The Planeswalker Cube

[CaptnIrony]

Hi

I've branched out from my Desert Cube design into the design of a cube based around Planeswalkers. I know. Normally I'd let this stew for a bit, but with the impending War of the Spark set, I felt like I might want to brainstorm before the addition of what WotC considers "Limited, with a focus on Planeswalkers". The idea for the cube would be to look not like a regular cube but a bit more like a retail set in the fact that it won't be singleton, and might even have rarities. I'm not fantastic at typing up my ideas and so I felt like just giving a list of the main concepts would work. PRE POST EDIT: Missed the deadline.

1. Why planeswalkers?
It's no secret that I've been unhappy with my cube. I like to think that this just means that I've grown as a cuber. There are a lot of things that are appealing, and it gave me an idea of what I want from a drafting environment, but I feel like it did that by coming up short.

I want defined archetypes so it doesn't devolve into goodstuff.cube. I want the archetypes to overlap enough so it doesn't devolve into onrails.draft . I wanted each colour combination to be able to play in more than just one way (RW Artifact Aggro is cool as long as its not the only WR deck). This is something that I feel would be solved by tweaking the balance between Goodstuff and narrow archetypes.
So, melding archetypes (RW Artifact Aggro into GW Golems into ...) leads to more interesting drafts in theory, but in practice, I felt that I was shoehorning archetypes in despite differences in power levels or in how interesting they were to draft/play. For example, I don't think a single person has ever drafted RW Aggro in my cube. Power level or interest I don't know, but either is reason enough to make some changes. I'm not saying I've figured it out, but I am glad to get a second shot at this.

There were also some more subtle things that annoyed me. Both intra and inter archetype I felt constrained to draftable sets due to my power-level. What I mean by this is that while making an archetype, often the majority of the cards felt like they came from the set(s) that supported the archetype. My Prowess archetype came from Khans and my Golems came from New Phyrexia. This is not yet a problem. But when I try to make archetypes meld, I'd end up linking archetypes that saw play together (Madness into Burning Vengeance into Spider Spawning). Together this made me feel like I was merging limited decks from a few distinct sets together. This didn't really grant me what I wanted. At a higher power-level, you might be able to string together bomb rares that supported the archetype, but I felt that at my power band I'd want more, weaker support, like the uncommons and commons. And that's where the problem lies. The cube feels like a netdeck rather than an expression of myself (lmao, I know how this sounds, I stand by it though). Not only that, but I also felt that it felt more like an amalgamation of a few sets rather than something that represents magic as a whole, which I'd like.

I then explored the idea of a desert cube as a more expressive and less common experience. I liked the idea and it gave me the possibility of going a bit further in terms of exploration of what I can do. It is a less beaten path, with a few low hanging fruits just outside of sight, but not out of reach. I could have done something there, and I could have been happy. Despite that, I did see it as a fad that was going on, and I wondered if I could instead try to build something that was a bit more my own. I don't remember how the Planeswalker Cube came to mind, but I suspect that it may have been from criticizing their design.

There are a few issues. Planeswalkers are value engines that tend to warp the game around them and apparently make for quite lame limited experiences. These will be a challenge that I'll try to take on. dbs's cube has the moxen which warp the environment and I'm wondering if something similar can happen here. I'd have to ditch the more overpowering ones, but the coming War of the Spark might help me find new ones to fill out the archetypes, as long as I don't turn this into a WAR.cube PRE POST EDIT: WAR is being spoiled, with PWs designed for limited and with Static Abilities. Neat. While I may be open to using some cards from WAR, I'd actually like to refrain from using any of their planeswalkers for now. I don't want to repeat the problems mentioned above.

Here is what I believe Planeswalkers bring to the table:
- Despite being in various sets, they focus less on the set's mechanics and more on some overarching aspects of the colour pie. This means that archetypes around them will both represent Magic as a whole better and (hopefully) give me a larger amount of options from Magic's history.
- They provide strong sign-posts that stand out and should stand out as special (in the same way that some iconic cards would), maybe this'll also make for emotional spikes in gameplay. It'll also prevent a "too-flat" power-band that may have resulted from me removing cards that slightly overperformed or whenever someone complained about something.
- The two coloured Planeswalkers should provide a type of smoothing or merging effects that would help bring Archetypes together.
- They would provide a sort of restriction on the possible archetypes to prevent me from being overwhelmed by a large number of choices.
- I get to be smart. They are quite different from regular cards and play differently. I want them to be interactable-with and as such, even disregarding them, I feel like the cards I choose to include will be much different than what a normal cube might play. This is exciting. Following this, I actually get to modify the colour pie a bit.

However, here's the few things that have come to mind for now:
- Being value engines that don't require mana, they tend to snowball. This leads to poor gameplay. I'd want to be able to fix this, if possible. I'd also be against games turning into "who drew more PWs?".
- I don't want this to be unfun. I usually find a lack of interaction unfun, so planeswalkers need to have answers. But I also don't want them to turn into expensive sorceries. WAR might have some tools for this, but I don't super like Hero's Downfall for being so... obviously good.
- I'm not yet sure about this one, but if the focus is on planeswalkers, I might want to tone down the power of creatures.

So interestingly, after looking into this more, I felt that what might define the cube the most after "Planeswalker Cube" but less than the actual planewalkers involved are the methods of dealing with them.

There's the obvious/generic, black gets targeted destroy effects (Hero's Downfall, Vampire Hexmage) or, more recently, planeswalker edicts (Plaguecrafter). White gets their general exile removal (Oblivion Ring). Red gets targeted burn (Incinerate). Green gets non-creature destruction (Bramblecrush). And Blue gets counters, while everyone gets creatures, and many (WBR) get cards that can wipe many planeswalkers at once. So at the minimum, we know it exists.

What if we want a bit more interaction, less "binary" (dead/not, like Black's) and want to shore up Blue and Green's interactions with walkers. I went a bit deeper. First, about the creatures:

Since planeswalkers will be a bit part of this, attacking should be encouraged, and defending might be more important. White's vigilance becomes a tiny bit more important. Tokens also become better, but they tend to be part of what makes planeswalkers unfun (unassailable value engines), I'll have to be careful here.
Evasive creatures in Blue might allow it to kill planeswalkers more easily. Also, a larger amount of planeswalkers might make decks with fewer creatures more realistic. Something like Polymorph?
Black doesn't have anything crazy going for it. With creatures being weaker/a smaller part of the cube, I could see them getting killed left and right. Self-recursion might be useful here. And with creatures dialled back, maybe black's suicide black creatures might not just be outclassed by power creep.
There's a lot for red. Haste dodges a lot of the sorcery speed removal, and people's ability to plan to defend their walkers. The Ball Lightning/Spark Elemental (ha!) like creatures actually turn into removal.
Trample and Flash should be a "big" part of Green's identity, to better deal with walkers. I might also want to keep an eye on the amount/quality of instant speed creature removal.
I also looked at ways for creatures to gain haste. Unearth, Dash, Suspend, and Flash (pseudo haste) are all at my disposal. Afflict also lets people pressure life totals while attacking planeswalkers.

I like these because they allow for discrete (rather than binary) interaction with planeswalkers.

But now, how about we go a bit further (I am 100% breaking singleton):
Colourless gets a few toys that everyone gets. I like the Revoker since every colour can interact with it, otherwise, everything but black can.




White gets to play midrange, locking down planeswalkers while trying to kill the opponent, or protecting their own. These are expensive answers, but they work:




Blue has evasive creatures and so could play a bit of a tempo role, it might try to race winning with preventing planeswalkers from using their ultimate. Bounce becomes a huge tempo play, but that isn't 100% backbreaking like it would be on creatures. Do you play your PW and use the [-] immediately in case it gets bounced, or [+] to protect it from unblockables? Oh, also cheat by countering the ultimate:




Black gets a Suicide Black board wipe, and a few "any target" damage spells. It could also play as the colour with the best, but fewest planeswalker interaction. Its removal also clears the way:




Red, interestingly, falls somewhere else. It has a lot of ways of dealing with planeswalkers, and its artifact removal lets it deal with what might be the most common way to deal with planeswalkers. I could see Red being a control colour here, to contrast blue being tempo. Lava Axe might be useful here, and I like the choice of having to choose between going after value engines or life totals. Many if its planeswalkers can burn out opposing ones. Red might just do it all:




Green gets the least interaction, it seems, or just might get the "deal with noncreatures". Like its card draw, it seems its interaction with planeswalkers might be linked to its creatures. It might be slow though, so you may need to stall:




Notable abstentions:



Fun fact: Seems my control colours are in Naya and my aggressive ones might be Dimir. This does bring a smile to my face.

I have to go to bed. I'll post the second (with an incredibly ill-defined list of walkers and archetypes in the near future.)

Notes on proliferate as a mechanic: I like it. But I feel like it might complicate the evaluation of planeswalkers a large amount. I'm wondering if it might be wise to iterate without it at first. I don't know if this is good or bad, but it would allow you to pump up a walker using proliferate and then a removal spell on a Pithing Needle or whatever card holding it hostage for a surprise ultimate.

Notes on "Oaths": I feel they are unnecessary. I should have enough planeswalkers to put the focus on them without needing support. Might change my mind if they enable interesting new archetypes.

 

[CaptnIrony]

I don't know how long this has been sitting in notepad++, but I've not worked on this in a few weeks. I feel like the longer it goes, the less likely I am to post, so I'll be doing some revising and posting the result afterwards. This doesn't encapsulate all the ideas, but this is the next step.

Limitations on the planeswalkers:
I'd like, for now, to avoid planeswalkers that are transform cards, only exist in foil, refer to commander, or are from WAR. I may relax these later, but this is my initial starting point. For now, I feel like I could get 4-6 mono-coloured and 2-3 two-coloured planeswalkers, but some choices might not be ideal. I'd like two loose archetypes (hopefully with some synergistic overlap) per colour combination as a starting point to promote more choices, being able to relax this or choose the better one at a later date.

One issue I'll need to tackle sooner or later is that of the intended power-level of the cube. This is something that I feel I should iron out before going further, but despite my enthusiasm for the project, I don't feel like I yet have much time to dedicate to it. For now, I feel as though I have three possibilities:
1.I could make this relatively low power. The planeswalkers would stand out as mythics and the games would really warp around them. I'd have to make sure they have a lot of answers, and I feel this will make for some very skill testing games, as you'd sometimes be fighting up against a very strong card and this would require people to plan many turns ahead for the possibility of the villain dropping a planeswalker. This feels as though it would be most difficult option to build, and the one more likely to fail. However, it would hopefully be cheaper than other options, and might alienate new players, although I am unsure they are the target audience. I don't want this to be a prince format.
2.High power. This would end up being a cube that stands out for the the large number of planeswalkers, but without them being necessarily the strongest cards. This would be a bit more conventional. I feel as though the fact that I have little to say about this indicates my lack of interest.
3.I could just ignore the power level aspect for now. Make a unbalanced but "cool" gimmick cube. See where the chips fall, see what people enjoy and use that as my baseline. Following this, I could refactor the cube to cater to the preferred power level. This has another advantage, the archetypes that I've "explored" seem to be quite varied in power level, if I choose this route I may be more ok with building something I already know is unbalanced.

Theory: Blue isn't as needed for CA, digging seems to be a bigger deal than actual drawing, as value engines exist. CA in blue might be cool in a sense that it'll let blue play more cheap tempo cards.

From here, I looked at the planeswalkers in each colour / colour combination, extracted possible overlapping themes, and then went back through the list trying to find where things might work.

WU


Blue White would center around defensive creatures. One one end they can gum up the board and allow you to race the opponent with evasive threats in a sort of "skies" deck. Saboteurs could be included for value. On the other hand, the defensive creatures can be the base of a control deck where Blue provides the early game tempo cards and white has the hard removal and late game answers. You'd get your CA from your walkers. There might be some room for some "Low Power" stuff (Mentor of the Meek, Militia Bugler) as it gets most evasive, defensive and saboteur creatures.

UB


These would be cool in a sort of "Go Wide" artifact deck. You can either try to beat down with the creatures backed by Black and Blue support (the aggressive colours in here) or play non-creature artifacts that can support the gameplan/can work as silver bullets (Pithing Needles, Various Baubles) while also having improvise or affinity spells. Ashiok, Nightmage Weaver is strong enough to enable its own "Mill Control" Archetype where the goal is to find, play, protect, and use Ashiok (or some Artifact mill cards like Grindclock). This might play like a non attacking Tempo deck. Hopefully with all the answers, Ashiok might not be overbearing. Relic Runner and Diligent Excavator might both fit. Ashiok does feel like it may be problematic, and so I may cut down to 2 PWs per colour pair and get rid of it.

BR


I could see a general value control deck here, with all three two colour walkers fitting in. A steal+sac subtheme could fit, as the focus on planeswalkers makes creatures more important, and being able to steal a creature removes a blocker and adds an attacker, making it easier to threaten planeswalkers. These colours are also the best at filling the yard with self mill and discard. I'd like to see if I can support a RB reanimator theme, possibly with dragons, this could be cool. Flashback/Aftermath/Zombie/Phoenix-like cards might work well as they grant value to the first deck and allow the 2nd to generate CA while looting/self milling.

RG


If Red plays dragons, this combination will find them and ramp them out. There could also be a "go wide" theme where they play many relatively "smaller" creatures (compared to regular GR), and dig for more using the walkers. This lets them have board control and make things hard for the villain. The other option is a type of "Berserker"/Power Matters deck that comboes off into a kill (turning lands into big creatures and them giving them double strike?)

GW


This can be many things, some ramp/control to survive until late game deck seeems inevitable, as they have some powerful walkers, and large creatures. I'm wondering if I want this to be the "big creatures" combination, as they might be able to make the biggest baseline creatures from walkers (Gideons) and lands (Nissa) before pumping their stuff even further with +1/+1 counters. These big creatures also work well with "Berserker" effects, or removal granting ones (Ajani, Caller of the Pride). There can also be a "Go wide" theme.

WB


For WB, I have two themes I like. One could be a "Go Wide" taking advantage of that fact the colour combinations has many ways of making small tokens. Black being aggressive might have many small creatures and sticky ones. The other possible theme could be a slower "Life Gain" theme more geared towards the late game, the low cost Sorins could keep the player alive early game and provide some minor lifegain later. Kaya also provides lifegain, but Sorin, Grim Nemesis could work as a finisher in the deck.

UR


I'd like UR to be a bit of a combo colour. Between Saheeli and Ral Zarek, I could see an artifact based control deck which gets a bit of control and some value from them. There are many artifacts that benefit from being untapped and/or copied (Hedron Archive, Icy Manipualtor, Lux Cannon, Alchemist's Vial). Ral, Izzet Viceroy, along with other planeswalkers like Jace, the Living Guildpact, or Chandra the Firebrand lend themselves to an Instant and Sorceries build that. You might want to fill your graveyard and play stuff like Rise from the Tides. Pyromancer's Gogles could tie in both archetypes.

BG


This one is a bit harder. The planeswalkers here fit a controlling deck, as they all have general catch all permanent removal. Both Green and Black work well with creatures, so I was thinking the 2nd archetype might be some sort of "big aristocrat" where the payoffs are related to the size (power/toughness) of the creatures. There could be, a bit like in red, a sort of "Ramp+Reanimate" way of making big creatures, but I'm sure. Otherwise there can be a generic midrange, with Black providing early stuff and Green providing bigger late game cards.

RW


Being part of the Naya Colours, WR easily lends itself to control, and the planeswalkers available to the colour combination strongly support this, possibly with a minor theme of Tapping threats (Nahiri, the Harbinger, Ajani Vengeant, Gideon Jura). For a second archetype I am a bit lost. I have a lot of half formed ideas, but nothing stands out. I'm leaning towards an out of colour (ha) aggresive decks that uses planeswalkers and red's direct damage to try to kill the opponent before they can stabilize. Hualti fits here.

UG


UG seems to lend itself to creatures based value ramp. I'm wondering if the addition of lands that benefit from being untaped (Bouncelands, other special lands, or even Overgrownth-like auras) might be worth it. Similarly, creatures that untap permanents like Aphetto Alchemist or Hope Tender might fit). If this turns into a combo deck that tries to assemble pieces, both these colours can dig for creatures, and the ability to transform lands into creatures might help push this. This seems like it'll be quite a creature based colour combination, and so a Tempo deck might be nice here, or maybe some sort of "number of creatures in graveyard" deck. Either way, Flash cards feel like they are a must. After WAR there is also the temptation of making a proliferate theme, with artifacts or creatures that support it, Karn's Bastion might be a tie in.


Additional notes:

Tokens defend planeswalkers well, but at weak to some damage based board wipes. A small number of big creatures does well too, but can get overwhelmed by token and is weak to some removal. I'm wondering if I can make a Rock Paper Scissors between using small board wipes, Tokens, and bigger defensive creatures for defense.

I want it to be possible to deal with planeswalkers without it being trivial. White might have the best removal for them, but it is also the highest costed ones, and the most flexible, which might bring tension between wanting to use them on planeswalkers or on other permanents.

Tokens are 3/3 and smaller. These are the tokens created by non ultimate abilities of planeswalkers (Except for Sarkhan the Mad's -2) and all planeswalkers that make themselves or lands become creatures make 4/4s or larger. This is interesting to me, and I wonder if I can use this to tailor removal. I'd like for creatures to be small overall, either like old magic or like RNA. Something where a 4/4 starts to feel big and 6/6s are really big.


I got this out.