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Touch The Sky: WIP Custom Cube
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Author:  thetitan555 [ Wed Nov 30, 2022 3:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Touch The Sky: WIP Custom Cube
Touch The Sky started as a worldbuilding project with my friend, then I started making a few cute cards in MSE to learn it, and three months later I have 160 cards. Oops. This being a cube and not a set, I've had to rearrange my priorities a little bit.

Rarity is the first thing that I'm overhauling. The goal of this cube is for it to be playable by someone who's just started playing magic, as well as people who are pretty enfranchised in it. Card subtypes are used to give an idea of synergies without including much true tribal synergy. Lots of keywords are allowed, but reminder text is mandated on everything at common(and I mean everything; I have reminder text for timing on abilities) and heavily encouraged at uncommon. Rares and mythics, on the other hand, usually don't have reminder text at all.

Playing just one color is encouraged via prohibitive mana pips in many costs, though each color is supposed to have some ways to deal with this. So far blue and black are the only ones for which this is realized, both having some treasure creation. There's a cycle of 10 dual-color spells that are intentionally undercosted at 3cmc. The dual lands I'm printing are filter lands for allied colors and taplands for enemy colors.

The general strategies for each color are:
White: Classic go-wide weenie aggro.
Blue: Tempo through tapping and bouncing.
Black: Big value with graveyard exile as a cost.
Red: Control by blowing up every creature all the time.
Green: Ramp, +1/+1 counters, and Big Timmy Lads.

This has been done more clumsily in some places than others. This is especially true in red, which is now allowed to counter spells by bolting its own creatures or to do hand disruption by looking at players' hands before wheeling. That said, I think most of my breaks have been done intentionally and I'm pretty satisfied on that front so far.

Not being in Magic's usual universe has made me want to stay away from certain mechanics, such as Phyrexian mana. Thematically, I'm shooting for many individual stories each with lower stakes. Think level 1-8 D&D adventures for the most part. The most evil villain in the world runs a dogfighting ring; definitely evil, but far from world-ending. The goal is to have several running narratives so you can get excited to see what trouble the showoff dropout gets into next, or where the two far-from-home druids will find themselves. Each of the mono-color lands includes flavor text describing how an initiate's journey in the color's biggest faction starts!

I'm adding an optional set of rules for bidding on Conspiracies between packs. Conspiracies are included in a separate randomized deck. After the first pack has been fully drafted, you flip the top card of the Conspiracy deck, then bidding for it begins using your minimum deck size. If you win an auction with a bid of 5, then your minimum deck size is now 45. Then you draft the next pack, auction another conspiracy, then draft again and auction again. They intentionally vary in terms of power and overall impact.

And finally, I am of course stuffing it with my favorite parts of Magic. Multiple Choice is my favorite card, so I both reprinted it and made a souped-up version. I find Dredge hilarious, so I made a card with Dredge 4 and no other text. The keyword 'Kicker' literally means kicking something to get an effect. Did you know Flash on lands is supported by the rules, and that you can still only play them on your turn?

Okay, let's get to the cards. MSE's export functions don't play nice with NGA's formatting (as far as I can tell) so I'm going to link them in a few imgur albums to save myself some tedium. Please let me know if there are any issues with showing art I don't own; all should be credited at the bottom of the card.

White
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Blue
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Black
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Red
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Green
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Multicolors & Hybrids
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Artifacts
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Lands
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Conspiracies & Tokens
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Author:  Mown [ Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Touch The Sky: WIP Custom Cube
thetitan555 wrote:
Playing just one color is encouraged via prohibitive mana pips in many costs, though each color is supposed to have some ways to deal with this. So far blue and black are the only ones for which this is realized, both having some treasure creation. There's a cycle of 10 dual-color spells that are intentionally undercosted at 3cmc. The dual lands I'm printing are filter lands for allied colors and taplands for enemy colors.

Not sure I'll find the motivation to go through all the cards, but I wanted to make a general comment regarding this. I'd hesitate to make the draft environment heavily mono-colored without some significant consideration put behind it. The draft experience can become very linear if you're only looking for cards of one color after your first pack, unless you counteract it with a lot of colorless, hybrid or split-type cards. Maybe I read a bit too much into your statement, but if you want it to be heavily color-weighed then I would probably at least make treasures a very prominent mechanic, and maybe adopt split-cards which both enourage splashing and can be played mono-color (albeit really annoying to name).
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