Kool Runnings: MTGO Cube Draft #3

Dear Jared,

Chrome Mox is good.

Thanks for commenting,
Chris

Hi everyone,

Let me start this off by saying I really appreciate all constructive criticism. It’s been a while since I have been “on my game”, and comments that make me think about my decisions are always welcomed AND encouraged. I know there will always be comments that are antagonistic, but the number of truly well-thought ones tend to outnumber them, and for that, I am grateful!

This is going to be a wall of text, so if you have a TL;DR tattoo on your inner forearm, I’m sorry. I aim to hit a few of the “issues” touched upon in the comments, and I reckon it will take some number of words (some large number…).

Magic on video: Magic is a bad spectator game because of its pacing (personally, I liken it to baseball- only an extreme affinity for the game can make it interesting to watch). As was mentioned, more thorough on the narrator’s part goes a LONG way in making the game (or draft) being watched entertaining and/or insightful. I regret that I have been unfocused in videos as of late (as I do recognize that commentary makes or breaks a video); hopefully A.J. and myself can coordinate something for our schedules again to get “Let’s Play”s up and running again. The dual commentary really forces each of us to focus on expounding upon our decision trees (and means that we get tense “versus the clock” moments from running our mouths and pontificating too much)! Talking takes focus away from the game, so a commentating player *really* has to know what’s going on to deliver top-level narration and make the best plays.

The average purpose of Kool Runnings: Mild-to-moderate entertainment coupled with me actually playing Magic instead of only thinking about it. I lost the desire to PT a long while ago. I love playing the game, but I believe that to earn (and not luck into) a Pro Tour berth, a player has to understand the environment they are playing in, and that takes a lot of work (both mental and physical- testing decks or running DEs is time consuming and theory crafting for a superior output is basically extreme problem-solving). That being said, I think Magic is a wonderful game and love to play it. These videos “force” me to take time out and play this exquisite game while providing my “unique” post-competitive mindset. To some, I hope this is enjoyable and is worth watching.

In-game decision-making: It gets worse with less practice. Luckily (especially for cube), I think there are very few blatantly wrong decisions.Sure, the MTGO Cube favors certain archetypes, but it also supports a wide variety of successful decks based on past decks (stuff like Accel Blue, Eminent Domain, Elfball (which was a deck pre-Onslaught!, Sui Black and the like). I would only trust cube insights from players with a lot of experience with a wide variety of different cards from all Magic sets; most recent pros don’t even fit the bill here (look at the SCG Invitational Legacy portion or Legacy GPs for corroborating evidence). My personal experience is heavily based in playing Singleton (which I feel like translates into the cube environment moderately well), so a lot of my decisions are based on deck construction for that format. I have played cards like Sphinx of Jwar Isle in UG(w) for Std. Singleton and Chrome Mox in UW-based Control in 100CS to pleasant effect. Razormane Masticore has actually proven itself to me in past cube drafts (where I was not happy to be playing it, initially); I now respect it.

MTGO Cube: There have been a decent amount of articles on how “awful” this cube is, and they do hit an important point: slower decks (that use mana ramp to better leverage their power of plays) are extreme ballbusters in this cube. Sure, LSV’s patented Mono-Red Cube 40(tm) is a known entity, but some mana ‘facts/elves and big spells win a lot of games. The good-stuff nature of the cube makes me less interested in drafting the “certain” deck, and more interested in having a pile of strong cards (unless the certain deck is a pet deck, like Sui Black or something with Wildfire)! Chrome Mox is very interesting because of the speed and resilience that comes with it. (The other quick accelerants are creatures and the mox doesn’t have summoning sickness issues.) I will play it over a land in a deck that doesn’t want a lot of mana sources but has 2cc-4cc drops that dramatically change the game coming out a turn earlier (and thus can lead to a win before card disadvantage matters) or in decks that have high-impact cards in the 3cc-6cc drops where a player is happy to pitch a card to stabilize the board and/or can easily recoup the lost card. Ancestral Vision is the opposite of this mentality- the mulligan is future benefit. I favor immediate benefit (most of the time) in MTGO Cube.

Hindsight: I regret picking the shock duals in pack 2; sometimes, I get lured into taking lands. I also regret not taking Manriki-Gusari when it showed up fairly late. I also feel like I could have spent some of my mediocre picks hating cards I don’t want to see. I still like this style of deck, though (even if it did have soft competition and wasn’t perfectly drafted).

And not to single out individual posters, but… Jared, sorry for the tongue-in-cheek reply to your comment. I was on vacation and a bit irritated when I left it (which is no excuse, ‘cept I can be a bit of a jerk :-O). I hope if you read this again that I gave you some insight into my Chrome Mox pick. “Kill yourself”, you picked your screenname… (Oops, there’s the jerk coming out again.)