Art by John AvonThis is a Conspiracy set cube, taking significant design inspiration from the two Conspiracy sets. Taking mechanics from both sets, as well as new cards and themes where appropriate, it aims to create an environment that is fun to both draft and to play in multiplayer games. Additional inspiration from Irenses's It's a Conspiracy (Cube) and Shawn Main's Conspiracy Complete.
This set is best drafted with either 6 players or 8 players. For 8 players, draft should be done with 3 packs, constructed like so:
- 10 commons
- 3 uncommons
- 1 rare
- 1 "draft matters" card
For 6 players, drafts are done with 4 packs, constructed like so:
- 8 commons
- 2 uncommons
- 1 rare
- 1 "draft matters" card
The set is constructed with duplicates for certain rarities:
- 4x each mono-color/colorless common
- 2x each multicolor common
- 2x each uncommon
- 1x each rare
The draft matters cards also use these same rarity counts (4x common, 2x uncommon, 1x rare/mythic), and are all mixed together when creating packs.
Archetypes
Fliers (blink subtheme)
Reanimation & Control
Aggro & Morbid
Monstrosity & "big-mana"
Go-Wide (tokens subtheme)
Monarch & Politics
Noncreature Spells
Morbid
Melee
Drawing Cards
Small update to red commons, as I make my way through recent sets.
Goldhound works with more red themes than Firebrand. Both have on-demand sacrifice for Morbid and relatively aggressive 1-drop bodies, however Goldhound is trickier to block which is attractive to Melee decks, while also providing one-shot ramp. I was never super happy with my red common 1-drop, and now I am!
Reckless Impulse feels like a strict upgrade to Tormenting Voice. Voice is neutral on cards, and mostly exists to improve your card quality (either smoothing early hands or pitching late lands for better cards). However, Impulse not only lets you see the same number of cards but it’s also card advantage. Impulse may be slightly worse early game at smoothing draws since you don’t keep the cards, but it’s still comparable and much better mid/late-game.
Also art swap on Broken Wings.
As a note, after another test or two of these mechanics I’m considering trying some new mechanic in the set. The current considerations are:
- Encore: Similar to Monstrosity, this gives all colors a mana sink in the late game. Along with a cycle at common, this would likely be paired with a shift in UB to have slightly more self-mill as well as Araumi of the Dead Tide as the two-color uncommon. Overall I feel the Encore cards have a good power level for the set and work with existing themes like Morbid and Melee, though encouraging self-mill can be dangerous in this environment where folks often end up low on cards.
- Cycling: We already have landcycling, why not the regular version? Again, easy to include a cycle at common (as long as I can find a common Blue cycler I like), and similar to Encore this would see a slight shift in GU to more directly support Cycling while still keeping a “card draw matters” theme.
- Myriad: While the other two were purely additive mechanics, Myriad would potentially be replacing Melee. Melee cards have poor defensive bodies but high potential upside, and are probably the most threatening aggressive decks. I like having these types of decks to keep the natural defensive nature of multiplayer Magic in check. Myriad approaches this from a different angle, providing generally better bodies for the cost but much less low to the ground. This change was really only be made possible by CLB adding new common Myriad cards in RW. Note that I don’t want Myriad and Melee together because they are an unintuitive non-bo.