Unstable gives us many of the needed cards to create an un-cube. How are people looking at structuring it?
Some questions that will need to be adressed for any un-cube creator will be contraptions, size, and themes,
My thoughts on contraptions are to create seprate packs of 20-25 contraptions for people to build their contraption deck with, treating them kind of like basic land and not draft them. I want to free the space up for other cards and still give people the option of using them if they want.
I would only have 3-4 people at a time so size can be flexable from 180 to 540 depending on type of draft and how many supporring themes and non un cards I want to inclue. Thoughts?
Hi! I've actually never made a cube before, so I'm not entirely sure how my opinion helps here (more on the casual side of playing just home-brew modern decks with friends), but yesterday I ordered 2x [(MOSTLY) Complete Set] of Unstable off of StarCityGames in hopes to create an un-normal cube with it.
I've always thought that if another un- set comes out, I'd like to buy into a majority of the cards. A cube sounded fun with the new cards, especially with the addition of host/augment and contraption deck.
I've been thinking about it, and I think the best way to go about the contraption cards would indeed be to make a seperate drafting form for them and just build in the contraptions if your packs worked with it. The question I have is how many of each contraption would be in the set, and would you choose to do packs with the contraption post normal packs?
I will do with Unstable as I did for Unhidged: Four of each common, two of each uncommon, one of each rare and mythic, seperate them with dividers in the cube box and when you want to draft it, make a (mosty) realistic boosters from them.
Keep in mind that the contraptions should probably be sleeved with different sleeves then the rest of the cube, as each booster has only two of them. Also, to make even more realistic and balanced boosters, run a computer simulator of boosters and make the physical booster as the same as you can do. The only downside is 1 rare/mythic might be too few, but for my playgroup it works well.
So, I have had an un-cube for a few months now that I have tweaked on and off (I do not have a list posted online as of yet, especially with the new set coming up). I'll give a basic breakdown of my builds, themes, thoughts, etc. My cube consists of both silver and black-border cards.
Silver-Border thoughts: So, a few things I realized and kept in mind when building my cube; Physical action cards are annoying, not entertaining (this includes cards like Side to Side, Bureaucracy, Enter the Dungeon, Red-Hot Hottie, etc). I found people are okay with things like Knight of the Hokey Pokey and Mesa Chicken, even Mouth to Mouth (only a couple). Avoid gotcha cards like the plague basically. They are anti-fun for the most part. I included a few in my cube, but they are few and far between. I avoided Name Dropping altogether because it was nightmare for my opponents when I drafted it back in the day. I have a couple Cardpecker, a lone Number Crunch, a couple Creature Guy, couple Save Life, a Deal Damage, a Kill Destroy, a Spell Counter and a couple Stop That. Those few out of a 600-650ish card cube feels about right. I even made sure I had grave-hate in the cube to help answer them. I also printed proxies of each holiday card excluding Thopter Pie Network, Goblin Sleigh Ride and Mishra's Toy Workshop (as these cards require either physical action or specific objects). I kept rare and truly obstructive cards to an absolute minimum (things like Staying Power, Topsy Turvy. I did include a handful of "future" cards like Double Dip, because they can be entertaining (I have notes I keep with the cube to remember our cube games for that stuff).
Lands and such: So, I only run two un-lands in the cube; a single copy each of City of Ass and R&D Secret Lair. I have a large pile of sorted nonbasic lands that form land pool that everyone picks from between packs (couple City of Brass, Exotic Orchard, multiples of each guild-gate, Evolving Wilds, Shimmering Grotto, etc. I even created proxies of Gem Bazaar from the old Microprose game and worded them to work with dice roll mechanics. This makes stealing cards better as you can actually play stuff you stole from someone if you pick your lands right. It definitely removes the "feel-bad" of taking lands over more useful cards.
As far as the new set goes, I'm planning on adding a special pack in the middle (maybe after pack 1) that includes conspiracies and contraptions. I'll likely focus a bit more on conspiracies that aren't so "draft-matters", but I'm still working on that. I will be dropping a few filler unhinged cards and expanding the cube to accommodate the new stuff. There are already quite a few synergies with tribal stuff like squirrels, killbots, etc. The dice roll stuff from the older sets in green definitely play into a nice die-roll tribal for As Luck Would Have it, looking forward to that. Augments and such are just a nice bonus to add depth. Still looking over the new stuff, especially in lieu of multiple versions of the same card with different rules text.
I have been building a fun cube like this for awhile, before Unstable was announced, but it was going to be very small and basically held up by adding in non-crazy cards from the Conspiracy sets. Now with Unstable, I am having 1 of every un-card (except the problematic ones, some mentioned above) along with all draft-centric cards from Conspiracy 1 & 2, along with cards with Conspiracy-exclusive keywords (Melee, Voting, Monarch, etc.) Not building it with multiples except for certain ones (S.N.O.T., Ow, the new Unstable cards that have different arts/effects, etc.) but that is my preference to create a lot of variance in the draft.
I am also adding in some special cards for support to give players a break from the complete wackiness in gold bordered world championship cards. The idea of my cube initially was to create a fun draft environment with cards people cannot play in tournaments, and these fit the bill while giving the cube some added punch with some powerful cards that aren't technically tournament legal. Tapping a gold bordered Gaea's Cradle to cast Slaying Mantis is gonna be fun
I do not have a final number for all the cards in my cube just yet (since the new card art-effects in Unstable threw off my original math and a lot of tweaking to do once I get all the cards in the mail) but it will be around 600 I think. I still also have two holiday promos to get (Gifts Given and the new one, Some Disassembly Required) but that should be the ballpark number.
Only thing I am trying to come up with now is how to play it, either 2 four-player pods or 4 regular two-player games. Lots of choices
I'm working on an Un-cube, as well. It'll be primarily Unstable with some cards from Unhinged and Unglued. I want to ensure sufficient support for Host/Augment and Contraptions, so I will be running multiples of some cards and have to avoid adding too many cards that dilute these strategies. I'm actually finding it pretty tough to balance the numbers so far. I checked out a few Un-cubes on cubetutor and found that the ones that went singleton don't have enough support to guarantee that an augment card isn't a dead draw - you really need a lot more hosts. Other cubes were running full playsets of everything, which won't work for me because I want this to be a smaller cube (around 300 cards).
Archetypes/Goals for this cube:
- Host/Augment
- Contraptions
- Playing games other than Magic (Hangman, B-I-N-G-O, etc.)
- Dice rolling
- Breaking rules
- Crazy legends
I will say that this is a horrible time to be gathering singles from Unglued/Unhinged. I had price checked cards several weeks ago, and when I checked again today, some cards had quadrupled in price. I'm assuming that is largely due to their current legality in Commander, with a splash of speculators driving prices up. I may have to wait on some until after January 15, when only casuals and cubers are looking for them and the hype has died down.
Yeah, I foresaw something happening to the prices when they first announced Unstable, that's when I picked my stuff up from people at bulk. I now get to pick up unstable stuff for free by selling off a couple cards such as Johnny, Combo Player and Strategy, Schmategy for ridiculous amounts more than I paid for them just a few months ago. B-I-N-G-O is a huge bomb as my cube gets played in multiplayer format.
I realized with my cube that I can add duplicates of some of the better hosts and simply add the augments to the conspiracy/contraption packs. I think this solution is the best way to handle them in mine at least, means I'm not cutting down on the standard card pool with potentially dead cards and not forced to flood the cube with hosts (though I will be running quite a few still).
For me right now, my cube kinda looks like this (delving a bit more into each color);
White: Control aspects some aggro support. Couple fumigates, fair amount of removal (Prismatic Wardrobe, AWOL, Crib Swap, etc), Wordmail, Emcee, etc. Definitely lots of life gain strewn about. There are some cheap creatures to fuel the aggro side of white, the number will increase with unstable's inclusion, and it will cause it to pair nicely with green with that Crossbreed Labs stuff.
Blue: Definitely control, with all the old unglued counterspell enchantments/spells. Fair amount of evasion creatures and definitely heavy on Un-shenanigans. In my cube, I added a handful of beebles and such to add to that evasive-beatdown side of blue. Censorship is a great counter for the handful of gotcha cards running around in my cube. Stunt Double, Puca's Mischief and Switcheroo are notable black border inclusions.
Black: Sort of a mid-rangey/control feel. Lots of (literal) hand disruption, some minor creature removal, home of a couple of the biggest beaters in the cube (Infernal Spawn of Evil and Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil, I contemplated adding B.F.M.(Big Furry Monster) to the cube as a pair in one card, but there just wasn't room and it's a really silly card to try to draft). I had some fun with it and added 3 copies of Ow as well. There are a few creatures that really help make black a strong choice in unstable, Hangman being the most notable. I'm looking forward to using unstable to tilt it a bit into the dice-rolling League of Dastardly Doom feel.
Green: Mid-rangey. Green is actually the most confused color in the cube currently, having decent creatures and such, but it's kind of all over the place. Symbol Status is first pick material in my cube with things like Adapative Automaton. B-I-N-G-O is a huge bomb in multiplayer pods. S.N.O.T. has shown itself to be pretty solid, especially if you happen to snag the Soul Foundry. Green is definitely going to be getting some attention with unstable inclusion. Crossbreed Labs stuff, Squirrels and more dice rolling focus to fuel As Luck Would Have It (will cause it to pair really nicely with red for things like Ol' Buzzbark and such). Really looking forward to the changes there.
Multi-Color: Here I have things like proxies of the Holiday Promos (Gifts Given, Naughty//Nice and Yule Ooze are all pretty bomby). I also included a proxy of the Dungeon Master planeswalker that was given to certain employees not too long ago (debating on doing the duel masters dragon as well now that Urza will be going in). Rare-B-Gone and Ass Whuppin' are a couple other big inclusions.
Conspiracies, Contraptions and Augments will fill a special set of packs to go around between packs 1 and 2. Hell, I even considered tossing some of the lower-power hero special cards from the Theros prerelease events awhile back in there (I decided against it simply because even the weak ones are really too strong for drafting). I feel these packs have a lot of potential to be fun, but I have to be careful about what I want to throw in there. Things like Sovereign's Realm and Worldknit are a bit too strong honestly. Cards like Weight Advantage, Backup Plan, Advantageous Proclamation, and Sentinel Dispatch seem good though.
I am working to build my own [F]Un Cube, and the big thing I noticed that was missing from silver-bordered sets was lands. Keeping things on flavor, I photoshopped this Evolving Wilds to make it silver-bordered without actually changing how the card works.
Also, I spent the day yesterday designing the cube. I keep changing out cards to make it better, but I really like it so far..... http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/94235
I'm actually also looking to build an Un-cube, using non-dexterity cards from all three Un-sets as well as Conspiracies and other black-border cards. Do you have a list of your cube somewhere ? Also, do you have any white-border cards worthy of inclusion ?
I will try to get a list together after I update it. For now, the cube is in pieces as I take the opportunity to use some of the cards for commander while they are legal and plan for Unstable (which will also involve new sleeves). There's a white border Game of Chaos and Master Decoy (definitely have to roll with the Phil Foglio art on it though), but I can't think of any other un-like cards in white border that I'd like to run in there. I know Border Guardian and like two other unstable cards care about white border cards.
I am working to build my own [F]Un Cube, and the big thing I noticed that was missing from silver-bordered sets was lands. Keeping things on flavor, I photoshopped this Evolving Wilds to make it silver-bordered without actually changing how the card works.
Beyond cards like Watermarket, City of Ass and R&D's Secret Lair (maybe even Secret Base ), there's not much point in making them silver border beyond just making them affected by Ass Whuppin' and such. Hell, I tweaked and added this land from the old Microprose game into my land draft pool (added about 4 to the pool) and while I made them work with dice rolling, I left them black bordered.
"Splash" Cards: Singleton adds no matter what the slot. Pulled from unglued and unhinged. Draft matters cards from conspiracy.
Pack Build:
8 common
3 uncommon
2 contraption
1 rare/mythic
1 optional conspiracy
In building the list, i started from the 3-2-1 basis and then checked the color and slot balances. Unfortunately, due to variants, a standard 3-2-1 build breaks the balance among the colors when it comes to rarity. While each color has the same number of total cards, blue and green have significantly more rares (statistically) than the others, while white has more commons, etc.
Instead of trying to balance this by changing the distribution of unstable cards, I decided to try balancing it with the addition of singleton, flavorful, mechanic-friendly cards from unglued/unhinged. This would retain the core of the cube as unstable, and ensure play-ability, but get some of the classic cards like cheatyface and enter the dungeon into the fray.
So lets talk about splash-card selection. Unglued and unhinged were filled with just totally un-fun cards. Many of the dice rolling mechanics were just unplayable. Many of the "Gotcha" cards made the game un-fun. And to throw this out there - there simply wasn't much synergy within the sets themselves. Out of 250 cards, I deemed about 86 as "potential" selections across all colors and rarities. This presents a problem - that's not much to work with while retaining both rarity distribution balance AND mana-curve balance. After some playing, I settled on a total of 35 splashes, all as singletons.
The big problem: Color fixing.
Color fixing in unstable is awful. It's perfectly fine in constructed, since you can make more focused decisions - but trying to draft fixing based on watermarks is just plain bad. Further, in order to have sufficient support, you really need to add multiples of each variant - this drives down the power level of decks and increases variance per pack toward containing multiple bases (which does not happen in real packs).
Given this, I can see three options available to do color fixing:
Cut secret bases and replace them with other common-slot color fixing options.
Add secret base to the land pool and have house rules of up to 4 secret base may be added during deck construction
Retain or reduce the number of secret bases, but heavily skew conspiracies toward mana fixing
I'm heavily leaning toward option #2, and leaning on option #3 as a fallback. I reason that drafting a secret base almost always feels bad, so I would rather just replace it with more playable cards. Not adding in draftable fixing, but leaving the bases available for construction, still forces people to draft in the set-designed guilds, but makes for a better drafting experience overall. Skewing conspiracies toward mana-fixing allows for a bit more flexibility, and drives down the general power of conspiracies so they don't take center stage.
The last thing i haven't done a ton of math on or testing yet is the curve of each color. From the current look, it seems like red needs to be downshifted a bit to be more playable, but i think red will also want to be playing artifacts and depending more on contraptions, so it may equal out.
Anyway, that's been my design process so far. Still trying to figure out how to get Ass Whuppin' in there, but for the most part i think it's looking decently stable. If i were to make any major change, it might be to go 4-2-1, dropping all secret bases, and bringing commons up to support a 10-person pod - but I don't think I'll have that many people drafting that often.
I'll just point out that there are a great number of black border cards that add a lot to an un-cube (and a few cards that interact with borders and things like World-Bottling Kit that get more interesting when more non-un sets are added in). I find pure silver-border cubes to be lacking in interesting draft mechanics, even with tossing in draft matters conspiracy stuff. You might really consider adding in things like changelings, Krark's Thumb, etc. The pure-silver gimmick does wear thin after a few drafts, and I find making the limited environment more in-depth helps lengthen the cube's "life".
As far as mana-fixing, I stated above there the method I use for land drafting. It does lead to a lot of dual color splashing a third, but I don't see it as a bad thing. The land draft I do is one of the biggest things players compliment when they draft my cube.
Here are all the options for Urza, Academy Headmaster 's loyalty abilities.
Use a handy d20 if you're not online!
+1
1. "Until end of turn, up to one target creature gets +1/+1 and gains first strike, vigilance, and lifelink.",
2. "Distribute three +1/+1 counters among one, two, or three target creatures you control.",
3. "Destroy target noncreature permanent.",
4. "Create two 3/1 red Elemental creature tokens with haste. Exile them at the beginning of the next end step.",
5. "Create three 1/1 white Soldier creature tokens.",
6. "Create a 3/3 black Beast creature token with deathtouch.",
7. "Reveal the top five cards of your library. Put all creature cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.",
8. "During target opponent's next turn, creatures that player controls attack Urza if able.",
9. "Put a loyalty counter on Urza for each creature target opponent controls.",
10. "Until your next turn, whenever a creature an opponent controls attacks, it gets -1/-0 until end of turn.",
11. "Target player exiles a card from his or her hand.",
12. "Reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand.",
13. "Target land you control becomes a 4/4 Elemental creature with trample. It's still a land.",
14. "Draw a card, then add one mana of any color to your mana pool.",
15. "Until end of turn, Urza becomes a legendary 4/4 red Dragon creature with flying, indestructible, and haste. (He doesn't lose loyalty while he's not a planeswalker.)",
16. "Until your next turn,creatures you control get +1/+0 and gain lifelink.",
17. "Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal an artifact card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.",
18. "Urza deals 3 damage to target creature or player.",
19. "Until your next turn,whenever a creature deals combat damage to Urza, destroy that creature.",
20. "Add X mana in anycombination of colors to your mana pool, where X is the number of creatures you control."
-1
1."Urza deals 3 damage to each creature.",
2."Gain control of target creature.",
3."Urza deals 4 damage to target creature or player and you gain 4 life.",
4."Destroy target creature. You gain life equal to its toughness.",
5."You get an emblem with 'Creatures you control get +1/+1.'",
6."You may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield.",
7."Draw three cards, then put a card from your hand on top of your library.",
8."Target player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.",
9."Reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other on the bottom of your library in any order.",
10."Exile target permanent.",
11."Reveal the top five cards of your library. You may put all creature cards and/or land cards from among them into your hand. Put the rest into your graveyard.",
12."Search your library for a card and put that card into your hand. Then shuffle your library.",
13."Target player sacrifices two creatures.",
14."Create a 5/5 black Demon creature token with flying. You lose 2 life.",
15."Create a 4/4 gold Dragon creature token with flying.",
16."Target player's life total becomes 10.",
17."Destroy target nonland permanent.",
18."Return target permanent from a graveyard to the battlefield under your control.",
19."Create two 3/3 green Beast creature tokens.",
20. "Draw four cards and discard two cards."
-6
1. Urza deals 7 damage to target player. That player discards seven cards, then sacrifices seven permanents.",
2. "You get an emblem with 'If a source would deal damage to you or a planeswalker you control, prevent all but 1 of that damage.'",
3. "Destroy all lands target player controls.",
4. "Create X 2/2 white Cat creature tokens, where X is your life total.",
5. "You gain 100 life.",
6. "Urza deals 10 damage to target player and each creature he or she controls.",
7. "You get an emblem with 'Creatures you control have double strike, trample, hexproof, and haste.'",
8. "You get an emblem with 'Artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands you control have indestructible.'",
9. "Create a 6/6 green Wurm creature token for each land you control.",
10. "Each player shuffles his or her hand and graveyard into his or her library. You draw seven cards.",
11. "Destroy up to three target creatures and/or other planeswalkers. Return each card put into a graveyard this way to the battlefield under your control.",
12. "You get an emblem with 'Whenever you cast a spell, exile target permanent.'",
13. "You get an emblem with 'Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may have it fight target creature.' Then create three 8/8 blue Octopus creature tokens.",
14. "You control target player during that player's next turn.",
15. "Exile all cards from target player's library, then that player shuffles his or her hand into his or her library.",
16. "Create three 1/1 black Assassin creature tokens with 'Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game.'",
17. "Put all creature cards from all graveyards onto the battlefield under your control.",
18. "You gain X life and draw X cards, where X is the number of lands you control.",
19. "Flip five coins. Take an extra turn after this one for each coin that comes up heads.",
20. "You gain 7 life, draw seven cards, then put up to seven permanent cards from your hand onto the battlefield.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The Steamflogged
Human Rigger Rebels
Resisting The Tyranny of the Anti-Contraptionists. Viva L'Assemblage!
Modern-- Fish; Jund; Burn; Affinity; Mill Legacy--UGBFood Chain; UFish; UBRG Delver Commander--UB Sygg, River Cutthroat; W Isamaru, H.O.K.WRG Naya grouphug Enchantress 60 Card Singleton -- WB value drain UN- -- W Weenie (Wordmail on Knight of the Hokey Pokey is good beats)
I'll just point out that there are a great number of black border cards that add a lot to an un-cube (and a few cards that interact with borders and things like World-Bottling Kit that get more interesting when more non-un sets are added in). I find pure silver-border cubes to be lacking in interesting draft mechanics, even with tossing in draft matters conspiracy stuff. You might really consider adding in things like changelings, Krark's Thumb, etc. The pure-silver gimmick does wear thin after a few drafts, and I find making the limited environment more in-depth helps lengthen the cube's "life".
As far as mana-fixing, I stated above there the method I use for land drafting. It does lead to a lot of dual color splashing a third, but I don't see it as a bad thing. The land draft I do is one of the biggest things players compliment when they draft my cube.
Do you have your land pile online somewhere? Very curious how you managed to make this balanced and which lands you used.
Each player will end up with 6 lands from this assortment ultimately. Pick order changes up each pack and the number of picks increase after each pack (1-2-3, one at a time). It leads to better color-fixing and more reliable mana bases, which leads to less color screw games (which I view to be a good thing). It also helps out the cards that steal cards from opponents' libraries/hands.
How do you guys handle the mutiple versions of some rare and mythic cards in unstable? Keeping the 3-2-1 setup in mind, this has puzzled me a lot.
Are you just trying to make a pure unstable cube?
Well, I ended up with a ton of Unstable cards after doing a draft. And I was wondering what to do with it. Everybody who attended had a great time drafting the set, so I figured a redraftable cube would be the most sufficient option. So I started doing some research on building a cube in general and how to make a set-cube. This got me here. So far I decided to go with the 3-2-1 ratio, since this gives the most options of different crafts during the draft. But then I reminded the different versions of some cards in the set.
Maybe I will add some Conspiracy (which I realy like), Unglued/Unhinged cards later on. The option of adding some blackbordered cards which go well with the set like Krark's Thumb is open as well.
Also, the non-basic landpile is a great idea to smoothen out the games. A lot of games during our draft ended up in favour of the player not getting mana flooded/screwed, which is a bit lame. The set is great, but in my opinion WoTC missed a spot with not putting enough manafixing in the set. Either you have to stick with 2 colours or draft green for Wild Crocodile or Selfie Preservation.
I got my Un-Cube mostly built (I have 92% of the cards sleeved up but am waiting for a few cards in the mail and waiting to purchase a handful more), and I've played some 2-3 player drafts and limited. It's a lot of fun.
Yes, the mana-fixing sucks. I haven't been happy with the Secret Bases at all. The odds are just too much against them - they only cover five of the ten two-color combos, but they don't even fix for all cards in those colors. It feels like each deck has at most 5-7 cards that can even benefit from the fixing, at which point a basic land is better because it will at least work with other cards of the same color. I really wanted to keep this strictly un-cards, but I may have to break that for playability.
What do you guys think of wacky/unconventional fixing to fit the cube? Stuff like Rainbow Vale and Rhystic Cave? Or is that just too annoying and trying to hard?
EDIT: Forgot to mention, in one multiplayer game we had the crazy experience of a Half-Shark, Half-Pony alongside a Clocknapper. If not for a timely Just Desserts, no one else would have ever gotten a beginning phase again.
What do you guys think of wacky/unconventional fixing to fit the cube? Stuff like Rainbow Vale and Rhystic Cave? Or is that just too annoying and trying to hard?
Seems fitting to the theme, but a contradiction to a solid manabase. Maybe you could use Paliano, the High City? Has the random factor, but still gives you an advantage in some cases.
What do you guys think of wacky/unconventional fixing to fit the cube? Stuff like Rainbow Vale and Rhystic Cave? Or is that just too annoying and trying to hard?
Seems fitting to the theme, but a contradiction to a solid manabase. Maybe you could use Paliano, the High City? Has the random factor, but still gives you an advantage in some cases.
That's fair. Also, that card is pretty cheap, which is a bonus.
So, the Unstable cards are no longer legal in commander and as such, I have dismantled my fun silver border decks I was slinging at one of the more competitive LGS's (lot of fun making people salty with Spy Kit plus Now I know My ABC's combo).
Anyways, I traded someone some cards for a case of Dragon Shield Mattes to re-sleeve my cube, and rebuilt it. I'll get a list after I've run a couple playtests with my group here. I basically cut some of the higher CMC gimmicky stuff and some of the feel-bad creature cards (like Working Stiff, Vile Bile, etc) and expanded the count for each color a bit. I avoided adding anything watermark dependent like Stamp of Approval, Secret Base, Watermarket, etc because there just aren't enough watermark cards to utilize them effectively in the cube. I also avoided adding any cards that require outside participants like Squirrel Dealer and It That Gets Left Hanging because there are a lot of times everyone playing the cube is actually everyone in the area and we typically play it as a multiplayer cube. I did snag 2 Paliano, the High City for my land draft stuff (I keep forgetting that card exists). Ultimately I added roughly 25 unstable cards directly to each color and cut about 10ish older cards. I have created a special pack that goes after the first actual pack that is built entirely of conspiracies, contraptions and augments (I also added a couple Spy Kits to the cube because of the name-based conspiracies and it actually makes ABC's a viable draft pick as a side effect). So the cube looks like this now;
-90 of each color (25 of which are unstable cards)
-60 Artifacts (somewhere around 15-20 of them are unstable, mostly hosts)
-5 lands actually in the cube (City of Ass x2, R&D's Secret Lair x1, Springjack Pasture x2)
-20 Multi-color cards (mostly the legends from unstable with a handful of extras like Ass Whuppin' and Yuletide Ooze)
-100 Cards in what I'll refer to as the "Enhancement Pack" (contraptions, conspiracies and augments)
Notable changes since adjusting with unstable;
*Red is now a favorable draft color as it has strong pairings with green's dice rolling theme and has strong pairings with blue as a coin flip tribal still and pairs with black because of League of Dastardly Doom guild stuff.
*Black removal became a lot less gimmicky (if a bit higher on the CMC), Duh is actually pretty solid with unstable cards. The color also became a lot more aggressive in early game creatures with things like Hangman.
*White is definitely the aggro color it was before, but has better creature options at low CMC. The removal cards like GO TO JAIL from unstable in tangent with AWOL and Crib Swap make for a very strong control combo with black (as you would expect from a typical cube). Unstable brought with it some augment synergy with green, so the two colors got a slightly higher count of hosts than the other colors (and have a few more augments in the "Enhancement Pack").
*Blue continued its aggressive nature with low-cost aggressive evaders like Blurry Beeble, but also delved into some dice rolling and artifact synergies. I'll be keeping an eye on blue to see that it doesn't get undervalued in drafts, but I feel the contraption game-plan for the color is pretty strong and will give it a bit of a new feel. Cards like Spy Eye and Gifts Given give it an interesting mini-theme of stealing opponent's cards.
*Green feels like the meaty mid-range color it should be with unstable's inclusion. It also picked up a strong dice roll sub-theme (As Luck Would Have It is actually a lot easier to pull off with contraptions in the mix than expected) and hopped on-board with the augment/host game-plan, especially with white. The old artifact removal, Remodel and Uktabi Kong, became quite the powerhouse picks now with so many colored artifacts in unstable (and the contraptions), First Pick was also added to further bolster this theme.
Some questions that will need to be adressed for any un-cube creator will be contraptions, size, and themes,
My thoughts on contraptions are to create seprate packs of 20-25 contraptions for people to build their contraption deck with, treating them kind of like basic land and not draft them. I want to free the space up for other cards and still give people the option of using them if they want.
I would only have 3-4 people at a time so size can be flexable from 180 to 540 depending on type of draft and how many supporring themes and non un cards I want to inclue. Thoughts?
I've always thought that if another un- set comes out, I'd like to buy into a majority of the cards. A cube sounded fun with the new cards, especially with the addition of host/augment and contraption deck.
I've been thinking about it, and I think the best way to go about the contraption cards would indeed be to make a seperate drafting form for them and just build in the contraptions if your packs worked with it. The question I have is how many of each contraption would be in the set, and would you choose to do packs with the contraption post normal packs?
Keep in mind that the contraptions should probably be sleeved with different sleeves then the rest of the cube, as each booster has only two of them. Also, to make even more realistic and balanced boosters, run a computer simulator of boosters and make the physical booster as the same as you can do. The only downside is 1 rare/mythic might be too few, but for my playgroup it works well.
Black Border Support: Changelings (8ish for each color), Adaptive Automaton (2 or 3), Soul Foundry (just one)all for the random tribal support in unhinged/unglued (this includes chickens, expansion symbols, donkeys, even can play into Old Fogey). Made red into a coin flip tribal of sorts using Goblin Archaeologist, Krark's Thumb, Goblin Bomb, Chance Encounter, Stitch in Time, Game of Chaos, etc. I also added some Heap Doll to the cube as grave-hate for the few gotcha cards I'm running.
Silver-Border thoughts: So, a few things I realized and kept in mind when building my cube; Physical action cards are annoying, not entertaining (this includes cards like Side to Side, Bureaucracy, Enter the Dungeon, Red-Hot Hottie, etc). I found people are okay with things like Knight of the Hokey Pokey and Mesa Chicken, even Mouth to Mouth (only a couple). Avoid gotcha cards like the plague basically. They are anti-fun for the most part. I included a few in my cube, but they are few and far between. I avoided Name Dropping altogether because it was nightmare for my opponents when I drafted it back in the day. I have a couple Cardpecker, a lone Number Crunch, a couple Creature Guy, couple Save Life, a Deal Damage, a Kill Destroy, a Spell Counter and a couple Stop That. Those few out of a 600-650ish card cube feels about right. I even made sure I had grave-hate in the cube to help answer them. I also printed proxies of each holiday card excluding Thopter Pie Network, Goblin Sleigh Ride and Mishra's Toy Workshop (as these cards require either physical action or specific objects). I kept rare and truly obstructive cards to an absolute minimum (things like Staying Power, Topsy Turvy. I did include a handful of "future" cards like Double Dip, because they can be entertaining (I have notes I keep with the cube to remember our cube games for that stuff).
Lands and such: So, I only run two un-lands in the cube; a single copy each of City of Ass and R&D Secret Lair. I have a large pile of sorted nonbasic lands that form land pool that everyone picks from between packs (couple City of Brass, Exotic Orchard, multiples of each guild-gate, Evolving Wilds, Shimmering Grotto, etc. I even created proxies of Gem Bazaar from the old Microprose game and worded them to work with dice roll mechanics. This makes stealing cards better as you can actually play stuff you stole from someone if you pick your lands right. It definitely removes the "feel-bad" of taking lands over more useful cards.
As far as the new set goes, I'm planning on adding a special pack in the middle (maybe after pack 1) that includes conspiracies and contraptions. I'll likely focus a bit more on conspiracies that aren't so "draft-matters", but I'm still working on that. I will be dropping a few filler unhinged cards and expanding the cube to accommodate the new stuff. There are already quite a few synergies with tribal stuff like squirrels, killbots, etc. The dice roll stuff from the older sets in green definitely play into a nice die-roll tribal for As Luck Would Have it, looking forward to that. Augments and such are just a nice bonus to add depth. Still looking over the new stuff, especially in lieu of multiple versions of the same card with different rules text.
I am also adding in some special cards for support to give players a break from the complete wackiness in gold bordered world championship cards. The idea of my cube initially was to create a fun draft environment with cards people cannot play in tournaments, and these fit the bill while giving the cube some added punch with some powerful cards that aren't technically tournament legal. Tapping a gold bordered Gaea's Cradle to cast Slaying Mantis is gonna be fun
I do not have a final number for all the cards in my cube just yet (since the new card art-effects in Unstable threw off my original math and a lot of tweaking to do once I get all the cards in the mail) but it will be around 600 I think. I still also have two holiday promos to get (Gifts Given and the new one, Some Disassembly Required) but that should be the ballpark number.
Only thing I am trying to come up with now is how to play it, either 2 four-player pods or 4 regular two-player games. Lots of choices
Archetypes/Goals for this cube:
- Host/Augment
- Contraptions
- Playing games other than Magic (Hangman, B-I-N-G-O, etc.)
- Dice rolling
- Breaking rules
- Crazy legends
I will say that this is a horrible time to be gathering singles from Unglued/Unhinged. I had price checked cards several weeks ago, and when I checked again today, some cards had quadrupled in price. I'm assuming that is largely due to their current legality in Commander, with a splash of speculators driving prices up. I may have to wait on some until after January 15, when only casuals and cubers are looking for them and the hype has died down.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
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I realized with my cube that I can add duplicates of some of the better hosts and simply add the augments to the conspiracy/contraption packs. I think this solution is the best way to handle them in mine at least, means I'm not cutting down on the standard card pool with potentially dead cards and not forced to flood the cube with hosts (though I will be running quite a few still).
For me right now, my cube kinda looks like this (delving a bit more into each color);
White: Control aspects some aggro support. Couple fumigates, fair amount of removal (Prismatic Wardrobe, AWOL, Crib Swap, etc), Wordmail, Emcee, etc. Definitely lots of life gain strewn about. There are some cheap creatures to fuel the aggro side of white, the number will increase with unstable's inclusion, and it will cause it to pair nicely with green with that Crossbreed Labs stuff.
Blue: Definitely control, with all the old unglued counterspell enchantments/spells. Fair amount of evasion creatures and definitely heavy on Un-shenanigans. In my cube, I added a handful of beebles and such to add to that evasive-beatdown side of blue. Censorship is a great counter for the handful of gotcha cards running around in my cube. Stunt Double, Puca's Mischief and Switcheroo are notable black border inclusions.
Black: Sort of a mid-rangey/control feel. Lots of (literal) hand disruption, some minor creature removal, home of a couple of the biggest beaters in the cube (Infernal Spawn of Evil and Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil, I contemplated adding B.F.M.(Big Furry Monster) to the cube as a pair in one card, but there just wasn't room and it's a really silly card to try to draft). I had some fun with it and added 3 copies of Ow as well. There are a few creatures that really help make black a strong choice in unstable, Hangman being the most notable. I'm looking forward to using unstable to tilt it a bit into the dice-rolling League of Dastardly Doom feel.
Red: Coin-flip and Aggro/Burn. I really brought the coin flip effects out with a pair of Chance Encounters in the cube. Red got a ton of black bordered cards like Game of Chaos, Karplusan Minotaur, Goblin Bomb, Goblin Archaeologist, Goblin Assassin, Goblin Bookie. They even got out of color support in the form of Krark's Thumb, Squee's Revenge and Stitch in Time (evena stray Boompile). I touched a little bit on goblin tribal obviously, and decided to include Squee, Goblin Nabob. Assquatch plays nice with all the changelings, it's actually pretty brutal. Yet Another Aether Vortex is among my favorite cards in the cube.
Green: Mid-rangey. Green is actually the most confused color in the cube currently, having decent creatures and such, but it's kind of all over the place. Symbol Status is first pick material in my cube with things like Adapative Automaton. B-I-N-G-O is a huge bomb in multiplayer pods. S.N.O.T. has shown itself to be pretty solid, especially if you happen to snag the Soul Foundry. Green is definitely going to be getting some attention with unstable inclusion. Crossbreed Labs stuff, Squirrels and more dice rolling focus to fuel As Luck Would Have It (will cause it to pair really nicely with red for things like Ol' Buzzbark and such). Really looking forward to the changes there.
Multi-Color: Here I have things like proxies of the Holiday Promos (Gifts Given, Naughty//Nice and Yule Ooze are all pretty bomby). I also included a proxy of the Dungeon Master planeswalker that was given to certain employees not too long ago (debating on doing the duel masters dragon as well now that Urza will be going in). Rare-B-Gone and Ass Whuppin' are a couple other big inclusions.
Conspiracies, Contraptions and Augments will fill a special set of packs to go around between packs 1 and 2. Hell, I even considered tossing some of the lower-power hero special cards from the Theros prerelease events awhile back in there (I decided against it simply because even the weak ones are really too strong for drafting). I feel these packs have a lot of potential to be fun, but I have to be careful about what I want to throw in there. Things like Sovereign's Realm and Worldknit are a bit too strong honestly. Cards like Weight Advantage, Backup Plan, Advantageous Proclamation, and Sentinel Dispatch seem good though.
My Cube is designed for a 4 person Glimpse draft...so when completed it will be 540 cards.
I kept things at a 3:2:1 ratio except for having two Mirror Entity.
I probably added things at a higher power level than the Unstable set, especially the Artifacts.
Not sure what more to add or take out.
http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/94338
I will try to get a list together after I update it. For now, the cube is in pieces as I take the opportunity to use some of the cards for commander while they are legal and plan for Unstable (which will also involve new sleeves). There's a white border Game of Chaos and Master Decoy (definitely have to roll with the Phil Foglio art on it though), but I can't think of any other un-like cards in white border that I'd like to run in there. I know Border Guardian and like two other unstable cards care about white border cards.
Beyond cards like Watermarket, City of Ass and R&D's Secret Lair (maybe even Secret Base ), there's not much point in making them silver border beyond just making them affected by Ass Whuppin' and such. Hell, I tweaked and added this land from the old Microprose game into my land draft pool (added about 4 to the pool) and while I made them work with dice rolling, I left them black bordered.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1waZgvcjUEqJ8IbgEdsRUK1nknH_12qyjK77aYpX0siM/edit?usp=sharing
Cube Build:
Pack Build:
In building the list, i started from the 3-2-1 basis and then checked the color and slot balances. Unfortunately, due to variants, a standard 3-2-1 build breaks the balance among the colors when it comes to rarity. While each color has the same number of total cards, blue and green have significantly more rares (statistically) than the others, while white has more commons, etc.
Instead of trying to balance this by changing the distribution of unstable cards, I decided to try balancing it with the addition of singleton, flavorful, mechanic-friendly cards from unglued/unhinged. This would retain the core of the cube as unstable, and ensure play-ability, but get some of the classic cards like cheatyface and enter the dungeon into the fray.
So lets talk about splash-card selection. Unglued and unhinged were filled with just totally un-fun cards. Many of the dice rolling mechanics were just unplayable. Many of the "Gotcha" cards made the game un-fun. And to throw this out there - there simply wasn't much synergy within the sets themselves. Out of 250 cards, I deemed about 86 as "potential" selections across all colors and rarities. This presents a problem - that's not much to work with while retaining both rarity distribution balance AND mana-curve balance. After some playing, I settled on a total of 35 splashes, all as singletons.
The big problem: Color fixing.
Color fixing in unstable is awful. It's perfectly fine in constructed, since you can make more focused decisions - but trying to draft fixing based on watermarks is just plain bad. Further, in order to have sufficient support, you really need to add multiples of each variant - this drives down the power level of decks and increases variance per pack toward containing multiple bases (which does not happen in real packs).
Given this, I can see three options available to do color fixing:
I'm heavily leaning toward option #2, and leaning on option #3 as a fallback. I reason that drafting a secret base almost always feels bad, so I would rather just replace it with more playable cards. Not adding in draftable fixing, but leaving the bases available for construction, still forces people to draft in the set-designed guilds, but makes for a better drafting experience overall. Skewing conspiracies toward mana-fixing allows for a bit more flexibility, and drives down the general power of conspiracies so they don't take center stage.
The last thing i haven't done a ton of math on or testing yet is the curve of each color. From the current look, it seems like red needs to be downshifted a bit to be more playable, but i think red will also want to be playing artifacts and depending more on contraptions, so it may equal out.
Anyway, that's been my design process so far. Still trying to figure out how to get Ass Whuppin' in there, but for the most part i think it's looking decently stable. If i were to make any major change, it might be to go 4-2-1, dropping all secret bases, and bringing commons up to support a 10-person pod - but I don't think I'll have that many people drafting that often.
As far as mana-fixing, I stated above there the method I use for land drafting. It does lead to a lot of dual color splashing a third, but I don't see it as a bad thing. The land draft I do is one of the biggest things players compliment when they draft my cube.
Use a handy d20 if you're not online!
+1
1. "Until end of turn, up to one target creature gets +1/+1 and gains first strike, vigilance, and lifelink.",
2. "Distribute three +1/+1 counters among one, two, or three target creatures you control.",
3. "Destroy target noncreature permanent.",
4. "Create two 3/1 red Elemental creature tokens with haste. Exile them at the beginning of the next end step.",
5. "Create three 1/1 white Soldier creature tokens.",
6. "Create a 3/3 black Beast creature token with deathtouch.",
7. "Reveal the top five cards of your library. Put all creature cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.",
8. "During target opponent's next turn, creatures that player controls attack Urza if able.",
9. "Put a loyalty counter on Urza for each creature target opponent controls.",
10. "Until your next turn, whenever a creature an opponent controls attacks, it gets -1/-0 until end of turn.",
11. "Target player exiles a card from his or her hand.",
12. "Reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land card, put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it into your hand.",
13. "Target land you control becomes a 4/4 Elemental creature with trample. It's still a land.",
14. "Draw a card, then add one mana of any color to your mana pool.",
15. "Until end of turn, Urza becomes a legendary 4/4 red Dragon creature with flying, indestructible, and haste. (He doesn't lose loyalty while he's not a planeswalker.)",
16. "Until your next turn,creatures you control get +1/+0 and gain lifelink.",
17. "Look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal an artifact card from among them and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.",
18. "Urza deals 3 damage to target creature or player.",
19. "Until your next turn,whenever a creature deals combat damage to Urza, destroy that creature.",
20. "Add X mana in anycombination of colors to your mana pool, where X is the number of creatures you control."
-1
1."Urza deals 3 damage to each creature.",
2."Gain control of target creature.",
3."Urza deals 4 damage to target creature or player and you gain 4 life.",
4."Destroy target creature. You gain life equal to its toughness.",
5."You get an emblem with 'Creatures you control get +1/+1.'",
6."You may put a creature card from your hand onto the battlefield.",
7."Draw three cards, then put a card from your hand on top of your library.",
8."Target player puts the top ten cards of his or her library into his or her graveyard.",
9."Reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other on the bottom of your library in any order.",
10."Exile target permanent.",
11."Reveal the top five cards of your library. You may put all creature cards and/or land cards from among them into your hand. Put the rest into your graveyard.",
12."Search your library for a card and put that card into your hand. Then shuffle your library.",
13."Target player sacrifices two creatures.",
14."Create a 5/5 black Demon creature token with flying. You lose 2 life.",
15."Create a 4/4 gold Dragon creature token with flying.",
16."Target player's life total becomes 10.",
17."Destroy target nonland permanent.",
18."Return target permanent from a graveyard to the battlefield under your control.",
19."Create two 3/3 green Beast creature tokens.",
20. "Draw four cards and discard two cards."
-6
1. Urza deals 7 damage to target player. That player discards seven cards, then sacrifices seven permanents.",
2. "You get an emblem with 'If a source would deal damage to you or a planeswalker you control, prevent all but 1 of that damage.'",
3. "Destroy all lands target player controls.",
4. "Create X 2/2 white Cat creature tokens, where X is your life total.",
5. "You gain 100 life.",
6. "Urza deals 10 damage to target player and each creature he or she controls.",
7. "You get an emblem with 'Creatures you control have double strike, trample, hexproof, and haste.'",
8. "You get an emblem with 'Artifacts, creatures, enchantments, and lands you control have indestructible.'",
9. "Create a 6/6 green Wurm creature token for each land you control.",
10. "Each player shuffles his or her hand and graveyard into his or her library. You draw seven cards.",
11. "Destroy up to three target creatures and/or other planeswalkers. Return each card put into a graveyard this way to the battlefield under your control.",
12. "You get an emblem with 'Whenever you cast a spell, exile target permanent.'",
13. "You get an emblem with 'Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, you may have it fight target creature.' Then create three 8/8 blue Octopus creature tokens.",
14. "You control target player during that player's next turn.",
15. "Exile all cards from target player's library, then that player shuffles his or her hand into his or her library.",
16. "Create three 1/1 black Assassin creature tokens with 'Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game.'",
17. "Put all creature cards from all graveyards onto the battlefield under your control.",
18. "You gain X life and draw X cards, where X is the number of lands you control.",
19. "Flip five coins. Take an extra turn after this one for each coin that comes up heads.",
20. "You gain 7 life, draw seven cards, then put up to seven permanent cards from your hand onto the battlefield.
The Steamflogged
Human Rigger Rebels
Resisting The Tyranny of the Anti-Contraptionists.
Viva L'Assemblage!
Legacy--UGBFood Chain; UFish; UBRG Delver
Commander--UB Sygg, River Cutthroat; W Isamaru, H.O.K.WRG Naya grouphug Enchantress
60 Card Singleton -- WB value drain
UN- -- W Weenie (Wordmail on Knight of the Hokey Pokey is good beats)
Do you have your land pile online somewhere? Very curious how you managed to make this balanced and which lands you used.
Are you just trying to make a pure unstable cube?
I don't have any of it listed online yet, but it looks something like this;
2x City of Brass
2x Exotic Orchard
4x Gem Bazaar (see above)
10x Evolving Wilds
10x Shimmering Grotto
3x of each guild gate
Each player will end up with 6 lands from this assortment ultimately. Pick order changes up each pack and the number of picks increase after each pack (1-2-3, one at a time). It leads to better color-fixing and more reliable mana bases, which leads to less color screw games (which I view to be a good thing). It also helps out the cards that steal cards from opponents' libraries/hands.
Well, I ended up with a ton of Unstable cards after doing a draft. And I was wondering what to do with it. Everybody who attended had a great time drafting the set, so I figured a redraftable cube would be the most sufficient option. So I started doing some research on building a cube in general and how to make a set-cube. This got me here. So far I decided to go with the 3-2-1 ratio, since this gives the most options of different crafts during the draft. But then I reminded the different versions of some cards in the set.
Maybe I will add some Conspiracy (which I realy like), Unglued/Unhinged cards later on. The option of adding some blackbordered cards which go well with the set like Krark's Thumb is open as well.
Also, the non-basic landpile is a great idea to smoothen out the games. A lot of games during our draft ended up in favour of the player not getting mana flooded/screwed, which is a bit lame. The set is great, but in my opinion WoTC missed a spot with not putting enough manafixing in the set. Either you have to stick with 2 colours or draft green for Wild Crocodile or Selfie Preservation.
Yes, the mana-fixing sucks. I haven't been happy with the Secret Bases at all. The odds are just too much against them - they only cover five of the ten two-color combos, but they don't even fix for all cards in those colors. It feels like each deck has at most 5-7 cards that can even benefit from the fixing, at which point a basic land is better because it will at least work with other cards of the same color. I really wanted to keep this strictly un-cards, but I may have to break that for playability.
What do you guys think of wacky/unconventional fixing to fit the cube? Stuff like Rainbow Vale and Rhystic Cave? Or is that just too annoying and trying to hard?
EDIT: Forgot to mention, in one multiplayer game we had the crazy experience of a Half-Shark, Half-Pony alongside a Clocknapper. If not for a timely Just Desserts, no one else would have ever gotten a beginning phase again.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
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ManabaseCrafter
Seems fitting to the theme, but a contradiction to a solid manabase. Maybe you could use Paliano, the High City? Has the random factor, but still gives you an advantage in some cases.
2023 Average Peasant Cube|and Discussion
Because I have more decks than fit in a signature
Useful Resources:
MTGSalvation tags
EDHREC
ManabaseCrafter
Anyways, I traded someone some cards for a case of Dragon Shield Mattes to re-sleeve my cube, and rebuilt it. I'll get a list after I've run a couple playtests with my group here. I basically cut some of the higher CMC gimmicky stuff and some of the feel-bad creature cards (like Working Stiff, Vile Bile, etc) and expanded the count for each color a bit. I avoided adding anything watermark dependent like Stamp of Approval, Secret Base, Watermarket, etc because there just aren't enough watermark cards to utilize them effectively in the cube. I also avoided adding any cards that require outside participants like Squirrel Dealer and It That Gets Left Hanging because there are a lot of times everyone playing the cube is actually everyone in the area and we typically play it as a multiplayer cube. I did snag 2 Paliano, the High City for my land draft stuff (I keep forgetting that card exists). Ultimately I added roughly 25 unstable cards directly to each color and cut about 10ish older cards. I have created a special pack that goes after the first actual pack that is built entirely of conspiracies, contraptions and augments (I also added a couple Spy Kits to the cube because of the name-based conspiracies and it actually makes ABC's a viable draft pick as a side effect). So the cube looks like this now;
-90 of each color (25 of which are unstable cards)
-60 Artifacts (somewhere around 15-20 of them are unstable, mostly hosts)
-5 lands actually in the cube (City of Ass x2, R&D's Secret Lair x1, Springjack Pasture x2)
-20 Multi-color cards (mostly the legends from unstable with a handful of extras like Ass Whuppin' and Yuletide Ooze)
-60 lands in Land Draft set (list above, but with with 2x Paliano, the High City)
-100 Cards in what I'll refer to as the "Enhancement Pack" (contraptions, conspiracies and augments)
Notable changes since adjusting with unstable;
*Red is now a favorable draft color as it has strong pairings with green's dice rolling theme and has strong pairings with blue as a coin flip tribal still and pairs with black because of League of Dastardly Doom guild stuff.
*Black removal became a lot less gimmicky (if a bit higher on the CMC), Duh is actually pretty solid with unstable cards. The color also became a lot more aggressive in early game creatures with things like Hangman.
*White is definitely the aggro color it was before, but has better creature options at low CMC. The removal cards like GO TO JAIL from unstable in tangent with AWOL and Crib Swap make for a very strong control combo with black (as you would expect from a typical cube). Unstable brought with it some augment synergy with green, so the two colors got a slightly higher count of hosts than the other colors (and have a few more augments in the "Enhancement Pack").
*Blue continued its aggressive nature with low-cost aggressive evaders like Blurry Beeble, but also delved into some dice rolling and artifact synergies. I'll be keeping an eye on blue to see that it doesn't get undervalued in drafts, but I feel the contraption game-plan for the color is pretty strong and will give it a bit of a new feel. Cards like Spy Eye and Gifts Given give it an interesting mini-theme of stealing opponent's cards.
*Green feels like the meaty mid-range color it should be with unstable's inclusion. It also picked up a strong dice roll sub-theme (As Luck Would Have It is actually a lot easier to pull off with contraptions in the mix than expected) and hopped on-board with the augment/host game-plan, especially with white. The old artifact removal, Remodel and Uktabi Kong, became quite the powerhouse picks now with so many colored artifacts in unstable (and the contraptions), First Pick was also added to further bolster this theme.
*Artifacts were an easy way to boost host count in a neutral way. I only added a single Everythingamajig (the high impact Mirror Mirror one), not really sure if I want to add another one or not, maybe the proliferating one? Sword of Dungeons & Dragons as well as Proper Laboratory Attire ended up in the cube as well as Mad Science Fair Project.