General CBS
- Thread starter James Stevenson
- Start date
It amazes me, Onderzeeboot, how you can explain the same theory over and over again and do it flawless each time. Actually you get better and better for each time you get the question about your 5 Guilds + 5 Shards/Khans sectionThumbs up!
Onderz is an international treasure.
Do you think an 8 supported colour combination format would work? I feel like they were going for that in Ixalan (BW Vamps, UG Fish, GW/RW/RG Dinos, BR/UB/UR Pirates) but it didn't really work. Is there a structure which might?
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I wouldn't go that far, but thanks for the sentiment. It did serve a nice set-up for a punchline
Well, first of all, I don't feel that's what WotC was actually trying to do in Ixalan. In my opinion what they did was create a format with four archetypes in which every color was equally represented. Each of the five colors appears in two tribes, and having four tribes means every tribe can accommodate exactly two drafters. This in contrast to the usual block structure, with five tribes, where two players will end up in an uncontested tribe if the drafters are distributed evenly over the tribes. That is also the reason the pirates ended up with the treasure mechanic, to ensure a pirate drafter can feasibly play a three color deck in a non-green tribe.
As for actually supporting eight color combinations, I think there's a few problems with that. First of all, you're oversupporting one color (assuming you try to distribute color combinations evenly over the colors). This might seem innocious, but say every drafter ends up in their own color combination (the ideal situation), that means one of the five colors will have four players fighting over the monocolored cards, whereas the other four colors will have three players fighting over that color. Secondly, I think it's hard to signal the supported guilds to your drafters, or more specifically, that two color combinations are not supported. Of course you can point this out before the draft, but supporting eight combinations is so close to supporting all combinations, that I feel it won't really be noticeable that two color combinations are missing.
It's a pity I haven't got more time right now (I'm about to hop on my bike), but exploring the natural tension the five color system brings to an eight player draft might be interesting. There's no common denominator for 5 and 8, meaning you can't divide color pairs in a natural way so that each pair is drafted by a like number of drafters. I feel an interesting balance could be struck by cutting a color to naturally support either an eight player draft (four allied color pairs, where each pair can support one player), or a six player draft (six color pairs in total, including the two enemy color pairs, where each pair supports one player).
Edit: I'm aware that cutting a color has been discussed before, and even implemented (at the very least for a two-player format), but I can't remember if the aspect of having a like number of drafters for each color pair has ever been part of the motivation for cutting a color.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
That's why I liked you post firstHey, I was the one with the compliment! He turned my complimemt into a joke
Same, but thinking of cubes without each colour ends up being interesting. It seems, however, most people prefer cutting green or white.
I also wonder if a cube without a colour (i.e. without white) ends up being very close to the four guilds that have that colour (no red gives something that seems like the mono colours are Boros, Izzet, Rakdos, Gruul).
Interesting imo.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Green and white are probably the colors with the most overlap: tokens, pump spells, life gain, artifact and enchantment removal. On a lot of mechanics, one of the colors is more efficient, or has more powerful abilities available, but there's still design space in the other color. White has permanent teamwide buffs, green less so, but every once in a while we do get a Beastmaster's Ascension. Green has access to generic graveyard recursion, white can recur almost anything, as long as it's not an instant or sorcery, but in exchange can sometimes reanimate instead of recur. Green is way better at ramping, but white, of all colors, is the other color that has access to ramp, and sporadically gets a Kor Cartographer. All in all, I think it's only natural to want to cut one of those two colors (if you had to cut a color, that is). White is certainly a very valid choice for a cut, as most (all?) of its defining features that aren't also green are easily replicated in other colors.
You actually made me realize. Last time we did this, I went through the mechanical colour pie and for each mechanic in tier 1, I mentioned where I'd put it. Unfortunately, it was in a google group chat, so it might be gone, but it was interesting to see how to redistribute things.
For example, I shifted the enchantment stuff from White to Blue based on stuff I had read elsewhere indicating that blue does well with spells, and enchantments are just more... Long term sorceries or instants. Then you can shift those a bit away from Blue and into Red or whatnot.
For example, I shifted the enchantment stuff from White to Blue based on stuff I had read elsewhere indicating that blue does well with spells, and enchantments are just more... Long term sorceries or instants. Then you can shift those a bit away from Blue and into Red or whatnot.
Kind of thinking this new mulligan rule might be fun for Best of 1 matches.
I honestly think it's a really clever way of doing a mulligan. Who hasn't been really bummed when, in game 3, you get to mulligan down to a unplayable hand of 5 cards? This feels like it should get around that. You get fewer cards, sure, but they should at least be playable the first few turns.
Interesting article from Jeff Cunningham here: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/artic...K9qYDU63L0O2qKlzYFumIXGf3afb-os6hCqeL9lRpEsfg
It's a tournament report-cum-musing on the history of the game. Long but worth the read.
It's a tournament report-cum-musing on the history of the game. Long but worth the read.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I tried out the microsealed format today with my best friend. Damn, that was a lot of fun, best 2-player mode ever. My Simic Ramp deck lost g1 against his RDW, but then I beat it and the next one with Azorius Skies. I chose RDW myself then, which got outplayed by opponents Orzhov Control. In the end though, I could save the win with Selesnya Voltron Aggro.
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cube-design-microsealed/
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cube-design-microsealed/
I agree, but without making your own cards, this is just what cube designers have been trying to do. If you're willing to go full on customs, then I think you might be able to integrate that even more so, not sure how close to magic that stays though.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Has anyone given any thought to a MTG-based deckbuilding game (in the vein of Dominion, or Spire)?
I haven't given it any thought, but I wonder if the act of drafting itself is sufficient for a deck building game related to MTG. Star Realms, the deck builder I've played, is very intentionally set up as a deck builder. I'm having trouble envisioning what this would look like for MTG, but would be interested if anyone had a foundation for it that sounded appealing.