Eldrazi Domain Cube
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
I think you underestimate how wide the power curves are even in a traditional cube. There's a pretty huge difference between 1st and 15th pick.
Strider Harness and/or Ring of Valkas are both interesting ways to grant haste at a fair cost. Might want to explore the dynamic they'd provide.
Attrition seems way too busted good.
The black discard is also way way too good. In a slow format where people are playing big haymakers, discard is very powerful. The only way to force an opponent to discard in Rise was Inquisition of Kozilek which very specifically did not punish people who were waiting to cast that last spell in their hands. Gruesome Discovery off a spawn token is likely back breaking. I think Mind Rot might be too good for this format, and Stupor is a strictly better. I think even Unnerve is too strong. Maybe Pulling Teeth (sometimes only 1) and Resounding Scream (which can be a big blowout, but requires 8 mana)?
Redirect or a variant would feel appropriate.
Attrition seems way too busted good.
The black discard is also way way too good. In a slow format where people are playing big haymakers, discard is very powerful. The only way to force an opponent to discard in Rise was Inquisition of Kozilek which very specifically did not punish people who were waiting to cast that last spell in their hands. Gruesome Discovery off a spawn token is likely back breaking. I think Mind Rot might be too good for this format, and Stupor is a strictly better. I think even Unnerve is too strong. Maybe Pulling Teeth (sometimes only 1) and Resounding Scream (which can be a big blowout, but requires 8 mana)?
Redirect or a variant would feel appropriate.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
This makes me think about game preference. I enjoy games that are opaque. I think feeling hopeless, helpless and lost on your first play is a good thing. I think good play should require you to destroy some preconceived notions and require you to perceive things in a new way. I think the first time a group of players enter a game, the winner should be determined in a fickle, random manner that makes no sense, but after further plays reveals a manipulable logic that only seemed random because the players were blindly poking at it with sticks.
Playing Magic is rarely like this. But drafting magic, particularly in a complex and unfamiliar cube, can capture this. Viva la cube.
You may be right about the discard. I do want to use all the Morbid cards that I can, as it's a pretty major part of the design. Also, not everyone is trying to land haymakers. ROE format had its fair share of "normal" decks. I really don't know about the dynamics. I need to make Eldrazi strategies sufficiently strong to be worth pursuing, but I also really like the interaction of things like spawn tokens and Tragic Slip. But how many easy ways to kill Eldrazi do we want out there? I would be very sad if I had to replace a playable Morbid card with something like Stupor.
For haste, I was thinking of this card:
Enchant a spawn token, next turn sac the spawn token to cast Primeval Titan. Yeah!
That may well end up happening. We're still in the throw things at the wall and see what sticks phase. Power levels on all sorts of things will be going up and down.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Opening a pack of 15 first picks of equal power is probably pretty frustrating after all, let alone following it up by being passed one of 14 
Out of Curiosity, Have you considered some token specific cards? Maybe you wanna go real deep with the token thing with stuff like Murganda Petroglpyhs, Intangible Virtue, Broodwarden, and Phantom General
Out of Curiosity, Have you considered some token specific cards? Maybe you wanna go real deep with the token thing with stuff like Murganda Petroglpyhs, Intangible Virtue, Broodwarden, and Phantom General
I have considered them. That'll be in Wave 2 of testing. For now I mostly want cards that are good that happen to produce tokens. I do have Broodwarden in there though. There's certainly room to push the token theme harder. But, I think that cards like Mikaeus, the Lunarch are of much higher value to the design. Works with tokens, ramp, and proliferate.
Also, anybody have suggestions for other fun ways to ramp? It's not really my forte. Is something like Somberwald Sage too strong?
Also, anybody have suggestions for other fun ways to ramp? It's not really my forte. Is something like Somberwald Sage too strong?
If you have a flat power level there is much less incentive to be in extra colors.
Now that you mention it, you're right about discard being vastly powered down in the triple Rise format. I vividly remember siding in Perish the Thought against an opponent whose sole game plan was to stall and ramp to 15 (!) in order to cast the single Emrakul in his deck. When he built up to 13 mana, I pulled the trigger and nabbed it. That was sweet.
I understand that disruption is an element of magic. But discard is very potent against decks trying to cast that one over the top threat. Are we trying to promote going over the top as a valid strategy? If so, discard needs to be dialed back a bit. Even the "weak" discard spells would be very strong against this type of strategy. Mind rot could have cost 5 mana in rise of the eldrazi and would have seen play. Therefore, there was no mind rot variant in Rise. Obviously this set is different than that set, so we can experiment, but my gut feeling is that any discard spells would be silver bullets against the "go big" decks and my suggestion would be to start with the power level extremely low and perhaps ratchet it up as testing justifies.
Of course, now that I've finished typing that last paragraph, and I'm rethinking: maybe I am misjudging the power level of discard. Perhaps it's fair as it currently stands, from a balance perspective. But even if that were that the case (and for the record, I doubt it is), I still think we should cut way back on it. If the point of the cube is to build up to giant type plays, and I draft a deck that looks to do that reasonably well, and my critical turn is coming up, and then I have to discard my hand to a lowly Mind Rot, that's my definition of not having fun. It's an easier pill to swallow if they had to spend a TON of mana to do that. I guess my point is, the cube says "do this!" But then there are cards that are REALLY good at stopping "this."
Re: Jason:
Dragon's Breath is another good one; the firebreathing is a nice plus. I was just throwing things out there for variety's sake.
Gruesome Discovery was sometimes good in DKA, because if you hit their last two cards, it was good, and if you had morbid, it was good. But that format dumped hands quickly and people played around morbid. In this format I'd guess that you almost always have morbid when you want it. This is fine for many cards, but outside of everything I've already said about discard (it's likely a fun-crusher against many decks), imagine this scenario: On the play, one drop -> Nest Invader -> T3 Gruesome Discovery. It doesn't matter what deck they have, unless their hand was super-awesome, you could potentially cripple them.
Morbid + Eldrazi Spawn is a cool design space in theory, but morbid wasn't really explored a ton in ISD block. The set had very few ways to get an "easy" morbid trigger. Quite intentionally, it was very hard to get a morbid trigger if your opponent didn't want you to have it. Realistically, you'd usually have to expend a card and/or a significant chunk of mana to get the trigger. But the rewards were potentially game-breaking: either two-for-ones or major upgrades in creature quality. Keeping an eye on these cards will be important: it's possible that the G/B "Eldrazi Spawn" deck can win without casting an eldrazi at all, just morbid creatures that get a serious upgrade when "kicked" by a spawn. These creatures don't have embarrassing stats on their own, so unlike the eldrazi themselves, they aren't dead cards if you didn't get the spawns to help speed them out.
My assessment could be flat out wrong, but it's something to look out for when testing.
Also Stupor is already in the cube. I wasn't suggesting you add it. I was suggesting you cut it.
I was typing my novel of a reply when you posted. I just searched for discard in Rise, and had forgotten about Perish the Thought. I do recall MaRo or someone saying that Perish specifically shuffled into the library to reduce the feel-bad of losing your best card; you had hope to draw it again (sort of goes against what the cardname suggests).
It's funny, too, because games with decks that went big could easily go long, and it wasn't at all out of the question to redraw the discarded card, considering the starting library size of 40. If I recall correctly, my opponent actually redrew his Emrakul that game, then hardcast it, but I had enough of a board presence to pay six permanents in tribute and still deal lethal.
Man ROE had bad discard? There was a really big patch between cabal therapy and thoughtsieze where the best you could get were cards like ravenous rats and distress.
These eldrazi decks seem like something we were talking about earlier. Tooth and nail decks or rude awakening decks or plow under decks or critical mass decks. These are decks that get a bunch if resources into play through lands and value guys and then goes into topdeck mode then fights disruption with card selectors and recursion to get back it's big dumb play. They can usually survive disruption if they are keeping up with the disruptive deck on cards because their one big play is worth so many of their opponents cards that they have no problem. Making crappy trades until the game goes long and they slide one through.
These eldrazi decks seem like something we were talking about earlier. Tooth and nail decks or rude awakening decks or plow under decks or critical mass decks. These are decks that get a bunch if resources into play through lands and value guys and then goes into topdeck mode then fights disruption with card selectors and recursion to get back it's big dumb play. They can usually survive disruption if they are keeping up with the disruptive deck on cards because their one big play is worth so many of their opponents cards that they have no problem. Making crappy trades until the game goes long and they slide one through.
Oops. Yeah, I don't really know my own list. I could probably tell you from memory what is in each section of my primary cube fairly accurately, but for this one I just jammed ideas in a list (a while ago) and let it stew until I had the resources to start tracking down the cards.
Good call on Stupor being gone. I will definitely keep an eye on the other discard sources. I too can see there being decks that use spawn tokens and no Eldrazi, but that doesn't really bother me. I want ramp to be viable, and certainly don't want to hate it out. There will be many things to tweak. Also note that the Utility Land Draft will have things like Eldrazi Temple and Eye of Ugin, to give these strategies a boost.
The big challenge is making ramp possible without having it dominate the entire design. It's very different space than my hyper-low CMC cube.
Give them few things to ramp into? I guess this question is exceptionally hard given the necessities that domain x five colour imply.
I guess fixing can be of the mana exchange variety.
We could also see a surge of 1 and 2 cc aggressive spells. Making 1/2/3 drops more interesting keeps people from skipping those turns for later ones sometimes.
There have been a number of draft formats that favored midranged decks with lots of removal and enabler turns with decks that were developed out if the dregs of the format that ended up keeping the greedier ones with better cards honest.
I guess fixing can be of the mana exchange variety.
We could also see a surge of 1 and 2 cc aggressive spells. Making 1/2/3 drops more interesting keeps people from skipping those turns for later ones sometimes.
There have been a number of draft formats that favored midranged decks with lots of removal and enabler turns with decks that were developed out if the dregs of the format that ended up keeping the greedier ones with better cards honest.
Well, there are actually a ton of 1/2/3 drop beaters in the list, they're just weaker than the ones in my primary cube.
I drafted the cube twice so far and got these "Sweet" decklists
http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/1192
This one says "junk with an AI that doesn't pick the lands up." 15 nonbasics, and only 6 sideboard cards for a total of 39 cards played ! on top of that, it kinda feels liek it does something.
http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/1193
The AI was picking up, but i still had the chance to go ludicrous on domain. 13 nonbasics and quite a few fixers. Turn 5 kozilek is included in this deck: T2 Pentad prism -> T4 composite golem -> T5 Kozilek. I prefer a T5 artisan of kozilek though, bringing back the golem for more shenanigans.
http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/1192
This one says "junk with an AI that doesn't pick the lands up." 15 nonbasics, and only 6 sideboard cards for a total of 39 cards played ! on top of that, it kinda feels liek it does something.
http://cubetutor.com/draftdeck/1193
The AI was picking up, but i still had the chance to go ludicrous on domain. 13 nonbasics and quite a few fixers. Turn 5 kozilek is included in this deck: T2 Pentad prism -> T4 composite golem -> T5 Kozilek. I prefer a T5 artisan of kozilek though, bringing back the golem for more shenanigans.
So Stupor is coming out, but I don't know for what just yet.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Yeah the draft gets better the more you use it.
I'm actually having a problem with mine at the moment because I did so many drafts looking for content for the wildfire article, that now it's impossible to wheel artifact mana or wildfire! Probably not indicative of your average draft environmental
I'm actually having a problem with mine at the moment because I did so many drafts looking for content for the wildfire article, that now it's impossible to wheel artifact mana or wildfire! Probably not indicative of your average draft environmental
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Now that I think of it, if morbid is a thing in this cube (and maybe you have a bunch of death triggers?)
the newly reprinted perilous research might be sweet
the newly reprinted perilous research might be sweet
Possible replacements for Stupor:
Go nuts everybody!
Go nuts everybody!
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Tribute to hunger seems AWEFUL in this format.
Contamination is really powerful, but maybe not the right kind of powerful. It does shut your opponent down, which might be really easy to keep up with all the tokens flying around.
My pick: Stab Wound
Contamination is really powerful, but maybe not the right kind of powerful. It does shut your opponent down, which might be really easy to keep up with all the tokens flying around.
My pick: Stab Wound