Total War
total war, n.
A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded.
Flavor
The Total War cube is set in a low-fantasy universe, where spellcasters are very rare, and the secrets of forging magic items have been lost to time.
Humans, goblins and elves fight both shoulder to shoulder and against each other, for the lives of their families, for territory, for resources, and for magical relics. Blacksmiths work night and day to supply armies with shields and swords.
Legendary heroes who stand out from the masses lead these armies. A single hero wielding mythical artifacts from eras gone is enough to tip the scales and subjugate an entire nation.
In the midst of the chaos, defiled mass graves and fallen soldiers whose remains are never found draw little attention...
Total War is a cube about war between factions. As a player, you draft your faction, forging alliances with peoples, drafting heroes into your cause, procuring equipment for your troops and powerful relics to suit up your army's leaders, and striking backdoor deals for nasty things to happen when it is most convenient to you. Exploiting resource-rich territory will allow you a broader arsenal and smooth logistics for your operations.
Extra Rules
Creatures can only carry one weapon and one other equipment. More formally:
Extra state-based actions:
- If more than one Equipment that depicts a weapon is attached to a creature, its controller chooses one of them, and the rest become unattached from that creature.
- If more than one Equipment that does not depict a weapon is attached to a creature, its controller chooses one of them, and the rest become unattached from that creature.
Structure
This is an entry for the 100 unique cards 360 cube contest.
100 unique cards, 360 total cards
Each card is one of six rarities instead of the usual three or four:
- 32 copies: Abundant (1 distinct card): Short Swords
- 16 copies : Mundane (3 distinct cards): Infantry
- 8 copies: Frequent (10 distinct cards): Disputed, resource-rich lands
- 4 copies: Common (23 distinct cards): Equipment, support units
- 2 copies: Uncommon (45 distinct cards): Heroes, war events, high-grade equipment, elite forces
- 1 copy: Rare (18 distinct cards): Relics from a lost age, sagas, runes of power
The colors are skewed the following way:
- Large sections: White (50 cards) and Red (50 cards)
- Medium section: Green (39 cards)
- Small sections: Black (26 cards) and Blue (26 cards)
There are also 17 multicolored cards, 72 colorless cards, and 80 dual lands (evenly distributed between all 10 color combinations).
The 24.4% ratio of nonbasic lands is very high, and with a 45 card draft pool and plenty of situational spells, building a good deck requires efficiently using the cards one is passed.
Inclusions
Abundants (32 copies)
The base upon which this cube is built are Short Swords. Their main role is to pump 1/1 tokens into being competitive 2/2s, and they do so at a low enough equip cost that it's reasonable to move them around. A single token with a Short Sword can profitably block unequipped tokens. This also gets the token out of range of being sniped by the various bows and bowmen.
There are enough tokens that there should always be bodies to wield the swords, despite the one weapon rule. Still, leaving some Short Swords on the sideboard is expected, as there are more powerful weapons around.
Mundanes (16 copies)
Mundanes represent the infantry and are the other cornerstone upon which the cube is built. They are essential to wield the large amounts of equipment, and though there are many mana sinks that generate tokens slowly, these are the most efficient ones.
Frequents (8 copies)
The dual lands represent territories that can be conquered and exploited to feed the war machine.
Commons (4 copies)
Most commons represent support units, common war events, and regular battle gear. Mechanically, their role is to provide texture to the games (since the previous rarities can literally only create battlefields of vanilla 1/1s and 2/2s), archetypal density, and utility effects.
Uncommons (2 copies)
The most numerous category, representing heroes, elite troops, fine apparel, and rare war events or processes.
Two copies of each hero provides enough consistency that it's worth drafting around them with two copies. The effects at uncommon are ones that are best as an infrequent occurrence, mostly because they are more powerful.
Uncommons provide additional archetype support and even more coarse-grained texture to gameplay.
Rares (1 copy)
The highest rarity is reserved to the nine ancient artifacts, plus the magical runes, turning points in a war, and precious hope.
Mechanics
Equipment
The base of the cube is equipment, and its only modification over a completely normal cube draft is the extra 1 weapon + 1 accessory rule. This rule is added primarily for flavor reasons, but it also makes decisions about which creature to equip with what more interesting. It can optionally be skipped (for example to play on MTGO).
Equipment are the foundation of the Total War cube. Everything else revolves around it, and the cube is designed to depict battles between armies strategically provisioned and heroes clad in armor and wielding ancient artifacts leading them.
Spot removal is toned down, which allows space for heroes to be relevant, but board wipes are abundant. Life is fleeting on the battlefields, but good steel endures.
Much of the agency in the cube comes from deciding when to develop the board and when and how to equip your units. Creature combat and blocking are essential and much more common than in other cubes. Evasion is extremely limited.
Tokens
Tokens represent the generic armies. Most tokens are 1/1s, and each of the 3 mundane spells (16 copies of each) make two of these tokens. 2/2 tokens are much more powerful, and reserved for cavalry and the growing threat of hordes of zombies, which require some extra investment to create.
Equipment does nothing without creatures, so some mana sinks give players expensive options to produce more creatures.
This abundance of tokens and homogeneity in creature types allows for tribal payoffs to act as build arounds.
With wide boards, games would be dominated by mass buffs, but they are not abundant at all. Warhorn Blast, Belle of the Brawl and Greatbow Doyen are the only ones.
Painlands
The dual lands are the painlands, chosen for a number of reasons:
- They depict natural and generic locations that are reasonable to conquer as "territory". Except for Battlefield Forge, which is appropriately on theme and on main colors of the cube - and arguably is the best dual.
- The life loss, combined with general lack of lifegain, represents the scarcity of resources in a war.
- They produce colorless mana, and due to the extremely high density of equipment, they can frequently be used without taking damage.
Foretell
One quirk of this cube is the 6 distinct foretell cards (18 copies). The presence of multiples in the draft conceals their identity. They are very different from each other, and reading which one the opponent has and playing around it is a minigame in itself.
Foretell also helps with smoothing, controlling spell velocity, and rewards forward planning.
Microarchetypes
The Total War cube is in the middle of the synergy spectrum, meaning it is expected that in a draft some decks will be built around specific combinations, and some will just play good cards and look for a sweet spot of densities to support them.
Archetypes are small, and more like shells that needs to be completed.
The decks built around specific combinations I consciously seeded are:
Damn. This is great.