on my cube for a while. http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/991 Its powered right now and attempting to support storm but that may change if it doesn't work out. Will probably be adding a set of shocklands to help with the fixing as well. Any thoughts?
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2013 22:36
|
|
|
KasaiAisu posted:I'm not a fan of running aggro in anything that isn't constructed, just because it's not consistent enough. Even if you do get a couple good 1 drops, they need to be in your opening hand to be worthwhile. Midrange dinosaurs or bust Aggro is absolutely consistent enough in the cube. Again, if you support it. Most cubes don't support it well enough, so these kinds of opinions are formed.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2013 03:08
|
|
|
This is what I ended up with when I tried to force aggro after taking a hero of bladehold over a better card (can't remember what it was). I went control after being confronted with pack after pack of bad aggro or no aggro cards. http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/13197 I'd really appreciate it if people could tell me whether they feel the colors are fairly well balanced in my cube. I tried to make them each have distinctive strengths. CountFosco fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Aug 1, 2013 |
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2013 21:13
|
|
|
rinski posted:I finally got around to uploading my cube to that cube tutor site, which seems pretty awesome. It's my first cube and definitely a work in progress. I made it for work, where there's like 5–6 other people who are either old casuals or new to the game. I kind of like having a large cube, because it seems like it'll take longer to get bored with it, but I could probably pare it down a bit. I have been spending an inexcusable amount of time tweaking it recently and probably need to stop. Here's my attempt at going aggro: http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/13205 Ended up with a lot of unplayables for the deck style, and some inclusions were a stretch (I didn't really want 2x Armadillo Cloak). So it seems possible, but difficult, and you have to be focused enough on it to ingore most of better cards you're constantly seeing and passing. For an end result it's not too bad though, depending on how strong the control decks tend to be.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2013 21:37
|
|
|
Thanks for the feedback! I'm really new at this and a lot of the things you all pointed out weren't super intuitive to me. Part of it was I built this cube using my friend's as a rubric: apparently he has no support for aggro whatsoever, which skewed my perception. One thing I noticed is I seem to have a hard time correctly judging power levels across cards in cube. For example, the Stronghold Rats. I thought that would be a decent card, because Black has a lot of reanimation and I wanted some discard outlets. Once The Lord of Hats mentioned it, though, it made me think about what other 3-drops that guy is competing with and it became more obvious that he's probably not the best. I also realized I was putting cards in colors where they wouldn't be getting a ton of support. I think Tuk Tuk is a good example, because I think I drafted him once in a RUG Pod deck and thought he was great, but he's clearly going to be worse in most of the decks running red. On that note, is there really a ton for red to be doing besides burn/aggro and Big Red-type stuff?
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
Well, there's vent sentinel. Your cube is just really, really big. I find it hard to draft based on the sheer volume of it. I think tightening it up by making some cuts could do it some good. I think there's a place for larger cubes but I think some streamlining would be good. I think that each color should have an identity or two to shape it. When I went about building my cube I thought of it like this: White: aggro cards / control cards Blue: tempo cards / defensive cards Green: multicolor support / value cards Red: burn / x-spell cards (plus vent sentinel support) Black: removal / card advantage I find that if the internal synergies are general enough, you can find naturally occurring cross-color synergies. I put my aggro focus on one color specifically (white), but each color has a decent amount to make it viable. Here's an example. I started off with a coalition relic, not knowing which way I was going, and the bots passed me some good green fixing card. When I saw a rolling thunder pack two, I knew I had something to ramp into and splash for. Looking Back, I probably built it wrong. I could have brought in a few more powerful splash cards from the sideboard. My fixing was already really good. http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/13283 CountFosco fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Aug 2, 2013 |
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2013 01:20
|
|
|
Do you guys have any opinions on doing "sealed" style vs draft? I feel like you wouldn't need to worry about supporting one specific strategy or another, just making fun synergy with your cards. I just started playing around the start of m13 and am working on constructing a cube now. Do people generally only put one of each card in there? That's what I've been trying to do, while keeping each color basically balanced in the amount of 1-5 drops, and approximately with the creature to spell ratios. I was thinking about dumping 4x of the gates, to help with fixing, is that overkill? I'm sure some of these questions will answer themselves as I actually play with it, but I figure I can get a headstart now if there are standards for this.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2013 01:32
|
|
|
Almost all cubes are singleton, as far as I know. Gates are excellent, multiples or not. My Peasant 360 manabase is: -10 Ravnica Karoos -5 Ally Refuges -5 Enemy Guildgates -5 Urza's manlands -5 Vivid lands -Mirrodin's Core, Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, Rupture Spire, and Transguild Promenade.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2013 02:03
|
|
|
CountFosco posted:This is what I ended up with when I tried to force aggro after taking a hero of bladehold over a better card (can't remember what it was). If that's what you wound up with in an 8-man draft when trying to force aggro, aggro simply isn't supported in that cube list. At all.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2013 02:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
rinski posted:Thanks for the feedback! I'm really new at this and a lot of the things you all pointed out weren't super intuitive to me. Part of it was I built this cube using my friend's as a rubric: apparently he has no support for aggro whatsoever, which skewed my perception. There's combo stuff, although that tends towards Red/Blue (and I'm surprised that you aren't running Splinter Twin alongside Kiki-Jiki in a cube this size), and there's some decent red control cards, but I think that any base red deck is probably going to fall into one of those two strategies. It's got plenty of good splashes, but if your core is red those are the effects you're going to find.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2013 04:47
|
|