General Archetypes

[tibbelsandbitts]

What are your favorite archetypes to draft in cube?

Sometimes i feel like my main cube is a collection of good value cards, and as fun as that is After drafting modern masters and vintage masters i felt like i wanted a more of a synergistic experience.
But i also feel this could be bad for a cube environment and make it feel stale after a couple drafts.

So I would love to know if any of you are running any interesting archtypes, if so how many and do they overlap?

How do you feel about every 2 color combination having an archetype in cube? Is that too much for a smaller singleton based environment compared to something like modern masters?

 

[ahadabans]

My favorite of late is Mardu sacrifice. Key cards are Falkenrath Aristocrat, Outpost Siege, with various token makers and the life sucking combo machine himself. Add aggressive dudes to taste and this deck can play it straight or combo you off later in the game. Very fun deck.

The most broken deck in my meta though is any flavor of UG blink. And I may have to take some tools away from it simply because it's unbeatable later in the game once the engine is totally online. And I don't care for decks that are that polarized. I might as well just run Grave Titan.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

If you go through some of the early posts in the penny pincher cube, it touches on a lot of the things you are asking about, exert below:

Spoiler

Construction
Anyone that follows my posts knows that I favor an approach of writing out all 10 guilds, and developing a theme and sub-theme for each color pairing. This sort of structured design approach helps prevent "cube-designers regret" down the line, when you realize that no one is going into G/R, and now you need to patch in a few G/R decks, hoping that your inclusions/exclusions won't make the cube worse. By having all combinations represented, and a backup sub-theme, you help make sure that you have as broad a gamespace as possible for your drafters to explore, thus preventing (or at least delying) them from solving the format.

Also, people generally don't draft mono-colored decks, so i.m.o it makes little sense to think in terms of "what does my green section do." Your green section will never be played on its own, it will always be supplimented by another color, which will warp whatever it is that its doing. The only exception, I find, is red. Someone will, inevitably, draft a mono-red aggro deck.
The design of this cube also really hammered in the importance of having broadly applicable cards. I think I was knocked off track a bit by MMA and VMA, each which use print runs to enable narrow decks in their respective formats. However, in cube, since you can't use a print run to control the availability of certain cards, every card must be broadly applicable. Its a bit like designing a good sideboard for a constructed environment with a broad array of possible matchups: your cards have to be relevent in many places, not just a few. For example, in cube, thirst for knowledge is a better card blue draw spell to run to support an artifact theme, than thoughtcast.

Also, of course, the need to minimize variance caused by:
1. Mana flood (addressed via mana sinks)
2. Color Screw (addressed via the proportional availability of mana fixers)
3. Mana Screw (addressed via bounce lands/cycling/cantrips/cheap TOL manipulation)
4. Poor Hands (addressed via deck building, cycling, cantrips, cheap TOL manipulaton)

Finally, the need to prevent:
1. Board stalls (addressed via evasive creatures, removal, combat tricks, temporary protection)
2. Removal Check/attrition Format (addressed via balanced threats with not too strong/abundent removal)

Archetypes
The archetypes that I arrived at look to be:

UW: heroic/tempo/Splicers
UB: Control/self-mill
BR: goblin Sacrifice/value reanimator
RG: Midrange Pump/Ramp
GW: Auras/+ + Counters
BW: Control/reanimator
UR: Spells Aggro-Combo/control
BG: Dredge/reanimation
RW: Wide Aggro/Control/Artifacts
GU: Ramp/self-mill

There is some flexibility here, of course. And:
R: goblin aggro
W: white weenie aggro
G: midrange
U: tempo
B: Control

Again, not too heavy of a focus on mono-color, since you will hardly every get a mono-color deck (beyond maybe red). I am ok with three+ color decks being a place of creative exploration, providing that they have a solid 2 color base to build from. Grixis and Esper are natural combo colors though.

The only thing that I would add to that is that my attitudes towards synergy have evolved. Brian Weissman, from years ago, had an idea of "branch efficiency," where a card is powerful and efficent alone alone but has the power to branch out when combined with other cards to create a synergistic effect. This is more or less how I think synergy should work in cube.

 

[tibbelsandbitts]

If you go through some of the early posts in the penny pincher cube, it touches on a lot of the things you are asking about, exert below:

Spoiler

Construction
Anyone that follows my posts knows that I favor an approach of writing out all 10 guilds, and developing a theme and sub-theme for each color pairing. This sort of structured design approach helps prevent "cube-designers regret" down the line, when you realize that no one is going into G/R, and now you need to patch in a few G/R decks, hoping that your inclusions/exclusions won't make the cube worse. By having all combinations represented, and a backup sub-theme, you help make sure that you have as broad a gamespace as possible for your drafters to explore, thus preventing (or at least delying) them from solving the format.

Also, people generally don't draft mono-colored decks, so i.m.o it makes little sense to think in terms of "what does my green section do." Your green section will never be played on its own, it will always be supplimented by another color, which will warp whatever it is that its doing. The only exception, I find, is red. Someone will, inevitably, draft a mono-red aggro deck.
The design of this cube also really hammered in the importance of having broadly applicable cards. I think I was knocked off track a bit by MMA and VMA, each which use print runs to enable narrow decks in their respective formats. However, in cube, since you can't use a print run to control the availability of certain cards, every card must be broadly applicable. Its a bit like designing a good sideboard for a constructed environment with a broad array of possible matchups: your cards have to be relevent in many places, not just a few. For example, in cube, thirst for knowledge is a better card blue draw spell to run to support an artifact theme, than thoughtcast.

Also, of course, the need to minimize variance caused by:
1. Mana flood (addressed via mana sinks)
2. Color Screw (addressed via the proportional availability of mana fixers)
3. Mana Screw (addressed via bounce lands/cycling/cantrips/cheap TOL manipulation)
4. Poor Hands (addressed via deck building, cycling, cantrips, cheap TOL manipulaton)

Finally, the need to prevent:
1. Board stalls (addressed via evasive creatures, removal, combat tricks, temporary protection)
2. Removal Check/attrition Format (addressed via balanced threats with not too strong/abundent removal)

Archetypes
The archetypes that I arrived at look to be:

UW: heroic/tempo/Splicers
UB: Control/self-mill
BR: goblin Sacrifice/value reanimator
RG: Midrange Pump/Ramp
GW: Auras/+ + Counters
BW: Control/reanimator
UR: Spells Aggro-Combo/control
BG: Dredge/reanimation
RW: Wide Aggro/Control/Artifacts
GU: Ramp/self-mill

There is some flexibility here, of course. And:
R: goblin aggro
W: white weenie aggro
G: midrange
U: tempo
B: Control

Again, not too heavy of a focus on mono-color, since you will hardly every get a mono-color deck (beyond maybe red). I am ok with three+ color decks being a place of creative exploration, providing that they have a solid 2 color base to build from. Grixis and Esper are natural combo colors though.

The only thing that I would add to that is that my attitudes towards synergy have evolved. Brian Weissman, from years ago, had an idea of "branch efficiency," where a card is powerful and efficent alone alone but has the power to branch out when combined with other cards to create a synergistic effect. This is more or less how I think synergy should work in cube.

This was very informative thank you very much.

 

[tibbelsandbitts]

My favorite of late is Mardu sacrifice. Key cards are Falkenrath Aristocrat, Outpost Siege, with various token makers and the life sucking combo machine himself. Add aggressive dudes to taste and this deck can play it straight or combo you off later in the game. Very fun deck.

The most broken deck in my meta though is any flavor of UG blink. And I may have to take some tools away from it simply because it's unbeatable later in the game once the engine is totally online. And I don't care for decks that are that polarized. I might as well just run Grave Titan.

I respect the way you desribed blood artist, made me laugh.

What are your favorite targets in UG blink.

 

[ahadabans]

Blood artist is so damn vicious. It looks like this stupid useless thing and then you play against it and it just wrecks you if you can't kill it early. In the sacrifice deck, you have lost the game before you realize you have lost the game. I can't count how many times I've seen that happen where you look at the board and it just doesn't matter. Killing it fires off a sac domino effect and you either take 10 from dudes or 10 from that guy combined with goblin bombardment or outpost siege or whatever. Amazing how much harm a 0/1 can do in the right setting.

 

[safra]

My favourite archetypes to draft are usually BWx disruptive aggro (no you're the dead guy), URx spellslinger aggro, graveyard decks, and UWx control. I like Grillo's approach of two-colour pairs and plotting overlaps, but I think there's also room to explore looser ("themeless") themes, pushed gently by the role-players in your cardpool. Start thinking about archetypes in terms of play arena and pressure applied and connections between them should just show up outta nowhere!

I think it's fine to have ten archetypes that you mix between, but I don't know that it has to be ten archetypes the whole way through. Pushing cares-about-creatures-dying from Mardu Sacrifice to Gx Pod to UB reanimator or whatever will strengthen each of the subthemes as they have more options to connect to and build cohesive decks.

If I had to name my major intentional archetypes, they'd be these:
Pod/CoCo (Gx)
Graveyards/Lands (GRx)
Haste (JUNDx)
Cataclysm (Wx)
Jeskai Ascendancy (JESKAIx)
Sacrifice (MARDUx)
Spells-matter (URB, tax effects in UWG)
Rebuying Haymakers (SULTAIx)

 

[ahadabans]

The more overlap the better. Totally agree. And to some extent, just providing very flexible cards with a lot of general synergy can cause a lot of interesting archetypes to develop organically. That to me is the best part about Cube. The power level is so high that you can win with sometimes super random things.

I think I posted this before, but it's worth repeating. This kind of interaction cannot be planned, it just has to happen. So one guy ran this WGb creature deck with a bunch of enchantments. Wasn't true enchantress I don't think, but he had a lot of those pieces in there. Anyway, he gets a good start and is pressing hard. Opponent gets blockers out and WGb guy responds with Parallax Wave. But there's just too much to get out of the way and he can't get enough damage through before fading triggers. So he loses right? No. He plays Song of the Dryads on his Parallax Wave permanently removing his opponents creatures and preventing the fading to trigger (assuming we played that right - it was so sweet no one challenged).

To some extent, just running cards that interact is going to generate a ton of very interesting decks. And so the focus on supporting archetypes thing is certainly a valuable discussion, but to some extent it's less important I think that we sometime make it out to be.

The key in my opinion is to avoid super self contained power cards. Stuff like Brimaz, King of Oreskos is just easy mode deck building. It's never bad. It takes over games. Good on offense and defense. Requires no synergy or thought. Like, what white deck isn't better with that card in it? Even Wrath of God decks. Play that, block forever making dudes left and right, Wrath finisher. Or Wrath, Brimaz, make dudes win. What other card is stupid easy mode Magic like that? Oh right, Grave Titan (I just hate that card so much). Get rid of those cards and run things with tons of play to them that only do broken shit when you mix and match them with other things. Blood artist.. fucking useless by himself. With other dudes, good but not broken. With tokens and sac engines and overlap themes? Busted beyond belief.

 

[tibbelsandbitts]

The more overlap the better. Totally agree. And to some extent, just providing very flexible cards with a lot of general synergy can cause a lot of interesting archetypes to develop organically. That to me is the best part about Cube. The power level is so high that you can win with sometimes super random things.

I think I posted this before, but it's worth repeating. This kind of interaction cannot be planned, it just has to happen. So one guy ran this WGb creature deck with a bunch of enchantments. Wasn't true enchantress I don't think, but he had a lot of those pieces in there. Anyway, he gets a good start and is pressing hard. Opponent gets blockers out and WGb guy responds with Parallax Wave. But there's just too much to get out of the way and he can't get enough damage through before fading triggers. So he loses right? No. He plays Song of the Dryads on his Parallax Wave permanently removing his opponents creatures and preventing the fading to trigger (assuming we played that right - it was so sweet no one challenged).

To some extent, just running cards that interact is going to generate a ton of very interesting decks. And so the focus on supporting archetypes thing is certainly a valuable discussion, but to some extent it's less important I think that we sometime make it out to be.

The key in my opinion is to avoid super self contained power cards. Stuff like Brimaz, King of Oreskos is just easy mode deck building. It's never bad. It takes over games. Good on offense and defense. Requires no synergy or thought. Like, what white deck isn't better with that card in it? Even Wrath of God decks. Play that, block forever making dudes left and right, Wrath finisher. Or Wrath, Brimaz, make dudes win. What other card is stupid easy mode Magic like that? Oh right, Grave Titan (I just hate that card so much). Get rid of those cards and run things with tons of play to them that only do broken shit when you mix and match them with other things. Blood artist.. fucking useless by himself. With other dudes, good but not broken. With tokens and sac engines and overlap themes? Busted beyond belief.

I can tell your very passionate about blood artist, and honestly you had sold him at llife sucking combo machine. So this archtypes is happening.

I hate grave titan as well, when my opponent has him anyway...

I love when archtypes overlapped in the latest modern masters the way some cards fit perfect in multiple archtypes. I was just afraid without playsets it may be a stretch.

 

[safra]

Not a stretch at all. If you're worried, add more card filtering in all five colours. Also over time individual cuts will boost your level of synergy, Cube design isn't really fire-and-forget most of the time.

 

[shamizy]

I prefer controlling decks that grind out games and close them out in the late game. That has been my preference when playing Cube and I usually default to that provided I get the right fixing. I love playing various blends of 3 color control decks. Sometimes I'll get a more controlly draw-go Esper build or a Grixis deck that can attack on various axes. I like playing decks that are capable of flipping their role depending on where you are in the game. That might be why I like playing with wraths so much, it just feels really powerful to reset the board. That's pretty much always the turning point before flipping the switch and gaining control. What's more exciting is when I'm facing down aggro and I don't have the wrath in hand. I like trying to figure out a way to buy enough time/draw into my outs before I can stabilize and close it out.

 

[Eric Chan]

+1 to Wrath effects. As an aggro player, I love playing around board sweepers, trying to gauge whether my opponent "has it", deciding whether to hold back troops or step on the gas pedal, formulating a plan for what to do if they draw the second board sweeper, and all that. There's nothing more satisfying than using a rag tag band of kithkin to trounce a control player packing all sorts of sweepers - you feel like an underdog, even if statistically speaking you aren't, and that you beat the odds. The inverse is also a lot of fun - extracting as much as value as you can out of your defensive creatures, trying to get your opponent to overcommit while you have a Wrath in hand, figuring out when to drop the pretense of control and just close out the game, and the like. The mind games!

 

[tibbelsandbitts]

+1 to Wrath effects. As an aggro player, I love playing around board sweepers, trying to gauge whether my opponent "has it", deciding whether to hold back troops or step on the gas pedal, formulating a plan for what to do if they draw the second board sweeper, and all that. There's nothing more satisfying than using a rag tag band of kithkin to trounce a control player packing all sorts of sweepers - you feel like an underdog, even if statistically speaking you aren't, and that you beat the odds. The inverse is also a lot of fun - extracting as much as value as you can out of your defensive creatures, trying to get your opponent to overcommit while you have a Wrath in hand, figuring out when to drop the pretense of control and just close out the game, and the like. The mind games!

I love kithkin. My by far favorite creature type.
How many wraths is too many in a 360 environment?

 

[Dom Harvey]

Hard to support many or all of these at once, but I really like:

- Prowess-based aggro, with a lot of flashback/rebound cards and tricks; also 'Voltron' style aggro with Berserk on Wild Mongrel and similar
- Themed aggro-combo decks (e.g. +1/+1 counters, sacrifice, artifact aggro) that use synergistic pieces to build towards a big finish
- 'Tricky' aggro decks, with flash creatures/tricks/lots of mana sinks
- Midrange creature decks using the abundance of tutors in green to set up loops/locks
- Creature decks with sweepers and ways to make them non-symmetrical e.g. Frontline Medic/Xathrid Necromancer, Pyroclasm with prowess/landfall
- Turboland, with library manipulation effects in conjunction with Courser/Oracle of Mul Daya and Primeval Titan
- Any mass reanimator combo deck e.g. Replenish/Scrap Mastery/Living Death

 

[Face]

The only thing that I would add to that is that my attitudes towards synergy have evolved. Brian Weissman, from years ago, had an idea of "branch efficiency," where a card is powerful and efficent alone alone but has the power to branch out when combined with other cards to create a synergistic effect. This is more or less how I think synergy should work in cube.

Are there any other resources on branch efficiency? I've seen Brian Weissman cited sometimes, but google searching has only yield references to him.

 

[shamizy]

I love kithkin. My by far favorite creature type.
How many wraths is too many in a 360 environment?

Assuming an 8 man pod, 360 would mean that every card within the cube will be seen throughout the draft. I feel like 6-7 wrath effects is just fine at that size. I've got quite 2 wa few more in my 405 list (soon to be 420), which makes sense since you won't be seeing them all the time. You also need to account for the fact that some people will definitely hatedraft a wrath if they feel that their deck can't deal with it. If you assume one control player in your pod, you generally need 2 wrath effects within a control deck to reasonably reset the board in a given match. It's on them to prioritize the wrath, but they should be able to get 2 wrath effects in a draft. It also depends on which colors you want to support control in. The main two are usually some combination of UWB, though people do often branch into R for the burn as spot removal.

Just diversify your wraths son. Wu Tang Cubebuilding.

 

[shamizy]

+1 to Wrath effects. As an aggro player, I love playing around board sweepers, trying to gauge whether my opponent "has it", deciding whether to hold back troops or step on the gas pedal, formulating a plan for what to do if they draw the second board sweeper, and all that. There's nothing more satisfying than using a rag tag band of kithkin to trounce a control player packing all sorts of sweepers - you feel like an underdog, even if statistically speaking you aren't, and that you beat the odds. The inverse is also a lot of fun - extracting as much as value as you can out of your defensive creatures, trying to get your opponent to overcommit while you have a Wrath in hand, figuring out when to drop the pretense of control and just close out the game, and the like. The mind games!

Yeah, the Aggro/Control tango is definitely the best part of the matchup. Fewer decisions for aggro, but there are heavier outcomes while it's the reverse for control players. I love being on both sides of that matchup, it's much more intriguing than a midrange grindfest (which can also be interesting if it's a game of inches). I'm just not a fan of games that lend themselves to just dropping value creatures one after the other trying to top the opponent's ETB. My cube is more heavily skewed towards the Aggro and Control routes as a result.

 

[tibbelsandbitts]

Assuming an 8 man pod, 360 would mean that every card within the cube will be seen throughout the draft. I feel like 6-7 wrath effects is just fine at that size. I've got quite 2 wa few more in my 405 list (soon to be 420), which makes sense since you won't be seeing them all the time. You also need to account for the fact that some people will definitely hatedraft a wrath if they feel that their deck can't deal with it. If you assume one control player in your pod, you generally need 2 wrath effects within a control deck to reasonably reset the board in a given match. It's on them to prioritize the wrath, but they should be able to get 2 wrath effects in a draft. It also depends on which colors you want to support control in. The main two are usually some combination of UWB, though people do often branch into R for the burn as spot removal.

Just diversify your wraths son. Wu Tang Cubebuilding.

WU TANG!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Are there any other resources on branch efficiency? I've seen Brian Weissman cited sometimes, but google searching has only yield references to him.

There is a chapter that he wrote about "the deck" in the bradly games Totally Unauthorized: Magic the gathering Advanced player's guide that I bought back in 1996. His chapter is the best chapter in the book, but I have no idea where you would find a copy online without purchasing it. Its a fantastic read as he was the guy who really developed and popularized the concept of card advantage, more of less creating the U/W control archetype in the process.

I can quote him for you though on branch efficency, as the exert is brief:

"Although scepter, tome, and moat are among the most powerful unrestricted cards in the Deck, most of the other components possess similar strengths. Nearly all spells in The Deck embody two important themes: autonomy and the potential for "branch efficency." Autonomy is straightforward: each card works independently of others and requires only the casting mana to be useful.

When I speak of branch efficiency, I mean to describe a card that is powerful and efficent alone but that has the power to branch out when combined with other, seemingly unreleated cards."

The example that he than gives is how a opponent could hold back creature enhancers in the face of moat, but with disrupting scepter in play as well as moat, each creature enhancer they draw is turned into a wasted draw, and thus creates virtual card advantage.

Obviously, there is a point where this idea can blur almost invisibly into power max, but the idea remains that cards should be reasonably independently efficient, but be able to branch out in function in combination with other cards. The example I gave in my spoiler covered post above of thoughtcast vs. thirst for knowledge is a perfect example. Thirst for knowledge is an independently powerful card, but can branch out into different functions if placed alongside graveyard recursion pieces, or artifact pieces. Thoughtcast, however, demands a density of artifacts to even function as a draw engine. Because thirst benefits from the synergies we are trying to push, but dosen't require it, its a good cube card. Meanwhile thoughtcast requires synergy, and is thus too narrow, and is a poor cube card.