About Gold

Introduction

With the Return to Ravnica prerelease fast on the horizon I thought it would be prudent to take a moment and talk about the role of Gold cards in the cube.  The reason for this is two-fold.  First, there are about to be a ton of new gold cards in the next block and I am sure that many of them will require consideration for cube.  Secondly, I am always looking for ways to improve upon the current quality of the cube and make future decision making easier.

Freaking Gold Updates...

I have more trouble evaluating gold cards for cube than any other type of card.  I have already identified what each color in the cube is trying to accomplish and I take that into account when evaluating potential additions to their respective sections.  I also look at the mana cost and see how it fits into the established curve for each color.  Easy.  Lands and artifacts are pretty easy too as mana costs don't really matter and the only problem is making sure I have solid cards that help multiple archtypes in colorless....land...i'll deal with lands next time we get some crazy additions...that's a topic for another day.  Anyway, these qualifiers are much harder to identify in gold cards.  There are a couple of reasons why looking at gold cards in the same light can cause problems.

 Do we actually take the converted mana cost of gold cards into account?

Each section of gold cards doesn't exactly have its own curve and each card needs to fit in BOTH colors.  For example, Scab-Clan Mauler is red/green.  It costs two mana. Is this a two-drop?  I hope to play it on turn two but I don't want to imagine sticking it in the 2 CMC sections of both red and green when thinking about it.  I also don't think its necessary to do that.  I tried to once and it was pretty annoying.

Do both colors actively want the effect that the card provides?

Some cards are multicolored but there isn't a good reason why.  Let's look at Wooly Thoctar.  It is a big dumb beat-stick.  It is very powerful if you can drop it on turn three...but why is it red?  It made sense in Shards of Alara as a Naya card but not in cube.  No red deck will actually want to cast this thing since many Naya decks in cube would be splashing red for burn or splashing white for removal.  A RG aggro deck wouldn't want this either since it is so hard on the mana.  These kinds of problems arise all the time with gold cards.

Is it a better fit than what is already present?

The competition for some guilds in cube is so high that no card they print is going to be a slam dunk cube card anymore.  Other guilds could use some help.  No matter how good a card is, it needs to be better than what is already present or why is it there at all.

Developing a System for Future Updates

I figured it would be helpful to develop some kind of system for updating the gold section of the cube from here on out.  It was either that or just go crazy trying to do the Return to Ravnica update.  I set up some general guidelines to adhere to and questions to ask myself when looking at any gold card for addition.  And there they are...

Well not just yet.  I figured it would be easier to explain all of these qualifications with an example and if you look at the Rakdos section of my cube you will notice something.  Terminate is missing.  I will use Terminate as the example to explain my reasoning below since I used them to come to the decision to exclude that card.

Note that these are in no particular order...just how I wrote them down.

I. Does it do something unique and/or interesting?

One of the ideas I have come around to when considering gold cards is that it would be nice if they did something interesting.  I want people to be excited to play the gold cards that they see in their packs and not just ignore them because of their mana cost.  One way to do this is by making sure that the gold cards actually do things that people want to try out.  To look at our example, does Terminate do something unique or interesting?  No!  It's just a blanket removal spell.  While good, it doesn't make anyone excited to play with it...it just gets slapped in the main deck as card X.

II. Does it fill a role that one or both of the colors is lacking in?

Terminate is a kill spell.  Both red and black excel at killing creatures.  Therefore, this spell does not fill an important role that the colors lack.  Both colors have trouble dealing with enchantments and planeswalkers while black has problems with reach.  While black can't deal with artifacts red can, making it less of a concern in this particular color combination.  Basically every combination of colors has problems with certain things.  Whether or not the gold cards can deal with some of their deficiencies is something that should be looked at when determining whether or not a card should be included.

III. Is it redundant?  If so, is it needed or unneeded redundancy?

I already explained how the redundancy of Terminate is a significant drawback when it comes to its assessment.  This is because neither color is in need of another removal spell.  This does not mean that redundancy is bad.  A very aggressive red/black one drop would be extremely helpful to aggressive strategies in both colors even though both colors already have several one drops.  This is because aggro requires more support than other strategies and good one drops is one of the best ways to do that.  An example of this would be Lingering Souls in Orzhov.  White excels at making tokens and Lingering Souls is an outstanding token maker, something that is very important for white to have as much access to as possible.  Therefore, it is included not despite redundancy but because of it.  Whether or not something is in need of more support varies from cube to cube and becomes more apparent through repeated playtesting. 

IV.  Is it an upgrade over something already present?

This one is pretty simple but still deserves mention.  If a card is just that much better than a card already present that serves a similar role then a change should probably be made.  An example of this would be if Shadowmage Infiltrator was absent from the cube and Dimir Cutpurse was present.  Both are Ophidian-type creatures and Shadowmage is significantly better due to the evasion.  It is important to keep in mind that this only really works if the two cards serve a similar role.  It is hard to say that Gisela, Blade of Goldnight is an upgrade over Boros Swiftblade because both are drastically different cards.


Summary

Overall, it is important to keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish in each color combination as well as what the colors are able to do individually.  Gold cards should be exciting and interesting if at all possible and should feel like a fun bonus to find in a pack.  I want players to feel excited to play them as opposed to them being last picks every draft or being unnecessarily redundant.  These are all things I will try to keep in mind when updating my cube and evaluating gold cards in Return to Ravnica and beyond.


Cheers!