Cubetutor Lists

[Jason Salvano]

Figured it might be useful to put all the lists in one place. If anyone else has their cube up on Cubetutor, let me know.

Mike Haley (& Pittsburgh crew)'s cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/8604

Mike Wall's cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/9110

Jason Salvano's cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/7698

[Mike Wall]

My list will be updated a lot over the next few weeks now that I have a better idea of what i want it to be

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[Rob Poirier]

4th Edition of my pauper cube. Updated just this weekend with Fate Reforged cards.

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/16870

[Richard Romanowski]

Huge update! I like that you added some old morphs now that you have the new ones

[Jason Salvano]

I'm curious about some of the cuts.

• Chittering Rats
  
• Fire at Will
• Martial Glory
  
• Putrid Leech
  
• Snakeform
  
• Temporal Spring
  
• Unmake
  

Were these too good?

[Rob Poirier]

Chittering Rats: Chittering Rats is good and can be ridiculous in some games, but it didn't really fit into any particular decks. Of the cards listed, it was the one I am most likely to bring back in.

Fire at Will and Martial Glory: I brought down the two-color pairs to just 5 cards each and I wanted to include War Flare in the Boros slow to support the token deck more. 

Putrid Leech: Purely just because I had to trim down the Golgari section. Putrid Leech is great, but doesn't have a real influence on the graveyard. 

Snakeform: Snake form might be too good in the right situation. Being a cantrip removal spell is not too good. Vigean Hydropon is a bit of a pet card. I want to see how well he works with morph creatures in green/blue. If it proves underwhelming, I might drop it for Snakeform or another simic card.

Temporal Spring: Temporal Spring just wasn't getting picked very often. The decks that really wanted it could usually pick it up, but not many decks wanted it. That may just be a reflection of the players I usually play with more than a true estimation of the quality of the card.

Unmake: When I first saw Unmake I thought it was suck, but in the cube there aren't many decks where exiling the creature vs destroying it matters. Unmake is usually just a worse form of removal compared to most of what white and black had access to.

The Pauper cube is interesting because the common removal might be too efficient. When you look at a pack, taking a Doom Blade, Pyrotechnics, Pacifism, or Prey Upon is usually the smarter pick compared to a creature. While they make creatures much better than they used to, there aren't a whole lot of resilient threats at common that stand up to cards like Rolling Thunder. I haven't made drastic changes (nor will I ever be using Rite of the Serpent or Sip of Hemlock in the cube) its been something I've had to think about. 

[Jason Salvano]

Realizing the limitations that gold cards can impose on your cube has been a good lesson for me. Personally, I love the challenge that gold cards present as high reward, high risk cards in the sense of both your draft and deck construction. In terms of the cube, they require more fixing, and attack your mono color and artifact pieces of the pie.

Only in more recent sets have the common creatures begun to pace the older common removal. Unmake is premium removal in my cube! Maybe my removal should be better...

[Mike Wall]

Do you guys try to balance the guilds in your cubes gold cards? I am running into some problems with that give the limited nature of the sets I'm pulling from. Also, green feels SO weak. My cube is coming together and I will be making more edits soon. Then I'll start asking for feedback before I start acquiring cards. 

[Jason Salvano]

I think it's more important to include a powerful incentive for playing each color combination (that the gold cards solidify or guide), and less important to keep numbers in equilibrium.

Obv green is weak. Your cube is all old cards.

[Tom Hummel]

Put Craw Wurm in there - problem solved!

[Mike Wall]

It's bad when greens 6 drop is something like craw wurm and blue's is mahamoti djinn

[Rob Poirier]

When constructing my cube, I try to design it in much the same way that R&D designs a modern magic set for limited. When it comes to the multi-colored cards and cards in general, I try to balance the colors/guilds/shards/wedges/lands to be even amounts so as to try to avoid a warped drafting environment where a particular color or color combination is favored. The difficult thing about balancing the multi-colored section comes with cards like guild mages, cards with kickers, cards with flashback, hybrid cards, off color activations, etc. While it is clear that a card like Armadillo cloak would be considered a multicolored card, what about a card like Forbidden Alchemy or Mystical Teachings? It requires a little bit of judgement of your part. I try to follow a couple rules

1. For cards whose casting cost is one color, but has a flashback cost/off color activation/off-color kicker I try and consider if the card is worth playing in a deck where you don't have the off-color mana. An example of this in my cube is Scholar of Athreos. In a W/B deck built for the long game, she is an allstar. As a 3 mana 1/4, she is pretty forgettable. Another example would be Dismantling Blow. 2W for Disenchant is strictly worse than Disenchant (which is in the cube already), but in a W/U deck, 4WU to disenchant and draw to cards is pretty respectable. 

2. For hybrid mana costs, I try to consider what decks in the cube actually want to cast the creature. A couple examples from my cube are Rakdos Shred-Freak and Slippery Boggle. Red has plenty of aggressive hasty opportunities in the cube and RR for a 2/1 haste isn't a bad deal. Most of the red/black decks in the cube would play it, but might consider taking goblins instead. When it comes to Slippery Boggle, the card is there to be another Gladecover Scout for the W/G Aura deck. There isn't really any other reason that a blue deck would want a 1/1 hexproof. 

3. For flashback costs, I consider whether a player would be happy with casting the spell once, or if you need to cast it twice to feel good about it. An example of the former would be Strangling Soot. Casting it just once is perfectly fine removal spell, being able to cast it a second time is excellent. An example of the latter is Reap the Seagraf. A 2B 2/2 is not good enough for the cube, but being able to flash it back, or get value off it if you self mill it, is relevant in Blue/Black which is Zombie tribal that benefits from self mill.

These distinctions become harder when you consider cards like the -scape cycles of familiars and apprentices from Invasion. I started the cube with both full cycles, but have dismantled them over time. Including cycles just for completion is a dangerous habit than can lead to some sub-par cards. As it stands I only have the Stormscape and Nighscape familiars left in the cube. Mostly because they support Esper control or Storm-ish decks. As far as the apprentices go, the green and blue ones are left in because they can be tappers. The black one is in because it is secretly a zombie and because U/B can take advantage of ETB effects while B/R aggressive decks could really use the first strike. I've seen both of those cycles categorized as wedge cards in other lists, but I don't think it is an apt categorization. 

The most important thing for me is to use the multicolored cards to help give a player unfamiliar with the cube an idea of what the color combinations do. The U/W cards are there to show that artifacts are what is important in that color combination. Most of the B/G cards try to encourage graveyard play. This isn't a rule that I strictly follow (Consume Strength, for instance, has nothing to do with the graveyard. Beyond usually helping to put two of your opponents creatures into the graveyard). I'm more likely to cute two color cards that don't support specific decks because they don't help point to a particular archetype (this is most of the reason that Fire at Will, Putrid Leech, and Temporal Spring were cut in the most recent update). 

TL;DR, I make it up as I go.

[Richard Romanowski]

Great read and a combo breaker of the regular email spew! Rob "quality over quantity" Poirier.

When I had a cube like Trevor's, I did similar things. Kird ape was RG, but I didn't consider hybrids as one color, that's interesting. Mine was also perfectly balanced since I'm a numberphile

[Peter Mitchell]

One of these days once I feel comfortable enough I'll put my cube up on the site... I fear I will have problems with balancing and all that good stuff because I'm kind of a newbie at this... it's trying to be a tribal cube so we'll see how that goes ... I structured around tribes and good cards I guess ... I'm sure there's a lot of broken stuff that I'll have to flush out if it's 2 annoying ..I'm gonna put a invite out to play at my apartment the weekend of March 7th so we can draft it... I figure I probably won't know much about how balanced it until I've drafted it at least once... Is that a good weekend?

[Jason Salvano]

I'd just throw out a word of caution that balance at the expense of fun is not a good path to go down. If I loved me some Golgari and I realized Putrid Leech was not in the cube, I might be unhappy. Of course the opposite end would be Sol Ring and Skullclamp (and Wurmcoil and Treachery and Mana Drain and power), so you've got to play a little tight. Balance your balance?

I don't think anything is going on that weekend...?

[Peter Mitchell]

Cool.. Funny thing is I don't think I have any of those cards in there. I have very little artifact creatures to be honest.. I'm not sure if that's a mistake .. mostly my artifacts are focused towards man of fixing and boosting tribal creatures.. I do have all of the therapists artifacts in there which I thought would be fun

[Peter Mitchell]

Funny my talk to text doesn't know how to spell mana lol

[Trevor McCarthy]

Yeah, pretty sure nothing's going on that weekend unless people are planning on going to Miami, Chicago, or Liverpool. Or, you know, do anything in their lives outside playing Magic: the Gathering, but who's crazy enough to do that?

Man, I did not know Mana Drain was an uncommon. Pity it's a $200 card...

[Jason Salvano]

OH, that's the Miami weekend. Not a 0% chance that I go to there.

[Tom Hummel]

Seriously? I'm pretty sure that I have one sitting in an old deck. Guess I should actually put it with my other old tradeables. #OldFartMTGProblems

[Trevor McCarthy]

Trevor's Peasant Cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/10414

[Jason Salvano]

Despite the fact that I find some of the cards distasteful (Sol Ring, Skullclamp, Story Circle, Spirit Mantle, 'S' Words for 1,000), I like it overall. If you've included Nightfire Giant, why not also Kird Chieftain and others of the cycle? Surely they're better than some of the other cards in slot? 

[Tom Hummel]

I think I'm going to make a cube that has all 6 Circle of Protection spells, Reverse Damage, all of the artifacts that gain you a life when you cast a spell of that color... In deck building there would be a maximum number of lands that you can play and draw spells (that can't target the opponent) would generally be considered a detriment. Everyone would likely figure out the best strategy quickly though - always mulligan down to 0 cards. Maybe have one Cranial Archive in the cube as the one completely bonkers unbeatable "rare".

[Jason Salvano]

Once Rich figured out the card drawing trap, he'd be in heaven. 

[Steve Nino]

So Mike Burger ( the Tournament organizer from uncanny) just stopped by micro center (my workplace) and Was curious where everyone's been and what the reasoning was that no one's been showing up. He seemed genuinely interested in knowing. If you guys have grievances I'd be more than happy to forward them to him as he said wants to do what he can to make the environment more playable for us.

[Trevor McCarthy]

...Anyways, back to the topic of cubes: Jason, I haven't really been sure what exactly I'd cut for them. I've thought about taking out Mystical Teachings for Jorubai Murk Lurker (seeing as it's, you know, completely insane), but I'm pretty sure if I did that, Rich wouldn't let me take the Cube into his house.

[Jason Salvano]

Cubes: Cut for the M15 ability guys? Well, I'd start with the S words cards, but that's just me.

Burgers: Due to weather and work responsibilities, I haven't been able to get back on the Monday draft train to get some reps with FRF. In general, I get the impression that supporting Magic is not one of the store's priorities, or at least, one among many priorities. And as business decisions go, I think that's fine. Being in a mall and having the location that they now do, it's probably in their best interest to appeal to as many different markets as possible: Comics, Apparel, Miniatures, Yugioh, Magic, Heroclix, Video Gaming, etc. But being spread so thin, the attention to any one community suffers. Promoting all of the new events, the lounge, whatever is great...but has little to do with the Magic community.

I've commented on the changes specific to Magic many times--some of them that felt punitive, like the reduction in store credit and prizes--and others have commented on the latest, like the litter-gate situation. If we wanted to put in the effort and if there's genuine interest from both parties, I think the best way to address would be to outline a document of grievances and suggested improvements. 

[argon.ph...@gmail.com]

So you're telling me that I should completely demolish the color balance and mana curve in my Cube just because you don't like the letter "s"?

[Jason Salvano]

That would be a rather hyperbolic interpretation of what I suggested, but sure! 

[Mike Haley]

It's gonna be pretty hard to play black cards with this new mandate!

—
Mike

[Jason Salvano]

Alex TreBLACK.

[Trevor McCarthy]

As far as UnComics & More is concerned...after we started planning to have our little get-togethers, I figured I'd still go to FNM there if no one was hosting anything on a Friday night. So I did that the Friday before the prerelease, and it sucked. It was like going to a new store for the first time after moving and not knowing anyone there, awkwardly trying to make small talk with people but feeling completely out of place the whole time. At this point, I'd probably only go back there if I knew a friend was going to be there, too, and what are the odds of that? I'd happily contribute to the grievances + suggested improvements document, though.

[Jason Salvano]

I was probably there. I do my best to suck all the fun out of any atmosphere.

[argon.ph...@gmail.com]

Really? That must be a new development, because otherwise you failed epically at that the first time we met.

[Jason Salvano]

I make sport of people's occupations, lifestyle choices, and most importantly, plays in game. I am of course perfect in all of these respects, so I reserve the right to make such judgments.

Does anyone know if CAM is running a Gameday (at either location)? Nothing on the calendar..

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 9:53 AM, <argon.ph...@gmail.com> wrote:

Really? That must be a new development, because otherwise you failed epically at that the first time we met.

[Nathan Musselman]

Yes, they are.  They have a display up at the front of the store for game day.  I believe the one in KoP will be on Sunday, but don't quote me on that.

[Peter Mitchell]

The word epically sounds funny (in a Peter Griffin voice)

[Sidney Blumenthal]

Here's my 450 + Planeswalkers powered cube. I'm a couple sets behind, and I might have to wait for rotation for baby Jace to come down in price a little. Every card is it's first non-foil version except all the alpha stuff is collector's edition (Lightning bolt, Llanowar Elves and Disenchant are true alpha). Basic lands are collector's edition.

I support the following archetypes: W, R, and B aggro, Ux control, UB tempo, Ramp, Naya value, Artifacts, BW tokens, Kiki-Twin, and Sneak & Show & Eureka. Some other stuff can work obviously, but those are the main ones.

My PWers are in their own section but since cubetutor doesn't let me do that, they are all in "Multicolor". I add 3 random PWers per player to the draft pool before shuffling up. It allows more narrow PWers to get a chance to shine every now and then.

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/235

[Richard Romanowski]

Very cool. When can we draft it? 😨