The Cube Part 3 – Balance

By Adam Styborski

Posted on September 15, 2010

Read this entire article series:

Part 5 - Change Evaluation

Last week I covered the basics of why information can be useful for cube development, ending with a small taste of what can be done. If you have the time I highly recommend plugging your cube into something. Documentation, even just sharing a list online, is the opening of a wonderful door of input and discussion.

Balancing and changing a cube is one of the best reasons to seek feedback, specifically because balancing a cube is an exercise in the impossible. While I should probably hesitate to say "impossible" I feel quite confident in my assertion. To balance a cube, in the abstract, is to ensure that all colors and archetypes are attractive, playable, and can win games. The actual act of balancing, and the process of going about it, is much more subtle, varied, and instinctive than simply "make everything equal."

Equality and Justice for All

"Make everything equal." is a big part of why perfectly balanced isn't possible. Colors, strictly speaking, aren't equal. That's part of why colors "feel" different even if their goals and means are the same. Consider white and black aggro: there are a lot of potential similarities between these two colors:

White Knight and Black Knight

Plentiful access to removal

Efficient creatures available at each step on the curve

Disruptive effects

The differences, however, show the story well:

Efficient white creatures are often synergistic and without drawback (Elite Vanguard, Baneslayer Angel)

Efficient black creatures often carry a drawback (Carnophage, Phyrexian Negator)

White removal is often enchantment-based (Pacifism, Oblivion Ring)

Black removal is often hitched with a "nonblack" clause (Terror, Doom Blade)

White's disruptive effects are often global and impact all players (Armageddon, Balance)

Black's disruptive effects are often narrow and discard-based (Duress, Sinkhole)

Both styles of aggression generally work to the same end: send damage through the red zone. Similar comparisons can be made with red and greed as well. Now stop and try blue. While "blue aggro" is certainly possible from a strategic standpoint, aggression is not one of blue's fortes.

Without belaboring the point, each color carries with it intrinsic benefits and drawbacks. Red has reach and speed but often at the cost of resource development and long term position. Black has efficient, powerful effects but often at the cost of life and self destruction. Blue has the best suite of control spells but at the cost of speed and early development. White has the most efficient creatures and global effects but at the cost of reciprocal impact and general creature size being small. Green has the biggest creatures and mana acceleration effects but at the cost of answers to most creatures.

The colors are different. Balancing a cube is not about simply giving every color everything every other color has; balancing the colors is reaching a determinant about the relative power of different, varied effects.

Control Magic vs. Isamaru, Hound of Konda

Balance vs. Rolling Earthquake

Beacon of Unrest vs. Acidic Slime

Treachery vs. Blastoderm

How do you determine power level? What makes a specific card "better" than a different choice? There are many, many ways to slice relative power. Most cube discussion forums are filled with debate and analysis of cards and their relative strengths, weaknesses, and uses. I won't pretend to have the only answers but the lens I use can be described in three factors:

1. Efficiency

Efficiency is a term that I use a lot because I believe in efficiency. I want things that normally cost two mana to cost only one. I want my spells to have an alternate cost of a nonmana resource (i.e. "pitch" spells and conditionally free spells). I want the power and toughness of each creature to be as close or bigger than the converted mana cost.

If you're thinking of the hallmarks of the much derided, and perhaps overstated, "power creep" you're on the right page.

Efficiency is a general description of how fast, easy, and affordable a card is. Counterspell was the baseline for countering spells for a long time. As much as players may dislike it, Cancel is now the standard. There is a big different between two mana and three mana; anyone with significant play experience can feel that immediately.

Unsurprisingly, Counterspell is in my cube while Cancel is not. Daze is as well. So is Mana Leak and Force Spike. Runeboggle, Rune Snag, and Convolute don't make the cut. Deprive is in but Spell Blast is out. The trend should be obvious: cheaper is better.

Doing something with less mana comes with two implications:

The cheaper something is the earlier you can do it

The cheaper something is the more exciting it can feel

While appropriately costing spells and abilities is certainly an important part of what makes Magic amazing, there is something to be said about "dirt cheap" and desirable as well. (Pro Tip: Cheap isn't the only exciting things about cards.)

Cubes are filled with the most efficient versions of effects because they are generally more powerful because of their costs. Getting to play more cards earlier in the game is often the hallmark of powerful strategies. The "free spells" out there, like Treachery and Snap, are nice because they keep mana free to use for additional spells and abilities. Alternate costs, like those on Snuff Out and Daze, give an effective mana cost of 0.

Efficiency is also intimately tied to the mana curve.

2. Place on the Mana Curve

Having multiple one and two drops are critical to an effective aggro deck. Highly efficient three and four drops are vital to midrange decks. Game breaking five and six mana cost spells are what lurk within the depths of control decks.

It's not just the purpose and effect of a card, it's also when and how you can play it that matters.

Let's take a look at some mana curves from my cube:

White Creatures and Spells:

Blue Creatures and Spells:

Black Creatures and Spells:

Red Creatures and Spells:

Green Creatures and Spells:

What do you see in these curves? How do you feel about these by color? Here is a breakdown of creature and noncreature spells by color.

Without grinding through every individual card, some basic inferences can be made:

Green and White are the most aggressive colors

Red and Black have a mix of aggressive early spells and powerful late spells

Blue has the smallest number of creatures and relies hard on other effects

Now, for bonus credit, tell me which color needs an overhual? (See the end for my answer.)

The tighter the curve that provides multiples of a desirable effect for that point on the curve the better your decks will play out. You'll always want things to do at every stage of the game; ensuring a full mana curve is filled appropriately (front loading lower costs and sprinkling only the highest) with effects that make sense at that spot.

3. Comparative Effect for Relative Cost

Quick: name me any many "mana bugs" as you know.

Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves

Boreal Druid

Elves of Deep Shadow

Birds of Paradise

Noble Hierarch

Joraga Treespeaker

Can you tell me why Noble Hierarch, and formerly Birds of Paradise, is valued so much more than Boreal Druid and Joraga Treespeaker? It's simple here: generating more than one color of mana for the same initial investment is more powerful than simply colorless mana, or the requirement to get a second land and sorcery speed ability activation to resolve.

"Strictly better" is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, especially during active preview seasons such as now, but Noble Hierarch is not strictly better than Boreal Druid. Boreal Druid and block and trade with something with one toughness; Noble Hierarch can swing across as a 1/2 all by itself. They are actually subtly different cards in many ways.

Yet we can easily get on board with paying a lot more for Noble Hierarch because getting more colors of mana as well as an aggressive synergy for just having it out. Hierarch takes the cake because, comparatively, it's abilities are superior for the same relative cost.

Bringing it Together

Now comes the ultimate goal: balancing between colors. Keeping in mind the efficiency of the card, it's place on a mana curve, and it's relative cost, which of the following converted mana cost four cards is the strongest?

Wrath of God

Control Magic

Braids, Cabal Minion

Avalance Riders

Garruk Wildspeaker

Do you have your answer ready? I suspect that many of you fall into one of two groups:

1. "Clearly card X is the best. No doubt."

2. "Uh, what context are we grading this in?"

The truth is that both camps are correct. Wait. What?

There are two defining features to playing a cube:

1. Eliciting player excitement via carefully selected cards

2. Provoking deck construction around archetypes

Some cards, regardless of what they are, are simply generally very exciting. Jace, the Mind Scupltor is recently one of the hottest cards. While he doesn't scream "YOU MUST USE ME!" to me directly, he is a fairly neat card to feel out. His four abilities are distinctive; his cost is very reasonable; he is a great card empirically.

What type of cube deck wants Big Jace?

Other cards are less exciting on the outside but provide a deep synergy or well-needed slot for powerful decks. Snuff Out is an innocent little card. For four mana you get Dark Banishing – or you get it for just four life. It isn't the flagship of anyone's trade binder. It isn't the card on the tip of everyone's tounge. It's just a simply removal spell that happens to have an alternate cost of just a life payment.

What type of cube deck wants this Duel Deck reprint?

What decks emerge are a result of both player preferences – I personally favor midrange decks of the green-with-blue-or-black variety – and supported archetypes. I have worked hard to ensure that every color has aggro and control options as well. Some picks fit into a wide variety of decks and are the "Jaces" of commons, like Rolling Thunder and Sprout Swarm. Others are narrow and work best with specific archetypes, like Fireslinger and Ashes to Ashes.

Any card can find use in a deck but providing avenues for each card to be an optimal inclusion is a dogged pursuit of shifting modifications to meet the demands of semi-random players.

In other words, the general feel of the cube is a reflection of what the designer wants users to play.

But I'm getting ahead of myself again. I hope this has given you some food for though, and pauses for consideration, in how balancing a cube is both vitally important and impossibly difficult. It's the delicate balance of fun and functional that every cube designer seeks to achieve.

Join me next week when I dive into deck archetypes: the big component of why specific artifact, gold, and land cards are included in cubes!

Bonus Round

I'm about to work out some major shifts in my cube specifically because one feature of my cube doesn't feel as strong as others: control. Blue is the color that I want to overhaul (again) as a pile of two and three drops aren't working to provide heavy blue players the tools they need.

What, exactly, do I have in mind? Here is a small list of suggestions I've drawn or been handed:

Preordain

Giant Tortoise

Welkin Tern

Clockwork Beetle

Wormfang Drake

Flood

Kraken Hatchling

Mana Chains

Repeal

Halimar Wavewatch

Spindrift Drake

Not all of these are going to make their way in, but it's clear that I'm conflicted about what to do with blue control. Either I provide narrow support, like Giant Tortoise and Halimar Wavewatch, or more general aggro and midrange tools, like Wormfang Drake and Repeal.