General CBS

LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Happy late Christmas! My work on my dumb gimmick cube stalled over the holidays, but now I want to give it a bit more attention.

Does anyone have any ideas for 7-drops? I finally came down on the side of making all Instants and Sorceries count as Arcane spells, which should explain one of the cards I already picked:



My plan is to have 5 monocolor 7-drops, and then have 15 colorless/gold 7-drops. I'm also debating between Beanstalk Giant and Krosan Tusker as my "ramp payoff" 7-drops.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Idea:

Instead of telling your players that all instants and all sorceries are also Arcane, you could instead tell them everything that refers to Arcane instead refers to instants or sorceries.

I like Beanstalk Giant over Tusker.

Do you have a link to your 2-3-7 cube?
 
Brad

Brad

I like Tusker over Sandwurm.

I get a little jealous you're designing this. :p Looks fun. Might mess with other CMCs once I settle what I've got going currently.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

I would take Oyobi. If you are making that rule, why not take the chance to rock some less known cards? I also like the effect and that it can be easily splashed.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

Velrun said:
I like Beanstalk Giant over Tusker.
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Brad said:
I like Tusker over Sandwurm.
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Come to think of it, I agree with both of these. I'll probably make those swaps.

Do you have a link to your 2-3-7 cube?
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It's in my signature, but here you go. It's a little slow going because it's not like I can crib off of other people's cubes — like, I spent an hour or so yesterday just filling out my monocolored 3-drop creatures, which comes out to 65 cards.

I get a little jealous you're designing this. :p Looks fun. Might mess with other CMCs once I settle what I've got going currently.
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The biggest challenge is that you'll think of fun cards and then realize that you can't run them. I've lost track of the number of times where I've gotten annoyed that a 6-drop wasn't a 7-drop. :D
 
Zoss

Zoss

Brad said:
Might mess with other CMCs once I settle what I've got going currently.
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I'm not sure that different values of CMC will work out nearly as well as 2, 3, and 7 do, largely due to how the numbers interact. For example, you go T1 land, T2 land + CMC 2, T3 land + CMC 3, and then you're left with interesting decisions. On T4, do you drop 2x CMC 2 cards, or do you play out a single CMC3 card? T5 is a little more scripted, but you have 3-4 options on T6, depending on how many cards you've used up previously, and it only grows from there. If you have 1 as a number, then you're probably just jamming 1-drop interaction spells willy-nilly, as the permanents will be outclassed. Similarly, if you have CMC 4, aggro becomes a lot swingier--you absolutely need the two low-CMC values to be adjacent, otherwise the tempo loss from missing a drop will probably be unrecoverable. 7 could be 6 or 8, sure, but much higher and your options are limited, whereas CMC 6 means that you no longer have the juicy combinatorics of 3 + 3 vs. 2 + 2 + 2 vs. 3 + 2 vs. 2 + 2. Also, this makes playing a spell and holding up interaction a lot easier. If the CMCs were much higher, that wouldn't be plausible, but if CMC 1 was available you wouldn't be able to bluff that easily as you're not giving much up to hold up 1 mana (ex. in a 137 cube, T4 would automatically be a 3-drop, and unless you were trying to go crazy wide the advantage of holding up interaction would likely outweigh the benefit of an additional 1-drop by a significant margin.)

But that's just my 2 cents, please prove me absolutely wrong!
 
Brad

Brad

LadyMapi said:
The biggest challenge is that you'll think of fun cards and then realize that you can't run them. I've lost track of the number of times where I've gotten annoyed that a 6-drop wasn't a 7-drop. :D
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That's the fun of it!
Zoss said:
But that's just my 2 cents, please prove me absolutely wrong!
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You're not considering the number of things that kick or flashback or whatever. It's not like you're only able to pay 2, 3, 2+2, 2+3 on those turns. That said, my playgroup is probably better off without a cube where half the cards have an additional paragraph of text to bend the mana cost. Under x words would benefit my playgroup more as a restriction.
Velrun said:
One could build a cube with 4 different mana costs? I see pros and cons there.
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I was thinking odd or even seem pretty viable. Or under a certain CMC.
 
Zoss

Zoss

...very?

All joking aside, looking at your list (edit: assuming that you are your own friend, which I would hope you are! If not, it's a list that's familiar to you as an example of what might happen.) the biggest problems I see are mostly in Blue. (Urza, Lord High Artificer, Snapcaster Mage, Laboratory Maniac, Bazaar Trademage, and Venser, Shaper Savant jump out to me as being problems.)

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the biggest issue lies in other creatures gaining flash, which makes several cards MUCH more deadly: Kitesail Freebooter, Nekrataal, and Avalanche Riders are bad news on an opponent's turn. You have a lot of army-in-a-can creatures that make attacking a lot trickier, and you have Recruiter of the Guard, Ranger of Eos, and Monastery Mentor as additional card advantage generators. Imposing Sovereign is also nasty to flash in in response to creatures being played. Judith, the Scourge Diva can also kill out of nowhere if flashed in during combat.

Granted, she's pretty soft to removal, but being a huge removal check is a minus, not a plus. I'd also expect that games featuring Lin will likely become fairly deterministic from Lin's side of things. If you want to juice White in a swingy way, sure, she'll probably work, but I'd anticipate her becoming a premier threat that is either killed on sight or takes over games.


Double edit: depending on your power level, I'd recommend making this edit of rebel to human to any other rebel-searcher if only because restricting the CMC would restrict the potential for abuse.

Triple edit: words are hard.
 
Brad

Brad

The solution to a lot of what Zoss correctly identifies as problems would be to make sure none of your humans are that good. That may defeat the purpose and probably isn't worth warping your format over.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

I have to agree that Liv Sivvy, But For Humans would be pretty problematic, except if all of your humans were subpar for some reason (in which case, you have a lopsided environment, and should probably fix that instead of fiddling with ol' Livvy).

...

For anyone who's curious, I've set up a cube thread for my (finally testable) dumb gimmick cube.
 
Erik Twice

Erik Twice

Thanks for the comments Zoss. I agree very much that she's kind of a removal-check. The thing is, I'm not sure it's as powerful as it appears. Let me share my reasoning and see if you agree.

On the turn you play her, she does nothing. If she's cheaply killed, which is likely it's a tempo loss. She won't hit the table before turn 3, she pairs poorly with green and she costs 1WW.
On the next turn, she's identical to Recruiter of the Guard except it allows you to cast the creature at instant speed.

So it's not until her third turn on the board that she is anything flashy. In a sense, she would be similar to a planeswalker or Birthing Pod. So the question becomes: How strong is she compared to those? At a glance she's stronger than Pod (Humans are already good, requires less deck-building) but weaker than the strong 3-mana planeswalkers. After all, she costs mana to use. Of course, being similar to a planeswalker is not a good thing. There's a reason they are controversial both in and out of cube.

My big worry is not that she tutors for Urza or Venser. But that she tutors for Mother of Runes and other cheap creatures, like Kitesail Freebooter. That's more dangerous than Laboratory Maniac, or a big beater.

Still, I finally printed my cube so I can give it a try and talk about how lifting restrictions on one of the most dominant cards of all time was as dumb as it seemed.
 
Zoss

Zoss

I totally agree with all these things--she's slow, she's fragile, and she's mana-intensive. However, I think she has a lot higher of an upside than a planeswalker. Sure, she costs mana, but she's essentially reads "Once per turn cycle, cast any [Human] from your library." She doesn't charge a premium the way most tutors do, and she doesn't lose you any card advantage. Actual creatures tend to be a lot stronger than a 3/3 Beast token. My fear is that, like Arcane Savant, she's not going to do the fair, fun things that I'd like to see her do. There's not nearly as much potential for abuse, but it puts an additional constraint on every Human you add.

By way of comparison, is Stoneforge Mystic + Batterskull too strong for your cube? That has about the same speed as Lin, and I'd say that the upside is (very) roughly the same. Lin can then go on to grab more cards and has a much wider range of targets.
(Lethargic Ninja Edit: Stoneforge does tutor on ETB, which may make Lin "more fair" than SFM/changes the reliability of this combination. I totally forgot about this, and it makes my comparison somewhat less valid.)

And all this is without considering the second ability. Yeah, it's crappy on its own, but it means that you can tutor for your Humans over and over again. It's never going to happen in a million years, but I had a nightmare last night about this and Avalanche Riders (actually, I wouldn't mind losing to that, and I'd like to think I'd even enjoy it).


I'm very curious as to why you're more concerned about her grabbing cheap creatures. Would you mind expanding a bit more on that point? I agree that Mom is a very strong creature to grab, but a defensive one, and, considering the limited lifespan of Lin as a Bolt-On-Sight priority, I'd rather grab another threat.


Of note, you make a good point about "being a removal check" not necessarily being a downside. I agree. No matter how flat your power band, there will be things that are removal checks, and, if you have multiple things that are removal checks, something is going to be the biggest removal check out of them. We just have to make sure we're happy with what it is. For me, I prefer my removal checks to be payoffs rather than enablers because it's much more satisfying to Vindicate a Griselbrand than a Coffin Queen.
 
LadyMapi

LadyMapi

So, I just had another terrible idea for an environment.

There are a bunch of problems with both Energy and Poison as mechanics... so what would it look like if we smushed them together? The simplest way of doing this would be to just make Energy and Poison the same exact thing - if you get 10 "Radiation" (hey, it's basically Energy Poison!), you lose the game... but up until that point, it's a resource that you can potentially use. It might be the only format where this little guy is remotely playable:

 
Velrun

Velrun

LadyMapi said:
So, I just had another terrible idea for an environment.

There are a bunch of problems with both Energy and Poison as mechanics... so what would it look like if we smushed them together? The simplest way of doing this would be to just make Energy and Poison the same exact thing - if you get 10 "Radiation" (hey, it's basically Energy Poison!), you lose the game... but up until that point, it's a resource that you can potentially use. It might be the only format where this little guy is remotely playable:

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I don’t believe there are any problems with either poison or energy as mechanics and Wizards agree.

The mechanics are parasitic but that’s not really a problem because they were designed to be parasitic on purpose so they wouldn’t affect eternal Magic randomly but only if a player chose to go down that specific route.
 
ravnic

ravnic

I don't think energy is designed all that parasitic, since most of the cards, that create energy, also offer a way to use it. For example my cube only has these two cards currently, and they are perfectly fine on their own as evasive etb guys that work with ninjutsu.

 
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