Goblin Game

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Goblin Game

320 card mostly red no deckbuilding desert bar cube.

6x Goblin Piker.



The Draft

Players draft 4 packs of 10 cards and play a 40 card deck. No basic land box. No sideboards. You draft 40 cards, shuffle them up, and play them.

5 packs of 8 with smaller groups.

The Mana

There are 128 copies of Mountain in the cube. There are no other lands in the cube.



You'll cast your nonred spells with these guys:



And this stuff:



Every "nonred" card in the cube has a red or colorless mode:



The Numbers Game

Red is not allowed to have burn spells with the number "4" on them.

There are 8 copies of Shock. There are 8 copies of Volcanic Hammer.



Red creatures are mostly little shitters from the 90s:



Nonred creatures get to have big numbers:



Or perhaps you'd like to enhance your dingus brigade:



Cave People is a pack 1 pick 1 bomb planeswalker.



The Combo Nonsense

After doing your prerequisite magic fundies gameplay and making smart trades on the ground versus your opponent's Hurloon Minotaur, you might enjoy engaging in some horseshit, such as:



Or:



Or maybe:



??????????:



The Goblin Game

Yes, the card Goblin Game is in the cube. No deckbuilding means every card gets played means you get to force people to cast these:



Decks

This cube has been drafted like 5 or 6 times. Here's a handful of cool and/or successful decks:

Thoughts

This cube is my magnum opus and is a pure distilled essence of what I think magic should be about. You play a series of tense, precise strategic decisions and then every once in a while something fucking stupid happens to you.

Land count could go a little lower maybe.

 

[LadyMapi]

A thing of pure beauty.

Goblin Spy + Soldier of Fortune is my favorite kind of bullshit.

 

[ravnic]

Pretty cool shit.

https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/4621ee6c-e16c-42f9-b0a1-afa75b2bfd63

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Some further thoughts on land count

My initial draft of this cube had 140 Mountains in it, or 17.5 lands per player. My rationale at the time was that I didn't want it to be too difficult to hit your desired land count, so I wanted lands to be somewhat easy to come by. It only took one 8 player full pod draft to realize how fucking stupid this was lol. Every card goes in every deck! If there are 17.5 lands per player, then players will have about 17.5 lands in their deck. More accurately, some players would steer themselves into a solid 15 or 16 and some players would get absolutely fucked and have to play with like 19 lands. One player even ended up with 21! Misery of miseries! So I immediately cut to 17 per player for the next draft and then cut again to 16 per player after that. I am currently still at 16 per player, but I could see cutting the number down even more.

There's a few complicating factors with this cube specifically:
1. The curve is extremely low except for when it isn't. The cube is primarily made up of cards that cost 1, 2, and 3, but there's a significant number of outlier big cycling idiots and other ramp target cards that are like 7+ mana.
2. As a result, there's a pretty big gap between the land counts that different types of decks want to play here. The player running pikers_equipment.dec can probably get away with going as low as 14, while the player who's trying to regularly cast Drownyard Behemoth might want a little more to work with.
3. However, the decks that are going big are playing tons of Myr and mana rocks, which are essentially just lands that you have to pay for, so even a deck that wants to cast the big dipshits is still probably not going to want to actually play 17 lands because a bunch of their nonland cards fix their mana and ramp them.

So I'm still on 16 for now. I figured this gives players some wiggle room where decks that want to play less lands can end up with 15ish and decks that to play more can end up with 17, but after more testing I would not be surprised to find that the average desired land count for decks in this cube is low enough that 15 lands per player wouldn't be crazy. I've been slowly ratcheting this down instead of jumping in the deepend and testing with way lower land counts because I think the consequences of some players ending up with a few too many lands is way less bad than a bunch of players not having enough. And hey if I end up going to 15 per player I get to add 8 more cards again. Whoo yeah awesome. Could also see something like 15.5 making sense. Gonna be keeping an eye on this whenever I get another chance to draft the cube.

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Some further thoughts on gameplay

I'm very proud of the way that this cube plays in a way I'm not sure that I've felt about any other project. I made a lot of big bets during the design process that all of these like stacked gimmicks, the no deckbuilding, the tight curation of numbers on cards, the nonred cards with red modes, would all come together and form a coherent and exciting draft format and I was shocked that it all just kinda worked on the first draft and I've only had to make minimal changes since then.

I've described the games in this cube as "slow until suddenly they aren't and someone dies". Games are "long" in that they take a lot of turns to finish, but since so many of the cards are very simple, the turns go by quickly and games generally don't take up a bunch of clock time.

The cube is all about choosing between 2-3 similar but appreciably different options every turn, which is my favorite thing to do in card games. Games begin as absolute bare bones fundamentals magic, chipping away at each other with dinguses and making classic magic combat decisions. Do you attack your Pikers into their Myrs? Do you trade your Goblin Tinkerer for one of their rocks or save it to beat Obelisk of Alara? Do you spend a Shock as removal now or try to go face later? Then the late game comes around and suddenly players are dropping insane haymakers that completely dominate the board, life totals get tight, and then you're dead from 2 Shocks and a Hammer. There's a really exciting ramp up from the straightforward small ball early game and the wild swings that happen once someone casts Aggressive Mining or reanimates their Greater Sandwurm.

The thing that I think is most successful about this cube, and the thing I would most want other folks to take away from this project and apply to their own designs, is the absolute devotion to controlling the numbers that get to be on the cards. I wanted this to be a cube about the numbers 1, 2, and 3, and making the distinction between them feel meaningful. Not allowing red creatures to have arbitrary big stats and aggressively curating the list around this means that players are always forced into making tight decisions. If you want to kill a thing with 4 toughness and your deck can't cast Expunge, you have to make risky plays in order to make progress. How can I get them to block this Piker with their Barkhide Mauler so I can finish it off with Shock? When is that 1-for-2 worth it? Do I want to trade my Mogg Fanatic for one of their 1 drop shitters so I can get in with my Pikers, or is it better to save it for later? And on and on and on. These sort of heuristic-driven gambly decisions are the type of thing I really love about this game and Goblin Game distills that gameplay down to its bare essentials. Every game I play in this cube I'm like hunched over the table staring the board down completely locked in and trying not to give too much away. It's fucking awesome.

One of my many motivations for this project was an ongoing frustration with stat creep in magic. I feel like WotC has just completely lost the plot on what numbers can go on cheap cards to the point that it feels like it just doesn't even matter anymore. Sure man here's a 2 mana 3/3 for 1G and it's not even that good. Who gives a shit. We often joke about how miserably shitty old creatures were, but I think people lose sight of the fact that they used to tightly control the stats on cards for a reason. They were trying to keep the game from spiraling out of control into oops my 1 drop is also a late game threat that fucking kills you. When the game becomes about that I think you lose a lot of clarity in the baits and bluffs that make combat in this game so fun. I would really encourage folks to take a look at their cube lists and ask themselves what they think a reasonable number is to put on a card of a given mana cost, and see how many cards just arbitrarily violate that constraint. I think the on-the-board gameplay of a cube can benefit immensely from being a complete freak about the numbers in the bottom right and top right corners of the cards

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Some thoughts on card advantage

You guys seen this shit? Pretty crazy.

Another one of my little frustrations with modern magic design is that card advantage just doesn't feel like it matters anymore. There are so many cards these days that are cheap threats that can completely snowball the game with value just by existing. It feels like they are so afraid of the idea of players ever running out of things to do, going into topdecking, not having anything to spend their mana on, that they've just made card accrual completely trivial. Every card is two cards, every card makes tokens, every card draws you into more copies of itself.

In Goblin Game, when you get a 2-for-1 with your Goblin Commando or your Jund Sojourners, it feels like a big swing because card advantage is so hard to come by. When you strip away trivial token generation and shit like Adventures and uhhhhh what's the new thing this week? "Prepared"? Okay. When you strip away all of these mechanics that make every card an Elvish Visionary, I think the game becomes a lot more tactical and rewards you for making smart plays to eke out incremental advantages over your opponent.

This also means that when players are able to cast one of the few cards in the cube that will put them up significantly on cards, its a huge swing that can turn the tide of the game. When someone drops their 8th land and then starts Aggressive Mining or casts Mizzix's Mastery overloaded and removes like 3 creatures at once, it feels splashy, exciting, and meaningful.

There was an early version of this list that had Experimental Frenzy in it, as part of a package of Weird Red Enchantments, and I cut it pretty quickly after realizing that it was just a 4 mana draw infinity and was breaking the card economy. I'm also gonna be keeping an eye on Rakshasa's Bargain since it is often just gonna be better Boon of the Wish Giver, but right now it's hanging on by swag factor.

And yeah, this means sometimes you and your opponent will topdeck at each other for a few turns. I'll be honest, I fucking love when both players are in topdeck mode. Sure, the game has "slowed down", but if you can't appreciate the tension of staring your opponent down trying to catch a glimmer of reaction to the cards they're drawing and praying they blink first, I don't understand you.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Where did you end up landing on Together as One?

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Where did you end up landing on Together as One?

Cool design and technically fits the restrictions but I think it's just way too cracked in a way that's not very interesting here. Getting to six mana is just not that hard to do and this card simultaneously removes a threat, puts you way ahead on cards and puts the life total race out of reach at the same time. And can also just be a big burn spell that ends the game, and I prefer my burn spells to deal 2 or 3 here so that they're in dialogue with Shock and Hammer. I like when players are doing math in their head trying to figure out how much life total they really have to work with. Would be cool in a similar cube that's working with a higher power level.

 

[LadyMapi]

I feel betrayed. How could you let the filthy number 4 show up on a red card?!?!

(I say as if Vexing Devil wasn't prominently in the first post. )

...

What's your opinion on



I mean, yeah, sure, it has a number bigger than three on it... if you kick it for . Given that this cube guarantees that every card is in a deck and that 12 mana is a reasonably big ask, I feel like everyone being aware that someone has an expensive end-the-game button might apply some interesting mental pressure.

 

[alvoi]

First comment: I love this project, and you are tempting me TOO much with the idea of just building it. I even have a foil Goblin Piker I opened in a Tenth Edition booster (I think) fifteen years ago. I am a monored enjoyer, I love Goblins, I love desert cubes, etc.

Anyways!

One of my many motivations for this project was an ongoing frustration with stat creep in magic. I feel like WotC has just completely lost the plot on what numbers can go on cheap cards to the point that it feels like it just doesn't even matter anymore. Sure man here's a 2 mana 3/3 for 1G and it's not even that good. Who gives a shit. We often joke about how miserably shitty old creatures were, but I think people lose sight of the fact that they used to tightly control the stats on cards for a reason. They were trying to keep the game from spiraling out of control into oops my 1 drop is also a late game threat that fucking kills you.

I have a similar feeling. Some time ago I was trying to design a Cube that was mainly focused on the graveyard, so that it had mechanics like threshold and madness and embalm. And then I realised that I wanted cards like Mystic Penitent and Mystic Visionary in the same Cube as cards like Trueheart Duelist and Sacred Cat: they were still commons and uncommons, but the power level delta was too much to have even the hope that a Cube like this could be balanced! And we are not even thinking about adding Angel of Sanctions!

Even rarity-restricted Cubes feel very hard to do lately, since many new cards are very interesting and I want to try them, but I realise that they are just stomping old classics. I am slowly converting to time-restricted Cubes, but obviously with that we should be aware of cards that now seem innocuous but were GRBS years ago

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

I feel betrayed. How could you let the filthy number 4 show up on a red card?!?!

(I say as if Vexing Devil wasn't prominently in the first post. )

You look me in the eye and you tell me that if you had an opportunity for Fire Juggler to be a reasonable card in an environment you were designing you wouldn't leap at the opportunity!

Seriously though, I actually really love how much Fire Juggler "yes and"s the mechanics here. Like sure, red can deal 4 damage to target creature. If and only if you can solve his perilous maze and answer his riddles three.

...

What's your opinion on



I mean, yeah, sure, it has a number bigger than three on it... if you kick it for . Given that this cube guarantees that every card is in a deck and that 12 mana is a reasonably big ask, I feel like everyone being aware that someone has an expensive end-the-game button might apply some interesting mental pressure.

Definitely a card I would consider, it's a classic and this is a space where you'd actually see the kicked mode happen somewhat often! I have been mostly off of big explosive burn spells in general because I ended up designing more towards wanting people to always be thinking in terms of Shock and Hammer damage numbers and cards like that sort of break that minigame, but Urza's Rage is definitely swaggy enough to deserve a look here and maybe bend that rule. It's certainly cooler than Landslide which was in the cube for literally a single playtest game before I said "this is fucking stupid" and cut it mid-match. Urza's Rage to the maybeboard!

First comment: I love this project, and you are tempting me TOO much with the idea of just building it. I even have a foil Goblin Piker I opened in a Tenth Edition booster (I think) fifteen years ago. I am a monored enjoyer, I love Goblins, I love desert cubes, etc.

I appreciate the kind words! I'd definitely encourage folks to try out cloning this list and tweaking it or trying out similar designs. I think this no-deckbuilding space is still really underexplored and there's a lot of potential for making things pop that are tough to get working in a "normal" cube. The fact that every card goes in a deck in every draft completely changes the way that I think about "balancing" a cube. Suddenly the card that was riding sideboards because it doesn't do enough gets passed around like a hot potato in the draft and then maybe actually does something in a game

Anyways!

I have a similar feeling. Some time ago I was trying to design a Cube that was mainly focused on the graveyard, so that it had mechanics like threshold and madness and embalm. And then I realised that I wanted cards like Mystic Penitent and Mystic Visionary in the same Cube as cards like Trueheart Duelist and Sacred Cat: they were still commons and uncommons, but the power level delta was too much to have even the hope that a Cube like this could be balanced! And we are not even thinking about adding Angel of Sanctions!

Even rarity-restricted Cubes feel very hard to do lately, since many new cards are very interesting and I want to try them, but I realise that they are just stomping old classics. I am slowly converting to time-restricted Cubes, but obviously with that we should be aware of cards that now seem innocuous but were GRBS years ago

Yeah I totally get this, one of the inspirations for this list was a white border bar cube that I played at Cubecon where I had maindeck Piker and was beating the shit out of people by suiting it up with Vulshock Morningstar and I just thought that being a powerful thing to do was so beautiful. There are so many degrees of gradation you can get out of power level in this game and most of it is left by the wayside in favor of more powerful cards. I think there is a lot of fun to be had with cards that are total dogshit and I love the idea of pushing further into this extreme low power space and seeing what happens.

 

[ravnic]

One of my many motivations for this project was an ongoing frustration with stat creep in magic. I feel like WotC has just completely lost the plot on what numbers can go on cheap cards to the point that it feels like it just doesn't even matter anymore. Sure man here's a 2 mana 3/3 for 1G and it's not even that good. Who gives a shit. We often joke about how miserably shitty old creatures were, but I think people lose sight of the fact that they used to tightly control the stats on cards for a reason. They were trying to keep the game from spiraling out of control into oops my 1 drop is also a late game threat that fucking kills you. When the game becomes about that I think you lose a lot of clarity in the baits and bluffs that make combat in this game so fun. I would really encourage folks to take a look at their cube lists and ask themselves what they think a reasonable number is to put on a card of a given mana cost, and see how many cards just arbitrarily violate that constraint. I think the on-the-board gameplay of a cube can benefit immensely from being a complete freak about the numbers in the bottom right and top right corners of the cards

Oh my god yes. People say power is relative but do you know what isn't relative or what doesn't change? Your life total. It's always 20. I think the commanderization of power and toughness in this game is seriously making it less fun. Every little stumble is deadly today. Just look at what standard has become. They used to seperate stats and value/utility, almost never would a creature with a great etb or otherwise strong ability be on or above curve. In modern design, creatures do everything pon their own.

Another one of my little frustrations with modern magic design is that card advantage just doesn't feel like it matters anymore. There are so many cards these days that are cheap threats that can completely snowball the game with value just by existing. It feels like they are so afraid of the idea of players ever running out of things to do, going into topdecking, not having anything to spend their mana on, that they've just made card accrual completely trivial. Every card is two cards, every card makes tokens, every card draws you into more copies of itself.

Yes exactly where I was going! Remember when Vitu-Ghazi The City Tree was a great card in draft AND constructed? Selesnya Guildmage was even considered the first mythic uncommon because it could make a freaking saproling for FOUR mana. Today, Vitu-Ghazi would be barely playable and the guildmage would just be a solid C even in limited.

Even rarity-restricted Cubes feel very hard to do lately, since many new cards are very interesting and I want to try them, but I realise that they are just stomping old classics. I am slowly converting to time-restricted Cubes, but obviously with that we should be aware of cards that now seem innocuous but were GRBS years ago

I also feel that what I try for my cube is to have a few cards tagged as power level orientation. That means whenever I add new cards, I try to remember myself and compare them with for example Gravedigger and see if they look like they belong together in the same draft environment or if the new toy just shits on my old favorites

 

[Jamie]

I am currently still at 16 per player, but I could see cutting the number down even more.

Perhaps you could give everyone a copy of Goblin Trenches that begins in play