I agree with most of your issues with tribal cubes.
There are currently a few cards that help stop the "pick a color, pick a lord" (or I imagine some people look at it the other way around), I have already mentioned Shared Triumph and Adaptive Automaton. I could envision a blue 1U enchantment that gives a chosen creature type flying, for example.
It's not like you can't include quality cards like Thragtusk, Devil's Play, or Wrath of God in a tribal cube. You just want to focus on including tribal cards, and then augment it with some staple cards. Restoration Angel seems like it could potentially be even spicier in a tribal cube.
I don't want to sound argumentative, but I think that infect cubes objectively need more on-theme cards. There are only 67 cards with the word infect in their rules text. In Scars of Mirrodin block draft, you could have several Rot Wolf in your draft deck. Without including duplicates, you can't do that in a cube draft.
So, on many occasions, I've become inspired to make "themed" cubes. Often, themed cubes run into the problem of not having enough support through currently printed cards.
Examples include Tribal cubes and Infect cubes. Goblins, Elves, and so on all have powerful cards, but the power level of these cards (especially in limited) tend to vary a lot, and hinge on synergy. Every color has some amount of creatures with infect, but not really enough to make an "infect cube" with 360 cards.
What is your opinion of designing and proxying custom cards to help flesh out and empower cubes which are trying to create a specific, thematic limited environment?
Some examples:
More changelings for tribal cubes (Perhaps a Woodland Changeling in every color)
More and more interesting lords for tribes, specifically catered to limited.
More fodder tribal creatures, potentially augmented with classes to encourage a "class" subtheme.
More creatures that interact with tribes.
More open-ended tribal cards like Shared Triumph and Adaptive Automaton.
vanguards aren't that balanced though and someones deal with random cards. We removed from our pool all the useless, boring, overpowered and "random-card" ones. Which aren't that many so far.
why not do some sort of draft with the vanguards before starting the cube draft?
Everything is "off color."
Four Reveillark "targets," only one of which has any sort of synergy.
Most of the cards are a little too aggro-oriented for the deck we have been moving towards.
I agree that the pick is somewhere between Taiga, Koth of the Hammer, and Wild Mongrel. I'm leaning one way right now, but I need to be more "wined and dined" before I "stay the night."
I'm really excited to see which card wins between Control Magic and Man-o'-War. (My vote is unchanged.) I respect that Control Magic is a more powerful card, but I still think the jellyfish is the more synergistic card.
I am afraid we're going too deep on the Reveillark plan, but Man-o'-War has a ton of synergy with every card we've taken so far, and can stall until our cards are more useful.
Obviously, playing either the recruiter or archmage before Reveillark is good. They both have their issues with getting put into the graveyard after we play them, but one of them gives us a lot more options.
Glen Elendra Archmage is good and protects our stuff, but we're leaning towards a recursive, midrangey deck. Having our opponent remove or attack through our creatures isn't a huge problem for us, since they'll (ideally) come back later. In my opinion, bringing Imperial Recrutier back and being able to tutor a second silver bullet is stronger than recurring two more Negates after our opponent is probably running out of cards.
This is interesting to me. What about turning cards (not necessarily creatures) into changelings?
Anyone of you folks (all of you :P) who are against custom cards more okay with Humpty's suggestions?
What about fully shifting a lord's types? First example that came to my mind was Lovissa Coldeyes, but that's actually a bad example.
We can even use it to tutor up Toxic Deluge if that ends up in our deck.
The goblin or the Specter could be cool, but they require more color commitment, and we don't really have enough incentive to justify that right now.
There are currently a few cards that help stop the "pick a color, pick a lord" (or I imagine some people look at it the other way around), I have already mentioned Shared Triumph and Adaptive Automaton. I could envision a blue 1U enchantment that gives a chosen creature type flying, for example.
It's not like you can't include quality cards like Thragtusk, Devil's Play, or Wrath of God in a tribal cube. You just want to focus on including tribal cards, and then augment it with some staple cards. Restoration Angel seems like it could potentially be even spicier in a tribal cube.
I don't want to sound argumentative, but I think that infect cubes objectively need more on-theme cards. There are only 67 cards with the word infect in their rules text. In Scars of Mirrodin block draft, you could have several Rot Wolf in your draft deck. Without including duplicates, you can't do that in a cube draft.
We're either committing to a white card that has synergy with our strategy or a blue card that has synergy with picking more blue cards.
Examples include Tribal cubes and Infect cubes. Goblins, Elves, and so on all have powerful cards, but the power level of these cards (especially in limited) tend to vary a lot, and hinge on synergy. Every color has some amount of creatures with infect, but not really enough to make an "infect cube" with 360 cards.
What is your opinion of designing and proxying custom cards to help flesh out and empower cubes which are trying to create a specific, thematic limited environment?
Some examples:
More changelings for tribal cubes (Perhaps a Woodland Changeling in every color)
More and more interesting lords for tribes, specifically catered to limited.
More fodder tribal creatures, potentially augmented with classes to encourage a "class" subtheme.
More creatures that interact with tribes.
More open-ended tribal cards like Shared Triumph and Adaptive Automaton.
why not do some sort of draft with the vanguards before starting the cube draft?
Everything is "off color."
Four Reveillark "targets," only one of which has any sort of synergy.
Most of the cards are a little too aggro-oriented for the deck we have been moving towards.
I agree that the pick is somewhere between Taiga, Koth of the Hammer, and Wild Mongrel. I'm leaning one way right now, but I need to be more "wined and dined" before I "stay the night."
I see what you did there.
And I, too will vote for Venser, Shaper Savant.
Obviously, playing either the recruiter or archmage before Reveillark is good. They both have their issues with getting put into the graveyard after we play them, but one of them gives us a lot more options.
Glen Elendra Archmage is good and protects our stuff, but we're leaning towards a recursive, midrangey deck. Having our opponent remove or attack through our creatures isn't a huge problem for us, since they'll (ideally) come back later. In my opinion, bringing Imperial Recrutier back and being able to tutor a second silver bullet is stronger than recurring two more Negates after our opponent is probably running out of cards.