Yeah, I have a way different definition of "unfair". Is turn one entomb, turn 2 animate deadGriselbrand fair or unfair? That's a matter of opinion I think with no right or wrong answer. But knowing where your players stand on that is key.
With all the power creep of recent sets, I feel there is a ton of design space for rare cubes these days. So much so, that the idea of categorizing them all together and using simplistic differentiations like "powered" vs "unpowered" is bordering on nonsensical at this point. I run a rare cube with plenty of broken stuff going on, but it's a turn slower than most contemporary lists and so it plays very different from other unpowered cubes (forget about comparing it to powered - that's night and day).
All of this is going to be largely play group dependent too, so it's hard to be black and white about some of these classifications. There are guys who have posted heavily combo based cubes with cards that I would find too narrow for my group. But it clearly works for them (things like storm for example).
At the end of the day, what kind of cube you choose to run has to be largely a personal choice. As a general rule, you want to encourage whatever your players will find the most fun. But "fun" is going to potentially be a very different beast depending on who you ask. In my mind, that's the hard part about being a cube designer... figuring out what your group likes and doesn't like and crafting a meta that scratches the most itches for everyone while being as balanced as possible.
With all the power creep of recent sets, I feel there is a ton of design space for rare cubes these days. So much so, that the idea of categorizing them all together and using simplistic differentiations like "powered" vs "unpowered" is bordering on nonsensical at this point. I run a rare cube with plenty of broken stuff going on, but it's a turn slower than most contemporary lists and so it plays very different from other unpowered cubes (forget about comparing it to powered - that's night and day).
All of this is going to be largely play group dependent too, so it's hard to be black and white about some of these classifications. There are guys who have posted heavily combo based cubes with cards that I would find too narrow for my group. But it clearly works for them (things like storm for example).
At the end of the day, what kind of cube you choose to run has to be largely a personal choice. As a general rule, you want to encourage whatever your players will find the most fun. But "fun" is going to potentially be a very different beast depending on who you ask. In my mind, that's the hard part about being a cube designer... figuring out what your group likes and doesn't like and crafting a meta that scratches the most itches for everyone while being as balanced as possible.
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/modular-cube-5-colors.800/
Retro combo cube thread
http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/retro-combo-cube.1454/