An anecdote: A while ago, two friends and I set out to build Kamigawa-only casual decks, with only the stuff we could find in our FLGS and collections. We succeeded in getting decks together, played them, and had some of the worst Magic games I've played. Mono-green spiritcraft against RW Samurai against UR The Unspeakable combo, and it took forever for anything relevant to happen. Boards got clogged with chaff and combat was a nightmare of nothing dying and irrelevantly tiny amounts of damage being dealt.
The set is gorgeous. The concepts are evocative. The gameplay, especially at common and uncommon, is terrible. One saving grace is that the complexity can be enjoyable for some, but the resulting payoff isn't of the same standard you'd get out of complex non-Kamigawa decks. I still have my *****ty mono-green spiritcraft deck, and I still pull it out in multiplayer games with new players, because I love the art and I love the theme... But I can't pretend it's good.
My suspicion is that the iconic Kamigawa cards can't be put into a Kamigawa cube. The peaks of Kamigawas power level are so far above the mean that the the game is reduced to "Who draws the bomb first". You probably can't run Yosei or Keiga, or Sensei's Divining Top, and you -definitely- can't run Jitte without the card effectively being a bye for anyone who drafts it.
This all being said, I love the set to death and I want you to prove me wrong. Please try, please succeed, just find a way to dodge the near omnipresent traps that lie before you in this endeavor.
FuneralofGod has a lot of good points. All the ideas are great, but there need to be cards to back them up.
All I'd add is to include cross-tribe support beyond just changelings: cards that exist in multiple tribes, or exist in one tribe and support another. Even if it's not related to the creature type, just supports a mechanic in that type.
I'd start with a simple cube, maybe peasant or pauper, to limit the initial complexity of the decks and board states and the amount of stuff you have to keep track of once stickers start to proliferate. It'll also mean more room on the card to put a sticker without blocking off important text. Changing stickers during a game sounds like it'll cause some feelbads, like suddenly giving a creature Flying to have it dodge an Earthquake or using a Defender sticker like free instant speed removal.
To test the idea, start with simple stickers like simple evergreen or commonly used keywords, "+1/+1", maybe a "costs 1 less" and simple ETB/Dies triggers like "Draw a card" or "Make a 2/2 zombie". Might be cool to have some stickers be coloured, so they can only go on the appropriate cards. I vaguely remember reading a similar cube sticker idea on a forum somewhere (Maybe even here), which had the losers putting stickers on cards, not the winner (Who presumably had the better deck and didn't need the help, and that being used to balance out the cube. It might have even been stickers during the draft phase, with stickers going on last pick cards (Again, cards that probably needed the help).
Good luck with the idea, would like to hear how it pans out once a few stickers are stuck.
How big is this cube going to be? At 360, with a -lot- of work, you -might- be able to jam 10 tribes, one of each colour pair. It won't be able to be a high powered environment as if you include, say, the best elves and goblins, soldiers is going to be bad in comparison and warriors even worse.
Not sold on druids as UG, IIRC there are only 4 blue druids and they're all green too. Mutant might work thanks to Onslaught block and the Simic, and by its very nature Mutant always overlaps with other tribes, but I don't know any great mutants of the top of my head...
Druids might work in another pair. There are definitely W and GW druids that care about enchantments, and black druids that ramp in exchange for life. Don't know any mono-R druids, but there are Nayan and Gruul ones most likely (unless the cards I'm thinking of are Shamans).
Artificer is a little tricky, there's only two cards that care about the type, a terrible equipment and a slightly less terrible enchantment that wants energy. That being said, it's kinda cool, and I like the idea of a Servo/Thopter spam UR deck with an Arcum Dagsson to upgrade the little dudes.
There are a few generically good Servo/Thopter makers around now, like Pia and Kiran Nalaar. If you were to go that route, consider Chief Engineer or Grand Architect. (Actually, consider Grand Architect anyway, it slides in as a pseudo Merfolk lord and fits into all sorts of artifact decks.)
Between all of those, you have a pretty cool theme for a tribe: Spam little helper dudes, invent big artifacts with them.
Like the Doom Cannon. Then fire them out of the Doom Cannon. Note: Do not run Doom Cannon in your cube.
How attached are you to singleton? I assume the colourless/white generic lords you want to run are Paliano Vanguard, Metallic Mimic and Adaptive Automaton, and I can happily recommend all of them, but the alternatives like Brass Herald, Door of Destinies and Obelisk of Urd are at best borderline, and most of the time just don't cut it. Obelisk is great with tokens though, so might make an okay artifact to cheat out with/for Thopter/Servos?
If you want a lot of those sort of "pick a tribe" lords, you'll either have to double up or start scraping the bottom of the barrel pretty quickly. As I've learned from tribal vs tribal clashes with my cube, a person who gets all their own lords plus the generic lords is in a -way- better position that someone who "just" got all the lords for their own tribe. Having more available might cure that? Or it might make it worse. I have no data, only conjecture.
Edit: Just remembered Commander 2017 added a lot of generic tribal stuff, like cost reducers and such. Don't know the cards that well, never seen them in play, but might be worth a look?
Yeah, tribal is hard. While I don't have a "Tribal" cube, I do have a cube that features them. Spirits, Merfolk, Zombies, Goblins, Elves, Golems and Humans. Even that much level of tribal interaction is difficult - Never seen a successful Elves deck out of my cube, for example. The real issue is that, if you design exclusively along tribal lines, drafters just pick a tribe and grab nothing outside it. That's not a cube, it's just 8 to 12 decks shuffled together that you have to unshuffle before you play.
I tried Allies, it's very swingy and never fun - In the rare draft where you get an allies deck that can consistently trigger ally abilities, you either win hard because your mana is good and you curved out, or lose hard because it isn't the perfect game. On top of that, most allies don't really get passive lord effects, so you need to be playing an Ally each turn, and the few allies that do do the passive lord thing like Harabaz Druid and Sea Gate Loremaster only amplify the swinginess. Lords are generally something you want to minimize due to their limited cross-deck usefulness, and Allies are a tribe of lords. This all being said, I didn't test Allies for very long, so feel free to ignore this advice.
Humans was way easier to do as a 5C tribe, as there are a lot of good effects stapled to human bodies, effects that are relevant even when the creature type isn't. They also have overlap with other tribes, which Allies only have tangentially. Humans that make X creature tokens all feel okay in either deck, and more often than not work wonders in non-tribal decks too.
Golems also kick ass. Splicers do a lot while also being Human, there are generically useful all-stars like Hollow One, and you have the silliest of lords Precursor Golem, who can be relevant in non-tribal decks while also allowing you to do silly things with Vines of Vastwood or whatever. That being said, I love Myr, my favourite draft story is about Myr in SoM, and I'd like to see it work. They seem like they could be useful outside their tribe.
I'd have a look at Lorwyn/Morningtide a little closer. The reason it could jam so many tribes in was the race/class split it had. You had Merfolk, Wizards, Kithkin, Giants etc vs Wizards, Rogues, Shamans, Warriors etc. You've mentioned it, but I don't know if you've thought about how much having a "farie rogue" in U or B matters compared to a "zombie" in U or B. Maybe consider a similar style of splitting it? You have Wizard, Soldier and Warrior as enemy pairs, and that's great, maybe there's a way to have enemy pairs care about class and allies care about race?
Looking at Spirits and Faeries, they both have little flying dudes and lots of hand/spell disruption, so that's your Esper playstyle, and that probably informs what you want to do with WB. Might not work with the added class restriction, but it'll add depth to the drafting.
Another thing to note is to run cards that more one player will want to pick up. Tolsmir Wolfblood isn't an Elf lord or a Wolf lord, he's an Elf that makes a Wolf while buffing green and white creatures. Rishkar, Peema Renegade does a very elfy job of giving you mana, but doesn't actually care about elves, and buffs whoever she can regardless of subtype. These may not be good enough to make it into your cube, but they're the examples that leapt to my mind. Also, have a look at the tribal equipment/enchantments, and run Changelings.
Waterfront Bouncer does so much. Fills the yard, buys time, reuse ETB effects, all before you get to any specific synergies like Madness/Flashback or the fact that it's a Merfolk. I've only seen Thing in the Ice in action a few times though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Are you not running Gemstone Mine / Undiscovered Paradise / Tendo Ice Bridge / Aether Hub? I like those a lot more.
Not running the Mine, Bridge or Undiscovered Paradise. I really like the Paradise idea, pairs well with Bloodghast and I run a little bit of Retrace, so it's got niche uses outside it's main focus, thanks for that suggestion
Ignoring, for a moment, that's it's just a good card, I like that it's a more interesting card as well. It's got a relevant creature type and it has potential synergies based off the -1/-1 counters. Having an FNM promo that references old-school Phyrexian art is just icing on the cake.
Oh wow, that's a great idea. I really like having support in multiple colours, and Manaplasm with Become Immense seems pretty fun, as well as going with stuff like Flashback'd Roar so it doesn't feel like it's just in there for one job (With thewurms and such, it might be okay in the RG Madness deck in general, who knows).
Thanks
Edit: Just remembered Blazing Shoal was a card too, am considering it.
So, just looking at direct damage spells and abilities that hit opponents and care about the mana cost of cards or permanents you own/control, there are quite a few. Admittedly, not all of them care about the same zones. Some care about your library, some your hand, some your battlefield and one (?) cares about the 'yard. There are even a few that trigger on casting the spell, but I think I might skip those.
Most care about what's on top of your deck, so that seemed like a good place to start messing about (Plus, I already have a "top of deck matters" thing going on in UG). Some of them are even playable on their own, like Sin Prodder and... Okay, just Sin Prodder.
I was kinda hoping that there would be ways to lower that opportunity cost while still keeping the deck 'playable'. Split cards, Delve cards, stuff with alternate costs or cost reduction effects, all of them being independently playable while also being decent ammo for throwing at faces.
I'm not thinking about running a Draco just for that sweet 16 damage Kaboom!, but a Blasphemous Act or a Turn // Burn can be a roleplayer in the deck while also doing respectable damage off a Gearhulk (It is in fact, Blast of Genius pitching Blasphemous Acts, Temporal Masteries and Turn // Burns back in Inn/RTR standard that first got me thinking about this in other formats.)
I think there are few ways to 'cheat' high CMC cards into a cube without ruining it, and I have plenty of topdeck manipulation already available, but I don't know if there's a way to have the proportions be right without the deck turning into a clunky mess (Just wait 'til I have my Scroll Rack and my Brainstorm on a stick and my Heretic's Punishment and a Blasphemous Act and Dead Drop!)
Now you mention it, you're entirely right about the archetype really suffering if it's enablers are blanked and the more I think about that the more I realize how difficult that is to overcome. Sin Prodder and Gearhulk, the most playable of the bunch, are a: vulnerable creatures and b: give the choice to your opponent, so they're very unlikely to get the win on their own, and the rest are parasitic and/or bad even in a deck built to use them.
It's difficult to fit redundancy in while keeping the parasitic payoff cards out, and I don't want to warp my red section too much - One 'Build Around' Erratic Explosion is fine, but I don't want to run alltheexplosions -and- Riddle of Lightning in 360. The archetype might need access to repeatable cards like Heretic's Punishment to have any shot at working, and that means drafting and drawing a specific card - I don't mind running Astral Slide, because I also have Drake Haven, Archfiend of Ifnir and Spirit Cairn as 'backup' payoff cards, all of which also go well with the madness/discard stuff I've got in the cube as well as the cycling, but all the decent payoff effects for this are in Red and only work for this deck. Shame theseguys can't go face.
I've found room in the cube for the more aggressive cards in this vein, and am just waiting for a shot to test it out. There are nowhere near as many of them, but at least they all naturally slide into aggro decks so some will probably see play.
I was thinking more about a control style archetype that closes out with a massive Erratic Explosion/Explosive Revelation/Kaboom!, or a proc from Wolf of Devil's Breach, rather than a aggro or tempo thing, but I suppose that keeping it as a curve-out aggro deck that has incremental damage from stuff like Sin Prodder and Vial Smasher would be a lot easier to squeeze in as an archetype without jamming bad cards into the cube.
Still going to consider the "Go big" variant, but will test the small incremental version first.
Thanks for the input, hopefully changing tack will give me a few new ideas
Edit: Thanks for reminding me that Fiery Confluence exists. I have a copy, how have I missed including it?
I have a (fairly janky) cube that runs some unconventional archetypes, and am looking for a mid to lategame R/x archetype to replace Wildfire, which just doesn't fit.
I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on "CMC matters" in red, specifically the stuff that results in direct damage.
Recent cards like Sin Prodder, Combustible Gearhulk and Vial Smasher the Fierce are a lot better than older cards with this sort of effect, and are frankly good enough to make it into my (again, janky) cube on their own merits.
I can see the archetype breaking down into three sets of cards:
Set-Up - Stuff that lets you sculpt your hand and deck to ease your early game and ensure that when you go off, you don't whiff. Brainstorm, Scry effects, slow tutors.
Ammunition - Spells with a high CMC that are independently playable and serve a role in your deck. Things that can reduce their cost, or are playable for an alternative cost. Delve is good for this (Dead Drop/Murderous Cut, Will of the Naga, Dig and Cruise), but maybe even something like Flame Javelin could work?
CMC Matters - Stuff with the text "deals damage equal to...converted mana cost", the cards that throw remaining "ammo" in your deck or hand at your opponent to close out a game.
1: Does this archetype sound fun? - Playing a Big Red style list that sculpts its deck, then goes big with titan-sized creatures and massive spells, or throws them at your face without even bothering to play/draw them first.
2: How much support would an archetype like this require? I run the enemy scrylands and scry and cycling cards in every colour, a few Delve cards, and my cube is slow, so I'm not too worried about set up, but how many "CMC Burn" effects would be needed as payoff in a cube of 360? (When I say slow, I mean "Long Term Plans is considered reliable without card draw" levels of slow. "Astral Slide on turn three is oppressive" levels of slow. Slow. Not Heretic's Punishment slow though.)
3: Can I avoid this archetype becoming too parasitic? I like my players fighting over cards, and they'll fight over Sin Prodder and friends, but stuff like Erratic Explosion/Explosive Revelation and Blast of Genius are really only going to go in this deck specifically, and lets not even think about Heretic's Punishment.
If you'd left a border of the original colour, about a millimeter wide, around the skull I really think it would look better. Either that, or do a white/bone colour border and fill in the eye sockets/nasal cavity with the same colour. Make the symbol POP. Otherwise, really cool.
Now for some lands of my own. Did all five of these in like, 2 hours. Slow, right? My Blaze took like, 20 minutes and it had to be colour matched. Again, scans are sucky. Then again, I didn't really put all that much love and attention into these. Spent more time getting the outline down and perfect than actually painting them. Only one I'm proud of is the Swamp.
The set is gorgeous. The concepts are evocative. The gameplay, especially at common and uncommon, is terrible. One saving grace is that the complexity can be enjoyable for some, but the resulting payoff isn't of the same standard you'd get out of complex non-Kamigawa decks. I still have my *****ty mono-green spiritcraft deck, and I still pull it out in multiplayer games with new players, because I love the art and I love the theme... But I can't pretend it's good.
My suspicion is that the iconic Kamigawa cards can't be put into a Kamigawa cube. The peaks of Kamigawas power level are so far above the mean that the the game is reduced to "Who draws the bomb first". You probably can't run Yosei or Keiga, or Sensei's Divining Top, and you -definitely- can't run Jitte without the card effectively being a bye for anyone who drafts it.
This all being said, I love the set to death and I want you to prove me wrong. Please try, please succeed, just find a way to dodge the near omnipresent traps that lie before you in this endeavor.
Edit: Tagged cards
All I'd add is to include cross-tribe support beyond just changelings: cards that exist in multiple tribes, or exist in one tribe and support another. Even if it's not related to the creature type, just supports a mechanic in that type.
To test the idea, start with simple stickers like simple evergreen or commonly used keywords, "+1/+1", maybe a "costs 1 less" and simple ETB/Dies triggers like "Draw a card" or "Make a 2/2 zombie". Might be cool to have some stickers be coloured, so they can only go on the appropriate cards. I vaguely remember reading a similar cube sticker idea on a forum somewhere (Maybe even here), which had the losers putting stickers on cards, not the winner (Who presumably had the better deck and didn't need the help, and that being used to balance out the cube. It might have even been stickers during the draft phase, with stickers going on last pick cards (Again, cards that probably needed the help).
Good luck with the idea, would like to hear how it pans out once a few stickers are stuck.
Not sold on druids as UG, IIRC there are only 4 blue druids and they're all green too. Mutant might work thanks to Onslaught block and the Simic, and by its very nature Mutant always overlaps with other tribes, but I don't know any great mutants of the top of my head...
Druids might work in another pair. There are definitely W and GW druids that care about enchantments, and black druids that ramp in exchange for life. Don't know any mono-R druids, but there are Nayan and Gruul ones most likely (unless the cards I'm thinking of are Shamans).
Artificer is a little tricky, there's only two cards that care about the type, a terrible equipment and a slightly less terrible enchantment that wants energy. That being said, it's kinda cool, and I like the idea of a Servo/Thopter spam UR deck with an Arcum Dagsson to upgrade the little dudes.
There are a few generically good Servo/Thopter makers around now, like Pia and Kiran Nalaar. If you were to go that route, consider Chief Engineer or Grand Architect. (Actually, consider Grand Architect anyway, it slides in as a pseudo Merfolk lord and fits into all sorts of artifact decks.)
Between all of those, you have a pretty cool theme for a tribe: Spam little helper dudes, invent big artifacts with them.
Like the Doom Cannon. Then fire them out of the Doom Cannon. Note: Do not run Doom Cannon in your cube.
There's also Embersmith and Reckless Fireweaver if you want it to be a more aggressive tribe.
How attached are you to singleton? I assume the colourless/white generic lords you want to run are Paliano Vanguard, Metallic Mimic and Adaptive Automaton, and I can happily recommend all of them, but the alternatives like Brass Herald, Door of Destinies and Obelisk of Urd are at best borderline, and most of the time just don't cut it. Obelisk is great with tokens though, so might make an okay artifact to cheat out with/for Thopter/Servos?
If you want a lot of those sort of "pick a tribe" lords, you'll either have to double up or start scraping the bottom of the barrel pretty quickly. As I've learned from tribal vs tribal clashes with my cube, a person who gets all their own lords plus the generic lords is in a -way- better position that someone who "just" got all the lords for their own tribe. Having more available might cure that? Or it might make it worse. I have no data, only conjecture.
Edit: Just remembered Commander 2017 added a lot of generic tribal stuff, like cost reducers and such. Don't know the cards that well, never seen them in play, but might be worth a look?
I tried Allies, it's very swingy and never fun - In the rare draft where you get an allies deck that can consistently trigger ally abilities, you either win hard because your mana is good and you curved out, or lose hard because it isn't the perfect game. On top of that, most allies don't really get passive lord effects, so you need to be playing an Ally each turn, and the few allies that do do the passive lord thing like Harabaz Druid and Sea Gate Loremaster only amplify the swinginess. Lords are generally something you want to minimize due to their limited cross-deck usefulness, and Allies are a tribe of lords. This all being said, I didn't test Allies for very long, so feel free to ignore this advice.
Humans was way easier to do as a 5C tribe, as there are a lot of good effects stapled to human bodies, effects that are relevant even when the creature type isn't. They also have overlap with other tribes, which Allies only have tangentially. Humans that make X creature tokens all feel okay in either deck, and more often than not work wonders in non-tribal decks too.
Golems also kick ass. Splicers do a lot while also being Human, there are generically useful all-stars like Hollow One, and you have the silliest of lords Precursor Golem, who can be relevant in non-tribal decks while also allowing you to do silly things with Vines of Vastwood or whatever. That being said, I love Myr, my favourite draft story is about Myr in SoM, and I'd like to see it work. They seem like they could be useful outside their tribe.
I'd have a look at Lorwyn/Morningtide a little closer. The reason it could jam so many tribes in was the race/class split it had. You had Merfolk, Wizards, Kithkin, Giants etc vs Wizards, Rogues, Shamans, Warriors etc. You've mentioned it, but I don't know if you've thought about how much having a "farie rogue" in U or B matters compared to a "zombie" in U or B. Maybe consider a similar style of splitting it? You have Wizard, Soldier and Warrior as enemy pairs, and that's great, maybe there's a way to have enemy pairs care about class and allies care about race?
If I was going to do a split like that, I'd start by thinking about how each allied pair would play, then find the overlaps to work out how the enemy pairs would play. As an example:
WU - Spirits (Esp. token makers that make spirits and disruptive ETB effects, think Intangible Virtue, Favorable Winds, Spell Queller)
UB - Faeries (Again, weenie fliers and disruptive ETBs, think Favorable Winds, Spellstutter Sprite, Clique, discard)
BR - Some kind of disruptive aggro with damage based removal and discard, Goblins have better cross tribe overlap, but Vampires have some cool Clerics.
RG - Were/Wolves (Straight aggro with damage based removal. Overlaps with Humans through Mayor of Avabruck and Master of the Wild Hunt and Elves with Wolf-Skull Shaman, Tolsmir Wolfblood and Wren's Run Packmaster)
GW - Elves (Counter distribution and small token makers. (Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Travel Preparations, Joraga Warcaller)
Looking at Spirits and Faeries, they both have little flying dudes and lots of hand/spell disruption, so that's your Esper playstyle, and that probably informs what you want to do with WB. Might not work with the added class restriction, but it'll add depth to the drafting.
Another thing to note is to run cards that more one player will want to pick up. Tolsmir Wolfblood isn't an Elf lord or a Wolf lord, he's an Elf that makes a Wolf while buffing green and white creatures. Rishkar, Peema Renegade does a very elfy job of giving you mana, but doesn't actually care about elves, and buffs whoever she can regardless of subtype. These may not be good enough to make it into your cube, but they're the examples that leapt to my mind. Also, have a look at the tribal equipment/enchantments, and run Changelings.
Edit: Merfolk are great, Clones are your friend if you want them to be good. Waterfront Bouncer/Enclave Cryptologist into Lord of Atlantis/Master of the Pearl Trident into Cackling Counterpart/Phyrexian Metamorph has happened to me in back to back games and it hurts.
Waterfront Bouncer does so much. Fills the yard, buys time, reuse ETB effects, all before you get to any specific synergies like Madness/Flashback or the fact that it's a Merfolk. I've only seen Thing in the Ice in action a few times though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Not running the Mine, Bridge or Undiscovered Paradise. I really like the Paradise idea, pairs well with Bloodghast and I run a little bit of Retrace, so it's got niche uses outside it's main focus, thanks for that suggestion
Baneslayer
Exalted
Gisela
Personally, I use Exalted because the morph is relevant with flicker effects and it passes the Bolt test.
Looking for a final "fixer" land to help support aggro, do I keep Crumbling Vestige or switch it for Unclaimed Territory?
Thanks
Edit: Just remembered Blazing Shoal was a card too, am considering it.
Sin Prodder
Explosive Revelation
Heretic's Punishment
Kaboom!
Riddle of Lightning
Combustible Gearhulk
Sorin, Grim Nemesis
Undying Flames
Pyromancy
Blast of Genius
Bosh, Iron Golem (More like a Fling for Artifacts)
Most care about what's on top of your deck, so that seemed like a good place to start messing about (Plus, I already have a "top of deck matters" thing going on in UG). Some of them are even playable on their own, like Sin Prodder and... Okay, just Sin Prodder.
I was kinda hoping that there would be ways to lower that opportunity cost while still keeping the deck 'playable'. Split cards, Delve cards, stuff with alternate costs or cost reduction effects, all of them being independently playable while also being decent ammo for throwing at faces.
I'm not thinking about running a Draco just for that sweet 16 damage Kaboom!, but a Blasphemous Act or a Turn // Burn can be a roleplayer in the deck while also doing respectable damage off a Gearhulk (It is in fact, Blast of Genius pitching Blasphemous Acts, Temporal Masteries and Turn // Burns back in Inn/RTR standard that first got me thinking about this in other formats.)
I think there are few ways to 'cheat' high CMC cards into a cube without ruining it, and I have plenty of topdeck manipulation already available, but I don't know if there's a way to have the proportions be right without the deck turning into a clunky mess (Just wait 'til I have my Scroll Rack and my Brainstorm on a stick and my Heretic's Punishment and a Blasphemous Act and Dead Drop!)
Now you mention it, you're entirely right about the archetype really suffering if it's enablers are blanked and the more I think about that the more I realize how difficult that is to overcome. Sin Prodder and Gearhulk, the most playable of the bunch, are a: vulnerable creatures and b: give the choice to your opponent, so they're very unlikely to get the win on their own, and the rest are parasitic and/or bad even in a deck built to use them.
It's difficult to fit redundancy in while keeping the parasitic payoff cards out, and I don't want to warp my red section too much - One 'Build Around' Erratic Explosion is fine, but I don't want to run all the explosions -and- Riddle of Lightning in 360. The archetype might need access to repeatable cards like Heretic's Punishment to have any shot at working, and that means drafting and drawing a specific card - I don't mind running Astral Slide, because I also have Drake Haven, Archfiend of Ifnir and Spirit Cairn as 'backup' payoff cards, all of which also go well with the madness/discard stuff I've got in the cube as well as the cycling, but all the decent payoff effects for this are in Red and only work for this deck. Shame these guys can't go face.
I've found room in the cube for the more aggressive cards in this vein, and am just waiting for a shot to test it out. There are nowhere near as many of them, but at least they all naturally slide into aggro decks so some will probably see play.
Still going to consider the "Go big" variant, but will test the small incremental version first.
Thanks for the input, hopefully changing tack will give me a few new ideas
Edit: Thanks for reminding me that Fiery Confluence exists. I have a copy, how have I missed including it?
I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on "CMC matters" in red, specifically the stuff that results in direct damage.
Recent cards like Sin Prodder, Combustible Gearhulk and Vial Smasher the Fierce are a lot better than older cards with this sort of effect, and are frankly good enough to make it into my (again, janky) cube on their own merits.
I can see the archetype breaking down into three sets of cards:
Set-Up - Stuff that lets you sculpt your hand and deck to ease your early game and ensure that when you go off, you don't whiff. Brainstorm, Scry effects, slow tutors.
Ammunition - Spells with a high CMC that are independently playable and serve a role in your deck. Things that can reduce their cost, or are playable for an alternative cost. Delve is good for this (Dead Drop/Murderous Cut, Will of the Naga, Dig and Cruise), but maybe even something like Flame Javelin could work?
CMC Matters - Stuff with the text "deals damage equal to...converted mana cost", the cards that throw remaining "ammo" in your deck or hand at your opponent to close out a game.
Red has access to most of this stuff. Its got ammunition like Blasphemous Act and Bedlam Reveler. Go deep enough and and there's even stuff that avoids its actual CMC entirely, like Bringer of the Red Dawn or Fury of the Horde, and of course the trusty Fireblast. It has -all- the CMC matters burn, though a few cards do splash other colours to do it (Blast of Genius, Vengeful Rebirth, Vial Smasher the Fierce, Mercurial Chemister and Sarkhan the Mad). The only thing is -has- to splash for is anything to set up its draws.
So, my questions are:
1: Does this archetype sound fun? - Playing a Big Red style list that sculpts its deck, then goes big with titan-sized creatures and massive spells, or throws them at your face without even bothering to play/draw them first.
2: How much support would an archetype like this require? I run the enemy scrylands and scry and cycling cards in every colour, a few Delve cards, and my cube is slow, so I'm not too worried about set up, but how many "CMC Burn" effects would be needed as payoff in a cube of 360? (When I say slow, I mean "Long Term Plans is considered reliable without card draw" levels of slow. "Astral Slide on turn three is oppressive" levels of slow. Slow. Not Heretic's Punishment slow though.)
3: Can I avoid this archetype becoming too parasitic? I like my players fighting over cards, and they'll fight over Sin Prodder and friends, but stuff like Erratic Explosion/Explosive Revelation and Blast of Genius are really only going to go in this deck specifically, and lets not even think about Heretic's Punishment.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts
Now for some lands of my own. Did all five of these in like, 2 hours. Slow, right? My Blaze took like, 20 minutes and it had to be colour matched. Again, scans are sucky. Then again, I didn't really put all that much love and attention into these. Spent more time getting the outline down and perfect than actually painting them. Only one I'm proud of is the Swamp.