At my local game store, at the moment we have multiple cubes being in interest here. However, to prevent these owners (of which I am among them) to fight each other, we decided to each take a completely different, unique theme to our cubes so that they are all different, and ran in a different way. For which, I've chosen to create a cube that revolves around Tribal synergy. It sounded like an amazing idea, to be honest, until I realized how difficult this actually is. Especially picking the tribals is very hard, as they all have pro's and cons that I just can't seem to balance out.
I will write down below what ideas for tribals I have/had for the colors:
Note; each tribal is primarily ran through two colors, however there are also other colors containing the same tribal
RWBGU Allies (Con: Allies are only strong together, and thus cards lack a reasonable independance value.)
RB) Vampires (Con: Contains few 'lords' or primary tribal support points, whereas I fear Bloodline keeper may dominate too much)
RG) Wolves/Werewolves (Con: Very 'solitary' tribal, it hardly has any crossover with any other tribal except humans.)
RW) Soldiers (Con: nothing really.)
RU) Wizards (Con: nothing really.)
WG) Humans (Con: I fear this tribal may be 'too present' as Human is a very largely available creature type.)
WB) Warriors (Con: Hardly any support beside Chief of the Scale/Edge)
WU) Spirits (Con: Very 'solitary' tribal, it contains hardly any crossover with other tribals.)
GU) Merfolk (Con: Hard to obtain a good balance point between strong and neglectable in an all-any situation.)
GB) Elves (Con: I fear this tribal may dominate too much.)
UB) Zombies (Con: I fear this tribal may dominate too much.)
Colorless) Myr (Con: I can't see it 'that' much as a tribal, it contains good support value for colors, but I'd applaud anyone that makes a myr tribal out of it.)
Other tribals I've been looking forward to, but can't seem to be convinced to adding or what to remove it for:
- Goblins. Classic, strong, and good for BR aggro. Although the debate of including Goblins over Vampires is haunting me.
- Elementals. There aren't enough cards, but these are excellent for UG if I should make Elementals via Lands(Awaken).
- Dinosaurs. They have a strong independence value, but there is a lack of synergy between each other, and much like the other RG tribal, they are too solitary.)
- Rogue. I'd LOVE to add this tribal as a proffession tribal, more coexistance with other tribals! But the exclusion of Zombies is killing me over this.
- Faerie's. Fact; Lorwyn had a great support for tribals, and Faeries is among them. But likewise, UB is already taken by zombies which is a good tribal competitor too.
- Dragons. RAWR! Unfortunately, Dragons are very solitary and tend to eat any other tribal it tries to synergize with.
- Cats. Although Amonkhet and C17 gave quite the support for this tribal... they are competing with Humans which kind-of takes the prize already.
- Pirates. YARR, Someone has stolen me mateys, there be little pirate cards, and too few cap'ns!
- Illusions. Given a tribal cube will run much more on creatures, I fear illusions may GRANDLY dominate. As well, I don't know any other color than blue this tribal consists of.
- Clerics. I know very little cleric lords, but having White/Black as a lifegain/lifesteal tribal is something I'd love to try out!
So what I am looking for right now is some assistance, people thinking along trying to help me answer questions; what 12 tribals will be the best to use? What cards are must-haves in each tribals, and what cards are absolute no-no's because of too strong power spikes? What creature/noncreature ration should I include in a tribal cube?
Yeah, tribal is hard. While I don't have a "Tribal" cube, I do have a cube that features them. Spirits, Merfolk, Zombies, Goblins, Elves, Golems and Humans. Even that much level of tribal interaction is difficult - Never seen a successful Elves deck out of my cube, for example. The real issue is that, if you design exclusively along tribal lines, drafters just pick a tribe and grab nothing outside it. That's not a cube, it's just 8 to 12 decks shuffled together that you have to unshuffle before you play.
I tried Allies, it's very swingy and never fun - In the rare draft where you get an allies deck that can consistently trigger ally abilities, you either win hard because your mana is good and you curved out, or lose hard because it isn't the perfect game. On top of that, most allies don't really get passive lord effects, so you need to be playing an Ally each turn, and the few allies that do do the passive lord thing like Harabaz Druid and Sea Gate Loremaster only amplify the swinginess. Lords are generally something you want to minimize due to their limited cross-deck usefulness, and Allies are a tribe of lords. This all being said, I didn't test Allies for very long, so feel free to ignore this advice.
Humans was way easier to do as a 5C tribe, as there are a lot of good effects stapled to human bodies, effects that are relevant even when the creature type isn't. They also have overlap with other tribes, which Allies only have tangentially. Humans that make X creature tokens all feel okay in either deck, and more often than not work wonders in non-tribal decks too.
Golems also kick ass. Splicers do a lot while also being Human, there are generically useful all-stars like Hollow One, and you have the silliest of lords Precursor Golem, who can be relevant in non-tribal decks while also allowing you to do silly things with Vines of Vastwood or whatever. That being said, I love Myr, my favourite draft story is about Myr in SoM, and I'd like to see it work. They seem like they could be useful outside their tribe.
I'd have a look at Lorwyn/Morningtide a little closer. The reason it could jam so many tribes in was the race/class split it had. You had Merfolk, Wizards, Kithkin, Giants etc vs Wizards, Rogues, Shamans, Warriors etc. You've mentioned it, but I don't know if you've thought about how much having a "farie rogue" in U or B matters compared to a "zombie" in U or B. Maybe consider a similar style of splitting it? You have Wizard, Soldier and Warrior as enemy pairs, and that's great, maybe there's a way to have enemy pairs care about class and allies care about race?
Looking at Spirits and Faeries, they both have little flying dudes and lots of hand/spell disruption, so that's your Esper playstyle, and that probably informs what you want to do with WB. Might not work with the added class restriction, but it'll add depth to the drafting.
Another thing to note is to run cards that more one player will want to pick up. Tolsmir Wolfblood isn't an Elf lord or a Wolf lord, he's an Elf that makes a Wolf while buffing green and white creatures. Rishkar, Peema Renegade does a very elfy job of giving you mana, but doesn't actually care about elves, and buffs whoever she can regardless of subtype. These may not be good enough to make it into your cube, but they're the examples that leapt to my mind. Also, have a look at the tribal equipment/enchantments, and run Changelings.
I have drawn an incredible lot of insight from your post so far! The idea of having 5 Unfriendly-color classes and 5 friendly-color races is a very good separation.
The goal that I had drawn - and I'm sorry I had forgotten to write that - is that even though it's a tribal cube, I want to let cards have a strong 'Independence Value'. I will only jam in like 1 or 2 lords per tribe (with 3 colorless ones and a joker one on white), so you don't 'have' to draft your tribe. You can easily just slam with Green-Red 'whatever' without mandatorily following Werewolves, so to say. TL:DR, I want people to be able to draft like they normally would, but that going tribal is a widely available option too.
That having said, this would make me need to look at what tribals will fit with each color.
How big is this cube going to be? At 360, with a -lot- of work, you -might- be able to jam 10 tribes, one of each colour pair. It won't be able to be a high powered environment as if you include, say, the best elves and goblins, soldiers is going to be bad in comparison and warriors even worse.
Not sold on druids as UG, IIRC there are only 4 blue druids and they're all green too. Mutant might work thanks to Onslaught block and the Simic, and by its very nature Mutant always overlaps with other tribes, but I don't know any great mutants of the top of my head...
Druids might work in another pair. There are definitely W and GW druids that care about enchantments, and black druids that ramp in exchange for life. Don't know any mono-R druids, but there are Nayan and Gruul ones most likely (unless the cards I'm thinking of are Shamans).
Artificer is a little tricky, there's only two cards that care about the type, a terrible equipment and a slightly less terrible enchantment that wants energy. That being said, it's kinda cool, and I like the idea of a Servo/Thopter spam UR deck with an Arcum Dagsson to upgrade the little dudes.
There are a few generically good Servo/Thopter makers around now, like Pia and Kiran Nalaar. If you were to go that route, consider Chief Engineer or Grand Architect. (Actually, consider Grand Architect anyway, it slides in as a pseudo Merfolk lord and fits into all sorts of artifact decks.)
Between all of those, you have a pretty cool theme for a tribe: Spam little helper dudes, invent big artifacts with them.
Like the Doom Cannon. Then fire them out of the Doom Cannon. Note: Do not run Doom Cannon in your cube.
How attached are you to singleton? I assume the colourless/white generic lords you want to run are Paliano Vanguard, Metallic Mimic and Adaptive Automaton, and I can happily recommend all of them, but the alternatives like Brass Herald, Door of Destinies and Obelisk of Urd are at best borderline, and most of the time just don't cut it. Obelisk is great with tokens though, so might make an okay artifact to cheat out with/for Thopter/Servos?
If you want a lot of those sort of "pick a tribe" lords, you'll either have to double up or start scraping the bottom of the barrel pretty quickly. As I've learned from tribal vs tribal clashes with my cube, a person who gets all their own lords plus the generic lords is in a -way- better position that someone who "just" got all the lords for their own tribe. Having more available might cure that? Or it might make it worse. I have no data, only conjecture.
Edit: Just remembered Commander 2017 added a lot of generic tribal stuff, like cost reducers and such. Don't know the cards that well, never seen them in play, but might be worth a look?
Actually, I just had a fantastic idea. Mutants comes with the Evolve ability a lot. Since I want people to be able to draft the cube without tribals too (like, following a certain theme), I'd recon smashing in a Warriors - Outlast, with Mutants - Evolve would do very well.
(Races)
WG Human (+Werewolf?)
WB Vampires
UB Faeries
BR Goblins
BG Elves
(Extra)
Golem + Myr (Colorless)
Ally (all) *I'm gonna try it anyway, for those creative enough to figure a way. I couldn't find any other idea for WG and I found that Human/WW has many crossovers with Warriors, Druids and Mutant <I believe it contains Mutant since Eldritch Moon? Or it was Horror.>
But I still need to know/get some feedback if the current list is something people can live into, and perhaps if they know some themes (like Sets/blocks) that would fit best in them.
I.E., Evolve (Mutant, RCoG + RTR) goes well with Outlast (DTR) and Fabricate (KLD).
Energy maybe not so much solely 'energy', but more in, 'counters' that aren't +1/+1 counters (-1/-1, wither, NO INFECT)
Instead of picking your tribes out of flavor, pick them based on what good tribal support cards exist. Druids sounds awesome, but there is very little support that exists throughout the history of MTG that we promote a druid-center draft deck.
Elves (G), Zombies (B), Goblins (R), Humans (W), Wizards (U) - I would try to focus on these 5 tribes because they each have plenty of cards that are good on their own, plenty of cards that offer support and reward for drafting the tribe, and can be crossed over with each other pretty easily. Here are a few cards that come to mind:
And obviously Elves don't lack any tribal support whatsoever, with all their lords and tutors and rewards for entering the battlefield.
These are just a few examples but with a little research you'll find the 5 tribes I mentioned are the easiest to support in a cube environment. You want most of your tribe cards to be good on their own, not need the tribe. But then you have support cards to be drafted that can push your archetypes over the top, really making the cube "feel" like a tribal environment.
It's most definetly true that the 5 monocolored tribes you mentioned are very strong...
BUT, there is a big problem. If I only have five tribes, that means at least two people (if drafting with the minimal 6) will be fighting each other and end up with 'meh' decks, while the other 4 ace it with little competition.
SO, instead, and sure this might be starting to overcomplicate things... What if I base mono-colored off Race, and multicolored off Profession?
White humans
Green Elves
Blue Merfolk
Black Zombies (Or vampires, depending which got the most support.)
Red Goblins
White/Blue soldiers
Blue/Red wizards
Blue/Black rogues
White/Black clerics
White/Red artificers
White/Green knights (This enables BOTH Knight of the Reliquary AND Wilt-leaf Liege)
Red/Green werewolves
Blue/Green druids
Green/Black shamans
Red/Black warriors
The important thing to note is: I especially DON'T want to let the tribals run too much through tribal supports/lords. I want tribals to be available as option by providing several cards that boosts any creature type (adaptive automaton, unclaimed territory, metallic mimic, door of destinies, conqueror's banner, etc), but that people can still draft just fine outside drafting tribal.
But for real, I value your input a lot. I'm still new to this and it's a complicated task, so your insight into this is invalueable.
I want tribals to be available as option by providing several cards that boosts any creature type (adaptive automaton, unclaimed territory, metallic mimic, door of destinies, conqueror's banner, etc), but that people can still draft just fine outside drafting tribal
I think your reasoning here explains exactly why my solo color tribe idea would work. In a minimum 6 player draft, multiple players could take the same tribe and it wouldn't matter. There will be so many zombie cards available that are good enough on their own, both players could draft viable decks. Maybe the one who drafted the bomb tribal support (such as Death Baron) will win though.
My philosophy is to attempt to make tribes matter, and not just tribes for the sake of flavor without any actual impact on the game. For this reason I'd suggest stopping druids, clerics, and warriors. I'd love to work on this project with you, at least from a theory crafting perspective. If we're going to do dual color tribes, I would say to drop the mono color ones. Ten tribes is plenty for a 360 cube. It would be wise to include several cards with Changeling as well, since they are all about the "creature types matter" theme
FuneralofGod has a lot of good points. All the ideas are great, but there need to be cards to back them up.
All I'd add is to include cross-tribe support beyond just changelings: cards that exist in multiple tribes, or exist in one tribe and support another. Even if it's not related to the creature type, just supports a mechanic in that type.
But that's a bit of a problem though. Lords tend to be either broken or severely underpowered. Death baron, i.e., it's a nice support for both Wizard and Zombies... but it doesn't affect himself and contributes nothing to Wizards, and for Zombies it just goes beyond insane (As if +1/+1 wasn't enough, they'll also get deathtouch which, as zombies token generator, gets ridicillious.)
Warriors has pretty much been a *shrug* for me. There are a lot of good Warrior cards that supply for black-assisted aggro, most goblins are warriors too (or soldiers), it fills the slot to name 'black/red' best.
Druids and Clerics aren't there for the big slam wins. Technically these don't need to have lords (even though, the 'class' lords will only be like 1 or 2), because their whole role serves support value. Clerics are things like lifesteal, protection, etc. Think of Mother of Runes, a must-have in white humans. But she's a Human Cleric. In these cases if one would really want to build a strong synergy with clerics, I'd love to let them get that chance, so give the beast a name(?). Likewise for druids, their purpose is one thing; ramp. (Beside for some standalones like Sylvan Advocate.) Nearly all mana dorks are druids, and a cube that runs with tribals - aka, a much higher creature vs noncreature ratio - needs mana dorks.
How about multicolor support for let's say 5 main tribes. This way different decks could be drafted as tribe alliances if you will. My thoughts:
Mardu Vampires (RBW), centered on red, focus on madness & flashback
Sultai Zombies (BUG), centered on black, focus on tokens and reanimation
Abzan Humans (BGW), centered on white, focus on creature protection and +1/+1 counters
Temur Elves (RUG), centered on green, focus on creature count and high power
Jeskai Wizards (RWU), centered on blue, focus on direct dmg and control magic
And not every creature in the cube needs to be of only these 5 creature types. There is a bit of flavor inconsistency in that Wizards are more of a "class" where all the others are "race"..
About Temur Elves, the big problem is that there's hardly to no Elves that are solely blue or red. In fact, I'm more sold on Abzan elves because there are a CRAPLOAD of White, WG, BG and Black elves that hold a strong independence value on their own. But this in turn leaves me with the dubious choice what Temur would be then.
Next to that, the next step I gotta take is card selection, and when I have very, very broad card categories, I'm completely blown away by what to even pick.
I'll write down here some cards what I had in mind of to run for the tribals I had named above, maybe so I can give over some of the ideas I had with it:
I will write down below what ideas for tribals I have/had for the colors:
Note; each tribal is primarily ran through two colors, however there are also other colors containing the same tribal
RWBGU Allies (Con: Allies are only strong together, and thus cards lack a reasonable independance value.)
RB) Vampires (Con: Contains few 'lords' or primary tribal support points, whereas I fear Bloodline keeper may dominate too much)
RG) Wolves/Werewolves (Con: Very 'solitary' tribal, it hardly has any crossover with any other tribal except humans.)
RW) Soldiers (Con: nothing really.)
RU) Wizards (Con: nothing really.)
WG) Humans (Con: I fear this tribal may be 'too present' as Human is a very largely available creature type.)
WB) Warriors (Con: Hardly any support beside Chief of the Scale/Edge)
WU) Spirits (Con: Very 'solitary' tribal, it contains hardly any crossover with other tribals.)
GU) Merfolk (Con: Hard to obtain a good balance point between strong and neglectable in an all-any situation.)
GB) Elves (Con: I fear this tribal may dominate too much.)
UB) Zombies (Con: I fear this tribal may dominate too much.)
Colorless) Myr (Con: I can't see it 'that' much as a tribal, it contains good support value for colors, but I'd applaud anyone that makes a myr tribal out of it.)
Other tribals I've been looking forward to, but can't seem to be convinced to adding or what to remove it for:
- Goblins. Classic, strong, and good for BR aggro. Although the debate of including Goblins over Vampires is haunting me.
- Elementals. There aren't enough cards, but these are excellent for UG if I should make Elementals via Lands(Awaken).
- Dinosaurs. They have a strong independence value, but there is a lack of synergy between each other, and much like the other RG tribal, they are too solitary.)
- Rogue. I'd LOVE to add this tribal as a proffession tribal, more coexistance with other tribals! But the exclusion of Zombies is killing me over this.
- Faerie's. Fact; Lorwyn had a great support for tribals, and Faeries is among them. But likewise, UB is already taken by zombies which is a good tribal competitor too.
- Dragons. RAWR! Unfortunately, Dragons are very solitary and tend to eat any other tribal it tries to synergize with.
- Cats. Although Amonkhet and C17 gave quite the support for this tribal... they are competing with Humans which kind-of takes the prize already.
- Pirates. YARR, Someone has stolen me mateys, there be little pirate cards, and too few cap'ns!
- Illusions. Given a tribal cube will run much more on creatures, I fear illusions may GRANDLY dominate. As well, I don't know any other color than blue this tribal consists of.
- Clerics. I know very little cleric lords, but having White/Black as a lifegain/lifesteal tribal is something I'd love to try out!
So what I am looking for right now is some assistance, people thinking along trying to help me answer questions; what 12 tribals will be the best to use? What cards are must-haves in each tribals, and what cards are absolute no-no's because of too strong power spikes? What creature/noncreature ration should I include in a tribal cube?
I tried Allies, it's very swingy and never fun - In the rare draft where you get an allies deck that can consistently trigger ally abilities, you either win hard because your mana is good and you curved out, or lose hard because it isn't the perfect game. On top of that, most allies don't really get passive lord effects, so you need to be playing an Ally each turn, and the few allies that do do the passive lord thing like Harabaz Druid and Sea Gate Loremaster only amplify the swinginess. Lords are generally something you want to minimize due to their limited cross-deck usefulness, and Allies are a tribe of lords. This all being said, I didn't test Allies for very long, so feel free to ignore this advice.
Humans was way easier to do as a 5C tribe, as there are a lot of good effects stapled to human bodies, effects that are relevant even when the creature type isn't. They also have overlap with other tribes, which Allies only have tangentially. Humans that make X creature tokens all feel okay in either deck, and more often than not work wonders in non-tribal decks too.
Golems also kick ass. Splicers do a lot while also being Human, there are generically useful all-stars like Hollow One, and you have the silliest of lords Precursor Golem, who can be relevant in non-tribal decks while also allowing you to do silly things with Vines of Vastwood or whatever. That being said, I love Myr, my favourite draft story is about Myr in SoM, and I'd like to see it work. They seem like they could be useful outside their tribe.
I'd have a look at Lorwyn/Morningtide a little closer. The reason it could jam so many tribes in was the race/class split it had. You had Merfolk, Wizards, Kithkin, Giants etc vs Wizards, Rogues, Shamans, Warriors etc. You've mentioned it, but I don't know if you've thought about how much having a "farie rogue" in U or B matters compared to a "zombie" in U or B. Maybe consider a similar style of splitting it? You have Wizard, Soldier and Warrior as enemy pairs, and that's great, maybe there's a way to have enemy pairs care about class and allies care about race?
If I was going to do a split like that, I'd start by thinking about how each allied pair would play, then find the overlaps to work out how the enemy pairs would play. As an example:
WU - Spirits (Esp. token makers that make spirits and disruptive ETB effects, think Intangible Virtue, Favorable Winds, Spell Queller)
UB - Faeries (Again, weenie fliers and disruptive ETBs, think Favorable Winds, Spellstutter Sprite, Clique, discard)
BR - Some kind of disruptive aggro with damage based removal and discard, Goblins have better cross tribe overlap, but Vampires have some cool Clerics.
RG - Were/Wolves (Straight aggro with damage based removal. Overlaps with Humans through Mayor of Avabruck and Master of the Wild Hunt and Elves with Wolf-Skull Shaman, Tolsmir Wolfblood and Wren's Run Packmaster)
GW - Elves (Counter distribution and small token makers. (Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Travel Preparations, Joraga Warcaller)
Looking at Spirits and Faeries, they both have little flying dudes and lots of hand/spell disruption, so that's your Esper playstyle, and that probably informs what you want to do with WB. Might not work with the added class restriction, but it'll add depth to the drafting.
Another thing to note is to run cards that more one player will want to pick up. Tolsmir Wolfblood isn't an Elf lord or a Wolf lord, he's an Elf that makes a Wolf while buffing green and white creatures. Rishkar, Peema Renegade does a very elfy job of giving you mana, but doesn't actually care about elves, and buffs whoever she can regardless of subtype. These may not be good enough to make it into your cube, but they're the examples that leapt to my mind. Also, have a look at the tribal equipment/enchantments, and run Changelings.
Edit: Merfolk are great, Clones are your friend if you want them to be good. Waterfront Bouncer/Enclave Cryptologist into Lord of Atlantis/Master of the Pearl Trident into Cackling Counterpart/Phyrexian Metamorph has happened to me in back to back games and it hurts.
The goal that I had drawn - and I'm sorry I had forgotten to write that - is that even though it's a tribal cube, I want to let cards have a strong 'Independence Value'. I will only jam in like 1 or 2 lords per tribe (with 3 colorless ones and a joker one on white), so you don't 'have' to draft your tribe. You can easily just slam with Green-Red 'whatever' without mandatorily following Werewolves, so to say. TL:DR, I want people to be able to draft like they normally would, but that going tribal is a widely available option too.
That having said, this would make me need to look at what tribals will fit with each color.
(Normal)
Red-Green - ??
Green-White - ??
White-Blue - Spirits?
Blue-Black - Faeries
Black-Red - Goblins
Red-White Soldiers
White-Black Warriors
Black-green ??
green-blue ??
blue-red Wizards
(Reversed)
Red-Green - ??
Green-White - Knights
White-Blue - Soldiers
Blue-Black - Rogues
Black-Red - Warriors
Red-White - Humans
White-Black - ??
Black-green - Elves
green-blue - Merfolk
blue-red - ??
Also, I hadn't anticipated the idea of 5-color humans. That is a great idea to do rather than Allies.
Druids for Green-Blue Class
Elementals for Blue/Red Race
are some quick ideas...
For professions, I yesterday was also thinking for the Artificer as a possibility for Red/Blue, Blue/White or White/Red.
Not sold on druids as UG, IIRC there are only 4 blue druids and they're all green too. Mutant might work thanks to Onslaught block and the Simic, and by its very nature Mutant always overlaps with other tribes, but I don't know any great mutants of the top of my head...
Druids might work in another pair. There are definitely W and GW druids that care about enchantments, and black druids that ramp in exchange for life. Don't know any mono-R druids, but there are Nayan and Gruul ones most likely (unless the cards I'm thinking of are Shamans).
Artificer is a little tricky, there's only two cards that care about the type, a terrible equipment and a slightly less terrible enchantment that wants energy. That being said, it's kinda cool, and I like the idea of a Servo/Thopter spam UR deck with an Arcum Dagsson to upgrade the little dudes.
There are a few generically good Servo/Thopter makers around now, like Pia and Kiran Nalaar. If you were to go that route, consider Chief Engineer or Grand Architect. (Actually, consider Grand Architect anyway, it slides in as a pseudo Merfolk lord and fits into all sorts of artifact decks.)
Between all of those, you have a pretty cool theme for a tribe: Spam little helper dudes, invent big artifacts with them.
Like the Doom Cannon. Then fire them out of the Doom Cannon. Note: Do not run Doom Cannon in your cube.
There's also Embersmith and Reckless Fireweaver if you want it to be a more aggressive tribe.
How attached are you to singleton? I assume the colourless/white generic lords you want to run are Paliano Vanguard, Metallic Mimic and Adaptive Automaton, and I can happily recommend all of them, but the alternatives like Brass Herald, Door of Destinies and Obelisk of Urd are at best borderline, and most of the time just don't cut it. Obelisk is great with tokens though, so might make an okay artifact to cheat out with/for Thopter/Servos?
If you want a lot of those sort of "pick a tribe" lords, you'll either have to double up or start scraping the bottom of the barrel pretty quickly. As I've learned from tribal vs tribal clashes with my cube, a person who gets all their own lords plus the generic lords is in a -way- better position that someone who "just" got all the lords for their own tribe. Having more available might cure that? Or it might make it worse. I have no data, only conjecture.
Edit: Just remembered Commander 2017 added a lot of generic tribal stuff, like cost reducers and such. Don't know the cards that well, never seen them in play, but might be worth a look?
Actually, I just had a fantastic idea. Mutants comes with the Evolve ability a lot. Since I want people to be able to draft the cube without tribals too (like, following a certain theme), I'd recon smashing in a Warriors - Outlast, with Mutants - Evolve would do very well.
Themes:
RGUB Energy
BGUW Counters
UGWR Tokens
RUBW Artifacts
RBGW (??)
Tribals:
(Classes)
RG Druids
GU Mutants
UR Wizards
UW Soldiers
WR Artificers
(Races)
WG Human (+Werewolf?)
WB Vampires
UB Faeries
BR Goblins
BG Elves
(Extra)
Golem + Myr (Colorless)
Ally (all) *I'm gonna try it anyway, for those creative enough to figure a way. I couldn't find any other idea for WG and I found that Human/WW has many crossovers with Warriors, Druids and Mutant <I believe it contains Mutant since Eldritch Moon? Or it was Horror.>
But I still need to know/get some feedback if the current list is something people can live into, and perhaps if they know some themes (like Sets/blocks) that would fit best in them.
I.E., Evolve (Mutant, RCoG + RTR) goes well with Outlast (DTR) and Fabricate (KLD).
Energy maybe not so much solely 'energy', but more in, 'counters' that aren't +1/+1 counters (-1/-1, wither, NO INFECT)
Elves (G), Zombies (B), Goblins (R), Humans (W), Wizards (U) - I would try to focus on these 5 tribes because they each have plenty of cards that are good on their own, plenty of cards that offer support and reward for drafting the tribe, and can be crossed over with each other pretty easily. Here are a few cards that come to mind:
Lends to multiple archetypes/colors:
Coiling Oracle
Wilt-leaf Liege
Shaman of the Pack
Bloodbraid Elf
Good on their own / don't need the tribe:
Sylvan Advocate
Caller of the Claw
Deathrite Shaman
Fauna Shaman
And obviously Elves don't lack any tribal support whatsoever, with all their lords and tutors and rewards for entering the battlefield.
These are just a few examples but with a little research you'll find the 5 tribes I mentioned are the easiest to support in a cube environment. You want most of your tribe cards to be good on their own, not need the tribe. But then you have support cards to be drafted that can push your archetypes over the top, really making the cube "feel" like a tribal environment.
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BUT, there is a big problem. If I only have five tribes, that means at least two people (if drafting with the minimal 6) will be fighting each other and end up with 'meh' decks, while the other 4 ace it with little competition.
SO, instead, and sure this might be starting to overcomplicate things... What if I base mono-colored off Race, and multicolored off Profession?
White humans
Green Elves
Blue Merfolk
Black Zombies (Or vampires, depending which got the most support.)
Red Goblins
White/Blue soldiers
Blue/Red wizards
Blue/Black rogues
White/Black clerics
White/Red artificers
White/Green knights (This enables BOTH Knight of the Reliquary AND Wilt-leaf Liege)
Red/Green werewolves
Blue/Green druids
Green/Black shamans
Red/Black warriors
The important thing to note is: I especially DON'T want to let the tribals run too much through tribal supports/lords. I want tribals to be available as option by providing several cards that boosts any creature type (adaptive automaton, unclaimed territory, metallic mimic, door of destinies, conqueror's banner, etc), but that people can still draft just fine outside drafting tribal.
But for real, I value your input a lot. I'm still new to this and it's a complicated task, so your insight into this is invalueable.
I think your reasoning here explains exactly why my solo color tribe idea would work. In a minimum 6 player draft, multiple players could take the same tribe and it wouldn't matter. There will be so many zombie cards available that are good enough on their own, both players could draft viable decks. Maybe the one who drafted the bomb tribal support (such as Death Baron) will win though.
My philosophy is to attempt to make tribes matter, and not just tribes for the sake of flavor without any actual impact on the game. For this reason I'd suggest stopping druids, clerics, and warriors. I'd love to work on this project with you, at least from a theory crafting perspective. If we're going to do dual color tribes, I would say to drop the mono color ones. Ten tribes is plenty for a 360 cube. It would be wise to include several cards with Changeling as well, since they are all about the "creature types matter" theme
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All I'd add is to include cross-tribe support beyond just changelings: cards that exist in multiple tribes, or exist in one tribe and support another. Even if it's not related to the creature type, just supports a mechanic in that type.
Warriors has pretty much been a *shrug* for me. There are a lot of good Warrior cards that supply for black-assisted aggro, most goblins are warriors too (or soldiers), it fills the slot to name 'black/red' best.
Druids and Clerics aren't there for the big slam wins. Technically these don't need to have lords (even though, the 'class' lords will only be like 1 or 2), because their whole role serves support value. Clerics are things like lifesteal, protection, etc. Think of Mother of Runes, a must-have in white humans. But she's a Human Cleric. In these cases if one would really want to build a strong synergy with clerics, I'd love to let them get that chance, so give the beast a name(?). Likewise for druids, their purpose is one thing; ramp. (Beside for some standalones like Sylvan Advocate.) Nearly all mana dorks are druids, and a cube that runs with tribals - aka, a much higher creature vs noncreature ratio - needs mana dorks.
The idea is something like this:
40 White Human cards + 2 nonhuman Knight/Soldier/Artificer/Cleric + 1 Mirror Entity + 16 noncreature cards
36 Blue Merfolk cards + 2 nonmerfolk Druid/Soldier/Rogue/Wizard + 5 clone cards + 16 noncreature cards
35 Red Goblin cards +2 nongoblin Warrior/Artificer/Wizard/(?Red/Black?) + 1 Terraen Mauler + 21 noncreature cards
41 Black Zombie cards +2 nonzombie (?Red/black?)/Rogue/Cleric/Shaman + 16 noncreature cards
41 Green Elf cards +2 nonelf druid/shaman/knight/warrior + 16 noncreature cards (total 65)
Multicolor:
5 WU Soldiers + 3 WU 'value' cards
5 WG Knights + 3 WG 'value' cards
5 WB Clerics + 3 WB 'value' cards
5 WR Artificers + 3 WR 'value' cards
5 UR Wizards + 3 UR 'value' cards
5 UB Rogues + 3 UB 'value' cards
5 UG Druids + 3 UG 'value' cards
5 GB Shamans + 3 GB 'value' cards
5 GR Warriors + 3 GR 'value' cards
5 RB ??? + 3 RB 'value' cards
Colorless: 15 colorless Myr cards + 10 tribal support cards + 15 value colorless cards.
Also, tbh: I'd love to drop in a Sword of Dungeons and Dragons xD. The fact this cube runs Clerics and Rogues makes me say yes so hard xD.
Mardu Vampires (RBW), centered on red, focus on madness & flashback
Sultai Zombies (BUG), centered on black, focus on tokens and reanimation
Abzan Humans (BGW), centered on white, focus on creature protection and +1/+1 counters
Temur Elves (RUG), centered on green, focus on creature count and high power
Jeskai Wizards (RWU), centered on blue, focus on direct dmg and control magic
And not every creature in the cube needs to be of only these 5 creature types. There is a bit of flavor inconsistency in that Wizards are more of a "class" where all the others are "race"..
Temur Elf Support:
Jeskai Wizards Support:
Abzan Humans Support:
Sultai Zombies Support:
Other Misc Relevant cards
And the list goes on..
I'll update this post later when I have time to do more research
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Next to that, the next step I gotta take is card selection, and when I have very, very broad card categories, I'm completely blown away by what to even pick.
I'll write down here some cards what I had in mind of to run for the tribals I had named above, maybe so I can give over some of the ideas I had with it:
Knights:
Knight Examplar (Lord)
Knight of the Reliquary
Wilt-leaf Liege, Crosses over with Elves
Puresteel Paladin, Crosses over with Artificers and Soldiers
Stillmoon Cavalier
Fiendslayer Paladin
Jackknight, Crosses over with Artificers (Yeah, I know, Unstable. BUT, it's a perfect 2 mana 1-drop that'll always say; "Whenever an artifact enters, put a +1/+1 counter on this.)"
Soldiers:
Captain of the Watch (lord)
Daxos of Meletis
Preeminent Captain
Ranger of Eos
Recruiter of the Guard
Thalia's Lieutenant (Human lord)
Champion of the Parish
Porcelain Legionaire (Crosses over with Artificers)
Warriors:
Khenra Charioteer
Rubblebelt raiders
Target Minotaur (Crosses over with Wizards) (Unstable, but still a dead-normal 2-mana 2/1 Prowess.)
Voltaic Brawler (Crosses over with most other GRB cards)
Goblin Rabblemaster
Greenwheel Liberator
Radha, Heir to Keld
Warfire Javelineer (Crosses over with Wizards)
Champion of Rhonas
Tuskguard Captain
Clerics:
Mother of Runes
Skirsdag High Priest
Fiend Hunter
Leonin Relic Warder
Kalastria Healer
Sin Collector
Marven Fein, Dusk Apostle
Auriok Champion
Artificers:
Aether Chaser
Pia Nalaar
Jor Kadeen (Crosses over with Warriors)
Flamewright
Ghirapur Gearcrafter
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Relic Seeker (Crosses over with Soldiers)
Stone Haven Outfitter
Blade Splicer
Sensor Splicer
Stoneforge Mystic
Toolcraft Examplar
Reckless Fireweaver
If desired I could update the list further for the other tribals, but these were the kind of cards I were looking at that I drew inspiration of.