General Magic Thread

dragonstout wrote: I feel like this is the dragonstout quarantine thread.

I was going to guess a Modern Masters cube, actually! Pretty much nowhere else is "Giants" a draftable thing. I'm jealous of you, I've heard great things about Modern Masters.

Modern Masters was a set released a few months ago which was kind of a "best of 2003 to 2009". The ostensible goal was to provide an increase in the supply for a bunch of cards from that era that had gotten absurdly expensive. In doing so, however, a LOT of pros and draft fanatics have declared it the best draft format of all time, or at least in the running. I haven't drafted it yet, because it was/is ABSURDLY expensive, at around $250 a draft (split between 8 people, sure). The incredible expense of Modern Masters drafts, as well as the high demand for them, has made a lot of people build a Modern Masters Cube. I'm working on it myself.

Enjoy drafting with their Cube, it should be awesome! The only thing is that Modern Masters was VERY much intended for advanced players, to be one of the most complex draft formats ever released. The very first thing that you MUST familiarize yourself with what the archetypes are. Among others, there is an intended archetype for each of the 10 2-color pairs:

WU—Artifacts
UB—Faeries
BG—Graveyard/Dredge
RG—Suspend/Storm
RW—Giants
GW—Tokens/Thalids
GU—Ramp/Sunburst
BR-Goblins
WB-Rebels
UR-Dampen Thought/Arcane

Here are some strategy articles delineating the archetypes:
www.starcitygames.com/article/26381_Mode...ters-Archetypes.html
legitmtg.com/competitive/ranking-the-modern-masters-archetypes/

I'd definitely read those; it's not a format you want to go "blind" into, and was never even intended to be.

From that first article:

The most important thing to keep in mind in Modern Masters is that you're drafting a deck, not a color combination. In many formats, you can get away with just choosing a couple colors and picking "good cards" in those colors to more or less cobble together a good deck...In Modern Masters, however, it's much more important to identify what strategy you're drafting because the value of cards varies wildly from one archetype to another.

If you're new to playing something like that, a very basic tip is: in the first few packs, look for uncommons or rares that are *key* to a particular archetype. If it seems like one archetype is open after a few packs, then, while you're learning the format, just go all-in on that archetype. Typically it's better to vary it up and lightly combine archetypes etc. etc., but when just starting? Just go all-in after getting some uncommon/rare enablers. And do NOT be afraid of multiples: multiples make your deck much more consistent and enable more craziness.

Thanks for posting this, I've been stewing over this concept for the past month and last night ordered a bunch of MM com/unc cards and have the chassis of a cube for less than the cost of a draft set. A few changes had to be made like Spell Snare to Delay and Kitchen Finks to Centaur Safeguard (lol), but I'm excited to grind down the 500 cards I have and add some rares that really highlight the set design, as I found the MM rares often did not enhance the gameplay of the set.

Are you kidding? The Modern Masters rares are, 90% of the time, linchpins of whatever decks they're in, very much enhancing each of the various themes! I thought they were pretty genius; yes, some of them are stuff like Blood Moon that have nothing whatsoever to do with limited, but then there's stuff like Doubling Season, Auriok Salvagers, Tombstalker, etc. that give so much added oomph and uniqueness to the decks. If I didn't have the cards, I'd probably just proxy the rares, because yes, an MM Cube with no proxies is going to be absurdly expensive.

I am super-curious to hear your alternate rares, though!

Well, the three you mentioned will all probably make the cube (except I'm running Parallel Lives over Doubling season), my main concept is to offer 5 rares for each archetype. I'm being careful about allowing keywords which were not in MM, but this cube is going to be played by pro/ex-pro/grinder players, so adding to the complexity to enhance how the cube plays isn't a problem.

I'm going to make a few changes to the common/uncommon slots too, but they'll remain mostly in tact or possibly just added to.

This is a draft of rares I'm considering for the cube. You'll notice there's like NOTHING for rebels, if you have any thoughts on how I can help that archetype I'd love to hear.

RW Giants
Sunrise Sovereign
Furystoke Giant
Chancellor of the Forge
Brion Stoutarm
Borderland Behemoth

BR Goblins
Goblin Chieftain
Krenko, Mob Boss
Siege-Gang Commander
Wort, Boggart Auntie
Weirding Shaman
Earwig Squad
Spikeshot Elder

UR Arcane
Disrupting Shoal
Reweave
Cloudhoof Kirin
Sire of the Storm
The Unspeakable
Skyfire Kirin
Earthshaker

UW Artifacts
Arcbound Ravager
Auriok Salvagers
Broodstar
Grand Architect
Indomitable Archangel
Master of Etherium
Scourglass
Sharding Sphinx
Tempered Steel

GW Tokens
Verdeloth the Ancient
Regal Force 
Hour of Reckoning
Mycoloth
Parallel Lives
Requiem Angel
Increasing Devotion

UB Faeries
Scion of Oona
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Sprite Noble
Wydwen, the Biting Gale
Glen Elendra Liege
Draining Whelk

Gx Domain/Ramp
Bogardan Hellkite
Consecrated Sphinx
Worldspine Wurm
Hellkite Overlord
Liege of the Tangle
Terastodon

BG Dredge
Deadbridge Chant
Extractor Demon
Golgari Grave-Troll
Grave-Shell Scarab
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
Life's Finale
Tombstalker

BW Rebels
Big Game Hunter
Ramosian Revivalist


UR Storm
Mind's Desire
Hidetsugu's Second Rite 
Priest of Urabrask 
Shivan Sand-Mage
Greater Gargadon 
Aeon Chronicler
Ancestral Vision
Wheel of Fate 
Jhoira of the Ghitu

I looked harder for rebels and found a few others:

BW Rebels
Big Game Hunter
Ramosian Revivalist
Sublime Archangel
Mirror Entity
Dust Elemental
Devout Invocation

In addition I'm going to enhance them by replacing Kitchen Finks with Aven Riftwatcher and adding in a common black changeling (though not sure which yet). It just seems hard for them to win because they're so puny and there are no BW overrun cards. White cards seem to just give +1+1 or a few abilities.

From the original Modern Masters rares, Reveillark is probably the most "play me with rebels!!!" B/W rare; the other B/W rares are more generically good.

Mirror Entity is a GREAT choice! That will super-power the Rebels, AND is useful elsewhere too.

Also, be wary of having your rares be too archetype-specific; one of the beautiful things about Modern Masters that ended up giving it a lot of depth is how so many of the cards are useful cross-archetype; to name some simple examples, Avian Changeling in Rebels & Giants, or Faerie Mechanist in Artifacts & Faeries. I find that this kind of thing tends be a big part of my absolute favorite draft formats in general, as it also encourages hybrid-archetype decks like, say, an Artifacts/Faeries deck, instead of just the obvious decks.

I wouldn't worry about adding keywords that weren't in the set originally. This ain't for beginners.

Looks like fun stuff, it's clear you put a lot of thought into scouring through setlists for good cards, I'd love to draft it! As I said, just be wary of including TOO many cards that require slavish devotion to a particular deck.

I'm curious whether Worldspine Wurm is ever going to be cast!!! Though I guess I've done more expensive things than that...in Rise of Eldrazi draft, I activated Spawnsire of Ulamog's ability (and even cast an Emrakul from the sideboard with it)! And just a couple nights ago in a Theros draft I activated Colossus of Akros, too (on the 8th turn even).

That's some really good advise. There are some in MM that only work in one deck like scion, bridge, swath, and there's also a bunch that don't have any synergies like the dragon cycle, demigod/divinity. But as I decide what to include I'll keep in mind cards decks would fight over. Thanks!

I have been trying to assemble Adam Styborski's pauper cube and it looks affordable apart from 2 cards: False Defeat and Chain Lightning. What would be a good cheap substitute for those cards?

You can replace false defeat with breath of life, chain lightning is a pretty unique card, do you have a list of what else is in the cube?

Reckless abandon? Sonic seizure? Shard volley?

All those are worse but do the same thing at a greater non-mana cost

You could just replace Chain Lightning with another Lightning Bolt (Bolt is more powerful).

As Bull pointed out, False Defeat is identical to Breath of Life, so just include a second one of those. Why is False Defeat so much more expensive? Portal Three Kingdoms is the rarest Magic set of all time, particularly in English. Speaking of which: from that list, you can also replace Fire Ambush with the identical Volcanic Hammer. Identical cards. That'll save you a few bucks as well. Cubes are just hung up on being singleton.

The list is here, Bull:
docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhH...Wp5bUJTOS11a3c#gid=0

Ancient of MuMu, make sure to check out both AdventuresOn (or just tcgplayer.com) and particularly magus-of-magic.com for commons. If you use Coolstuffinc or anything similar you will get GOUGED. Like, by a factor of 10 or more.

I didn't realise breath of life was already in there. I'd just play another card (or Resurrection), I think it's kind of dumb when people build "singleton cubes" and then run functional reprints to cheat around the singleton rule. just don't have the rule, it's your cube. You either want every card to be unique or you don't and both are fine but no need to find a loophole in something like that.

I would just double-up on Breath of Life, for real.

I completely disagree with Bull Nakano about functional reprints and the singleton rule. Here's the thing: you need that singleton rule in Cube to stay sane. Once you decide to completely ignore the singleton rule, then why not have red have, like, a million Lightning Bolts? Cubes tend to have two rules: 1) Singleton and 2) most powerful cards possible (possibly under a rarity constraint, a la Pauper or Peasant). If you allow breaking the first rule, then "the most powerful cards" just becomes "include a ton of the most powerful single card".

But on the other hand, redundancy is extremely important. Redundancy is both a key part of deckbuilding and a key part of drafting: if I draft a Heroic card in Theros draft, I need to know that I'll probably see more Heroic cards, or else I can't build a deck around it. So despite the singleton rule in Cube, we also need redundancy.

Also, Wizards designs functional reprints NOT with the intent of one excluding the other. In a Legacy white weenie deck, you can play both 4 Savannah Lions and 4 Elite Vanguard, no problem. They particularly intentionally make functional reprints with Commander in mind: Evolving Wilds was made at least partially so that Commander players could have a second Terramorphic Expanse.

But yeah really it's all about staying sane and drawing lines, because "restrictions breed creativity".

Thanks for the advice on Fire Ambush too. I had somehow bypassed that one when working out the costs.

Daze is the final one which is more expensive than I would like, though much more affordable than the other 3. Any ideas for a substitute?

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote: Daze is the final one which is more expensive than I would like, though much more affordable than the other 3. Any ideas for a substitute?

We're talking about how to save $2, right? The time spent figuring out a substitute that won't be as good or interesting is easily worth more than $2. There are not a lot of free counterspells in the history of Magic.

PS: How many people are you planning on drafting this Cube with?

It will be either 2 or 4 people (my daughter and me or my main play group). Give each a random selection of 100 cards, and get them to make a 40 card deck.

Whoa, 100 cards is a lot! Sealed-deck with Cube is already significantly more overwhelming than normal sealed-deck, and 100 cards is larger (and therefore even more overwhelming) than a normal sealed deck (only by 10 cards, but still). I'd recommend either:
90-card sealed deck (this is doable regardless of player number)
If 4 players: Tenchester draft, hands down, this format is awesome.
If 2 players: Grid draft (preferred for Cube) or Winchester draft. Note that drafting will be more confrontational than sealed-deck, particularly 2-player drafting.

Rules for TENCHESTER:
Make a stack of 360 cards
Flip over the top 10 cards face-up on the table
Player 1 chooses a card, then player 2, 3, 4
Clear the remaining cards
Put another pack face-up
Player 4 chooses a card, then player 1, 2, 3
etc.

Rules for GRID:
Make a stack of 162 cards
Flip the top 9 cards face up in a 3x3 grid
Player 1 chooses a row or column and takes all cards from it
Player 2 chooses a remaining row or column and takes all cards from it
The rest of the cards are discarded
Flip the top 9 cards
Player 2 chooses first this time
etc.

Rules for WINCHESTER:
Make a stack of 90 cards
Flip over the top four cards face up
Player 1 picks a "stack" of cards (currently there is only one card in each stack)
One card is added to each of the 4 stacks
Player 2 picks a stack
One card is added etc.

Enjoy!!!!!!!