"Complex" Cube

[Thomas David Baker]

I'm putting together a cube comprised of all the most complicated cards in the history of Magic.

So far I'm determining complexity solely by length of Oracle text.

I have a ruby program that I use to do a bunch of magic things. So for this I just asked it for:

* The 40 creatures in each color that are the most complicated.
* The 30 non-land, non-creature cards in each color that are the most complicated.
* The 30 (each) artifacts and lands that are the most complicated.

That's 384 cards (410 cards minus duplicates that show up in more than one color). It seems like a cube has a minimum of 3 x 15 x 8 = 360 cards so that's a good starting point.

There's currently no consideration of either mana fixing or mana curve. And plenty of the cards need either removing or having more support cards added (example: Higure of the Still Wind).

You can see the cards in this visual spoiler

[Amidu]

It wont work that way :S

If you give a rocket scientist some monkey poo, he wont be able to make a rocket :(

Thomas David Baker said:

More seriously, the idea was to jam loads of complicated cards in and see if anyone can break it and/or come up with clever interactions. When your opponent wizardcycles Vedalken Aethermage EOT to get Jhoira and then use her next turn to suspend an Enigma Sphinx that they don't otherwise have the correct colors of mana to cast (anywhere in their deck) then the cube is doing it's job. Go cube!

[Thomas David Baker]

But it already did! Angel's Grace + Amulet of Quoz. Jhoira of the Ghitu + Iname as One, Enigma Sphinx and other uncastable fatties. Vedalken Aethermage + Jhoira of the Ghitu. Fairly obvious things, perhaps, but still emergent properties of the cube. So the raw ingredients are at least a bit more like a rocket than monkey poo is.

This is the rough draft. If it shows promise (I think it does!) then I can refine from here adding say more Elves and Merfolk to support cards that need those (or whatever is required) and removing cards that literally do nothing or aren't any fun.

If you come from another angle - what about a cube that contains complicated and powerful cards instead of just the best cards of all time? - it's surely obvious to see that could be quite fun. So what we're really discussing is whether the complicated-but-useless and complicated-but-not-hugely-powerful cards belong in the cube or not. I'm going to cut the former and I'm perfectly happy with the latter. Shards draft contains Soul's Grace, Jhessian Lookout and Viashino Skeleton and is still enjoyable - there won't be anything so dull as that in this cube.

It's meant to be fun, rather than necessarily the greatest thing ever. It's an experiment and a learning experience, not my life's work by which I wish to be judged :) Plus most of these cards are new to me since I only started playing at the end of Eventide so on that level alone it's been interesting.

I promise I won't kidnap you and make you play it if you don't want to, though :)

[Tiff Leek]

I think we established that suspending ivory giant fucks up multiplayer good and proper.