MTG Salvation

This though occurred to me last night and I've been playing with it in my head. Basically it's Archenemy, but instead of constructed decks there are limited decks. Here's how I imagine the special rules would be:

1. There's 1 archenemy and X "heroes" facing you.
2. The Archenemy gets a number of "slots" on the draft equal to the number of heroes they are facing. It's kind of like it's as if they are X different people. If there are 3 heroes, then each time a pack is passed to them from their left, they would've picked 3 cards from it by the time it gets to the right.
3. Heroes can collaborate to make their draft choices.
4. The heroes make 40 card decks while the archenemy gets a 60 card deck (to avoid him milling himself with draw schemes and to counterbalance how many extra cards he can draft).
5. There is a scheme deck for the Archenemy, though I don't know how it would be decided what goes in it. Maybe it's pre-made or maybe it has to do with drafting basic lands from sets to work as proxies for schemes. idk.
6. There may be some extra rules based on the draft environment, such as the archenemy being able to get as many wastes as they want while adding lands to the deck. You know, flavor stuff.

After that, there would be a fairly standard archenemy game. Maybe some new rules for the limited environment. I don't know all too much about archenemy since I've only played it once or twice with a friend who has it.

Anyone want to try it out with a draft or their cube and see how it works?

So what is the general consensus on Return of Kozilek? It's a pyroclasm you can tutor for 1 extra mana. Its reuse effect has some occasional uses too and doesn't hurt. You could potentially run fewer of them and have a few more flex spots, though I don't know how the mana cost effects it.

Maybe I'll put some indication on the front of the sleeves. Are there any sleeves with identical backs but different fronts? Some sort of indicator for rarity? Maybe I'll just put a different colored sharpie mark in the corner. Oh, and yeah, the lands work how you said.

I'm not sure I want to go above 360 cards. I'm probably not going to be playing with 8 people very often, but if I do I can always just expand the cube to a larger size in increments of 15.

I think I have an idea for commons. Since there aren't enough uncommon slots to have too many of the fun multicolored cards, I have an idea for including them in the common set. Each color has 10 commons, all 4-ofs. Then, each color combo has 1, each a 2-of. Then colorless gets 5-ofs.

If we have this and 10 multicolored uncommons, that would be 30 multicolored cards in an 8 man draft. Is that too much? Maybe we should just have 20 in the uncommons. I'm not sure.

For fixing I was going to include 1 of each tap land and 4 terramorphic expanse in the lands, plus maybe the 5 enemy man-lands, and then maybe 4 pilgrim's eye. It is tricky since fixing is a core part of a certain archetype, so how much non-colored fixing should be around is not something I'm sure about.

What I have learned from my recent Magic experience is that I like Limited, specifically drafting, a lot more than constructed. Sometimes, I like to play with others, such as the kids in my boy scout troop, and I probably will do this more as I go off to college.

I want to create a cube that recreates a specific draft environment (I want to do BFZ/OGW since that's what I have/will be getting a lot of through drafts), and I'm trying to figure out the way to do this. I have some ideas for the general format, which I will post here, but if you have any suggestions I'd love to see them. I know this is something that people do sometimes, but since it's the less popular than other cube types I have a hard time finding articles or threads about it.

My current idea for the cube goes like this: 360 cards, separated into groupings roughy based on what you get when you open a real booster pack.

24 "Rares": These will be big, iconic cards from the set (Planeswalkers, Eldrazi titans, etc.) as well as cards that have large power and you can build a deck around, but are still good on their own (like Emeria Shepard). I will not worry too much about making this be perfectly balanced colorwise, but I'll try to be close.

72 "Uncommons": These will be split up between the colors and colorless the best I can, with 10 or 20 being devoted to 1-2 cards per color combination. these cards are usually powerful, archetype defining, and/or flashy. They will come from uncommons and some of the less flashy or huge rares (like, for a random possible example, Barrage Tyrant). I'll try my best to keep it color balanced.

240 "Commons": Commons, uncommons, and maybe a few rares that will be recurring cards that support deck archetypes. All of these, unlike the above cards, come are not one-offs. Many come with 4 copies, some with 3 and some with 2. I will choose them based around how they can fit certain archetypes, be fun to draft, balance colors, and make certain strategies playable. For example, if I want ingest to be a viable archetype, I'd probably put 4 copies of a lot of ingesters. I'll try to be perfectly color balanced.

24 Non-basic lands: These would provide mana-fixing and utility. I'm considering adding the 5 man-lands in here.

I'm not too big on specifics since Oath hasn't had its cards revealed yet.

Each card type would be put in a different sleeve color so I could make packs that fit the 1:3:10:1 ratio of real packs.

Any thoughts? Better ways? Are there too few cards for this to work? I've never made a cube before, so I'm not entirely sure how to go about this.

http://mtgmirror.com/#/

We've had a sealed sim, now we have a draft sim.

I guess Buffsam has a point if you, say, have a deck focusing around tutoring out a certain card(s), then milling someone will inherently give them a slightly less likely chance of being able to pull it out of their deck. The difference is nearly negligible, even in limited sized decks, but I suppose in that sense it makes a little bit of sense.

So if we are going with the theme of 3-drop midrange to go along with Collected company, I thought I'd collect all the modern playable 3 or fewer costed cards we could throw in (That I could easily find, I'm sure I'm missing some).

• Voice of Resurgence
  
• Tarmogoyf
  
• Loxodon Smiter
  
• Qasali Pridemage
  
• Snapcaster Mage
  
• Gheist of Saint Traft
  
• Kitchen Finx
  
• Rhox War Monx
  
• Scavenging Ooze
  
• Courser of Kruphix
  
• Vendilion Clique
  
• Steppe Lynx
  
• Scythe Leopard
  
• Lotus Cobra
  
• Drift of Phantasms
  

Honestly those are the only 2 landfall cards that really stood out to me. Maybe things'll change in BFZ.

This is, of course, not counting the mana dorks (birds and hierarch) or spells. We probably won't find much room for spells, though. We might be able to use some 1 mana counter cards (We do have Snapcaster mage for 2 mana).

As far as removal/misc. Most people are Path, Simic/Bant charms, Dromoka's command, Serum Visions, and Commune with the gods. Not sure how I feel about a tutor but I suppose it could help. I'd much rather play something that gives me card advantage instead of just replacing itself, but it works, I suppose.

First of of all, I hereby nominate this deck as Reliquary Return Bant, or RRB. Pronounced Ribs.


Juicy

Anyways, I really like the idea of going pure combo, though now that I realize Retreat only taps creatures I'm hesitant. A strong turn 3 win, no doubt, but easily played against and slow if you don't get the right hand, even with tutors like drift and commune. I think it comes down to striking th eright balance between combo and midrange, which can be hard. I do like the 3 mana creatures comboed with collected company

I do like dispel in this deck a lot, like Mantis rider said.

I'm afraid I don't have much more to add. Osacko's list seems like it's pretty close to the best we have right now, though I'd definitely substitute some creatures with dispel and maybe some other utility (We don't need 26 creature drops, including the collected companies). I'm sure there's some high class cards we could run (maybe some stuff with delve), so I'll do some searching in my free time.

Personally I think we can run 21-22 lands, given how we have 8 mana dorks.

If we are going combo, Coralhelm+Knight is pretty much a sure win unless they have a specific answer to it the moment you put it down, since you can tap all their lands and blockers with coralhelm using fetchlands to double landfall coralhelm while only having to tap knight once, getting you a tap per fetchland. It's honestly not necessary to have any more combos based around knight since she wins on her own, so everything should be there solely in case you don't get your combo on the first couple hands.

You'll probably have some sort of sub-archetype, either that or focus entirely around tutoring it out, though I don't know we have the tool box to do so efficiently outside of legacy. I imagine you could go with Bant midrange or Bant control sub-types, though I don't quite know myself.

Edit: Drift of Phantasms and commune with the gods are pretty much staple in this deck, I think.

Cards with weird rarities? Limited. Rares show up in limited less than uncommons, so if you want it in but only occasionally in limited (no real consistency so you can't get 4 of them), then you shove it in rare. Rare isn't there to be powerful, it's there to show up less often as other cards. Besides, no rare bombs and most of the first-pick worthy cards being in uncommon makes for a more consistent draft experience that bases itself more on skill.

I'm excited for this set. It's clearly designed for a limited environment.
1. Rares are not overpowered bombs. Most of the power is in the uncommon slot, which is more consistent and reliable for drafting.
2. Overall power level is low, so experimental cards can have less of a dramatic effect on constructed.
2. The sheer amount of archetype complexity. Someone said it well: So many different eldrazi focus on different things: colorless creatures, colorless spells, scions, ramp, sacrificing, exiling... It makes for some interesting archetypes. That's not counting interesting interactions with Awaken (which also serves as a solid mana sink for limited), Ally decks, Converge decks, landfall decksm and probably s lot of other possibilities we haven't seen.
3. Not really a point in its favor, but so much of a draft's quality is in the commons, which we've seen very little of. I can't exactly say it's going to be good to draft, but it is quite clear it was designed to be drafted.

I'm pretty sure the most of the fixing in limited will be via land tutoring any splash colors you may have a la pilgrim's eye, rampant growth reprint, etc.. Makes a lot of sense given the landfall mechanic returning. I also like that idea because all mana fixing also just being solid ramp since it crosspolinates over many archetypes. Me gusta.

Wait, people are questioning whether or not a 3/2 body+removal for 3 mana is standard viable? Excuse?

Quote from Galspanic »

Quote from MajorMajora »

You guys do know that rares aren't there for the sole purpose of being good, right?

Yup. They are rare because they are because if they were at a lesser rarity it would cause imbalance in a limited environment. Right?

Among other reasons. There's also NWO stuff about keeping complexity down for at lower rarities.

You guys do know that rares aren't there for the sole purpose of being good, right?