General The Wishes

[ahadabans]

Along the lines of an idea someone posted about a "pandora pack" (busted pack that you'd add to a draft triggered by Lore Seeker). What about a wish package? So you add some number of the wish cards but limit what they could get to your side board or a selection of potentially stupid cards (depending on how far you want to go).



This seems particularly interesting for both living and burning. For example, Craterhoof Behemoth is too easy to fetch with things like Natural Order. If the only way you could get it was by casting living wish, it would be almost unfetchable outside some super setup job (brainstorm after then cast NO). Burning gives you access to super heinous stuff, but it also would telegraph and provide an additional turn to answer. Like burning for Bribery or Mind Twist. You've got a turn to answer that unless it's super late in the game (where maybe it's not as bad anyway). Seems interesting. Golden Wish for Wurmcoil Engine? That wish still sucks I think.

I dislike the idea of stupidly powerful cards floating around the draft but having to unlock them by jumping through an additional hoop sounds like a fun mini game to me.

Or does this actually suck as an idea?

 

[Fulcrum]

I'm not a big fan of the wishes in cube. Since cube is mostly singleton I feel like you would want to just have the best cards in your deck. They aren't really useful for searching up stuff that's outside of your colors since you wouldn't be able to cast them and you really don't want sideboard cards floating around in draft. For stuff like Tinker or Natural Order the stuff needs to be in the deck.

I guess it would be interesting if you drafted a deck with Sneak Attack or Show and Tell and kept most of the targets in the sideboard and got them with Living Wish as needed. That still seems like a super narrow application though.

I like the idea of having a wish package the most although it would have to be carefully constructed to offset the whole getting a bunch of extra picks even though you have to cast the wish to access them deal. I guess it depends on what the wish packages were. It could also be interesting to make like 3 packages per wish and have the drafter choose one at random.

I really do like the wish package idea but I would construct the packages more towards containing stuff like Naturalize (actual naturalize) rather than game ending bombs. Kind of like a charm with 4 or 5 modes although that's kind of unexciting for some people.

One time I did a 6 person draft of a 1080 card cube that had the wishes in them. The owner's house rules were that the wishes let you look at a new pack and choose a card, as specified by the wish. So for Burning Wish you open up a new pack and take a sorcery. That's the only time I've ever seen the wishes in a cube environment.

 

[ahadabans]

For a Living Wish package...


Burning Wish package...


Burning wish package looks a lot worse by comparison.

Utility choices seems good too, especially for burning. I currently have burning in my combo cube and I've drafted it before but felt constrained and underwhelmed with only my side board choices.

If you are going to not play a card but then pay 2 more for it at sorcery speed, I figure the card has to be exactly what you need or much much better than anything else you could be casting (and if it's the latter, why isn't it already in your deck?).

 

[RavebornMuse]

I like the idea of a "Wishboard" of cards that cannot be added to a deck, but only Wished up, so drafting the card gives you access to the Wishboard. I think I prefer the idea of 1-2 "situationally amazing" cards per color, but I guess a solid range of bombs could work if your format is powerful enough to contain them; that is to say, I don't think even a Wurmcoil Engine is particularly reasonable, as that's a first-pick bomb by a county mile for most cubes in these forums.

 

[Velrun]

How about letting the Wishes only tutor on-color cards?

So Living Wish can tutor:
A cheap green creature: Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
A midrange green creature: Polykranos, World Eater
A big green creature: Primeval Titan
A cheap colorless creature: Phyrexian Revoker
A Midrange colorless creature: Solemm Simulacrum
A big colorless creature: Wurmcoil Engine
A green utility land: Treetop Village
A colorless utility land: Throne of the High City

This is what I would do. Eight cards. Each scaled by two converted mana cost and there's always something to be happy about.

 

[ahadabans]

That could work too. I think the appeal for me is allowing in super powerful cards well above what my list allows. Back door option into power max land. Really want Grisledaddy or Balance? Well, wish it into your deck.

This effectively creates an entire archetype. The OP card wish deck. Would take some work tuning a package though that didn't make the wishes auto first picks or overly niche. I think it would be really sweet though.

EDIT: Also worth noting, you can wish something from you sideboard too (that's not even a house rule). So I worry less about having utility options. If you pick up Living Wish early, grab Rec Sage, etc and then you have a toolbox option from your SB. The ancillary supplemental options I'm thinking are super above curve stuff that you'd fall over backwards to put in any deck that can cast or otherwise get the creature into play. Like Grislebrand is so much better than literally every other creature for sneak/show/reanimator. So you are heavenly incentivized to grab Living Wish if you are making one of those decks. Whether that's a desirable design decision or not, I'm not sure. But it's certainly going to alter how your cube drafts.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

One thing to keep in mind is that the wish in this instance is an individual card representing an entire class of cards. Tutors are interesting in the sense that they aren't real cards in the way we normally think of cards; they are abstractions representing the entire pool of potential tutorable cards.

The thing that I don't like about the setup that each individual tutor is representing an entire class of potential first pickable cards. I understand where you are coming from via a Johnny's perspective, but it seems to me foolish to not just first pick these cards every single draft, as it guarantees me a powerful, first pick quality card, regardless of the direction the draft goes. The more colors I play, the more free, first pick quality cards, each tutor pick represents.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Keeping it limited also helps it not just be an easy wheel for the more intense among your playgroup, AKA the "Why nobody will ever play mental magic against me anymore"

 

[Aston]

The wishes can sort of work as access to a "utility everything" board, with stuff like Tendrils of Agony or Laboratory Maniac being wish targets. I don't think putting generically powerful cards in the wish board is a good idea as it makes wishes a split card of the best options at any point in the game.

I would also probably leave out Cunning Wish as having to factor in all the possible instants when your opponent has plus mana up sounds very draining. On the other hand, I would like to Cunning Wish for Teferi's Response in response to a Rishadan Port activation just once...

 

[ahadabans]

I think you guys are correct (not having generically powerful cards). They should probably be narrow or niche at least on-color (maybe all choices in a midrange list if you even want to open this door there). That means for living wish we probably need to drop any artifact/eldrazi option (so no wurmcoil).

I really like Craterhoof as the Living Wish target though because it's a nonbo with most green based cheat strategies (absolutely sucks with Natural Order, Pattern of Rebirth, Oath of Druids). That's actually really neat in a way (almost a trap ). So if you focus on green combo, that only leaves Channel and Rofellos.dec, which makes living narrow. You really need to treat it like a gold card if you want the flexibility.

While clearly still great, is that an auto first pick in a higher powered combo list?

Again for the other colors, you have to consider living wish a gold card. And that's locking your in more than a mono colored card would. Does Living Wish still sound like an auto first pick? Griselbrand is obviously the premium reanimator/sneak/show target (outside eldrazi), but is green the best support color for those decks? I don't think so. Black and Blue are premium splashes due to discard/draw/filter/engine cards. Green is OK but Jund reanimator/sneak is inherently worse than the Dimir version simply because with blue you get more ways to draw your pieces and additional overlap with the tinker deck (including premium target Inkwell) so your draft is less locked in. Again, first pickable? Probably. Auto first pick? I still don't know. Demonic tutor gets you any pieces you are missing. I slam that in reanimator over living wish 10 times out of 10 and probably in sneak/show decks too. I like green more than most, so I'm probably going to want to draft living wish a lot. But I'm not convinced it's broken even with a small wish package.

For burning, the red option should probably be Bonfire of the Damned for similar reasons to living wish above. Bonfire is dumb and horrible but it actually isn't very good without miracle. So again, the real Rx combo here is burning wish with brainstorm. And now burning is an izzet card essentially, requiring you draw the second piece of the combo. Burning with mind twist makes it a really good Rakdos discard spell for sure, but you can't overlook the fact that you are having to cast a sorcery card for 2 mana before getting the really powerful card in your hand.

" - target player discards X cards at random"
is garbage.

"Target player discards X cards at random. Weird Suspend 1 - . Remove the last time counter at the beginning of your first main phase. You pay pay . If you choose not to, put this card back into your hand and it no longer has weird suspend but instead gains a casting cost of for the remainder of game. "
is overly complicated as a card design, but is cool. That said, it's certainly a notch down from actual mind twist.