Introduction
Hi everyone, long time listener first time caller. I don't really play all that much MTG these days, but I wanted to put together a cube so that I can do so on an even footing with my fellow occasionals, and also partially as just a fun theoretical design exercise. To that end, I created a smaller 270-card (i.e. 6-player), 10 two-colour archetypes, lower power level cube as a pilot . It turned out alright because playing cube is better than not playing cube at all, but I found that many archetypes were either too linearly powerful, on rails, or just didn't come together despite explicit support. The most interesting cases were those with similar archetypes in neighbouring colours, or cards which bridged themes - I recognise this isn't groundbreaking, but it was valuable to experience directly.
As a result of this, and of lurking here and reading the tremendous archetype shape thread, I have taken a second stab at a bigger (360) cube with more cohesive overarching themes. It can be found here: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5fba6e3f8e1dc31071abbd5f
Design Overview
The cube is based on the allied colour shards (originally of Alara), which each shard having a single theme that each colour (and colour pair within it) embodies in slightly different ways. I considered changing the colour pie, but ultimately decided that would make things less intuitive since there is a biases towards allied colour pairs over enemy, so them being different requires the players to be pretty switched on in an already information-heavy environment.
The power level is relatively low to allow for some lower-power themes to shine, and to have a more interesting range of cards than in more powermax-y builds: I really do like some of the weird Riptidean gems. The fixing is very good (double fetches, double shocks) because I want to encourage splashing/three colour decks - hopefully the life cost of fetches and shocks (over OG duals) will discourage greedy goodstuff soup, but if they prevail the fixing can be pared back. Multicolour cards are intended to give very strong signposts and be valuable rewards for having picked a lane, rather than being just generically good, splashable cards.
Shard Themes
Initially I started being quite rigid on what decks each pair within a theme should support (e.g. RW landfall aggo vs GW landfall ramp), but that basically carried over issues of archetype narrowness present in the 10-pair format, forced me to try and support some very weird decks for the sake of having every colour combination be "a deck", and stopped me adding good cards for the theme because they didn't match the specific thing the colour was "supposed" to be doing. Better I think to give the colours tools within theme for many aggro/control/midrange outcomes than specifying that XY but not Z is the aggro part of the shard.
The Present Day
At this time, the cube does not yet exist in paper. Physical testing is of course the only way to fine tune things, but at this stage I am rather struggling to see the wood for the trees and would really value some thoughts or feedback from the denizens here about whether the basic skeleton passes an eyeball test before I sleeve it up. Specifically, I'm looking for opinions on topics such as:
Sources
Some neat threads that I stole ideas from:
Archetype Shapes
Enchantment theme
Blink
Landfall Aggro
Madness/Discard
Draft Archetypes
Design Heurstics
Hi everyone, long time listener first time caller. I don't really play all that much MTG these days, but I wanted to put together a cube so that I can do so on an even footing with my fellow occasionals, and also partially as just a fun theoretical design exercise. To that end, I created a smaller 270-card (i.e. 6-player), 10 two-colour archetypes, lower power level cube as a pilot . It turned out alright because playing cube is better than not playing cube at all, but I found that many archetypes were either too linearly powerful, on rails, or just didn't come together despite explicit support. The most interesting cases were those with similar archetypes in neighbouring colours, or cards which bridged themes - I recognise this isn't groundbreaking, but it was valuable to experience directly.
As a result of this, and of lurking here and reading the tremendous archetype shape thread, I have taken a second stab at a bigger (360) cube with more cohesive overarching themes. It can be found here: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5fba6e3f8e1dc31071abbd5f
Design Overview
The cube is based on the allied colour shards (originally of Alara), which each shard having a single theme that each colour (and colour pair within it) embodies in slightly different ways. I considered changing the colour pie, but ultimately decided that would make things less intuitive since there is a biases towards allied colour pairs over enemy, so them being different requires the players to be pretty switched on in an already information-heavy environment.
The power level is relatively low to allow for some lower-power themes to shine, and to have a more interesting range of cards than in more powermax-y builds: I really do like some of the weird Riptidean gems. The fixing is very good (double fetches, double shocks) because I want to encourage splashing/three colour decks - hopefully the life cost of fetches and shocks (over OG duals) will discourage greedy goodstuff soup, but if they prevail the fixing can be pared back. Multicolour cards are intended to give very strong signposts and be valuable rewards for having picked a lane, rather than being just generically good, splashable cards.
Shard Themes
- Bant : Enchantments (Sagas, Constellation)
- Esper : Enter-the-battlefield: (Blink; Value Reanmation; Ninjutsu)
- Grixis : Looting (Cycling/Discard; Madness; "Second Draw")
- Jund : Sacrifice (Value sacrificing; Morbid; Auto-Recursion)
- Naya : Lands (Landfall; Lands in Graveyard)
Initially I started being quite rigid on what decks each pair within a theme should support (e.g. RW landfall aggo vs GW landfall ramp), but that basically carried over issues of archetype narrowness present in the 10-pair format, forced me to try and support some very weird decks for the sake of having every colour combination be "a deck", and stopped me adding good cards for the theme because they didn't match the specific thing the colour was "supposed" to be doing. Better I think to give the colours tools within theme for many aggro/control/midrange outcomes than specifying that XY but not Z is the aggro part of the shard.
The Present Day
At this time, the cube does not yet exist in paper. Physical testing is of course the only way to fine tune things, but at this stage I am rather struggling to see the wood for the trees and would really value some thoughts or feedback from the denizens here about whether the basic skeleton passes an eyeball test before I sleeve it up. Specifically, I'm looking for opinions on topics such as:
- Is this a sensible structure for a cube?
- Do we like the themes?
- Are there a reasonable number of enablers and payoffs to encourage syngeristic drafting without pushing the drafter onto rails? (the million dollar question)
- Are there any obvious power outliers/underliers or cards which are just too cute?
- Do I have enough "meat and potatoes"-type cards?
- Should theme-bleed be encouraged or discouraged? For example, Doomwake Giant is a card I like, but black doesn't care about enchantments. Would running it be cool synergy distribution or a badly-designed trap?
Sources
Some neat threads that I stole ideas from:
Archetype Shapes
Enchantment theme
Blink
Landfall Aggro
Madness/Discard
Draft Archetypes
Design Heurstics