For a long time I have been thinking to make a set about shifting color abilities or emphasizing odd color abilities. More like a planar chaos block. Well, instead of designing a set, I have thought of building a cube. Actually, I will probably not build this, but I find this to be a cute little mental exercise.
Here are the abilities of each color:
White - White leans more to control rather than the weenie side.
As the land color, white gets land ramps (Land tax, tithe, etc) while getting big finishers (Eternal Dragon, Yosei)
White also gets most cantrips making it the "draw color", cycling.
Counterspells (mana tithe) also goes to white.
White skips on Artifact, Enchantment and Land removal.
Blue - is the weenie color - primary tribal cards like Faeries and Birds (maybe Merfolk - but I want flying ones)
Gets a little discard thru Planar Chaos cards it has (Venerian Glimmer) instead of hard counters
Blue gets temporary steal back with Ray of Command and variants.
Blue gets artifact removal thru "gain control" effects.
Psionic blast.
Black - Tokens, Bad Moon, Mass pump. In this cube Black is the best creature color.
Black also gets the most life gain and direct damage in terms of its drain life effects.
Black does not get creature removal, but gets artifact removal from Antiquities cards.
Black can be the enchantment color (if can be pulled of) with Constellation and Bestow cards.
Red - Red is the primary graveyard color. Spells with flashback or retrace, creatures have unearth and phoenixes ae included. Looting is in red so this helps with the theme.
Red is a control and midrange color
Damage is limited to creatures only, red also gets the Planar chaos bounce (red is second best in creature removal)
Spell copy and redirection is maximixed (Shunt, etc)
Green - As most creatures in the cube have flying (phoenixes, fae, etc.) green becomes the primary removal color. Plummet is the Terror of the set.
Green gets high end control creatures but only utility creatures at small costs.
Green counters spells by granting shroud (Vines of Vastwood)
Green skips on Artifact, Enchantment and Land removal.
Artifacts - artifacts role is to fill up some color bleed, such as direct damage (Cursed Scroll, Black Vise), discard, etc.
At this stage, you might as well just invent some of your own cards. The issue being that if you're pulling from the past, there is a limit to quality and CMC among other balance factors that will inevitably show in playtesting.
Playtest what you have, bootstrap, but where there are no cards for your vision; embrace your inner Mark Rosewater.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Life is a beautiful engineer, yet a brutal scientist.
Thing is with Black is that it can kind of do anything even now, except deal with enchantments and artifacts. Quite often it's cards cost more or are weaker or require a life payment though. So Planar Chaos black isn't that much different than normal black, except that it gave black some nice weenies. But black only rebels is unplayable in singleton because there are so few of them.
There's also Warp Artifact and Relic Bane but those are on-color.
This looks like a cool concept, but I'm not sure if there's enough redundancy in the off-color effects you're looking for to warp the color pie in some of the directions you want to.
Having tried to pull off Bant Bird tribal in EDH, you can take my word for it that there really isn't much payoff to Bird tribal even if you expand the theme to more colors. But if you really want Bird tribal, white's actuallywhereit'sat.
There's definitely a lot of support for Merfolk and Faerie Tribal, so that's where I'd look for blue tribal weenie.
Green counters spells by granting shroud (Vines of Vastwood)
I suspect you're going to find that this kind of effect is too narrow to be worth very many slots, if any. Vines of Vastwood is decent because it's also a solid combat trick. The only other cards I can think of that grant this effect that seem worthwhile are Sylvan Safekeeper and Asceticism.
All that said, though, I'd love to see you're cube list once you've put it together. Please post it here and give us the chance to try it out in the "Draft the Above Person's Cube" thread.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
465 card Unpowered cube thread. Draft it here and I'll be happy to return the favor.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
Here are the abilities of each color:
White - White leans more to control rather than the weenie side.
As the land color, white gets land ramps (Land tax, tithe, etc) while getting big finishers (Eternal Dragon, Yosei)
White also gets most cantrips making it the "draw color", cycling.
Counterspells (mana tithe) also goes to white.
White skips on Artifact, Enchantment and Land removal.
Blue - is the weenie color - primary tribal cards like Faeries and Birds (maybe Merfolk - but I want flying ones)
Gets a little discard thru Planar Chaos cards it has (Venerian Glimmer) instead of hard counters
Blue gets temporary steal back with Ray of Command and variants.
Blue gets artifact removal thru "gain control" effects.
Psionic blast.
Black - Tokens, Bad Moon, Mass pump. In this cube Black is the best creature color.
Black also gets the most life gain and direct damage in terms of its drain life effects.
Black does not get creature removal, but gets artifact removal from Antiquities cards.
Black can be the enchantment color (if can be pulled of) with Constellation and Bestow cards.
Red - Red is the primary graveyard color. Spells with flashback or retrace, creatures have unearth and phoenixes ae included. Looting is in red so this helps with the theme.
Red is a control and midrange color
Damage is limited to creatures only, red also gets the Planar chaos bounce (red is second best in creature removal)
Spell copy and redirection is maximixed (Shunt, etc)
Green - As most creatures in the cube have flying (phoenixes, fae, etc.) green becomes the primary removal color. Plummet is the Terror of the set.
Green gets high end control creatures but only utility creatures at small costs.
Green counters spells by granting shroud (Vines of Vastwood)
Green skips on Artifact, Enchantment and Land removal.
Artifacts - artifacts role is to fill up some color bleed, such as direct damage (Cursed Scroll, Black Vise), discard, etc.
Any suggentions or comments?
Playtest what you have, bootstrap, but where there are no cards for your vision; embrace your inner Mark Rosewater.
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>
There's also Warp Artifact and Relic Bane but those are on-color.
You have 5 options, and only Mana Tithe and maybe Lapse of Certainty look playable.
There are only 3 Birds matter tribal cards in the game: Airborne Aid, Crookclaw Elder, and Keeper of the Nine Gales
Having tried to pull off Bant Bird tribal in EDH, you can take my word for it that there really isn't much payoff to Bird tribal even if you expand the theme to more colors. But if you really want Bird tribal, white's actually where it's at.
There's definitely a lot of support for Merfolk and Faerie Tribal, so that's where I'd look for blue tribal weenie.
I suspect you're going to find that this kind of effect is too narrow to be worth very many slots, if any. Vines of Vastwood is decent because it's also a solid combat trick. The only other cards I can think of that grant this effect that seem worthwhile are Sylvan Safekeeper and Asceticism.
All that said, though, I'd love to see you're cube list once you've put it together. Please post it here and give us the chance to try it out in the "Draft the Above Person's Cube" thread.
450 card Peasant cube thread. Draft it here.
I remember it was an archetype in duels of the planeswalkers one time.