Powerful Nothing
A Magic the Gathering Cube podcast hosted by Dan and James. Talking Cube and other magical goodness.
Powerful Nothing
#52 - Looking at Magic: the Battling, a MTG Autobattler
This week me and James are taking a deep dive into Magic: the Battling, a MTG Autobattler created by Ryan Saxe.
00:01:54 - Overview of the Autobattler
00:04:44 - The Rules
00:39:54 - The Cube List
00:47:31 - Example Decks
01:05:09 - Making Our Own Packages
Magic: the Battling List: https://www.cubecobra.com/cube/overview/auto
LRR MTG Playing Autobattler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em3gT0P_qlw
Autbattler Discord: https://discord.gg/F8NhbpBsZN
Ryan Saxe on Soley Singleton: https://solelysingleton.libsyn.com/s8e4-trade-offs-in-cube-design
My Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/sweet
The Treat Yourself Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/treatyourself
James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage
Social Links: https://linktr.ee/toosweetmtg
Runaway by Diamond Ace | https://soundcloud.com/diamond-ace-music
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Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
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Hello everyone. Welcome back to Powerful Nothing and Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host Dan been nominated as three MTG. And as always I'm telling my co-host James James, how are you doing? Are you well? Yeah, I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. My flat has recently added exciting new addition of functioning hot water. Again, we've been down that for a few days, so that's that's good news. I've had an actual warm shower, which is, put me in a much better mood. And that sharp out of some cube. Ooh, decadent. I know. Right. And I really, really treating myself today. Oh, definitely. Yeah. We have fun episodes, everyone. Today. Today we're going to be talking about magic the battling an emoji format inspired by the auto battler genre. So this has been around for about like 6 to 9 months now. It was designed by Ryan Sachs, who is quite well known in the cube community. The classic cube was spotlighted on might go a few years ago. And he also had a very interesting episode, on Solly Singleton a few years ago. It was a really, like, really good level up episode in terms of cube design. We'll put a link down to everything Ryan Sachs related in the show notes below, but the auto battler is his newest project, and it's something that, we put together and we've actually been playing quite a lot of games. We've actually kind of everyone who we've introduced to has been messaging. When is the next auto battler, when are we doing it again? All I can think about when I go to sleep at night is auto battler. Yeah, Dan's being Avast and our WhatsApp group to organize more auto battler traffic, so I think that's pretty good feedback. Yeah, 100% is fastly becoming my favorite way to do drafting with four players. So like we have talked about four player, like two bits and like four player cubes on this podcast before. This is kind of in line with that, but it is also very different as well. We'll kind of give an overview of the project before we kind of dive into a little bit. So kind of like when you look at the list of the auto battler, it looks like a cube. But the main thing to note is that the gameplay pattern is very different. It's lots of quick drafts with lots of quick games. It's really good for people who think that drafting is the best part of cube. It was inspired by auto battlers that kind of risen in popularity either last couple of years. Ryan actually going to try to try to try to take the best parts of that and make it work with magic. The idea of this is that you're building the best small hands of cards possible. It starts with a three card hand growing at regular intervals, and as you draft, you get better decks. You do more cool things. Let's get more powerful. The drafting is kind of like the shop mechanic in a classic auto battler, and there's also upgrades that you can take to improve your cards, and you can end up with some really cool, unique decks. As it was getting bigger. You can also have multiple decks. You can have a deck that strong against one player or one kind of deck, and then you can pivot if you think you're playing against someone else in the next round, you kind of build or build a cool side or deck against them as well. And importantly as well, unlike most auto battlers that I've seen out there, with this, you are actually playing the games of magic. It's not deterministic, you are drafting and you are playing. So even if you're someone who likes playing magic more than drafting, you will still enjoy this because it's not a quick draft and it's not a quick games. You still play. Your decisions in the game do matter. Yes for sure. I think you make a lot more decisions in the drafts than you do in the games, but that doesn't mean the decisions of a games are easy, because you're really thinking through what your opponent is likely to have put in that deck, because there is no element of randomness in the cards in your hands. Right? They, often they overlooked, as you saw during the draft, they're were all there for a reason. Your opponent always has a plan they were going in with in their hand because there is no deck. It is just you have a card in your starting hand and all the manner you're going to get at least. So, they are going to have the ability to execute the game plan they have going in. So you've got to be prepared for that. You can't be hoping your opponent had a clunky talk. No, exactly. Unlike that part of it. Still, it makes it still feel like magic, which is kind of is a nice onboarding level. Like like it will jump into the rules of the thing a bit more detail shortly, but kind of like the main thing is it's just it's different, but it still feels like magic, which is definitely something from listening to Ryan's ex talk about it and read his articles and stuff. Is definitely he was like the best of auto battlers, but but make it work in magic, but not do like things have to work within the magic rules. That's why I kind of like, like one thing I don't really is like poison is in it as a way of tracking, like overall like totals and stuff. And like as much as magic players, we know that if you get to ten poison, you lose the game. That's a thing in this, they kind of like takes it, kind of carries it over. So everything kind of does make sense. Cool. So worth mentioning. Before we dive any further, I link to the Q list with the full rules will be down below. There might be updates to the rules in the future. Kind of like at time of recording we are on like version one, like loading ready one did a playthrough of this a few months ago. They were using like a data version, like there's been some updates and I'm like, what? What we are going through with like the as far as I'm aware, the released one point over version of the rules, but there are any changes. That link will contain the most updated versions. Also, this project is made up of two halves. Effectively, we have the rules of the auto battler by the system that we are playing within, and then you have the actual list of cards that you are playing with. We've been playing with the main list of cards that Ryan Sachs has created and put together, but there are other lists out there. There are budget versions on his on his cucumber profile. You can also make your own list, which is something we'll touch on a little bit later as well. But like in theory, James, you could play this with any cube. Yeah, for sure. I think, the innovation and the thing you really want to start with is the rule set. I think the rule set is very well thought out, actually. There's a lot of things I thought reading the rules set. Oh, we could do this, but definitely we could do this. Definitely. And then once you've played it, you're like, no, I totally understand why you did it this way. And that's great. I think it comes across to me that I imagine there's been quite a lot of testing gone into this little set. I think, if feels very well tuned, I think it works fairly well. I think you could make a lot of very different changes to the cube list within that little set, and still have it work fairly well. There's certain types of cards you very much want to avoid, obviously. And they'll be a things like card for doesn't work, nothing that interacts for your library, but also things like, I think you really don't want to be like focusing people in this cube. I think that would play really badly. So I think there's a few sort of guidelines to go with that, of how you should construct a cube for auto battler. I think within that there's huge scope for creativity here about, well, they'll packages of synergies and combos you've done and how high or low power you want it to be. This feels actually very high power to me in a way where it didn't reading it, but having played it within the context of these rules attacks are very powerful in the late game. So yeah, I think there's a lot of scope for difference there. Hundred percent like, like in the games that we played, it does definitely feel like, you start off with kind of just like it feels like it's the damned thing of like you feel like you start off, feel like you've fit, feeling like you've walked into a tavern and been given a sword, and you end up feeling like a God who can move a mountain with your deck. It sounds like like the kind of like the the games do ramp up and you are able do some very cool things, but kind of like, let's go over the mechanics of the auto battler before we get into some bits about kind of like decks we have built and we have played with and we have liked, and then kind of like our own thoughts on on packages or decks, you could even add to Ryan's list. Or if you wanted to make your own things you could consider. So ideally you are starting this with a pod of four players. It can work with other players even is definitely better because, everyone's playing at the same time. It's not as quick games. You don't really want to have people like that, but bodies can really mess up the math a little bit with this. That's that's been the main thing we've kind of discovered. But like four works perfectly with this because because in theory people don't have to move to as you can just play across parts and stuff. But the setup is each player gets seven cards to start with. They then have to build a starting deck of three cards for the first game. You start with the whole deck in your hand and you don't lose for not having a library. So like that is Oracle doesn't work. In this. You'll start the game with three basic lands of your choice in play and also with treasure. So you start with your mana. You start with your debt in your hand. You are ready to go. Kind of like, James and like, what have you seen? Like a solid three card starting deck look like? Because like in theory, you're not going to have your ultimate combo. It's kind of going to be a bit cobbled together. Like what? What does an early deck look like? Yes, a piece of attacks which are going to the most like here. Am I good cards? That really the most balanced stacks? You'll be using actually throughout the event? Because obviously they'll be very fair. You won't have combos, you'll have, you'll have some fats and some ways to interact through opponents threats. You have to bear in mind, but your opponents probably have at least one piece of interaction in their free cards, and they'll be able to cast it in response to your threat. So you need to build a pool that isn't that your opponent having one can spell out one of the pool spell. Because bear in mind here as well, that to achieve anything, you have to win the game. Just dealing with your opponent's fat isn't enough. A bull, which I think is a actually very possible for this reason is, is if you draw, you essentially both lose. So, you do need to make sure that you can win the game through some of this interaction. A very common set up would be something like two fats, one removal spell or one counter spell. You might also think about if you had, say, a very powerful 4 or 5 mana fat, you might include, mana source in your three. You could do something like accelerant, a factor, for example, and a removal spell because your factors even affect it's going gonna leave something behind. So that's maybe worth giving up the extra fat for, although you're taking on some risk. If they can feel factors, you're in a lot of trouble. That, that third slot is where, I guess where you have a bit of a fat. But yeah, I think you're really almost always going to want a piece of interaction and, and obviously at least one fat for, the final thing to say is if you have ways to make treasure in your, in your pool, in your seven, you should try quite hard to play them in your deck, because treasure is a game piece that will possess of the game. Even if you lost, if you made some treasures that might actually be okay with you. I think we'll discuss that a bit more like that. But, if you have those early treasure sources that really, really good, the treasure actually sort of, really helps you set up for later in the game. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that would definitely be more of a thing. And we'll point out in a moment. So when you've built your three card deck, you play against someone random in the pot and you roll to see who goes first for later games. Is the player with the higher poison count that goes first. As you lose games in this format, you get poisoned count counters. So effectively the worse you are doing, it guarantees that you are going versus a nice little level set there. And importantly in these games you start on ten life. Jinx. How have you found these kind of early games to be like you mentioned, it is very bread and butter. It's very much I have two threats a removal spell or I have threat removal spell counter magic. Kind of like like how have you found these? Kind of like like most games in this format tend to be quite quick, but do you think these are kind of the quickest? They have more turns than a lot of these subsequent games because you're just not killing people as quickly. Visa. Unsurprisingly, if you only have three cards in your deck, two full ones are very, very powerful. Anything that looks like a two full on is going to do God's work for you. Have, well over all this. I've seen, for example, heartless pillage. Pretty busted on three cards. That's they're basically a mind vault. If you attack, that gives you a treasure. Because kind of if you're on the play, you just cast that in turn one and they have one card left and you have two, that's three. So if I kogan's command, I found to be very good. It's like a kill your creature, you get it back, you kill, you even get a card out of them or kill a creature. I yeah, I've found that card to be very powerful. Some of the big threats, if you have some acceleration to go with them, can be good. Stuff like facts, like I mentioned. Wormhole engine. Sometimes these are actually cast of all in your free card deck because there is actually very powerful acceleration enhanced stuff like Grim Monoliths and Mana vault is in solving is and, we're doing this for magic manifold much better than solving I think. Because. Yeah, because you have so much to your cards, right? You don't care so much about repeatable manner. You want to cast your one big thing. There are also lands in the cube as well. So you you always start with three lands. But if you get a underground sea in your pool, you can play that. So you have access to a fourth land, but you're down a like effectively you have one less card in your pool because it's it's a land. So yeah, for sure it can be worth it if you're trying to either fix or if you're trying to play a bigger spell and go over your opponent's. Yeah. And your, and base cards can be good for four and five types, but I would say your bar should be pretty high for including maps. Also in your free card deck. You've got to be doing something very, very good with that because you are essentially down a card and after your will be okay. And when that card is a third of the cards you can see throughout the whole game, that's a very real cost to hundred percent. Yeah. And so you've played your game. At the end of the game, both players get an additional treasure and the loser gets a poisoned counter. As we mentioned, if it's a draw, both players get a poisoned counter. And importantly, you can't concede because there are some cool ways, but because specifically treasures carry over to other games and the drafting part we don't do in a moment. Mucking with treasures later in the game can be a strong way of metagaming things. Yeah, so? So you can't deprive your opponent of the opportunity to make a bunch of treasures when they've already essentially won the game and killed all your threats, and you can't deprive them of the opportunity to blow off all of your treasures after they've already demonstrated they can. Kelly. That's something that's happened to me quite a lot of it. But there are ways of making more treasures in this format. Treasures going through to the draft are always capped at five, so you can't take infinite treasures through if somehow you built a Rube Goldberg engine to carry treasures through. Treasures are always capped at five when you move over to the draft. So after the game, each player gets a card at random from the cube and adds it to that pool. So your deck also so. So your card pool is has gone up by one. After this game you then get to draft. You get a five card pack randomly from the cube, and you can swap any cards in your pool with a card in that pack. So if you don't like three of the cards in your pool and you'd like three of the cards in the pack, you can swap them. This is kind of the shop mechanic of the auto battler, but there is something a little bit extra. The treasure that you have been given and you had possibly generated in the game. You can use the treasure to shuffle the pack away and get a new pack of five, and you can do that after you've already swapped some cards out. This is very much the shop mechanic of Auto battler, so you can really be like, you have this nice question of like, do I use my treasure in a game to try and win a game? Or do I keep it for the draw section to help sculpt my future decks? I've got a James. How? What are you looking for in the in the drafting phase? Like are you looking to improve the deck you have? Are you looking to pivot to kind of like what are high picks for you? Yeah. So really for me it's it's not a question of if I'm going to pivot. It's a question of when I'm going to pivot. Because as we've mentioned previously for for late game decks in this format are very, very powerful that we're talking about decks that can win on turn one, often with some disruption. We've seen decks win on upkeep. I've. Yes, I've looked down to that. I haven't got off of in my own upkeep through a counterspell that's it. It's, Yeah. Your your deck is not going to sort of incrementally improve to a point where it can do that. If you just look for small incremental upgrades to your found one deck, you're just not going to get, so the most important thing I'm looking for when I'm drafting early is stuff it gives me out to do get a really powerful engine going. I'm not going to get there right away. I'm not going to get by my first round of drafting. I want to give myself the maximum amount of opportunities to do that. When, as I see more cards of V, as the game progresses, right? Yeah. Generally, if you think about your deck on a sort of power level scale of, say, 110 and your, your starting deck will be like a two or whatever, I'm not really looking to sort of get point five stronger each time we draft. I'm looking to go from like a two to a six or a seven all in one go, one five piece to combo together. Right? Is is really my long term plan here. But we're not going to get there right away. How we are going to get there is by seeing a ton of cards. And that's where the treasure comes in. Right? So early on, you should be prioritizing as you draft cards that make treasure quite a lot. Often, I think if you can make a lot of treasure, that it's okay if you lose the game early because you only get one poison counter for losing the game early, you have ten poison counters to play with. As in a normal game of magic. Your life total is a resource here. You can take some losses early if you're building to a good late game. In the first round of a game like, how many treasures do you think is worth the poison cancer? Like if you could lose the game but get two treasures or win the game and have no treasure, it's well, what? What do you think the number is? Treasures for treasures that two treasures, I think early in the game, oddly like I would rather be up one treasure than win the game. I think the the worst case scenario is you lose the game and you've used your treasure. That is the art of worst case scenario. Like like if you're going to say you're going to play all that stuff, it is worth not cracking your treasure to try and play your full drop it. It's just going to like you're still going to lose. Like the two of these, I have one. I think I have lost every game in the first round. Yeah, I can believe. Yeah. Because like, I honestly just like like the early rounds up that. But they are important when it comes to the math. And it does kind of tee up who's playing first and second later on. And it does change the type of deck you're building at. But yeah, I think, very early on, it's the treasures that are important. The poison becomes more important later on. Yeah, I could see that. I think I think one place in, one treasure pretty close early on in value. See if that very much changes as the game goes on. But yeah, I think that's probably correct. That's what I would say. So I'm. Yeah, I'm okay sacrificing power level early to make treasure. I'm also prioritizing cards that make me treasure a lot early. That's sort of a second priority after powerful late game save combo cards. Then the other thing I'm looking for is, cards that will be good interaction pieces in the late game. Because you're not the only one who's hopefully going to be doing busted stuff, you need to, in fact, for your opponent's busted stuff and you need to protect your own busted stuff. Generally, because you're going to get to add more cards, right as you go through your late game pile will maybe have like three, maybe four, maybe two cards that combine to do something very powerful. When you've game and then you have the slots are going to be ways to protect that and ways to in fact, the opponent and there aren't a ton of great ones. So I'm, I'm prioritizing values quite high the early as well. That honestly kind of the lowest level of priority is what, looking at my hand, what am I actually going to register in the next game to try and win it? That's a huge guy. So yeah, I know, I do see that. Yeah, but but the good thing is you will. You're seeing a bunch of cards, right? It doesn't cost you to swap in and out of your pool. So you will get to incrementally upgrade phase stacks, because even though you're building to a late game, you still need to, like, present something reasonable for a game in front of you. But you will see cards and they'll enable that for you to do that. Often with the hard decisions you're making, when you take cards, you also have to put cards back. So it's a question of what to hang on to. Yeah, I would say, yeah. Prioritize hanging on perspective. Late game stuff quite highly, actually. If a card is kind of not a late game card and not currently in your deck, like even if you just cut it from your deck and you're looking at think well, should I just cut this? Surely this isn't like the worst card in my pile? It's probably not getting back in, actually, if it's not getting them a late game. So that's a good one. Send back. Yeah. I just just one thing I want to touch on. So. So you use the word combo to describe your deck. But like that doesn't just mean like tiki tiki. See Rex Arc as an example. It is a combination of cards because like like like in this format, like like something like true name, nemesis, giant growth, berserk. That is a combo of cards that will kill your opponent. It's not specifically like, yeah, it's a combination of cards that work together rather than just like A plus B equals. I when I like. That is what it is. But like I feel like it's a, it's any combination of cards that can get your opponent down to zero life and win your game. That could be like a stack C style of thing. It could be hand attack, hand attack, the rack or something like that. That is decks you can do in this. Yeah for sure. And you really have to reevaluate a lot of these cards in the prism of this cube. Like because a lot of stuff, like putting some spells on my true name nemesis is like a no, I'm not. Yeah, yeah, but what if I atone for my true name, nemesis? That sounds rubbish. And this in this format, you always draw your true knight nemesis if you have it in your pool. So, Yeah, that sort of strategy can really work. Definitely. So after you've drafted, you build your next deck and then you play against someone that you haven't played against yet. After that game, you get an extra treasure and you get another random card. You draft again, you play again after the third round. There is a slight difference here. This is kind of like the round timer. Everything kind of picks up after after three games. Rather than taking a card, you get an upgrade. So these are one of four conspiracies. If you don't know what conspiracies are, they are from conspiracy. Take that from the two conspiracies that there are additional kind of like game objects that effectively could upgrade a card. So so you take one of these upgrades, you can either give a creature haste, you can give a you can have a creature enter with a counter on it. You can make a, you can make a card to be able to cast for any color of mana. Or you can take a card that reduces the cost of a card by one generic matter. You can put a name of a card on one of these upgrades, and then at any point in the game, you can turn it up. And then it's constantly assigned to that card. So what I said earlier about like true Night Nemesis, you can take the upgrade that gives it haste. So then your nemesis will permanently then have haste. Or it could even be, which is one blue blue. You could make it cost for a manor of any color, so you could run it in your mono white deck. For example. Like, these upgrades are very cool and like how, how, how have you find them? And how like, what cool effects have you done with these? Yeah, these are really powerful. And very important to evaluating the other cards in the queue because some of them scale very well with these upgrades. That generally not just about oh, look, my creature has one more power wave. That's awesome. So uncounted things like persistent creatures in the cube, for example, a persist creature with the, conspiracy, if it makes sense to have a plus one plus one counter, well, persist back for minus one minus one counter. Those two counters just cancel out and it can die again and come back again. So if you combine that with something like a goblin bombardment, that's a very straightforward two card combo that will win you the game. You can sort of think about it as the yeah, you can do the persist creature plus goblin bombardment, plus something like fizzy of of empties. And in fact, like you'd say, well, this conspiracy means you don't need for vizier of remedies. So that's very, very powerful. But haste one is, this is not in the late game, a format where you want to be casting creatures and saying, go and hope you get to attack with them next turn very often. Yes, yes, I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, these decks have put up numbers. There are some very powerful, spells that you can count to ten very quickly. But yeah, they need to outpace the best creatures available so that that one's huge, but also for things like the animator effects. So I think for the last draft we did my stack, which ends up going ahead of where I was, like, collective brutality, discarding a battle sphere. The animate from a battle sphere because of that would be fine anyway, but they could just kill from their battle sphere with this consistency. For me, a battle sphere has haste so you can attack right away. You deal full from the trigger when you tap all your Mia and me about fear now has eight power, but that's 12 that wins the game. So yeah, the conspiracies are very much enablers for your late game rather than just incrementally. Oh, look, my spell's a little bit better than it used to be. I've. I personally found the one that makes a card tack tap for any color to be the best to take. If you don't know what you are going to attach it to, because with these you can. Once they're attached, they are stuck to that card. And like if you don't have it in your pool yet, but like if you have something you want to use on these, I found this just to be very good. Just just from a minor point of view, because you only start with three lands in play, like just being able to run two double picked cards is very strong. Like I had a great I end up having a really solid deck with, putting the Warburg Manor one on, on a on a flicker wisp. That meant I could run it in the same deck as the eternal witness. Like just making manor better and more efficient can be very solid in this. And just like that, that's one I'd like to just. If you're, not sure what you're going to be using it for, like, it means you can buy like, it means you can splash that siege rhino pretty easily. And then the, the reduced by one one. There are like you start with three lands. You do have treasures, but like there are four drops in here. There are five drops in here. There are six. There are very large trees and there's a 12. There's some 12 drops. We'll get onto the some of those a bit later, but the, the cost reduced by one one can be very powerful, if used on the right. Kind of god like, I used it, to, to middling effect. But I had a lot of fun on sneak attack. Making a sneak attack cost three so you can cast it in this format with your lands is very strong. Yeah. So. So what's nice is that they are kind of flexible. Like, I think they are flexible. They can work with your pool, or they can work with potential things like it's a nice level of complication to to add to this I found. Yeah for sure I think they all of the conspiracies available have their place. I think the cost reducer one is really nice for some of the explosive but expensive cards. I remember the last draft. You you cast them to mount a sneak attack. Attacks. If I'm not on to to you, you can stack multiple conspiracies. Yeah, on my cards. Yeah. I went all in on a sneak attack with that one. To be fair, with you know what? I did get a couple of people, Golden Maverick is more than ten. So if it works, it really works. But, yeah, it does it. You find your lane, but, so once you've done your upgrades, importantly as well, the deck size also goes up by a card. So you're now building a four card deck. Also, once you've got an upgrade, the amount of poison you get after you lose a game goes up by one as well. This is what James was talking about earlier when he mentioned that. Kind of like losing games early is not that it's not as bad if you are setting yourself up for the future, because losing around one game, you only get one poison. Two is twice as much. I really like like the games really do. Kind of like like like the power level goes up, but like the the end game comes in line with that, if that makes sense. In terms of hands getting bigger, change of like, how is that affected like the decks in what you're playing, but like like are you just adding. But like I personally found it unlocks another like level of like synergy with the deck. But but like it can just be if you've if you've already got a good deck, you can just add a additional level of redundancy. You can add like another Counterspell, they can add another removal spell. But like how have you generally found the like adding additional cards to the pool to be? Yeah. It really opens up a lot of doors for your cards to synergize together in a way which is not just an A plus B combo. Right? A card like for example, a featherweight is a card which I've seen, which I think is very, very strong of SCU but does very powerful things. But it's very hard to maximize that card in a free card deck, because you either have to have, two good TV creatures plus V family, right? In which case it can be kind of hard to have like enough interaction to really play a balanced game. And you can't protect your RTB creatures or you can't protect your family, because you don't have enough interaction. Right? Once you get to more cards, it lets you have the interaction and have the synergy. And so yeah, it opens a lot of doors and the free card game feel very much like, fundamentals of, yeah, building a balanced stack and then kind of rolling some dice a little bit. I feel, I feel like with the free card games, whereas before card games you're really starting to have a bit more of a plan just because you have kind of a flex slot in your deck in a way where you just don't in the free card ones. Yeah. And because, you know, going into it, the hands will go up at certain intervals. That does affect to us and how you're drafting because you will need like like your pool is getting bigger, but you need more tables that synergize. So like I yeah, ideally as James I said before that the deck is is getting stronger. Like but I just also means that it's also synergize better. It's not just yeah like like if you already have something strong you can add a counterspell. But ideally it's like you've exponentially increased the level of the strength of your deck by adding that that additional card to it. So let's let it go. So that loop of playing a game, getting a card, getting a treasure, drafting, you repeat that another three times. So every third round you get upgrade is that of a card from a pool. The hand size goes up by one, and then two poison goes up by one as well. So. So for five card hand it's three poison for a loss. And you have two upgrades. For six card hand it's four poison for a loss. And you get three upgrades. Realistically games have tended to when we played them have tended to end around the five card hand mark. That is still magic. You, yeah, because as we mentioned, you're out of the game when you get a ten poison at the three poison a loss, generally speaking. Like that's where we have found games tending to end. And as we mentioned, like that is the, the loop, the mechanics of the auto battler itself. And as I mentioned at the start, there will be a link to the full rules in the show notes below. I'm to James, how have you found that game loop? Like like like like as I take the cards out of it for a second. Like as a way of playing magic as a kind of as a format, like effectively, this is like a whole new way of playing magic. Like, how have you found it? Yeah, I really like it. I one of the things I like is that as you loop through, so you're playing in each sort of loop, you play, three rounds, assuming you're playing in a full against your three different opponents. I think one of the interesting dynamics is, when you're building your deck for the first two phase rounds, you could be playing one of phase three people, right? So you don't have much information about what you're up against. The type of time you're playing the last one, you know, who you're playing against and you've seen them play their last game so you know what their deck is doing. Obviously if I could play that, people definitely will make one, two big pivots in the course of the whole game. So you can be reasonably confident there's a good chance, at least for what they're doing, going to be doing against you is similar for what they did against their last opponent. So then you can start to metagame a lot more. I mean, there's two opponents. Obviously there's a 5050, 50 split. You also know if you know who your opponent is, you know, if you're on the playoff at all, that makes a huge difference in how you build your deck. If I'm building my deck knowing that I have two possible opponents, but I have fewer poison counters and both, so I know I'm going to be on the tour. I'm going to build my decks very, very differently because I'm going to want to have an instant to spend my money on that. And I I'd much higher, more highly prioritize playing something like a free man account spell because that very cleanly uses my man on that counter that turn one play if I can back fine, but that means I don't have that counts on my turn and then I can do my game plan, whereas if I'm on the play, I'm much more going to prioritize. Say something like a discard spell, which we talked about briefly, why you shouldn't have stuff like full season. We keep that. There are some discard spells. I just things like blackmail, which, like my MVP of this format, it's a single black sorcery. Target play reveals three cards from your hand, and you choose one of them. That player discards that card. So early game, it's very strong because you hold hands, but later on, that can keep some secrets. But yeah, yeah, blackmail has been an MVP in this format. Yeah, yeah, I cut that card very strong. But if you know you're on the draws and they're not that good. Right. Yeah. So very, Yeah, I like that process. If you're guessing more information about what you're playing against this round goes on, I think that's quite a nice balance. I remember, and the first time we played this cube, I did that based around my opponent discarding lots of cards. And the early game, I had, like a black male. And I think there's a small pox in there. Maybe a minor. I can't remember exactly, but, one of the players in our pod felt to be the perfect meta anti discard that with like a null power and the ability to absorb our hand. So I had to take the nullified power. And that was really cool. But there's a point where it's like, well, you can have two possible opponents. You five attack that's gonna crush with one opponent. That leads to VFL. You can try and build something balanced and, I think that's a pretty fun dynamic, actually. Yeah, definitely. I like so I've listened to some interviews with Ryan Sacks, and that was one thing that he actually wanted to build, like to have into this like, like spying on people's games is something you can do in Auto Battlers. Oh yeah. So it's actively encouraged I think. Yeah. So so, so, so having that element of like like like paying attention to what your opponent is doing, like normally in a cube draft, we're not like like like we might kind of watch every game. It's kind of like if it's early rounds, we're not really like making notes of like, oh, this player has that, this player has that. We are still trying to be like an element of like, I'm not going to pre sideboard against my opponents. There's element of that when you're kind of like casually doing a cube or I do anyway. But in this you were actively trying to pre sideboard and get the perfect option against your opponents. And then the thing I found is that like, like like sometimes in the late games I've really enjoyed with this is where you basically end up with this rock, paper, scissors of where my deck beats you but doesn't beat you, and kind of like you have to kind of like either like thread the needle or you just commit to trying to do one. Like, I found that bar to be very enjoyable, kind of like, like just trying to play the meta as best you can. Like it has an added level of complexity that I really like with this. Yeah, for sure. And it really exacerbates out as the, when you get towards the later round you everyone isn't very much established in a archetype. Right. And but you know, but if you, your opponent knows who they're playing against, the fans, well, they can kind of work out if their default deck is going to beat your default deck. And if it isn't, they're going to register something else that, well, you know, so you've got to be preparing for them to pivot. And there's there's all of different levels involved. You know then maybe you're meant to pivot, right. If if it's a one on one match and you just, that just, what you played last time, then for your opponent to lose, they either they just didn't have any tools in their pool, but they probably did by that stage from a game, or they kind of have to a screwed up. Right? If I knew exactly what your deck did and they could, and then they can probably build a deck, beat it, you know? So, there is a point where, yes, you might have what you think is a very, very powerful strategy, which is hard to beat. But if you know the matchup in advance, people are going to be able to be fair. And you need to think about pivoting or having some sort of a curve ball, it doesn't have to be a whole pivot, but having some some sort of alternative angle to a set of attack, which I might not bet like it can be something as simple as taking the scale of like being like the mono red deck, or it being like a mono grain deck the whole way through and taking, the upgrade that makes a card tap for any color and just taking a counterspell taking a blue, like taking a double blue counterspell that no one's like, like like you've not shown any protection up until any point. And now suddenly you have the answer. You you've cut one of your combo or one of your into like one of your aggressive bits for account a bit about dice and something but like like like like it could be something as simple as that to give you that lit that little bit of edge. Because realistically, this is like the the most format of like it doesn't matter. Like all all that matters is winning. And it doesn't matter how much you win by it. Really. Like just having the slight edge in this format is what matters. Yeah. For real, for real. And it's and basically you're making all of these decisions and deck building. Right. But games, they're not locked in, but they have, if you submit the wrong that key is, you're probably not going to be able to make up for it in the game. Right? So you've really got to be anticipating your opponent's moves in deck building. You can't just be here my cards I'll figure it out because kind of that's the that's the game that is the auto battler ruleset. But kind of the second piece to that is the list itself that Ryan Sachs has put together. So that's how I link to Ryan's. This would be down in insurance below. It has the rules, but the actual list itself is there as well. You can look at that. You can copy that. You can use it as a base for your own cubes or your own versions of this. What you kind of see is that from looking at it, it looks kind of like a normal cube. It's a it's 252 cards. There's like around 35 of each color. There's 24 colorless cards. There's four of each two color pair. There's one of each three color pair, like there's some there's one of each jewel. And like it does look like a regular cube. And I think that is a good way to start off, because the ruleset you're already changing, like the way people draft and the way people play. So keeping the cube looking like a cube, I think is a great way to kind of get cube enthusiasts into it because like when I first like when I copied this list, it was like, what do I need? Okay, cool. This is a cube list. I know what this is. I can work with this. And then we work out the bit that's different afterwards. I think that is a great starting point for this. But like going forward, like like like like there isn't really anything tying you to be like like because of the way the drafting works, you're not like taking cards of your opponent. You don't need to read signals. It doesn't matter if everyone's in blue. Like, you could very much make a leap, like you could cut white on this, and it wouldn't actually make a difference to the gameplay, if that makes sense. I apart from missing the like, like like it doesn't. But what I'm trying to say is it doesn't have to be as balanced as it is. But I think starting off like this is a good place for people to kind of like explain. Because like, like from what I've seen, kind of like like basically, I think if you're already in a cube play group, you're more likely to be able to do this easy because like, you're used to organizing drafts and getting people to have a place to do this kind of thing. I think kind of this format feels very cube adjacent, basically is what I'm trying to say. Yes, for sure. For sure. It's very, I don't yeah. It's all like almost all cards, you know, it's, it's very balanced. It feels like it has been tested a lot. Yeah, I, I think, like the cards you can pretty much feel like, see their own vibe while contributing something. There's a few things that feel like kind of power outliers, if you will. Stuff like, I think purpose. This stuff is very, very powerful. I could see a world where you want the persist stuff. I mean, I like it being bad, like, say a, where you want to get rid of, like a two man emphasis creature, for example. It does feel very, very efficient and kind of easy as a way to kill someone. Yeah. I think the only times I felt it was, the cube wasn't playing perfectly was if you kind of luck into a good combo early, and it can feel like you're kind of running away because you're, you're winning over games because you have a good combo. No one else does. And neither of, and some of the combos have a manner of fission. And then you can just you don't have to burn your treasures to look for more cards. And the only cards you do need to pick out the like more waste sacks for combo. So I wonder if, like, maybe a couple of the combos you could do with costing one more mana, like just cut Putrid Goblin for free mana possessed creature? As an example. But I think in general I have like really no, no criticisms of the way the cube is built. And you could maybe add, slightly different ways to target specific decks. So I know vines said, he likes having the targets at cards, and I agree, I think, like, good. But some of them do sometimes feel like they're a little slow or a little too easy to interact with. Stuff like, like Meddling Mage is meant to be invalid. So where you can stop your opponent when you know what they're doing. Right. But in reality, that's like a sorcery speed feature that you can kill. And I was wondering something, maybe something like for the graveyard deck, for example, like very macabre would be a very cool way to break those up because it's something you can't counterspell and you can't remove from play. That's for, It's like a free mana flier. You can discard it from your hand to exile. Two cards from a graveyard. It's also like it is on a creature, right? So when you play against someone else, it is a creature you can pass and attack with. But against the combo deck, it's. It's pretty hard for them to interact with. Say, it forces them to either have another plan or have like a stifle, which feels very hard to do. I like the idea of, you can force people to have another plan, right? They can't just run that same combo into their opponents deck every single game, because your opponent has a ways to jump that which you can't beat just by having another count spell, you know? No. That's fair. I think I would agree with that. I think in general, though, the list that Ryan's put together, I think works really well. It really does do you have your good generic bits you have, like your lightning bolts, you have your counterspell, you have the bits that you would expect to see in a cube, but then you have a nice level of selection that works within the ruleset that has been put together with this, that is put out like cards, like like the rack. We know that games can go to having no cards in hand quite quickly. The rack is a nice alternate wing on like like the cards that care about treasure. The cards that care about people having poison counters. These are cards that have been chosen to work within this framework, and I think they work quite nicely. Like like a great example actually, of a of a card. Kind of like if you like, when you first see it, you're like, oh, that's cool. But then if you actually think about it, it's actually really, really strong. Is a card like, Dark Depths, the dog that we know comes into play with ten nice counters on it. You can pay three to remove a nice counter from it, and when it has no white counters on it, you might get 2020 squiggly fish. And we all know that. Kind of like this. And vampire hex mage or thespian stage is a way of cheating it out. But realistically, in this format, a very strong deck that I that I've seen. Yeah, yeah, four bits of interaction or counter magic and dark depths because dark depths on an empty board just over, over, over all the times of the game, once you've answered everything your opponent is doing, you just pay three manner they can't like and and you get and it just. And you get a 2020 indestructible flier at the end of it. It's very cool if you kind of like like there's been a lot of thought and a lot of care and consideration that's gone into kind of like the different synergies and the different decks you can build with that. There's a bunch of other really cool things that have been added that I want to highlight. That works really well with the auto battler, game loop that Ryan's put together like cards with corrupted, for example. Like there's a card like bring the ending that's won the blue for an instant kind of target spell unless his controller pays two generic. But it also has corrupted counter that spell instead if his controller has three or more poison counters. So early game. This is kind of like a bad manic but late game because poison is a game mechanic in this, it works as a nice hard counter, but you also have some ley lines and some of the chancellors in this. These are cards that if they start in your opening hand, they either come onto the battlefield or they have some kind of effect in this type of environment where you have your whole deck in your opening hand, you know, you're going to have this effect. You're guaranteed it. For me. That's very cool. From like a game design point of view, I think it really helps the whole environment feel unique, but also still feel like magic. All right. Awesome. So you kind of done an overview of the game system, like the rules of how the auto battler works and also the list that Ryan has put together as like a starting point is that you go through some of the decks that me and James have built. If I make it King of James, one of the favorite decks I built with this is Cedar. I know with the card that lets it cast for any color of mana Cedar. I know with the deck containing a land, FEMA eight snap cards to mage and for in metamorph. So the joke with this is you are casting Cedar. I know like five times and that is more than enough to kill your opponents. I really like this deck. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, this was really sick. You did this to me. I was not even mad about it. It was. It was great. Yeah. So is it like CGI? No. Clone CGI? No. Like, am I CGI, though? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I guess you, I think I, I use the treasure to try it, to emulate it straight away. So it was at least doing nine by the time I untap. But my next turn and then yeah, we had Snapchat. So a metamorph as a as a nice little backup in case you call something or in case I just needed to rebuy different. But yes, I thought that was a very like I didn't have to attack and that was what was fun with this deck. I just, I just, I felt I did a bunch of times, that's each one. That was really cool. James, any decks that stand out to you that you've built? Yeah, I had a couple, ones that really made me laugh. It wasn't very good. But it did win the game, and it was. I had not had a good draft. Right. I'd, I, I did have a thing with that, since I think the second or third time we drafted this format. So I like, clued up to what I was doing. Yeah. Had not developed a strategy, shall we say. And I've done the thing with, like, I felt like I had a good deck early. I was, I just sort of put cards for gradually improve that deck and I didn't build to anything. And my late game was rubbish. So I was I think I was already I was already pretty data at this point. There was something to do. I wasn't much I could do to compete, but I did have a lot of treasures. And what I did for these treasures was, turn one mayhem, devil, suspense, great. Magog. Adam sacking a treasure, triggering my mayhem level. Crack. Another treasure for devastating summons, which is the sack of land. Makes a sack lands make, two creatures. Happens after the skull turn for fancy fact. Basically two more dudes triggers mayhem. Double again. Twice. Actually. Treasure and you sack. And then once for each lands you sacks and sack all four remaining permanents, including those tokens to a a gargantuan, which is just enough triggers for to deal turn off mayhem devil. And that was that was a great time. I it's not a good long term strategy because I went from 5 to 9 crashes in that game, but I shot it. And once someone I had a good time doing it, it is definitely a thing of like the I think the highlights quite nicely. Something you said earlier of like early in the game, the treasures are more important for the draft, but later in the game if you just need to win, if you're one loss away from getting Max poison, yeah, crack those treasures. Do it. Do whatever you need to to stay in the game. I think an example of just like a pretty solid one there. Kind of like it's not the most combo in terms of like as you think of it, but just like what one I found to work really well was. Yeah, it was the deck I mentioned earlier. It was so it was dispatch. The, if you have metal craft, single white, Excel, target creature, and I had more than three treasures. So we had metal craft that with an eternal witness, an ephemeral rate and a flicker wisp. I was just effectively. It's just. How many times can you cast a exile spell? So you're always going to answer that threat no matter what it is. And then you end with, like a like like like even just beating that, like it doesn't matter again. It doesn't matter how much you win by attacking and beating them down with a ton of witnesses, a perfectly solid way of winning a game if they have no creatures and no way of answering your you're you're one creature. Like like it can be A11 attacking over ten days, like it doesn't matter. So I thought that was like, that isn't the most like exotic of decks, but it's just like, yeah, it's the one I mentioned earlier where we had a ton of witness and the Warburg upgrade. So it cost double white in my mono white deck. I thought I was pretty solid. Yeah. This face from the at the, let's say the complete other end of that is one that, friend of the show, Josh track mode I put together. James, you want to talk about this and not just minutes. Yeah. This was I think this is the best Dex I've seen in this format. But, yeah, it was just some of the jokes. He was crushing everyone. He puts in a ley line of anticipation. I go to my upkeep on my turn. He casts a putrid goblin, which he's been doing. His nonsense. Persist things with, I counts that he counts as back. Fine. He splashes in a blow, and soul trader, which is the a creature make treasure so Vesper for putrid goblin. It's just pay one life. Get a treasure. The future carbon keeps coming back. Then he can flash in a blood. Arceus and the. The thing about this fight is that not only is he winning the game with a counter on my upkeep, it also generates him infinite treasures. Yeah, so he could. And that's such a hard luck to get through. Once someone's established that because they can expend all of it breaks that paradigm, right? Of, you don't want to use all your treasures to win one game. Sure. And have fun the next game. This wins him the game and gets him back up to match treasures. With interaction that that was a bit of a level up moment to me in this queue, but I was like, oh, I the things I would do doing that, that wasn't enough. That wasn't I need to be doing better things. Yeah. But that was, that was really cool. And I, I actually think they lined up anticipations really good when you get to the late game. Yeah. Yeah, it's worth a lot. Basically. Just giving away stuff. Flash. Yeah. I mean, I think only if, you know, you're on the draw because it's basically a mulligan on the play. Right? But, yeah, if you know you're on the track, you're already winning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was that was very much one of those moments where it was like, this is the first like, I think we played it once or twice beforehand. We invite Josh and he just completes it immediately. It's like, oh, that's frustrating. This is yeah, there's some facet. Yeah. There's been a lot of cool. That's fair. Honestly. Another one that comes to mind was just, and someone got a two name nemesis and a gold for. Is it gold for pretty early gold, which is crap in this format. She's a card I would never, ever put back if I if I see it. It's one a green. You make a treasure of an target creature get plus two plus two for each treasure you control. So basically, if you can keep a high treasure count, this is just going to be lethal on any unblocked creature. And it was true name nemesis with the, haste upgrade. I think also with the cost one less conspiracy. So just ten one hasty true name gold rush lethal. I, I guess the slight limitation, but you can't be cracking a bunch of treasures to protect it because, then the damage of the gold rush goes down. But you did not have to expend a lot of resources there to, to get the full. And it's pretty hard to interact with because I've seen removal spells not so effective against tree name nemesis. Exactly. But yeah, it's nice that, like, we've talked about a bunch of ways of winning without having to attack, but it is nice in the, in this format, like like in the list that Ryan's made himself there is like a berserk. There is like slick sort of you can do stuff by attacking, but you can still win by attacking. And blocking is still a part of this. It's just as as things get stronger in, the combos get higher. Ed, that's not always the case, but yeah, just it is nice that there are some very strong game winning combos that that do revolve around turning that sideways. Yeah, for real. I think finish the strongest attack I've had was I might like full card file or something like, collective brutality, Vietnam, Basil spare and irons ionize free amount of counter. So it's just every game I was on that better cancer your spell untap collective brutality. You reanimates it, you die and the the savage thing is right of the discard outlet is collective result because it's so hard to fight against. Right. You can take that piece of interaction with you got this, got this, got out that, but that one felt very, very powerful. And they can't even, like, counter the collective brutality value. Right. Like it doesn't do anything. Your mental stance idea of a graveyard, I'll be a shame is the more frustrating. Part of that was, was when we went up to five cards, you just added another counterspell. Yeah, well, what's better than ten? One lethal of a counter behind ten, one lethal with two counter spot. Oh, that was better. Yeah, well, I got cast. I saw I think it's an offer you can't refuse. Blue counter non feature. They make two treasures. You can't really cast this card in the early game. Two treasures is so big for them. But, later in the game, like, one mana come to your thing. It's it's kind of phenomenal. Those are some of the cool decks we've seen. Are there any other cool interactions that you've seen people do that? Kind of like it's not a whole deck, but kind of like unique things that you're doing because of the rules set that we're working within. So I think one of the things that comes to mind is the no concessions rule is quite interesting. So this, I think, really goes off with cards like, ephemeral spells, a lot of creatures in this list for ETP and make a treasure. And sometimes you're like, well, I won this game. I wait, no, I don't want to attack because I want to formulate my guy and makes treasure, and I want my FMV to be banned. If I make another treasure, then I will attack for lethal. This can also work in the in a negative way. I think, I think we've all we've both experience for Liliana Veil situation at one point or another. Yeah, yeah. How James. Yeah. I don't explain to everyone how miserable that is in this, in this world where treasures are a resource that you're really trying to cultivate and put a lot of work into. Yeah. So I think a lot of players, fixed assets by now, but in this scenario where you. Yeah, maybe you exchanged like a card early on your free card game and then you play out your last creature, you pass, turn, have one card, and I have like a card in hand, something in play. What's the worst that can happen? Make a Liliana a fail edict. Your feature and, you know, like, okay, fine, we nothing else happens everywhere. If I have a creature in play, we draw applies. Turns out that's not what happens. What happens because you can't conceit is fail to pick up fair. Liliana. A bunch of players discard cards. Nothing happens. Farmville ultimate that Liliana. Which is they split your permanent since two piles. And you got to pick apart, keep So you keep one with most treasure strikes. You're not gonna win this game that none of your parents do anything anyway. And just want to keep most treasures. Then they're not done. They'll just keep kicking up for Liliana. And it's again until the until basically, you end up with one treasure in play, and. Yeah, then you really savage already has your lovely pile of fall treasures. Yeah. That loot like the first time that happened that was utterly magical. That on the topic of hitting treasures, it is something that I've done a couple of times, just like I. I ran in a braid, in one of my decks, like, I like the first one. Like like I got kind of like cheap, cheap return to action. But I just used it in games I was already losing to just to man that destroy a treasure that was like that fight that actually adds up to quite a lot of like. Like it's investing in your future by doing that. It's like, I would rather I have a treasure than a poison counter, but but if I can, if I'm losing a game and I can take a treasure off my opponent, then by God I am doing that. I do think it is quite fun, but it's something I'm I'm I'm kind of moving on to the, like changes we take in terms of like the cube list, as it were, but kind of like one thing I think I want to look at is just, ways of mucking around with treasure, like, like, like, like we've had people mentioned like like I played it was like, oh, at Melt Down, that'd be funny. But like, that might be a bit too strong because it's just if you can build a deck that doesn't require treasure, just melt down. And destroying all treasures doesn't really seem fun. But there's the there is any ways you can either build your own list or you can look to making adjustments. The one Ryan Sachs has made. There are some interesting design questions that kind of come with this. And like I said, something that he must have asked himself in the first place when putting it together because like, yeah, it's things like Mil does nothing, card draw does nothing. There's no like shuffle effects don't work with no deck. Cause that cost more than four mana. If you only have three lands in play, you kind of like like what is the like? How are we deciding the power level of these? Like. Like what gets in? How is it like, how are you making a card that's more than four mana worth it? Like multicolored cards? Like you only start with three lands. Like it means that like you, you can't naturally cast like your Mantis rider and a berserk without using an additional source of manner. Those are interesting questions. I kind of like, I think one thing we found, and it's like something to kind of like, again, questions have to ask these like like two for what? Like two for ones are incredibly strong. So that means creatures that make additional bodies are incredibly strong. Because again, you only have to have one point of power more than your opponent over the course of the game to win it. So like, one thing we found is like, yeah, most the removal is it's one for one. And like we found, I think Breyer like the four color legend to be very strong because it makes two, two bodies. Yeah. And the, the four different colors of mana is just not as much of a downside in this cube as it would be normally. You just have one of each basic, which is fine anyway. And then you have one treasure, like, it's it's actually not that different from costing like three in a blue, you know. No, definitely. And like, there's some other things in terms of like if you wanted to make changes, this will make your own kind of like, but you can kind of consider like, like I know from the notes that has put together can like things, but because poison is a way of tracking the life total like like it's it's the meta life total in this like like in fact creatures and things would proliferate like we've talked about adding. But I think it just becomes a bit more miserable because effectively you can just take a player out of the game. Again, it's like the Liliana of the veil thing of of like putting them down to one treasure. Like that could be loops in this where just like out of nowhere, you just take a player out of the game and then they're not sitting. And I like maybe, maybe you can't do it to someone else and you just kill someone early. Kind of. That doesn't seem like a lot. I if you're dispelling the most powerful version of this, then maybe that's maybe that, maybe it it maybe it's there. But kind of like from like an actual enjoyment point of view. I don't, I think not including poison then it was a good choice when it was put together. Yeah. On the I don't like the idea of Philip facing poison at all because like, realistically, you know, this well, trying to win. But this is this is a game where can I go and play in a pub for someone's house or whatever with afternoon where it really sucks if you get killed on like ten to because unlike the second game, because someone proliferated your poison a million times or hit you have a ten power in fact creature, I feel like the feel bad vibe is just not worth the upside. Like it would be cool if it happens in like, round four. Like when, and like someone's really far ahead and then you can get this huge poison and knock him out. That's sweet, but I don't think it's worth the downside if you randomly knock someone out on, like, the second game of the whole cube and then just annoyingly sat around while three other people fight magic for the next two hours? Yeah, I completely agree with that. One thing that that kind of works the other way, though, is that like there are like in the baseless rounds, might include things like the 12 minute spell of lumbering Mega sloth, ten green green, eight eight slot mutant. This spell cost one joke. That's the cost for each character among players and permanents. And it comes in and that's trample. But like later in the game, if both players have five poison counters, this is green. Green for an eight eight trample. Yeah, that's kind of sick. Yeah. Like this is a this this is this is kind of like harking back to what I said was all kind of like it's a new way of it's a new lens of looking at magic. Basically, it's finding things that work within this rule structure. And like, I think the list of runs put together is really, really good for that. And like, I like, like, yeah, that there was a budget version. I think there's a peasant version or a pauper version which could be even more budget like, for full disclosure, I when I proxy the Treat yourself cube, I also proxy this as well on the same order. So nice and cheap. We love that for us. We're gonna move on to now. Kind of like us talking about, like, things that, like, we could either add because. Yeah, because because we've had we've had our hands on the list or a couple of a couple of months now, and we've been playing this relatively regularly. We've kind of gotten when we first put this together, the first thing was like, okay, we get the loop, we get the gameplay. This is cool. We're enjoying this. But like from a design point of view, I hadn't really wrap my head around how to actually build this yourself or how to make changes. I got from listening to Ryan's talk about it and from reading things about it. The general thing you're trying to do is effectively, you're trying to start with the end hand and work backwards. So like what does like a final hand look like? Kind of like like like think of it in terms of like a 5 or 6 card final hand of like, you have 1 to 3 cards of synergy. You have like 1 or 2 bits of interaction, 1 or 2 bits of protection and stuff like that. Kind of like, what does your call that look like? Kind of like we've already described some of those like like like like we described like the death of the, multiple siege rhino deck. It's kind of its plan was play multiple siege rhinos, like in the combo stack. That's like that. Those were the bits are going to put it together. Kind of like, so what me and James have done and we don't know each other's of these. This could be quite fun because I'm definitely up for adding some of these to the list that we are, that we're playing with, and kind of making it more customized and making it our own, kind of like, James, do you want to kick off? Do you want to give me like a 5 or 6 card deck that you have put together that we could conceivably add to our list? Yeah, for sure. So I've got, I've got a few utilizing one of the same cards because I think it's, I think it would be a really sweet Add, and I think that's really cool stuff you could do with it. So the first one is, from patrol, I think we have, we have a counterspell in there to, to interact on that send we need be since, to be truthful, you know, the specs, the game. Then another ten, we're gonna, we're going to have some forests. We're going to cast a channel. Oh, James, are we just. Let's go. Okay. Love that. Okay, then we're going to channel outside the fence grid. Defense grid is a two mana artifact. Spells cost tree less. On, spells cost free. More. If it's not your turn. So it's gonna make it hard for us to interact with us, and it costs colorless manner, so, yeah, it's only costing us life for our channel. We do only have ten of that life, but it doesn't cost us life. Because we only have ten life. Our next spell is going to be weather the storm. This is the one that green gain three storm. I will, okay. I'm glad we went with the storm package. Good, good. Okay, well, we're gonna, And ten. So we we spend two life on defense grid. So we're down to eight, but we gained nine of weather. The storm. That then gives us enough life, but we can cloud capstone. Michael, are you actually going Emerald? Okay. Fuck, yeah. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think Emerald set. I think it's actually not that broken in key in this cube as well, because you start on ten, right? So, I don't think so, but annihilating treasure tokens might be. Is that two? Sure. Yeah. I'm. Oh, yeah. Okay. Find out for sure exactly what I'm here for. Okay. Isaac is exactly what I'm here for. Yeah, I think I'm cool. You you probably need to take out show and tell. I suspect if you. I think I'm cool. I think showing I'm cool with haste is a bit much, but, I think outside of that, there's nothing else that's completely broken with it. And, I'm kind of half. I'm cool, you know? That's cool. I guess, is that any other big flying thing? Like, we all wanted to kill them in one shot, I'm assuming with this, but, yeah, that seems sick. I love that, I yeah, I was also thinking storm. Storm at some point. The one I have James I don't again. So what I'm expecting is your decks to be built. Well and your decks to be like 2 or 3 cards in some interaction. Mine are not mine, I just here are five cards I think are cool. And as a cool look, let me get you one with that. This one actually has two bits of interaction in it. James, what do you think of this? Okay, firestorm okay. Firestorm is a single read. Choose and discard X cards. Firestorm does X damage to each of X target creatures and or player. So let's say we're on the play. We can do four damage to our opponents. Let's do that. We're going to discard James Venge vine root wall root. While, and fiery temper. So we already them okay. Yeah. I'm into this. Yeah, yeah. As we already dealt them for of firestorm. We madness fiery temper to deal them three the venge vine goes in the bin first we can cast that we then madness in the root Wallace the venge wine will trigger coming back into play off of us. Casting two creature spells that turn. We then swing for four. And that's ten. There's a turn one win with a with a vengeance. In this format, I think that's viable. Again, it is technically two bits of interaction. They are going face in this scenario rather than protecting yourself. But I did want something with Root Wallace. I was also trying to build around one with nothing. The card that just said single back, discard your hand. There is something there with root Wallace like I don't know what it is yet. I thought that was quite cool. Yeah, that's kind of sick. I thought that one was funny. I love I think it's I'm continuing along the cast. Something giant root. So I think that pile again, there's a big difference if I played troll, but I think I want to I want to start off with a discard spell here, but he's not starting off the discard spell is still a bit still a bit fragile. After this, we, Okay, we do. We do die to a lot of things here. So we're going to have a discard spell and we're going to have some very cheap piece of counter magic, I think, may be an offer you can't refuse. I think would be a pretty good one hand. Then we get into this basic map. So, plans of fish on. We're going to have to forgive me for my pronunciation. Have. I've never tried to say this card. Name. I'm going to go with echo auditory. We say this is an Assassin's Creed by fans of the genre. Do you mean Italian? I'm more of an Assassin's Creed, but also the Italians. I'll say the Italians. You have to forgive me. Ezio is one of black favorites. You menace assassin spells. You have to have cast. I'm freerunning. Black. Black. I'm not going to read that black. But what that means because no one cares. Whenever Ezio deals combat damage to a player, you may play back if that player has ten or less life. When you do that player loses the game, then. That is an interesting one. I think. Like, yeah, I think this is cool because it cost you probably a bunch of treasures to do. Yeah, that's at least like at least three. In theory. You have a black already in your deck, you have another, you have two other colors. You know, it's probably costing you. Yeah, it's costing you at least two treasures to do, but more potentially. Yes. I should remove something or protect it, I guess. Yeah. And you have you definitely have to protect first. Right. Because it's your time to hit them with a free two. Yeah. I think you definitely need the controversy if it gives it haste as well. But I think this is a cool card to add. Like, Yeah, I think I like free. You know, this actually works for the Last life. I like that they can interact with it with blockers, potentially. They can then move it, but it works well for conspiracies and it's a face like win condition. It is powerful. It might be too powerful. I don't I think it's I think it's cool. Yeah. I think it really incentivizes like if you. Yeah. That's the thing. Like, I mean true name is in this. Like it's probably like, what's wrong actually. Well, that's like yeah. Not totally. Yeah. I think we're allowed to name were allowed at. Okay. Not cool. Yeah. Definitely one we could test. All right. My next one James. So my next one is actually a bit of a package. So we can kind of so to the hand is probably a bit of interaction. We then have either a zombie infestation or forbid zombie infestation is an enchantment that you discard two cards to make a two to zombie or for bed is three mana counterspell with buyback discard two cards. So either of those combined with Squishy Goblin, Nabob and Master of Death. With that we are either making over the course of a game, an infinite. So there's a squeezing, Squeeze and Master Death both come back to your hand on upkeep. If they were in your graveyard. So the gimmick areas were either making a slow army of zombies with it, with zombie infestation, or we are. Or we have a counterspell every time. That's pretty sick, actually. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was very cool. There is also a redundant one of these effects. Do you know what clever can horror does? James? Is it a really bad squee? Yes. It's full amount of two to, at the beginning of your end step of this car is in your grave, but with a creature card directly above it, you may return it to your hand if you're doing it. So it is a sad queen or master death if you already have the other one. But it's loose. But I like this one. I think it's like. Like I think they kind of go down a bit of a rabbit hole with these type of cards, like, oh, it's like delirium skeins, which is, three mana, sorcery. Both players discard two cards if the card you're discarding is squeak again, if they have no creatures and you can beat them down with a squeak, that's pretty solid. There is a world where maybe squeeze too strong because it just teases or interaction. Actually, like, cheese is all creature removal, but it's cool. I think that's fine. Yeah. And then yeah, but it's like a free of one wasn't you know, I think it's fine. All right. Yeah. The squeak lines was definitely something I like. Yeah. So so both of mine so far have been discarding that as ones. I promise I have something else for the next one. But. But you next. James, what do you have for your, I'm returning to the Vale. Drowsy train here. Okay, good, good. So next up, we've got, we've got we've also got a discard that I think we're gonna go. We only need to discard one card. Fine. So, let's go collect the fruit. Alfie, that's, that's a really nice, interactive way to discard, we'll have. Of course. I'm having I'm having a count spell to back this up as well. So we've got, we've got a hotlist summoning. We've got a, we've got a collective utility, we've got I council. We can spell collective brutality. We're going to escalate that. We'll choose a duress and some of merit. It's some very matter. We can discard our good friend and record from a stand. Cool. From a stand is going to shuffle back into a library at this point, you can't have a life in this format. I think you just don't start with one. But you can have a library. Once this fills back in, like in a cast calibrated blast. You know, this card, I do not. Calibrated blast is two in a red. For an instant, you reveal cards from the top of your library and so you hit a non non land card. But for revealed cards from the bottom of the library in a random order, when you reveal an on land card, this way calculated that that steals damage equal to its manor value to any target. So I think for this card to work, you need like a couple of draws that shuffle back in. Because obviously otherwise you can never have cards in your library. I kind of like the idea of a few nonsense things to do of now to ask, you know, and I think this is a good one. Yeah, it's, it's, it's on the vein of, like, if it's a reanimation spell which, which I like, but it's not like, I think just, I think in this kupo like he's been quite good at, like the version that we're playing with doesn't have putrid reanimate. That's a bit too linear. You need like a bit of extra, work that maybe spikes with that, but. So. Yeah. Yeah, I like calibrated brass. It is a little bit extra of, it is dead. The end result is good. And it is an extra like like when you put it together, you have built something which is go nice. On the topic of library. So, so this is just a one card included that I think could be interesting. And that's Nexus of Fate. That's cool. Nexus of fate is a seven man. For instance, take an extra turn off of this one. This is fate would be put into grab it from Anywhere reveals the fate to shuffle it into its own as library instead. So basically, if you can cast this repeatedly, if you can repeatedly make seven manner, you will take infinite turns. That could still be a draw. So with this, you need to have a way of making seven mana and a way of Add like an invasive creature I guess. But like if you can, like in this format where you're starting with three, in theory, your deck is going to be like like land, land, land like land land ancient tomb Counterspell this like if you commit to that and you get, oh, actually, even that does actually, when you think it needs to be, I don't know, does it need to be like a mad land or something like that? Like there there is a, there is a five card hand that can win with, with next to fate. Like, like maybe there's a way of like of, like repeatedly making treasure. So like but but basically it's I think it's an interesting include I, I don't know how you win with it yet, but there will be a sequence of events of making like Infinite Treasure in this where maybe you don't have a win going for it, but your went on is infinite turns. It is a cool, unique card. I think someone could break with this basically. Yeah, it's kind of sweet. I was actually thinking for fandom, one card includes it's probably actually quite bad, but Time walk is low key. Quite funny because it doesn't do any of the good things that time normally does, and he just cast out its own. Right. It's, so don't get the card that you don't get your land. Oh, yeah. None of it really matters. But maybe. But like, you can do eternal wetness. A family time walk is infinite turns. That's nice. Yeah. And maybe that's something that, you know, you need, like, a bunch of other stuff to do with a time lock, but, I haven't worked out fully what it is yet. It would be kind of funny to me to have Kim walk in as a very narrow combo card. I kind of like that. Yeah. I mean, I've lots of that. A bunch in Canadian Highlander, but yeah, I can see that. Yeah. It doesn't it's not as just generically strong. It is a build arounds energy card which, which is quite fun. Yeah. Yeah. Nice I like that. All right I have a quick couple more James if that's alright with you. Yeah. Go for it. So we. So this is just a single card include. I did it in the blue nothing cube recently. Ephemeris in. Why don't we just add a chroma angel of Fury? 001. It is a it's a three minute morph that you can flick up to become a chroma. That's a cool thing to do in this. Like it's, the other one I had, and this is, I. Another little package I think you could run of. There are two massive equipments that make a creature more than a 1010. So that's colossal. Colossus, hammer and belt of giant strength. There is then steel Paladin to equip it. There's Arden, there's casual toll collector or wind walker. There isn't really much in the way. So there's like metal scythe, but I think that's in him. In it. More ready just for a, living weapon gets bigger with, treasures in play. But I think that could be a little equipment package in there. Maybe, like. But it's the one thing that I think is actually kind of missing in terms of being represented, as a deck, we see other places. So I think that one could be quite fun. Do you want to hear my bad Stone deck games? Yours. So, so I mean yeah, it's kind of generic actually. So it's a counterspell then, cabal ritual, poetic ritual as well. And then either tendrils of agony or ignite memories and hope your opponent has a card in hand. Sack like it? I, I think this is something that kind of like I want to tailor more. I basically like like I think the list that Ryan's made, the cute aside from the from the ruleset just so I look at. Okay. But I think what he's put together is a great base and works really well. And it's like there's something a bit there for everyone, like, there's there's like tribal synergy or like like there's like creature matter synergies. And in here as well, which I like, I think works for like a like for more generic like about like I feel like basically we play with some degenerates. James. So I think storm is something that we kind of suit, like like like like like there must be something cool we can do with, like, an LED in this cube, this kind of stuff like like that. They'll definitely be some cool synergies we can build around. Like, I like, I think storm is something that I would like to add, like I think from, like a because the games are quite short. It is what it is. But like playing the game is a small part of the game. Building the decks is just as important, if not more important than actually playing the game. So therefore, if you're building this cool engine and if it happens to be stolen and you get all the bits, then I think it could be rewarding. It's just working out which bits can be like, like with any cube can overlap with other decks and other parts like I think like like like from a design point of view, like one card putting you up, Amanda, is something we see in the cube, like just lands. If you think about it from a game design point of view, I land in this. If you put a land in your like, like if you put a bat, a bad lands in your three card deck, it is a card that is only in there to put you up a banner. That's kind of what Cabal Ritual is doing. It is one card that's putting you up a banner. Ancient tombs in here. City of traitors are in here. I think rituals are actually fair cards in this. They are. They are all effectively lands for one shot, though, so doing something that I think kind of works within the rules that have already been set out, but I think could be quite cool. Yeah for sure, for sure I was, I was thinking a bunch about stone cards as well actually. I think the wave, it's interesting to me to get to use stone cards in this cube that I think could work quite well with other conspiracies is, things that let you cast the same spell infinite times. So I'm thinking about things like, Bergey plus Agnes. Oh, okay. Is, this kind of fact. Then you can just keep casting the greeny agnostic out mana. And that seems quite powerful. And you can just grapeshot them without actually having just thought about this. This is like Vinnie. Agnes is way completely broken. You can never put it in this cube because there's a conspiracy if it makes it cost far less. Yeah, okay. That's a bad idea because you don't even need the bad, right? It's, You just make this cost one less, you can cast it infinite times. Yeah, that's a vibe. You make, it costs you less. And you also infinite mana. Okay, that was a bad idea. The one that came to mind was, abstract fee. Actually, only the one that goes through the dungeons a bunch of times. Yes. It's like, three mana legends for five, five when it enters. If you haven't completed the Tomb of Annihilation, which is one of the dungeons, you venture into a dungeon and it comes back to your hand. So this is interesting to me in that, you can make it cost one less, which obviously helps a lot. You can also make it you can cast it for any colors so you can make infinite amount of any of the colors. You can, you can cast, set infinite times. Because once you can cast it infinite times, it does kill from. Right? Because you just keep going through a different dungeon. One of the other dungeons, like, deals one damage from at some point. So you never complete the tomb of annihilation. You keep be cast it, and eventually if I die. So we just need ways to be able to cast it, basically. I was thinking you could do some nonsense with, like, the summoning, which is the one. The black enchantment. Yeah. You're creatures cost three less, and that's more like because, if you have, like, a relic of legends or something or some other way to make, or you just have another way to make infinite mana, right? Like, I think this is a cool infinite mana sink. If you wanted to include stuff like the voted Druids in the cube. So I think the voted druid could actually be quite strong. But just because you have the ability to give it haste, right? That's always the issue of the way to do it, is that it doesn't have haste. So you could have like drew it and, and Visio or something is a little package. So so devoted Druid and Swift configuration are currently in the list that Ryan's got. I just don't think oh really, we've seen it. We've seen it fully come together yet. Oh, I've literally not seen a devoted to it okay. Five draft. Oh hopefully we've done okay. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. But that seems like a cool. Yeah, I like asterisk. Maybe if there's a few, like, ways to make him in that manner or make it cast. The thing I think might be quite cool. Yeah. Doing stuff for mana is, is another thing. I can see why from a starting point of view, if this is like the list you're putting out might not be for everyone having a little sprinkling in, but I think it's something that can play again. One thing I like about this list is that it's. It seems like a very good base. You can tailor it to suit your play group. And I think I kind of like one thing that kind of like overlay people. I kind of getting from James talk about it is the we both really like this and kind of like it is definitely like a thing about like it. We have a side WhatsApp group where we're just like talking about this kind of stuff and like, we will be talking about this more tomorrow as we actually start making updates. Yeah, this is a really fun format. I think it's really like a testament to, to how well it's built and how well it's put together, just like we just really like talking about it. There's we could go on about this for hours, James, but I think with that, let's call it there. Yeah. Always a pleasure. Nice. I know that, from from seeing Ryan talk about this before. He is looking for feedback on this type of group. He's looking for feedback. So. So I will also put a link to the discord for Auto Battlers in the show notes below. If you want to, give any feedback directly. This is a very cool and unique kind of playing pattern. And, I'll also put a link down to learning ready run played an earlier version of this. So so you kind of see what it looks like, see if it's right for you. But like, honestly, if you and your friends like drafting, like cubing, I think you will love this, proxy it up or get the, budget versions. I'll put links to everything and and engineers below if you want to try it out yourself, I would highly recommend. All right. That's going to do it for today. It's good from me. Thank you. Bye from James. Until next time. We'll see you all soon. Goodbye.