End-of-Year 'Audit' - 12/28/17
Another holdiay season, another Holiday vacation. Perfect time to delve a little deeper into cube polishing! I've been very happy with my format as of late, but even still, over the past couple months I've been collecting ideas and notes from discussion here on RTL and form drafts, and I think it's high time to make some moves. When it comes to slot selection, I find I have
very high inertia to making changes. That can be a good thing to help maintain format stability, and to properly think things through when I don't get as much IRL playing as I'd like, but it also can leave subpar cards in the list longer than they should be. Anyways, time to lay them out on the line so I can make som decisions!
The list, with card for removal on the left, possible swaps on the right
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Simic Charm is really lackluster for a gold slot. It performs three decent duties, at an efficiency hit, but the UG decks I've been seeing don't really need or want this effect. And it's not evocative or good enough to lead someone into the colors, so clear time for a swap. Urban Evolution I've been keen on since I saw it in Rasmus' cube in a RUG list. I think it will be great in the same decks here, and also provide a good draw effect for a variety of decks in UG. Not as good for the tempo decks, but I've been seeing more draw + Ramp in my UG lately, so I'm down.
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?
Thought-Knot has
not been seeing play round these parts, so time to go. The
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theme never really panned out anyways. No eraly clue what to do with the slot, is the only problem! Sword comes to mind as a really neat card that gives Stoneforge something spicy to tutor for.
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Dynavolt tower similarly is just.. not seeing play. I think it's one too many bridge to cross for the spells deck, and I don't have any other energy cards that could really make much use of the energy. Again not sure what to do with the slot. First things that come to mind are effects that are similarly meant for more spells/controlly decks, but seems far more runnable.
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Dunno man, just haven't been very happy with this card. I'm not sure my format really wants this effect at this cost. Also no idea what to put in it's place. Maybe something totally out of left field like
tithe. I think 4 is a little much for spot removal in this format, and I've already got Cast Out which I like a lot.
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Anafenza is a great card, but this is textbook a card that isn't fit into the proper framework. One of my primary archetype focuses in white is tokens! That immediately lowers her stock tremendously. Skyfisher is a cube staple, and while it also doesn't really work with tokens, it does help other themes so I'm happy to make this swap. Also easier to cast!
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Ashling is also another effect that my format just doesn't really want/need. There are plentiful removal/wipe effects for slower decks, and agro decks weren't really looking to spend time on her. My two options are basically between helping agro and helping slower decks. Slaughtermaster would directly help a 'double strike' theme, and Iguana is a great addition/finalization of the draw-discard suite in red, being attached to an efficient blocker. Not sure what direction I want to go, but I'm leaning towards the Iguana. Or I could put in something entirely more generic (3/2 for 2). Dunno yet, need to compare my section for agro/slow support.
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CROW STORM!! Enough said. But besides that, skulker is annoyingly good and hard to deal with, so bye bye.
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These swaps would go hand in hand, but the primary swap coes from the grove. my RG land section was too 'fast' for my tastes. Thicket comes in as a direct incentive for the lands deck, as well as being searchable with Mountain Valley, and entering tapped to match the archetype speed I want. Punishing Fire was a natural casualty, because it's not stayin' without the grove. Both options are great burn spells with Madness, which I realized I really wanted at least one of to supplement my draw-discard suite in UR. Probably leaning towards Judgment right now.
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I haven't been super happy with my RB section for awhile now. Both Kolaghan and Olivia seem rather 'meh' both in ability and pick count. I'm really not sure what to do with Olivia's slot (I also just don't like the RB gold card selection in general), so I can see just taking out the Dragon. Kolaghan's ability is definitely decent, and a hard(er) to remove hasty beater is nice, but I want to push the team pumping into RW, and want also to lower my RB curve overall. Falkenrath Aristocrat comes in perfectly here as a hasty beater that's sticky, while not being mind-blowingly OP. Also sac outlet!
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This is jsut a potential swap. I don't think my blue section really
needs the raw power of the command. Commit is a
much more splashable card with a strong front end and cool, if marginally usable backend. Only issue is, Commit would only further tilt my list towards counters that only temporarily deal with things:
unsubstantiateremandvenser, shaper savant
and then
Commit
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does slightly tweak the scale away from hard control and towards more tempo-y, spells midrange strategies. But that aside, I'm not certain my control decks need the cryptic. sigh. Probably just leaving alone for now.
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Silumgar's Command I have not been impressed with, honestly since about day one. It's stayed around because... reasons? Likely because "two for one so good!!!" Regardless, time to clean it out now. My immediate swap is to consign // oblivion, which is a solid front and back end effect stapled together. Issue here is Consign is good enough to run on it's own (no Oblivion), and that makes me feel there are too many 2 mana bounce effects in blue. So cascades down to Perilous Voyage for removal. I'm thinking to put something """unique""" in this slot. Most likely it will become muddle the mixture, which is a really neat tutor effect. I like it more than the raw efficiency of Mystical Tutor.
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Jace is just too good. It's literally everything almost every U deck wants, in one card! He joins the pile of U cards that are just so first-pickable, and I wanted to trim one of those to help give other colors a little more breathing room out of the gate. Still like the looting effect, and I want to replace it with one of the evasive options. My heart is set right now on the Beeble, both for cuteness factor, and because one mana looter effect!
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This is another
potential swap. I'm not sure I don't like Vanish enough to remove it, but I am watching carefully that it's too 'techy" or something. Blink is definitely the more straightforward effect for the archetype, and would be my swap almost assuredly.
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I'm really down on utility lands overall, but especially ones with specific color requirements. Problem, again, is that I don't know what to
do with it. Some generic rainbow fixer (City of Brass etc) is likely, but maybe something like
Drownyard temple? Probably too slow, but a neat little synergy piece with the draw-discard suites, and also a little bump to the lands deck.
Buried Ruin I could also see for artifact decks.
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Lotleth Troll is honestly fine, but pretty unexciting, and I don't think the GB decks I've been seeing have been dying for a creature discard outlet. Flayer is a popular inclusion round these parts, and with recent testing myself, I'm definitely sold on it being much more interesting in a variety of different angles.
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Siren is a seven mana card. Just the way it is. That it's stayed in my cube listed as one mana for so long I can only imagine is some minor delusion on my part. I was originally going to swap for Lay Claim, but then I realized this was an opening to include everyone's (mine included) newest favorite spells wincon! So I will.
Whew! That was a lot of word-barf. But I'm glad more than anything to just get it out there. Might improve my odds of making actionable changes in the near future. Besides all that, I must say that my #1 victory for my format has definitely been Green, and GR in particular. I'm just very happy with the depth of archetypes the section is showing off, and the overall viability of the lands archetype. Here's a recent deck I tossed together, funky curve aside, it looks great! and critically, great
without Loam. The density of land recursion effects has really payed off, and we can see here the secondary "land get" effects at play here with Yavimaya Elder and The Gitrog Monster, which is near-combo level with Vortex. Unearth can also grind out more Elder activations, or bring back something critical like Feldon/Excavator. Sweet!
And then here's another one that plays less on the engine side, wanting to use that sparingly in conjunction with Excavator only to control the board, while really aiming to hit every land drop and get to Dromoka and Convergence to close the game out.
All-in-all, really pleased with the health of the archetype and colors. Need to focus on something else now, I think. I have two plans for that. Firstly is overall the color
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. It's fine, but I think I can really buckle down and help make the color more viable and interesting. Second, I really am intrigued and enamored with the idea of
The Baron. I definitely think it could be a Sultai archetype in my format, especially with green already being setup for slower decks. Here's a sample deck I drafted a little while back that I think homes in on some of the ideas I have around how to make the archetype work at this power level. It's only missing a couple pieces here imo, with a discard outlet at the top of the list. Thinking of Raven's Crime as a potential re-include, because it can work from both hand and grave off of gifts.: