Aston's Cube

[Aston]

I figure I've been around here long enough that I should post my list. This is my cube: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/6050

It's pretty high power but I am happy with it at the moment. I've been pulling back on individual cards that tend to take over games - Wurmcoil and Grave Titan being the most recent casualties.

I'm experimenting at the moment with removing the protection from the swords. This has been met with what I'd charitably call a "mixed" reaction - they've gone from being picks 1-3 to tabling most of the time, but I think that's down to an over-correction in evaluation. I'm going to keep going with it, but it does add another thing to be explained (along with Squadron Hawk - draft 1, get 3 more and the ULD) to new players.

If you have any thoughts, let me know.

ULD:

Spoiler

White:


Blue


Black


Red


Green


Colourless:


Multi Utility:


Misc:


Temples:
One of each

Special:

3x Cloudpost and 2x Glimmerpost - costs all 4 picks

2-4-1 Pick:

Second Cube:

The Penny Pincher cube, which I stole completely from Grillo_Parlante, is here. As of now, March 2016, they are identical, but I'm sure they'll diverge over time.

 

[Aston]

Crossposting the report I wrote up for a cube day a while ago:

I had quite a day. I met up with some guys and cube drafted for about ten hours, doing three drafts: a five player with 5 packs of 9, a three player rochester 12 packs of 12, and a four player 5 packs of 9. I have a lot of decklists to post.

For this cube I was doing the experiment of removing protection from the swords. It was generally not well received but I hope it'll grow on people.

The players were myself, M, J, K and A.

Draft 1:

Spoiler

Five players is a bit of an odd number (no pun intended) to draft with, but I think the draft portion was ok. We did ULD with 2 picks each after packs 2 and 4.

Abzan Pod (Aston)

My deck went 1-2, beating 5cc and losing to monored and Cloudpost. The deck did manage to do some cool things in the stalled out games vs 5cc particularly with Mikaeus and the persist creatures. Overall my huge glut at 4 and 5 meant I was a bit too slow to compete with the fast aggro and ramp decks.

Monored (K)

Monored went 1-2, beating Abzan Pod and losing to UB control and Cloudpost. The deck was a bit lacking in one drops and the manabase is a bit questionable, as the Plateau is just a Mountain which dies to Wasteland. Falkenrath Aristocrat was very good, and Flamewake Phoenix held equipment like a champ.

5cc (A)

Unfortunately A had packed their deck away with their basics and utility lands before I got a picture. This was kind of a classic all the colours and all the planeswalkers deck. I know it lost to me but I'm not sure how it managed in the other two rounds.

Cloudpost (M)

The 19 land special. This deck really showcased the power of Cloudpost, as it when 3-0 pretty easily. It was very consistent and Upheaval was extremely effective at stabilising the board. I'll be keeping an eye on the Cloudpost package (which currently costs all 4 ULD picks) in the future.

UB Control (J)

There's one land I can't quite make out on my picture. It looks like it might be a Badlands but I can't see how that would make sense. Anyway I didn't get a chance to play against this deck, which I think beat monored and lost to Cloudpost, not sure of the result vs 5cc. I did overhear vs Monored that in game two a Griselbrand was hardcast and game three was lost to revealing Kozilek, the Great Distortion off Dark Confidant.

Draft 2

Spoiler

A and K took a break to do some standard testing and myself, J and M did a three player Rochester draft. I think this is the best 3 player draft format I've tried, but I still hate playing with three. It's just the worst number to play cube with, and I'm including just messing around with changes by myself! We did not do a ULD for this one.

Temur Ramp (M)

I couldn't make out one of the lands on the picture I took.

As you might be able to tell, M likes to go big. This deck went 1-1, beating my Jund and losing to J's White Weenie. Went straight over me but got outraced by White Weenie in one game and crushed by Cataclysm in the other.

White Weenie (J)

This is the version of the deck after I helped J, who's quite a bit less experienced than the other players, rebuild it after game 1 vs Temur ramp. Somehow he had ended up with 21 lands in the deck, and was playing a lot of expensive cards and Wraths with the white aggro cards. It did win both games in this configuration. Unfortunately I had already played my match against J and although I lost one game to Wasteland assisted manascrew, the other two understably came down to flood on the white deck's part so it's not much use as a data point.

Jund (Aston)

If M likes to go big, I guess I like to go midrange. Weird, since I never play green midrange decks in constructed, but I apparently can't stop myself when it comes to cube. I lost to Temur Ramp in two games, although I forgot to implement my sideboard strategy of cutting red and adding in Duress effects. The first game came down to a point where I could drain my opponent out with Gray Merchant and Recurring Nightmare if I untapped, but instead he played Maelstrom Wanderer, ultimated Garruk, Primal Hunter and ultimated Chandra, Pyromaster.

The games against White Weenie were as I said a bit of a nonfactor, although new addition to the cube Pyreheart Wolf did do some work on the one occasion he was cast.

Draft 3

Spoiler

At this point the people testing Standard/Modern headed off and K rejoined us for a final four player draft. As an aside, whilst I can't stand three player I really like the dynamic of four players with 5 packs of 9.

We did all ULD picks at the end of the draft for this one.

Unfortunately as we were packing up to leave I only managed to snag pictures of two of the decks.

White-Green Aggro (K)

This went 2-1, beating 4cc and Temur Ramp/Cloudpost (M decided that he liked his last two decks so much he just drafted a mashup of both in this one) and losing to my Jeskai deck, although there was a fair bit of manaflood on K's part involved in the two games he lost. Not much to say on this one, except for Collected Company seemed pretty sweet here.

Jeskai Ascendancy (Aston)

There's one more land that I can't make out on my picture, but I'm pretty sure it's another fetch. I went 2-1, beating White Weenie and 4 colour and losing to Temur Ramp/Cloudpost.

This was my favourite deck of the day. I don't really support "storm combo" in my cube, but this deck came pretty close. I killed people several times from 16-20 life in one turn on the back of Ascendany-powered Squadron Hawks or Spectral Procession tokens.

There was also one particularly memorable game where I untapped with Gelectrode and Ascedancy in play and my opponent on 19, and ended the turn with my opponent on 1 and a Rift Bolt on suspend. He responded by Primeval Titaning for Glimmerpost to go to 5, and casting Burning of Xinye and I couldn't close it out. I realised after the game that had I just flipped my Sensei's Divining Top at some point to get an extra Ascendancy trigger instead of suspending the Rift Bolt I would have had the last point of damage I needed, and had I not been rushing due to it being late I think I would have found that line. If it hadn't been for that player error this would have been a 3-0 deck, but hey. Who's counting?

The other two decks I didn't get pictures of were M's Temur Ramp/Cloudpost, with cards like Primeval Titan, Maelstrom Wanderer (M's new favourite cube card), and planeswalkers including Jace TMS and Karn, which went 2-1 beating my Jeskai and 4 colour and losing to Wg Aggro; and J's 4 colour non-red midrange, which had Cataclysm, Smokestack, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, Lotus Cobra, and some value reanimation. This one went 0-3 and was by J's admission a bit of an experiment with stretching himself beyond two colours, which he hadn't tried before. He did win one great game against me where Cataclysm and Smokestack combined to eat all my permanents.

I think everyone really enjoyed themselves and as far as I could tell most of the games were pretty long but decision dense from the first few turns, which was what I was hoping for. Plus, this was my first draft without Wurmcoil or Grave Titan, and I didn't miss them at all.

 

[sigh]

Cool list! I like the foil cards indicator . Do you squadron some things? I can't help but notice a lone Squadron Hawk in the white 2's. I would think a squad of 3 at least, right? Is there anything else you squadron (if you squadron squawk)?

What would you think about taking the protection clauses on the swords and making them fiendslayer paladin "protection"? So Light and Shadow would say "can't be the target of white or black spells your opponents control"

 

[Aston]

Squadron Hawk is indeed squadroned - it's in the OP, but it might be unclear how I phrased it. Nothing else is, though.

I could try the Fiendslayer Paladin idea but honestly I just don't like the swinginess of the ability, as it either does nothing or everything. The analogy I use would be if they had a comes into play ability of flip a coin, if heads equipped creature gets hexproof. I wouldn't want to play with that card.

 

[sigh]

Completely missed the note in the OP about squak :eek:.

Yeah, I guess it is a little swingy even with "color hexproof".

How do you like the chromatic baubles, even with your list fairly highly powered? Do they get picked/played?

 

[Aston]

They're pretty new, only in for maybe 3 or 4 drafts. I've definitely had decks where I wanted them - the Jeskai Ascendancy deck in the report, for example. Another player I have who is admittedly pretty new to the game seems to love them and snaps them up whenever he can, so they are certainly being picked and played. Whether he is correct to do so is perhaps another question...

Also I realised I should edit the ULD into the OP as well. And update the sideboard on cubetutor so it matches.

 

[Aston]

For my own notes and from memory, the decks from the most recent 8-player draft:

Midrange (3-0)
Sidisi (2-1)
Tinker/Reanimator (2-1)
Ramp/Birthing Pod (2-1?)
Tempo (1-2?)
Devotion (1-2)
Midrange (1-2?)
Midrange (0-3?)

Not sure on all of the records and I didn't keep decklists unfortunately.

 

[Aston]

More decks to post. From a six player team draft, I only got three decklists which were:

Monoblack Devotion (Kieran, 2-1)

Temur Tempo (Chris, 3-0)

Monoblue Artifacts (Aston, 2-1)

The other three decks were WBu Tokens (1-2), Monored aggro splash green (0-3), Green ramp splashing red and black (1-2).

My team was monoblue, temur and WBu tokens, and we took the set 6-3 overall. Some sweet plays included me playing Precursor Golem, my opponent Metamorphing it and then me using Cryptic bounce/draw on all the golems, a game I watched in the temur deck where he drew all three colourless lands and was still casting double colour spells and splash spells thanks to lotus cobra, and me casting Tinker for Battlesphere on turn 3 a disgusting amount of times. Tinker is busted and it's getting cut, I need some ideas for replacements. Someone suggested Opposition, though I'm a bit wary of that one. Maybe Brainstorm #2 or Gitaxian Probe?

I think as well I'm going to move a couple of the ULDs, probably Gaea's Cradle and Shelldock Isle, back to the main cube.

 

[Aston]

As I've mentioned to a couple of people, playing in the Penny Pincher grid draft league has inspired me to put together my own penny pincher cube, and the link is here. I've lifted it wholesale from Grillo's list but I'll probably be making some adjustments based on my own tastes, which I'll probably figure out sometime this week and do a big write-up on. I think it could be interesting to watch these two lists evolve side-by-side.

 

[Aston]

Alright, I've got a few pincher cube drafts under my belt, and I've figured out some changes I want to make. I'm sorry about the wall of text, and I've tried to use spoilers to break it up a bit, but there's still quite a lot so I appreciate anyone taking the time to read through and let me have their thoughts.

First of all: heroic. This seems to be a minor theme in white, with several heroic creatures and pump/protection effects to support them. This is more down to my own biases, as I have less than fond memories of battling against the heroic deck in Theros draft where it often ended up being impossible to interact with them due to a combination of low power removal and protection effects blanking the one or two spells that did matter. The mechanic in my experience tended to lead to "feel bad" games where either the heroic player's pump effects land, and they far outstrip the other player's ability to react, or they get blown out by a well-timed removal spell and are effectively out of the game very early on. Therefore, the cuts:

Spoiler

There's not much to say here, except that I think Battle Mastery stands on its own power level enough to justify a spot, and Feat of Resistance still has +1/+1 counter synergy.

This does leave a gaping hole in white, however, which does need a replacement, and I think I have the ideal thing: rebels!

Add:

Spoiler

There's the backbone of a rebel chain, and of course Lin-Sivvi as the build-around engine. Anyone who has played Time Spiral limited will remember how fun putting together a rebel deck was, and of course Mercadian Masques block constructed demonstrated that they're not just a fun tribe to try, but have the power level to compete with some of the more powerful spell-based strategies available. I've also added in a few more removal spells just to up the density slightly.

The next change I wanted to make might be a bit of a controversial one. In a word: Planeswalkers. The current design of the cube has eschewed them entirely, I'm not sure whether for budgetary or power level reasons, but I think this cube can take it, in small doses at least. As has been discussed in the lower power level planeswalker thread, when used sparingly and with an eye to their environment, planeswalkers can create an interesting mini-game of judging whether it's possible to race, or if killing the planeswalker is worth losing out on some tempo. I'm being extra cautious with this change, limiting myself to one per colour, but that does mean I can discuss the change in a bit of detail.

White:

Spoiler

Out:

In:

The forgotten Elspeth has her chance to shine in this environment. Both a stabilizing tool and a win condition for white-based control decks, Elspeth fills multiple roles without being oppressive. Auriok Salvagers is a little narrow and poisonous for my taste, so unfortunately he gets the boot.

Blue:

Spoiler

Out:

In:

Not much to say on this except there's a little more support for the artifact deck. Cloud of Faeries often ends up just being a flying Memnite, which is a bit low power even for this environment

Black:

Spoiler

Out:

In:

This iteration of Liliana helps support the B/R discard based midrange without being so swingy as Persecute, which can miss completely or win the game the game on the spot in some situations.

Red:

Spoiler

Out:

In:

Chandra fills a similar role to the Sharpshooter in keeping down X/1s and messing up opponent's blocks without being totally oppressive against token strategies.

Green:

Spoiler

Out:

In:

Another like-for-like swap, Nissa also presents multiple threats but at a much more manageable pace.

Finally, I would like to address the issue of land destruction. Although the aim of the cube is to prevent non-games due to mana issues, the presence of the bouncelands together with cards like Petravark, Regress, and especially Flickerwisp mean that on the play you could essentially destroy both of your opponent's lands on turn 3. I don't think this is a very satisfactory outcome, to end the game with one spell so early, but fortunately I think there is a simple solution:

Out

Spoiler

In




Thank you for sticking with me to the end of the update. Obviously I'll be testing and tweaking as I go, but I do think this changes up the list whilst still sticking to the spirit of the original. So let me know what you think, give me any other suggestions, or just call me crazy if you want!

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I'd be interested to see how the rebel cards pan out for you. Are there enough there for you at the moment? How onerous is the shuffling?

 

[Kirblinx]

I'm going to play Sin Prodder here, and question those Penny Pincher changes.

The biggest issue is the cutting of the bouncelands. They are what the entire environment was built around. They interact with the untap effects, the scry and gain lands and being able to keep low-land decks to improve efficiency. Replacing them with a fetch and dual doesn't seem to supplement or add anything to the environment. You've just taken something away.

The reasons you mentioned for taking them out was they can produce non-games when a person plays Flickerwisp, etc. My question is, why didn't you just take them out? That would only require 5 cards to change instead of entire land base that the format had been built around. Grillo had only added those cards as a sort of 'safety valve' to stop players drafting too many of them and always going to the de-facto ramp strategy (As discussed here). I urge you to reconsider this change, as I feel it will change the format dramatically. It also blows the 'penny' out of penny pincher, but whatever, if you have them then go ahead.

Next is the white changes. Heroic I am not a fan of either, so I like the change. Rebels seem a little insular as they are pretty average by themselves and only the rebel drafter will take them. I personally would have put in an Avian Changeling (Golem!) for something spicy for other decks to use as well, Cho-Manno Revolutionary is cool though and would love to see how he goes.
The main concern is those spells you chose. Why give white such overpowered removal in this low-powered format? They would be nearly auto first-picks. Why not try some lower powered stuff first, like Judge Unworthy, Devouring Light or Harm's Way? I personally liked the way the protection effects worked in the cube and am sad to see them go, but replacing them with straight out removal seems against the 'interactivity' of the format.
I also mentioned in Shamizy's Blog that I really dislike Timely Reinforcements. It is too much of a backbreaking card. I don't know what you are putting this in for.

I'm fine with introducing Planeswalkers and they all seem decent enough to try. The cuts are all sort of bomby enough that they are decent enough swaps. Cloud of Faeries being cut is a little sad is now the Familiar combo deck is almost non-existent. Well, with the cutting of the bouncelands, it really is non-existant. That means you can some of those cards as well, since they have lost most of their appeal.

I know I am not the designer of the cube, but I feel I had a decent grasp of what sort of gameplay it was aiming for and I think you have taken a really large chunk out of it. They are your changes and if you get any data on how things went with the new changes I would be glad to hear them. I just personally think they are taking the cube in the wrong direction.

 

[Aston]

Wow, thank you for the feedback. Before I go any further, there was one further edit which I had forgotten to put in the last post, and which I think may change your mind:

Spoiler

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Oh thank god, I just saw the post now and nearly flipped when I read it.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Well played Aston, well played!

 

[Kirblinx]

When I finally got around to replying to the post I didn't even realise that is what it could be.

I wonder what would have happened if Grillo was the first to reply. I thought I was being fairly contained in my response (surprising, I know ). All I could picture in my head while I was reading your post and writing my reply was:

You got me good. This I will concede. Well done

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

It would have looked more like this:

 

[safra]

 

[Aston]

I did feel a bit bad that the reveal came like 4 days late, but I'm glad you liked it.

Just so you know, I really am putting together the Penny cube, that wasn't part of the joke. It was just when I realised the timing would be so perfect, how could I resist?

 

[Aston]

Got in two six-player drafts today. Time to dump some lists:

Spoiler

Draft 1

Keiran BUG Reanimator 1-1

Didn't see this played unfortunately.

Chris Four Colour CoCo

This one looked mental in a good way. I didn't get to play against it, though.

Adam Grixis Control 0-2

Unfortunately Adam had to leave early, and I'm not sure I got this list exactly right - I seem to have ended up with 42 cards.

Jack GW Ramp

Jack doesn't play too often, but when he does you can be sure he ends up with Smokestack and Cataclysm. I played against him and his deck didn't seem to match up all that well against mine, as you'll see below. It was also a bit split focus, I'm not sure the board sweepers really fit in the creature heavy ramp decks.

Aston Jeskai Control 2-0

My deck was honestly a bit loose. Both Skullclamp and Tolarian Academy are a little low on creatures and artifacts respectively, and a few of the spells are ones I don't love in this deck, like Avalanche Riders, and I didn't manage to get any counterspells at all. That said, the combination of planeswalkers and powerful sweepers is a good one. I saw Elixir of Immortality in the same pack as Sphinx's Revelation and I was really hoping to go all in on that as my win condition, but unfortunately it didn't wheel. I haven't drafted a traditional control deck in a while, and it was a good change of pace. My matchups were GW ramp, where the sweepers proved to much for Jack - Wildfire put him down to zero permanents in one game, and Wrath cleaned up in the other. The other match was agains the Cloudpost deck below, where we kind of traded blows and whoever ended up ahead on cards won. We both lost a game to decking, although in my case I had gotten Oblivion Sowered twice, once taking my three remaining win conditions. This was the first time I'd played with Wildfire and it fit in pretty well, although timing it right proved more difficult than I anticipated.

James UB Cloudpost 0-2

James's deck looked good on paper and honestly I think he was unlucky to not get a match win. Our games were great, long and interactive. Looking at it I see he doesn't have any counterspells either. I might need to up the count a little on those.

I've got another bunch of lists to type up which I'll do later in the week.

 

[Aston]

More decklists

Spoiler

The second draft we did teams of 3v3 randomly chosen after the draft. It was myself, Craig and James against Keiran, Chris and Jack.

Team 1

Craig Monogreen Cloudpost 2-0

Somehow Craig's first game took over an hour (I'm not sure how but I think he won via decking after his opponent had cast Time Spiral on an empty library), and he had to leave at that point. I'm kind of glad he did because that meant I got to play this deck in round 2, and man it was so fun. Considering it looks like a pretty standard ramp deck, I'm not exactly sure why it was so good, but I think the land recursion with Wastelands and Mutavault was part of it. I never got to cast Kozilek I don't think sadly, or I might have put it on the stack and my opponent conceded. Cloudposts continue to be very powerful it seems. My buddy James played one game of it for round 3 but at that time the pub we were in was closing and they didn't finish, but this deck won the first game and I wouldn't have been surprised to see it 3-0. At that point (spoilers) our team had already won in any case.

Aston Jeskai Ascendancy 2-1

When we were looking at our first pack, Chris who was sitting to my right showed me Jeskai Ascendancy and asked if it was a deck, and I told him it was but it was pretty hard to put together. He then took something else, confident that it would wheel, and of course I snapped it off second and went in hard. I picked up Life/Death p8p3, and was met with some confused looks as to why I was so excited that I managed to grab it, but once people saw it in play they understood. Ascendancy->Life->cantrip is so good.

I beat one flavour of blue/black and lost to the other with Upheaval, generally due to Upheaval. Turns out that card's really good. I had a good game against the last deck too, with a heartbreaking sequence for me. My opponent had out 4-5 creatures including Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and a Phantasmal Image copying Krallenhorde Howler. I have 5 lands open, and a couple of creatures including as Monastery Mentor and a monk, with Impulse and Enlightened Tutor in hand. Chris attacks with the Phantasmal Image only, and my sweet play is to cast my cantrip, Enlightened Tutor for Mirari's Wake, eat his creature with 4/4 Mentor and slam Wake the following turn. I crack my Windswept Heath to find...no fetchable lands. Due to Thalia I can only cast one spell this turn and can't cast Mirari's Wake. I lose the game whereas I think if I had had the extra land I would have won reasonably easily. I do end up winning the match due to Chris's mana screw in game 3.

James Temur Pod 2-1

James's deck was a kind of pod/ramp hybrid with planeswalkers. It was very strong when it came together, although I think his mana was a little shakier than he would have liked - I think he was a bit screwed with me to his immediate right taking fixing very highly, and Chris two to his right also in UGx. The one match I managed to watch ended with a Domri Rade emblem into Pod for Inferno Titan for 20+ damage. James lost to Chris mostly due to Umezawa's Jitte I think, and beat the two blue/black decks.

Team 2

Keiran U/B Tezzeret Control 1-1

Blue black with artifacts is a pretty common archetype in my cube and this is a nice representation of it. I have really liked double Tezzeret, as he's a cool planeswalker that needs to be built around to maximise his potential. Keiran's deck had a couple of angles of attack, either ramping into a big Upheaval or fighting the honest fight with efficient creatures and Tezzeret. I lost one game to a Tezz -4 for 16 life which I completely missed. This was the enemy team deck that didn't manage to finish all of its rounds.

Jack U/B Reanimator Control 0-3

This was the other half of the hour+ one game match. I think what happened was Jack killed everything Craig played, but couldn't find a way to finish the game, went through his deck again and still came up short. He did say afterwards that he thought he could have won if he'd been a bit more aggressive, and I think his deck probably does match up pretty well against Craig's ramp into big threat strategy. Jack's games against me were not too interesting - game 1 he mulliganed to five and kept a no land hand, and although he ended up hitting a clump a couple of turns later he was too far behind to come back. Game 2 I think he tapped out for a mass removal spell and I went Ascendancy into Life to combo him out. Against James he was overwhelmed by incremental advantage from Domri Rade, Birthing Pod and Genesis. I think perhaps one more dedicated win condition could have gone a long way towards helping Jack, and he and Keiran must have been within a couple of seats of each other drafting very similar decks, which would have hurt him.

Chris Bant Company 1-2

Chris liked Collected Company so much he drafted the same deck twice in a row. I think he was a bit unlucky not to get another match win - I know he beat James pretty solidly, but lost to to me due to mana screw in one game and Grim Lavamancer in the other, and I Wasteland locked him playing Craig's deck when he had already mulliganed to 4. This was the first draft with Duskwatch Recruiter in play, and it performed very well.

Overall the archetypes were as follows:

Craig: G/Colourless ramp
Aston: RWUgb Ascendancy
James: RUG Ramp/Pod
Keiran: UB Tezzeret
Jack: UB Control
Chris: UWG Company

That's five decks out of six playing blue as a main or secondary colour, with the others being split pretty evenly with two decks playing each as a main or secondary colour. It's strange but I hadn't even noticed this until coming to type up the decklists, and I don't remember anyone else pointing out that nearly everyone was playing blue. Something to think about, anyway.

As far as this goes, I think I might add a couple more colourless-matters cards, probably Thought-Knot Seer and Eldrazi Displacer, as it seemed people who wanted it had ample access to colourless mana. I guess I should sleeve up a couple Wastes as well.

 

[Aston]

More decks from a 6 player draft:

Spoiler

Claude 2-0:



The Cloudpost decks are pretty consistently the best performing decks. I think I need to adjust this somehow, probably by making it 2x Cloudpost instead of 3 in the package.

Francis 1-1


Jeskai (? there's a mountain but no red cards) control. I think I must be missing a couple of cards. I played against this, it was very effective. Top plus Mentor is pretty effective.

James 1-1 I think



Grixis Control splash green. I think this is what people refer to when they say 4 colour good stuff piles but I think decks like these are sweet.

Ed 1-1


A pretty good version of the mono-red deck. Ed still thought it was underpowered but he tends to be very pessimistic about his own decks so I'm not sure. He really wants me to put Sulfuric Vortex in the cube.

Aston 1-1


I love the low resource black deck. This was pretty cool in that it had the combo finish of Mikaeus/Carrion Feeder/Murderous Redcap, although I didn't manage to pull it off. Sea Gate Wreckage only got activated once.

Callum 1-1 I think might have been 0-2


I didn't get much of a chance to see this one play out, other than a game against mono red that had a draw something like t1 Hierarch t2 Kitchen Finks t3 Courser t4 Metamorph Courser. He won that game.

After today I'm pretty sure I want to cut Upheaval and Recurring Nightmare, and tone down the Cloudposts a bit.

 

[Aston]

Two drafts on Saturday. Here's my half-remembered list from the first draft:



Missing three spells but I can't remember what they are, I think I had a 6 drop creature and maybe a couple more 3s. Anyway the deck was sweet, I got to Domri -2 with Phyrexian Obliterator so that's something I can tick off my cube bucket list.

The other archetypes in draft one were

James: White Weenie splashing for Collected Company and red for something. E: I just remembered he had Sparksmith and Goblin Rabblemaster.
Callum: Black Red Sacrifice with Mikaeus/Murderous Redcap combo finish
Francis: Blue White control/Mentor-Top
Nick: Naya Midrange
Claude: Blue Black artifacts

No idea on the records other than I went 2-2, beating Callum and Nick and losing to James and Claude.

I'm going to type up the lists from the second draft as I still have them.

 

[Aston]

Second draft on Saturday, this was a team draft with Aston, Claude and Callum vs James, Nick and Francis

Spoiler

Claude

Claude beat James, lost to Nick and was 1-1 with Francis when we had to finish so I could catch the last train home.

Callum

Callum beat James and lost to Nick and Francis

Aston

I beat James and Francis and lost to Nick. This was the first cube outing with 2x Cloudpost instead of 3x, and this version did feel a lot less powerful although I don't think I drafted a great version of it. Several of my game wins were on the back of Upheaval which is now getting cut for something. It just does too much on its own.

James

James went 0-3. His deck doesn't look bad, although the forest seems a bit loose. I think he was a bit unlucky.

I did hear a turn 2 Dark Ritual -> Braids on the play though. He won that game.

Nick

Nick went 3-0, cancelling out James' record. His deck was super fast and super consistent, very scary to play against.

Francis

Francis beat Callum and lost to me, and the final with Claude was tied when we had to finish

 

[Aston]

Nine Player cube on Saturday, archetype breakdown from memory:

Aston: Monoblue artifacts
James: Jund with Wildfire
Callum: Black Red Birthing Pod
Claude: Jeskai Control
Dan: Jeskai Control (these two were sat next to each other as well)
Jamie: UR (possibly Jeskai) Delver
New Player 1: Boros Aggro
New Player 2: Monogreen Ramp
Francis: BW Stax

9 player means all but 4-5 cards were drafted, and the ULD did feel a bit sparse for that many players. I took Seagate Wreckage which again I never activated, Inventor's Fair which was pretty good, Phyrexia's Core which I never activated but had a spot I would have done to turn my Hangarback into Thopters but my opponent killed it anyway, and I don't remember the last one so it probably wasn't super impactful. Overall I think I would have been better served with the Cloudpost package - I really wanted Tolarian Academy but it got first picked.

My list as far as I remember it:



Trinket Mage was amazing with Chimeric Mass, Hangarback and Walking Ballista as targets. This was also my first chance to play with Crystal Shard and I liked it a lot, even though I mostly just used it to rebuy Walking Ballista over and over.

Vedalken Shackles completely took over the games I played it in and my opponents weren't very happy about it. It's a powerful card but I'm not sure I've seen it be that warping before, at least not often. I was playing a higher number of Islands than most decks can afford which may have contributed.