So Khans is a thing but lacked the dragons, now we have Sarkhan McFly with a Delorean going back to the draconic era with the introduction of dragon cards in the later entries of the block. What are some of the obscure cards that you would recommend for a Dragon Cube that have provided a good experience in your own past cube designs? I'm rather new to Cubing, gathering the cards for the next months so suggestions are welcome.
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Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
I think you'll have to be a little more clear on what you mean by dragon, tribal, cube. Will the cube be mostly red? How big a cube are you wanting to make? How many folks are you planning to play this with at a time? Is this idea for a 1v1 or a multiplayer cube?
Conversely, you don't want:
1. Things that can get rid of your dragons too easily, i.e. unconditional one or two-mana removal. You can keep burn (get a focus on X-spells to get rid of those dragons), more conditional cheap removal (Ghastly Demise, Murderous Cut, Reprisal), and three-mana or more removal (start with Dark Banishing and work your way up).
Other things to care about:
Bounce, countermagic and creature theft become really good when you're getting so much resource value out of countering/bouncing/stealing massively-costed cards. Blue becomes a fair bit stronger.
You just got a full outline for a dragon cube. Have fun.
I think you'll have to be a little more clear on what you mean by dragon, tribal, cube. Will the cube be mostly red? How big a cube are you wanting to make? How many folks are you planning to play this with at a time? Is this idea for a 1v1 or a multiplayer cube?
I'll be building off of the Dragons of Tarkir set as a building block, which we basically at this point have zero information on besides that it has well dragons in it and probably some hybrid, multicolor (wedges), and some sort of stuff dealing with perhaps colorless. Which is really vague on size, preferably my "goal" with air quotes is around 360-450. My basis is looking at some of the really irregular cards using Khans level power level.
-Don't need multiplayer cube, already built one.
-Don't want constructs and other stuff from Conspiracy, have a cube sporting that.
-Have a "normal" cube themed after enchantments for that stuff.
There's a few artifact dragons such as Teeka's Dragon and so forth that also plays into a certain theme for artifacts.
Other things to care about:
Bounce, countermagic and creature theft become really good when you're getting so much resource value out of countering/bouncing/stealing massively-costed cards. Blue becomes a fair bit stronger.
You just got a full outline for a dragon cube. Have fun.
Thank you. I tore apart my Scion of the Ur-Dragon EDH deck in anticipation for this, so some of the stuff you've suggested I've already gotten in there. Never saw Drover before to be honest, which may make me want to use the new green EDH deck as a supplement for the green slot perhaps.
I think the Ferocity mechanic from Temur will work nicely with regard to the overall construct from the Khans block as well as Delve support.
Whenever looking at large creatures and using some planeswalkers, where do you strike the balance? Considering there are three Sarkhans that can go into three different slots.
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Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
If you're going to use the final set as a launch pad, I'd like to recommend you consider making a non-singleton cube, or at least including multiples of some of the "glue," archetype supporting cards. I run a lot of draft sims where I preserve pack distributions of 1 (mythic) rare, 3 uncommons, and 11 commons, AND include multiples of lower rarity cards (usually 1r/2u/4c). For the khans one I built I included 1 copy of 36 "good" rares, 2 of each uncommon, and 2 of each common. That way I could preserve some of the flavor of a retail khans draft.
Pyredreams suggestions are really fantastic, but I would try and make sure that your additions to the tarkir set don't drastically outclass the limited cards ~ wizards does go to a lot of trouble to make a balanced limited environment, even if they sometimes include weak/suboptimal cards. One to two uber cards can sometimes ruin an entire draft environment if not handled with care... pack rat in RtR and Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief in ROE come to mind.
If you're going to use the final set as a launch pad, I'd like to recommend you consider making a non-singleton cube, or at least including multiples of some of the "glue," archetype supporting cards. I run a lot of draft sims where I preserve pack distributions of 1 (mythic) rare, 3 uncommons, and 11 commons, AND include multiples of lower rarity cards (usually 1r/2u/4c). For the khans one I built I included 1 copy of 36 "good" rares, 2 of each uncommon, and 2 of each common. That way I could preserve some of the flavor of a retail khans draft.
Pyredreams suggestions are really fantastic, but I would try and make sure that your additions to the tarkir set don't drastically outclass the limited cards ~ wizards does go to a lot of trouble to make a balanced limited environment, even if they sometimes include weak/suboptimal cards. One to two uber cards can sometimes ruin an entire draft environment if not handled with care... pack rat in RtR and Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief in ROE come to mind.
I'm not a huge fan of draft sims, granted some cubes do use nonsingleton format for a few of the staple cards in some builds I've seen. My own preference for draft sims are mainly as a form of retro drafting for something like Tempest or Invasion.
For now, I'm looking at Invasion block constructed in a way for power level since that was the last really big draconic format I can remember. However, since this is going to be wedge probably than shard mimicking Dro-Go as a possible build is going to be some what standoffish until Fate Reforged gives us a clear picture of how draconic.
Changelings give opportunities for specific sub tribal options such as shamans and warriors. The inclusion of mana acceleration elves offers up the capacity to use some tribal elves that overlap with warrior and shaman tribal as well from Lorwyn and Onslaught. It's a bit dicey whenever considering the cube theme is draconic, but sub themes are a tricky balance. It looked like khans can possibly have at least some interesting effects on certain tribal. Pushing some tribes as a sub theme, what has been your experience?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
1. Stuff that reduces the casting cost of big creatures eg. Dragonspeaker Shaman, Krosan Drover.
2. Stuff that cheats big creatures out, eg. Sneak Attack, Dramatic Entrance, Summoning Trap, Elvish Piper.
3. Stuff that gives you extra mana efficiently, eg. Eldrazi spawn, mana dorks.
3a. Stuff that gives you burst mana, eg. Dark Ritual, Black Lotus.
4. Stuff that lets you find dragons, eg. Dragonstorm, Fierce Empath.
5. Stuff that cares about high power, eg. Intrepid Hero, Where Ancients Tread (KTK's wedge and Alara's Naya shard should be good for this).
6. Stuff that cares about high casting cost, eg. Appetite for Brains, Disdainful Stroke, the Dragon enchantments from Scourge (Dragon Breath etc), Draining Whelk, Induce Despair, Judge Unworthy, Mystic Genesis.
7. Other thematically appropriate creatures (changelings, drakes and lizards/snakes).
Conversely, you don't want:
1. Things that can get rid of your dragons too easily, i.e. unconditional one or two-mana removal. You can keep burn (get a focus on X-spells to get rid of those dragons), more conditional cheap removal (Ghastly Demise, Murderous Cut, Reprisal), and three-mana or more removal (start with Dark Banishing and work your way up).
Other things to care about:
Bounce, countermagic and creature theft become really good when you're getting so much resource value out of countering/bouncing/stealing massively-costed cards. Blue becomes a fair bit stronger.
You just got a full outline for a dragon cube. Have fun.
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
I'll be building off of the Dragons of Tarkir set as a building block, which we basically at this point have zero information on besides that it has well dragons in it and probably some hybrid, multicolor (wedges), and some sort of stuff dealing with perhaps colorless. Which is really vague on size, preferably my "goal" with air quotes is around 360-450. My basis is looking at some of the really irregular cards using Khans level power level.
-Don't need multiplayer cube, already built one.
-Don't want constructs and other stuff from Conspiracy, have a cube sporting that.
-Have a "normal" cube themed after enchantments for that stuff.
There's a few artifact dragons such as Teeka's Dragon and so forth that also plays into a certain theme for artifacts.
Thank you. I tore apart my Scion of the Ur-Dragon EDH deck in anticipation for this, so some of the stuff you've suggested I've already gotten in there. Never saw Drover before to be honest, which may make me want to use the new green EDH deck as a supplement for the green slot perhaps.
I think the Ferocity mechanic from Temur will work nicely with regard to the overall construct from the Khans block as well as Delve support.
Whenever looking at large creatures and using some planeswalkers, where do you strike the balance? Considering there are three Sarkhans that can go into three different slots.
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>
Pyredreams suggestions are really fantastic, but I would try and make sure that your additions to the tarkir set don't drastically outclass the limited cards ~ wizards does go to a lot of trouble to make a balanced limited environment, even if they sometimes include weak/suboptimal cards. One to two uber cards can sometimes ruin an entire draft environment if not handled with care... pack rat in RtR and Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief in ROE come to mind.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I'm not a huge fan of draft sims, granted some cubes do use nonsingleton format for a few of the staple cards in some builds I've seen. My own preference for draft sims are mainly as a form of retro drafting for something like Tempest or Invasion.
For now, I'm looking at Invasion block constructed in a way for power level since that was the last really big draconic format I can remember. However, since this is going to be wedge probably than shard mimicking Dro-Go as a possible build is going to be some what standoffish until Fate Reforged gives us a clear picture of how draconic.
Changelings give opportunities for specific sub tribal options such as shamans and warriors. The inclusion of mana acceleration elves offers up the capacity to use some tribal elves that overlap with warrior and shaman tribal as well from Lorwyn and Onslaught. It's a bit dicey whenever considering the cube theme is draconic, but sub themes are a tricky balance. It looked like khans can possibly have at least some interesting effects on certain tribal. Pushing some tribes as a sub theme, what has been your experience?
Modern
Commander
Cube
<a href="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/the-cube-forum/cube-lists/588020-unpowered-themed-enchantment-an-enchanted-evening">An Enchanted Evening Cube </a>