How do you plan to classify the the FRF cards that are single color to cast, but have hybrid activated abilities?
Do you plan to classify them in their single color section?
Create/put them in a new wedge section?
I have a very small wedge section where I have cards like Nicol Bolas and Sphinx of the Steel Wind. Expanding that section would require cuts to the colored sections or the guild sections. The latter would hurt more for some guilds, and also seems somewhat arbitrary in terms of which guild to cut a card.
I'm going to create a wedge section for these guys and slot them in there. If I was running a cube with a wedge section already in place, I'd either replace existing wedge cards with them or expand the wedge section by a slot to get them in.
I'm going to create a wedge section for these guys and slot them in there. If I was running a cube with a wedge section already in place, I'd either replace existing wedge cards with them or expand the wedge section by a slot to get them in.
Still praying for a good Sultai one...
I thought 450 was considered too small for a wedge section? Or are you making an exception for these because they're wedge cards but not really wedge cards?
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Rest in RIP My Signature, I guess. 2015-2016, we hardly knew ye.
Total side note but I like how people are discussing running this over itself.
Well, it has to be said that Kolaghan is clearly better than Kolaghan. Considering what BR decks usually want and how stiff the competition in this guild is, there is no way that I would run Kolaghan over Kolaghan! Kolaghan might make it in as the sixth guild card or so. Kolaghan on the other hand ranks several places below that.
It was so funny to me when they described this as a downgrade to the original Zurgo during the Pax East panel. I was thinking if this is a downgrade, they should really "downgrade" all legendary creatures. Haha.
My deck designing is quite concise at this point:
1. Come up with deck idea
2. Realize this idea is somehow fundamentally similar to another deck I have or that is commonly played in my group
3. Decide I don't want to disassemble one of my existing decks
4. Give up and do nothing
I don't see the point of this new shroud mechanic. It's strictly worse than Hexproof. Threshold is pretty bad too, Delirium is a much better mechanic and probably easier to activate.
Otherwise this card is a pretty neat guy. Dodges removal and grows into a Primal Huntbeast. 3/5
If they were all true tri-color cards, I wouldn't play a section at 450. But since these cards are so flexible, cutting other multicolor cards for them actually makes the gold section more playable. And since I can "cheat" the shard section with reanimation/Natural Order/Tinker targets and cards like Nacatl and stuff, a tru 10-card "tri-color" section only has a couple actual 3-color cards. It makes sense to do that now, whereas it didn't before (at 450 anyways).
In a 360 cube (or smaller), I'd probably classify them in the respective mono-colored sections if you don't want to make a shard/wedge section.
EDIT AGAIN: For the Jeskai slot, as well as SGM, I also quite like the Jeskai Khan, Sun Yun, the Silent Tempest. You can potentially quite easily swing for 8 next turn like a small blue Rafiq of the Many who lets you swing with more stuff. Could be good for cubes with big tempo support and it's probably great in counterburn, being a cheap finisher to get with counter protection mana up quite easily.
EDIT AGAIN: For the Jeskai slot, as well as SGM, I also quite like the Jeskai Khan, Sun Yun, the Silent Tempest. You can potentially quite easily swing for 8 next turn like a small blue Rafiq of the Many who lets you swing with more stuff. Could be good for cubes with big tempo support and it's probably great in counterburn, being a cheap finisher to get with counter protection mana up quite easily.
I do like that guym, just not sure hes quite good enough. Ive thought about testing him.
I would just put them in a generic "more than 2 color" section, which is where we currently have cards like Nicol Bolas and Wild Nacatl currently go in our cube. You don't need a card in every single wedge or shard to just play the most powerful ones.
I always sort cards by what colors are needed to make them playable. Kitchen Finks can be played in green or white since you only need either color to make it work. Wild Nacatl is terrible unless you're in Selesnya or Gruul so it belongs in one of those sections, but if you're willing to play the cat girl in a mono green deck, then put her in the green cards I guess. A green card with a white/black hybrid ability is good in Selesnya or Golgari so it can fit into either of those sections. Lightning Angel gets to be in a wedge section as would a mono color card whose abilities require two other colors, unless the card felt completely playable in a certain pair of colors.
If I had a cube capable of receiving these cards, I think I'd probably make a judgement about which guild section the card fits best in and put them there (Warden of the first tree reads more selesnya to me than golgari for instance). The off-color activation would just be a bonus capability inherent to each of the cards.
If I had a cube capable of receiving these cards, I think I'd probably make a judgement about which guild section the card fits best in and put them there (Warden of the first tree reads more selesnya to me than golgari for instance). The off-color activation would just be a bonus capability inherent to each of the cards.
Why would this be the case? Green aggro might have barely enough critical mass to be a competitive thing at 360/450 soon because of this guy.
I'd combine green a lot of times with black for Lotleth Troll, Putrid Leech, black one drops, removal, etc. I don't think there'd be any reason to discourage that type of deck once you commit to making green aggro a thing. I'm excited to see an aggressive Abzan deck coming to a cube near me.
After this experiment, I added a "Multicolor" section to my cube for cards that don't strictly fit into any one color or guild. This includes things like Hybrid cards and these new offcolor activations, as well as tricolor cards. That section, so far, has been stealing numbers from my colorless cards. My cube has 465 cards (450 for a 10 player draft plus 15 cards for a Lore Seeker pack). 61 cards of each color, 9 cards of each guild (5 lands and 4 spells), and 70 cards that get split between colorless and the multicolor section.
What I learned from the experiment I linked above was just how little an imbalance in colors actually affects the draft. As a result, I'm not trying to be perfectly balanced at the top end, which lets me just play the hybrid/wedge/shard cards that are good enough to play without forcing myself to play bad ones. I'm definitely going to slot the new green one drop into this section, and probably Soulfire Grand Master as well. Not sure about the black hellrider variant, I think he might actually just be a black card.
I expect that by the time my Fate Reforged update is finished I'll have gone down to 60 cards of each color to buy myself 5 more cards worth of space in the multicolor section, since I have a few tricolor cards I'd like to fit in anyway.
Why would this be the case? Green aggro might have barely enough critical mass to be a competitive thing at 360/450 soon because of this guy.
I'd combine green a lot of times with black for Lotleth Troll, Putrid Leech, black one drops, removal, etc. I don't think there'd be any reason to discourage that type of deck once you commit to making green aggro a thing. I'm excited to see an aggressive Abzan deck coming to a cube near me.
I'm not saying that WotFT couldn't be a fine golgari card in its own right, just that I'd rather carve niches out of a guild section that a given tri-brid seem to work well with, rather than create whole wedge/shard sections in my cube. I'm just concerned that the relative quality between the the wedges/shard rosters might force a player to tend one that is inferior to the rest all for the sake of maintaining color symmetry. I still don't think there is a good enough hybrid or multicolor RUG card to justify inclusion in a normal cube, except maybe maelstrom wanderer.
I'll put them in the single color section. There aren't enough room for shards and wedges at 360 anyways. If I have a bigger cube, I would think it's a time to make a Shard and Wedge section.
I'm placing them in the single color section as well. I don't want to run cards like Broodmate Dragon and Sphinx of the Steel Wind just to make a wedge/shard section. All of them with the exception of the green one-drop seem to play fine without activating their abilities anyway.
My group is a fan of the multicolor cards, so I was super stoked to see that Khans was an enemy wedge set. I was glad to get those five cards back in the cube. Before Khans that section was mediocre at best with Lightning Angel being the only card I was sad to no longer be running. So now I don't know what I'll do. I love that I can once again play with Lightning Angel, but I'll be honest and say that it's surprising to get more cubeable wedge options so soon. It's awesome to have options, but also I want to play with Lightning Angel and I want to play with Soulfire Grandmaster because both cards are good, but I don't want to have a two card wedge section and I don't want to put Grand Master in my mono colored section or force it into a random guild section and aaahhhhh....
In all seriousness, with 550 cards, do you really believe that the balance of the draft will be negatively affected if you include both Soulfire Grand Master and Lightning Angel and don't also include 2 of every other wedge?
I am leaning toward the monocolored section. Most decks are more than one color and so there is about a 50/50 shot that you will be in one of the colors of the activation cost anyway. 50/50 seems not much different than many of the archetype specific cards.
If you are Boros aggro you don't draft wildfire (unless you are hate drafting it I guess). I think the dynamic with these will be the same, if you aren't in one of the 2nd colors, which should be 50%, you won't draft it.
I too am leaning towards mono...
... the way my cube is currently structured, if I were to add into multicolour, I would probably have to bring in a cycle of five (probably five wedge tri-colour cards if I was going to include any of the KTK hotness), or the full ten. And let me tell you, Bant and Jeskai are complete wastelands for Multiplayer...
I think many Hybrid cards or cards with another color in their text should be classified where applicable. I give some examples. Graverobber Spider, although green, has a very relevant black ability. Kird Ape is terrible without being Gruul. Ethersworn Adjudicator is Esper. The most recent Soulfire Grand Master is Jeskai, but I won't fault anyone for putting it in Boros. Figure of Destiny can fit in Red, White, or boros. I call it flexibility; some call it greediness. It depends how much goodness one wants to squeeze in cube.
I think as more and more sets are introduced, cubers are gonna give in sooner or later to gold cards. This is something I've foreseen for years. It's been coming. There're bound to be gold/hybrid cards printed in almost every set (especially the big ones) because Wizards have to cater to color archetypes in limited. And limited cards in turn becomes potential for cube.
The dynamics have changed, and so have people's tastes. Some multicolor cards are so good that they're become hard to ignore.
How do you plan to classify the the FRF cards that are single color to cast, but have hybrid activated abilities?
Do you plan to classify them in their single color section?
Create/put them in a new wedge section?
I have a very small wedge section where I have cards like Nicol Bolas and Sphinx of the Steel Wind. Expanding that section would require cuts to the colored sections or the guild sections. The latter would hurt more for some guilds, and also seems somewhat arbitrary in terms of which guild to cut a card.
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Still praying for a good Sultai one...
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I thought 450 was considered too small for a wedge section? Or are you making an exception for these because they're wedge cards but not really wedge cards?
In a 360 cube (or smaller), I'd probably classify them in the respective mono-colored sections if you don't want to make a shard/wedge section.
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Well, we got Tasigur.
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EDIT: 'Nathed.
EDIT AGAIN: For the Jeskai slot, as well as SGM, I also quite like the Jeskai Khan, Sun Yun, the Silent Tempest. You can potentially quite easily swing for 8 next turn like a small blue Rafiq of the Many who lets you swing with more stuff. Could be good for cubes with big tempo support and it's probably great in counterburn, being a cheap finisher to get with counter protection mana up quite easily.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
I do like that guym, just not sure hes quite good enough. Ive thought about testing him.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/3pq
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Regarding Sultai cards - have you played with Villainous Wealth? That card is bonkers if you support big mana decks.
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Sidisi, Brood Tyrant has been really good for me.
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"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Why would this be the case? Green aggro might have barely enough critical mass to be a competitive thing at 360/450 soon because of this guy.
I'd combine green a lot of times with black for Lotleth Troll, Putrid Leech, black one drops, removal, etc. I don't think there'd be any reason to discourage that type of deck once you commit to making green aggro a thing. I'm excited to see an aggressive Abzan deck coming to a cube near me.
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What I learned from the experiment I linked above was just how little an imbalance in colors actually affects the draft. As a result, I'm not trying to be perfectly balanced at the top end, which lets me just play the hybrid/wedge/shard cards that are good enough to play without forcing myself to play bad ones. I'm definitely going to slot the new green one drop into this section, and probably Soulfire Grand Master as well. Not sure about the black hellrider variant, I think he might actually just be a black card.
I expect that by the time my Fate Reforged update is finished I'll have gone down to 60 cards of each color to buy myself 5 more cards worth of space in the multicolor section, since I have a few tricolor cards I'd like to fit in anyway.
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I'm not saying that WotFT couldn't be a fine golgari card in its own right, just that I'd rather carve niches out of a guild section that a given tri-brid seem to work well with, rather than create whole wedge/shard sections in my cube. I'm just concerned that the relative quality between the the wedges/shard rosters might force a player to tend one that is inferior to the rest all for the sake of maintaining color symmetry. I still don't think there is a good enough hybrid or multicolor RUG card to justify inclusion in a normal cube, except maybe maelstrom wanderer.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Yasova Dragonclaw has been a complete beating.
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In all seriousness, with 550 cards, do you really believe that the balance of the draft will be negatively affected if you include both Soulfire Grand Master and Lightning Angel and don't also include 2 of every other wedge?
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If you are Boros aggro you don't draft wildfire (unless you are hate drafting it I guess). I think the dynamic with these will be the same, if you aren't in one of the 2nd colors, which should be 50%, you won't draft it.
... the way my cube is currently structured, if I were to add into multicolour, I would probably have to bring in a cycle of five (probably five wedge tri-colour cards if I was going to include any of the KTK hotness), or the full ten. And let me tell you, Bant and Jeskai are complete wastelands for Multiplayer...
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I think many Hybrid cards or cards with another color in their text should be classified where applicable. I give some examples. Graverobber Spider, although green, has a very relevant black ability. Kird Ape is terrible without being Gruul. Ethersworn Adjudicator is Esper. The most recent Soulfire Grand Master is Jeskai, but I won't fault anyone for putting it in Boros. Figure of Destiny can fit in Red, White, or boros. I call it flexibility; some call it greediness. It depends how much goodness one wants to squeeze in cube.
I think as more and more sets are introduced, cubers are gonna give in sooner or later to gold cards. This is something I've foreseen for years. It's been coming. There're bound to be gold/hybrid cards printed in almost every set (especially the big ones) because Wizards have to cater to color archetypes in limited. And limited cards in turn becomes potential for cube.
The dynamics have changed, and so have people's tastes. Some multicolor cards are so good that they're become hard to ignore.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG