I love having lists of ten for a number of reasons.
First, it's really nice if you're constrained by budget. A lot of these really good multicolor cards also happen to be really good in other formats. Some of what we might consider staples go for 20 bucks or so right now for nonfoils. While that may not be expensive to everyone, it certainly can be to some. Being able to go down the list and skip over a card that's seeing play in multiple formats in favor of a more budget, but still perfectly acceptable option is nice.
On the same note, maybe that staple is too powerful for your environment. Maybe you don't want planeswalkers. Heck, maybe you're just tired of this card you've been running since 2009 and want some inspiration on a replacement to change things up for your next draft. A ten card list provides plenty of alternative options.
Ten card lists are also great for people who want to run a large cube, especially if they're looking to keep multicolor at around that 8-10% mark and want to know what's commonly seeing play in slots 5-8.
It's really sad to see the participation numbers have dropped so low for this round of voting. The guild lists are my favorite ones to make.
Changing the subject, what are we doing with the draft-matters cards and the conspiracies?
I think we could do a Top 20 (or even maybe 25) Conspiracy / Draft Matters / Un-Cards, since a lot of cubers choose to lump these types of cards together into a separate add-on module and not cube with them all the time.
FWIW, I'm in the same camp as wtwlf on thinking that the data we're mining here is mostly insignificant (at least to me). Sure, the mining part is fun. Who doesn't like making lists? Lists are great! But I don't think an average top 20 list for any given section in cube will be relevant to me. Odds are I'm already running the cards on these lists and I don't think specific rankings will have any bearing on how I personally evaluate specific cards.
I'll advocate again for top X for each casting cost in each color. While this would be a much bigger project, I think the resulting data would be much more useful for cubers of all experience levels. For someone who's been cubing for years, it's nice to see a list of the best options for a specific cost if you're maybe looking for new options. For someone who's just beginning, a list like that is a nice resource for where to start. Not only this, but this is a project we haven't taken on for nearly ten years now and I, for one, would be very interested in seeing that those lists look like now.
"These are the first twenty cards I'd include in X section in order of importance"?
The problem with this prompt is curve. A 20-card section wouldn't contain the 20 "best" white cards.
I mean, yeah, but how many people are building cubes with 20 card sections? If I were building a 360 card cube with 50 per section, the first 20 cards I'd include would likely be the same first 20 cards I'd include if I were building a 540 card cube with 70 cards per section.
But I feel like we're all just arguing semantics here. Ultimately, while I do find the data we get from these top 20 votes to be interesting to read through, I don't think it has much value in terms of the lists of cards we end up with. I don't mean to be rude if that comes off that way.
The type of data that I think is more valuable is either a top X for each casting cost in each color or just a cube comparison that results in how many cubes run specific cards. Looking a list of the top X White 5 drops is helpful for new cubers looking to get into the format and for veteran cubers who may just be looking for something fresh to swap in over Baneslayer. Alternatively, a cube comparison that tells me 30 cubers are running a card that I've been overlooking is helpful for me to find new cards for my cube and also helpful for new cubers looking for a starting point for a new cube. Both of these data finding methods are better, imo, than a Top 20 for each color. It's hard to agree on a metric and then get everyone voting to stick to that metric. And, who is this data for? It's unlikely that I'll find something new for my own cube on these lists. If a new cuber looks at this and just says, Oh I need to include these twenty cards, that doesn't give them any sort of context for where they need to go from there.
And Path should almost definitely be on a top twenty list for white.
Then we're asking the wrong questions. Because if that's making a list of "top P1P1 cards", the data we're getting is pretty meaningless.
Agreed. That was my point. It's rare that I'd ever take Path at P1P1, so if it's on a list of the top twenty P1P1 white cards it raises a lot of questions about how useful the data actually is.
Why not just say "These are the first twenty cards I'd include in X section in order of importance"? These lists should be here to support new cubers looking for a resource when building their cubes.
I agree that P1P1 is the metric that is easiest to parse. Would I take Card A over Card B? If yes, then rank accordingly. However, the biggest problem with that is the number of true P1P1s in any given color fall off fairly quickly. Maybe there's five or ten white cards that I would realistically take P1P1 given other options, but what does a pack have to look like for me to take Path to Exile over options from other colors (or colorless)? And Path should almost definitely be on a top twenty list for white.
I don't think spoiler tags solves the "problem" of people being influenced by other voters' lists. I mean, just open the tag and look at the list. I understand what it's trying to do, but if you really want everyone to be submitting their lists uninfluenced by other lists, then you should do this via PM.
I also don't think we'll be able to come to a true unanimous agreement on the voting criteria. Even if you tell folks to post their top twenty "most impactful" white cards and everyone agrees on that, you'll still gets posters who interpret that differently. What does impactful really mean in terms of cube? Is Armageddon the white card that's had the most impact on games for me? Does that make it rank higher than Moat or Balance? Maybe I'll just shortcut impactful to mean P1P1 or favorite since these are easier for me to interpret. I don't believe there's really a way to avoid this metric being mostly arbitrary based on the individual posters.
Every time one of these projects comes up, these organization debates resurface. FWIW, I agree with wtwlf on pretty much everything here.
The organization style he mentions makes the most sense to me. Costs green, taps for a white? That's a Selesnya card. Why? Well, because when I'm playing Selesnya is when that card is at its best. Will it see play in a Gruul deck? Sure, occasionally that deck will fall short on mana dorks and need to play a Boreal Druid to make up for it. But that's certainly not where it's at its best.
On the subject of voting criteria, I think a top 20 list would have more value if the cards on that list were quite literally something a new cuber could refer to and get a good idea of what the most played / most loved / best cube cards for that respective color are. Someone who is completely new to the format should realistically be able to refer back to these lists and find a nice starting point for the cube cards in each other that we veteran cubers tend to prefer. Obviously, cube is what each of us makes it out to be and everyone's cube will (and should) be at least a little different. But a top 20 list for each color as a starting point for my new cuber brain way back in 2007 would have been a priceless resource.
On a similar note, last December I took it upon myself to re-up a project from the previous year to find the average peasant cube list among active MTGS forum posters. Don't get me wrong, this was a ton of work for me and I completed it while off from work on vacation around the holidays. In a nutshell, I just pulled lists that had been updated recently then consolidated that data in Excel and spit it back out as an Average Peasant Cube on CubeTutor. Doing this meant that it didn't matter if someone had Faerie Conclave in their land section instead of in their blue section. As long as it was somewhere in the list it got a point toward how many cubers included it. The final organization was my prerogative because I was the one uploading to CT, but that didn't matter. If you check the CT list you can see that Faerie Conclave is a popular cube card. If you disagree with where I sorted it, that's fine, but based on numbers, it's at least a card you should consider. The data I got from this comparison project was really interesting and actually made me give several cards a second (or sometimes third) look based on how popular they were among trusted cubers here. The point of this is to say that, if I wanted to, right now I could refer to that data and see what the top twenty white cards for peasant cube are as of Dec 2018. Doing it this way removed both the organization debate and criteria of the vote factors from the discussion. It's quite literally just a "played in X cubes" list sorted by most to least, which I think can provide more value than having multiple people submit top twenty lists all using different criteria. If you compare 30 cubes and all 30 are running Card X, then that's probably a good cube card. If you compare 30 lists and only two of them are running Card Y, then maybe that card is a little more niche.
I'm not advocating that you take on such a big project, but I do think data like this that really doesn't have a chance of being tainted by human interpretation is more valuable. It's literally just numbers.
First, it's really nice if you're constrained by budget. A lot of these really good multicolor cards also happen to be really good in other formats. Some of what we might consider staples go for 20 bucks or so right now for nonfoils. While that may not be expensive to everyone, it certainly can be to some. Being able to go down the list and skip over a card that's seeing play in multiple formats in favor of a more budget, but still perfectly acceptable option is nice.
On the same note, maybe that staple is too powerful for your environment. Maybe you don't want planeswalkers. Heck, maybe you're just tired of this card you've been running since 2009 and want some inspiration on a replacement to change things up for your next draft. A ten card list provides plenty of alternative options.
Ten card lists are also great for people who want to run a large cube, especially if they're looking to keep multicolor at around that 8-10% mark and want to know what's commonly seeing play in slots 5-8.
It's really sad to see the participation numbers have dropped so low for this round of voting. The guild lists are my favorite ones to make.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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I think we could do a Top 20 (or even maybe 25) Conspiracy / Draft Matters / Un-Cards, since a lot of cubers choose to lump these types of cards together into a separate add-on module and not cube with them all the time.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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I'll advocate again for top X for each casting cost in each color. While this would be a much bigger project, I think the resulting data would be much more useful for cubers of all experience levels. For someone who's been cubing for years, it's nice to see a list of the best options for a specific cost if you're maybe looking for new options. For someone who's just beginning, a list like that is a nice resource for where to start. Not only this, but this is a project we haven't taken on for nearly ten years now and I, for one, would be very interested in seeing that those lists look like now.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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I mean, yeah, but how many people are building cubes with 20 card sections? If I were building a 360 card cube with 50 per section, the first 20 cards I'd include would likely be the same first 20 cards I'd include if I were building a 540 card cube with 70 cards per section.
But I feel like we're all just arguing semantics here. Ultimately, while I do find the data we get from these top 20 votes to be interesting to read through, I don't think it has much value in terms of the lists of cards we end up with. I don't mean to be rude if that comes off that way.
The type of data that I think is more valuable is either a top X for each casting cost in each color or just a cube comparison that results in how many cubes run specific cards. Looking a list of the top X White 5 drops is helpful for new cubers looking to get into the format and for veteran cubers who may just be looking for something fresh to swap in over Baneslayer. Alternatively, a cube comparison that tells me 30 cubers are running a card that I've been overlooking is helpful for me to find new cards for my cube and also helpful for new cubers looking for a starting point for a new cube. Both of these data finding methods are better, imo, than a Top 20 for each color. It's hard to agree on a metric and then get everyone voting to stick to that metric. And, who is this data for? It's unlikely that I'll find something new for my own cube on these lists. If a new cuber looks at this and just says, Oh I need to include these twenty cards, that doesn't give them any sort of context for where they need to go from there.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Agreed. That was my point. It's rare that I'd ever take Path at P1P1, so if it's on a list of the top twenty P1P1 white cards it raises a lot of questions about how useful the data actually is.
Why not just say "These are the first twenty cards I'd include in X section in order of importance"? These lists should be here to support new cubers looking for a resource when building their cubes.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
Follow me. I tweet.
I also don't think we'll be able to come to a true unanimous agreement on the voting criteria. Even if you tell folks to post their top twenty "most impactful" white cards and everyone agrees on that, you'll still gets posters who interpret that differently. What does impactful really mean in terms of cube? Is Armageddon the white card that's had the most impact on games for me? Does that make it rank higher than Moat or Balance? Maybe I'll just shortcut impactful to mean P1P1 or favorite since these are easier for me to interpret. I don't believe there's really a way to avoid this metric being mostly arbitrary based on the individual posters.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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The organization style he mentions makes the most sense to me. Costs green, taps for a white? That's a Selesnya card. Why? Well, because when I'm playing Selesnya is when that card is at its best. Will it see play in a Gruul deck? Sure, occasionally that deck will fall short on mana dorks and need to play a Boreal Druid to make up for it. But that's certainly not where it's at its best.
On the subject of voting criteria, I think a top 20 list would have more value if the cards on that list were quite literally something a new cuber could refer to and get a good idea of what the most played / most loved / best cube cards for that respective color are. Someone who is completely new to the format should realistically be able to refer back to these lists and find a nice starting point for the cube cards in each other that we veteran cubers tend to prefer. Obviously, cube is what each of us makes it out to be and everyone's cube will (and should) be at least a little different. But a top 20 list for each color as a starting point for my new cuber brain way back in 2007 would have been a priceless resource.
On a similar note, last December I took it upon myself to re-up a project from the previous year to find the average peasant cube list among active MTGS forum posters. Don't get me wrong, this was a ton of work for me and I completed it while off from work on vacation around the holidays. In a nutshell, I just pulled lists that had been updated recently then consolidated that data in Excel and spit it back out as an Average Peasant Cube on CubeTutor. Doing this meant that it didn't matter if someone had Faerie Conclave in their land section instead of in their blue section. As long as it was somewhere in the list it got a point toward how many cubers included it. The final organization was my prerogative because I was the one uploading to CT, but that didn't matter. If you check the CT list you can see that Faerie Conclave is a popular cube card. If you disagree with where I sorted it, that's fine, but based on numbers, it's at least a card you should consider. The data I got from this comparison project was really interesting and actually made me give several cards a second (or sometimes third) look based on how popular they were among trusted cubers here. The point of this is to say that, if I wanted to, right now I could refer to that data and see what the top twenty white cards for peasant cube are as of Dec 2018. Doing it this way removed both the organization debate and criteria of the vote factors from the discussion. It's quite literally just a "played in X cubes" list sorted by most to least, which I think can provide more value than having multiple people submit top twenty lists all using different criteria. If you compare 30 cubes and all 30 are running Card X, then that's probably a good cube card. If you compare 30 lists and only two of them are running Card Y, then maybe that card is a little more niche.
I'm not advocating that you take on such a big project, but I do think data like this that really doesn't have a chance of being tainted by human interpretation is more valuable. It's literally just numbers.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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