General Two headed giant cube

Spiderdoofus

Spiderdoofus

Ok dudes, been a while since I posted here, but as I was playing two-headed giant at the prerelease tonight, it occurred to me that it would be sweet to make a cube designed for 2HG.

It's just brainstorm/thought experiment stage, but since it would probably be cool to do it with custom cards, I thought Riptide was the place to come. What I'm looking for is either existing mechanics that would work well in 2HG (the only one I can think of is parley), and ideas for new mechanics or cards. What do you guys think?
 
Spiderdoofus

Spiderdoofus

That's an interesting example. Extort is clearly very powerful in 2HG. Powerful mechanics are good. I'm especially interested in mechanics that do something with the team aspect of 2HG.

My initial idea would be:
Recover (needs a better name)
Ability word: if your teammate <meets condition Y> they do X.

Examples:
<land finder>
2G - Sorcery - Search your library for a basic land and then put it into play tapped. Recover - If your teammate controls fewer lands than an opponent, they may search their library for a basic land and put into play tapped.

<draws>
3U - sorcery - Draw two cards. Recover - if your teammate has fewer cards in hand than an opponent, they may draw a card.
 
vennythekid

vennythekid

This sounds super cool! Conspiracy is probably the closest thing in terms of a retail set from WOTC to what you're trying to do. Like Blacksmithy said, Tempting Offer and Will of the Council, as well as their other multiplayer mechanics, are a great place to start looking. Cards that say "each oppponent" become extremely strong in 2HG.

My question to you is: how is this being drafted? By 4 players and then random teams? coordinated teams? 8 players? 12?
 
B

blacksmithy

Oh, another thing to watch out for in this format is that black and red, imo, have a significant built-in advantage in a cube meant for 2hg, because they both get a number of burn/lifedrain effects that scale with the number of opponents. Grey merchant of asphodel in THS 2hg prerelease is the classic example.
Now i think that you should totally run those effects, but be conscious of the resulting change in your meta. It may be that Bant needs cards that go a tad above your desired powerlevel to compete; it may be that control in general needs some extra tools to beat "Double Burn." It may be that you build combos/really strong synergies into Bant (and there are several: finks and counters, kotr and coralhelm, tinker and battleball, etc etc) to give the colors a boost.
Or maybe you build a custom mechanic for Bant that scales like BR's burn/drain effects? "Draw a card for each opponent" or something in that vein? I'm sure you can come up with something more elegant.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

A note on synergistic strategies and 2hg. You are drawing 2 cards per turn, so this can mean going through a larger amount of cards. If a combo piece exists so that works with the one combo piece + any one of these others them chances are higher that you find the combo.

For example, my friends opened a demonic pact in their sealed pool and built decks with some bounce spells and etb disenchants. Since they has about 3-4 each in their respective 40 card decks they got a way to pop or reset their pact pretty concistently. Maybe you can use this for your bant? I don't know what power level you're aiming for but there's ton of blink synergies and stuff that you can play with, and adding to that a bunch of blue library manipulation could turn out potent.
 
Spiderdoofus

Spiderdoofus

I'm imagining this would be drafted as a team. Four teams of two would draft from packs of 18, picking two cards each pick. There are five packs, meaning a total of 90 cards per team, 360 cards in the pool.

Part of the fun of a card like Grey Merchant of Asphodel is figuring out that it works differently in 2HG. The problem is that's not a hard challenge, and in the end, the card was broken in THS 2HG. I think Grey Merchant is an example of a card that is powerful, but uninteresting. I'm fine with some of those, but I'm more interested in stuff like the Demonic Pact + disenchants synergies. That's sweet because it's the team interaction making it better, not simply because the card reads "each opponent" and there are multiple opponents.

EDIT: I am thinking that now the cube will be proxies with some custom or tweaked cards. Definitely need a Mind Rot type effect like Tasigur's Cruelty, which seems about where I want cards power-level-wise. The "team mind rot" probably should cost 5-6. EDIT2: Just realized they printed "team mind rot" at 4, Unnerve.
 
Spiderdoofus

Spiderdoofus

Ok, after thinking about it for a while, I am thinking more and more of doing all custom cards. Most cards are going to be tweaked versions of existing cards to make balancing it somewhat manageable, but team-based cards don't have enough existing support to me. So it probably means I should take this project to a custom cards forum or something. Anyway, for the curious:

The cube is going to be structured around 4 color combinations. Each 4 color combo is going to have a theme, centered around one main color. The main color will have about 20 cards for the theme with the supporting colors having 5-10 cards. The goal is for many possible 2 color decks, with some 3 color decks possible. I want the overall power level to be somewhere between a peasant cube and an unpowered cube.

Two-headed giant is a lot different than 1v1. There are generally more creatures on the battlefield, more grindy games, more attacking/blocking, more creatures dying. Aggressive decks are worse in 2HG because one 2/4 can blank a team of 2/2s.

Anyway, the themes I'm thinking about are:
WUBR Rebels
UBRG Cycling
BRGW Sacrifice
RGWU Levelers
GWUB Counters

The first color is the main color with 20 cards in the theme, the other colors in the combination have 5-10 cards on theme.

Rebels are cool because they can be aggressive, but also grind out some advantage in the later game. WB Rebels was one of my favorite decks in Modern Masters 1, and it's an open, flexible theme. I'm basically going to "rebel-ize" a bunch of interesting creatures.

Cards like Astral Slide and Lightning Rift were powerful and cool. They are both pretty strong and a good template for doing other "cycling matters" type cards. I'm not totally sold on this theme though.

Sacrificing your own stuff is one of my favorite mechanics. It's been in a few sets, and looks cool in Battle for Zendikar. I'm not sold on this theme either.

Level Up was a cool mechanic that always seemed like it had more potential to me. Like Rebels, it lets smaller, more aggressive creatures do more in the late game.

+1/+1 counters are interesting, and abilities like graft are interesting in 2HG.

Aside from this, the rest of the cards in the cube are going to be creatures I wish existed for 2hg, like an Arbor Elf that can untap a teammate's land, etc.
 
B

blacksmithy

I love your themes, man. BFZ definitely does add a lot to a sacrifice theme, as you said. And if you're going all-custom... Zang.
Slight note though: Arbor Elf can already untap a teammate's Forest. Perhaps the custom would be: Untap target land you control and target land you don't control. Eh? Eh?
 
Spiderdoofus

Spiderdoofus

I'd like to do Smallpox, but I don't want to encourage mana screw, so I'd rather do something like Innocent Blood.

Edit: Oh, and I don't think every card will be original. Playing a lot of existing rebels, for example. Also, original is probably a stretch for a Rampant Growth that can affect anyone on your team. Most cards are going to be like that. Team Rampant Growth, team Grave Digger, rebel-ized Dryad Militant and rebel-ized team Mother of Runes.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Rampant Growth Can affect the team: Like "target player", or "you and your teammates"?
I think the latter should probably cost more than 2, and "Target player" has some interesting implications for stuff like Misdirection, which is already more interesting in multiplayer
 
Spiderdoofus

Spiderdoofus

Chris Taylor said:
Rampant Growth Can affect the team: Like "target player", or "you and your teammates"?
I think the latter should probably cost more than 2, and "Target player" has some interesting implications for stuff like Misdirection, which is already more interesting in multiplayer
Click to expand...

Good calls, Chris.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top