General Old border cube archetypes
- Thread starter Nanonox
- Start date
Chris Taylor
Contributor
My god Caldera Lake got reprinted.
And not just power level, all the complexity, nested conditional triggers, funky timing, arbitrary batches. like in an oldschool cube i'd be more cool with
"when this enters play, deal 999 damage to target Goblin"
(okay, well, this can one-hit KO people sometimes, but at least it's Fast and Funny!)
than
"when this creature attacks, if its power is greater than the mana value of target non-Outlaw nonland card in your graveyard or command zone, exile two copies of that card. You may cast those copies during any turn during which one or more of your opponents have attacked you or a planeswalker you control."
(I want to go home! I came here to lead, not read!)
"when this enters play, deal 999 damage to target Goblin"
(okay, well, this can one-hit KO people sometimes, but at least it's Fast and Funny!)
than
"when this creature attacks, if its power is greater than the mana value of target non-Outlaw nonland card in your graveyard or command zone, exile two copies of that card. You may cast those copies during any turn during which one or more of your opponents have attacked you or a planeswalker you control."
(I want to go home! I came here to lead, not read!)
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I mean, in the online only Tempest Remastered set, so…
I think it's a combination of all of the above, but most of all I want that same gleeful feeling I had when I was in highschool and I beat someone over the head with wild looking cards.
Yeah, those are much cooler to me, just tryna figure out where people's definition of old border starts 'n stops.
Cuz war buggy is cute as heck, and oldborder mh2/mb3 cards seem supremely uncute. But if that's the scope of the convo...
Cuz war buggy is cute as heck, and oldborder mh2/mb3 cards seem supremely uncute. But if that's the scope of the convo...
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Yeah very spirit vs letter of the law. I'm more inclined towards spirit
the problem with trying to curate old border cube with the new cards but still maintain the "vibe" is that most people are pretty bad at determining vibe haha. ive seen so many lists that claim to do this and then you open a pack and it's got feldon of the third path in it or something.
Honestly, that's my problem with a lot of old border treatments - the art and text ends up feeling just a little bit off. Like, I think new cards in the old border can work, but you have to be kinda careful to only use cards that could feasibly be printed back in the day.
It's also, like... you can make any number of general cubes where Feldon is a playable card, but this is a chance to run some bad creatures in a context where they'll feel solid. Something like Subjugator Angel or Haunted Dead feel like they would've been solid creatures back in the day, so why not give them a home?
(There is more leeway with non-creature spells, though - there, you pretty much just have to avoid the ones that reference keywords or mechanics that didn't exist before the border change and you're pretty much good.)
I want to disagree to that, wholeheartidly. For me, old borders are purely an aesthetic thing. I started playing in the late summer of 2005 and I didn't see my first old border card before 2007, so I really don't have a particular nostalgia for it. It is just that the old frame looks literally a hundred times cooler than the super bland, ugly 2014 frame. So I'd prefer every card since then in old border (or any frame for that matter that wasn't designed purely to be as readable as possible like f*cking tax papers and similarly flavorful).
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I did start with the old border (1999), and the old gold border in particular makes me puke. Only thing that was objectively better was the brown artifact banner.
Taste and objectively do not belong together in a post/sentence.
To each their taste. I like the old border, it has much more a fantasy/magic feel to me. However, the old borders/frames and especially the white border frame combo had some reading issues.
They made 2 changes: the first one is to split the frame into more different boxes which tremendously improves readability. Sadly, they decided to also change the borders which made it feel much less fantasy.
In my opinion, the 2003 frame was also much better than the 2014 one. Since there was more color and more texture with those being visible all around the card. Now the boxes got a little wider, the bottom is completely white on black text only, and we have too many different roundings. Taste is subjective, but I feel like you can really see that the 2014 frame is not designed from ground but just tries to force the previous version to be even more "practical"
I agree with this. The problem with old border shifting moderns cards, particularly creatures, is that old border creatures were designed on a completely different axis. They're clunky, lumbering, slow, expensive, or weak. I forgot where I read this, but it rings so true: Like, you'd have absurdly powerful spells like Entomb, Survival of the Fittest and Reanimate to get back creatures like... Hypnotic Spectre or a Verdant Force or something silly. Everything just feels off on so many levels when you add in modern creatures.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I haven't met a single player yet who thinks the new artifact border looks better than the old brown border. I have seen different opinions on all the other frame colors. I obviously know taste is subjective, but in the case of the artifact border, it seems pretty objective to me
