I've been thinking about and working on a 120 card modular micro-cube for my group, and have run into a few issues. I was hoping some of you kind people would be able to give advice on how to support multiple theaters (Aggro, control, etc) and archetypes (Tokens, spells matter) within some harsh limitations.
Don't feel the need to read my entire wall of text as a lot of it is just preamble to establish my approach and give context to the concerns below. It's really just the "Concerns" tab that matters.
The cube is currently a 5-module, 120 card micro-cube for 4 players, just for testing the concept and working out the most obvious kinks.
The goal however is to have 10 modules and probably 300 cards, for a variable number of players (Probably 4 or less, occasionally up to 8). While strictly speaking this wouldn't be a microcube, it would be most often drafted as a 150 card list, so for all intents and purposes it shares a lot of the limitations.
Each player picks one of the tri-colour modules, each of which is primarily built around one archetype. Each module overlaps the archetypes of the others to create variance in game plans, so you have to tailor your draft around other players decisions here.
It's then drafted as three packs of 10 cards, with a minimum deck of 30 cards.
The modules are shuffled, then the draft happens.
Players have an interest in shorter, convenient, and very importantly tactical drafts, but intricate, decision-heavy games; all of which which has informed this peculiar approach.
My current approach has been to keep all archetypes relatively low to the ground, with few spells getting to or above 5 cmc, due to a vague fear about 30 card decks with the goal to cast a specific game ending threat dying due to the lack of redundancy in their decks or by decking themselves - I'll talk more about this in "Concerns"
I also have an assumption that decks will end up being three colour, and I'm not worried about this at all - as long as everyone is on even footing at the end of it. Half of my players have enjoyed the challenge of playing heavily multicolour draft decks which my primary cube does not strongly support, and those that don't seek it out are more interested in the in-game decision trees then in the colours they are or aren't playing, or (in one blessedly undemanding case) simply want to draft with friends.
There are 5 modules at the moment, one for each wedge.
The modules are built around the central colour for each wedge, and are colour-skewed towards the central colour by one card (Black in Abzan, for example). This gave room for one ally guild card (So Selesnya for Abzan) and one card that representa all three colours somehow, usually mono-coloured cards with off-colour activated abilities. I would like to add appropriate lands to each module to suit their colours and theme, but at the moment they just have one of the appropriate tri-lands and one Ash Barrens each.
I have plans to expand it to 10 modules by adding one for each shard as well.
The current modules and associated archetypes are:
Turns out Wizards has printed a lot of cards that reanimate creatures of CMC 2 or less in the past few years, all of them in black and white. Turns out green has a lot of efficient cheap creatures. That's the point of this module. Cards like Devoted Crop-Mate, Timely Hordemate or Isareth the Awakener can bring back cheap threats like Warden of the First Tree, Moldgraf Scavenger or the terrifying Tarmogoyf again and again as you bludgeon your way to victory. There are a lot of cheap legends with nice stats or rules text too, so Teshar was included to see if that historic trigger is worth working for. If it is, the module will probably end up with more cheap overstatted legends like Isamaru to help aggro out.
The archetype overlaps with Mardu Aristocrats, giving the cheap creatures with death triggers a way to be brought back for extra value, and Sultai Delve, by letting the self-mill cards pay off with Delirium or reanimate effects rather than by giving you things to exile
This is basically what you'd expect. Creatures with abilities that trigger of casting spells. Spells to trigger those abilities, protect those creatures, or draw more creatures and spells. The obvious includes are here, from Kiln Fiend to Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor. Emerge Unscathed and Center Soul pull double duty, protecting your creatures one moment, helping you push through damage the next, and other cheap recastable spells like Firebolt and Reckless Charge keep the damage flowing as free spells like Gush and Frantic Search keep your hand full and the pressure high.
The archetype overlaps with Mardu Aristocrats in their shared goal of making tokens (Jeskai off triggered abilities, Mardu from spells like Goblin Fodder or Hordeling Outburst) and the payoffs that result from this horde, and with Temur in their shared Spells Matter creatures.
It was hard to give control a place in the tiny space I allowed myself, but the Sultai stepped in and saved me. A blue black control 'suite' buys time for you to Think Twice and Grapple with the Past your way to whatever big finishers you field, be they the big Delve creatures in the module or other on-colour threats outside it.
The archetype overlaps with Abzan, which speeds thing up with its discard outlets and Delirium-enabled threats trading a control plan for a tempo one, while Temur gives the archetype access to ramp and mana-sinks, as well as a few other niche toys.
This was the first module I thought about, as I like the archetype (And it's an old favourite for two of my players) but find it too hard to squeeze into my regular cube. Hopefully this lower powered cube will do it justice.
Token makers like Hordeling Outburst and Ophiomancer, or creatures that leave a body behind like Doomed Traveller or Doomed Dissenter, poke for damage while cards like Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat and Falkenrath Noble threaten to rack up scary amounts of damage if you block or off a sacrifice outlet like Goblin Bombardment or Falkenrath Aristocrat.
This module overlaps with Abzan and Jeskai, with Abzans' ability to recur token makers or important enablers (And even adds an Alesha to the cheap recursion game plan), while Jeskai adds a few token makers of its own as well as ways of protecting key pieces.
Okay okay I know this is a hard sell which is why I've saved it for last, but it also was the first module I finished building due to the nature of its gimmick.
Every card bar one in the module is double faced or manipulates double faced cards. If this sounds limiting, well... I mean it sort of is, but there's a lot of common threads in the DFCs printed thus far.
Red transform cards are pretty much all cheap threats, oftentimes helping other creatures become more threatening themselves like in the case of Instigator Gang or his little buddy Breakneck Rider, and I wanted some extra density there. There are enough green transform cards that exist to ramp you (Ulvenwald Captive, Scorned Villager), provide mana sinks (Ulvenwald Captive again, Duskwatch Recruiter, Wolfbitten Captive) or draw cards Duskwatch Recruiter again, Hermit of the Natterknolls) that they all have a gameplan in common too, and should they flip they too are quite threatening. Finally, the blue transform cards either provide a degree of card selection (Search for Azcanta, Civilized Scholar or benefit from that (Delver of Secrets and his grown up forms).
If that still sounds like a stretch, then it kind of is. But at the same time, transform tribal! Haven't you ever wanted to equip Neglected Heirloom to a Delver of Secrets, then cast Moonmist with Aberrant Researcher in play?
While it has some of the most parasitic cards in the cube, with Heirloom and Moonmist doing stone-cold nothing in most decks and Immerwolf being only slightly more relevant than them, there's still a lot of overlap with both Sultai and Jeskai. Sultai appreciates access to additional sources of self-mill from Search for Azcanta, Civilized Scholar, Grizzled Angler and Aberrant Researcher as well as the ramp and instant speed mana sinks green provides. Jeskai also benefits from some of this card selection, but also appreciates the hasty creatures from red... Okay, casting lots of spells to trigger prowess in your deck with werewolves is a bad idea, and the overlap is minimal. There's a Curious Homunculus though?
I'm going to be honest, I didn't have an idea for Temur other than "Ramp and value" until I saw Ulvenwald Captive and went "That's ramp -and- something to ramp into!", and I went off the deep end.
There are a number of inclusions in some archetypes just to fill needed roles, from cards like Mana Leak to Lightning Bolt, so don't worry that every card is a niche role-player with way too much text. Only most of them are.
I'll throw a link to the CubeTutor down below if you want to see more of the inclusions.
My plan for the 5 Shard modules is to build them around the myriad ways we now have of making incidental artifact tokens. Clues, Treasures, Servos and Thopters, and cards that care about artifacts coming in to play, being sacrificed, getting tapped, all that nonsense. I do have a preliminary list of cards I'd lilke to include, but the archetypes are still somewhat nebulous. All I know is, I want to colour shift them. Green Metalcraft aggro up against Grixis coloured artifacts, while Esper is on an artifact aristocrats (Aristifacts!) plan off things like Disciple of the Vault, Hidden Stockpile and Marionette Master. Obviously there will be overlap with the current modules (Teshar and Grizzled Angler will have Actual Support, but I'd like to tailor the existing wedges to fit the shards once I believe this cube idea will work in practice.
Okay, here's the meat and veg of the post, what I actually care about:
There are a lot of problems with my approach and with my current results. To begin with, different archetypes and theaters require different levels of support. As everyone here already know, an aggro deck like Jeskai Spells is going to need a lot more cheap dudes than a control deck like Sultai needs big ones, yet both are allocated the same number of total cards (24 right now, 30 eventually). I think I've done an adequate job managing this through the internal structuring of each modules curve, the decision to keep the cube within a narrower curve and by spending some time on the cross archetype support, but this can only go so far. An archetype like Aristocrats needs an utterly absurd density of very specific enablers and payoffs, while Sultai control (again) is happy with any sort of instant speed interaction and card selection that buys time for whatever finishers it can nab up.
My decision to have every module in some way interact with the graveyard was also deliberate, and I'm pretty happy with the results. A Jeskai deck fighting with the Sultai drafter very heavily despite only sharing one colour, a UB control deck stealing Unearth from under the BW reanimator player to use with their Snapcaster, both have happened in the 4 and 2 player tests done.
Thanks to the small cube size making the synergies easy to parse and the small pack size making pick time shorter, drafts and deckbuilds have been very very quick, which is fantastic... But we've had no time to actually -play- yet. Due to the graveyard theme, 30 card decks and lack of real testing I'm (probably overly) worried about people reliably decking themselves before the game is over, and as much as the mana bases can be finagled to resemble recommended ratios, I can't yet grok just how much worse your mana gets when you have to split your colours over 12 lands rather than 17 to 18.
Also, a cube this small has me worried about lack of redundancy in important effects will lead to massive imbalances over who got the two to four cards that Do The Thing. I've seen a blue green tempo deck just not get any discard outlets to set up its cards after not seeing things like Noose Constrictor or Frantic Search before other drafters snapped them up, and then not pick any self mill because it "wouldn't fit the tempo plan". They had the instant speed interaction and card draw, but can't turn on Delirium for anything and even 'Goyf looked like it'd get to a 4/5 only in the most optimistic of situations.
I've tried to include more redundancy, and skewed things towards repeatable effects rather than one-shot ones so you don't require the same density within the decks, but Crop Sigil and Crawling Sensation are awfully deep cuts and make for terrible Azcantas' #2 and #3, and even then they only do anything if you draw them.
In short, can anyone with Micro and/or Modular cube experience save me? As much as I've had fun poring through cards for interesting interactions (Lieutenant Kirtar and Teshar seem sweet together! They're even both Otarian Aven in white robes with crooks, which totally matters!), I'm worried the results just don't stack up, and I'm quite happy to change directions on my draft set up, archetypes, etc. I would prefer to keep the cube modular and quite small, but beyond that I'm really open to ideas.
While this is much less important at this point I'm also looking for advice on inclusions and cuts, keeping in mind the drafters expressed preference for low turn count, high internal and interplayer interaction games with no heavily skewed matchups, minimal non-games, and unique or underrepresented archetypes with a total power level only just above a good set or block draft. You know, a simple request that any cube manager could quite easily accomplish.
Cube Tutor: Here
More interested in browse and impressions/feedback.
Feel no obligation to draft it as it's still underdeveloped, but if you do you'll have to set pack size to 10 and players to 4 for now.
I've been thinking about and working on a 120 card modular micro-cube for my group, and have run into a few issues. I was hoping some of you kind people would be able to give advice on how to support multiple theaters (Aggro, control, etc) and archetypes (Tokens, spells matter) within some harsh limitations.
Don't feel the need to read my entire wall of text as a lot of it is just preamble to establish my approach and give context to the concerns below. It's really just the "Concerns" tab that matters.
The goal however is to have 10 modules and probably 300 cards, for a variable number of players (Probably 4 or less, occasionally up to 8). While strictly speaking this wouldn't be a microcube, it would be most often drafted as a 150 card list, so for all intents and purposes it shares a lot of the limitations.
Each player picks one of the tri-colour modules, each of which is primarily built around one archetype. Each module overlaps the archetypes of the others to create variance in game plans, so you have to tailor your draft around other players decisions here.
It's then drafted as three packs of 10 cards, with a minimum deck of 30 cards.
The modules are shuffled, then the draft happens.
Players have an interest in shorter, convenient, and very importantly tactical drafts, but intricate, decision-heavy games; all of which which has informed this peculiar approach.
My current approach has been to keep all archetypes relatively low to the ground, with few spells getting to or above 5 cmc, due to a vague fear about 30 card decks with the goal to cast a specific game ending threat dying due to the lack of redundancy in their decks or by decking themselves - I'll talk more about this in "Concerns"
I also have an assumption that decks will end up being three colour, and I'm not worried about this at all - as long as everyone is on even footing at the end of it. Half of my players have enjoyed the challenge of playing heavily multicolour draft decks which my primary cube does not strongly support, and those that don't seek it out are more interested in the in-game decision trees then in the colours they are or aren't playing, or (in one blessedly undemanding case) simply want to draft with friends.
The modules are built around the central colour for each wedge, and are colour-skewed towards the central colour by one card (Black in Abzan, for example). This gave room for one ally guild card (So Selesnya for Abzan) and one card that representa all three colours somehow, usually mono-coloured cards with off-colour activated abilities. I would like to add appropriate lands to each module to suit their colours and theme, but at the moment they just have one of the appropriate tri-lands and one Ash Barrens each.
I have plans to expand it to 10 modules by adding one for each shard as well.
The current modules and associated archetypes are:
The archetype overlaps with Mardu Aristocrats, giving the cheap creatures with death triggers a way to be brought back for extra value, and Sultai Delve, by letting the self-mill cards pay off with Delirium or reanimate effects rather than by giving you things to exile
The archetype overlaps with Mardu Aristocrats in their shared goal of making tokens (Jeskai off triggered abilities, Mardu from spells like Goblin Fodder or Hordeling Outburst) and the payoffs that result from this horde, and with Temur in their shared Spells Matter creatures.
The archetype overlaps with Abzan, which speeds thing up with its discard outlets and Delirium-enabled threats trading a control plan for a tempo one, while Temur gives the archetype access to ramp and mana-sinks, as well as a few other niche toys.
Token makers like Hordeling Outburst and Ophiomancer, or creatures that leave a body behind like Doomed Traveller or Doomed Dissenter, poke for damage while cards like Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat and Falkenrath Noble threaten to rack up scary amounts of damage if you block or off a sacrifice outlet like Goblin Bombardment or Falkenrath Aristocrat.
This module overlaps with Abzan and Jeskai, with Abzans' ability to recur token makers or important enablers (And even adds an Alesha to the cheap recursion game plan), while Jeskai adds a few token makers of its own as well as ways of protecting key pieces.
Every card bar one in the module is double faced or manipulates double faced cards. If this sounds limiting, well... I mean it sort of is, but there's a lot of common threads in the DFCs printed thus far.
Red transform cards are pretty much all cheap threats, oftentimes helping other creatures become more threatening themselves like in the case of Instigator Gang or his little buddy Breakneck Rider, and I wanted some extra density there. There are enough green transform cards that exist to ramp you (Ulvenwald Captive, Scorned Villager), provide mana sinks (Ulvenwald Captive again, Duskwatch Recruiter, Wolfbitten Captive) or draw cards Duskwatch Recruiter again, Hermit of the Natterknolls) that they all have a gameplan in common too, and should they flip they too are quite threatening. Finally, the blue transform cards either provide a degree of card selection (Search for Azcanta, Civilized Scholar or benefit from that (Delver of Secrets and his grown up forms).
If that still sounds like a stretch, then it kind of is. But at the same time, transform tribal! Haven't you ever wanted to equip Neglected Heirloom to a Delver of Secrets, then cast Moonmist with Aberrant Researcher in play?
While it has some of the most parasitic cards in the cube, with Heirloom and Moonmist doing stone-cold nothing in most decks and Immerwolf being only slightly more relevant than them, there's still a lot of overlap with both Sultai and Jeskai. Sultai appreciates access to additional sources of self-mill from Search for Azcanta, Civilized Scholar, Grizzled Angler and Aberrant Researcher as well as the ramp and instant speed mana sinks green provides. Jeskai also benefits from some of this card selection, but also appreciates the hasty creatures from red... Okay, casting lots of spells to trigger prowess in your deck with werewolves is a bad idea, and the overlap is minimal. There's a Curious Homunculus though?
I'm going to be honest, I didn't have an idea for Temur other than "Ramp and value" until I saw Ulvenwald Captive and went "That's ramp -and- something to ramp into!", and I went off the deep end.
I'll throw a link to the CubeTutor down below if you want to see more of the inclusions.
My plan for the 5 Shard modules is to build them around the myriad ways we now have of making incidental artifact tokens. Clues, Treasures, Servos and Thopters, and cards that care about artifacts coming in to play, being sacrificed, getting tapped, all that nonsense. I do have a preliminary list of cards I'd lilke to include, but the archetypes are still somewhat nebulous. All I know is, I want to colour shift them. Green Metalcraft aggro up against Grixis coloured artifacts, while Esper is on an artifact aristocrats (Aristifacts!) plan off things like Disciple of the Vault, Hidden Stockpile and Marionette Master. Obviously there will be overlap with the current modules (Teshar and Grizzled Angler will have Actual Support, but I'd like to tailor the existing wedges to fit the shards once I believe this cube idea will work in practice.
There are a lot of problems with my approach and with my current results. To begin with, different archetypes and theaters require different levels of support. As everyone here already know, an aggro deck like Jeskai Spells is going to need a lot more cheap dudes than a control deck like Sultai needs big ones, yet both are allocated the same number of total cards (24 right now, 30 eventually). I think I've done an adequate job managing this through the internal structuring of each modules curve, the decision to keep the cube within a narrower curve and by spending some time on the cross archetype support, but this can only go so far. An archetype like Aristocrats needs an utterly absurd density of very specific enablers and payoffs, while Sultai control (again) is happy with any sort of instant speed interaction and card selection that buys time for whatever finishers it can nab up.
My decision to have every module in some way interact with the graveyard was also deliberate, and I'm pretty happy with the results. A Jeskai deck fighting with the Sultai drafter very heavily despite only sharing one colour, a UB control deck stealing Unearth from under the BW reanimator player to use with their Snapcaster, both have happened in the 4 and 2 player tests done.
Thanks to the small cube size making the synergies easy to parse and the small pack size making pick time shorter, drafts and deckbuilds have been very very quick, which is fantastic... But we've had no time to actually -play- yet. Due to the graveyard theme, 30 card decks and lack of real testing I'm (probably overly) worried about people reliably decking themselves before the game is over, and as much as the mana bases can be finagled to resemble recommended ratios, I can't yet grok just how much worse your mana gets when you have to split your colours over 12 lands rather than 17 to 18.
Also, a cube this small has me worried about lack of redundancy in important effects will lead to massive imbalances over who got the two to four cards that Do The Thing. I've seen a blue green tempo deck just not get any discard outlets to set up its cards after not seeing things like Noose Constrictor or Frantic Search before other drafters snapped them up, and then not pick any self mill because it "wouldn't fit the tempo plan". They had the instant speed interaction and card draw, but can't turn on Delirium for anything and even 'Goyf looked like it'd get to a 4/5 only in the most optimistic of situations.
I've tried to include more redundancy, and skewed things towards repeatable effects rather than one-shot ones so you don't require the same density within the decks, but Crop Sigil and Crawling Sensation are awfully deep cuts and make for terrible Azcantas' #2 and #3, and even then they only do anything if you draw them.
In short, can anyone with Micro and/or Modular cube experience save me? As much as I've had fun poring through cards for interesting interactions (Lieutenant Kirtar and Teshar seem sweet together! They're even both Otarian Aven in white robes with crooks, which totally matters!), I'm worried the results just don't stack up, and I'm quite happy to change directions on my draft set up, archetypes, etc. I would prefer to keep the cube modular and quite small, but beyond that I'm really open to ideas.
While this is much less important at this point I'm also looking for advice on inclusions and cuts, keeping in mind the drafters expressed preference for low turn count, high internal and interplayer interaction games with no heavily skewed matchups, minimal non-games, and unique or underrepresented archetypes with a total power level only just above a good set or block draft. You know, a simple request that any cube manager could quite easily accomplish.
Cube Tutor: Here
More interested in browse and impressions/feedback.
Feel no obligation to draft it as it's still underdeveloped, but if you do you'll have to set pack size to 10 and players to 4 for now.
Edit: Cut down the preamble