Shards of Alara is a set about a world (Alara) which was shattered into five different shards which each developed independently. Then they invaded the others in search of greater power. After hearing about some people wanting to build small, non-5 color cubes, I came up with this crazy idea.
5 different 108 card cubes, one for each shard Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya. All of these cubes can be combined to make a 540 cube. Why would you want to do this? Well...
Each 108 shard cube can:
Be played independently as a 2 player draft format (Winston, Winchester, Soloman etc)
Easily be transported, functioning as a travel cube or mobile entertainment
Support 3 different two-color pairs and archetypes, for example Esper: UW Control, UB Zombies Aggro, WB Enchantress Midrange.
Be used as a shard sealed deck (90 cards) to play against the other shards (2 to 5 players total)
Be combined into a master 540 cube which can be drafted by up to 12 players.
108 cards was specifically chosen in order to create variance for draft and sealed. Since a standard sealed pool is made from 90 cards, 18 cards will be different from pool to pool. With 108 cards and 3 archetypes, ~36 cards can be dedicated to each color combination, allowing for some pretty potent and focused 40 card decks. Of course you wouldn't see all of them each and every time, and thats the great thing about upping the card count to 108.
Imagine having a best-of-five tournament with your friend, traveling to each of the different shards and doing two-player drafts to see who is the "Master of Alara." Isn't that exactly what a planeswalker does? Or perhaps you really love Jund, and want to test your sealed Jund deck against all of the other shards. Hell, you could even have 10 players, each compete in a two-player draft, and have those players go against the other shard winners.
Of course, building a cube itself is difficult. Building five cubes is even harder. Building five cubes which combine into a bigger cube (cubeception)? Madness. But I think it could be a fun way to spend a few (hundred) hours designing and building. Of course, standard cube rules would apply. Singleton only, meaning you would have to decide if Snapcaster fits best in Grixis, Esper, Bant, or neither of them.
Khans of Tarkir could also be used, but I think Alara wins on the flavor (and Snapcaster is probably best for a Jeskai cube anyway!).
Great idea. I'd echo everything Ravnic says. Crucially, some system must be used to mark the cards for the proper shard, or it will be impossible to control.
I personally like the Tarkir color combinations better, but Alara has a lot more support for its shards, so it's probably the right choice.
The break-down should be pretty easy. Example (Grixis): B-20 U-20 R-20 BU-10 BR-10 UR-10 BUR-8 C-5 Land-5 = 108
The hardest thing to do will be the sifting, since you want to have so many sections. If you want the BR of Grixis to feel thematically different from the BR of Jund, it may be a little challenging doing the allocations. Grixis may tap into madness for that section, where Jund may focus on the all out aggro end, but certain crucial cards will be tough to allocate. You can give Kolaghan's Command to Grixis, and Blightning to Jund, but there will be some cards that don't have a stand-in. The mono-color cards will be the hardest slots to fill, but they will also be the most important ones. I do think you should include some colorless cards in each section.
The Tarkir combinations could be added later when you want even more challenges. Then you could throw Jund, Grixis, Sultai, and Temur together for a four color, 8 person draft.
Interesting idea, do you plan to stick to Alara themes? e.g. mechanics?
Esper - artifact synergy, combo.
Grixis - pure graveyard resource shard with looting, dredge, flashback and unearth
Jund - token-and-sac shard
Naya - ramp into fatties
Bant - Exalted? Might not be enough for a singleton format.
I think one nice thing about the shard theme is that Esper, for example, has very little artifact removal. But when combined into Alara, artifacts can easily be removed. Same thing with graveyard (hosers present in green and white) and anti-Fatties (spot removal, bounce) can be found in Dimir colors. This will provide a check to the power of each shard.
Bant - Exalted? Might not be enough for a singleton format.
Blink.
EDIT: Mapping this out right now, the only thing I'm having difficulty with is actually seperating sultai and grixis.
EDIT2: Unless I move Grixis over to storm/instants and sorceries. Maybe add a subtheme of draw/discard/wheeling for things like Nekusar or other draw punishers.
This is definnitely something I'm going to start playing with over the next few days, so I haven't set anything in stone yet. If someone else wants to go ahead (as I have seen already) and start tackling this, go right ahead! But I think I'm going to go with either Alara shards OR Khans clans. Having both of them doesn't really fit the theme here. And I'd be going for Alara-theme and similar mechanic cards, but not only the Alara block. Innistrad has some great flashback cards for Grixis, and Zendikar for Naya ramp etc.
Mana fixing probably wont be that difficult (famous last words). Since there's only three colors per mini-cube we probably don't need the standard 10% as in a 5-color cube. Another thing I thought about was the overall feel and similar mechanics within the shards which would work for sealed decks.
As JinxedIdol mentioned, as an example, Grixis as a shard could feature some graveyard centric strategies. Zombies, unearth, flashback, looting, reanimator, etc. Esper could have all the artifacts and artifact synergies. Something like Bone Splinters would be perfect for Grixis and unearth, and Executioner's Capsule for Esper, and Murder for Jund.
Another cool idea which emerged is the shards in itself. Esper could be seen as the "control shard," and the mana fixing could be slow lands, gain lands, tapped lands. Grixis, the all about death shard, could run fetches and shocks. You could still have an aggro deck within Esper and slow lands (maybe even mono color), while having a more suicide-black style aggro deck in Grixis which utilized muti-color cards and pain lands.
To me, it seems like the key part is making the ally colors feel unique AND cohesive. Since both Jund and Grixis have black and red, and both Esper and Bant have white and blue. Here's an example.
Grixis Graveyard Subtheme:
BR - Midrange / Disruptive
BU - Control
UR - Counterburn / Aggro
Esper Artifact Subtheme:
UW - Tempo / Aggro
UB - Midrange
BW - Control
So that makes RUW (Jeskai) our aggro/tempoish colors. BW and UB (and therefore Esper shard) mainly control. And BR and UB (Grixis) forced into a graveyard based midrange strategy.
If a single change happens, everything gets thrown out of whack. If Grixis wants to be UR Counter Burn control, and Esper wants UB Control, now some of our cross-shard synergies get thrown out. Seems like a ton of planning should be done before even starting to make the lists!
Edit: A mill deck can be thrown in there somewhere for Grixis (UB?), which functions as a benefit for Reanimator + Unearth synergies!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Check out my 192 Travel Cube!
Requesting drafts and feedback, both good and bad.
Shards of Alara is a set about a world (Alara) which was shattered into five different shards which each developed independently. Then they invaded the others in search of greater power. After hearing about some people wanting to build small, non-5 color cubes, I came up with this crazy idea.
5 different 108 card cubes, one for each shard Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya. All of these cubes can be combined to make a 540 cube. Why would you want to do this? Well...
Each 108 shard cube can:
108 cards was specifically chosen in order to create variance for draft and sealed. Since a standard sealed pool is made from 90 cards, 18 cards will be different from pool to pool. With 108 cards and 3 archetypes, ~36 cards can be dedicated to each color combination, allowing for some pretty potent and focused 40 card decks. Of course you wouldn't see all of them each and every time, and thats the great thing about upping the card count to 108.
Imagine having a best-of-five tournament with your friend, traveling to each of the different shards and doing two-player drafts to see who is the "Master of Alara." Isn't that exactly what a planeswalker does? Or perhaps you really love Jund, and want to test your sealed Jund deck against all of the other shards. Hell, you could even have 10 players, each compete in a two-player draft, and have those players go against the other shard winners.
Of course, building a cube itself is difficult. Building five cubes is even harder. Building five cubes which combine into a bigger cube (cubeception)? Madness. But I think it could be a fun way to spend a few (hundred) hours designing and building. Of course, standard cube rules would apply. Singleton only, meaning you would have to decide if Snapcaster fits best in Grixis, Esper, Bant, or neither of them.
Khans of Tarkir could also be used, but I think Alara wins on the flavor (and Snapcaster is probably best for a Jeskai cube anyway!).
What do you think?
Requesting drafts and feedback, both good and bad.
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/65652
Playing: Modern UB Fae
I personally like the Tarkir color combinations better, but Alara has a lot more support for its shards, so it's probably the right choice.
The break-down should be pretty easy. Example (Grixis): B-20 U-20 R-20 BU-10 BR-10 UR-10 BUR-8 C-5 Land-5 = 108
The hardest thing to do will be the sifting, since you want to have so many sections. If you want the BR of Grixis to feel thematically different from the BR of Jund, it may be a little challenging doing the allocations. Grixis may tap into madness for that section, where Jund may focus on the all out aggro end, but certain crucial cards will be tough to allocate. You can give Kolaghan's Command to Grixis, and Blightning to Jund, but there will be some cards that don't have a stand-in. The mono-color cards will be the hardest slots to fill, but they will also be the most important ones. I do think you should include some colorless cards in each section.
The Tarkir combinations could be added later when you want even more challenges. Then you could throw Jund, Grixis, Sultai, and Temur together for a four color, 8 person draft.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
Esper - artifact synergy, combo.
Grixis - pure graveyard resource shard with looting, dredge, flashback and unearth
Jund - token-and-sac shard
Naya - ramp into fatties
Bant - Exalted? Might not be enough for a singleton format.
I think one nice thing about the shard theme is that Esper, for example, has very little artifact removal. But when combined into Alara, artifacts can easily be removed. Same thing with graveyard (hosers present in green and white) and anti-Fatties (spot removal, bounce) can be found in Dimir colors. This will provide a check to the power of each shard.
I actually kinda wanna map this out now.
Blink.
EDIT: Mapping this out right now, the only thing I'm having difficulty with is actually seperating sultai and grixis.
EDIT2: Unless I move Grixis over to storm/instants and sorceries. Maybe add a subtheme of draw/discard/wheeling for things like Nekusar or other draw punishers.
Generals meant to be drafted first in a single pack of 6 cards.
And here is the actual cube, meant to be drafted in 4 regular sized packs. (60 card decks)
This is definnitely something I'm going to start playing with over the next few days, so I haven't set anything in stone yet. If someone else wants to go ahead (as I have seen already) and start tackling this, go right ahead! But I think I'm going to go with either Alara shards OR Khans clans. Having both of them doesn't really fit the theme here. And I'd be going for Alara-theme and similar mechanic cards, but not only the Alara block. Innistrad has some great flashback cards for Grixis, and Zendikar for Naya ramp etc.
Mana fixing probably wont be that difficult (famous last words). Since there's only three colors per mini-cube we probably don't need the standard 10% as in a 5-color cube. Another thing I thought about was the overall feel and similar mechanics within the shards which would work for sealed decks.
As JinxedIdol mentioned, as an example, Grixis as a shard could feature some graveyard centric strategies. Zombies, unearth, flashback, looting, reanimator, etc. Esper could have all the artifacts and artifact synergies. Something like Bone Splinters would be perfect for Grixis and unearth, and Executioner's Capsule for Esper, and Murder for Jund.
Another cool idea which emerged is the shards in itself. Esper could be seen as the "control shard," and the mana fixing could be slow lands, gain lands, tapped lands. Grixis, the all about death shard, could run fetches and shocks. You could still have an aggro deck within Esper and slow lands (maybe even mono color), while having a more suicide-black style aggro deck in Grixis which utilized muti-color cards and pain lands.
To me, it seems like the key part is making the ally colors feel unique AND cohesive. Since both Jund and Grixis have black and red, and both Esper and Bant have white and blue. Here's an example.
Grixis Graveyard Subtheme:
BR - Midrange / Disruptive
BU - Control
UR - Counterburn / Aggro
Esper Artifact Subtheme:
UW - Tempo / Aggro
UB - Midrange
BW - Control
So that makes RUW (Jeskai) our aggro/tempoish colors. BW and UB (and therefore Esper shard) mainly control. And BR and UB (Grixis) forced into a graveyard based midrange strategy.
If a single change happens, everything gets thrown out of whack. If Grixis wants to be UR Counter Burn control, and Esper wants UB Control, now some of our cross-shard synergies get thrown out. Seems like a ton of planning should be done before even starting to make the lists!
Edit: A mill deck can be thrown in there somewhere for Grixis (UB?), which functions as a benefit for Reanimator + Unearth synergies!
Requesting drafts and feedback, both good and bad.
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/65652
Playing: Modern UB Fae