Hello there everyone. There was a comment made not to long ago that made me stop and consider the viability of putting together a set/cube very specifically that could be used as a side for Agents of Artifice.
Now, naturally, being designed from a story, it pretty much precipitates a top down approach. Since I'm no expert at set building, I thought it best to make this a group activity. I'm sure there are those in the community who could offer suggestions that I wouldn't think of.
The two rules I'm going to go with are:
1: Suggestions must be modern.
2: Suggestions must be representative of something at least mentioned in the book. They don't have to be present within the text, but they should make sense.

Since I'm starting off the project, I'll go ahead and lay out the main players. More because I want to be careful on which versions get used.

Jace, Architect of Thought: Kind of throwing a curveball in initially, I decided this Jace is a good fit for the narrative, but is also bland enough to be useful. Also, it breaks up the sources of the walkers, which I feel is important.
Liliana Vess: The basic Liliana. Though her power suite isn't greatly focused, but it is more versatile for a general black deck.
Tezzeret the Schemer: Because there aren't many that really fit that well. It's years after he's a Seeker and he's not an Agent of Bolas again yet.

Now on all these, and in general, I'm open to discussion about what fits or what would be interesting. I will say one thing, before the suggestions come in, I'm going to say no to Bolas as a planeswalker, just for balance issues. If anyone thinks it a good idea, maybe he can be featured with something like cruel ultimatum.










Suggestions for card pool size are welcome

Cerulean Sphinx always struck me as the Sphinx Jace summons in his fight with Tezzeret, just going by the description of the creature.

It might also be possible to have a small Faerie archetype on the side. One of Jace's faeries dies to Tezzeret's [c=Esperzoa]artifact monstrosity and near the end Jace uses a ton of fairies to test the Consortium's defenses.

Jace uses something like Distortion Strike when sparring with Kallist (who I can't find a good card for). Baltrice also doesn't have her own card and Regathan Firecat might be the best Modern legal card to represent her elementals. Something like Fireball might also suit her.

You could put in Emmara Tandris but that means being regularly reminded of what they did to her.

And since Jace is the main character, there needs to be a good amount of mind magic and milling, I guess. Talent of the Telepath also seems an obvious suggestion in that regard.

Thought Prison might be a decent way to represent the prison Jace is stuck in near the end.

Well, story moment-wise, it seems like Traumatize is obvious as the penultimate moment. I definitely feel there should be some utility mill in there.

Since we're talking faeries, I'm up for sprite noble to bolster the flying archetype that can top out with the sphinx.

Liliana's shade can be one of her face cards, though I'm unsure how wide we could cast that net.

You raise an excellent point with Emmara! And you raise an excellent rebuttal!... I think I'll see what other people have to say on the matter.

I'll rebutt that I think metallurgic summoning is a better choice than Esperzoa for that moment. Anyone else have a vote for which way to go?

Black could probably use some Nezumi from the pop off to Kamigawa, and I think Genju of the Fens might play towards a swamps theme in black.