Troels's cube

[troelslmunk]

Hi!

I just checked and I've been away for three and a half years. When I found myself unable to stop thinking about building a cube, I knew where to go... to read and think more about cube!

I want to build a cube. I'm building a cube. I have built a cube. It's a mess! And maybe it's going to be different later tonight. There's probably a hundred things I'm missing, like more than two sweepers or such, but this is my first cube in a long while. Also I have a feeling my theories show that I haven't played much limited lately.

I want to play my cube. I'm planning to play my cube. I have planned to plan a cube night.

Fringe modern decks
The idea started for a cube that contained all my favorite bizarre modern decks:
Gruul Prowess

Blue Steel

and various others that fell by the wayside in the first week of building the cube.
Already I began to see the links between the two archetypes: Small artifacts can trigger Prowess. Bigger artifacts can be ramped out. Lodestone-taxes can fight the Prowess decks.

And lots of questions posed themselves: [I'll add my first attempts at answers in brackets]

• How am I going to make sure there are enough creatures AND spells for the Prowess decks? [Try 50/50 in each color]
• How can noncreature be creatures? [Bestow, Awaken, tokens]
• How much removal is fair if deck contain fewer creatures that normal? [A smaller amount than normal]
• How do you build a green Prowess deck when the only guy is Deeproot Champion? [Herioc, auras and pump? Delirum?]

Back to the Lab
Then I went back to this place to seek advice. I.e. to continue lurking and taking in the wisdom that floats like a river of milk and honey. I became very inspired when I read Artifacts in Cube - Yes, but how? and Blue-Red Spells-a-Turn

Here Onderzeeboot and dbs show me (many of us, it seems) how to make sure a theme is not only supported in a few colors, but built into a cube as a whole. I was looking at solidifying five-ten guild strategies, but now I'm more leaning towards a general philosophy of 'casting spells is good and you should be rewarded for it' for all colors. Somewhere I became much more about playing spells than noncreature spells or just instants/sorceries. For example I started slotting every Extort card I had into the cube. I just want Mishra's Bauble to be the best card in the cube and for it to fit into every deck. Is that to much to ask?

I went deep on the list of keywords to help guide and expand the cards I were looking for: Storm, Fabricate, Extort, Surge, Heroic, Prowess, Flashback, Jump-start, Rebound, Suspend, Cascade, Retrace, Bestow, Awaken, Living Weapon, Affinity, Investigate, Improvise, Historic. And you can add Crew and Equip as well.

I also tried to follow the example of Broad Archetypes but didn't get far because I only had
Artifacts
Prowess
() Sacrifice
as themes so far and with limited space it doesn't make much sense to me. I didn't mention before: I'm planning only have 270 cards, because I don't anticipate having more than six players, realistically only four, which is fine by me.

A partial set of color-archetypes makes more sense to me now:
Spell count
Extort
Artifact ramp
Artifact sacrifice
Prowess
Artifact and Storm hate
(So many decks that want a Bauble!)

Other nonsense
Riptide also brought on it's own set of possibilities I had to choose from: Proxies? Custom cards? No, I don't need these right now. I like real magic cards. Maybe breaking singleton is something I'll do in the future. I'll probably keep away from doubled-faced cards and Conspiracy cards to start with because of complexity issues for the players, though Vance's Blasting Cannons are calling to me. I just hate that a player new to cube doesn't know what the flip side is.

On the subject of rules you set for yourself, I have been fighting myself a lot over whether I should wait on buying a lot of cards before playing the cube. I really want to sculpt the perfect list already, but it doesn't make much sense when I have no idea how it plays right now. But again, it will play much different when I get the cards I want.

What do you suggest? I'm leaning towards making a "finished" list of the cube I want to play. It seems like the most sensible to play and easier to get feedback on, but also it might take an extra week to get and delay the testing.

And then there's power level! Another one of those questions I can't realistically answer before playing the cube. I'm thinking no planeswalkers, except maybe the two Daretti's. I really want to play Tinker, because I never have, but that one card that restricts the artifact high end a lot.

It seems like every one of these decks would like a Signet (or a mox of any kind). Trouble is, I don't want fast mana. I want fast spells. And then big mana only for artifacts. I forgot how to articulate why I don't want fast mana.

Lastly I'll add a mess of cards not in the current cube, that I've found interesting:

Spoiler

Thoughtcast
cloud of Faeries
burning tree emissary
isochron scepter
top
helm of awakening
future sight
retract
Chromatic Star
frantic search
brainstorm
Lotus petal
Goblin Electromancer
Manamorphose
search for Tomorrow
phyrexian metamorph
everflowing chalice
mind's desire
sentinel tower
geistblast
think twice
thousand year Storm
light up the stage
memnite
teshar
trading post
steel overseer
engineered Explosives
perilous Myr
whirler rogue
sharding sphinx
Captain Lannery storm
pia's revolution
pitiless plunderer
pirate's pillage
rampage if the clans
Sai
shrine of loyal legions
sprouting renewal
thopter spy network
sram's expertise
thopter assembly
brudiclad
daretti
depths of desire
feldon
defiant
salvager
sage of lat nam
salvage Titan
scarecrone
daring archaeologist
jackknight
quick Smith genius
glaze fiend
glassdust hulk
riddleform
scroll of the masters
skywise teachings
cinder vines
firebrand archer
Weldfast Monitor
Hardened Beserker
Scrapheap scrounger
bident of thassa
bosh
cataslysmic gearhulk
combustible gearhulk
darklit gargoyle
esper stormblade
etherium sculptor
etherium astrolabe
ethersworn canonist
ethersworn adjudicator
krark-clan ironworks
ravnican lockets
ramos
shardless agent
silas renn
spear of heliod
sphinx summoner
torrential gearhulk
cogworker's puzzle knot
cranial plating
moriok rigger
heartless pillage
treasure map
domineer
mechanized production
tezzeret's touch
ensoul artifact
harrow
sphere of resistance
tinker
bitterordeal
crow storm
brain freeze
empty the warrens
grapeshot
haze of rage
hunting pack
mind's desire
scattershot
storm entity
inventors' fair
grinding station
marionette master
weaponcraft enthusiast
glint-sleeve artisan
visionary augmenter
iron league steed
efficient construction
retrofitter foundry
ongoing investigation
tamiyo's journal
trail of evidence
declaration in stone
forgotten ancient
vedalken archmage
bonesplitter

I hope what you see seems interesting and I look very much forward to your feedback and my further dabbling with this cube.

 

[troelslmunk]

I seem to have placed the thread in the wrong subforum. Can a mod take care of that? I can't see a way to delete this thread.

 

[Velrun]

Here have a like.

Second: Very nice initiative! Keep up the good work.

My advice to you is to proxy up the first tournament and THEN start buying all the cards. As a cube owner there are certain responsibilities. One is to make a format people find fun to play but another is to not burden the players with ‘your problems’ and proxies is one of those problems. However I do believe you will learn extremely much during your first tournament so maybe your 3-7 other players will be fine with proxies once.

Here is a recent article I think you should read. You actually have the golden opportunity to mold your cube because you haven’t fully constructed it yet

https://armlx.blogspot.com/2019/01/limited-design-32-for-three-is-place-to.html?m=1

 

[troelslmunk]

Thanks, Velrun.

I don't have much time to rebuild the cube this week, but I'm going to need some CubeTutor advice at some point anyway: Is there a way to mass-remove cards from the cube? Right now it takes a second to select or delete a single card and I can do anything meanwhile.

Yeah, I read the post because people here were fond of it. It makes a lot of sense and Ari seems to have made a very good analysis. I was planning to look at the P/T of the creatures in my cube, when the next sketch is made, but I'm not sure what to do with the data. It's not like I know what the distribution of 2/2's and 3/2 should be.

But I looked at the Scryfall list Rasmus posted and here's are the ones I'm considering playing:

 

[astraedm]

When you go to edit list and hit remove/replace, you can do a bunch of those before hitting submit.

 

[dbs]

Great post! For obvious reasons, I relate to a lot of the ideas you've outlined above. I think I can help distill some of the basic principles you're aiming for. Before I do, I'd like to point out two warnings about the cubetutor list you posted.

First, to me it feels more like an artifact theme cube rather than a cube suffused with artifacts. It's a little too heavy on the on-color artifact payoffs, with too few incidental artifact effects and more general build-arounds. That was my impression from skimming the list at least (I skimmed pretty quickly, so I could be wrong). This isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I'd strongly suggest looking at Dom's cube list (http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/97332) - I think his counters/tokens/proliferate/artifacts themes are exactly what you're looking for. I'd also recommend looking at RBM's cube list (http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/69130) - they're a brilliant cube designer and I think they capture a ton of the principles you care about (although placed inside the framework of a riptidean bounceland format which you may or may not want to adopt).

Second, if you care about spell velocity, I think you're a tiny bit light on replacement effects. I'm worried some decks will end up emptying their hand super quickly with no way to keep the train running. This might lead to a lot of high variance games. In part, I suspect this is because of how all-in you went on the artifact and aura themes. I think you could use a bit more card draw (not necessarily only card draw spells but definitely card draw triggers!) and more graveyard recursion. More recursion will have the side effect of feeling less bad when your Deeproot Champion eats a removal spell.

Okay, on to my general advice/distillation of what I think you're aiming at. The two modern strategies you posted at the top, capture the fantastic feeling of a certain aggro-combo deck that's pretty unique to modern. Old Affinity and the newer Hardened Scales are great examples: you really get the crazy spell velocity feeling, with lots of triggers and moving counters around. Your goal sounds like it's to capture that feel in a limited environment. Basically you have a ton of small, cheap, and efficient building blocks which stack together to form something much bigger. If I were building this style of cube, I would focus on the following principles:

Creatures should be cheap, and really care about triggers. Tons of triggered abilities should mean when you're playing the spell velocity game, it really feels like you're building up a mounting advantage of resources from small parts.

Huge number of replacement effects. Decks should constantly be drawing cards and recurring from the graveyard, this means you can keep assembling up your combo-y board-states, and you prevent feel-bad blow outs (which come from investing a ton of resources but then for example, losing it all to a sweeper without a way to refill your hand).

Whereas creatures can be very cheap and very efficient, removal should be inefficient. Maybe even 3+ CMC only. All sweepers should be conditional.

Interaction should play out on board. Instead of having removal spells, you should be proliferating your walking ballista and shooting down their stuff, or recurring a goblin cratermaker over and over. It should be all about building up velocity/on-board resources and using that to contest your opponent.

For aggressive strategies, the two modern examples of RG prowess and artifact creature decks are good illustration of exactly these principles. What about for other strategies? How does a control deck use small individual pieces to build up a board advantage and contest the opponent? You could have recurring sources of token generation together with stuff like:



You aren't using anthems or buffs to kill them really fast with tokens, instead you're building up on-board resources to lockdown your opponents resources.

How about a ramp deck? Inspiring Statuary let's you turn your incidental artifacts into mana, Cryptolith Rite lets you turn creatures into mana, Crystalline Crawler, Everflowing Chalice, and Pentad Prism let you turn Tezzeret's Gambit into mana. The ramp deck doesn't have to use that mana to simply cast a big bomb. You could use it to get a 6-mana build-around like Contagion Engine out faster. Or you could use it to chain a long series of spells together for your Mistfire Adept.

On the other hand, stuff like Extort and Bestow don't seem to capture these concepts. Extort doesn't build up the board (or interact in anyway at all). That's fine in my cube (where I don't care about contesting the board or doing creature combat) but it feels antithetical to what makes weird modern aggro-combo decks feel cool. Bestow is likewise super low-velocity, and to me it doesn't capture the feeling of chaining lots of small, cheap resources together. Then again, maybe I'm biased because of my experiences from Theros block drafts....

Anyway, my number one suggestion would be to make a huge number of hypothetical cube deck lists. Don't limit yourself to cards currently in your cube, draw from anywhere. Grab 23 cards you think would form a cool deck together pushing themes you care about. Then build more lists for the same theme, but shift the colors around. This shifting part helps emphasize the overlaps between different archetypes and different styles of building similar strategies. It also helps you single out cards that are a little too narrow. This process has been hugely helpful to me, and I think it's more useful to build the cube list from deck sketches rather than try to just build a list all at once.

Excited to see what you end up with!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

My number one suggestion would be to go download Forge, enter your cube list, and play a ton of games against crappy draft bots (really, I've taken Black Lotus 6th pick). However crappy the draft AI may be (you can enter a pick order list with a lot of time and effort, by the way, if you want them to correctly identify bombs), it's a great way to test your cube. Not only because you can actually mock up multiple drafts in a short amount of time, you can actually play games against a mostly serviceable AI, and you can edit your cube list in Notepad++, restart Forge, and test your changes in a matter of minutes. You can even manually edit drafted decks to build a kind of gauntlet, to try out various matchups that you expect to pop up.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

+1 to the suggestions of making deck lists and practice drafting against bots. I would also suggest maybe taking some deck lists you're particularly keen on for a spin against a friend in an actual game! I think people would be more down to play with proxied cards if it's for testing design ideas, rather than an entire cube draft experience, so it could be a good place to start when moving over to real cardboard.

 

[troelslmunk]

Back after a busy week!

Thanks, astraemd, the remove card box is a little faster than the remove button. I think what I'm looking for is a remove button in the mass edit section, but you can't always get what you want.


Thanks for the thorough post, dbs! It's a great mix of things I couldn't express myself and things I hadn't thought of.

First, to me it feels more like an artifact theme cube rather than a cube suffused with artifacts. It's a little too heavy on the on-color artifact payoffs, with too few incidental artifact effects and more general build-arounds. That was my impression from skimming the list at least (I skimmed pretty quickly, so I could be wrong). This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying with this, but I can draw a couple of things from it anyway.

From a certain point of view there are four (overlapping) groups of cards in the cube: Build arounds that are artifacts, artifact synergizers, generic artifacts and cards that have nothing to with artifacts.

Are you saying that I need more the build arounds and the generic artifacts? I will need to test or look at Mirrodin, for example, as-fan before I know how many artifacts to include. My gut feeling is that I need more than the 40-45 artifacts, of 270, I have right now.

Second, if you care about spell velocity, I think you're a tiny bit light on replacement effects. ... I think you could use a bit more card draw (not necessarily only card draw spells but definitely card draw triggers!) and more graveyard recursion.

Yes, I'm been adding and removing cantrips. I don't think I want cards like "Gain Fear, draw a card", but I really like Confront the Unknown. But you're right, I think I need more cantrips or card drawing in general. I have also seen Chromatic Star mentioned a lot here.

... capture the fantastic feeling of a certain aggro-combo deck that's pretty unique to modern. Old Affinity and the newer Hardened Scales are great examples: you really get the crazy spell velocity feeling, with lots of triggers and moving counters around. Your goal sounds like it's to capture that feel in a limited environment. Basically you have a ton of small, cheap, and efficient building blocks which stack together to form something much bigger.

Yes, please! That is what I wanted before I knew I wanted it

Interaction should play out on board. Instead of having removal spells, you should be proliferating your walking ballista and shooting down their stuff, or recurring a goblin cratermaker over and over. It should be all about building up velocity/on-board resources and using that to contest your opponent.

I think this is important. If Prowess is king, interactive permanents should be the queen, at least. It might be easy going of in a flurry of spells, but I think it's going to be hard to interact with. To promote interplay with the opponent, I think I need permanents that are ready to hinder the opponent. I hope this can be done even while keeping the Prowess spirit of most permanents in the cube. This also extends to spells in some way, where I want spells to interact with the opposition, not try to ignore it. Thoughtseize over Aphotic Wisps is one way of putting it.

For aggressive strategies, the two modern examples of RG prowess and artifact creature decks are good illustration of exactly these principles. What about for other strategies? How does a control deck use small individual pieces to build up a board advantage and contest the opponent?

This is a very good question that I hadn't considered. When looking at the traditional archetypes, it seems most are covered in the cube I have in mind, but not control.

On the one hand control is the opposite of Prowess. You don't want to sit on your hands and wait for the right moment, if the cube wants you to play multiple spells each turn. Also with the removal getting nerfed it might be hard to control the board.

On the other hand it's an extension of what I described above: Cards fighting the opposition, only more focused and gaining advantage while doing so.

On the third hand a tempo-control deck would fit very well into the cube: Landing one threat and making it stick using counter, discard, recursion and protection spells.

Ramp, Aggro, Combo, Control

On the other hand, stuff like Extort and Bestow don't seem to capture these concepts. Extort doesn't build up the board (or interact in anyway at all).

I agree on Bestow. My guess is that one or two will stick in the cube, but paying five mana for an aura is the opposite of the flurry of spells I'm looking for.

But I'm going to give Extort a go. It's been a while since Gatecrash, and yes, it seems uninteractive, but on the flip side it's gives you more time to play spells and the spells you cast to trigger Extort can still affect the board, as long a they're cheap.

Anyway, my number one suggestion would be to make a huge number of hypothetical cube deck lists.

Will do!

My number one suggestion would be to go download Forge

Interesting, I'll look into this at some point.

I would also suggest maybe taking some deck lists you're particularly keen on for a spin against a friend in an actual game!

Duly noted.
Thank you all for all your advice. I hope to update the cube this weekend, but I can't make any promises

 

[troelslmunk]

I built some deck mostly from what's in the cube right now to show examples of what I'm trying to achieve:

Azorius Steel (Aggro Ramp with a focus on Taxing)

A deck I want to play and a necessary one to keep the Surge/Storm decks fair.

Izzet Surge

I might have to work on the curve in this deck/idea.
This deck also isn't far from an aggro Prowess build or a controlling Storm deck.

Artifact Sacrifice

Gruul Prowess-Aggro

Those were my first four builds. There's a lot to say about them, but for now I'll leave you with a few comments.

I still imagine there being a Storm deck and an Extort deck, both need a lot of ramp or fast mana that I haven't included in the cube. But I'll try to build examples later to if something works.

Right now I want to change half the green and the black cards, but I don't have have anything special in mind. Do you guys have any ideas that might fit into my themes?
Related: It seems like a good idea to stick to an even distribution of colors, 36 cards in each color in my case. I assume most of you keep it structured like that?

 

[troelslmunk]

I've slowly been tinkering with the list and I have come to a point where I like all of the cards. There's still lots I want room for, and some imbalances that I haven't taken care of: Blue wants to do too many things and I don't exactly know what I want green and black to do. Maybe that's where I break singleton at some point to concentrate on a theme that hasn't been printed a lot.

I'm looking forward to Wednesday, where I hope my first draft will happen. I have plans for two more drafts in February!

Will Ramroller ever be a 2/3? I doubt it. Is that going to be a problem? I don't know. The only way to find out is to draft, I guess

Further up the page I said some things about restrictions I have or I am considering: Customs, double-faced cards, modern border, split cards. I'm still figuring out the area between giving the drafter the most easily understood experience, giving the player the most balanced and varied experience and keeping me, the designer, from tying myself up in rules.

Anyway, I'm breaking one of my rules, because the following custom cards are so close to something the player has already seen and are so hard to replace without making customs. Inspired by Onderzeeboot and with their sparring on art and construction, I put together the five missing Borderposts. I'm not a CubeTutor champion, so they're just represented as Guildgates there, without the right images.

But with those, I feel like I've hit v1.0 of the cube and I'm ready to present it to the drafters. There might be deck lists coming up, real ones from the draft or fake ones to present archetypes.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

I've slowly been tinkering with the list and I have come to a point where I like all of the cards. There's still lots I want room for, and some imbalances that I haven't taken care of: Blue wants to do too many things and I don't exactly know what I want green and black to do. Maybe that's where I break singleton at some point to concentrate on a theme that hasn't been printed a lot.

I'm looking forward to Wednesday, where I hope my first draft will happen. I have plans for two more drafts in February!

Will Ramroller ever be a 2/3? I doubt it. Is that going to be a problem? I don't know. The only way to find out is to draft, I guess

Further up the page I said some things about restrictions I have or I am considering: Customs, double-faced cards, modern border, split cards. I'm still figuring out the area between giving the drafter the most easily understood experience, giving the player the most balanced and varied experience and keeping me, the designer, from tying myself up in rules.

Anyway, I'm breaking one of my rules, because the following custom cards are so close to something the player has already seen and are so hard to replace without making customs. Inspired by Onderzeeboot and with their sparring on art and construction, I put together the five missing Borderposts. I'm not a CubeTutor champion, so they're just represented as Guildgates there, without the right images.

But with those, I feel like I've hit v1.0 of the cube and I'm ready to present it to the drafters. There might be deck lists coming up, real ones from the draft or fake ones to present archetypes.

You certainly have some interesting concepts at play here- I think your draft will go well.

On Ramroller- does it having only 2 power actually matter in most matchups?

 

[troelslmunk]

On Ramroller- does it having only 2 power actually matter in most matchups?

Well, it matters some to the clock.

But I just took it as an example of whether it makes sense to have cards with conditional effects if they are no longer conditional, because the list is crammed full of artifacts. At least my guess is artifacts are going to be on the battlefield almost all the time with the current amount of artifact cards and tokens

 

[troelslmunk]

Turns out I have been sick all week, so I didn't get to draft yesterday. But I'll give you some decks anyway. Decks, decks, decks!

The other day I drafted this piece that I like very much

Jori En and the Baubles from CubeTutor.com

Part of my comment on CubeTutor
"This is basically why I built the cube. All in on Surge effects. Optimized with three baubles. Only question is whether you save them for Jori or a Surge spell, or just get a Prowess trigger and a new card.
I chose not to go with Grand Architect this time because of the lack of cheap blue creatures."

The sideboard had lot of potential also. 10 creatures for three vehicles might be a bit on the low side. But damn, there are going to be some Prowess triggers

If I were playtesting I would probably add a Mind's Desire (over Walking Ballista) because this is the type of deck I want it to be good in, without being broken anywhere. See the last deck for more like this.


a dozen swans succeded in making a great version of Blue Steel

Blue Steel from CubeTutor.com

From playing the constructed version of the deck, I know that the most explosive starts with one-drop, Chief Engineer into an artifact or Grand Architect into something huge on turn three. That doesn't need to happen often, but it's going to be rare with the lack of cheap blue creatures in the cube right now. So 3 one-drops and 2 two-drops (Spined Thopter) is great in the current cube for this deck.
I added Baral's Expertise as a not-as-narrow Paradoxical Outcome, and because two spells at once is what this cube is about, but of course it's also a powerful tempo spell as seen here.

I wonder if Crow Storm is misplaced in this deck or if it's fine along with the artifact ramp.


I drafted this just now. 16 lands.

Thalia and the Clues from CubeTutor.com

I started with Thalia a quickly focused on GW and keeping the curve low and the creature count high. I ended up with all three non-creature taxers. Some removal-light versions of Surge/Prowess deck are going to have a hard time fight against that, but maybe that's only fair. I'll have to keep that in mind when looking at removal in the future.


And now, a couple of thought up examples.

Viridian Revel Control

A Green (+black/red) archetype where you kill stuff, mostly artifacts, and draw cards whenever your opponent wants to use their artifact tokens. This is one example of a control deck.

Another example of "control" could be this. 17 lands + the borderpost

Extort-Extort

This might be just too annoying to play against or too slow to set up. But I'm excited to find out why it's awesome What I like is, firstly, that the extort mechanic works so well with the low curve in the cube. Ornithopter might be a stretch for the cube, but this is one spot for it. Secondly, I imagine the middle/late game as a race to get enough triggers to kill your opponent while your mana is tightly bound to pay for those triggers. The opponent then has two options, kill the extorters or race your lifegain.


The last list

Storm + Mentor

I didn't expect this one to be so hard to find cards for. There may be a couple of reasons why. Blue is stretched over several archetypes, with most of it going for a "play multiple spells every turn" strategy like the white cards also lean towards. When trying to maximize the Storm spells, with a backup in general Prowess, I tried to find removal to delay the opponent and generating mana to be able to play spells before the storm. Removal is not cheap in this cube so doesn't really fit, and mana acceleration is sparse. I ended up splashing for it. And sometimes Inspiring Statuary will let you play a couple of Baubles and ramp out an early storm spell, but in this build you have to work for it most of the time.

All of this is of course an attempt to do the impossible, enable the fair storm deck

Oh, and by the way, this cube is brought to you by the following three albums. the olllam by the olllam, Hmayra by Shubh Saran, and Positive Force by Delicate Steve. I went through Spotify's discover weekly and a month back and the three that stuck are three different genres of instrumental music. They're going to remind me of building this cube for some part of the future.

Thanks for reading/listening

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Those are really nice songs, thanks!

 

[Knifethrower]

Aviary Mechanic, Kor Skyfisher, Emancipation Angel. Also see low powered Invasive Species . Also Paradoxical Outcome

 

[troelslmunk]

Aviary Mechanic, Kor Skyfisher, Emancipation Angel. Also see low powered Invasive Species . Also Paradoxical Outcome

I might swap Glint Hawk for one of these, because they're more versatile. They add to the spell count, but not necessarily fast enough for it to matter. Thank you none the less



The first draft was on Thursday!

I brought it to the local magic association and when the regular draft didn't fire, I had lots of people who wanted to draft my cube. We were six drafting 4 packs of 11. I was prepared to draft a grid draft with four people, but instead there weren't even room for all the people who were interested because of the 270 size.

Next weekend I'll have to add another 90 because we're going to be eight drafters. I'm a bit worried that just mashing 15 cards from the maybe-cubeables into every color is going to work out, but I don't have another strategy right now.

Back to the draft. I had an awesome time because the I could check off many things I wanted to see happen and because people had a good time with my creation.

Here are the decklists along with the highlights of what I heard and saw in the games. I remind you that the blank cards are my custom Borderposts.

UR Steel

Highlights: Turn 1 Memnite, Bonded Construct. Turn 2 Chief Engineer, Spined Thopter. I thought it look awesome, but it didn't amount to much in the end because the rest of the hand didn't cooperate. Also there was Turn 1 Ponder Turn 2 Abbot of Keral Keep which reveals an Ornithopter. Awesome, but maybe too cute

This player had Grip of the Roil, Boulder Salvo and Containment Membrane in their sideboard, so one of us is wrong about Surge. I'm definitely wrong about Membrane, it's not worth a card when it doesn't tap the creature.

Mentor Extort

This was my deck and pretty close to the Extort list I posted in the last update. First picks was Mentor and Myth Realized, going into white with cheap artifacts and later into black.
I got to do exactly what I imagined, getting into racing situations where extort really pulled its weight, either getting there or falling just short. Also the deck was strong enough to just run away with Mentor some games.
The protection from artifact on Apostle's Blessing was relevant a couple of times.

Br Sacrifice

Another example of a deck I think came together really well. The player first picked Knight of Autumn, but turned up here. They also remarked that Brittle Effigy exiles itself, which is disappointing in a deck like this, so maybe it should be something else.
The highlight I think was when Salvage Titan sacrificed three artifacts and got two of the back immediately with Scrap Trawler.

URw Prowess

Looking at this curve I guessed that the player had made a mistake by drafting zero two-drops. Looking at the curve of the cube, I realize that it's me who made the mistake. There are only three two-drops in blue! I should work on smoothing things out, there and other places like with the black six-drops.
Also the player commented on that it was hard to build around the Sentinel Tower and Trail of Evidence in their sideboard, since the cube is so focused on artifact as a source of noncreature spells. I'll take that into consideration.

Wr Aggro

Strong deck, maybe the curve of the deck and cube need some work here as well. I didn't see Fall of the Titans being played for Surge, it was mostly just a deal 2 and 2 for five mana.

Sultai Midrange

I really like this deck. Maybe four Naturalize effect are too many, but it's one way of controlling the board while you generate value or mana enough for your bombs. Highlights included Rona bringing back Mishra's Bauble, which is basically the reason I put her in the cube Also turn 3 Tinker turning a borderpost into The Immortal Sun. I sounds awesome, and I hope there was a game left afterwards and not just a landslide.
I have lots of questions for the players, but that's what happens when you don't have time to talk after the draft and wait a couple of days before writing the decks down.
I had a good time and I'm looking forward to another draft tomorrow already. I didn't have any revelation of cards or entire sections that need to be changed, but that probably a good sign. The cube actually behaved the mostly way I imagined it would, so I can't call the first draft anything but a success.

 

[troelslmunk]

Another draft
So I had a draft with four colleagues this past weekend. I have a few things to say, but all together we were a bit too tired and didn't get many games in and I can't conclude a lot from it. We had drafted UMA during the afternoon, and when it came time to cube people found themselves exhausted. But the players nonetheless expressed that they liked the cube and wanted to come back to it.

It's nice to have some more deck lists to see how people approach the cube differently than I do, but many things could also be different approaches to limited or Magic in general. For example I ended up with a 15 land aggro deck while of the another went with a 19 land control deck. Again I wish I had had the time to talk with each player about their deck and how they built and drafted it.

My deck
As I often do I stayed open as long a possible in the draft, sticking to one color for the first half of the draft. This is easier with so many colorless artifacts. But I didn't expect to stay monored the entire draft, but it kept flowing. In the last booster I first picked Tinker to go with my Scuttling Doom Engine, but I didn't end up playing it. It sounded better and more fun to keep the curve low and the mana consistent.

The deck lists

Spoiler

All-In-Red

Bant Bit-Of-Everything

Non-Green Control

Naya Hate-Midrange

Sultai Midrange

There many things the five of us did differently and many sideboard cards I would have played in their lists. But as I mentioned, that might be differing approaches that I can't do much about. What I can do something about is how I introduce the format and thereby how they approach this format in particular. I don't feel I have done a good job with my introductory speeches, but unless I have something short and great to say, it seems people would rather just begin the draft already.

Playgroups
I don't have a fixed playgroup and I don't see one forming just yet. Instead I have our local association in addition to friends and colleagues who are ready to try something new. This means that the cube is exposed to many different crowds and their unknown drafting styles and that makes even more challenging to introduce them all to the cube.

[Here's a side note where I could point out that the lack of a group is yet another reason to keep the cube to a six player size and abstain from using hard-to-understand/read mechanics like Sagas and double-faced cards in an already confusing format]

Finding the right words to say about the cube goes hand in hand with getting to know what the cube wants, what it is capable of and which direction is it going:

A Spells Cube
I'm convinced that this cube is a Spells Cube. It all about playing spells and being rewarded for it. Mark Rosewater wrote at one point about how some mechanics reward players for things they already want to do. Landfall was an example of such a mechanic while discarding to Wild Mongrel was the opposite. I feel like this concept is one to follow.

What better than playing a spell? Playing another spell right after the first!

That means cheap and free spells, cards that care about spells being cast in a turn and so forth.

Along with the starting point, my bizarre modern decks, this lead me to include a lot of artifacts, cheap and expensive, and an extensive artifact theme that included every color. But this may be a betrayal of the core theme: Spells. If I were to guess, I would say that in the next iteration of the cube the artifact theme will be turned down to half the intensity. In order to focus even more on the multispell environment.

Yet another draft
But that's not going to be this instant. All my time tonight went into this post and tomorrow is another draft and Saturday is yet another! Glory be the drafting days!

 

[troelslmunk]

Another draft / Playgroups
I had a bit of an disappointing draft since last time I wrote, and it's mostly my own fault. It's been swingy how many players were up for a draft at the local association, but still I tried to gather up people on Commander day and I did get 6 people for the draft. But before even building their deck one of the players said they were soon going back to commander. After the first round, half the players left I guess I learned only to draft with players who are there to draft. Expecting to play commander all day and being convinced to a draft apparently doesn't work.
It also reminds me of stories about free online drafts, where everyone drafted, dropped and drafted again because they could, leaving the opponent with nothing but wasted time.

So for all my talk about not needing a playgroup, I didn't succeed this time at having fun draft by recruiting volunteers on the spot. Maybe I'll develop a more fixed playgroup or maybe I'll be sure to recruited players before the event, so they might be focused on the draft and not want to be elsewhere.

Write me if you want me to see the deck lists for the last couple of drafts.

Deconstruction
I'm nearing what feels like my first big overhaul of the cube. I have

• a target - the theme of casting spells
• some changes - from artifact-filled to artifact-themes
• some flaws - a lack of focus for green and black
• some obstacles - power level of bombs versus removal
• and some experimental ideas - "why don't I like ramp?" versus "are moxen what this cube needs?"

Spellslinging and Velocity
One player dubbed it spellslinging when I tried to explain the concept of the cube. I'm not entirely hooked, but it's better than 'multispell'

It's a weird to be building a format around a concept so generic as casting spells, but when you ask for high velocity spell casting, I'm surprised there have been printed so few payoffs. I can see a couple reasons why: Storm sets a dangerous precedent and designers want to keep their distance, which is maybe why Surge was so nerfed. It's hard to reward players for playing many spells when you're not restricting what kind of spell, but I can't put my finger on why.

Chaining spells together also either requires a format with low CMC or players who a patiently holding on to their spells until the right moment. That maybe also be something Wotc isn't looking for.

Artifacts
I haven't implemented much of anything yet, but this is where the overhaul will be focused. I have a fourth or a third of the cube that I want to change, primarily artifacts that don't add much besides being artifacts. I will have to read the Yes, but how thread once more to come closer to where I want my artifacts and artifact themes to be.

So far, I like Treasures and Clues for the velocity theme and I also like their perfect match, creatures like Glaze Fiend. That leads me to focus on tokens in addition to Borderposts and Baubles and focus less on artifact ramp and historic.

Green and Black
While blue and red are filled to the brim with themes and good cards waiting their turn, green and black are mostly filler. The majority feels like mediocre cards or cards that don't fit any of the themes.

The obvious pairing when talking Golgari is a graveyard theme. And thinking about Vengevine and Gravecrawler, they seem to fit right into the main theme of casting spells, and they do. But at the same time they both require a large commitment to discard outlets, sac outlets and mill (and Zombies) that I don't have in the cube, because they feel like the opposite of casting spells. Also if I were to go for a graveyard theme in green-black, I can't see how it wouldn't be isolated like with Jason's Infect concept.

I have given the graveyard theme some thought, but not enough, so I may turn around on this. I like aristocrat decks and they have the same speed that I'm looking for, so that may be an angle to pursue.

Right now, black has functions like removal, extort, discard, artifact sacrifice and artifact boosted aggro. Green has anti-artifact, +1/+1 triggers on spell casting, large 4-drops and Clues.

Green and black don't have any Prowess creatures, but at least green has Deeproot Champion that I could double down on. Black somehow isn't interested in spell triggers.

Removal and Bombs
Manaplasm has replaced Managorger Hydra, and Forgotten Ancient is going the same way. I need to turn up the volume on removal significantly before they get back in. I think they would be balanced if they only triggered on your own spells in this cube, but with out clean answers, they just lock the opponent out of the game when played on curve or on an even board. It was easier to cut two cool cards than to rebuild the removal suite and understand the consequences that would have to the format.

At least Monastery Mentor still dies to a burn spell. I would like him to be powerful and awesome, but stills stoppable.

Ramp
I don't find ramp decks exciting. You need ramp early and payoff late and either part is useless if it shows up at the wrong time. I find it inefficient and out of my hands when I play it, so made the decision for my players and cut it from the cube. That had consequences in multiple directions that I've mentioned here before. Storm isn't dangerous with limited mana, high curve is reserved for control decks and green is a bit more limited in what it can contribute with.

Fast mana seems different, but problematic for its own reasons. I fits better with the velocity theme which is probably why Dark Ritual has survived in the cube so far. While ramp is played to make next turn more exciting, rituals make this turn more exciting. Still, for all the fun of having and explosive turn, the opponent rarely has a good time or a good way to answer a threat that arrived before it's turn.

Moxen
Adjacent to the above and inspired by dbs's Mox Cube, I started thinking about how much it would break my cube to add 5-10 of the original moxen. They would either replace or be in addition to the borderposts which are also spells that function as lands. That's the main reason I want them, to be spells lands. The ramp is not central and has as many upsides and as downsides.

After reading the answer to my post in dbs's blog though, that little fantasy is put on hold. One of the big downsides to moxen is that they break the curve, which isn't a big problem in a cube like dbs's, but would be backbreaking in a tempo cube like mine.

A few ideas for customs come to mind to solve this problem, if one was the customizing type. A mox that cannot be cast on the first or second turn. A mox that gives the opponent a Treasure. A mox that allows the opponent to discard a card to gain a mox token in hand. Or one could make a more powerful monocolor borderpost, untapped and with a cost of instead of . Or 'simply' a land that is a spell or, equivalently, a mox that takes a landdrop. Apparently I had more than a few ideas.

Also,
Creature count
I've stuck with the 50/50 creature/noncreature balance in each color so far. I have a feeling it could be better, but I haven't found a better system and I don't feel like using loose boundaries.


Most of the above ties into the card Deconstruct. It's a multispell card: It begs you to cast another spell right after it. It has to do with artifacts, specifically it holds one of greens values, artifact destruction. It's a removal spell for artifact bombs and artifact mana. Which is why it seems to me like it should have a central place in the cube.

But: I have been seeing it hanging out in sideboards in a format where I hoped it would be a main deck card. And now I'm moving away from juicy artifact targets in the cube. Is it even going to be a relevant sideboard card?

I don't know, I'm just musing on the fact that one of my favorite cards is maybe falling off by the wayside as the format evolves.

Also: Programming
I was inspired by silent auction draft linked by Onderzeeboot in designing-for-3-to-5-players. The tl;dr is that four players open a pack on the table, secretly choose a bid for each card and each card goes to the highest bid on that card. 200 points to use over 12 packs.

I have started using my limited programming skills and some ideas from colleagues to make a website that could speed up the process significantly and take care of the paperwork. I have written the back end code in Java to do the auctioning with the input from the website. Now I 'just' need to integrate that into the workflow: website -> input -> algorithm -> output -> website, while having the website update at the right times to stay in sync with the other drafters. I have gotten some advice to use jsp to call the backend and sessions to keep the four browsers in sync, but my google skills are failing.

Any advice is appreciated. That goes for cube as well as programming