You might find some inspiration with the MTGS Average Peasant Cube I put together last year (and try to do every year). The tags and filters are little wonky on CubeCobra, but you can filter down from only the cards included the the most cubes to the cards included in the least.
I work from home predominantly, so I was lucky enough to be able to just stop going into the office. My wife works retail and her store shut down through the end of the month. Luckily it's a good company and she's getting pandemic pay. This has definitely affected us as far as completely altering our normal routine, but I can't complain. I hope everyone here is doing well!
But why don't they like it? What is so objectionable about playing reasonable versions of Jitte or a Sword or Batterskull? You haven't offered an explanation.
I also frequent the peasant forum here, so I saw how you spent the last few days repeating your same unpopular opinions over and over in the main peasant cube thread until most of the regulars over there flat out blocked you. So it seems as if your ideas didn't catch on there and you've just decided to come out here to the main forum and try again. Your opinion, however far off from the norm it may be, is certainly valid, but you can't keep saying these same things and expect validation from a group of people who don't tend to share your mindset. You just end up driving people away instead of creating meaningful discussion. And, just like with the guy in your group who doesn't want to cube with your Sharpied cards, people tend to start ignoring you. It's one thing to debate playing with protection cards in cube by making valid points and arguments as to why you think they're bad for the environment, but the attitude you have here doesn't come off as the type of person who's looking for a friendly debate. You're looking for validation on some pretty radical ideas and you're probably not going to get that here.
2.) What is actually wrong with
blacking out lines of text? If there is a broken card that you like, what exactly is wrong with fixing the card? Why not, it's a custom draft environment?
Nothing, unless it's not something your cube group is a fan of, which it sounds like is the case here. Plenty of cube groups play with cards using custom errata. Some groups play Chaos Orb as a colorless Vindicate. Some groups have house rules requiring cards be picked over other cards. My group plays with free mulligans. So if your group is on board with playing a sword and ignoring the protections on it, there's nothing at all wrong about that. But if it's something you personally want, but your cube group doesn't like or doesn't enjoy, then you may have to concede. Forcing unwanted house rules on your group seems like an easy way to a one man cube night.
where do you guys stand on storm in powered cubes?
In my experience storm is a beloved archetype, but it can also be a bit of a trap. I have a "storm package" that I throw in sometimes when we manage to get eight drafters (any less than eight and it's near impossible to get enough cards in the pool for storm to be remotely viable). Even with the full eight drafters and 360 cards (sometimes 375 due to Lore Seeker), it's still a hell of a challenge to put together a truly viable storm deck. This goes double if there's even one more person at the table who's also in your archetype. I'll add that my storm package is currently at 24 cards and honestly, even that feels like not enough. Storm is so parasitic that outside of basic blue cantrips and black tutors, it's hard to find cards that fit into storm that also fit into other archetypes you want to run.
What about channel style ramp as opposed to traditional ramp?
I don't view "Channel Style Ramp" as an archetype. There's just ramp and sometimes you get a sweet opener and a free win from Channel. I understand what you mean by feeling that you need to prioritize colorless ramp targets over the Woodfall Primuses and Atarkas of the world if you have Channel in your pool. I get that, but mostly ramp decks like that tend to just play out on their own. There's not much opportunity cost to including Channel in your ramp deck, even if you only managed to pick up one or two great uses for it. Even if you get one Eldrazi and a Gilded Lotus, that's probably worth it to include Channel in your ramp deck.
With creatures and planeswalkers continually improving do you feel your cubes have gotten more aggressive over the past 3ish years? Is it still necessary to force aggro support by including underwhelming on curve beaters?
Yes and no. It is still important to make sure you have enough aggro support if you want that deck to be viable at all. But aggro beaters have continued to get better and better over the past few years. White has gotten a ton of great one drops and even some really good two drops. Green has had a bit of a boost of aggressive support. Black has gotten several recursive two power one drops. Red is, surprisingly, the aggro color that could still use some help in the aggressive one drop section, despite it being arguably the most aggressive color, but it has gotten a few great two drops. But for the most part, WotC has been very nice to aggro decks in cubes over the past few years.
How many archetypes do you feel a 360 or 450 can support in a given color? I want to support reanimator, storm, and stax in black and worry that will leave black too thin to also support aggro and midrange.
It's not impossible to have support for all of these archetypes in black, but you may have to sacrifice some the more generically good cards in favor of archetype specific support. Try to include cards that can help support multiple archetypes. You may have to make some really hard choices at 360, but at 450 you can probably make it work. One good thing about black aggressive strategies is that most of the best black aggro cards also fit nicely into the Stax archetype because of their recursive nature.
1. If you build the cube so that a true WW deck is supported, Benalish Marshal could certainly be a powerhouse. I tried Brightling in my low power list for a while and, honestly, as cool as it looks on paper, it was pretty underwhelming. It was a fine mana sink when you literally had nothing else left to do, but for WW decks it was a bit too mana intensive for the payoff and non aggressive decks just didn't want it. I would rather have decent creatures with solid static abilities like Kinjalli's Sunwing. A 2/3 flyer for three is pretty french vanilla, but the static pseudo-Kismet makes it pretty annoying to play against.
2. Unfortunately, I just don't think we've gotten that sort of card for white yet. Citadel Siege is a fun card, but it's nowhere near the power level it seems you're looking for. Parallax Wave is cool too, but again probably not the build around you're looking for.
3. Serendib Efreet specifically probably just fell out of favor for being a mostly uninteresting creature. It was easy to answer and didn't really have a deck that wanted it outside of a generic midrange list. A three mana 3/4 flyer is fine, but it's also super boring. My control decks didn't want it and my midrange decks would rather have a second Man-o'-War or even a Whirler Rogue. I do still run him in my low power list, for what it's worth.
4. Man, Flickerwisp just does so much. A random blink can clear a blocker to get in damage, it can blink for value ETB effects, or it can kill a token. I've gotten a ton of value out of Flickerwisp over the years. It's not the best white three drop, but I still think it's pretty damn good.
I'm on board with this rule as a seasoned player who (pretty much) fully understands the rules of the game. It makes so much more sense to point my Bolt directly at the 'walker than it does to point my Bolt at my opponent and then redirect that damage. It also opens up more design space where they can print burn spells specifically for Planeswalkers (or players).
The one thing I'm curious about is the relevant cards he's referring to. I'd like to see that list. I'd also hate to be the person who has to update any of the online databases to reflect that errata.
Feels weird to post it in the 'articles' section as it's not mine, but they have good conversations about cube and a bunch of different view points on things cube-related.
I know at least one of them visits here, so if they see it, start a thread in the articles/podcasts section!
I dig it too. I don't listen to every episode, but I like their set reviews. And I added Empty the Warrens to my secondary lower power list to help out the UR spells matter deck on their recommendation. I'd also add that as much as I enjoy their opinions, the debates and arguing can get a little annoying.
Ever go back to read the beginning of this thread? It's a trip down memory lane, really interesting to see how far the format has come in 10 years.
I have, actually. There's a very early draft of my cube somewhere in those first few pages. We've come a long way.
On the subject of having cards stolen, I can fortunately say that I've not experienced that. However, I also don't normally play my cube in public. We're usually cubing in my basement and I'm surrounded by fairly close friends who I trust not to steal the cards. Mostly because they're all good dudes and wouldn't do that, but also because they like playing with these cards in cube.
Agreed with Metamind. Tireless Tracker has been consistently impressive and is typically a medium-high pick and pretty much always makes the cut in any green deck.
I use different basics for my two cubes. For the powered cube, we've chosen our favorite land (or at least one we can all agree is sweet) and worked on getting it in foil. For the low power list, I've just kind of gone through all of the lands and chosen lands that I really like, so it has all different arts.
We have an altered black border P3K version. It's P3K, but the borders were painted (by a pro, not just random guy with a Sharpie) to be black. Honestly, I like our current version better than this foil. New frame, shooting star? Yuck.
Awesome news! Thanks Spike Rogue and Allred for doing this.
I think the tribids should count as three color, not color of casting cost. I also think that lands that require a color to do their thing (Faerie Conclave for example) should count as a card of that color.
I'm kinda neutral on the P1P1 vs. most powerful/favorite criteria. As long as the criteria is spelled out, I think I'll be able to live with whatever the consensus is.
I strongly think the Un-cards and such should be kept separate.
I was just thinking about a ranking yesterday as I referred back to 2015's results. I also think the Power Ranking should probably be every two years. I don't know that enough changes come about in one year to really shake up the rankings. Maybe in one or two colors, but for the most part they'll look pretty much the same. I would like to see another Project Rank Everything where we literally rank the top X for each casting cost in each color. I don't believe one of those has been ran since 2010. I'm sure that looks very different today.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/mtgs2021
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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I also frequent the peasant forum here, so I saw how you spent the last few days repeating your same unpopular opinions over and over in the main peasant cube thread until most of the regulars over there flat out blocked you. So it seems as if your ideas didn't catch on there and you've just decided to come out here to the main forum and try again. Your opinion, however far off from the norm it may be, is certainly valid, but you can't keep saying these same things and expect validation from a group of people who don't tend to share your mindset. You just end up driving people away instead of creating meaningful discussion. And, just like with the guy in your group who doesn't want to cube with your Sharpied cards, people tend to start ignoring you. It's one thing to debate playing with protection cards in cube by making valid points and arguments as to why you think they're bad for the environment, but the attitude you have here doesn't come off as the type of person who's looking for a friendly debate. You're looking for validation on some pretty radical ideas and you're probably not going to get that here.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Nothing, unless it's not something your cube group is a fan of, which it sounds like is the case here. Plenty of cube groups play with cards using custom errata. Some groups play Chaos Orb as a colorless Vindicate. Some groups have house rules requiring cards be picked over other cards. My group plays with free mulligans. So if your group is on board with playing a sword and ignoring the protections on it, there's nothing at all wrong about that. But if it's something you personally want, but your cube group doesn't like or doesn't enjoy, then you may have to concede. Forcing unwanted house rules on your group seems like an easy way to a one man cube night.
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In my experience storm is a beloved archetype, but it can also be a bit of a trap. I have a "storm package" that I throw in sometimes when we manage to get eight drafters (any less than eight and it's near impossible to get enough cards in the pool for storm to be remotely viable). Even with the full eight drafters and 360 cards (sometimes 375 due to Lore Seeker), it's still a hell of a challenge to put together a truly viable storm deck. This goes double if there's even one more person at the table who's also in your archetype. I'll add that my storm package is currently at 24 cards and honestly, even that feels like not enough. Storm is so parasitic that outside of basic blue cantrips and black tutors, it's hard to find cards that fit into storm that also fit into other archetypes you want to run.
I don't view "Channel Style Ramp" as an archetype. There's just ramp and sometimes you get a sweet opener and a free win from Channel. I understand what you mean by feeling that you need to prioritize colorless ramp targets over the Woodfall Primuses and Atarkas of the world if you have Channel in your pool. I get that, but mostly ramp decks like that tend to just play out on their own. There's not much opportunity cost to including Channel in your ramp deck, even if you only managed to pick up one or two great uses for it. Even if you get one Eldrazi and a Gilded Lotus, that's probably worth it to include Channel in your ramp deck.
Yes and no. It is still important to make sure you have enough aggro support if you want that deck to be viable at all. But aggro beaters have continued to get better and better over the past few years. White has gotten a ton of great one drops and even some really good two drops. Green has had a bit of a boost of aggressive support. Black has gotten several recursive two power one drops. Red is, surprisingly, the aggro color that could still use some help in the aggressive one drop section, despite it being arguably the most aggressive color, but it has gotten a few great two drops. But for the most part, WotC has been very nice to aggro decks in cubes over the past few years.
It's not impossible to have support for all of these archetypes in black, but you may have to sacrifice some the more generically good cards in favor of archetype specific support. Try to include cards that can help support multiple archetypes. You may have to make some really hard choices at 360, but at 450 you can probably make it work. One good thing about black aggressive strategies is that most of the best black aggro cards also fit nicely into the Stax archetype because of their recursive nature.
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1. If you build the cube so that a true WW deck is supported, Benalish Marshal could certainly be a powerhouse. I tried Brightling in my low power list for a while and, honestly, as cool as it looks on paper, it was pretty underwhelming. It was a fine mana sink when you literally had nothing else left to do, but for WW decks it was a bit too mana intensive for the payoff and non aggressive decks just didn't want it. I would rather have decent creatures with solid static abilities like Kinjalli's Sunwing. A 2/3 flyer for three is pretty french vanilla, but the static pseudo-Kismet makes it pretty annoying to play against.
2. Unfortunately, I just don't think we've gotten that sort of card for white yet. Citadel Siege is a fun card, but it's nowhere near the power level it seems you're looking for. Parallax Wave is cool too, but again probably not the build around you're looking for.
3. Serendib Efreet specifically probably just fell out of favor for being a mostly uninteresting creature. It was easy to answer and didn't really have a deck that wanted it outside of a generic midrange list. A three mana 3/4 flyer is fine, but it's also super boring. My control decks didn't want it and my midrange decks would rather have a second Man-o'-War or even a Whirler Rogue. I do still run him in my low power list, for what it's worth.
4. Man, Flickerwisp just does so much. A random blink can clear a blocker to get in damage, it can blink for value ETB effects, or it can kill a token. I've gotten a ton of value out of Flickerwisp over the years. It's not the best white three drop, but I still think it's pretty damn good.
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The one thing I'm curious about is the relevant cards he's referring to. I'd like to see that list. I'd also hate to be the person who has to update any of the online databases to reflect that errata.
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I dig it too. I don't listen to every episode, but I like their set reviews. And I added Empty the Warrens to my secondary lower power list to help out the UR spells matter deck on their recommendation. I'd also add that as much as I enjoy their opinions, the debates and arguing can get a little annoying.
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I have, actually. There's a very early draft of my cube somewhere in those first few pages. We've come a long way.
On the subject of having cards stolen, I can fortunately say that I've not experienced that. However, I also don't normally play my cube in public. We're usually cubing in my basement and I'm surrounded by fairly close friends who I trust not to steal the cards. Mostly because they're all good dudes and wouldn't do that, but also because they like playing with these cards in cube.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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All of this, seconded.
Seriously, though, thanks, Spike Rogue!
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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