Brad Loves Eldrazi
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I think having these cards right next to each other explains it quite well.
while the idea of Ugin into Titan woul make sense, the reality is "ugin, 0, rock, rock, rock. Oh look their board is wiped"
(But Karn Liberated is a solid walker and usually scales well with power level, that would be my vote if you're looking for a colorless "Titan planeswalker" as a control win-con.)
while the idea of Ugin into Titan woul make sense, the reality is "ugin, 0, rock, rock, rock. Oh look their board is wiped"
(But Karn Liberated is a solid walker and usually scales well with power level, that would be my vote if you're looking for a colorless "Titan planeswalker" as a control win-con.)
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I'm not convinced that it would blow up multiple things in a turn that often. Hand should be pretty low by then.I think having these cards right next to each other explains it quite well.
while the idea of Ugin into Titan woul make sense, the reality is "ugin, 0, rock, rock, rock. Oh look their board is wiped"
(But Karn Liberated is a solid walker and usually scales well with power level, that would be my vote if you're looking for a colorless "Titan planeswalker" as a control win-con.)
But that's a good point that it's like Karn with a free -3 and draw a card and gain 3 life...
Fine. I'll skip this one even though it's cool as hell.
Not loving what domain/converge/vivid brings. The power level on the cards with those keywords is super variable and it feels like a bit of a distraction to run it singleton.
Speaking of singleton, I dislike the vibe of heavy multiples and will be allowing 2x Eldrazi cards as non singles for now. Multiples on lands feels ok, but we'll see where it ends up.
I'm also exploring other color wheels.
If you look at something like KTK's wheel, you have Mardu, Jeskai, and Boros that want nothing to do with green (unless it's a big greed pile). This would let me separate the decks that want Eldrazi from those that don't.
Still using the KTK wheel as an example, there could be:
Temur Ramp Eldrazi
Sultai Eldrazi recursion and yard ramp
Abzan midrange that can be flexible as aggro or a bigger deck
Mardu Aggro
Jeskai Aggro Spells
In this case, the Boros side of the cube can be free of the Eldrazi constraints while the green side of the cube has a heavier focus on Eldrazi. Blue and Black sitting next to green would take on a secondary Eldrazi role.
I don't necessarily think KTK is the optimal wheel for it. Simply used it as an example.
Speaking of singleton, I dislike the vibe of heavy multiples and will be allowing 2x Eldrazi cards as non singles for now. Multiples on lands feels ok, but we'll see where it ends up.
I'm also exploring other color wheels.
If you look at something like KTK's wheel, you have Mardu, Jeskai, and Boros that want nothing to do with green (unless it's a big greed pile). This would let me separate the decks that want Eldrazi from those that don't.
Still using the KTK wheel as an example, there could be:
Temur Ramp Eldrazi
Sultai Eldrazi recursion and yard ramp
Abzan midrange that can be flexible as aggro or a bigger deck
Mardu Aggro
Jeskai Aggro Spells
In this case, the Boros side of the cube can be free of the Eldrazi constraints while the green side of the cube has a heavier focus on Eldrazi. Blue and Black sitting next to green would take on a secondary Eldrazi role.
I don't necessarily think KTK is the optimal wheel for it. Simply used it as an example.
White
I don't like white (in this context). It's doing the opposite of what Eldrazi do. It kills big creatures and loves small creatures. There's very limited overlap between a big Eldrazi deck and the entire color white except that board wipes can make the game go long and there's a few playable token multipliers.
I have a few options from there:
Suck It Up
Play a normal 10 color pair wheel where I don't really love WU, GW, and WB. I actually like Boros because it's a simple pairing to go fast and keep the format honest.
KTK Wheel, WBGUR
WB Sac
BG Yard
GU Ramp
UR Spells
RW Aggro
The tricolors are the natural overlaps of those.
Onder Wheel, WRGUB
This happens to be the wheel that Onder runs.
WR Aggro
RG Ramp
GU Also Ramp
UB Control Yard
WB Filler (flexible because it sits between an aggro and a control pair)
Slanted Wheel WRGUB or WBGUR
This seems less likely because it's so weird, but it would focus heavily on xGx ramp and have WB/WR as an aggressive adversary on the far side of the wheel. There would be a decent quantity more green cards as well as some extra xG, Gx, and Wx multicolor cards to support the respective green ramp pairs and enemy aggressive pair. Imagine Odyssey block (Torment and Judgment), but it's Green vs Aggro instead of Black vs GW.
The Green Cube
I like this a lot less than I liked The Black Cube. While black has access to almost all effects at the cost of life, The Green Cube has always felt like The Ramp Cube because ramp is such a central identity to green. When every deck is green, it feels like there's less variation than when every deck was black. Think of GU vs RG compared to UB vs BR. The green decks are different flavors of the same thing, but the black ones are complete opposites.
I have rough mental outlines for all of these and lists for a few, but none are really speaking to me. I was hoping that SOS would clear things up, but it made it more complicated. The enemy pairs look really deep right now thanks to the semi-recent TDM and SOS, but the Onder wheel might be better suited long term.
I'm currently somewhat stuck deciding how to set up my colors to best support the goal here, a mid-high power format where Eldrazi are castable.
I don't like white (in this context). It's doing the opposite of what Eldrazi do. It kills big creatures and loves small creatures. There's very limited overlap between a big Eldrazi deck and the entire color white except that board wipes can make the game go long and there's a few playable token multipliers.
I have a few options from there:
Suck It Up
Play a normal 10 color pair wheel where I don't really love WU, GW, and WB. I actually like Boros because it's a simple pairing to go fast and keep the format honest.
KTK Wheel, WBGUR
WB Sac
BG Yard
GU Ramp
UR Spells
RW Aggro
The tricolors are the natural overlaps of those.
Onder Wheel, WRGUB
This happens to be the wheel that Onder runs.
WR Aggro
RG Ramp
GU Also Ramp
UB Control Yard
WB Filler (flexible because it sits between an aggro and a control pair)
Slanted Wheel WRGUB or WBGUR
This seems less likely because it's so weird, but it would focus heavily on xGx ramp and have WB/WR as an aggressive adversary on the far side of the wheel. There would be a decent quantity more green cards as well as some extra xG, Gx, and Wx multicolor cards to support the respective green ramp pairs and enemy aggressive pair. Imagine Odyssey block (Torment and Judgment), but it's Green vs Aggro instead of Black vs GW.
The Green Cube
I like this a lot less than I liked The Black Cube. While black has access to almost all effects at the cost of life, The Green Cube has always felt like The Ramp Cube because ramp is such a central identity to green. When every deck is green, it feels like there's less variation than when every deck was black. Think of GU vs RG compared to UB vs BR. The green decks are different flavors of the same thing, but the black ones are complete opposites.
I have rough mental outlines for all of these and lists for a few, but none are really speaking to me. I was hoping that SOS would clear things up, but it made it more complicated. The enemy pairs look really deep right now thanks to the semi-recent TDM and SOS, but the Onder wheel might be better suited long term.
I'm currently somewhat stuck deciding how to set up my colors to best support the goal here, a mid-high power format where Eldrazi are castable.
I think this is the one. What I like the most here is that you have two ramp pairs making Eldrazis more plausible + a slower UB strategy that is also favorable to the Titans.
How are you planning on differentiating the two ramp color combinations?
White in ROE was basically dead unless you were the only one on the levelers deck or got Gideon Jura. Green was super juiced there and supported a lot of drafters.
Maybe my problem is that I've historically put equipment into RW and counters into GW, but they should stay more centered in just white. One difficulty I've had is that G and W are so opposite that the GW decks are just goodstuff piles.
I'll just run the best ramp stuff for both and then GR will slant into Naya aggro and GU will slant into Sultai yard control.
My biggest issue here is that I'm not a fan of Esper.
ECL Draft Review
I ended up on RG Vivid with a ton of hybrid cards. Typically had like 3.5 colors of permanents out. Would have 4-5 by the time I was casting Prismabasher or Aurora Awakener.
The deck was really consistent. Basically every 3 land hand was good due to
As I've noted in the past about a lot of the blue scry+cantrip type cards, having the ability to see more cards from your opening hand is a big deal. That stayed true here.
Dundoolin Weaver was really good, but definitely needs a creature heavy deck. It wasn't too hard to hit, but you could miss if you go creature light. It was good to get back Evolving Wilds a few times.
Goliath Daydreamer felt fun to try to set up. If it lives and you have a removal spell, you can keep casting it. I used it for the +1/+0 bite spell, attack, bite again, now it's 6/4.
The DFC typal legends were cool. I had the Elf one and played against the Kithkin one. Strong but fair base stats and nice ways to get some slow value.
I saw very few actual two color cards and a lot of hybrids. It made the drafting and deckbuilding feel pretty flexible.
It's also worth noting that I had no land ramp and won about half of my games off of Prismabasher and/or Awakener, but I did have two Treasure makers and two land impulsers.
I ended up on RG Vivid with a ton of hybrid cards. Typically had like 3.5 colors of permanents out. Would have 4-5 by the time I was casting Prismabasher or Aurora Awakener.
The deck was really consistent. Basically every 3 land hand was good due to
As I've noted in the past about a lot of the blue scry+cantrip type cards, having the ability to see more cards from your opening hand is a big deal. That stayed true here.
Dundoolin Weaver was really good, but definitely needs a creature heavy deck. It wasn't too hard to hit, but you could miss if you go creature light. It was good to get back Evolving Wilds a few times.
Goliath Daydreamer felt fun to try to set up. If it lives and you have a removal spell, you can keep casting it. I used it for the +1/+0 bite spell, attack, bite again, now it's 6/4.
The DFC typal legends were cool. I had the Elf one and played against the Kithkin one. Strong but fair base stats and nice ways to get some slow value.
I saw very few actual two color cards and a lot of hybrids. It made the drafting and deckbuilding feel pretty flexible.
It's also worth noting that I had no land ramp and won about half of my games off of Prismabasher and/or Awakener, but I did have two Treasure makers and two land impulsers.
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ECL has about 1/10th hybrids. That's like 4-5 per pair in a 360-450 cube. The uncommons in ECL are largely triple hybrid symbols and hard to cast, though, so we could go a little lower to get a similar feel. Similarly, I wouldn't suggest Boros Reckoner as a hybrid card as much as I'd suggest Ordruun Mentor for the ease of casting.I keep saying that
Sucks that the UB sets have had such great hybrid cards.
I kinda wanna do a custom Eclipsed cycle.
My CCC has 30 hybrids in the 330 core module and will on average get four more from the occasionals for 34 expected hybrids in a 360 draft pool. That's almost 10%, but then there is also a relatively large amount of colorless. Flexibility in draft are a high priority for me.
I like Reckoner for other reasons, but it's more of a multicolor card or W/R devotion payoff.
Yeah. I'm obviously on a ton of colorless here. Working on the list now that there won't be a real set for a long time.
Looking at other wheels, I noticed that ECL has an interesting hybrid and multicolor split. Counting full hybrid symbols as multicolor:
Pair: #multi, #hybrid
WU: 4, 1
BR 3, 2
GW: 3, 2
UR: 2, 3
BG: 5, 1
Avg: 3.4, 1.8
UB: 1, 3
RG: 1, 3
WB: 1, 3
RW: 1, 4
GU: 0, 4
Avg: .8, 3.4
The summary is that the supported pairs primarily got multicolor cards while the off pairs got hybrid cards. The signpost uncommons mostly followed this trend, as well.
There's some room for argumentation whether is more multicolored than or whatever, but I thought it was a noteworthy idea for stressing five pairs while supporting all ten.
EDIT: Something like this.
Pair: #multi, #hybrid
WU: 4, 1
BR 3, 2
GW: 3, 2
UR: 2, 3
BG: 5, 1
Avg: 3.4, 1.8
UB: 1, 3
RG: 1, 3
WB: 1, 3
RW: 1, 4
GU: 0, 4
Avg: .8, 3.4
The summary is that the supported pairs primarily got multicolor cards while the off pairs got hybrid cards. The signpost uncommons mostly followed this trend, as well.
There's some room for argumentation whether
is more multicolored than or whatever, but I thought it was a noteworthy idea for stressing five pairs while supporting all ten.EDIT: Something like this.
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I'm looking for green (or colorless) cards that help Eldrazi without being ramp. I'm trying to move ramp to colorless to make green less of a necessity for Eldrazi decks.
I already searched up otag:gives-haste and otag:gives-uncounterable. I also already have any tutors that I find worthwhile.
EDIT: Searched otagower-matters and otag:lands-matter
I already searched up otag:gives-haste and otag:gives-uncounterable. I also already have any tutors that I find worthwhile.
EDIT: Searched otag
ower-matters and otag:lands-matter
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Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to find stuff that isn't win more.
Cute, but too risky. I'm open to a little bit of cheat higher in the curve, but I've avoided it so far.
I need to update the list as soon as I know what I'm doing. I have three lists currently active.I can't check your list (cubeartisan returns a 502 error whenever I try to access it), but do any of these strike your fancy?
Have Stirrings. Runadi and Vortex are just shy of what I'd want and Curator Beastie is unfortunately similar to Grave Titan.
As I look at taking most of green's ramp power, I'm looking to stress the idea that green has bigger creatures than the other colors. Something like Prowling Serpopard or Surrak, the Hunt Caller are great because they can be part of an aggro or midrange deck or part of a plan to support Eldrazi.
I really like the idea for this cube to take ramp away from green and move it to colorless mostly. You could also consider just having a really huge colorless section and have the colored sections relatively small. Maybe that would work out?
What I wouldn't pay too much attention to, at least I don't see the reason why you would do it, is a color wheel and what certain color pairs are doing. I would just try to support eldrazi and have a little bit of counter play and just have these things fall into the colors they happen to fall into.
What I wouldn't pay too much attention to, at least I don't see the reason why you would do it, is a color wheel and what certain color pairs are doing. I would just try to support eldrazi and have a little bit of counter play and just have these things fall into the colors they happen to fall into.
The colorless section is naturally kinda big due to Eldrazi.
I'm sliding more towards generically useful cards recently with some emphasis on each color moreso than on the pairs. White goes small, blue is spells or artifacts (not sure yet), black has some yard stuff, red has burn, green has better creatures going up the curve (but not as much ramp share as usual).