Honestly it depends on the build of the cube you are drafting from. If its a 360 card cube that is designed well with a ton of bombs sol ring will probably be an amazing first pick, but if its a 600 card cube that is just a pile of good cards and no design to it sol ring would probably suck as a first pick.
Yes. Yes I do, and it often does. This argument is terrible, and something you would rip apart from the otherside. Hell, throw Spiritmonger into that sample pack you posted instead of Knight of the White Orchid. Now, is it possible it will wheel? Hell yes. Even if a player is specifically in BG, there's a putrefy sitting there.
I actually used to believe that Sol Ring was overrated in cube much like you. Then I played against it. Then I played with it. Turns out I was stuck in "regular" limited thinking. Bombs do wheel. Removal does as well. Fixing flys all over the place. Why? Because the cube is filled with these cards, and you will experience diminshing returns on them. Passing on one bomb/piece of removal in order to be able to accelerate all your other bombs, of which there will be many, is just fine with me.
Over on mtgsalvation there is a ranking thread where people are ranking their top 20 P1P1's for each color. Currently they are on artifacts. Every list I've seen so far has ranked Sol Ring number one. Now, that may not be correct, but the odds that all the people their, who clearly have cubed a lot, are not only wrong, but DEAD wrong seems unlikely.
I can't see this being at all true. Library fits in every deck. Library wins you (well, me) 95% of the games which it is in my opening grip. Stonghold is slow, color intensive, more vulnerable, and restrivctive. While great I can't think of how the card would be in a similar tier to Library P1P1.Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
I've never seen him so upset....or ever before.
Rarely will I ever pick black lotus first. Sol ring on the other hand is the best car in any cube bar none.
I've been playing cube for about 6 months with friends and have drafted about 20 times with sol ring in my 45. I have never ever ever lost a game where I had sol ring in my opening hand. It is blatantly unfair to start any game 2 turns ahead of your opponent.
Guys guys....plz stop feeding "the Jack," he is dragging you in. You will never win, no matter how reasonable you arguments are or how wrong he is.
I hadn't seen this post until now either, but it's ridiculous how wrong you are. Library is an auto-windmill. EVERY TIME (Well, that and sol ring are pretty close, but I've never opened both so I can't really say). If I'm opening a library I'm slamming it and going control immediately. The card advantage that you get from that card is unreal, and it's not slow like stronghold. I honestly don't understand why you keep saying we're acting like it's vintage. There's a reason these cards are all sick in vintage, and it's because they're powerful. If my limited deck has 2 pieces of power (say sol ring and ACall, basically unreal opens, or 2nd picks if you're sitting next to me) then it's closer to resembling a vintage deck. How is that not good?
If you're taking slower versions of X card over a piece of power, that's fine by me, ship along the sol rings and ACalls and enjoy your slower versions of these cards. If I play turn 1 library, and you play turn 1 stronghold, who's winning that game? If I play turn 1 sol ring, and you play a dual land, who's winning at that point?
You're basically ranking slower versions of X card over the more powerful and fast versions, and it seems as though your judgement is clouded by normal limited. Cube is not normal limited. If you're playing with 15 card packs, about 8 or 9 are going to be bombs, so one is probably wheeling. If you're playing a 2v2 with 9 card packs, about 5 of them are going to be bombs. Just because I'm taking a sol ring over a control magic doesn't mean my deck is going to end up terrible. I'm going to wheel something, not to mention the 6 picks in between, that are going to be playable.
If I have a deck with 16 or 17 lands, a sol ring, and 22 or 23 bombs, it's going to be leagues better than a deck with 17 lands and 23 bombs. Mine are going to get out faster if I get a sol ring or mox start, and my card quality is going to be higher than yours right out of the gates.
I would love nothing more than to 3v3 your team with mine, and we'll see who's decks end up better, the ones that have vintage power, or the ones that have stronghold and terramorphic instead of library and sol ring.
EDIT: Also, you say that sol ring is a terrible topdeck late game, but is terramorphic any better? Your taking a mana source over a sol ring, and they're equally bad late game, but mine allows my X spells to be better, or if I topdeck a draw spell I'm going to have an extra mana after I draw my cards.
EDIT2: I also just saw where you said land tax was bad in limited, so I'm basically not going to respond anymore because you're so dense and braindead. Have you ever fucking played tax/rack? If you honestly think land tax is bad then I don't see how you're winning cube drafts, unless you don't play for money and just don't take it seriously and spread your bullshit to your cubing friends and they get last pick sol rings that end up in their sideboard. Or perhaps you just don't like casting your bombs with mana advantage given through sol ring and land tax, but in any case, good luck.
Ancestral Recall is legitimately busted and I never said otherwise, so don't try to insert words into my mouth. Library of Alexandria is ridiculously good, but not as good as Volrath's Stronghold as a first pick. Library requires a certain stream of play to be good. If you're in a situation where you're forced to expend cards answering threats, which happens all the time, your Library is going to shut down and you're going to have a hard time getting it active again. Mind you, it's still pretty damned good if you've even drawn one or two cards at that point, but it requires that the pressure on you be low. Volrath's Stronghold is consistently ridiculous. I would easily splash a single fucking Swamp on the third pack just so I could play Stronghold. Volrath's Stronghold means never having to draw something that doesn't fuck up the opponent's game.
As for someone citing a list of people on MTGSalvation giving strategy advice... you're citing a list of people on MTGSalvation giving strategy advice. I'm sorry, you may be forgetting that this is where Cavius is actually respected.
Please, for the love of God, just everybody let's shut up with the attempt to argue that other people agree with you so it must be right. Magic theory isn't something where the majority is always right even in competitive formats. For months after Extirpate came out there was a general consensus that it was maybe good, while cards like Jitte, Tarmogoyf and Skullclamp were ignored for weeks. And those are heavily played, competitive formats, not a casual draft format. I fully agree that conventional wisdom on Cube drafting is to first pick Sol Ring; I also think it's a stupid meme that people repeat without actually understanding it, because they only see the situations where Sol Ring is really good and not the entirety of the repercussions that come of first picking the card. As proof of this, I point to the fact that Dominick is with the opposition.
Again:
I have no doubt that Sol Ring enables really powerful plays. Obviously if the rest of your mana base is stable and you've got a lot of bombs you want a card like Sol Ring to run as a 17th land slot that's going to accelerate into those cards.
The problem is that you're putting the wagon in front of the fucking horse chasing after Sol Ring before you get those cards. A stable mana base that lets you run all those bombs you've picked up is more important than Sol Ring; and those bombs are more important than that.
In terms of real card advantage, in terms of real tempo advantage, Wrath of God is just vastly better than Sol Ring. Sol Ring will never win the game for you the way Wrath can. This also applies to Jitte, to Ancestral Recall, to Volrath's Stronghold and Library of Alexandria and Skullclamp and Cursed Scroll and Vedalken Shackles. It is simply wrong to think that if you pick Sol Ring over Nevinyral's Disk, you will be benefited by it. In every deck conceivable, drawing and playing a Disk opens a far greater world of card and tempo advantage than Sol Ring can show you, unless it's accelerating you into cards like Wrath and SoFI. But certainly it's better to have Wrath and Jitte and SoFI and no Sol Ring than to have Sol Ring and none of the others.
Yes, there are many powerful cards in Cube, but it would be grossly mistaken to think that they are all equally powerful. If you already have a half dozen legitimate bombs and a stable mana base, perhaps it's wise to think about Sol Ring to accelerate you into Kokusho and Damnation and flashbacking your Chainer's Edict, or casting a Stroke of Genius or Upheaval. What's not wise is relying on the best bombs wheeling. Spiritmonger was a joke because it's the type of card that would be a bomb in regular Limited but is simply mediocre in Cube; but other cards in this format legitimately deserve to be first picked because they fuck up other bombs. If you pass me a card like Garruk or Elspeth because you're picking up the Sol Ring to accelerate you into more bombs, I'm happy because you've given me better cards than you can rely on wheeling.
Maybe this changes if you have an exceptionally small Cube; I've never even seen a 360 card list. It's certainly not true for normal lists, and especially very large Cubes like the Wizards Invitational one, which has quite a lot of fluff in it.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I should point out I got that from goodgamery.com
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
This seems like airtight logic. You're accusing me (I'm assuming) of saying that you were wrong because people on salvation disagreed with you (which I didn't, thanks for reading) and respond with the flawless argument of "everyone knows people on salvation are idiots! This comic reflecting public sentiment proves it!" Don't you normally rail against this kind of thing? Oh wait, you did in the very same post. I see...
I think here is a fundamental disagreement. I don't think drafting Sol Ring is putting the cart in front of the horse, I think it's buying a cart first, and paying a hefty price for it, because there are fucking horses (bombs and fixing) everywhere, where as there are very few carts, and certainly none on this level.
I've never seen him so upset....or ever before.
No, I'm saying that arguing, "People on MTGSal all agree on something", which is what you did, proves nothing.
And for the fiftieth time;
If you think all bombs are equal, you're wrong. If you think the bomb you fifth pick is as good as the one you first pick, you're wrong. If you don't think that there's a scale to the quality of each card in Cube, and that even in a pile with cards from tournament-winning Magic history, some vastly outshine others, then you're wrong.
If you pick Sol Ring over Damnation, or Jitte, or any top-notch bomb, thinking that it won't make a difference if you're reduced to picking up second tier removal and bombs later on, then you're wrong.
If you think the difference it makes to have the possibility of first turn Sol Ring will make up for the difference in quality between a deck that first picked the best bombs and removal, and one that picked up mana acceleration first instead, then you're wrong.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I'm sorry.
Did you just say that Library isn't slow?
Are you going to choose to be on the draw every game, on the chance that you'll open Library?
Library is a really strong pick, don't get me wrong, but it's every bit as slow as Stronghold is, and more dependant on the rest of your deck.
Early one morning while making the round,
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down;
I went right home and I went to bed,
I stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head.
This is absolutely right. Library is absolutely the most ridiculous 1st turn play in the format. It will put you ahead by so many cards over the course of the game it becomes almost impossible to lose. You will never miss a land drop (barring really bad luck) and you will draw all your relevant cards faster than your opponent. We used to joke that if an opponent played turn 1 Library and didn't have down syndrome, we would just scoop and go to the next game.
As the argument for Sol Ring goes, you can have your stupid black creatures. I'm taking Sol Ring. There are always more creatures, there is always more removal. This is fucking cube. All the cards are good (unless you built one of those 900 card cubes with shitty cards). If you draw it mid to late game, its usually still good because like all limited formats, you don't always hit every land drop. It might let you power out your 7 mana bombs, or maybe just draw 2 more cards with Stroke or deal two more damage with Banefire. The number of times it is truly dead versus the number of times its puts you that much ahead of the opponent is a ridiculous ratio.
One final time, the top 3 picks go as follows:
1. Library
2. Sol Ring
3. Umezawa's Jitte
None of these posts have anything do to with the tournament report. If you want to discuss cube drafting strategies, do so in another thread. This one is being watched.
-TOOL
There was a young lady named Valarie
Who started to count every calorie
Said her boss in disgust,
'If you lose half your bust
then you'll only be worth half your salary.'
Nightmare - How did the Snakes as a 2 of feel? Were they decent? If you're still reading this thread (unlikely) I'd appreciate a more in depth talk about that card specifically.
Last edited by T is for TOOL; 06-04-2009 at 04:25 PM. Reason: Off-topic content deleted.
[3. LocalDefense]: English is under attack!
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