Kamigawa cube

Toan

Toan

Figured I might as well post this here just in case someone is interested:

Kamigawa Cube on Cube Tutor

The idea is to emulate 3xChampions draft, but with extra support for R/W Samurai and R/B Ogre/Demons, and to a lesser extent, W/B Spirits.

I don't know if the lands balance is correct, or if cards from other sets should make an appearance to make some of the archtypes better.

Definitely don't want multicolour cards though.

Also, Ninja probably need to make an appearance somehow, but I'm not sure how to best have Ninja as the dimir archtype.

Also snakes? Kamigawa block was pre-Lorwyn tribe design, and as such, many of the tribes occupy only one colour. Kitsune = White, Soratami = Blue, Nezumi = Black, Orochi = Green, Akki = Red. AKA: White Foxes, Blue Rabbit-People, Black Rats, Green Snakes and Red Goblins.

Current archtypes:
R/W Samurai
W/B or G/B Grindy Spirits (G/B version has Hana Kami + Death Denied or Soulless Revival)
R/U or W/U Dampen Thought (Maybe also U/G, but I doubt it. Vital Surge and Kodama's Reach are probably not good enough, though Elder Pine of Jukai is cool).
U/B or R/U Tempo Spirits (loose collection of fliers, soulshift and removal, sometimes spliced)
R/B Ogre/Demons
R/G or R/B Aggro Spirits
5 Colour Shrine Control

Yes, there's a lot of multiples of cards to try and bring up powerlevel and consistency.

Yes, there's 8 copies of Kodama's Reach (given that it was one of the few reasons to be green).

To be honest, this will probably mesh and be the home page for custom cards that are remakes of the old Kamigawa stuff. (Who thought Sweep and an unnamed Wisdom mechanic was a good idea? ;~; )
 
Toan

Toan

Super quick reimagining of a cool card from CHK:

Bushi Tenderfoot.jpg

I don't know how this card would fare by today's standards, but it's pretty cool nonetheless from a lore standpoint.
 
Toan

Toan

Dom Harvey said:
Turning the beautiful OG flip cards into ugly transform cards is grounds for a permanent ban IMO
Click to expand...

Pssh, not being able to tell the difference between a tapped, flipped creature and a tapped, unflipped creature (not to mention, some people tap anti-clockwise) is worse than finding worse art, having more textbox space (which means more flavour text) and looking less cluttered :p
 
Toan

Toan

In an attempt to add playable black samurai into the format (so cards like Nezumi Ronin can come back in):

Eiganjo Ronin.jpg

Fills the gap of not having many good 2-drops in the block, fills Spirits wanting a good 2-drop, makes R/B or W/B samurai a consideration and is an excuse to make more cards with edgy art.
 
japahn

japahn

I feel like the archetypes are too linear, feels on rails. I know it's Kamigawa, but it feels like it has gone even farther than triple CHK.
 
Toan

Toan

Part of attempting to focus the archtypes means forgoing a lot of the variety, yea.

Furthermore, a lot of the mechanics and archtypes in Kamigawa block don't really do well by today's play standards (Sweep, "Wisdom", Soratami, Orochi venom, Ninja w/o ETB creatures).

Also me aggressively doubling down on multiples of the actual good creatures to try and forge a draft environment that would have a similar power level to Theros or Innistrad (ish) probably makes it feel like a small set. So, I'm trying to branch out a bit more with customs.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Toan said:
Super quick reimagining of a cool card from CHK:

View attachment 1185

I don't know how this card would fare by today's standards, but it's pretty cool nonetheless from a lore standpoint.
Click to expand...

Turning flips into transforms gets my thumbs up. I imagine they will never go back to flips because the transforms execution looks so much better and leaves much more space for text.
 
Toan

Toan

Onderzeeboot said:
Turning flips into transforms gets my thumbs up. I imagine they will never go back to flips because the transforms execution looks so much better and leaves much more space for text.
Click to expand...

I distinctly remember MaRo saying somewhere that DFC tech is what Flip wants to be. I think having two seperate card arts really helps with making each side feel cool.
 
Toan

Toan

I'm back and now with more motivation to pick this up again.

Open question to anyone fond of (or hated kamigawa), what were the most fun and least fun aspects of the block? And more specifically, how fun was bushido, splice, the wisdom mechanic, ninja, etc?

My quick thoughts:

Bushido seems like such a weird mechanic. I guess it promotes more defensive play? It's a little like flanking though.

Splice is conditional buyback. With enough enablers it might as well be buyback. So the question is, is this fun?

There's probably no way to make sweep fun. The soratami mechanic of bouncing your own lands could probably be tweaked to the point where it is fun though?

I think soulshift is a fantastic mechanic though. Captures the flavor and is fun to play with. Making it fun to play against is the issue but it's possible.

The other tribes need more cohesion. Probably take a page out of lorwyn and have them be two colours or more.

Bonuses for playing spirit and arcane together ("spiritcraft") is cool but I think the humans need a stronger theme and mechanic as a counterpoint to how much value spirits have.
 
Toan

Toan

Idea: Nezumi revolving around the Skulk mechanic, being sneaky, Ophidian-style triggers (Ie something sweet happening when they connect with the opponent).
 
Toan

Toan

Just so I don't forget:

Nezumi Smuggler
1UB, 3/1, Rat Rogue
When Nezumi Smuggler enters the battlefield, target creature can't be blocked this turn.
T: Target creature with power 2 or less can't be blocked this turn.

Nezumi Thief
1B, 1/2, Rat Rogue
Skulk
When Nezumi Thief deals combat damage to a player, you may exile two creature cards from their graveyard. If you do, draw a card.

Sorta vague ideas not really well balanced but they're ok to start with.

Edit:
Yamabushi Priest
2RR, 1/4, Human Shaman
Whenever one or more creatures is put into exile from anywhere, Yamabushi Priest deals 2 damage to target creature or player.

The Yamabushi are supposed to represent Buddhist monks in a way, but leaning towards banishing spirits. I figure this could tie ok with black exiling creatures in the graveyard and incentivise you to play some of the dorkier red creatures in the block and/or get you excited to put them together. Issues: this is a mono colour interaction, and red/white is samurai, whereas red/black is oni and ogres. I think maybe red/green would be the home for this? Maybe.
 
Jonas

Jonas

I love the idea of this cube. Sadly I had a break during the Kamigawa block, so I don't have any relevant input :(
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Necroing this thread. Toan, you still working on this?

I started playing sometime near the end of Mirrodin, so I guess Kamigawa was my first full block? I hated it. Loved the theme to death (Medieval Japan is SWEET), but I had played with my friend's older Magic collection and Kamigawa felt so underpowered (spells in particular compared to old sets, but creatures too). Then came Ravnica and I loved the gold themes, power level was higher, mechanics felt easier to digest. I just didn't appreciate Kamigawa for what it was at the time or even as recently as a few years ago.

I've come around on it honestly. The mechanics of the set are subtle and pretty well integrated when you look closely. I didn't get it. Now I feel like I do. I've definitely misjudged this set.

Stumbled onto a cool retrospective Magic series on youtube. This guy loves Kamigawa (like A LOT) and does a really incredible job on this block. I think the lore behind Magic blocks ranges from mostly corny to entirely corny. Not going to lie here. I'm like the anti-Vorthos as a general rule. But this dude's series made me actually want to read the Kamigawa books. Here's the link to episode 1 for champions for those interested.


Another thing I've started looking at which ties in with Kamigawa... I checked to see which sets people felt had the best limited gameplay. Believe it or not, Champions of Kamigawa (along with Betrayers) is on many lists (even LSV's). Innistrad, OG Ravnica, and Rise of the Eldrazi are the others topping most lists.

To add some variety and make it more dynamic, how about trying to infuse Kamigawa with a few of these highly rated limited sets? I know the power level and themes could be problematic between them, but some of this feels pretty portable. Ninjas work in any sort of rebuy value environment - you can slot them into almost anything. Soulshift is the best mechanic in Kamigawa IMO, and as long as you are judicious with creature choices and power level it should be fully portable - spirits are all over the place. Arcane is actually sweet if you can hit critical mass on it. Seems completely reasonable to do in a 360 list. One thing great about it is how y0u have to invest in the strategy to get the benefit, unlike buyback which is mostly auto additional value for anyone running even a single card. I've asked the question before about how you actually reward spell based strategies for going creature light. Arcane is the best implementation of this IMO.

Couple loose ideas that might work.
  • Innistrad graveyard elements - ties nicely with spirits. Get more stuff in the yard and you have more targets for soulshift. Human theme here ties into Samurai and gives you more reason to run them.
  • ROE - ramp elements could help to power out Myojin's much like how it did for Eldrazi. Sacrifice effects certainly go well with Zuberas.
  • Ravnica - We all love bouncelands (right, right??). Not sure what to take from this set honestly but I'm sure it can contribute something.
Thoughts? Anyone still care about this?
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I took a swing at my own Kamigawa inspired list. It's maybe 80-90% there but could use some tuning.

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/88240

Flip cards are clunky, so I excluded all of them in my list. That's probably not going to please Kamigawa purists. I also injected portions of the innistrad graveyard stuff (spider spawning deck should be draftable). There's also a random assortment of other cards from different sets. I wanted to up the removal a bit and drop the mana curve down so it was faster. This is all a bit haphazard though and why I say 80/90% and in need of tuning. Some of these cards are out of place thematically but I put them in for mechanical reasons.

Did a dozen mock drafts and all color combinations seem viable except maybe RG - can't figure out what that is supposed to be doing. Super rampy BS seems very doable in heavy green and I think that could be really fun. Might even be worth tossing in a couple of the big common/uncommon eldrazi as additional targets. Annihilator 1/2 wouldn't be unbeatable in this cube and it would create really interesting scenarios with all the soulshift shenanigans.

Speaking of which, there might be too much soulshift support here. It feels painfully easy to draft spirit synergy in almost any color combination with minimal effort. I do like that Rend Spirit and Rend Flesh have an equal number of targets though.

Samurai could be really good here. They were bad in limited draft because all the good support was printed at rare. But in this list, you are always going to see them and can therefore pretty reliable draft around it.

If I were to make some additional changes, I'd probably thin some of the support for samurai and spirits and add some ETB stuff to help Ninjas and enable maybe some other archetypes. I've always liked blink and lower powered creature blink could be fun to draft. Maybe splicers would work here? There's definitely enough room for more archetypes.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
These decks are really interesting to look at.

I feel like there has to be something awesome here.

Idea: go down to 1 dampen thought, move away from dampen thought as an independent combo deck, but shift it towards an engine for a gy combo. Kind of like a spider spawning redux, where we use dampen-splice to fill up the yard.

I think your idea to add the self-mill innistrad mechanics alongside the self-mill kamigawa tools is really smart.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I slapped in the splicer package, added the common eldrazi for the big mana BS and shifted a few more cards. Not sure I am making things better or worse. All I know is the 10 drafts I did I was drowning in spirit synergy and it all felt too simple to draft.

I thought about swapping a thought scour for a dampen thought early on. I was worried about hitting a critical mass on arcane spells though which is a real limiter on card choices. I also think the dampen thought deck was really neat and I wanted that to be very draftable. So I'm conflicted.

This feels much lower power and slower than any cube I've built before, so I'm a bit out of my depth.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Yeah, the amount of spirit synergy is insane. There are a metric ton of potential lord cards, and that seems like a really cool, and unique play to explore. You probably don't strictly need the splicer package.

I would cut meloku, kodama of the north tree, and jetting glasskite for sure for power level reasons, and distracting from more interesting interactions. The dragons might be doing the same thing, but hard to say. In the draft I got the same pick feeling when I saw them, as when I see a titan. These generic good cards remove a lot of the problems that motivate creative and deep drafting.

With the big myojins, and some of the spirit lords being high CC targets, I feel like there are some really interesting top end strategies, prob don't need the eldrazi, and it would be nice to get a feel for how the kamigawa top end plays out, without having more generic good stuff cards like the dragons distracting from them.

I really like adding the untappers, at least one good black tutor, and brainfreeze. Heartbeat feels so interesting here as a combo engine, there is a real motivation to ramp, and the self-mill engine is already there where brainfreeze becomes organic as a viable pick.

Devouring greed also looks really interesting as a combo piece.

Lots of interesting stuff to unpack here. Nice find.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Found a review series for all the Kamigawa sets by Kai Budde that includes limited ratings. Seems like a pretty good resource (to say the least). Made a bunch of tweaks based on that.

I also cut most of the obtuse stuff. Still keeping the red and green dragons in there since they are definitely worse that the other three. I still have a little over 100 cards from non-kamigawa sets. Will likely tweak those a bit more.

This list is only $295 as priced by Cubetutor. Wow. That's pretty sweet.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Brain Freeze is a tough sell in this list. Not that it won't work - it probably will. It's just really degenerate. That just makes me want to put all the broken Kamigawa cards back in.
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

I really want to infuse more innistrad. Kamigawa and Innistrad are the two sets with the sweetest (IMO) flavor. What do you think about the cycle of guild lands (desolate lighthouse, etc) in place of a set of guild gates? Weakens fixing more but I'm OK with that in this cube. Fixing in Kamigawa sucked and that's OK for what the set is about (zero gold cards). Those utility lands in low powered limited could just wind up warping the whole format though. I've only played with a couple so unsure how busted they are.
 
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