I have had this feeling for a few sets now. I feel like there was a conscious design decision to warp cards around a color pair or specific combo. This struck me as true of 3x Amonkhet drafting especially where you could so easily lose to a curve of Gust Walker into Ahn-Crop Crasher. Hour of Devastation helped alleviate this and I thought we might be back to a more interesting set feel, but Ixalan seemed to take a step backwards to the mono-Aggro lack of depth again. What's even more aggravating is that the mechanic that has, in my opinion, the most individual depth, Enrage, is subdued in its as-fan numbers and not really a build-around strategy that is viable in draft.
I don't post on this website ever, but I saw this thread and had to respond.
I had the exact same idea for this type of cube a while back but gave it up because of the logistics. It was a partially-custom cube with 420 cards. I designed a handful of cards which interacted with your sideboard, the undrafted cards still in the box, and adding cards to your opponents hand, graveyard and battlefield which were detrimental. I made use of several Conspiracy mechanics and expanded them. I finally gave up when I realized that the draft was all I was focused on and lost sight of the gameplay mechanics. I may revisit it someday to see if I can salvage the best parts into something playable, but I don't foresee that any time soon.
I am incredibly excited about this. I have very fond memories of drafting Conspiracy with 15 friends at my LGS for a whole Saturday. It was an absolute blast. This also lets me add new cards to my Conspiracy Cube!
I voted for Theros purely for its' limited playability.
I know people will argue for Khans limited and please don't get me wrong: triple Khans was the most fun I have had in limited in a LONG time before that. However, FRF and the transition to Dragons were incredibly mediocre for me from a limited standpoint. If it was a tossup between 3x KTK and Theros Block, it's Khans all the way, but DTK especially, was a letdown.
BFZ block has been really disappointing thus far. I have only drafted OGW once since its' release, but 3x BFZ was a big disappointment from a balance standpoint. Green was unplayable. Clutch of Currents makes playing huge Eldrazi a liability, and the allies were just underwhelming. Overall, I ended up being good at the format simply by forcing blue or black as often as I could and ignoring green, which makes me sad. Now, I think OGW will end up shoring up the balance issues that 3x BFZ inherently had, but playing massive Eldrazi is still risky and blue and black are still insane, so I don't know yet how the format will play out.
Theros did almost everything right from a limited perspective. The colors were well balanced, the archetypes were well defined and the games were incredibly interactive. The contrast between the "go tall" decks and the "go wide" decks made the format very enjoyable and scry tied the whole thing together by smoothing out draws and fixing mana stalls. Heroic, which looked awful at first glance, was actually an incredible mechanic. There was nothing more satisfying, to me, than playing Time to Feed on my Centaur Battlemaster and wrecking your blocker while giving my guy 3 +1/+1 counters. Felt so good.
Sol Ring (which this deck will likely include, because it's pretty much a commander staple) will get this gal out on turn 2 easy, and a 4/4 double striking vigilant giantess on turn three is nothing to sneer at. The card is quite playable in commander, both for Boros decks and Giant Tribal.
Couldn't agree more. I think people underestimate her aggressive mana cost to damage ratio and the pressure she can put on early. T1 Sol Ring T2 CMDR into T3 Baneslayer seems like a sweet thing.
My advice would be twofold
1. Absolutely stick to the play preferences of your friends/playgroup.
2. Read as much as you can about design.
I have a very nontraditional cube that I modeled after WotC's design of MMA and VMA. I built a design skeleton using MaRo's Nuts and Bolts columns. (Here is his latest, with links to all the others). Also good reading would be any column where set designers talk about their decisions. I remember the MMA and VMA articles were extraordinarily influential in the design of my cube.
In the end, however, the best thing you can do is playtest and talk to your players. "What worked?" "What sucked?" "How's your deck?" These simple questions can go a long way in the iterative process that is design.
I haven't posted on mtgSal for a few years, but I feel the need to add my 2 cents to this topic.
I think the distinction between the traditional "cube" set of cards versus the "custom draft environment" is a matter of personal preference and giving your normal cube companions what they want.
My LGS is hosting a Wednesday cube league in conjunction with SCG's "Game Night" promotion (free foil tokens!). A few of us have our cubes to contribute to the league. My contribution definitely falls on the "custom draft environment" side:
We had 16 players on the first week of our league this week and one pod drafted my cube, while the other drafted my friend's power cube. The response was very similar for both cubes. Both were balanced against other decks from their own pod and the players' experiences were good! Now, this isn't to say that a typical deck from my cube would stand a chance against the typical power cube deck, but that is not important. What's important to me and the folks who played this Wednesday is that our cubes create fun games with friends.
TL;DR - As long as your cubers are having fun, it doesn't really matter what's in your cube!
As a limited and Modern player, I have mixed emotion on the set and the block as a whole.
From a limited standpoint, I am a happy camper. Lots of build-around-me cards and cards that fill out existing archetypes. The R 1/1 heroic satyr is awesome. The new 2/4 heroic flying lifelink clown is a huge bomb and first pickable. As a pretty regular UG drafter, the flash + flying + deathtouch cockatrice is pretty sweet as well. Lots of goodies in the bestow + drawback cycle and some pretty decent red and black cards to finally shore up the weaknesses from those two colors in BTT drafting.
From a modern standpoint, I could care less. I have my Thoughtseizes and Brimaz's and Temples, but beyond that, there isn't much here. The Pyrostatic Pillar on a stick is neat, but I don't play burn. I'll definitely pick up Rule of Law man and True Believer 2.0, but really the cards aren't terribly good for Modern. There are some role players, I suppose, but nothing that gets me excited.
Red looks to be much improved in BNG, it was kind of a rough place to be in 3x THS unless you were the hyper-aggressive heroic deck. The midrange deck needed support to be competitive in my experience.
However, some of the spoiled cards from BNG make me think that the midrange deck is back. Fall of the Hammer at common is a high pick for this archetype, imo. Making a huge nessian asp or ill-tempered cyclops and having it wreck an opposing creature for 2 mana is huge. Pharagax Giant also at common seems insane. A 3/3 + Lava Axe or a 5/5 for 4R seems great to me.
At uncommon, the hits keep on rolling with Akroan Conscriptor. I, personally, can't wait to hit this with a Time to Feed or a Fall of the Hammer to 2 for 1 people all day long. Searing Blood also seems pretty insane if you can use it to win a combat or kill a heroic guy early.
I'm pretty happy with where red is headed and with the insane green from two packs of Theros to help, the archetype seems to be headed in the right direction.
I don't understand some of the flavor complaints. The previous rule centered around the interaction between a legendary permanent and its' "loyalty" to a planeswalker. The old rule handled the situation of playing a second permanent of the same type by destroying both. What flavor argument can be made for that? It made little sense, but worked well in the rules. (I won't argue that the clone interaction was an important strategic play that will be missed) The new rule works well in the sense that is maintains the idea of uniqueness. Playing a second legend for your side maintains the "one legend per planeswalker" state by simply eliminating one, but not both, permanents.
As to separating the battlefield in terms of checking for the legend rule, it's a bit harder to justify this flavor-wise. The idea that a legend should only be "loyal" to one of the planeswalkers in a dual was actually very flavorful and added to the mystique of the legend supertype. I never liked the clone effect, personally, but I can understand where that is justified by flavor. The idea of a dual of powerful planeswalkers who both summon an iconic spiritual warrior to their aid doesn't make a ton of sense. There's only one such spirit!
TL;DR: I can see it both ways, but overall I'm okay with the new legend interaction.
Played my morning flight and went 2-2 drop in a 6 round flight of 50+ folks. Played Simic which was very fun. Had no real bombs, but splashed red for an Arrows of Justice, Wrecking Ogre, Ghor-Clan Rampager which went well with 2x Simic Fluxmages (which are insane with the right mana curve). Had a singleton Cloudfin Raptor, who is gross on T1 into T2 Frilled Oculus and T3 Drakewing Krasis, which I was able to do 4 times due to doubles of both those guys. Aggresive Simic is nigh unstoppable unless you are in heavy early removal in Orzhov. Both losses came to hyper aggressive Boros decks featuring Wojek Halbardiers and other aggresive Battalion cards. Hold the Gates is the perfect complement to a dedicated Boros deck with 2+ gates. The toughness boost and vigilience allows them to trigger Battalion while still being able to block.
Usman, the cube writer for SCG, has a split cube that I think he may have posted at one point. I got to play it recently. The most synergistic cards are the lands. With the highlights being the fetchland cycle, each of which has a relevant flashback card on the other half of the card as well as Squee, Goblin Nabob + Terramorphic Expanse, which just makes your mana so easy it's scary.
Other than that, the cards have a lot of tension to them, making game decisions very difficult. It's a very cool concept, but be prepared for long games and tough drafting decisions. Each card makes a difference.
Maybe: Ripper, Blade of Brass's equip ability costs 0 to activate if it targets a legendary Pirate creature.
Just an idea. Love the card.
I had the exact same idea for this type of cube a while back but gave it up because of the logistics. It was a partially-custom cube with 420 cards. I designed a handful of cards which interacted with your sideboard, the undrafted cards still in the box, and adding cards to your opponents hand, graveyard and battlefield which were detrimental. I made use of several Conspiracy mechanics and expanded them. I finally gave up when I realized that the draft was all I was focused on and lost sight of the gameplay mechanics. I may revisit it someday to see if I can salvage the best parts into something playable, but I don't foresee that any time soon.
So. Pumped.
RIP my wallet. Between this and EMA...
I know people will argue for Khans limited and please don't get me wrong: triple Khans was the most fun I have had in limited in a LONG time before that. However, FRF and the transition to Dragons were incredibly mediocre for me from a limited standpoint. If it was a tossup between 3x KTK and Theros Block, it's Khans all the way, but DTK especially, was a letdown.
BFZ block has been really disappointing thus far. I have only drafted OGW once since its' release, but 3x BFZ was a big disappointment from a balance standpoint. Green was unplayable. Clutch of Currents makes playing huge Eldrazi a liability, and the allies were just underwhelming. Overall, I ended up being good at the format simply by forcing blue or black as often as I could and ignoring green, which makes me sad. Now, I think OGW will end up shoring up the balance issues that 3x BFZ inherently had, but playing massive Eldrazi is still risky and blue and black are still insane, so I don't know yet how the format will play out.
Theros did almost everything right from a limited perspective. The colors were well balanced, the archetypes were well defined and the games were incredibly interactive. The contrast between the "go tall" decks and the "go wide" decks made the format very enjoyable and scry tied the whole thing together by smoothing out draws and fixing mana stalls. Heroic, which looked awful at first glance, was actually an incredible mechanic. There was nothing more satisfying, to me, than playing Time to Feed on my Centaur Battlemaster and wrecking your blocker while giving my guy 3 +1/+1 counters. Felt so good.
Also, the pick there is pretty obviously Cruel Ultimatum, because value.
Couldn't agree more. I think people underestimate her aggressive mana cost to damage ratio and the pressure she can put on early. T1 Sol Ring T2 CMDR into T3 Baneslayer seems like a sweet thing.
My advice would be twofold
1. Absolutely stick to the play preferences of your friends/playgroup.
2. Read as much as you can about design.
I have a very nontraditional cube that I modeled after WotC's design of MMA and VMA. I built a design skeleton using MaRo's Nuts and Bolts columns. (Here is his latest, with links to all the others). Also good reading would be any column where set designers talk about their decisions. I remember the MMA and VMA articles were extraordinarily influential in the design of my cube.
In the end, however, the best thing you can do is playtest and talk to your players. "What worked?" "What sucked?" "How's your deck?" These simple questions can go a long way in the iterative process that is design.
Good luck!
I think the distinction between the traditional "cube" set of cards versus the "custom draft environment" is a matter of personal preference and giving your normal cube companions what they want.
My LGS is hosting a Wednesday cube league in conjunction with SCG's "Game Night" promotion (free foil tokens!). A few of us have our cubes to contribute to the league. My contribution definitely falls on the "custom draft environment" side:
Design Synergy Cube
We had 16 players on the first week of our league this week and one pod drafted my cube, while the other drafted my friend's power cube. The response was very similar for both cubes. Both were balanced against other decks from their own pod and the players' experiences were good! Now, this isn't to say that a typical deck from my cube would stand a chance against the typical power cube deck, but that is not important. What's important to me and the folks who played this Wednesday is that our cubes create fun games with friends.
TL;DR - As long as your cubers are having fun, it doesn't really matter what's in your cube!
Also love UW aggressive blink commander.
From a limited standpoint, I am a happy camper. Lots of build-around-me cards and cards that fill out existing archetypes. The R 1/1 heroic satyr is awesome. The new 2/4 heroic flying lifelink clown is a huge bomb and first pickable. As a pretty regular UG drafter, the flash + flying + deathtouch cockatrice is pretty sweet as well. Lots of goodies in the bestow + drawback cycle and some pretty decent red and black cards to finally shore up the weaknesses from those two colors in BTT drafting.
From a modern standpoint, I could care less. I have my Thoughtseizes and Brimaz's and Temples, but beyond that, there isn't much here. The Pyrostatic Pillar on a stick is neat, but I don't play burn. I'll definitely pick up Rule of Law man and True Believer 2.0, but really the cards aren't terribly good for Modern. There are some role players, I suppose, but nothing that gets me excited.
Limited: 8/10
Modern: 3/10
However, some of the spoiled cards from BNG make me think that the midrange deck is back. Fall of the Hammer at common is a high pick for this archetype, imo. Making a huge nessian asp or ill-tempered cyclops and having it wreck an opposing creature for 2 mana is huge. Pharagax Giant also at common seems insane. A 3/3 + Lava Axe or a 5/5 for 4R seems great to me.
At uncommon, the hits keep on rolling with Akroan Conscriptor. I, personally, can't wait to hit this with a Time to Feed or a Fall of the Hammer to 2 for 1 people all day long. Searing Blood also seems pretty insane if you can use it to win a combat or kill a heroic guy early.
I'm pretty happy with where red is headed and with the insane green from two packs of Theros to help, the archetype seems to be headed in the right direction.
As to separating the battlefield in terms of checking for the legend rule, it's a bit harder to justify this flavor-wise. The idea that a legend should only be "loyal" to one of the planeswalkers in a dual was actually very flavorful and added to the mystique of the legend supertype. I never liked the clone effect, personally, but I can understand where that is justified by flavor. The idea of a dual of powerful planeswalkers who both summon an iconic spiritual warrior to their aid doesn't make a ton of sense. There's only one such spirit!
TL;DR: I can see it both ways, but overall I'm okay with the new legend interaction.
Overall, a good day, with some good pulls: Duskmantle Seer and Godless ShrineI'm super pumped to draft this set.
Other than that, the cards have a lot of tension to them, making game decisions very difficult. It's a very cool concept, but be prepared for long games and tough drafting decisions. Each card makes a difference.