I find cubes are an ideal environment for playing with "house rules."
These "house rules" seem to fall into two different types
1) Simple rules that change the effects of a limited number of cards. Simple rules generally made to allow certain cards to be entered into the cube that would not be strong enough otherwise.
Examples:
i) Whenever a gate (land type) comes into play gain 1 life for each gate in play
ii) Level-Up cards can be used at instant speed
iii) Custom cards
Cube formats work well with house rules because
1) Cube drafting is a causal format
2) Complete control over the card pool to avoid cards that break the system
What are some house rules (large or small) that your play groups have experimented with?
What are some house rules (large or small) that you think would be fun to try out?
My commander cube has some house rules relative to the actual commander format, which have some interesting implications. The big notable one is the often house-ruled "Hybrids don't count against color identity" rule, but it isn't because I favor that rule in regular EDH; I would prefer if normal EDH rules allowed for hybrids in that way, but I wouldn't house rule my cube for that reason. The actual reason for the rule is because it's better for the cube environment allowing me to give different colors access to certain effects, without abolishing color identity and having things like The Mimeoplasm recurring their own Sphinx of the Steel Wind. (And it allows some multicolored cards to not be locked by color identity as they would otherwise.)
Aside from that there's smaller deck sizes to allow the cube to be less enormous and make the draft consume less time, and the inclusion of some banned cards like Sylvan Primordial which are less obtrusive in the cube format.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Check out the thread for my cube if you have the time, and tell me how terrible it is.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
I have a squadron hawk in the cube and if you draft it you get three more hawks to make your deck with. In a powered cube I've found the more power cards you can create the more balanced it will become.
I have thought about making a house rule for mishra's workshop that would allow it to produce mana that can be used for eldrazi but I haven't decided yet.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Magic Enthusiast
Professor
Powered 540 Cube fully foiled and altered
Legacy: Death and Taxes / RUG Delver
Vintage: Shops
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
These "house rules" seem to fall into two different types
1) Simple rules that change the effects of a limited number of cards. Simple rules generally made to allow certain cards to be entered into the cube that would not be strong enough otherwise.
Examples:
i) Whenever a gate (land type) comes into play gain 1 life for each gate in play
ii) Level-Up cards can be used at instant speed
iii) Custom cards
2) Large rule changes that change the game on a fundamental Level. These cubes tend to be dramatically different from standard cubes to account for the change in rules.
i) Type 4 (See link for a description and example)
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/192721-300-type4-tevs-cube?comment=1
ii) Abundance Magic (personal creation see link for more information)
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/casual-related-formats/homebrew-variant-formats/564737-abundance-magic?comment=1
Cube formats work well with house rules because
1) Cube drafting is a causal format
2) Complete control over the card pool to avoid cards that break the system
What are some house rules (large or small) that your play groups have experimented with?
What are some house rules (large or small) that you think would be fun to try out?
Aside from that there's smaller deck sizes to allow the cube to be less enormous and make the draft consume less time, and the inclusion of some banned cards like Sylvan Primordial which are less obtrusive in the cube format.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
I have thought about making a house rule for mishra's workshop that would allow it to produce mana that can be used for eldrazi but I haven't decided yet.
Professor
Powered 540 Cube fully foiled and altered
Legacy: Death and Taxes / RUG Delver
Vintage: Shops