General CBS

[Rusje]

I keep wanting to bring my playgroup back to Onslaught, but most of us starting in a tribal environment doesn't translate well to cube or even to jumpstart. Our next set, of course, was Mirrodin, which is a disaster in terms of power balance. That said, my current main project (that's likely to get a thread soonish) is an artifact design. Nostalgia is hard to beat.

You are right that tribal is hard to do in cube/limited (especially if you have more than one tribe in a colour). An exception is when the support is accidentally, like beasts. Onslaught has more to offer so I would suggest just ignoring tribal and only add support when you think the tribe is there. (My effort overdid the morph part, so it did not work out.)
I know that Mirrodin had issues in constructed, but that also holds for urza block. Those issues can be solved in cube. Finally, a set cube is not only nostalgia but also not too many abilities and often some sort of balancedness (creatures from the same era and so on).

This is kinda true. There's definitely a bit of a power difference, but it's not nearly like it is today. I think some of that can be credited to WotC's poor card evaluation at the time. That's how the Academy land cycle ended up so lopsided. Mythics of today are primarily printed to sell packs, as well. They have to be pushed well above the rest, although a reject mythic draft would be a lot of fun lol.

You are right that the power difference/mistakes are due to poor control, but it does not seem like that this has changed much. For my urza block cube the cycle is much less lopsided as one would expect:
Yavimaya>Gaea>manlands=Shivan>>>Phyrexian>>Serra>Tolarian. All decks play creatures so the cradle has more strength than the other 2 tap for x. Without really cheap artifacts/enchantments (who you want to play early) the others lose a lot and the drawback of tapping for zero is huge (cradle has this too, but much less often). For constructed the tap for x lands rule. Especially the Tolarian and Gaea’s. In the old days the rares also were to sell the set. Pfiew, can you imagine that the following was a chase rare?

 

[Seeker]

Remove is:firstprint if you are okay with From The Vaults, World Championship Decks, and Amonkhet Invocations.

I did a constructed 8-man of "mythics only but FTV included" on another forum some years back and seven of us settled on Fyndhorn Elves -> Lotus Cobra -> Thran Dynamo* into eldrazi. If you actually want to make a cube you probably would want ftv just so you can play with , like, half the contents of FTV20 (Impulse, Swords, etc)
and of course ftv exiled for the real MVP

Spoiler

*the funnest part of this is that these card images are all different rarities and none of the three are mythic

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I did a constructed 8-man of "mythics only but FTV included" on another forum some years back and seven of us settled on Fyndhorn Elves -> Lotus Cobra -> Thran Dynamo* into eldrazi. If you actually want to make a cube you probably would want ftv just so you can play with , like, half the contents of FTV20 (Impulse, Swords, etc)
and of course ftv exiled for the real MVP

Spoiler

*the funnest part of this is that these card images are all different rarities and none of the three are mythic

Don’t forget the best Mythic ever printed:

 

[LadyMapi]

I thought it was

?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I thought it was

?

The actual answer is:

 

[Rusje]

The actual answer is:

Holy fuck. That card is bad even in old standards. The only thing that is good about it is that is mythic. So in a draft/sealed you won’t see it that often as opposed to

 

[Velrun]

But it’s very mythical. How Mythic rarity should be. Big splashy, divine and unusual effects.

 

[LadyMapi]

Hey, Last Caress has a ton of potential! How else will villain know that you've won if you don't kill them with a garbage spell?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Hey, Last Caress has a ton of potential! How else will villain know that you've won if you don't kill them with a garbage spell?

I wouldn't call it garbage. It's much better than Archangel's Light!

 

[LadyMapi]

But you can do so much with Archangel's Light! You can free-cast it off of Jeleva and then counter it with Mana Drain so that you can afford to play an Eldrazi titan on your second main phase! Can Last Caress do that?!?

 

[Velrun]

Math checks out.
Barely.

8 + (4 - 2) + 1

 

[TrainmasterGT]

But you can do so much with Archangel's Light! You can free-cast it off of Jeleva and then counter it with Mana Drain so that you can afford to play an Eldrazi titan on your second main phase! Can Last Caress do that?!?

Ah but you can do even more with Last Caress. Have you ever considered using it to trigger Gixian Puppeteer, giving you a free life-drain trigger in addition to the life Last Caress already drains? It's basically a cantripping Lightning Helix!

 

[blacksmithy]

yeah i mean if nothing else it does say draw a card on it

 

[Seeker]

But it’s very mythical. How Mythic rarity should be. Big splashy, divine and unusual effects.

in addition to this, it also was deliberately made shitty because they put it in at the last minute as a replacement for another card:

The big question about this card seems to be: Why is this a mythic rare? A good question, as this card very easily could have been a rare. So, here's what happened. The card that filled this slot for most of design and development was a weirder giant effect involving life gain (I'm not telling you what it is because although it got rejected, I think we might be able to salvage part of it). Playtesting showed the card might be problematic and at the last minute it was decided to swap it out for a different card.

What this meant was two things:

1. The card had to match the preexisting name and art. This forced us to consider cards that had something to do with life gain.
2. The card had to be something development had total confidence in printing, meaning it had to be on the lower side of power. The reason we shoot low in this situation is if we miss the card will still be safe enough to print. R&D has been burned multiple times making a last minute switch that ended up with a broken card in the environment (Skullclamp and Umezawa's Jitte being two famous examples).

I'll be the first to admit that this card doesn't quite have the sexiness of most mythic rares. It can produce a very large effect (for example, late game, this card could easily gain a player 40 or 50 life), so it does have some "potential for awesomeness" (R&D's loose guideline for mythic rare). With more time and less restrictions, this card would most likely have ended up at rare.

fun fact, this article's name was reused for an article about Shadows over Innistrad card-by-card design in 2016, which is the only one you can find on the website at the moment, so I had to use an archive.org link to the actual original article.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Patrick Sullivan has turned me on to the idea if "if you're doing something cool and you can't possibly walk it back, just make it terrible"
He brought this up in the context of ring of maruf:


This card's a neat idea! Will it break magic? Eh, it costs 10, probably not, but it's still a cool idea

 

[Brad]

Patrick Sullivan has turned me on to the idea if "if you're doing something cool and you can't possibly walk it back, just make it terrible"
He brought this up in the context of ring of maruf:


This card's a neat idea! Will it break magic? Eh, it costs 10, probably not, but it's still a cool idea

Doesn't @blacksmithy have a dual land that does this for 2 mana?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Doesn't @blacksmithy have a dual land that does this for 2 mana?

Blacksmithy has many crazy things in his Cube. He’s a true Balduvian.

 

[Velrun]

@blacksmithy Show me please?

 

[blacksmithy]

lol i do not have a land that does this

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That would be a ridiculous tutor at that cost :')

 

[Nanonox]

Speaking of ridiculous lands, what are people's thoughts on running 2 of these to boost Selesnya?



I'd like to boost Selesnya a bit more and I figure a great way to do it is with this land.
Both Green and White are great at recurring lands



Both are decent at doubling tokens



Both can tutor for it



And then there are some weird corner cases that benefit (Land Tax, Tarmogoyf, Garruk Wildspeaker).

 

[blacksmithy]

this is in fact a big part of my main GW archetype and it kicks ass, it's super fun. you'll wanna look for more stuff like Thraben Inspector and Tireless Tracker to make your Karnstructs real big, but it's not hard to slip a bunch of artifact tokens in

 

[LadyMapi]

It's also an enchantment, so...

 

[blacksmithy]

Speaking of ridiculous lands, what are people's thoughts on running 2 of these to boost Selesnya?



I'd like to boost Selesnya a bit more and I figure a great way to do it is with this land.
Both Green and White are great at recurring lands



Both are decent at doubling tokens



Both can tutor for it



And then there are some weird corner cases that benefit (Land Tax, Tarmogoyf, Garruk Wildspeaker).

some extra cards to consider to broaden the archetype a bit into "good lands.dek"


a quick scryfall search can give you a bunch of GW artifact stuff but you're probably already running a lot of it. also make sure to give it good tutor targets like the Baubles and Currency Converter and whatnot

 

[Nanonox]

It's also an enchantment, so...

Good call on the enchantment! Reminds me of The Restoration of Eiganjo that is a good fit too.

a quick scryfall search can give you a bunch of GW artifact stuff but you're probably already running a lot of it. also make sure to give it good tutor targets like the Baubles and Currency Converter and whatnot

Yeah, I'm good on the artifact stuff (targets and producers). I also have a bunch of the good lands, minus Library of Alexandria. That one seems a bit too durdly, for too little effort.