>>'Jeepers Creepers: Jiki of the Kiki Breaker' is a cube environment built upon the design question, "What if the cool, 'broken' strategies found in the Vintage Cube were rebalanced to have more trade-offs in draft?" For example, I use mechanics that 'flip off the top' like cascade ([[Shardless Agent]]) and polymorph effects ([[Shape Anew]]) to give players the opportunity to create new combos that fall in the fun range between completely random and repetitive and predictable. {R} *** I use {W} {U} {B}... as footnotes. *** ****For CubeCon I want to either trim to 360, or 432 with a 3x18x3 draft, so all cards are drafted and players can go into the draft with a plan**** >>> ### GUIDING PRINCIPLES <<< >>>LEAN: Design to avoid board-stalls or sprawling board-states. <<< >>>ICONIC: Lets play with some of Magics' classics. <<< >>>INTERACTIVE: Removal is plentiful and efficient. Threats have meaningful counterplay {B}<<< >>>MINDFUL CARD ADVANTAGE Greatness comes at a cost, its more fun that way {G} <<< >>>MAINTAIN DRAFT DECK IDENTITY: Can drafters feel as though they successful drafted the “x” deck in this environment? >>>WHAT HAVE WE MISSED?: Explore the fun synergies that may have been overlooked because of the dearth of new cards being printed {U} <<[[!Shape Anew]] [[!Tainted Pact]] [[!Crashing Footfalls]] [[!Sun Titan]] [[!Desecrated Tomb]] [[!Wilderness Reclamation]] [[!See the Truth]] [[!Hypergenesis]]>> >>Design Goal {1}: Fair decks have got to have some 'bite.' Creature strategies have got to be fast and resilient and interesting enough to draft. This one is easy :) <<[[!Gut, True Soul Zealot]] [[!Titania, Protector of Argoth]] [[!Stoneforge Mystic]] [[!Smuggler's Copter]] >> <<[[!Inti, Seneschal of the Sun]] [[!Quirion Beastcaller]] [[!Dark Confidant]] [[!Thing in the Ice]]>> >>Design Goal {2}: Keep games short. Provide a ‘lean’ environment that still allows for more “Oh My God it’s Lightning Helix!” topdeck moments. Players should expect to be at risk of being burned out, life gain is important. Slower decks have few speedbumps like Satyr Wayfinder. >>Design Goal {3}: Explore deck identities that aren't “critical mass” archetypes. If theres any two cards I hope drafters can enjoy drafting in this cube, its [[Shardless Agent]] or [[Shape Anew]]. <<[[!Leyline Binding]] [[!Horned Loch-Whale]] [[!Dead // Gone]] [[!Overwhelming Remorse]]>> Lots of “fake” high cmc cards for players to manipulate their cascades. Mana value diversity also creates really interesting tensions in draft. For example, while Shardless Agent compliments [[Colossal Skyturtle]], [[Murderous Cut]], and [[Riftwing Cloudskate]], while [[Dark Confidant]] pulls drafters toward Lurrus and Baubles. This tension mostly exists mostly independent of the "archetypes" that these cards would normally fall under, allowing so much variety and flexibility in draft. Right??? <<[[!Shape Anew]] [[!Reality Scramble]] [[!Back for Seconds]] [[!Entomb]]>> Draft few but powerful pay-offs, combined with enough Treasure or Clue generators. If I've picked Shape Anew, Stoneforge, Kaldra, and Cryptic Coat, which three do I play? All four? Hopefully by omitting Tinker and using polymorph effects, the different decks will meaningfully distinct from traditional Tinker decks <<[[!Torrential Gearhulk]] [[!Kaldra Compleat]] [[!Cityscape Leveler]] [[!Magma Opus]]>> - To help in leaning toward A+B combos, I’ve kept most of the Magic’s best card selection spells as well as a few tutors, drafters should be able to have multiple effective copies of the key cards in their deck. But, playing with powerful cards is fun. Cheating powerful cards into play is also fun! If you're gonna try a draft, see if permutations of the following interest you :3 <<[[!Violent Outburst]] [[!Fires of Invention]][[!Hypergenesis]] [[!Simian Spirit Guide]] [[!Colossal Skyturtle]] [[!Trumpeting Carnosaur]] [[!Magma Opus]] [[!Reality Scramble]] >> or <<[[!Faithful Mending]] [[!Shark Typhoon]] [[!Resurgent Belief]] [[!Ancestral Vision]]>> or <<[[!General Ferrous Rokiric]] [[!Incubation // Incongruity]] [[!Helping Hand]] [[!Raffine, Scheming Seer]] [[!Faithful Mending]] [[!Back for Seconds]] [[!Tidehollow Sculler]]>> or <<[[!Stoneforge Mystic]] [[!Assimilation Aegis]] [[!Anchor to Reality]] [[!Kaldra Compleat]]>> or <<[[!Sun Titan]] [[!Phantasmal Image]] [[!Geological Appraiser]] [[!Unburial Rites]] [[!Faithful Mending]] [[!Breakthrough]] [[!Gifts Ungiven]] [[!Persist]]>> >>>Footnotes on Cube Philosophy<<< {W} Higher power level cubes have a (small) problem. The most consistent strategies revolve around an increasing pool of cards that are 1. above rate and 2. have relatively little opportunity cost to play in draft. For example, [[Gut, True Soul Zealot]] and [[Minsc & Boo, Timeless Heroes]] are very effective at swiftly ending games. My eye is toward seeing if Jeepers Creepers can make it so Gut can coexist in interesting games with Shape Anew. These designs occupy the "best-in slots," while providing a lot of small synergies, without any opportunity cost because of the high floor in their designs. In MTGO Vintage cube for example, cards like Gut and Laelia are top picks and slot into most decks that can cast them, whether it is Jund Midrange, as a UWR control finisher, or mono-red top end. My hope is the inclusion of Shape Anew and Companions introduce more of an opportunity cost to picking these cards {W}. {U} I've veered away from the likes of “land matters” or “artifacts matter” for this cube. Instead players can build decks that are built around specific play patterns more akin to certain constructed archetypes. I hope for players to feel their decks have cohesive goals via A+B combos, as opposed to being ‘a pile of good x synergies.’ {U} {G} Bedlam Reveler, Ox of Agonas are a fun and interesting form of card advantage. But why play them if you could rather cast reliable two-for-ones like Baleful Strix and Laelia? Additive card advantage starts to push out other restrictive rewards. I want to see if players can feel like building around Ox or making Gifts Ungiven work is worth it. {G} {R} Explanation on the relationship between "high-variance cards" (Shardless Agent, Indomitable Creativity) and "low-variance" gameplay. I call [[Shardless Agent]], [[Geological Appraiser]], [[Indomitable Creativity]], [[Tainted Pact]], "high-variance" cards because by design they are rely on a certain variable that in casual play could be random and wacky. Ironically, in practice, competitive players use these cards to create very predictable situations. Either cascading is designed to be deterministic by cascading into [[Archon of Cruelty]] or [[Crashing Footfalls]], or, it is very samey by cascading into [[Lightning Bolt]] and [[Tarmogoyf]] like Jund of old. Fortunately, in singleton cube, I hope players will enjoy the variance and create situations where these cards are used all along the spectrum between random and deterministic. {R} {B} [[Mawloc]] is another example of a design that I've excluded for being uninteresting. Every deck that can cast it would likely play it because it is a removal spell that always leaves behind an on-rate body that can attack or block. Its strong, offers choices, interactive, but ultimately doesn't feel like it encourages any kind of emergent gameplay because it is so on-rate unlike [[Voracious Hydra]] {B}