The dragon is a perfect marriage of power and the will to use it. —Sarkhan Vol
View the Cube list
Playtest (draft) against bots
I began this project on a mechanical level, with the intent to bridge the gap between "blue's historical dominance over the game engine" and the 'legacy-lite' gameplay I want. Blue's broken old spells have been able to 'pitch to force' broken new creatures, and WBRG are getting some really strong and fun new cards, but weren't receiving broken old cards in the past. I thought about this problem a lot last year, and ideas started to come together, but it wasn't until recently that I hit on the solution that just makes so much sense, that feels so easy I can't believe I never thought of it: go back in time and give them some.
I've always liked Sarkhan Vol. He's a compelling character with interesting story beats, and one of the only characters in Magic to like dragons even more than I do. He's enslaved by a dragon, freed, and then gives everything to other dragons, forfeiting the chance to become Khan himself. He's omnipotent but not omniscient, he re-consecrates Tarkir in an intensely political moment of religious ecstasy...it's a hell of a story! Thus, "the passion of Tarkir".
I drafted a lot of 3xKTK and a fair bit of all the other draft formats from that block, and the mechanical 'time travel' hook of Fate Reforged, the fulcrum around which KTK and DTK swung, I still think that's one of the coolest bits of block design ever. And so I thought, okay, I have magic's colour pie, and my colour pie swinging around a fulcrum too, so what if that fulcrum was still Sarkhan's dizzying choice? And that set my brain on fire, and Sharzad v4 is the result.
"The Passion of Tarkir" explores a version of Magic where colour identity flows fast and loose, where every colour has access to efficient threats and old-Magic-feeling haymakers, lower curves mean that unpleasant do-nothing variance is reduced for all players, and stack and hand interaction are available in more colours than before. My hope is to not only make mechanical changes to the game engine and how it plays, but to also capture some of the nostalgia and love that enfranchised players feel about Time Spiral block and its loving homage to colour identity "what ifs".
Obviously, WotC has not printed another Time Spiral block all about Sarkhan just for me. As a result, I've gotten to flex my creative muscles and add a few third-party game pieces, custom cards that 'bleed' effects into other colours, and new creature cards that push the tribes I find emotionally resonant (dragons and angels in the sky, elementals and everyone else on the ground) up into 'Legacy constructed' playability. I used to try to make custom cards feel 'middle of the pack', solid cards that could've been printed, but weren't, and which wouldn't have broken any constructed formats. This time, since I wanted to destabilize blue's dominance over Legacy, I had to, uh, "take the limiter off the golf cart". Lots of words words words about this below, which are completely optional to read and even more optional to think about and agree that I'm completely right and a genius for having said.
I'm still putting this all together, and I haven't gotten a real draft together yet (although I've done some 1v1 grid drafts and a lot of goldfishing). But I think that maybe I have done something pretty cool and creative here, and I've tried to start and finish with mechanics, the kinds of gameplay I want to see, with all the fun time travel dilemma stuff tying loose mechanical threads together in a cohesive story.
More to come, more to say another day. Please take a look at my baby, I'm very proud of it. (PS: test drafts dearly solicited)
View the Cube list
Playtest (draft) against bots
I began this project on a mechanical level, with the intent to bridge the gap between "blue's historical dominance over the game engine" and the 'legacy-lite' gameplay I want. Blue's broken old spells have been able to 'pitch to force' broken new creatures, and WBRG are getting some really strong and fun new cards, but weren't receiving broken old cards in the past. I thought about this problem a lot last year, and ideas started to come together, but it wasn't until recently that I hit on the solution that just makes so much sense, that feels so easy I can't believe I never thought of it: go back in time and give them some.
I've always liked Sarkhan Vol. He's a compelling character with interesting story beats, and one of the only characters in Magic to like dragons even more than I do. He's enslaved by a dragon, freed, and then gives everything to other dragons, forfeiting the chance to become Khan himself. He's omnipotent but not omniscient, he re-consecrates Tarkir in an intensely political moment of religious ecstasy...it's a hell of a story! Thus, "the passion of Tarkir".
I drafted a lot of 3xKTK and a fair bit of all the other draft formats from that block, and the mechanical 'time travel' hook of Fate Reforged, the fulcrum around which KTK and DTK swung, I still think that's one of the coolest bits of block design ever. And so I thought, okay, I have magic's colour pie, and my colour pie swinging around a fulcrum too, so what if that fulcrum was still Sarkhan's dizzying choice? And that set my brain on fire, and Sharzad v4 is the result.
"The Passion of Tarkir" explores a version of Magic where colour identity flows fast and loose, where every colour has access to efficient threats and old-Magic-feeling haymakers, lower curves mean that unpleasant do-nothing variance is reduced for all players, and stack and hand interaction are available in more colours than before. My hope is to not only make mechanical changes to the game engine and how it plays, but to also capture some of the nostalgia and love that enfranchised players feel about Time Spiral block and its loving homage to colour identity "what ifs".
Obviously, WotC has not printed another Time Spiral block all about Sarkhan just for me. As a result, I've gotten to flex my creative muscles and add a few third-party game pieces, custom cards that 'bleed' effects into other colours, and new creature cards that push the tribes I find emotionally resonant (dragons and angels in the sky, elementals and everyone else on the ground) up into 'Legacy constructed' playability. I used to try to make custom cards feel 'middle of the pack', solid cards that could've been printed, but weren't, and which wouldn't have broken any constructed formats. This time, since I wanted to destabilize blue's dominance over Legacy, I had to, uh, "take the limiter off the golf cart". Lots of words words words about this below, which are completely optional to read and even more optional to think about and agree that I'm completely right and a genius for having said.
Dragons are the raison d'être of the Cube, so you'll see a lot of new ones. They rule the skies, and are generally the biggest flier in any board state. Angels also fly, but tend to lose to dragons in combat - however, what they lack in sinew and sorcery, they make up for by interacting with the game engine (gaining life, moving cards between zones, complicating combat). Elementals, anchored by Omnath & friends, are connected to and interact with lands and mana. Human and zombie tribal, key tribes in previous versions of the cube, are much less relevant now - it's all about flying, just like retail limited.
Legacy's fetchland-ABUR dual manabases are more or less "perfect mana", and to replicate that, players need to be almost all-in on really good nonbasic lands. Drafting them would've ballooned the cube's size to 500, and made drafts slower and duller - no thanks! Instead, I've decided to just put fetchlands and dual lands "in the basic land box", but a few dozen of Magic's greatest-ever lands are still in the cube, do still cost a draft pick. Everyone gets a Legacy manabase, but to go beyond that, you're gonna have to draft that Gaea's Cradle or neo-Valakut. Most decks will be incentivized to play one basic land, so those are in the land box as well.
The cube also leans heavily into the "sol lands", lands which tap to make two mana, but which otherwise tend to produce "small games" by either costing lots of life or sacrificing themselves after generating a burst of resources. Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are legacy all-stars, powering out t1-2 Show and Tells and Initiative Stompy creatures, but they're joined by the Saprazzan Skerry cycle of 'depletion counter' lands. Sharzad v3 tried to use sol lands' colourless mana as a feature, not a bug, by aping the "Eldrazi Winter" that haunted Modern in early 2016 (until Eye of Ugin was banned) and the Eldrazi Stompy decks that continued to haunt Legacy until mono-W Initiative finally solved the question of how to best use the sol lands.
The cube also leans heavily into the "sol lands", lands which tap to make two mana, but which otherwise tend to produce "small games" by either costing lots of life or sacrificing themselves after generating a burst of resources. Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are legacy all-stars, powering out t1-2 Show and Tells and Initiative Stompy creatures, but they're joined by the Saprazzan Skerry cycle of 'depletion counter' lands. Sharzad v3 tried to use sol lands' colourless mana as a feature, not a bug, by aping the "Eldrazi Winter" that haunted Modern in early 2016 (until Eye of Ugin was banned) and the Eldrazi Stompy decks that continued to haunt Legacy until mono-W Initiative finally solved the question of how to best use the sol lands.
I like to play bad decks in Legacy, and so does most of its playerbase - Legacy is an "undersolved format" which flatters "deckbuilders" who want nothing more than to go 2-1 with something stupid but personally meaningful. Initiative Stompy was different from most of the Bad Brews that haunt the format - it actually solved an unsolved question, how to best (ab)use the sol lands. The Legacy Specialist's wounded pride lined up with a gripe about the differences between normal and multiplayer Magic, when Initiative, designed for 4-player FFA, proved to be a deep and powerful thing to do in a real game of Magic, too. If you're unfamiliar with the mechanic, don't worry, it's really simple to explain (joke): initiative means "venture whenever you'd monarch". Yes, two of Magic's wordiest third-decade mechanics are smashed together; "venture when you'd monarch". What a headache, what a nightmare in terms of cognitive load.
And yet, the cards are fun, the mechanic offers branching decision points and rewards playing to the board and winning combat steps. In combo-saturated formats, Magic's second-decade midrange threats have increasingly failed to 'cut it' and close games in a relevant amount of time (Siege Rhino lines up poorly against Moat and Dark Ritual into Yawgmoth's Will). I'd like to hope that Initiative has what it takes to bring back the joy of ramping out a midrange creature one turn early and feeling like you're on top of the world, that you just Time Walked your opponent. And with the sol lands mentioned above, decks can play an initiative beater on curve and feel good, or ahead of curve and feel like they're really doing something on par with Magic's ancient broken cards.
And yet, the cards are fun, the mechanic offers branching decision points and rewards playing to the board and winning combat steps. In combo-saturated formats, Magic's second-decade midrange threats have increasingly failed to 'cut it' and close games in a relevant amount of time (Siege Rhino lines up poorly against Moat and Dark Ritual into Yawgmoth's Will). I'd like to hope that Initiative has what it takes to bring back the joy of ramping out a midrange creature one turn early and feeling like you're on top of the world, that you just Time Walked your opponent. And with the sol lands mentioned above, decks can play an initiative beater on curve and feel good, or ahead of curve and feel like they're really doing something on par with Magic's ancient broken cards.
Here is an album where you can view all of the customs in the Cube. If you want to talk about any of these designs, please feel free to do so in this cube blog thread! In order to achieve 'colour balanced legacy', orcish bowmasters isn't enough - I have to go back in time and add new and different broken cards.
I'm still putting this all together, and I haven't gotten a real draft together yet (although I've done some 1v1 grid drafts and a lot of goldfishing). But I think that maybe I have done something pretty cool and creative here, and I've tried to start and finish with mechanics, the kinds of gameplay I want to see, with all the fun time travel dilemma stuff tying loose mechanical threads together in a cohesive story.
More to come, more to say another day. Please take a look at my baby, I'm very proud of it. (PS: test drafts dearly solicited)
| Sharzad v1 | A Thousand And One Cube Nights (2014) |
| v2 | 2018-2020 |
| v3 | Dragons and Drazi (2022-2023) |
| v4 | The Passion of Tarkir (2023-??) |
Last edited:
, or even worse, the ability to cast any of their spells at all.
