180 cards, 3 colour cube.

Jonas

Jonas

Cubetutor link: http://cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/17588

I want to build a three colour cube, made for four drafters, since that usually is the number of drafters that I end up with. I started out thinking that a Jund cube would be fun, but the more I looked at it, the more it feels like Jund is mostly LD and removal, with crazy value critters and big beaters sprinkles throughout.

There was some quick thinking about it in the Skype convo, and BUG came up as a good suggestion for a three colour cube, what with all the shenanigans that can be done in that shell.

So what I'm looking for now, is suggestions from people that happen to know what BUG is good at, since I can't say that I usually look at that colour combination too much.

I think I'll keep Pods in, and some amount of gravecrawlers and the new recurring 1drop from Khans could be interesting, since a sacrifice theme is pretty fun, and could be interesting to see if it can be done well without goblin bombardment.

Any other suggestions on 3colour combos that could go better together would also be much appreciated.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I think spider spawning is probably the perfect represention of a what BUG is all about: being able to use self mill to dig through your deck, and than using the graveyard as a source of card advantage that affects the board.
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

I'm curious, as BUG usually becomes the self-mill color combination, where does blue fit into that? Obviously the milling part is the most blue, or rather it is very blue to do milling, but how do you tie that into actual gameplay and the draft? Do you make it so that traditionally bad blue mill cards get to serve the roll as graveyard enablers, do you have a bunch of cool flashback cards and ways to get back instants and sorceries from your graveyards? How have you made BUG different from just golgari dreding?
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
I think the relationship of these 5 cards help show the U/G relationship, and how it can carry over into BUG.




B/G Dredge tends to be a very slow grindy deck in limited. The addition of U helps fill some of the decks weak points.

B/G's problems are that most of its payoff cards are 5cc or higher (grave-troll, ghoultree, worm harvest, spider spawning), its tempo inefficent, and its susceptible to chump blockers. It also has the issue of dredging away its land drops, in a deck with traditionally higher CC threats. Greens role in that equation is kind of like some weird graveyard ramp, and this is reflected in a lot of the green enablers: mulch, satyr wayfinder, and life from the loam--as well as some of its threats, such as ghoultree. The dredge cards themselves are also good, but tempo inefficent in a deck that needs to put its shields up until it hits at least 5 mana: Stinkweed imp is a powerful card, but represents a tension between blocking, dredging, and the tempo loss of replaying it.

Blue gives you cheap plays such as turn 1 dream twist to turn on green's graveyard based threats such as splinterfright or boneyard wurm, providing early pressure. Armored skaab gives you a defensive piece that lets you keep the shields up while also milling, and stitched drake provides early evasive pressure. Basically pressure, evasion, and a smoother curve.

...and the blue mill and self-mill cards can also be combined with blue's TOL manipulation for varying degenerate effects: like EOT lim-dul's vaulting for an it that betrays, dream twisting it into the yard, and than casting living death on your turn.

In sum, Blue is the best color in magic and makes everything better.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
BUG! Hurray! (...errr, Teskai? Jemur...? I still don't know these wedge names very well.)

In my own cube, I love blue in these BUG shells for its filtering capability, which helps you dig for your combo pieces and fill up your graveyard for shenanigans. Depending on how graveyard-centric you take your cube, you might want blue to either focus on self-mill, or looting, or perhaps both. If you take the latter path, some suggestions:

 
Jonas

Jonas

Am I insane for thinking that there could also be a place for madness in a bug cube, what with all the discard, and it being the right colours for things like wild mongrel?
 
Rasmus Källqvist

Rasmus Källqvist

Btw, you didnt mention this, is this meant for a sleeve of different formats or just 4-player grid drafting or, what is the idea? (Loving the BUG-talk)
 
Jonas

Jonas

I usually do 5 packs of 9 when drafting four players, so that's mainly how I think it will be drafted here.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Do it!



You've probably already thought of this, but there's also the Dredgevine archetype, which works pretty well in BUG. Potential cards that could go in the theme, in addition to cards already mentioned earlier:



There's Deathrite Shaman as well, but I worry that the card would be oppressive with fully stocked graveyards to feed on.
 
Jonas

Jonas

Eric Chan said:
Do it!



You've probably already thought of this, but there's also the Dredgevine archetype, which works pretty well in BUG. Potential cards that could go in the theme, in addition to cards already mentioned earlier:



There's Deathrite Shaman as well, but I worry that the card would be oppressive with fully stocked graveyards to feed on.
Click to expand...

I've added Deathrite at the moment. Also a hoser like Gaea's Blessing. I ponder, is faeries always too poisonous? It would fit in as a aggro/controllish thing here, maybe.

Looking at Delve, there are a few that seem interesting, for example:

 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, I'm absolutely enthralled with looters. They're a little on the slow side for the typical 'riptide cube' on here, but I think they could thrive in a graveyard-friendly environment like this. Other possibilities:



A little sprinkle of delve would be perfect, I think. Logic Knot is a possibility.

Faeries would be sweet! A small touch of tribal is nice, especially if it covers two out of your three supported colours. Come to think of it, I wonder if you could extend the tribal theme, and figure out one tribe per colour pair...? I want to suggest zombies, but aside from a couple of gold cards, there aren't many in green.
 
Jonas

Jonas

This also looks like a place where diregraf captain could find a home.

Haha, super secret tech:



Right now I'm throwing everything at the cube to see what sticks, so any and all feedback on what to add or remove is helpful. sadly, KTK cards aren't on CT yet, but hopefully they'll be there soon.
 
Jonas

Jonas

Current themes in the cube, some of them will have to go:

Zombies BUg
Self mill/looting bUG
Dredge BG
Hatebears buG
Mill UB
Madness bug
Top of library ug
Sacrifice BuG
Haakon B
Devotion bug
Swamps matter B
Reanimate b
+1+1 counters uG
Pod g
Tempo bU
Tinker U
Smokestack/Braids b

What should I keep, what should be thrown away, there are currently 274 cards in there, that should be paired down to somewhere close to 180 at least.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Jonas said:
Right now I'm throwing everything at the cube to see what sticks, so any and all feedback on what to add or remove is helpful. sadly, KTK cards aren't on CT yet, but hopefully they'll be there soon.
Click to expand...

He's promised it's first on his list once he gets back from the honeymoon :p
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
As big a fan as I am of reanimation, there's probably enough stuff going on with the graveyard that it isn't necessary. The reanimation spells you'd have to play in this environment to make them fair would end up being kinda durdly, anyways.

What kind of artifacts are you thinking of running?
 
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