General CBS

Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Chris Taylor said:
Not if people know what the actual card does :p
No matter how simple a custom card is, people still need to read it, process it, and figure out if it's broken or not. People get really weird about the custom cards and end up thinking about way more than "is this card right for my deck?", they find out if it's balanced, possible analogues, color identity, etc.
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So Coercive Portal is among the best cards in my cube right now, to the point where my playgroup thinks that, as a difficult to answer permanent, it's worthy of a ban. The advantage accrued over a game that goes long is impossible to keep pace with, and it's worth the extra mana over Phyrexian Arena to not take any damage. On top of that, it fits into any deck.

If you're running Outpost Siege but not Coercive Portal... you might be doing it wrong.

On the topic of sieges, Citadel Siege is bonkers. I was taken aback at how much better Khans mode is than Dragons, since the former essentially has 'haste', and works better on both a developing board state and on a gridlock. There aren't many things you can't overpower by spreading the love with a couple of +1/+1 counters a turn.

Between that and Dictate of Heliod, Wizards has quietly printed two ridiculous white anthems in the last nine months, when nothing existed that was even halfway decent before 2014.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
That has something to do with it! Given that most people on here don't run Smash to Smithereens, Disenchant, or Torch Fiend either, though, I wanted to point out a card that I think's been unfairly overlooked, probably in part because of its strange wording. I realize that Outpost Siege has some other uses besides drawing cards, but except in specific board states, Khans is usually the choice, but Coercive Portal is an even stronger choice.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Yeah I don't run red seige anymore, though I do love chandra pyromaster!
I feel like outpost seige is this weird card that is mostly just painless phyrexian arena, but with all these weird little stipulations: it's bad with counterspells (Fine), don't play your land before it triggers (Fine), it has another mode you won't use 90% of the time but when you do it will be insane (Seriously?) etc etc etc

I did like the coercive portal I ran (4, etb tapped, :T: Draw a card for simplicity's sake), but I never really felt it was this exciting card tons of people wanted. Maybe I was wrong?
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Dom Harvey said:
If you're still heavy on the B/R sacrifice stuff, aren't you choosing Dragons most of the time?
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Honestly probably not. It's not a sac outlet, and 4 mana card dependant on having 2-3 more cards in play seems loose.
Drawing another card per turn though...

It's not out of the question, but say I had Cackler and Vampire Nighthawk in play, but my deck was full of gravecrawlers and their friends, I don't think I'd be running out dragons mode on this thing on turn 4
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, I find those decks need recurring creatures the most, followed by sac outlets with upside, like Goblin Bombardment and Blasting Station. Then 'cards that benefit off shenanigans', a la Blood Artist, come in third, though they're what make those decks sing.

Chris: you probably need to run your custom artifact again, and beat the rest of your playgroup with a midrange or control deck with that in a starring role. That might win over some people.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
If I'm on a R/B Sac deck, I want my 4-drops to be Hellrider / Koth / Skinrender / Redcap / Persecutor. I probably wouldn't put that card in my deck.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
great job grillo. that is a sweet list. i would like to work on further developing it to diversify some of the card choices -- you don't really need duplicates, probably don't want them, if the card pool is so much wider -- but this kind of lower power cube is something i have great interest in.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Thanks everyone.

Yeah, I've been noticing the same thing about duplicates, which kind of took me by surprise. The bouncelands provide so much definition to the draft that its not essential to break singleton on other cards to support build arounds.

The exception are, of course, the bouncelands themselves, which I need multiples of at 360, and maybe that star/sphere assortment. I do think cutting down on rusted relics or cloud of faeries would make for a less rich environment; and multiple ghostly flickers are also essential if you are looking to push higher level combo interactions (I don't really have the disruption package to support it).

I have to give credit where its due, as the earliest inspiration for the cube came from your orignal "draw a card" thread. I think it confirms a lot of your thoughts on cantrips and the original RGD format: reducing negative variance while encouraging tactically rich environments makes for fun magic.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Whenever I read stuff like that it's like they are talking about a completely different format. The Innistrad I remember is one where the bad removal combined with Werewolves and good bombs meant that a lot of games were non-competitive; the cute decks were even worse at dealing with those problems and would randomly misfire on top of that.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Chris Taylor said:
Okay now I'm interested, please explain
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Luigi has a terrible recovery. Most players have an Up-B that has some sort of range and horizontal movement to it, but Luigi just has this dinky jump that goes straight up and hardly anywhere. As a result he has to use his Side-B, which is even dinkier and sends him flailing like a retarded dolphin towards the stage. Sometimes (RNG based) he'll "misfire" and rocket towards the stage, occasionally killing the opponent in the process. If you see a Luigi .gif of a crazy tournament thing, often it's with a fortunate misfire that turns the match.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Jason Waddell said:
Luigi has a terrible recovery. Most players have an Up-B that has some sort of range and horizontal movement to it, but Luigi just has this dinky jump that goes straight up and hardly anywhere. As a result he has to use his Side-B, which is even dinkier and sends him flailing like a retarded dolphin towards the stage. Sometimes (RNG based) he'll "misfire" and rocket towards the stage, occasionally killing the opponent in the process. If you see a Luigi .gif of a crazy tournament thing, often it's with a fortunate misfire that turns the match.
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Man, Luigi was my Jam! for some reason I found his arial moves much easier to use than anyone else.
I was curious how something "Randomly not working as intended" would end up positively, especially in a game like smash, but yeah that makes sense :p
 
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