Warhammer 40k Themed Custom Cube

[wahoopride]

Hey all-

Starting a blog here to record my thinking on this project that has been in the back burner of my head for several years. I used to play Warhammer 40k many years ago and it was fun, but I have been more into the lore for a lot longer. I have a non-custom cube that I have been designing, modifying, and playing with for years and I think I may have a blog on it somewhere. But I have always liked the idea of doing a completely custom one so that it plays out exactly how I want without having to rely on WOTC to print the right kind of cards. As such I figured I would create a custom cube and use the lore that I know and love.

So the goal here is to create a completely custom, riptide-esque cube with lots of synergy that uses Warhammer 40k as its setting.

I think I heard that WOTC is releasing their own Warhammer 40k set, which sucks because they basically stole my idea. Lawsuit pending.

But either way mine is going to be better than what they put out

Anyways I will follow this post with my various thoughts so far...

I would love feedback on any and every aspect of this!

 

[wahoopride]

So to start off I am going to aim for a manageable 360 card cube. In many cases I might use real magic cards or even direct copies (with only the name/lore changed) to anchor the cube as my rough draft and then possibly make adjustments from there. I am going to try to stay as true to the 40k lore and as true to the MTG motifs as possible. That is, I am not going to print a bunch of direct damage in green or ramp effects in blue etc (even though I could). I want this to feel like real MTG that any MTG player is used to but also not compromise o9n the spirit and feel of Warhammer 40k lore.

I want to represent at least the following factions:

Imperial Space Marines
Imperial Guard
Forces of Chaos
Craftworld Eldar
Dark Eldar
Orks
Tyranids
T'au
Necrons

I also plan to include as much additional races/characters/forces as I can. I see the colors breaking down roughly like this:

Imperial Space Marines -- probably represented in white/red/blue. Lots of different chapters and styles within this faction that can go anywhere.

Imperial guard -- mostly white, filling the role of white weenies, going wide, small tokens, equipment matters possibly

Forces of Chaos -- centered in black, with the 4 gods of chaos leaning into to each of the black guilds as follows: Orzhov - Slaanesh, Dimir -- Tzeentch, Rakdos -- Khorne, Golgari -- Nurgle

Craftworld Eldar -- mostly blue. Eldar are some of the best psykers in 40k and so will fill the role of wizards/mages from MTG. They will also lean into red a bit as battle mages and also the Eldar are known for being FAST so it fits with reds play style a bit.

Dark Eldar -- centered in black and then lean into Rakdos and Orzhov. Dark eldar are the fastest race in 40k so red makes sense. Their origin is Slaanesh so it makes sense for them to also lean Orzhov (see Forces of Chaos). Their backstory is that they have to continually experience the suffering of others to survive which fits well in an Orzhov style aristocrats types situation (as well as Rakdos i.e. Falkenrath Aristocrat) where dying creatures gains their controller life etc.

Orks -- mostly green and some red. Orks grow from some weird fungus and they are some like hybrid between animal and fungus. They are also relatively immune to psychic attack which fits well with greens big creatures that can sometimes be immune to effects. Orks can often regenerate and stuff. Red fits well too for the same reason orks and goblins classically go into red in real MTG.

Tyranids -- Mostly green/blue with some splash into black and red. Tyranids are all about weird evolution and constant biological adaption which of course goes right into the Simic guild. They also have some regeneration stuff that can go well with golgari gy matters type stuff.

T'au -- flavor wise the T'au underlying philosophy is "The Greater Good" which fits perfectly into white which crushes free thinking and individuality in favor of the interests of the community. T'au will be solidly white and blue. Blue mainly because the T'au are all about careful planning and also advanced technology which goes well with blue's focus on artifacts. T'au are not psykers at all though so this part of blue will mostly be Eldar and other races.

Necrons -- solidly black and artifacts. Necrons are basically zombies. And they fit well with recursion and stuff. Also flavor wise it makes sense for a lot of necrons to be artifact creatures as well.

 

[wahoopride]

For the gameplay I will model this cube loosely off my real MTG cube. I like to have one main theme anchored in each color that then is present in 4 other colors in different variations. So something like this:

Counters Matter -- white (anchor), green (+1/+1), black (-1/-1), blue (proliferate/manipulation)

Artifacts Matter -- red (anchor), white (equipment matters), blue (affinity), black (sacrifice)

Spells Matter -- blue (anchor), red (direct damage, prowess), white (heroic), green (heroic)

Lands Matter -- green (anchor), blue (landfall bounce), red (landfall discard sacrifice), black (sacrifice graveyard matters)

Sacrifice -- black (anchor), green (recursion), red (aggro), white (aristocrats)

The idea here is there are lots of different ways to build decks. People will fight over cards more because they can fit into so many decks. Like if you grab a bloodsoaked champion you could use that in Orzhov aristocrats, red aggro, etc. I think it makes the draft more interesting and increases the creativity in how you can build decks. It's not like "oh looks like I am building the same exact artifacts matter deck that builds itself--its these 2 exact colors with these 5 key enabling cards" etc.

Curious people's thoughts on this general idea as well as specifically the themes I have chosen. To be honest I like all of them except the counter matters one for white. I couldn't think of another interesting one there that can be played different ways in different colors.

Also torn on whether spells and artifacts should be anchored in blue/red respectively or the other way around. Could go either way.

I also have ideas for some smaller themes like a Dimir (with maybe a little red) madness/discard theme. Or an Azorius blink theme.

 

[Sheltem]

Some thoughts to this idea. If Craftworld Eldar are blue, their siblings Dark Eldar should be Dimir. Showing the corruption by adding black to the blue.
Tzeench is the god of Magic and change. Isn‘t Izzet a better representation for that? Slinging spells and drawing cards as a representation of his domain. Niv Mizzet could easily be one of Tzeench‘s minions.

 

[wahoopride]

Some thoughts to this idea. If Craftworld Eldar are blue, their siblings Dark Eldar should be Dimir. Showing the corruption by adding black to the blue.
Tzeench is the god of Magic and change. Isn‘t Izzet a better representation for that? Slinging spells and drawing cards as a representation of his domain. Niv Mizzet could easily be one of Tzeench‘s minions.

Thanks for the reply!

I see what you are saying about the Dark Eldar. There are two reasons I think they fit better with Orzhov:

1) Slaanesh is the evil god create by the Eldar due to their decadence and pursuit (often a perverse pursuit) of pleasure, hedonism, and sadism. The way the Dark Eldar have gone about staving off their ultimate demise at the hands of Slaanesh is to continue down this path. They must continually inflict and relish in the pain of others to maintain a their youth and keep Slaanesh at bay. I think this fits with aristocrats and orzhov pretty well—more so than Dimir.

2) Because of a psykers connection to the warp, the Dark Eldar explicitly have no psykers and in fact go out of their way to kill and torture psykers they come across. Since I see blue as the color that cardinally represents psychic power it would make sense that dark eldar were not in Dimir.

To your point about Tzeentch, I think it’s a good one. I guess I liked the apparent symmetry of there being 4 chaos gods and 4 guilds that had black and this dividing each chaos god into one of the black guilds. I feel that red doesn’t go too well with the Tzeentch since he is much more about careful plotting and conspiring rather than the aggressive impulsive power of red.

But I think both of the points you were made are worth thinking about! Thanks again

 

[wahoopride]

These are the targets I am giving myself for the cube. This may change as I start filling in cards but wanted to have a rough starting point:

			Creature	Non-creature
	White	49​	29​	20​
	Blue	49​	24​	25​
	Black	49​	29​	20​
	Red	49​	27​	22​
	Green	49​	34​	15​
	Gold	50​	35​	15​
	Colorless	45​	15​	30​
	Land	20​		20​
		360​	193​	167​

		1​	2​	3​	4​	5​	6.5
White	30​	5​	8​	7​	6​	3​	1​		2.916667​
Blue	24​	4​	7​	5​	4​	3​	1​		2.9375​
Black	30​	5​	8​	7​	6​	3​	1​		2.916667​
Red	27​	6​	10​	5​	3​	2​	1​		2.574074​
Green	34​	5​	8​	7​	6​	5​	3​		3.25​

 

[wahoopride]

You can see the green is more heavily weighted toward creatures and blue toward spells (red also has a slight tilt toward spells).

Red has a lower avg cmc for its creatures while blue has slightly higher one with green the highest. This is to reflect wanting to red to have a strong aggro presence and green to have some ramping. Meanwhile blue will be somewhat control based so a slightly higher cmc.

 

[Zoss]

I think that Slaanesh could fit pretty well as RB, tbh. You could flavor the Dark Eldar as WRB and the Eldar as UG, if you're okay with being cute about it. This would also help out your color balance as currently your only occupants of Green are the Tyrannids and the Orks. T'au could also fit anywhere into Bant, IMO, as Green is all about harmony and finding your place in the world.

But you clearly know a lot more about the lore than I do, so feel free to disregard this advice! If you want something more tangible, I'd say to just start designing cards and go from there. Do you have any specific mechanics you're looking to use, or anything you've come up with? Personally, I've always thought that Madness would be perfect for in the 40K expansion, but it's pretty far from your skeleton.

Finally, when in 40K lore are you basing this set? Pre-Horus Heresy, or "present day?" What's your upper limit for who will appear on cards--Primarchs? Gods? I think that finding a narrative structure for it will really help tie the room together, so to speak, much more than any color/type balancing will.

I'm really interested to see how this turns out! Good luck!

 

[wahoopride]

I think that Slaanesh could fit pretty well as RB, tbh. You could flavor the Dark Eldar as WRB and the Eldar as UG, if you're okay with being cute about it. This would also help out your color balance as currently your only occupants of Green are the Tyrannids and the Orks. T'au could also fit anywhere into Bant, IMO, as Green is all about harmony and finding your place in the world.

But you clearly know a lot more about the lore than I do, so feel free to disregard this advice! If you want something more tangible, I'd say to just start designing cards and go from there. Do you have any specific mechanics you're looking to use, or anything you've come up with? Personally, I've always thought that Madness would be perfect for in the 40K expansion, but it's pretty far from your skeleton.

Finally, when in 40K lore are you basing this set? Pre-Horus Heresy, or "present day?" What's your upper limit for who will appear on cards--Primarchs? Gods? I think that finding a narrative structure for it will really help tie the room together, so to speak, much more than any color/type balancing will.

I'm really interested to see how this turns out! Good luck!

Great questions and thoughts!

My overall plan was to have Dark Eldar be Black/White/Red as you suggested. The Orzhov side being the more aritocrat type Dark Eldar and the Rakdos side covering the fact that the Dark Eldar are the "fastest" faction in the galaxy and strike unexpectedly, without warning, and with incredibly speed and aggressiveness. So it easily fits into both.

Meanwhile there will be Eldar that are both Blue and Green, per your suggestion. The Craftworld Eldar will be blue, and then there are Eldar known as Exodites who life ascetic lifestyles and will fit well with green.

Green is tough though. The Warhammer 40k universe is very dark, ugly, and not too concerned with the preservation of life. So fitting people into green is tough. Though in addition to the Orks, Tyranids, Exodite Eldar, I think I will also include some Imperial Guardsmen like the Catachan Jungle Fighters.

I don't have any mechanics yet that will be unique to this cube. I have thought about some but that make be easier to implement on a 2nd draft so to speak. I agree about madness and I am hoping to incorporate at least a Dimir madness theme. Possibly extending it to Red a little bit.

Your last question is a good one. It is one I have thought about and not 100% sure the answer. As far as time period, I think my first inclination would be to say it is "mostly" in the "present day" of warhammer 40k. Which is to say the "Era Indomitus" so basically at the same point as the lore currently is. The Horus Heresy would obviously be the coolest time period to feature but it becomes somewhat restrictive because the T'au, Necrons, and Tyranid were all not present and the forces of Chaos weren't that well developed at the point. I also don't think doing a fully 100% Era Indomitus would be ideal because there are some characters and stuff that I want to include from different points on the timeline. So I think it is going to be kind of fungible. For instance I already created a card to represent Sanguinis even though he is dead. But I will mostly be trying to to delve in the "past" too much.

As far as upper limit I am not sure. The power band within the 40k universe is so wide that I have to be careful. For instance, a Primarch, in theory, is so godlike and beyond even a basic human that it is tough to include them in the same set. Like a Primarch is in theory worth like 20 regular space marines, which themselves are superhuman. But of course I don't really HAVE to 100% operate within the 40k power band. I originally did not think I would include anyone of the Primarch level but as I mentioned I did end up creating a Sanguinis card so I think I may include several of the Primarchs but I am thinking that will probably be the upper end. I had to basically tone down how powerful Sanguinis would actually be. His current design is this:

Sanguinis, The Great Angel
3WW
Legendary Creature -- Superhuman Commander
4/4

Flying, Vigilance, Lifelink

When Sanguinis, the Great Angel enters the battlefield, put one +1/+1 counter on up to 3 other target creatures.

"He has the vision and strength to carry us to victory, and the wisdom to rule once victory is won."
-Warmaster Horus


Not really that creative or anything but was supposed to just be a card that is either "good stuff" or a control finisher but also fit in with the counters theme which is supposed to be anchored in white.

 

[Zoss]

Maybe those at the Primarch+ power level would be best represented as Planeswalkers? Alternatively, you could have them appear on non-creature cards a lot--Blessing of Gork and Blessing of Mork could be a sweet pair of enchantments.

Of course, for lore you could just say that this is a collection of histories. This would be too much for a WotC set, but I'd imagine that the knowledge of WH40K follows a pretty steep sigmoidal curve, lol, so most people would either
a) not know anything about the universe beyond a few major characters and factions,
b) have peripheral knowledge of 40L but not know that characters X and Y don't show up in the same time, (this is me without the internet)
c) be able to argue with you about minute details of how exactly your depiction of Robot Gillyweed is wrong, wrong, wrong

So maybe you just don't need to worry too much, but I'd still suggest picking out a handful of stories to explicitly track. This will help keep you within a manageable scope, but also will allow you to not worry too much about lore concerns. And if all else fails--blame Chaos.



As for the Green question, I think that while you're right that it's a hard sell for the universe, Green can be more than a little uncaring. But yeah, it would be hard to flavor anyone else as Green, at least not in a major way.

 

[wahoopride]

Is there a good way to show custom cards? Or do I just have to paste a bunch of text?

 

[sigh]

If you have pictures of the cards generated on something like MSE, you can just copy paste them in, otherwise yeah you basically have to write out the card.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Upload to Imgur and past the images here works, or just writing out the card text

Text only is probably better, if you go through the whole process of uploading a mostly finished card with art and everything, people can feel like it's done already

 

[wahoopride]

Awesome. I am going to roughly copy the format they are using over in the Custom Card thread. Here are my first draft of black 1-cost creatures:

Nurgling
Creature -- Nurgle Daemon
Whenever Nurgling dies, you may a -1/-1 counter on target creature.
"The Great Father marks out those who are chosen with the gift of his Nurglings. These servants bear on their multitudinous backs his champions and chosen. They will war for them and nurture them and aid them in spreading the gifts of Father Nurgle to the undeserving and unappreciative Imperium of Man."
-From a fragment of the Liber Pestilentia
1/1

Ripper Swarm
Creature -- Tyranid Infantry
Ripper Swarm can't block.
Whenever a non-Tyranid creature dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Ripper Swarm.
1/1

Traitor Guardsman
Creature -- Human Infantry
Traitor Guardsman can't block.
Raid -- : Return Traitor Guardsman from your graveyard to the battlefield. Activate this ability only if you attacked with a creature this turn.
2/1

Heretek Savant
Creature -- Cybernetic Artificer
Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from play, target opponent loses 1 life.
Fabricate 1 (When this creature enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on it or create a 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature token.)
"The path of the Omnissah has left humanity dithering in the darkness, incapable of advancing on the paths of knowledge. Embracing the warp reveal technology that the primitives on Mars could never dream of wielding."
-Magos Cain of the Five-Fold Path
1/1

Chaos Spawn
Creature -- Daemon Infantry
Madness 0 (If you discard this card, you may cast it for its madness costs instead of putting it into your graveyard)
Delirium -- If there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard, Chaos Spawn gains +2/+2.
1/2

 

[wahoopride]

Would love to hear what people think!

Just a reminder of the themes I am trying to incorporate in Black:

1) The main theme that is anchored in black is creature sacrifice
2) Lands Matter (preferably focused on sacrificing them or using lands in your graveyard to do something)
3) Artifacts Matter (preferably focused on sacrificing artifacts for some value or what have you)
4) Counter Matter (focused on -1/-1 counters, proliferation, etc)

Also I am trying to get a minor madness thing going in dimir with maybe some red too.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Heretek Savant
Creature -- Cybernetic Artificer
Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from play, target opponent loses 1 life.
Fabricate 1 (When this creature enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on it or create a 1/1 colorless Servo artifact creature token.)
"The path of the Omnissah has left humanity dithering in the darkness, incapable of advancing on the paths of knowledge. Embracing the warp reveal technology that the primitives on Mars could never dream of wielding."
-Magos Cain of the Five-Fold Path
1/1

This is a bit above the curve. It's hard to find room for synergy on 1 drops without making them overpowered, there's just not a ton of budget to play with.

0/1 Fabricate 2 for 2B would work if you want to keep the synergy, but if you specifically want to keep the 1 drop, I suggest for a mana cost.
Also, should the base creature be an artifact?

 

[sigh]

0/1 Fabricate 2 for 2B would work if you want to keep the synergy

?

 

[Chris Taylor]

Yes but with the "Whenever an artifact is put into a graveyard from play, target opponent loses 1 life." line of text

 

[Sheltem]

Why not just reskin existing cards?
For example

wouldn‘t he make a good great unclean one?

He could be the primarch Mortarion, the pests his Nurgling horde.

She could be Fabius Bile, stealing bodies and turning them into deathtouching super soldiers.
You only would need to find the art for the cards and rename them. I guess this could be faster than designing a whole set of 350 new cards.
But if that was your initial goal please ignore my comment.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Not a bad idea. Hell you can use the Godzilla nickname tech to really key people in to the existing card and help lighten the mental load.

 

[Sheltem]

These already have Tyranid style artwork.

 

[wahoopride]

This is a bit above the curve. It's hard to find room for synergy on 1 drops without making them overpowered, there's just not a ton of budget to play with.

0/1 Fabricate 2 for 2B would work if you want to keep the synergy, but if you specifically want to keep the 1 drop, I suggest for a mana cost.
Also, should the base creature be an artifact?

Yeah agree he is a bit ahead of the curve. I may just up his cost to but then I will need to come up with another creature for the 1 slot probably.

 

[wahoopride]

Why not just reskin existing cards?

I am half doing this. I am using existing cards as inspiration or just straight copying them a lot of the time.

For instance, Traitor Guardsman is actually just Bloodsoaked Champion. Nurgling is actually just Festering Mummy. Ripper swarm is based off of Carrion Feeder.

However, I do think ultimately my desire is to create a mostly custom set and not be limited by only things WotC have printed. Though I think using my existing cube that has real magic cards as a starting point will definitely be helpful.

 

[wahoopride]

Maybe those at the Primarch+ power level would be best represented as Planeswalkers? Alternatively, you could have them appear on non-creature cards a lot--Blessing of Gork and Blessing of Mork could be a sweet pair of enchantments.

Of course, for lore you could just say that this is a collection of histories. This would be too much for a WotC set, but I'd imagine that the knowledge of WH40K follows a pretty steep sigmoidal curve, lol, so most people would either
a) not know anything about the universe beyond a few major characters and factions,
b) have peripheral knowledge of 40L but not know that characters X and Y don't show up in the same time, (this is me without the internet)
c) be able to argue with you about minute details of how exactly your depiction of Robot Gillyweed is wrong, wrong, wrong

So maybe you just don't need to worry too much, but I'd still suggest picking out a handful of stories to explicitly track. This will help keep you within a manageable scope, but also will allow you to not worry too much about lore concerns. And if all else fails--blame Chaos.



As for the Green question, I think that while you're right that it's a hard sell for the universe, Green can be more than a little uncaring. But yeah, it would be hard to flavor anyone else as Green, at least not in a major way.

I've been giving this some more thought and I decided that I am going to try to stick to one timeline. I am going to have the cube be "set" in the Era Indomitus. I think you make some good points and this will help with some of the design by placing some constraints. That is, I can restrict myself to the characters and narratives of this timeline.

For instance, the only "primarchs" that are really relevant to that timeline so far are Roubute Guilliman, Mortarian, and Magnus the Red.

 

[wahoopride]

I was toying around with this idea for a mechanic. Curious what people think:

Markerlight (If a source with Markerlight deal damage to a target, that target receives a marker. Until end of turn, if a source with a marker receives damage, it receives that much damage plus the number of markers on it).

I'm sure there is a way to word that less confusingly.