Can I learn anything by thinking about Magic cards?
CC and I drafted Forbidden Trash on Saturday night, and his deck didn't work. I take partial responsibility as the cube designer. What can I learn from this draft?
For background, Forbidden Trash is my cube where you try to do broken, unfair stuff with janky cards. Is it a bar cube? Sure, there are no sleeves, no tokens, no counters. You barely even shuffle. Is it a clown shoes cube? Probably, but there aren't any rules modifications. The texture is just created through card selection. Notably, there is never a reason to read cards in your graveyard. You might Delve them away, but they're not coming back, and nothing cares about their type or anything like that.
WUb Smogscribe Hammer, drafted by me.
First, my deck, which I think is good lookin'. I prioritized creatures higher than I normally would, because for all the nonsense, you still probably need to just deal damage to win. The nonsense just influences who can do it faster.
There are a few overlapping gameplans here:
Leonin Lightscribe + Chain of Smog combo (make all my creatures arbitrarily big until end of turn)
Colossal Hammer + a way to equip it: Either kicked Thieving Skydiver, Metalcraft Puresteel Paladin, or just 8 mana
General evasion (Shoreline Looter and Hammer would be mean, but I never drew Looter)
Winning combat with Seeker of the Way and/or Lightscribe and my cheap/free spells.
All of the above came into play. Personally, #4 was the most satisfying, as it felt the most improvisational, rather than seeded. I'm not sure how that feels when you're not the designer. The combo was fun to have happen, but I can see it getting boring. Thankfully, it felt fragile, in that the card draw / selection is slow enough that the combo didn't feel inevitable, and Leonin Lightscribe is probably worth using removal on anyway (as happened in one of my games).
More thoughts:
Scrying feels really strong. I put the Temples in the cube to have lands that have value off-colour and they were completely worth it in this deck. Yes, surveils would be better, but I don't want to double (triple?) the cost of this list for those cards.
Azorius has been drafted a few times and this was the first time it wasn't artifact based. I'm pleasantly surprised that this diversity of decks exists in such a small cube.
Untappy Gruul, drafted by CC.
This deck did not function, and it seemed to be because of a lack of creatures, but also some poor drafting decisions. Which ones are my fault?
Magus of the Candelabra is not good enough. U like Arbor Elf it does nothing on its own. It should be cut.
Foundry Inspector and Brotherhood Vertibird make no sense in this deck. Those are really poor draft picks, BUT that might be because there weren't enough playable red and green creatures. Maybe that needs adjustment.
The above also applies to the fact that this deck has only 12 creatures. It probably really wants ~5 more. it's an example of a cube that de-emphasizes something and ends up overpowering it because of that, like low-curving cubes that make high drops really important.
Powerbalance is also pretty terrible. Despite feeling appropriately janky+wild, I think it just sucks too much.
Importantly, CC has done really well with Gruul in this cube before! It's not that the drafter or the colour combination are inherently un-workable, but drafts are susceptible to train-wrecking. I will need to watch closely for whether train-wrecks are too frequent.
Two player draft of Forbidden Trash, February 1, 2025 | list
5 packs of 13 or 14
Pick 1, pass
Pick 2, trash 2, pass
Pick 2, trash 2, pass
Pick 2, trash the rest
