I however, have been pleased with the removal of bounce lands from my cube. As said before I saw too many people become frustrated by the double timewalk that resulted from land destruction. LD is already good, it simply didnt need that boost.
Yeah me too. We already had more than enough fixing (60 lands) and the bouncelands were just meh. LD is much more powerful in an unpowered cube too which makes bouncelands even worse.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
I actually had a good 30 minute chat with Tom at a recent unsanctioned Event i was running, and i compared our respective cubes. He runs 540 now (enough for two 6-man drafts) and no karoos and no Signets, but please also take into account, his cube is a THEMED cube, it is: was this card playable in standard, ever? then yes, let's give it a whirl and see if it's awesome.
He is not going for perfection, by any means. he likes to cube, and having new and random and fun cards is better than drafting the perfect mid-range/control deck.
i don't understand why he can suggest major changes to a cube like removal of signets and bouncelands, but isn't allowed to post a list. that just doesn't make sense to me. is wotc only concerned about what he says about new cards or something?
"Racketeering is the act of operating an illegal business or scheme in order to make a profit, perpetrated by a structured group."
If he went around telling people to buy Jace the mindsculptors, and acknowledged the existence of the secondary market, the compant could be sued, because people could say that they INTENTIONALLY made Jace, TMS so good, just to make a HUGE profit, therefore, employees cant's tell people which cards to buy/sell/play/invest in, etc.
"Racketeering is the act of operating an illegal business or scheme in order to make a profit, perpetrated by a structured group."
If he went around telling people to buy Jace the mindsculptors, and acknowledged the existence of the secondary market, the compant could be sued, because people could say that they INTENTIONALLY made Jace, TMS so good, just to make a HUGE profit, therefore, employees cant's tell people which cards to buy/sell/play/invest in, etc.
Except that making a good product (in this case, Magic cards) and then telling people that it is good so that people will buy it is not an illegal business. That's every business model ever.
"Racketeering is the act of operating an illegal business or scheme in order to make a profit, perpetrated by a structured group."
If he went around telling people to buy Jace the mindsculptors, and acknowledged the existence of the secondary market, the compant could be sued, because people could say that they INTENTIONALLY made Jace, TMS so good, just to make a HUGE profit, therefore, employees cant's tell people which cards to buy/sell/play/invest in, etc.
Also, Aaron Forsythe's decklist (Legacy?) that he gunslinged at PT Philidelphia was something he was free to give out. So they can tell us what to play in Legacy but not cube? Seems weird.
Well, I'm don't know what to think of his change, I guess. Currently, I'm not running any bouncelands, and only run 2 of the signet (U/W and U/B). I guess I'm not that different from him.
it's the thinking that differs, not the end result. cutting bouncelands and signets because they're "too good" or to give green a specific identity is very different than cutting them because they don't make the grade anymore.
i still don't understand the "no cube" rule. wotc guys can obviously reveal decklists, and they design decks for us all the time. they even post edh decks and the like on the website. i just don't get what the difference is between what's allowed and what's forbidden.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
Yeah, it's hard for me to believe LaPille doesn't reveal the list for legal reasons. The rumor is probably a misunderstanding of something he said or just the "telephone" effect.
Well, there is a point when there's so much easy fixing/accel that decks become all "good stuff" dot dec. But it depends on the rest of the cube.
No not all decks become good stuff-decks. That becomes the default option, but they often are not the best decks. Focused drafting makes for better decks most of the time (brute power does work ofcourse)
it's the thinking that differs, not the end result. cutting bouncelands and signets because they're "too good" or to give green a specific identity is very different than cutting them because they don't make the grade anymore.
i still don't understand the "no cube" rule. wotc guys can obviously reveal decklists, and they design decks for us all the time. they even post edh decks and the like on the website. i just don't get what the difference is between what's allowed and what's forbidden.
The vast majority of the decklists posted on the Wizards site are either tournament decks made by others/pros/tournament winners, or fun/theme/budget decks.
What cube has grown to become is "The best 360/450/500 cards in MTG", or at least that is how it is largely perceived. It makes perfect sense to me why wizards wouldn't endorse such a list, as it could lead to hurting their brand in a significant, albeit subtle way.
I can see them changing their stance on it, if they could make their cube perceived as "Cards that are fun to draft", rather than just "These are the best cards"
I can see where Tom is coming from. For signets, it lowers the impact that green has (In the sense that it does mana accel and fixing). We have all played those games as aggro where the opponent plays sol ring first turn, and we just cannot keep up. Signets do this on a WAY lesser scale, but it's still there. It's incremental advantage that let's you clock out faster against aggro. As for the removal of signets, I'm not really for it, I just focused on making aggro stronger. I prefer to add cards than remove, though aggro other than red has been somewhat a harder road (with white green needing the most work).
As for the bouncelands, I can totally understand this. Before I started increasing aggro, bouncelands were something players were already scared to play with (we all know the feeling when you play a bounceland and it gets destroyed/bounced). Now if he REPLACED the bouncelands I wouldn't agree, but if he did what I did, and just removed them all together, than that is okay in my books. Bouncelands were definitely the worse of all my lands, though I will not argue that they are not awesome. With the increase of aggro (and land destruction options) the odds of getting your karoo blown out increased. This overall led me to the option of just removing them, thus making my lands overall tighter, and not leading to those moments of dread that happen consistently enough to remember every time you throw a karoo into your deck. I haven't missed them since.
So he's let's say he removed his karoo's without replacing them. Now this overall makes his cube way more efficient in it's mana fixing (with better mana fixing lands being seen more often). This puts a further strain on green in lessening one of it's greatest strength. I do have to say that the next best option would be to get rid of signets. They are a set of 10 cards that do everything green is strong with, and can be played in any deck. So now we are seeing the stronger controlling color get ways that don't mess with their color pie, and overall make them more resilient to aggro in terms with tempo.
I think the difference between me and lapille in this sense (cause I did notice it), is that I increased ways to deal with this problem in the aggro colors (AKA why when I added werewolves, I took out chandra's phoenix instead of keldon vandals), where as he removed the signets all together. Going turn 2 signet, and your opponent plays a turn 3 vandal, is good enough solution for me to want, while not removing amazing cards (I like to play with the best cards, not remove them cause they are "too good"), and not being as un-fun as some other plays in the cube (like when it's your bounceland getting removed :S). So overall, is this something our community should do? Well I would say no, I would say to try to ADD solutions instead of REMOVING problems. But if your cube's current design can't support the addition of answers, than by all means remove signets. Or move to a more lands -> multicolor design.
One last note I would like to make is the design of my cube (and to an extent lapille's, based on his last posted version of his cube). Many of you run your dual lands in multicolor. Me and LaPille run all our lands in the lands section. This changes the way our format plays, in terms of the accesibility of mana fixing and lands in general. When you play with lands as a section your seeing lands in the draft at a way higher basis. So for you that run lands in your multicolor and colorless section, lands are being seen at a lower amount than we do, meaning your mana fixing is tighter. I have to deal with the fact that fixing is more readily available (Albeit at the loss of non-land cards in the draft), so would the removal of signets really be as big of an impact as in your cubes? Or is it just something that is more already placed throughout cube, and the additions of signets is just overboard?
Just food for thought. I mean there is so many variables to cube design, which is why I don't really question people's choices of cards, unless it's a card that is just often terrible comparatively to a replacement card no matter how their cube plays, or a card that is just unreal no matter how the cube is designed. For example one of the variables a lot of people forget but makes a big difference in terms of how their cube is played is the distribution of packs. A lot of people go random, while other have some sort of structured way, which switches the odds of seeing certaion cards quite a bit.
I ran the talismans in my uncommons-only cube for a while but cut them. I am happy to have them gone.
Having lots of artifact ramp makes green acceleration and fixing less relevant. I like that part of green, and I believe that a green deck should have access to the best accelerating and fixing.
Signets make the metagame hostile to aggro decks by making it easy for midrange and control decks to accelerate to their big stuff. If every deck has access to turn three Wrath of God/Damnation, it becomes a lot harder to play aggro.
Me and LaPille run all our lands in the lands section. This changes the way our format plays, in terms of the accesibility of mana fixing and lands in general. When you play with lands as a section your seeing lands in the draft at a way higher basis.
This isn't true at all. If you and I have the same size cube, and the same number of fixing lands in each one, then we have the same availability of fixing lands, no matter what section you classify them in.
yeah that just doesn't make sense. the number of lands you include is the same no matter how many you run them. an organizational model doesn't force you to cut lands or run fewer lands or anything like that.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
I can see the Ravnica bouncelands being cut for dual lands that are better in faster decks. I think the M10/INN duals are a good alternative, at least in certain color combinations. Same goes for the Shadowmoor filterlands. And the Scars duals are definitely better than the bouncelands, but they are only available for allied color pairs so far.
The Signets on the other hand are the poor man's Moxen. You can cut (some of) them if you run Moxen, but otherwise, the more the better. Colorless mana acceleration is soooooo important for control decks. I would never cut them for as silly reasons as "they step on green's feet".
The vast majority of the decklists posted on the Wizards site are either tournament decks made by others/pros/tournament winners, or fun/theme/budget decks.
What cube has grown to become is "The best 360/450/500 cards in MTG", or at least that is how it is largely perceived. It makes perfect sense to me why wizards wouldn't endorse such a list, as it could lead to hurting their brand in a significant, albeit subtle way.
I can see them changing their stance on it, if they could make their cube perceived as "Cards that are fun to draft", rather than just "These are the best cards"
How is posting a tournament winning decklist not telling us good cards. It might not be the reason, but if it is, it's BS.
His argument was that green was being underdrafted, so to balance out the colors he cut signets so that any ramp deck had to run green. I don't see a problem with that.
The problem with stating that cube is the 500 best cards in the game, is that it simply isn't true.
Sure, there are cards that are the best at what they do inside the cube. And sure, a lot of them are staples in other formats. But saying that is won't change the demand much - they're already in high demand.
There are also tons of cards that are ONLY good inside the cube, and fairly banal elsewhere. The Goblin Patrols, Black Knights, and Mire Boas of the world.
So, using power level as the basis of the argument that revealing a list would be somehow influencing the secondary market to an effect such that it is illegal, is fairly bogus.
to me, it's as simple as this: if a wotc employee can reveal a decklist they made, for casual purposes or not, they should be able to reveal a cube list. i just don't see the difference.
When I see Healing Salve, I'm often like "Oh girl, I wish I could turn every card into this." Thanks they removed the gain life part, otherwise this would have been broken.
I would just make green better instead of intentionally making the rest of my cube weaker.
This isn't really an accurate assessment of what's happening. If you're taking out signets for Moss Diamond and friends, sure, you're making the cube worse. But if you are taking out signets for cards that fill a completely different role you're just changing the dynamic of the cube. It's no different from cutting Akroma's Vengeance if you decide you have too many sweepers for aggro to be drafted successfully.
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Yeah me too. We already had more than enough fixing (60 lands) and the bouncelands were just meh. LD is much more powerful in an unpowered cube too which makes bouncelands even worse.
but he just did. where is the line he can't cross? that's what i'm confused about.
He is not going for perfection, by any means. he likes to cube, and having new and random and fun cards is better than drafting the perfect mid-range/control deck.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
"Racketeering is the act of operating an illegal business or scheme in order to make a profit, perpetrated by a structured group."
If he went around telling people to buy Jace the mindsculptors, and acknowledged the existence of the secondary market, the compant could be sued, because people could say that they INTENTIONALLY made Jace, TMS so good, just to make a HUGE profit, therefore, employees cant's tell people which cards to buy/sell/play/invest in, etc.
Except that making a good product (in this case, Magic cards) and then telling people that it is good so that people will buy it is not an illegal business. That's every business model ever.
Also, Aaron Forsythe's decklist (Legacy?) that he gunslinged at PT Philidelphia was something he was free to give out. So they can tell us what to play in Legacy but not cube? Seems weird.
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I'm OP_Forever. I'll be putting this in my signature for a while so everyone know I change my nickname.
i still don't understand the "no cube" rule. wotc guys can obviously reveal decklists, and they design decks for us all the time. they even post edh decks and the like on the website. i just don't get what the difference is between what's allowed and what's forbidden.
No not all decks become good stuff-decks. That becomes the default option, but they often are not the best decks. Focused drafting makes for better decks most of the time (brute power does work ofcourse)
I feel compelled to repeat everything I hear
The vast majority of the decklists posted on the Wizards site are either tournament decks made by others/pros/tournament winners, or fun/theme/budget decks.
What cube has grown to become is "The best 360/450/500 cards in MTG", or at least that is how it is largely perceived. It makes perfect sense to me why wizards wouldn't endorse such a list, as it could lead to hurting their brand in a significant, albeit subtle way.
I can see them changing their stance on it, if they could make their cube perceived as "Cards that are fun to draft", rather than just "These are the best cards"
Juju Alters - Altered MTG Cards
As for the bouncelands, I can totally understand this. Before I started increasing aggro, bouncelands were something players were already scared to play with (we all know the feeling when you play a bounceland and it gets destroyed/bounced). Now if he REPLACED the bouncelands I wouldn't agree, but if he did what I did, and just removed them all together, than that is okay in my books. Bouncelands were definitely the worse of all my lands, though I will not argue that they are not awesome. With the increase of aggro (and land destruction options) the odds of getting your karoo blown out increased. This overall led me to the option of just removing them, thus making my lands overall tighter, and not leading to those moments of dread that happen consistently enough to remember every time you throw a karoo into your deck. I haven't missed them since.
So he's let's say he removed his karoo's without replacing them. Now this overall makes his cube way more efficient in it's mana fixing (with better mana fixing lands being seen more often). This puts a further strain on green in lessening one of it's greatest strength. I do have to say that the next best option would be to get rid of signets. They are a set of 10 cards that do everything green is strong with, and can be played in any deck. So now we are seeing the stronger controlling color get ways that don't mess with their color pie, and overall make them more resilient to aggro in terms with tempo.
I think the difference between me and lapille in this sense (cause I did notice it), is that I increased ways to deal with this problem in the aggro colors (AKA why when I added werewolves, I took out chandra's phoenix instead of keldon vandals), where as he removed the signets all together. Going turn 2 signet, and your opponent plays a turn 3 vandal, is good enough solution for me to want, while not removing amazing cards (I like to play with the best cards, not remove them cause they are "too good"), and not being as un-fun as some other plays in the cube (like when it's your bounceland getting removed :S). So overall, is this something our community should do? Well I would say no, I would say to try to ADD solutions instead of REMOVING problems. But if your cube's current design can't support the addition of answers, than by all means remove signets. Or move to a more lands -> multicolor design.
One last note I would like to make is the design of my cube (and to an extent lapille's, based on his last posted version of his cube). Many of you run your dual lands in multicolor. Me and LaPille run all our lands in the lands section. This changes the way our format plays, in terms of the accesibility of mana fixing and lands in general. When you play with lands as a section your seeing lands in the draft at a way higher basis. So for you that run lands in your multicolor and colorless section, lands are being seen at a lower amount than we do, meaning your mana fixing is tighter. I have to deal with the fact that fixing is more readily available (Albeit at the loss of non-land cards in the draft), so would the removal of signets really be as big of an impact as in your cubes? Or is it just something that is more already placed throughout cube, and the additions of signets is just overboard?
Just food for thought. I mean there is so many variables to cube design, which is why I don't really question people's choices of cards, unless it's a card that is just often terrible comparatively to a replacement card no matter how their cube plays, or a card that is just unreal no matter how the cube is designed. For example one of the variables a lot of people forget but makes a big difference in terms of how their cube is played is the distribution of packs. A lot of people go random, while other have some sort of structured way, which switches the odds of seeing certaion cards quite a bit.
Having lots of artifact ramp makes green acceleration and fixing less relevant. I like that part of green, and I believe that a green deck should have access to the best accelerating and fixing.
Signets make the metagame hostile to aggro decks by making it easy for midrange and control decks to accelerate to their big stuff. If every deck has access to turn three Wrath of God/Damnation, it becomes a lot harder to play aggro.
This isn't true at all. If you and I have the same size cube, and the same number of fixing lands in each one, then we have the same availability of fixing lands, no matter what section you classify them in.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
The Signets on the other hand are the poor man's Moxen. You can cut (some of) them if you run Moxen, but otherwise, the more the better. Colorless mana acceleration is soooooo important for control decks. I would never cut them for as silly reasons as "they step on green's feet".
Uril, the Miststalker RGW -- Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre C -- Vhati il-Dal BG -- Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer RW -- Animar, Soul of Elements URG
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker R -- Maga, Traitor to Mortals B -- Ghave, Guru of Spores BGW -- Sliver Hivelord WUBRG
I only think they're better in the aggro combinations. In the control colors, I still prefer the bouncelands.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
How is posting a tournament winning decklist not telling us good cards. It might not be the reason, but if it is, it's BS.
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Sure, there are cards that are the best at what they do inside the cube. And sure, a lot of them are staples in other formats. But saying that is won't change the demand much - they're already in high demand.
There are also tons of cards that are ONLY good inside the cube, and fairly banal elsewhere. The Goblin Patrols, Black Knights, and Mire Boas of the world.
So, using power level as the basis of the argument that revealing a list would be somehow influencing the secondary market to an effect such that it is illegal, is fairly bogus.
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This isn't really an accurate assessment of what's happening. If you're taking out signets for Moss Diamond and friends, sure, you're making the cube worse. But if you are taking out signets for cards that fill a completely different role you're just changing the dynamic of the cube. It's no different from cutting Akroma's Vengeance if you decide you have too many sweepers for aggro to be drafted successfully.