Limited Resources #77 – Cube Panel

I totally punted the “what’s a card that you think is overrated/underrated in peoples’ cubes?” I defaulted to Skittles to try to segue into talking about how understanding how to not fall for BCSM is one of the most important skills for a cube designer, but I don’t think that worked too well. If I had to redo it, for overrated, I’d say Rude Awakening (I much rather prefer Terastodon and Woodfall Primus for 8 mana finishers since it doesn’t necessarily do much when it isn’t cast FTW. I’ve found that as my cube has gotten faster, Rude Awakening has gotten worse. I’m REALLY hoping the green Praetor is a good green finisher as well and not something with infect) and for underrated, something like the usual cast of characters of aggro cards that people don’t run because they fear the drawback, cards like Sarcomancy, Wild Dogs, etc.

Aside from that, it was a blast to do and was awesome.

I might have some insight for you guys on building a block or standard (format) cube. I’ve already got a regular unpowered cube, but I just wanted to do something interesting/different for a “cheap” cube rather than the typical common or common/uncommon cube. So I took all of the recent sets from M10 onward and instituted a size limit from each set to pull cards from, at each rarity, per color. For instance, for a large set like Zendikar I allowed/forced myself to include 12 commons, 6 uncommons, and 3 rares from each color. Worldwake is a small set, and has half that many (and only 1 rare).

Just going through the motions and deciding what cards end up in/out of the cube leads to some interesting things I noticed about the sets/colors in general, from a design/restriction point of view:

- Each set and color definitely has varying levels of power, or “deepness” at a given rarity. This is immediately seen if you start building and do a filtered search on the Gatherer or magiccards.info for a specific set-color-rarity. For instance, a small set only has 7 commons per color. I have to use 3 of them. This can feel bad, because some colors are really awesome and I can’t use them all, and some colors simply aren’t good.
- Once you filter out a lot of the crap in each set, you’re left with something like 70% creatures (for a normal, non-mirrodin block), even when you bias yourself torward including the most powerful spells/removal first. This leads to having no shortage of playables in a draft that feels very much like regular limited.
- You have to throw some rules completely out the window for lands (fixing) and artifacts, especially if you include the Scars of Mirrodin block. I had to make new rules for the M10/M11 reprint interactions too. At this point, the rules are almost too complicated to be worth it, but I don’t spend much time with this in the first place, and there are never any changes to the cube down the road barring other reprint/core set situations. The core of the cube will essentially never change, and you could always change it up from draft to draft using a “make your own standard” once you include enough sets to filter some out of the draft.
- Scars of Mirrodin block basically gives an XBox achievement for infect, since there are few playable infectors and I had to include some anyway due to rarity, but a few are worth playing anyway.
- Removal is fairly scarce, since it is no longer “common”, and there are nearly no wrath effects. Red and white are good choices if you like removal.
- White is really strong in general, since it gets the bulk of the good fliers, and cheap removal. Black and Blue get a surprising amount of fliers as well. (They all get a 3/2 flier for 4 mana, in fact)

Now, I put some additional restrictions on that cube that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to someone using a Standard (format) cube as their only cube. You can definitely tailor it to have a more balanced draft situation, by culling the cards from whatever rarities you want. But basically, for me it was an exercise to see if it would work, and for the most part it does.

I’m still working on getting my blog up and running, but I’ll have it up at some point as well as my regular cube. (http://thecubemiser.wordpress.com/)

Also, I’d be pretty interested seeing how a Kamigawa block cube works out, since I never played it originally, and I love the flavor. In the back of my mind I’m thinking about doing one without the singleton restriction.

RE: Sleeves – I’ve been using matte UltraPros for a while now and haven’t had major issues with sleeves breaking. They’re one of the few I’ve tried that don’t “brick” up on me and refuse to side shuffle smoothly, too.

Great podcast everyone!

Great podcast guys.

I think I’m going to try to build a cube now, but I’m going to avoid the Analysis Paralysis thing. I don’t have a pile of sweet rares, so I’ll just throw some cards in together and call it good. Then I can start tweaking it.

I thought Usman and Thea did a nice job, and that the cast was fairly entertaining. Some thoughts:

- I thought the advice for new cubers was a bit over the top (the hosts did a good job of reeling it back in). The first advice that should be given to new cubers is to just start cubing. Getting bogged down in the details is what prevents people from ever getting started. And how many people have you ever known to start cubing and stop? Thea gave the best advice here, which was to start small.

- Thea, you have a MTGO cube? That just blows my mind with awesomness. Is the list posted anywhere?

Keep up the good work!