General How do YOU plan to use the various Conspiracy cards?

a handful of the new multicolor guys look interesting

the drafting-matters gimmicks look super gimmicky and more fun to think about than to play with. at least with 8 people, i think it'd be good for like 3-4 people maybe but then thats a bad draft for other reasons. too much unneeded complexity, people always mess up pack order or put drafted cards into the packs somehow on accident already. i have no idea how but i swear it happens every draft. even after i instituted the "put your phone/other item on top of your undrafted packs" rule
 
There are a handful of cards I'm definitely going to try. I plan to throw some of the more interesting drafting bots into my main cube and see what happens. As far as cards with the conspiracy mechanic goes, they seem perfectly suited for the Utility Land Draft (except for a couple which might be strong enough for the main draft). I think I'll mostly avoid the will of the council cards, as they don't feel quite right for 1-vs-1.

If I eventually get around to building the BANG! cube injection for multiplayer, I think a lot of the cards will end up there.

EDIT: If you use plastic sleeves, here is an idea for drafting bots and hidden agenda cards...
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Laz

Developer
I am going to assume you are talking about the draft matters cards, since, I mean, I am mostly excited about getting a modern border Gamekeeper, as well as having better access to modern border versions of some staples (Swords, Brainstorm), as well as sweet new art, but that is hardly going to affect anything bar the aesthetics of my cube.

On the draft matters cards, at this stage I am reserving judgement. I am going to test out some of the conspiracy cards, most likely starting with Power Play ('You are the starting player' Two-player errata: For game 1 of the match) conspiracy. That seems the most benign one to gauge how my players feel about them as a whole. If that is received positively, I might throw in Advantageous Proclamation (Deck size is reduced by 5). I am a little concerned that these might favour aggressive decks a little too much, but we will see with testing.

Of the draft manipulating artifacts, I am not sure yet, but my initial outlook is not hugely positive. Whispergear Sneak (the 'look at an unattended pack'-guy) is kind of interesting, as is the first revealed Cogwork Librarian, since having what essentially amounts to a revolving wild-card might be fun. Both definitely contribute to more consistent decks coming out of the drafting process if drafted early, though the Sneak is a personal help, while the Librarian helps most of the drafters.

The 'add a pack'-guy's mechanic is simply miserable, not to mention the fact that I cube with 360, so running out of cards to draft is a real possibility, and I chose that number for consistency, consistency I would have to sacrifice to play that card. I also dislike the 'eat a pack'-guy, since randomly stopping cards from wheeling is not particularly fun, and the variance on taking a whole pack seems really high.
 

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I like the 'eat-a-pack'-guy. It's only one pack, and the rest of the cards that haven't been picked will actually wheel one seat further. The best thing is you can still look at the packs, but you can't draft anything. So you get valuable information about what colors are being cut, but you also get to faceslap yourself when a brilliant pick comes along that you can't touch. "Noooooooooooooooo!"

I am also definitely adding the 'bargain-trade'-guy. Offering one card up "for sale" sounds like an awesome mechanic, and a 2/3 looter for 3 is pretty playable anyway.
 
I like eat-a-pack, post-draft-trade, worldknit, minus-5-decksize, surprise-ultimatum conspiracy and sort of like librarian. Grinder seems neat and skill-testing. Dredger seems silly, but good in combination with some of the other things going on (eg: grinder).

A lot of the hidden agenda cards would be good in a cube that had multiples of less good creatures/spells, as they talk about in the whichever article it was I read; and they have to be less good because every discussion I've seen of them has been about build your own ancestral recall (or other broken card) rather than build your own squadron hawk or whatever.
 
My players are consistently too derp / too cheaty to use freaking coldsteel heart. "Remember x number" and hidden agenda cards are right out the window for me.

Advantageous Proclamation to let decks be more focused / archetypes less punishing for 'missing' on too many picks.

Power Play because it's OP as all hell but I'm gonna make everyone find out the hard way.

Backup Plan is also likely OP but again, testing and learning is better than guessing.

Worldknit will likely be attempted, but I've got a few five-color enabling cards in my list and it's kind of miserable to see someone draft 12+ duals because they want to force it. The dynamic of them risking not getting "the payoff" while ruining everyone else's mana bases makes it less and less fun as time goes on.

I'm trying Cogwork Librarian, Agent of Acquisition and Deal Broker. Lore Seeker and Canal Dredger don't actually do anything IMO, and I don't like Grinder's concept in Cube- hate picks now have an upside.

I'm at least mildly curious about almost all the new gold cards. Grenzo has to be one of the most exciting and most powerful cards in the set. Flexible CC + powerful, cheap activation + playable in multiple archetypes? Seems great to me!
 

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
My players are consistently too derp / too cheaty to use freaking coldsteel heart. "Remember x number" and hidden agenda cards are right out the window for me.

I'm gonna have to figure out some kind of sticky note tech to deal with all this. It does seem like a minor pain in the ass, in addition to bringing dice and tokens for my players.
 

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I love love love Worldknit and will be including it and drafting it as soon as possible

I actually like Aether Searcher a lot too, it reminds me of cascade
 
I'm really unsure about the conspiracy cards themselves. But deal broker is awesome. Haven't made my mind up re the others yet. However they all make me want to pay booster tutor. If we're going to go wacky lets do it.
 
If you have to play an actual CNS draft, you can always get out of playing it by cheating Phage into play.
 
If I run the conspiracies, I might just let people decide what the "named card" is when they flip up the conspiracy. It's not like they can reuse the effect too often in one game and it adds some extra options in game. Also removes the fuss of writing crap down.
I'd also probably allow you to reflip each game, again to avoid having to buy post-its just to draft. Again it doesn't feel THAT broken to like, let someone choose a different creature for +1/+1 counters.
Might implement a conspiracy draft rather than add them to the main cube.

Realistically I'm not going to run the actual conspiracy cards. Cogwork Librarian, Grenzo, Dack and his duplicant are the new cards I care about.
 

CML

Contributor
I'm optimistic for Aether Searcher, too. At the very least, I'm pretty sure it'll be miles better than Maelstrom Wanderer.


yeah dom this is the card we're most excited about to play with tomorrow

Clearly WotC needs to make a dice with WUBRG1 as the faces of a D6 for this
wtf man great idea

is anyone else trying BASICALLY EVERYTHING?

advantageous proc
double stroke
worldknit
iterative anal
deal broker
aether searcher
agent of acquisitions
grenzo
paliano

dack’s duplicate
lore seeker
canal dredger
custodi soulbinders

how can y'all see this set and not want to print all the proxies and put them in your cube will ynilly
 
I don't think there's enough of the "special cards" to warrant a seperate draft. I'll probably just throw some of the more interesting ones in and cull from there.

I've got my eye on: Worldknit, Cogwork Librarian, Paliano.

Secondarily, I'm looking at Advantageous Proclamation, Backup Plan, and Unexpected Potential (for that single saucy splash), but I fear that all of them will detract from deckbuilding by making it easier.

Finally, Deal Broker might be interesting, especially if you're already running some effects which benefit from looting.
 
This is really what I wanted for my cube all along, so I'm not bothering to separate out conspiracies or draft-altering cards in any way.

Unexpected Potential looks like fun for the whole family. Splash anything! The only thing is, I don't really like the other Hidden Agenda cards, so running only one will make it a little bit less unexpected. At least the card itself will still be secret.

Worldknit also looks super fun. For the low cost of 1 spot in my cube, I can enable a whole new archetype that technically overlaps with every single other archetype? Sure!

Also going to add Librarian and Deal Broker, and probably Advantageous Proclamation, Backup Plan and Power Play.
 
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