15oz Micro Brew
Design Philosophies: A Small Box With Big Dreams
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Create a unique replayable environment which allows players to play magic in a new way while still being approachable to new players.
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The cards chosen should foster players fun (avoid hate cards / gameplay patterns), as well as, be easy to read and understand.
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The format should focus on playing medium power "Fair" magic with a focus on synergetic value over a Xerox style gameplay.
Micro Cube Rules
- Cards are drafted in 2 packs of 12 cards
- Every deck has to be exactly 15 cards.
- Players do not lose the game if they would draw a card from an empty library.
Draft Guide:
Playing 15 card decks fundamentally changes how players evaluate cards; both in terms of card advantage and the worth of a card slot in your deck.
Most of the mechanics present in the cube touch most color combinations. Some specific mechanical themes to keep an eye out for while drafting include: recursion, artifacts, enchantments, historic/legendary, sacrifice, tokens, creature modification, Shrines, blink, discard, and large monsters.
Micro decks tend to be very consistent when you have drawn their entirety by turn 8 most of the time, Typically they play around 5 lands and limit themselves to two colors.
Feel free to stretch these guidelines, just make sure you have all the mana sources you need to cast your wildest dreams.
Side boarding between games is very important, and most often is the difference between winning and loosing a match-up. When drafting, try to diversify the range of effects you have access to in order to shore up your draft pools weaknesses.
Playing Guide:
Game 1- Try to get to know your opponents game plan, as the game goes on take mental notes of their threats and the types of disruption they have at their disposal.
Game 2 & 3- Now is time to let your inner spike shine! You now have almost near perfect information of your opponents deck. Scour your sideboard for reasonable edits and get ready to posture around being the player whos game plan gets ultimately realized.
also also and and....HAVE THE MOST FUN
Gameplay Balancing:
Due to players only having 15 cards in their deck, games already start innately Small compared most other limited formats. Card effects that work to make the game even smaller have been seen to be hard to balance while keeping the game fun for both players.
A good portion of the cards selected for this cube focus on making the game bigger while Removal / other small game effects come at more of a premium. As the kids say, LET THEM COOK!
Lessons learned:
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It has been seen that the Big/Small game philosophy also applies to libraries as well. Cards that Mill have lead to unfun non-games. On the other end of the spectrum, innocuous cards like Gaea's Blessing can make the game so big that it's insurmountable at too low of a cost.
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Destroy effects are preferable to exile effects. Exiling any of your opponents cards should be rare and at a premium and not be an incidental benefit.
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Its more fun when players have to work for their Two for Ones. Flametongue Kavu and the like have been too constant and lead to good stuff piles being the dominate strategy, punishing players for exploring the cute synergies the cube has to offer.
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It is very easy to get perfect information for games 2 and 3 so effects that let you see what your opponent has planning have also lead to less suspenseful games. Targeted discard effects like Thoughtseize have been removed.
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After Years of playing Conspiracies in this environment, I have finally have decided to let them go. They are just too consistently amazing, and do not really add to the texture of games in an interesting enough way.