http://saltcitymagic.blogspot.com/20...ubtacular.html
As usual, my report of suckage. Still, it was a fun day of cube draft and EDH at the bar.
I had a cube together for over a year, and did weekly cube drafts at college, with 6 to 8 people each time, with only one rule (aside from general take care of these cards, 'having a half foiled up cube is a huge investment blah blah') was that Sol Ring was a first pick, almost regardless of what was in the pack.
My opinion is on-color power is a high pick (1-4th in the pack) while off-color power can get thrown by the wayside for cards that can win you the game.
And sometimes you just get the shaft during a day of magic; I know the feeling. The local GPT for Chicago was full of my opponents blind-flipping counterbalance, Dreadnoughts, and an opponent getting incredibly lucky with the Aggro Loam mirror match. I went 1-3, where the 1 was a shameful bye. And then I had to drive the winner of the GPT home.
I write reports because I like to write them, no matter how I do in the event. The fact that I don't always win is one of the reasons I do it on the blog instead of here. If you don't want to read it, that's ok. I'm not going to make you. Still, any recount of the day gives you insight into what went on aside from the play-by-play. There were a lot of people having a lot of different kinds of fun at this event. Why should only 8 people get to talk about it?
Pretty good.
Also, no, you're totally wrong.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Sorry, Adam. I'll buy you a couple round when I get home.
Sol Ring, Black Lotus, and Sensei's Top are always automatic first picks in the Cube for me. If I had to choose one, it would be Sol Ring. Turn 1 Sol Ring is the most unbelievable tempo boost its hard for the opponent to come back from that
Jesus, no.
I would never, ever, ever first pick a Sol Ring if you held a gun to my head.
You pick all the mana acceleration to power up into those power plays. Maybe that actually works against other idiots using the same strategy. I'm not going to pass you a single goddamn bomb. I'm going to take every bomb and removal spell that comes my way, and if I want more mana I'll run more lands. And you're going to accelerate into your crap that I'm going to answer and then you're going to run out of steam, because you drafted fucking mana acceleration over real cards in a format with an average ten turn clock.
You people need to play real limited some time, you're picking up the worst strategies imaginable.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I play real limited. And I like to think that I am pretty good at it. Whatever pick you take is going to be determined by what is in the rest of the pack. There are so many questions to ask before you make a pick, especially in a format with insane cards like a cube. Nightmare and I have a fully powered cube and the decks with the power and mana-fixing generally run more consistantly than the decks with just bombs.
But for the most part, there really isn't any way to draft the cube correctly. It really is just supposed to be a fun format, and if anyone wants to argue cube drafting somantics and strategy, I'll tell you to go fuck yourself because there really isn't any.
You are going to take the cards that you want to play with. That is the whole point. If you want to try and draft a good deck, hopefully in the cube, you will have a mix of power and bombs. But it really all just comes down to personal preference. Saying Sol Ring is better than Wrath of God isn't really relevant when both cards should make any deck and would be/are/were first picks.
If you want to talk relevant limited strategy, fine. But who the fuck cares about cube drafting or irrelevant formats in general? No sense in having a pissing contest over something that doesn't even matter.
EDIT: If anyone takes a single card over Black Lotus in a cube draft, you should get punched in the dick. Period.
Team Sexy - Better Than Ever, Still Better Than You
Right. But it was ME posting. About a relevant format.
Team Sexy - Better Than Ever, Still Better Than You
I take Sol Ring over Lotus in cube. I'd take Ancestral over Lotus, too, but I've never had the Ring/Ancestral pick. I think I'd take Ancestral but it's really close.
What are you taking over Sol Ring? There are DI creatures/removal/draw/counters, so unless it's something like Upheaval, Workshop, Survival, or an actual archtype, whatever you took over it was replacable, and Sol Ring is better than all of those other cards.because you drafted fucking mana acceleration over real cards
edit: power is not passable. what the hell is wrong with you people?
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
Eh, we pass on mana acceleration in cubing pretty often, but our cube has a limited number of win conditions. Making sure you are the player with the win conditions and answers to your opponent's wincons has been more important than the acceleration in our cube.
Don't get me wrong, Sol Ring and Lotus can do some amazing plays. But, we've found it is more difficult to consistently setup broken interactions with these cards than abuse more standalone bombs and control cards.
I think the value of mana acceleration heavily depends upon the other cards you run in a cube. As much as it pains me to say it, Black Lotus tempo is not always worth the loss in card advantage or a loss in the quality/quantity of your win conditions and control cards.
peace,
4eak
You're all fucking terrible and make me weep for the future.
Random pack of fourteen;
Harmonize
Suchi
Icy Manipulator
Lightning Bolt
Soltari Priest
Spectral Procession
Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni
Blightning
Lorescale Coatl
Mana Drain
Sigiled Paladin
Chrome Mox
Bloodstained Mire
Necropotence
And let's throw in Sol Ring.
Now let's discuss what this deck has. Our answer cards are Mana Drain, Lightning Bolt, Icy Manipulator. Our threats are Ink-Eyes, Lorescale, Sigiled Paladin, Soltari Priest, Spectral Procession and Suchi. Our utility spells are Harmonize, Blightning, and Necropotence. Our mana fixing is Bloodstained Mire. Our mana acceleration is Sol Ring and Chrome Mox is both acceleration and fixing.
In terms of power, I would rank the answers from Icy Manipulator to Lightning Bolt to Mana Drain, with Mana Drain being last; counters generally require you to pick up several before becoming a reliable strategy. Lightning Bolt is flexible and hits players, but is in the worst Cube color and doesn't take out bombs. Icy Manipulator can hold down anything it can target and doesn't commit us to a color.
In terms of power, I would rank the threats down from Ink-Eyes, to Suchi, to Lorescale, to Soltari Priest, to Spectral Procession, to Sigiled Paladin. Ink-Eyes is the most obvious bomb that will completely fuck up the opponent's day when she gets into play. Suchi is a beefy body that has the advantage of going into any color. Lorescale commits to two colors but gets really freaking big. Soltari Priest offers evasion, as does Spectral Procession. Sigiled Paladin is still an efficient weenie, although the worst of these cards.
In terms of power, the utility ranks from Harmonize to Necropotence to Blightning. Discard is highly unreliable in draft. Necropotence is obviously powerful but difficult to cast. Harmonize is a lot easier to splash, especially when green offers good mana fixing.
In terms of power, I would rank the mana cards, from most to least, as Bloodstained Mire, Sol Ring, and Chrome Mox. I don't like lands that lose CA in a slow format, and will often, in two to three color decks, provide exactly the color of mana I don't need. Sol Ring accelerates but Bloodstained Mire offers tangible mana fixing now, allowing me to grab up more bombs, especially if I pick up some dual lands later.
Overall, not knowing what else I'm going to pick up, this is how I would rate the cards in this pack;
Icy Manipulator
Ink Eyes
Harmonize
Suchi
Lorescale Coatl
Lightning Bolt
Soltari Priest
Spectral Procession
Mana Drain
Sigiled Paladin
Bloodstained Mire
Necropotence
Sol Ring
Blightning
Chrome Mox
Bloodstained Mire, Necropotence, Mana Drain, Spectral Procession and even Blightning might be subject to an elevated order later on, depending on what I've picked up thus far. Sol Ring pretty much would not be. Specific issues of color aside, the ranking of importance is more or less;
Bomby answers > bomby threats > card advantage > regular answers > regular threats > mana fixing > mana acceleration.
Sol Ring will pretty much never be a first pick. The rest of the deck would have to be absolute dreck, or I'd have to be running some sort of very specialized deck on the second or third pack; even then I'd have to see nothing else for me first.
Mana fixing, mind you, will rise drastically in importance as I learn what colors I'm in. I'm by no means diminishing the advantage of picking up color fixers. To that end I'd even look at Black Lotus over Sol Ring.
However, while ideally a mana base full of Moxen and the like would be nice, it's more important to seize the reality of having bombs and answers to play now than to rely on the hope of having bombs to go with the mana acceleration I just picked later.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
There I will disagree.
There are a relatively small number of cards that make Lotus a worthwhile pick. Kodoma of the North Tree, for example.
But your average creature will just give them a 2 for 1, because there's so much removal available in the format.
I do like Sol Ring, however, as permanent mana sources are infinitely more important when you have availability to so many bombs.
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.
Assuming this is my first pack, I'd probably rank them like this:
Icy Manipulator--Very versatile and fits any deck. Color screwing your opponent or creating favorable combat positions rocks.
Ink Eyes--second to Icy only because of double color cost, while Icy is much easier to play
Su-chi--I value colorless, efficient bodies a little more because they maintain value regardless of what I see in future packs
Lightning Bolt--we work hard to balance the colors in our cube, and so our red is a bit better than most cubes
Lorescale Coatl
Soltari Priest--evasion + protection from a relevant removal color
Harmonize--would be higher, but I prefer to take the bomby wincons and versatile control cards.
Mana Drain
Bloodstained Mire--seems pretty good in this pack too
Sol Ring
Blightning
Spectral Procession--colorless castability and raw permanent advantage makes it better than Sigil
Sigiled Paladin
Necropotence (BBB sucks, and it can be such a conditional card)
Chrome Mox--yuck. This card only works when we get Confidant + Necro in the same deck.
peace,
4eak
Actually, Ink-Eyes is probably the right call in that pack, since that leaves it with only Blightning as the playable black card, and that's a splash.
Theoretically, you could get the nuts deck with Ritual/Lotus/Hymn/Hyppy/Necro, etc, but the odds are so low that you've effectively cut black out of that pack by taking away Ink-Eyes.
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.
Dammit. That's actually a good call. You can even expect Bloodstained Mire to wheel to stabilize a manabase.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I definitely agree with you Jack about not taking mana sources early, but I believe Sol Ring has its merits. It puts you two turns ahead of you opponents for playing your bombs. And you say u wouldn't want to waste a first pick on it, but the thing about cube is there are 14 more good cards in the remaining packs. There is any shit picks in cube. Maybe off color cards but no bad ones.
After thinking about it some more, I forgot that Library of Alexandria is automatic first pick no questions asked, followed closely by Sol Ring, Ancestral, Top, Jitte, and maybe Time Walk and Lotus
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