I’ve been kicking around with the idea of a ‘decision’ cube for a while. I wanted to make something where the theme of the cube was cards that forced players to make decisions when they played, hopefully creating a highly skilled environment where right and wrong decisions would affect how a game played out. I’ve tried to think about how cards would play out – some cards look like they present a decision to the player, but 9 times out of 10 there’s only one way to use it, the cube should be about making *meaningful* decisions.
So for a while I’ve just been chucking cards into a cubetutor list, without balancing or giving consideration for how the cube would play out, kind of an index of relevant cards. You can see the list here
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/1147
It'll give you an idea of the types of cards I’ve been considering. Now I’d like to try to put a proper list together – you can see my initial incomplete draft in the link below
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/24318
A lot of the cards that I want to use are clearly going to be lower power, so that will dictate the power level of the cube. Even though it’s lower power there’s a tendency to still end up with a lot of ‘good stuff’ cards – particularly things like charms and commands which although will provide you with choices when you play them, don’t contribute much to the drafting or deck building experience. So I’d like to try build in some themes into the cube to support this, and try to reduce (but not completely eliminate) some of the generic, independently good stuff (or at least tie it to a theme). So here’s where I’m at with some of the themes/principles/groups of cards:
Tribute
These give you a pretty good idea about the kind of power level that I’m aiming for, though I think unless you’re power maxing then it’s pretty hard to get a relatively flat structure. I know most people think they are bad, but some of the cards (these ones at least) are pretty cool and my hypothesis is that if you can construct your environment well you can make them be meaningful decisions. They clearly all have in common putting +1/+1 counters on them if you pay tribute. This makes them bigger and more of a threat but what if you also have other uses for the counters, making the decision on whether to pay tribute or not more tricky?
+1/+1 Counters
There are a lot of cards that either use or care about +1/+1 counters in my draft list. To be honest, my gut feel is that there’s probably too many – it feels a bit unsubtle and unsophisticated and I’ll probably need to prune some in this area. I’ve tried to spread this them across all colours and to try and make it open ended. These add quite a lot of complexity into board states, which adds to some of the decision making capacity but I’m aware that this might contribute to a bit of analysis paralysis, but is probably something that I’ll need to get a feel for when I take it for a test run. There are quite a few proliferate cards thrown in as well to supplement this.
Morph
I like the idea of having multiple morph cards as a mini theme in a decision cube. I think it fits the power level of the cube and it warps the format around it them a bit, making it slower and shaping decisions on which other cards to include. Megamorph overlaps with the +1/+1 counter theme a little too. Manifest is here to compliment it too (and there are a few top of the library overlap cards with the miracles).
I wanted to try not just to have morphs as stand alone good cards so looked to see what themes I could pick out from them (if any)! Black has a couple of sacrifice themed cards, red around difficult to block creatures of those that want to connect with the opponent, green has some overlap with the x-spells theme. White and blue were a bit of a struggle to pick anything out but I think I'm probably okay with this.
I need to have a check towards the end of the cube development to make sure I have a decent number of high toughness creatures that can hold off early attackers (including morphs) to give morphs time to develop. Probably look to have a few cheap combat tricks to make things not too straightforward on the battlefield.
I've got a few bounce and self bounce spells to recur the morph creatures too.
X-spells
I thought that x spells would add an interesting dynamic, around players making a decision over how long to hold out until they played their spell and how much advantage they could get from this. Ideally I'd want each colour to have a couple of options to choose from.
There are a few artifact ramp cards to support the theme that also get you to choose how long you build them up for, and also the timespiral charge lands. Green has some big ramp cards too.
Cycling/scry etc
These are great for giving players choices on when/how to use them and I'll probably run through at the end to make sure there are enough options in each colour to help things run smoothly.
I'll have some specific questions for you soon but just wanted to throw this out here now. First question though - do you have any suggestions for themes and synergies I could add based on the cards in the draft list?
So for a while I’ve just been chucking cards into a cubetutor list, without balancing or giving consideration for how the cube would play out, kind of an index of relevant cards. You can see the list here
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/1147
It'll give you an idea of the types of cards I’ve been considering. Now I’d like to try to put a proper list together – you can see my initial incomplete draft in the link below
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/24318
A lot of the cards that I want to use are clearly going to be lower power, so that will dictate the power level of the cube. Even though it’s lower power there’s a tendency to still end up with a lot of ‘good stuff’ cards – particularly things like charms and commands which although will provide you with choices when you play them, don’t contribute much to the drafting or deck building experience. So I’d like to try build in some themes into the cube to support this, and try to reduce (but not completely eliminate) some of the generic, independently good stuff (or at least tie it to a theme). So here’s where I’m at with some of the themes/principles/groups of cards:
Tribute
These give you a pretty good idea about the kind of power level that I’m aiming for, though I think unless you’re power maxing then it’s pretty hard to get a relatively flat structure. I know most people think they are bad, but some of the cards (these ones at least) are pretty cool and my hypothesis is that if you can construct your environment well you can make them be meaningful decisions. They clearly all have in common putting +1/+1 counters on them if you pay tribute. This makes them bigger and more of a threat but what if you also have other uses for the counters, making the decision on whether to pay tribute or not more tricky?
+1/+1 Counters
There are a lot of cards that either use or care about +1/+1 counters in my draft list. To be honest, my gut feel is that there’s probably too many – it feels a bit unsubtle and unsophisticated and I’ll probably need to prune some in this area. I’ve tried to spread this them across all colours and to try and make it open ended. These add quite a lot of complexity into board states, which adds to some of the decision making capacity but I’m aware that this might contribute to a bit of analysis paralysis, but is probably something that I’ll need to get a feel for when I take it for a test run. There are quite a few proliferate cards thrown in as well to supplement this.
Morph
I like the idea of having multiple morph cards as a mini theme in a decision cube. I think it fits the power level of the cube and it warps the format around it them a bit, making it slower and shaping decisions on which other cards to include. Megamorph overlaps with the +1/+1 counter theme a little too. Manifest is here to compliment it too (and there are a few top of the library overlap cards with the miracles).
I wanted to try not just to have morphs as stand alone good cards so looked to see what themes I could pick out from them (if any)! Black has a couple of sacrifice themed cards, red around difficult to block creatures of those that want to connect with the opponent, green has some overlap with the x-spells theme. White and blue were a bit of a struggle to pick anything out but I think I'm probably okay with this.
I need to have a check towards the end of the cube development to make sure I have a decent number of high toughness creatures that can hold off early attackers (including morphs) to give morphs time to develop. Probably look to have a few cheap combat tricks to make things not too straightforward on the battlefield.
I've got a few bounce and self bounce spells to recur the morph creatures too.
X-spells
I thought that x spells would add an interesting dynamic, around players making a decision over how long to hold out until they played their spell and how much advantage they could get from this. Ideally I'd want each colour to have a couple of options to choose from.
There are a few artifact ramp cards to support the theme that also get you to choose how long you build them up for, and also the timespiral charge lands. Green has some big ramp cards too.
Cycling/scry etc
These are great for giving players choices on when/how to use them and I'll probably run through at the end to make sure there are enough options in each colour to help things run smoothly.
I'll have some specific questions for you soon but just wanted to throw this out here now. First question though - do you have any suggestions for themes and synergies I could add based on the cards in the draft list?
