Both, are they at odds? Sounds like the second requires the first to me.
While I don't think these goals are at odds, some colors are intrinsically better at doing certain things than others. Creating an environment where every color can equally contribute to each macro-archetype might get in the way of creating the best possible play experience for the first goal, because you'd be dedicating a significant portion of each color to doing something that color just isn't good at doing. A red/green control deck probably isn't going to be as good as a blue/white counterpart, simply because red and green don't have as good control tools as white and blue. The only way I can think of off the top of my head to support a red/green control deck would be a Wildfire deck in a low-power environment, but at that point you're venturing off into microarchetype space again.
None of this means you can't give each color support for each macro archetype. There are cards that are fantastic in a macro-archetype a color doesn't normally excel at supporting. For example,
Burn Down the House is fantastic in control, even though Red isn't a great control color in its own right. A U/R, Jeskai, or Grixis control deck could use some control-specific red cards like
Burn Down the House coupled with generically good red cards like
Shock. However, Red isn't going to have as many cards to contribute to the control deck as Blue.
I'm open to any power level on principle, but I believe a high power level clashes with the requirement of all colors supported in all macro archetypes. At the end of the day, the best control decks possible are blue. The best aggro decks are... not blue. So I'll probably go lower power.
I don't think a high power level is necessarily at odds with the goal of every color supporting every macro archetype. As we established, there are good cards for every macro in every color– the only issue is equal support, and that's mostly a density issue. In my experience, lowering the power level of the environment too much makes control decks way too good, as the density of board wipes those decks require to beat back aggro consistently can start to hate out every deck incredibly hard as the format gets slower. You can't really skimp on wipes because otherwise, control wouldn't be able to find their interaction on time. Unfortunately, faster gameplay tends to require more potent cards. You don't necessarily have to build in a legacy-lite space, but you'd likely benefit from trying to balance the format like Standard from some point between 2007 and today.
If I'm understanding your goals correctly, it seems like you want to build a cube that isn't similar to your current Cube. It might be beneficial for you to commit fully to the bit and try to build in a power space than you usually do as well. I'm not saying you should build a Cube with cards you don't want to play, but getting out of your comfort zone and experimenting with something entirely new could prove enlightening. You're a good designer already, and this will help you improve your arsenal.
The latter mainly, it's impossible to not have synergy - I would just like to focus on natural synergies - mountains and red cards, removal and counterspells, creatures and equipment. If Tarmogoyf is a good enough card even if there are not 8 graveyard enablers or fetches, it's fine (though I'm sure it'll be good enough).
Good, this will make your job significantly easier. Lots of the good glue cards for the macro archetypes in modern magic are powerful
because of their synergistic elements, so having the ability to lean on those cards will help to make the design process smoother.
By the way, I recognize this is "basically what a lot of other people do", but I bet people who work within constraints of microarchetypes would have valuable insight into what it means NOT to have that constraint.
I totally agree! Playing Cubes with a heavy emphasis on the macro-archetypes and later building a Cube that primarily supported the big three macros has made me a better designer. Getting a solid feel for modern macro-archetype Cubes has helped me better understand how to design micro-archetypes that don't feel forced or weak. Every micro-archetype is basically a flavor of one of the macros. For me, gaining a complex understanding of how different flavors of each macro-archetype play in their simplest forms has helped me to figure out cool things I can lean into for micro archetypes. For example, my Cube has a "delve deck" currently which uses filter to graveyard cantrips like
Thought Scour,
Ransack the Lab, and
Commune with the Gods to power out good delve cards like
Tasigur, the Golden Fang and
Hooting Mandrills. Fundamentally, this deck is "just" a flavor of Sultai Midrange–most of the payoffs and all of the off-plan cards the delve deck specifically uses are things generic Sultai would use. However, this deck still feels unique because the deck still has a specific, abnormal plan. It also has some cross-pollination with other micros I currently support, like Reanimator and Spells, because all of the enablers also go to enable those decks. I don't think I would have come up with the delve deck back when I focused just on fully-supporting micro archetypes because the pool of cards is not extensive enough to build a whole synergy deck around. However, as a flavor of Sultai midrange, the deck works fantastically and feels really cool and unique.
Here's what I'm thinking:
- Lots of glue cards that work in all archetypes
- Good amount of board wipes that curb aggro
- Good amount of resilience for aggro to curb control
- Good amount of disruption to curb control
My intention is that aggro must build with board wipes in mind. There might be space to support aggro that tries to simply go under the wraths (or maybe making them 5+ mana would be enough, but then disruption is kind of op) which would be great to support to cover the whole spectrum, but there might be a real estate issue with that due to the densities needed.
This sounds great! Macro-archetype decks in the present era tend to be more about spell velocity than raw power, so keeping the curve lower helps to keep things moving along smoothly.
The other thing I would add to this list is to play
lots of fixing. Fixing is your best glue card– it helps decks play the good cards in colors that aren't necessarily the best at their macro-archetype without making the deck worse. Because of the way Macro-oriented Cubes tend to work, you're not going to have to worry about 5-color pile decks because your average card quality is going to be roughly even. There's no point to taking random green cards for your R/W aggro deck if you haven't yet reached your ideal density for 1-drops yet. There's still a real cost to consistency in branching into new colors– it dilutes the number of key spells that are in your pool. Good fixing doesn't fix this problem, it just lets players have an easier time consistently cast their on-plan cards they would want to be playing anyway.
Maybe bumping wraths to 5 mana, disruption to 2 mana and letting hyper aggro have room to not have to run too many 1-drops would work ok? I'm not confident on having a higher mana curve like that since there is less agency in how the sequencing happens.
I think bumping some of the wraths to 5 mana sounds good (especially if you're not trying to build in a super high-power space), but I think skimping on one-drops is not a recipe for success. Cutting one-drops from aggro is like cutting discard outlets from the
Drake Haven deck. Sure, you're technically making it weaker, but you're doing that by making the deck less consistent, not by reducing the power level of the cards in the deck. This doesn't really lead to the most fun gameplay, as players feel like they're at the mercy of their draws instead of winning or losing based on skill. My advice here is to spend some time with a hypergeometric calculator, figuring out what percentage of the time you want your aggro decks to be able to start with a turn one one drop. From there, add a number of one drop creatures (or equipment) to your cube based on the number of ones you want each aggro deck to have.
I still really like
the exchange regarding this topic
@Onderzeeboot, and I had a couple of years ago discussing the differences between micro-archetype oriented designs and macro-archetype oriented design. I think it really brings the differences between the two extremes into focus.
If you want to talk more about this topic with me, I'm open to having a chat on discord about it as well!
