I've been playing MTGArena and been enjoying it. I've mostly just been brewing my own decks with little success :P, but it's fun.
My only concern is longevity to the game in the constructed format. Staying current when only playing a few games a week seems like an impossibility. I can pay say $90 for gems a few times a year, but even that's a stretch and opening packs for wildcards is just expensive and a massive money sink. I'd rather just splash on paper (Where I have already splashed a lot of cash).
So I'm thinking Limited is the best way to go.
Anyone know if you have to complete a draft in a single sitting or can I for example draft my deck today then play the draft out over a few days?
Sorry I've fallen rather poorly after my local pharmacy screwed up my medicine order. So fun ¬¬
It's sort of hard to concentrate on much at the minute and my daughter is a full time whirlwind. But some basic advice from the nonsense is:
1) Keep your guild cards at different mana costs. Which you've done for every guild except Simic and Boros. But switching Skyrider Patrol to something like Coiling Oracle/Shardless Agent or Deafening Clarion/Justice Strike for Heroic Reinforcements won't be hard.
2) At 360 try to keep your guild cards to a max of 3 per guild. Most 360 cards use 2 gold guild cards (cards that have 2+ diff colours in their mana cost). Where they move to three the third is usually a hybrid card. Your cube works fine with 3 gold cards per guild due to it's lower ceiling for broken insanity, which brings me to...
3) For now, you're best keeping to a single card for each shard and ommiting the wedges. The cards you have for each shard are fine, but if you need suggestions then Tamiyo, Field Researcher, Jenara, Asura of War and Treva, the Renewer would be examples that work across the various archetypes in Bant colours. Similarly in Jund you could use Gyrus, Waker of Corpses, Hellkite Overlord or Wasitora, Nekoru Queen.
I'm sorry I can't do much more. Grandma turned up has taken my kid while I was writing this, so ill use the time to rest. I'll try to contribute where I can, but illness and busy week is going to leave me with next to no time =(
No problems, health and family first!
I think I'm at a point where I'm just going to leave it as it is now. I've picked up a few of the cards i didn't already have and will finish up the cube when it all arrives. So from this point on I'll just call it finished and continue to refine over time.
The curves are so much better! They feel right on point for where your cube wants to be. It's a great base for you to work from, and the cards that you've chosen for yourself really give it some personality and are well thought out. Great job.
Also, the first draft I did with it at 360 was awesome. P1P1 (Pick 1, Pack 1) I took Glimpse The Unthinkable. I then proceeded to take every mill card I could reasonably take, hate drafting Gaea's Blessing and Fastbond in case I could splash it. Then in pack 3 the God-Pharoah showed up (Nicol Bolas, the Ravager), with me having red splash lands. It resulted in this monstrosity.
The God-Pharoah predicted this day would come. Let his will be known. Bow to your master Bolas, all hail the God-Pharoah.
You've done a fantastic job. Your cube's foundations are now truly solid, and the only thing left to do is balance up your multicolour section to match your needs. I'll help with this if you wish. From there, just swap in and out cards as you discover them or wish to test them, and enjoy many games of fantastic drafting.
Welcome to cubing! It's been a pleasure helping you learn the basics and get your first cube started, and I hope your playgroup appreciates all your hard work =)
If you have time some day throw up a few suggestions for the multicolour cards. I'm having a look, but it's not easy :).
I didn't get much time to look at the cube tonight, but i managed to put in about an hour.
So I went ahead and changed out a few cards. Including some of your suggestions and i tried to make a few changes of my own. I also bought the card count up to the magical 360! - YAY :).
I have to goto bed and didn't manage to look at the multi coloured cards yet. I can put up maybe another $20/30 this month to fix up those colours. So I'm hoping to go through the cube and pick out the worst cards per colour and pick up newer better cards. But it won't be tonight, i'm stuffed and have to sleep.
I really appreciate all the tips in this thread, you have all been a major help. And definately a big Kudos to Leyshade for his dedication!
Checked in on the cube again, and it looks like it's getting structured well.
Just keep in mind that expanding our cube with "Top 360" sorts of cards is going to turn the weird archetype additions into blanks - cards like Doorkeeper/Doomed Dissenter/Wolf-Skull Shaman/Waste Not/Wort, the Broodmother could have homes somewhere, but it's not in a world with turn 2 Grave Titan/Wurmcoil Engine/Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
I'd keep an eye on these cards, which I think could corner out your Tribal/Mill/etc plans:
Balance, Armageddon, Mana Drain, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Reanimate, Exhume, Recurring Nightmare, Channel, Rofellos and the Swords
Checked in on the cube again, and it looks like it's getting structured well.
Just keep in mind that expanding our cube with "Top 360" sorts of cards is going to turn the weird archetype additions into blanks - cards like Doorkeeper/Doomed Dissenter/Wolf-Skull Shaman/Waste Not/Wort, the Broodmother could have homes somewhere, but it's not in a world with turn 2 Grave Titan/Wurmcoil Engine/Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
I'd keep an eye on these cards, which I think could corner out your Tribal/Mill/etc plans:
Balance, Armageddon, Mana Drain, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Reanimate, Exhume, Recurring Nightmare, Channel, Rofellos and the Swords
While I have five minutes: This is sage advice too. I was going to wait to mention this until the curves were a bit more structured, but Emetic razes a good point.
Many unpowered cubes esque the use of the original Eldrazi titans because of their Ainnhilator ability being so utterly one sided. Cards like Sneak Attack, Show And Tell, Channel, Fastbond are all examples of ways these cards come out fast with no answers for your opponent. Slots occupired by parasitic cards that don't support any of the archetypes (Waste Not/Wort, Boggart Auntie) are better used for cards that keep in check the turbo speed, or enhance the ganeplan of existing archetypes
If your group enjoys at least one person having a blowout turbo deck, that's cool. But mileage may vary. If you find your group doesn't like that, moving the Eldrazi titans into their newer versions works well. As does using slower versions of those power cards: Fastbond > Azusa, Lost But Seeking and Balance > Magus of The Balance.
I feel it's good to have these type of effects in your cube, but during testing if you find Emetic is correct and these cards or others are too OP, look for cards with the same type of effect but on a lower scale.
Similarly, the quality of your removal will heavily define the format's speed. It will also be especially important in making sure that reanimator can't get too silly on turn 2/3, and mill can survive aggro. But take each thing one step at a time. Get your curves and archetypes down first, then follow Emetic's advice on balancing the overall power and sliding effects up and down on the curves =)
I agree that some of those cards can be abused and Channel is most likely too OP. Eldrazi or similar fatties on turn 2/3 is game breaking to be honest. I've also been unsure about the swords as i mentioned in a previous post further back. It also made me try to look at including more artifact/permanent removal in the cube.
With that being said both Waste Not and Wort, Boggart Auntie can be swapped out for better cards. The big Eldrazi are something I'd like to keep, but I'll keep an eye on how fast they come out and look at "downgrading" cards that make them come out too fast.
The colour i'm least happy with is Green. I'm thinking a Ramp/Elf(-warrior)/Warrior theme would work out well in there. So that's what I'm going to be looking at in the next few days when i get time.
What I'm more uncertain about is when you all mention "Curve". At the moment most of the colours are around or under 3 CMC with Blue, Red and green between 3.1 and 3.2 (CMC is 5.6 in the multi coloured cards). The average for the whole cube without lands is 3.12 CMC.
When you mention "getting the curves right" is that implying that the colours over 3 CMC are too high, for example?
I'm just unsure about that bit, so please explain :)?
PS:
As a side note, my group (4 people) is very new to drafting. We began drafting FNM about 6 months ago and go along maybe 1/2 times a month at best. So building the cube has really given me a better insight into the world of magic which is great fun :). So learning the archtypes, guilds and all this has been a great learning experience for me.
We all played while in high school maybe 15 years ago and only started picking it up again recently. So seeing the cards from Mirage, Tempest, Stronghold, Urza's Legacy and so on has all been a great trip down memory lane :). A bit annoyed i didn't keep all my old cards considering prices today. Thankfully I kept my Black Lotus (CE), Yawgmoth's Will, Juzam Djinn and a few others (which are also in the cube) and it's surprising to see how much they are now worth.
By all means. If a card is too OP in your cube then you either remove the card or adjust your cube to accomodate.
Only the Un-Sword exists in the nonsense because the other Swords are sadly a little too powerful in a vacuum at the minute. The same happens to us for various pieces of power, so we have to deal with increased variability and inconsistency. You will have more consistency, which makes it easier to remove problem cards and harder to adjust around them - the inverse of the Nonsense.
I do hope my suggestions are useful to you though. For instance, if the Mill deck doesn't work out, at least you'll still have good cards that provide a solid foundation to build up from in the future. Another thing I've found useful is to place highly parasitic cards into the guilds - that way the strategy is naturally supported and it semi-encourages their use to bind two colours together in the draft.
Mileage may vary however. Your experience and group are likely to be different to mine in some way, so always remember to apply a filter to advice so that your cube and game time is the most fun and exciting it can be =)
I'll do Zombies for you when I've got the time, likely when my terror tot passes out next
I have 2 kids myself, so understand the rules of engagement there
I think supporting mill will be fun. So I plan on picking up your suggestions. Looks good!
Tribal decks by their nature are parasitic, as they require the creature type their based around. The trick is to find creatures of that type that can work on their own, but benefit in a group. Our Vampire section in the Nonsense is an example of that.
There is actually a lot of overlap in Zombies and Reanimator. Several Zombies have recursion abilities, and many reanimation spells grant the creature type. So essentially you'd have a situation where you 'could' go zombies if you pick up a lord, or you'd just have a suite of good creatures that happen to be zombies. That choice is obviously yours to make though.
As with your mill deck, it's your choice to make. I will only offer suggestions of what you 'can' do, not what you 'should' do. For instance, here are some suggestions for cards you 'could' switch them into that enable mill while not being overly parasitic. I've put in brackets the cards I'd likely switch out in their place, such as the parasitic Waste Not. I've also done this specifically for mill cards, so that you can see.
Those are all cards that mill likes that can still be used in other decks and archtypes. For the most part
Those cards actually look really good and for the most part they seems like they won't cost too much (priced them up, looking at around 30/40 pounds). I actually think they could work really well.
Sword of Body and Mind as well as the other 2 swords i have in the cube seem really OP. I'll have to have a run through the colours and see if I have enough artifact/enchantment removal so these don't become a problem though.
I might actually go forward and pickup those suggestions of yours.
If we can keep a decent Zombie/Reanimator theme in black as well control in blue, maybe it won't be too difficult to change out some of those cards for some well rounded mill cards instead? I think it's a really interesting idea, but at the same time a little scared it will make a chunk of the cube very limited.
It also begs the question if it's worth doing that or just replacing some of the weaker cards (some of which are listed above) with cards that strengthen the more prominent archtypes already available?
White: White feels pretty solid, has a nice frame to it. Could use some more useful lower end cards, but I like where it's at at the moment. Treasure Hunter is an undervalued value card, working great in both Artifact.dec and nabbing equipment back that's been exploded.
Blue: Feels much alike white - relatively solid but needs 1-drops and a good late game card or two that really closest out the game. Upheaval is the big name, but if that's not your speed you might like Kederekt Leviathan. There's also not enough artifact support in general to make Artifact.dec work at the moment, needing a Darksteel Forge and others to get it there. It also feels like it's mill theme is lacking something too, but that's a momentary aside.
(Note: The Nonsense supports Artifact.dec through it's white/blue section. There may be useful cards in there that would work with your cube in those colours).
Black: Way, way too much at Black's top end. The zombies theme is great, as is supporting reanimator and mill, but it's made difficult by the top end. More low cost cards like Reanimate, Thoughtseize, Moment of Craving and Cryptbreaker. Culling the 5-drops to around 4 cards would help this colour. Elsewise it's Surveil cards work great for Dredge and Reanimator so looking for cards like Geth, Lord of the Vault or Returned Reveler that help in both archetypes may be of advantage to you. Lord of the Undead and Unbreathing Horde may also tickle your fancy.
Red: I generally like where red is at. Some cards could stand to get better versions, but the overall layout and card balance works well enough. It's only loss is in needing more 1 and 2 drops, that would enable aggro and make Experimental Frenzy earn it's keep. Burn like Lightning Bolt and Burst Lightning, along with 2 ATK-1 CMC creatures like Zurgo Bellstriker and Jackal Pup would seriously help.
Green: Feels alright for the most part, nice little mix of fatties and ramp, with some interesting Play Creatue - Draw Card features. Taking out Bounty of Might for something like Oracle of Mul Daya, taking pressure off the top end would do fine. You can also benefit from some of the 1 Green drops released over the last few years, such as Pelt Collector and Narnam Renegade, as well as old classics like Nimble Mongoose working well with surveil.
Colourless: Not sure why Ancestral Vision is here when it requires blue mana, but ok. Darksteel Forge would be welcome for the artifact deck, as would Voltaic Key. If you can find them, the Ravnica Signets tend to be better than Lockets and Keystones, but your mileage may vary. I'm honestly not the best person for this section, so I'd reference a 360 Cuber or two for how to construct this section. I'd also caution against Sol Ring though - outside of powered cubes with Moxen and such, Sol Ring often enables decks to go much faster than opponents can reasonably answer.
Guilds: Dimir - Glimpse the Unthinkable and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver if you want to push that mill theme. Selsenya pushes for a token theme that's not really there in white or green. Perhaps pivot some of this to a more lifegain strategy to support what's already there?
That's my thoughts for now. Hard to write with a three year old climbing on me, but I look forward to seeing you guys next update to it, especially with a full 360 list on CubeTutor to test.
Obviously not every card will be attainable or to taste. But they do represent cards that have mechanics you would want a copy or two of. Divest or Duress could be used instead of Thouhgtseize for instance. Foundry Inspector could easily become Tinker, depending on how broken you want to be. Dragonlord's Servant could be Dragonspeaker Shaman, all depending on how you want to balance things.
Oh, and bonus card to develop your Rakdos: Bladewing the Risen, enjoy that slice of Zombie Dragon craziness.
Edit: Cards from your deckbox that you can start using straight away, typed while I watch Marikiplier finish Bendy & The Ink Machine...
I need a break. So, that's at least something to work with now. I think I helped tonight, or at least I hoped I did. Look forward to seeing what you make of my suggestions =)
Wow, that was quite a lot of work you did there :).
You must have looked at the cube a few hours before i updated black as i worked on that colour last night. I've managed to pull it down to a CMC of 2.8 which I think works a lot better.
Blue
I've added Frost Titan and Inkwell Leviathan as some top heavy hitters in blue. Upheaval looks great so I will have a look at picking that up when I'm done with the other colours. I've put up a certain amount of $$$ to buy some single for the cube. At the moment I'm just trying to get it in a "Fit for fight" shape and then refine even more later on. So I'll leave blue as it is for the moment.
Black
Black was one of the colours that I haven't really used much in constructed so I didn't have a lot to work with. I've had a look at a few different cubes, both yours and emeticLunch and picked a few up cards on Ebay which i think could be fun (I've added those cards to the list, but they haven't arrived yet). I did however have Yawgmoth's Will and a few other from the "Old days". So I've included them.
Honestly I'm not that happy with black, but I think it's in a better position than before. A strong focus on zombies and reanimator which i think will be fun!. Ideally I'd like to get in another dragon (Maybe the Zombie Dragon you suggested and Bladewing's Thrall).
I think I'll move on to red now and start refining that and rather come back to black as the last colour. It's the colour I've used the least in constructed, so I don't have that many of the good individual cards.
Red, Green, Multi and Artifact
I'm surprised you said Red was not that bad :). I havn't managed to have a look at red yet. It's still in it's "Just thrown together" stage. The same goes for Green, Multi and Artifact. I want red to have a focus on Goblins, Dragons, Haste and Burn. I'll be looking at Red tonight.
I would hesitate to add Mill, Infect or Storm cards that don't win the game on their own or contribute to a more general strategy.
Those are almost always terrible - both for the decks trying to build around them, and for the other players who would otherwise see more usable cards in draft
Edit: Likewise for cards with other parasitic mechanics like Lys Alana Huntmaster or Darksteel Forge that only do anything in one specific deck. Thief of Sanity, Imperious Perfect or Bosh, Iron Golem are examples of thematic cards that work in multiple decks while supporting a specific Mill / Tribal / Artifact plan - they have an archetypes where they do a lot, but they can also be jammed in other decks and do something. The less all-in a strategy is, the better it is for a draft environment
I'm sort of hoping to have a Blue/Black mill theme, but it's obviously very premature at the moment without the best cards, but I'm hoping to make it work eventually :).
I'm not sure about Infect or Storm. I don't think there are many of those cards in the Cube at the moment.
I've definitely been trying to find cards which have a broader use case when adding them to the cube without them being "locked" to a specific theme/deck. Fevered Convulsions Is a card i really don't think is that good for example. Those cards will be refined out when i go back around for another pass at the cube and after we have drafted it for a week or two to get a feel for it.
I would skip the common, cycling and maybe tri-colored lands. What your cube looks like now - and what it sounds like with things like Sol Ring coming in - is a real power gap between cards.
That's normal to an extent - in a vacuum Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Wurmcoil Engine and Jackal Pup or Pestermite aren't even close to the same power levels - but they're normalized because those bad cards are part of combos or archetypes where they contribute something important to the game plan.
Right now, your list has a lot of cards that aren't good enough to make retail draft decks, and that don't really have decks for them. Supporting aggro at 360, I want a minimum 5 attacking 1-drops in aggressive colors and at least 10 attacking 2-drops per color. My highest priorities would be shifting the curve down to center around 1-3 mana slots, getting the downright bad cards out ASAP, and then evening out the guilds - I'd give 2 cards per color pair to start, and adjust by taste afterward.
Shocks and checklands are a solid mana base. With the exceptions of ONS/KTK/ZEN fetches and Alpha-Beta duals, you'll get declining benefits from land slots once you have those full cycles, so I probably wouldn't touch lands after that until your colors themselves are better balanced
We finally finished getting all our cards into Deckbox.org so we actually know what we have on hand. So we spent some time tonight looking at the cards we have and refining White and Blue in the cube. Cube tutor is updated.
New CMC:
White - 2.8
Blue - 3.2
I think white has turned out acceptable. But i'm more uncertain about blue. It's not really a colour i play so I just gave it my best :). I think we did an OK job of removing the chaff from both Blue and White.
We have at the same time increased the amount of cards in each colour to end up with a cube of 360 cards instead of the previous 280.
We'll do Black and Red tomorrow night and slowly work our way through the colours.
I might also mention that I picked up most of the lands in the list above, so they are on their way. Will take a week or so in shipping time.
White is definitely the strongest colour there due to it's Knight theme and Angel theme.
To be honest that's a pretty solid little base to work from. I'd say now that you'd probably want to fill out more of the low end of your cube, the 1-2 CMC cards to create solid curves rather than add much more to your top end. But adding enough lower end cards and sorting curves would give you a nice little 360 to build upon.
Besides, I just found a couple more cards to show my group for debate in the nonsense, so all's well that ends well =)
I'll write a more thorough set of suggestions when my three year old isn't acting like a mini-demon, coz honestly right now I'm not even sure Bolas could match her tyranny >.<!!
Opened a tab with your list last night and came here to say the same thing as LeyShade about CMCs.
Most decks you draft will probably be best with more 2-mana spells than 3-mana spells, and more 3-mana spells than 4-mana spells and so on, and the composition of your cube should support that.
There are a lot of cards bunched up at the higher mana costs. As you refine, that's one of the first things to pare down. It will make more cards playable and will make mana screw less of an issue
The next step would be refining the types of decks you support, whether you want to encourage prolonged mid-range slugfests, all-in janky combos, frequent aggro mirrors, tempo v. control fites, etc.
It does lean to the right doesn't it :). I've almost got my whole collection in DeckBox now which will make it easier to see what cards i have available as well as sort them. While I've been cataloging my collection I've noticed I have lots of Wizards which looks like fun. Anyhow, I'll start going through the cube and adding/removing cards and trying to skew the CMC more to the left and adding more cards that are fun to play while keeping a few top end cards for a bit of fun. But i want them to be playable!
So I'm really keen on having a strong manabase to support multi-coloured/decks cards as i think they are really fun.
Thinking of picking up the following:
* All shock lands i don't already have
* All tri-lands
* All check lands
* Some fetchland type cards (Terramorphic expanse, Warped Landscape and similar items)
* 5 colour helper lands: City of brass, Gemstonemine, Mana conlfuence as examples
Ahhh. The reason I suggested using CubeTutor is because it allows others to test draft your cube. It also offers feedback on what your cube does/doesn't support, and is very easy to use. It's also free: there is no necessity to access the paid features unless you truly need/want to.
At 613 cards you already have enough to cube. There is many people who run 540 Cubes with great success. It may be more easy for you at 720 if you find your total a little over that.
I stand by the suggestion of adding in the majority of your collection as your first cube (collection cube), and then cutting from there down to an appropriate size for your group. Once you find a nice structure doing that it will be a lot easier to swap cards out for others, than blindly trying to sculpt a statue with detail and all on your first go =)
Also I gandered over your stuff on that Deck Box site. It was kind of hard to read for me, but from what I see you do have all the cards you'd need to set up an initial cube. It would naturally be a lower power level than WTF's, maybe a little more powerful than the Nonsense (my sig) as your's would be more consistent. Either way though, it would give you a solid foundation to work from, being able to directly upgrade cards into better cards as you discover/gain them. Also, with your large amount of Darksteel stuff you may be able to offer support for an Artifact.dec variation as the Nonsense does.
Your clay offers you much potential and possibility, I will enjoy seeing what you sculpt in the end and hope you enjoy the journey of creating something unique =)
I didn't completely blow off your suggestion to just make a cube and get started :D.
Last night we went through each colour and put together this: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/121370
We just went through each colour sorted by mana cost and tried as well as we could to keep a balance.
We drafted it a few times last night (only 2 people) using the Glimpse method. It ended up favouring White quite a bit. But it was great fun!
My suggestion follows on from WTF, just throw together what you have now (like, everything you have), draft it a couple of times and then work backwards from the problems you find.
Too much red? Cut some red cards. Too many 6 drops? Cut some of those. Struggling for mana fixing? Time to grab some duals/tri-lands.
Get your cube built into something you find satisfying from what you have to begin, and then add other cards as you discover/aqquire them. Elsewise there is several drafters here with their cubes on CubeTutor (links in our sigs) who's lists you can use as guidance to map out everything from colour balance to finding interesting cards to insert.
You may also find it easier to type up the cards you have into your own CubeTutor cube so that users can easily look at it and make suggestions, and so you can manage it easily, and the plethora of other useful features that site offers. Drafting a few other peoples cubes will also give you a feeling for what you do and don't like in cube to help guide you.
But most of all what should be most important is having fun and creating a cube you and your playgroup enjoy, everyone else be damned =)
Edit: I skipped your last post by mistake.
Graveyard matters: Dredge, Delerium, Threshold, Delve, etc - Quite common archtype in Black, Blue and Green. Especially good with some of the Dimir/Golgari stuff just released.
Zombies: Tribal theme with lots of easy to aqquire lords. Quite common to see this supported across White, Black and Blue.
Angels: Primarily white but has been getting increased tribal support lately. Decks doing this tend to rely on cheap early cards (such as Mana Tithe and Swords to Plowshares) until they get something big going.
Lifelink: Also quite common, largely a white and black mechanic. But is a good archetype to support for those control shells =)
Burn: Red Deck Wins. Burn is an important part of red due to being removal. Ram that burn in there hard.
Dragons: Roar? Green, Red and Black support this archetype, though most of it's stuff is on the top end. Plays well with a Sneak Attack, but requires similar structure to Angels (cheap stall or ramp at start into something big).
Spells Matter: Red, White and Blue all support Prowess decks, which overlap with Storm and Wizards. An easy to support archetype in any deck that uses spells
Ramp: Green is a pain to make work, but tends to primarily be ramp and fatties, as good options for green Aggro have only just started to appear. And 'good' is a subjective term there.
These are all good archetypes to focus on making work first, and then build everything else around them basically =) - I look forward to seeing the projects outcome if you choose to share it =)
Thank you. much appreciated.
I think I'll take a slightly longer route by cataloguing every card i own (Only going back to M19 with a few outliers, so not so bad). Then I'll have a look at other cubes as you suggested. At a minimum I'll know what cards I already have.
I've managed to get all my Iconic Masters Cards and some of my more prolific rares into Deckbox as well as blue and red common/uncommon cards from the other sets mentioned in the OP. Minus most rares as I haven't started with my rares binder yet: https://deckbox.org/sets/2163799
Hoping to get everything in there by the weekend then the fun can begin :).
I'm really looking forward to getting started, this will be lots of fun!
My only concern is longevity to the game in the constructed format. Staying current when only playing a few games a week seems like an impossibility. I can pay say $90 for gems a few times a year, but even that's a stretch and opening packs for wildcards is just expensive and a massive money sink. I'd rather just splash on paper (Where I have already splashed a lot of cash).
So I'm thinking Limited is the best way to go.
Anyone know if you have to complete a draft in a single sitting or can I for example draft my deck today then play the draft out over a few days?
No problems, health and family first!
I think I'm at a point where I'm just going to leave it as it is now. I've picked up a few of the cards i didn't already have and will finish up the cube when it all arrives. So from this point on I'll just call it finished and continue to refine over time.
Thanks for your help. Hope you feel better soon.
Vexing Shusher > Radha, Heir to Keld
Wort, Boggart Auntie > Blazing Specter
Benalish Marshal > Brimaz, King of Oreskos
Fumigate > Thalia's Lancers
Bone Dragon > Abyssal Persecutor
Greenwood Sentinel > Sylvan Advocate
Sprouting Renewal > Sylvan Awakening
If you have time some day throw up a few suggestions for the multicolour cards. I'm having a look, but it's not easy :).
So I went ahead and changed out a few cards. Including some of your suggestions and i tried to make a few changes of my own. I also bought the card count up to the magical 360! - YAY :).
I have to goto bed and didn't manage to look at the multi coloured cards yet. I can put up maybe another $20/30 this month to fix up those colours. So I'm hoping to go through the cube and pick out the worst cards per colour and pick up newer better cards. But it won't be tonight, i'm stuffed and have to sleep.
I really appreciate all the tips in this thread, you have all been a major help. And definately a big Kudos to Leyshade for his dedication!
I agree that some of those cards can be abused and Channel is most likely too OP. Eldrazi or similar fatties on turn 2/3 is game breaking to be honest. I've also been unsure about the swords as i mentioned in a previous post further back. It also made me try to look at including more artifact/permanent removal in the cube.
With that being said both Waste Not and Wort, Boggart Auntie can be swapped out for better cards. The big Eldrazi are something I'd like to keep, but I'll keep an eye on how fast they come out and look at "downgrading" cards that make them come out too fast.
The colour i'm least happy with is Green. I'm thinking a Ramp/Elf(-warrior)/Warrior theme would work out well in there. So that's what I'm going to be looking at in the next few days when i get time.
What I'm more uncertain about is when you all mention "Curve". At the moment most of the colours are around or under 3 CMC with Blue, Red and green between 3.1 and 3.2 (CMC is 5.6 in the multi coloured cards). The average for the whole cube without lands is 3.12 CMC.
When you mention "getting the curves right" is that implying that the colours over 3 CMC are too high, for example?
I'm just unsure about that bit, so please explain :)?
PS:
As a side note, my group (4 people) is very new to drafting. We began drafting FNM about 6 months ago and go along maybe 1/2 times a month at best. So building the cube has really given me a better insight into the world of magic which is great fun :). So learning the archtypes, guilds and all this has been a great learning experience for me.
We all played while in high school maybe 15 years ago and only started picking it up again recently. So seeing the cards from Mirage, Tempest, Stronghold, Urza's Legacy and so on has all been a great trip down memory lane :). A bit annoyed i didn't keep all my old cards considering prices today. Thankfully I kept my Black Lotus (CE), Yawgmoth's Will, Juzam Djinn and a few others (which are also in the cube) and it's surprising to see how much they are now worth.
I have 2 kids myself, so understand the rules of engagement there
I think supporting mill will be fun. So I plan on picking up your suggestions. Looks good!
What are you thinking when it comes to zombies?
Those cards actually look really good and for the most part they seems like they won't cost too much (priced them up, looking at around 30/40 pounds). I actually think they could work really well.
Sword of Body and Mind as well as the other 2 swords i have in the cube seem really OP. I'll have to have a run through the colours and see if I have enough artifact/enchantment removal so these don't become a problem though.
I might actually go forward and pickup those suggestions of yours.
Following up from that
Having a look through the cube i could see swapping out these cards to make room for more/better Mill orientated cards:
Black
Thoughtpicker Witch
Walking Corpse
Dread Shade
Demon of Catastrophes
Ulcerate
Vicious Rumors
Wrench Mind
Clinging Darkness
Fevered Convulsions
Blue
Merfolk Trickster
Mystic Archaeologist
Aven Wind Mage
Tempest Djinn
Frost Lynx
Glyph Keeper
Ghostform
Quasiduplicate
One with the Machine
Artifact
Fountain of Renewal
Sorcerer's Wand
Angel's Trumpet
Tower of Fortunes
If we can keep a decent Zombie/Reanimator theme in black as well control in blue, maybe it won't be too difficult to change out some of those cards for some well rounded mill cards instead? I think it's a really interesting idea, but at the same time a little scared it will make a chunk of the cube very limited.
It also begs the question if it's worth doing that or just replacing some of the weaker cards (some of which are listed above) with cards that strengthen the more prominent archtypes already available?
Wow, that was quite a lot of work you did there :).
You must have looked at the cube a few hours before i updated black as i worked on that colour last night. I've managed to pull it down to a CMC of 2.8 which I think works a lot better.
Blue
I've added Frost Titan and Inkwell Leviathan as some top heavy hitters in blue. Upheaval looks great so I will have a look at picking that up when I'm done with the other colours. I've put up a certain amount of $$$ to buy some single for the cube. At the moment I'm just trying to get it in a "Fit for fight" shape and then refine even more later on. So I'll leave blue as it is for the moment.
Black
Black was one of the colours that I haven't really used much in constructed so I didn't have a lot to work with. I've had a look at a few different cubes, both yours and emeticLunch and picked a few up cards on Ebay which i think could be fun (I've added those cards to the list, but they haven't arrived yet). I did however have Yawgmoth's Will and a few other from the "Old days". So I've included them.
Honestly I'm not that happy with black, but I think it's in a better position than before. A strong focus on zombies and reanimator which i think will be fun!. Ideally I'd like to get in another dragon (Maybe the Zombie Dragon you suggested and Bladewing's Thrall).
I think I'll move on to red now and start refining that and rather come back to black as the last colour. It's the colour I've used the least in constructed, so I don't have that many of the good individual cards.
Red, Green, Multi and Artifact
I'm surprised you said Red was not that bad :). I havn't managed to have a look at red yet. It's still in it's "Just thrown together" stage. The same goes for Green, Multi and Artifact. I want red to have a focus on Goblins, Dragons, Haste and Burn. I'll be looking at Red tonight.
I'm sort of hoping to have a Blue/Black mill theme, but it's obviously very premature at the moment without the best cards, but I'm hoping to make it work eventually :).
I'm not sure about Infect or Storm. I don't think there are many of those cards in the Cube at the moment.
I've definitely been trying to find cards which have a broader use case when adding them to the cube without them being "locked" to a specific theme/deck. Fevered Convulsions Is a card i really don't think is that good for example. Those cards will be refined out when i go back around for another pass at the cube and after we have drafted it for a week or two to get a feel for it.
We finally finished getting all our cards into Deckbox.org so we actually know what we have on hand. So we spent some time tonight looking at the cards we have and refining White and Blue in the cube. Cube tutor is updated.
New CMC:
White - 2.8
Blue - 3.2
I think white has turned out acceptable. But i'm more uncertain about blue. It's not really a colour i play so I just gave it my best :). I think we did an OK job of removing the chaff from both Blue and White.
We have at the same time increased the amount of cards in each colour to end up with a cube of 360 cards instead of the previous 280.
We'll do Black and Red tomorrow night and slowly work our way through the colours.
I might also mention that I picked up most of the lands in the list above, so they are on their way. Will take a week or so in shipping time.
It does lean to the right doesn't it :). I've almost got my whole collection in DeckBox now which will make it easier to see what cards i have available as well as sort them. While I've been cataloging my collection I've noticed I have lots of Wizards which looks like fun. Anyhow, I'll start going through the cube and adding/removing cards and trying to skew the CMC more to the left and adding more cards that are fun to play while keeping a few top end cards for a bit of fun. But i want them to be playable!
So I'm really keen on having a strong manabase to support multi-coloured/decks cards as i think they are really fun.
Thinking of picking up the following:
* All shock lands i don't already have
* All tri-lands
* All check lands
* Some fetchland type cards (Terramorphic expanse, Warped Landscape and similar items)
* 5 colour helper lands: City of brass, Gemstonemine, Mana conlfuence as examples
Here is the list i have created so far.
I didn't completely blow off your suggestion to just make a cube and get started :D.
Last night we went through each colour and put together this: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/121370
We just went through each colour sorted by mana cost and tried as well as we could to keep a balance.
We drafted it a few times last night (only 2 people) using the Glimpse method. It ended up favouring White quite a bit. But it was great fun!
Thank you. much appreciated.
I think I'll take a slightly longer route by cataloguing every card i own (Only going back to M19 with a few outliers, so not so bad). Then I'll have a look at other cubes as you suggested. At a minimum I'll know what cards I already have.
I've managed to get all my Iconic Masters Cards and some of my more prolific rares into Deckbox as well as blue and red common/uncommon cards from the other sets mentioned in the OP. Minus most rares as I haven't started with my rares binder yet: https://deckbox.org/sets/2163799
Hoping to get everything in there by the weekend then the fun can begin :).
I'm really looking forward to getting started, this will be lots of fun!