Comments on: Simon Says #47: Natural Selection (Single Elimination Cube Draft)

By: kezzedrix

kezzedrix — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:42:51 +0000

I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. I love Cube online. Everybody should play it as often as they can.

By: Simon Goertzen

Simon Goertzen — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:45:47 +0000

Thanks for your comments and feedback, everyone! I was very happy how the deck and the matches turned out, even beating one of my personal end-bosses in the finals :).

@Galemathias: This is on of the reasons I do single elimination expert set drafts (the others being that it’s what I play exclusively when not recording and enjoy the most). I was wondering if people felt differently about cube, though.

@Alex: Thanks!

@Simon: I’ll try to record a Modern Masters draft, don’t know about the 11-set sealed though.

@cricketHunter: It’s great to see that so many people like the European coverage, especially given English is our 2nd language.

@schmuelle: Going for the Ooze rather than Wurmcoil sounds reasonable. Though to be fair, getting to keep either of them would have helped a lot :).

@Daracaex: The comment by crosswell below yours basically answers the question. If Winter Orb sufficiently hinders my opponent more than me, it is worth the inclusion. The game against Recurring Nightmare was won solely because of Winter Orb and is a beautiful example of many small decisions mattering in the end.

@crosswell: When should I have gotten the Ooze? From the point that Tarmogoyf was stolen I didn’t draw a creature until Taurean Mauler was bounced. I agree that getting the Ooze then might have been better than the Wurmcoil, but I don’t see an earlier point in time to do so.

@Broc: I like to be conservative when it comes to mana bases :).

@dave c: Very nice analysis :).

@Gulfoss: I don’t know the details, but MTGOAcademy always shows the link buttons for each round, whether I won or not. So in theory there should be no spoilers.

@Always swiss: I strongly disagree with only showing drafts that worked out. I know that it offers longer entertainment, but losing is a natural part of Magic. Some losses are not worth watching (I won’t upload a draft video with disconnects during drafting or in which I time out round 1), but some are more insightful than 3-0 drafts.
Recording drafts and matches until I make the finals sounds awful. Even with a high match win percentage, that would force me to let a significant portion of my work go to waste :/.

By: Always swiss

Always swiss — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:26:27 +0000

Always do swiss for cube. Or, do single eliminations until you hit the third round. Uploading games where you get knocked out m1 or 2 is really annoying regardless of whether it’s realistic. EG ochoa or martell’s draft videos. That joke got old very quickly.

By: Gulfoss

Gulfoss — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:06:08 +0000

Hey, thanks for your vids, great content !
About the single elimination/swiss question, I would say that both are interesting. But could you post 3 videos even if you played only one round (the other two being empty of course)? It was killing the suspense to know that you were going to win round 1 and round 2…

By: dave c

dave c — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:21:05 +0000

Great content as usual. Personally I would have first picked the balance and gone a different direction but that’s whats so great about cube. A lot of people think midrange creature based strategies are underpowered in cube which might be true in irl cubes but I actually think those strategies can be well positioned in the wizards cube if you have a good post wrath plan be it vengevine, reanimation spells, or something like cloudgoat ranger.

By: Broc

Broc — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 21:12:57 +0000

great stuff, your deck had a lot of sweet synergies. I think one advantage is that you weren’t greedy with your mana base – unlike those 4 color decks you played in round 1 and 2

By: crosswell

crosswell — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:59:00 +0000

The winter orb absolutely won him one game in round 2. If you’re on the creature beatdown plan like Simon was, winter orb and gaddock teeg are symmetrical effects that happen to hose control and 3-4 color decks. And yeah, m1g1 you should have realized several turns earlier that tarmogoyf was the only thing holding up your board and gone ooze with fauna shaman to let you ramp up the pressure. But hey, impossible to see every play.