I'm thinking I may got down to 3 multicolored cards per color combination, and with the 10 extra slots, add these draft-changers in. I'm on the fence about conspiracies. Are they too good for draft? Thinning the deck by 5 cards seems very powerful.
Cogwork Librarian is indeed never a maindeck card. And I'm not sure if it is just because it is new and will get old quick or because it is something to stay, but my group has drafted it twice and it was exciting and fun both times. Showed up in Pack 1 and Pack 3 and was definitely less impactful in Pack 3 but not unused. I'll likely be trying the 2 and 3 mana ones out as well.
With the -5 deck size card: do a few drafts and pay attention to the worst cards in your deck.
It's better for combo decks, so if there's an actual kiki-twin archetype in your cube it's value goes up, and it gets better the more disparate your power level is.
Like, I'm in the cut jitte camp of cube balance (debate that elsewhere) and the difference between the 5 best cards in my cube and the 5 worst cards in my cube is nowhere near the difference between sol ring and ... Iunno, goblin patrol? You get the idea
Cogwork Librarian is indeed never a maindeck card. And I'm not sure if it is just because it is new and will get old quick or because it is something to stay, but my group has drafted it twice and it was exciting and fun both times. Showed up in Pack 1 and Pack 3 and was definitely less impactful in Pack 3 but not unused. I'll likely be trying the 2 and 3 mana ones out as well.
I've erratta'd him to cost 3 and he's made a few maindecks, much the way I anticipate lore seeker to
My problem with the conspiracies is that none of them really do anything. I would have much rather had mo more powerful symmetric effects that I could build a deck around, like howling mine or mana flare.
Kingcobweb presented a way of thinking about these that changed my mind. Consider: you get to play 23 of the spells you draft. Everything else is effectively blank. Cubers love lands so much, because they break that paradigm. You can think of non-basics as bonus deck slots, because each one effectively upgrades one of your 17 basic land slots. (yes, this is an oversimplification. Stick with me.)
Conspiracies work like non-basic lands. Each one you draft, you get to upgrade one of your spells. Grab the Brago's Favor, and now your Time Walk has been upgraded to cost U. Draft Muzzio's Preparations, and now your Goblin Guide is upgraded to be a 3/3. No mana. No card invested. The only cost is a draft pick, and you can value it accordingly. I think these are going to be amazing skill testers.
Cogwork Librarian is indeed never a maindeck card. And I'm not sure if it is just because it is new and will get old quick or because it is something to stay, but my group has drafted it twice and it was exciting and fun both times. Showed up in Pack 1 and Pack 3 and was definitely less impactful in Pack 3 but not unused. I'll likely be trying the 2 and 3 mana ones out as well.
We've been drafting with Librarian in the mix ever since it was spoiled, and it's still picked very high (on average pick 4 or even higher). We've enjoyed it a ton even if it's never been used as an actual magic card.
I don't know what to think about the conspiracies. All of them improve your deck at the low cost of draft opportunity, but they range from low-impact (most of the Hidden Agenda cycle) to match-alteringly powerful (Advantageous Proclamation and Power Play seem first pickable).
Power play doesn't just let you win all dice rolls either, even if you win the first game, you go first in the second game. And the third. I just worry about the feelbad of losing to the same aggro deck twice in a row without ever having a chance to play first.
There's good cards, then there's breaking the fundamental rules of the game to eek out wins. I don't know which side of the fence these conspiracies fall on.
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The GameCube, a 500 cube with a medium power level and a focus on fun and fringe playables rather than immediately shutting your opponent down with the best cards ever printed.
Modem Masters, a 500 cube that tries to capture the essence of a Modern Masters set draft. 3 of each common, 2 of each uncommon, 1 of each rare, few mythics. Includes minor changes for balance reasons to give certain archetypes the tools they need to succeed.
Yeah the "you go first" one seems more suited to multiplayer where going first has less of an impact than in 1v1 and where you're likely only playing a single game.
Yea, after thinking about it some more, I'd say that both Advantageous Proclamation and Power Play are downright unpassable in a most cube environments. The consistency that Proclamation gives you (especially P1P1) seems more powerful than any card in cube, and playing a tuned aggressive deck with Power Play probably starts you off with at least a 60% chance to win the match.
I would banish them to fully powered cubes willing to delve into the Conspiracy setup. I can't imagine them being anything but format-warpingly powerful.
Worldknit feels more powerful in Cube than normal draft, but probably still not good, and certainly not worth running when you consider that it's pretty dead 2/3 of the time it gets opened.
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
So... Worldknit means you don't have a sideboard and that you have to run everything you drafted? Weird. I guess it's a nice way to support that 5CC deck, as the cost of having a 50-60+ card deck.
I think I would be more open to regularly including these cards if they're more like Worldknit and less like Immediate Action. Definitely going to try some at least once.
I wonder if Conspiracy is going to schism the cube community. There will be at least 50% of Cubers who won't run draft altering cards on principle, since they are basically uncards.
The cubes that do run might end up warped around them to the point that conspiracy and non-conspiracy cubes are simply not commensurate anymore (although at the moment that scenario seems more likely if you run Conspiracies than that draft artifacts..but who knows how screwy they went with some of the rare artifacts)
I don't think so. I'd be happy with a semi-random setup to help balance out the draft process. My current idea is to post-draft hand the first drafter a mini-pack of two or three random conspiracies and pick one, then hand the next drafter a pack of two or three random conspiracies, until everyone has picked from the cubeable conspiracies, and return any undrafted ones to the box. It's nothing new since I know at least one game that does something similar (Twilight Imperium and its hidden Agendas). It works for me because I see 8 out of 10 currently spoiled conspiracies as cubeable, which would only require maybe one or two of the last three to be decent enough for inclusion in this system. Beyond eight players though, I think you'll have to invent another workaround
I wonder if Conspiracy is going to schism the cube community. There will be at least 50% of Cubers who won't run draft altering cards on principle, since they are basically uncards.
The cubes that do run might end up warped around them to the point that conspiracy and non-conspiracy cubes are simply not commensurate anymore (although at the moment that scenario seems more likely if you run Conspiracies than that draft artifacts..but who knows how screwy they went with some of the rare artifacts)
There are already plenty of schisms in the Cube community:
Powered vs Unpowered
Modern vs Vintage
Peasant/Pauper vs Regular
EDH/Multiplayer vs Regular
Include vs Exclude Silver-Borders
360 vs 450 vs 540 vs 630 vs 720 vs 720+
Draft vs Sealed
etc
None of these schisms are so wide that we can't find common ground.
I have an EDH Cube, but I can still evaluate how good a card would be in a 360 unpowered modern cube or a 720 peasant multiplayer silver-bordered cube.
And odds are, there will be a lower difference between a "Conspiracy Cube" vs a "Non-Conspiracy Cube" than Powered vs Unpowered. There are 13 conspiracies and maybe 10 constructs and we already know 5 of the former and at least 2 of the latter are unplayble (the Hidden Agendas are bad in a singleton draft format, and Whispergear Sneak/Cogwork Spy are both unplayable and only minorly affect the draft)
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If people run these, it might divide cubes more on the basis of drafting type than on anything else. I mean, some of these Constructs work in Winston drafts, but a lot of them don't. The Conspiracies have a few cool ones though, and I could see drafting a really weird deck about Worldknit if I saw it early. The opportunity cost of picking a Conspiracy overall an actual playable might be fun for a while so maybe we'll give them a whirl, at least the ones that function in Winston draft.
But creating a 'schism' doesn't worry me for the reasons Wildfire mentioned... not to add 'singleton/non-singleton' to that debate, if you consider such a cube.
I don't think it divides the community at all. We already have our own unique things about our cubes that make them play differently from one another, and the Conspiracies are no different than other Un- card support, and the draft manipulators are only separated by whether or not the cube plays Winston/Sealed, just like a lot of other card selections are.
I'm beginning to come around on these cards. I think I'd like to get the ones I want and keep them on the side. In some drafts, we'll choose to do it Conspiracy style and some we won't. I'll just make sure the Conspiracy stuff gets shuffled into the portion of my cube that actually gets drafted. Great, I just found a way to spend more money on Magic!
Advantageous Proclamation seems to be very good, but also balanced. It is a strong pick for sure and especially aggro or combo decks should be able to profit from the reduced deck size.
Sentinel Dispatch on the other hand seems like a very solid pick up for control decks. Getting a completely free blocker is certainly worth a middle pick.
Worldknit seems like the most fun. It is a shame that it does not really work in Winston draft, though, and that is what will probably keep it out of my cube.
Power Play and Backup Plan: These are the problematic conspiracies in my opinion. They are clearly balanced around a multiplayer format with best-of-1 matches. For regular two player cube and best of 3 or best of 5 matches, they seem much too strong to me. Both are very mindless first pick that grant a substantial guaranteed advantage to one player.
7 mana 6/4. When you draft it, reveal the next card you draft and mark it down. Whenever 7 mana 6/4 ETB, you may search your library/hand for the named card and play it without paying it's mana cost.
Now, obviously this card is a huge gamble. But, it allows you to do some really, really powerful things potentially. This can be reanimated, show and telled, snuck attacked (sic?), Channeled, or even just hardcast. It's an artifact, so it's a potentially insane tinker target (gets you a 6/4 + a non-artifact creature), and you can also Mishra's Workshop it out.
Now the risk here is obvious:
1, there has to be a big, splashy card in the direct next path to make this worthwile. I think most 6+ mana cards in the cube would make this worthwhile, with obvious payoffs with crazy stuff like Tooth and Nail, Eldrazi, Griselbrand, etc. But if your next pack is just a bunch of spot removal, mana dorsk, and lands, you just completely wasted what has to be a relatively early draft pick.
The fact that this allows you to cast from hand saves it though, IMO. It means if you draw your random fatty you aren't stuck with a dead card + a Razorfield Thresher in your hand.
Basically, if you're supporting Green Ramp/ Tinker/ Eldrazi/ Reanimator, I think this is definitely worth testing and could be very good.
As far as the conspiracies go, I think they will be fun as a once in a while thing, where once in a while you add a conspiracy to each pack in the draft.
I actually really like worldknit because it supports a really wacky archetype (PLAY ALL THE CARDS), without taking up more than 1 spot in the cube. It's exactly the kind of fun card I can see myself and my cube buddies playing, especially because my cube is a lower power level (no JTMS or Jitte). I quite like it and am excited to see how many times people try to play it.
I wonder if Conspiracy is going to schism the cube community. There will be at least 50% of Cubers who won't run draft altering cards on principle, since they are basically uncards.
The cubes that do run might end up warped around them to the point that conspiracy and non-conspiracy cubes are simply not commensurate anymore (although at the moment that scenario seems more likely if you run Conspiracies than that draft artifacts..but who knows how screwy they went with some of the rare artifacts)
There are already plenty of schisms in the Cube community:
Powered vs Unpowered
Modern vs Vintage
Peasant/Pauper vs Regular
EDH/Multiplayer vs Regular
Include vs Exclude Silver-Borders
360 vs 450 vs 540 vs 630 vs 720 vs 720+
Draft vs Sealed
etc
None of these schisms are so wide that we can't find common ground.
I have an EDH Cube, but I can still evaluate how good a card would be in a 360 unpowered modern cube or a 720 peasant multiplayer silver-bordered cube.
And odds are, there will be a lower difference between a "Conspiracy Cube" vs a "Non-Conspiracy Cube" than Powered vs Unpowered. There are 13 conspiracies and maybe 10 constructs and we already know 5 of the former and at least 2 of the latter are unplayble (the Hidden Agendas are bad in a singleton draft format, and Whispergear Sneak/Cogwork Spy are both unplayable and only minorly affect the draft)
I think your premise muddles the point. Most of what you list are VARIANTS but conform to the same basic structure of Cube. Pauper and EDH exist as their own microcosms and I could see the same thing happening with Conspiracy vs Non. However, instead of settling into its own niche, Conspiracy could end up being a competitor with "traditional" Cubes. Although on further review, I doubt it very much simply because the novelty of Un cards wears off quicker than you think and the nuisance factor sets in quicker than you might imagine as well.
Even effects that don't affect gameplay like Miss Demeanor start to detract from the overall experience if you are trying to play serious games.
Agent of Acquisition 2
Artifact Creature - Construct
Draft him face up.
Turn him face down: Draft the entirety of your current pack instead of anything else this round
2/1
For all those times you go "Man, I want this ENTIRE PACK"
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It's better for combo decks, so if there's an actual kiki-twin archetype in your cube it's value goes up, and it gets better the more disparate your power level is.
Like, I'm in the cut jitte camp of cube balance (debate that elsewhere) and the difference between the 5 best cards in my cube and the 5 worst cards in my cube is nowhere near the difference between sol ring and ... Iunno, goblin patrol? You get the idea
I've erratta'd him to cost 3 and he's made a few maindecks, much the way I anticipate lore seeker to
Kingcobweb presented a way of thinking about these that changed my mind. Consider: you get to play 23 of the spells you draft. Everything else is effectively blank. Cubers love lands so much, because they break that paradigm. You can think of non-basics as bonus deck slots, because each one effectively upgrades one of your 17 basic land slots. (yes, this is an oversimplification. Stick with me.)
Conspiracies work like non-basic lands. Each one you draft, you get to upgrade one of your spells. Grab the Brago's Favor, and now your Time Walk has been upgraded to cost U. Draft Muzzio's Preparations, and now your Goblin Guide is upgraded to be a 3/3. No mana. No card invested. The only cost is a draft pick, and you can value it accordingly. I think these are going to be amazing skill testers.
Cubetutor Link
There's good cards, then there's breaking the fundamental rules of the game to eek out wins. I don't know which side of the fence these conspiracies fall on.
Modem Masters, a 500 cube that tries to capture the essence of a Modern Masters set draft. 3 of each common, 2 of each uncommon, 1 of each rare, few mythics. Includes minor changes for balance reasons to give certain archetypes the tools they need to succeed.
I would banish them to fully powered cubes willing to delve into the Conspiracy setup. I can't imagine them being anything but format-warpingly powerful.
Cubetutor Link
Worldknit feels more powerful in Cube than normal draft, but probably still not good, and certainly not worth running when you consider that it's pretty dead 2/3 of the time it gets opened.
Interested in Custom Card Creation.
My Cube:Cardinal Custom Cube
A custom version of a third modern masters: MM2019
(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
The cubes that do run might end up warped around them to the point that conspiracy and non-conspiracy cubes are simply not commensurate anymore (although at the moment that scenario seems more likely if you run Conspiracies than that draft artifacts..but who knows how screwy they went with some of the rare artifacts)
My Cube (DeckStats)
My Pauper Cube: 540 (CubeTutor link!)
Level 1 Judge
There are already plenty of schisms in the Cube community:
Powered vs Unpowered
Modern vs Vintage
Peasant/Pauper vs Regular
EDH/Multiplayer vs Regular
Include vs Exclude Silver-Borders
360 vs 450 vs 540 vs 630 vs 720 vs 720+
Draft vs Sealed
etc
None of these schisms are so wide that we can't find common ground.
I have an EDH Cube, but I can still evaluate how good a card would be in a 360 unpowered modern cube or a 720 peasant multiplayer silver-bordered cube.
And odds are, there will be a lower difference between a "Conspiracy Cube" vs a "Non-Conspiracy Cube" than Powered vs Unpowered. There are 13 conspiracies and maybe 10 constructs and we already know 5 of the former and at least 2 of the latter are unplayble (the Hidden Agendas are bad in a singleton draft format, and Whispergear Sneak/Cogwork Spy are both unplayable and only minorly affect the draft)
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
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But creating a 'schism' doesn't worry me for the reasons Wildfire mentioned... not to add 'singleton/non-singleton' to that debate, if you consider such a cube.
On spoiled card wishlisting and 'should-have-had'-isms:
My 630 Card Powered Cube
My Article - "Cube Design Philosophy"
My Article - "Mana Short: A study in limited resource management."
My 50th Set (P)review - Discusses my top 20 Cube cards from OTJ!
Cheers,
rant
My Cube
CubeCobra: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/5f5d0310ed602310515d4c32
Cube Tutor: http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/1963
Advantageous Proclamation seems to be very good, but also balanced. It is a strong pick for sure and especially aggro or combo decks should be able to profit from the reduced deck size.
Sentinel Dispatch on the other hand seems like a very solid pick up for control decks. Getting a completely free blocker is certainly worth a middle pick.
Worldknit seems like the most fun. It is a shame that it does not really work in Winston draft, though, and that is what will probably keep it out of my cube.
Power Play and Backup Plan: These are the problematic conspiracies in my opinion. They are clearly balanced around a multiplayer format with best-of-1 matches. For regular two player cube and best of 3 or best of 5 matches, they seem much too strong to me. Both are very mindless first pick that grant a substantial guaranteed advantage to one player.
7 mana 6/4. When you draft it, reveal the next card you draft and mark it down. Whenever 7 mana 6/4 ETB, you may search your library/hand for the named card and play it without paying it's mana cost.
Now, obviously this card is a huge gamble. But, it allows you to do some really, really powerful things potentially. This can be reanimated, show and telled, snuck attacked (sic?), Channeled, or even just hardcast. It's an artifact, so it's a potentially insane tinker target (gets you a 6/4 + a non-artifact creature), and you can also Mishra's Workshop it out.
Now the risk here is obvious:
1, there has to be a big, splashy card in the direct next path to make this worthwile. I think most 6+ mana cards in the cube would make this worthwhile, with obvious payoffs with crazy stuff like Tooth and Nail, Eldrazi, Griselbrand, etc. But if your next pack is just a bunch of spot removal, mana dorsk, and lands, you just completely wasted what has to be a relatively early draft pick.
The fact that this allows you to cast from hand saves it though, IMO. It means if you draw your random fatty you aren't stuck with a dead card + a Razorfield Thresher in your hand.
Basically, if you're supporting Green Ramp/ Tinker/ Eldrazi/ Reanimator, I think this is definitely worth testing and could be very good.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
I think your premise muddles the point. Most of what you list are VARIANTS but conform to the same basic structure of Cube. Pauper and EDH exist as their own microcosms and I could see the same thing happening with Conspiracy vs Non. However, instead of settling into its own niche, Conspiracy could end up being a competitor with "traditional" Cubes. Although on further review, I doubt it very much simply because the novelty of Un cards wears off quicker than you think and the nuisance factor sets in quicker than you might imagine as well.
Even effects that don't affect gameplay like Miss Demeanor start to detract from the overall experience if you are trying to play serious games.
Agent of Acquisition 2
Artifact Creature - Construct
Draft him face up.
Turn him face down: Draft the entirety of your current pack instead of anything else this round
2/1
For all those times you go "Man, I want this ENTIRE PACK"
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
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