I'm sorry Christ Aylor, you
Those of you remaining in the competition, you have 60 minutes to make an entree using the following four ingredients:
Remember, in this battle, flavor counts! Allez cuisine!
GBS
- Thread starter VibeBox
- Start date
I'm sorry Christ Aylor, you
Those of you remaining in the competition, you have 60 minutes to make an entree using the following four ingredients:
Remember, in this battle, flavor counts! Allez cuisine!
I call it the cold war cube. It's brimming with creatures with defender and disruption, especially mana disruption. Creatures with evasion and draw fixing are few and far between. You are very encouraged to play 1-2 colour decks, though over the course of a match you will likely find all five colours if you need to, you will probably have seen a lot of cards.
It plays an awful lot like a bad limited format. There are multiple copies of many cards that interact with the defender mechanic. Lots of creatures that are easily profitably blocked by walls too.
It plays an awful lot like a bad limited format. There are multiple copies of many cards that interact with the defender mechanic. Lots of creatures that are easily profitably blocked by walls too.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I like how in this awful format, the Antelope can be used as a way to push through damage.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Is there a 1 of rolling stones?
The final round is the dessert round.
The draft has an extra first pack that consists of Scheme cards and 'Goal' cards. A Goal card is Scheme-sized and has a difficult condition that must be met before it can be 'Scored', which allows the player to play a random card from their Scheme deck (minimum three Schemes). A goal is typically thoroughly tangential to winning the game:
Whenever you pay life, put that many futility counters on ~. When ~ has 10 or more futility counters on it, score ~.
Whenever one or more creatures you control attack in a band, put a science counter on ~. When ~ has three or more science counters on it, score ~.
You may score ~ whenever you could cast a sorcery if you've lost a game this match and it's not the first, second, or third turn of the game.
0: Skip your next turn. At the beginning of your next precombat main phase, score ~.
WUBRG: Score ~.
At the beginning of a match, each player reveals the top card of his or her goal deck. That Goal card is that player's active Goal for the remainder of the match or until it is scored. When you score a Goal, remove it from the deck, remove the random Scheme from its deck, and reveal the next Goal card. A player who has run out of Goals cannot score further Schemes this match. Players may reconfigure their Goal and Scheme decks between matches using their pool of drafted Goals and Schemes.
The first pack consists of four Goals and six Schemes. The cube contains 32 Goals so that all will be drafted and 50 Schemes so that 2 will not be drafted for a minimum amount of variety.
The cube itself (360) is full of oddball cards that obliquely support Goal cards or synergize with Scheme cards. Most are low-powered to allow the Schemes to flourish. Allied color pairs have themes:
WU: Flicker
UB: Mill
BR: Self-damage
RG: Landfall
GW: Banding
There is below average fixing, except for landfall enablers such as Harrow, and most of it is terrible. Removal is strong, counterspells are mediocre, and there are at least three big dorks that attack in each color. Stuff like Goliath Sphinx and Ancient Hellkite.
There is one Sneak Attack, for heat. (58 minutes!)
Whenever you pay life, put that many futility counters on ~. When ~ has 10 or more futility counters on it, score ~.
Whenever one or more creatures you control attack in a band, put a science counter on ~. When ~ has three or more science counters on it, score ~.
You may score ~ whenever you could cast a sorcery if you've lost a game this match and it's not the first, second, or third turn of the game.
0: Skip your next turn. At the beginning of your next precombat main phase, score ~.
WUBRG: Score ~.
At the beginning of a match, each player reveals the top card of his or her goal deck. That Goal card is that player's active Goal for the remainder of the match or until it is scored. When you score a Goal, remove it from the deck, remove the random Scheme from its deck, and reveal the next Goal card. A player who has run out of Goals cannot score further Schemes this match. Players may reconfigure their Goal and Scheme decks between matches using their pool of drafted Goals and Schemes.
The first pack consists of four Goals and six Schemes. The cube contains 32 Goals so that all will be drafted and 50 Schemes so that 2 will not be drafted for a minimum amount of variety.
The cube itself (360) is full of oddball cards that obliquely support Goal cards or synergize with Scheme cards. Most are low-powered to allow the Schemes to flourish. Allied color pairs have themes:
WU: Flicker
UB: Mill
BR: Self-damage
RG: Landfall
GW: Banding
There is below average fixing, except for landfall enablers such as Harrow, and most of it is terrible. Removal is strong, counterspells are mediocre, and there are at least three big dorks that attack in each color. Stuff like Goliath Sphinx and Ancient Hellkite.
There is one Sneak Attack, for heat. (58 minutes!)
Chris Taylor
Contributor
This is of course more interesting than the list of cards that preform better in 40 card environments: Every mill card ever and shelldock isle 
Toolbox cards are always better the bigger the deck, no?
CML
Contributor
today i came up with the idea that the excessively steep power curves in most cubes and limited formats mimic the maldistribution of wealth in America or at Hasbro and all the surrounding hypocrisies.
i find it significant that a lot of you guys here are Euros. jason as an american who left that MTGS for greener pastures elsewhere seems particularly heroic
i find it significant that a lot of you guys here are Euros. jason as an american who left that MTGS for greener pastures elsewhere seems particularly heroic
While GSZ might not have had such a huge impact for EDH, Birthing Pod got banned in regular Highlander because the power of repeatable tutoring effects in a 100card-deck singleton format. I think GSZ would've also had a bigger impact on 100 card decks if your were allowed to run 4 of them.
Sorry for the radio silence lately. We have been spending all our extra energy searching for and purchasing a house. As of Friday, we finally have all the paperwork in and are going into contract on a place. Here's for hoping the remainder of the process isn't as excruciating as getting here, but I have to say I'm not hopeful
A friend of mine plays these and writes articles about the format on puremtgo. http://puremtgo.com/articles/return-classic-trilogy
I don't play Highlander myself even tough it's rather popular in the German scene so I wouldn't be the one to ask how the games play out. If you're interested there's a bunch of tournament reports and decklists on http://www.magicplayer.org/forum/index.php?board=10.60 .