The Cube According to Gatherer, Part 24 – Vizzini and the Boros Blunder

 

According to Vizzini in The Princess Bride, there are two classic blunders.  The first is that you should never get into a land war in Asia (A bon mot probably inspired by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s quote in 1968: “The United States has broken the second rule of war. That is: don’t go fighting with your land army on the mainland in Asia.  Rule One is, don’t march on Moscow.  I developed those two rules myself.”)  Blunder two, of course, is that you should never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Far be it for me to argue with Vizzini.  He seems more knowledgeable on these subjects than I am.  I do, however, know a little about Magic design.  And I’d like to submit a classic blunder of game design: Never design without knowing where your limitations are.

Designing without limitations is designing toward a clockwork graveyard of wasted time.  And sure, some of us got time to kill.  That’s fine.  But which would you rather claim to finish?  Three complete games, or one game and a great heaping pile of garbage?

I say this knowing the first cards I added to this cube were designed with zero idea where I was going.  But that’s fine.  That open ended design lead me to discover the relevant boundaries of my project.  As I continued designing and writing, I discovered what I liked about my cube and leaned on that.  Now that there are only 83 cards left to add, I must be acutely aware of my cube’s needs.  If I don’t focus, I’ll blow potential on good solutions to nonexistent problems.

Case in point: It’s been a while since I checked the color balance of this cube.  With only 83 cards left, it won’t take much to hit the maximum card slots for any one color.  Any more and I’m venting heat into the vacuum of space.  Looking at the tally…

 

…I find I focused maybe a little too much time on Blue, to the tune of 49 cards.  Meanwhile, I under-focused on White and Red, with 42 and 41 cards respectively.  I’m not the first designer to do that.  Blue’s mechanics cover a broad range of options, while White and Red gravitate toward a straightforward assault, making the two colors deceptively difficult to design after all the obvious choices are satisfied.

If I add no more colorless and/or multicolor spells, then there’s room for 61 cards in each color.  Possible, but unlikely.  Even if I add no more colorless/multicolor cards, Gatherer’s top deck of fate probably will.  Plus, I’d like to balance multicolor, if possible.  Here’s a breakdown of mana symbols in multi as it stands:

White: 5
Blue: 4
Black: 4
Red: 5
Green: 4

It looks balanced-ish.  But Blue, for example, includes Undermine, Slave of Bolas, and an Esper spell I designed that doesn’t require white or black mana if you control a Spirit.  There’s a lot of weird costs in there.

But that’s for future me to deal with.  Right now, I aspire to valorous duty.  I must enlist a battalion of white and red cards to prevent the forward march from stymieing.  Because I can’t predict what new recruits Gatherer will marshal on my behalf.

Oh, I haven’t explained what’s going on yet.  Hi, I’m making a cube using Gatherer’s ‘random card’ function.  Gatherer supplies half the cards, then I design cards to smooth the rough edges.  Sometimes I veto a card Gatherer gives me, but since a veto feels like a failure of creativity on my part, I tend to come out swinging to get of the corner Gatherer pushed me into.  All things considered, I veto sparingly.  Maybe once every twenty cards.

Enough graphs and figures.  Whatchu got goin on, Gatherer?

 

 

Haha.  Very funny Gatherer.  A lot of times I don’t bother to mention my veto power in the introduction.  The one time I stress how infrequently I use it, is the one time Gatherer hands me a card I simply can’t allow.  No one card I design can diminish the power of Time Walk.  To do that, I’d need to design a string of ugly cards to ruin an otherwise pleasant walk through time.  And if I’m designing a pile to make a card not fun, why add the besmirched card in the first place?

In the last log, I accepted another card from the power nine: Mox Pearl.  It’s not that I’m against adding power.  But Time Walk is the third most undercosted card in the game, beat only by Ancestral Recall and Black Lotus.  Manalith informs us that Mox Pearl would cost too much as a common at .  To get the four star mythic Time Warp, one needs to pay an additional on top of Time Walk’s mana cost.  What a cantrip.

So, no.  I’m not giving this any more thought.  Let’s spin the wheel again and hope we don’t get a Wheel of Fortune.

 

 

That, by the way, is not the Oracle wording of the card.  The card’s current wording is this:

If target creature has toughness 5 or greater, it gets +4/-4 until end of turn. Otherwise, it gets +4/-X until end of turn, where X is its toughness minus 1.

Yeah, I know.

The concept is simple to comprehend, but comprehension takes a back seat to function when it comes to the rules.  When Legends was printed in ’94, all a card’s text needed was a broad explanation.  We were decades away from quarter million dollar pro tours.  If players disagreed about card interaction, the person who didn’t flip the table lost.  Now we need exactitude.  Art be damned.  Modern designers are witnesses to a couple decades of functioning cards, so they tend to intuit what can and can’t be done within the confines of the rules.  Odd corner cases like Blood Lust don’t show up as much any more.  But sometimes I wish we could go back to the days of Word of Command, Drain Power, Chaos Orb, and the occasional ruined friendship.

Ah well.  I’m in charge of my cube so I can put whatever wording I want on Blood Lust.  What’s the DCI going to do?  Bust down my door and issue warnings?

Meanwhile, Gatherer was very nice to me.  Not only did we need more red cards, but one of the few items left on my bucket list is ‘a red combat trick’.  Blood Lust will do.  While we’re at it, why not scratch off another item:  a red spell that removes blockers.

 

 

Rippling Wedge does that, while adding to our creature sacrifice theme, increasing the number of odd replicate costs in set, and providing a decent combo with Blood Lust (two different combos, in fact. Sometimes you want to kill a creature of which you gave a taste of blood, and sometimes you need to ensure your bloodlusty ogre isn’t blocked.)

An aside: “Replicate—sacrifice a creature” is a useful design tool when you think about it.  Cards like Altar’s Reap are problematic.  If it’s countered, you lose the creature.  But if sacrifice is part of the resolution (like with Disciple of Bolas) you can be blown out with a responding kill spell.  Replicate softens the blow.  Sacrificing is part of the cost, denying your opponent from destroying your fodder.  But your opponent (usually) can only counter copies on a spell for spell basis.  I mean, sure, a single Remedy might blow Rippling Wedge out… but that’s a direct answer to a spell that divides up damage.  Remedy won’t work against every spell that reads ‘Replicate—sacrifice a creature’.

Moving on!  Let’s go, Gatherer!

 

 

Okay, Righteous Blow.  It’s not exciting, but I can’t complain about business spells in a need color.  Evidently, Gatherer toggled to easy mode.  It almost looks like I’m cheating via cherry picking.  I’m not.  What’s the fun in that?  To be honest, all this talk may be tempting fate, so I shut up.

I guess there’s still a white damage prevention spell in my bucket list.  As long as Gatherer is lobbing softballs, I might as well swing for fences.

 

 

The set not only needs auras, but auras that still do something when Devout Harpist is online.  Even against the Harpist, Soul Shields can Mending Hands.  There’s an odd push/pull in that the creature you need to prevent 4 damage to might make a poor party cleric.  I like a good puzzle, though, so the push/pull stays.

What bugs me is how that activated ability can make a mess of combat.  It sure don’t belong on a common.  I know cubes don’t feature commonality.  But considering all the inherent chaos Gatherer brings, I try to keep simplicity in mind when designing.  And that ‘simple’ last ability is packing huge swaths of complexity in any combat step with six or more untapped lands.  Here’s hoping Gatherer’s final selections keep combat simple enough for my occasional complex design.

Hitting Gatherer again, we get:

 

 

Gatherer is playing games with me.  I talk about how I don’t veto cards often, and Gatherer tosses me Time Walk.  I talk about how the cards Gatherer selects tend to be confusing, and Gatherer gives me Minotaur Abomination.  Maybe I can take advantage of this streak.  Gatherer never gives me a white combat trick, a second green naturalize, or a green charm in which one can choose any number of modes.  It never does that!  And boy, would I be surprised if one of those cards was the next card Gatherer randomly assigned me!  It would be very funny and shocking!  Gatherer!

Tradition states that when I get a vanilla creature, I make a vanilla creature to match.  I don’t see any reason to stop now.  Nice of Gatherer to give me a zombie, too, since there’s some zombie tribal effects in the set.  Human tribal is also in the set, so let’s make another one of those.  Though I can’t help myself from adding a weird spin to the card, so here’s an android pirate:

 

 

I don’t know why I immediately thought of making a computer code out of a pirate code when working the flavor text, but my mind jumped straight to it.  I guess sometimes it do be like that.  With only space for two pirate rules, I added one about splitting booty shares, since so much pirate code is focused on who gets what bounty.  The idea that a single android could hold multiple autonomous programs seemed problematic, so I also added that the captain was the ultimate authority on everything shipwise.  Except when not.  Pirates were often more democratic than the ships they preyed upon.

Okay Gatherer.  I’m certainly not expecting you to give me a card I just so happen to need.  That would be crazy.  Hitting the random button, I get…

 

 

Well, I’m not surprised that Gatherer didn’t give me exactly what I needed.  But Dragon Fodder is welcome, nonetheless.  Right on the back of Hordeling Outburst which popped up in the last log, Dragon Fodder continues the Red/Green sacrificial feast.  I guess I should make a creature to match.

 

What was that I said a few paragraphs back?  “I try to keep simplicity in mind when I’m designing”?  I’m full of bull today, I guess.  Though, I don’t think these complicated choices are all my fault.  What do you expect my design to look like when Gatherer tosses out vanilla creatures and sorceries that make vanilla tokens?

Portal to Wildfire doesn’t do a lot of sacrificing.  The door opens (presuming no support) six rounds after its arrival.  But the Portal soaks up incidental sacrifices.  And those Elemental tokens are rife for more sacrificing.  Actually, now that I think of it…  If we sacrifice all four Elemental tokens to… let’s say a Nantuko Husk… that would untap the portal 4 times, putting 4 new charge counters on it.  That’s a single sacrifice away from an infinite combo.  And we’re only talking about an infinitely big Nantuko Husk.  There are many more destructive things we can do with an infinite sacrifice engine…

Crud. I wanted to make one of these sacrifice trigger cards make token creatures.  Partly because sacrifice costs sure do love tokens, but also because I’m running out of different effects I can do in Red.  I knew that the potential for abuse was dangerous.  That’s why, when I started designing Portal, I put a clock on the card.  But then I forgot what I was doing and wound the clock with creature sacrifice.  Good job, brain.

I need to nerf this card.  But I’m letting it be comboriffic.  Instead of four 3/1 elementals, it now makes three 4/1 elementals.  That should make infinity require more parts, but still allow a little crazy.  Like a society tea party that’s off the chain.

Honestly, I don’t know if that’s a strong enough nerf.  In a dedicated sacrifice deck, it could still be busted.  But I’m at least willing to test this version.

Okay Gatherer!  Punch it to the max!

 

 

 

Huh.  Plagiarize.  There are cubes where this card is a monster.  This isn’t one of them.

I ran a search for the word ‘draw’ in the 286 cards already in the cube.  That picked up 35 cards.  But most of these cards only draw one additional card (they cantrip, or cycle, or something of that nature.)  Casting Plagiarize in response to these spells is as powerful as casting Plagiarize during the draw step, so they don’t count (though a couple, like with Sword of Fire and Ice, you might see coming.  That could make a Plagiarize cast during the draw step worth a two card swing.)  When we count only cards in the cube which draw two or more cards at a time, we’re down to seven choices.  And a few of those are questionable.  Though I love the interaction between Plagiarize and one of my previous designs, Twisted Charm.

 

 

I need a few more cards for Plagiarize to plagiarize from.  The obvious choice in red is a four card variant of Burning Inquiry.  But that… seems excessively rude.  It’s one thing to steal an opponent’s Opportunity.  It’s another to force discard their hand in the process.  Cards should be designed with fun in mind.  There are exceptions to that rule, but this doesn’t feel like a time for exceptions.

Maybe instead we can claim inspiration from Twisted Charm.  Can we offer cards, then yoink them back?

 

 

I went digging for white cards which draw more than one card, and found Truce and Temporary Truce.  They aren’t part of white’s color pie anymore.  White never lets its controller draw more than one card at a time.  The flavor is very White, though.  I get something, you get something, and we’re all happy now shut up about how you didn’t want everyone to get something you monster.

The Truces are also underpowered.  To help tip the balance toward usable, I beefed up the strength of this Ceasefire, while putting control in the hands of the caster.  It doesn’t hurt that that also matches White’s philosophy: “We should all be equals; but I know what’s best so let me just do that for you.”

Now I can declare a ceasefire, hire a couple scribes, insist you also hire two scribes, then Plagiarize their work.  Could I cast two Divinations instead?  Sure.  But what’s the fun in that?

One last card for the day.  Go, Go, Gatherer random button!

 

 

Well I certainly can’t complain about insufficient randomness.  Before Gatherer’s feedback section went kaput, Island of Wak-Wak picked up a solid 3.877 stars.  I’m sure at least a half-star came from the oddity that is a woman’s headed fruit that says “Wak”.  Oh, and maybe another fraction of a star from Wizards’ embarrassment in ruling that this land doesn’t count as an Island.  Also, where’s the Island?  Were you supposed to draw it in yourself behind the Motown backup singer?  What an odd card…

Is Fozzy Bear’s favorite island any good?  Maybe it’s good enough.  Lands without mana activations are more similar to hexproofed artifacts than lands.  We covered this in Log 10 when I asked the random card generator Roborosewater for a card, and it spat out Drood of Rantist… another land with no mana activation (Yes, there are two in this cube.  Sigh.)  Based on cards past and star ratings, I determined that lands with no mana activation were about as powerful as a great one-cost artifact, or below-average two cost artifact.  Island of Wak-Wak follows that model.  I would be happy to cast this for , but could be convinced to pay for an artifact with this ability.  Any more mana, and I’d need to get some real wing-y vibes from my opponent.  Maybe if I was playing against Mike Score from Flock of Seagulls, or one of the Hackett brothers from the show Wings.

What do I do with this information?  One of the earlier themes of this cube was red anti-flying and minor flying support to counterbalance.  I stopped treading that path since five-ish anti-flying cards seem like enough.  Now there’s six-ish anti-flyling cards.  I feel a need to balance the other side.

Though I’m choosing to be oblique about it.  Something else I introduced was that, if red was the anti-flying color of this cube, then green could interact by fearing flying.  I know Quirion Treerunner doesn’t quite use the color pie properly, but you can go to Log 4 if you want to know how I got here:

 

 

I liked what this card was doing, but I never got a chance to reinforce it.  I know I was supposed to do Boros today, but one green card won’t hurt:

 

 

My first idea for an image was to look for was a large wurm trapped in an open field surrounded by looming claws and shadows of drakes as the wurm coiled back in panic.  At least that’s what I would have sent out for if I woke up one day and Freaky Friday’d myself into Jeremy Jarvis, the current Magic: the Gathering art director, and this passed by my desk.  Look… I think it’s important to figure out the how and why of whoever you get Freaky Friday’d into.  But finishing somebody else’s desk work first before you go off hunting for the riddle of the pirate mummy’s curse is just good manners.

Since I don’t plan to Freaky Friday any time soon, I racked my brain for animals who do some of their best work in the jungle, but are vulnerable in the open.  That’s how we landed on lord gorilla.  Gorillas are lucky there aren’t drakes in real life.  Look at that stance!  There’s no way that big boy is surviving a giant owl swoop from above and behind!

One last task for the evening.  Temporary Ceasefire added a new token to the set, so let’s add the token!

 

 

To be honest, while I like the token and am happy to add another checkmark to the underused ‘Sand’ creature type, I’m miffed at the redundancy.  This is the third vanilla 3/3 creature token in the set.  I can’t do much about the Centaur creature token, since that comes from an aura that grants the legs of a Centaur.  But… hmm… Vulcanic Genesis.  If I tinkered with this card, it could create colorless 3/3 Sand creatures instead…

 

 

If I did that, then Temporary Ceasefire would need to make colorless Sand creatures.  Seems fine, since they’re sometimes going to your opponent.  But the cube includes tribal Spirit.  I wouldn’t want to cut a tribal card.  I guess that makes these tokens Sand Spirits now?

 

 

A few odd choices, but the cube is a little more consistent.  Consider the other two cards retroactively changed as well.

289 cards down.  71 left to go.  Click here to go to Log 25.  Until then, perhaps you’d prefer to pick through the According to Gatherer archive?