Good day, ladies and gentlemen!
CubeTutor link!
A few (plenty of) points of design philosophy:
Everyone loves Mirran Crusader, oh wait, we don't. This card is a great beater for aggro with the ability to go over the top in the right colors (colors whose aggro sections needed a boost) and is also a great combination blocker/finisher for control decks.
Also a big part of the flavor of Esper, to me anyway, was the idea of continuous self-improvement by re-engineering one's own body and I don't think the block mechanics really captured that.
Okay, I admit, this card is really goofy and its templating doesn't actually work under the official rules. And it has trinket text and an absurd mana cost. Nevertheless it sounds like an absolute blast to actually play with so I'm giving it a shot. Also the controlling builds in those colors were lacking four drops besides Nekrataal and friends.
Consecrated Sphinx puts games away a bit too securely for my taste when they don't have instant speed removal and does nothing when they do. People have removal quite often in my cube, control finishers needed to get a little better, Flickerwisp hasn't been getting picked high enough, my control players have a fetish for library manipulation, and ramp wants to block Calciderm while finding its Genesis Wave. Everyone wins! Except you, you're drawing three lands next.
Another control finisher that does something when it comes into play but doesn't completely put the game out of reach. I would like to retemplate this to not use a creature type but I couldn't find a satisfying way to do it. This card is evidence that I am printing cards merely to have an opportunity to type out some old card wording.
I typically find when I'm playing a BGx graveyard focused deck that what I really want is to draw more copies of Grisly Salvage. This is my attempt to answer that call.
This card is the direct result of a discussion on the old mailing list about how good Fungusaur would have to be for it to see play. I really like the low-impact synergy between the two abilities on this card, and green needed a bear that played well with red sweepers like Volcanic Spray, Slice and Dice, and Pyroclasm.
I really like chess. I think this card is strong but not imbalanced for my environment. Only testing can tell. Oh, and it's yet another reason to pick Volt Charge. I like that it can save up lots of flame to burn out a big creature.
So here we have the first of many cards that exist to support every aggro deck. I'm also righting the great wrong that is Brass Gnat. I think I accomplish more in my large cube by putting in a card like this than I do by putting in another painland, because it's inherently very hard to consistently have fixing for all color pairs available in each draft and a card like this helps every aggro deck stumble less, not just the decks for one color pair.
So this card is very strange. I think a lot of aggro decks do want to run it, but you run the risk of losing every race very badly. It may be that it's simply too strong with the fourth point of power.
So there's this big hole in the power curve of the living weapons that have actually been printed. There are all these completely unplayable cards, and then niche roleplayers like Bonehoard and Lashwrithe, and then there's Batterskull. So this is an aggro card for everyone that has some marginal late game utility. Aggro decks in my cube like the option of late game utility without having to devote an extra slot to it because they so frequently get very close to winning and have to draw into some reach. Shoutout to Mortarpod which I should probably put in sometime soon.
This one highlights the power of living weapons to help aggro bounce back from wraths. Having this in play makes many more of your one drops live pressure draws after a sweeper. And, of course, it's a blue haste creature.
I think this card would be pretty broken if it was surrounded by a Tempered Steel kind of shell, but most decks in my cube won't have the opportunity to pull off multiple regenerations simply because they won't have the artifact density. Instead, this card just quietly regenerates Porcelain Legionnaire and lets you turn that Talisman of Indulgence you topdecked late game into a 2/1. Signet ramp likes it too because it's a recurring blocker.
So this is an artifact lord that works with living weapons, screws with combat math, and makes Grafted Wargear absolutely insane. As a bonus it lets you maindeck cards like Smash more often because you can aim them at your opponent's finishers. Like the Myr above, the Captain isn't very impressive on his own but rewards you for picking up all sorts of artifacts and for committing to a board position.
What is nine mana really worth to you as a Magic player? Teeka's Dragon isn't really good enough, is it? Another card that is good against removal without blanking it.
Forgot this the first time. I am steeped in irony. I like Horizon Canopy but I didn't think any particular color pair in my cube needed that effect more than any other, so I made a colorless version with some hopefully-fun selection built in.
So that's the gallery! I assume you guys have some things to say about my zany card choices. Let's just say I'm on board with not being on board with power maximization. What do you think?
CubeTutor link!
A few (plenty of) points of design philosophy:
- I want every draft to be very different. This cube was built to replace a game I already played called 'take 100 random cards of each color from my collection and draft it.' Variance of this kind can be fun.
- I want to play with a bunch of old cards I'm nostalgic for and I want to sometimes win games with them. My cube contains such heartstring-pullers as Crash of Rhinos and Mahamoti Djinn, and each has actually been relevant to at least one game. With a very large cube, I can include such cards without wrecking whole strategies by denying them key cards. Sometimes your finisher will be Keiga, the Tide Star and sometimes it'll be Lorthos, the Tidemaker and that will inform your other pick choices.
- I want each color combination to have multiple viable strategies.
- I want people to be able to play goofy slow decks and be able to win sometimes. Those decks obviously still need to be able to do stuff on early turns but they should be able to survive to execute their game plan. So aggro shouldn't be able to consistently turn 4-5 people through removal and blockers, and likewise control doesn't need to consistently wrath on turn 4. This has informed the choice of fixing. I expect many of you to become furious at my land section.
- I want to play with interactive cards. Actually I want to play games of magic where the players interact often over the course of the game. Removal is good, counterspells are good, sweepers are good, and discard is individually good but has low representation. Regeneration, shroud, hexproof, and protection are always watched carefully. I've been looking for creatures that are good against removal without literally blanking it, such as Deathpact Angel, but there aren't many.
- The veterans here are okay with certain cards that cause massive blowouts but not others. We have a rich history of beating each other with cards like Control Magic and Mind Twist but find it boring and painful to lose to Lodestone Golem. I build for my audience.
- The cube is played by several people who do not have intimate familiarity with every card in Magic. Therefore I include no transform cards so that all the information about a card is easily accessible. I've been gradually removing tribal themes from my cube for the same reason.
- Because those newer players typically have trouble shuffling quickly, effects that force your opponent to shuffle are included sparingly. Thus my cube does not contain Path to Exile although it contains Swords to Plowshares. Cards that make their controller shuffle are okay because you can choose whether or not to play a strategy that relies on them.
- We tend to have round time limit issues, which have lead to shuffling and card selection being toned down somewhat. There are no fetchlands and two cards I love playing with, Sylvan Library and Sensei's Divining Top are not included for time purposes. They're much worse without fetches anyway.
- A large cube leads to more pack shapes that are skewed in favor of one strategy over another. For this reason it's very important to have cards that go in many different decks, and among those cards to have a varying power level. Jeweled Amulet, for example, is generally not considered cubeworthy but can go in many one or two color aggro decks, especially if they find themselves light on one drops and heavy on three drops. It's not the one drop you're hoping to open but it's the one you'll be able to table.
- A large cube creates more feel-bad about planeswalkers. It's more likely that the packs will contain only one or two, which means that each person is more likely to have zero planeswalkers to their opponent's one planeswalker through no fault in drafting strategy. Even though planeswalkers are not necessarily more impactful than other cards, most people feel as though they are missing out in those situations, much more so than if their opponent merely has a strong card like Aurelia, the Warleader. So I have included no planeswalkers.
- I personally like singleton formats and haven't yet seen a need to include multiples of any card.
Everyone loves Mirran Crusader, oh wait, we don't. This card is a great beater for aggro with the ability to go over the top in the right colors (colors whose aggro sections needed a boost) and is also a great combination blocker/finisher for control decks.
Also a big part of the flavor of Esper, to me anyway, was the idea of continuous self-improvement by re-engineering one's own body and I don't think the block mechanics really captured that.
Okay, I admit, this card is really goofy and its templating doesn't actually work under the official rules. And it has trinket text and an absurd mana cost. Nevertheless it sounds like an absolute blast to actually play with so I'm giving it a shot. Also the controlling builds in those colors were lacking four drops besides Nekrataal and friends.
Consecrated Sphinx puts games away a bit too securely for my taste when they don't have instant speed removal and does nothing when they do. People have removal quite often in my cube, control finishers needed to get a little better, Flickerwisp hasn't been getting picked high enough, my control players have a fetish for library manipulation, and ramp wants to block Calciderm while finding its Genesis Wave. Everyone wins! Except you, you're drawing three lands next.
Another control finisher that does something when it comes into play but doesn't completely put the game out of reach. I would like to retemplate this to not use a creature type but I couldn't find a satisfying way to do it. This card is evidence that I am printing cards merely to have an opportunity to type out some old card wording.
I typically find when I'm playing a BGx graveyard focused deck that what I really want is to draw more copies of Grisly Salvage. This is my attempt to answer that call.
This card is the direct result of a discussion on the old mailing list about how good Fungusaur would have to be for it to see play. I really like the low-impact synergy between the two abilities on this card, and green needed a bear that played well with red sweepers like Volcanic Spray, Slice and Dice, and Pyroclasm.
I really like chess. I think this card is strong but not imbalanced for my environment. Only testing can tell. Oh, and it's yet another reason to pick Volt Charge. I like that it can save up lots of flame to burn out a big creature.
So here we have the first of many cards that exist to support every aggro deck. I'm also righting the great wrong that is Brass Gnat. I think I accomplish more in my large cube by putting in a card like this than I do by putting in another painland, because it's inherently very hard to consistently have fixing for all color pairs available in each draft and a card like this helps every aggro deck stumble less, not just the decks for one color pair.
So this card is very strange. I think a lot of aggro decks do want to run it, but you run the risk of losing every race very badly. It may be that it's simply too strong with the fourth point of power.
So there's this big hole in the power curve of the living weapons that have actually been printed. There are all these completely unplayable cards, and then niche roleplayers like Bonehoard and Lashwrithe, and then there's Batterskull. So this is an aggro card for everyone that has some marginal late game utility. Aggro decks in my cube like the option of late game utility without having to devote an extra slot to it because they so frequently get very close to winning and have to draw into some reach. Shoutout to Mortarpod which I should probably put in sometime soon.
This one highlights the power of living weapons to help aggro bounce back from wraths. Having this in play makes many more of your one drops live pressure draws after a sweeper. And, of course, it's a blue haste creature.
I think this card would be pretty broken if it was surrounded by a Tempered Steel kind of shell, but most decks in my cube won't have the opportunity to pull off multiple regenerations simply because they won't have the artifact density. Instead, this card just quietly regenerates Porcelain Legionnaire and lets you turn that Talisman of Indulgence you topdecked late game into a 2/1. Signet ramp likes it too because it's a recurring blocker.
So this is an artifact lord that works with living weapons, screws with combat math, and makes Grafted Wargear absolutely insane. As a bonus it lets you maindeck cards like Smash more often because you can aim them at your opponent's finishers. Like the Myr above, the Captain isn't very impressive on his own but rewards you for picking up all sorts of artifacts and for committing to a board position.
What is nine mana really worth to you as a Magic player? Teeka's Dragon isn't really good enough, is it? Another card that is good against removal without blanking it.
Forgot this the first time. I am steeped in irony. I like Horizon Canopy but I didn't think any particular color pair in my cube needed that effect more than any other, so I made a colorless version with some hopefully-fun selection built in.
So that's the gallery! I assume you guys have some things to say about my zany card choices. Let's just say I'm on board with not being on board with power maximization. What do you think?
