Right now, I'm leaning most towards Sen Triplets. Having Gonti always available as my commander seems really fun, but I like the idea of having access to more colors and their utility. I do already miss Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Dack Fayden...
Sen Triplets don't actually control anyone's turn! It's on your own turn that you choose a player and take their stuff, it's also a neat control effect in that you stop them from playing spells on your turn. (Which can prevent someone with counterspells or removal from interrupting your combos, etc.)
I actually played Intet, the Dreamer as my first "EDH" deck thinking back on it. I never really lived the dream as I couldn't build a good deck and it's surprisingly hard to reliably connect with a dragon.
Later on I built a Thada Adel, Acquisitor deck that was way better in principle (way easier to connect with), but I really didn't like having to manage the mini-game of looking through my opponents' decks and remembering what cards I was on the lookout for. It's pretty innocuous to just pay 3 mana each time and hit a mana rock every time, but the Spike in me will rack me with guilt if I'm not looking at every single artifact in every single deck at the table and thinking about what I need and when I need it. This kinda goes back to me not wanting to search my opponents' decks. It feels like bad table etiquette, and it's a lot more "mental clutter" to play those sorts of cards well.
Cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury or even Sen Triplets have a more tame scope of the decisions and management they impose on me, similar to Discoveries in Hearthstone. "Here are a few cards that aren't in your deck that you can pick from." It's a lot easier (and more random, which I think is fun) to make decisions when you only have 1 to 7 cards to choose from versus a whole ~77 card singleton deck.
Hey guys! Those spoilers are looking pretty spicy! Not necessarily for what I'm trying to do here, but we've definitely got a lot of choices for building 4-color decks soon. I'm a little disappointed we didn't get 10 2-color partners and 10 3-color partners. (And maybe 5 1-color partners?) I guess that's design space that's still out there, though.
So, I think we're all pretty much in agreement that blue and black are key here. Gonti, Lord of Luxury is the perfect card for what I'm looking for and there are ways to abuse him even if it's just sacrificing him and bringing him back to cast him again. I honestly couldn't tell you why I'm so focused on casting my opponent's spells, but Spelljack is another card I really want to include.
From there, we have other less reliable ways to cast other people's cards but it starts getting objectively better to take the cards in more reliable ways like Beacon of Unrest or Progenitor Mimic or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker...
So, the most compelling reason to pick white based on cards I've seen is Adarkar Valkyrie. White also gives me access to more blink effects (which a lot of modern ones actually put them back into play under my control!) like Restoration Angel. +Sen Triplets, which is reliable and fairly on-theme.
The most compelling reason to include green is Progenitor Mimic. Green also has lots of unique value that it adds to Commander decks. More so than other colors (in my opinion, of course), it gives me weird fringe "combo" pieces like Noxious Revival. +Villainous Wealth is pretty obnoxious.
Red is probably the most sensible color to add. Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Dack Fayden are universally useful cards that also play into my theme. (And they "permanently" take control of their targets.) Wild Ricochet is super fun, and Prince of Thralls is probably not actually good but is cool.
I'm pretty torn. What do you guys think? Do you think any of the new commanders we've seen suit this deck idea particularly well? Should I just play a 5-color commander?
I forgot about this year's Commander having four-color commanders in it. That's super exciting! I'm definitely going to wait to see what all I can pick from there before deciding what to do.
Based on my preferences, I think I'm leaning most towards "not-red" out of all of the color combinations. I know Red has a lot of snatching effects, but a lot of them are temporary. Then again, I do really like Wild Ricochet...
We'll see, though. There's a cool commander in most of the shard/wedge color combinations that either directly plays into stealing spells or is just solid and could help out in a unique way. Currently, I think I'm going to try to lean away from cards that search my opponent's deck. To the point where I might play Telemin Performance over Bribery. I definitely want to at least lean away from searching another player's deck every turn if possible if only for the sake of etiquette.
Fingers crossed there's a super cool and suitable four-color commander coming up!
It's been a while since I played a game of magic! Every now and then I check up on new sets and the game's hooks get me a little each time. I stopped collecting a while back and I don't really want to start again, but I do like the idea of having an EDH deck or two and maybe a cube.
So, I have always had a soft spot for cards like Knacksaw Clique that let me steal my opponent's cards and play them myself. For whatever reason, doing that (instead of palying, like, Control Magic) really tickles the Timmy in me. I think I'd like to build a deck around that sort of effect, to the point where I almost don't even have my own strategy. Of course, I'd include a few of the format's staples and swiss-army-knives that can make their own path to victory, but I really like the idea of focusing on trying to use other people's strategies and combo pieces to pave a new path to victory every game.
Does anyone have any decks that follow this sort of plan? What are the better effects like Knacksaw Clique? Are there enough of them that don't care about colors of mana, or do I need to play something like Celestial Dawn? (lol, I accidentally wrote Glorious Dawn first.)
This is definintely an interesting idea. I think CMC 6 is "particularly high" and very much restricts your card pool.
Restrition is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, designers (particularly MaRo, I think?) have suggested that restriction makes things more interesting! Now, the restriction you're imposing is ultimately strictly on you as the cube designer (and those that help you work on the cube, like the community here) more than it is a restriction on your players. Whether or not your format is engaging will ultimately depend on the results of your efforts as a designer. (It'll also depend on your players to a pretty large extent, but the "play" will not exist without the cube.)
My suggestion is to look into cards at CMC 6+ with alternate casting costs and/or from-hand abilities (like Cycling and Transmute) and/or morph. See how many cards "like that" you find and consider how big your cube is going to be. You might find you only have ~3-6 cards "worth anything" for each color. If that's the case, maybe you should look into including cards at CMC 5. Again, maybe you'll then find you want to also include cards at CMC 4.
Assuming you make it all the way to CMC 4, I think you'll be at a happy medium between your "obtuse" idea (and, again, there's nothing wrong with the idea, it's just a big restriction) and kitchen table Magic.
I like the idea, but like Ennex said, I dunno how good of an idea it is until I see what it looks like in practice!
This was an excellent thread, thank you very much for it!
Somehow, rather than satisfying me, it has made me thirstier for more Multi-archetype All-stars! Do you have more than 10, or do they start dropping off really quickly after that?
I'm considering building my own 180 cube as well, and was wondering if you think there are any specific things one should keep in mind when building it.
Do you think you have the right amount of fixing with the 12 nonbasics you have and a few green cards?
Are there any archetypes that are easier to include at this number of cards? Are there any archetypes that are harder to include?
I stuck with a simpler example (limited to creatures) because I was confident I could get my basic idea across with a simpler sticker. I'd be dealing out random "sticker cards" like these at the beginning of each cube draft, and I'd like to avoid cluttering things up with several "similar, but different" stickers like "Draw a card." for creatures, for artifacts/enchantments, and for instant/sorcery.
Examples of stickers that, in theory, could be attached to any card. (Again, the current "inelegant" solution I have is to just have these trigger when you cast the card, like Cascade.)
"Draw a card."
"Scry 2."
"Gain 2 life."
"Put a 0/1 colorless Eldrazi Spawn creature token onto the battlefield. It has "Sacrifice this creature: Add {1} to your mana pool.""
If I wanted to avoid the "when you cast this card" clause, I could make different ones for instant/sorcery and nonland permanents, but then I'd basically be adding twice the number of stickers to my "stack," changing the odds of getting the different stickers.
It's definitely easier to either have different ones for different types (or have the effects trigger on cast), but if there's an elegant solution out there somewhere...!
Between making different instances of the sticker cards for different types of spells and having the stickers' effects trigger on cast, which do you prefer?
Regarding mana dudes + Intruder Alarm, you've got Mobilization, Dragon Roost, and Jade Mage. Maybe a few more. Jade Mage is definitely a solid card for a lower-power cube and Mobilization can be too.
Because it's slow at work, here are all the "core set" creatures that can produce mana for this combo:
This is perhaps a little harder for players not familiar with splice to wrap their heads around, but I think it's really elegant overall.
I was trying to figure out how to include universal stuff like "Draw a card." or "Gain 2 life." or whatever, because there's the awkwardness of "What if it's attached to a creature?" My original solution was to have the drawing of cards or gaining of life or whatever else to be attached to "when you cast this spell." But that 'makes counterspells worse' and I don't want that!
How would you recommend making a sticker card, using this new splice templating, that could attach to an undefined spell that may or not be a permanent, that gives the card "Draw a card." on resolution? That is, as a spell resolves or the permanent enters the battlefield.
Is it as simple as saying something like "If the stickied spell is a permanent, do this when it enters the battlefield."?
I think shuffling every duel deck together and calling it a cube is a bad idea.
Perhaps a way to go about the "theme deck cube" idea would be to have a "modular cube." You could make a ~45-60 card "pack" for each duel deck, planeswalker, or whatever other theme you want to represent. At the start of each draft, each player picks one "pack" and you shuffle all of those packs together and that's your "cube" for the session.
This way, instead of being "limited" to duel decks, you can make an Elves pack and a Goblins pack--taking inspiration from the duel decks but also trying to support at least two archetypes (and maybecolors) in each. Taking inspiration from (rather than "being a slave to") duel decks lets you be a bit more contemporary and "powerful," but it also lets you have more freedom tuning things to each other.
You could even go so far as to give each player a bonus for adding a specific "pack" to the draft. Like, someone who picks the Jace pack might automatically get a Jace, Architect of Thought where as a player who picks the goblins pack might get a Raid Bombardment and some other stuff.
As far as logistics, it might be a good idea to have a "base" part of the cube with less exciting cards like Sunpetal Grove and its counterparts, along with cards that commonly show up in duel decks to "smooth" them out like Forgotten Cave.
And if you want to have a method for sorting your cubes between drafting, you could double-sleeve your cards and add "set symbol" stickers to the "perfect fit" sleeve to remind you (and your players!) which cards go where.
Edit: So I wanted to include a joke saying I'm advocating for "dark chocolate." But I'm not sure if my suggestion is dark chocolate or milk chocolate.
I've loved this card ever since, on MTGO cube, I cast a turn 2 Edric, Spymaster of Trest off of a turn 1 Llanowar Elves, then I cast Chasm Skulker on turn 3 and attacked with both of my elves, drawing two cards.
Thanks, PyreDream! I was starting to make my own list last night (looking only through Instants and Sorcery, was going to do auras later) and to say the least, my list was fairly different.
I know for white, Shelter, Valorous Stance, and Embolden were in my white section.
In blue, I had Distortion Strike and Crypsis.
In black, I had two tricks that regenerate creatures, they're both newer. Virulent Swipe as also there. Hatred was not on my list, but I'd reconsider that. At the time I told myself it was too expensive to be a "trick."
Red's was pretty different. I had Dynacharge, Weapon Surge, Reckless Charge (which is really relatively powerful, I think) and, I think Titan's Strength.
Though looking at this list, I was coming up with pump spells rather than tricks in some cases. So it makes sense that I considered sorcery where you didn't. (And that's my bad.)
Depending on the size of my cube, I'll probably strive for a few tricks and a few pump spells (a la Rancor and Reckless Charge).
Having a few more lists to compare to would be helpful.
I'm doing something weird with my cube, and it will mean that occasionally one player at the table will start the draft with several (custom, colorless) heroic creatures in his pool of cards for deckbuilding. Because of this, I'd like to include a "more than normal" number of tricks in my cube, specifically tricks that are spells that target your own creatures.
If you had to pick the best four tricks in each color that activate your own heroic triggers, what would they be?
Sen Triplets don't actually control anyone's turn! It's on your own turn that you choose a player and take their stuff, it's also a neat control effect in that you stop them from playing spells on your turn. (Which can prevent someone with counterspells or removal from interrupting your combos, etc.)
Later on I built a Thada Adel, Acquisitor deck that was way better in principle (way easier to connect with), but I really didn't like having to manage the mini-game of looking through my opponents' decks and remembering what cards I was on the lookout for. It's pretty innocuous to just pay 3 mana each time and hit a mana rock every time, but the Spike in me will rack me with guilt if I'm not looking at every single artifact in every single deck at the table and thinking about what I need and when I need it. This kinda goes back to me not wanting to search my opponents' decks. It feels like bad table etiquette, and it's a lot more "mental clutter" to play those sorts of cards well.
Cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury or even Sen Triplets have a more tame scope of the decisions and management they impose on me, similar to Discoveries in Hearthstone. "Here are a few cards that aren't in your deck that you can pick from." It's a lot easier (and more random, which I think is fun) to make decisions when you only have 1 to 7 cards to choose from versus a whole ~77 card singleton deck.
So, I think we're all pretty much in agreement that blue and black are key here. Gonti, Lord of Luxury is the perfect card for what I'm looking for and there are ways to abuse him even if it's just sacrificing him and bringing him back to cast him again. I honestly couldn't tell you why I'm so focused on casting my opponent's spells, but Spelljack is another card I really want to include.
From there, we have other less reliable ways to cast other people's cards but it starts getting objectively better to take the cards in more reliable ways like Beacon of Unrest or Progenitor Mimic or Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker...
So, the most compelling reason to pick white based on cards I've seen is Adarkar Valkyrie. White also gives me access to more blink effects (which a lot of modern ones actually put them back into play under my control!) like Restoration Angel. +Sen Triplets, which is reliable and fairly on-theme.
The most compelling reason to include green is Progenitor Mimic. Green also has lots of unique value that it adds to Commander decks. More so than other colors (in my opinion, of course), it gives me weird fringe "combo" pieces like Noxious Revival. +Villainous Wealth is pretty obnoxious.
Red is probably the most sensible color to add. Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and Dack Fayden are universally useful cards that also play into my theme. (And they "permanently" take control of their targets.) Wild Ricochet is super fun, and Prince of Thralls is probably not actually good but is cool.
I'm pretty torn. What do you guys think? Do you think any of the new commanders we've seen suit this deck idea particularly well? Should I just play a 5-color commander?
I forgot about this year's Commander having four-color commanders in it. That's super exciting! I'm definitely going to wait to see what all I can pick from there before deciding what to do.
Based on my preferences, I think I'm leaning most towards "not-red" out of all of the color combinations. I know Red has a lot of snatching effects, but a lot of them are temporary. Then again, I do really like Wild Ricochet...
We'll see, though. There's a cool commander in most of the shard/wedge color combinations that either directly plays into stealing spells or is just solid and could help out in a unique way. Currently, I think I'm going to try to lean away from cards that search my opponent's deck. To the point where I might play Telemin Performance over Bribery. I definitely want to at least lean away from searching another player's deck every turn if possible if only for the sake of etiquette.
Fingers crossed there's a super cool and suitable four-color commander coming up!
It's been a while since I played a game of magic! Every now and then I check up on new sets and the game's hooks get me a little each time. I stopped collecting a while back and I don't really want to start again, but I do like the idea of having an EDH deck or two and maybe a cube.
So, I have always had a soft spot for cards like Knacksaw Clique that let me steal my opponent's cards and play them myself. For whatever reason, doing that (instead of palying, like, Control Magic) really tickles the Timmy in me. I think I'd like to build a deck around that sort of effect, to the point where I almost don't even have my own strategy. Of course, I'd include a few of the format's staples and swiss-army-knives that can make their own path to victory, but I really like the idea of focusing on trying to use other people's strategies and combo pieces to pave a new path to victory every game.
Does anyone have any decks that follow this sort of plan? What are the better effects like Knacksaw Clique? Are there enough of them that don't care about colors of mana, or do I need to play something like Celestial Dawn? (lol, I accidentally wrote Glorious Dawn first.)
Any cool commanders that suit this theme?
Restrition is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, designers (particularly MaRo, I think?) have suggested that restriction makes things more interesting! Now, the restriction you're imposing is ultimately strictly on you as the cube designer (and those that help you work on the cube, like the community here) more than it is a restriction on your players. Whether or not your format is engaging will ultimately depend on the results of your efforts as a designer. (It'll also depend on your players to a pretty large extent, but the "play" will not exist without the cube.)
My suggestion is to look into cards at CMC 6+ with alternate casting costs and/or from-hand abilities (like Cycling and Transmute) and/or morph. See how many cards "like that" you find and consider how big your cube is going to be. You might find you only have ~3-6 cards "worth anything" for each color. If that's the case, maybe you should look into including cards at CMC 5. Again, maybe you'll then find you want to also include cards at CMC 4.
Assuming you make it all the way to CMC 4, I think you'll be at a happy medium between your "obtuse" idea (and, again, there's nothing wrong with the idea, it's just a big restriction) and kitchen table Magic.
I like the idea, but like Ennex said, I dunno how good of an idea it is until I see what it looks like in practice!
Somehow, rather than satisfying me, it has made me thirstier for more Multi-archetype All-stars! Do you have more than 10, or do they start dropping off really quickly after that?
I'm considering building my own 180 cube as well, and was wondering if you think there are any specific things one should keep in mind when building it.
Do you think you have the right amount of fixing with the 12 nonbasics you have and a few green cards?
Are there any archetypes that are easier to include at this number of cards? Are there any archetypes that are harder to include?
Examples of stickers that, in theory, could be attached to any card. (Again, the current "inelegant" solution I have is to just have these trigger when you cast the card, like Cascade.)
"Draw a card."
"Scry 2."
"Gain 2 life."
"Put a 0/1 colorless Eldrazi Spawn creature token onto the battlefield. It has "Sacrifice this creature: Add {1} to your mana pool.""
If I wanted to avoid the "when you cast this card" clause, I could make different ones for instant/sorcery and nonland permanents, but then I'd basically be adding twice the number of stickers to my "stack," changing the odds of getting the different stickers.
It's definitely easier to either have different ones for different types (or have the effects trigger on cast), but if there's an elegant solution out there somewhere...!
Between making different instances of the sticker cards for different types of spells and having the stickers' effects trigger on cast, which do you prefer?
Because it's slow at work, here are all the "core set" creatures that can produce mana for this combo:
And token producers:
Some of those are kind of janky or not infinite.
This is perhaps a little harder for players not familiar with splice to wrap their heads around, but I think it's really elegant overall.
I was trying to figure out how to include universal stuff like "Draw a card." or "Gain 2 life." or whatever, because there's the awkwardness of "What if it's attached to a creature?" My original solution was to have the drawing of cards or gaining of life or whatever else to be attached to "when you cast this spell." But that 'makes counterspells worse' and I don't want that!
How would you recommend making a sticker card, using this new splice templating, that could attach to an undefined spell that may or not be a permanent, that gives the card "Draw a card." on resolution? That is, as a spell resolves or the permanent enters the battlefield.
Is it as simple as saying something like "If the stickied spell is a permanent, do this when it enters the battlefield."?
Perhaps a way to go about the "theme deck cube" idea would be to have a "modular cube." You could make a ~45-60 card "pack" for each duel deck, planeswalker, or whatever other theme you want to represent. At the start of each draft, each player picks one "pack" and you shuffle all of those packs together and that's your "cube" for the session.
This way, instead of being "limited" to duel decks, you can make an Elves pack and a Goblins pack--taking inspiration from the duel decks but also trying to support at least two archetypes (and maybe colors) in each. Taking inspiration from (rather than "being a slave to") duel decks lets you be a bit more contemporary and "powerful," but it also lets you have more freedom tuning things to each other.
You could even go so far as to give each player a bonus for adding a specific "pack" to the draft. Like, someone who picks the Jace pack might automatically get a Jace, Architect of Thought where as a player who picks the goblins pack might get a Raid Bombardment and some other stuff.
As far as logistics, it might be a good idea to have a "base" part of the cube with less exciting cards like Sunpetal Grove and its counterparts, along with cards that commonly show up in duel decks to "smooth" them out like Forgotten Cave.
And if you want to have a method for sorting your cubes between drafting, you could double-sleeve your cards and add "set symbol" stickers to the "perfect fit" sleeve to remind you (and your players!) which cards go where.
Edit: So I wanted to include a joke saying I'm advocating for "dark chocolate." But I'm not sure if my suggestion is dark chocolate or milk chocolate.
I won that game.
I agree with wtwlf123 that Mutagenic Growth is essentially colorless. I would count it and Apostle's Blessing as colorless.
I know for white, Shelter, Valorous Stance, and Embolden were in my white section.
In blue, I had Distortion Strike and Crypsis.
In black, I had two tricks that regenerate creatures, they're both newer. Virulent Swipe as also there. Hatred was not on my list, but I'd reconsider that. At the time I told myself it was too expensive to be a "trick."
Red's was pretty different. I had Dynacharge, Weapon Surge, Reckless Charge (which is really relatively powerful, I think) and, I think Titan's Strength.
Though looking at this list, I was coming up with pump spells rather than tricks in some cases. So it makes sense that I considered sorcery where you didn't. (And that's my bad.)
Depending on the size of my cube, I'll probably strive for a few tricks and a few pump spells (a la Rancor and Reckless Charge).
Having a few more lists to compare to would be helpful.
If you had to pick the best four tricks in each color that activate your own heroic triggers, what would they be?