Attack on Cube (2021 Update)

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blacksmithy

all of the dust has finally settled after MH2 release! cube size is now 224, to be drafted by 4 players in a 7-pack, 8-card-per-pack format.

i expect players to run approximately 15 lands and need approximately 0 cards from the BLB, hence the larger draft pool size.

i’ve also updated the overview to better reflect available archetypes, as domain, magecraft, and “assorted graveyard value” are by far the best-supported archetypes, with smaller packages of land and artifact recursion engines (which i guess is also assorted graveyard value). also a little blink and a couple sneaky ways to turn on Thassa’s Oracle faster in control shells.

some notable OMISSIONS from MH2 based on power level being too damn high include Ragavan (like wtf this monke) and the whole entire evoke cycle.

got a (hopefully) 4 player draft firing on Saturday!
 
B

blacksmithy

CUBE NIGHT REPORT!

Had a great draft tonight with me, 2 pals, and my wife graciously filled in to make a pod of 4!

We cut off early due to the guys living in a faster time zone, but we were able to play 2 of the 3 planned rounds before it ended.

DECKS
Me: Sultai Gifts/Breya
(2-0)

Wife: Gruul Domain/Titania
(1-1)

Pal 1: Naya Omnath/Vengevine
(1-1)

Pal 2: Grixis Quicken/Pyromancer
(0-2)

Notable good cards:
Chevill drew a card every turn for 3 turns in a row.
Ferrous was curved into Bloodbraid Elf cascading into Territorial Kavu for 14 power added to the board in one turn.
The creature lands actually made mainboards and did good stuff and were activated more than once, which exceeded my expectations. Going to leave them in as-is for now, i love having good mana sinks on dual lands.

Notable bad cards:
The Onslaught cycling lands were actively worse than just actual factual basic lands in the environment. Only one person (my wife) ran them, and they goofed up her curve more often than they drew her cards. These are all gone effective immediately, i’ll just have to add a few more full art basics to the BLB to compensate.

Feedback:
Folks had a good time and expressed interest in trying more customs and un cards in a future draft. Quicken and Thragtusk were named as player faves, my Naya player actually chose his colors so he could do the Resto/Swagtusk combo from days of yore. Players greatly enjoyed the Ghibli tokens, and I need to make a Crab and some Titania Elementals for next time since those cards both earned their spot.

Cube change list:
All 5 cycling lands OUT, i will miss you, sad and beautiful landscapes by Heather Hudson! May sneak untapped customs of these in later.
Gonti OUT, cards getting mixed up between players is sucky in IRL play and he’s just not great in this environment to begin with.
Elvish Visionary OUT, green section is getting a slight makeover to have beefier bods, there are plenty of sweet cantrips in the green spell section already.
Magma Jet OUT, i love this little baby but it is in fact my worst burn spell at 2 damage for 2 mana, and decks don’t particularly need the scry.
Sundrifter IN, this is my custom white Evoke cantrip/baneslayer whale that you can find in customs thread.
Pilfering Pterosaur IN, this is my custom Spellstutter Sprite that trades the tribal scale up for Evolve, also in the customs thread.
Knight of the Ebon Legion IN, black finally has another proactive turn 1 play hooray!
Booster Tutor IN, i’m changing my pack setup from 7x8 to 6x9 so that there’s an 8 card pack in the kitty for players to tutor with this. If it gets flashed back… idk what happens!
Blast from the Past IN, jimothies ahoooooy!
Burning Wish IN, not sure if this will stick but i think the format is pretty kind to Wishes thanks to the power band.
Toski IN, this is the tokens payoff my bazillion token spammers have been looking for.
Living Wish IN, see Burning Wish. If this one flops i’ll probably just try Explore instead.
 
B

blacksmithy

players were fine with the draft format overall but expressed a general feeling that the resulting pools were SLIGHTLY too big.
for next time, we will be keeping the cube the same size, but drafting 6x9 instead of 7x8, which leaves 8 cards “in the kitty” to be used as a sealed pack for new addition Booster Tutor.
 
B

blacksmithy

After brainstorming a while in custom card threads/channels and throwing some ideas at a couple of my players for feedback, i’m considering a big manabase change, from the current wilds/basic duals setup to this:
FECD1943-1F2F-41FB-A9AB-F9ADCE33827E.jpegF30B91AA-BA50-4AC1-A439-71DB5D15782D.jpeg0D0312DC-0C96-4C7C-AA31-01E9C4E734DD.jpeg35D51906-1C42-4F96-9051-F82284ABBB95.jpeg
two cycles of “real” fetches, one cycle of fetchable duals, one cycle of fetchable creature shocks, and one cycle of fetchable campus shocks. i just really enjoy creature lands and campuses, and this will integrate them better into the overall manabase while keeping the core fetch/dual structure that makes so many things click in the environment. also, one of my drafters voiced the opinion that there should be some life costs to the fixing, and this takes care of that concern too.
 

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B

blacksmithy

had a test run with the custom creature land shocks and campus shocks. they felt really nice in the environment for a number of reasons:
1. the shockland restriction was a decent enough drawback to make us think twice about whether to fetch a utility shock or the painless basic duals
2. the campuses and creature lands were both activated multiple times during the matches but didn’t run away with the game- i definitely got my Raging Ravine exiled by a Swords to Plowshares twice during the night and it hurt lol
3. fixing with the real fetches and these lands feels closer to a true 3+ color environment where it’s easy to make 3 colors work but not so easy to make 4 or 5 work
4. at any given point in the mid/late game we had extra options for lines of play outside our hands, thanks to the ability to push damage with the creature duals as the beatdown or hold up response mana and then scry with the campuses as the reactive deck

really, really happy with these results!
 
B

blacksmithy

testing some more lands and a couple “packages” as occasionals: white equipment and black discard sub games.

this land cycle, as shocks, with a couple tweaks on Drownyard and Bloodhall to make them a less of power outliers (drownyard too busted, bloodhall too poopy):
1EF7A0D7-6C8B-41E8-B771-CB6A20C817DC.jpeg

white equips with SFM and possibly Maul of the Skyclaves:
B5479B81-11DB-4783-934E-925D5FC746BF.jpegFD108703-8446-4EE8-AB5F-54A9D875FDC3.jpeg

black discard subgames:
B9FED1EE-140B-4A61-9D46-A797E9864BEA.jpeg1658A319-E128-481C-9142-08492387E01F.jpeg
451DB065-933D-43D2-A7BE-30E8B458D1A6.jpeg
 
B

blacksmithy

cards arrived today and i have many changes to consider… this is where the occasionals packages concept is going to really come into play for me as there are starting to be a lot of moving parts in cuts and adds. the easy “bad cards out good cards in” level of changes is long gone, and now i have to really think about what archetypes i’m supporting and whether anything is over or under supported, as well as making sure i’m not creating design gaps by removing too many critical basic effects (like black murders, blue counterspells, etc).

anyway here’s what’s on the table for adds

White
Tithe
Weathered Wayfarer
Stoneforge Mystic
Portable Hole
Dancing Sword

plus 2 customs, an equipment and a wish.

Blue
Serum Visions
Delver of Secrets
Innocuous Insect
Logic Knot
Thing in the Ice

Black

Blackmail
Cabal Therapy
Entomb
Grim Wanderer
Reanimate

plus 1 custom targeted discard spell.

Red

Bombardment
Light up the Stage

plus 2 customs, a cascade creature and a burn spell.

Green

Green Sun's Zenith
Eternal Witness
Explore
Werewolf Pack Leader
Elvish Reclaimer

My main concern here is figuring out what to cut, as well as how to group cards into occasionals packages to make swaps between drafts easier. any suggestions are welcome!
 
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blacksmithy

Rasmus Källqvist said:
Very cool! How were these made? Sticker on top of magic card, paper on top of a card.. or are maybe the whole card completely custom?
Click to expand...
i use the Artificer mobile app to make the card image, then resize it in GIMP to fit the specs for MakePlayingCards, then get them printed and shipped to me at the MPC website. with shipping it usually comes out to about $0.50 a card or less depending how many i order at a time, and the feel of them is indistinguishable from a real card during play. (i use a custom card back and make sure to leave the “custom card made in Artificer” text on the front so they’re easy to tell from real cards by looking)
 
B

blacksmithy

drafttttt reportttttt

had a six-person draft tonight, did a round robin BO1 “ready play” tourney format to keep people moving and that worked REALLY well for reducing “sitting on phone time” for folks, highly recommend.

had some of my usual crew plus a fellow cube architect and a former PTQ grinder type fellow. NO ONE went undefeated, which made me very happy!

decks were:
4-1 Sultai 60-card (yes, really) Dredge
4-1 Five Color Zooicide
3-2 Blue (splashing gwb) Spells <-me
2-3 Jund Burn
?-? Abzan Stoneforge
?-? Niv Pile
last two players on the list had to head out early, so i didn’t catch their records. i think the Stoneforge deck was 3-2 or 2-3 and the Niv deck was 0-something, but he got to resolve Niv a couple times which is the real point of playing the archetype.

all in all a great night, and i was really pleased to see a few people who had never previously met hitting it off splendidly over piles of my cards and having a good time!
 
landofMordor

landofMordor

Administrator
Can you explain the “ready play” system? I’m intrigued. How do you avoid the slow people only finishing 1 match or whatever?
 
B

blacksmithy

so this was first night we ever had more than 4, so also the first night we ever did it this way, but it’s pretty simple: you finish your match, you go find someone else who’s done that you haven’t played yet, and play them. between that and the BO1 format we were able to crank out matches fairly quick.

(and to answer your second question, if someone’s that slow, they just need to get their head out of their butt)
 
B

blacksmithy

it is finally happening, planeswalkers are entering Attack on Cube! i wanted to start it off simple, so i’m trying just one of each color for now and maybe will add more later:
https://imgur.com/a/FY80AP9

while getting those, i also added another batch of proxies and customs to test, including Death’s Shadow and Scourge of the Skyclaves, a squad of Legion Angel, and these spicy (i hope) one-card archetypes:
https://imgur.com/a/YMCHhMC

some stronk standalone cards to fill out design gaps/core effect redundancy:
https://imgur.com/a/s6WLPs4

and finally some self indulgent memes:
https://imgur.com/a/u2PWrPz

these and a few more goodies should arrive sometime in February, so i’m hoping to get them sleeved up and play with them ASAP!

(and if you are interested in the world of proxies and customs, DM me to learn more!)
 
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B

blacksmithy

thanks! i already run Omnath and Breya, and then i’m adding Saskia with these so i have a full cycle of 4-color cards. just a really small pool of “real cards” to choose from.
 
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