Art by Jim NelsonWelcome to the environment where a vanilla 1/1 is playable: old Kamigawa, as depicted in Champions of Kamigawa block (2004-2005).
The focus is on CHK-style gameplay, made more replayable. It has extensive paper playtesting in 6-player booster draft and 2-player triple sealed. We use a 4-2-1 duplicate ratio locked to the printed rarity on the cards.
Some cards are off-plane inclusions, interpreted as 'reprints' onto the plane from other sets. They obey the following rules:
- They shouldn't take center stage without good reason. Gluttonous Slug serves as a foe for samurai to battle, and Gaze of Justice providing a build-around archetype for small creatures in white, but most inclusions support CHK cards. Some reference CHK themes, such as Arc Blade mimicking epic and the wider time-substitution theme.
- They should add gameplay complexity, especially lenticular, without raising comprehension complexity too much.
- The flavour and art can be interpreted as being set on the Kamigawa of the past.
- They normally follow the same overall frame styling as cards from 2005.
- They aren't double-faced.
Almost all CHK-BOK-SOK horizontal cycles appear as partial cycles of 2-4 cards. Deprecated mechanics like Fear and Regenerate are removed, and the card choices follow modern-day design sensibilities, bent towards the CHK format.
Artifact removal is very suppressed — an option limited-only environments allow for — which has the effect of making some of the more questionable Kamigawa artifacts quite playable. Equipment, a very recent innovation in 2004, and often overpowered in CHK block, is toned down.
We skip various sets of cards from SOK, such as those with frequent graveyard checking, but large pieces of SOK are kept, which was unusual for a CHK cube even as late as 2020. SOK's 'all hell breaks loose' theme made many players quit Magic, but here some mild hell breaks loose.
We used the original Kamigawa lands for a while, but found players were punished too hard for running more than two colors, so we moved to stronger duals. This is an example of the difference in philosophy between this cube and cubes more representational of OG Kamigawa: we opt for 'fixes' that improve gameplay.
The overall speed of play is slow; creature-based aggro strategies that shaped the CHK limited meta have been dialed back. Kamigawa was also famous for its board stalls, which we actually encourage, just adding some extra ways to help games end, in addition to those in the original block.
The defining feature of deck construction in CHK limited is polarisation. Spirits and arcane encourage you to play more of themselves and each other. Everything pushes towards the spirit-world. Only the quality of your other cards might hold you back, so how far to play along is the player's dilemma. Playing up this dynamic, we eschew the hate cards that aren't really needed in limited.
We avoid most hate on Legendary-matters, too, but with different rationale: this theme is barely supportable in CHK limited anyway.
Over the last decade Wizards R&D has used a ‘signpost uncommon’ philosophy for multicolor uncommons. We make some use of this, but also use multicolor slots to extend the color pair's behaviour, or work optimally with cards outside their color identity. We're hamstrung by the constraints of Modern's card pool anyway, but both signposts and mechanical diversity are important, because we (ideally) aim for both approachability and replayability.
under construction: [We avoid draft traps. For example, as of 2021, samurai are hard to support in any format; this cube doesn't attempt to support samurai outside of white, and foregoes nonwhite samurai that might be taken as a signal of samurai being a broader draft archetype. (Warriors — the 'dark samurai' tribe, just as common in CHK — add to their single tribal card in CHK with two extras.) The aim is only to be kind to the uninitiated; certain cards are challenging on their face — others, though possible, aren't fooling anyone.]
Originally this cube was pure intended-as-Kamigawa designs, until my playgroup felt the gaps in the block's gameplay too painfully. The offplane choices are original — excepting, I think, the Vivid lands (which I saw on other cubes and play great in this block), and the genius in a Discord channel who suggested Zuran Orb.
If you’ve read this far, please follow the cube :)
Themes and mechanics in CHK blockTo aid as an introduction to draft, only cards appearing in this cube are listed.
Kami/Mortals Conflict