I'm a Blockhead

I'm not alone in being passionate about Magic. While I've recently hit some notes that have struck a chord with different players and views, splitting open debatable topics isn't what I'm all about. What keeps me glued to the cards (other than the non-existent addictive ink) are the things I find fun: Elder Dragon Highlander, Planar Magic and Archenemy, and Cube.

Cube has been growing steadily over the past few years. While Stack/Type 4 has been around for ages, taking the primal awesomeness of great cards and applying organized, tuned principles to it is relatively new. Take all of the skill required for building good decks, cross it with the knack and ability to design new decks, and roll it up with a well-defined, balanced structure and you begin to get a sense of what is involved in building a cube.

360 Problems – 1,000 Solutions

I'm not an expert on cube. But the process of building, tuning, and understanding my own cubehas brought me some invaluable lessons – lessons I believe many of us can appreciate. If you're considering getting into the cube-building business, looking to understand more, or believe there aren't lessons left to be learned, see if you can gain a glimmer of new light through five highlights from my experiences.

1) You are not the contents of your wallet.

When many of us think of a cube we immediately become delighted at the prospect of playing with Rolling Earthquake, foil Pernicious Deed, Time Walk, and other valuable, attractive cards. Even "less powered" or "unpowered" cubes often carry a diverse selection of foreign, textless promo, foil, and altered/custom art cards. Often amazingly beautiful and interesting, pimped out a cube is one of the few exceptions of "avoid foils" rule many player follow.

The catch is, however, even with the most expensive and impressive-to-acquire cards on hand if what you built plays bad it's going to be bad.

When I first build my cube (the PMC – Pauper Multicolor Cube) I ran very large sections for multicolor cards, had in nearly double the amount of lands for mana fixing, and had very small sections for individual colors. It was, indeed, heavily multicolor.

It was also clunky and awkward.

While it was full of foil versions of cards, including original foil printings of Rancor, Daze, Force Spike, and more, it was not terribly interesting to draft. Even worse was Sealed where you, inevitably, were forced into three colors whether your strategy would benefit from it or not – there simply wasn't enough playable within a two-color framework.

Except for flukes of randomization that gave enough for a two-color deck. These aberrations had overwhelming consistency that would tear through the slower three-color decks others were forced to have.

While this was intentional and I felt that my goal of "players will play three colors" was achieved I was blind to price I paid: my cube, frankly, sucked. It was terrible to play. While the comparison cubes on-hand were a phenomenal common/uncommon cube and a nicely pimped powered cube make a pauper cube focused on multicolor seem bad outright, the fact it played worse sealed it away.

No one wanted to touch it (aside from me, of course).

A visually interesting and niche design is one of those "good on paper, bad in execution" ideas. Mark Rosewater's greatest lesson from Odyssey is that "you must design for your audience, not for yourself" and it took too long for that lesson to sink in for me. Foils or not, interesting and fun have to be there for anything to work.

2) You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick.

So I discovered that shiny and unique does not a great thing make. My first reaction was to rationalize justifications for things. While those helping me humored my ideas I missed the point of their open evaluation: accepting that even long established things can be wrong.

Exploring ignored card spaces and interesting effects is something that many of us engage in. We like "things that work" and we move forward with proven, reliable formulas, confident in the successes we stand upon. When dealing with cube, and other open-ended frameworks, the room to optimize and tweak is at a completely different level. Those 11,000 pieces form an incredible puzzle when trying to pare it down to 600, 500 or just 360 unique cards.

As the blows to my ideas mounted the realization set in: I had to learn more. Growth is sometimes painful and I had to take the punched moving. Instead of rejecting or, worse, simply ignoring input, I began to crave it. The more opinions, perspectives, and ideas that were shared with me the more I incorporated other views and perspectives into my prism of design – after all I was looking beyond my personal blinders. I had already learned that I needed things to appeal to other so I then learned that the community around me was a great litmus test of good and bad.

The coaching the local "sharks" gave me was more valuable in refining my goals than any amount of brick-walled failure could grind into me. It isn't because every great player is an expert at card evalutation (they aren't), rooted in a deep history and knowledge of the game (they aren't), or even find consistent, reliable success competitively (they don't) but each one had a passion and understanding about some more universal facet of game strategy.

Control players knew good counterspells. Aggro players knew the value of a pure curve of threats. Limited players know the value of versatile, color diverse removal. Legacy and EDH players knew the unique, interesting interactions buried deep within the game.

And I learned so much more than I can even begin to summarize.

3) While the rest of us were sleeping, he worked.

After I expanded my horizons and broadened the scope of my cube felt that I had "finished" the job. Perhaps a few changes here and there but the big overhauling was done. That was January 2010, six months after I started.

July 2010 brought a change of 40+ cards at once. All of the changes were after a 20+ change in May.

Understanding what I had created took more time than I had originally thought reasonable. In fact, I'm still learning more about how things play out. Different root archetypes, like Rock and Counterburn, are well established. But Blue-White tempo control, Suicide Black (with Red), and Blue-Green midrange aggro are all consistently emerging decks in both Sealed and Draft. Even more interesting is that simultaneous color pair decks get drafted, yet the tools they want are subtly different – they aren't cutting each other out of the meat and potatoes of what they're looking for.

Ulamog's Crusher even lets a green-white reanimation ramp deck appear (with other juicy targets like Krosan Tusker). The Crusher's first victim ever was gentleman at Grand Prix DC – he was surprised to see the Eldrazi but nuked it on the spot. False Defeat rectified the situation for the ramp deck.

The process of refining and adjusting cards continues unimpeded. As decks settle down, strategies become apparent, and pick priorities become clearer, the weaker and avoided picks becomes eligible for replacement. Rampant Growth is certainly a ramping staple, but is Land Aid '04 better? What about running either, or both, alongside Into the North (with Snow Basic lands) or Farseek? How does Edge of Autumn compare or fit in? What about Sakura-Tribe Elder, Kodama's Reach, Cultivate, Civic Wayfinder, Borderland Ranger, and Sylvan Ranger? Which strategies want what cards, and why?

And these are just considerations for my all commons cube.

The process of continued development requires constant investment and ongoing practice. Understanding more in Magic never ends and, in fact, requires a deep commitment to succeed at all.

4) No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.

Understanding better the environment and impact your choices create, whether it's in a cube, new deck, or tweaking a choice for a metagame reaction, is important. Letting go of the chaffcompletely is something a little different.

The human brain relies on assumed information. We simply cannot process the immense flow of information so, like digital broadcasting, we "lock in" on specific values in order to focus on a different, more important flow of information.

The problem, of course, is when we adhere too strongly to preferred information. By letting values long assumed and locked in to skip reexamination is foolhardy, at best, and catastrophic at worst. Tom LaPille, a stalwart pillar of the cube community years after he helped fan the early flames, recently (or not-so-recently depending upon your perspective) took signetsand bounce landsout of his cube.

The significance of this, I believe, is on par with Mana Leak returning to Standard in Magic 2011.

Signets and bounce lands are tools that deckbuilders love. They ramp (in different ways), provide mana fixing, come in every color pair, and were printed at common. In a power sense they are fantastic cards – except for decks that want to drop threats on turn two and three. And for green decks and their color pie identify of ramping and color fixing.

Tom took these cards out because it put undue pressure on green-heavy decks. Rampant Growth isn't the same as a signet – not even close. Kodama's Reach isn't. Part of what makes green attractive is being able to ramp into threats quickly. Signets allow any color combination the ability to do so with less of a tempo hit. Bounce lands make green mana fixing largely irrelevant. Or, as Tom put it:

"Signets put impossible pressure on green decks and attack decks. I'm less attached to axing the bouncelands, but I still like them gone."

Contemplating and considering change is important, but holding back on making the right choices because of the fear and distraction of something being counterintuitive is dangerous.

5) Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.

Whatever your Magic project – deck, cube, or more – it takes a concerted effort to move through. This is true, obviously. Knowing what you're giving up, and accepting that loss, is entirely different.

In Economic Theory opportunity cost is, simplistically, defined as what gains you forgo to achieve your current output. While there's much more going on here, Magic has sets of costs and benefits that we're all familiar with. Keeping only a play set of individual cards is giving up the ability to build multiple decks using the sets of same cards simultaneously. Practicing Constructed match ups is time not spent practicing Limited. Playing the game itself is time spent away from trading.

You can't do "everything" in Magic. Mastering multiple environments is certainly possible. Having a great sense of balance, fair play, and meeting the demands of various casual social contracts can be done. Honing card evaluation, deck designing, and Limited pointing skills are excellent pursuits.

But you can't do it all – not at the mastery level.

I'm confident that there are players out there who have high marks in many, or even most, of the areas of Magic listed above. I'm sure some self-styled ultimate masters will comment on this. But I stress that no player, not matter how great, is prefect. No individual, no matter how natural and talents, effortlessly achieves all Magic knowledge.

No one can do it all.

Knowing what you must cast off in order to meet the immediate and long-term goals you've set is vital to progression. I have cast off my competitive edge. I could hone it, pick my formats, and dive deep.

I'd much rather play with goofy rules, random effects, hilarious interactions, and shoot from hip rather than the scope. I understand that because I'm not actively pursuing and testing decks that my ability to read and play them is hampered. I accept that because I refuse to bound myself to "better, faster, stronger" principles of deck design I will be looked down upon.

My pursuits are exactly what others have given up.

Justifications like "Social contracts are vague." and "Casual decks mean bad decks." are the same types of justifications as "Legacy is too expensive." and "Everyone net decks everything all the time."

You can have reasons, clear and sound, for your decisions. But you can't overlook that you've given something up in return. Devaluing and degrading other perspectives is a cop out from acknowledging your limited, mortal potential – you can't possibly examine everything from every angle in every way. While I may not agree with every player out there, disregarding and condemning them isn't an acceptable option.

When they contradict my point of view I stand only to gain from their unique insight.

And if I've contradicted yours I sincerely hope you've gained something new in unique to take with you.