General CBS

Even with lots of incentives to cast the AKs? Spellslinger payoffs, threshold etc.
Even when AKs land in graveyards naturally because there is a lot of self mill and looting and such?
Even when you can cheaply exile cards from graveyards (e.g. Delve) to weaken opposing AKs after you've cast yours?
Even when you can use hand disruption and countermagic to get blown out less?
 
Having witnessed AK battles in Standard first hand, the first one to crack and cast an AK for a single card is almost always the one who loses. “Who can keep their AK’s in hand the longest” is a real thing and not a particularly fun mini game
Yeah that's my worry as well, you would need a very specific environment to avoid this problem. Maybe with your ideas @ravnic it could be done, but I feel like probably working with the Inventory could be nicer for every player. I know it has a worse frame, though...
 
Do you guys run walkers?

I ran them back when Hero's Downfall was the only decent removal for them and wasn't much of a fan and I'm wondering how people feel here. Mid-high power cube, if it matters. In particular, I'm eyeing ramp walkers, especially blue ones that interact with artifacts in order to branch ramp out of green.
 
Do you guys run walkers?

I ran them back when Hero's Downfall was the only decent removal for them and wasn't much of a fan and I'm wondering how people feel here. Mid-high power cube, if it matters. In particular, I'm eyeing ramp walkers, especially blue ones that interact with artifacts in order to branch ramp out of green.

I'm down to 16 out of 720 cards, or 2.2% of my list.

I was at ~40 out of 540 at one point (7.4%), and games regularly revolved around them as they were also the best cards in my Cube without question. My players complained. I had two anti-Walker diehards who advocated for their complete eradication, but I compromised by letting them pull a marginal one whenever someone traded me a sweet card in the shuffle up stage of a Cube night.

Eventually, I pulled back. So did R&D, slowly. The years wore on. The sleeves got changed out a few times. My players got new jobs, got married, moved away, quit and returned to Magic. Myself, I had a couple kids and moved to Europe -- and back! -- and then Mark Rosewater announced that we'd only get one new planeswalker a set for the most part, and zero in Universes Beyond. But I hardly would have noticed, we were years past the high highs of War of the Spark, beyond the days where I would hem and haw over the different 4MV Sorin variations in Orzhov.

All of a sudden Jace the Mindsculptor became a late pick, but of course, it was anything but sudden.

Jace Reawakened is sweet though.
 
High power, but I'm on 10/450 (sort of...):
The Wandering Emperor/Jace, the Mind Sculptor/Liliana of the Veil/Chandra, Torch of Defiance/Garruk Wildspeaker - one for each color that can go in nearly any deck (I have ever had an aggressive enough white deck to not want TWE, but it's rare. I anticipate replacing Chandra someday, but they keep printing niche red walkers instead of a new generalist.)
Saheeli, Sublime Artisan and Teferi, Time Raveler - Third Path Iconoclast and Repulse effects with some fun interactions. The amount of "fun" will vary with Teferi depending on what side of the table he's on.
Kytheon, Hero of Akros and Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student - these are only planeswalkers when it's your opponent's fault for not doing something sooner, thus the "sort of" above.
Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler - testing out a pet card to do all the Insidious Roots nonsense, disregard :p

The idea of planeswalkers in general is a good one imo, because the "you can attack this or you can attack your opponent" is a fun minigame in small doses. You could also get this via Battles, I guess, if you're at that power level. More of the good removal - like Get Lost or sufficiently ambitious Prismatic Ending - hits planeswalkers these days, you're not just on Murderous Rider ripoffs.

You probably do want Saheeli, Sublime Artisan, though she's not exactly what you asked for. She can ramp by making her own Servo into a Worn Powerstone or whatever, though she rarely does so immediately because that requires a curve like Gingerbrute -> Mind Stone -> Saheeli. She's also a payoff for ramping out a Triplicate Titan or whatever by "giving it haste" if you already have a Servo or a Prismatic Lens.

You definitely want Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner. Even without stupid Nykthos Constructed things, she's [mono-]blue", "works with artifacts", and "ramp payoff for large creatures". Only problem with her is that green drafters might steal her to do the same thing, and that's a good problem to have during the draft portion IMO.

If you don't need mono-blue, Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset is worth considering too. I was a skeptic on it in Standard, but untapping a land (let alone a Lotus Field) plus The Celestus was enough to keep relevant interaction up. It always played way better than it looked against me... which is good, because it looks like a giant wall of text that says +1: gain 2 life fiddle with game objects, -2: get a card. Also, it comes down at 4 loyalty and the ultimate's only at 7, so it's kind of like Chandra in that you have to interact with it surprisingly quickly.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I am down to only five out of 450!

I found that in a lower power environment, including too many planeswalkers leads to superfriends decks that are hard to combat on value. Even something as innocuous as a Kaya, Ghost Assassin proved to be hard to deal with for the other decks.
 
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don't forget that Teferi, Temporal Archmage can be your commander

that's four abilities
You know, I was shitposting when I wrote this, but I thought about this a bit more and it could actually be interesting to respect that rules text in an otherwise non-Commander cube environment. Companions make for fun draft-arounds once in a while, it could be interesting to have the color identity as a similar restriction for an "eighth card"...

you'd have to design your cube accordingly, so lots of colorless / monocolor compared to multicolor, since the commander drafter can't take them
you'd probably not want to let them get re-cast from the command zone, because even the most boring walker and a 20 land deck becomes obnoxious if not borderline unbeatable against the average same-power-level limited deck
maybe even add the 3 mana companion tax?

At least my wheels are spinning.
 
Do you guys run walkers?

I ran them back when Hero's Downfall was the only decent removal for them and wasn't much of a fan and I'm wondering how people feel here. Mid-high power cube, if it matters. In particular, I'm eyeing ramp walkers, especially blue ones that interact with artifacts in order to branch ramp out of green.

I think planeswalkers are a good Occasionals (sorry I probably spell it wildly incorrect) modal that you can add as an entire package from time to time. Like “Today we’re going to include the Planeswalker package that we normally do not run in the cube, enjoy my friends.”
 
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