DESIGN DOCUMENT

CONCEPT

The idea for the Discount Value Cube is to create a low-to-mid-power environment where navigating busy boardstates, combat tricks/combat math, and card advantage from non-card-draw sources are very important to the experience.

DESIGN PILLARS

Pillar 1 No FIRE design-style "do everything" cards
A card should either be setting something up or paying something off. Never both.

Pillar 2 Vanilla creatures matter
Not in a build-around sense, but vanilla creatures should have a place in this format. Rather than having pushed aggressive creatures with lots of text that push specific themes, I'm going for things like Isamaru, Watch Wolf, Savannah Lions, etc to be the curve-fillers that aggro decks need. Certain stat lines lend themselves to be role-players in different decks too, like a 1/4 for 3 mana, for example, can be a good blocker in a slow deck.

Pillar 3 Card draw is sparse
Actual "draw a card" card draw and card advantage will not be abundant. Most card advantage will be gained through trading resources as 2-for-1s or better. Card draw and similar forms of card advantage can be done if it supports a particular theme or play pattern that should be incentivized.

Pillar 4 Combat should be the main focus of the format and it should be difficult
I want to create an environment where each player commonly has multiple creatures, some amount of on-board trickery, and where there is always a threat of a Giant Growth or similar being played during combat to change the math completely.

Pillar 5 Playing to the board should be a main focus
Creature-less or nearly creature-less control and combo decks will be possible but they will be difficult to pull off.

Pillar 6 Disenchant should be a good, playable card
Basically, this means that multiple card types should matter. It is easy to design an environment where creatures can do everything and players are not incentivized to play artifacts, enchantments, etc. I want artifacts and enchantments to have a place in this environment.

Pillar 7 Prevent board stalls
Designing a format with heavy emphasis on playing to the board runs risk of producing board stalls that drag games out and make rounds last too long. Think Khans of Tarkir limited. This should be avoided.
Tools that can be used to prevent this include burn spells that can close out a game, pump spells and combat tricks that can help punch through an opponent's defenses, Overrun or Flying Crane Technique-style effects to end the game on a stalled board, and creatures that either incentivize or force attacking (Ulamog's Crusher) or disincentivize board stalls (Serendib Efreet).

Pillar 8 Removal has meaning
There should be few or no recursive threats. Recursion should be something that is done by another card. This way, removal spells are impactful and self-recurring threats do not generate a disproportionate amount of card advantage.

Pillar 9 Avoid color-hosers
It's not fun to have your entire deck invalidated or your entire board stalled by a single card. It's even less fun when you know that this card is only good against you and not anybody else at the table. No color-hosers.

Pillar 10 Avoid linear draft strategies
Linear draft strategies can be fun depending on how they are implemented but an overreliance on linear draft strategies can lead to a format that is too on-rails and does not give players enough agency or opportunity to express themselves during the draft. It can be a crutch that ensures good decks are drafted consistently, but it is consistently the same decks that are drafted. As a matter of taste and to keep myself out of trouble, linear draft strategies should be avoided in this cube design.

Pillar 11 Make sideboards matter
In other cube designs, I specifically avoid cards like Red Elemental Blast, Doom Blade, or Decimate because they are more narrow or situational than I would like. These cards are unlikely to make it into your maindeck, so why even include them in the cube, right? In this cube, I want to add another layer to the draft experience by making players consider whether they should take a very powerful but narrow sideboard card over a medium-strength maindeck-playable card. The sort of cards I'm thinking of should be high impact but only want to come in for specific matchups or they could be a metagame call against a particular pod. Ashes to Ashes is a dud against other black decks, but maybe that risk is worth it because the upside is so good. Decimate needs a lot of requirements to be met, but it can be a 4-for-1. Red Elemental Blast is so narrow but it is the absolute best at what it does.

DECKS

Deck1: Red Deck Sligh

The red aggro deck of this format should be a play-to-the-board sligh-style deck rather than a spell-based burn or prowess deck. The sort of cards that should be prominent in this strategy are creatures and artifacts that deal damage repeatedly turn after turn like Grim Lavamancer and Cursed Scroll. These creatures are backed up by burn spells that can target both creatures and players. The goal of this red deck is not necessarily to win quickly, but to control the board long enough to lower the opponent's life total into the "danger zone" where burn spells can be used to finish them off.

D1.1) Curve-out style aggro, not burn (P5)
D1.2) Emphasis on board control such as pingers and other repeatable burn effects (P3, P5, P7)
D1.3) Some sources of card advantage that incentivize aggressive play patterns (P3)
D1.4) Uses artifacts to deal damage (P6)
D1.5) Uses enchantments and auras to buff creatures (P6)
D1.6) Uses combat trick instants (P4)

Deck2: 5 Color Zoo

5 Color Zoo should be a slower, but larger and more powerful aggressive deck playing cards that reward having many basic lands types in play or spending many colors of mana.

D2.1) There should not be too many domain-specific cards that other decks would not play. Include enough to show that this is an intended deck, then no more. (P10)
D2.2) Use sunburst and off-color kicker cards to reward players who can produce many colors of mana with filter lands or similar. (P10)

Deck3: Blue Green Flash

Pretty straight-forward idea: I like delver-style tempo decks and I think the best way for that to exist in this format is to make an aggro/tempo deck that plays lots of flash creatures. This also plays into pillar 4 by making players second-guess their attacks due to the chances of a flash creature taking them by surprise.

D3.1) Emphasis on "creatures as combat tricks" being a theme for this deck. (P4)
D3.2) Flash creatures should be mostly vanilla once they are on the battlefield. (P2)
D3.3) Green should contain better flash creatures on rate and blue should contain flash creatures with better abilities. (P1)
D3.4) Go all-out with powerful multicolored cards to support this deck. It should be obvious what this deck is trying to do, how to do it, and what colors to do it in (there will be flash spells in other colors but the UG gold cards should indicate that this is the flash deck). (P10)

Deck4: Zombies

This is less of a complete deck in and of itself and more of a package that can be slotted into black decks to add some texture and grindy value gameplay. The idea here is the pillar 8 discourages us from adding lots of recursion and pillar 3 means card advantage comes from 2-for-1 exchanges and value engines rather than raw card draw. This zombie package aims to be a value engine in-line with pillar 3 and an exception to pillar 8 that is narrow enough to not cause problems.

D4.1) Recursive effects should be limited to zombie creatures. (P8)
D4.2) Zombies should care about your graveyard and reward you for having things in the graveyard. (P10)

Deck5: Grixis Pingers

Pingers are fun. They're an interactive card archetype that lets you control the board by building up your own board presence. Red naturally has a lot of pinger effects because red is the best color at direct damage. Blue and black also have some amount of pingers but importantly they have effects that work well with pingers like Curiosity-style "whenever this deals damage draw a card" effects and "give this creature deathtouch" effects.

D5.1) All three colors of blue, black, and red will have creatures that have some variation on the ability "[cost]: [this] deals 1 damage to target creature or player." (P4)
D5.2) Enchantments, auras, artifacts, and equipment will be used to give pinger creatures abilities that play well with pinger effects. (P6)

Deck6: White Weenie
Lots of lord effects

Deck7: White Black Legends
Large overlap with White Weenie, but more specialized.

Desert Subtheme - Add desert lands. Some colors may have cards that care about them. So far red has Ramunap Ruins.

Design Goal Tracking

Cards in the "List" tab will be tagged to show which particular design goals and pillars they correspond to.

A card that satisfies a particular pillar will have the tag "Pn" where n is the number of that pillar. For example, a vanilla creature that satisfies pillar 2 should be tagged "P2".

A card that satisfies a particular deck design goal will have the tag "Dn.m" where n is the number of the deck (ex. Deck1: Red Deck Sligh) and m is the number of the design goal of that deck. For example, a red creature with a pinging ability should be tagged "D1.2" for being a card that goes into Red Deck Sligh (Deck1 or D1) and supporting goal 2 of that deck.

If a card is in violation of a particular design pillar or goal, it will be marked with that tag preceded by an exclamation mark. For example, a FIRE design-style card that is its own setup and payoff would be marked "!P1" for being in violation of design pillar one. Note that a card being in violation of a design pillar or goal does not necessarily mean that it MUST be cut from the list. There may be some flexibility to the pillars and goals as outlined in the design document. These cards that break or bend the rules will be tagged and tracked to ensure that there is not a problem with too many cards violating the format's design principals or alternatively that there may be a problem with the design pillars and goals if so many cards are in violation.