Powerful Nothing
A Magic the Gathering Cube podcast hosted by Dan and James. Talking Cube and other magical goodness.
Powerful Nothing
Supporting Typal Matters In Cube - #78
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In this episode of Powerful Nothing, we discuss the things you need to consider if you want to build a typal matters cube, where the creature types are the things that your pushing.
Timecodes
4:04: What is a creature type matters cube?
7:29: Choosing your creature types
26:44: How do the decks win?
32:21: Cards that will be better
40:08: Things to avoid/consider
46:28: Not everything has to be synergstic
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and as always, I'm joined by James. James. How are you doing, my boy? Well I'm well I'm well I've been drafting an unhealthy amount of flow in eclipse. It's been a lot of fun. I've been I've been going off the rails with some. I have a minor obsession with trying to draft tree folk at the moment, and it's. It's not been good for the ranks. I would say. But has it been fun? Is the main question. I I've had a lovely time. I've, I have so many tree sevens in play and I it's it's phenomenal. Nice. Well, that does kind of dovetail nicely into our main topic for today. For those who've been enjoying low in eclipsed. Today we're gonna be talking about creature type matters in cube. Lower and eclipsed is a creature type matters set. It matters that the creature types that you're drafting. And we're going to discuss some bits today on constructing a cube with that in mind. Kind of like, like taking the lore in eclipsed environment and kind of just making more of it and really leaning into it and making that what the whole cube is about. Yeah, for sure. So not a lot when eclipse sets cube, but a a title matters cube where most of your Dax or maybe even all of the Dax gonna care in some way about for creature types. Yeah, exactly. And kind of like unlike things like a powered cube where kind of like we can debate the correct choice on like, is this card more powerful? Kind of like an advantage. Probably you're aiming for a higher power level and like, same as like a pole prop as think you're aiming for the best version within the constraints. This is going to be more kind of like a device episode. What kind of things to consider if you're building one of these cubes, because that effectively there isn't a correct way to build this type of cube. It's like like there are good things to do and bad things to do, and we'll kind of guide you through those a little bit, but kind of like some people love gifting. Some people love goblins, like like like like when these cubes to come together, they're going to be tailored more to the person making them and the play group rather than like what? Rather than a hard and fast rules of like a vintage power cube of like what? You have to run these blue cards, if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's it's very subjective. It's about the play experience you want to hand over time. Right. And that's going to be how you select five the types you care about, but also how you want to structure your cube, do what you want. Most of the decks to look like. Do you want most of the decks to be like, I'm this what I care about this one creature type, and I've got 14 of them in my deck? Or do you want people to have to be a bit scrappier than that? You know, like, do you want to make it a bit more difficult so that people have to, have to sort of fight, make for lots of it that, you know, that's exactly because like, one of the reasons we want to talk about this is it's not just because, the current sect is supporting this type of environment, but also because, like type all matters and like creature type matters. Environments like they are so popular in commander like in that format is the nice thing of like, oh, I want to play an elf deck. I'm going to jam all the all the elves in, like it's it's a very kind of good base for a deck, and it's very popular in commander, but that hasn't really translated over into cube. But there is definitely space for it to grow. That's kind of one of reasons you want to have this conversation today. See it. This episode is it's more about kind of giving advice. If you're doing a whole cube based around creature type matters, rather than just like an archetype. So this is like, let's have a conversation on like in a budget cube. I have like goblins being my ragdoll archetype, but then no other archetype in the cube carrying about a creature. This is more, a conversation for for a grander environment where everything is kind of this type of this type of thing. So that's what we're gonna be focusing more on today. But I think it's probably good place to start is let's actually define what is a type of matter cube. What is a creature type matters cube. So for me this is a cube where multiple archetypes revolve around drafting multiple creatures that share a creature type. So like lore in eclipse, like original or when is it lore when alone does it? I've been saying lore went, let's go and you can say what you want. All right. I thought it was LoRaWAN, but there's should be more vowels in it for that. So yeah, let's commit to lore in here and now. But but yeah, also like bloom burrow for example, another great, type of matter set where the decks are less about raw efficiency, they're more about synergy. It's more about getting a bunch of the same types of creatures together that have a more powerful effect when they're combined, like an example of this is like is like a deck that cares about goblins will still probably want a card like Lightning Strike, but, but but a card like TAA fire that is also a goblin will go up in its estimations. It'll want it more because it's energizes with other things that the deck is doing. And one thing with that, though, is because you're not using necessarily the most efficient cards. The power level is going to be down a little bit. It's not going to be like like it's probably hard to get one of these cubes to be the power level of the high power level cube. You're looking more like budget cubes. You're looking more around the power level of like a master's draft or like a modern horizon set. Or you're going to go along with that. James. Yeah, I mean, you can obviously like very fast and very powerful type will pay off. So you can push for a power level if you want to, but also but when you're pushing the power level within a constraint of something like a type of cube, it's going to really restricts where you can go, because that first you just only burn. You'd have to sort of just pick the most supported creature types. Right. And then you can then support, oh, here's like a more interesting take on that creature type you've got to go with, like, what are the most efficient payoffs and the most efficient pieces? I think the trap you fall into if you try and just max power level, is that ultimately because you're building around creatures and everyone's going to be a creature deck, you will end up in a spot where everything's a bit down deck, and that's kind of not that fun, right? You need to, I think most of the time you're going to want to be willing to rein the power level in a little bit to make room for some of the more interesting type of payoffs that are just play loads of this creature type in play and attack. Yeah. 180. Yeah, that's definitely something we're going to be digging into today. But just to be on like on on the power level as like you, you have nailed it. Like, some things that come with this is the it does mean necessarily you don't need the most efficient like fixing though. Like, like like tap lands can be fine in these environments. Like like you don't need to run saws to plowshares or pathways. Oh, you can run like the 2 or 3 mana version of these effects. Like, like like that is one nice thing with these type of uses that they can be more budget because yeah, yeah, as James mentioned. But like like like the the optimal version of all these cards is probably more boring than the fun versions. You can kind of build by trying some variety in your architecture, but that is something that we're going to be getting into, kind of like another reason. So so I'm moving on to kind of picking creature types and this does kind of build system is this kind of is linked to power level. One thing you are saying when you are building, creature type matters cube, is that I am limiting the number of cards I can pick from, and that will immediately lower the power level, lower the ceiling of your cube, because you don't have access to all of the most powerful cards you have, might have access to some of them because you're trying to make them work in the, creature types that you've chosen. And again, there is no right or wrong way of doing it. There is no like, here is the best creature types. Run these in all your colors. Run what? It's your cube. Build what you want. But like the kind of context that we're talking about here. So at time of recording, there are 31,183 unique magic cards. Of those you have about 4000 humans. You have about 650 elves, about 600 zombies, 500 goblins. And then everything else goes down really quickly from there. So like for and vampires and dragons are around the 400 mark. Most things are below that. That is not a tremendous amount of cards to pick from. Like humans is quite high. Humans will admit is very, very high because everything's about a human. But in turn. But that's kind of the lens we are looking at this through. And like it does mean that kind of like if you go for more niche creature types, there can be a lack of redundancy and there can be lack of varieties and Dex like, like I think I'm thinking like like kick in is we've only really seen in low end and maybe some master sets or maybe some very, very old sets, but kind of like as a creature type, it's going to be harder to support than something like elves, just because you have less options to play with, basically kind of like, would you agree with that, James? Yeah, for sure. And if you're running, running, this solves less supported types. You kind of take choice away from yourself as well, because you end up just having to run all the playable ones. And yeah, so it's harder to sort of build in more of a direction, you know, you're just like you're a playable captain. You're in the cube combat. Exactly. You are right on rate, power and toughness. Attacker. You're fine. Yeah. No, exactly. But the but there is some help here. And I do think this is actually a good way of, making the draft environment more important. It's like we're going to use the D&D, the race and class way of describing this here. But effectively, jobs and classes also count in these types of cubes. So, so like warriors and wizards and soldiers like like in magic, there are twice as many clerics as there are merfolk. Remember that. It's not just like elves. It can be warriors as well. It can be like creatures. Like, especially, especially nowadays, more and more common, like things will have multiple types. And that I think will really help make a more, a more rounded environment than just it is elves, it is humans, it is goblins. It is zombies like it's an additional level. And it also makes it also adds cards that want to go in multiple decks, like you could add a elf warrior. So the elf deck wants it and so does the warrior deck. Like, like we'll touch on this more as we get into after, but just like having more choices, having more overlapping cards is something that you want from a good cube. You don't want lines like you don't want like like one thing we are really trying to avoid when putting this cube together is after pack one, everyone knowing what deck they're in and just taking the cards that go in that deck with no choice. Because then why are you even bothered bothering to draft? Mixing them up like that, I think really is a great way of kind of from from the jump off having choices. And I think that's a key thing to keep in mind. Yeah for sure. So I think this is the trap quote unquote. Maybe it's not a trap that nice. Sort of basic draft environments that care about creature type tend to fall into very, you draft, bloom, throw you first free cards of rabbits, but I think rabbits for one of them. Yeah. I would go for elements. Yeah, they beat me up many times. It's not terrible. That's why I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you just like, never had another decision for the rest of the draft. Right. And, even, like for spells only rarely works in one that, you know, you would just like every pack, you took that card for a picture of a rabbit. And that was year two after. And then you played and sat down, play some games. So and that's like, I think that's fine for a few drafts, right? It's like you dropped a rabbit stack. Yeah, that was fun. And then I went and drafted for Fox SAC. And that was pretty fun. And but it doesn't make me want to draft it like the sixth or seventh time, you know, it's like I've kind of once I've shifted all the things. Okay. I'm kind of done with this format, you know? And if you're building a cube, you kind of want it to have a little bit more longevity than that, right? So I think one way you can go about that and, and say you're not, that not not stuck in one lane immediately is that if most of the decks care about more than one creature type, right. So you might care about elves, but you might also care about druids or warriors. And probably to make that work, you have to end up in a spot where like that aren't enough elves in the cube that you're reliably going to get 40 an ounce in the attack, because then you'll just care about elves, right? And there's no reason for you to to dip into anything else. Whereas to me, I think it's kind of cool if it's a bit scrappier and you've got to be like, well, I only have like seven elves, that's kind of just not enough to make this pay off work. But then I also have some druids and there's this weird little druids payoff over here. And I've got these two changelings and they're very bad, but I'm going to run of them anyway because they, like, just that makes my decks take over. And that's to me is like actually a more interesting draft experience. It might be you'll have less powerful decks. Obviously, I'll have less streamlined decks, but, I think it's a you're providing a very different experience than the Beast draft one. And I think pretty fun on. No. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That element of like tension is there. I'm just like, oh like I might like like what is my deck going to look like? Am I fully nuts and like not knowing that you're going to we'll everything I think is incredibly important. Like that is one of the points. That's one of the best parts about booster draft of just like I have. Which card should I take? It's so much more boring if it's like, well, it doesn't matter, I'm going to get them like, like, like, but like you want it so that someone else wants the card that you want. Like there shouldn't be any bad cards in a cube. And like that does count. Like, even if you're the one in the deck, like, there should be an element of tension, which I think like that really does, kind of, which, which which mixing up the creative types. So it's, so it is just, it's a, it is race and class matter. I think it's very important. And also it's a tool because, because there are some cool decks that you can pull together because of it. But let's keep it going. Let's talk about talking of decks, things are important to consider as well as one thing that James mentioned is that it can really be a trap of it's just eight people curving out, ramming their decks into each other. Whoever draws the overrun first wins. That might be fun once, maybe see who's the fastest. But for replayability, it's not just different decks like, oh, it's just different archetypes. It's the key components of a deck. So like by that I mean having like making sure the aggro is represented, making sure that tempo is represented, making sure control is represented, making sure midrange and combo are all there. But these all these are fundamentals of to building. But just because you are building a creature type matters cube doesn't mean you can ignore. You want these kind of keep, but by the combo deck existing it means that control that needs to be kept in check. And by aggro existing it means that control is like it's like a big game of paper, rock, scissors that we want to be there because it makes like these are fundamental ideas of cube that make cubes enjoyable. Yeah. For sure. I think this is so we were talking about bloom though, and lo, in those examples a of the type of mushroom environments, right? I think for me this is something Logan has done very well. What the intro kind of failed at in bloom. So it was they were kind of they were five creature types, I think, and they were basically full aggro deck decks and fox thing. And one on playable deck wasn't that for forever? Fox was kind of cool, actually. The Fox was all right if I were doing V like ETP to my around a pond, it was a bit of a barrier. But everything else was mostly just beating down, you know, and, and just wanted to sort of spew the maximum number of creatures of the appropriate type onto the battlefield as early as possible. Where was Logan? I think has gone in quite a nice, different direction. Where that deck still exists, like Kick In is very much a beat down deck. And that's that's fine. You've got to have that in the format. When you look at elves, for example, elves tends to care way more about having elves in the graveyard than having elves on the battlefield. I think that's a cool, different direction. You're you're still caring about your creature type. You still want to maximize your density of it, but it's not. Just put as many into play and make them think, oh, I'll make some hasty or first try kill whatever it is. And then something like elementals, which is what I've been trying to cast loads of elementals is trying to make manor cast some bigger elementals. Profits accumulate value that way. When things like Flame Trader to enable that, rather than making it easier to. But making your elementals in play better, it's enabling you to cast bigger elementals early because you just have more, more directions, you know, rather than just, power and toughness and a very fat type. Yeah, 100% like, it feels like what they've done with Logan is they've thought about what what can the types do that is more interesting than just care about. And when you are building a cube with this environment, keep that in mind. Think what what can creature types do that is more interesting than just care about. So yeah, so so so James mentioned yeah, yeah, yeah. Traditionally elves was the epitome of the carve out cast. Lord effect when the game. But it's now had a bunch of graveyard stuff thrown into it as well, which is a cool. It was a very interesting way of taking it. Like you can make go Gary. Gary, I was be like a graveyard matter. Stuff like goblins as well. The epitome of I'm going to play a bunch of goblins, I'm going to turn them sideways. But because of modern horizons and stuff like that, we've seen a bunch of like, aristocrat style of things that you can go with goblins. There's like, there's like, I have Slinger and Lieutenant, along with the classic of Siege Gang Commander that are really good at throwing goblins at your opponents. That is like the basis of an aristocrat deck that's more interesting than just Goblin pile driver into Lord, that kind of stuff. Like, And if you listen to our last, interview episode, we talked a bunch about, like, goblin combos, that's a whole nother thing you can add, which is done. Like, it's a deck that cares about goblins, but in a different way. And it's more interesting than just I play one drop 2.3.4 drop win. It's kind of what we're after, but like you can just go down the list of creature types like angels. Angels can be fliers, but there's also a bunch of angels that angels are to do. Interesting stuff with. Life game. There's vampires. Vampires can also be life game, but they can also be tokens. They can also be aristocrats. They can be like there's a whole madness. Command the deck around like, oh, with a bunch of vampires in it. You could pull that over. Like, like a lot of the more recent madness cards. Vampires you could like. That's how you can still do a type of matter stuff, but still make it be slightly more. Yeah, for sure. For sure. You just need to make sure you're not. I think you're not, like, essentially casting creatures that have a tick box that's had a visa for that type so that they're actually synergize together in some other way. Yeah, exactly. And that will be that will be easier with creature creature types with that have more options and more variety. So being honest, a portion of the cube, a portion of this cube will be made up of elves, goblins, zombies, humans because there's just more of them. Like you can do. Like my gut is. You'll do more outside the box things with the ones that are more supported. But then if you want like tree folk, I think tree folks probably is quite good. Like but matters deck like a defense like like like there's definitely some cool stuff you can do with all of the creature types, but like I'd like to get like kick in, as James mentioned earlier, is going to be harder because it's just we just seen them less like like not like nugget. Shaymin or like Nagas might be tricky as well if they're not snakes yet or yeah now get might be fun I think for way I'm. I think if I was going to build this hyper mass cube now for. So the way I do it is I have some number of like family supported types where and I'm probably going to have it have a normal default and based after a as they seem to have gone for five supported vibes. Right? They seem to have decided that's for number where they can make sure everyone has enough cards type. I would be tempted to go with a setup where most of the time you don't have as many cards of your type as you'd like, and you've got to like scrap for a little bit more. I think that's cool. But then I would also see it in a bunch of cards. I'll be, sort of secondary having you calls like have a class type side for the wizards, for soldiers V and what I want you to be doing with that right, is you don't care about soldiers for a pack and a half. And you see this type soldiers master cards, and you have to look through all your files again and see how many of them are soldiers. And if you can scrape together enough soldiers to make that work, and then you have changelings as a way to sort of type a room together, right. I think you really want the changelings to be on power level. Worse than the other cards, right? But you. All of them. Yes, because they're almost free to go in any deck. So. Yeah. So, like like maybe not as bad as some of the ones, some original low in the are very like like we're not champion changelings here, but like that's when when you have to like Exile one when it comes in all that kind of stuff like. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Some of the ones I'm low and I think have been very low in eclipse are very good at that. Yeah for sure. Like for The Changeling skittering surveys and some lower two cups, for example, those, would feel like I know. Yeah, 100%. I'm just a jump back as, like just a final bit on on things to consider in archetypes is there's some archetypes or some creature types do overlap pretty well. So we have mechanics like party which cares about you having clerics, rogue warriors and wizards like that seems kind of like a pretty cool, like overarching like look at like almost like a package that you can add as well. So, so, so like if you're seeding those archetypes in the cube anyway, you can have like a party deck exist and then cool, that's your like secret a level like that's your spider spawning, if that makes sense. Like you can also do a similar thing with outlaws. That's another of these that they added in analysis of Thunder Junction outlaws cares about, assassins, mercenaries, pirates, rogues and warlocks. Kind of like that. That might be a bit more niche, and I probably wouldn't do both that and party. It's just a cool way you can get things to overlap. Again, it's a cube. We're looking for cars that multiple people want and then like like you have very simple things. I want to like like like like werewolves. One side is a human, one side is a werewolf. A lot of them also care about wolves as well. There's definitely a deck that's kind of like like you can have a human deck and like green, white, and then you can have a werewolf stacking rule that will work quite nicely because some of the cards will, like the humans will work on with in both decks. But then the werewolf stat can get more out of them because they are also werewolf. So like I think that's like there's a bunch of other ways like that. You can go like, like, like there's humans that make dogs and always kind of stuff. Like there's ways of you can make things like this work. Yeah, for sure. I think VR for like niche sort of stuff archetype you could have in that is you scattering a few very powerful payoffs for creature types, which basically aren't supported. Okay, so who's a changeling builder? And, you know, you have to have got a decent massive changelings in order to use them, but say something like, spawning Kraken was one that came to mind, which is, cares about. I think it's like when a Kraken Leviathan, you know, all for, like, food creature types. Then you make a 99 Kraken whenever the delicious creatures deal that. Yeah, whenever you visit a seafood restaurant. Yeah, you make A99 Kraken. And it's cool to have that as a little sub off site visit website for around ten hours. Actual kraken. But there's some changelings, and maybe there's something you can do where you trapped all the changelings and all those cards. Because no one else wants, and theoretically, because no one else can use them and look for like, the solve. Interesting and very unique creature type payoffs as well, right? Something like, Joe hack on a Knights dude. Oh, that, there's a car that is sweet but unplayable in command. Or what is hack on do hack on is one black black for A33 legendary zombie knight. You may cast this car from your graveyard, but not from anywhere else. As long as hack on the battlefield, you may cast knight spells from your graveyard. And when it dies, you lose two life. That's right. Yeah. So, like, if you've got a self meltdown, right? Yeah. You can just melee for your own cast out of a graveyard. So now I can cast all my changelings out of the graveyard. That's very cool. It goes really well as well. If you've got any of you like Changeling Instance and sorceress. Because you just go right back to the graveyard when you cast them, and then you cast them again, and you can just keep going for this much madness. You have the AI just to find them infinitum. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We touched on changelings being a nice little blender. But yeah, yeah, that is an additional think again. Get creative with it. That's an additional deck that you can add which is interesting. Again, this is more interesting than just I'm going to draft all the goblins today, which is not a I'm not saying you are wrong for doing that, but if you want to keep playing this cube, having variety like that, I think is going to be really, really good. Yeah for sure. You want you want both experiences to exist, I think ideally. Right. If if someone wants to just plant their flag, they should be able to and that's fine. And but there's potential for other options. Nice. See, another thing to keep in mind when you are putting the cube together is like, again, this this will kind of come into an overlap with how, the deck's going to win. So again, we have our curve out, but we have our obvious one. So it's like creature lords. The most obvious way that these type of cubes and these type of decks can win. So, like, if you're on an elf deck, a card like Elvis Champion, like Elvis Champion is going to be great for you. One green green tutu creature elf. Other elf creatures get plus one plus one and have forest walk. If you're supporting owls and you want elf to be the aggro beatdown deck law like that Lord is fantastic and most heavily supported title matters I decks will have a Lord of some sort like Lord of Atlantis back in Alpha classic one. The other thing you can consider is if you are doing something more interesting with these archetypes, rather than just the beat down, look for effects that that archetype wants rather than like the creature type ones. So we mentioned, aristocrats and goblin. So yeah. So sing, sing that together. I'll read it out now. It's three in a black for A11 creature goblin. When it enters, create 211 red. Got my which tokens and second goblin target player loses one life and you gain one life. So in this aristocrat deck, this is a really strong card. It's turning all of your other dorky goblins into direct damage. Like this is a battle. Like in this deck. This is a better blood artist because it's the sack outlook and the thing that's killing them. That might not be something that we run in, just the generic goblin beat down deck. But when we, making it, when making Knocked Up do something, it immediately becomes better. Yeah. For sure. It's about looking for payoffs that actually meet the needs of that deck, right? Not ones that just look powerful necessarily. So, for example, if you have, trying to do something like slivers, well, slivers is probably going to be a bunch of colors, right. And therefore you want to prioritize the slivers for fix your manners. That's things like, I think there's mana left slack of which like makes all your slivers into Birds of Paradise. And a couple of similar effects and base color. Wash your slivers. And that might actually be more valuable up there to drop sort, than just giving off slivers plus one plus one of that. I'm sure you can find vein for that to. Yes, I've also lost a muscle sliver in my time as well. Oh, who hasn't? The second muscle sliver. That's what. That's what messes you up. But yeah. So then on top of deck specific lords and deck specific like an archetype specific payoffs, you have the good generic payoffs that can go in multiple decks. And kind of like I'd be tempted to I think if we're doing ls, I'd be tempted to run one Elvis champion or like one way of giving my deck overrun. But I probably wouldn't do this. I I'd be tempted to not do the second to the third and run something like Patchwork banner or, or, this incubator or something like that. So I read Patchwork banner. Pirate banner is three generic for an artifact. It taps to add one manner of any color as it enters, choose a creature type and creatures you control the chosen type. Get. Get plus one plus one. The. This can go in any deck. It's a colorless artifact that goes in any creature type deck, and this is a card for any of the archetypes in this set or in your cube. Will want. Same with edges incubated as incubators. Three generic for an artifact. As it enters, choose a creature type who just spells as the chosen Typekit cost two generic. That's the cost. These are kind of like open ended cost. Like this is like this is like drafting a fetch land in a powered cube. Like, you know, it's going to more than likely it's going to get in your deck, but it leaves you open with choices. But cars like these, I think are very, very so like, these are like colorless rewards or, and these are rewards that have to be colorless. But but they are payoffs that can go in any deck like, and I think they are going to be pretty strong in this environment because every deck will kind of want them. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think you want to be careful though, right? Not to make those payoffs better than V type specific ones. Very like I don't agree. You don't you don't want the best payoff to be for one that also go in after you tap. Right. It should be. It should be like good, but maybe not thus set like so for example something like vanquishes banner right? Is so that's v five minus factor does get plus one plus one. And when you cast a creature of that type to our card, super powerful card. So maybe instead of doing that you do something like, gathering sound from the recent set. Right? Which is, you look at the top card on your upkeep and you put it into your hand. So it's that, like, type and type crossover that's so powerful. Type it is. Doesn't have the on board presence. It's not quite that that power level of, fun Christmas banner. Which means that it's going to be slightly lower power level than like the colorless payoff that goes in that for your deck. It shouldn't be better in your elves. That fan the Elvish champion, I think would be the approach I would take. Yeah, that makes sense. So so so maybe the Elf one should be something that gives elves plus two plus two, but the generic one gets plus one plus one. Exactly. Yeah yeah yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes more sense. Yeah. I think that does lead us on to a nice point of like one thing. That one thing with these generic ones is this is something you can do when you are searching for cards for this Q but cards that say choose a creature type are going to be stronger here. And that's kind of what like what James was alluding to because they go in any they go in every deck, they can just you can just take that. They're basically free to draft because you know, they're going to be playable because you'll just choose a creature type where they get more interesting. And this is something, again, the James was alluding to is when your deck isn't 14 humans, it's 9 or 10, and you've had to take some other bits from here to make a deck, like when it's not affecting every every card freely. And like, I like to like I've seen this in law in LA, when I was talking with my Twitter giant partner about his, singles prerelease and like, he had the very broken, mythic rare from the set, like the banner, and he didn't name Kiss King or elf or merfolk, he named like warrior or something like that, because that was more helpful at the time. And that is what he thought would help him win the game. And that's kind of the point of it. Like, like even if you are the humans deck, just having that sense of like, it's not guaranteed. What I'm going to pick every time because of how you build the cube, because you've thought about class and creature type, that will make it more interesting again, more choices. It's always a good thing. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I think the thing you ideally want in these cubes fight is that you can, because you don't want it to be, like overwhelmingly complex and inaccessible. So you want people to be able to, like, draft it the easy way and take that creature type. And like, if they found an open lane, it be okay. But you want there to be another level beyond that as well, like where you're doing more complex stuff, where you might be caring about multiple types for you or maybe, yeah, for slightly more in depth strategy than the sort of, on the face of it, what this creature type does. Yeah. No. Yeah, I agree with that. So also, when we're talking about the, spec about being choose a creature type cards, we're mostly focusing on cubes assigned here, but a little bit of strategy, I think for these cubes, you should prioritize those cards very highly early in the draft, because they're going to let you actually see what's open the half of it. But, you know, the last thing you want to do is take your elves build around, pack one, take one, take a HTML, and then a battle, and then vandalize. Yeah, yeah. I'll say drafting elves, right. And that's how you train back fight when you, when you do that and you don't let go fast enough. Whereas if you take a couple of hours, choose a creature type cards early that lets you actually figure out what you're seeing, before you, before you pick a blade. Know. Exactly. Yeah. The the train tracking part of it does kind of summarize all of my experience of Bloom Burgh, if I'm honest with you. But like, I think that it's partly because that set was way more like way more harsh because, like, if you weren't specifically like, like you could be in the colors, but if you weren't in the archetype, it really punished you. And I think that's why I think with this, we're trying to get across a little a little bit of having more options so you can pivot out because in Bloom Barry it was it was the five but that was it. That's kind of why was like that. That's kind of why we're talking about like have your like have your key creature types but then have their jobs as well. And I can pivot into that or I can pivot into my party Matters deck, or I can pivot into changelings or just just having more options means that you're not going to have a draw finish. And four people are like, yeah, I got the best elf, goblin, zombie, human deck, and the other four I like. I got the worst elf goblins on the human deck, you know what I mean? Like, that's kind of where we're trying to get with this a little bit. Yeah. The issue you had in bloom, though, right, was for, if you say you started off in green rabbits and you, you, you know, you're like, six picks into a draft, you have like, four green cards. Two white cards, for doing for rabbit Fang and you for life. For rabbits. Nope. Invite your cat and cut. Actually, foxes for place. I need to be. I'm getting pastel for good frog stuff. Great. Let's pivot over there. Fox is green. Blue should be an easy pivot. I have mostly green cards. Doesn't work because your green cards that you took for your rabbit stack don't work in the fog stack, you need a completely different set of cards. There's maybe like 1 or 2 removal spells like Common Witch Transfer and everything else is is works in one deck off the other. Say you want to build in cards which allow you to do that pivoting, right? Yeah. I mean, I swear there was less in that in because there was a bunch of cards that were cheaper or easier to cast if you had one of the creature type, like there's a bunch of like I of like I because I've been going through my chat boxes recently and building decks from them like there's a, there's a isn't there a bounce or like a fight that's cheaper if you target, a frog, which is like playable in the rabbit deck but so punishing if you've taken that as like some removal and then you have to pivot afterwards. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. It was. Yeah. That's a great point actually even before stealth didn't that it's yeah it's kind of rough. Yeah. Yeah I feel every time I drafted that set I was in the colors that were open but just not in. I just wasn't seeing the creatures to make them as soon as you work. But we're trying to avoid that in the ones that we built for ourselves. Some other things I do kind of want to consider, like, like in terms of cards that are generally going to be better in this type of environment where there's a bunch of creatures running around is cause they care about creatures, cards that care about you, casting or playing creatures or number creatures in play are going to be more important in this queue, because it's not. You can't just run a cube that like, this isn't scourge. We can't just have every effect be on a creature. We are going to run incident sources, but it's highly likely we're going to run slightly more creatures in this queue, maybe like 10% more in this cube, because there will be some effects that we can get on creatures, but we still there still has to be a balance. It can't be all creatures, but it's still going to be a higher percentage of creatures. So cards that care about creatures will get better. So I'm thinking something like impact tremors. It's a one red for an enchantment that deals with damage. When a creature we control enters the battlefield, that's going to be better in this environment than a regular cube, because there's just naturally more creatures for you to draw like. Same with a card like Guardian. Project is another enchantment that whenever, an unknown creature enters under control. If it doesn't share a name, which it will do. In cube, we draw a card. We are going to have more hits in this. Like our deck is probably going to be 3 or 4 more creatures than a regular cube draft, because we're trying to get that synergy. So a card. So cards like those get better just because our deck is a high up, a higher proportion of creatures. So they're going to be triggering more often. Yeah for sure. And I think the really big difference right, is that you you just aren't going to have like 4 or 5 creature control talks of, hey, you know, can that I think at pretty much every deck in most of these cubes is going to have a minimum of like 12, 13 creatures, right? Because otherwise you're just not going to have any of these type of synergy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely agree with that. I think so. That's kind of cards to consider. Let's kind of just talk about general cube constructions and final things to kind of keep in mind when you're choosing cards to go in a tuple matters cube. And I think one of the key things is check the wording on all the cards. And this will very much define how you want this to work, because a lot of older cards say number of the creature in play, not you. Control. I played an onslaught block which had a lot of this like well-wisher mirrors are kind of miserable like well-wisher one, the green one, one creature ls you tap it to gain one. Like for each elf on the battlefield. That's not you control. That's on the battlefield. Say, my opponent has the well-wisher and I have a bunch of changelings. It will count those all like the majority of old, type of matters. Cards will be worded this way. Like they're like, there's a bunch of slivers that care about all slivers as much as slivers that came up. Just ones you control. Keep that in mind, because it's if you are running changelings, which we're probably which which which we are suggesting is a nice way of filling in the gaps that will come up. So just keep that in mind, because it can be a kind of a feel bad to some newer players who are not used to that, because it's something they fixed because it didn't feel fair. Yeah. This is I think this is very much depends on your outlook, whether you think this is a feature that, in my mind, that's cool. If that's not counter play. Right? Because, like I do agree, but it is worth mentioning, I think. Yes, but you should be thinking about your play group when you decide which one you want. Like do you want Lord of Atlantis, which is cool and buffs your opponent's merfolk and get some Islands Warlock against your blue deck? Or do you want massive pale trident which does not? Yeah. No. It is a very valid point for It's not a fun thing to find out about on the fly, you know? Yes. I happened to me once, like, quite recently. I thought from from Odyssey that they reprinted in Domino Remastered. We did a Domino remastered draft. I played this in my white x deck. Divine sacrament one white, white enchantment. White creatures get plus one plus one threshold. White creatures get an additional plus one was on. As long as there are seven or more cards in your graveyard. I played this and then my opponent killed all my white creatures and then played their own white creatures. So. But like that is symmetrical and like at the time I was like, oh, this is rubbish. But like it's a thing of like like, but because in this group, because you're going to be mixing wordings. That's more what it is. It's like it's unlikely all of your cards are going to say, oh, all of the cards are going to have the old wording, or all the cards are going to have the new wording. There's a chance like it's something to consider just to avoid feel bad. It's basically. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's I think it's fine to have both, but just bear in mind it adds to the overall complexity of the ocuvite, and I think that is something you need to bear in mind at all points. I, I think we touched on this amphibious in my mind, you kind of have a sort of complexity budget which you're able to spend. You know, which is going to be different depending on your play group and the sort of play experience you're going for. But you can't dial for complexity up to 11 on every single access. Right? Or for a lot of sacred. Oh, it just becomes kind of overwhelming as a first draft experience. And people just might not want to draft it anymore because they just spent an hour being confused and then loss. Exactly. Yeah. And and that's a great reason why this is not a this is the hard and fast way. You 100% build a cube like this. Because if you are going to like like you might like that complexity, if you're listening to this, you might hate that complexity. That's a decision for you when your play group. It's just something we wanted to bring up because I think it's important. Another thing that I think is quite important, it just from the deck construction point of view, if you're building an archetype and that's not all your type matters. Cards have to be obvious, or they don't have to be on creatures like like I'm thinking like like I mentioned this deck earlier, but like, you could have quite a cool spider spawning deck and a cube that has a bunch of like, architects that are doing a self meld thing. Maybe you have like elves in Go Gallery, you have goblins or you have zombies or fairies and Demir doing a self male thing, and then you have a couple of spider lords and some of the spider spawning effects that make a bunch of spiders. You don't need to run 15 spiders to make that deck work. That deck wants to like, just wants creatures. And then the spider spawning style effects like is spiders spawning on them. That I think is another effect that I like, that there's 1 or 2 effects that do a similar thing that would raise you like, that is a deck that you can make work with, not with like by like 2 or 3 spider lords. And those cards, if you if the rest of the archetype is there because it's what your cube is doing. But like keep that in mind. Like really get creative with it. I think it's I think that's a great way of adding more diversity. And also people like like secret spider spawning deck back in 2026. Let's go. Yeah, that's that's very cool. Yeah I think it's always and it's cause like five is fighting like cool because if you're doing the self male thing anyway, you don't need to put in many slots. To make that work. Right. You can probably make it work with just for choose a creature type and you choose spider and you do a bunch of yourself male stuff. And that's like, you know, maybe normally you're choosing elves or whatever, but you have this other angle to attack left. Sometimes you choose spider and make lots of spiders. Yeah, 100%. Like there's a bunch of elves that actually make insects. Like maybe that's the way you take it. Actually, you've got cause like it is only thousand die and vile spawn spider, which you make a bunch of insects depending on the number of creature cards in your graveyards. Like maybe it's that over specifically spiders, and then you run some insect payoffs. But yeah, generally, I think that's a very cool deck you can build as well. And I think kind of rounding it off like this is kind of the next thing I want to talk about, just kind of it does to an extent go against everything that we've currently talked about. But I think it's important to kind of keep in mind in that not every card in this cube has to be a creature type matters card. Like, you don't have to make all your cards too specific. This is not commander like in commander. You can go really deep and like every elf, like, oh my card draw elf, all my interaction elf or my ramp on quite easy, but elf like, that's not how this is going to be like like like like what? We buy this. I'm what I'm saying is like your key staples. I think it's okay to keep some of them generic. By that I mean like white and black removal, like blue card draw and counter magic, like black hand attack, red burn and green ramp. These are staples that you kind of that you need to just make. Decks exist. And it can be very tempting, as I said, to make them all be specific creature types, but kind of like what happens if all of my red interaction is on goblins? It can get who it could be, who would buy one player or two, but or you can send mixed signals to players and kind of like you need room for generic effects to kind of like to grow and flex and, and what kind of like like I think a great example is that kind of like, every blue deck open, most blue decks will want some kind of counter magic, some kind of interaction on the stack. And like, it can be very tempting. Kind of like if you're doing fairies in blue, you run spells at a sprite. That's one on a blue for a flash fairy that counters a spell with mana x or less. When it comes into play, where X is the number of fairies you control, great pay off for a fairies deck, but if that's the only counter spell in your cube, what does the non blue berry bowl? What is the non blue fairy deck? Get? What is like my cynic merfolk deck? Get. This is where generic bits can be important. And again like like okay I do not have hard numbers for everyone listening but but it's going to be tailored to the cube. And like my gut is that kind of like it's fine to run spells as a sprite as a reward for the faerie player, but you then want to run 1 or 2 additional bits for anyone to pick up to go in and and like and like I mentioned top earlier, that's fine to go in a cube if it has goblins because the other like, but that's at least more open ended if that makes sense. Like it's still a shock in another deck. I think these kind of like finding like not being too strict is, key part of this cube which, which is, which is different to commander where everything where you try and synergize everything a lot of the time with this, you're not doing that, I think is a fair way of saying it. Yeah. For sure. You need, you need for, you're still going to want your generic interaction spots. And these cards can sort of have some interaction with creature types. Right? You can run, for example, the ones which, like a removal spell that's a little bit better if I've got, elf. That's fine. That still kind of counters your generic interaction spell, because you could also run it, and then none of it would be totally fine. But something like spell. So this is fine, for example, doesn't count as one of your counter spells and ice cube fairly. If you're if you're, you know, following some metrics on, on on those lines because for top even majority of for people drafting blue it's not going to work as a count spell for them. Right. I think actually yeah. What you just said maybe not including the payoffs in your count, I think is a good way. I think that's a nice way of doing it. Yeah, exactly like 100%. If you're doing fairies than spells versus fights. It's a sweet card, but, just be aware it doesn't really replace a generic counter spell in your cube. No, definitely. That makes sense. Where do you stand on the cards that modify creature type? So stuff like mask with Nexus. So it basically makes everything all feature types on your side. And you thinking like that's makes it less interesting because you've, because then it doesn't matter what types you drafted or is it interesting build around where then you've got a dedicates a whole card slot to Vesper, then it unlocks, something else in your deck. I think that's cool. I think it's similar to the like five color changeling deck. I see it as like a if you can find like a package of cards that work with those, then I think that's quite nice because because there is a world where kind of like they just become like, it's almost like, you know, the, conspiracies that, that, that let you play a lot, then let your lands tap for any color. Yeah. They kind of like that. And I think it's like, I, I think they are very strong, but they're very strong. If you see them in pack one, like would be my gut. Yeah. That kind of checks out because like, and you need your deck for skill work when you haven't on. It's so exactly. It's very much one of like if you don't see like the eight I like it as a deck building constraint. I think that's cool. Like so it's a good. Yeah. Yeah. It's not much like you could build a deck that does not work unless you see those effects and that probably won't be great. But if it's a way of unlocking some some more powerful card, like if it's a way of like, turning on a couple of powerful lords in your deck, and I think that's a cool way of building it. So. Yeah. So, so, so I could definitely see those like those finding a lot. Yeah. I think it could be an interesting angle. Right. But yeah, it'd be interesting to see how it plays out. Anyway, where I thought you were going with like question was like old bad illusions. Sure. Yeah. Cause like like Myst form drama is where I thought you were going with it. Like a two in a blue two one illusion with flying that you can pay one to make it become the creature type of your choice in to lend it to. Like, like like these. This is changelings. Before we had changelings, I thought that's where you were going with. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. The thing with all features like that, right, is that if you want them to be playable in your cube, you often have to be doing a whole that fair cube. Fang, because they just very, very some creatures, sometimes flux is so bad, it's, you had to for this spot where they have to do synergize amazingly well to reach the level of, like, a draft don't. And a novel set without any synergy at all. You don't. Oh, I do, I do like a card like trickery charm. From that set, though, that could be quite fun. Like, like there's going to be more effects like this, but visually it's a single blue for instance, that has three options. We don't care about two of them, but its abilities target creature becomes the creature type of your choice until end of term. That seems really funny, like turning off a creature, like turning like they lord a creature somehow. And then it's like you turn off creature types until end of turn. That could be a really funny way of going in this type of stuff. Like, I don't know if there's enough of those effects, but like having creatures lose that creature type to stop their buff from their Lord effect or stop their dex energy. It seems like it seems like a very funny control deck. That's kind of cool. I bet it looks really narrow on first glance, right? But I bet in one of these cubes most games you actually can find a really good spot for that. Yeah. Like, even if it's just winning a combo or something, you know, like, they make a bunch of attacks in with their buff creatures and then you debuff them and wear them a combat, right. Yeah. Could be an interesting one. It's kind of cool against the, there's a bunch of sweepers which are like, destroy all permanent except for this type. Right? It's good against them. Nothing is very strong. Yeah, we get it. I found a repeatable version. Unnatural selection one, the blue one. Mana. Choose a creature type other than wall, because, yeah, that's really, target creature becomes that type until end of term. That's really funny, actually. Like like again, like this is why like, this is where for me, these cubes become interesting when you can do something interesting and do something so far outside the box, like, like, like turn like a control deck that turns off people's creature type. Seems really funny to me. Yeah, I quite like that. I think that might be. That was so I can say no. Phenomenal. Oh, so I think if it ever comes up, I really want the I think we should play with the old walls, full vegetables, walls and having to. I do like that idea. Would they have changed that when they added changelings? Because they've changed things for every creature type that would, they would be walls and that makes sense. Yeah, I was probably the reason. Okay, maybe we shouldn't play with it. Feels a little sexist that these things always have always, always kind of, changed things that. Oh, so you found a funny. All right. As is often the case, we found ourselves in a rabbit hole. Let's put ourselves out and let's end this episode. But, yeah, yeah, I, I think these types of cubes have a lot of potential. Like, like they do seem a very good way of giving. Like a lot of players, like title matters. I think this is a great way of like, like for, like an entry level cube or like, like converting like, command the collection into a cube. I think this is going to be quite easy for a lot of people, because we have a lot of the cards and a lot of the play offs and that kind of stuff. I think. Yeah, yeah, it's it's stuff people like, and I think that obviously that now Lauren is out again. People are kind of like, now we've had a good one I think is what I'm gonna say. Like, like I, I love the Art of Bloom Burrow. It was adorable. The draw format did not vibe with me, but like, now we've had a good one, I think. I hope people have found this episode helpful in terms of putting together their own environments, doing this type of thing. When I thought about type of not as cutesy this year, I kind of thought I. I've always thought I'll just be really unveils and get a bit dull. But talking about the options for this actually, I think they could be really cool. And there's. Yeah, I think there's a lot of like, interesting design space for that. What's that? James, I need a fifth cube. My God, we've done it. So sometimes you just send out a choice, you know? Sometimes. Yeah. It wasn't my fault, wifey. Yeah, they made me do it. All right, all right, let's let's end of that, James. Pleasure, man. Thank you very much. That was a really good chat. Always a pleasure. Wonderful. Just leads me to thank you all very much for listening. Do give the podcast if I some of you tell a friend all that good stuff, whatever positive affirmation you could give to the podcasting platforms, the podcasting gods would greatly help us out. Until next week, it's goodbye from me and goodbye from James and we'll see you all soon. Goodbye.