https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/eldrazidomain
Lately I've been building towards the idea that there's a large swath of unexplored design space in the world of cubing. For the sake of clarity, I'll define cube here as a custom limited environment using only cards that have been printed by Wizards of the Coast.
Most early cubes were originally built under the restriction of singleton power maximization. These two restraints actually push us towards some extremely narrow design space. If you wanted to push some sort of theme, it needed to be one that Wizards had printed powerful cards in throughout the course of its history.
Oddly enough, despite 20 years of cards at their disposal, many cubes tend towards what I'll call "core set cubing". Yes, there are powerful cards involved, but the gameplan of individual decks, especially in the aggro theater, tend towards the generic. In retail sets, it's the expert-level expansions that tend to push into more unique archetypes. They dive into new mechanical space that allows you to draft decks unlike any you have played before (e.g. Eldrazi token ramp, dredge, Spider spawning, 5 color control, etc.).
Without printing new card designs of our own, there are two main ways to open up new design space: breaking singleton, and lowering power level.
Recently I've explored the idea of breaking singleton, and the results have been spectacular. Aggro decks have never been more fun to play, and my format is currently in a pretty nice place. There are certainly improvements to be made, but I'm liking the direction.
However, I draft my cube each and every week. I love it. But I am also filled with wanderlust. As both a player and a designer, I long to explore this uncharted territory.
So here's my idea: keep iterating and tweaking my current design for a few months, then freeze it and move to something new. Something dramatically new.
I want to build a cube from the ground up that explores new design space through a combination of mechanics and ideas that haven't coexisted in a draft format before. It also means that I'll need to power down to some degree.
Anyways, I need help carving out a new space.
I have some ideas. They're rough, ambitious, and possibly hopeless. Maybe we'll scrap them entirely:
- Design a cube that facilitates an interactive Eldrazi archetype. I'm not looking to use Channel or Grim Monolith or any of those things. We'll be using nearly every Eldrazi Spawn Token producer we can find, as well as other interesting ramp cards.
- Morbid: making a big colorless monster won't be the only thing you can do with eldrazi tokens. They also give you morbid on demand!
- Populate: Both the eldrazi spawn tokens and morbid are Jund-based mechanics, this ties us to white.
- Domain: because why not? If we have land fetchers (say, Khalni Heart Expedition), we might as well put in a sweet domain theme
Well, that's what I have so far. It's very incomplete, but I'm hoping your creativity can help to fill out the design (or point me in some better direction). I want a challenge, and I want to launch a completely new cube design in, say, September.
Thank you in advance for any and all input!
Lately I've been building towards the idea that there's a large swath of unexplored design space in the world of cubing. For the sake of clarity, I'll define cube here as a custom limited environment using only cards that have been printed by Wizards of the Coast.
Most early cubes were originally built under the restriction of singleton power maximization. These two restraints actually push us towards some extremely narrow design space. If you wanted to push some sort of theme, it needed to be one that Wizards had printed powerful cards in throughout the course of its history.
Oddly enough, despite 20 years of cards at their disposal, many cubes tend towards what I'll call "core set cubing". Yes, there are powerful cards involved, but the gameplan of individual decks, especially in the aggro theater, tend towards the generic. In retail sets, it's the expert-level expansions that tend to push into more unique archetypes. They dive into new mechanical space that allows you to draft decks unlike any you have played before (e.g. Eldrazi token ramp, dredge, Spider spawning, 5 color control, etc.).
Without printing new card designs of our own, there are two main ways to open up new design space: breaking singleton, and lowering power level.
Recently I've explored the idea of breaking singleton, and the results have been spectacular. Aggro decks have never been more fun to play, and my format is currently in a pretty nice place. There are certainly improvements to be made, but I'm liking the direction.
However, I draft my cube each and every week. I love it. But I am also filled with wanderlust. As both a player and a designer, I long to explore this uncharted territory.
So here's my idea: keep iterating and tweaking my current design for a few months, then freeze it and move to something new. Something dramatically new.
I want to build a cube from the ground up that explores new design space through a combination of mechanics and ideas that haven't coexisted in a draft format before. It also means that I'll need to power down to some degree.
Anyways, I need help carving out a new space.
I have some ideas. They're rough, ambitious, and possibly hopeless. Maybe we'll scrap them entirely:
- Design a cube that facilitates an interactive Eldrazi archetype. I'm not looking to use Channel or Grim Monolith or any of those things. We'll be using nearly every Eldrazi Spawn Token producer we can find, as well as other interesting ramp cards.
- Morbid: making a big colorless monster won't be the only thing you can do with eldrazi tokens. They also give you morbid on demand!
- Populate: Both the eldrazi spawn tokens and morbid are Jund-based mechanics, this ties us to white.
- Domain: because why not? If we have land fetchers (say, Khalni Heart Expedition), we might as well put in a sweet domain theme
Well, that's what I have so far. It's very incomplete, but I'm hoping your creativity can help to fill out the design (or point me in some better direction). I want a challenge, and I want to launch a completely new cube design in, say, September.
Thank you in advance for any and all input!
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