Card/Deck Lin Sivvi

[KBH]

Has anyone tried her by making all Humans be Rebels? It more or less fits thematically and White is super heavy on Humans to begin with. We're thinking of trying this out because we like it much better than the ad hoc method of errata'ing various creatures (permanents..) to be have the Rebel subtype

But if its been tried before, I'd appreciate feedback on how well it works before we jump in head first

 

[Jason Waddell]

Has anyone tried her by making all Humans be Rebels? It more or less fits thematically and White is super heavy on Humans to begin with. We're thinking of trying this out because we like it much better than the ad hoc method of errata'ing various creatures (permanents..) to be have the Rebel subtype

But if its been tried before, I'd appreciate feedback on how well it works before we jump in head first

In case you weren't aware (which it sounds like you are) Andy Cooperfauss' cube runs Rebels, but he has manually chosen specific creatures to have a "Rebel" creature type. He wrote an article about it here:
http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/3-putting-white-back-on-the-map/

I will say, your Humans -> Rebels solution sounds much more elegant, but is potentially more difficult to balance.

To my knowledge nobody has tried this specific change before.

For reference:

 

[KBH]

The reason I don't think it would be hard to balance is that we wouldn't really change anything else.

She basically augments the creature base that is already available, with prime targets being

Hero of Bladehold
Mother of Runes
Thalia
Silverblade Paladin
Mirran Crusader
Mirror Entity
maybe Accorder Paladin or Student of Warfare or Champion of the Parish?

I should add that in GW you can get Knight of the Reliquary although my biggest disappointment was Gaddock Teeg who is a Kithkin.

Brainstorming a little, you could maybe do something tricky with Ranger of Eos or Fiend Hunter/Banisher.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The reason I don't think it would be hard to balance is that we wouldn't really change anything else.

She basically augments the creature base that is already available, with prime targets being

Hero of Bladehold
Mother of Runes
Thalia
Silverblade Paladin
Mirran Crusader
Mirror Entity
maybe Accorder Paladin or Student of Warfare or Champion of the Parish?

I should add that in GW you can get Knight of the Reliquary although my biggest disappointment was Gaddock Teeg who is a Kithkin.

Brainstorming a little, you could maybe do something tricky with Ranger of Eos or Fiend Hunter/Banisher.

Well, this is a little bit of what I meant. Those creatures are very powerful, particularly if you are tutoring them up reliably. I could imagine this sort of archetype becoming very powerful. I don't know if you're only intending on adding Lin Sivvi, or if you had other Rebel fetchers in mind.

If you think of, say, Modern Masters limited, the rebel archetype was quite potent despite all the creatures in the deck being pretty terrible on your own. Now you have the same thing, but with actually good creatures getting fetched onto the battlefield. Will that be too strong? Only testing will tell. If it is too good, then it might be tricky to tone down "rebels" without toning down white in general. I guess the first step then would be running the weaker rebel fetchers.

I think it's a really interesting design task, and if it's all calibrated correctly could be a lot of fun. Looking forward to hearing your experiences.

 

[KBH]

To be honest, we will probably try it but there is a bit of a stigma attached to "out there" ideas so not everyone who plays with us will be thrilled about it. So it may not last long.

We have already boosted white a bit by playing Cold Snap. Thats another thing we don't always play because some people object to it. It also makes an awkward situation where it conflicts with Symbol Status if you actually use Snow Covered lands since Snow lands are in exactly two expansions. The alternative is the unappealing decision to make all basics count as Snow.

Its an issue because those are both probably the best card in their color if you play them

 

[Jason Waddell]

Yeah, managing the playgroup is always a tough one. I know my group has been exceptionally accepting of out of the box ideas, and I feel pretty free to tinker knowing that the players will judge ideas by their merit rather than based on some inherent prejudices. But I imagine the people I play with are more of the exception than the rule unfortunately.

But I also know that people have been less enthused about some changes (errata) than others (breaking singleton). Multiple copies of a card needs no explanation, but playing a card that works differently than how it does in real Magic (or an entirely custom card) can be a tougher sell to some players. It's a very emotional issue, and probably just a human reaction. Two years ago I probably would have called BS on somebody trying to include a "custom card" version of Deathrite Shaman, Lingering Souls, or Snapcaster Mage, but now that they are real WOTC cards I am more than happy to run them. Errata'd cards that top the power curve further exacerbate this issue.

 

[CML]

Right, people are far more willing to play with a broken card that's actually been printed.

The custom cube project is interesting, though I wonder if I do better as a designer with the constraint "real cards" (even as I chafe at singleton and so forth)

 

[Jason Waddell]

The problem with the custom cube project is that most of the cards seemed absurdly complicated and inelegant. It looked like it would be a massive headache to play.

 

[Dom Harvey]

^yeah, that. It's like it was designed by impatient EDH players.

 

[Eric Chan]

I know my group has been exceptionally accepting of out of the box ideas, and I feel pretty free to tinker knowing that the players will judge ideas by their merit rather than based on some inherent prejudices. But I imagine the people I play with are more of the exception than the rule unfortunately.

My regular playgroup barrrrrrrrely accepts the fact that I'm breaking singleton, and they're aghast whenever they learn I've cut Yet Another Cube Staple ("But but but, if you just run more artifact removal, Swords / Wurmcoil are very fair"!). Cube culture around here is still stuck in some kind of backwater town.

A while ago, the thought had briefly crossed my mind to errata Kithkin, Human, and Ally into some sort of mega-tribe. Then I could run stuff like Wizened Cenn, Hada Freeblade, Kazandu Blademaster, and Goldmeadow Stalwart (!!) without embarrassment. In the end, though, I decided it was too much trouble for too marginal of a gain.

On Lin Sivvi, I don't know what your cube looks like, but my worry is that she would lead to repetitive game states. Nabbing random utility creatures is one thing, but getting the likes of Hero of Bladehold (!) and other game-dominating bombs is another. I guess it depends on how much help your white weenie archetype needs, and it's definitely worth giving a shot if you want to let it play in the big leagues. The main concern I have is that games with your rebel searcher would play out completely different than games without, and much like planeswalkers, Lin Sivvi would create a sub-game of "can you kill me or not?".

 

[Jason Waddell]

I think that if you were really building cards from scratch that things would look a lot different. Cube-level tribal cards could be much better designed. Storm is a cool mechanic that would be much more fun in draft if the cards gave you good value at, say, Storm count = 2. That solves a lot of the poison principle things while still allowing cool interactions and interesting sequencing opportunities.

I maintain that silent cuts are the best way to handle a cube group. Most people probably never realized that Recurring Nightmare has been gone for ages, they just keep on playing.

 

[Jason Waddell]

On Lin Sivvi, I don't know what your cube looks like, but my worry is that she would lead to repetitive game states. Nabbing random utility creatures is one thing, but getting the likes of Hero of Bladehold (!) and other game-dominating bombs is another. I guess it depends on how much help your white weenie archetype needs, and it's definitely worth giving a shot if you want to let it play in the big leagues. The main concern I have is that games with your rebel searcher would play out completely different than games without, and much like planeswalkers, Lin Sivvi would create a sub-game of "can you kill me or not?".

I found the Rebels to be pretty repetitive in Modern, but really like the Birthing Pod decks in cube. The combination of a much higher density of removal coupled with the fact that Birthing Pod takes a creature away from the board makes for much more fluid game states. Rebels just kind of snowball. Very different quality of design in my opinion.

 

[KBH]

^yeah, that. It's like it was designed by impatient EDH players.

Probably over 90% of custom cards are terrible for this reason and the related (but not totally the same) Wall of Text.

Personally, I think the design team should be keywording more not less. Yes, more keywords = more to remember (which is one interpretation of "complexity") but I view it like a controlled burn where "some fires prevents more fires".

Also this would likely tighten things up as you'd be more likely to reuse the keyword than recreate the ability in a slightly different fashion. THAT practice is a complexity problem because it may seem like mintuae most of the time but there invariably arises some corner case that isn't so "corner" and now everyone has to keep track of which interactions work with which iterations of what is basically the same ability.

 

[KBH]

One reason I've gravitated toward playing the Unglued cards is that they are end up being format defining cards that you otherwise totally miss out on EVER playing.

Contract from Below
Chaos Orb
Topsy Turvy = bizarre pseudo Time Walk
We haven't figured out what to do with Necro-Impotence yet but it basically reads: pay 16-18 life, draw your deck
Once More With Feeling = white reset button (compare to Shahrazad and its way better, I think better than Armageddon too. We don't think it compares as much to Upheaval as you think)

Add Cold Snap and Symbol Status and those are all arguable top 20 cards in a powered Cube.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Cold Snap?

 

[CML]

Hada Freeblade / Kazandu Blademaster

Wizened Cenn

Goldmeadow Stalwart

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Revisiting this topic, what do you think the best way to do rebels in cube?

1) Playing is written is pretty much out, rebels are kind of crappy on their own.
2) Manually make certain creatures rebels on a design level. Its the most exact, but also the most annoying.
3) Blanket a creature type as rebel (human, for example), but as Eric said there are some potenial issues with this.
4) (This was my idea) Manually assign the rebel title to creatures on a player level. That is, after drafting, pick, say 4 creatures in your deck to be rebels. Before the match, you show your opponent the list and they can assign one as a traitor, who is not a rebel for that match. The upside is that its flexible with the veto helping to curb the abusive repetitive game state issue, but the downside is that its a weighty rule everyone has to listen to.

The searchers I was thinking of using were Ramosian Sgt, Amarou Scout and Ramosian Captain.

 

[DreamPaint]

Why not just errata the Rebel searchers to tutor for Humans instead? It seems a lot simpler to errata Lin Sivvi, Defiant Falcon, etc. to just search for Humans rather than errata a bunch of random Humans/Hounds/Cats/etc. to be Rebels. That way when you open Lin Sivvi you know exactly what she tutors for (Elite Vanguard, NOT Isamaru) and you don't have to wonder if Stoneforge Mystic and Sublime Archangel randomly got changed to Rebels.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

That was option 3. All humans are rebels or rebel searchers find humans, its all the same. I agree its a reasonably clean option, but is there a good gameplay reason for why its cool to search for Mother of Runes, but not Isamaru?

 

[Jonas]

Same reason why it is okay to search for a human rebel but not the human standing next to it?

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Same reason why it is okay to search for a human rebel but not the human standing next to it?

Sorry, you're right, I expressed that poorly. Is there a good cube design reason why its cool to search for Mother of Runes, but not Isamaru? It seems that the dog is the more limited, less powerful card that could use some late game utility while Mom is in a pretty good spot already.

 

[Jonas]

I don't even play Isamaru, but looking over the rebels on gatherer, there are very few vanilla creatures to fetch, they have at least one keyword, and moving from MM, some interesting abilities, which is needed. I think a better way to make Lin-Sivvi interesting would be limiting the power of the creature she can fetch, something like "X: fetch a creature with casting cost X and power no more then 2." Then you can fetch utility creatures everywhere, and you can still get a lot of interesting choices, and makes her great at fetching gravecrawlers

 

[James Stevenson]

I don't even play Isamaru, but looking over the rebels on gatherer, there are very few vanilla creatures to fetch, they have at least one keyword, and moving from MM, some interesting abilities, which is needed. I think a better way to make Lin-Sivvi interesting would be limiting the power of the creature she can fetch, something like "X: fetch a creature with casting cost X and power no more then 2." Then you can fetch utility creatures everywhere, and you can still get a lot of interesting choices, and makes her great at fetching gravecrawlers

You've just designed a wholly new card. It looks sweet.

 

[CML]

Hard to balance that kind of effect as Herr Jonas realizes. How about a nice one of these

 

[Jonas]

A Lin-Sivvi that can fetch other things then rebels is a ton better then Recruiter though. I don't spend too much time thinking on custom cards, so I have no clue how to balance it.

You've just designed a wholly new card. It looks sweet.

Neat!