Morph, Adjusted

[tbo]

Hello Riptide!

I've been lurking on the forum for a while while tinkering with my Graveyard themed cube-- (I might start a blog for that one too), and while I've found a huge amount of help here, that environment is more put together, so I figured that if I were going to start a cube blog, it should be for something messy- something So very WIP that I can evolve it here.

Morph provides a huge amount of depth to gameplay-- When do I unmorph instead of casting a spell? How do I best time my removal? Do I play my better morph first into removal, or sandbag it but lose tempo? Do I fire off removal on the first morph or not? Etc. etc. hidden information and mana sinks make for fantastic gameplay

The goal here is to create an environment that revolves around morph, using things that interact well with it or create interesting dynamics, rather than just shoehorning morph into a cube
For example:
Anthems get a lot more valuable-- ways to have your 2/2s beat their 2/2s


Ways to play at instant speed let you hold up mana more easily


There's a lot of colorless spells and creatures going around!


Blinking is basically show and tell, right?


Some cards like manifest


Stats matter most in how they match up to a 2/2


The cmc of a morph is 0 in all zones


Everyone is casting creatures, and creatures are mana sinks


Protection feels less bad, because it will rarely shut off your whole board, and rarely mean unblockable. This both weakens protection and helps design-wise (Not 100% sure on this one yet)


Morph incentivizes acting on your opponent's turn


Misc, But cute:


Introducing: Morph, Adjusted!

This cube wasn't 'inspired' by the old riptide thread on the same topic per se (as in, I found the thread after starting the design), but this is extremely relevant: https://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/adapting-morph-to-cubes.1730/

The basic Idea is that morph is lots of fun! But unfortunately, playing Gray ogres is extremely inefficient, and while low-power cubes can be a lot of fun, powering them up a little bit lets a lot come out to play, as morphs can now go hand in hand with cards that would have previously laughed at their inefficacy.

Of course, the first thing to consider is, What to change the morph statline to? The thread linked above plays around with a few ideas, like, to pull straight from that post:



That thread also included ideas about an etb scry or draw a card, which I think adds too much complexity

But at the end of the day, I think the easiest and most elegant change is...
-------->

Which is honestly because I think morphs were designed around the 2/2 statline and while removing 1 from the cost has a lot of implications, going to a 1/1 p/t fundamentally changes how cards play


Also, the idea of a format full of squires bouncing off each other gives me

So, 2/2 for 2 it is!

This has some immediate implications on the environment
1. When playing morphs for 3, we had to be a lot more careful about nerfing removal, because getting a Gray ogre Shocked is a massive tempo loss. Having the same thing happen to a two drop hurts a lot less. This means we can pump up our removal's power level

2. Some cards get a lot better

We'll see as this plays out whether these are problematically good or simply quite powerful

3. On the other hand:


4. With a less embarrassing statline, it's even easier to splash off-color morphs, or get up to crazy 5 color shenanigans. Looking forward to seeing how this develops. There aren't Archetypes inherent to the design, with the goal being to allow players to discover their own synergies

So far, I've only done a single draft of this cube (and it was a two person draft). Quarantine sucks . But it was a ton of fun! There are definitely some potential balance issues, which I'll post some thoughts on below
(Also, if anyone wants to help test the environment, we've been doing online drafts and are always looking for more people to join. online drafting is an opportunity!)

This is my first major post on Riptide and I'm looking forward to developing this and other cubes with you all!

 

[tbo]

Cards I'm Worried About/Watching

Overpowered

Cost Reducers:


Free Morphs


Potentially overpowered Morphs


Card advantage engines that double as armies


3CMC Planeswalkers that affect the board

(More concerned about Kaya than Lili)

Misc

I'm worried that this will be a huge beating


Protection gets a meaningful nerf and less feel-bads, but is it enough?


Can steal a morph for 3 mana + Flexibility. Heavy Blue requirement and flipping up a morph will fizzle the spell. This could become Dominate if it's Too strong but within reason, or be cut altogether.


3 CMC Sweeper for Morphs with additional Flexibility and timing. This could be Gaze of Granite, or just something else.


Potentially Underpowered

Some Morphs


Misc

The Idea here is that you manipulator on turn 3, and turn 4 play two morphs and are now able to steal a morph. Too cute? We'll see

A good effect with morphs but 6 is a lot (Plus, there's no paper printing, but my group is ok with proxies). Kinda pales in comparison to other versions of this effect, Mentor of the Meek,Bygone Bishop,Beast Whisperer.


A bit worried this just doesn't do enough? you try to play out more cards while letting them unmorph, and then try to get value. interesting play, but is it any good? we shall see.


Essentially Hieroglyphic Illumination, Right? ...Right?


Seven is a lot of mana. Could turn out that this is the fair version of Whisperwood/Primordial mists, or it might be bad.


5 mana for 2 Toughness in a field full of 2 mana 2/2s and 2 damage removal. Questionable at best, but does have a high ceiling. (I think)


The weaker colorless matters payoffs. I'm a bit higher on Drone than Tyrant, but Tyrant is a lot worse than Siege-Gang Commander and Pia and Kiran Nalaar-- It's possible that those are too strong, otherwise Tyrant is too weak.

One of the major design challenges is that while adjusting morphs helps all of them, it doesn't do anything for the cards around morphs, like the Valesk or Barrage Tyrant. Because of this, my goal is to find higher power level cards that will continue to have interesting synergies/interactions with morph in the cube. If you have any in mind, I'd love to hear about it!

 

[blacksmithy]

just wanted to pop in and say this cube looks very cool!
i like your train of logic for changing the Morph mechanic. the challenge will be effectively communicating it to your playgroup throughout the night so there’s no tragic misplays.
i will try to give this thing a few drafts over the weekend and give some better feedback!

 

[tbo]

Thanks!
Any Rules change has some negative impact in terms of complexity, but I'm hoping that this one will be somewhat easy to track/remember because the change is the point of the cube-- whereas many rules changes are done simply to change the power level of a card/cards, this cube is built around the change, so it should be pretty central to the draft/gameplay.

Anyway, A couple updates-- Hoping to draft soon to get some more testing in, but I've made a couple adjustments to the list based on my last post
In: Joraga Treespeaker
Out: Guardian Shield-Bearer
Mana dorks are very powerful, but there's quite a bit of early interaction in this format. Treespeaker has an additional moment of interaction by needing to level it up, but is powerful if it works. I think this could have interesting gameplay and Shield-Bearer was getting cut from decks

In: Wretched Confluence
Out: Festering Mummy
Mummy is fine as a 1 drop that trades for a 2 drop, but it's super unexciting and one of the weaker cards in the cube. Wretched confluence, on the other hand, is a super flexible 3 for one, and is probably pushing the high end of the power level. It's a card I love, though, so here we go. One question is if Consume the Meek should be cut if this is in the list, since this does the job better and has a lot more modality to it.


In: Gaze of Granite
Out: Pernicious Deed
I think Deed is too good, primarily because of its instant speed and flexibility. Gaze of Granite does similar things less powerfully, and I think it's still very good.

In: Hagra Mauling
Out: Ultimate Price
Ultimate price was cute because it can't kill morphs but can kill almost anything else, making it the opposite of many removal spells. However, because of that, you're playing it later in the game anyway. Mauling has a similar playstyle in that sense, but can kill a morph in a pinch, and allows you to play it as a land. The interesting tension here is that you'll often need to play it as a land early in the game, before you know what your opponent's creatures are. It's also just good.

In: Soul-Scar Mage, Monastery Swiftspear
Out: Village Messenger, Reckless Waif
I like the play of werewolves as creatures that reward holding up morph costs/encourage your opponents to play out their hand rather than unmorph their creatures. The issue with the 1 drop werewolves is that they both still just trade for a morph on their backside, as well as doing nothing at all on the front side. Aggro decks in the format are in an interesting place, as there will essentially always be blockers on the other side of the field. Games will often grind out, and "aggro decks" can go a couple directions
1. Removal: Yes, all decks want removal, but using removal to push through for damage can be very good in an aggro deck which loads up on 1 mana removal so they can play a one drop and then still remove their opponent's morph on turn 2 to keep getting in for damage
2. Anthems: I think this is the biggest one, pumping up your creatures in order to be able to attack
3. Recursive threats-- Having your one drop be able to trade for a morph and then get it back-- a la Bloodsoaked Champion is a way to get straight up card advantage. These are the premier aggro one drops, far outshining anything in red and white in this environment. This also lets you play a deck based around Braids etc.

I think going forward, the way to have 1 drops be relevant in this format is to have them be able to get into combat favorably with a 2/2, because otherwise they get outclassed far too easily.


The Red 1 drop prowess creatures come in because they offer the chance to continue attacking into 2/2s when keeping mana up for instant speed interaction, which is something you want to do anyway because you want to threaten activating your morphs.

In: Searing Spear, Lightning Strike, Shivan Fire
Out: Roil Eruption, Cursed Scroll, Barrage Tyrant
This goes hand in hand with the above changes, I'm adding a few instants in red so you have more ways to pump your prowess creatures that are also just generally good. Cursed Scroll is awkward because it's very telegraphed and you pump a lot of mana into it, meaning that any time you shoot it at creatures, your opponent can just unmorph. Yes, you can hit players, but I think it's kinda just outclassed. Barrage Tyrant, as I posted the other day, is really bad compared to P+K and SGC

In: Stormcrag Elemental
Out: Bonethorn Valesk
It's a 5 mana 4/2, and a single trigger can't even kill a morph. It's just bad. Stormcrag isn't an inclusion I'm insanely excited about, but a 6/6 eats just about everything in this format outside of the cheat targets and Sagu Mauler, which admittedly it's a lot worse than, but it's also not in two colors.

I'm keeping an eye on my fixing suite and wondering if lowering the power of the fixing a little bit could be interesting, since morph makes your mana a lot less punishing anyway. I do love how much paranoia an off-color land can cause in this format, though
One to Watch.

 

[tbo]

Also, I'm trying to find some fitting basic lands for this cube. Any Suggestions? I'll post some ideas soon.

 

[blacksmithy]

i always use ROE basics but for this cube, maybe one of the Tarkir sets?

 

[jerichoalar]

So I was going to suggest modern frame reprints of the ONS lands, but none of the Islands ever saw a reprint (shame, some of them are gorgeous). You could probably proxy these pretty easily though through MPC or something.

my favorite non full-art modern frame cycle are the Guay Basics which are now widely available thanks to being reprinted in several commander products, so I’d recommend those if you don’t want something Full Art and don’t want to proxy.


also, I will watch your career with great interest. Morphs cost 2 should make for a very unique and interesting cube.

I’d avoid anything that makes playing them facedown cheaper, cheating on flip cost maybe still ok.

 

[tbo]

I think I'm gonna go with these, from onslaught-- There aren't any lands with morphs on them, but the fact that the Onslaught set symbol is a morph makes them the correct choice for this cube

 

[tbo]

Ok, so I finally got to play a couple (2 person) drafts again today!
The Decks:
Draft 1:

Sultai Midrange

Blink-Naught

Draft 2:

Naya Winota (Featuring Inspiring Commander)

No Morph, Just Ramp

Takeaways!
Well, I got totally bodied in these drafts (I was on the Dreadnought and Winota Decks)-- Which means I have a lot of feedback to take in, and that's wonderful!

First of all, The green ramp deck in the second draft ignored morph altogether and just played all the elves. That's a no-no! I'm cutting all the one-drop accelerants that aren't BoP and Treespeaker. I nearly won one of the games, but the Big Pig came down and killed me. The fact that a strategy ignoring morph destroyed me as a cube designer is great, because it lets me get a better grasp on what the "best" thing to be doing is, and I can adjust power level of non-morph strategies accordingly.

Second, Whisperwood was in both of the decks I didn't draft (and was played every game, yikes), and that card is scarily good. I've suspected for a while that it was between very good and too good, and so far its coming down on the side of too good. I mean, seriously, Temur War Shaman is in this cube. I'm gonna give it one or two more drafts, but its dominance did open my eyes up to something else-- It's really hard to remove big creatures right now. The removal is all made to combat morphs, which means that decks actually gain a big advantage by not playing morphs, which is kinda antithetical to the whole point. I'm gonna give a boost to removal/interaction for now, and cut the bombiest threats if they continue to be a huge problem.

Also, I'll note that we were drafting this with bots, and they did not take lands, so the fixing in these decks was incredible. I'm gonna keep watching what manabases end up looking like.

The blink deck seemed like a LOT of fun, even though I still lost

 

[japahn]

Cards I'm Worried About/Watching

[...]

One of the major design challenges is that while adjusting morphs helps all of them, it doesn't do anything for the cards around morphs, like the Valesk or Barrage Tyrant. Because of this, my goal is to find higher power level cards that will continue to have interesting synergies/interactions with morph in the cube. If you have any in mind, I'd love to hear about it!

Many of the cards you mentioned as worrying were chosen because they synergize with morph. This is already an environment in which morphs are good (at 2/2 for 2 they are actually strong), so you don't need to incentivize people to play them by putting in cards that work well with morphs. Instead, choose cards that:

• You like how they play in general (random examples)

• Are normally not that great, but the environment makes them much better

• Have with different considerations in a morph cube

• Push a particular set of morphs (fliers, or expensive flip costs, or good flip abilities for example)

 

[sigh]

Good suggestions, except Disallow maybe doesnt work quite as well as you hope. Still a good card, but not specifically because of morph.

 

[japahn]

Disallow counters the triggered abilities when a morph flips, like Skirk Marauder. Yeah, it can't counter the flip itself.

 

[tbo]

Ok, it's been awhile. I haven't posted because, well, I haven't had opportunities to playtest anything for a while. That said, a couple recent drafts have helped confirm my suspicion that there's a problem with my green section, in that it is
A. The home of the best Morph cards and morph payoffs, and
B. Had many of the most powerful non-morph related cards, like the mana dorks.

Here are the offending cards that I've cut in my first sweep:


On top of this, I'm doing a general re-work as I start to cut down on some of the funky enchantments that never wound up in decks-- particularly, the Mystery booster cards like


I think these could be interesting buildarounds, but no one has bothered drafting them

There's many cards, including more bit-part buildarounds, currently on the watchlist, but they get to stay for now

My big issue currently is I don't know what to do with Green! It still has many of the most powerful cards in the cube, and I feel I need to give it some kind of unique Identity that doesn't involve adding more generically good cards. Any advice?

 

[Nanonox]

Could you give a rundown of the unique Identity of each other color? Maybe I missed it in the write up. I checked the cube, but since I am unfamiliar with a lot of the cards, I have a hard time discerning them.

 

[tbo]

(Ok, Post-Writing this note-- I do think the sorta generic, unfocused-ness of morph and effects that work well with it mean that colors don't have as much of a unique identity as I would perhaps like them to. Maybe what I mean is that I'm looking for more interesting cards (and types of effects) in green that will interact well with a morph-focused environment?)

Sure! There aren't two-color Archetypes or the like, and colors aren't specifically focused on anything, but rather some general themes exist which are naturally focused in a single color or colors. I think one of the cool things about this environment is how easy splashing is due to the huge number of colorless bears as fail-rates on your splash cards, which I think matters with more loosely defined archetypes-- the goal is to still have different sorts of decks without shoehorning players into two colors. I don't know if I've achieved that yet, though.

Some Themes/Identities

White
Blink-- This is obviously good with morph and manifest, since it allows you to cheat out large creatures for only a small amount of mana. Centered in white with Ephemerate, Angel of Invention, and Restoration Angel as some top cards

Anthems-- If 2/2s are often squaring off with each other, having a team +1/+1 can be extremely effective. There are many pump effects running around, but White usually has the most tools to win combat-- Ajani Goldmane, Always Watching, Defender of the Order

Weenie-- Since there are a lot of 2/2 0cmc Creatures, White's ability to care about small creatures can interact well here-- Bygone Bishop, Mentor of the Meek, Dusk//Dawn

Blue

Value//Tempo-- This is sorta Two different Things, but the Idea here is that blue has the most "tricky" morph creatures, such as Voidmage Prodigy and Echo Tracer. To me, this wants to make blue play onto the board, but also be keeping mana up to do things on the opponents turn. Ideally, Blue is the home of the "fair" morph decks, that are playing the way morph was initially intended to work, where your opponent is wondering what to do, and whether your facedown creature is a Willbender or a Brine Elemental

Black

This has been the hardest color to design for in this cube because it has the least morph interaction, but here goes
Recursion//Pox//Stax-- One of the things I noticed early on was the number of cost-reducing effects that would play well with morph, like Obscuring Aether and Dream Chisel. This made me wonder if I could also go the opposite direction and run things like Sphere of Resistance along with Resource Denial like Smallpox. Those, along with Braids, Cabal Minion, Nether Void, and the like control your opponent while you beat down with recursive creatures like Bloodsoaked Champion, since the recursive 2/1s naturally trade favorably with the 2/2 morphs.

Red

Not an especially well-defined color. There's a whole lot of two damage burn spells and effects, and in my mind the red decks play more aggressively, but perhaps similarly, to the blue morph decks, using their "turn face up" effects proactively more than reactively, and pushing through damage with their removal spells. This is reflected in that, like black, there's a decent number of red 1 drops-- One drops in this cube have to be able to trade favorable with a bear, and while I'm not convinced by the suite I have here yet, they all have the potential to do that. I imagine the red deck swinging in with a Morph and a Monastery Swiftspear on turn 3 with mana open into an opposing morph

There's also a few Threaten effects in red-- The idea here is that you steal an opposing morph and perhaps flip it up to get the effect rather than your opponent (Or just sacrifice it), as well as get in for damage. I'm not convinced it's actually good.

Green

There's a lot of good, beefy cards in green which just end up dominating-- In terms of themes, I've thought about pushing Flash, as it works well with wanting to keep mana up to flip up morphs. This also works with Werewolves, which will flip naturally if you pass the turn with mana up for flash/morph

 

[LadyMapi]

I'm not familiar with your list, but maybe you could do something with Green's combat tricks? You could also use some of Green's +1/+1 counter manipulation cards, which would also work well with Megamorph.

 

[tbo]

Ok, I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he brought up an interesting idea-- Is there a way to make Foretell work as morph? As in, instead of exiling the card, just go ahead and pretend that foretell is morph/spellmorph
Additionally, etb effects on those cards would become "Enters the battlefield or is turned face up"
Pros:
Opens up new space, especially with instants/sorceries
There are a lot of cool Foretell cards at lower power levels
Right now, the power level is awkward due to the limited card pool-- this would help address that

Cons:
Complexity/Unique rules are a downside
How would sorceries work? They are designed with the idea that they can only be cast at sorcery speed, but morph (+Spellmorph) states that you can turn it up at any point

I'm interested in what other people think of this idea-- Here are some cards that I'm thinking could play well in the environment

 

[tbo]

Sorceries that I think are cool, but too good if you can play them at instant speed

 

[tbo]

Update time!!!!

So, after another draft of this with a friend, I made the choice to power down the cards surrounding morph, particularly sweepers, instant speed removal, and top end


So, a new link for these major changes: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/list/6033ff0ec87fd8103415272d

Around 60 cards were switched out, so I won't go into posts of the full change, but a few things I'm interested to see play out

The Changelings, as a depowered and interesting form of blink (Ephemerate was too strong)


Powered Down Removal


RG mana sinks archetype


Companions, whose restrictions you can get around by playing with the right morphs


A draft of this is being run (without me!!) this saturday, so we'll see how it goes. My biggest concern is that it'll be difficult to trudge through the same-ness of the morphs into archetypes, and that's the design direction I'm working on. Would love to hear suggestions about archetypes I could support more clearly/effectively, or other cool ideas for this sort of environment.