WUT. I wonder if this is the card I've been looking for to make Academy Rector relevant in my cube. Yawgmoth's Bargain certainly wasn't it.
Probably way too good with haste
Probably way too good with haste
General Unstable Spoiler Unthread
- Thread starter Tzenmoroth
- Start date
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
!
Thinking more on it, yeah this has to be way, way too good. Like, cool powered cube thingy, but...
- can't remove the creatures.
- Can't target them with anything but grave hate, in fact. No wraths even.
- speaking of wraths, post wrath this could instantly kill the control player. Seems icky
- powering this up seems ludicrously easy. Collective brutality also becomes dramatic entrance ×2. Ancient Excavation....
Cool card tho.
- can't remove the creatures.
- Can't target them with anything but grave hate, in fact. No wraths even.
- speaking of wraths, post wrath this could instantly kill the control player. Seems icky
- powering this up seems ludicrously easy. Collective brutality also becomes dramatic entrance ×2. Ancient Excavation....
Cool card tho.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
This thing seems pretty good. Sure you can look at your deck and go "Which of my creatures are wordy enough?", but the easy way out is noticing that tokens basically never have flavor text
They fixed Cheatyface!
This thing seems pretty good. Sure you can look at your deck and go "Which of my creatures are wordy enough?", but the easy way out is noticing that tokens basically never have flavor text
I am worried this card is too good. If not it might actually be quite interesting. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with flavor text having an influence on the game. It’s just a habbit that it shouldn’t but we can change that slowly over time
Chris Taylor
Contributor
My cube doesn't have e a huge token sub theme and my customs don't really have a rhyme or reason as to which have Flavor text and which don't, so if it's gonna be fair anywhere it'll be fair in my cube
Some highlights from the latest spoilers:
Graveyard Busybody seems potentially very interesting with the self-mill decks I'm trying to bolster in my current list, although it might be a generic beater often enough that I just end up cutting it. Love the idea of delving the opponent's yard, though, especially given how often both players are playing in the graveyard lately over here.
The Big Idea offers some dice-rolling that looks fun, and could help reinvigorate the sacrifice deck in
for me. I like the art a lot! (Also of note: the tap-3-Brainiacs ability doesn't specify when you need to roll those die, allowing you to possibly save the extra rolling for later!)Clocknapper has some gorgeous art, although again I must express my concern about a Time Walk masquerading as a "fun and funny" card. Worth a try, but I'm noting my skepticism here.
Finally, Phoebe, Head of S.N.E.A.K. is just begging for a house rule. I like that it looks to play nicely in the ninjas/evasives
deck, but how do you reign in that ability? I think my plan for her would be to have the activated ability last for the duration of matches you have against a given opponent, or maybe work for all matches in one draft session, with the condition that the creatures get their stolen text boxes back after each game concludes. I think that seems like an interesting way to keep some of her quirkiness without her winding up feeling oppressive, but I'll have to test and see.(edit: Maro himself says here that the text box theft lasts until she leaves the battlefield and the creatures stay vanilla even after she leaves the battlefield, which is probably the better way to play it and makes it look actually pretty reasonable and fun!)
There's a lot of other interesting cards in the spoiler, but too many of them are either
- tremendously parasitic (Augment et al.)
- quickly played out if your playgroup isn't massive/playing in an LGS or potentially leading to more bad feelings than fun times (Gimme Five, Sacrifice Play, Kindslaver)
- absurdly strong and not at all funny enough (to me) to justify the busted bonkers power level (Ol' Buzzbark, X, Animate Library)
- too easily played best by the most experienced players, who need the least help in winning their matches (Modular Monstrosity, Hot Fix)
But by all means, if any of you wanna talk about a card in the spoiler that excites you, have at it! It's shaping up pretty nicely, if a bit more powerful than I want to meddle with
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Clocknapper is beautiful! Time Warp is a very fair card in cubes (unlike Time Walk), so this doesn't look too unfair. Stealing the beginning phase is probably the default, stealing the untap and draw from your opponent, and allowing you to cast another instant, but in a pinch you can have your opponent skip combat. Pretty good!
the only issue I see is that stealing beginning phase also often steals every other phase... because, you know, they didn't untap. so it's more like a double time warp (skip their turn, you get another untap and draw). With a blink effect you can lock your opponent out forever (they also skip drawing, so no new lands).
Man I love graveyard busybody! I'm gunna run that. If I ever rebuild my cube.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
That's true, blinking this is awful. There's no blinking in my cube, so I'm not overly concerned with that, but I have to agree this card is insane with Momentary Blink or, God forbid, Brago, King Eternal or Venser, the Sojourner.
Blinking is an issue but I also dislike cards that simply look stupid IRL or when cards have effects that can’t be used like Daretti, Scrap Savant.
It can steal one of the five phases:
- Beginning
- Precombat Main
- Combat
- Postcombat Main
- Ending
Stealing resolves in two things: Opponent loses something and you gaining something.
Who would ever steal precombat main phase when they leave the opponent with a main phase to cast spells and leaves you with an extra main phase that you have almost no mana in? What do you gain from watching your opponent untap and draw before casting your sorcery-speed blocker that you didn’t already have in your own turn? What does your opponent lose?
Almost the same can be said about postcombat main phase except you actually gaining a little since you can now EOT sorcery-speed spells onto the battlefield.
I still love 90 % of Unstable though <3
Now imagine this card being able to steal both Main phases as one ‘pick’ and not being blinkable!
It can steal one of the five phases:
- Beginning
- Precombat Main
- Combat
- Postcombat Main
- Ending
Stealing resolves in two things: Opponent loses something and you gaining something.
Who would ever steal precombat main phase when they leave the opponent with a main phase to cast spells and leaves you with an extra main phase that you have almost no mana in? What do you gain from watching your opponent untap and draw before casting your sorcery-speed blocker that you didn’t already have in your own turn? What does your opponent lose?
Almost the same can be said about postcombat main phase except you actually gaining a little since you can now EOT sorcery-speed spells onto the battlefield.
I still love 90 % of Unstable though <3
Now imagine this card being able to steal both Main phases as one ‘pick’ and not being blinkable!
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Hehehe Jane Air
Chris Taylor
Contributor
In terms of cards that aren't too silly and fine to play:
Alright maybe that last one is a stretch but I do love it.
Magic will probably one day print squirrel dealer without a condition
Alright maybe that last one is a stretch but I do love it.
Magic will probably one day print squirrel dealer without a condition
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Squirrel Dealer's flavor text is hilarious, it's creature types a mystery...
Chris Taylor
Contributor
#CrossbreedLabs
Chris Taylor
Contributor
You can block it if you Do have glasses? Yeah that thing is terrible in my playgroup
You can block it if you Do have glasses? Yeah that thing is terrible in my playgroup
Yeah, Blurry Beeble kind of produces some awkward variance for mine as well; I always wear glasses, one player usually wears glasses, and the last doesn't. Still, I do like the idea of a 1-drop looter that also feeds artifacts-matter.
Some very interesting pieces in this set. Still looking over the spoiler and just pondering for now, though.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Oh I didn't notice the artifact bit, neat
Blurry Beeble is literally a 1 mana Looter Il-Kor in my playgroup lol, so I'll most likely be trying it out instead of the looter in place of JVP. Artifact synergies also definitely a huge plus, so yay.
Enjoying these uncards that are like... basically black border. More subtle silliness.
Also poring over the spoiler, and gotdamn, there are a lot of contraptions o_O.
Enjoying these uncards that are like... basically black border. More subtle silliness.
Also poring over the spoiler, and gotdamn, there are a lot of contraptions o_O.
My initial impressions:
There are surprisingly less ways to make Contraptions than I expected. The deck seems to pivot around small one-off effects and hope to domino out off of a multiplier down the road (like Steamflogger of the Month). This poses some big questions about balance and singleton. While there are a lot of Contraptions, many scale with rarity, meaning we probably don't want to run them all. I think my biggest concern would be a theoretical cube in which players just power-draft the 3 best Contraptions and, if they do, start aggressively picking the assemblers, leaving it to be a poisonous deck that you draft on-rails that takes up a ridiculous amount of space. I have some ideas for a way around that:
- Watermarks-matter seems outrageously difficult to migrate into a cube format unless you're making an Un-cube. A pity that they went so ham with it, because I personally have always been annoyed by watermarks (I like clean, crisp readability). I really wish they'd dumped this concept and instead followed the direction of Goblin Haberdasher (ie, if a card's art contains a spy or ninja..., or if a card's art contains an object you could read), which seems like a very clever and amusing concept that would've opened it up significantly to some quirky cube crafting. This might actually be territory I'd want to explore if I ever made a custom set..
- Dice-Rolling looks more poisonous than I expected, with very few pieces to feed a surprising number of seemingly-greedy payoffs. The whole deck seems to pivot around Snickering Squirrel or Squirrel-Powered Scheme. That said, I do have an Un-Cube concept in the works; I may slot it in there.
- While I was initially down on Host/Augment, I must say, a number of the Host creatures look 100% cubeworthy at lower power levels. Of my list here in front of me, I count around a half-dozen that could make it into my list relatively easily. Seems like another idea that could port into an Un-Cube, for those considering one, without feeling too poisonous thanks to the competition for the better ETBs (which will invariably seduce players towards the cooler Augments).
- I think there's a number of playable artifact-matters cards here; Old Guard, Jackknight, and Do-It-Yourself Seraph all have some potential at lower power levels, and Rules Lawyer, Blurry Beeble, Entirely Normal Armchair, Staff of the Letter Magus, Split Screen, and Angelic Rocket all seem worth consideration.
- There's some stuff that is hiding behind "being funny" that looks very easily abused to busted territory.
There are surprisingly less ways to make Contraptions than I expected. The deck seems to pivot around small one-off effects and hope to domino out off of a multiplier down the road (like Steamflogger of the Month). This poses some big questions about balance and singleton. While there are a lot of Contraptions, many scale with rarity, meaning we probably don't want to run them all. I think my biggest concern would be a theoretical cube in which players just power-draft the 3 best Contraptions and, if they do, start aggressively picking the assemblers, leaving it to be a poisonous deck that you draft on-rails that takes up a ridiculous amount of space. I have some ideas for a way around that:
- Perhaps each player could get some number of Contraptions randomly at the end of the draft and be required to run a certain count; maybe you're given 12 and must run no less than 6. Then each Contraption-assembler is generating a powered-down, Planeswalker-esque effect, that is balanced somewhat by the random nature in which they can be drawn and allocated and the condition that players draft and make use of Contraption-assemblers in smart ways.
- Perhaps there is a big, shared deck for all players, with each player having their own Contraption zone. Whenever you would assemble a Contraption, you draw one from the shared deck and place it on your own Sprockets. Again, this is leaning on randomization for balance of a free resource that can feel unfair depending on its implementation.
- edit: A third idea: Each player must put together a Contraption deck consisting of X cards of each rarity (another way to balance through randomization without the risk of someone lucking into multiple mythics/rares).