tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7069223956725485027.post9091254128965728830..comments2024-03-13T00:18:13.624-07:00Comments on MTG Cube: My Fixing PhilosophyNick Nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08217616255450989605noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7069223956725485027.post-68685047690105890192017-07-05T22:56:37.652-07:002017-07-05T22:56:37.652-07:00Well said. And I agree with you (mostly). Recent...Well said. And I agree with you (mostly). Recent sets have added a great deal of depth to cubing. I can't deny that. I still hold out that there's a perfect combination of cards that gives you the best of both worlds though. Some of the fun degeneracy of powered cubing with the quality that you can get in unpowered. A place where combo and midrange are both viable at the same time. Is that too much to ask for? :) gazzlefrazhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10273395347695080111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7069223956725485027.post-8543318817727705562017-07-05T17:02:33.325-07:002017-07-05T17:02:33.325-07:00I know what you mean! I do love me a Phyrexian Rag...I know what you mean! I do love me a Phyrexian Rager but at least the 2/1 for 1B can't be too far away now! While I also get your sentiment about missing some of the more exotic things you could try and pull off in cube I do feel we generally get much better games in the unpowered cubes these days. Decks are a little slow and a lot more consistent. There is more redundancy in the good effecets archetypes want and way more outs in all the colours to all the various problems they face. Games are a little more homogeneous now but a wider range of decks are possible and quality of games has gone up along with skill level. I think in all that is a great trade off and I am not sure we can have it all. I just make up for it but doing a bit of powered cube every now and again to get the silly out of the system! Then I do some weird constructed event where I can build the rare and exotic and then I am done with all that and just back to wanting good quality games. Nick Nobodyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08217616255450989605noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7069223956725485027.post-42474751772826199582017-07-05T16:19:16.131-07:002017-07-05T16:19:16.131-07:00Good observation on the 3 color decks. I've no...Good observation on the 3 color decks. I've noticed that as well. I think this is compounded by the fact that in going with more colors, it opens you up in the draft to a larger pool of playables. I believe this is the primary reason people use to argue less fixing. Why focus on two colors and limit what cards you can draft when you can easily go 3 colors and just have more options? End of the day though, if there isn't enough fixing all decks suffer and you wind up with too many games decided by screw. It seems like you have more options, but in fact you have less because you wind up with cards in your deck that can’t be supported by your mana. Somewhat related, part of what has encouraged me to look at a more combo oriented list is the 3+ color "good stuff" deck building problem (defined as just grabbing powerful cards and jamming them into a deck with no real archetype focus). As the average power level of cards in cube has gone up, the value of synergy has gone down I feel. There was a time when building a Reveillark / Karmic Guide style synergy based deck was so much value, it was simply better than just cherry picking bombs and making 3+ color good stuff. I believe you allude to this a bit in your archetype articles comparing powered vs unpowered. In powered, the archetypes are much more specific and well defined. They are heavily synergy based and often tend to be degenerate - in short, it’s much more powerful than whatever value you get from running a bunch of random bombs. In unpowered, it's a lot looser and less defined. It's in this space where "good stuff" drafting is thriving IMO. At least in my lower powered rare lists it was. I found good stuff drafting was often just the best way to go outside some obvious things. I miss the days where power level was lower and we were happy running phyrexian rager as filler in our Bx synergy deck. gazzlefrazhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10273395347695080111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7069223956725485027.post-34035448368591316472017-07-05T13:27:43.256-07:002017-07-05T13:27:43.256-07:00Really well phrased. I had arrived at the 20% mark...Really well phrased. I had arrived at the 20% mark through experience however your explanation and logic is more convincing. Thanks for siting article. Obviously everything Frank does is great! <br /><br />One funny thing about cube mana bases is that 3 colour decks actually can get better or comparably good mana bases to two colour decks in a lot of cubes. When you have a maximum of five duals per pairing you can fit in all 15 in one 3 colour deck and be more consistent than a two colour deck with with all five of its fixers. This is predominatly due to the interaction with sac lands and lands with dual types. If they get less than the full five in their pairing you will also be more consistent. For a while I had a meta dominated by three colour decks. I have managed to tone them back a bit by culling a lot of the gold cards but they are still some of the best archetypes. Nick Nobodyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08217616255450989605noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7069223956725485027.post-89916089110665395052017-07-05T10:13:57.905-07:002017-07-05T10:13:57.905-07:00Awesome article. Thank you for taking the time to...Awesome article. Thank you for taking the time to write it. <br /><br />For what it’s worth, the high land count in your list was one the catalysts for me questioning the conventional cube design which tends to only have roughly 1 full dual land cycle for each 90 cards or so. I think the average cube runs 11-13% fixing. Operating under that paradigm, my cube had become notorious for color screw and you really couldn’t pick fixing high enough to completely avoid it. CC cards became the bane of everyone’s existence. Which led me to really start questioning my ratios. <br /><br />I stumbled onto an article on Channel Fireball that talked about how much fixing you needed to reliably cast spells on certain turns and with certain mana costs (C or CC or CCC, etc). And the numbers are surprisingly high for a 40 card deck. For a two color deck, where you wanted to be able to cast say a T1 white card and a T2 double red card (an example you cited in your article), you’d need 10 white sources and 14 red sources in order to have a 90% chance of doing this. Assuming 17 lands, that’s 7 fixers (8 fixers with 16 lands). Granted, this is a fairly extreme two color deck but not that far off the reservation either. In the average cube, even if you took every dual land for that color combination and managed to grab all the city of brass type lands, you still couldn’t get to 7 fixers. There literally aren’t enough. And this only looks worse as you start building 3 color decks. <br /><br />Your 20% number seems really solid to me in light of all this. Just a simple calculation, but consider 6 fixing lands and 23 playables in a reasonably built cube deck. That’s 20.69% right there if we look at the ratio at face value. From that, I believe we can extrapolate the following: If lands are less abundant than 20%, players will be forced to choose fixing over playables while drafting. If lands are more abundant, the opposite is likely true and that makes it easier to assemble 3+ color decks. While I can see leaning one direction or the other, I feel most cubes are leaning way to far towards not enough fixing. To the point where drafting is being negatively impacted.<br /><br />The mana article for reference:<br />https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/gazzlefrazhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10273395347695080111noreply@blogger.com