Developing The Onebert

Ryan Overturf breaks down one of his newer Cube designs, a Twobert where every spell costs one mana! 

The Onebert on Cube Cobra 

Wheeler's One Drops on Cube Cobra 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What's up gamers? Welcome back to 180MTG. My name is Ryan Overturf, and this week I'm going to be talking about one of my play environments that I call the 1bert, which is a 2 bert, a 180-card cube where every spell has mana value 1. When I say the name of the 1bert, the most frequently asked question that I have to answer is whether this is a cube that one player can play. No, this is not a solitaire cube. This is a cube where every spell has mana value one. So sorry to disappoint if you're looking for a solitaire cube with the one bird. I have not designed that yet, but I do think that this all mana value one two bird environment is pretty fun, is pretty novel, and it's something that I'm excited to dig into with you here today. So the first thing that I should say is that these kind of cubes where every card has mana value one, this is not anything that I came up with, very much not my original idea. In fact, if I rewind, go back in time to when cube was first popping up, it did not take long for people to really make cubes their own, start iterating on cube, exploring new niche, weird spaces. You know, cube has grown a lot in the way it's been really creative in recent years, and this all one drops cube is something that really goes back close to the origins of cubes. People have been doing this kind of cube where everything costs one for a very long time. This is one of the first kind of weird cubes that I ever heard of, in fact, it's just a cube where everything costs one. And it's not something that I have a lot of experience playing with from back then, but I do remember this kind of cube being around for a long time. And it's not anything that I have ever really had the full motivation to work on until recently, despite always being kind of intrigued by the concept, there was just something that just wasn't fully approachable as far as ironing out the environment. There is just some stuff, just kind of noise in my head, I guess, about approaching it. What do you do if everything costs one? Um, you can make the gameplay dynamic. I think that's something that really I got hung up on when it comes to an all one-drop cube. Of course, there's not much of a consideration for your mana curve when you lay the cube out. Um we'll come back to talk about that a little bit because there are ways to do one-drop cubes where there is more of a mana curve consideration, but just abstractly, if you're starting from the position of all the spells cost one, then mana fixing lands get kind of weird. If you have the best mana fixing of all time, fetch lands, shock lands, ABU duels, then it becomes kind of just picking the best card in the pack and just trying to make your mana work. Uh, it's really easy to see this kind of environment be something where the actual cards don't matter and you kind of just pick the strongest card from every pack and kind of cross your fingers. So there's something that I always felt not quite approachable to me about designing one of these and how to kind of uh approach the gameplay environment here from a design perspective. That is until 2024 at KubeCon, where I had the privilege of doing commentary for the event, and one of the cubes that we covered was Benjamin Wheeler's Wheeler's OneDrops, a 540-card cube for eight players where every spell has mana value one. And the thing that really grabbed me about that cube was that all of the mana fixing lands enter the battlefield tapped. There's kind of an exception when it comes to fetch lands, but if you use wooded foothills to fetch up hedge maze, then hedge maze is tapped. You can't get an untapped dual land on the first turn. You know, Wooded Foothills is a mana fixing land, but if you fetch a mountain or a forest, then you no longer have access to the mana fixing beyond one color as the game progresses. So you won't necessarily end up in this kind of soupy space. And just the aesthetic aspect of your land entering tapped, making your land functionally a one-drop, was something I immediately fell in love with and something that made me feel like I had to start exploring this space. It made the space a lot more compelling to me. So shout out to Benjamin Wheeler. I will have the cubecoper page for Wheeler's OneDrops in the show notes, as well as the cubecobra page for the One Bert. But before we get into the OneBert, I do want to just talk about a few more things happening in Wheeler's OneDrops, where the general construction here for this cube is that every card has mana value one in the sense that you can transmute Dizzy spell to find it. I was talking to Wheeler at KubeCon. There was actually one exception to this. There was an ancestral vision in the cube, and Wheeler was saying, Oh, maybe I actually kind of don't like that because it breaks that parameter. The idea there is that ancestral vision, it has no mana value, but you can suspend it by paying one blue mana, which is functionally making it a one drop, but it's not a one mana spell. But then kind of more broadly, when you look at Wheeler's one drops or really any one mana value cube that gets up to the size, 540 cards, you get into a lot of space where when you hear all one drops, yeah, there's going to be a lot of stuff. This spell costs one, you cast it for one. That that's the whole thing. But you get into a lot of exceptions when you get to a larger size, and some of this is just to allow for varied gameplay. Uh, a very clear example is X spells, a card in Wheeler's List, Gold Vein Hydra, one green mana, and then X for a creature that enters with X plus one plus one counters. So stuff that scales with that, where the spell's mana value is technically one, but you would never cast it for one. And then there are a number of other ways where you can cast a spell for more than one mana, which adds some dynamism to the game as things can play out differently when you have cards that you are more realistically looking to spend three, four, whatever number of mana beyond one to actually cast them. And that's something that you're going to want to have in these larger, all one drop environments just to make the gameplay more varied. Also, because you run out of appealing cards that just cost one to cast on their face. Something that is really cheeky that I enjoy about Wheeler's environment is the presence of Soul Ring, where when you first see it, you think, well everything costs one mana. Why do I want an artifact that taps for two? And it's this funny uh usage of this card that is fundamentally one of the most broken cards of all time. If you're used to drafting powered cubes, then you're used to Soul Ring being a very high pick. And then when you play an all one-drop cube, maybe you think, oh, Soul Ring's not that powerful here. And then the way it actually plays out, because you have these different ways where spells cost more than one, and a lot of the gameplay in all one-drop cubes is activated abilities of cards on the battlefield, or even just cycling, is something that comes up when we talk about those lands being in one-drops. That's going to be lands like triomes, like two-color cycling lands, where Soul Ring does pay a lot of the cost or all the cost for that kind of thing. Soul Ring is actually a pretty compelling first pick in this environment as well. And that's kind of the thing that I did not end up translating as I scaled down to a 180 card environment to build the two bert with all one mana spells in the one bert. And then Wheeler also has a number of more niche archetypes, smaller packages, things like mill, kind of space to explore that can vary from draft to draft. This is a cube where you don't draft all of the cards when you play with eight, and then also you do just kind of run out of appealing one-drops, as I was saying, when it comes to just kind of more focused gameplay, certainly around creatures and navigating combat. So you want to do more stuff in cooler space to allow for more unique gameplay. That's all stuff that I think scales very poorly down to a tuber environment where you draft all the cards with a four-player draft or a good chunk of the cards in a two-player draft. You have all these exceptions where you have ways to leverage more than one mana on a turn, but in a smaller environment where you draft more of the cards or all of the cards, they stop being exceptions and they start being rules. So there are things that I wanted to maintain here, some things that I think are really positive aspects of the gameplay, having activated abilities and mana syncs, so you can keep doing something with your mana. Of course, I had already said that I really enjoy the mana fixing lands entering tapped and those being a one-drop. But then things like the soul ring, it's just going to be really difficult to make that compelling because when you have all these activated abilities, that's either what the game's about, you can pair those down and then make it so, okay, so Soul Ring is weak or soul ring is very strong, and that's just not that interesting of a puzzle to put together to me. I think that it can be a little bit more exciting when there's more variance in the environment, when there's more players drafting, more cards involved. But parsing this down to a smaller list, that was definitely something that did not appeal to me as I worked on the smaller cube size because Soul Ring ends up being loudly very strong or loudly very weak by design. Neither of those appeal to me. But let's get into the different types of one mana spells and what my philosophy is for the one bird. This is notably going to be a somewhat different conversation than what I usually do when I break down my own cube designs, or really break down any cube. I will often like to go through the cube color by color, talk about what's happening in that color. But with the one bird, so many of the game pieces uh have a very similar texture, even if there are archetypes seated here. If you look into the cube, you certainly see a prowess thing going on in blue and red, you see a little bit of a sacrifice theme going on in black, green and white are paired together more than any other color pair for ways that will come up as I break down kind of some of the mechanical aspects of the cube. But it makes a lot more sense to have this conversation, at least to me, around the way I'm approaching inclusion of different ways that the spell can be a one-mana spell and the implications of the selection criteria. So that's really going to be more of my focus today as I talk about the one vert. So let's start with just my broad strokes approach to what I'm looking for in a one-mana spell for this cube. I liked Wheeler's thought about you can transmute Dizzy spell for it, but I took things a little bit further there. I am only including cards that you will generally cast for one mana, that a player will happily, if they have their choice in a significant amount of the games, more often than not, kind of my general criteria, cast the spell for one mana. So that gold vein hydra, any X spell, fireball, like you can cast Fireball for one mana. It'll trigger prowess and then do nothing the spell normally does. That's not going to be a candidate for inclusion for the one bird for me. I'm looking for spells you will actually want to cast for one mana. And I also like excluding those weird cases like suspend, like the card actually just having one pip in the corner. I think that's a fun part of the aesthetic. But like I said, I'm excluding any X spell. I'm also excluding some mechanical implementations of one mana spells. Spree is something you'll see in Wheeler's list where Spree is a mechanic where a spell has a base cost, and then you can pay additional mana to add additional abilities to the card. The thing about a spree a spree spell, you literally can't cast it without paying any additional cost. So for my definition, it is fundamentally not a one-drop. To the extent that you could cast fireball for one mana, you can't cast a spree spell for its base cost. It's just not a legal game action. So spree is a non-starter for me. I do like kicker. Kicker, when we're talking about a card like burst lightning, for one mana, it'll do two damage. That's something that will kill a lot of one mana creatures. And then sometimes you can kick it. For four additional mana, you can deal four damage. Sometimes a larger toughness creature is something you'll have to answer with burst lightning. You can do more damage going upstairs, but overwhelmingly, you will cast burst lightning for one mana and be happy about it, which does kind of get into some exceptions I have for kicker. I'm talking about inclusion of cards you happily pay one mana for. That means I'm gonna exclude some stuff that has kicker, where you feel like a chump if you don't kick it, where the purpose of the card is to kick it every time. A really loud example of this is the card Urborg Repossession. Now, this is a card that I like. This is a card that I have history with. Dominary United is actually one of the retail limited environments in the past several years that I have heavily engaged with. Urborg Repossession was a strong card in that environment. Really cool value card for building an engine, often around Wing Mental Champ Chaplain. I like this card, but I'll read the text here if you're not familiar. One black mana sorcery, kicker one in a green, return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand, you gain two life. If this spell was kicked, return another target permanent card from your graveyard to your hand. If you have your druthers, you were always casting this card for three mana. So it's not a card you were happily paying a one for, therefore, it doesn't fit my aesthetic parameters here. And this just ends up being something that you kick every time, and then it just does become loudly one of the strongest cards in the cube. And I mentioned not wanting to balance around Soul Ring, it just feels like a fool's errand for a small environment. If I start putting in Soul Rings and Herborg Repossessions, the cube just has to be that kind of stuff all the way down because the stuff that you just cast for one and do a little bit more honestly is completely unappealing next to these cards. So all of the games would be defined by these cards. So as much as I like herborg repossession, as much as I think that it is an awesome include and should be a part of the 540 card build for Wheeler's one drops, great inclusion there, it just doesn't fit my parameters. And everything that I have tried that has been this kind of mana sync, where the idea is you always spend more mana on it, these cards as a category have negatively impacted the play environment. So I avoid these kind of cards where you always spend a bunch of mana, spree being a full non-starter, and then kind of case by case with kicker, herbal repossession being something that you are always going to want to kick, whereas a card that I really like in the one birth is Vines of Vasswood. For one green mana, you give a creature of yours hexproof until end of turn, and then for an additional green, you can give that creature plus four plus four. If your opponent is using a removal spell, certainly at sorcery speed, there's no need to kick the vines, but then there are reasons that open up where you will kick it some of the time in some of the games. If you have to use it as a combat trick, you pay a little extra. I like having to pay extra. I actually had some uh difficulty or dissatisfaction when I tried some more catch-all protection spells that give you a little bit more like blossoming defense. An instant for one mana gives a creature plus two, plus two in hexproof talent a turn. That card I felt gave you a little bit too much. It was kind of strong against red removal, black removal, and just any creature. And it just kind of felt like that kind of thing was pretty deflating for the general premise of everything costs one. Blossoming defense is really nice in a lot of environments. I really like that kind of card in the tempo two bert, where you want the creatures to shine. There's a lot of these great removal spells. In the one birth, so much of the game is about sticking creatures and establishing a battlefield. And I did find that blossoming defense was just giving you a little bit too much, and it almost felt like a color pie break, where it was like a doom blade and a counter spell, and it was just giving you a lot. And this implementation of embracing vines of vastwood, a spell that does a lot of what that card does, and everything if you pay a little bit more, and just kind of attaching that extra cost and really having that extra one kicker with that specific example, I think, actually is a really uh fun aesthetic aspect of that inclusion in this environment. So stuff that you kick sometimes, and also kind of making it so the texture of individual cards matters, having very few things that are just catch-all, just strong in all of the games, and trying to avoid that kind of thing. I'm trying to make players work for a little bit more in this environment. And on the topic of making players work for it, I also don't have any Phyrexian mana. There's nothing you can do in this cube for zero mana. And if you're approaching a one-drop cube, there's really no reason that for your own purposes you can't include zero mana spells. Everything that costs less than one, that's a fine way to approach it. But Phyrexian mana, when everything costs one, these cards are just going to consistently be very high picks, or the effect is maybe just not that appealing. But like a Gataxian probe, you're going to take it. I think the card mental misstep would be so broke in this environment, it's just kind of a first pick over everything. Really game state agnostic, really an easy way to leverage extra mana, which also kind of flies in the face of that approach of using mana-fixing lands that enter the battlefield tapped. Giving you something for free seems like a really easy way to get ahead in this environment, and so I just have not really entertained ever having any Frexian mana in the environment. Even a card like Gutshot, I think, could be pretty game-breaking here. So despite really liking that card, it's something that I don't think would contribute positively to the play environment. A really interesting card to consider for these one mana environments from Secrets of Strixhaven is Slumbering Trudge, which is green and an X for a 6-6. A creature enters with a number of stun counters on it equal to 3 minus X. If it entered with a stun counter on it, tap it. And this is one that I opted not to include in the One Bird, which is similar to those other X spells. The difference is Slumbering Trudge is a card you can just cast on turn one. You can play Forest, Slumbering Trudge, it'll enter tap with three stun counters, eventually it'll untap and be a 6-6. And the reason that I decided against it, just in terms of sequencing, you would rarely make that play. If you had a different thing worth doing on the first turn, you would just get your other thing online, and then eventually you'll be able to spend more than one mana on the trudge. It'll enter with fewer stun counters. Waiting and spending more mana is, you know, just kind of the same in terms of the trudge's output, but then you get to do something else in the interim. So this is actually just kind of the weakest card to play on the first turn, usually. There's also some synergistic stuff. Creatures with evolve are going to incentivize you further to play the trudge later in the game. And so Slumbering Trudge to me really reads like a four-drop that you can cast for one, not like a one-drop that you can cast for four. So it really does not fit kind of my aesthetic rules for what constitutes a one-drop for the one bird. As much as I do like the card Slumbering Trudge, it just ends up being more of a four-drop in actual games, and that does not fit what I have built here. But then as far as what I do like, I of course like creatures that you just cast for one mana, I like removal spells that are pretty good at trading evenly with one mana creatures, and I like activated abilities as a way to add texture to the game over time, particularly activated abilities that are mana syncs, I think are pretty compelling, and the cost of one mana, it is really felt in this environment because you can be casting your spells. You only have so much mana to go around, so using 3 mana for an activated ability is a really real cost. You're gonna cycle a lot of triombs in this environment because you do need to draw spells, you only have use for so many lands, so the other mana syncs, they are a way to make use of the fact that in some of the games you are going to flood. You should be playing less than 17 lands, the overwhelming percentage of drafts in this cube, just because all of your spells are cheap. The situations you end up in where you want to play more lands are typically because you end up in three or more colors and your mana base gets kind of scuffed, you really need to make sure you have a bunch of different colors of mana, and just like basic lands are pretty weak in this environment, especially as you get into more colors, because you only have so much to do with your colored mana, and these activated abilities tend to cost generic mana. So activated abilities cost mana definitely is something that is very welcome in this environment. To that end, something similar. I like flashback. I actually like flashback kind of categorically more than kicker, lava dart, firebolt, the ability to flash these spells back later while getting something now. It's a way to add some card advantage to the environment, where some of the ways you can generate card advantage in these all one mana environments totally take over the game. A two for one that's kind of expensive, you know, sacrificing a land is to the extent that you will draw too many lands, sacrificing a land for a lava dart is still not the most appealing rate. There's a lot of creatures here that that's not kill, and flashing back firebolt, you know, five mana is a really steep cost in this environment. So that stuff just kind of adds more texture to the games as they go along, so that stuff is still really welcome categorically, though you do have to find the ones that really work. There are some of these cards with mana syncs attached that I've had to weed out over time. So let's talk about some examples of that. Which I do think at this point it does make sense to go color by color. So you do get some nice mana syncs in white and even some card advantage. Thraven inspector and even the new Elite Interceptor is present here in the one bird, and those are one-twos, that is a fine body here, and they end up drawing an extra card eventually, so you can get some card advantage there. Those cards are pretty strong, and those kind of one-shot effects. I really value those in these cubes. I like the card possessed goat, that's a new ad one mana, one one. Once per game, you can pay three mana and discard a card to put three plus one plus one counters on it. Now it's a big four four that's pretty giant in this environment, and just kind of that one shot ability to get some value. I think that that stuff can just. Generate some nice use cases for these cards, some nice tension in the game. With the possessed goat, you know, if your opponent responds with like a lava dart, if they have a removal spell that can't kill a 4-4 but can kill the 1-1, it can be an opportunity for some tense decision making. Thraven Inspector, Novice Inspector, these are safer cards. You're just gonna get a card back for them eventually. But it's good just to have some reliable tools in the environment. And the stuff that I've really been avoiding are the cards that you can just keep doing the same thing turn over turn that the output on them compares pretty favorably to a lot of cards. An example of this is Herald of Anafensa. That is a one-mana one-two. It has an outlast ability, so we can pay a cost and tap it to do this thing. Uh so the outlast ability on Herald of Anafensa for two and a white, you put a plus one plus one counter on it, tap it, and you make a one-one token. So this creature is just kind of becoming gigantic. Doesn't take too long for it to outscale most or all of the creatures on the cube, and you get a 1-1 token, which just matters in the texture of combat where every creature costs one. That just takes over the game on the battlefield. The mana sinks that I like, you know, there is some tension to cracking a clue with Traven Inspector because every spell just costs one, and most of the spells here played to the battlefield. So spending some mana just to sculpt your hand, that is a real cost here. Drawing extra cards, you know. I like recruitment officer. It's a one mana two-one. You can pay for to look at the top four cards of your library and put a creature with mana value three or less from a monk into your hand. So any creature here you'll be able to find with the officer, but four mana is so steep and it doesn't put it into play, it puts it into your hand, so there's no impact on the battlefield there. This kind of thing is much easier to manage than those Herald Pana fenzas. And the game shakeout, like it is a removal check. You either kill the thing or you don't, but the games are so bad when you don't kill the thing. You know, some of the creatures are going to be stronger than others. As a game goes along, as battlefields can get bogged down, you will want an answer to a card like Recruitment Officer, but it's not even guaranteed to put a card in your hand with every activation. And it is four, and then you need another mana to cast any creature that it does find. So that's just a lot more modest as far as the impact on the game. You can just more easily play the game while this card exists on it, whereas Herald of Anafensa kind of monopolizes the game actions on the game. And then there are some other cards where uh something I find really undesirable is if there's some kind of game action you can take with a card in this environment, that once you do it, it becomes really difficult for your opponent to come back or requires even more specific things. Like I was talking about possessed goat. If that becomes a 4-4, it's strong, but it still dies to all the black removal, the white removal. It's not even that big of a deal for the red or green decks because double blocking and two for one in yourself uh to answer it is something that can happen, it isn't that big of a deal. It's still like a navigable game object. Also, if it's attacking you, you have 20 life. You can take a hit or two, you can chump block, you can do something about that. The card Kithian, hero of Akros, that was a one-mana, two-one that can transform into a planeswalker. When that planeswalker was in play, I kind of felt like the game was over. So I really didn't like that. To the extent that I kind of like the front side of the card, a 2-1 that can gain indestructible for some mana. I think that that plays fine here. I kind of like that, but I played a game where it transformed, and that was just kind of really disinteresting to keep playing that game from there because it didn't immediately end the game, but the game was functionally over, which is, in my opinion, kind of the worst kind of game to play where it's only technically continuing. And other stuff in this category. It doesn't even have to be mana sinks, you know. The the Kyftan is not a mana sync. Mother of Runes is a card that's a non-starter for me here. You either kill it or you don't, and then it just really messes up the game and perpetuity once it's down. And I've shied away from a lot of protection spells there. I just want most of the cards here to try to trade evenly. When you use a removal spell, certainly a card like a fatal push, I want it generally to hit its target and just kind of minimizing the stuff that makes those cards weak, because there's only so many of them. And when it comes to all one mana spells, just the range of how strong any one game piece can be relative to any one other game piece. It's really hard to have anything super explosive that can come back from very far behind in this kind of cube. And as such, I want the removal spells that can claw you back into a game as it starts to slip away to be generally effective. I don't want to have a bunch of stuff, even Benevolent Bodyguard, I didn't like here, because if you have one creature that really matters, I want the top decks from your opponent looking for the removal spell for that to be generally very effective. I wanted to have pretty minimal interaction points for that kind of thing, so that every draw stab mattered a little bit more, and player agency on both sides of the table was more relevant. So I'm a pretty big fan of isolate and swords to plowshares here, and I actually don't have Path to Exile because I think giving your opponent a land for a creature you trade with is just such a big downside, especially with all the mana syncs in the environment. I want the removal spells to be generally appealing without having anything like a sweeper, because there's only so many two for ones. Certainly when you only cast them for one mana, those cards like end the festivities that can deal one damage to all your opponent's creatures, which tend to be most hostile to the weakest cards in the cube. So I don't have anything like that, and I don't want ruble spells that have significant drawbacks, because I think it's really easy to lose, because Spath Exile, the extra land converts into a lot of things here. When you're talking about a mana base, I'll talk about the mana base more as I get to that point in the uh breakdown here of every column of the cube, but an extra mana to cycle more of your lands, your extra lands, that alone, even if it might not be allowed in the game, giving your opponent extra mana allows them to take advantage of that, and you can get buried over time. And every turn, that extra mana for whatever mana sync they have is going to be a problem for you. And I want removal to be appealing because having spot removal for the most significant creatures on your opponent's side of the battlefield, even if I'm tempering the top end there, it's just going to make the games more compelling, more engaging for both players. And I do have one card in white that's kind of on a watch list, kind of pertaining to these cards that can theoretically take over a game and monopolize game actions, which is Legion's Landing. One mana enchantment makes a one-one lifelinking vampire. And then if you attack with three or more creatures, you transform it into a land where you can pay three mana to make one-on's. This one, you know, that one-one, there is a lot more removal that can easily answer a one-toughness creature. There's even a couple of creatures that enter the battlefield and just answer a one-toughness creature in this queue, which I kind of like showing off these kind of flame tongue kavu-esque kind of creatures there. So there's some vulnerability there, and you do have to be pretty far ahead to make an attack with three creatures without giving up any material in that exchange. Whereas Kithian was a little bit easier, both because of Kithian itself can give indestructible, and then the planeswalker side on that Gideon there was just way more impactful than spending mana every turn to make a 1-1. So Legion's Landing, I think, plays better in the environment, but it is texturally very similar to cards like Herald of Annefenda. So I'm going to watch it over time. It's something that I could see possibly monopolizing games or leading to kind of um anticlimactic end states where the game kind of drags on. I'm gonna watch it, but so far, it's a card that I really like generally historically. I'm a big fan of Legion's Landing, and it has not been problematic in the games just yet, though it is notable that as I peel things back, kind of some new thing has kind of emerged over time. I've worked on this cube for over a year and a half now, and I've kind of scaled back on one thing or the other. Some different thing can become problematic. That's an aspect of this environment. And I want to keep the power level kind of as high as it can be without having stuff that really breaks explicit rules from the environment. And so Legion's Landing is currently the experimental ceiling for the white cards on that kind of output. There's a lot less to talk about in blue. You get a lot of really nice card selection spells. It's kind of funny. I think that ponder and pre-ordine are really strong, especially in those games where you are trying to find the catch-all removal spell for some problematic creature on your opponent's side of the table, but they cost a mana and don't impact the battlefield, right? In a cube where everything costs one, they are much less exciting as your turn one play than getting something into play that can do some attacking or blocking, whatever the game calls for. So they're really nice, and I think it's it is important to supplement them with kind of a prowess theme. Have stuff like the Delver of Secrets here, and notably I don't have some of the other one mana blue prowess things. There's a modern Horizons creature that has bestow. That's a one-mana prowess creature, and it bestows for two. The reason I don't have it is because I expect you would most commonly bestow it. That's the way it played out. I did try it briefly, and every time I had my deck, it's like I'm a sucker if I don't bestow this, because it can be a two for one if I bestow it. So it really felt more like a two-drop than a one-drop. You're not really trying to open the game with that. And I feel similarly about Elusive Otter, which is another card that I really like, a one-mana prowess creature, but the green X spell on the adventure is just so strong in this environment that it becomes a non-starter. Where I am kind of a bigger fan of an impactful creature in blue is Sleep Cursed Fairy, which bears some similarities to Slumbering Trudge. One mana three three enters tapped with uh three stun counters on it. But you can't pay additional mana to cast a spell to have to have it with fewer stun counters. You generally have to wait over time, or you can pay two mana to untap it, which removes a stun counter, which two mana over pang and X into the green. Very different texture. Truthfully, the amount that I like Sleep Curse Fairy is where a lot of my sympathy for Slumbering Trudge does come from, but I think that the numbers on Sleep Curse Fairy just kind of make more sense in this environment, and the fact that it is a one-mana spell. And you know, the untap ability, it's good once you get going, but you have to invest to get it going. Mostly it aesthetically feels like a one-drop, and then mechanically it's countered by a pretty notable blue card in minor misstep, which is one blue mana to counter a spell with mana value one or less, which would not always catch the slumbering trudge. So that's that's a nod in favor of sleep curse fairy. And honestly, being countered by minor misstep is probably the best way to express my criteria for things being a one-mana spell for the one bird. And I like the way that minor misstep plays here too, where mental misstep costing zero, if you just pay two life for it, is something that's just a huge tempo swing, always gets your opponent's best thing. But the value of a mana here, always having to leave up one blue, that's a real cost, and it can interfere with things like wanting to cycle your lands to get to a higher spell density. And the the way minor misstep plays, where it's just kind of fine, it can play proactively or reactively, but that cost of a mana that's real, it can only impact things that are cast later, it can't reset the battlefield. This is actually something, this is part of the reason why I moved away from cards like Blossoming Defense. Those ones had a really counterspelly type aspect to them, but then they could also more significantly impact the battlefield. So I've tried to preserve some power to the card minor misstep. I like having some kind of counterspell in blue, and I like what minor misstep adds to blue's slice of the color pie here, lets it express the things it traditionally does, and kind of moving away from the strongest protection spells allows blue to shine in that way in this environment. I've avoided using cards like Curiosity or Curious Obsession in the One Bird, because I think as soon as they hit once, you can really easily take over the game, so I think that that's something I want to avoid having in this cube. And then as far as cards that are on the list that are on my watch list, uh Stormchaser's Talent is the card in blue I'm kind of watching. For one mana, you make a 1-1 prowess creature. I love that. Honestly, if that was all that Stormchaser's Talent did, I would still really like the card. I would certainly be casting it in some context. But then the level two, the four mana rebuy, an instant or sorcery, that can be really powerful. It's something that I don't think is inherently game-breaking, but where it might become an issue here, I've added a boomerang basics to the cube, and I've liked the way that it's played. You can do things like rebuy Melt Strider's Resolve to get another fight. You can rebuy a creature with an enter's ability to draw a card and get that entrance ability back. It's powerful, but it's a sorcery. There's some risk involved with targeting your own thing. You don't feel that risk with Storm Sacer's talent, and there is that kind of looping potential where you can keep hitting level two, get back the basics, bounce the talent, that kind of hostile play environment for standard that can really take over a game. Now, the value of four mana here is very high. It's something that has not come up in many games just yet. It's just something that I'm mindful of that I am watching. Storm Saser's Talent also is an individual card. That six mana ability is something that can take over a game. I'm less concerned about that because actually having six mana or six lands in play in this cube is a really tall order. It usually means you are struggling in some other ways. So that has not been a problem. That's not a real concern of mine. I like the way Boomerang Basics played. It's this this loop aspect with Stormteaser's talent and boomerang basics. That's something I'm watching. That's something I don't really want to have uh be a part of this and play environment. But I like having that bounce spell. I like the self-bounce with some inherent risk and some rebuying. And it's not the end of the world if you just bounce Stormteaser's talent on level one and make another prowess creature and draw a card. I think that there's something appealing to that. You're being kind of aggressive there. I don't mind that, but it is also just a pretty powerful interaction between those two cards, so it's something that I'm going to watch there. Moving on to black, black gets some great removal spells, some catch-all stuff, some stuff that doesn't kill everything but generates some value. So I really like the black removal here, and I like kind of a sacrifice theme going on with carry and feeder. Of course, you're gonna see Gravecrawler in the spread and a decent collection of zombies, so you will often be able to cast that from your graveyard. That's one of black's strengths. One of the zombies in the cube is one of my favorite changelings, changeling outcasts, one black, one-one with changeling that can't block or be blocked, so that's gonna check the box of being a zombie. Having some evasion is a pretty big deal as an environment. There's so many like one-twos, two-twos, two-threes hanging out here where the battlefield on the ground can get glutted down. So, some evasion to always connect, that's really valuable to have in the environment. Even just though the 1-1 flyers, the flying men-shaped cards in this cube are pretty appealing. So the unblockability could even give you a little bit more on that evasion front. I really like this card. There is a zombie that I did have to cut as I scaled things back. I used to have Crypt Breaker in the cube until I recently played a game where I did, you know, make a bunch of 2-2 zombies and I tapped them. And once once I drew an extra card, it was really similar to that Transforming Kithian thing, where it was like, okay, if you get to this stage, the game is over. And it honestly doesn't ask that much of you to get there. So moved away from that one. Another example of a black card that I moved off of is Ghouldra's Assassin, which is a level up creature from Rise of the Eldrazi. It's kind of steep to level up. It starts as a one mana one one. You can pay two mana to level it up, but it's not until you've leveled it up twice that it gains the ability for black and tap to give a creature minus two, minus two. You can level up more, then it eventually gains the ability to give you a creature minus four, minus four with this activated ability. But it's such a steep mana investment. When I started playing this cube, it would just die, or you just wouldn't have the mana to get there. But then eventually we played the games where it got leveled, and it just completely invalidates most of the top decks, and you're less playing a game and more just watching Ghoultras Assassin kill everything. So I moved off to that one, and I'm pretty happy with where Black is now. A potential card to watch here is Evolve Sleeper. This is one of those creatures with a bunch of abilities, very similar to level up, where this keeps getting bigger, and then eventually you can pay three mana every time you do that. It gets a plus one, plus one counter, you draw a card and you lose a life. I think that these costs are just very real in this environment. Evolve Sleeper, drawing extra cards for three mana, hasn't been a problem, and this is way more safe than something like Crypt Breaker. The fact that the tap three zombies is a zero mana ability. Actually, it's similar to a white card that I recently cut. Warden of the Inner Sky, which is one white mana for a one-two, as long as Warden of the Inner Sky has three or more counters on it, it has flying and vigilance, and you can tap three untapped artifacts and or creatures you control to put a plus one plus one counter on it and scry one. You can only do that as a sorcery, but it doesn't cost any mana. And then once it becomes the four-five with flying and vigilance, that's just gonna fly over everything, it's bigger than everything, it ends the game very quickly. And the vigilance also means that there's not really a cost to attacking with it. The cost associated with Evolve Sleeper, three mana every time you draw a card, pang the life, the fact that even though it gets pretty big, it still can only attack or block. There's more you can navigate against Evolve Sleeper as the opponent, it just feels way more manageable. And also starting at that base one toughness, it does open up some additional vulnerabilities, certainly as it relates to some of the red removal, and also just you can't attack and do anything until you have spent some additional mana on the Evolve Sleeper. So it's one that texturally won't surprise me if there comes a day where the card has some undesirable play patterns. You can just keep pumping mana into it, and that's all that you do. But it it's less problematic than some of this other stuff. The fact that it always continues to cost mana, and three mana is pretty steep, that's something that has not been as much of an issue as these things that have very small mana uh activations or zero mana ways to activate their abilities that can take over the game in that way. And there's no case where I can say with Evolve Sleeper, where now the game is over, we're like transforming Kithian or getting your Warden of the Inner Sky very big. The Evolved Sleeper still involves you continuing to navigate combat because it's not evasive and you are paying life. It's not a ton, it's only one life every card, but that does add up, so you can't just continue hitting that button at infinitum. Moving on to red. Red is of course my favorite color. I love the texture that these one mana creatures have regarding whether a one, two, or three damage effect can kill them or not. Really like the way these fiddly red cards that are often my favorite cards anyway, line up against the creatures in this environment. Of course, I love a monastery swift spear and a SoulScar Mage. It's kind of funny how difficult it can be to turn on Delirium for Dragon's Rage Channeler, but also just the value off of surveilling is pretty high here because you really don't want a flood. I keep coming back to that, drawing too many lands, a real problem with all when all your spells cost one. As far as notable omissions or cuts from red, grim lava mancer, not in the cube, being able to deal two damage to something almost every turn, to the extent that burn versus scaling toughness are just different sizes of creatures at all cost one is compelling. The ability to deal two damage to something every turn, which is honestly a little bit easier to turn on than Ghooldra's assassin was. Yeah, that's kind of a non-starter there. That can really take over some game. So Grim Lava Mancer, not at home, it's an all-time favorite of mine, but it would be a pretty negative include here. There are two cards that I'm kind of watching for different reasons. Uh Heartfire Hero, a card that of course is banned and standard, the ability to put a plus one, plus one counter on it with Valiant, allows you to do things like equip a bone splitter to it every turn and get a counter on it every turn. And it just gets really large. It doesn't really take much investment at all. And the fact that uh Cacophony Scamp is just a playable and kind of appealing card here is maybe a sign that the Heartfire Hero is a little bit too much. The last draft that I played where I had it, I really did feel like I was getting away with something, definitely with the combination with Lava Dart using that as a pump spell on my guy. It felt really filthy, it was kind of cool, but also it was really strong. You know, sometimes it feels like you're doing something cool because you are winning the game after all. So I'm watching that one, that's one that I could see cutting. It's probably the first card out if I see a red card that catches my eye to add to the cube. And then one that I'm also watching is Monstrous Rage. Well, on the topic of cards that are banned in standard. I think that monstrous rage is something that really negatively impacted standard. I've made the joke on the podcast here before, where when you have four copies of this card and constructed, the ability to give a creature plus three, plus one and trample, and that lasting plus one plus one and trample counter, or uh aura rather, excuse me, the roll aura, that makes it so blocking is basically illegal. Now, only having one copy in a deck, the texture of that is very different, and I don't mind a player getting blown out every now and again. I like the impact of pump spells. A lot of the games in the One Bird are going to be about combat. I like something that opens up. The ability to make some good attacks, but it might just be a little bit too strong. That remains to be seen. It's really just that lasting monstrous roll, so it's possible that something that's just a one-time boost is more welcome in the environment. I'm not watching that one as closely as Heartfire Hero, largely because the next best option ends up getting a lot worse, like brute force, titan strength. These cards are fine, but I really like that monstrous rage gives trample, it actually deals some damage there. So I'm holding on to Monstrous Rage because I think that's something it does in a fundamental way. The combat trick that can be good for some damage with all these burn spells here is a positive aspect of the environment. It's more just a question of rate, where Heartfire Hero has a more potential turnover turn negative play pattern issue, which is a more glaring problem to address. And to be clear, that is also a question of rate. The fact that Heartfire Hero just triggers for zero, you don't have to pay an additional cost. It's something where I don't think hired claw is a problem at all. A one mana one-two, whenever you attack with one or more lizards, which it is, it'll deal one damage to your opponent. And then for one and a red, you're gonna put a plus one plus one counter on hired claw. If an opponent has lost life this turn, you can only do that once a turn, which is also kind of true with the texture of how many lands players are going to control in this cube, but I'm getting away from the main point here, which is that scaling is welcome. The ability to generate advantages over time are welcome, but if they are just too low mana or too high impact for the mana you pay, I want you to pay for what you get. I like having the ability to sink some mana into hired claw, and even then it takes a couple turns to really get it going. It's a strong card, but it doesn't totally take over games, which is the fear of uh monstrous rage, maybe making it so you have a really good attack on one turn, and then you just keep having good attacks. Maybe it's a little bit too much over time, a little bit too much upfront, given that you have that lasting monster roll. And then Heartfare Hero's scaling is potentially concerning when Cacophony Scamp is a very similar card that is generally weaker. You know, notably the scamp can deal its damage to a creature, so that attrition aspect doesn't mean the hero is just stronger. If the hero could target a creature, it would probably already be out of the cube. I don't mind having stuff that accelerates the game towards a conclusion. That's less problematic that to me than the stuff that turn over turn just generates value and buries your opponent, but you have to keep playing the game. But it is possible that the rate on the Heartfire Hero is a little bit too high here, so I'm going to be watching that one. And that brings us to green. Green is tough in one mana environments, kind of similar to how it's tough in the tempo tuber, where a lot of green's strength historically comes from mana ramp and just casting more expensive spells. There are appealing things to do in green, but I've already talked about how I haven't liked the way that blossoming defense played. It just kind of felt like you were actually doing a little bit too much for one mana with that kind of effect. It just invalidated too many potential things your opponent could do. So green is a color where you don't get to do a lot of the things that are part of its fundamental historical strength, and where some of the stuff that plays in kind of similar environments is arguably too strong here, wasn't a positive aspect of the play environment. But there are still some nice things. I like wild Nicodal. I like having access to some stuff that's a one-mana creature that just has more power and toughness. A little bit of pump spells is nice. I'm pretty happy with Vines of Vasswood. I love the way Berserk plays here, where it's often a removal spell. You have to take some damage to the for the trouble, but where your opponent's only playing one mana creatures, if they have like a flyer, that's a problem. You can Berserk it and take double damage, and that'll be a kill spell there, or trying to line up a way where you can use Berserk, maybe in conjunction with Audacity, Rank or Vines of Basswoods, the biggest way to pump power and toughness, and just get a big hit that way, doing something a little traditional, the green with a big hit there. A couple of cards I really like in green are mild mannered librarian and stampeding scurry foot. These are one mana one ones that have four mana exhaust abilities, just some abilities you can use once per game, whereas they'll get a little bit a little bit bigger. The scurry foot will make a 3-3 token, the librarian will draw you a card, and they both get some plus one plus one counters. That's the kind of thing that I really like in terms of scaling, where it's just once per game, now it's bigger, you kind of build to this moment, you try to find your spot where you can activate the four mana ability, and it's not something like I tried Oviya Pashiri, which is very similar to Herald of Anafenza, just a creature that for three mana every turn, you can make a one-one token. And then Ovia also has a five mana ability to make a giant token. Yeah, that was the kind of thing where if you ever activate the giant ability, the game is over and it's just in play, you have to kill it, and if you don't kill it, you know, you're just watching the inevitability of this thing that is going to overpower you, so that was not very fun. I also had uh actually I don't know if I ever tried Hex Drinker, but I can tell you why I don't like Hex Drinker. Hex Drinker, the modern horizons leveled up creature, when you level it up three times, it becomes a 4-4 with protection from instance, so it turns off a lot of the ability for your opponent to interact with it. Then when you level it all the way, it's a 6-6 with protection from everything, so it can't be blocked, can't be hit by a removal spell, and it's just the largest thing on the battlefield in this kind of cube. That's just kind of too much, you know. Even though it is vulnerable to a lot of things, it enters with one toughness, it's just very clear what this card is trying to do, and that's make the game totally about it. Whereas I do like figure of destiny. If we jump over to gold, I have figure of destiny, I have figure of fable. These creatures scale in a way where they become large, like figure of fable, that three mana activation makes it a 4-5, figure of destiny becomes a 4-4. These are gigantic, they are immune to a lot of the removal spells on the queue if you get them up to that level, and then if you get up to the six-mana ability, forget about it. But unlike Hex Drinker, you have to pay six mana at a time. If you control six lands, you are probably pretty far behind because you are flooding very badly in the all one-drop environment, and that's going to give you a prayer in competing in the game with this six mana ability. So I'm way more comfortable with that than something like Hex Drinker, something like a via Pashiri where activating it once will often win the game, and they also just do more in the early game. They do more than attack and block the accrue value, and they give that kind of protection where there is also a moment of vulnerability when you try to activate these six mana abilities where a Swords of Plash Air is a fatal bush can just completely demolish you. So there's tension in activating those, whereas a lot of that is removed with a card like Hexrinker. So finding ways to kind of get the protection spells to a place where they're appealing but not too strong, and have some of these scaling abilities where they are strong but not too vulnerable. It's been interesting to navigate green there, and I'm currently pretty happy with the spread here. Green also gets your noble hierarch, your ignoble hierarchs, some mana acceleration there. I'm not going fully into Sol Ring where it's just getting some extra mana is strong, but then these are attached to creatures, a little bit vulnerable. They are a reasonable amount of mana acceleration, they only give you one extra mana. The exalted gives you a little bit something else going on with combat that can break up board stalls with both the hierarchs, and then land or else, just a classic card there. It's gonna be some extra mana for all those cycling abilities, which on the topic of that, let's just go ahead and look at the land base for the cube. I have all 10 triumphs. I was delighted when they completed the two-color cycling land cycle over the last year in commander deck. So I have all of those. These are typed duels that enter tapped and they cycle. And I also have monocolor cycling lands, the onslaught cycle like lonely sandbar that all cycle for one mana. And these are all ways to make it so you functionally have fewer lands, they mitigate flooding. You know, lonely sandbar, any blue deck will play that, and you can cycle it for a blue if you already have an island. You don't want to draw too many islands just because it's really easy to flood when all your spells cost one mana. So I like having the one, two, and three mana cycling lands there, they all fit really well. I love Surveil Lands, another tapped duel that's gonna fix you for two colors, set up your draws a little bit, can mitigate some flood there. Also with flashback and stuff like Gravecrawler, sometimes you put stuff into the graveyard for value. Not a huge part of the gameplay environment, but it's something that matters. And then in this cube, because you are playing so few lands, because I don't have fetch lands, I don't have untapped typed duels, it's really hard to play more than like splashing a second and a third color. It's really hard to be fully a three-colored deck, especially when drawing too many basics just makes it so hard to cast any of your spells. Your mountain can't cast your green spells, it is just impossible. So I I like having just these triomes where they often are only giving you two colors of relevant mana, and the big thing they're doing is they're cycling three to have a functionally lower density of lands in your deck. And then I did end up adding one cycle, I guess it's a half cycle plus uh of untapped fixing, where I have all six horizon lands in the cube. And I like these largely because you will often play them as not mana fixing lands. These are just lands that also will lower the density of lands that mitigate flood summon the environment. So you have your horizon lands like Fiery Islet, the the five enemy colors they tap for one of two colors deal damage to you, or you can pay one mana and sack them to draw a card. I of course like that. That's a one mana ability. It's like a one drop in the cube, so that aesthetically works. They're they're only mana fixing in terms of you draw them, and if you're playing blue-red, then fiery islet makes both of your colors. But there's a number of things in this cube that do care about types, so they can be weaker than the tap duels in that way, where your wild macottals, not pumped by your sunbake king and in any capacity. And then I just have uh Horizon Canopy as well, and it's just because these cards will play in monocolor decks, and often you even play them in two or three color decks where you're only using one color of mana because reducing your functional land density is just that valuable in this cube. So I really like the way that those ones play. So I cribbed all of Wheeler's Your Lands and your tapped kind of thing for the one drop there. I hemmed and hot a bit about having the horizon lands, but I love the way they play. I love the fact that they end up in monocolor decks or not fully as mana fixing, love the one mana ability there. And then I have a couple things like Prismatic Vista and Multiversal Passage, which don't really fix you. They fix you one time. You find a specific color of mana with them, and with that, you can't really play a soupy deck. They don't really expand your ability to fully play three colors, four colors, five colors. They're mostly fixing for two color decks or going into a third color. They're not gonna make you be able to be really greedy here, they're just gonna make your mana base more functional. So they're solid game pieces that don't really break the rules established by using these other cycles of lands. So you end up with a lot of triumphs where you only care about two of the colors, you end up with horizon lands where you maybe only care about one of the colors, and really a lot of what the mana base is doing here is just giving you something functional. One of my big fears about an all one-drop environment is just if you have really strong mana fixing and on-tap duels, then why wouldn't you just draft the strongest card out of every pack? And you know, there's some tempering of a lot of what I've talked about today is removing the strongest, the power outliers on cards, but then a lot of it does come down to the mana base, and where these lands, like it's often appealing to cycle your triome. You can't just play a bunch of triombs and have the best spells because all your lands aren't getting tapped, you're just falling behind on the battlefield. So the fact that the cycling is as appealing as the mana fixing is something where the lands, the utility on them complements the gameplay in a way that I find deeply satisfying, and it's one of my favorite things about this environment. And one last thing I want to talk about before I close today, I want to talk a little bit about aesthetics, something I want to do a better job of when I talk about my cubes. I do try to get some basic lands that really fit the environment for the OneBert. I've been using the Corset 2021 showcase lands, which are all basic lands that have a lot of coloration in the text box that really pop in that way, where there's kind of like mana overflowing from the land is how they kind of look visually to me, which I think really works for this environment. They're lands that I picked up when they were new and they fit in a couple different cubes, but this is the one that I felt like they really fit here, where your first planes means you can cast any of your white spells. So that really loud kind of radiating mana generation on the basic land, that aesthetic pop there, is something that really I think complements this environment aesthetically. But then the real reason that I'm talking about aesthetics as it pertains to the one birth is that generally when it comes to my card printings, I overwhelmingly prefer original printings. I like non-foils from the pack, like the first pack printing of any card. But in this cube, there's kind of been a proliferation. It started with swords to plow shears, where the swords to plow shares I had in this cube initially was just a copy from the Warhammer deck, I want to say, where it's just it was the swords to plowshares that I had on hand, and I put the cube, and a friend of mine just happened to have this secret layer swords to plow shears, which is like this bird guy riding a bicycle with some flowers in a basket. It's just really silly looking swords to plowshares, it's really whimsical and really fun. And he's like joking about trading that. I was like, Yeah, sure, whatever. And so then I had this like borderless swords to plowshares, a little bird guy, swords to plow shares on the cube, and every other card just had a regular border, and that that's an aspect of these original pack printing cards. Yeah, I generally prefer cards that just have regular card frames that have a black border, you know, the occasional white border, but a border on the card. And then over time, I just started picking up more and more like secret layers or showcase or alternate frame treatments of cards on the cube. And because the complexity of one mana spells is so low, this kind of visual noise, you can just abide more of it in an environment like this. Like, this stuff can really be hard to keep up with if you do it in something like a commander game where there's all these alternate treatments, and like, you know, it's less important you know what the cards do, but here in a two-player game, it really matters what the cards do, but there's just more, but there's just more room for some of this visual noise and this whimsy, and I've picked up just more and more silly versions. So if you look at the cube cobra page for the one birth and you see some weird card version you've ever seen before, some weird secret layer, these are the versions of the cards in the cube, and I just find that really delightful. I always just laugh to myself when I when I look at the cards, when they pull these cards out of the box, when I'm drafting this cube, and I open a pack, and there's just some goofy teenage mutant ninja turtles delver of secrets. I I can't help but crack a smile and laugh at that stuff. It's just really silly and fun, and kind of just allowing myself to do more of this goofy stuff is something that has been fun to explore with this cube when it's a pretty different aesthetic from what I usually go for. So I like having that aspect of variety from one of my cubes to another. And you know, the the name the One Bert is hard enough to say with a straight face. So leaning a little bit more into the silliness is something that I do value here. And mechanically, this has been a really fun environment to explore because I've always been kind of intrigued by these one drop cubes, but there's been something that didn't really register for me about them until I saw Wheeler's list and just these tapped duels just kind of opened up this world to me. And so I do learn something every time I draft this cube. I've had it for over a year and a half now. I've drafted it a few dozen times, and even still, I'm still kind of learning about the environment and kind of learning about what you can do with OneDrops and what I want to be doing with them in these cubes. And so something that kind of questions my intuition, my priors, and it's something I get to continue learning with and also explore this silly, funny aspect as well. This cube really gives me a lot, and I really enjoy working on this environment. Uh, but that's going to be it for my breakdown today. I hope that you have enjoyed listening to me talk about the One Bert. I appreciate you listening, liking, commenting, sharing, reviewing, whatever you do to support the podcast, and I will be back next week talking more cube. Later, gamers.