Article ChannelFireball: Microsealed
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
So my friend had a few draft boosters, so I suggested we tried this format! Few caveats:
- we didn't have the special lands, because it was a bit impromptu, but the didn't feel necessary
- I forgot the "you can search your sideboard when tutoring"-rule, but it didn't feel necessary either
It was amazing! Since my 1-life cube I'm a big fan of 15-card formats. winning 4 matches was too much (that means playing 8-21 games), so we played until winning 3. I feel inspired; which is why I'm writing this down
We felt like it was odd that you would have to retire you deck if you lost, because my friend had a very dominating deck that just kicked out 2 of my deck easily, leaving me at a disadvantage in both remaining card quality and score. When we do it again, I'll try the following:
- 60-card pools
- create three 15-card decks up front
- play a game with each deck against each opponent's deck (6 games total)
If it works as well as I hope I might make a POC of a cube variant!
- we didn't have the special lands, because it was a bit impromptu, but the didn't feel necessary
- I forgot the "you can search your sideboard when tutoring"-rule, but it didn't feel necessary either
It was amazing! Since my 1-life cube I'm a big fan of 15-card formats. winning 4 matches was too much (that means playing 8-21 games), so we played until winning 3. I feel inspired; which is why I'm writing this down
We felt like it was odd that you would have to retire you deck if you lost, because my friend had a very dominating deck that just kicked out 2 of my deck easily, leaving me at a disadvantage in both remaining card quality and score. When we do it again, I'll try the following:
- 60-card pools
- create three 15-card decks up front
- play a game with each deck against each opponent's deck (6 games total)
If it works as well as I hope I might make a POC of a cube variant!
I'm really glad to see some more love for this format after all this time. We played it exclusively for quite a while, though it was usually in a multiplayer round-robin format, as opposed to the two-player best-of-7 marathon as originally designed. I eventually experimented with eliminating the rule where you can shuffle your graveyard back into your library but made sure the cube had cards that did this. I even went so far as to eliminate all of Jason's rules (except 15 cards and no decking), deploying them and some variations thereof to custom cards you can select at the beginning of each match. This format led me to explore a lot of angles on this game and discover deck archetypes and strategies unique only to this format (and realize that some typical ones don't work so well). I really appreciate that you came up with it and shared it, Jason! Thank you!
This looks cool
Smart idea
I agree! I took the concept almost completely from the “Sudden Death” cubes floating around
Hey, I've been brainstorming a couple of ideas for this format and ... well, you're the only other people I know that have ever played it, so I'd love your thoughts.
We're finding that cards that exile just feel too powerful. You're removing a substantial piece of the opponent's deck, and also removing them from future redraws, which feels too good. Exile mechanics like delve, collect evidence etc are also way worse to being basically unplayable without some way to get those cards back. Same with red's 'exile the top, play it this turn' type of stuff.
Here are a few suggestions we have to overcome it:
1) When you pay the 3 life to shuffle the graveyard into your library, you then move the exiled card(s) into your graveyard. I like that this lets you eventually re-use the cards and it's probably the most practical, but it could be exploited by (for example) reanimation, delve, etc by looping things in and out of the graveyard.
2) When you pay the 3 life to shuffle in, you then put the exiled card(s) on the bottom of your library. This gets around any graveyard shenanigans you could exploit above, but doesn't work as well if the deck is small in the late game, meaning you (again) can get things straight from exile to your hand if it's the only card in your deck.
3) Any 'exile' cards you play will exile themselves too, so they both become one-offs. This preserves the permanence of exile removal while balancing it out, although it doesn't work as well when it comes to things like delve effects, red's impulsive draw, etc.
4) Any exile cards you play go on to the battlefield as permanents, and work like Oblivion Ring. For example, 'exile target creature' removal will become an enchantment on the field, effectively removing them both from the gameplay loop, but if a player can remove the enchantment, the card goes back to the battlefield and the spell goes to the graveyard. The idea here is that we never want anyone to be able to pay 3 life to get back cards exiled by things on the battlefield, but this is the wildest suggestion here.
Nothing feels quite right, and we obviously have to test which works, but didn't know if anything stood out as immediately obvious to you?
I also think we're going to make the 3-life-to-shuffle a sorcery speed ability, partly to balance the above and partly because we find life gain is at a premium in this format because of it. Being able to do it at less-than-optimal times will help.
We're finding that cards that exile just feel too powerful. You're removing a substantial piece of the opponent's deck, and also removing them from future redraws, which feels too good. Exile mechanics like delve, collect evidence etc are also way worse to being basically unplayable without some way to get those cards back. Same with red's 'exile the top, play it this turn' type of stuff.
Here are a few suggestions we have to overcome it:
1) When you pay the 3 life to shuffle the graveyard into your library, you then move the exiled card(s) into your graveyard. I like that this lets you eventually re-use the cards and it's probably the most practical, but it could be exploited by (for example) reanimation, delve, etc by looping things in and out of the graveyard.
2) When you pay the 3 life to shuffle in, you then put the exiled card(s) on the bottom of your library. This gets around any graveyard shenanigans you could exploit above, but doesn't work as well if the deck is small in the late game, meaning you (again) can get things straight from exile to your hand if it's the only card in your deck.
3) Any 'exile' cards you play will exile themselves too, so they both become one-offs. This preserves the permanence of exile removal while balancing it out, although it doesn't work as well when it comes to things like delve effects, red's impulsive draw, etc.
4) Any exile cards you play go on to the battlefield as permanents, and work like Oblivion Ring. For example, 'exile target creature' removal will become an enchantment on the field, effectively removing them both from the gameplay loop, but if a player can remove the enchantment, the card goes back to the battlefield and the spell goes to the graveyard. The idea here is that we never want anyone to be able to pay 3 life to get back cards exiled by things on the battlefield, but this is the wildest suggestion here.
Nothing feels quite right, and we obviously have to test which works, but didn't know if anything stood out as immediately obvious to you?
I also think we're going to make the 3-life-to-shuffle a sorcery speed ability, partly to balance the above and partly because we find life gain is at a premium in this format because of it. Being able to do it at less-than-optimal times will help.
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To hop on this after the Simic Combine brought it back from the depths... has anyone built a duplicate microsealed pool? In other words, it'd be an itty-bitty "constructed format" to mess around with.
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As for the exile thing... maybe that's just a sign that you should avoid effects in exile, or keep the permanence in mind when selecting your cards? Or you could just give both players one of these fine cards?
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As for the exile thing... maybe that's just a sign that you should avoid effects in exile, or keep the permanence in mind when selecting your cards? Or you could just give both players one of these fine cards?
To clarify how we play, we have a bunch of MTGO redemption sets at home (one of each card) and we pick a set, split those into boosters and play microsealed, rather than have it in a dedicated cube, hence my question about exile mechanics because they come up now and then.
Your card selection gave me another idea for a 'Pull from Eternity' rule ...
5) Whenever you may draw a card, you may instead put an exiled card into its owners graveyard.
This simulates the effect of drawing and casting pull from eternity without having it in your deck. Much to test!
Your card selection gave me another idea for a 'Pull from Eternity' rule ...
5) Whenever you may draw a card, you may instead put an exiled card into its owners graveyard.
This simulates the effect of drawing and casting pull from eternity without having it in your deck. Much to test!