Well, we done had a BBQ at Scoop_Phase's place for Memorial Day. It was nice. There was EDH. And I forgot to bring the Cube. When I left the house I was trying to figure out how to email 40 megs of real estate pictures to my father. (Tip: Don't put them in a .ZIP file and try to send them via an attachment. I'm a genius.) I got distracted. But it would have been great, because it's free and we haven't Cubed in way too long. That got me thinking about our options for Shadowmoor additions to the Cube. I have a non-exhaustive list of potential candidates and would love to hear some feedback. There are lots of powerful cards in Shadowmoor (especially at the uncommon level) that kind of change the expected math that we use to evaluate cards. Is a 3/3 with haste and wither for three mana good enough? What if all the mana is colored? What if the card can still be played consistently in a two color deck despite the colored mana restriction? These are the sort of questions we haven't had to answer very often in the past.
Keep in mind we had only seven additions for Morningtide. I would guess that number is probably about right for Shadowoor as well, maybe even fewer. The stuff in the Cube is REALLY good, arguably the best cards in the last ten years or so of Magic (we don't run Power, so we can't claim to go all the way back to Alpha). Additions need to surpass this already excellent card quality. Oh, because of the multicolor slant to Shadowmoor, please recall that our Cube has absolutely juiced G/W already. I don't know why it worked that way, but it just did. G/W cards have an even higher standard. Kitchen Finks is still at the top of my list, but I'm just sayin'. Here is the latest Cube list, and the Morningtide additions, for reference.
White
Armored Ascension
Ballynock Cohort
Niveous Wisps
Prison Term
Runed Halo
Twilight Shepherd
Blue
Cursecatcher
Savor the Moment
Black
Beseech the Queen
Faerie Macabre
Dusk Urchins
Midnight Banshee
Red
Flame Javelin
Furystoke Giant
Intimidator Initiate
Green
Crabapple Cohort
Devoted Druid
Prismatic Omen
Tower Above
Artifact
Elsewhere Flask
Grim Poppet
Painter's Servant (Only if we add Grindstone!)
Multicolor
Aethertow
Augury Adept
Godhead of Awe
Mirrorweave
Mistmeadow Witch
Plumeveil
Thoughtweft Gambit
Somnomancer
Swans of Bryn Argoll
Inkfathom Infiltator
Inkfathom Witch
Oona, Queen of the Fae
River's Grasp
Scarscale Ritual
Wasp Lancer
Ashenmoor Gouger
Murderous Redcap
Din of the Fireherd
Fulminator Mage
Boggart Ram-Gang
Deus of Calamity
Firespout
Tattermunge Maniac
Tattermunge Witch
Vexing Shusher
Wort, the Raidmother
Dawnglow Infusion
Kitchen Finks
Mercy Killing
Oracle of Nectars
Oversoul of Dusk
***
Can we cut that down to 5-7 cards? Including the cards that are awesome that I am sure to have missed? I think maybe top ten lists would be worthwhile, so we can (hopefully) come to a consensus. I seem to like lists lately. Post yours in comments. Mine would run like this:
1. Kitchen Finks
2. Oona, Queen of the Fae
3. Swans of Bryn Argoll
4. Boggart Ram-Gang
5. Tattermunge Maniac
6. Firespout
7. Beseech the Queen
8. Flame Javelin
9. Murderous Redcap
10. Godhead of Awe
11 comments:
Ugh. I narrowed it from the 42 cards I wanted to add from shadowmoor (and that was already excluding some cards I wanted in) to a top 19. I'm having a hard time getting any lower than that. I'll put more thought into it later. These are NOT in order of importance.
1. Aethertow
2. Boggart Ram Gang
3. Flame Javelin
4. Dusk Urchins
5. Furystoke Giant
6. Incremental Blight
7. Kitchen Finks
8. Knollspine Invocation
9. Midnight Banshee
10. Oona, Queen of the Fae
11. Prison Term
12. Puppeteer Clique
13. Seedcradle Witch
14. Sygg, River Cutthroat
15. Tattermunge Witch
16. Torrent of Souls
17. Tower Above
18. Twilight Shepherd
19. Valleymaker
Is there a current Cube list accessible somewhere for reference?
I linked to it in the article, but here it is for you, special.
http://thefugitivewizard.blogspot.com/2008/03/toosarcastics-cube-draft-list-v20.html
It appears that link is not complete, but if you copy the whole URL (multiple lines of it) and paste it worked for me. Otherwise refer to the link in the body of the post.
There are to many cards that want to be in the cube. I have been for this for a while so I am going to suggest it again. WE NEED A BIGGER CUBE.
Shadowmoor has created many a great limited cards and all of them want a shot in the cube. Morningtide was easy because they printed some dumb rares and a few worthy uncommons, but Shadowmoor went and made every uncommon pure gold and the rares even more bomby for a limited environment. I know expanding the cube is alot of work and I would happily help to get the numbers right for each color again, etc.
I really think that with what Shadowmoor has brought us, Eventide is going to bring us even more. I can't imagine with Eventide's opposite (enemy) color scheme how stupid the cards will be. Remember Apacalypse
Please Expand the Cube
okay I visited www.Cubedrafting.com Evan Erwin's cube site and he has his configured like this
"My cube is currently 440 cards. 55 Cards of each color and Lands, 50 Artifacts and 60 Multicolor."
It is roughly 80 cards larger than ours, is that too much of a change to be able to play all the cards we want instead of trimming cards every set?
I like trimming. It's not like we can't play any card we want in EDH. Also, apparently I can't be bothered to read an entire article. Sorry for the redundant question.
What about building a cube of the worst cards in magic? Bog Hoodlums and Mudholes and Hindering Touch, oh my?
Re: bad cubes. Funny once. Unlikely to be fun to play. Good to pull out at a ptq as a lark. Never make it past round 1. Like drafting Homelands. Seems like a good idea, but isn't.
It always seemed to me the biggst downside to expanding the Cube would be that the quality of cards seems to drop off pretty heavily after about 400 or so. Shadowmoor does help this problem. The Cube then has a totally different shape, though. You have to begin to pick and choose other draft subthemes (like milling, or elves, or affinity, for example) that are linear. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that. We already have to do it to some extent. But then again, I have always envisioned going up to 540 (12 players) as the next logical step, not a smaller arbitrary number. I personally REALLY like the idea that you will use the whole Cube in an X-man draft, whatever the number X is (8 is obviously the sweet spot for this). But it is a personal preference, not a decree. The reason I like using all the cards is that I feel like I am guaranteed to have this intense distilled power to work with. I'm not "missing" any really awesome cards (I guess, Power excluded). But if we have an expanded Cube, even if we just expand it to 440 or whatever number, there will be that uncertainty of what is even in the pool. To be fair that's more like a normal draft anyway, where you don't know 100% what players will open, but somehow the Cube for me has a different philosophy behind it. Any other opinions about what to do here? Any more picks for adds?
T
I'm in favor of expanding- Obviously if we expand we'll need to take a look back through the cards that didn't make the cut originally, but shadowmoor has a million cube worthy cards on its own. I tend to like the idea of not knowing what's in the draft, and having a larger cube also dodges the "oh, two extras showed up? sorry, we're cubing. you can't play."
I really don't think power level will be an issue, as there are cards (hell, there are entire cycles) waiting to join the cube. I do think, and I've said this before, that the cube needs a bump on the controlling end. A lot of the shadowmoor cards that i'm advocating allow for that, but i'd be nice to have more space to work with.
Post a Comment