Afternoon Delight: Constrained CMCs

[LadyMapi]

Afternoon Delight is an untested 360 card, relatively low-powered cube where all of the non-land cards have CMCs of 2, 3, or 7. There is one additional house-rule: all Instants and Sorceries are Arcane (or anything that refers to Arcane instead refers to Instants and Sorceries). This is because Splice Onto [X] is the perfect mechanic for an environment with these kinds of constraints.

Yes, that is pretty goofy... but it has lead to the inclusion of some interesting cards.

I'm not entirely sure of what to include here right now, since I didn't exactly build this cube with solid archetypes in mind. So I guess I'll talk about some of my decisions, and show off a few of the cards.

A Plethora of Mana Sinks
One of the big things I ended up deciding on is that there should be as many mana sinks as possible. It's entirely possible that your deck's curve will stop at 3, so I felt the need to give you other ways to spend your excess mana (other than playing multiple spells per turn):



Precise Mana Costs
Unlike most environments, there are exactly four converted mana costs that cards and permanents can have. This allows for a few cards to be far stronger than they would be normally. It also allowed me to include some cards that would be discarded in a more "normal" cube.



I'm just waiting for someone to draft and play a Lurrus deck — unlike in a "normal cube", players should have plenty of options for 2-drops.

7-Drops Are Weird
One thing I ended up deciding is that 7-drops should be flashy and scary to face down, but they shouldn't win you the game right then and there. I also had the disappointing revelation that gold 7-drops are not distributed evenly across the colors, which made me pretty sad. Still, decks that do ramp into 7s will have some tasty options to play with:



Removal has been tuned to deal with smaller creatures, since that's the majority of what you're going to have to face. You'll still have ways to deal with 7-drops, but they definitely won't be common.

 

[Brad]

While I find the cube's layout adorable, I'm not sure having exactly equal CMCs across colors makes sense. Certain colors and decks will lend themselves to different needs.

I'm a huge fan of Ultimatums, but their power levels vary wildly.

I don't personally like the mana base, but that could just be me.

That's all for now. Gave it a draft.

 

[LadyMapi]

I'm looking at this as a first draft, mostly. If it turns out that Red needs more 2s and Blue needs more 3s, I'll make that adjustment.

As for the lands... I have no idea what I'm doing there. I'll probably give it another look later.

 

[LadyMapi]

Alright, thanks to the Distanced Drafting league, there was a four-person draft earlier today. This was pretty nice, since we all got to play each-other.

First off, we have Japahn, who went 3-0 on the strength of "drafting a bunch of two-drops" - turns out that those are really good in a format where most people are playing 3s. He mentioned that he ended up siding out Idol of Endurance for a Mountain and felt that it was a good trade, which was kind of disappointing.

Spoiler: RW Aggro

Secondly, we have Silas' midrange-y deck, which came in with a 2-1 win record. He did mention that it felt really bizarre to run a UB deck with such little removal, and he ended up siding out Mind's Dilation on account of it being completely useless. On the other hand, God-Pharaoh's Gift was fun for him... but not for anyone else.

Spoiler: UB Midrange

I came in with a 1-2 record, playing ramp. I originally splashed into both White and Blue, but then I ended up siding out my blue lands and my Shardless Agent for some other lands and a Wild Beastmaster, which was probably the best choice.

Spoiler: RGwu Ramp

Bringing up the rear was Zoss's deck, with a 0-3 match record (ouch). I think he was aiming for a ramp deck and then ended up not getting enough payoffs. On the other hand, there was some sweet accidental Spirit tribal, which we noticed in our second game together.

Spoiler: GWBu Pile

Two interesting/positive things popped up during the games - the first, and probably the most noticeable, was that the CMC restrictions stopped "mattering" after the draft. There are so many activated abilities, kickers, and alternate costs that the games themselves felt like "normal" Magic. This was amazingly gratifying to see, since that was one of my goals.

The second was that, despite the neat breakdown above, decks ended up being way closer than I expected. If the notes I took are accurate, every match was 2-1, implying that there was some actual "fight" to our matches. That's also pretty encouraging.

Now... onto the stuff I need to fix:

1. There are too many three-drops and not enough two-drops. Japahn noticing that and reasoning out that two-drops are straight-up more flexible than three-drops in this environment led to a pretty significant advantage. On top of lowering the curve, I think I'm going to look at Foretell a bit more closely than I have been - having a three or seven drop that you can pseudo-sequence with two drops should be useful.
2. The seven-drops are wildly imbalanced in terms of both power level and ease of casting. I blame Commander, honestly.
3. The cube needs more removal. While part of the issue was that we were drafting half of the cube, boards got rather clogged.
4. There are some archetypes that I kinda-sorta seeded while building the cube that simply don't have enough support. I'm probably going to have to rip them out and replace them with something broader.
5. The mana base needs another look-over. When people tutored for shocks, they usually let them come in tapped, and people really didn't need that many storage lands. It's also pretty skewed towards allied colors - I have to think about whether or not I want to lean on that while revising things, or if I want to help the enemy colors work.
6. The "all Instants and Sorceries are Arcane" errata worked better in my head. I kinda want to see it with the full cube before I cut it entirely, but the consensus was that it wasn't worth the effort.

 

[japahn]

Thanks for the fun draft! You focus on the issues, but I wanted to highlight the things that made it a great draft to me.

• The activated abilities, kicker, escalate, and mana sinks in general made me feel like I always had options. Victories feel more like they are due to you skill when you had other options. But I won, so I'm biased
• Mana was never wasted because of the features above.
• All matches were 2-1s and the games themselves were really competitive. In every one of the 3 matches, at some point in game 3 I was almost sure I was going to lose.
• I lost all die rolls, kept a good share of bad sixes, had a usual amount of mana problems, but because there were few snowballing effects and the speed was slow, I put up a fight even with starting hands and won some. The elasticity that the alternate costs/abilities gave to the deck was great.
• Combat tricks were playable. Still got blown out by Blessed Alliance but that one felt like it was on me. I fear if you increase the removal density this will be lost.
• Power level was low overall, and I really enjoyed playing at that power level because I was rewarded for being scrappy and playing cards I don't usually get to play.

Memorable moments:

• Played a 12-creature aggro deck.
• Cast Kariv Zev's Expertise on a creature, splice Glacial Ray on the same creature, cast Glacial Ray on another target with Expertise for a convoluted two card Swelter.
• Fetch Collective Defiance with Sunforger.
• I made a bunch of clue tokens, but I don't recall ever cracking one.
• Skyclave Sentinel into Together Forever lets Sentinel attack as a 3/4 flier on T4, which is really good in this format.

 

[LadyMapi]

Thanks! I hear your concerns about adding more removal, which is why I've been mostly looking into sorcery-speed removal. I want to keep the "and then I stapled together three different cards" feeling for the whole thing.

---

So. One of the things I want to overhaul is my land section. This is what I'm currently running:

Utility Lands, which serve as mana sinks. Most of these are going to stay in - some of them are (unfortunately) more marginal than others:


The full cycle of Shocklands, which didn't work as well as I thought they would. It turns out that this environment is slow enough that you don't need fast mana, since you're very likely to have something to play on T2 regardless of what lands you started with.

Two sets of the full cycle of Bad Fetchlands:

To be honest with you, I originally had all of the good fetches in here... but then I realized that, if I wanted to actually buy this cube, that'd be very expensive. So I swapped these in last minute... which really lead to a feeling that the mana base was skewed towards allied colors, especially with...

My two sets of Storagelands.

This was my favorite part of the land base, if I'm going to be perfectly honest. They give you a natural mana sink that let you get to that magic number 7 without actually needing to hit 7 lands - perfect! Annoyingly, though, Wizards never printed enemy-color storagelands - I really want the full set.

The changes that I'm currently thinking are as follows:

1. Dump the fetches and the shocks. That stuffs boring — we can do better than that!
2. Replace half of the Storagelands with custom enemy-color versions. Hopefully I can find a cool set online — if not, there's always MSE.

That leaves me with 20 open land slots. I'm thinking about the following:
Bicycle Lands (Ally Colors)

Horizon Lands (Enemy Colors)

Five Monocolored Utility Lands

I mean, I probably won't actually use the Memorials (they're a bit uneven), but that's the basic idea - a bunch of monocolored utility lands, because I'm a fiend for that kind of thing.
Five Colorless Utility/Fixing Lands

OK, probably not literally, but I'm just about to eat dinner.

 

[LadyMapi]

Alright, Kaldheim updates have happened - I ultimately ended up dropping the land count to 30, removed the abortive Faerie and Goblin Engineer packages, and generally skewed the average CMC downwards.

My first test draft produced this beauty of a deck. It looks like the bots still don't understand how this damn thing works.

 

[Zoss]

It seems like this format has a really big aggro problem, both from our test drive a month ago and from the deck you drafted (which is bananas due to both the aggro and the reach/recursion provided by Lurrus and Extort). Have you thought about including things like Wall of Blossoms or Omen of the Sun to help give late-game decks a fighting chance, or do you think that will slow things down by too much given that there's nothing at 4-6 to 'break through' defensive options profitably?

Thinking about it more, it seems to me that you don't have a good way of gaining card advantage in this cube, which may be part of why aggro is so dominant. Infest and variants could be a good way of giving your controlling/midrange players a way to counteract the decks that rely on 'curving out' better than you.

 

[LadyMapi]

Currently, I'm running the following ways to deal with a wide board:

CMC 3


CMC 4


CMC 5


CMC 7


Looking at that list... it looks pretty Red heavy, with one of those cards (Necroplasm) not really coming into play until two turns after you play it. This is a poser.

EDIT: Thinking about it, I might end up working on a new 2-3-7 list once I have a bit of a better idea of how things work together than "well, I had a kinda biased draft with it once".

 

[LadyMapi]

I gave it a little thought, and I've noticed a few issues:

1) The basic facts of the format heavily bias you towards playing 2-drops. You can play out your hand way more quickly than someone who is relying on 3-drops, and at my current power level 2s trade way too easily with 3s. Plus I kinda seeded a bunch of aggro cards into the cube because I was worried that aggro wouldn't work well without 1-drops. Oops! On top of that, bounce is almost useless against the fast stuff, which sucks when it's, like, half of your removal suite (sorry Blue!)

2) A lot of the 3-drops I currently have... don't do much. I love my do-nothing enchantments, and I should go through and remove a lot of them. What's worse, some of them are actively counter-productive — Quiet Contemplation would be a control/tempo card in any normal context, but in this cube it essentially makes your noncreature spells cost 1 more if you want the benefits. This is bad for slower decks.

3) In general, cost-increasers like the extort creatures or Spirit Bonds are way better when they're turning a 2 into a 3 than when they're turning a 3 into a 4. This is a problem, since the cube has a bunch of those to help spend mana in the late game.

In retrospect, assuming that the games would be slower just because of a lack of 1s and because "people will totally go for the big kickers" was... short-sighted.

 

[Brad]

Make the curves different across colors.

Cut down on the number of real 7s. Beanstalk Giant isn't really a 7, for example. A normal cube runs quite few 6+.

For the real 7s that you do have, you can make them much more powerful without then taking over the game.

Cut the monocolor and colorless producing lands. If you're not in a color-slanted environment, you're so much better off running fixing.

The power level is ALLLLL over. Even it out.

This is preferential, but I'd put the multicolor section into pairs. Back to point one, the curve doesn't have to be even. I'd prefer to have an overview of what each pair is doing rather than an overview of the curve being exactly even.

I'm sure you've done this already, but get AS MANY 4-5 DROPS AS POSSIBLE. Find every cmc cheating mechanic you can. Kicker, Escape, whatever.

Consider a graveyard-based color pair or two and get Roar of the Wurm, Underworld Charger, Call of the Herd, etc to fill that curve. If you can get enough fake 4-5s, you can slow those aggro decks down and bridge the midgame.

 

[LadyMapi]

It's currently a mess with a perfectly even curve because I don't know what I'm doing ahhhhhhh

Ahem. Sorry about that.

I went into designing this cube with a few assumptions on how it would play that do not match what the format does. At all. To the point where I think I'm going to have to call this one a draft that I've learned some nice things from.

---

First things first, I think my next take is just going to be 2s and 3s, with maybe a few 7s splashed in there. For whatever reason, my Timmy brain went "7 drops big. 7 drops good. People want 7s"... and in the actual draft, they were borderline useless because of power level. Oops!

My current thoughts for how to lean into the fact that 2s and 3s are effectively "fast" and "slow" in this cube are as follows:

1. Most interaction should be 2s or should be able to be slotted in as a 2, because that's the most flexible part of the mana line (you need at least three points to define a curve).
2. Card advantage should be focused in my 3s, unless it doesn't do anything to affect the board. If a "fast" deck wants to maintain the pressure, they'll need to slow themselves down by including 3s. This also makes Lurrus less insane (because seriously, this is pretty much the only cube where you'll be able to draft around Lurrus), since you can't grind away with sac outlet + a CA two-drop.
3. Haste on two-drops is dangerous. Haste on three-drops intended for faster decks is probably alright.
4. 2 drops can't be sticky. If a card is going to be able to recur itself, it has to be a 3, otherwise it's just going to be too hard to deal with.

Basically, I feel like I need to go back to the basics of deck speed for this one. "Aggro" and "control" don't really make sense as descriptors. On top of that, I'm going to have to find archetypes that can actually fit within my constraints.

 

[japahn]

I know I'm the low power guy, but the 7-drops might be a good place to go powermax. It might give enough incentive for people not to draft aggro, combined with cards that can be used offensively and defensively (which I think it already one of the strengths of the list).



God-Pharaoh's Gift was particularly good in this environment, but I think it's an unfun card overall that wins games slowly and is hard to interact with. Elesh Norn might be on the same level, but at least it dies to removal.

Weirdly that high-power 7-drops is a pretty shallow category... I guess they have to be really good to be worth it.

I don't think the aggro/midrange/control/tempo framework can't hold in this environment. Aggro and tempo doesn't play 7-drops, midrange and control do, and everyone plays 2 and 3-drops. That's nothing too different from the average environment.

 

[japahn]

Make the curves different across colors.

Yes.

Cut down on the number of real 7s. Beanstalk Giant isn't really a 7, for example. A normal cube runs quite few 6+.

By "cheating" in the 7s with adventures, alternate costs (Sephara, Sky's Blade, Siege Wurm, Scourge of Nel Toth), and cycling I think this might not be necessary.

For the real 7s that you do have, you can make them much more powerful without then taking over the game.

+1 as I said in my previous post.

The power level is ALLLLL over. Even it out.

It's not that bad. It was true for the sevens, and I think for a first draft it was completely fine.

I'm sure you've done this already, but get AS MANY 4-5 DROPS AS POSSIBLE. Find every cmc cheating mechanic you can. Kicker, Escape, whatever.

Consider a graveyard-based color pair or two and get Roar of the Wurm, Underworld Charger, Call of the Herd, etc to fill that curve. If you can get enough fake 4-5s, you can slow those aggro decks down and bridge the midgame.

Then, the 2, 3, 7 is just a gimmick and not a cube identity. I think it's cool you have to find activated abilities, ways to double spell, mana sinks, and all.

 

[Brad]

I know I'm the low power guy, but the 7-drops might be a good place to go powermax.

Maybe not quite powermax, unless the rest of the cube calls for it, as a lot of those cards are GRBS to me, but I'd push the power level pretty well, for sure.

By "cheating" in the 7s with adventures, alternate costs (Sephara, Sky's Blade, Siege Wurm, Scourge of Nel Toth), and cycling I think this might not be necessary.

Then, the 2, 3, 7 is just a gimmick and not a cube identity. I think it's cool you have to find activated abilities, ways to double spell, mana sinks, and all.

Maybe it wasn't clear, but I don't count those as "real" 7s. If we are avoiding the 7 mana payment, then it isn't a real 7. Which I think was done intentionally and you seem to support the idea of?

Conversely, you're against doing it for 2s and 3s?

My impression, at least, was that some of the fun of this constraint is cheating the costs. I thought that's why there was so much Kicker, Foretell etc present.

But I guess that's up to Lady.

 

[japahn]

Yeah, I realize it sounds contradictory.

I was suggesting that low power 7's could be cost reduced, since they represent a "payoff", a "powerful play", a "game winner", so that they are an actual force in the format. Some need to be hardcast, like the powermax ones I suggested, and reaching 7 mana in this format is not easy. Some, weaker ones, do not need to be hard cast and can even act as payoffs for particular archetypes. Sephara, for example, is a payoff for fliers.

On the other hand, if you fill the cube with too many virtual 4s and 5s, it loses its identity. There isn't a gap anymore that has to be filled with abilities, kickers, etc. I'm not advocating to avoid those cards - the cube list already has a bunch of that and I like it. I'm advocating not to go so deep into them that there's no gap anymore between 3 and 7, and it's just a regular cube with a gimmick: "oh, technically all spells cost 2, 3 or 7, did you notice?"

 

[LadyMapi]

The big secret is that there actually aren't all that many "virtual" fours or fives. I think I grabbed most of the playable kicker spells at two or three.

---

I hate to admit it, but I didn't think super hard about the curve before making the cube — one of the joys of working with a weird format is that I need to think about cards differently. Let's see:

<2 mana: Play a tapped land or a Borderpost. Maybe suspend a spell.
2 mana: Play a two drop OR Foretell a card.
3 mana: Play a three drop OR two drop + one mana flex. "Flex" here can be a bunch of different things - it covers mana spent to do things other than casting things from your hand.
4 mana: Two drop + two drop OR two drop + two mana flex OR three drop + one mana flex.
5+ mana: Past this point, there's going to be a lot of flex, to the point where I don't think listing all the possibilities really helps. 7 mana, of course, is the point where your big 7-drops come down.

Looking at this, I'm having a few thoughts:

1. Instead of doing what I have been doing (i.e. just finding cards that give you stuff to spend mana on), I should go through my list and evaluate cards based off of how much "flex" they eat up.
2. Removal being 1-for-1 is fine at two mana, but at three mana it should start giving you a better rate. I've basically been ignoring the fact that three mana removal is going to take up your whole turn to cast if you have under 5 mana.
3. Three drops should have a better quality of card advantage in general, to compensate for how much "faster" two drops are.
4. I'm still not too sure about the role of seven drops. Flashing back to when I first started thinking about the cube, I wanted the seven drops to be resistant to being blown out without necessarily giving you inevitability as soon as they dropped. Maybe I should steer away from seven drop creatures in general? Fill up that slot with stuff like Alrund's Epiphany or Brass's Bounty — stuff that gives you a burst of power without necessarily demanding an answer.

Other things I'm thinking about:

1. I'm torn about keeping the "all Instants/Sorceries are Arcane" rule around. On the one hand, I like the idea of being able to build your own kicker. On the other hand, it's something extra for drafters to remember. I might just identify a handful of spells that I really like in that role and just make customs with "Splice onto Instant or Sorcery" instead.
2. Trinisphere and friends might be a good inclusion, due to how they mess with your opponent's curve. I think that anything that messes with costs is going to have to be a three drop, though.
3. On that note... I might want to be careful with cheap activated abilities, too.

 

[LadyMapi]

Whazzat? It's been a year? Ugh.

I'm mostly dropping this here to remind myself to update/redesign this cube, especially since NEO gave us some sweet new cards to look at (actually playable Channel cards? At my allowed CMCs? My cup runneth over!) and because I'm slightly better at card evaluation and set design now. Maybe. Kinda.

 

[blacksmithy]

yeah you got some juicy options. Shigeki seems cray cray here with the ability to buyback multiple 7 drops

 

[LadyMapi]

Weirdly enough, the new cards that I'm most interested in jamming in there are a few of the BLOOD cards from Vow.

Mostly because having something you can spend exactly on is a pretty decent thing in this kind of environment.