Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

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Havtorn
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Joined: 09 Dec 2013, 08:24
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Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby Havtorn » 03 Sep 2015, 15:09

Hiya.

I put a tribal cube together a while ago that I recently decided to sort of demolish and rebuild. It was focused around a bunch of different tribes, one per Ravnica Guild, but the big problem was that since the tribes were color-dependent people just sort of picked one or two of the tribes and then didn't interact much with the other players during the draft. So I'm starting fresh, and in order to avoid falling into the same trap I decided to choose five Race-type tribes (Human, Minotaurs, Elves, Rat, Faeries) and five class-type tribes common with those tribes (I ended up going with the ones from Lorwyn: Soldiers, Wizards, Rogues, Shamans and Warriors. Also Ninjas.) and I built a skeleton where most cards somehow interact with at least two tribes and the color-division is a bit more nebulous. A Human Warrior could theoretically be any color, but it's less likely to be blue than a Faerie Rogue, and so on.

So I've ended up with 280 cards that I guess could be called the meat and potatoes of the cube, here:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tribal-cube-skeleton-1/?cat=custom

Now I just need another 80 to get up to the minimum of 360, which I guess could be the "gravy". And I'd appreciate any suggestions you guys could have. At the moment the cube is light on non-creature spells, for one.
Since I have the skeleton in place anything goes, really. The cards don't have to have a tribal thing to them, the important thing is that they're fun and would work in the cube.
I would prefer not to have many more Human- or Elf-centered cards. If you have a suggestion for those, I would appreciate if you'd suggest a card I should take out for it.
SixFootTurkey
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby SixFootTurkey » 03 Sep 2015, 20:56

You have an 'Elf Warrior' with a Warriors matter effect under Warriors - which makes sense - but it's also an Elf. If you don't already have the numbers on this, a spreadsheet - allowing you to have numerous categories - may help you keep track of it.
Havtorn
Posts: 39
Joined: 09 Dec 2013, 08:24
First Video: A "Things on my head" video

Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby Havtorn » 03 Sep 2015, 21:58

The reason I'm doing the list on Tappedout is because it allows me to tag things with any number of categories quickly for exactly that reason. I had apparently mislabeled the Bramblewood Paragon to be a Human, though. Whoops. :)


The numbers currently are

Human - 81
Elf - 69
Warrior - 55
Faerie - 46
Wizard - 48
Soldier - 46
Rogue - 44
Minotaur - 29
Rat - 17
Ninja -7

So as you can see Humans and Elves are overrepresented while Minotaurs, Rats and Ninjas are underrepresented. Warriors, Faeries, Wizards, Soldiers and Rogues are about equal-ish.

In a perfect world I'd solve this by just adding a bunch of Minotaur Ninjas, but sadly there aren't any. :P
SixFootTurkey
Posts: 361
Joined: 18 Nov 2012, 03:54
First Video: PAX Prime '12 panel (recorded)

Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby SixFootTurkey » 03 Sep 2015, 22:11

Indeed, but the issue comes up when a card falls under more than one category. (Changelings aren't a huge issue, as they work for everything - although certain tribes may have more use for them.)
fantôme
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Location: UK

Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby fantôme » 03 Sep 2015, 22:38

Tribal gravy?: Alpha Status, Coat of Arms, Distant Melody, etc.
Havtorn
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby Havtorn » 03 Sep 2015, 22:44

@SixFootTurkey I might be misunderstanding you, but as-is the Bramblewood Paragon (for example) now is listed under both the Elf and Warrior categories, adding one to both? Almost every creature falls under at least two categories, meaning they show up under multiple headings.

I'm not at all disputing that spreadsheets are a superior way to go, once I'm past the "sketching" stage I'm in now that's what I'm planning on doing.

@fantôme I'd totally forgotten about Alpha Status. All of those are neat. I've been on the fence for Coat of Arms simply because it might be too good, though. I have a hard time seeing any player pass it under any circumstance, no matter what their deck is or what else is in the pack. If I do put it in I'll probably have to add a bit more artifact removal than I was originally thinking.
SixFootTurkey
Posts: 361
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby SixFootTurkey » 03 Sep 2015, 23:25

Ah, my mistake, I didn't realize you were double listing them. I still prefer spreadsheets as they're a bit cleaner and more efficient - though since you're going that way eventually anyway, I'll take that as a win. :P
Havtorn
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby Havtorn » 04 Sep 2015, 00:11

On the input end it's a lot cleaner, you just add #Human #Warrior or whatever after the cardname once and Tappedout does the rest. As I said, good for "Sketching". I kind of thought the fact that it put them in diffrent columns was kind of useful. Basically each column becomes a "This is what the interesting cards in the cube are going to be for a <Tribe> player"-list in a vacuum. And then I can further filter by color or curve using Tappedout's normal functionality.

Not perfect, but it works.
susu.exp
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby susu.exp » 04 Sep 2015, 04:39

You might want to move your list to cubetutor - it has tags as well, but being able to have people do test drafts and checking which cards get picked and which didn't is helpful and the color coding for the tags is a neat option:
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/36897 has the current status of my Pie in the face cube for instance and the filter options are helpful in checking what is going on.
I quickly set up yours and tagged it here: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/38052

I'm somewhat worried about how the colors play out - how often are the Naya Elfs going to be played, if there are enough green elves for a deck and expanding to Golgari means that you get plenty and adding white gives you the most 3 color options. Warriors and Minotaurs are close to being the same deck, with a lot of Minotaur Warriors available - the White Warriors seem like a red Herring (in a test draft I ended up cutting Chief of the Scale from a WB deck). The same holds for Rogues and Faeries - a lot of overlap and you get a lot of either of the synergies in Dimir.
Wizards are base blue, but it's unclear which colors to add, because there are 10 mono-black cards, but the gold cards are mostly Simic and Izzet. Still the most depth is in Dimir making it a 3rd Archetype in UB.
I tried a sealed and ended up Dimir, in drafts its one of 3 archetypes:
Soldiers - close to mono-W
Elves - close to mono-G
Dimir

Red has the lowest number of cards, the things you have in red aren't appealing (even if you force Minotaurs+Warriors you end up with a pile and that's with the rest of the table actively avoiding red) and red has the highest curve.

I'm not so sure I agree with your premise that finding out what is open in your seat and then drafting that is a bad thing.
fantôme
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby fantôme » 04 Sep 2015, 05:29

Minotaurs not appealing? Curve too high? Didgeridoo!
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Tacos_yay
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby Tacos_yay » 04 Sep 2015, 12:01

what about eldrazi tribal? I mean, you don't really NEED the cube to be balanced, right?

On a more serious note, no goblin tribal?
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Havtorn
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Joined: 09 Dec 2013, 08:24
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Re: Help me finish my new Tribal Cube!

Postby Havtorn » 07 Sep 2015, 20:12

@susu.exp
I knew about cubetutor, but I didn't know about the tagging option, thanks!
I transfered the cube there and changed some stuff:
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/38023

Regarding the white warriors being red herrings, you might be right. Either the White or Black ones, at least. The White/Green Elf Warriors are a thing (the biggest warrior-consentration is in green), but as-is I haven't included a ton of the white/selesnya half of those. I think I should probably go through each class-tribe and try to lock them down to three colors.

The problem with drafting what's open is simply a matter of the cube being too small - since almost every card is going to go past you people didn't just end up with "A wizard deck", they ended up with "The wizard deck" to the point where you might as well have just picked a tribe before drafting.



@Tacos_yay
I had a goblin tribal as the first version of this cube and they were... fine, I guess. They vomited out their entire hand before turn 4 and either won or lost before turn 6. Which I guess is what you expect out of goblins, but I would kind of want to give the Minotaurs a go. They're also pretty fighty red creatures, but a bit slower and less focused on going broad, which is kind of what the Soldier tribe tries to do.

@fantôme
Done! ;)

I've tried to include one artifact for each tribe. The Minotaur one was the easiest. :D



Edit:
I've decided to move each Class into one of the Alara shards. Unfortunately the overlap of Warriors and Shamans as Jund is causing some problems, and I need a class for Bant. I'll probably keep the Warriors and replace the Shamans with something Bant-y. Probably Knights, Clerics or Druids, I haven't decided.

Might replace Keyrunes with Myr for a laugh.

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