General [Contest] 30+ Eggs in one Basket
- Thread starter ellogeyen
- Start date
I had a shortlist of:
I spent a long time playing with a Death’s Shadow-core City of Brass list, but ended up on the underrated and delightful Mister Gutsy.
I've been having so much fun with this. I will absolutely be building a 360-card version of this Cube in paper.
I spent a long time playing with a Death’s Shadow-core City of Brass list, but ended up on the underrated and delightful Mister Gutsy.
I've been having so much fun with this. I will absolutely be building a 360-card version of this Cube in paper.
Question— are we allowed to change our submissions? I have a couple of ideas that I would like to explore, but I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to get to all of them. I’m building the first one now, and I’d just like to submit it when it’s done. However, if I have time to build the others (and I like one of them more), would I be able to swap ‘em out?
Yes you may! I will take the last submission unless stated otherwise
Cool, thank you!
I think I'll post an egg a day next week to get some juices flowing
A card at the center of numerous overlapping synergies! As a bonus, this card synergizes with every companion that includes white.
I think I'll post an egg a day next week to get some juices flowing
Did you know you could activate their ability from your library?
I may have overshot this number, but now it's more of a challenge!!
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Time constraints are an issue for me in this contest. Building a new cube takes too much time for me atm That said, I’ve been eyeing
That said, I’ve been eyeing
Last edited:
This contest is really awakening the two Game Design Wolves inside me. One of them really admires games like Hive, and the other really admires games like Necromolds.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
I have no idea what you mean by that, and I've played Hive
I have no idea what you mean by that, and I've played Hive
I guess I think of Hive as a symmetrical zero-variance game in the same family as Chess or Go. To my mind, designing a game like this requires a lot of discipline and refinement, and the final design is elegant and stimulating because complex games arise from simple pieces and rules.
Meanwhile, Necromolds is asymmetrical and super-high variance, with dice rolls determining available player actions and the effectiveness of those actions. The pieces are made of play-dough, and when you remove an opposing piece from the board, you get to squish the play-dough into a flattened pancake. So the joy of this game comes more from sheer novelty and chaos management than a hard skill test.
The Game Design Wolves themselves come from an old story (described on Wikipedia as "a memetic legend of unknown origin,") about two wolves who live inside you. One is good and the other is evil. But the Game Design Wolves are neither good nor evil. They just like different games.
Or, in the case of this contest, they like different "eggs".
Nah, it's just a different type of challenge than designing more of a typical cube. With 30 count, the designer needs to find a way to deal with a supply that gives each player 6+ copies if they want them. The card needs to be useful enough to get drafted instead of drafters just letting it wheel and expecting it to be there in the last picks. That restricts the choice more, but people can find interesting ways to work within that constraint.
I like the idea of putting a great glue card in there as the egg. The new Marionette Apprentice comes to mind. LadyMapi's ideas for Thraben Apprentice and Voldaren Epicure also seem good. It seems like it would be difficult to pick anything costing more than 2.
The most obvious choice seems like any fetch land, especially Prismatic Vista. I think that would work well, and I have actually considered ordering a pile of proxy vistas. In fact, I think 30 is a perfectly reasonable number for a 180 cube if you want to mostly take color screw off the table. It's just some extra shuffling, and a designer would need to build it knowing that aggro has good mana and every player can easily splash a color or two.
A cheap burn spell could be a candidate in a cube where every deck can at least splash for bolts. The frustration of red drafters everywhere is people splashing to steal those, so just make that the theme. It woud be funny if it was theoretically possible to build a 30 bolt + 10 mountain deck (or maybe 29 + 11 is optimal). I actually think a Lightning Bolt format could work, though. THAT is a resource that players would be willing to compete for, because 10 bolts can be better than three.
I feel called out here.
I've mostly been approaching this as building a 150-card cube that just so happens to have a weird extra card in the BLB - after all, having ~7 copies of a card in your pool might as well be infinite as far as deck building is concerned.
EDIT: Some extra design thoughts, for people who want to be tricky:
EDIT: Some extra design thoughts, for people who want to be tricky:
- You should take it as given that everyone will end up with 7-8 copies of the card unless some of the drafters are actively avoiding the card or it's a flexible enough card that you could reasonably run more than 8 copies without your deck falling apart. Approaching this from the direction where people are going to be fighting over the card is, in my mind, the wrong approach.
- That said, a micro-archetype that actively didn't want the core egg would be interesting (if a little hard to design). It'd have to be narrow enough that you'd only have one person drafting it at most, but the core advantage would be that you'd have a broader number of unique cards to play through when deck-building.
- If you have 8 copies of a card, remember that that's just under the threshold for narrower buildarounds. If your egg is Merfolk Pupil, for example, you could reasonably run Summon the School without including any other Merfolks (it wouldn't be a high pick, mind you, but it'd be a defensible in a way that it wouldn't be in Ye Olde Generic Cube). Don't be afraid to do some Scryfall deep-dives.
- Oh, right - you probably don't want to include any cards that are "strictly better" than your egg at doing the egg's thing. If you're making the Merfolk Pupil Cube and you decide that you want to include Madness cards, you probably should steer clear of repeatable discard outlets that are more efficient than paying to cast or exile a Pupil.
- Grim Reminder is a card that exists. Do with this knowledge what you will.
Last edited:
I think I'll post an egg a day next week to get some juices flowing
How many party people would you add to covet this egg?
Is this the direction you plan to go? Otherwise I will need help deciphering your reply, since I am not aware of any interesting history that you may have with burn spells. If you do have a certain history or affinity with burn, please share! Personally, I have been playing fast burning red decks on Arena for the past two years to get daily wins, and it has given me a whole new appreciation for it.
It is really diffucult to choose an egg that works with multiple different archetypes without having those bleed together. If they all are supposed to be interested in 5+ copies of it, then every deck will have 5+ copies of it. And since you would want multiple strategies to work with it, you could often run different archetype payoffs, since every fourth card or so is the one sweet enabler anyway.
But I think I found my solution. First pitch:
cares about creatures in the graveyard.
cares about lands in the graveyard.
cares about instants and sorceries in the graveyard.
cares about artifacts in the graveyard.
an aggressive hate bear deck that can exile single cards from graveyards.
More to follow ...
But I think I found my solution. First pitch:
cares about creatures in the graveyard. cares about lands in the graveyard. cares about instants and sorceries in the graveyard. cares about artifacts in the graveyard. an aggressive hate bear deck that can exile single cards from graveyards.More to follow ...
Have none of you read the title of this thread? It's 30+ eggs in one basket. Not marvels, or vistas, or cities, or wands. Eggs.
is my ovum of choice.
Scry payoff, top of the library manipulation, defender tribal, sacrifice, land recursion: so much going on.
Plus it's a double faced card. Who doesn't love double faced cards?
is my ovum of choice.
Scry payoff, top of the library manipulation, defender tribal, sacrifice, land recursion: so much going on.
Plus it's a double faced card. Who doesn't love double faced cards?
Can't believe no one has proposed a Hollow One cube yet smh
Real talk-- @ellogeyen , I know that there are no custom cards allowed, but what about emblems? I'm thinking about a cube based around Painter's Servant and color-based effects, but a 1/3 for 2 is a bad statline as a designer. Getting to make everything cost less as in the Turbo Cube (or heck, even just less) would make the card a lot easier to justify.
Real talk-- @ellogeyen , I know that there are no custom cards allowed, but what about emblems? I'm thinking about a cube based around Painter's Servant and color-based effects, but a 1/3 for 2 is a bad statline as a designer. Getting to make everything cost
less as in the Turbo Cube (or heck, even just less) would make the card a lot easier to justify.I'm gonna say no mainly because I think emblems are an excellent idea for their own contestCan't believe no one has proposed a Hollow One cube yet smh
Real talk-- @ellogeyen , I know that there are no custom cards allowed, but what about emblems? I'm thinking about a cube based around Painter's Servant and color-based effects, but a 1/3 for 2 is a bad statline as a designer. Getting to make everything cost
I think I hit gold. Here I was tripping with my stupid Chromatic Stars, but then I realized I can go harder
It’s scalable! You can cast it for 0 to trigger prowess and stuff or for 6 late game. You get artifact tokens, counters and vehicles all in one. Excited to see where I end up!
It’s scalable! You can cast it for 0 to trigger prowess and stuff or for 6 late game. You get artifact tokens, counters and vehicles all in one. Excited to see where I end up!