MTG Salvation

For my graveyard themed cube, the box is coffin shaped. It used to be an Innistrad cube that we drafted in packs of 13 cards. I also printed off a bunch of paper with occult/satanic symbols and writing, "aged" it by soaking it in tea and then microwaving it to dry it, and then using it to wrap the packs.

I have a big 6-foot playmat that the winner signs each time. It's a fun tradition, but I wish I had gotten a nicer mat. Those 6-foot mats are hard to find though without some lame art on them. I'd love to be able to get one custom made with a cool graphic on it, or just a black one people could sign in silver pen.

I am happy to be proven wrong on her. If people testing her seem to like her, I may try her out. I'm ok with cutting all but the best white 4's and 5's and just playing more 2- and 3-drops though.

I tried supporting Pod for a while, but it was just too hard to draft around. At the time, my cube was unpowered, and I think Pod was fast enough and had potential. The problem was that it was too hard to draft enough creatures at each spot in the curve that one would want to Pod up. It is fine to upgrade your creatures, attack with a 3-drop, pod it into a 4-drop, but unless you are generating value along the way, it's not that exciting.

Compared to other value engines that shine in unpowered cubes, like Recurring Nightmare, Survival of the Fittest, or Monarch cards, Pod never really shone. A couple people tried it to middling results and then I cut it.

I haven't cubed much these days, and powered my cube, so I don't anticipate Pod making a comeback soon. There are a few reasons Pod might be better these days like the recent influx of recursive black creatures. I also think Pod is better if your cube supports green aggro, which mine did not. Aggro creatures are generally good early and weak late, so Pod has a real use in upgrading them. Maybe in a couple of years black will have a real recursion and sacrifice theme and I'll give Pod another go. It's a fun, iconic card.

I think Prime Speaker is a fun card, and blue could be interesting in pod with untap effects like Pestermite. Pod cards add a "mini-game" of different-cmc-matters to draft, but the baseline power level of cube is so high that winning that mini-game doesn't have enough pay-off. At least that was my experience.

Would people play with this card if it just cost R, in other words, if Spectacle was always "on?"

Quote from LucidVision »

There is an implicit design thesis on this forum. We are designing our own limited format with the most iconic and powerful magic cards of all time.

One strength of this forum is the conformity to this design thesis. It means we can effectively collaborate because we are all generally working to achieve the same thing. I think this forum has had a big impact on cubing and what the average Magic player thinks it is. However, this shared vision also has negatives. I think cube should be "make your own draft format." There are some more original cubes here, but by and large, people here tend to see things in a more narrow way. As I said, that has pluses and minuses, but it's an important context for why one might get push back for suggesting cutting or adding a card.

I'm looking at Gutterbones, Spawn of Mayhem, Judith, and Biogenic Ooze. I guess Judith is the most exciting because I would like RB Sacrifice to be a thing, but I'm not sure Judith is enough juice for that.

I added 2x fetch lands and Titania to my cube a while ago. Double fetches enable a lot of cards that are good in constructed but struggled to find a spot in cube. Titania has never done anything too busted but I still think she's solid.

Eh, I don't think this is clearly better or worse than Man-o'-War. I'll probably stick with the original just because the chance to bounce your own stuff is the kind of sweet play I want to see in cube.

I am thinking about what would make a good entry. They don't want something that is too much like the Vintage, Legacy, or Legendary cube, so that rules out the mainstream cubes here. Plus, we tend to evaluate cubes and cube cards from a mostly Spike perspective, whereas the MTGO cubes have a lot of stuff for Timmy/Tammy and Jenny/Johnny. The criteria they will use is based on "fun, originality/creativity, feasibility, and replayability."

Fun
I think having the Timmy/Tammy/Jenny/Johnny (TTJJ) cards is important. There needs to be cool, splashy things. While hitting all my land drops with Crucible + fetch land is a cool interaction to me, it isn't exciting. Other than that, Magic is fun. Cubes are fun.

Originality/Creativity
This is going to be one of the biggest things, I think. There are a lot of theme cubes out there, tribal and graveyard theme seem relatively popular. I'm not sure if one of these options would count as original. Something like The Desert Cube is certainly original and cool, but adding a new mechanism (can't add basic lands after the draft), is likely to be disqualified based on feasibility. My guess is that one of the finalists will be a tribal cube. It's a popular theme, offers stuff for Spike and TTJJ, and the card pool is pretty deep.

Feasibility
This criterion will kill stuff like The Desert Cube and other zany ideas like the split card cube, Conspiracy-esque draft mechanics, "Legacy" cube (as in Risk Legacy-like) and so forth.

Replayability
I think this one is where a lot of theme cubes suffer. If the theme is too present, then you learn the archetypes and just draft those cards. Every draft is basically like drafting monored aggro in a MTGSally cube; just pick the best red card in each pack and ignore everything else. Lorwyn draft suffered from this "drafting on rails" problem too. It's hard to balance replayability, complexity, and power level.

Conclusion
As I said, I think tribal is a good way to go for this. The problem is avoiding the "drafting on rails" trap.

The other idea would be to do a 3-color cube. People love shards/wedges, and drafting 3-color decks would be different from most draft formats. I am also thinking a "color matters" theme would be cool for this. The problem is that this theme is a bit mechanical, and not too exciting as a concept.

I don't love that goad doesn't have reminder text and works different in 2p than multiplayer. I think this card is good and interesting, but I'm worried about complexity issues. I tend to cube with people with a wide range of Magic experience, and so I try to limit the weird mechanics unless a card is just too fun to not include. He might make the cut.

That said, having the option of either forcing their creature to attack or pseudo-draw is great, and that ignores his lord effect of giving that ability to all your creatures!

The more I think about thus card, the more I feel like it's the best card in the set for cube. Can't wait to get my foil.

Yes. Well, I know I would for sure.

I can't imagine cutting Thoughtseize. I think it's likely a top 20 black card. I maindeck it in every black deck except maybe heavy control builds.

Cheers,
rant

My dream green 4 exists and it's called Oracle of Mul Daya. Although 3 extra toughness wouldn't hurt that card :).

Another one that I think will be hard to beat is Garruk Wildspeaker. I expect both of those cards to still be in cube in ten years while a card like this will almost certainly not be.

Generally, I think the best roles in green are:
1-2 mana: Ramp (Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, Joraga Treespeaker,
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary). This slot has a ton of great options that are think are around to stay
for next 10 years.

3-5 mana: card advantage / gas cards, cheating fatties (Tireless Tracker, Oracle of Mul Daya,
Garruk Wildspeaker, Natural Order). I think the best things wizards could do for green is
improve this part of the curve with better versions of marginal cards like Harmonize or
Garruk, Primal Hunter.

6+ mana: top end ramp targets like Craterhoof Behemoth, Primeval Titan and
Woodfall Primus that should win the game. Green has plenty of these, although a better version of
Terastodon or a mono-green version of Dragonlord Atarka would be welcome.

Quote from wtwlf123 »

Maybe C/Uubes are having a big impact on the rankings? IDK.

It's almost certainly this.

Samut the untested.

Super meh

Finally, a reason to play Ancestral Recall

While I understand it's not a deck that can always win, I love Sneak Attack. I actually drafted it last night with cuttups' cube, using Worldspire Wurm and Ulamog as the ultimate big fatties. I also had Fauna Shaman to continually find the Wurm, which was sweet. Pretty much a permanent inclusion in my cube.

Maybe not the sneakiest, but the other week I was at Ikea and I was dicking around with a friend and decided to hide in a stand-up armoire/cabinet/bureau and scare people. Eventually this family comes by and the wife moves to the door. As she's saying "look how tall these are" a couple feet away I step out and say "and there's so much room on the inside!" and scare the ***** out of her. It was awesome, I wish I had video of it.

How about one that can gain indestructible that transforms into a planeswalker?