General CBS

Velrun

Velrun

@Brad

Did you mean to post this in the custom card thread?

Ancient Ruins looks cool. Can I see the other four?

Barren Wilderness doesn’t look like a Forest.

What is The Source the source of?

Dusklord’s Tomb is using existing MTG art.

Birthing Pod on a land is really really cool. It think it should cost at least {1} more. Some of the others in the cycle too. Especially the scrying and surveiling ones.
 
B

blacksmithy

Brad said:
https://imgur.com/a/j1OW9Wx
@blacksmithy
Looking into custom powered cube. Cards get more custom as you go. First few are examples of each fixing cycle. I'd love advice on the last 10.
Click to expand...
i really like those last 10, but it seems like they are not all giving you the same amount of value per activation. theyre all really really strong but some are a lot stronger than others.
my advice would be to choose one of the following:
1) add a generic mana or two to the costs of the stronger ones,
2) buff the effect of the weaker ones,
3) nerf the effect of the stronger ones.

fwiw these last 10 are all INSANE and stronger than any duals ive ever run i think. so you may benefit the most from just playtesting them a bit and seeing which ones feel "cool and powerful" and which ones feel "dirty and egregious" and tweak from there. it probably wont take more than a couple good sessions to get a really good idea whats out of line.
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

I feel like repeatable 1 mana scry 3 on a land may get a little repetitive in the same way that Sensei's Divining Top does. Lots of really fun designs here though, I'm a fan of the concept of pushing lands into the realm of ridiculousness and seeing what happens.
 
K

Karshtakavaar

Yeah they got rid of that, it bothers me too. I used to name the decks so I could go back and look at them, or create example decks for each archetype, it was a super useful feature.
I think there's some backend/database reason for it, a while ago the site slowed down a ton and they made a bunch of changes (No more random cube button anymore either) - maybe the userbase grew faster than they could keep up with and they had to drop stuff to speed up queries?
 
Rusje

Rusje

How can storing a name be computationally/memory wise be difficult? The deck is stored anyhow. Storing a name with it is not that much more memory. I am not talking about searching deck names, that can be quite a big database if desired.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
BTW if anyone is like me and uses Chrome and Scryfall, and this thing got disabled for you:
1693938071280.png
I found out how to turn it back on. The feature is called "Site Search Shortcuts", and you can turn it on for all sorts of things
1693938086893.png
 
MilesOfficial

MilesOfficial



Is anyone planning to play with Greymond, Avacyn's Stalwart? When it was first printed as Rick, Steadfast Leader, the Walking Dead version of the card was relatively more powerful, but I don't think it's been outclassed that much, even if one does not run much human support.

While I've historically been pretty pro-UB, this one did not resonate with me in particular, and between that, the price, and the foil-only printing, I felt fine skipping it. Now that we're getting the Innistrad edition...I dunno if I care enough? Has anyone had good experiences playing with Rick?
 
K

Karshtakavaar

I play Human Tribal and looking to depower it a little (Champion goes too hard). Plus I run too many 4's as it is :p
I guarantee it'll rock up in someone's folder at my FLGS, I'll promptly forget these things and get it anyway, all so it can sit in the "Find room for this" section of my cube box for a few years gathering dust (See: Taranika, Aspirant).

As an aside, I wonder why so many Universes Within cards are Innistrad-themed...
 
Velrun

Velrun

I’m turning away from Human tribal for my cube. It’s not a very interesting creature type in my opinion. Not anymore. I like party.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

I have paper cards again: I've come into a huge box of draft common/uncommons from the RTR - Kaladesh era and I think a cube needs to be made of it! I think my approach will be to build out some mini-decks to find the themes that actually work (with a big side-eye towards Cipher) and go from there. Looking forward to horribly expensive curves of mediocre multi-color madness - truly Cube Bullshit.

How would you approach this endeavor?
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Velrun said:
I’m turning away from Human tribal for my cube. It’s not a very interesting creature type in my opinion. Not anymore. I like party.
Click to expand...
Human tribal was definitely as popular as it was due to a lack of friction, rather than interesting design.
How are you finding party? I always thought it would be overwhelming trying to keep in my head what types I had/needed, though I'm also someone who always had pieces missing at the end whenever I drafted birthing pod.
 
Brad

Brad

vennythekid said:
I have paper cards again: I've come into a huge box of draft common/uncommons from the RTR - Kaladesh era and I think a cube needs to be made of it! I think my approach will be to build out some mini-decks to find the themes that actually work (with a big side-eye towards Cipher) and go from there. Looking forward to horribly expensive curves of mediocre multi-color madness - truly Cube Bullshit.

How would you approach this endeavor?
Click to expand...
How many cards? If it's less than 2000 or something that fits on a table, I'd be tempted to shuffle them all and fire a draft up!
 
gaytransmulldrifter

gaytransmulldrifter

vennythekid said:
I have paper cards again: I've come into a huge box of draft common/uncommons from the RTR - Kaladesh era and I think a cube needs to be made of it! I think my approach will be to build out some mini-decks to find the themes that actually work (with a big side-eye towards Cipher) and go from there. Looking forward to horribly expensive curves of mediocre multi-color madness - truly Cube Bullshit.

How would you approach this endeavor?
Click to expand...
First thing I'd probably do with this is go through the whole pile and start pulling out your basic effects. Removal, interaction, lands, simple creatures, etc. Then I'd do another run through and start making piles of cards based on different themes/synergies and see what there's enough of to make the start of a working theme in the cube. I'd also go through and remove all the stuff that's not gonna be relevant in a cube, narrow sideboard cards, weird garbage rares, etc.

Then I'd just put them all in a box and start drafting ASAP. I think the best way to start getting a cube towards the gameplay you want is to play it, add some shit, play it again, repeat until you have something you're proud of. No need to overthink things at the start, there's nothing that will tell you more about the cube than playing it a bunch and tweaking as you go. Don't let analysis paralysis hold you back from getting drafts in early and often.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Chris Taylor said:
Human tribal was definitely as popular as it was due to a lack of friction, rather than interesting design.
How are you finding party? I always thought it would be overwhelming trying to keep in my head what types I had/needed, though I'm also someone who always had pieces missing at the end whenever I drafted birthing pod.
Click to expand...

I think party is interesting for several reasons. One is that it is actually four different creature types instead of one. And it is classes instead of races which is also a bit different from what we are use to. This has no actual implications in Magic but it does create a situation where you can have a Human Rogue and a Faerie Wizard be part of the same tribal. It feels a bit like a collector items because you want one of each type. Or as many different ones as you can get. Finally I enjoy that all colors have equal good access to the tribal so I have chosen for it to be the tribal of the cube. I also have a minor subtheme of Dragons but they only have three payoff cards.

1 - 2 - 3

Downside of party is that the payoff cards are not very powerful and there are not so many of them. I am thinking about doing something about that with custom cards.

I do not think it is a challenge to keep track of how many members each player has of the party. It’s on par with tracking delirium I would say. Maybe a bit more than simply counting the number of Elves of Merfolks on the battlefield. But not enough to stop me from doing the tribal I find most interesting and who also happen to be spot on flavor wise for a D&D flavored rogue-like, deck-builder cube.
 
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K

Karshtakavaar

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Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Velrun said:
I do not think it is a challenge to keep track of how many members each player has of the party. It’s on par with tracking delirium I would say. Maybe a bit more than simply counting the number of Elves of Merfolks on the battlefield. But not enough to stop me from doing the tribal I find most interesting and who also happen to be spot on flavor wise for a D&D flavored rogue-like, deck-builder cube.
Click to expand...
You know, the roguelike elements of your draft might help this a lot, actually. My worries about tracking are purely during the draft portion, and it'll really help to have the draft be broken up slightly, rather than doing it all at once (Usually without looking at your pool, if only to keep things moving smoothly)
 
Velrun

Velrun

Chris Taylor said:
You know, the roguelike elements of your draft might help this a lot, actually. My worries about tracking are purely during the draft portion, and it'll really help to have the draft be broken up slightly, rather than doing it all at once (Usually without looking at your pool, if only to keep things moving smoothly)
Click to expand...

I hadn’t thought about that one!

Maybe the drafting phase is a little too complicated with the party mechanic in there. However it worked for Zendikar Rising. I will have to keep an eye on this during the next tournament. Inform the players beforehand and ask them to also keep an eye on the party complexity tax during the drafting.

Yeah about half of the party mechanic comes in later. At this point players will already know if they are on the party boat or not. We all know what a powerful rare card or two that suddenly shows up can do to our final deck list. But at this point it should be fine.
 
Velrun

Velrun

Karshtakavaar said:
Now we have a few (good) Charming creatures, what with Charming Prince, "Charming" Channeler, "Charming" Bloodmage and Charming Scoundrel, wondering what's on the wishlist for a green CMC2 or 3 creature with "ETB: Charm".

Like yeah, we have Gala Greeters, Sentinel of Lost Lore and Tranquil Frillback, but none of them are quite the right templating for me to think of them as part of the pseudocycle.
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I am not certain it will cost 2 or 3 mana.

At first we had Throne of Eldraine and Charming Prince. At that point we thought it would either be a standalone card or part of a mono-colored cycle of 2 cost creatures expanding over several sets. But then we later got 3 cost creatures. So now we are not sure what the green one will cost if there ever will be one.

And maybe Wizards only consider the white and red to be a cycle because they are the only with Charming in the name. If that is the case then we are still missing 3 and they will still all cost 2 mana.
 
MilesOfficial

MilesOfficial

safra

safra

Velrun said:
I think party is interesting for several reasons. One is that it is actually four different creature types instead of one. And it is classes instead of races which is also a bit different from what we are use to. This has no actual implications in Magic but it does create a situation where you can have a Human Rogue and a Faerie Wizard be part of the same tribal. It feels a bit like a collector items because you want one of each type. Or as many different ones as you can get. Finally I enjoy that all colors have equal good access to the tribal so I have chosen for it to be the tribal of the cube. I also have a minor subtheme of Dragons but they only have three payoff cards.

1 - 2 - 3

Downside of party is that the payoff cards are not very powerful and there are not so many of them. I am thinking about doing something about that with custom cards.

I do not think it is a challenge to keep track of how many members each player has of the party. It’s on par with tracking delirium I would say. Maybe a bit more than simply counting the number of Elves of Merfolks on the battlefield. But not enough to stop me from doing the tribal I find most interesting and who also happen to be spot on flavor wise for a D&D flavored rogue-like, deck-builder cube.
Click to expand...
You're missing some dragon synergy pieces! At a variety of power levels (and for both players), there's:

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I found Party to be finicky and difficult in retail draft and almost totally unreliable in Standard, where it existed mostly in a UW angels deck with Linvala, Shield of Sea Gate and Angel of Unity. Despite being full of clerics, getting to slam the tribal payoff warriors, undercosted removal that I remember being solid in standard, neither the UW angels party deck (anchored in clerics and warriors) or the grindier RB deck (anchored around Rogues and Wizards) ever seemed to 'get there'.

Given that you say that in your cube the payoff cards aren't powerful, I don't think Party has any chance of being a real thing players care about. I think custom cards are a way to fix this, as you say, but I don't think the issue with Party is the bookkeeping - as you say, both players can just stop and count - but that the mediocre reward isn't even worth the minimal bookkeeping. good luck solving this![/c]
 
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