I like cube drafting. I prefer MTGO because 2-1 is a redraft. I play arena bc cubing on my phone is nice.

Charging 1500 for a phantom with garbage prize payout is really bad. Bo3 2-1 is 200/1,000/2,500 is obviously tilted to 3-0 but it ruins the EV for normal drafters, sub 60% win rate people. At least premier draft keep the cards there is a little spiff in keeping the cards and eventually getting gems for the packs.

I am voting with my wallet. You can too. Do 1 if you want to check it out but don’t support the format based on this pricing.

If power cube is switched to this pricing structure count me out.

He struggled to explain why but I can explain for myself and it might be similar. (Edit: Zach Barash suggested it was about nostalgia, but for me it’s not that at all, so maybe this explanation will be a useful data point for the design team.)

Arena for me is a super convenient way to play Magic since I can’t afford the time to go to the LGS frequently. Alchemy to me is a different game than Magic. Many of the cards would be completely impractical for paper Magic, which makes it a different game to me. Arena to me is a way I can imagine that I’m playing actual Magic…as close as it can get with this level of convenience.

Also, I like to learn the sets and hopefully take what I learn to the LGS when I can get there. I just have zero interest in learning the extra complexity of the alchemy cards because I’ll never be able to play them in real life.

Now this is a cube, not a new set, so that last reason isn’t relevant.

I’ll still play this cube since it seems so novel, but I’ll have that skeptical sort of feeling Marshall described. I’ll still probably have a lot of fun, but yesterday I still hit the MSH draft button instead and put it off kind of because of this.

Title.

Played three BO3, had a blast, cube is great, seems like lots of builds are viable.

Not playing any one more match, the pricing is a joke and a shameful moneygrab from wotc.

Before MSH was released I posted a review of preseason grades for the previous four sets. This post brings that project up to date for MSH.

I looked at 9 sets of grades (Both Limited Level-Ups hosts, both contributors to drafttierlists, Limited Resources, casual_spike, Cardgamebase, and Draftsim (Set Review and Tierlist ). As ever we are only looking at commons and uncommons.

Chart here.

Some grades get updated after preview season ends. This is not useful for us, and so where I couldn't find them unadjusted the grades are simply omitted. I'm particularly interested in finding pre-release drafttierlist grades (their change tracking is somewhat tricky to parse, and I haven't tried to use it to recreate older set grades).

As you can see drafttierlist and Limited Level-Ups (as ever) did quite well; for everyone else this was a challenging set to grade (I didn't include Draftsim's Tierlist in any averages; not sure what's going on with that). To an unusual degree the graders' ability to assess how well a card would perform was tied up with how highly they assessed one color (White) and dismissed a second (Red). 5 of the 10 most underrated cards had White, 7 of the 10 most overrated had Red.

One thing I struggled with when putting together the previous post was whether or not to adjust GIH WR by average pick to get closer to some notion of true card strength and, if so, how. I couldn't quite crack that to my own satisfaction. But, since then, /u/oelarnes posted his own project (found here) in which he did just that (and more). That's a useful resource and it seemed to me possible (perhaps likely) that preview grades might track GIH WR more closely if you adjust for what he calls pick equity. I set aside his other adjustments for now.

Chart here.

As you can see there was a small but meaningful increase in correlation across the board. This is a neat result, and I think it points to some combination of two things. One, insofar as adjusting for pick rate more accurately captures 'true' card strength, then graders are doing better than they appear at judging card strength. Two, insofar as graders are judging card strength in relative isolation, then the adjustment proposed by oelarnes is at least roughly correct and an improvement over naive GIH WR.

The other thing that's clear from the above is that naively normalizing and averaging grades is on average slightly better than following the best graders.

I have no idea what my opponents were drafting but it definitely was not lands. Fun but fuck that pricing

Combo combos with War Machine and Blazing Crescendo to hit 10 a turn

With a helpful assist by [[Deepmuck Desperado]].

I guess I can die happy now?

Only got close to losing a match once, rest of the times just curved out beautifully.

Cosmic Cube did lead to game wins sometimes,

also managed to soft lock via Mighty Thor and Justice.

Got the trigger Kang at least one time.

Stature does do a lot of initial chip damage and drove the nail in the coffin in a few games

Didnt get to play Monica once. Mister hyde definitely overperformed with viv vision and just general omph. 3x web up is also disgusting in sealed

It might be a little washed for Powered Cube, but people simple don't respect how ridiculous a limited card Ashiok is in somewhat less powerful limited formats. With Ruin Crab backup, even and I got both of them 6-7 picks. I definitely had way more fun playing control in this cube than I did trying to fight over the landfall shenanigans in the rest of the color pie. This deck also made me realize how important bounce effects / Memory Lapse can be in a format with lots of heist cards. An opponent cast my Ob Nixilis off of heist and I got to Talion's Throneguard it right back to my hand which is just filthy.

I think I'm probably done with at least the Zendikar version of this cube for now. It's not bad, but it doesn't tickle me the way powered cube does. I definitely feel like I got my nostalgia hit from this deck. Now if only the Kamigawa version would have [[Dampen Thought]] I could do it again in a couple weeks.

https://www.17lands.com/draft/d04d9539b0a14a5c8db01b35a943fdab/1/1

The signals were rather odd and I never knew exactly what lane I should have been in at any point in time. I thought I had clear direction P1P5, but pack 2 just did not make sense to me. Any thoughts?

Risen Reef is a fun card. Went 7-2 with only loses being to decking (as one does).

Not sure if it’s an obvious question but I feel like by the time I’m playing it out I might just whiff. What would you cut for it?

Anything else I’m missing? I know removal is pretty light, but I wasn’t seeing much.

This deck was a lot of fun.

Super intelligence on speedball or on kid loki can really snowball

Had to put 43 cards to prevent to kill myself with how much card i would draw

4-0 on pick-two at diamond 4

I believe my plan here is RG curve-out beatdown with some Manifest and a midrange contingency plan. I don’t think I want to cut any of my interaction. Maybe I cut Anthro, Branchsnapper, and Longneck? Although that would leave me pretty vulnerable to flyers if i don’t draw my interaction. Would appreciate some advice!

[Insert snarky joke here about drafting aggro in cube if you want to win]

I got slapped a couple times by felidar retreat, card's busted.