I've started and given up on a few cube lists over the past few years. Now, there's a local card shop that's ~10 minutes from where I live (rather than an hour with no traffic), so it's much more feasible for me to indulge in the cardboard crack with a 40-hour work week.
This is mostly a question about sleeves, but it's a little specific, and I'd like to welcome cursory discussion about my "phantom cards" for my Cube Legacy.
First of all, "Cube Legacy" is (as far as I know) a creation of Gregory Marques. It's based on Risk: Legacy, which is a standalone variant of Risk where meeting conditions in a game permanently changes the board and/or rules of the game for future games. It's a really cool concept, in my opinion, and I think it would really suit the culture at my new LGS. This is a more recent article on Cube: Legacy that I haven't read yet as I just discovered it.
Anyways, I'm drafting my cube list right now and it will probably be a slow process, but I'm also in some case drafting custom cards to be used with "player powers" from the Cube: Legacy part of the cube. As an example: (From here on out, I'm not going to put quotes around terms like "player powers", but I had been putting them in quotes because I'm not a fan of the names and will likely change them. Suggestions welcome.)
There will be a number of player powers that give a player cards to use in deckbuilding, somewhat similar to how some Conspiracy cards affect a player's deckbuilding process. The concept I'm furthest along with makes cubing with a card I like (Squadron Hawk) feasible. I have created a custom card for this and a friend of mine made me three foil proxies of the card to use in the cube. So, each player would be dealt a random power at the beginning of the draft and one of them might be Caw of the Birds.
Caw of the Birds Player Power
Add three cards named Caw Bird to your sideboard, you may add these to your deck like any other card you've drafted.
Caw Bird2 Creature - Bird
Flying
When Caw Bird enters the battlefield, you may search your library for any number of cards named Caw Bird, reveal them, put them into your hand, then shuffle your library. 1/1
So, basically, you might start the draft primed to build a "Cawblade" style deck. Because we "can" make custom cards, I decided to make a colorless version of Squadron Hawk so as to not push players towards certain colors before the draft even starts.
Because these custom cards are not part of the "actual" cube and they should not be shuffled up and dealt out with the rest of the cards in the cube, I'm hoping to somehow distinguish the cards without marking them or using different colored sleeves. From what I remember, there are "perfect fit" style sleeves that have patterns printed on them. I can't find them using my Google Fu, but I'm fairly certain they exist. Could you help me find them? Would you recommend them for this use?
Beyond that, I'm trying to find more cards like Squadron Hawk that, because they could be played in multiples, created a specific archetype. I can't think of any other good examples, but basically, I'm trying to find other cards I can shift to colorless and give a player 2-4 of and therefore push them towards a deck reminiscent of constructed format-defining decks.
I've started and given up on a few cube lists over the past few years. Now, there's a local card shop that's ~10 minutes from where I live (rather than an hour with no traffic), so it's much more feasible for me to indulge in the cardboard crack with a 40-hour work week.
This is mostly a question about sleeves, but it's a little specific, and I'd like to welcome cursory discussion about my "phantom cards" for my Cube Legacy.
First of all, "Cube Legacy" is (as far as I know) a creation of Gregory Marques. It's based on Risk: Legacy, which is a standalone variant of Risk where meeting conditions in a game permanently changes the board and/or rules of the game for future games. It's a really cool concept, in my opinion, and I think it would really suit the culture at my new LGS. This is a more recent article on Cube: Legacy that I haven't read yet as I just discovered it.
Anyways, I'm drafting my cube list right now and it will probably be a slow process, but I'm also in some case drafting custom cards to be used with "player powers" from the Cube: Legacy part of the cube. As an example:
(From here on out, I'm not going to put quotes around terms like "player powers", but I had been putting them in quotes because I'm not a fan of the names and will likely change them. Suggestions welcome.)
There will be a number of player powers that give a player cards to use in deckbuilding, somewhat similar to how some Conspiracy cards affect a player's deckbuilding process. The concept I'm furthest along with makes cubing with a card I like (Squadron Hawk) feasible. I have created a custom card for this and a friend of mine made me three foil proxies of the card to use in the cube. So, each player would be dealt a random power at the beginning of the draft and one of them might be Caw of the Birds.
Caw of the Birds
Player Power
Add three cards named Caw Bird to your sideboard, you may add these to your deck like any other card you've drafted.
Caw Bird 2
Creature - Bird
Flying
When Caw Bird enters the battlefield, you may search your library for any number of cards named Caw Bird, reveal them, put them into your hand, then shuffle your library.
1/1
So, basically, you might start the draft primed to build a "Cawblade" style deck. Because we "can" make custom cards, I decided to make a colorless version of Squadron Hawk so as to not push players towards certain colors before the draft even starts.
Because these custom cards are not part of the "actual" cube and they should not be shuffled up and dealt out with the rest of the cards in the cube, I'm hoping to somehow distinguish the cards without marking them or using different colored sleeves. From what I remember, there are "perfect fit" style sleeves that have patterns printed on them. I can't find them using my Google Fu, but I'm fairly certain they exist. Could you help me find them? Would you recommend them for this use?
Beyond that, I'm trying to find more cards like Squadron Hawk that, because they could be played in multiples, created a specific archetype. I can't think of any other good examples, but basically, I'm trying to find other cards I can shift to colorless and give a player 2-4 of and therefore push them towards a deck reminiscent of constructed format-defining decks.
Some cards I'd like to be able to push like this:
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx (monocolored decks/devotion)
Young Pyromancer, Augur of Bolas, Lunar Mystic, Dralnu, Lich Lord, Runechanter's Pike, Guttersnipe (Instants/Sorcery Matter)
Mentor of the Meek and/or Ranger of Eos ('aggro-to-midrange')
Kor Spiritdancer, Ethereal Armor, Favored Hoplite, Hero of Iroas (Voltron-style Pump)