Rat Colony hub
TappedOut forum
Posted on Jan. 14, 2024, 10:50 a.m. by Felipix
Why there is'nt a Rat Colony hub for Rat Colony decks? Heren in Tapped Out we can see a bunch of decks of Rat Colony
legendofa ok, I understand your point so, what do you think about the no limited copys hub?
January 14, 2024 3:35 p.m.
sergiodelrio says... #4
Unspectacular, but I believe they all boil down to "Low Variance" which might be a good generic name for the hub, while maybe also catching some stuff outside of those cards
January 14, 2024 7:04 p.m.
sergiodelrio It seems to me like "low variance" would capture most decks with scry, tutor, or other manipulation. Not quite sure that's the way to go, unless there's a more specific name.
January 14, 2024 9:26 p.m.
sergiodelrio says... #6
As long as we fail to have a descriptive official name for the ability we can only name it after one of the cards with the effect, name it ourselves, or, as I suggested, name it after the intent of the ability.
The prior is problematic imho, because it needs some advanced knowledge of the cards and the game for both ppl who create the deck and set the hubs (especially when they picked one of the cards the hub is NOT named after) as well as the people who run into the decklist and read the hubs. Like when the hub is called "Relentless Rats", but I'm playing the Apostles, that's just weird imho.
Rather pointing out what the intent is, namely heavily reducing variance, is the way to go here, imho, and the hub catching decks without those cards that intrinsically pull it off by themeselves is fair game too. This is especially true due to the fact that the general strat changes severly depending on which one of those cards you choose to fill your deck with. You kind of ARE doing the same thing when you manage to fill your deck with 40 copies of Lightning Bolt clones, and for all intents and purposes, it is based on a similar idea, except the cards have different names.
Yes, you put in tutors for low variance... do we have a tutor hub? Not to my knowledge. Sometimes you don't want the tutor for low variance, but for toolboxing, which is different imho and we DO have a hub for that.
TLDR, my point is since we don't have a perfect name for the hub, we might want to pick a more vague name and as a bonus it will accomodate some additional decks/strats which also do not have a hub of their own, like heavy scrying and tutors, especially when they are in a deck that does indeed try to lower variance. IMHO that'a a feature, not a bug.
And sorry for long post.
January 15, 2024 5:54 a.m. Edited.
sergiodelrio I'm also avoiding loose and vague hubs names. They get used incorrectly or are broad to the point of all-inclusive.
Vague hub names have caused problems in the past. One hub in particular (Team America, now inactive) was being used for the wrong decks entirely. It's a Legacy tempo shell from 2008-2009, but was being treated as a synonym for any Jeskai deck, which is about as far away from the intended definition as you can get. I understand the source of the confusion, but a confusing hub is not a good hub, in my opinion. If it can't be understood at a glance, it's going to get reworked.
"Reduced variance" or "low variance" also already exists, kind of, as the "competitive" hub. The whole intent of competitive decks is to reduce variance as much as possible, so that the deck is as streamlined and consistent as possible. This is achieved through tutors, redundancy, deck manipulation, using playsets of cards, and so on. So what would be the criteria for inclusion in a "low variance" hub? I expect that a "low variance" hub would be highly subjective, used for any deck that its creator thinks is unusually consistent, whether or not it actually is.
I have also declined to put in a real tutor hub so far for similar reasons. How many tutors do you need to have to be a "tutor" deck? Is four enough, with Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, and Diabolic Intent? What about Eladamri's Call, Green Sun's Zenith, Natural Order, Buried Alive, Terramorphic Expanse, Misty Rainforest, Mystical Tutor... What would be a short and solid description of a "tutor" deck? "A deck that regularly searches its library" would include landfall decks, almost every competitive EDH deck, "silver bullet" decks, and hatebear decks, all of which already have their own hub, and probably more. "A deck with seven or more card that search its owner's library" is arbitrary, as is any other number for inclusion. "A deck that regularly searches its library for specific cards that help it advance its win condition"--nah, I'm going to search for this useless card that doesn't help me at all.
Incidentally, "scry" is already available as a hub in the keyword/subtype checklist.
If a hub includes a $300 Dragon's Approach Pioneer deck, a $80 Elrond, Master of Healing casual Commander deck, and a $50,000 Vintage Beseech the Mirror deck, that hub becomes even broader than the aggro/combo/control archetypes, and as such becomes almost meaningless. I've added Dragon's Approach, Rat Colony, and Shadowborn Apostle to the short list for consideration, so they might be coming soon; I didn't see as many decks or as much diversity for Persistent Petitioners. And don't worry about a long post, as long as it's meaningful. It shows the idea has people willing to defend it and fight for it, which makes it more likely to be included one way or another.
January 15, 2024 1:48 p.m.
sergiodelrio says... #8
While I feel some of the reasoning in the examples brought up is inconsistent with other existing hubs, I'm also willing to accept that "low variance" is not an awesome pick for the hub - for whatever reason - and throwing in some (or one) cardnames as hubs is a solid compromise with precedent.
January 15, 2024 4:37 p.m.
Which hubs do you feel have inconsistent reasoning? This is the kind of feedback I like.
The "no card-specific hubs" isn't a hard and fast rule--in particular, Lab Man/Thoracle hub is the best name for the "draw from empty library" strategy. So there's probably others, but I'd like to know what you see.
January 15, 2024 5:44 p.m.
sergiodelrio says... #10
Haha, gotcha! xD
Ok, so let me start with sth general here. Just because something is or is not in the deck or a deck does or does not do a specific thing, DOES NOT make it the deck's theme. At least not necessarily. Opinions can vary on this.
Specifically, it is how the creator perceives the hubs and their deck and how they want to communicate it with others. Sure, there is often a general consensus on what sth is. But then you can cheese all of those things too. I made a really nice tribal deck, with all the cards that have the tribal cardtype (I know the name changed recently) , also a really nice budget deck, only 2k$.
You criticized "low volatility" because that's what competitive decks do. Well, no. Competitive decks try to win the game. And so do all other decks. However, competitive decks are really good at lowering variance within their theme, however, low variance is not their theme. If it was, the cards with the lowest variance would be the most competitive.
The same point can be made for tutors... just because one puts Urza's Saga in their deck because everyone else does, does not make the deck a tutor deck. But again that can be very subjective.
Then we have "card draw matters" hub... every deck draws cards no?
Goodstuff hub, is my stuff not gud?
To a lesser extent "top deck matters"
Maybe there are also others. Doesn't matter. My point is, if someone wants to get a hub wrong, they're gonna get it wrong, no matter how well established a term might be.
Competitive decks secretry trying to lower variance does not make it their theme just like any other deck drawing a card in their draw step, or off a cantrip does not make "card draw matters" their theme.
At the end of the day there is no need to rules-lawyer this too hard, because the words in question vary in meaning to different people and there is no amount of education and disclaimers that can prevent that. So factor that in
January 15, 2024 6:34 p.m. Edited.
Taking this point by point, skipping what I've already mentioned:
Decks based around the Tribal supertype are much less common, and much more gimmicky, than decks that are built around a specific subtype. Also, the Tribal hub got deactivated several years ago, when the subtype checklist got introduced. (Or, it should have been. If it's still selectable, let me know.)
Budget is definitely subjective, and I have it defined as "a deck that costs less money than a deck of the same format or strategy. This is a fairly subjective term." This definition is here (ignore the Commander bit; hub pages are just linked to formats based on the deck you got there from). Each hub has its own page with my definitions. So for your really nice budget deck, $2,000 is extremely high for Pioneer, very high for modern, but very budget for Legacy and unheard of for Vintage. Commander is all over the place. So for Budget, Casual, Competitive, and similar hubs, it does strongly come down to the builder's intent. Which format would that $2,000 deck be in?
"Card draw matters" and "top deck matters" are relatively recent hubs. Parallel to "legendary matters", CDM's not just the act of drawing. It's using cards that interact with drawing, such as Dream Trawler, Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, Queza, Augur of Agonies, and so on. Similarly, TDM is for Aminatou, the Fateshifter, Counterbalance, Miracles, etc. I added the word "matters" because, like you said, every deck wants to draw cards and wants good topdecks, but the act of drawing and topdeck manipulating can be built around. That's why they're not just "card draw" and "topdeck".
"Goodstuff" describes a deck that simply uses the best individual cards available, with no concern for synergy or interactions. This is a term with a specific definition that I believe is well-known enough to use as a hub title.
I have three goals for hubs: clarity, conciseness, and objectiveness. Sure, some of the terms aren't natural English, but they make sense in Magic-ese. If you have suggestions for name changes or clarifications, please let me know.
January 15, 2024 8:49 p.m.
sergiodelrio says... #12
I didn't mean to make you spell out the hub's definitions since I'm well aware, so sorry about that.
I wasn't aware hubs had definitions on their TO pages, I had never noticed.
My point revolves around your objection towards my initial suggestion "low volatiliy".
What I mentioned as examples in my previous post, was just to display that on misuse, the comeback boils down to "well, that's not what the hub means". Fair. Evenmoreso when hubs have a page with a def.
To bring my point home, "low volatility", since we introduce/define it ourselves due to the lack of official wordings, can simply mean to cover one thing and not the other. So, whenever someone (mis-)uses that in their competitive Jund deck, we can point to the definition page and tell them, "well, that's not what the hub means".
What I meant by inconsistent and the reason I specifically picked the examples I picked, is that, in a vacuum, those can easily be misinterpreted/misread (whenever sb chooses to NOT check with definition) which I also believe is the one major reason why hubs get misused in the first place.
Let me stress that this post is not me defending my initial suggestion ("low volatility"), I'm totally fine with ditching that for something better (especially since it doesn't hit the nail on the head). Not married to it at all. I just really wanted to make clear where I come from, since I find that important in a conversation out of respect for everyone else involved, so that we are on the same page (and because I am somewhat of a hair-splitter, lol).
Let me also stress that this is not me criticizing how you run the hubs. I do believe it has vastly improved over the last couple years (or so), and I'm just highlighting my subjective perspective... there is no "I'm right and you're wrong" in here, and I really feel that you live up to the goals you state in your last paragraph.
January 16, 2024 5:39 a.m.
sergiodelrio I understand where you're coming from, and like I said, I do appreciate the feedback. I try to make this accessible, and your comments have been taken onboard.
In my opinion (and strictly my opinion), there's going to be a certain amount of misuse no matter what. But when a hub gets misused to the point of completely changing (see Team America), is it better to redefine the hub, or close it down as not worth saving? I feel (and again, this is my prediction, not something based an anything empirical) like a hub called "low variability" will be misused more than it gets used for the intended definition, and that pointing people to the intended definition will become a full-time job. I guess my central point is that I like the idea and I want to find the best possible execution before making it publicly available.
I can be a hair-splitter too, and pretty stubborn at that. Thank you for a reasonable, polite conversation so far!
January 16, 2024 9:42 a.m.
sergiodelrio says... #14
Thank you, too, legendofa, I agree this has been a good conversation.
As far as I am concerned, we can wrap it up at this point. I actually 100% agree with your last take (comment #13), we just need a better/more descriptive, preferably catchy name. What I suggested is sub-par, and we should not shoehorn our own lingo into this.
Too bad WotC insists not having "basic" mean that ability, that would solve all our problems. I kinda get why they don't want to, but it could work. Until we have an official catch-all name, it is what it is.
legendofa says... #2
Felipix I generally don't like adding hubs based around single cards, but I agree that there's a good amount of diversity in the Rat Colony decks here. My big concern is that the next hub suggestions will be for Dragon's Approach, Shadowborn Apostle, Persistent Petitioners, and whatever else comes down the line. Is it worth it to have separate hubs for all these cards?
By the way, there's a thread to suggest new hubs here.
January 14, 2024 1:28 p.m.