The Cube According to Gatherer, Part 30.5 – More Boring Devign

First things first: This log will be boring, and the only joke in it is the writer himself. We’re putting some final shellacking to the Cube According to Gatherer to make it playtestable. There are no new cards, and no fun surprises. If this is your first article in this series, I implore you to check out any other article in the According to Gatherer series. Here’s the first Cube article in case you want to go back to start. For the rest of you, unless you really like to dive under the hood, I recommend skipping this log. No, really, I’m posting this to be a completionist. I’ll be entertaining next time.

My goal in this log is to make certain the average card cost is reasonable for a draft. Going into this, I’m pretty sure the average converted mana cost is far too high since 50% of the cards were chosen at random by Gatherer. Gatherer isn’t restricted by rarity, sprinking rares as often as commons and uncommons. And rares and uncommons, on average, cost more than commons. Ipso facto mana bloat.

My ideal goal for this log is an average converted mana cost for each color, and the set as a whole at 3.0 or less. I should point out that that’s a high average. But I know that pushing to 3.0 is going to require a few snips I won’t like making. Besides, we just need the set’s average to be low enough so the can be reasonably play tested.

Using the average cost of all the cards is going to give us a skewed idea of how fast the set is. I costed as equal to , since it’s usually fruitless to pay for X, but paying for is almost always suboptimal too. And a number of spells either have added costs (like how you’ll get more value out of Marsh Casualties if you pay the kicker) or ways to reduce the value. When does anyone pay full price for Treasure Cruise?

But we’d be here forever if I spent all my time adjusting for these enigmas. I say we let their casting costs ride and hope it balances out. We aren’t interested in a precise calculation of casting costs, anyhow, so much as we’re looking to get an estimation as to how far from an average set’s converted mana cost we are.

White

x7
x12
x2
x16

x6
x2
x5
x2


x2

A total combined mana cost of 191 / 57 total white cards =
Current average converted mana cost: 3.35

Blue

x7
x12
x 11
x4
x6
x 3
x3
x3
x3
x2
7

A total combined mana cost of 195 / 57 total blue cards = -21
Current average converted mana cost: 3.42

Black

x4
x7


x10
x4


x6
x3
x5
x7
x4
x2
x2

A total combined mana cost of 214 / 58 total black cards = -23
Current average converted mana cost: 3.69

Red

x4 4
x11

x12
x3

x9
x3
x3
x4
x2
x2
x2

A total combined mana cost of 205 / 58 total red cards =
Current average converted mana cost: 3.54

Green

x10
x10
x2
x11

x9
x3
x3
x3
x2

A total combined mana cost of 180 / 57 total green cards =
Current average converted mana cost: 3.16

Colorless

x4

x10
x9
x7
x2
x3

A total combined mana cost of 133 / 39 total colorless cards =
Current average converted mana cost: 3.41

Multicolor

cc2 x3
cc3 x3
cc4 x2
cc5 x3
cc6 x3
cc7 x2
cc8 x2

A total combined mana cost of 86 / 18 total multicolored cards =
Current average converted mana cost: 4.78

It shouldn’t be surprising that multicolor is so high, considering the only way to get a multicolored one-cost card is with hybrid mana. But 4.78 is egregious. Seeing how difficult it should be to drop that converted cost to 3.0, I plan to focus on dropping the colorless converted average below 3.0 to help balance out the high cost of gold.

A total combined mana cost of all non-lands 1,204 / 346 total non-land cards = Total current average converted mana cost: 3.48

Oof. That’s a long way to go. There’s some obvious slack to pick up. Both Red and Black have a strikingly low number of cards that cost one mana. And I’d be surprised if we can’t turn a few fives and fours to twos. But I can’t alter the costs on the cards that Gatherer chose at random. I need to take a butcher knife to my own design to make up for the occasional Spawnsire of Ulamog in the set. Time to get to work.

White post-adjustment – 3.09

That’s not great, but I think I can live with it. It’s annoying to see how many cards are now one-cost just to balance out the seven-cost monstrosities. But many of those one-cost cards include additional costs in the text, so it isn’t like a deck won’t have other things to do after playing them.

While going through the casting costs, I realized the set accidentally includes two copies of Trusted Pegasus. That won’t do. So I went to Gatherer and hit the random button until I got a white card with a mana cost of three or less. It chose the brand-spanking-new Skyclave Apparition from Zendikar Rising. I guess white gets a spontaneous booster shot in the arm!

Blue post-adjustment – 3.05

As part of reducing the costs, I changed what Xenophobia did. It tried to combine too many concepts and was too confusing. How do you make an enchant creature that grants -6/-0, but only if you control more creatures than your opponent, but also has an escape clause so it isn’t a dead card if you’re behind in creatures and clearly losing? You… um… can, but you shouldn’t.

Instead it’s now a one-cost aura that grants -6/-0, but returns to your hand when a creature enters the battlefield, but also has cycling for when that gets annoying. Good enough.

Meanwhile, ‘Juice the Drones’ was updated from a instant that created two 1/1 artifact creatures to a instant that created two 0/1 blue illusion tokens, to better keep with the themes of the set. Two illusions of artifact creatures, I suppose. I got to update that name and art some time. It’s a pity. I liked the name ‘Juice the Drones’…

Black post-adjustment – 3.29

Oof. Feels bad, man. This is down quite a drop from the 3.69, but still well above 3.00. A few cards I didn’t have the heart to change, since their casting cost was tied into what made their card work. A few weak cards became knock outs, since I would sometimes shave off a colorless mana, but otherwise wouldn’t touch the card.

Red post-adjustment – 3.10

Considering Red was up to 3.54, getting down to 3.10 was surprisingly simple. Makes sense, since I remember how intermediary devign forced me to increase the cost of a number of red cards. I just put those cards back at their original costs.

Green post-adjustment – 2.87

Finally got one of the colors to dip below 3.0. Weird that it’s green pulling down the card average, but I’ll take it. There sure are a lot of cards that cost or . It’s unclear how this will play out, but I guess I need to play it to see if it’s as odd as it sounds.

Colorless post adjustment – 3.05

Eep. I honestly thought it would be easy to knock some costs off of the artifacts, but a few of these costs are in place for a reason. With some equipment, it wasn’t too hard to decrease the cost and increase the equip cost. But there’s a point where doing too much of that is a little silly. The whole point is to decrease the overall cost of the set. If an equipment is cheap to pay for, but expensive to equip, then I technically made the set more expensive.

Multiclor post adjustment – 4.5

Not terribly surprising. The worst part is that much of the high cost in multicolor is from cards I designed. They’re mostly over-the-top enchantments, instants, and sorceries. I can’t cut out a colorless mana and give them -1/-1. Reducing the cost undoes a few of these spells. Oh well. At least there aren’t a lot of multicolored spells.

Oath-Bound Retainer went from a 2/2 with menace, first strike, and lifelink for to a 2/1 for that gained those abilities when attacking. Kind of strange to gain menace when attacking, but I didn’t want to dedicate an extra line for it.

Average converted mana cost – 3.20

Not great, but By the way, that’s not the exact number. I just combined the ‘six’ colors average costs and divided by six. But it’s close enough to know I’m off by quite a bit. I guess I’ll have to live with it for now.

You know, my original game plan was to work on these costs and take a few of my designs that I wasn’t too keen about and alter them. But since I haven’t play tested the set, I’m not sure what they should alter to. Maybe it’s best I wait for that to happen.

So I guess you should expect a pdf of all the cards to come out soon. Talk to you soon!