General [Contest] 72-card Nanocube
- Thread starter ellogeyen
- Start date
my entry for the contest: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/98bbfb9f-6a2a-4528-bcc8-bb62ddc1a24e
Sorry if I was unclear, I was just asking if I had to use basics or not. The two ideas I've been exploring the most have been Cubes where the majority of the cards are from one color. In one case, it was a "100 Ornithopters" kind of thing where there were a boatload of copies of a single card and then some ancillary spells to fill out the list. The other was a "constructed mirror" Cube about drafting different variations of one of my favorite Legacy decks, which has versions using all 5 colors but is always heavily based in one color. In the case of the first Cube, I thought it would be cool to use only the on-color basic and Mana Confluence in the basic land box, while for the other Cube, I was going to use the primary basic and either Pain Lands or ABU Dual Lands in the land box. In both cases, the point of doing this is to allow players to focus on drafting the spells and/or utility lands that shape the intended play experience.
If you want to change you basic land box, that's fine. I do want to press how easy it is to have a consistent mana base for 15-card decks though. Both examples you included will make 5-color decks trivial. If that's your intend, cool! Otherwise I'd advise you to do some test-runs to see if just playing basic really isn't good enough. You can run 3-color decks without fixing (depending on the cube's speed and color pip density of course).
Yeah, I feel like an important thing to keep in mind about a 15-card format is that after you draw your starting hand your remaining deck is roughly a fourth of the size of a 40-card deck (8 remaining cards vs. 33 remaining cards).
That said, I think a cube trying to emulate constructed might still need better fixing, since those decks thrive off of effectively completely changing their colors at each step of their curve. Something to test, I guess.
That said, I think a cube trying to emulate constructed might still need better fixing, since those decks thrive off of effectively completely changing their colors at each step of their curve. Something to test, I guess.
Here is my submission, Nanonox's Blue Nanocube: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/NanoBlue
Suggested draft format: 2 player grid draft of 8 packs
Rules: 15 card minimum decks as per contest rules and no loss because of decking.
Since the cube is so small, I wanted to maximize the possible synergies. I chose to have the cube be mono-colored so that all the cards have the potential to interact with each other.
Archetypes
Even with a small size, I wanted a synergy driven cube where there is competition for cards. I wanted the cube to feel Blue so I chose some classic archetypes which are
- Wizards
- Faeries
- Discard
- Artifacts
- Prowess
- Counters
The cube is built around small packages that tie multiple themes together. I chose 5 cards that represent a lot of what the cube is all about and you can see how these themes overlap with each other.
I think it's also important to have different speed of decks and I believe that this spread of cards allows you to go in all sorts of directions.
Interaction
Countermagic and bounce are usually what Blue is best known for when it comes to removal. For more permanent removal, I chose to include a bunch of colorless cards to help. Penny Pincher enjoyers will recognize a classic duo
When card availability is limited to 9 non land slots per deck, having reusable removal becomes key to building a more controlling shell. The other removal pieces also benefit from Proliferating which is present in the cube (shout out to Stun counters + Proliferate!). Academy Ruins and Nevinyrral's Disk is another avenue you can take to take over the game, but it is very mana intensive!
End game
Having never played 15 card decks, I am afraid of board stalls that lead to draws. To circumvent these situations, recursion is key so that you don't run out of things to do. Mana sinks such as Stormchaser's Talent do good work here too.
Given enough time, you can burn them out.
Another slow way to get the last 10 points of damage in.
Sometimes you need an engine to get there.
And sometimes, you need your whole deck!
Ramp?
I wanted some way to make big mana and decided to add 4 Cloudpost. Since the cube is mono Blue, no fixing is required and these colorless lands can help you chain some big turns (like the wildly improbable engine I posted above). Since the draft format is Grid drafting, all picks are face up. So there is some counterplay if you see your opponent getting greedy with Cloudposts as you can hate draft them.
This was a fun challenge, thanks ellogeyen! Might try my hand at making the rest of the colors too.
Suggested draft format: 2 player grid draft of 8 packs
Rules: 15 card minimum decks as per contest rules and no loss because of decking.
Since the cube is so small, I wanted to maximize the possible synergies. I chose to have the cube be mono-colored so that all the cards have the potential to interact with each other.
Archetypes
Even with a small size, I wanted a synergy driven cube where there is competition for cards. I wanted the cube to feel Blue so I chose some classic archetypes which are
- Wizards
- Faeries
- Discard
- Artifacts
- Prowess
- Counters
The cube is built around small packages that tie multiple themes together. I chose 5 cards that represent a lot of what the cube is all about and you can see how these themes overlap with each other.
I think it's also important to have different speed of decks and I believe that this spread of cards allows you to go in all sorts of directions.
Interaction
Countermagic and bounce are usually what Blue is best known for when it comes to removal. For more permanent removal, I chose to include a bunch of colorless cards to help. Penny Pincher enjoyers will recognize a classic duo
When card availability is limited to 9 non land slots per deck, having reusable removal becomes key to building a more controlling shell. The other removal pieces also benefit from Proliferating which is present in the cube (shout out to Stun counters + Proliferate!). Academy Ruins and Nevinyrral's Disk is another avenue you can take to take over the game, but it is very mana intensive!
End game
Having never played 15 card decks, I am afraid of board stalls that lead to draws. To circumvent these situations, recursion is key so that you don't run out of things to do. Mana sinks such as Stormchaser's Talent do good work here too.
Given enough time, you can burn them out.
Another slow way to get the last 10 points of damage in.
Sometimes you need an engine to get there.
And sometimes, you need your whole deck!
Ramp?
I wanted some way to make big mana and decided to add 4 Cloudpost. Since the cube is mono Blue, no fixing is required and these colorless lands can help you chain some big turns (like the wildly improbable engine I posted above). Since the draft format is Grid drafting, all picks are face up. So there is some counterplay if you see your opponent getting greedy with Cloudposts as you can hate draft them.
Spells control
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Artifact counters
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Artifact wizard discard counters?!
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Faeries
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This was a fun challenge, thanks ellogeyen! Might try my hand at making the rest of the colors too.
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There's going to be a small change in the deadline structure. We'll have a soft deadline and hard deadline this time.
February 2nd: Soft deadline
Use this deadline if you want a thorough review by me! I Won't be reviewing or voting for you cube if you miss this one, but just like last time there'll be enough others voting to not affect your chances too much.
February 9th: Hard deadline
I'll set up the poll on February 9th. You cannot submit anymore when the poll's gone up. The exact time will follow.
February 2nd: Soft deadline
Use this deadline if you want a thorough review by me! I Won't be reviewing or voting for you cube if you miss this one, but just like last time there'll be enough others voting to not affect your chances too much.
February 9th: Hard deadline
I'll set up the poll on February 9th. You cannot submit anymore when the poll's gone up. The exact time will follow.
For those who are wondering about the extension, we are talking about this contest on the next episode of The Pack One Slick Ones, the podcast I do with @gaytransmulldrifter and a couple of our internet friends over on Usman Jamil's Substack. The episode won't be airing until January 30th for... reasons that will be apparent once the episode is released.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Omg hype! Hope you got a cool car(d)!
Here's my completely untested and questionably playable submission: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/77546963-4138-47c4-9150-3f159876d4e4
I wanted the 15 card decks to be a real center point of the cube, and themed it off of Doomsday and the idea of "what if both players started the game by Doomsday-ing" (completely hypothetically). Thoracle combos, mill, renaimator, and (tenatively) flash are the focal points.
I also wanted to stay true to my love for gimmicks and hope this is unique and interesting enough to be enjoyable
I wanted the 15 card decks to be a real center point of the cube, and themed it off of Doomsday and the idea of "what if both players started the game by Doomsday-ing" (completely hypothetically). Thoracle combos, mill, renaimator, and (tenatively) flash are the focal points.
I also wanted to stay true to my love for gimmicks and hope this is unique and interesting enough to be enjoyable
It is, in fact, a card and not a car.Omg hype! Hope you got a cool car(d)!
Locust
It is also something that could definitively be considered a "Cube Card."
I can't say more...
it's actually just a reprint of dark baninishing they fuckin screwed us!!
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
hEY! yOU SaiD YOu COUldN't sAy MORe!1!!one!
Hi, I'm RedShirtDown and this contest brought me over from the 'other place'. The restriction was just too cool to pass up! Anyways, here's my entry:
Tiny Leaders Nano Cube
How to Play:
2-4 Players draft 18 card pools
Build 15 card decks exactly, including commander(s)
Decking is a loss, and mill is a strategy
Philosophy:
My first thought was that decks would need to be aggressive. If the decks are going to be limited to 15 cards then the games need to finish quickly. Not only that, but with 4-6 lands total in any given deck there is a finite restriction on how expensive a single spell could even get. Given that, and also the meme-infested brain dancing in my head, I immediately thought of Tiny Leaders, and started building from there.
Play Style:
This cube is very creature focused. There are few removal spells, and only 2 board wipes, so gaining an advantage through creature combat is a key tenant of the environment. Your deck size after starting is only 7 (or 6!), so you've got to be able to win fast. The control type decks in the format will not only have to mitigate the incoming damage, but also need to use recursion to keep themselves from decking.
Archetypes:
This cube is super limited in what it can offer for variety, so I'm leaning heavily on the legendary creatures to carry the archetypes. That said, some through-lines to look for are modified and recursion. You've got to be able to scale damage on the board fast, and with limited game pieces.
Tiny Leaders Nano Cube
How to Play:
2-4 Players draft 18 card pools
Build 15 card decks exactly, including commander(s)
Decking is a loss, and mill is a strategy
Philosophy:
My first thought was that decks would need to be aggressive. If the decks are going to be limited to 15 cards then the games need to finish quickly. Not only that, but with 4-6 lands total in any given deck there is a finite restriction on how expensive a single spell could even get. Given that, and also the meme-infested brain dancing in my head, I immediately thought of Tiny Leaders, and started building from there.
Play Style:
This cube is very creature focused. There are few removal spells, and only 2 board wipes, so gaining an advantage through creature combat is a key tenant of the environment. Your deck size after starting is only 7 (or 6!), so you've got to be able to win fast. The control type decks in the format will not only have to mitigate the incoming damage, but also need to use recursion to keep themselves from decking.
Archetypes:
This cube is super limited in what it can offer for variety, so I'm leaning heavily on the legendary creatures to carry the archetypes. That said, some through-lines to look for are modified and recursion. You've got to be able to scale damage on the board fast, and with limited game pieces.
Hi all!
I've joined to specifically to submit my cube- big thanks to Ellogeyen for hosting it!
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/9fb97ad0-a5e2-48b2-aac2-06aedcc9f1fd
My cube is based around variable costs!
Mostly X-spells, but some alternate X costs or multikicker sprinkled in.
I've stuck to Temur colours and tried to give each colour their own identity, rather than focus on archetypes in such a small environment.
The idea was to have cards that scaled with the game- limiting your dead draws- but contrastingly lots of decision making about card order and how to use your mana.
I mostly build cubes for Winston draft, so, I mostly pitched it to that style- but either draft method should work well.
(I will also say all colours have token makers and other bits that mean they have more creatures than it seems- do not fret potential drafters)
Hope you all enjoy it!
I've joined to specifically to submit my cube- big thanks to Ellogeyen for hosting it!
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/9fb97ad0-a5e2-48b2-aac2-06aedcc9f1fd
My cube is based around variable costs!
Mostly X-spells, but some alternate X costs or multikicker sprinkled in.
I've stuck to Temur colours and tried to give each colour their own identity, rather than focus on archetypes in such a small environment.
The idea was to have cards that scaled with the game- limiting your dead draws- but contrastingly lots of decision making about card order and how to use your mana.
I mostly build cubes for Winston draft, so, I mostly pitched it to that style- but either draft method should work well.
(I will also say all colours have token makers and other bits that mean they have more creatures than it seems- do not fret potential drafters)
Hope you all enjoy it!
does the cube have to support all 5 colors?
There's nothing in the rules that says so!
I've submitted 3 colour, I remember seeing 4c and mono blue when I was looking at other submissions.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/Kashi?view=spoiler
I jotted down some thoughts on my build and the challenge on the cubecobra. Figured I would throw them in here to just in case:
I started down the road of this idea at the intersection of Splinter Twin and Situation. My initial thought was that with so few cards and a limited number of turns, combo would allow players to have deterministic control over the ending of most games while also enjoying/wanting to emulate/impersonate the flow of Splinter Twin mirrors in terms of counterplay and interaction. Unfortunately, after a bit of research around UR, WUR, and URG, I concluded that there were far too many Pestermite and not nearly enough Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker.
Knowing I wanted to craft an environment built around combos and having already thought about a bunch of different “Splinter Twin Situations,” I noticed that there was a not small amount of them in White and Green… the two colors I least identify as combo colors. I liked that slight bit of contradiction and decided it might be worth pursuing. So to organize my thoughts and help guide the design, the first thing I did was try and identify as many “Universal Donors”—cards that could be a part of multiple combos—as I could. So, I spent a few hours clicking around the internet, turning over stones, learning about Jump-Start cards and weirdo Warhammer mana dorks, going to Cathars’ Crusade college, and I ended up with about 130 cards. From there, cutting cards was about refining the combos (sorry Emiel the Blessed, Solemnity, Earthcraft and assorted others). I cut to around 50 core six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon interconnected combo cards.
From there, all that was left to do was try and make it so both players get to play games… A thing I like about the way this shaped up compared to the starting point is the counterplay available to most of these combos, as opposed to actual-literal [Splinter Twin], which creates a board state that moves to combat and ends the game in more or less the tap of a Deceiver Exarch. Here, when a player establishes their combo, often (not always) the other player will get at least one more turn to see if they can stay in the fight. If your opponent makes 10,000 creatures, what does that really mean if you untap and gain 2 billion life? If you have 2 billion life, what does that mean if your opponent can make 4 billion mana? The games should be defined by the machines each player has built, but the outcomes don’t always have to be determined by them. Simply surviving is also an option. I think this approach is particularly strong in this challenge because the limited deck sizes/turns in a game are going to inherently create winnable positions where they might not otherwise exist… It might not matter that your opponent is at 8 billion life and has 8 billion 8 billion/8 billions in play because they don’t have enough turns to convert that into a win.
Conversely, when playing an actual Splinter Twin mirror, sometimes your opponent has it, and if they have it and you can’t stop it right here, right now, another turn is not going to matter. So, I wanted to find interesting pieces of interactivity. For me, these cards didn’t necessarily need to be the best option for the job. I knew I wanted to forgo Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile specifically because they exile the creature. I still wanted the removal to be powerful though, so I think we are playing the best white Doomblades. Really happy with the inclusion of Unwanted Remake — a card that I think is generally regarded as not very good that in this environment asks some interesting questions, IMO. Manifest Dread comes with a cost for the person having it cast against them. 2 cards out of the deck means 2 fewer potential turns in the game, BUT they might’ve gotten a combo piece and are going to untap and go off anyway (which, it won’t go without saying, is an argument for why Unwanted Remake isn’t very good. Feature, not a bug though, for me). The second layer of this is protection, and I am playing some of those too, of course (shout out to Ephemerate, who can save a creature or be a combo piece). Sometimes, though, a Doomblade is not the answer and, as such, I am happy to have access to White Force Spike, Remand, and not-quite-Memory Lapse.
And one last note on the construction side of things: my friend Jared demanded I play Juniper Order Ranger.
And thus things ended up here. 92 combos in 72 cards.
Oh, Serene Remembrance. Power level cut. First time for everything.
Thanks to ellogeyen for holding this contest. I had a very good time wrapping my brain around it for a little while.
I jotted down some thoughts on my build and the challenge on the cubecobra. Figured I would throw them in here to just in case:
I started down the road of this idea at the intersection of Splinter Twin and Situation. My initial thought was that with so few cards and a limited number of turns, combo would allow players to have deterministic control over the ending of most games while also enjoying/wanting to emulate/impersonate the flow of Splinter Twin mirrors in terms of counterplay and interaction. Unfortunately, after a bit of research around UR, WUR, and URG, I concluded that there were far too many Pestermite and not nearly enough Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker.
Knowing I wanted to craft an environment built around combos and having already thought about a bunch of different “Splinter Twin Situations,” I noticed that there was a not small amount of them in White and Green… the two colors I least identify as combo colors. I liked that slight bit of contradiction and decided it might be worth pursuing. So to organize my thoughts and help guide the design, the first thing I did was try and identify as many “Universal Donors”—cards that could be a part of multiple combos—as I could. So, I spent a few hours clicking around the internet, turning over stones, learning about Jump-Start cards and weirdo Warhammer mana dorks, going to Cathars’ Crusade college, and I ended up with about 130 cards. From there, cutting cards was about refining the combos (sorry Emiel the Blessed, Solemnity, Earthcraft and assorted others). I cut to around 50 core six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon interconnected combo cards.
From there, all that was left to do was try and make it so both players get to play games… A thing I like about the way this shaped up compared to the starting point is the counterplay available to most of these combos, as opposed to actual-literal [Splinter Twin], which creates a board state that moves to combat and ends the game in more or less the tap of a Deceiver Exarch. Here, when a player establishes their combo, often (not always) the other player will get at least one more turn to see if they can stay in the fight. If your opponent makes 10,000 creatures, what does that really mean if you untap and gain 2 billion life? If you have 2 billion life, what does that mean if your opponent can make 4 billion mana? The games should be defined by the machines each player has built, but the outcomes don’t always have to be determined by them. Simply surviving is also an option. I think this approach is particularly strong in this challenge because the limited deck sizes/turns in a game are going to inherently create winnable positions where they might not otherwise exist… It might not matter that your opponent is at 8 billion life and has 8 billion 8 billion/8 billions in play because they don’t have enough turns to convert that into a win.
Conversely, when playing an actual Splinter Twin mirror, sometimes your opponent has it, and if they have it and you can’t stop it right here, right now, another turn is not going to matter. So, I wanted to find interesting pieces of interactivity. For me, these cards didn’t necessarily need to be the best option for the job. I knew I wanted to forgo Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile specifically because they exile the creature. I still wanted the removal to be powerful though, so I think we are playing the best white Doomblades. Really happy with the inclusion of Unwanted Remake — a card that I think is generally regarded as not very good that in this environment asks some interesting questions, IMO. Manifest Dread comes with a cost for the person having it cast against them. 2 cards out of the deck means 2 fewer potential turns in the game, BUT they might’ve gotten a combo piece and are going to untap and go off anyway (which, it won’t go without saying, is an argument for why Unwanted Remake isn’t very good. Feature, not a bug though, for me). The second layer of this is protection, and I am playing some of those too, of course (shout out to Ephemerate, who can save a creature or be a combo piece). Sometimes, though, a Doomblade is not the answer and, as such, I am happy to have access to White Force Spike, Remand, and not-quite-Memory Lapse.
And one last note on the construction side of things: my friend Jared demanded I play Juniper Order Ranger.
And thus things ended up here. 92 combos in 72 cards.
Oh, Serene Remembrance. Power level cut. First time for everything.
Thanks to ellogeyen for holding this contest. I had a very good time wrapping my brain around it for a little while.
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Here's my 4color version
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5068eff8-736e-479d-afcf-ff41145fcf8c
Themes include:
Disruptive control to win with your opponent decking sooner [using devious cover up] or mill combo [for example stand still+dimir charm] in UB and UW
Tainted strike/berserk/doublestrike pump combo in Gwb
Disruptive beatdown in Wu/Wb
+1/+1 overwhelming stats in GW
https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5068eff8-736e-479d-afcf-ff41145fcf8c
Themes include:
Disruptive control to win with your opponent decking sooner [using devious cover up] or mill combo [for example stand still+dimir charm] in UB and UW
Tainted strike/berserk/doublestrike pump combo in Gwb
Disruptive beatdown in Wu/Wb
+1/+1 overwhelming stats in GW
I saw this contest a few days ago and thought I'd throw my hat into the ring.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/df406254-a7ef-4db8-8674-428660fb2fc0
This is partly inspired by the three-card blind, a format in which you submit three cards to be your whole deck. Games are played with theoretically perfect information, meaning there are many cheap cards, many of which can scale given enough time to game-ending threats.
Standard rules apply (normal mulligans can add as many basics to your card pool as you want), Though players do not lose from drawing from an empty library.
Since players do NOT lose to decking the cards that can mill/shuffle back into a deck, allow that player to accrue more value over a longer game.
Each color has a broad theme, but since most cards only need one mana pip, players are free to play any number of colors (though some cards may need more pips than others). I leave it as a challenge to player creativity to cast the chancellors without ruining their deck.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/df406254-a7ef-4db8-8674-428660fb2fc0
This is partly inspired by the three-card blind, a format in which you submit three cards to be your whole deck. Games are played with theoretically perfect information, meaning there are many cheap cards, many of which can scale given enough time to game-ending threats.
Standard rules apply (normal mulligans can add as many basics to your card pool as you want), Though players do not lose from drawing from an empty library.
Since players do NOT lose to decking the cards that can mill/shuffle back into a deck, allow that player to accrue more value over a longer game.
Each color has a broad theme, but since most cards only need one mana pip, players are free to play any number of colors (though some cards may need more pips than others). I leave it as a challenge to player creativity to cast the chancellors without ruining their deck.