Art by Erica Yang~ Cabbages & Kings ~"'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings!'"
Lewis Carroll
RESTRICTION
mv and lower are old border (Cabbages)🥦
mv and up are modern (Kings)👑
GOALS
A struggle for power between old and new, between rich and poor, between what it takes to win and what it takes to die with respect.
CABBAGES : "The Proletariat": Premodern vibes with low/mid power level. This is the majority (90%) of the cube. You can build decks with just these cards, and 'eat the rich'. And if you somehow win games against new elite tech you will be a legend.KINGS : "The Ruling Elite": Power outliers. These probably get built around because of their spice. These are new, likely game breaking cards. These start hitting the board at 5mv and the game warps around them.
HOUSE RULE : DIRECT ACTION 🧨
If every card you draft is old border, then your minimum deck size is 30.
- Sub-rule : You may pass a pack without taking a card.
- Bounce lands and Cogwork are not old border. Clearly. Just look at them.
STRATEGY
- Agro and land destruction may help you get under the 5mv wire and win before Kings hit the board.
- Draft removal for Kings, but remember you'll probably play against a lot of Cabbage traitors too.
- In 'best of 3' games your side board is going to matter a lot.
FURTHER READING
A review of the novel Cabbages and Kings by O Henry, from the New York Times, Dec 17th 1904;
"The incidents embracing as they do, a variety of subjects, hang loosely together, so loosely in fact, that at times one finds no apparent connection between them at all, and yet in the end one sees how each is intimately related to the other. ... Written by a less able hand than O. Henry's the book might have been a sad jumble, perhaps comprehensible to none but the Walrus—but as it is, one finds a joy in its every obscurity."
- And of course this amazing and seemingly constantly relevant part of Alice in Wonderland
- And this amazing video game from the 1900's
- And this incredible collection of artworks
Scryfall card pool search query:
(date<=scg mv<=4) or (date>=scg mv>=5 t:creature) is:firstprinting game:paper -o:"less to cast" -o:convoke -o:affinity -o:delve -o:emerge -o:suspend -o:"rather than pay"
Comments welcome. Roast the meta.
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In the distant future, all the buildings will be small hills. The streets will be creeks. The blocks will be mesas. Mostly where downtown is, the old solid rock courthouses lasting longer than the steel and glass skyscrapers. The suburbs disappear first, and entirely. An effect of the optimization of capitalism is to make the houses more hollow, thinner, like egg shells, which of course disappear first in geologic time.
Blood Moon adds thousands of years to the planet. The creatures all time travel, into a world of mountains. Small hills of rubble really. Even the densest cities, once collapsed to time, become only hills really. Civilization, compressed into rock, sub-ducted under continents, a thin poisonous line in the sedimentary rock cliffs of an unknown future ocean.
Blood Moon is the symbolic representation of omen, of dread, of other worldly, of bad times on the horizon. Of drought, of flood, of famine, of wind. Of smoke in the air. What else makes a moon red, other than pollution? Of forest fires, of factories, of cities.
To see a Blood Moon is to see the downfall of our actions. We risked too much, being too special. We trusted the speed and efficiency of new and shiny things. And now its all mountains. Like we had been living in the mountains this whole time, and only now realize it.
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