Everyone Come Look At and Work On This Communal Cube

CML

CML

Contributor
http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/13229

Anyone can edit. This is a grand experiment in crowdsourcing. Nobody type in "gay" next to Bident of Thassa

name = GruesomeEncore
pass = theanustorn

Have at it. Remember that poetry is what's lost in translation ... well, that and some card choices that have turned into 'Ows'

I typed up this rough draft when I saw all these sweet cards with flashback that were a little too weak for a typical Riptide Cube. The important thing is to balance the power level so that the ecology that lets Quiet Speculation and Battle Screech be things (should this ever actually be played) isn't disturbed.

High priorities:
-Cut excessively powerful cards (i.e. Swords to Plowshares)
-Roughly balance colors for number of cards
-Copy-edits

Also high:
someone get rid of these
hallow
vengeance
lingering souls
blessing
nix
wonder
wonder
faerie macabre
agent of the fates
dregscape zombie
rotting rats
withered wretch
pain seer
viscera dragger
cairn wanderer
street wraith
gempalm polluter
reaper from the abyss
afflict
swat
murder
ow
ow
lich
lich
anger
vithian stinger
magnivore
reckless wurm
ancient hydra
punishing fire
crash
wild dogs
wolfbitten captive
anurid barkripper
tracker
borderland ranger
mitotic slime
wolfir silverheart
woodripper
reap
deep reconnaissance
grizzly fate
scar
deity of scars
cauldron haze
restless apparition
immortal servitude

deathpact angel

and add living death

cool
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
oh man lightning surge. Ends games!

Also: I like Grizzly Fate way more than beast attack. Maybe double it instead? Maybe I'm crazy?
 
CML

CML

Contributor
can someone edit the thread title to the effect of "everyone look at and work on this communal cube"
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Hey CML, do you have some sort of high-level outline for the cube / design goals / direction? Is there more than "medium-power graveyard cube" in mind?
 
CML

CML

Contributor
cube idea: maximize difficulty so that strong players screw up until the end of time. if we design with that in mind then goals like replay value and diversity of archetypes should happen incidentally.

here's some vague notions that, if kept in mind but not necessarily adhered to religiously, might provide some concrete or abstract direction:

-long, interactive games with incremental advantage. things can develop slowly, most turns should feature choices "that matter" in the game-design thread sense
-never run out of stuff to do
-few enough haymakers to make them answerable
-strong removal that either provides value or efficiency
-few creatures that "just" attack and block, many that provide value
-flat power level (medium power level in the sense that there are no bad cards and everything is maindeckable)
-idiosyncratic card choices that take advantage of these conditions

in general recent draft formats like Vintage Masters and Modern Masters have given me an idea that there is an enormous amount of untapped design space for lower-powered Cubes. the notion behind this one is to show people what is possible
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Alfonzo Bonzo said:
Yes, that would be interesting.

Also,

Click to expand...


throw it in the list

someone wanna hop in and get rid of the cards that are clearly better than the rest (like swords to plowshares)? good removal shouldn't necessarily mean "STP," hell, Chan, we could even cut Lightning Bolt though my vote is for (barely) keeping Path to Exile.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
CML said:
cube idea: maximize difficulty so that strong players screw up until the end of time. if we design with that in mind then goals like replay value and diversity of archetypes should happen incidentally.

here's some vague notions that, if kept in mind but not necessarily adhered to religiously, might provide some concrete or abstract direction:

-long, interactive games with incremental advantage. things can develop slowly, most turns should feature choices "that matter" in the game-design thread sense
-never run out of stuff to do
-few enough haymakers to make them answerable
-strong removal that either provides value or efficiency
-few creatures that "just" attack and block, many that provide value
-flat power level (medium power level in the sense that there are no bad cards and everything is maindeckable)
-idiosyncratic card choices that take advantage of these conditions

in general recent draft formats like Vintage Masters and Modern Masters have given me an idea that there is an enormous amount of untapped design space for lower-powered Cubes. the notion behind this one is to show people what is possible
Click to expand...

Yeah, these are standard CML-isms, but I guess I'd be looking for some tangible direction in terms of archetypes and overlaps. Like the kind of stuff that was there in Eldrazi Domain. I'm not saying that was a perfect cube, but at least I had some direction when I fired up Gatherer. This feels to vague still for me to contribute. I know it's "collaborative" but if there's one thing I learned from threads like the budget cube thread is that people will help flesh out somebody else's idea but it's hard to care enough to try and make the skeleton yourself.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
CML said:
in general recent draft formats like Vintage Masters and Modern Masters have given me an idea that there is an enormous amount of untapped design space for lower-powered Cubes. the notion behind this one is to show people what is possible
Click to expand...

Well, if that’s one of your goals, I'll relink to the discussion in my cube thread, here.

I came to the same conclusion that WOTC did with triple Innistrad, modern masters, and--apparently--vintage masters: weakened removal opens up a lot of design space. I could probably go a bit further and make my removal more conditional to force players down certain design corridors, e.g.harvest pyre and corpse lunge.

All of those were formats that were defined by synergy: modern masters was very much--and probably to an undesirable extent--driven by archetype drafting, and triple Innistrad was also a very synergy focused format with numerous archetype pieces to build around. The problem with strong, efficient removal, is that it has a tendency to 1) punish board synergy by efficiently removing one of the synergistic pieces, and 2) obsoleting or limiting alternate strategies via their raw efficiency. For example, I can force people to go down a more decision heavy route of ray of command + sac outlet or vanishment + ghoulcaller's bell, precisely because there is no path to exile or swords to plowshares that can reliably and cheaply removal any threat.

I would suggest that you if you want to explore the potential of lower powered formats, that you begin by deciding what your removal suite is going to look like, as that will dictate how deeply you can explore and promote board synergies. Running Eric's much maligned volcanic hammer in place of lightning bolt is probably a good start, as would be cutting the path to exile, at least for now, until you have a better idea of what you want to do.

It would also be a good idea to decide what tempo you want the format to have, and what cards you want to encourage that tempo.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Grillo_Parlante said:
Well, if that’s one of your goals, I'll relink to the discussion in my cube thread, here.

I came to the same conclusion that WOTC did with triple Innistrad, modern masters, and--apparently--vintage masters: weakened removal opens up a lot of design space. I could probably go a bit further and make my removal more conditional to force players down certain design corridors, e.g.harvest pyre and corpse lunge.

All of those were formats that were defined by synergy: modern masters was very much--and probably to an undesirable extent--driven by archetype drafting, and triple Innistrad was also a very synergy focused format with numerous archetype pieces to build around. The problem with strong, efficient removal, is that it has a tendency to 1) punish board synergy by efficiently removing one of the synergistic pieces, and 2) obsoleting or limiting alternate strategies via their raw efficiency. For example, I can force people to go down a more decision heavy route of ray of command + sac outlet or vanishment + ghoulcaller's bell, precisely because there is no path to exile or swords to plowshares that can reliably and cheaply removal any threat.

I would suggest that you if you want to explore the potential of lower powered formats, that you begin by deciding what your removal suite is going to look like, as that will dictate how deeply you can explore and promote board synergies. Running Eric's much maligned volcanic hammer in place of lightning bolt is probably a good start, as would be cutting the path to exile, at least for now, until you have a better idea of what you want to do.

It would also be a good idea to decide what tempo you want the format to have, and what cards you want to encourage that tempo.
Click to expand...


abstraction:
-i generally dislike the idea of 'archetypes' and would rather not 'explicitly support' them so much as add themes that overlap with one another. if this is pulled off (as it has been a few times before) the result will be every deck being weird in its own way moreso than 'all the decks are basically the same.' 'supporting the x deck' is something i'd want to avoid
-slow tempo

concrete stuff:

-RGD and OTJ suggest the direction of not "weaker removal" but "value creatures and powerful removal that's also conditional." this will make a leisurely tempo, but killing everything while not doing anything yourself will be a poor strategy. so there will be a great tension between stopping them and doing your own thing while also stopping them from stopping you and so on, not the comparable linear snoozefests of NWO successes.
-i'm not sure if we should try to push down the curve or just let it bubble up to the characteristic limited curve with a big bulge at 3/4. i'm inclined to say we should push it down because i think grim mongo cubes suck due to a high power level + high curves, but this does have the danger of defining 'aggro / midrange / control' too much.

removal:

creatures:

-lots of activated abilities, not quite 'the decision cube' but enough on-board complexity to stimulate and flummox strong players. cards like

-pump?

-lands:
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Ok, let’s start off with your proposed removal, which I think we can organize as such:

1). Actual Conditional Removal
dream leash,spinning darkness

2). Dedicated Mid-game Removal
ribbons of night, second thoughts

3). Cheap Early Game Removal
last gasp,firebolt

4). Probably Just Plain Bad
plague boiler

Since you are still in the extreme early phases, you need to decide what density of each category you want. If you run a large number of # 3, it will encourage an environment where someone can take a very reactive position, disrupting aggressive creature strategies, and build up to midrange or control strategies. The real value of running lots of actual conditional removal is that it can be used as the carrot on the stick to encourage people down avenues they never would have otherwise gone. This is where you can get creative.

As an example of how this could transition from theory to practice, I opted for a large amount of conditional removal that overlaps with the cube's central mill, sacrifice, and graveyard themes. Since I wanted a format where people were actively committing to the board from an early stage, I choose pieces that would also be tempo generators.

+

+
+

As for the threshold cards, I played a bunch of them in my old cube for a long time, and they can be surprisingly hard to get active. You probably want to run some self-mill to power up the graveyard in a reasonable time frame. You can see most of those cards in my current list.
 
MCMcEmcee

MCMcEmcee

The Guildmages from both Ravnica blocks seem to be a good fit for the stated design goals. 2 drops to lower the curve a bit, activated abilities and mana sinks, etc.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
MCMcEmcee said:
The Guildmages from both Ravnica blocks seem to be a good fit for the stated design goals. 2 drops to lower the curve a bit, activated abilities and mana sinks, etc.
Click to expand...


yes

stuff like prey upon seems good. really i'm not too worried about taxonomizing removal that finely, if the curve is minded then those pieces will fall into place
 
CML

CML

Contributor
Jason Waddell said:
Is the massive color imbalance intentional?
Click to expand...


its just because i'm lazy and couldn't think of enough white cards.

big projects:

-add white
-cut black
-clerical stuff like removing the 2nd duskmantle guildmage
-maybe add some fixing prioritized for enemy colors.

i'm thinking 495-540 for a final size, the idea is that by dialing back the power we increase the card pool and can thus increase diversity without diluting decisions. i always wanted to try a bigger cube here

edit: 540 probably
 
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