General CBS

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I cut him from my cube for being slightly too efficient. Flesh Carver is rather hard to interact with, and it's hard to get punished unless there's a bunch of exile effects in your cube.
 
Does anyone else's Cubecobra add random printings of cards to the cube, even though they have "most recent" printing selected?
 
Click on the cards.

Unlike cubetutor, cubecobra lets you change everything regarding a single card by clicking on it - instead of leading to another useless page.

What I also didn't know was, that you can make pre settings.
 
I am clicking on the cards to change them, but it's frustrating because it's set to most recent printing and doesn't do it at all.

No one actually answered my question. Is it like that for everyone?
 
You're welcome to it!

An actually dumb idea that just came to me: there's an old format called 237 Magic that I stumbled on a while ago. Long story short: the only CMCs that you can run in a deck are 2, 3, and 7.

Which made me wonder how a 237 Cube would work. My first thought is that it's basically a natural home for Cycling and Kicker - Murasa Sproutling would make a sweet "5 drop", and I could see Yidaro, Wandering Monster being a hilarious mini-archetype.

I have a few weeks before I have classes - I might take a crack at building a 360. If I block off 40 cards for lands, I could go with 120 2-drops, 160 3-drops, and 40 7-drops as a rough start.
 
Love weird designs.

You could overwrite the CMCs on CC for kicker, etc, to get a better idea of the real curve and later export as text and reupload to get it back to all 237.

Is there a reason someone made it 237 and not 146 or something else?
 
Is there a reason someone made it 237 and not 146 or something else?


I don't know.

If I had to guess, I think it's because you can get most staple effects at 2 and 3, and 7 is a big beefy number that's good for ramp payoffs/reanimator/etc. Plus, 2 and 3 are high enough that you actually have some flexibility in terms of their design and function, while being low enough that you can reasonably expect to curve into them "on schedule".

146 would probably be miserable if you tried to play it like normal magic. It'd probably play best if you started everyone off with a few lands and mostly used 1 drops for combat tricks or tempo plays. Otherwise, there'd be a real risk that the aggro deck that basically only picked up 1-drops would run over anyone who tried to focus on higher mana counts.
 
I did some initial investigations into my options for kickers, and man. This is going to have to be a low-power cube, and even then a lot of the cards aren't really worth it. The real questions, however...

1) Should I include X spells with a base CMC of 2 or 3? I was initially thinking 'no', but Return to the Ranks looks pretty fun in this context.
2) I'm wondering if I should run Aftermath in this cube. Both halves of the card would have to meet the CMC requirements, and I don't know if that would leave me with enough playable cards. Maybe Aftermath should be considered to be a weird Flashback variant instead?
3) Should I include cards that care about CMC? Stuff like Goblin Engineer, Transgress the Mind, or Devoted Crop-Mate are going to play pretty differently in an environment without 4, 5, or 6 drops.
4) How unfun would Eidolon of the Great Revel be, do you think?

---

A lot of Adventure creatures actually work with this. Huh.

 
1) It's personal taste, but I would lean no.
2) Sure, why not.
3) I think you should! Giving cards more or less power based on context is one of the most fun parts of gimmick cubes.
4) I wouldn't run it, but that's just me.
 
I think X spells are in the same category as Kicker spells.

As long as the base cost of the card is either 2, 3 or 7. Same goes for kicker spells and cards with flashback etc etc
 
1. Fair within the rules. I can't imagine wanting TOO many X spells, anyways.
2. Might as well.
3. If they look like they make sense to run, do it. Agree with whydirt that shifting card evaluations is fun. The Black Cube is full of that kind of thing.
4. As unfun as usual, I guess? Also, RR is difficult to cast. Not a fan.

(o:2 or o:3) o:converted (cmc=2 or cmc=3 or cmc=7)
Just my picks cus I was curious. A few were borderline that I didn't add.

Isochron probably warps the format, but I added it for lols.

Looks like there's a solid Wx graveyard deck.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
1) Yes, the cmc of X-spells ignore the X-cost, so Clan Defiance is fair game for this hypothetical cube.

2) As a rules lawyer, aftermath cards are officially split cards. From the glossary of the Comprehensive Rules (November 20, 2020—Commander Legends):

Aftermath
A keyword ability that lets a player cast one half of a split card only from their graveyard. See rule 702.126, “Aftermath.”

If the rules of the format dictate both halves of a split card have to obey the cmc restriction individually, then those rules should be applied to aftermath.

3) Heck yeah, whydirt hit the nail on the head.

4) It's one of those cards that all under rule 3. It's a dream card for red aggro, so I don't see why you would not want to include it, unless for casting cost reasons. Not everyone enjoys the archetype it represents, but some might!
 
Thanks to everyone for humoring me :p. I have a little under a third of the list up on CC - I'm planning to make a cube blog when I'm close to a full list.

Some things that are shaking out in my more-or-less random "grab any cards that look cool":

1) 7-drops are going to be out-of-context problems. They're kinda hard to cheat into play given my CMC constraints, so one of my biggest concerns is that they should also be kinda tough to get rid of. I've been tuning the removal to be at its most efficient against 2s and 3s, so hopefully that will be enough. This is actually really helped by the fact that I don't have any 4s, 5s, or 6s - removal spells that would normally stop being effective around T4 are now going to be effective throughout the whole game, which is pretty neat.

2) I'm playing around with the idea of using the "all instants and sorceries are Arcane" houserule for this cube. Having Glacial Ray in your hand effectively means that any instant or sorcery you cast has "Kicker 1R. When this spell is kicked, you get a free shock"

3) Planeswalkers? I'm almost definitely going to be running Chandra, Acolyte of Flame (because her "ult" is perfect for this cube), but I'm not sure about including others. Maybe Jace, Mirror Mage? I'm leaning pretty low-power for most of my choices, so I'm not sure most planeswalkers would be appropriate.

4) One of the fun things about this gimmick is that there are effectively four different CMCs to worry about: 0 (lands and tokens), 2, 3, and 7. As a result, any card that has a variable cost based on the CMCs of its target has a few different breakpoints. In some cases, it can be kinda subtle and cute - Spellstutter Sprite effectively has "counter target 2-drop if you control another Faerie", while scaling up to dealing with bigger spells if you happen to have more Faeries out. I dunno if I'll run enough Faeries for that interaction to work, though.

5) There are a few cards that I'm very interested in trying out:



The Prerogative seems like it'd do some interesting things, and it helps cement the difference between 2-drops and 3-drops. I can see it filling a few different roles, but I'd like to see how it'll pan out. Similarly, Lavabrink Venturer has some potential for shenanigans.

Disciple of Deceit is way stronger when your deck is primarily going to have 1-2 different CMCs. In my head, it's going to have a nice toolbox feel to it, especially with Splice cards.

Eldritch Evolution is my response to not being able to run Pod, or any of its variants. It lets you turn tokens into 2-drops, and 2-drops into 3-drops. I also kinda appreciate that you can't use it to cheat out 7-drops, because that would be kinda ridiculous.
 
1. Ramping into a 7 seems totally viable, but, you're right, it needs to be a good one. I'd try to make any kicked removal spell able to kill the 7s when possible. KIlling a 7 for 2-3 mana is a beating. ETBs, death triggers, and protection to ensure value will be important here.

2. Do it if your playgroup would be into it.

3. I'm back on Team No Walkers, but some of the uncommon walkers could be cool here.

5. Prerogative looks interesting. Definitely worth trying. Could prove high variance.
Disciple looks awesome.
Dislike the random 50% protection of Venturer.
Unless you have a combo deck, I'm not sure the tempo and the -1 will be worth the Evolution.
 
Top