Onderzeeboot's Khans of Alara WUBGR Cube

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Based on my current speed, only 10-15 hours to go before I finished all of the proxies. Yaaaaaay... Ugh.

On the bright side, they be looking nice!
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Get your playgroup to help you cut and sleeve while the pod fills up!
I don't think you have a good idea of how I proxy my cards. It took me a long while to adopt proxies because I'm a real stickler for look and feel. I'll post some pics later (i.e. Wednesday at the earliest probably) to give you an idea :)
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
VVV
exciting! can't wait.
Woke up early today. Suddenly, time! :D

Proxy_01.JPG Proxy_02.JPG Proxy_03.JPG

So, I'm printing all of my proxies on Avery J8567 clear shipping labels. The second pic shows some cutouts on the left side. On the right side you see some peeled foils. I use Theros block foils for this (warning: do not use new border foils). The foil layer peels real easy, leaving you with a nice blank card as the perfect basis for a proxy that feels right and has the right size. To apply, pull the protective back off the shipping label cutout, put it facedown on the cutting mat, carefully align one of the long sides of the peeled Magic card on the cutout and lower slowly to align perfectly. Once you've done that, use the knife together with a steel ruler to cut off the excess label, then round the corners with a pair of scissors. After that I put the card in a leftover sleeve and use the seel ruler to firmly press together the cardback and the label. After that, double sleeve the stuff, and you got your proxies on the right. Well Fierce Nacatl and Dokar Shieldwall are proxies, Grim Lavamancer and Goblin Guide are not!

You can still see the proxies are a bit more grainy, but they look and feel a lot better than paper cutouts put in front of a normal Magic cards!
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Okay, cool stuff!

1) Don't do that for EVERY proxy you make, patching will be a nightmare and the workload will be so insane you'll never change this damn thing. Let cards earn their spots: Magiccards.info printouts initially, and put the real work in for cards when they deserve it. Trust me, you'll thank me later
2) Custom Cards!

Geyser%20of%20Wisdom.png

I've stolen this thing too, but I added "Sacrifice a creature: Add a time counter" to make more people want it. Even if it gets a million counters, it's still just a higher downside phyrexian arena. (Well, unless Vampire Hexmage is in here to cash it all in at once :p)

Grave%20Gaunt.png

Black Narcomoeba seems fine in draft. Greater than or equal to please.

Ordeal%20of%20Kiora.png

Interesting. You wanted to move the counter theme away from blue?

Fated%20Flames_1.png

Cooooooool. Tell me if this thing is broken, it seems REAL strong

Grim%20Swordsman.png

I get what you're referencing and why it's better, but why is it here? Red/White gets some odd, agressive but still rampy 3 drop?
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Okay, cool stuff!

1) Don't do that for EVERY proxy you make, patching will be a nightmare and the workload will be so insane you'll never change this damn thing. Let cards earn their spots: Magiccards.info printouts initially, and put the real work in for cards when they deserve it. Trust me, you'll thank me later
Sadly, the only proxies I can get off Magiccards.info are the fetchlands, and they are in! This proxying stuff? It's all customs!
2) Custom Cards!

Geyser%20of%20Wisdom.png

I've stolen this thing too, but I added "Sacrifice a creature: Add a time counter" to make more people want it. Even if it gets a million counters, it's still just a higher downside phyrexian arena. (Well, unless Vampire Hexmage is in here to cash it all in at once :p)
Sacrifice is not really a blue ability, but I get what you mean. I'm curious how it plays, might need to be upgraded. Then again, i don't mind this tabling for the guy who picks up Zur or the constellation theme.
Grave%20Gaunt.png

Black Narcomoeba seems fine in draft. Greater than or equal to please.
I ripped the can't block it clause straight from Silumgar Assassin. It looks weakish, but that was what I was going for. This is mainly there to interact with the zombie tribe and as a combo piece with Buried Alive, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, etc. Maybe this can be changed to "Creatures with power 1 or less can't block Grave Gaunt"? That's more of a red ability, but I don't think it's a stretch to bleed it.
Ordeal%20of%20Kiora.png

Interesting. You wanted to move the counter theme away from blue?
Yup. There's a +1/+1 counter theme in Jund and an enchantment theme in Naya. The card just feels so green to me as well. +1/+1 counters, getting cards for attacking, pants that make you stronger. So, awesome in green, still awesome in blue, but much less useful in that color in this particular cube.
Fated%20Flames_1.png

Cooooooool. Tell me if this thing is broken, it seems REAL strong
Sorcery Shock for creatures + not quite as good as draw a card. Yeah, my gut tells me this should probably be alright, but it's probably also very, very strong.
Grim%20Swordsman.png

I get what you're referencing and why it's better, but why is it here? Red/White gets some odd, agressive but still rampy 3 drop?

Huh. Each color has two cards that reference an allied color, so four cards in each color (two for each of its allies). The only playable red card that mentioned white I could find was Burning Oil (which is a pretty sweet limited card actually), so I made a custom. I liked Hardened Berserker, but decided to improve it a bit. I do agree it's in a bit of a weird spot for the most aggressive guild in my cube though. This might be better at "{G}: Regenerate ~". We'll see if it does anything interesting. It could get an aggressive deck to play some more high end cards. Following this up with Assemble the Legion is pretty boss, and there are plenty of expensive targets once you go Naya. Interesting question though. Will monitor!

Man. That was some sweet feedback! Gimme more! :p
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Okay then just print out some 88mm tall card scans :p Paper in the sleeve might look worse, but it still looks fine and it's 1/10th the work, something wholly necessary with so many cards undergoing testing like this :p
Like, just imagine if maybe 20% of the cards you're adding are a biiiiit too strong, like they need small but necessary tweaks (I had a B1 2/1 undying which moved to B1 2/1, when it does make a diregraf ghoul)

How much more work is that? That's not even a new patch you need to do, this is work on top of every patch you make :p

Anyways, custom feedback:

I added sacrifice to Gyser because there's enough stuff in my cube that just wants to die because Pod exists, but giving someone a reason to pair gravecrawler with something other than red (Or in my cube, green). I know creatures dying isn't a huge main theme of this cube, but it's in there and I like to overlay themes where I can, especially if we get the true Kitchen Finks home run card that everyone wants

Grave gaunt kinda depends. I'm lobbying for him to slide past 2/1s because I'd love a solid evasive black 2 drop that can block (Blood-Chin Rager is the current guy for that idea). If he can be blocked by 2 power creatures, that's essentially the minimum size of a creature in cube, so he loses a lot of the evasion incentive, and I'd love this guy to not be carried by the narcomoeba ability, I'd love him to be good if you can't reliably cheat him in.

In terms of grim swordsman, I'm mostly curious because he does represent a different direction than we usually see in most people's RW decks. Looking at the multicolor section, it's interesting that so much of the cards this guy would play well with are in other colors, as assemble the legion is the only 5 drop multicolored card (Most cost 1-2). Elite Scaleguard is an akward card to cast post combat, (As is flamerush rider), with mostly Siege Gang Commander and Reveilark, and Not Quite Sigil of the Empty Throne as exciting cards to curve into.
Wojek Halberdiers on the other hand sends a different signal, one well supported by the rebounding token makers and figure of destiny :p
Making it Rg would be interesting, as Green tends to lend itself waay better to jamming early 5 drops, and the 1 > 3 > 5 curve of Elf > Him > Beef is much more appealing there.

If you do need a Rw card to fill the slot he's in now, I'd recommend something like goblin heelcutter: A decent body, maybe with haste, and when it attacks, you may pay a {W}. If you do, tap target creature
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I agree on most of your points, but if I'ld switch up anything I'ld probably swap Grim Swordsman and Tin-Street Hooligan. I think I'll have to playtest the cards as is to see if they work or not. Grim Swordsman, for example, pulls {R/W} into a slightly different direction, but it's still a 3/2, threatening first strike for 3, which is just fine in the archetype. And while a post-combat Elite Scaleguard is awkward, it's still a fine play on turn four. The card gives a little bit of a quirk to Boros decks, making them ever so slightly less straightforward, which is a nice thing I think. Gruul, on the other hand, has plenty of ways to generate extra mana, so Grim Swordman wouldn't be all that special, let alone efficient in that color combination, though he would be awesome off an elf.

I think you make a fair point for improving Grave Gaunt, but at the same time I'm a bit worried about making the base body too good. At the moment I can't really judge how often his Narcomoeba ability will trigger, but if it does come up often enough, giving out sweet free bodies probably isn't a good idea. So, do you start out careful, or do you push the envelope to see if it breaks?

I could play a few test games with real quick proxies to get a feel for how powerful these cards are. You know, that's probably a really good idea!
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I uploaded my custom cards to Cockatrice to play with them. Started with Sultai Self-Mill/Zombies vs Boros Tokens. Man oh man, Sultai is awesome, and I'm pretty sure I didn't put enough answers in my Boros list. Sheesh, the Sultai list felt like it was never out of options. Super awesome to play. Oh hey, stuff dies, but I can dredge Shambling Shell, recast Risen Executioner, regrow stuff with Up // Down and Tasigur's Command, or, you know, clinch the game with a 6/5 trample for 3 mana when I finally dredge three critters into my yard. There was a brief moment where Boros tokens had a dominating and totally awesome board position of Young Pyromancer, Seeker of the Way, Mikaeus, the Lunarch, a 1/1 Monk token with prowess, a 1/1 red Elemental token, and Pick the Wrong Fight coming back next turn with rebound, but alas, Up // Down for X = 2 dashed those dreams in devastating style!

In short: sweeeet first game. I wish I didn't need sleep so I could go for another round :)

Visual spoiler of my cube available on http://khansofalara.blogspot.nl/#a_summary, if you want to look up the customs.

Edit: Oh, I used the mill 5 cards (targeting myself) and return a land modes on Tasigur's Command in the match. Those were actually relevant :)
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Ooh, 1-1. Boros slaughtered a slow start from Sultai.

t1 Force Piker // t1 Devour Intellect
t2 Instigate the Masses (attack for 4) // t2 nothing
t3 Pick the Wrong Fight (attack for 4) // t3 Relentless King
t4 Victual Chains (attack for 8) // t4 crap... no Up // Down

I'm beginning to think Victual Chains might be good enough without the lifelink rider. Taking out a blocker for two turns and attacking with it once was pretty stronk already!

Edit: 2-1 for Sultai! Goodness does that theme get going :) Risen Executioner is a sweet card, and all of the custom Sultai cards are worth it. Up // Down does a ton of work, that card is just full of value. Speaker of the Dead is also very good. Lots of play to the archetype!

Boros was fun to pilot as an aggressive deck. I think I might have been too impatient actually, sending my team in a turn or two too early, maybe letting the Sultai deck eke out a win. Hard to tell. The beginning turns are nice and aggressive though, lots of pressure.

Edit 2: Tomb Raiding is probably too cheap at XUBG. Casting 4+ mana cards at 3 mana feels a bit too dirty. I'm going to try it out at XXUBG, and change the wording a bit so you can also play land cards with it.

The {B/G} land also probably needs a redesign. You're using the graveyard as a resource in those colors, so creatures are rarely staying in the yard. It's also quite wordy, in contrast to the other four manlands, which I find meh. Maybe a cheaper activation cost and ditch the trample? That makes it a little bit easier to parse maybe.

Edit 3: Oops. Apparently I played Up // Down wrong in the first game. I designed it as destroy stuff equal to X, not equal to or less than X. That might have made a difference... It's probably balanced a little bit better that way.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I updated a few cards based on my playtest games, and added two new ones.

Revised:
Zotan%20Dragonbane_1.png
Ruric%20Thars%20Command_1.png
Nechebes%20Command.png
Speaker%20of%20the%20Dead.png
Tomb%20Raiding.png
Chains%20of%20Command.png


  • Zotan got upgraded with Reach. Played him against a deck with a lot of flyers, and it felt extremely silly that he could kill one, and then... die.
  • Ruric Thar's Command did 6 damage to the dome, but that mode was an autopick. Changed the Plummet effect to 6 damage to a flyer to sync up with the improved Roast option. Basically it's an improved Branching Bolt with options now. Reads much better now. I expect 6 damage to a nonflyer will still be the pick most of the time, but at least it's not killing people way too efficient now.
  • Nechebe's Command had +0/+2 as the last option, which was never picked. I exchanged it for Pay no Heed, which promptly was the right option in the next game I played with it.
  • Speaker of the Dead had wording issues that made it... not work. It also targeted the thing it was going to copy, but didn't target it's reanimation target (though it sorta did, except that was the part that didn't work). Anyway, now it works. It's a little less intuitive sadly, since you have to know that the name is copied as well, but I hope it's implied from the card concept. I couldn't really think of a snappy reminder text.
  • Tomb Raiding was too cheap. It was way too easy to bin a few cards and then cast something at a huge discount for only 3 mana. Upping the cost by {2} makes that a little bit harder.
  • Victual Chains (the previous name) was a little bit too much of a swing. Threatening a creature and freezing it the turn after that is a tremendous effect, I really like how it plays, but giving the stolen creature lifelink really put it over the top. I got rid of the lifelink, and hence the name had to change as well, since there is nothing victual about the card anymore.

New:
Pillars%20of%20Lost%20Thoughts_1.png
Etherforged%20Paladin.png


  • I noticed several cards that interacted with the graveyard during playtesting, in other colors than Sultai as well, so I wanted to add another graveyard exiling effect. Curious to see how this works out, since it won't always produce mana it's a little less reliable than other mana rocks, but in the late game you can regrow an important spell over two turns, which is a nice bonus.
  • Who would have thought Ethercaste Knight would be pretty unexciting? Right? Right? So, yeah, this is my attempt at making a card that synergizes well with the artifact theme in Esper, without being a dud in other (read: nonartifact) decks.

Jury's still out on Grave Gaunt. The Narcomoeba effect is awesome, and being a zombie also makes a difference. The evasion rider has been pretty irrelevant so far though.
Fated Flames is totally fair, in cube at least.
Geyser of Wisdom has been fine, happy to play it as is. Same with Ordeal of Kiora, that card is mighty fine actually. Feels really at home in green.
Grim Swordsman hasn't really made much of an impact yet, still trying him out.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Hymn%20of%20Salvation_1.png


Increased cost from {3}{W}{W} to {4}{W}{W}. This was closing out games a bit too quick, even with only one other enchantment. If you played this on turn 4 (say off a mana rock) and followed it up with more enchantments it was pretty much game over.

Edit:

Grave%20Gaunt_1.png


Followed Chris's suggestion and added "or equal to" as it indeed could use some punch when played from the hand. I think it's funny it now dies to 1/1's, but not much else :)

Edit 2:

Redesigned Phoenix Ashes.

Phoenix%20Ashes_1.png


It wasn't doing enough with only the ping on death and lifegain triggers. This, however, was impressive on the first try!
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Looking for one or two aggro-friendly equipment cards that don't just kill aggro if a midrange or control deck picks one up. Bonesplitter is fantastic, but Grafter Wargear does not have the desired impact (that's to say, it's, to my surprise, too strong). So far I came up with these two:

Angelic%20Wings_1.png
Endocendiary%20Plating.png


Edit: Oh, I think I want to keep these, they playtest really nice in my Boros test deck :)
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Turns out the original Woodland Heretic was kind of a dud because it never got to proliferate, so I tried out a replacement that proliferated when attacking. Turns out that was horribly overpowered when I tested it out in a Golgari shell with Gravecrawler and other stuff to trigger it multiple times. I was always attacking for 3 on turn 3, and soon more and more. The solution was tweaking when it received a counter, limiting the amount of counters, and limiting the times it could attack for 3 on turn 3. There's still some nice sequences where you can land a counter on it on turn 3, but that's alright. Live the dream!

Woodland%20Heretic_1.png


I also updated the first posts in this topic and my signature. Come all ye and let me know what you think of the cube now that it's sort of finished (although a cube is never really finished).
 

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Looking for one or two aggro-friendly equipment cards that don't just kill aggro if a midrange or control deck picks one up. Bonesplitter is fantastic, but Grafter Wargear does not have the desired impact (that's to say, it's, to my surprise, too strong). So far I came up with these two:

Angelic%20Wings_1.png
Endocendiary%20Plating.png


Edit: Oh, I think I want to keep these, they playtest really nice in my Boros test deck :)

I feel you on the lack of good equipment, but sweet Jesus that white one is insane!
Do note that Auras, +1/+1 counters, Anthems and any odd ability contribute to how insane it is. Phantom Nomad becomes a 5/5 flying, Fencing Ace is suddenly an evasive 6/3, Prowess sticks, etc etc etc (Yes I know those exact cards aren't in your cube but still)
All that for {W}, {W} to equip?
tvyAAF3.png

This thing now cost {G}{1}, {G}{1}, and is still strong. Given that throwing it on your average goblin piker is +1/+2 and flying, I'm thinking {W}{1}, {W} to equip is far more reasonable, though feel free to swap the play/equip costs, it's a nice method of balancing things

I'm a little worried about the second one too. Trading Shroud for the ability to burn someone out (see Lightning Greaves) is strong, since it'll be relevant even when your opponent is on the mono-no-interaction plan, and the phyrexian equip cost is hard to quantify. I'd test it with a heavy eye
 
You've been drafting the crap out of my cube, so I figured I should return the favor at least once. Ended up with a Gruul attacking deck that uses the trilands to splash blue AND white: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/332325
This was a lot of fun. My deck is probably more awful than I realize but I'd play that hot garbage all night anyway. Would draft again.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
You've been drafting the crap out of my cube, so I figured I should return the favor at least once. Ended up with a Gruul attacking deck that uses the trilands to splash blue AND white: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/332325
This was a lot of fun. My deck is probably more awful than I realize but I'd play that hot garbage all night anyway. Would draft again.

That deck looks like it would do well enough! Remember that this cube doesn't run Sol Rings, Grave Titans, Jittes, etc. ;)

It's also, however, my old cube! I "recently" did a giant overhaul, but now my cube doesn't work on CubeTutor anymore, because I'm using so many customs. You can view the visual spoiler via the tag in my signature, but you can't, sadly, draft it online anymore :(
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I think... I think... I'm missing Nicol Bolas and Karador :'( After giving this cube a rest for a while, returning to it feels wrong somehow. I designed my original gold cube with two shards in mind: Grixis and Abzan. I love both of those color combinations so much, and I just cut them from this cube. The Sultai section is definitely the highlight for this cube for me, and I quite like Jeskai, but Esper doesn't do a lot for me. What if I switched to WRUBG? I'ld reintroduce Grixis and Abzan, keep Sultai, Jeskai, and Naya I guess. This swaps Azorius (yay) and Gruul ( :/) for Izzet and Selesnya. I guess I should ditch the artifact subtheme, which is pretty poisonous anyway. Swapping out Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas for Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver lets me play an UB planeswalker that'll be actually interesting in control builds?
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Critique time! This cube has a focus on shards, so I want to add two HC spells per shard ({B/R}{U}for Grixis, for example) to push the shard feel, without taxing mana bases too much. I'ld welcome some thoughts about these cards, because customs have to pull their weight, especially if they're to carry the shard theme of your cube!

Management synopsis: here's some cards, evaluate!

Tombspawn%20Slayer.png
Chains%20of%20Command.png
Witch%20Doctor_1.png
Ensnaring%20Orb.png
Necrophidian.png
Skaab%20Violator.png
Gravetiller_1.png
Ghostbind_1.png
Stalwart%20Hunter.png
Implacable%20Assault.png
 
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