General Unstable Spoiler Unthread

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Full Spoiler is out!

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Oh yay they colorshifted true-name nemesis

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I like it :p The whole "someone else" thing might get old after a while, but this is sweet
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
AFAICT we haven't discussed this yet:

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It's an awkward colour combination for it, but this card is ridiculous in any proactive deck: you refill your hand every turn while shutting down their reactive cards (e.g. against a blue deck, if they draw a land at the end of their turn they either have to put it in front and shut off their removal/counterspell or it gets lost in the rest of their hand). If you have ways to sacrifice(/Weld) artifacts, you can use it to draw a bunch of cards and then sacrifice it after combat in the opponent's turn once it's made their life a bit harder.

There's also:

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Lots of wonderfully obscure synergies, and don't forget that +2/+2 and -2/-2 counters exist...

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This would appeal to me as a Weld target/finisher but the host part will throw people off... I'd try to get the augment cards in there somehow but there aren't many good ones and idk how the logistics would work.

Kindly Cognician might be the Etherium Sculptor I've always wanted?
 
Taamas

Taamas

I'm getting interested in host-augment, since some combinations look very interesting and some hosts look playable on their own. However, as has been addressed here, augment's toxicity is around infect levels or even higher. This has been taken into account for Unstable draft, since the rarity distribution is:
Host: 17 commons, 1 uncommon, 1 rare
Augment: 2 commons, 10 uncommons, 1 rare

I was thinking of including some of these cards and see how they play (if my cube ever gets to be played). My idea was to have around the same number of hosts and augments, more or less arranging them in pairs by color, considering that augment cards will 100% only go to players who picked hosts. This way (and I'm probably wrong) players would get an augment creature for each host they draft. Host count should probably be higher than augment count, however.

So, I'm considering the following cards:

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+
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+
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+
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I also really like Steam-Powered (nothing to do with being a Steam-Powered Giraffe fan), but let's try to keep the augment count low. Although making most of the augments artifacts could really help.
Also, Serpentine Crocodile looks very cool.

Regarding custom rules, squadroning, etc: I prefer to add as little custom rules as possible so the accesibility is as high as possible, but I'm eager to see your ways to introduce host-augment if you decide to!
 
Velrun

Velrun

I feel like there should be quite many more Hosts than Augments.

Not only because you cannot start drafting Augments unless you have either already drafted a Host card or you know it's going to happen but also because you cannot cast your Augment cards unless you have a Host on the battlefield. And like all other creatures, they won't live forever which means you need to draw your Augment cards soon after casting your Host cards.

A solution could be to have Hosts be more common/outnumber the Augment cards like Wizards do it in Unstable.

I suggest starting with a 3:1 split in favor of Hosts over Augments.
 
Boromir of Borg

Boromir of Borg

RavebornMuse said:
My initial impressions:
  • On contraptions, which deserves its own space...


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).
Click to expand...


I think if I run contraptions (which I want to) I'll have 5 "decks" of 1-each of the 9 contraptions per watermark. Then players that want will either get one randomly or pick one. (9 contraptions should be enough per player.)
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

Boromir of Borg said:
I think if I run contraptions (which I want to) I'll have 5 "decks" of 1-each of the 9 contraptions per watermark. Then players that want will either get one randomly or pick one. (9 contraptions should be enough per player.)
Click to expand...

I quite like this concept, as well! Each of the Contraption sets do seem to work just fine as their own thing.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Saw a friend of mine (Christopher Larsen who just won Grand Prix Portland two days ago) like this article on Facebook and as I started reading, I could not stop.

So here it is for you guys if you're interested in math and math combined with cube-potential cards:

https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/magic-math-unstable-white-blue-and-black/

The article is by Frank Karsten, who has quite the sadistic humor but quite the brilliant mind when it comes to Magic. In this article you'll find some analysis on white, blue and black Unstable cards. Most relatable to cube is the math related to GO TO JAIL, Inhumaniac and Summon the Pack.

Enjoy <3
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I'm interested in hearing how contraptions perform. If anyone (RavebornMuse and Boromir of Borg I choose you!) is going to try them out, please let me know!
 
sigh

sigh

Wow

That middle one is insane, and there's at least one more different one than these Ive seen.

EDIT, at least one more:
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RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

This certainly explains the joke about being a Very cryptic command, or an Ineffable blessing. Impressive! And it looks like there are some very worthy alternatives to consider over the originally spoilered version, which looked a little too good. Of course, with how slow CubeTutor is to update, I worry over how long we'll be waiting for all the versions to be implemented.. :rolleyes:
 
anotak

anotak

i sort of wonder if they just compiled a list of effects and randomized every printing to have a unique combination of 4
 
anotak

anotak

on that note i think if i was still into playing magic i would explore making an online thing to procedurally generate a custom cube as players draft for cockatrice
 
Tzenmoroth

Tzenmoroth

None of the effects on like 5 versions of VCC seem to overlap so I assume there's a set of distinct versions. I wonder what other variations of cards will turn up.

I'm having trouble evaluating any of these commands for cube. I kind of want to replace actual Cryptic with one of these but I have no idea which one.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
From Reddit:
My store has started opening Unstable to prepare for the release and this is what I noticed so far:

Target Minotaur (The minotaur is targeted by different spells in the artwork)

Beast in Show (Different beasts in the art)

Extremely Slow Zombie (Says Braiiiinnnns across all 4 seasons)

Garbage Elemental (Different Keyboard abilities such as Cascade)

Kill Bots (Each Killbot has a different adjective in the card name(e.g., Curious) but otherwise identical)

Very Cryptic Command

Ineffable Blessing

Slyspy (Different triggered abilities on each card)

Secret Base (Numerous different pictures)

Overall, I don't think there are a huge number of alternate variations or I think I would have seen more. It is easy to pass over a card like Garbage Elemental when going through huge stacks of cards though.
Click to expand...
 
Velrun

Velrun

RavebornMuse said:
This certainly explains the joke about being a Very cryptic command, or an Ineffable blessing. Impressive! And it looks like there are some very worthy alternatives to consider over the originally spoilered version, which looked a little too good. Of course, with how slow CubeTutor is to update, I worry over how long we'll be waiting for all the versions to be implemented.. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It's easy. Become a paying Patreon and upload your own pictures :)
This will only solve 50 % though :( You will not have the correct card on CubeTutor but one of the other version's but with the correct picture on top.
 
Aston

Aston

Tzenmoroth said:
None of the effects on like 5 versions of VCC seem to overlap so I assume there's a set of distinct versions. I wonder what other variations of cards will turn up.

I'm having trouble evaluating any of these commands for cube. I kind of want to replace actual Cryptic with one of these but I have no idea which one.
Click to expand...


The solution is clearly to have all of them and include a different random one each time

Velrun said:
Turn target creature into a 2/2 morph
Click to expand...


Or transform it if it's a double-faced card!
 
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