Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:52 pm
how is singleton not arbitrary...
Singleton is generally accepted as the norm, an "axiom" if you will.
Consider any branch of mathematics; if you keep asking "why" far back enough, you will approach the axioms that we all just take for granted; the fundamental assumptions that allow us to do anything and everything we do with mathematics (if you don't know set theory, this might be a bit beyond you, idk). Without those assumptions, mathematics is nothing.
Singleton is an assumption/axiom of cubing as long as I've ever heard about it. It seems a much easier and more interesting rule to follow than to start making multiples; I accept it as a given (and therefore, not arbitrary) because that is how 99.999999% of cubes I've ever seen or heard of are run. There are probably more reasons for going singleton that I don't have the time or patience to go into or figure out, but there's that.
At the most basic level, saying "I want
more ramp" and turning to a card already in your cube seems extremely lazy to me; I think it is flat out lazy cube design to have to use the same card multiple times, rather than finding the right card to balance your green spell section the way you want, or whatever. You can whine and say "but none exist that are as good as ramp spell X, so I just wanna use two", and I'd say "just stop being lazy and use a different ramp spell; the game has over 17k cards (approx), surely you can find one that suits your needs that you aren't using". I suppose this goes back to the variance argument a bit, but that's just how I feel, the principles I use to build my own cubes.
And yes, a large part of it is the question of: if two rampant growths are ok, why not 3? Why not use two lightning bolts and two savannah lions and etc etc etc. That pandora's box of subtle probability nuances is not something I'm interested in opening; and that's ok, because by sticking to the singleton rule, I don'
t have to.