Yeah it's your draft format (well also your drafters) and if you want to make one where there is a good spot for a sweet card you like, like halimar depths, and you can make that happen, I'm all for exploring it. Some ideas are harder to wrap your head around than others though.
I love inventing cards but I've screwed that up before in cube hahahaha. I think it takes a lot of work to get custom cards working in cube more than I feel willing to figure out right now, but i like designing cards.
The PEZ cube I'm working on totally has errata though! My Harvest Wurms do not have the word basic on them and my Waylays are played the old way!
Oh well I probz contributed to that back when I cared, I haven't been on salvation much for a while because I keep missing the daily card contest first day signups and there is very little cube content being made by people who are not riptidelab affiliated right now.
I dunno it's a hot button issue to some people but it feels like one of those things where no one is putting raisins in their cookies so they might as well not be too up in arms about it. I think it's sad that there isn't more places to discuss sorta left wing draft format design ideas and people are so fundamentally opposed to pushing the conversation but I can understand their love of constrained optimization dynamics and I can see that they love the paradigms they are used to and want to talk to other people who share that same experience and don't have time to talk about other ideas.
It's probz better that it stays buried all things considered. Salvation as many forums has sorta predictable reactions to things and it's one of those discussions that often devolves into the "Equal-Colour-Sections VS Hybrid-etc" kind of old argument that I'm also kinda depressed always becomes a big closed minded fight.
But seriously people like you ahadabans make me super optimistic. Like maybe we don't agree about everything but we both have super sweet and rich experiences we are excited to share and learn from and I think that sort of approach is exactly what makes me excited to talk about formats I love and keep checking boards for cool info.
Purphoros's ScoldingR
Instant (U?)
Purphoros's Scolding deals 2 damage to target creature or player, if you payed the kicker cost instead it deals 4 damage to target creature or player.
Kicker RR
Hahaha I dunno the more angry at you he is, the more scalding his reprimand or something.
Halimar Deepening U
Sorcery
Search your library for an Island card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.
Look at the top 3 cards of your library and put them back in any order.
Wildfire my man I totally made a white command card that did something like that!
I think it was like a 2cc instant called Brilliant dawn and it could choose 2 - Search up a plains, scry 2, tap a guy and it couldn't untap and some other crappy ability. I feel like it's a much nicer sorta effect to put in the hands of a non blue colour but your idea is also super swell.
I'd probably just be way more inclined to run more copies of standard sifting spells, but you know finding that tundra and peering 3 sounds pretty swell too.
Feel free to hate away! I've found it to be super sweet. Love the weird aggro decks that crop up and the emphasis away from re-animator / fatty cheating and more toward graveyard advantages is pretty cool. Like Survival of the fittest is just such a sweet card with 2 gravecrawlers and 2 vengevines. Explosive zooish Steppe Lynx decks are also super sweet! Did you see that Modern deck that won the GP with them? I do admit though I find his love to wastelands intimidating, but I can imagine it's more fun when there is a fair distribution of them and the environment is designed around cheap spells.
I wish I could show you some other guy's set ups for the land draft but I'm not sure who has theirs linked to their Riptidelab page. I know there are a number of people who are playing with it though. I'm sure there is someone with a more conservative cube writing about the land draft on their page though.
If you want to be a real lazy git you can just add it as a 15 or 16th card gimmick to your packs. Every pack gets some dumb special land, but you know that still has the same lame tension problem as always, just opens up your packs a little.
The way I play with Eric's modern cube is that many man lands and super sweet utility lands are either included in standard fixing sections or multicoloured card sections of his cube. These are usually the super sweetest and things that go in tonnes of places like mutavault.
The fixing in his cube is super sweet too 20 fetches 20 shocks make for an environment where your mana can be relied upon if you invest in it even for super sweet legacy style multicolour aggro decks.
Things in the ultility land draft are things like moaning well and much of the innistrad spell land cycle (the ones not sweet enough to be considered for a multicoloured section slot) 10 pain lands (painful stuff when you are relying on a lot of shocks and fetches) and 5 colour fixing like gemstone mine and city of brass.
I think each colour has a bunch of okay monocolour lands too like flagstones or windbrusk. In modern cube with a super low curve the availability of hideaway lands in the land draft has been something of a very interesting metagame factor. I've been digging it so far but those 4 tec edges feel like they are going to become more relevant some day and be something very interesting to learn from.
Rest assured, though some players feel comfortable leaving much of their fixing to the land draft, they are usually in for a lot rockier of a wake up call than the others who acknowledge the tension between premium basic land type style fixing and sweet spells. The tension hasn't gone away, there are just more interesting questions thrown into there.
Man I'm really starting to think of bothering them into including things like land grant and other weird sorta-land stuff in this section. But maybe that's even too progressive for my peers.
Riptidelab is a lot more focused on trying to build cubes with built in environmental stipulations in order to sorta craft an environment. I'd check out Jason Waddel's articles on building his Eldrazi Domain Cube and a couple of other people on that site that have put in some work to give their draft environment a particular feel.
It's important to not make things too much about extremely constrained optimization because you will probably end up with a real unbalanced clunker. Try to think more about how you can craft an environment where the cards and rules you like can flourish.
From what I hear about thematic cubes like the zombie apocalypse cube or the recent Volrath VS Gerrard Cube project, it usually requires a little bending of the normal draft structure!
I think it's a part of the metagame that has not been fully realized yet. You know like how legacy was super different before wastelands and disruption became more prevalent?
If you are interested in it, there's the articles written by Jason Waddel on Channel Fireball, but I think there is probably an article or two on Riptidelab.com (Link in my sig) that discuss it a little more. It comes up a lot on our forums and I'm sure there is a thread for it on our cubetalk board. Jason's cube page also includes his land draft list! http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/jason-waddells-cube.14/
People seem to dig it so far. I think the biggest thing might be:
1) People figuring out how much fixing they actually need because the double suite of fetch lands have been tabling a lot more and I'm assuming it's because of the availability of evolving wilds pain lands and gemstone mine in the land draft.
2) Expanding the availability of certain effects to sorta support archetypes. Jason Waddel often talks about how green ramp can be interesting in his cube mainly because Primeval Titan is very cool with the land draft. I've been finding a lot of joy being able to assure my control decks have access to at least 2 manlands between the draft and the land draft, but I think super sweet stuff like making Vitu-Ghazi or or Cephalid Colosseum available for the people who can make a deck that will get some oomf out of those. Still early days.
3) The realization that there are a wealth (at least 3-4) Tec Edges available (mainly modern format) is something that is dawning super slowly and the crucible decks haven't been popping up with that in mind yet. I feel like the metagame that is being played right now in his cube is one that does not acknowledge that a player can have 2 tec edges pretty easily and like 2-3 other LD spells or things like Tammy. In a world that runs on 20 fetches and 20 shocklands mainly for fixing it feels like tec edge aggro could be as strong as the multicolour humans aggro and the zombie aggro decks.
Man I have had such good discussions about this card.
To me it's like the biggest most high maintenance man land you can pick up, but it totally doesn't tap for any mana. Or at least that is how I usually play it.
It also sometimes just feels like a blue fireball. It's like the slowest fireball in the world but it's pretty inevitable and it has the nice advantage of blocking sometimes and usually being good for a couple turns, but having it in my deck makes me feel like I have the inevitability that other good fireballs have given me in past environments.
It's one of those ones like olivia that make a big stink and has a really warping impact but you are like totes spending a million mana or having to threaten that mana to make it relevant. It's even more fun than olivia because often when you drop your AEtherling you totally have to face every dumb removal spell in your opponent's deck.
Halimar Depths has been consistently taken early in my buddy's Utility Land Draft and I've seen it make huge impacts on keeps and late game attrition wars. Even after the big miracle reduction of late.
I think it's a really sweet card in a format where everyone is fighting over the blue spells that influence your draws. It's also nice you can include it in your land draft instead of say, just doubling up on the sifting spells everyone seems to be interested in.
Man this card seems super sweet and UR cards always seem pretty low impact / interchangeable. On top of that UR is often a part of a 3 colour splash so I can't imagine it's that hard to justify. I can't wait till someone gives me a chance to play this sweet card.
It's not too hard to dredge-proof this card, so I don't see what the issue is.
Grinding Landscape
Land t: Add 1 to you mana pool.
When ~ is put into your graveyard from anywhere, put the top card of your library into your hand.
Sacrifice a creature you control: discard ~.
Easy peazy.
The card sacrifices things and sorta does stuff from weird zones but what's the hook? What did you have in mind buddy?
Wow it's like we shouldn't necessarily have to design around degenerate strategies like dredge. Not that I want to defend this real enabler of a card's right to exist, despite how much I love lands that do weird stuff and move between zones, but I think we are all tired of hearing about dredge. Why doesn't someone tell me about how amazing time vault is with things that untap while we are at it.
Anyway I'm sorry for ranting. I like lands, I want to find ways to increase the value of the average drawn land and make lands less like a concession of a third of your deck during deck building but this card doesn't feel like it's part of the solution lololololol
I love inventing cards but I've screwed that up before in cube hahahaha. I think it takes a lot of work to get custom cards working in cube more than I feel willing to figure out right now, but i like designing cards.
The PEZ cube I'm working on totally has errata though! My Harvest Wurms do not have the word basic on them and my Waylays are played the old way!
I dunno it's a hot button issue to some people but it feels like one of those things where no one is putting raisins in their cookies so they might as well not be too up in arms about it. I think it's sad that there isn't more places to discuss sorta left wing draft format design ideas and people are so fundamentally opposed to pushing the conversation but I can understand their love of constrained optimization dynamics and I can see that they love the paradigms they are used to and want to talk to other people who share that same experience and don't have time to talk about other ideas.
It's probz better that it stays buried all things considered. Salvation as many forums has sorta predictable reactions to things and it's one of those discussions that often devolves into the "Equal-Colour-Sections VS Hybrid-etc" kind of old argument that I'm also kinda depressed always becomes a big closed minded fight.
But seriously people like you ahadabans make me super optimistic. Like maybe we don't agree about everything but we both have super sweet and rich experiences we are excited to share and learn from and I think that sort of approach is exactly what makes me excited to talk about formats I love and keep checking boards for cool info.
Instant (U?)
Purphoros's Scolding deals 2 damage to target creature or player, if you payed the kicker cost instead it deals 4 damage to target creature or player.
Kicker RR
Hahaha I dunno the more angry at you he is, the more scalding his reprimand or something.
Wildfire my man I totally made a white command card that did something like that!
I think it was like a 2cc instant called Brilliant dawn and it could choose 2 - Search up a plains, scry 2, tap a guy and it couldn't untap and some other crappy ability. I feel like it's a much nicer sorta effect to put in the hands of a non blue colour but your idea is also super swell.
I'd probably just be way more inclined to run more copies of standard sifting spells, but you know finding that tundra and peering 3 sounds pretty swell too.
I wish I could show you some other guy's set ups for the land draft but I'm not sure who has theirs linked to their Riptidelab page. I know there are a number of people who are playing with it though. I'm sure there is someone with a more conservative cube writing about the land draft on their page though.
If you want to be a real lazy git you can just add it as a 15 or 16th card gimmick to your packs. Every pack gets some dumb special land, but you know that still has the same lame tension problem as always, just opens up your packs a little.
The fixing in his cube is super sweet too 20 fetches 20 shocks make for an environment where your mana can be relied upon if you invest in it even for super sweet legacy style multicolour aggro decks.
Things in the ultility land draft are things like moaning well and much of the innistrad spell land cycle (the ones not sweet enough to be considered for a multicoloured section slot) 10 pain lands (painful stuff when you are relying on a lot of shocks and fetches) and 5 colour fixing like gemstone mine and city of brass.
I think each colour has a bunch of okay monocolour lands too like flagstones or windbrusk. In modern cube with a super low curve the availability of hideaway lands in the land draft has been something of a very interesting metagame factor. I've been digging it so far but those 4 tec edges feel like they are going to become more relevant some day and be something very interesting to learn from.
Rest assured, though some players feel comfortable leaving much of their fixing to the land draft, they are usually in for a lot rockier of a wake up call than the others who acknowledge the tension between premium basic land type style fixing and sweet spells. The tension hasn't gone away, there are just more interesting questions thrown into there.
Man I'm really starting to think of bothering them into including things like land grant and other weird sorta-land stuff in this section. But maybe that's even too progressive for my peers.
It's important to not make things too much about extremely constrained optimization because you will probably end up with a real unbalanced clunker. Try to think more about how you can craft an environment where the cards and rules you like can flourish.
From what I hear about thematic cubes like the zombie apocalypse cube or the recent Volrath VS Gerrard Cube project, it usually requires a little bending of the normal draft structure!
If you are interested in it, there's the articles written by Jason Waddel on Channel Fireball, but I think there is probably an article or two on Riptidelab.com (Link in my sig) that discuss it a little more. It comes up a lot on our forums and I'm sure there is a thread for it on our cubetalk board. Jason's cube page also includes his land draft list! http://riptidelab.com/forum/threads/jason-waddells-cube.14/
People seem to dig it so far. I think the biggest thing might be:
1) People figuring out how much fixing they actually need because the double suite of fetch lands have been tabling a lot more and I'm assuming it's because of the availability of evolving wilds pain lands and gemstone mine in the land draft.
2) Expanding the availability of certain effects to sorta support archetypes. Jason Waddel often talks about how green ramp can be interesting in his cube mainly because Primeval Titan is very cool with the land draft. I've been finding a lot of joy being able to assure my control decks have access to at least 2 manlands between the draft and the land draft, but I think super sweet stuff like making Vitu-Ghazi or or Cephalid Colosseum available for the people who can make a deck that will get some oomf out of those. Still early days.
3) The realization that there are a wealth (at least 3-4) Tec Edges available (mainly modern format) is something that is dawning super slowly and the crucible decks haven't been popping up with that in mind yet. I feel like the metagame that is being played right now in his cube is one that does not acknowledge that a player can have 2 tec edges pretty easily and like 2-3 other LD spells or things like Tammy. In a world that runs on 20 fetches and 20 shocklands mainly for fixing it feels like tec edge aggro could be as strong as the multicolour humans aggro and the zombie aggro decks.
To me it's like the biggest most high maintenance man land you can pick up, but it totally doesn't tap for any mana. Or at least that is how I usually play it.
It also sometimes just feels like a blue fireball. It's like the slowest fireball in the world but it's pretty inevitable and it has the nice advantage of blocking sometimes and usually being good for a couple turns, but having it in my deck makes me feel like I have the inevitability that other good fireballs have given me in past environments.
It's one of those ones like olivia that make a big stink and has a really warping impact but you are like totes spending a million mana or having to threaten that mana to make it relevant. It's even more fun than olivia because often when you drop your AEtherling you totally have to face every dumb removal spell in your opponent's deck.
I think it's a really sweet card in a format where everyone is fighting over the blue spells that influence your draws. It's also nice you can include it in your land draft instead of say, just doubling up on the sifting spells everyone seems to be interested in.
The card sacrifices things and sorta does stuff from weird zones but what's the hook? What did you have in mind buddy?
How many dual land pairs would you like? Man land types sound hilarious!
Anyway I'm sorry for ranting. I like lands, I want to find ways to increase the value of the average drawn land and make lands less like a concession of a third of your deck during deck building but this card doesn't feel like it's part of the solution lololololol