Article [Top 8] Missed Design Opportunities: Multicolor Edition

[Chris Taylor]

Vanish Into Memory is the only card on this list that's really a design failure in my book, as it feels clumsy and non-intuitive. Honestly, I think the rest of the cards have great designs. They do what you think their respective color pairs would best team up to do. Abstractly comparing them against "what could have been" is going to lead to a lot of disappointment. And frankly, an article that consists mostly of criticism can really be a turn-off. A much more interesting article might be where you instead challenge yourself to balance your cube to make these sweet designs desirable.

Development is the team responsible for tweaking "the numbers" on cards - Mana, P/T, etc. And honestly, I can't say that I blame them for costing everything like they did, or the standard environments they lived in would be a much different place.

Warleader's Helix was originally going to be a straight up reprint of Lightning Helix, and late in development, after the art had been commissioned, development realized that they didn't want the card to show up in Standard at this time. So they had to make a new card, but keep the art already commissioned. Because the art was clearly evocative of the original, they really had no other option than to make a variant.

Vanish does seem a bit overly complex for a card that's supposed to do something really simple: slide something out and make you loot a bunch.
But then again, as it's worded you can kill Roar of the Wurm Tokens and draw 6 cards with no downside. (This happened to me)
Is there a standard format that's ready for lightning helix? Maybe. Is there a standard format that's ready for Helix + Snapcaster? Less likely. I'm in favor of the change

Hmm...but isn't the coolest thing about building Cubes that we can tailor the environment the way we want? What exactly do we gain by dismissing cards "because commander"? Deckbuilding and playtesting for EDH in pretty much a focus exercise that helps you learn about new cards, mechanics and their interactions in a very focused way and lets you iterate on some themes and card combinations with an ease that wouldn't be possible by playing cube alone (mostly because of drafting and deckbuilding taking too much time).

And it's not like every card would ever be constructed/limited playable anyways. Look at how much chaff we got before Alara, when the set sizes were much bigger. Those big mana crazy effects that you have pointed have existed for far too long to be commander-specific. By the time Biorhythm and Time Stretch were designed, there wasn't even an EDH scene to cater to. At least there is an 'official' format that accepts playing with low-power/high-fun cards now, otherwise we would be opening the same chaff with the exception that people wouldn't be able to point to specific demographics and blame them for those cards existing.

I believe that our Cubes have a lot to learn from Commander if we are to fully utilize our potential as designers. I'll see if I can organize my thoughts on this matter and write something cohesive in the near future.

I agree with this. Good luck finding a cube environment that fully utilizes Cloven Casting

We have a lot to learn from every format, but commander contains the very real lesson of "What do you do when WotC starts making your format worse".
If the modo cube wasn't evidence enough, WotC's design aims and ours are pretty far removed, since they think Channel Ulamog is an awesome combo.
I'm afraid of wizards making cards specifically for cube, because once they realize they can make a giant 300 card box set of gold border cards that don't even go into legacy, dangerous things happen.
We get green show and tell. We Get red sinkhole. We get a buyback wrath. We get a blue moat.

We get all sorts of shit because "It's powerful, and that's what cube players love" without anything being balanced because it can't affect any constructed format ever.

This is all fine for the people who enjoy vintage and urza's block constructed, but thinking that the entire cube community is like that is bad marketing.
this happened with EDH because the people who loved the format were all playing these ten thousand dollar fully pimed decks, and describing all these "Sweet Plays" where they killed the table on turn 2 with tolarian academy, because that makes a way better story than "man, I drew overrun at a crucial time and killed 3 people, but he had Safe Passage and killed me on the swingback!"

Since these people are all WotC heard about, they assumed they were all the people who played it.
Later they found out Craw Wurm guy loved EDH, but he's playing a different format. They just happen to have the same rules.

Belcher Combo decks and Craw Wurm ramp can't exist in the same format and have everyone having fun.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Also Cloven Casting Cube, all it takes is some erratta. Or Type 4

My idea: All lands are utopia lands, everyone begins with 5-7 in play. Could be a sweet archetype enabler.

 

[Lucre]

Will I have to play with 1ofs or can I just play a million colour burn deck with draw 7s?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Up to you to go find multicolor burn spells

 

[Peter Angell]

...
A much more interesting article might be where you instead challenge yourself to balance your cube to make these sweet designs desirable.
...

Good luck finding a cube environment that fully utilizes Cloven Casting

After re-reading Cloven Casting, I'm not going to hold my breath. But besides it and Vanish, the rest of the cards seem reasonably powerful and fun. I don't think it would be too out there to lay out the skeleton of a cube that's pegged around the power level of these multi-color cards a la the Eldrazi Domain Cube. And maybe that's not a single article, but a multi-part thing.

I guess my biggest beef, after re-thinking everything, is that the article comes off as "Wizards didn't give me the toys I wanted." The main target of the criticism is R+D. And because you are focusing on individual cards, and not sets as a whole, the only tie-in to cubing is for custom cards and errata (neither is directly mentioned).

I'm not trying to bring the hate parade down on VibeBox, as I agree with some of your individual points, and I'm not looking to stamp out the opinions I don't agree with. But as a whole, the article just feels super negative and that also falls on the editor to make sure the author has a good direction to go in.

 

[VibeBox]

I'm not trying to bring the hate parade down on VibeBox

no worries, you're entitled to your opinions.
the article does have a negative tone because the premise is inherently a negative one. i came up with the topic off the top of my head and it is what it is. not everything has to be so "nice" all the time, especially toward a company that treats its customers so poorly.
ultimately though, i don't think it matters much whether people agree with my cubepinions or not, i just wrote something i though people might click and read. whether they like my article or not i already accomplished my goal because they came here, saw riptide lab, and now know there is cube content here.

 

[Lucre]

Oh crap, do you think they'll imagine we're all lovable cranks on here after reading the article?

 

[VibeBox]

i prefer to think that they will come away with a view that diverse set of views are expressed here. perhaps it's a bit naive, but i have faith that as long as we foster that attitude it will become our image.

 

[Chris Taylor]

"You know what really grinds my gear?" Cube Edition