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This Week At Bungie 1/28/2021
Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/50040 This week at Bungie, we introduce Seasonal Challenges. Welcome to the second-to-last TWAB of Season of the Hunt. Many of you have been navigating the secrets of the Harbinger mission, uncovering randomly rolled Hawkmoons and earning the Radiant Accipiter Exotic ship. Content-wise, we’re coming to a close for the Season, and we’re incredibly excited for what’s to come in just a few short weeks. We’ve been covering some upcoming quality of life changes to Destiny 2, like the return of Umbral Engrams, but it’s almost time to take a peek at fresh content. Season of the [REDACTED] trailer goes live on February 2, 2021. Before we get there, we have a new feature to cover, Seasonal Challenges, and a round of weapon-focused sandbox changes to walk through. As a warning, this is a pretty large amount of information in a small space. We've joked about "meaty" TWAB's before, but this one may feel a bit overwhelming if you rush through it. Let's take it slow, step by step, and get through it together in one piece.
Introducing: Seasonal Challenges
Over the last year, we’ve been looking at ways in which we can reduce the amount of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in Destiny 2. We’ve recently made some changes to Seasons and how Seasonal content is available throughout a given year of Destiny 2. This week, we’re looking to bounties and Bright Dust, introducing a new system not only to remove FOMO, but give fresh ways to earn XP and alternate rewards. To walk us through the ins and outs of Seasonal Challenges, we pass the mic to the Development team.
Dev team: During production of Beyond Light, we started looking at the problems of bounty fatigue and FOMO, as well as Seasonal legibility (i.e., “What is in a Season?” and “How to I engage with it when I log in?”). We created a few goals which we believe will improve the experience:
Provide a guide to new, returning, and veteran players for what to do today/this week.
Guide the player through the Seasonal content, week-over-week.
Encourage players to engage with complexities and nuances of the Seasonal activity and rituals.
Reduce the penalties on XP and Bright Dust for missing a given week.
To solve these goals, we are introducing a new pursuit type for players – Seasonal Challenges. The Seasonal Challenges live on their own page, are accessed through the Quest Log or Season Pass, and are separated by week. Image Linkimgur Here’s a quick breakdown of how this feature works:
Every week, for the first 10 weeks of a Season, between 3 and 10 new Challenges appear automatically for players.
Some of the Challenges deal with the Seasonal content.
Others push players to complete strikes, Gambit, and the Crucible, or to focus on non-activity focused Destiny rituals, like gaining Power, unlocking Seasonal Artifact mods, or improving guns and armor.
These Challenges can only be completed once per account, but once they become available, these Challenges can be completed at any time before the end of the Season, and do not need to be started or picked up from a vendor.
As an example, if a player doesn’t play for weeks 2 through 4, they can return on week 5 and have all of those Challenges waiting for them!
Completing each Challenge awards XP, contributing to your Season Pass ranks.
Other rewards could be Bright Dust, Seasonal currency, or other interesting items!
In moving away from weekly bounties, which were restricted to broad objectives tied to ritual activities, we have taken more leeway with creating some interesting or more difficult Challenges. These may be things you are already doing, or things that test your ability. Some examples include:
Defeating Primeval Envoys in Gambit
Defeating enemies in Nightfall: The Ordeal with Seasonal weapons
Gaining Infamy or Valor ranks
Acquiring the ritual weapon and its cosmetic ornaments
Winning rounds in Trials of Osiris
Completing a Grandmaster Nightfall
Not all the Challenges will require that level of accomplishment, but the harder or longer the Challenge is, the more experience it rewards. Challenges that focus on the Seasonal activity and ritual mostly need the Season Pass to complete, but most of the ritual focused Challenges can be completed without the Season Pass. Overall, roughly 60% of the Seasonal Challenges do not require the Season Pass. With the changes above, we are removing weekly bounties from the three ritual vendors (Zavala, Shaxx, and Drifter), Banshee-44, and the Seasonal vendor. These vendors will still have daily bounties which reward XP, and the three ritual vendors will still have repeatable bounties for those of you who want to pursue additional XP and Bright Dust. Lastly – most of the Challenges disappear after the Season they were introduced, and anything that isn’t claimed will be lost. We don’t add any new Challenges after Week 10 – which should give everyone a few weeks to clean up any Challenges they didn’t finish. Any Challenge that rewards unique or Seasonal items (currencies, lore books, Seasonal weapons, etc.) – can be completed as long as the Seasonal activity is in the game, but XP awarded for completing the challenge will only be available during the season it was introduced. Let’s Talk Bright Dust Back before Beyond Light launched, we discussed some of the goals around the changes to Bright Dust. As a refresher, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they've been earning over the last year. In Season 13, we’ll be continuing to move toward these goals by adding Bright Dust onto Seasonal Challenges. Since you no longer have to purchase weekly ritual bounties, each of the strike, Crucible, and Gambit Seasonal Challenges will award between 75 and 300 Bright Dust. We are also introducing an end-of-Season Bright Dust bonus – if you complete (nearly) all of the Seasonal Challenges, we are awarding a single 4,000 Bright Dust pile. Additionally, each ritual vendor challenge (“Complete 8 bounties”) awards 120 Bright Dust for each character who completes it each week. And because this is prompted by the removal of weekly bounties, the only Seasonal Challenges that will be awarding Bright Dust are the ones that both Season Pass owners and free players can complete. Here’s a quick breakdown of how much Bright Dust you should expect to earn over the course of Season 13.
120 Bright Dust per ritual vendor, per character, per week
14,040 total if completing all required weekly Challenges over the course of Season 13
Additionally, we still plan to offer weekly and repeatable Bright Dust bounties for Seasonal events, giving you a bit more Bright Dust towards desired rewards. As a final note, please be sure to claim all Seasonal Challenges that award Bright Dust prior to the end of a Season. Once a Season ends, associated Challenges and their Bright Dust rewards will expire and can no longer be claimed.
It’s always exciting when we bring a new feature online for Destiny 2. We hope that the changes detailed above make it easier to create goals to complete each week. As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback once you start finishing your first Seasonal Challenges, so please sound off with your thoughts!
Back to the Sandbox
Image Linkimgur Every Season, we have a collection of changes to the Destiny 2 sandbox to spice things up a bit. This Season, we’re making some targeted changes to weapon archetypes that need some love as well as beginning some preparations for crossplay.
Dev team: In preparation for crossplay, coming later this year, we’re making some changes to the Recoil stat. Currently, several weapon archetypes have their Recoil reduced by around 40% (dependent on archetype) when using mouse and keyboard. This results in an issue where players on mouse and keyboard are able to largely ignore the stability weapon stat, creating unintended discrepancies in weapon performance between controllers and mouse and keyboard. The following weapon archetypes will have their mouse and keyboard Recoil adjusted closer to controller (reduced the difference from ~40% to ~20%).
Auto Rifle
Scout Rifle
Pulse Rifle
Submachine Gun
Hand Cannon
Machine Gun
In the case of Pulse Rifle, Submachine Gun, and Machine Gun, we will also be introducing some buffs. In some cases, these weapons will have less Recoil across both Controller and mouse and keyboard input methods compared to what’s in the game today.
Submachine Guns are largely outclassed by Auto Rifles at medium range, and by Sidearms at short range, with player feedback often mentioning how hard they are to control. To address this feedback, we’re introducing the following change:
Reduced camera movement from firing a Submachine Gun by 24%.
Pulse Rifles with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
Reduced camera movement from firing a Pulse Rifle by 7%.
Machine Guns with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
Reduced camera movement from firing a Machine Gun by 9.5%.
We will pay close attention to how these changes play out when they go live, and plan to revisit individual archetypes in a future update as needed. Outside of Recoil adjustments, we will also be tuning a few weapon archetypes in Season 13. Looking through backend data and community feedback, we landed on the following: Buffs
Rocket Launchers have fallen behind other Heavy weapons in most measures of effectiveness, we’re pushing them more into a burst damage role.
Increased Rocket Launcher damage by 30%.
Exotic Rocket Launchers have been adjusted individually and are affected by this change to different degrees.
Paired with the buffs to reserves from last Season, we’re hoping you’ll explode many more things in Season 13!
Fusion Rifle usage is very low, and they feel like an unreliable choice in Crucible compared to Shotguns.
Increased Fusion Rifle damage falloff start distance based on Range stat. (6% with 0 Range, 16% with 100 Range)
Reduced camera movement from firing a Fusion Rifle by 9.5%.
Breech Grenade Launcher usage is very low (outside of Mountaintop). We believe part of the reason is that the loop of "hold the trigger to arm, then release to detonate” is challenging to execute, particularly since projectiles can bounce off targets if the trigger is held
Breech Grenade Launcher projectiles will now detonate on impact with a character, even if holding the trigger.
Nerfs
While Sniper Rifle usage has dropped in Crucible, we’ve observed that it’s hard to challenge someone with a Sniper Rifle – even if you get the first shot on an enemy, they can often respond and win the fight.
Increased ADS flinch to Snipers when taking damage from other players
Swords are extremely dominant in PvE. At this time, 65% of players are using Swords for the majority of gameplay encounters in Destiny 2. While we are introducing a buff to Rocket Launchers to make them a bit more enticing, we feel that Swords do too much damage compared to other options.
Reduced Sword damage by 15%.
Exotic Changes and Bug Fixes
Some Exotic weapons lose their buffs when you switch weapons, which is intended. They would also lose their buffs when pulling out your Ghost Shell, which is not intended. Fixed that issue on these weapons:
Ace of Spades
Tarrabah
Hawkmoon
Borealis and Hard Light now have a custom (quite short) animation for switching damage type.
Duality
Increased damage falloff distance by 1.25m (while both firing from the hip and aiming down sights).
Reduced maximum buff stacks from 7 to 5, each stack now grants more of a damage bonus, extended buff duration slightly.
Sturm will once again reload any equipped Special slot weapon on kill provided the Special weapon's clip isn't full already and there's available reserve ammo.
Fixed an issue that was preventing Merciless from increasing its charge rate on non-lethal hits.
Ah, and before we go – we are planning to take a quick tuning pass on Arbalest. This won’t be ready in time for February 9, but we are expecting to have this touched later in Season 13!
Now, we know it can be difficult to understand the scale of buffs and nerfs without having these changes in your hands. Not to mention, there will be some new perks for you to hunt as you start navigating content in Season of the [REDACTED]. As always, we’re excited to see these changes out in the wild on February 9, and will be eager to hear your feedback.
Crimson Days
Each year, we look to February as a time to celebrate bonds of friendship throughout the community. Guardians have come to know this celebration as Crimson Days. It was one of our first “Seasonal” events in Destiny 1, a tradition that we carried to Destiny 2. While there was great enjoyment of Crimson Days, we feel that it’s been missing the mark in terms of quality over the last few years. As such, we have made the decision to discontinue Crimson Days moving forward. While we’ll miss the event, this move will allow us to maintain focus for alternate Seasonal offerings, ranging from quests to activities and more. We have quite a bit planned for Season of the [REDACTED] and our hope is that we’ve maintained, or even improved, the quality you’ve come to expect from this upcoming release. Some of you may be asking about the fate of Crimson Doubles, our once-a-year Crimson Days playlist. This mode is currently being shifted to the Destiny Content Vault but may return in the future. Many thanks to every Guardian who has joined us over the years for this event. Crimson decorations may not be hung in the Tower, but we have no doubts that you’ll continue to form Crimson Bonds over the years to come.
BugTrax
Image Linkimgur For those who may be new to the TWAB, welcome to the Player Support Report. This section is dedicated to known issues, active investigations, and pending updates for Destiny 2. Our Player Support team navigates the Help forum daily, collecting info on new issues and dishing out help articles. This is their report on the most frequently reported issues of the last week.
CRUCIBLE TOKENS AND FRAGMENT QUESTS Due to the updates to the vendor progression system, Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts are no longer needed and will be deprecated into Junk that will delete as a full stack starting in Season 13. Additionally, current Stasis Fragment Quests will be deprecated at the end of Season of the Hunt. Players are advised to turn in all Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts and finish all available Stasis Fragment Quests before Season 13 starts. KNOWN ISSUES While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help forum:
Stasis abilities can be difficult to distinguish between enemy and friendly for colorblind players.
The Double Trouble Triumph is unobtainable.
In the Deep Stone Crypt raid, the augment lockout timer occasionally resets during the final encounter against Taniks.
During the final fight against the Sanctified Mind in the Garden of Salvation raid, sometimes a shielded tether box can become tethered instead of the correct glowing tether box.
Hunter legs clip through the Ten-Grasp Sword Sparrow.
In the Last Wish raid, the Shuro Chi puzzle room plates don't work if a Titan bubble or Warlock well are placed on them.
The Titan Phenotype Plasticity Helm eye clusters no longer glow red.
Weekly and daily elemental kill bounties have stopped rotating off of Void.
When overcharging grenades while using the Voidwalker top tree subclass as a Warlock, Super energy stops charging.
For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.
[Bird Noises Intensify]
Image Linkimgur It’s been fun watching Hawkmoon clips and montages throughout the Season. With recently introduced random rolls, players have been pushing the limits of this Exotic, taking on 1v1 encounters in the Crucible that they may have otherwise avoided. This week, our top pick not only got a sweet roll on perks, but a killer roll on audio, too! Movie of the Week: Ting Ting Ting Ting Video Link Movie of the Week: Deep Stone Lullaby Violin/Piano Cover Video Link Movie of the Week: …That’s a lot of Hawkmoon Video Link As always, if you'd like to submit your creation to be featured in a future TWAB, make sure to create a post on the Community Creations portal of Bungie.net.
Credit Where It’s Due
Image Linkimgur Every day, we take a moment to scroll through various social media apps to take a look at community artwork. We’re always awestruck by the talents that many of you possess, and eager to share your works with a wider audience. Here’s a quick roundup of some sweet art, and direct links to their authors. Give them a follow if you want to see more of their stuff! Art of the Week: Art Sharing
Cheers, and make sure to tag your content with some form of #Destiny2Art so we can find you easily! That’s it for this week, folks. Season of the [REDACTED] is almost here. We’ll have some patch previews to cover in the TWAB next week, so stop by if you’re interested!
If this gets 7 likes we'll add a new LZ on Europa next Season. — Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) January 27, 2021
We’ll see you again next week, bright and early on Tuesday morning. Cheers, dmg04
So recently I noticed that 5thgen, Pekora and Matsuri have started streaming/playing the game God Field. Suisei & Shion also joined in to play on Pekora's stream. Pekora also mentioned potentially doing a tournament for the game (not confirmed yet though). It seems like we might continue to see more streams of this game within Hololive. However, I haven't seen anyone TLing any stream clips, which is a shame since it's a very funny game, made even more entertaining when Hololive members are playing it! I suspect it's because the game isn't well known to the overseas audience, so I decided to make this guide for TLers and EN fans who are interested but don't understand the game. I've provided examples from Hololive streams so that you can practice following along. If you don't know anything about God Field, in short, it's a party card game. You could say it's like the Mario Kart of card games, and by that I mean it's a mixture of skill and unfair RNG mechanics and lucky card draws. The game also has the weird ability to make players start role playing, somehow due to its weird "God" theming and its unusual card and status names. You'll see players start to say silly things as they attack each other cards like "Goodbye Sword" or inflict weird status effects like "Fog". But these aspects are what creates very hilarious interactions and dialogue between the players, some of which I'll include at the end of this guide as a bonus. You can also play the game for free here, but there's no tutorial, so I recommend reading this guide as you go.
Basics
The goal is to get your opponent's HP to 0. There are two main card types, attack (攻) cards and defence (守) cards. During your turn, you use attack cards to attack an opponent. The opponent can use defence cards to defend against it. 1ATK is equal to 1DEF. EX: Suisei attacks Pekora with the 14 ATK "Violent Flail" (a very fitting card for her). Pekora defends with "Iron Armor", a 5DEF card, so she takes 9 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3161) When defending, you can stack as many defence cards as you want at once. But for attacking, it's a bit different. You can only use 1 attack card normally, but you can combine "combo attack" cards to make a stronger attack. You can tell if it's a combo attack card if it has a "+" in its damage, for example "+3 攻" or "+3 ATK". Note that combo attack cards don't have to be used in a combo, they can also be used as standalone attacks. EX: Polka attacks Lamy with a monstrous 10+13+10 card combo, a total of 33 damage. Lamy defends with a 1, 3, and 9 DEF combo, a total of 13 DEF, so she takes 20 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3314)
Elements
Some cards are color-coded, meaning they have an element. Elemental attacks can only be blocked with an elemental defence of a certain element. Fire & water (red & blue) counter each other, and stone & wood (grey & orange) counter each other. Elemental attacks are very hard to deal with, because you often won't have the specific elemental defence needed in your hand. Elemental cards themselves are also more uncommon than non-elemental cards. Note that you can use elemental defence cards to defend against non-elemental attacks too. EX: Lamy attacks Botan with "Fire Crossbow", a +4 ATK fire card. Note that she used a combo card by itself instead of making a combo, which was actually a good play, because it preserved the card's element, making it so that Botan needed water element defence to defend it. Of course, Botan didn't have it, so *she took 4 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2603) *This is a funny moment during a 3v3 team game of "Botan/Polka/Suisei" vs "Pekora/Nene/Lamy", where Botan says she'll "be a wall" for her teammates, and proceeds to get brutally focus-fired by the opposing team. More on why that happens later. Actually, there are two more elements that behave quite differently: light (yellow) and dark (purple). Light cannot be blocked, and can substitute as Fire/WateStone/Wood for both attacks and defence. So it's like a wildcard element, as well as being virtually undefendable (a few cards can block it). Dark can be blocked by anything, even by non-elemental defence, but it kills the opponent if even 1 damage goes through. As you can imagine, both of these elements are very scary to deal with. EX1: Shion attacks Pekora with "Justice Lance", a 5 ATK light card. Note that none of Pekora's defence cards are lit up, showing that they can't be selected, because again, light element attacks are unblockable. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5623) EX2: Botan attacks Nene with "Killer Fork", a 5 ATK dark card. Nene didn't have any defence cards, so she died despite having 24HP due to the dark element's instant kill effect. Note that Botan likely knew she had no defence cards, because in the early rounds of this 3v3 team game, Team Suisei/Botan/Polka all attacked Nene, causing her to use her up defence cards early on. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2977) You might be thinking that if you combine something like +10 ATK cards with a 5 ATK dark element card, you have the recipe for an OP combo. But actually, stacking attack cards of different elements will cause the entire attack to become non elemental, so you'll lose the "dark instant-kill" effect. However, there are combo cards which are elemental, so if you're lucky enough to get a +5 ATK dark element, you can combine it with a 5 ATK dark element to create a very lethal dark element attack.
Tip for Following Along as a Viewer
It can be hard to add up all the cards and consider the elements for a given interaction, especially when the players play very fast. Some cards are also both attack and defence cards, meaning they have an ATK and DEF value, making it extra hard to understand if you don't know the kanji. So as a tip, the game itself will show the total ATK, total DEF, and elements of a given interaction. It's shown below each of the two "card columns" of the field. And as mentioned before, usable cards will light up in your hand, so you can tell if the streamer was forced to take an attack because they had no cards to play, or if they took it in purpose to save their cards for later. EX1: Polka attacks with a 9ATK card and +10 Light ATK *card. Remember that non elemental and light don't combine, so it's actually just a non elemental attack altogether. Note the "19 攻" near the bottom left, showing the total attack, and the fact that it's black means that it's non elemental. On Nene's side, it shows a black "15 守" , meaning the total defence is 15, and is also non elemental. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2679) *The light card Polka used is called "Meteor", hence why Polka says Suisei's catchphrase in reference to it. EX2: Lamy attacks Botan with 3 wood ATK and +1 light ATK. Since light substitutes as wood, you can see in the bottom-left that it becomes an orange "+4 攻", or in other woods, a 4 damage wood attack. Once again, Botan is unable to defend, since elemental defence is very rare. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2926)
AoE Attacks
Some attacks have a "%" in their damage, for example "50% 9ATK". What this means is that they have a % chance of hitting each opponent with that much damage. So with "50% 9ATK", if you're in a 8 player free for all, you can think of it as flipping a coin for each of your 7 opponents, and if it lands on heads, they get hit by 9ATK. Depending on luck, the attack can either hit everyone, miss everyone, or do some mix of hitting/missing. AoE attacks are all elemental by design as well, making them extra annoying. EX: Polka attacks Pekora/Nene/Lamy with "Rain Deity's Sword", a 50% 9ATK water card. And to her luck, it successfully hits all three of them. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2771)
Spells
Spells work basically like how they do in RPGs; they cost MP, and they can be used infinitely. You'll notice after a player uses them the first time, that the card stays in the bottom right of the player's hand. It's sort of like they "learned" the spell. Most spells are simply elemental attacks that cost MP, but there are some other unique effects they can do as well. In general, spells are much stronger than regular attack cards in this game, since they're essentially infinitely reusable elemental attacks. But they're usually hard to use since MP is a somewhat uncommon resource, and spells themselves are uncommon as well. EX: Pekora vs Shion. Pekora has a measly 2HP, and Shion uses the spell "Ice", a 4ATK water spell that costs 2MP, to finish her off. Luckily, Pekora draws "Moonlight Shield" just in time, which reflect spells, and manages to survive. But if you recall, spells are reusable, so Shion just uses "Ice" the next turn. Miraculously, Pekora draws "Moonlight Sword", which also can reflect spells, and survives yet another turn. Finally, for a third time, Shion casts "Ice", but this time Pekora is all out of luck. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5637) Spells actually have an interesting side effect. Because of how card draw works (you replenish the same amount of cards that you use), when using a spell, it counts as if you "used it" even though it remained in your hand. So your hand size will increase by 1 every time you use it, meaning it gives +1 card advantage. So if you have a cheap cost spell, you can cast it many times over the course of a game to continuously increase your hand size - and thus create a massive card advantage over your opponent. If you've played card games before, you'll realize that this is a very powerful effect. EX: Pekora attacks Shion with a 6 ATK wood spell. Watch Pekora's hand in the bottom-left, and notice that she gains a card slot in her hand when she uses the spell. Also note that her hand is much bigger than the default hand size, as she's already used the spell a bunch before. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5152)
Statuses
There are very non-traditional status effects in this game, so I'll explain each one: Fog: The background becomes blue, and various things become blocked with a blue fill. You can't see what cards other players play, unless they're attacking you. You also can't see anyone's HP/MP/Money, besides your own, and you cannot select who you target when you attack. EX: Shion uses the "Fog" spell on Pekora. Pekora actually has a consumable that can cure it called "Heart Shell", which can cure all statuses, so she uses it. But "Heart Shell" is single-use, and if you recall, spells are infinite use, so Shion just casts "Fog" again right after, since the MP cost is low. The interaction itself is funny, with Shion constantly teasing her about "absolutely wanting Pekora to not be able to see~" (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5547) Dream: All cards you draw have a 50% of being "disguised" - meaning they can actually be a different card then what it visually appears as. It'll reveal what the card really is when you use it. A "disguised" card will have a misty filter on it. Note that cards can't turn into cards of another type - meaning you can't defend with a defence card, but then it turns into an attack/spell/consumable card with 0 DEF. It'll always turn into another defence card. And if it's an elemental defence card, it'll turn into an elemental defence card of the same element. This makes it so that you can't play a "wrong" or "invalid" card as a result of dream. EX: In a close game of Pekora vs Matsuri, where both players have 7HP left, Matsuri attacks Pekora with a 11ATK combo. Pekora's only defence card is a potentially fake "Flame Boots", a 3DEF card, so she thinks she will lose, especially since elemental cards tend to have low DEF, so even if it's fake, it'll still probably turn into another weak card. However, it's actually revealed to be "Flame Armor", a 12DEF card, so she survives with excitement. (Volume Warning https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4706) Flash: You can only use up to 1 defence card when defending. EX: Polka hits Botan with *"Horror Wheel", a +11 ATK card. Botan counters with "Uranus Ring", which inflicts flash to whoever damaged her, so Polka gets the "Flash" status. Then, Lamy attacks the "Flashed" Polka with the 9 ATK "Power Halberd", which is difficult to defend since she can only play 1 defence card. To top it off, Polka's under "Dream" as well, meaning she doesn't know if her 1 defence card will be good enough, since it may change into another, weaker card. This interaction shows a special yellow text (まぶしい) that translates to "bright". So while getting hit, Polka says "It's bright! What's with this brightness?" (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=1043) *You might be wondering why Polka used a combo attack on its own, since unlike in the previous similar example with Lamy, it's non-elemental, so it should be better to combine it with another attack. It's because she was new to the game - Nene actually starts explaining it to her about "+" and "combo" cards during that timestamp after she plays it. Dark Cloud: If you're hit with a % attack, it has a 100% chance of hitting. EX: Shion hits Pekora with "Flare Axe", a 50% 10ATK fire card. Pekora is already under Dark Cloud, so she gets hit. This interaction shows a special purple text (不可避) which translates to "inevitable", as in it's inevitable the hit will land. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5967) Cold->Fever->Hell->Heaven: These disease statuses give -1/-2/-5/+5 HP per turn. They're related in that diseases can get "worse" at a 5% chance each turn, or when you catch another disease. When a disease becomes worse, it turns into the "next stage" disease. Meaning cold turns into fever, which turns into hell, which turns into heaven, and after heaven, you'll simply die. Heaven is quite odd since unlike the other diseases, it gives you HP per turn rather than dealing damage per turn. But instead you have a 5% chance of dying at the end of your turn. So it can create some thrilling situations where a player is nearly unkillable because of the +5HP per turn, but also can die at any moment if their luck turns bad. EX: Lamy uses "Heaven Herb" on herself, which gives +20 MP, but also puts herself under "heaven". Note the +5HP that appears after as a result of "heaven". Polka questions the play at first, since heaven is very dangerous so you'd rather give it to someone else, but then she realizes you can cure it later. So Lamy used it as a desperate way to heal herself, as her HP was running low. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3144)
Common Keywords
There are some common card effects that are important to know. Bounce Attack/Spell - Redirects an attack/spell to anyone in the game, even to the person who bounced it! A quirk of this mechanic is that the attack/spell will become unblockable if you bounce it and it redirects to yourself. EX: During a team battle, Polka uses the light element spell "Meteor" on Lamy. Normally, light is unblockable - but Lamy plays "Sky Helm" which bounces spells. It then bounces to... (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3010) Polka's ally Botan, causing Polka's attack to kill her own teammate, who only had 7HP, and no way to counter light element. Reflect Attack/Spell - Reflects the attack/spell back to the attackecaster. Fairly self explanatory, but it's good to be aware of, as it's the common cause of funny moments, along with "Bounce". EX: Pekora vs Shion. Pekora has only 7HP and is on her last legs, while Shion has 22HP. Shion plays "Ice Age", a 75% 30ATK water spell. Shion thinks she just won, as it's nearly impossible to deal with 30 water damage. But... (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5268) Pekora uses "Moonlight Sword", which is an attack card that can also be used as a defence card to reflect spells, and makes a comeback. Cast Spell w/o Cost: You can combine a card with this effect to cast a spell for free. This is why you'll see players occasionally cast a spell without enough MP, and combine it with a seemingly unrelated armoweapon. EX: Polka casts the spell "Meteor" which costs 7MP on Lamy, but she only has 1MP. She then combines it with the consumable card "Spiritual Doll", which allows a spell to be casted with no cost. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3074) Block Attack/Spell - It allows you to fully block certain kinds of attacks, regardless of how high the damage is. Counterattack - A defensive keyword that activates upon receiving damage. You'll see counterattack on a set of cards known as "Elemental Planet Rings", like the "Uranus Ring" mentioned before. They all have very different effects. Some effects scale based on how much damage you took, meaning you might intentionally take more damage to boost the effect. A common mistake is to use defensive cards with a counterattack card, because it may weaken the special effect. EX: Pekora vs Shion. Shion counters Pekora's 11ATK "Gravity Mace" with "Saturn Ring", which counterattacks with double the received damage, as stone element. So Pekora was countered with 22 stone ATK. If Shion instead tried to fully block the attack while using Saturn Ring, it would've dealt no damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=6025) Inflict "X Status" on Damage - If the attack deals at least 1 damage, it'll also inflict a status. EX: During the 5th Gen FFA, Lamy attacks Polka with "Bogus Spear", which has "inflict Dream on hit". Polka gets scared, saying "I have to completely defend this!". Earlier in the stream, nearly everyone had spent a long time under the effects of "Dream", so she was afraid of experiencing it again. It's a very scary status to be afflicted with. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=4301)
Consumables
These are mostly cards that simply heal HP, MP, or cure statuses. Though there are actually some with much more wild effects, like the "Heaven Herb" mentioned previously. An interesting part about these cards is that you can use them on someone else, so for example you can heal allies in team matches. One more notable feature is that they're in a separate category from attacks or spells, and this game only has blocking cards that work against attacks and spells. As a result, there is no way to block consumable cards. EX: Continuing from a previous example, Pekora uses "Heart Shell" to cure her teammate Lamy's "Heaven". She was afraid that Lamy would die from heaven, leaving her in a 1v2 situation, so she waited a few turns for it to heal her, then cured her. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3237)
Money
You may have noticed that both players and cards have "￥" on them. "￥", or money, is used for three specific cards: "buy", "sell", and "exchange". These cards are fairly common, have very unique effects, and can be OP when used right, so I'll explain them thoroughly. Buy: target a player, then the game chooses a random card from their hand. You then have the option of buying that card from them. The real power of this card comes from its glitchy side effect - similar to spells, after buying a card, it actually increases the buyer's hand size by 1. But unlike spells, it also decreases the seller's hand size by 1, meaning this gives a +2 card advantage. You might notice a player's hand size becoming extremely small or big, as a result of multiple uses of this card. Needless to say, this card is extremely powerful. EX: Pekora gets lucky and manages to buy Shion's "Real Ghost Sword", a 12ATK lifesteal card. This effect is very powerful and essentially means the card has 24ATK in terms of value. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5331) Sell: choose one of the cards in your hand, and target a player to forcefully sell it to. It has the same side effect as "buy" cards, meaning you lose 1 hand size for using it, and the opponent gains 1 hand size. So at first it seems like a terrible card since it has -2 card advantage, but it actually has its uses. For example, what happens if you sell a $30 card to someone with $0 money? The victim is forced to buy the card no matter what. If they're too poor, they pay in MP instead. If they have insufficient MP, then they pay in HP. So they can actually die from being too poor to buy a card. So when used on a poor player, this card actually becomes an unblockable MP drain, and/or an unblockable attack. EX: Suisei says "Peko-chan, Peko-chan, looks like you don't have any money right now" and then sells her an expensive Heart Shell. To add insult to injury, she already has two Heart Shells, and because she has no money, she lost 15MP instead, which she crucially needed because she has 3 useful spells in her hand. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3217) Exchange: allows you to freely exchange your HP, MP, and money at a 1:1:1 ratio. This card is pretty straight forward, and doesn't have any crazy side effects like the others. The thing to note is that there are very few ways to gain HP/MP/money in this game, so this card is one of the most versatile cards in the game and combos well with all HP/MP/money cards. EX: Shion vs Pekora. Shion has been using the spell "Treasure", which costs 5MP but gives 10$, to reach a total of $60. And as her HP runs low, she uses "exchange" to turn 60$ into 40HP and 20MP. As a result of this, while taking Pekora's attacks, she was able to fully heal herself, and leave herself with 20MP for a strong spell later, all the while increasing her hand size by a lot due to spamming the spell "Treasure". (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5798) These cards all belong to the "trade" category, so like "consumables", they aren't considered an "attack/spell", so they cannot be blocked. Note that money is not used to play cards, this value is strictly only for buying and selling. Cards don't have any cost to play them (except MP for spell cards).
Guardians
Certain cards will allow players to summon elemental guardians, which have a 25% chance of casting cards after every opponent's turn. The cards they cast depend on their element, the dark guardian for example will randomly choose between 5 dark element cards. Also, guardians don't need MP to cast spells. Guardians have a 10% of disappearing when the player they belong to gets hit. There's also a money guardian and a healing guardian, which are less deadly since they don't attack, but still are quite annoying if left alone for too long. In general, guardians are a huge threat, as it's impossible to keep up with the amount of elemental defence cards needed to block their elemental attacks. The value they generate over time is so threatening that players in a team or FFA game will often start focus firing you for having one. EX1: Pekora uses "Guardian Sealed Jar" on her teammate Lamy, to give her a guardian. She gets the darkness guardian, which has the potential to win the game on its own by constantly sending out dark element attacks. However, its threat causes Lamy to get *brutally targeted by Team Suisei & Polka, and eventually the guardian falls (Summoning https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3042) (Disappears https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3115) *If you remember, Lamy had to use "Heaven Herb" on herself before due to her HP getting low. This was from the same game and happens right after this. So her HP was getting low because of the guardian her ally Pekora gave her. EX2: Remember the Botan moment from before, where she says "I'll be a wall for everyone!" in a 3v3 game? The reason she said this was actually because she played "Guardian Sealed Jar" before, and thus you can see she has a guardian icon next to her on the top right. So she was playfully speaking to the fact that she drew the opposing team's aggro. And indeed, she ends up taking the brunt of the opposing team's attacks and dies first for her team. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2603)
Apocalypse
There's an optional setting in the game where when a certain number of turns pass, the apocalypse starts. When this happens, the background changes, and there's a high chance of drawing "devil" cards, which have various effects, most notable of which is just straight up receiving unblockable damage. It's basically a "hurry-up" mode - a way to stop games from being too long. Another fun interaction is that since devils count as cards, you can actually: draw a devil, take damage, devil gets discarded/used so you draw another card, you draw ANOTHER devil, take damage, and repeat. So you can simply die from endless devil damage, all from one card draw! Pekora/Matsuri/Polka didn't use the setting, so there are no examples of it. But I explained it in case one of them uses it in the future.
Playing The Game
Within the RNG, the game has some interesting mechanics and strategy, which I've tried my best to cover. But if you want to understand the streams fully, I ultimately recommend playing the game yourself, as there's many unique card effects that I haven't covered. In addition to effects, knowing the card names and draw rarity adds much needed context to what the players are saying. There are times when players will play multiple powerful rare cards in a row, which adds to the hilarity. The game is free and playable on browser and mobile. There's a "bible" on the top-right where you can check card effects and rarities, and modes where you can play vs AI, with friends, or with strangers. This game is very fun with friends, but is boring alone IMO. However, there's no tutorial, and the UI is confusing, so you should familiarize yourself with the game first before introducing it to friends. It also has a NND style chat, so if you're wondering about the floating text that sometimes appears, it's the hololive members typing it. The game uses odd "God"-themed terms for things, which I avoided using in the guide to prevent confusion. But you'll need to know them to play the game, and the players themselves make references to it, so here's a chart:
God Field's Terms
Regular Game Terms
Artifact
Card
Curse
Status
Miracle
Spell
Sundry
Consumable
Ascension
Death
Seizure
Death by Heaven
Forgive
Allow (allow an action to happen without playing any cards in response)
Pray
Pass (if you have no attack cards, pass and draw a card)
Bible
Glossary / Card Library
Gift Rate
Draw Chance
Phenomena
Global Effect
Prophet
Player
Hidden Melee
Private Lobby
Again, one of the charms of the game is how it makes the players "role-play" as they attack each other with unethical cards combos and statuses, so I'm hoping that whoever TLs any clips can capture the nuance and wordplay well. Thanks for reading!
Bonus: Stream Highlights
Pekora vs Shion. Pekora gets excited as she draws "Dangerous Pestle", a 30ATK light card, a powerful and unblockable card which has the effect of randomly attacking anyone in the game. Shion's HP is below 30. Pekora gets cocky towards Shion as she uses it. Can you guess what happens next? https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5610The attack hits herself and ends up losing the game soon after because of it.
Shion vs Pekora. With Pekora at 46HP and Shion at 17HP, Shion's chances look dim. In addition, she takes Pekora's "Gravity Mace", an 11 ATK card, without defending, instead countering with "Saturn Ring", a defence card that counterattacks with double the damage that she just took to the attacker as stone element - so 22 stone damage is dealt to Pekora. But Pekora still has 24HP, so the situation still seems bad. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=6025) Until Shion plays a "Waterfall", a 25ATK water spell, which is just enough to make a nearly perfect sudden comeback against Pekora.
Pekora vs Matsuri. Pekora attacks with an insane 31 attack combo. And the base attack card, "Ghost Sword", has lifesteal, so the whole attack gets lifesteal as well. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4040) But Matsuri counters with "Reflecting Sword" which reflects non elemental attacks. Now, not only does Pekora have to deal with the attack, but Matsuri gets "ownership" of the attack, meaning she gets the lifesteal as well.
Matsuri vs Pekora, Matsuri has been building up MP all game, making Pekora think that a massively strong spell was coming, which forced her to waste turns playing defensively. But it was just a bluff, and Matsuri exchanges all her MP for HP instead. Pekora says "Eh? Suddenly your HP is at 90... wait a second, weren't you saying you were gonna use that MP for an attack?" (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4319)
Team Battle: Polka noticed that Pekora did not block an attack in the previous turn and plays the "weakest" card in the game. Botan says "There's no way you'll die, right?" https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3357Self-explanatory.
Matsuri vs Polka: Polka inflicted Dream onto Matsuri earlier, so Matsuri cures herself with "Heart Shell". Then Polka hits her with "Bogus Spear", which inflicts "Dream" upon damage. Polka then teases her about making her dream forever in a creepy voice. Later, they have a cute convo about waking up when Matsuri finally cures herself again. https://youtu.be/8qhduadHdtM?t=2502
5th Gen FFA: Earlier, Botan used "String of Fate" which causes a random "Phenomena", which is like a global status effect. It caused "Mushroom Outbreak", which causes everyone to lose control of their attack for 3 turns, as the game automatically plays random attacks cards for them. This causes Nene to unwillingly attack Lamy with an overkill combo, consisting of "God Sword", a 30ATK card, and "Angel Bow", a +15 ATK card, making a total of 45ATK. Nene blames Botan for it. And shortly after, Botan is forced to use "Magical Stick", an attack which uses all your MP and deals double your MP's damage. But the Mushroom Outbreak makes her target herself. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=1911)
5th Gen FFA: Polka and Botan both buy a card from Nene. Then Polka plays "Nocturnal Broom" on Nene, which removes 3 cards from the target's hand, and just like "buy", the hand size permanently gets smaller. Watch as Nene's hand size shrinks, and as Nene laments the loss of her "Diamond Sword". (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=2170)
5th Gen FFA: Nene despairs as she dies to Polka's 10 light damage Meteor spell. But Nene's "Ascension Bow" which she had in her hand, comes into play, which has the effect of activating as a "75% 30 Light ATK" card upon dying. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=3524) She manages to take out Botan with her death, but misses against Lamy and Polka. This card is able to turn the game into a draw.
Polka online ranked vs Horse. Polka sells "Gold Club" to Horse, a 1ATK card that costs 25$. It's a card that basically only exists for buying/selling. Horse counters by selling it back. But Polka counters by selling it back, thanks to having an extra sell card. (https://youtu.be/UH8eQRXbpUU?t=3575 )Later in the game, Horse actually sells it back once more, but Polka has another sell ready and immediately sells it back.
Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49751 This week at Bungie, we’re beginning our descent to Europa. Every release, we have a long conversation about what we should show players leading up to launch, and what we should leave for players to discover. We want to build up the sense of wonder as a new Season or expansion makes its approach without spoiling everything that’s coming. With just a week to go before launch, we’ve almost reached our destination. Video Link Our Beyond Light Launch Trailer went live last week. A ViDoc, exploring Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt, is available for your viewing pleasure. We’ve released our Season of the Hunt calendar to help you plan out your days for the next few months. Image Linkimgur All that’s left is a quick preview of patch notes and a maintenance timeline. After that, we leave the rest to you.
It’s All in the Patch
Over the last few weeks, our goals have been to set expectations. We’ve covered the Destiny Content Vault, upcoming Sandbox changes, Gambit tuning, and more. These updates aren’t mind-blowing or overly game changing, they’re just nice little morsels to chew on in the final days leading up to launch. In any case, we hope you like the following quality of life appetizers before your meal is delivered on November 10. Archives Beginning November 10, two new kiosks will be available in the Tower. First up, the Quest Archive will be found next to the Postmaster. Our hope is that this removes some of the confusion when trying to track down the odd quest that you previously discarded. Additionally, this will be the place for any veteran players to pick up the New Light Quest on November 10, if they have a strong desire to experience new player tutorials and the (re-)introduction to the Cosmodrome. Image Linkimgur Next up, the Monument to Lost Lights Exotic Archive will be found by the Vault. Here, players may acquire various Exotics and Legendary Pinnacle/Pursuit weapons that were once available through now-retired quests. As many of these Exotics were tied to lengthy quests or difficult objectives, we wanted to make sure their prices reflected those previous efforts. Players will need an amount of Glimmer, destination materials, masterworking materials, and an Exotic Cipher or Ascendant Shard in order to purchase the Exotic or Legendary which they desire. We’re also introducing a currency, Spoils of Conquest, which can only be acquired when completing raids. This currency will be required for Exotics previously tied to Vaulted raids. Image Linkimgur In the past, Exotic Ciphers were very limited in nature. While you can expect one to be available as part of the Season Pass, Xur will also offer a quest to earn one Exotic Cipher on a weekly cadence. Now, let's move on to some traditional patch notes... Crucible
Trials of Osiris
Trials of Osiris Power level requirement increased to 1210.
Added ADEPT weapons and weapon mods to Flawless chest rewards.
Additional information here (link TWAB).
Maps
Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Altar of Flame.
Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Exodus Blue.
Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Cauldron.
Player Identity
Login screens now have a dark background.
Updated the full-screen menus to have a dark background style.
Player waypoints now display Season Rank, HUD waypoints.
Added toggle functionality to the character screen, allowing the player to make a choice between Light and Dark subclasses.
Character screen visuals updated depending on player choice between Light and Dark.
Character Creation
Changed selection from "Male" & "Female" to "Masculine" & "Feminine."
Guardian head and hair models have been replaced with improved versions.
Several color swatches have been changed to better represent the applied color.
Player’s previous head selections are still used.
Misc
Fixed a bug that prevented online friends from showing up in the roster on Stadia for players with more than 100 friends.
Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented players from earning progress on bounties when joining an activity in progress.
This most notably impacted Iron Banner bounties and could cause players to have their Artifact Power bonus enabled during Iron Banner matches.
A few Sandbox changes that we missed in our Sandbox preview
Traveler's Chosen
Reduced muzzle flash intensity.
Point of the Stag
Increased Point of the Stag's Max Power Level to 1310.
Divinity
Fixed a bug that prevented some weapons from dealing precision damage to the Divinity cage (e.g. Eriana's Vow).
Hunter Dodge
Increased Hunter's Dodge cooldown by a few seconds.
(E.g. Tier 4, old cooldown: 22 sec. New cooldown: 26 sec.)
Anti-Champion Mods
Anti-barrier rounds will now penetrate Taken Phalanx shields.
All Anti-Champion mods have been shifted to armor, rather than taking a weapon mod slot.
Orbs of Light have been changed to Orbs of Power as they can now be consumed by Light and Dark subclasses.
Before we end our patch note preview, we do want to call out the collectors among you who have been talking about the impending removal of Expired Ramen Coupons from your inventories. We know this one stings a bit. It’s a byproduct of us cleaning up inventory systems and doing general maintenance. We want to a provide a parting gift before these coupons are tossed into the bin. These coupons can’t be redeemed for spicy ramen, but they can decorate your desktop for as long as you desire. [4k – SPICY RAMEN COUPONS] Image Linkimgur …and there we have it. Full patch notes will be released on Tuesday around launch time. Stay tuned!
Novembrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
With a new expansion coming next week, we also have a fresh update coming to Bungie Store! We’re entering the holiday season, so it’s a pretty good time to start gift shopping for your favorite Guardians out there in the world. Image Linkimgur Starting November 9, upgrade your arsenal of collectibles and gifts at Bungie Store with new exclusive products and free in-game emblems with purchase, including the Destiny 2: Beyond Light Original Soundtrack! Cosmic Alignment (Available November 9 through December 4, 2020) Image Linkimgur Between Stars (Available November 9 through February 9, 2021) Image Linkimgur Shattered Harmony (Available November 9 with purchase of Destiny 2: Beyond Light Original Soundtrack) Image Linkimgur Follow @BungieStore on Twitter for more deals and discounts to be announced every Friday in Novembrrrr from The Drifter, The Exo Stranger and Variks.
Let’s Talk Maintenance and Pre-Loads
Image Linkimgur Next Monday, November 9, Destiny 2 will go offline for an extended maintenance period. We want to give everyone ample time to download Destiny 2 Update 3.0.0. Our teams are prepping for the launch day assault on our servers. Destiny Player Support has the full timeline for maintenance, downloads, and more. Read up, spread the word, and get ready for Beyond Light. This is their report.
UPDATE 3.0.0.1 Next Monday, maintenance for Update 3.0.0.1 will begin. Below is a timeline of events:
November 9, 3:30 PM PST (2330 UTC): Background maintenance for Update 3.0.0.1 will begin.
November 9, 4:00 PM PST (0000 UTC): In preparation for downtime, players will be removed from activities and will be required to download a small update before logging in again.
November 9, 6:50 PM PST (0250 UTC): Sign-on for Destiny 2 will be disabled.
November 9, 7:00 PM PST (0300 UTC): Destiny 2 will be brought offline for expected maintenance. Players will be removed from activities and won't be able to log back into Destiny 2 until 9 AM PST on November 10.
November 10, 9:00 AM PST (1700 UTC): Destiny 2 Update 3.0.0.1 will be available across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2.
November 10 12:00 PM PDT (2000 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is expected to conclude.
For more information, please visit our Destiny Server and Update Status help article. BEYOND LIGHT PRE-LOAD Pre-load for Update 3.0.0.1 will be available prior to the game’s release. Below are pre-load timelines and instructions based on platform: PlayStation Beginning on November 8 after 8 PM PST (0400 UTC), users can start pre-downloading Update 3.0.0.1 by:
Navigating to Destiny 2
Pressing the “Options” button
And selecting “Check for Updates”
In an effort to decrease server load, some PlayStation Plus users may be able to pre-download Update 3.0.0.1 starting on November 7 after 8 PM PST (0400 UTC) if they have auto update/download enabled on their PlayStation 4. For instructions on how to setup auto update/download, please click here. PLEASE NOTE: BUNGIE RECOMMENDS THAT PLAYERS SHOULD NOT DELETE THEIR CURRENT VERSION OF DESTINY 2 ON THEIR PLAYSTATION CONSOLE TO SPEED UP THE PRE-DOWNLOAD PROCESS. Xbox Pre-load for Xbox will be available shortly after Destiny 2 is taken offline for expected maintenance at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) on November 9. For instructions on how to setup auto update, please click here. PC Pre-load for PC will be available shortly after Destiny 2 is taken offline for expected maintenance at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) on November 9. Update 3.0.0.1 should automatically be put in the Steam download queue once it is available to pre-load. For more information on managing Steam downloads and updates, please click here. STORAGE REQUIREMENTS Below are the updated storage requirements for Beyond Light: Platform |Destiny 2 Install Size |Storage Space Needed for Installation | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| Xbox Series X|S|65.7 GB|65.7GB| PlayStation 5|70.78 GB|70.78 GB| PlayStation 4|70.78 GB|171.68 GB| Xbox One|65.7 GB|65.7 GB| PC|69.7 GB |186.2 GB** | ** PlayStation 4: Includes current installed version of Destiny 2 (100.9 GB) + Update 3.0.0.1 pre-load (70.78 GB) = 171.68 GB* *** PC: Destiny 2 Install Size may vary based on languages installed, size shown is maximum size possible * ** PC: Includes current installed version of Destiny 2 (up to 116.5 GB) + Update 3.0.0.1 pre-load (up to 69.7 GB) = 186.2 GB* DESTINY CONTENT VAULT AND THE END OF SEASON OF ARRIVALS With the start of Year 4 and the introduction of the Destiny Content Vault on November 10, certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with Vaulted destinations, activities, and campaigns. Players should review our help articles on items being deprecated at the start of Year 4 and items being removed at the end of Season of Arrivals for more information on items, quests, and currencies that will be removed from player inventories at the start of Year 4. Some items listed can be used or turned in for rewards, such as Glimmer, weapons, and armor, so be sure to do that before November 10. Additionally, certain Titles will become Legacy Seals and unavailable to earn at the start of Year 4. Players should be sure to equip the following Titles before November 9 at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC), after which they will be unavailable to earn. For more information, please visit our Year 4 Triumphs Update help article. Seal |Title | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| A Shadow Rises|Shadow| Reckoner|Reckoner| Black Armory|Blacksmith| Destinations|Wayfarer| Lore|Chronicler| Undying|Undying| Dawn|Savior| Almighty|Almighty| Arrivals|Forerunner| Moments of Triumph 2020|MMXX| BUNGIE REWARDS With the release of Beyond Light on November 10, certain Bungie Rewards will no longer be available to earn. These include the ‘Eclipse Sunset’ and ‘Sunset’ emblems, the Year of Shadowkeep Artifact Coins, the Moments of Triumph t-shirt, the Raid Ring, the Prophecy Dungeon Hoodie, the MMXX Seal, and the Forerunner Seal. Players should be sure to earn these rewards by November 9 at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) and claim these rewards from the Bungie Rewards page before November 13 at 8 AM PST (1600 UTC).
Encore
Image Linkimgur Before we kick off a new year of Destiny content, we have a final round for Movie of the Week. 2020 isn’t over yet, but we’ve had a blast watching community-created content throughout Shadowkeep and its associated Seasons. Many thanks to those who’ve submitted their footage (and art!), as it’s kept us sane week over week. Here are your final Movie of the Week selections before Beyond Light brings some Darkness to the table. Movie of the Week: Thanks, Taken! Video Link Movie of the Week: Festival of the Lost, Parting Shot Video Link Movie of the Week: Give ‘em a hand Video Link Movie of the Week: SEVENTH COLUMN!!! ...AND ANOTHER ONE! Video Link Movie of the Week: It isn’t over until it’s over
Next week, we’ll have a new companion section for Movie of the Week. We felt it important to give the same spotlight to the artists of our community as we’ve been giving to those who create fun videos. To throw your hat in the ring, submit your content to the Community Creations portal on Bungie.net. If you also post your content to social media, tag it with #DestinyMOTW or #DestinyArt. We’ll snag a few winners each week and grant them some fancy new emblems. We’ve been here a few times. What was once months became weeks. Weeks have become mere days. Five more sleeps stand between you and Beyond Light. Well, that’s if you can even sleep the night before launch. I know I probably won’t. Many of you have been on this journey with us from the start. In the last year, numerous Guardians have begun their journey through New Light. No matter how long you’ve been a Guardian, we can’t thank you enough for playing. Stay hydrated. Be healthy. Treat yourself well. We’re almost there. See you starside. -dmg04
Challenger 1-Cost Reroll Guide and Comps for Set 4.5
Hi everyone, I’m RamKev or KevinRamen, NA Challenger. You might know me from my Dusk Vayne guide for Set 4 or from the latest GSTV Challenger Series tourney this week where I pulled off a win with Talon. With the mid-set update coming up, I wanted to write a general guide for what I believe is one of the stronger strategies during the early part of the set – rerolling for 3* 1-cost carries (it’s also my favorite way to play the game). I want to go over the general cadence of rerolling, including important decisions like when to roll and when to level, and share a list of units that I believe are carry-worthy for the new set.
Before I get into any of the specific details, I want to go over my general philosophy behind the cost-benefit tradeoffs of rerolling for 3* 1-cost carries. I believe that one of the main draws for 1-cost reroll comps is their early and somewhat irregular spiking point compared to comps that rely on more standard carries. From my experience, you will for the most part be spiking hard at some point during round 3 when you hit one or several 3* units. For comps that rely on higher cost carries, standard roll-down points are around 4-1 or 4-5, which means that in a typical lobby, you can very likely streak up until round 4 carousel. Assuming you hit, this basically grants you an enormous injection of gold in the mid-game from streaking and being able to greed levels as a result of board strength. This strength is exacerbated even more during the early set, where most people are still not familiar with traits or units and are playing weaker boards during the mid-game as a result.
Rerolling for one-cost carries is also a great way to abuse the chosen mechanic in set 4. If you are playing around a 1-cost carry, it should always be a chosen unit, because not only will it get the chosen stat bonus, but essentially being given 3 copies of the same unit all at once makes the path to 3-staring that unit so much faster. It also makes the decision of when to sell and reroll for chosen a lot easier because you’ll be playing the same chosen throughout the entire game.
Unfortunately, you are taking on some risks by choosing to reroll for a 1-cost carry. The biggest one is sacrificing in-game flexibility. If you decide to commit, then if you don’t hit, you’re basically screwed. There are no backup plans. A 2* 1 cost carry will be nowhere near enough to carry you through the mid game, and if you end up having to spend all of your gold trying to hit a 3*, then it will take a while before you can start levelling back up, giving the rest of the lobby a chance to out-scale. If you get unlucky, it is very easy to go 8th, whereas playing flexibly which gives you several backup plans. In addition, it is very easy to lose health while rerolling – You will most likely be lower level than the rest of the lobby and can potentially lose early fights by several units. That is why it is crucial to play the strongest board you can while still maintaining decent econ. If you end up losing too much health, then even if your board strength is good, one bad fight can knock you out. Finally, and this applies to some comps more so than others, you are susceptible to being out-scaled in the late-late game. Many one-costs are lacking in large-scale AOE that the later game units can provide (Samira COUGH COUGH). This either means you should look towards replacing some of the current units you are using with more useful legendaries or you should look towards levelling to 9 and replacing your chosen with a legendary chosen.
IMPORTANT DECISIONS – ROLLING, LEVELLING: Rounds 1 and 2: The first and most important decision you’ll have to make is whether or not you actually want to commit to a reroll comp. This decision should almost always be made before Round 2 Carousel (and preferably before 2-1) and depends on several factors: Chosen unit, number of units, and items. There are no set-in-stone rules here (I believe that decisions in TFT should never be static), but I have a couple good rules-of-thumb that I use to give myself the go-ahead, ordered in terms of how strong they should signal you to go down the reroll route (3 and 4 are pretty iffy and can be high-risk since your odds of hitting are lower):
If you have 6 or more of your chosen unit by carousel
If you have 5 of your carry unit by carousel, including chosen, with one good component
If you have 4 of your carry unit by carousel and can make a core completed item for them
If you have a chosen unit with good items, and are uncontested
Again, you should not take these as strict guidelines. Sometimes it’s better to level, push an early win-streak and transition in the mid-game. Sometimes you might want to test your luck just for fun. These are just some good heuristics that I personally have found success with in set 4 and on PBE.
Rolling/Levelling: NEVER ROLL BEFORE KRUGS!!! This isn’t just advice for rerolling, this is just general advice. No matter how you’re playing the game, you should NOT be rolling before 2-7 unless you somehow have 7 pairs or something ridiculous like that. For Round 2, I usually don’t put any money into levelling, since this decreases your chances of naturalling 1-cost units. However, there are exceptions. If you happened to have pre-levelled during 1-3 and find a 1-cost chosen that you already had a 2* for, then you can still consider rerolling for that unit. Likewise, if you already have 7 copies of a unit and think you can push streak by playing an additional unit then you can level to 4 during 2-1/to 5 during 2-5 while still rerolling for that unit during Round 3.
General Eco guidelines: Nothing set-in-stone here, but if you are still level 4 by the end of Round 2, you should be around 40 gold and pushing 50 by the start of round 3.
Round 3: If you have committed to rerolling, then this is the round where you have to make many micro-decisions that will ultimately determine how successful you’ll be in the lobby.
3-1 Roll-down: In most reroll scenarios, you’ll be level 4 at 3-1. At this point in the game, you should be asking yourself if you want to roll some gold here and at what point you want to stop. You can donkey-roll all of your gold in hopes of hitting a 3. There are a couple benefits to this – you’ll hard spike incredibly early, and your chances of hitting are probably highest at this point in the game. I usually do not try to do this unless I have 7+ copies of the unit, because if you don’t hit, it is very hard to econ back up. Instead, I’ll roll a bit of gold to stabilize my board (usually staying above 30 gold). This means upgrading the rest of your units while also looking for your 1 cost carry. I tend to do this quite a bit, since it will preserve health in the long run, and you’ll be able to get closer to your 3 unit. Finally, you can choose to not roll at all. Feel free to do this if you think your board is strong enough and you have enough of the unit you want where you’ll be able to hit it easily without having to lose econ (6 or more).
3-2 through 3-6: Rolling: During these rounds, you want to econ back up and slow-roll for your 3*. When doing this, I want to emphasize a very important point that I believe many people in all ELOs have trouble understanding: Health is the most important currency in the game. People tend to forget this fact, ESPECIALLY when they are slow-rolling, even though I would say that it is even more important to keep this point in mind when you’re slow-rolling. What this means is that you should not be tunnel-visioning to stay at 50 gold. If you’re losing rounds by 5 units every time, you should be rolling a bit already until you have better frontline. If you’re 1 unit away from 3*, you should be rolling aggressively to hit. Don’t come crying back to me when you lose the game because you lost 80 health by the end of Round 3 while sitting on 50 gold for the entire game. Learn your in-game tradeoffs and adjust your value system accordingly.
Levelling: You’ll be level 5 until your 3*. Once you hit, then you can think about levelling to 6 and ultimately 7. You should ALWAYS be keeping win-streak in mind when you do so. Are you strong enough to greed levelling until later? Does levelling make your board significantly stronger at the cost of 1 or 2 gold in interest? These are the types of questions you should be asking yourself.
Round 4 and Late Game: At this point, most of the important decisions should be out of the way. Play the game as you usually do, focus on levelling to 8/9, positioning and looking for upgraded units/synergies. This should all be standard stuff. If you fall off early, you might have to roll at 8 for upgrades/replacement units. If you’re streaking, you can push 9 and look for legendaries. If you fall off in the late-late game, you can consider selling off your 1-cost chosen for a 5-cost chosen if you have the gold. This type of knowledge should be universal, regardless of what comp you’re playing, reroll or not.
Comps: Carry Worthy: (first synergy listed is better IMO)
SyphoneDivine Nasus: A very strong carry unit throughout all points in the game. Ideally you get a JG + Titans on him, so he’ll be dealing tons of damage while becoming unkillable. I’ve seen a lot of people making the mistake of putting Gunblade on this unit. He does not need additional healing, he already gets that from the Syphoner trait. It is far better if he is itemized for DPS and tankiness.
Yasuo: Very standard comp that basically carries over from Set 4. Looking for items like QSS, Titans, IE, Last Whisper, etc. The only difference is that Xin has been replaced with Tryndamere, meaning it will be a bit difficult to get 6 Duelists online in the early game. You’ll probably have to make due with other enlightened/divine/syphoner units and synergies until you find that last duelist that you need. Hard spikes with Yone + Lee in the late game.
Mage Brand: This is basically the new Nami. You want a Ludens on him for sure since he benefits a lot from the CC-boosted damage. Then you’ll probably want some mana or defensive items to fill out the rest of his slots.
Divine/Vanguard Wukong: Good ol’ Bonkey Kong. He benefits a lot from AD/AS items. In Set 4, I would avoid playing the Vanguard chosen version of this unit, but with the changes to Vanguard, I can see him doing very well with lifesteal + Rageblade.
Dragonsoul/Sharpshooter Tristana: I have tried several times to make this unit work since she’s basically the Vayne replacement for 4.5. I think Shiv is probably the best item for her, since she gets an attack speed steroid as her ult, so she’ll be cranking out the autos and dealing tons of AOE damage.
Spirit/Assassin Diana: Haven’t had the fortune to play reroll Diana in any PBE games, but from what I have seen, she is very capable of popping off. Itemizes similarly to Moonlight Diana.
Untested: Duelist/Enlightened Fiora: This is a chosen I abused a couple of times on PBE. If you get a JG and a mana item on her, she is an absolute smurf, dodging damage and CC while dishing out tons of damage. However, she’s being changed on live so that her chosen stat is HP instead of Mana, so I don’t think she will be as good. Important to keep in mind that her damage comes from her ult, not her autos, so you want to itemize for AP and mana, not AD. She falls off hard in the late game, so you’ll probably want to transition to a chosen legendary.
Mage TF: I’m still not too clear on how good this is in the new set, but with the decreased Mage synergy thresholds, this could be viable. However, TF is a unit that has very inconsistent damage and targeting, so I tend to avoid him as a late game carry.
Cultists: You can potentially reroll cultists and play for 9 cultists in the late game with Sivir buffing your Galio. Haven’t really tried this, so I’m not too sure how strong it is.
Garbo Tier: Sharp/Warlord Nidalee: This unit as a main carry is trash. The fact that her spears can miss completely means that her damage is way too inconsistent.
Conclusion: Hopefully this guide helps everyone out! I know I didn’t really go into details about the specific comps, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’m also gonna plug myself on Twitch, I do free coaching and try to stream most of my games: https://www.twitch.tv/kevinramen
I placed Top 8 in a league with Celestial Kirin Combo! (Report & Primer)
Intro
Hello everybody! About a year and a half ago after the release of Modern Horizons, I found out about two cards that made it possible to cast Armageddon in Modern: Celestial Kirin and Ugin’s Conjurant. To explain the combo briefly, Celestial Kirin turns Ugin’s Conjurant into a spell that reads: “Destroy all permanents with converted mana cost X” where X is the spell’s casting cost. Naturally, the “all permanents” clause includes lands, which means Ugin’s Conjurant is a 0-mana Armageddon with a Celestial Kirin in play. Long story short, I built a deck around this combo and have been periodically refining and testing it in a series of leagues hosted by Untap.in and the friendly TO’s of the Untap Open League Discord over the past year. I find this deck a lot of fun to play, so I wanted to share it and some of the results I've gotten with it here in hopes of spreading awareness of this janky work of art.
The Deck: Kirin Combo
I’ve seen a few different builds of Kirin Combo around, and the thing that most of them have in common is that they have a proactive plan with creatures like Knight of the Reliquary and a bunch of mana dorks (here’s a great example by Faithless Brewing). The idea of this build (which I like to call Turbo-geddon) is to establish threats and find the combo quickly with ramp, then use the combo as an aggressive tempo swing to take over the game with, much like how the Vintage Cube Armageddon deck functions but with dorks instead of Moxen. I took the deck in a different direction. In my mind, its biggest flaw is its weakness to board pressure; since the combo is comprised of two unique cards (meaning there aren’t any redundant copies of combo pieces, e.g. Pestermite/Deceiver Exarch in Twin) you’ll often have to spend at least a turn tutoring for one of them while your opponent plays their stuff, so by the time you get to cast the combo, their threats will have already been deployed. The Turbo-geddon deck is built to go underneath that by ramping to play its own threats and tutors faster, but Modern is chock full of low cmc juicers like Tarmogoyf and Death’s Shadow that are just too cheap to undermine, and Turbo-geddon’s reliance on dorks to go fast also makes it somewhat susceptible to removal; if your opponent Bolts your Bird, they’ll get all the time they need to develop their board and make your Armageddon obsolete. So, here's the solution I came up with: Ghostly Prison! You can probably see where this is going. Ghostly Prison makes opponents pay mana to attack, Armageddon blows up their mana, so they can’t attack. This is the basic plan of the deck. Find the combo, play Ghostly Prison and/or Windborn Muse to delay opposing attackers, cast Armageddon on turn 4 or 5 to lock them out completely and swing over the top with fliers while they're recovering.
As this deck takes inspiration from the Death & Taxes archetype, I took the liberty of naming it after D&T as well. Henceforth the shorthand for this build of Kirin Combo shall be A&T. In this section, I’ll share my philosophies behind card choices, general strategy, and various other bits of knowledge that I gathered in my adventures with the deck. The early turns of the game are spent setting up for the combo with cards that fall into three general categories: balance breakers, tutors, and disruption.
Balance Breakers
Balance breakers do just that—they skew the symmetrical effects of Armageddon in your favor by giving you access to mana in some way. The cards in question are Noble Hierarch, Flagstones of Trokair, Aether Vial, and a one-of Ramunap Excavator. Each of their functions should be fairly evident, but I’ll go through them anyway. Hierarch is ramp and serves double duty as a buff to your clock. More often than not, the biggest creature you’ll have in play after the combo is the Celestial Kirin itself, and the power boost on its 3/3 flying body can be a huge deal since you won’t be putting on any early damage. Flagstones is great with Armageddon and doesn’t affect color consistency at all since A&T is a base white deck. The single Ramunap Excavator is kind of low risk, high reward with Eladamri’s Call, and it enables Ghost QuarteHorizon Canopy loops against grindier decks and greedy mana bases. Aether Vial plays three very important roles in the deck. First of all, it cheats on mana. That may seem like an obvious conclusion, but it is pretty important, since it frees up your mana to play noncreature spells like Eladamri’s Call and Ghostly Prison on turns you’d normally be playing creatures to back up your Armageddon with. Second of all, it lets you play larger creatures immediately after Armageddon without needing an investment of multiple ramp spells in the previous turns (more reward for fewer cards). Finally, it is the deck’s main defense against countermagic—with a Vial on 4, the combo can't be interacted with at all without a Stifle effect like Nimble Obstructionist or Tale's End.
Tutors
The two tutors I’m playing are Eladamri’s Call and Ranger-Captain of Eos. Eladamri’s Call is really the glue that holds the deck together; it can obviously find combo pieces, but it also has great synergy with Aether Vial (you might remember the ol’ Titan Vial decks of yore). The ability to pay two mana and play any creature from your deck at instant speed is quite strong. In addition, E. Call gives the deck a lot of sideboard flexibility and the option of playing mainboard tech. Ranger-Captain can only tutor for one half of the combo, but it does solid work as a hedge against removal and counterspells vs interactive decks like Control or Jund. It is also a free tutor in conjunction with Aether Vial, which again frees up your mana to play interaction and lock pieces in earlier turns. Here's a quick sketch as an example: You're on the draw and you played an Aether Vial on turn 1, then spent your second turn fetching Celestial Kirin with Eladamri's Call. If your opponent plays a must-answer threat like Liliana of the Veil on their turn 3, you can spend your third turn answering it with Skyclave Apparition and still be able to play the combo on turn 4 with a Vial on 3 and a Ranger-Captain to get Ugin's Conjurant.
Disruption
Here we address the deck’s most significant issue: the opposing board. As I mentioned above, Armageddon decks typically use the land destruction to supplement their aggressive plan with a big tempo swing; however, the Kirin combo requires you to cast two very unique cards, so in most games you will need to spend a turn or more durdling around to find them while your opponent establishes a board presence. Now, let’s talk about Ghostly Prison. Its greatest benefit is that it deals with low-to-the-ground aggression much more cleanly than one-for-one removal; decks with a lot of small creatures are likely not playing many lands, and if you get to cast the Armageddon combo with Prison on the battlefield, they probably won't be attacking for the rest of the game. But the problem is that the card has two glaring downsides: one is that it's only good against small creature decks (a shocking realization, I know). The other is that it has a very small window to be effective. This deck doesn’t consistently get to three mana post-Armageddon unless the game goes long, so a lot of the time it’s only useful if you can play it on turns 2-4, before you cast the combo. You can increase your odds of drawing one by then by playing four of them, but then you run the risk of having worse topdecks against decks that don't play a lot of small creatures. Carrying on: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is a great card in mass land destruction decks, but she’s only a two-of here because of the density of noncreature spells in the main deck. Archon of Emeria is a recent addition that has performed pretty well overall; it’s good at delaying multi-color decks post-Armageddon with its “nonbasic lands enter tapped” clause and is also a maindeckable spell-based combo hoser, which is great since this deck’s combo matchup is quite bad. The only downside to it is that it delays our own combo by a turn as well. Oust synergizes very well with the deck’s tempo beatdown plan; by putting the creature in the opponent’s library, it blanks one of their draws, keeping them from drawing into lands to rebuild their board state or pay taxes with. The other reason it's in the deck over Path to Exile is because of Path’s non-bo with the combo—the thought that it could get one of your opponent’s basics out of their deck before destroying their lands is tempting, but you really don’t want to give them lands after Armageddon when you’re relying on Ghostly Prison to keep their scary prowess monks at bay. That said, it's probably still correct to play a split of the two because Path is just that good. Finally, we have Skyclave Apparition. I think you all know how good it is by now, but I want to be really clear on this point: this card single-handedly pushed A&T into the realm of viability. First of all, it answers planeswalkers. Planeswalkers—Wrenn and Six especially—are this deck’s worst enemy, and I cannot stress that enough. Secondly, it’s a creature, which lets you do the cool thing where you fetch it with Eladamri’s Call and then put it in play with Aether Vial. Finally, when it dies, it makes a token. Do you know what happens to tokens when you cast an Ugin’s Conjurant for 0 with a Celestial Kirin in play? They blow up! Kaplooey! So, I know that many of you are probably spitting on the floor in disdain at the lack of four copies of Skyclave Apparition in the deck after I went on that whole tangent about it, and that is totally understandable—but cut me some slack. It was a new card at the time, the meta was in tatters, and I was but a naïve janky deck builder, an early bird who forgot to put on his glasses when he rolled out of bed at 5 AM to catch the worm. Believe you me, I regretted this decision and several others I made this league. But that's beside the point. Let's move on!
Meta and Matchups
To give you an idea of the state of the meta when this league fired, it was a few weeks after the release of Zendikar Rising. Oops/Charbelcher was all the rage, and there was quite a bit of hype for Mill. Uro, RB Shadow, and RG Ponza were the top decks. The population of the UOL Discord favors midrange decks in general, and there are at least two players that jam Jund every league; last time, I had seen several Uro decks, Sharkblade, and Death's Shadow, so I was expecting those to be played again. Other than those, I figured there would be at least a couple red decks since the meta was new and there's always someone who wants to go face, Charbelcher because it looked fun (I was tempted to play it as well), Mill because some people were talking about it in the discord, and Ponza since it was Tier 1 at the time. Before we get to the sideboard cards, I’ll let you in on my personal evaluation of A&T's matchups (by archetype) in the form of a tier list, in which A is its worst matchup and F is its best. Most of these placements are based on experience, but as I haven't played against every deck there is, a few of them are just speculation.
A (30-70) Combo.
You may have already realized this looking at the decklist, but combo is by far this deck’s worst matchup. Fortunately, GW has cards like Thalia, Gaddock Teeg, and Archon of Emeria/Eidolon of Rhetoric which do great work against spell-based combo like Storm and Ad Nauseum, but because of the deck’s lack of instant-speed removal and (over-)reliance on Ghostly Prison, it gets absolutely spanked by creature-based combo. Think Devoted Druid, for example: it makes infinite mana, can tutor for both of its pieces at instant speed, and doesn’t need to win through combat. Shudder.
B (35-65) Burn.
Right after combo in the list of horrible matchups is ye olde anti-jank Burn deck and its alternate win-con equivalent, Mill. Burn doesn’t care much about Ghostly Prison and since all of its spells are so cheap, it can operate fine off of a single land, which makes Armageddon real bad against them. Mill is a bit easier than Burn since their spells are more expensive, but it’s still really difficult since most Mill players play Surgical Extraction in the main which can delete our combo from the deck.
C (40-60) Red-based Midrange, Creature Aggro, Graveyard decks.
The third tier of bad matchups is ruled by Red-based Midrange, which includes decks like Mono R Prison, GR Ponza, and RB Midrange.
Prison has fast mana and powerful planeswalkers like Chandra, Torch of Defiance; you've already heard me say this, but planeswalkers are this deck's worst enemy, and an early Blood Moon or Chandra can easily cheese out A&T.
Ponza has all the problem cards that Prison does plus a bunch of other worst-enemy cards like Klothys, God of Destiny and Wrenn and Six; the mix of disruption and aggressive pressure that the deck brings to the table alongside all those anti-Armageddon cards is very difficult for this build of Kirin Combo to deal with.
RB Midrange has discard spells (very bad for combo decks), Blood Moon, and Dark Confidant/Magmatic Channeler which can draw them out of Armageddon.
Right under Red Midrange are the creature-based aggro decks—Prowess, RB Shadow, Humans, and Hardened Scales. A&T is teched against creatures, but if you don't draw the relevant interaction they can still just run you over. It's worth noting that these decks play a lot of permanents with common converted mana costs, which leaves them susceptible to getting wrathed by Kirin combo on X=1 or 2.
Graveyard-based decks like Dredge and CrabVine can be just as unfair as the highest tier, but white has some great hate cards that help a lot post-board; if Phoenix was still a thing, I'd probably put it up there with Burn since they have counterspells and flying creatures to block the Kirin with.
D (45-55) Black-based Midrange, Tempo.
Decks like Jund, Rock, and Grixis Death’s Shadow. These decks pack a lot of discard spells, play planeswalkers, and have big dudes that cost little mana. That looks really bad on paper, but A&T's own midrange game should not be underestimated; Giver of Runes especially is a great card in these matchups. Also, since they’re Midrange decks, they get hit hard by Armageddon if it ever does resolve.
Tempo decks are kind of difficult to measure because it really depends on what kind of build they are, but I can imagine a counterspell/removal-heavy deck like UR Delver would be difficult to deal with. Grixis Shadow is kind of a tempo deck so I just stuck the entire archetype in the same tier.
E (50-50) White-based Midrange, Blue/White-based Control.
I put Death and Taxes, UW Control, and Sharkblade in this category. Mono W D&T plays their own Aether Vials and arguably better creatures, but has a fairer game plan and no hand disruption or counterspells to interact with the combo. I've only played against BW and UW variants of D&T, so the matchup could be worse than how I'm rating it here.
As far as UW decks go, I'll be honest and say I simply haven't played against enough of them to make a good call on where they place on the tier list; I've had a single match against UW Sharkblade that I won, but just one match isn't really a good indicator. I will say that hard control is more difficult than the Stoneforge builds since they don’t tap out as often, and Aether Vial/Veil of Sumer do a lot of work in the matchup.
F (65-35) Tron, Uro, (Non-Amulet) Titan.
As you can imagine, decks that care about having lands in play don't do too well against Armageddon. Practically the only way Tron can win against Kirin Combo is with a turn 3 Karn; out of all the Tron variants, I'd say Eldrazi Tron has the best chance (about 60-40 in favor of A&T) since they have Thought-Knot Seer to disrupt the combo. G Tron comes in second since they mulligan for turn 3 Tron most aggressively.
Uro decks win by outvaluing their opponents in the late game with Field of the Dead zombie tokens and card draw from Uro. However, the Kirin combo destroys both their lands and any tokens they happen to make (usually before they can re-cast Uro from their graveyard) which is devastating for them.
I will say that there are some mana dork-heavy builds of Uro-Omnath that may be exceptions to this placement, but I haven’t had the opportunity to play against any of them yet, so I don’t know for sure.
GW Titan actually has an okay time because they have Elvish Reclaimer to get their own Flagstones in play and several blockers that line up well against this deck’s attackers (Reclaimer and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove have 4 toughness, our largest ground attacker is Ranger-Captain at 3 power). But again, the combo destroys both their lands and their FotD tokens, which shuts down their late game pretty hard.
Also, I didn't include some of the more niche decks like Bogles here, but if you want to know how it or any other unmentioned deck might stack up against A&T, ask in the comments and I'll do my best to give you an answer that makes sense.
Sideboard
I won’t go into too much detail on the sideboard since this section is getting lengthy and most of my choices are self-explanatory. Eladamri’s Call lets the deck play a flexible creature toolbox sideboard, which is a lot of fun. However, I don’t think playing a ton of 1-ofs is correct since tutoring for sideboard hate is really slow on average and you’d usually rather use your tutors to find the combo. That said, A&T actually has a decent midrange game without the combo, and I’ve even won a few games with the random one-ofs here and there. So who knows. The cards that I consider to be sideboard mainstays are Rest in Peace, Veil of Summer, Knight of Autumn, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and Phyrexian Revoker. Of these five, Revoker is the most important. For one thing, it answers planeswalkers, which, as you now know, are the deck's worst enemy. For another, it hits every single combo deck that A&T struggles against; creature combo like Devoted Druid and Heliod Combo and the Oops All Spells/Charbelcher deck rely on activated abilities to function. (Oops uses Salvage Titan’s activated ability to get it back from the graveyard and recur the Vengevines.) I usually play at least three of these critters, but this league I made the fatal mistake of cutting one to fit a Gaea’s Blessing in because I was afraid of Mill. Spoiler: there turned out to be only one Mill player who dropped out in the second round, so I had to play the entire league with a dead sideboard card. Such is the way of life.
End of Primer
This is the end of the primer. I hope you all gleaned something from that word dump, because I put a lot of effort into it. But now we move on to greater things: the tournament report! Before we start, I have to mention a few things about the league:
Decklists are open, so everyone knows exactly which cards each other player is playing. This means I don’t get any competitive advantage from playing an off-meta deck unless my opponent chooses not to look at my list beforehand.
Each round is a week long, which gives you time to prepare a plan or even play some mock matches against your opponent’s deck if you can get someone to help. I took advantage of this a couple times.
This season’s league was a 5 round Swiss-style tournament of 29 players with the typical match point scoring policies of official Swiss tourneys.
This is by no means a competitive tournament—I would say its atmosphere is akin to that of an FNM, but with higher quality decks on average since it's online and the cards are free.
Also, every deck I played against will be linked and sideboard changes are in italics (note that I didn't write these down in my original match log document, so they're all just future me guessing what I brought in). So without further adieu, I present to you my most recent league run, the culmination of a year-long journey through the snow-capped Mountains of Trial and Error, the Seven Seas of Broken Standard Sets, and the smoking wildfire that was the pre-nerf Companion era. I hope you all enjoy the ride!
Untap Open League Match Log #4:
Zendikar Rising Season | Decklist:https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3449686#paper Round 1 vsJund Game 1: I was on the draw this game and kept a solid Aether Vial hand with double Giver of Runes, Noble Hierarch, Thalia, and Ranger-Captain. I was able to establish a disruptive board presence quickly and punished my opponent's slower hand with the Thalia and an Archon of Emeria that I drew later; his Goyf, Kroxa, and post-Archon Bloodbraid Elf stood no chance. In: 2 Revokers for W&6, 1 Rest in Peace and 1 Scavenging Ooze for Goyf/Kroxa, 1 Knight of Autumn, 1 Veil of Summer, and 1 Skyclave Apparition. Out: 4 Ghostly Prisons, 1 Archon of Emeria, 1 Ramunap Excavator, and 1 Plains. I left Windborn Muse in the deck to keep the option of soft locking combat open. I like to cut lands on the draw. Game 2: I kept a good combo hand with Aether Vial and double Eladamri’s Call. He established an early Wrenn and Six which I hit with Phyrexian Revoker on my second turn. He then played a Plague Engineer on Humans which kept me from Vialing in the Hierarch I had in hand (he didn't know about it). On his turn 4 he played a Klothys, God of Destiny, and on my turn 4 I casted the Kirin combo, destroying all lands. This was the board at that point: I had a Temple Garden from Flagstones of Trokair, a Phyrexian Revoker, a Scooze, and a Kirin in play. Opponent had an inactive Wrenn and Six, Plague Engineer, and Klothys. He proceeded to do nothing for several turns as I swung over with the Kirin, eventually drawing/tutoring for two Skyclave Apparitions and exiling Klothys and Plague Engineer for the win. Result: Win (2-0). Starting off the league strong! Not much can be said here, since opponent’s hands were just not very good and my draws lined up well. Typically Jund gives this deck a much harder time with their discard spells, Dark Confidant, and planeswalkers. Round 2 vsInfect Game 1: Drew a hand of Aether Vial, Giver of Runes, Noble Hierarch, and two Eladamri’s Calls. I chump blocked with the Giver on turn 2 to prevent the worst case scenario, then searched for Thalia on turn 3. This slowed opponent down enough for me to use the second Call to get Skyclave Apparition, which hit his Glistener Elf. Then I established the Ramunap ExcavatoGhost Quarter loop to kill all his Inkmoths and blue sources while attacking for the win. In: 1 Thalia, 1 Skyclave Apparition. Out: 1 Plains, 1 Ramunap Excavator. Game 2: Opponent kept a slow seven with a questionable turn 2 Scale Up on Noble Hierarch. I had a rather slow hand as well, but drew Oust on turn 2 which stalled his one-lander draw for multiple turns, giving me the time to Eladamri’s Call for a Skyclave Apparition that eventually answered a Blighted Agent. I proceeded to remove his Hierarch and Armageddon the lands away, resulting in my flawless victory on turn 7 (no permanents in play heheh). Result: Win (2-0). I had played against this player before in the previous league, and in my conversations with him I got the sense that he was pretty new to Modern. So I think the biggest reason I won this match was because he was inexperienced with Infect (he played a different deck last league) and didn't quite know his lines or mulligan plans; remember, people, learning the ins and outs of a single deck will yield better results than switching between several. This league run with Kirin Combo being the case in point. Round 3 vs5c Yorion Pile This was an interesting build that was devoid of counterspells, instead opting for land-enchant ramp, multicolored removal, and powerful late game engines (Uro, Omnath, Niv, and Yorion). The perfect prey for Kirin Combo. Game 1: I believe I was on the play. My hand had an okay curve, Aether Vial, and Eladamri's Call. I got through a T3feri and Kolaghan’s Command destroying my Vial to combo-kill all lands on turn 5. Opponent conceded with no permanents in play. In: 1 Gaddock Teeg for Bring to Light, 2 Phyrexian Revoker, 2 Knight of Autumn, 1 Skyclave Apparition Out: 4 Ghostly Prison, 1 Windborn Muse, 1 Archon of Emeria, Game 2: Kept a natural combo hand with one land. Naturally, I got punished; opponent bounced my Noble Hierarch with Teferi, then tapped out for an Omnath which I Ousted on my turn. Then, he made me sacrifice my Noble Hierarch with Kaya’s Guile, keeping me stuck on two lands. Unfortunately for him, I drew a third land next turn and Skyclave’d the Teferi, then Skyclave’d his Omnath the turn after. One or two turns later, he killed an Apparition with Assassin's Trophy and blocked with the token it made to kill both Apparitions in combat. However, the Trophy gave me a fourth land which let me cast the combo from hand, destroying all lands and the Apparition tokens. From there, he made a land drop every turn and played Stoneforge Mystic getting Batterskull to race my Kirin, but I topdecked Ugin’s Conjurant twice to seal the deal. Result: Win (2-0). This match went about as expected. Uro Pile decks that don’t play any stack interaction have an extremely difficult time with Kirin combo; I even won on the draw with a mana screwed hand that got severely punished by my opponent's disruption, which is quite nuts. Round 4 vsGR Ponza Game 1: I kept a heavy white hand with Flagstones and Ranger-Captain into Celestial Kirin for a turn 4 combo. My opponent played a turn 2 Bloodbraid Elf into Blood Moon which hit my double white hand really hard, and I lost to color screw and creature beats. In: 1 Phyrexian Revoker, 1 Scooze, 3 Knight of Autumn, 1 Skyclave Apparition. Out: 4 Ghostly Prison, 1 Ramunap Excavator, 1 Archon of Emeria. Game 2: I forget what my hand was, but I remember that I was stuck on lands for a while. Opponent cascaded into Wrenn and Six with a Bloodbraid which was scary, but I was able to swing over to kill the W&6 with Kirin before they got any value with it. I got to cast the combo this game, but then the deck durdled too much; opponent drew some lands and a Seasoned Pyromancer that found two removal spells to kill my board, and that was all she wrote. Result: Loss (0-2). This matchup is very dependent on getting a good sequence of draws; stumble at all and you’ll get got by Blood Moon and early pressure. I'm not feeling too bad about this one though as it’s the first loss of the league and against a Tier 1 deck no less. Rather, I’m looking forward to the next round or two since the rest of the highly seeded players are playing Uro decks. ;) (If you look very closely at this last sentence here, you may notice a textbook case of foreshadowing.) Round 5 vsHeliod Company And of course, of all the possible combinations, here's my worst matchup in the final round before Top 8. You hate to see it. Game 1: I drew three copies of Ghostly Prison. This is the second time I've seen the card this league, mind you, versus a deck that doesn’t care about it at all. Ended up losing to the Spike FeedeHeliod, Sun-Crowned infinite life combo. In: 2 Phyrexian Revoker, 1 Gaddock Teeg, 1 Skyclave Apparition, 2 Knight of Autumn. Out: 4 Ghostly Prison, 1 Windborn Muse, 1 Ramunap Excavator. Game 2: I kept a high-risk, high-reward one lander with Aether Vial, Giver of Runes, Thalia, and Ranger-Captain/Celestial Kirin, then got punished by a Knight of Autumn on the Vial on turn 3 (should've expected that) and didn’t draw a second land until opponent had already assembled the Ballista combo. Bonus: Game 3! In the wake of my horrible defeat, I asked my opponent for a third game to see if I had a chance on a good draw and they humoured me. My hand this game had two lands, Oust, Noble Hierarch, and Eladamri’s Call/Ugin’s Conjurant. At the beginning of the game, I Ousted away an Arbor Elf, then Skyclave Apparition’d an Auriok Champion to prevent the turn 4 Ballista kill. Then, I drew into a fourth mana source to cast the Kirin combo; opponent CoCo’d in response for a Heliod and a second Arbor Elf, speculating on a land for a Spike Feeder in their hand. They didn’t draw one before I hit the Elves with Phyrexian Revoker, and I swung over for the victory. Result: Loss (0-2).
TOP 8
I finished the first five rounds with a record of 3-0-2, which was just enough to place me in the Top 8 of the league thanks to the early win streak and tiebreakers. I was seventh seed, and these were the other decks in Top 8: (TO’s message on discord with some small edits)
Reminder that Top 8 and onwards is Best of 5, no sideboarding until game 3, and higher seed chooses play/draw. Glhf, y'all Value pinging top 8: 1 Daveyjones - RG Ponza(<-- round 4 opponent) 2 Cryptic Lock, Must 104.3a #TSC - Heliod Company(<-- round 5 opponent) 3 pascee - 4c Uro Pile 4 Derpy Efalant - Jund 5 bridgamatuer - 5c Uro/Omnath Pile(<-- round 3 opponent) 6 Niv - Mono-Red Blitz 7 pizza - GW Kirin Combo 8 Kazu of the Draiu #TeamDraiu - 4c Uro Pile (Wet Jund?)(idk if this is the right list)
Unfortunately, because of my seeding I got paired against the Heliod deck again. But thanks to that bonus game, I knew that I had a shot at winning, and came to the match with fire in my eyes! Top 8 Quarterfinals vs Heliod Company Game 1: I was on the draw and lost to a turn 2 Company into the Ballista kill on turn 3 or 4. Too slow this game, run it back! Game 2: Played Oust on an Arbor Elf early, then Skyclave Apparition'd their Heliod into Kirin combo the next turn. Opponent stone whiffed on CoCo and scooped it up. In: 2 Phyrexian Revoker, 1 Gaddock Teeg, 1 Skyclave Apparition, 2 Knight of Autumn Out: 4 Ghostly Prison, 1 Windborn Muse, 1 Ramunap Excavator Game 3: I kept a great hand with natural Kirin combo and two Noble Hierarchs, but as I was on the draw I lost to 69,420 life the turn before I could combo off. Game 4: I mulliganed for Revokers, but wasn’t able to find them. Lost on turn 5 to 42,069 life. Result: Loss (1-3). I was fortunate enough to go into sideboarding without a 2 game deficit, but I really needed to find those Revokers post-board. The Top 8 of these leagues is single elimination, so that's the end of the run—in the words of Snidely Whiplash, curses, foiled again!
Reflections and Results
The deck performed well overall, only dropping games against two of its least favorable matchups, Ponza and Heliod Combo. Unfortunately, I only ended up playing against one Uro deck despite how many there were (5 or 6 of them total and three in Top 8), but the Uro Pile I defeated in Round 3 did happen to be the one to win the whole tournament, so I suppose that's something to brag about.
Reflections
There were three big mistakes that I made this league. Mistake #1: Not playing four Skyclave Apparitions. The card is far too good to not play as a playset. It was an essential part of several of my victories, and I brought the third copy in from the sideboard every single game. Four main deck copies would have gone a long way in the match against Ponza. Mistake #2: Not playing enough Revokers in the sideboard, and general sideboard sloppiness. The lack of mill in the league hurt quite a bit after I dedicated a slot to Gaea's Blessing. Fun fact, I and a few other people were asking around for mill hate cards in the discord in the week leading up to the league, so we probably brought that upon ourselves. Mistake #3: Playing four Ghostly Prison in the main. In retrospect, the meta at the time was very hostile to aggressive creature decks like Humans, so I should've taken a hint and not played so many copies. Now for some other observations: Though A&T is built around a combo, it's really more of a midrange deck that has a bit of unfairness sprinkled in, kind of like Twin. But the thing that this deck has over others in its archetype is that it doesn't lose to the late game value of the Uro and Titan decks that pushed other midrange decks like Jund out of the format; rather, it preys on those kinds of decks. So it's kind of in a unique situation in that it's good against all the decks that typical midrange is bad against and vice versa. Another one of A&T’s greatest strengths is its resiliency to sideboard hate. All of the most played sideboard cards like Veil of Summer, Aether Gust, Celestial Purge, Cleansing Wildfire, and Mystical Dispute don’t do anything against the combo; really, the only two commonly played sideboard cards that do anything at all are Thoughtseize and Blood Moon. However, since A&T is a primarily white deck that splashes green, it can play Veil of Summer for the discard spells and work around Blood Moon with basic lands without losing out on mana consistency. With all these things in mind, I think A&T actually has some potential as a Tier 2 or 2.5 deck. It still loses to a lot of different things, but with enough luck and a good main deck and sideboard I'm sure it can do well.
Improvements
Back when I first built this deck, there weren't many good white removal spells besides Path; the only two non-Path cards that I could use in this deck were Oust and Fiend Hunter. Fiend Hunter was okay, but it just wasn't reliable enough as a removal spell. So, I resorted to Ghostly Prison, which was riskier but did a fine job of covering the chinks in the armor, so to speak. However, with the printing of Skyclave Apparition, I believe the deck no longer needs a mass creature answer. With 4 copies of Oust and Skyclave Apparition and one more card that I will mention in a bit, the deck may have enough removal to reliably control the board in the early game. Ghostly Prison can thus be played as a two-of or relegated to the sideboard to bring in against creature decks. So, since the conclusion of this league, I've had a few ideas that could improve the deck's general matchup spread. One of those is Mana Tithe. At first, I avoided playing Mana Tithe because of the meme stigma around it, but I've come to realize the card could be pretty good in A&T. I'll list the reasons out here:
It is a strong removal spell in the early game, which is what we want in a card.
The deck plays Aether Vial and Eladamri's Call, so leaving up mana for Mana Tithe won't affect the curve much.
It helps in the combo matchup; countering their haymaker spell or even just forcing them to play off curve can be enough to win the game off of Armageddon.
It is maindeckable protection against discard spells (only on the play really, but good to have nonetheless).
Mana Tithe usually becomes a dead card past turn 4 since opponents have the mana to pay for it, but the combo resets both players' mana, so a late Tithe post-Armageddon can be just as good or even better than it is in the early game as opponents can't afford to wait for extra lands to play around it.
In theory, Mana Tithe gives A&T stack interaction which increases its odds against a number of combo and fast aggro decks that operate on a lower curve like Death's Shadow or Hammer Time. The potential downsides to the card are that it's awkward with Thalia and it's still bad if you draw it at the wrong time. Here's a Mana Tithe list I've been playing recently that's worked well so far: Kirin Combo w/ Mana Tithe. Elvish Reclaimer is a card that I only started thinking about recently after playing a match against GW Titan. Here's a sample deck and another list of potential upsides to playing it:
It can be a ramp spell with Flagstones of Trokair, which the deck is already playing four copies of, and also finds the Flagstones to set up for the combo.
Armageddon naturally fulfills the requirements for its passive ability, so it's almost always a 3/4 past turn 4.
It can be tutored for with Ranger-Captain of Eos, so even a single copy can see a lot of play, and 4 mana for 6 power across two bodies that each have additional utility is really good.
You could shave a Ghost Quarter or Horizon Canopy to fit in one Cavern of Souls as a utility land to fetch with Reclaimer for the counterspell matchups.
The biggest downside to Reclaimer is that it's a pretty durdly card; GW Titan decks get away with it since their late game bombs are so strong, but A&T can and will get bad draws occasionally and without Armageddon it doesn't really do much for the deck.
Conclusion
Well, that's a wrap! I had a lot of fun this league, and I'm excited to finish off this next one (it took me a while to write all this stuff, so the next league's already at Top 8). Since we've come this far already, I'll give you all a sneak-peek of the next match report: R1 vs RB Shadow: W (2-0). R2 vs GB Rock: W (2-0). R3 vs Dice Factory Tron: W (2-0). R4 vs GW Titan: W (2-1). R5: Intentional Draw (0-0). Currently #1 seed in Top 8 with the Mana Tithe build up above. Another big thanks to the Untap Open League Discord for hosting these leagues; this post wouldn't have happened without them. Here's another invite to the discord if you're interested—the community is really friendly, and they also run leagues for other constructed formats like Standard, Pauper, Pioneer, Legacy, and Vintage. Hopefully, this article has garnered some interest in the deck—I think it's a lot of fun, and I'd love to see more people play it. If you'd like to keep up with updates to Armageddon & Taxes, the most recent version is almost always on this page on tappedout.net (the description is a bit outdated, though). I'll do my best to answer any questions in the comments. Farewell, adieu. Until the next report! (Thanks for the awards!)
This post aims to draw together a bunch of research that helped me get started cubing, pulling on advice from other cubers, resources on this subreddit, and external articles. The idea is to cover the basics, answer the FAQs and collate links to other resources for further reading. (please bear in mind this is a round up of advice through the lens of my own bias, I am not claiming any advice here to be the way thingsshouldbe done, just to provide a starting point to people who don’t yet know how thingscouldbe done)
Post breakdown:
0 - What is a Cube?
1 - Quick Start
2 - Detailed Start
3 - Extras
4 - Resource Hub
0 - WHAT IS A CUBE?:
“A cube is a ... collection of (often powerful) cards used for drafting and playing Limited. Drafting a cube is similar to drafting booster packs, but instead of drafting from three fifteen-card Magic booster packs, you draft from fifteen-card "packs" that you create from your cube.” - Building Your First Cube) Tolarian Community College - What is a Magic: The Gathering Cube? How many players do I need to play my cube?: Cube can be enjoyed with anywhere between 2-8 players. A brilliant summary of different draft methods for different player counts can be found here
1 - QUICK START:
So you like the look of cube and want to get started playing the best limited format ASAP? Here are some of the easiest ways to start building and playing Cube:
Pull together 360 cards you already own into a Cube, following the rough colour balance guidelines in the WotC “Building Your First Cube” article
Purchase a premade cube (links in the resource hub)
Copy or gain inspiration from some of the most popular cubes (links in the resource hub)
If you decide to build your own first cube, as long as you have reasonably even colour sections and a curves similar to what you might want to draft in retail limited you will produce an environment that will be a blast to play. Other early facets you may wish to explore are:
Card power delta - i.e. how much stronger your strongest card is compared to your weakest. Typically cube design aims to cut out the draft chaff found in retail limited so that all packs contain fun and playable cards.
Archetypes you enjoy - e.g. if you enjoy Madness and graveyard interaction cards, building a cube environment that supports this type of gameplay is a worthwhile goal!
Cards you enjoy but not sure whether they fit - Just jam 'em in. It’s not necessary to worry too much about individual card balance early on. Actually playing with the cards in the cube will be the best way to inform decision making.
Remember, you can always add and remove cards as you see fit. It’s not necessary to agonise over individual card choice at this point (although of course you may if that floats your boat). CubeCobra is the community favourite cube management website. It is similar to existing decklist websites (mtggoldfish etc.), but made specifically for cube. It has all sorts of tools for managing, analysing and playtesting your cube, and is invaluable for a cube designer. Playing your cube: Playing paper magic is currently challenging to impossible depending on where you are in the world. See the Resource Hub for ways to play your cube online. Bonus Link - Lucky paper - How and why to build a cube (podcast)
2 - DETAILED START:
To help make this section more searchable/digestible I’ve split it into what I’d consider to be the key elements to think about when building your first cube:
2.1 Size
2.2 Power & Removal
2.3 Curve and Cardtype Balance
2.4 Archetypes
2.5 Signposting
2.6 Gold count
2.7 Nonbasic lands
2.8 Colourless
2.9 Colourless Ramp
2.10 Singleton or Not?
2.11 Board State
2.12 Devotion
2.13 First Cube
2.1 SIZE: The size of your cube affects a number of factors, such as card density, number of players, variation between drafts, cohesion of archetypes etc. Typical cube sizes are multiples of 180 (as they divide nicely into 15 card packs)
180: Normally the minimum cube size one should build, it will support only 4 players drafting or 2 players sealed, and will provide a low variation in each draft. The pros of a 180 cube are that they can be used to support archetypes difficult to play at higher card counts, provide a draft consistency useful for teaching new players, are cheaper to build and sleeve, and can be more easily transported.
360: The /standard/ cube size, supporting a full 8 player draft pod or 4 players sealed and provides twice the variation per draft! This is my recommended size for a first cube. It should provide easily enough variation for long lasting fun, without being an unwieldy first project.
450: Often used as a stepping stone above 360 to introduce further variation into the cube (still drafted in 8 man pods), and to allow more sealed players and alternate draft methods.
540+: For further variation in 8 man pods, or support for two 8 man pods at higher card counts.
2.2 POWER (and power consistency): How powerful do you want the contents of your cube to be?u/land_of_Mordor has written up a brilliant shorthand for differentiating cube power levels here This scale ranges from 1 (Retail limited) to 10 (Fully powered, absolute strongest cards in magic the gathering) It is important to consider power consistency when building your cube. Ideally most of your cards ought to sit at a roughly equal power band to provide fun and fair gameplay. For an extreme example, a cube that runs sol ring (found in ~strix 8+) should not include drastically lower power cards such as celestial prism (and vice versa). Ideally you don’t want situations where your drafters win because they have the “better” cards than their opponent. Cube is an opportunity to move away from the chaff/bombs divide present in retail limited. A useful tool for gauging the balance in your cube after building it is to use the filters in CubeCobra to sort your cube by “Elo” and scrutinise any outliers. The elo system ranks cards by recording each card picked against every other card passed in a pack. <1000 elo is very low >2000 elo is incredibly high (power 9 sit in this spot). Due to how elo is calculated it doesn’t take into account:
Your environment - A card with low elo but important to a synergy in your cube may well be a high pick bomb in your environment
Card “power” - Elo is a reflection of how early drafters pick cards. In a cube draft, assessment value is often given by players to cards that allow them to fix mana, ramp or stay open. For this reason, the Elo of a card such as arbor elf is significantly higher than dragonlord atarka
In summary, Elo is a useful tool to flag outliers, but individual card merit should still be assessed by the cube designer in the environment they are creating. 2.2(a) REMOVAL: Removal in cube plays a significant role in how your environment functions and its overall power level. Density and efficiency are the main dials of removal that can be tweaked to adjust your format.
Low density - Removal becomes a premium. Threats stick to the board for longer. Baneslayers are more viable
High density - Mulldrifters become a premium / Baneslayers are less viable. Less focus on creature combat.
Low efficiency - Aggro has a greater window to get “under” the other players.
High efficiency - Threats need to be cheap and provide high value to not be outclassed by cheap removal.
Ideally density and efficiency of removal should reflect the rest of your cube. For example, high efficiency high density removal is best suited to environments that have very efficient threats. Efficiency can be adjusted by raising/lowering the CMC of removal spells (Murder vs Daring Demolition), deciding on instant vs sorcery, or including removal with restrictions/drawbacks (Bone Splinters) Attaching removal to bodies increases both density and efficiency. E.g. Ravenous Chupacabra Density can otherwise be adjusted by increasing/decreasing the removal card count in your environment. 2.3 CURVE AND CARD TYPE BALANCE: Character limit -I'll put this section in a comment. 2.4 ARCHETYPES: You may wish to decide on supported archetypes at the inception of your cube, or allow them to present themselves through play of your quick start cube. Archetype support is a tricky beast, many cube designers have differing opinions on how (or even if) archetype support should be implemented. Two main axis that archetype support can be measured on are “Parasitism” and “Weight” "Parasitism in cube" video and thread Parasitic strategies work within their own defined bounds, don’t care much about other cards, and are underperformers/useless outside of their strategy.
Mill and tribal can be examples of parasitic archetypes.
Medium parasitic cards might be fringe playable outside their intended strategy e.g. Auramancer
Low parasitic cards are playable in multiple shells but shine in their desired archetype. E.g. Galvanic Blast
Running cards that have a good floor (i.e. worst case scenario) but improve in your chosen archetypes is a good way to reduce parasitism in your cube. Additionally, running cards that fit multiple archetypes can be desirable e.g. Rimrock Knight is useful to mono R aggro, spells matters, and weenies “Weight” is the term I’m giving to the measurement of how prominent each archetype is in each colour. A lower weight may allow for more organic strategies to develop in your draft environment A higher weight may result in drafters feeling like they are being pushed to do what you "want" them to do For example if you run 20 Prowess creatures in red and white, players may feel obliged to lean into the strategy given to them instead of having the agency to build their own unique deck. Where your cube sits on the Parasitism/Weight scale will be personal to you, and will likely change as you develop and adjust your cube. You and your playgroup's enjoyment can help drive these decisions. u/Japahn has an excellent article here on archetype design in cube. 2.5 SIGNPOSTING: Signpost cards are cards that support and communicate the presence of a strategy to drafters. These can be used effectively to help players understand what is possible in your cube. For example, if a player opens a pack and sees Thermo Alchemist and/or Talrand, Sky Summoner they might reasonably believe that a “Spellslinger” theme is present in your cube. In the same line of thinking, it can be worth avoiding false signposts that lead players to believe a strategy or theme is present that actually doesn’t exist. For example one half of the blood combo without the other, or otherwise playable cards that suggest a strategy that doesn’t exist e.g. Champion of Dusk without vampire tribal. You may even consider eliminating one-off mechanics for comprehension. E.g. I cut Aether hub in favour of Tendo Ice Bridge after a drafter was disappointed that Energy wasn’t a present mechanic in the cube. Gold cards are a good opportunity to show your drafters some of the strategies possible in each colour combination. This should feel familiar to players, as WotC employs the same design in their retail sets. 2.6 GOLD COUNT: Gold cards can be very fun, they act as good signposts and are often players’ & designers’ favourite cards. The temptation to include lots of gold cards is high among beginning cube designers for these reasons, however a lower count is generally more beneficial for the environment. Fundamentally, gold cards are relevant to far fewer players and have a tendancy to wheel around the table before landing with a player who doesn’t want them. For example, a Lightning Helix is very relevant to your Boros drafter (if there even is one this session), lightly relevant to your Naya/Jeskai/Mardu drafters (if there are any) and irrelevant to everyone else. In contrast Lightning Strike is relevant to ⅕ of your Mono colour drafters. 5/10 of your 2 colour drafters and 6/10 of your 3 colour drafters. Someone at your table will be playing red, and this card is guaranteed to be relevant and desirable. More cards able to be played by more people in more strategies = more agency for your drafters 20-30 gold cards in 360 anecdotally works very nicely. 2.7 NONBASIC LANDS: Good fixing in cube is crucial to help games run smoothly. Not being able to play magic due to mana screw is one of the least enjoyable aspects of the game. Good fixing reduces the number of feel bad games your drafters experience due to poor variance. 30-40 lands in 360 cards will help ensure the games are more enjoyable for everyone. Unfortunately, good lands can be expensive, but proxy printing/sharpie changes can solve this issue! (proxy resource links below) (it is worth noting a risk of too much fixing is that everyone is able to draft 5 colour piles of the best cards(this may still happen even at lower land count if 7 of your drafters ignore the fixing and one player snaps up 20 lands)) 2.8 COLOURLESS: Colourless cards are effectively “free” picks for your drafters, allowing them to remain open in the draft while providing powerful effects. Fun utility cards and curve filling creatures are perfect candidates for the colourless section. Due to the “free” nature of colourless cards, you may wish to balance them in such a way that they don’t outclass your coloured cards. 2.9 COLOURLESS RAMP: Colourless ramp such as Sol Ring and Dimir Signet allow your drafters to cheat past the early stages of the game. Be very cautious about including cheap colourless ramp in any lower powered environment. Reasons to be careful:
Strong ramp can invalidate aggro
If you want ramp to be part of Green’s identity, colourless ramp can invalidate it (or reduce its uniqueness)
It can cause swingy games based on variance - Opponent plays a T1 sol ring and you have no ramp. You’re almost guaranteed to lose
A rough guide for rocks that produce 1 mana:
0-1CMC rocks (Moxen/Sol Ring) - Powered cubes only (Strix 9-10)
2 CMC rocks (Signets/Talismans/Diamonds) - Medium cubes (Strix 5-8)
3+ CMC rocks (Crystals/Lockets/Cluestones) - Lower power cubes (Strix 0-4)
Don’t be fooled by “enters tapped” clauses. Sphere of the Suns is still likely too strong for a low powered cube. Bonus: Rock List 2.10 SINGLETON OR NOT?:
Singleton Pros:
Higher variety of cards
More unique mechanics
Draft decks will contain all unique cards
Aesthetically pleasing to some
Singleton Cons:
Higher complexity for newer players (learning 360 new cards in a single draft can be a lot)
Some strategies may require a higher density of a certain effect at a certain CMC to be viable (i.e. you decide your cube needs 2x reanimate in order to help the deck be consistent enough)
Breaking singleton is a fine thing to do, but typically is only worth doing to fulfil a design goal that can’t be achieved by another unique card. A common singleton break is for nonbasic lands, as cube designers often want to provide the best possible fixing for their drafters. The first iteration of my cube broke singleton in a few places and it was fine, but very quickly I felt like I was wasting slots that I'd rather use to increase variety and replayability. Interesting write-up on breaking singleton by u/Karametric 2.11 BOARD STATE: Do you want a front heavy (i.e. 3/2 creatures) or a back heavy (i.e. 2/3 creatures) board state? This article discusses the advantages of a front heavy board state. I won’t repeat the detail of this article here as I’ve nothing extra to add, but the main point is that a front heavy board allows for meaningful attacks and reduces board stalls. 2.12 DEVOTION: Cards with a high colour devotion (i.e. multiple coloured pips in their casting cost) are more difficult to cast by more of your drafters. For example Knight of the White Orchid can only reliably be cast on curve by a mono white (or heavily white) deck. Cards with low CMC and high devotion are particularly problematic, as finding 2 white by turn 2 in a Selesnya deck is a lot harder than finding 2 white by turn 5 to cast Regal Caracal. When designing with this in mind, high devotion cards can be used to tune the accessibility & viability of 3+ colour decks. 2.13 FIRST CUBE: u/Fleme’s write up on assessing your first cube was a massive boon for reviewing the first cube I built. Reading this before and/or after building your cube should provide lots of useful insight.
3 EXTRA
Cube Costs: Within reason, cube can be as expensive or cheap as you want it to be. Here’s a quick breakdown of costs associated with cube:
FREE - Playing a CubeCobra list exclusively online
FREE - Playing with cards you already own
~$35 - 550 Sleeves required for 360 cards + 34 of each basic land
Variable - Cost of singles bought for the cube. Your design goals and tolerance for proxies dictate this.
Proxying (Requires sleeves):
Free - Printing on any printer you have free access to (University/work etc.)
Variable - Printing at home, cost variable on printeink/card stock
~$0.25/card - Online printing services
$10 - $200 - Storage
4 RESOURCE HUB
A hub for cube and draft resources! Many of the resources below have been discussed and analysed in a vast number of different articles/videos/podcasts. If any one topic takes your interest, a quick google will almost always lead you to more content on a topic. E.g. Quadrant theory has been analysed by a plethora of different players on many platforms. One just has to google. Sidebar: The sidebar on the right of this subreddit contains lots of useful links to podcasts/discord channels/popular threads etc. Check out what it has to offer.(If you are on mobile, sidebar links can be accessed by scrolling to the top of the subreddit and pressing the "about" button in the right/centre of the page) How to draft:
Quadrant Theory - A method for evaluating cards, useful for design and play within your cube.
Draft evaluation in cube - This video focuses on how to draft cube more effectively, and in turn contains information that can be very useful when considering your design.
How to shuffle:
Fully randomising your cube by regular thorough shuffling is normal and provides good gameplay.
Dr4ft.info - Draft tool with cube support and pack size, pick number, draft speed, and bot options. Produces savable draft logs + deck lists for importing elsewhere
Untap.in - Promising looking for drafting and playing in browser, but anecdotally have encountered issues with cards that refuse to load or produce errors. Hopefully this will be fixed in future. (Limited draft options)
Tabletop Simulator - A simulator that allows you to play board/card games as in real life
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