I'm really curious about what you're trying to illustrate by comparing Dash Hopes with Carnage Tyrant. Care to elaborate?
I only follow this 'discussion' by reading quoted comments from you know who, but I think I can answer it for you.
Magic players hate the game and that's why Wizards replaced shroud with hexproof. And that's why Magic players, who hate the game, love cards like Carnage Tyrant because it has hexproof and can't be countered and thus is uninteractive and unfun. And that's why playing a card like Dash Hopes is like sprinkling holy water on a vampire to most Magic players because it's so damn interactive!!1 And, you know, Magic players HATE interactivity! Because they hate the game! Because they replaced shroud with hexproof! And everything Magic players hate is good for the game and that's why you should fill your cube with arcane cards and One with Nothing just because it's something Magic players hate.
I mean, that's bascially everything this guy has been saying over and over and over since he started posting in the peasant section of this forum (and I assume he posted the same nonsense elsewhere before). And that's all you'll ever hear from him.
It's not that Magic players hate the game and that's why they like dumb uninteractive nonsense like Carnage Tyrant, it's that they prefer having their wins handed to them and prefer showing you their Cool Thing(tm) even if it's at the expense of everyone else playing the game. As opposed to playing a long interactive game where decisions matter.
So instead of winning by actually playing the game and making decisions, they'd rather just put Ethereal Armor and 3 Rancors on Bogles and Louis C.K. you. A lot of Magic games mirror modern board game design where no one truly interacts with each other, they're just playing "Multiplayer Solitaire".
The guy with the turn one bull***** combo deck is enjoying himself, no doubt. But his fun is at the expense of everyone else and he isn't truly playing the game, he's just playing with infinite ammo, all guns unlocked, and invincibility cheats enabled. And that's why Dash Hopes, Banding, Splice Onto Arcane, etc. are things that I like, because they're the polar opposite of that.
As far as Dash Hopes being a usable card, generally no. But in a burn deck it's fine. If you're swinging with a Skittering Skirge and they go to remove it, protecting it with Dash Hopes presents them with a situation where neither option is desirable and the lesser of the two evils is still 2 mana 5 damage.
My argument isn't that it's a generally competitive card, it's that it's a well designed one and its "flaws" are what make it well designed as opposed to a card that has zero ways to play around it, like Carnage Tyrant. It creates a more interesting, more fun and interactive game state than an uncounterable hexproof above curve trampler does.
One was designed by someone who put thought into card design.
Another was designed by a 7 year old smearing ice cream on his face.
Yeah, I tried being pleasant again but he fell into the same pattern of behavior. I finally blocked him.
For whatever reason, our aside (which up to that point was tolerable) pushed pyredream to quit the community. Which is fine, I suppose, but it certainly came out of nowhere.
In any case, hopefully we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming
I don't block anyone or beg the mods to ban people that I disagree with but okay.
From my perspective, it's hard to have discussions when every card has to be The Best and daring to suggest a card like Tidal Wave or mentioning that Dark Depths was intended to actually cost 30 mana is met with accusations of me being a troll.
If asking about changing the CMC on Gurmag Angler and then telling you that I lied and it's actually Tombstalker is enough to get you to quit the forums, why is it my fault? Aren't you just too sensitive?
So whatever. It's not that I don't value everyone else's opinion because I don't consider any of you to be playing ~~~REAL~~~ Magic anyways, it's that I consider your opinions and do the exact opposite of what I'm told because I disagree about everything.
For example, my favorite Magic card is Dash Hopes. The reason everyone hates it is the reason why in my opinion it's a well designed card.
I find it super interesting that a structured post about Cryptic Serpent gets one reply but fake Gurmag Angler that's actually Tombstalker from SaltMaster of all people, is the highlight of peasant talk. Looks like controversy sells.
Well, it's not that interesting since I'm on my way out of this forum anyway. Enjoy your imaginary card discussions, I'll be going to a place that entertains discussion on real cube cards.
Last time this point was brought up about fixed Skullclamp, someone else said, "Oh come on, this dying forum gets like one post a day." You think that I'm hogging the discussion or whatever, in reality this place is a ghost town and I'm one of the few remaining active posters.
I got my answer on delve. I was told that the delve cards would be unplayable garbage at more than a 2 CMC increase, so I added 4 CMC. There.
Me having a discussion about delve isn't stopping you from posting about Cryptic Serpent.
Cryptic Serpent seems like a fine card. Seems like a solid EZCast beater like Gurmag. I would run it in my cube if I didn't hate the vast majority of art on new cards but blue Gurmag seems fun.
If you're looking for an opinion on how good it is, I wouldn't know. I like Magnivore despite being told that card is unplayable garbage and they're kind of similar.
If not everything has to be a good card, it's hard to communicate with you effectively. Especially when the tradeoff for good isnt even to be interesting.
I am not in denial about a 5 mana 5/5 being unplayable in cu/be.
My question was about at what point does the Delve cost become prohibitive and these cards stop becoming autoincludes. I get that everything that's not Mulldrifter, flametounge kavu, sprout swarm, and pack rat is considered "literally unplayable garbage" but that's not my question. I don't care about how good a card is, I cut Thraben Inspector for Shield Bearer.
I'll just stick with 11B for now. Well, 10BB since I've been lying this whole time and the card I'm actually concerned about is Tombstalker. I figure Gurmag and Cruise are reasonable facsimiles.
You can reasonably get 5-6 cards in the yard moderately early, and if you're playing some synergies you get rewarded for it with a BB 5/5 flier. Seemingly it should be 5-6-7~ mana creature on average, which is what I want a 5/5 flier to cost. I want Juzam Djinn to be equally as pickable as Tombstalker.
I'm talking about Pauper MBC. Magic players are in denial about what their best cards are so ironically no one runs Gurmag Angler in their black decks in favor of Phyrexian Rager or whatever garbage. Therefore it's a good idea to run 3 of them. You don't need any dredge or self mill or fetches to fuel Gurmag, you can fairly easily support them off of just incidental sign in bloods and removal spells and having your own creatures die or get countered over the course of a normal game.
At the very least you can support 1 in a draft deck. I find it hard to believe that it's ever a good decision to cut one from your draft deck.
I'm looking for 4-5-6 mana 5/5's. I'm okay with that. Not everything has to be some max power stat monster.
I do have some graveyard synergies but not running Gurmag because of them seems wrong. It's wrong for the same reason that, "I'm not running this Wrath because I have good creatures" is wrong. You always run the Wrath.
I was curious about damage on the stack since I've only been playing Magic since last year, so I started asking some friends what they thought about it, what they preferred and why.
One friend whose opinion I value said that he preferred damage on the stack, and another friend whose opinion I don't really value at all said that he thinks the change was for the better.
Some others also gave me resistance when I declared damage to be on the stack and I would tend to forget to declare it until part way through the draft when I would see a damage on the stack creature and it felt scummy to state it then, so I dropped the idea after a while and I ended up cutting the Nim Replica, Goblin Replica, Elf Replica cycle from my cube (which are some of the best looking cards in the entire game).
I try to play with as many COK Block and Mirrodin cards as possible because they have the best art and the most fun game mechanics and some of those were designed with damage on the stack in mind.
Then I realized that I could just sharpie a reminder on the cardboard longboxes I use for my cube and that everything that Magic players hate is good for the game.
So now I play Nim Replica in all of its hand drawn, computer colored Carl Critchlow glory and two-fer with it. Or play Yuki-Onni and destroy a signet with it, block and put damage on the stack, then bounce it back to hand with a Glacial Ray.
It adds an extra layer of depth to the game, like Splice Onto Arcane or Banding (another thing I get ***** for). I don't know about constructed, but at least in cube it's been fine.
Since I double sleeve cards, I will sometimes sharpie errata on the inner sleeve of cards that are too powerful or underpowered too. Nothing grinds a Magic player's gears more than when he sees that Infect has been replaced with Wither on Blightsteel, or that I've sharpied off Pro:red & white from Sword of War and Peace. Hail Satan.
TL;DR: If every reasonable idea I have is met with resistance, then any idea I have that's met with resistance is reasonable lol.
In constructed Pauper I could support 3 Gurmag Anglers with no fetches or self mill or anything, just over the course of a normal game.
So I don't really understand why one would cut Gurmag Angler from a black deck, at the very least the first one is EZ.
I also don't think that the card would magically be unplayable if it was 2 CMC higher. There is a number where it becomes unplayable but I don't think 8 or 9 CMC is that number.
A 40 card deck is going to have 33-34 cards on turn 0. Assuming you kept 2-3 lands, and run at least 10 creatures, keeping 1 or 2 of those in your starting hand, about 24 of those cards in your deck are gonna stick on the board when you play them. Without self-mill, it's gonna be hard to hit 10 cards in the graveyard before a 5/5 is just 'on curve' on turn 5 or 6. You get the benefit of mana efficiency, but are incredibly weak to bounce. at 10B, you're not gonna recast that for 1 or 2 until the game is very nearly over.
I think the math works against the delve cards once you increase each price by about 2. You only have so much deck, and you still want to get SOME value out of your cards, unless you want to self-mill turbo those suckers out, in which case, you might have better options (reanimator perhaps).
My thinking is that a few turns in it's not unreasonable to have 4-5-6 cards in the graveyard already, so you'd still be able to cast them reasonably often.
My goal would be to have a card like Gurmag actually cost 5~ most of the time, with the added bonus of getting a discount if you draft dredge/self-mill. As opposed to how it is now, where you just pay 1-2 mana for Gurmag on average. I want delve to actually be a cost, not just pretend mana.
I want a player to see both Juzam Djinn and Gurmag in a pack and have it be an actual decision.
The CMC I have Gurmag at now is B11. Haven't seen it in a draft yet.
How much Delve mana would it take for you to consider not autoincluding Gurmag Angler or Treasure Cruise in a blue or black deck respectively?
Let's say Treasure Cruise was U12. Would you still play it?
If Gurmag was B10, would you still play it? B12?
There is a point where these cards become legitimately unplayable, and the point where they're at now where their delve costs don't matter at all and you just slam 1-2 mana 5/5 and draw 3. I'm looking for the correctly balanced number.
I think having some strategies like hexproof and tron are good for the game as they're a counter to cheap removal. Why bother investing mana to build your board with fair creatures when stuff like lightning bolt and disfigure can remove it for so cheap? In general, I think this is why the games designers have started adding more enter the battlefield effects to creatures.
Ghostly flicker should go too. Tron is heavily played because it happens to be the best engine for ghostly flicker. Didn't peregrine drake decks play ghostly flicker too?
1.) I don't see why there needs to be a counter to interaction. If you play a creature and I play a Doom Blade that's just fine, I don't see a problem. Your argument is that having to interact with your opponent and protect your creatures is a bad thing. I disagree strongly, I don't think fun is subjective and I think that interaction is an objective measure of fun.
2.) There used to be this thing called Shroud. It was like Hexproof except fair. Did you know that since Kor Skyfisher doesn't target you can pick up and reset a Blastoderm with one? That's pretty cool, but why bother when you could shove a hexproof 1/1 with Ethereal Armor and Rancor for million/million with First Strike and Trample?
3.) There exist protection spells and 2 Pauper legal flag bearers. If hexproof was banned the fun, fair, interactive Mono White Heroic deck would take its place. It's like hexproof except it requires you to interact with your opponent in order to protect your creatures. It's a more fun deck to pilot and play against.
I don't think Tron should be banned. I think the 3 double flicker cards mentioned above should be banned. The defining characteristic of Pauper Tron isn't big mana, it's looping Ghostly Flicker and Ephemerate (or Displace should the other 2 get banned).
So the name Tron is a misnomer. Tron in Pauper should really be called 5 color Flicker.
All of the other Pauper Tron strategies I've seen are possible to interact with. Fangren Marauder & eggs, rebels, Fireball tribal, Rhystic Circle, colorless Tron that just shoves Ulamog's Crushers and Self-Assemblers, Snow White Tron (kind of like Boros Monarch but with Tron lands and Fireball in it), etc.
Tron isn't the problem because there isn't much you can actually do with big mana that's worth it. It's just these Flicker loops.
If all flicker elements leave Pauper, what will WU be running instead? A very clunky control deck?
1.) Evoke Mulldrifter into Angelic Renewal or Cloudshift or Momentary Blink. Like Ephemerate except not broken and can't be looped infinitely.
2.) Look up an old Reality Acid deck. Like that. I mean, Tortured Existence is a clunky control deck too, no one complains that it's second tier.
Ephemerate Mulldrifter is absurd, and Ghostly Flicker loops have been broken for a while now. Cloudshift Mulldrifter is far more reasonable.
I even splash white in MBC for Ephemerate and it's dumb.
These strategies would still be workable in Pauper, they just wouldn't be utterly dominating the format.
Another thing of note is that if you ban Flicker loops, it turns Tron into a fair deck that's possible to interact with and as a result second tier clunky midrange decks like Tortex and Reality Acid would be more competitive as a result. In a format dominated by midrange decks, reality acid is probably the best one.
Well, Astrolabe has been banned. Awesome. Anything that Magic players hate is good for the game and there is nothing that Magic players hate more than card bans so I hope Wizards keeps this up.
Very true. Combine that with the current mulligan rule and you see Astrolabe coming out turn one in nearly every game you play against it. I hope it goes tomorrow but I wouldn't put money on it.
From a psychology standpoint, most Magic players are tasteless jackals that want to show you, "Their Cool Thing(tm)" at your expense.
Meaning that they prefer to play a solitaire deck and Louis C.K. you with it instead of actually obeying the game's rules or interacting with their opponent. For example, decks like Hexproof and Tron.
Wizards knows this and that's why they periodically make Hogaak and Rotting Regisaur and other obvious mistake cards. Because it gives people the ability to play with cheats enabled, which is what most Magic players like doing.
All Magic players are the kid that gets shot with a toy gun going, "Nuh-uh, but I'm wearing a bullet proof vest so I'm not dead." They're not interested in playing a fair game, just a game that's fun for them at the expense of everyone else.
"Nuh uh, my creatures are hexproof and can't be targeted!"
It's why Arena is best of one, it's why drafts on Arena are against bots instead of real humans, it's why Hexproof replaced the elegant Shroud, it's why Commander is one of the most played formats despite being the worst balanced one, it's why everyone hates Kamigawa and Homelands, etc. Anything that reduces the amount of interaction your opponent has with you and the less the rules matter, the more people like it.
So port this to Pauper and there you go. They could very easily make Pauper fun, fair, and interactive but most Magic players are of the paste eating variety so infinite flicker loops and 5 color good stuff it is.
I only cube now. Only cards I enjoy, and none of what I hate. Constructed Magic sucks.
My friend asked me what my favorite card is last night. I had to think about it, and I ended up looking through my cube to find out. Dash Hopes is my favorite card. It's a very well designed card and the fact that most Magic players think otherwise proves my point. People hate this card specifically because it has interaction and decision making built into it. And that's why it's a well designed card.
I find it's best to stop caring and just put whatever cards you want in your cube. No need for complex formulas.
Furthermore, having certain decks show up 90% of the time kind of defeats the whole point of cube.
What I would do if I really wanted to push aggro would be to take one color and just make that the aggro color. Depending on the power level of your cube, just fill it with as many 1 mana 2/2's and 2 mana 3/3's or whatever and cards like Skittering Skirge as possible
It's not that Magic players hate the game and that's why they like dumb uninteractive nonsense like Carnage Tyrant, it's that they prefer having their wins handed to them and prefer showing you their Cool Thing(tm) even if it's at the expense of everyone else playing the game. As opposed to playing a long interactive game where decisions matter.
So instead of winning by actually playing the game and making decisions, they'd rather just put Ethereal Armor and 3 Rancors on Bogles and Louis C.K. you. A lot of Magic games mirror modern board game design where no one truly interacts with each other, they're just playing "Multiplayer Solitaire".
The guy with the turn one bull***** combo deck is enjoying himself, no doubt. But his fun is at the expense of everyone else and he isn't truly playing the game, he's just playing with infinite ammo, all guns unlocked, and invincibility cheats enabled. And that's why Dash Hopes, Banding, Splice Onto Arcane, etc. are things that I like, because they're the polar opposite of that.
As far as Dash Hopes being a usable card, generally no. But in a burn deck it's fine. If you're swinging with a Skittering Skirge and they go to remove it, protecting it with Dash Hopes presents them with a situation where neither option is desirable and the lesser of the two evils is still 2 mana 5 damage.
My argument isn't that it's a generally competitive card, it's that it's a well designed one and its "flaws" are what make it well designed as opposed to a card that has zero ways to play around it, like Carnage Tyrant. It creates a more interesting, more fun and interactive game state than an uncounterable hexproof above curve trampler does.
One was designed by someone who put thought into card design.
Another was designed by a 7 year old smearing ice cream on his face.
Because it has interaction built into it. And fun, fair, interactive Magic is like holy water to a vampire to most Magic players.
Compare Dash Hopes to a card like Carnage Tyrant.
I don't block anyone or beg the mods to ban people that I disagree with but okay.
From my perspective, it's hard to have discussions when every card has to be The Best and daring to suggest a card like Tidal Wave or mentioning that Dark Depths was intended to actually cost 30 mana is met with accusations of me being a troll.
If asking about changing the CMC on Gurmag Angler and then telling you that I lied and it's actually Tombstalker is enough to get you to quit the forums, why is it my fault? Aren't you just too sensitive?
So whatever. It's not that I don't value everyone else's opinion because I don't consider any of you to be playing ~~~REAL~~~ Magic anyways, it's that I consider your opinions and do the exact opposite of what I'm told because I disagree about everything.
For example, my favorite Magic card is Dash Hopes. The reason everyone hates it is the reason why in my opinion it's a well designed card.
Last time this point was brought up about fixed Skullclamp, someone else said, "Oh come on, this dying forum gets like one post a day." You think that I'm hogging the discussion or whatever, in reality this place is a ghost town and I'm one of the few remaining active posters.
I got my answer on delve. I was told that the delve cards would be unplayable garbage at more than a 2 CMC increase, so I added 4 CMC. There.
Me having a discussion about delve isn't stopping you from posting about Cryptic Serpent.
Cryptic Serpent seems like a fine card. Seems like a solid EZCast beater like Gurmag. I would run it in my cube if I didn't hate the vast majority of art on new cards but blue Gurmag seems fun.
If you're looking for an opinion on how good it is, I wouldn't know. I like Magnivore despite being told that card is unplayable garbage and they're kind of similar.
My question was about at what point does the Delve cost become prohibitive and these cards stop becoming autoincludes. I get that everything that's not Mulldrifter, flametounge kavu, sprout swarm, and pack rat is considered "literally unplayable garbage" but that's not my question. I don't care about how good a card is, I cut Thraben Inspector for Shield Bearer.
I'll just stick with 11B for now. Well, 10BB since I've been lying this whole time and the card I'm actually concerned about is Tombstalker. I figure Gurmag and Cruise are reasonable facsimiles.
You can reasonably get 5-6 cards in the yard moderately early, and if you're playing some synergies you get rewarded for it with a BB 5/5 flier. Seemingly it should be 5-6-7~ mana creature on average, which is what I want a 5/5 flier to cost. I want Juzam Djinn to be equally as pickable as Tombstalker.
At the very least you can support 1 in a draft deck. I find it hard to believe that it's ever a good decision to cut one from your draft deck.
I'm looking for 4-5-6 mana 5/5's. I'm okay with that. Not everything has to be some max power stat monster.
I do have some graveyard synergies but not running Gurmag because of them seems wrong. It's wrong for the same reason that, "I'm not running this Wrath because I have good creatures" is wrong. You always run the Wrath.
I was curious about damage on the stack since I've only been playing Magic since last year, so I started asking some friends what they thought about it, what they preferred and why.
One friend whose opinion I value said that he preferred damage on the stack, and another friend whose opinion I don't really value at all said that he thinks the change was for the better.
Some others also gave me resistance when I declared damage to be on the stack and I would tend to forget to declare it until part way through the draft when I would see a damage on the stack creature and it felt scummy to state it then, so I dropped the idea after a while and I ended up cutting the Nim Replica, Goblin Replica, Elf Replica cycle from my cube (which are some of the best looking cards in the entire game).
I try to play with as many COK Block and Mirrodin cards as possible because they have the best art and the most fun game mechanics and some of those were designed with damage on the stack in mind.
Then I realized that I could just sharpie a reminder on the cardboard longboxes I use for my cube and that everything that Magic players hate is good for the game.
So now I play Nim Replica in all of its hand drawn, computer colored Carl Critchlow glory and two-fer with it. Or play Yuki-Onni and destroy a signet with it, block and put damage on the stack, then bounce it back to hand with a Glacial Ray.
It adds an extra layer of depth to the game, like Splice Onto Arcane or Banding (another thing I get ***** for). I don't know about constructed, but at least in cube it's been fine.
Since I double sleeve cards, I will sometimes sharpie errata on the inner sleeve of cards that are too powerful or underpowered too. Nothing grinds a Magic player's gears more than when he sees that Infect has been replaced with Wither on Blightsteel, or that I've sharpied off Pro:red & white from Sword of War and Peace. Hail Satan.
TL;DR: If every reasonable idea I have is met with resistance, then any idea I have that's met with resistance is reasonable lol.
So I don't really understand why one would cut Gurmag Angler from a black deck, at the very least the first one is EZ.
I also don't think that the card would magically be unplayable if it was 2 CMC higher. There is a number where it becomes unplayable but I don't think 8 or 9 CMC is that number.
My thinking is that a few turns in it's not unreasonable to have 4-5-6 cards in the graveyard already, so you'd still be able to cast them reasonably often.
My goal would be to have a card like Gurmag actually cost 5~ most of the time, with the added bonus of getting a discount if you draft dredge/self-mill. As opposed to how it is now, where you just pay 1-2 mana for Gurmag on average. I want delve to actually be a cost, not just pretend mana.
I want a player to see both Juzam Djinn and Gurmag in a pack and have it be an actual decision.
The CMC I have Gurmag at now is B11. Haven't seen it in a draft yet.
Let's say Treasure Cruise was U12. Would you still play it?
If Gurmag was B10, would you still play it? B12?
There is a point where these cards become legitimately unplayable, and the point where they're at now where their delve costs don't matter at all and you just slam 1-2 mana 5/5 and draw 3. I'm looking for the correctly balanced number.
1.) I don't see why there needs to be a counter to interaction. If you play a creature and I play a Doom Blade that's just fine, I don't see a problem. Your argument is that having to interact with your opponent and protect your creatures is a bad thing. I disagree strongly, I don't think fun is subjective and I think that interaction is an objective measure of fun.
2.) There used to be this thing called Shroud. It was like Hexproof except fair. Did you know that since Kor Skyfisher doesn't target you can pick up and reset a Blastoderm with one? That's pretty cool, but why bother when you could shove a hexproof 1/1 with Ethereal Armor and Rancor for million/million with First Strike and Trample?
3.) There exist protection spells and 2 Pauper legal flag bearers. If hexproof was banned the fun, fair, interactive Mono White Heroic deck would take its place. It's like hexproof except it requires you to interact with your opponent in order to protect your creatures. It's a more fun deck to pilot and play against.
I don't think Tron should be banned. I think the 3 double flicker cards mentioned above should be banned. The defining characteristic of Pauper Tron isn't big mana, it's looping Ghostly Flicker and Ephemerate (or Displace should the other 2 get banned).
So the name Tron is a misnomer. Tron in Pauper should really be called 5 color Flicker.
All of the other Pauper Tron strategies I've seen are possible to interact with. Fangren Marauder & eggs, rebels, Fireball tribal, Rhystic Circle, colorless Tron that just shoves Ulamog's Crushers and Self-Assemblers, Snow White Tron (kind of like Boros Monarch but with Tron lands and Fireball in it), etc.
Tron isn't the problem because there isn't much you can actually do with big mana that's worth it. It's just these Flicker loops.
And yes, Peregrine Drake decks ran Ghostly Flicker. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pauper/comments/4xgenu/which_is_better_for_the_format_peregrine_drake_or/
This guy had the right idea back then and since it's reddit his well reasoned thoughts were downvoted.
1.) Evoke Mulldrifter into Angelic Renewal or Cloudshift or Momentary Blink. Like Ephemerate except not broken and can't be looped infinitely.
2.) Look up an old Reality Acid deck. Like that. I mean, Tortured Existence is a clunky control deck too, no one complains that it's second tier.
Ephemerate Mulldrifter is absurd, and Ghostly Flicker loops have been broken for a while now. Cloudshift Mulldrifter is far more reasonable.
I even splash white in MBC for Ephemerate and it's dumb.
These strategies would still be workable in Pauper, they just wouldn't be utterly dominating the format.
Another thing of note is that if you ban Flicker loops, it turns Tron into a fair deck that's possible to interact with and as a result second tier clunky midrange decks like Tortex and Reality Acid would be more competitive as a result. In a format dominated by midrange decks, reality acid is probably the best one.
What still needs to go:
Ghostly Flicker, Displace, Ephemerate, Mystic Sanctuary.
From a psychology standpoint, most Magic players are tasteless jackals that want to show you, "Their Cool Thing(tm)" at your expense.
Meaning that they prefer to play a solitaire deck and Louis C.K. you with it instead of actually obeying the game's rules or interacting with their opponent. For example, decks like Hexproof and Tron.
Wizards knows this and that's why they periodically make Hogaak and Rotting Regisaur and other obvious mistake cards. Because it gives people the ability to play with cheats enabled, which is what most Magic players like doing.
All Magic players are the kid that gets shot with a toy gun going, "Nuh-uh, but I'm wearing a bullet proof vest so I'm not dead." They're not interested in playing a fair game, just a game that's fun for them at the expense of everyone else.
"Nuh uh, my creatures are hexproof and can't be targeted!"
It's why Arena is best of one, it's why drafts on Arena are against bots instead of real humans, it's why Hexproof replaced the elegant Shroud, it's why Commander is one of the most played formats despite being the worst balanced one, it's why everyone hates Kamigawa and Homelands, etc. Anything that reduces the amount of interaction your opponent has with you and the less the rules matter, the more people like it.
So port this to Pauper and there you go. They could very easily make Pauper fun, fair, and interactive but most Magic players are of the paste eating variety so infinite flicker loops and 5 color good stuff it is.
I only cube now. Only cards I enjoy, and none of what I hate. Constructed Magic sucks.
My friend asked me what my favorite card is last night. I had to think about it, and I ended up looking through my cube to find out. Dash Hopes is my favorite card. It's a very well designed card and the fact that most Magic players think otherwise proves my point. People hate this card specifically because it has interaction and decision making built into it. And that's why it's a well designed card.
Furthermore, having certain decks show up 90% of the time kind of defeats the whole point of cube.
What I would do if I really wanted to push aggro would be to take one color and just make that the aggro color. Depending on the power level of your cube, just fill it with as many 1 mana 2/2's and 2 mana 3/3's or whatever and cards like Skittering Skirge as possible