To clear up this sidebar tangent, I should be more specific. The person didn't straight up lie, but they did play and make their own guesses in such a way that it seemed to me like they must have a weapon that they actually did not have. So in my notes, I jotted down that the murder weapon couldn't possibly be this weapon because clearly this person was holding it. When the envelope was revealed it ended up being the very weapon I just knew it couldn't be. This then became me going, 'WTF, you made it seem like you had that weapon!" Which then resulted in others explaining to me that it's ok to mislead the rest of the players with your guesses so as to throw them off. Apparently that's the point of Clue. But I don't like being misled and I'm not really good at or enjoy playing games that require me to purposely mislead others. It's probably why I'm terrible at poker. I guess what we learned here is that they bluffed and I considered it a flat out lie.
Haha. Ok, that's totally fine. I thought you meant you asked if they could prove you wrong and they said no when they had a card in hand. What you're describing is playing with unknown information, and that's part of the fun of Magic (especially multiplayer Commander). It's like when a blue player with a couple untapped lands pauses after you cast a spell and says "Wait, what does that do?" before reading it, checking the cards in their hand, and finally saying "Sure, it can resolve." Now you worry that you're playing around counter magic and don't want to cast your best spell. Or the black player looking at your attacker and the cards in their hand before saying "Meh, I'll just take the damage." Mind games are just part of the game. Of course, these bluffs can only work if some of the time you follow through.
The big winner was Call the Bloodline. I have a discard and graveyard theme in my cube, but that card is so good that a non-graveyard deck felt the need to Confiscate it, and then won off its back. The Lifelink is huge.
Orcish Lumberjack is a card that diserves more love. Instill Energy and a couple forests, and I was really going to town. If anything, I just needed more stuff to dump mana into. I really wish there was an uncommon Crucible of Worlds effect worth playing. Groundskeeper and Scaretiller just don't quite seem good enough.
Can you provide more context as to why these are over or under performing for you? I mean Felidar Cub has literally be around since 2004 with Kami of Ancient Law. What brought you to this list specifically?
I won't mention every card on the list, but I'll mention several.
Bestowing Hopeful Eidolon is enough to turn a mediocre beater into a must-answer threat, and just casting it is okay too. Plus you get to keep the guy after they answer the threat most of the time. Then it works well with other buff cards, since lifelink scales so well.
With Felidar Cub, I'm playing a high enchantment count, and it never missed having a target. Being a grizzly bear made it a strong enough maindeck card anyway. Really this one is about the high enchantment count, which supports a very minor but still present enchantress theme. That makes it better here than it would be in most environments, but I think people skip over this classic gem. Kami of Ancient Law was always a good card. Disenchant is the same way. This turns out to be a strong maindeck card in this cube.
Call the Cavalry does exactly what it says it does and nothing more, but that's pretty easy to underestimate. Crested Herdcaller is exactly one step up, and it's great too. It's pretty hard not to get value.
Nevermaker is pretty cool, and not a card I'd ever tried before. It's actually almost always an interesting choice to evoke it or not. When it's not evoked, it's a pretty inconvenient card to deal with.
Flood is the only thing keeping you alive a lot of the time. Sure, it's blue mana hungry, but holds down most threats, and can hold down multiple threats. The downside is that it likes to create board stalls, but some decks need to create a stall so they can come down for a big win.
Ghoulcaller's Accomplice has proven itself time and again. It's a little weenie attacker, and it gives you something to do when you run out of gas. It's great discard fodder, and it's happy to chump block.
I was interested to try Spikeshot Goblin over other pingers, and I was happy with the results. It's not hard to buff power, and just a small buff can make a huge difference. Specifically, this was working quite well with Samut, Tyrant Smasher. Now it's a hastey pinger that shoots for three. That's dangerous.
Samut is a pretty cool Fires of Yavimaya variant. I'm sure Rhythm of the Wild is better, but I don't have a copy, and I like what Samut is doing. Hybrid mana is sweet, the power boost is almost always relevant, and the card selection of the scry is something red/green really wants to be doing. It hasn't come up yet, but I think the fact that this can go in something like a black/green deck with ramp and reanimates gives it a decent edge over other fires variants.
I kinda expected Confiscate to be too slow. I purposefully played only very fair steals. Nevertheless, the effect is powerful enough that it's still pretty damn good at six mana.
Throes of Chaos is slow. It's really slow, but it's also a pretty solid value engine. It's also just fine to only cast it once. But it is pretty random.
Instill Energy is a heavily underrated card. Haste does a lot more than I ever gave it credit for here. Usually it just goes on a mana dork or a pinger, but sometimes it goes on something that just gets wild. Orcish Lumberjack with Instill Energy plus two forests can produce eight mana, and it has haste to boot. I definitely saw some very early Breaker of Armies off of that. I've only seen the pseudo-vigilance option used a few times. But with Instill Energy, Kiora, Kiora's Follower, and Quirion ranger, I've got a bit of an archetype with these, focusing on multi-mana producing cards.
Crawling Sensation worked quite well as a graveyard engine and a token engine. I am playing a graveyard archetype, and it's probably not a great card if you aren't. It's also fun to find ways to get lands into your graveyard during the opponent's turn.
Speaking of the graveyard archetype, Unburial Rites is such a great card for it. It supports the graveyard on both ends, and any grave based deck is going to have use for it. I'm playing at least one non-gold card per guild, and it's got me playing cards like Unburial Rites, Orcish Lumberjack and Probe that people don't tend to be able to find slots for.
Navigator's Compass makes bad hands keepable. It's not a great topdeck in the lategame, but sometimes the three life is a big deal then. This card has always done me good.
Vessel of Endless Rest is a generic mana rock, but I really like having the grave hate random upside. It's happy in the main deck or in the sideboard.
Also I didn't mention these, but the cards that I consider the basic equipment still always perform admirably. That's Bonesplitter, Trusty Machete, and Vulshok Morningstar. But I think most people already play these cards.
Sunhome Stalwart was... just a guy every time he came out. But I feel like it's a card that can be situationally quite good.
I was really disapointed in Exclude's performance. Three mana was too much for a counterspell that only hits one card type.
Dreamscape Artist just cost too much mana to activate. I saw it chump block more than I saw it ramp.
I added Ice Over because it hits artifacts, but it turns out to miss at least half of the important artifacts since they don't care about being tapped, and artifact creatures could have been targeted anyway. Particularly equipment. As creature removal, it's only ever been okay anyway.
Curse of Chains gives the opponent too many chances to get something value out of the creature. This might be due to the prevalence of untappers and creatures with tap abilities in my cube.
Thanks for the write up! A lot of these seem like excellent options for midsize to larger peasant cubes. I'm at 360 and really feel like quality starts to drop off quick after about 450, so a list like this (especially with context) can be really helpful.
Mergatroid jones
Im pretty sure you could make more starting hands keepable if you replaced navigators compass with an 18th land. It will be the fixing you need half of the time but the mana source you need every time.
Also, cali, all of my favorite nonmagic, nonsmash games involve lying. Bluffing is the best game mechanic ever.
I know hybrid classification is a heavily debated subject. It always seemed silly to me to call Rakdos Cackler a red card when it's clearly not. Why not just expand the guild section to compensate? Hybrids are healthy for the format anyway.
Regardless of that, I'm really liking my guild formula. In each guild, I force one gold card and one non-gold card (hybrid, off-color mono, or guild colorless). In my next update, I'm going to expand from three to four cards per guild, but keep it at one gold and one non-gold at the minimum. The non-gold guild cards really make the format easier to play, so I favor those over the more taxing gold cards.
All that said, I've been really disappointed with Curse of Chains. It gets picked highly because it's hybrid removal, but it often works poorly in practice, especially with my minor untapper archetype. I don't have any other good non-gold cards in Azorius other than Aethertow and Sejiri Merfolk, so I may be interested in getting something else (inexpensive) to fill that gap. What would you guys suggest in that slot? Dovin? Is Aethertow good? Are there other good off-color mono cards that I may have missed in Azorius?
All that said, I've been really disappointed with Curse of Chains. It gets picked highly because it's hybrid removal, but it often works poorly in practice, especially with my minor untapper archetype. I don't have any other good non-gold cards in Azorius other than Aethertow and Sejiri Merfolk, so I may be interested in getting something else (inexpensive) to fill that gap. What would you guys suggest in that slot? Dovin? Is Aethertow good? Are there other good off-color mono cards that I may have missed in Azorius?
If "off-color mono" means something like a card with an off-color cost in it, Momentary Blink is probably the card. Dovin is pretty good, though. Aethertow is not.
Hybrids are healthy for the format, yes - but not as guild cards. The most common way to integrate them outside the guilds is by keeping a balance between the colours by having each count as a half-card for their respective colours and just dispersing them equally between the colours to ensure equal amount of 'pure' cards for each. Thus, for instance, one might have Rakdos Cackler in Red and Murderous Redcap in Black, as a simple example. Since not all guilds have playable hybrids and since hybrids are the polar opposite of gold cards (usable by either colour rather than requiring both), treating them the same or requiring each guild to have a hybrid slot just does not work out in terms of colour balance.
People like to debate hybrid classification a lot, but it honestly doesn't make a practical difference wether one color effectively has one card more or less. Nobody's ever going to notice while drafting, as long as it's just a couple of cards. So claiming stuff like "treating them the same as guild cards doesn't work in terms of color balance" is a bit pointless. Yes, your color balance will be off in a theoretical sense, but it won't make a practical difference. If you need to have your colors balanced in a theoretical sense, go ahead and classify however you want. Theorycrafting can be fun after all. But if you only care about the impact on draft, don't bother with work that doesn't change your draft experience: just treat hybrids as guild cards and be done with it. If you feel like that curtails your gold cards, add one card slot per guild and fill it with hybrids where you want, the rest can just be additional gold cards.
With topics like these, it's really important to remember that your cube is your cube, you can't really do anything wrong as long as drafting it is still fun.
There is a difference in whether something affects colour balance and whether that ends up having a noticeable effect - although, even if it did, quantifying it would be so hard because of the lack of a control that while one is not obliged to be a stickler about such things, having foundations which are solid in principle is the much safer bet.
When I say that it does not work out in terms of colour balance, I mean that there is a real difference between the values involved. Whether that is reflected in actual play is a different consideration and you cannot just redefine colour balance in terms of actual play. The whole concept is about the structural features of the Cube which may or may not have noticeable impact within some degree of variation.
I'm not redefining color balance. I'm contending that when you claim a "real difference" it's in fact not. In terms of the draft, it's a nominal difference, not a real one. Why make the draft the central reference point? Because color balance only exists to ensure that the draft goes well. There's no point to balancing your colors otherwise.
You were also claiming "hybdrid cards are healthy for the format, but not as guild cards". I find that kind of absolute claim baffling and not helpful for anyone, hence the reminder that what we're talking about is a cube with no actual hard rules beyond "make it fun". You're not violating the fundamental laws of physics or human decency if you're a couple of cards off. Even how much we're actually off if we run a hybdrid in a gold slot is a matter for debate. None of your players is ever going to notice on their own if you suddenly start running 61 white cards and 59 blue ones. So have fun debating it, but don't worry too much about it.
Again, color balance is a good idea and you should stick to it in principle, sure. Again, if ~your~ cube has to be completely balanced in a way you find appealing for you to be happy, sure, go for it. Make yourself happy. But I'd prefer we didn't pretend it's going to be a tragedy if anyone else is off by a couple of cards. It's not. It's only as important as you want to make it for yourself when you're building your cube.
I know hybrid classification is a heavily debated subject. It always seemed silly to me to call Rakdos Cackler a red card when it's clearly not. Why not just expand the guild section to compensate? Hybrids are healthy for the format anyway.
I've always been curious about this, too. If it's gold or hybrid, I just call it a guild card, and I have 5-6 slots for each guild (some are easier to fill than others; in fact, it's become really hard to make cuts in some guilds because I like so many cards, whole other guilds struggle to have passable options). If it has an off-color flashback, I categorize it as it's actual color and just consider it a bonus if they draft it in a guild deck that can play it twice. Are my colors perfectly balanced in every conceivable way? I doubt it. But it's close enough that no one has ever noticed a problem. I mean, out of 400 cards, a couple cards is fairly insignificant.
I had hybrid cards in my guild section for quite some time until I was annoyed by it. In some cases it didn't matter since there was enough space, but ultimately it either didn't allow me to run the true two color cards I wanted or it prevented me from running hybrid cards I wanted to run, but had no space for in my guild section.
Most hybrid cards are single color cards that can be played in either color, so it makes no sense to run them in the guild section. Of course you can do whatever you want, but from my pov it just limits your options. When there are two good counterparts like Rakdos Cackler and Murderous Redcap it's a no-brainer, though I even run hybrids without a counterpart in the color where I have space and where I feel it fits best.
Expanding the guild section for hybrids is never a good idea as too many guild cards make the cube more linear to draft and you have to fill the guilds that don't have any playable hybrids with mediocre cards just to keep the balance intact. Well, you don't have to, but I think almost everyone wants a cube that is at least remotely balanced.
I'm very happy with my decision to put hybrids into the mono color section and I won't ever put them back into my guild section unless they are meant to be played as true two color cards such as Torrent of Souls.
Why do we have to restrict ourselves to the false dichotomy of "multicolor section or monocolor section"? Just because cube tutor sorts them that way doesn't mean we have to. Why can't we have a third designation "playable in either color"? It allows for cards like Rakdos Cackler and demigod of revenge to both exist without horrible misclassification.
Why do we have to restrict ourselves to the false dichotomy of "multicolor section or monocolor section"? Just because cube tutor sorts them that way doesn't mean we have to. Why can't we have a third designation "playable in either color"? It allows for cards like Rakdos Cackler and demigod of revenge to both exist without horrible misclassification.
How would that make a difference? It's about color balance and having a 'playable in red or black' section (aka as Rakdos hybrid section) for Rakdos Cackler wouldn't help with that unless you added the same amount of hybrid cards for all color pairs. And a large 'playable in more than one color' section where you just throw in every hybrid card would make it worse as then you'd end up with noticeably more cards in some colors than in others. I have two hybrid cards in Rakdos for example, but no hybrid cards in Simic.
I can agree with Guitarspider that color balance doesn't need to be 100% perfect as no player will notice a difference when red has 57 cards and green has only 56 cards, but there will still be a minor statistical difference.
Personally I want color balance to be as close as possible, both for aesthetic and gameplay reasons. As long as I don't have to restrict myself from playing good and fun cards (or have to play bad cards just to get the right balance) I see no reason not to strive for that.
I said 'real difference in terms of colour balance'; i.e. there is an actual calculable, verifiable difference in how hybrids and gold cards function relative to colour balance. You are talking about effects being nominal, not the difference. I seems the problem is the ambiguity in 'difference' since 'to make a difference' is often thought of in terms of practical effects. The manner in which true gold cards and hybrid cards differ is clearly quantifiable and while the effect diminishes as the number of cards increases, to just dismiss the matter in general is pretty anti-intellectual.
The reasons for my earlier comments are pretty simple: Principles like colour balance are means to an end. For instance, colour balance acts to ensure in its part that different colours and their combinations are not being advantaged or disadvantaged through differential availability. Now, it obviously does not suffice to make the colours balanced: card choices still matter. Hybrid cards are healthy because they inherently increase the amount of live picks in a draft, as long as they are worth picking. Treating them the same as gold cards skews colour balance which is unhealthy for the same reason colour balance helps along towards a good Cube experience. That might not be a deal-breaker since there are so many other considerations at play. But it is regardless unhealthy for quantifiable reasons and something which should at least warrant consideration as a result.
No one builds their Cubes without some regard for guiding principles and purely through testing play feel of random configurations. Sometimes, there might be overriding reasons which justify adjusting those principles. It does not mean that principles with actually quantifiable effects should be dismissed outright just because the effects on real play might not be salient because they are small and because the players lack a reference for their judgements.
All this is not to say everyone needs to retain perfect colour balance. Just that the difference between hybrids and gold cards is calculable and that dismissing it outright is hardly justifiable. As long as it is not used as a be all end all overriding principle, it will not make any Cubes *worse* to accommodate that difference. To ignore it entirely at least risks making them less fun.
I think it's important to remember that you don't need to stick to anyone else's rules.
Many people will happily have uneven setups or take a scientific approach to balance and that is up to them.
I personally prefer the aesthetic choice of having 3 multi and 2 hybrid, my hybrids aren't even equal in splashability or Playability or even being true hybrid (split cards are "hybrids" to me). If that is what I want to do that's what I want to do.
There are all sorts of weird side things going on in my cube with flashback and phyrexian mana, that some people take more seriously, I did at one point take it more seriously but loosened my own rules in the name of my cube experience.
Regardless, I know from testing that I have a really good colour balance going on, 7 colour pairs and a (almost) mono colour deck is what a draft tends to shake out as. I think, since your multi-coloured section will be super tight you have to think hard about what those cards are doing inside your cube, it's better to have archetype signpost cards rather than straight-up good cards in those slots. I know some people think that is boring but i don't play my cube enough to make that boring.
I digress, the point of cube is to make your own draft environment, your own it's all up to you.
I was responding to Guitarspider, specifically. And as I conceded, it is not something which should be considered an overriding consideration. Everyone is indeed free to make their own choices. The attitude of thumping one's nose at such considerations while confusing a comment on effects on a variable with effects on gameplay (even if the former will be reflected in the latter to one extent or another) just felt in need of addressing. For instance, if we assume that outside splashes, decks are either mono-coloured or bi-coloured, a hybrid card goes in 9/15 possible combinations while a gold card goes in 1/15. That is hardly a nominal effect on colour balance relative to any given slot even if the differences might pass under the radar in play.
Since, after all - there are ways in which we could in principle balance things like coloured symbols on cards across colours but few if any do so outside heuristics like putting limits on how many 1CC or CC cards per colour they are willing to include. At that point, other considerations such as power level of available cards generally take precedence. Phyrexian mana is another example where people (me included) are willing to make exceptions - in part since most cards with Phyrexian mana are only really playable under the assumption that you are paying life for them.
I've had this conversation too many times, and I'm short on time, but putting a card like rakdos cackler in the rakdos guild section is probably less accurate than even putting it in the colorless section.
Assuming two color decks, a red card can go in 4 guilds. A rakdos card can go in 1. A colorless in 10. And a rakdos hybrid in 7.
Putting something in "rakdos" that can be played in 6 other decks is helping those 6 other decks and hurting the guild you thought it fit into. I dont care if it seems negligible. It's still incorrect. I try not to do incorrect things.
/
EDIT
I would be intellectually dishonest if I didn't point out that a rakdos hybrid still has a small upside in a rakdos deck by being castable at all times. Murderous redcap may not always be castable on 4 lands in gruul, but is as castable as untethered express in rakdos. But being literally castable in gruul, izzet, boros, orzhov, dimir, and golgari should be a bigger consideration.
In truth the versatility of playability varies from card to card. Any deck with mountains or swamps can play Rakdos Cackler. Only a UW deck is going to be interested in Mistmeadow Witch. Any deck with islands or plains can play Depose // Deploy, but only a UW deck gets full value. Any deck can play Izzet signet for some ramp, but only UR is going to. Assault // Battery is basically unplayable in a green deck without red, but quite playable in a red deck without green. Fire // Ice is playable in R, U, or RU, but is better in red than blue. Kird Ape only goes in RG, but Ancient Grudge can go in a nongreen deck if it needs to. Gwyllion Hedge-Mage is playable in any black or white deck, but heavily rewards BW. Duergar Hedge-Mage is a decent sideboard option for R or W, and a decent mainboard card for RW. Farm // Market requires white, but loves it if you are also blue. Kaya, Bane of the Dead can be played in nonblack or in nonwhite, but if so it has a triple color cost and requires you to be heavily into that color. Saheeli, Sublime Artificer is likewise taxing on the mana base in a nonblue or nonred deck, but is silky smooth in RU. Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner is so easy to cast that even a nonblue nongreen deck could just splash it. Avacyn's Pilgrim has probably been in more nonwhite decks for me than in GW decks. Esper Battlemage is worth it in UB, but not in UW, and isn't much better in BUW than UB. Marang River Prowler is okay in U, and not all much better in BUG than in BU or GU. Thornscape Battlemage is fantastic in every Naya combination, but doesn't get cubed alot because it's considered three color. Probe goes in any blue deck, but loves black mana, and gives you a reason to splash. Even Migratory Route could be played as a colorless card in a four or five color deck with the option to cast it being a splash (though it's still definitely a gold card). There's a whole big spectrum.
I like my system of classifying guild cards as gold or nongold-- then requiring one gold, and one non-gold, but not forcing anything from there. That said, everybody seems to like their system, and the debate has been argued so many times that everybody's heels are pretty dug in. If anything what we've proven is that there are plenty of viable solutions to classification.
I find the pushback to this idea to be really interesting. Like, the way that some people seem to think it's a petty thing to argue about.
If someone said that they wanted to put a few more white cards in their white section because they don't know what to take out yet, or just to test some stuff out, nobody would mind. But if they said it was correct to put in 4 extra white cards, I think we'd have some words for them. Nobody would say it's purely a matter of opinion. Moreover, nobody would say that those of us with an opposite opinion were being nitpicky.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
Overperformers:
Hopeful Eidolon
Felidar Cub
Nyx-Fleece Ram
Disenchant
Call the Cavalry
Nevermaker
Flood
Confiscate
Ruthless Sniper (Archetype card)
Ghoulcaller's Accomplice
Call the Bloodline!!
Plated Geopede
Spikeshot Goblin
Throes of Chaos
Quirion Ranger
Crested Herdcaller!
Thundering Tanadon
Instill Energy!
Fertile Ground
Crawling Sensation
Probe
Orcish Lumberjack!
Samut, Tyrant Smasher
Unburial Rites
Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner!
Navigator's Compass
Vessel of Endless Rest
Underperformers:
Sunhome Stalwart
Phantasmal Bear
Exclude
Dreamscape Artist
Ice Over
Driver of the Dead
Sengir Autocrat
Bitterbow Sharpshooters
Curse of Chains
Claim // Fame
The big winner was Call the Bloodline. I have a discard and graveyard theme in my cube, but that card is so good that a non-graveyard deck felt the need to Confiscate it, and then won off its back. The Lifelink is huge.
Orcish Lumberjack is a card that diserves more love. Instill Energy and a couple forests, and I was really going to town. If anything, I just needed more stuff to dump mana into. I really wish there was an uncommon Crucible of Worlds effect worth playing. Groundskeeper and Scaretiller just don't quite seem good enough.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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With Felidar Cub, I'm playing a high enchantment count, and it never missed having a target. Being a grizzly bear made it a strong enough maindeck card anyway. Really this one is about the high enchantment count, which supports a very minor but still present enchantress theme. That makes it better here than it would be in most environments, but I think people skip over this classic gem. Kami of Ancient Law was always a good card. Disenchant is the same way. This turns out to be a strong maindeck card in this cube.
Call the Cavalry does exactly what it says it does and nothing more, but that's pretty easy to underestimate. Crested Herdcaller is exactly one step up, and it's great too. It's pretty hard not to get value.
Nevermaker is pretty cool, and not a card I'd ever tried before. It's actually almost always an interesting choice to evoke it or not. When it's not evoked, it's a pretty inconvenient card to deal with.
Flood is the only thing keeping you alive a lot of the time. Sure, it's blue mana hungry, but holds down most threats, and can hold down multiple threats. The downside is that it likes to create board stalls, but some decks need to create a stall so they can come down for a big win.
Ghoulcaller's Accomplice has proven itself time and again. It's a little weenie attacker, and it gives you something to do when you run out of gas. It's great discard fodder, and it's happy to chump block.
I was interested to try Spikeshot Goblin over other pingers, and I was happy with the results. It's not hard to buff power, and just a small buff can make a huge difference. Specifically, this was working quite well with Samut, Tyrant Smasher. Now it's a hastey pinger that shoots for three. That's dangerous.
Samut is a pretty cool Fires of Yavimaya variant. I'm sure Rhythm of the Wild is better, but I don't have a copy, and I like what Samut is doing. Hybrid mana is sweet, the power boost is almost always relevant, and the card selection of the scry is something red/green really wants to be doing. It hasn't come up yet, but I think the fact that this can go in something like a black/green deck with ramp and reanimates gives it a decent edge over other fires variants.
I kinda expected Confiscate to be too slow. I purposefully played only very fair steals. Nevertheless, the effect is powerful enough that it's still pretty damn good at six mana.
Throes of Chaos is slow. It's really slow, but it's also a pretty solid value engine. It's also just fine to only cast it once. But it is pretty random.
Instill Energy is a heavily underrated card. Haste does a lot more than I ever gave it credit for here. Usually it just goes on a mana dork or a pinger, but sometimes it goes on something that just gets wild. Orcish Lumberjack with Instill Energy plus two forests can produce eight mana, and it has haste to boot. I definitely saw some very early Breaker of Armies off of that. I've only seen the pseudo-vigilance option used a few times. But with Instill Energy, Kiora, Kiora's Follower, and Quirion ranger, I've got a bit of an archetype with these, focusing on multi-mana producing cards.
Crawling Sensation worked quite well as a graveyard engine and a token engine. I am playing a graveyard archetype, and it's probably not a great card if you aren't. It's also fun to find ways to get lands into your graveyard during the opponent's turn.
Speaking of the graveyard archetype, Unburial Rites is such a great card for it. It supports the graveyard on both ends, and any grave based deck is going to have use for it. I'm playing at least one non-gold card per guild, and it's got me playing cards like Unburial Rites, Orcish Lumberjack and Probe that people don't tend to be able to find slots for.
Navigator's Compass makes bad hands keepable. It's not a great topdeck in the lategame, but sometimes the three life is a big deal then. This card has always done me good.
Vessel of Endless Rest is a generic mana rock, but I really like having the grave hate random upside. It's happy in the main deck or in the sideboard.
Also I didn't mention these, but the cards that I consider the basic equipment still always perform admirably. That's Bonesplitter, Trusty Machete, and Vulshok Morningstar. But I think most people already play these cards.
Phantasmal Bear was so easy to kill.
I was really disapointed in Exclude's performance. Three mana was too much for a counterspell that only hits one card type.
Dreamscape Artist just cost too much mana to activate. I saw it chump block more than I saw it ramp.
I added Ice Over because it hits artifacts, but it turns out to miss at least half of the important artifacts since they don't care about being tapped, and artifact creatures could have been targeted anyway. Particularly equipment. As creature removal, it's only ever been okay anyway.
Driver of the Dead and Claim // Fame simply whiffed too often. Sengir Autocrat was too vulnerable. Bitterbow Archers was too far away from being Serra Angel.
Curse of Chains gives the opponent too many chances to get something value out of the creature. This might be due to the prevalence of untappers and creatures with tap abilities in my cube.
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My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
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MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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Im pretty sure you could make more starting hands keepable if you replaced navigators compass with an 18th land. It will be the fixing you need half of the time but the mana source you need every time.
Also, cali, all of my favorite nonmagic, nonsmash games involve lying. Bluffing is the best game mechanic ever.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
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All of our disagreements over the years finally make sense.
MTGS Average Peasant Cube 2023 Edition
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My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
Regardless of that, I'm really liking my guild formula. In each guild, I force one gold card and one non-gold card (hybrid, off-color mono, or guild colorless). In my next update, I'm going to expand from three to four cards per guild, but keep it at one gold and one non-gold at the minimum. The non-gold guild cards really make the format easier to play, so I favor those over the more taxing gold cards.
All that said, I've been really disappointed with Curse of Chains. It gets picked highly because it's hybrid removal, but it often works poorly in practice, especially with my minor untapper archetype. I don't have any other good non-gold cards in Azorius other than Aethertow and Sejiri Merfolk, so I may be interested in getting something else (inexpensive) to fill that gap. What would you guys suggest in that slot? Dovin? Is Aethertow good? Are there other good off-color mono cards that I may have missed in Azorius?
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My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
If "off-color mono" means something like a card with an off-color cost in it, Momentary Blink is probably the card. Dovin is pretty good, though. Aethertow is not.
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With topics like these, it's really important to remember that your cube is your cube, you can't really do anything wrong as long as drafting it is still fun.
When I say that it does not work out in terms of colour balance, I mean that there is a real difference between the values involved. Whether that is reflected in actual play is a different consideration and you cannot just redefine colour balance in terms of actual play. The whole concept is about the structural features of the Cube which may or may not have noticeable impact within some degree of variation.
You were also claiming "hybdrid cards are healthy for the format, but not as guild cards". I find that kind of absolute claim baffling and not helpful for anyone, hence the reminder that what we're talking about is a cube with no actual hard rules beyond "make it fun". You're not violating the fundamental laws of physics or human decency if you're a couple of cards off. Even how much we're actually off if we run a hybdrid in a gold slot is a matter for debate. None of your players is ever going to notice on their own if you suddenly start running 61 white cards and 59 blue ones. So have fun debating it, but don't worry too much about it.
Again, color balance is a good idea and you should stick to it in principle, sure. Again, if ~your~ cube has to be completely balanced in a way you find appealing for you to be happy, sure, go for it. Make yourself happy. But I'd prefer we didn't pretend it's going to be a tragedy if anyone else is off by a couple of cards. It's not. It's only as important as you want to make it for yourself when you're building your cube.
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Most hybrid cards are single color cards that can be played in either color, so it makes no sense to run them in the guild section. Of course you can do whatever you want, but from my pov it just limits your options. When there are two good counterparts like Rakdos Cackler and Murderous Redcap it's a no-brainer, though I even run hybrids without a counterpart in the color where I have space and where I feel it fits best.
Expanding the guild section for hybrids is never a good idea as too many guild cards make the cube more linear to draft and you have to fill the guilds that don't have any playable hybrids with mediocre cards just to keep the balance intact. Well, you don't have to, but I think almost everyone wants a cube that is at least remotely balanced.
I'm very happy with my decision to put hybrids into the mono color section and I won't ever put them back into my guild section unless they are meant to be played as true two color cards such as Torrent of Souls.
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How would that make a difference? It's about color balance and having a 'playable in red or black' section (aka as Rakdos hybrid section) for Rakdos Cackler wouldn't help with that unless you added the same amount of hybrid cards for all color pairs. And a large 'playable in more than one color' section where you just throw in every hybrid card would make it worse as then you'd end up with noticeably more cards in some colors than in others. I have two hybrid cards in Rakdos for example, but no hybrid cards in Simic.
I can agree with Guitarspider that color balance doesn't need to be 100% perfect as no player will notice a difference when red has 57 cards and green has only 56 cards, but there will still be a minor statistical difference.
Personally I want color balance to be as close as possible, both for aesthetic and gameplay reasons. As long as I don't have to restrict myself from playing good and fun cards (or have to play bad cards just to get the right balance) I see no reason not to strive for that.
My Old School Battlebox
My Premodern Battlebox
The reasons for my earlier comments are pretty simple: Principles like colour balance are means to an end. For instance, colour balance acts to ensure in its part that different colours and their combinations are not being advantaged or disadvantaged through differential availability. Now, it obviously does not suffice to make the colours balanced: card choices still matter. Hybrid cards are healthy because they inherently increase the amount of live picks in a draft, as long as they are worth picking. Treating them the same as gold cards skews colour balance which is unhealthy for the same reason colour balance helps along towards a good Cube experience. That might not be a deal-breaker since there are so many other considerations at play. But it is regardless unhealthy for quantifiable reasons and something which should at least warrant consideration as a result.
No one builds their Cubes without some regard for guiding principles and purely through testing play feel of random configurations. Sometimes, there might be overriding reasons which justify adjusting those principles. It does not mean that principles with actually quantifiable effects should be dismissed outright just because the effects on real play might not be salient because they are small and because the players lack a reference for their judgements.
All this is not to say everyone needs to retain perfect colour balance. Just that the difference between hybrids and gold cards is calculable and that dismissing it outright is hardly justifiable. As long as it is not used as a be all end all overriding principle, it will not make any Cubes *worse* to accommodate that difference. To ignore it entirely at least risks making them less fun.
Many people will happily have uneven setups or take a scientific approach to balance and that is up to them.
I personally prefer the aesthetic choice of having 3 multi and 2 hybrid, my hybrids aren't even equal in splashability or Playability or even being true hybrid (split cards are "hybrids" to me). If that is what I want to do that's what I want to do.
There are all sorts of weird side things going on in my cube with flashback and phyrexian mana, that some people take more seriously, I did at one point take it more seriously but loosened my own rules in the name of my cube experience.
Regardless, I know from testing that I have a really good colour balance going on, 7 colour pairs and a (almost) mono colour deck is what a draft tends to shake out as. I think, since your multi-coloured section will be super tight you have to think hard about what those cards are doing inside your cube, it's better to have archetype signpost cards rather than straight-up good cards in those slots. I know some people think that is boring but i don't play my cube enough to make that boring.
I digress, the point of cube is to make your own draft environment, your own it's all up to you.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
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GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
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Since, after all - there are ways in which we could in principle balance things like coloured symbols on cards across colours but few if any do so outside heuristics like putting limits on how many 1CC or CC cards per colour they are willing to include. At that point, other considerations such as power level of available cards generally take precedence. Phyrexian mana is another example where people (me included) are willing to make exceptions - in part since most cards with Phyrexian mana are only really playable under the assumption that you are paying life for them.
Assuming two color decks, a red card can go in 4 guilds. A rakdos card can go in 1. A colorless in 10. And a rakdos hybrid in 7.
Putting something in "rakdos" that can be played in 6 other decks is helping those 6 other decks and hurting the guild you thought it fit into. I dont care if it seems negligible. It's still incorrect. I try not to do incorrect things.
/
EDIT
I would be intellectually dishonest if I didn't point out that a rakdos hybrid still has a small upside in a rakdos deck by being castable at all times. Murderous redcap may not always be castable on 4 lands in gruul, but is as castable as untethered express in rakdos. But being literally castable in gruul, izzet, boros, orzhov, dimir, and golgari should be a bigger consideration.
/
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article
I like my system of classifying guild cards as gold or nongold-- then requiring one gold, and one non-gold, but not forcing anything from there. That said, everybody seems to like their system, and the debate has been argued so many times that everybody's heels are pretty dug in. If anything what we've proven is that there are plenty of viable solutions to classification.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
If someone said that they wanted to put a few more white cards in their white section because they don't know what to take out yet, or just to test some stuff out, nobody would mind. But if they said it was correct to put in 4 extra white cards, I think we'd have some words for them. Nobody would say it's purely a matter of opinion. Moreover, nobody would say that those of us with an opposite opinion were being nitpicky.
My CubeCobra (draft 20 card packs, 2 packs.)
430, Peasant, Very Unpowered
Why you should take your hybrids out of your gold section
Manamath Article