So now we know how contraptions will work and we have seen a few of them how are people feeling about them?
It might not be something for the more traditional cubes but if we get 1 or 2 solid contraption generators and 5 or 6 playable contraptions I would consider trying to make something work. Maybe by keeping 10 contraptions in different sleeves inside my token box for the contraption players to use, just letting a player pick one from a pool or even have them pick 3 and roll a d6 to decide, it will really all depend on the strength of the conspiracies.
If we got some 1-2 drop contraption makers, and things like a contraption that deals 2 damage or draws a card it could work. Bee-Bee Gun, Genetic Recombinator and even Dogsnail Engine could work wonders in the right deck.
I we get a couple of good contraption makers (maybe even a planeswalker?) I will definitely try and make something work, for a test run anyway.
The problem with Contraptions will be the number of cubeable assemblers / Contraptions you can scrounge up. UNS has 2 Contraptions seeded per pack, you’d probably have to include it in a utility land draft type thing if anything.
The problem with Contraptions will be the number of cubeable assemblers / Contraptions you can scrounge up. UNS has 2 Contraptions seeded per pack, you’d probably have to include it in a utility land draft type thing if anything.
I think Contraptions will be fairly cheap/easy to pick up so I'm not worried about getting the cards (not sure if that what you meant). I wonder if people will try and spec long term on contraptions being black boarder one day?
As for a Utility Land style draft, if I have 2 cards that make the contraptions in my cube (a hopeful estimate) I think I can get by with a deck of 10 cards. It also seems like an extra step I don't need to add on top of an already out-there mechanic.
The best/simplest solutions I can think of are having all players share a contraption deck or just naming the one they want. What contraptions you run will probably depend on what colours get access to contraptions.
The problem with Contraptions will be the number of cubeable assemblers / Contraptions you can scrounge up. UNS has 2 Contraptions seeded per pack, you’d probably have to include it in a utility land draft type thing if anything.
I think Contraptions will be fairly cheap/easy to pick up so I'm not worried about getting the cards (not sure if that what you meant). I wonder if people will try and spec long term on contraptions being black boarder one day?
As for a Utility Land style draft, if I have 2 cards that make the contraptions in my cube (a hopeful estimate) I think I can get by with a deck of 10 cards. It also seems like an extra step I don't need to add on top of an already out-there mechanic.
The best/simplest solutions I can think of are having all players share a contraption deck or just naming the one they want. What contraptions you run will probably depend on what colours get access to contraptions.
I'm not worried about card availability as in obtaining the actual cards, but the actual number of contraptions / assemblers that are viable for cube. Since contraptions / assemblers are parasitic to each other, there needs to be a critical mass of both for contraptions to happen.
One thing I'd advise to people who aren't into the utility draft idea is to break singleton for contraptions / assemblers.
The problem with Contraptions will be the number of cubeable assemblers / Contraptions you can scrounge up. UNS has 2 Contraptions seeded per pack, you’d probably have to include it in a utility land draft type thing if anything.
I think Contraptions will be fairly cheap/easy to pick up so I'm not worried about getting the cards (not sure if that what you meant). I wonder if people will try and spec long term on contraptions being black boarder one day?
As for a Utility Land style draft, if I have 2 cards that make the contraptions in my cube (a hopeful estimate) I think I can get by with a deck of 10 cards. It also seems like an extra step I don't need to add on top of an already out-there mechanic.
The best/simplest solutions I can think of are having all players share a contraption deck or just naming the one they want. What contraptions you run will probably depend on what colours get access to contraptions.
I'm not worried about card availability as in obtaining the actual cards, but the actual number of contraptions / assemblers that are viable for cube. Since contraptions / assemblers are parasitic to each other, there needs to be a critical mass of both for contraptions to happen.
One thing I'd advise to people who aren't into the utility draft idea is to break singleton for contraptions / assemblers.
I'm not really worried about number of assemblers, if I get one decent assembler and a few relevant contraptions I could make something work. A colourless assembler would be ideal, I would add 5 cards to my rather spacious token box to make a fun card work.
I only need a critical mass if I want to support it as a full blown mechanic; I'm mainly thinking of it as a single card with afew options contraption-wise.
It's an interesting thought. My suspicion is that contraptions will be too weak/parasitic for the main draft, but if there turn out to be decent assemblers, they may be too *good* to be basically "free" cards handed to the player after the draft. An occasional +2/+2 effect that doesn't cost me a pick, doesn't take up a deck slot, doesn't have to be cast, and doesn't require mana to activate? It's not exactly bonkers, but then again it's 100% bonus at no cost (assuming, again, decent enough assembler to make it worth running in the first place).
My hunch is that contraption/assemblers will work best – maybe work solely – as a module, and that for relatively low power cubes, and probably for only relatively small cubes – it's hard to imagine we'll see all that many assemblers worthy of inclusion.
Putting all 45 contraptions in a 360 cube will result in a fan out of almost 2, but you will also need a lot of assemblers, probably the same anount. We’ll have to wait and see until all contraptions/assemblers are spoiled until we can fully assess. My initial guess is no, contraptions wil take up too much space and guve little power in cube.
I Can imagine an artifact cube revolving around contraptions being built. I have an artifact cube and I can imagine it morphing into having contraptions.
It's possible to make it work in a themed cube, particularly in an un-themed cube. Like anything as wacky and space-intensive as this, it can't work in a cube with any kind of a traditional power level. There's also nothing yet spoiled that makes me coo coo for contraptions, but that could change.
It’s kind of hard to comment on how competitively costed assemblers are going to be, considering we’ve only had limited fodder and build-arounds revealed so far. My guess would be that “assemble” is roughly comparable to a Bloodbraid cascade in value (comparing Cyclical Evolution to Genetic Recombinator seems reasonable).
The big question is definitely if you choose to draft contraptions or not. Doing so probably means committing a lot of space to it unless there are a few particularly broken ones. It might require a lower powered cube depending on the costing of assemblers and how much space you’re willing to devote to it. Having a preset deck instead is much cleaner in-draft but presents some logistical issues (how do you accommodate multiple people playing assemblers?)
It’s kind of hard to comment on how competitively costed assemblers are going to be, considering we’ve only had limited fodder and build-arounds revealed so far. My guess would be that “assemble” is roughly comparable to a Bloodbraid cascade in value (comparing Cyclical Evolution to Genetic Recombinator seems reasonable).
The big question is definitely if you choose to draft contraptions or not. Doing so probably means committing a lot of space to it unless there are a few particularly broken ones. It might require a lower powered cube depending on the costing of assemblers and how much space you’re willing to devote to it. Having a preset deck instead is much cleaner in-draft but presents some logistical issues (how do you accommodate multiple people playing assemblers?)
Go for the second option, just have a small shared deck and have anyone who needs to assemble a contraption draw the top card (or just name the contraption they want to make it even simpler). I only expect to run 1 or 2 assemblers, and I am guessing it will probably as an ETB trigger so I don't expect to ever need more than 5 on the battlefield at once.
I would play something like:
2
Toolbox Assembler
Creature - Artifact Rigger
When [card name] enters the battlefield assemble a contraption.
2/1
If I got something like this card and 5 good contraptions I would cube them. I would probably be interested as a 0/4 wall as well, A contraption version of Wall of Omens (A Wall of Contraptions if you will)
I think comparing Cyclical Evolution to Genetic Recombinator is reasonable but slightly off though, you are always have to wait at least a turn for a contraption activation and it cant be countered but artifact removal hits them. I think 1-3 mana assemblers will be the sweet spot for cube.
I wonder if we will get a Mox or Lotus that assembles a contraption for your opponents when you tap and/or play it? So far Un sets have given us Jack-in-the-Mox and Mox Lotus so I expect to see something Mox/Lotus related.
My thinking at the minute is A)Cut it down to 10-15 deck and have any contraptions assembled from it. B)Include them all, have players choose 10-15 to form their deck (draft if they cant agree). C) Cut it down to 15-20 and let players choose what contraption they wish to assemble.
It looks like Incite Insight is the only card good enough to crack it in cube so I am leaning towards option C. I have some a good bit of space in my token box so I'm happy to sleeve up 15-20 cards to make Incite Insight into a sweet toolbox card.
One big concern is breaking colour pie if I just let players choose; Incite Insight becomes reanimation (black), artifact destruction (red, white, green) or a mini overun (green) effect for 3 mana at X=1. It takes an extra turn to hit though, and the effect can be stopped by artifact removal so that helps balance a bit (no so much colour pie though).
Oh I also forgot option D... I choose option C except I buy every contraption and when my plan fails through I assemble them all and frame the results.
If you have to draft you contraptions then you are dedicating cube slots to something that might never come together in any useful way. Depending on your colours you could get assembler but no relevant contraptions or a number of "on colour" contraptions but no decent assembler. Those packs with 2 contraptions that you cont passed? They could have been any number of more useable cube cards.
If I do end up running contraptions I will let the player who drafts an assembler pick the contraptions they want for there deck. There is a more lengthy explanation in the other thread, probably best not to have 2 threads on the same topic.
None of that makes any sense to me, or the schemes you've elaborated above to include Contraptions. You would be adding <10 total cards (for the most part the Contraptions that do something to "target creature" aren't good enough. You have to think of the assembling creature as having a delayed etb effect -- by that criterion there are maybe 5-6 good contraptions). Anyway, 15th picks are 15th picks and I don't think its going to matter if its a contraption or some other card that the drafter picking it definitely won't play. Its Cube, its not as though playables are in short supply.
Making Contraptions even more complicated (or, worse..semi-random, which reduces their power greatly) than they already are seems like a bad idea. Riveting Rigger and Wrench-Rigger are definitely good enough if you snag one of the top two or three contraptions and probably a couple of other assemblers would make the cut as well.
Wrench-Rigger is a good call, surprised I missed it since a 1 mana assembler was on my want list.
My current thinking is I just let the player choose their contraption when they assemble it I hadn't gone through them all yet when. I am happy to keep 15 cards with my tokens to make Wrench-Rigger and Incite Insight work. When a player casts either of them they just choose a contraption that hasn't already been assembled.
This way takes the randomness out to make them tool box effects and you don't have to rely on drafting a useful contraption. Picking a contraption also lets me include some of the less powerful, more situational contraptions like the Guest List or Duplication Device.
I would rather add 15 cards to my token box and 2 to my cube, than 12-17 cards to my cube.
Wrench-Rigger is a good call, surprised I missed it since a 1 mana assembler was on my want list.
My current thinking is I just let the player choose their contraption when they assemble it I hadn't gone through them all yet when. I am happy to keep 15 cards with my tokens to make Wrench-Rigger and Incite Insight work. When a player casts either of them they just choose a contraption that hasn't already been assembled.
This way takes the randomness out to make them tool box effects and you don't have to rely on drafting a useful contraption. Picking a contraption also lets me include some of the less powerful, more situational contraptions like the Guest List or Duplication Device.
I would rather add 15 cards to my token box and 2 to my cube, than 12-17 cards to my cube.
The issue with this is that those cards become insanely powerful. An aggro deck will pick up Wrench Rigger because it will always get Dual Doomsuits, which is absolutely back breaking. Or it can grab Faerie Aerie and become "R: get a 1/1, deal 2 to your opponent, and draw 2". Incite Insight for 3 will rarely not win the game. You can grab Top Secret Tunnel, Dual Doomsuits, and Oaken Power suit and casually dome your opponent for 12 unblockable with a 3 power creature. 5 power wins the game on the spot. And that's just the floor - you can get out of basically any game state with it.
I just think it gives too much consistency and way too power to those cards, but drafting contraptions is also less than ideal. Since we cube with custom cards, my solution for an "Unstable Expansion" will be to design more playable Contraption enablers (probably about 15-20 of them, focused in Grixis). At the end of the draft, each player reveals the X cards they drafted that care about Contraptions. Then each player randomly pairs up with another player and they "draft" Contraptions. The player with the higher X in each pair picks first, and players alternate picks until they have drafted X contraptions. Once they've reached their limit, they must draft Contraptions randomly. So if 1 player has 10 cards that care about Contraptions, they get to choose all 10 of their Contraptions, while someone who drafts only 3 will get 3 Contraptions of their choosing and 7 random ones.
Each player gets ~10 contraptions (thinking of having sets of 20 contraptions), and the players that focus on drafting Contraption matters get to influence the construction of their Contraption deck more. It's just an idea, but I hope it should lead to more fun gameplay.
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If I fiddle around with a contraption variant (and that’s all it would be) I would probably put contraptions in the pack to be drafts, and have each player start with an emblem that gave you some way to assemble them.
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
Adding contraptions seems like a TON of logistics. Are any of the cards so powerful that it's worth adding this entire package to cube? I'm leaning towards not bothering with all this nonsense.
Perhaps the best way to incorporate contraptions is to look at a similar card type that generates different types of free value, AND starts with con- too! Conspiracies!
In order to avoid balancing issues between the card pools of players, I will be putting contraptions into the draft, like conspiracies. This keeps the minimum opportunity cost of each free value piece at "one draft pick." But conspiracies and contraptions are different, they vary on two axes. Conspiracies are guaranteed every game & are (usually) less impactful, while contraptions are randomly assembled but (usually) more impactful. How do we balance these cards? The answer lies in another question: How will players assemble contraptions?
Well, I don't think any of the riggers are playable. Wrench-Rigger, Work a Double, even Incite Insight can't /really/ stand up to great cube cards in their respective slots that impact the board immediately or push you towards your win condition. However, the Contraptions themselves are sweet as hell, and can often net you real value in just a few turns, more than some conspiracies for sure. I'm not interested in breaking Wizards' deckbuilding rules for contraptions OR straying away from how the scrapyard and contraption deck work, shuffling and assembling randomly, etc. So, one house rule will be under effect for every game with the module:
If a player controls a contraption deck, at the beginning of that player's upkeep, he or she may roll a six-sided die. If the result is 6 or higher, that player may assemble a contraption.
(This could change to rolling 5 or higher, depending on the power level of contraptions, needs a lot of testing for sure)
(Also a concern: this means that every time the player rolls a 6, if they already control a contraption, that player can then assemble a contraption AND crank it all at once by stacking triggers. Some fixes include changing this to an end step or draw step trigger, but this can also be used as a balancing knob.)
With this method, contraptions:
-are draftable and assemble-able by every single player, no matter what deck they build
-maintain their integrity as free value draft picks that impact the game, like conspiracies
-do NOT guarantee a particular amount of value due to the randomness of the contraption deck. This balances them against conspiracies, which usually have less powerful one-time effects, but are available every game guaranteed.
-do NOT affect deckbuilding or force players to play sub-optimal cards to validate their draft picks
-Introduces the proven-to-be-fun-just-look-at-unstable mechanic of randomness
-turns cards like Krark's Other Thumb into a playable archetype. Okay kind of.
Now, ALL of this will be a 50-card separate module, like others have done. Whenever we want to use it, we just take the cube, shuffle it, pull out a 50-card chunk, throw the module in, and re-shuffle. Then draft!
Please let me know your thoughts! Sorry for being long-winded and boring thorough!
It seems like a pretty big departure from how contraptions are meant to function, with no assemblers you are basically just taking half the mechanic, which is fine but not something I am interested in doing. The problem, as you noted, is game balance; a repeatable free uncounterable chance based effect is a lot harder to balance than requiring to resolves a spell.
Will adding this module mean there is more need for artifact destruction? Since you are a large ammount of cards for this module is it going to change up the meta? On days you add it in isn't black and blue taking a hit? Both colours have problems dealing with artifacts so giving out free contraptions to all players hurts them most.
There may also be some feel bads for the poor player who drafts a bunch of contraptions and never rolls a 6; I might never see my creature based assembler but actively rolling and failing each turn would feel worse for example like in MTG:Planechase when you are stuck on a terrible plane for like 10 rolls. The opposite is also true, getting shafted because someone rolled 6 for 3 turns in a row and hit all their best contraptions is going to feel a but sucky.
I could see a lot of contraptions being chaff, especially if you want to include 50 (duplicates I assume?), it feels like the best strategy would be to just grab 1 or 2 of the strong ones (to keep the variance of your deck low) and then ignore them. Since there is no way to reliably get the contraptions out it isn't even that much use for an artifact deck.
I think I just prefer trying to keep the mechanic more similar to how it worked in block. There is also the logistical issue of having to remove all the remaining cards from your cube before the next game, just seems like a lot of hassle when I could just include 2-3 assemblers into the cube and keep my contraptions with my tokens, in different colour sleeves.
I haven't got round to adding my module (curse you unemployment) but I am still planning to add a couple of assemblers and keep a 10-15 card contraption deck with my tokens that will be drawn from when a player needs a contraption. Just feels cleaner to me, I only need to add 2-3 cards to the cube and it causes way less logistical issues.
If you really want to go all in on the contraptions being in your draft why make players roll at all? You could just let players assemble one for free each upkeep. This would cause a nice tension between only wanting the 3 best in your deck, and, wanting to include enough so you don't run out before the game ends. Will this in turn help the artifact decks too much? Who knows.
Let me know how it goes and what you decide to do.
@TheGrogLord I like your suggestion of cubing the assemblers, keeping the contraptions there for anyone. Personally, 1) just like you want to keep the assembling mechanic as designed, I want to see them fought over and drafted as intended, and 2) I don't really want any of these un-cards permanently installed into my cube.
In response to the blue/black woes and general feel-bads, you are absolutely right about those situations occurring and needing attention, but anytime the module comes in, it's because every player has agreed that today's cubing session will be ridiculous & randomly balanced. I consider the possibility of someone never rolling a 6 to be an important part of the contraption vs. conspiracy balancing during drafting.
My module (prob 40-50 cards) will be included in its entirety in everyone's draft packs when we use it, so if I put in the best 20 contraptions, and usually draft with 4-6 players, I assume every player will only have 2-4 each. Okay someone might nab 7. It warrants testing, but I have a feeling with all the other ridiculous blue/black un-cards (counting arcane savant here lol) + all the other free value in conspiracies they could pick up, I think they'll be okay
(also, I'll be sleeving the module in different goofy sleeves to make them easy to organize afterwards. I know thats silly. *shrug*).
@Antipox I appreciate extra wrench-rigger analysis, you are swaying me a bit. It's hard to swallow the idea of only ever assembling 1 contraption with this card -> waiting one turn to crank it -> hopefully make a card's worth of value -> waiting THREE TURNS -> crank it again, etc. But for a 1-drop, thats kind of radical haha! Not to mention flickering effects. So it is super tempting to cube him + incite insight I suppose. Again, I don't reeeally want these cards IN the cube, just the module. And that's definitely not enough to make contraptions work.
It might not be something for the more traditional cubes but if we get 1 or 2 solid contraption generators and 5 or 6 playable contraptions I would consider trying to make something work. Maybe by keeping 10 contraptions in different sleeves inside my token box for the contraption players to use, just letting a player pick one from a pool or even have them pick 3 and roll a d6 to decide, it will really all depend on the strength of the conspiracies.
If we got some 1-2 drop contraption makers, and things like a contraption that deals 2 damage or draws a card it could work. Bee-Bee Gun, Genetic Recombinator and even Dogsnail Engine could work wonders in the right deck.
I we get a couple of good contraption makers (maybe even a planeswalker?) I will definitely try and make something work, for a test run anyway.
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I think Contraptions will be fairly cheap/easy to pick up so I'm not worried about getting the cards (not sure if that what you meant). I wonder if people will try and spec long term on contraptions being black boarder one day?
As for a Utility Land style draft, if I have 2 cards that make the contraptions in my cube (a hopeful estimate) I think I can get by with a deck of 10 cards. It also seems like an extra step I don't need to add on top of an already out-there mechanic.
The best/simplest solutions I can think of are having all players share a contraption deck or just naming the one they want. What contraptions you run will probably depend on what colours get access to contraptions.
I'm not worried about card availability as in obtaining the actual cards, but the actual number of contraptions / assemblers that are viable for cube. Since contraptions / assemblers are parasitic to each other, there needs to be a critical mass of both for contraptions to happen.
One thing I'd advise to people who aren't into the utility draft idea is to break singleton for contraptions / assemblers.
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I'm not really worried about number of assemblers, if I get one decent assembler and a few relevant contraptions I could make something work. A colourless assembler would be ideal, I would add 5 cards to my rather spacious token box to make a fun card work.
I only need a critical mass if I want to support it as a full blown mechanic; I'm mainly thinking of it as a single card with afew options contraption-wise.
My hunch is that contraption/assemblers will work best – maybe work solely – as a module, and that for relatively low power cubes, and probably for only relatively small cubes – it's hard to imagine we'll see all that many assemblers worthy of inclusion.
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I Can imagine an artifact cube revolving around contraptions being built. I have an artifact cube and I can imagine it morphing into having contraptions.
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The big question is definitely if you choose to draft contraptions or not. Doing so probably means committing a lot of space to it unless there are a few particularly broken ones. It might require a lower powered cube depending on the costing of assemblers and how much space you’re willing to devote to it. Having a preset deck instead is much cleaner in-draft but presents some logistical issues (how do you accommodate multiple people playing assemblers?)
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Go for the second option, just have a small shared deck and have anyone who needs to assemble a contraption draw the top card (or just name the contraption they want to make it even simpler). I only expect to run 1 or 2 assemblers, and I am guessing it will probably as an ETB trigger so I don't expect to ever need more than 5 on the battlefield at once.
I would play something like:
If I got something like this card and 5 good contraptions I would cube them. I would probably be interested as a 0/4 wall as well, A contraption version of Wall of Omens (A Wall of Contraptions if you will)
I think comparing Cyclical Evolution to Genetic Recombinator is reasonable but slightly off though, you are always have to wait at least a turn for a contraption activation and it cant be countered but artifact removal hits them. I think 1-3 mana assemblers will be the sweet spot for cube.
I wonder if we will get a Mox or Lotus that assembles a contraption for your opponents when you tap and/or play it? So far Un sets have given us Jack-in-the-Mox and Mox Lotus so I expect to see something Mox/Lotus related.
Good
OK
If I missed any please let me know.
My thinking at the minute is A)Cut it down to 10-15 deck and have any contraptions assembled from it. B)Include them all, have players choose 10-15 to form their deck (draft if they cant agree). C) Cut it down to 15-20 and let players choose what contraption they wish to assemble.
It looks like Incite Insight is the only card good enough to crack it in cube so I am leaning towards option C. I have some a good bit of space in my token box so I'm happy to sleeve up 15-20 cards to make Incite Insight into a sweet toolbox card.
One big concern is breaking colour pie if I just let players choose; Incite Insight becomes reanimation (black), artifact destruction (red, white, green) or a mini overun (green) effect for 3 mana at X=1. It takes an extra turn to hit though, and the effect can be stopped by artifact removal so that helps balance a bit (no so much colour pie though).
Oh I also forgot option D... I choose option C except I buy every contraption and when my plan fails through I assemble them all and frame the results.
None of that makes any sense to me, or the schemes you've elaborated above to include Contraptions. You would be adding <10 total cards (for the most part the Contraptions that do something to "target creature" aren't good enough. You have to think of the assembling creature as having a delayed etb effect -- by that criterion there are maybe 5-6 good contraptions). Anyway, 15th picks are 15th picks and I don't think its going to matter if its a contraption or some other card that the drafter picking it definitely won't play. Its Cube, its not as though playables are in short supply.
Making Contraptions even more complicated (or, worse..semi-random, which reduces their power greatly) than they already are seems like a bad idea. Riveting Rigger and Wrench-Rigger are definitely good enough if you snag one of the top two or three contraptions and probably a couple of other assemblers would make the cut as well.
My current thinking is I just let the player choose their contraption when they assemble it I hadn't gone through them all yet when. I am happy to keep 15 cards with my tokens to make Wrench-Rigger and Incite Insight work. When a player casts either of them they just choose a contraption that hasn't already been assembled.
This way takes the randomness out to make them tool box effects and you don't have to rely on drafting a useful contraption. Picking a contraption also lets me include some of the less powerful, more situational contraptions like the Guest List or Duplication Device.
I would rather add 15 cards to my token box and 2 to my cube, than 12-17 cards to my cube.
The issue with this is that those cards become insanely powerful. An aggro deck will pick up Wrench Rigger because it will always get Dual Doomsuits, which is absolutely back breaking. Or it can grab Faerie Aerie and become "R: get a 1/1, deal 2 to your opponent, and draw 2". Incite Insight for 3 will rarely not win the game. You can grab Top Secret Tunnel, Dual Doomsuits, and Oaken Power suit and casually dome your opponent for 12 unblockable with a 3 power creature. 5 power wins the game on the spot. And that's just the floor - you can get out of basically any game state with it.
I just think it gives too much consistency and way too power to those cards, but drafting contraptions is also less than ideal. Since we cube with custom cards, my solution for an "Unstable Expansion" will be to design more playable Contraption enablers (probably about 15-20 of them, focused in Grixis). At the end of the draft, each player reveals the X cards they drafted that care about Contraptions. Then each player randomly pairs up with another player and they "draft" Contraptions. The player with the higher X in each pair picks first, and players alternate picks until they have drafted X contraptions. Once they've reached their limit, they must draft Contraptions randomly. So if 1 player has 10 cards that care about Contraptions, they get to choose all 10 of their Contraptions, while someone who drafts only 3 will get 3 Contraptions of their choosing and 7 random ones.
Each player gets ~10 contraptions (thinking of having sets of 20 contraptions), and the players that focus on drafting Contraption matters get to influence the construction of their Contraption deck more. It's just an idea, but I hope it should lead to more fun gameplay.
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In order to avoid balancing issues between the card pools of players, I will be putting contraptions into the draft, like conspiracies. This keeps the minimum opportunity cost of each free value piece at "one draft pick." But conspiracies and contraptions are different, they vary on two axes. Conspiracies are guaranteed every game & are (usually) less impactful, while contraptions are randomly assembled but (usually) more impactful. How do we balance these cards? The answer lies in another question: How will players assemble contraptions?
Well, I don't think any of the riggers are playable. Wrench-Rigger, Work a Double, even Incite Insight can't /really/ stand up to great cube cards in their respective slots that impact the board immediately or push you towards your win condition. However, the Contraptions themselves are sweet as hell, and can often net you real value in just a few turns, more than some conspiracies for sure. I'm not interested in breaking Wizards' deckbuilding rules for contraptions OR straying away from how the scrapyard and contraption deck work, shuffling and assembling randomly, etc. So, one house rule will be under effect for every game with the module:
If a player controls a contraption deck, at the beginning of that player's upkeep, he or she may roll a six-sided die. If the result is 6 or higher, that player may assemble a contraption.
(This could change to rolling 5 or higher, depending on the power level of contraptions, needs a lot of testing for sure)
(Also a concern: this means that every time the player rolls a 6, if they already control a contraption, that player can then assemble a contraption AND crank it all at once by stacking triggers. Some fixes include changing this to an end step or draw step trigger, but this can also be used as a balancing knob.)
With this method, contraptions:
-are draftable and assemble-able by every single player, no matter what deck they build
-maintain their integrity as free value draft picks that impact the game, like conspiracies
-do NOT guarantee a particular amount of value due to the randomness of the contraption deck. This balances them against conspiracies, which usually have less powerful one-time effects, but are available every game guaranteed.
-do NOT affect deckbuilding or force players to play sub-optimal cards to validate their draft picks
-Introduces the proven-to-be-fun-just-look-at-unstable mechanic of randomness
-turns cards like Krark's Other Thumb into a playable archetype. Okay kind of.
Now, ALL of this will be a 50-card separate module, like others have done. Whenever we want to use it, we just take the cube, shuffle it, pull out a 50-card chunk, throw the module in, and re-shuffle. Then draft!
Please let me know your thoughts! Sorry for being
long-winded and boringthorough!This is still the best place for high-power-level cube chat & debate.
Here's to many more years at MTGS *clink*
Will adding this module mean there is more need for artifact destruction? Since you are a large ammount of cards for this module is it going to change up the meta? On days you add it in isn't black and blue taking a hit? Both colours have problems dealing with artifacts so giving out free contraptions to all players hurts them most.
There may also be some feel bads for the poor player who drafts a bunch of contraptions and never rolls a 6; I might never see my creature based assembler but actively rolling and failing each turn would feel worse for example like in MTG:Planechase when you are stuck on a terrible plane for like 10 rolls. The opposite is also true, getting shafted because someone rolled 6 for 3 turns in a row and hit all their best contraptions is going to feel a but sucky.
I could see a lot of contraptions being chaff, especially if you want to include 50 (duplicates I assume?), it feels like the best strategy would be to just grab 1 or 2 of the strong ones (to keep the variance of your deck low) and then ignore them. Since there is no way to reliably get the contraptions out it isn't even that much use for an artifact deck.
I think I just prefer trying to keep the mechanic more similar to how it worked in block. There is also the logistical issue of having to remove all the remaining cards from your cube before the next game, just seems like a lot of hassle when I could just include 2-3 assemblers into the cube and keep my contraptions with my tokens, in different colour sleeves.
I haven't got round to adding my module (curse you unemployment) but I am still planning to add a couple of assemblers and keep a 10-15 card contraption deck with my tokens that will be drawn from when a player needs a contraption. Just feels cleaner to me, I only need to add 2-3 cards to the cube and it causes way less logistical issues.
If you really want to go all in on the contraptions being in your draft why make players roll at all? You could just let players assemble one for free each upkeep. This would cause a nice tension between only wanting the 3 best in your deck, and, wanting to include enough so you don't run out before the game ends. Will this in turn help the artifact decks too much? Who knows.
Let me know how it goes and what you decide to do.
In response to the blue/black woes and general feel-bads, you are absolutely right about those situations occurring and needing attention, but anytime the module comes in, it's because every player has agreed that today's cubing session will be ridiculous & randomly balanced. I consider the possibility of someone never rolling a 6 to be an important part of the contraption vs. conspiracy balancing during drafting.
My module (prob 40-50 cards) will be included in its entirety in everyone's draft packs when we use it, so if I put in the best 20 contraptions, and usually draft with 4-6 players, I assume every player will only have 2-4 each. Okay someone might nab 7. It warrants testing, but I have a feeling with all the other ridiculous blue/black un-cards (counting arcane savant here lol) + all the other free value in conspiracies they could pick up, I think they'll be okay
(also, I'll be sleeving the module in different goofy sleeves to make them easy to organize afterwards. I know thats silly. *shrug*).
@Antipox I appreciate extra wrench-rigger analysis, you are swaying me a bit. It's hard to swallow the idea of only ever assembling 1 contraption with this card -> waiting one turn to crank it -> hopefully make a card's worth of value -> waiting THREE TURNS -> crank it again, etc. But for a 1-drop, thats kind of radical haha! Not to mention flickering effects. So it is super tempting to cube him + incite insight I suppose. Again, I don't reeeally want these cards IN the cube, just the module. And that's definitely not enough to make contraptions work.
This is still the best place for high-power-level cube chat & debate.
Here's to many more years at MTGS *clink*