Bauble Cube

miles

miles

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/16227

This is a new cube project that is currently being built from the ground up. I would greatly appreciate any input for archetype and card ideas. The idea is a low/medium-power level cube with overlapping archetypes and synergies. I first got into magic in the odyssey block era and love that block, especially after throwback drafts on MODO recently. I'd love to combine the threshold/madness/flashback graveyard themes from that block with artifact/(fair) tinkering themes.


ground rules:
- medium or low power level - sort of custom limited set
- breaking singleton will be necessary
- not opposed to custom cards if necessary (baubles that are actually useful might be nice)

archetypes and themes:
- artifacts: baubles, tinkering, myrs
- graveyard matters: madness, threshold, flashback, reanimating, self mill

by color:
BLUE: tinker, artifacts matter, looting, threshold enabler, madness outlets
RED: trash for treasure/ goblin welder, atogs, madness burn, burning vengeance
GREEN: madness, threshold, self mill - does not tie into artifact theme (except as artifact hate)
WHITE: artifact weenies, bauble enablers, some madness enablers
BLACK: self mill, mortivores, reanimating, disciple of the vault

-milling and looting overlap with white's ability to return artifacts from the grave and red's ability to weld things back. green and black like things in the grave for threshold and mortivores.
-baubles can help cycle through your deck to enable threshold.
-myr servitors seem hilarious to have a lot of and also are artifacts that reward putting some into your graveyard. combo with atogs or other sac outlets. infinite welding possibilities.
-thirst for knowledge seems good for most decks (and is strong in general).
-the smith cycle from SOM are really neat here - blue looting, white creating artifact tokens, red pinging are all really useful. black and green are interesting as well.

questions:
- how can green tie into the artifact themes better? is it okay to just be anti-artifact?
- what are more cards that tie together multiple themes?
- ideas for custom baubles or 'togs?

hybrid atog, u/r, u/r, 1
discard a card: atog gets +1/+1 until eot
sacrifice an artifact: atog gets +1/+1 until eot
1/2

trample bauble, 1
G, sac bauble: target creature gets +1/+1 and gains trample until eot
1, sac bauble: draw a card

white bauble, 1
W, sac bauble: target creature gets +1/+1 and gains first strike and lifelink until eot
1, sac bauble: draw a card
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
As someone whose taste in cube design has a lot of overlap with this list, I really like what you have going on here. I will give it a more detailed look later, but at a glance, the first thing that strikes me about the list is that appears to be a powerful tempo format. Mechanics like threshold, flashback, and cycling nicely tie together the early and late game, rewarding aggressive decks for expanding resources and committing to the board. You also have a number of creatures that want to connect for value but lack natural evasion, the most notable of these being atog.

In my own list I run a large number of threaten effects and bounce to enable those interactions. I see you already have my beloved silent departure, but there are tons of ways to achieve that same goal: e.g.blustersquall, teleportal, nightbird's clutches, gigadrowse, man-o'-war, crossway vampire.

Also, a lot of the big tough green graveyard cards and the atogs run the risk of being chumped forever, so there probably exists a demand for cards that enable trample.

One thing that might help with green artifact interaction, is to think of it in terms of green color pairings. What do your other colors lack in their artifact plan that push them into green? What themes or subthemes exist in green color pairings that could enable an artifact plan?

For example, if I was having that issue with blue, the solution could be to run blustersquall and teleportal, while not running (or running less) threaten or nightbird's clutches effects in red. That way, blue becomes an essential part of a red atog decks artifact plan.
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Is lithatog even good enough? I know with this many artifacts running around Atog is likely too fast, but there's got to be something beter than him, right?
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Maybe errata lithatog?

----------

I was trying to get an idea of what your format speed would be; and that is, of course, impossible to do by eyeballing a list. However, these were the things that caught my attention that may become issues.

1) There are lots of 2/1, 1/1, and 2/2 creatures in the format. That seems to make 1/3, 1/4, or 1/1 creatures really good as blockers, as well as suggesting that attacking in a lot of situations might be very bad.

2) Early conditional removal: you have some good bounce effects in blue, some reasonable diversity in black, but red removal looks deep and powerful, especially with so many x/1 and x/2 creatures. A lot of those red cards, I suspect, will be de facto unconditional removal due to how they scale against the creature base. That is probably something to keep an eye on if you are looking to weaken spot removal to increase format diversity. Executioner's capsule also looks like an extremely powerful card.

3) With these sort of low power, creature focused formats, navigating board stalls is going to be important. Charge effects, exalted, mass board tapping effects, and intimidate are all viable approaches.

4) I'm not sure about nihil spellbomb because it is such a beating to the graveyard player. Whip of erebos might aggravate board stall situations and can feel very bomby at this power level.
 
miles

miles

Grillo_Parlante said:
Maybe errata lithatog?

----------

I was trying to get an idea of what your format speed would be; and that is, of course, impossible to do by eyeballing a list. However, these were the things that caught my attention that may become issues.

1) There are lots of 2/1, 1/1, and 2/2 creatures in the format. That seems to make 1/3, 1/4, or 1/1 creatures really good as blockers, as well as suggesting that attacking in a lot of situations might be very bad.

2) Early conditional removal: you have some good bounce effects in blue, some reasonable diversity in black, but red removal looks deep and powerful, especially with so many x/1 and x/2 creatures. A lot of those red cards, I suspect, will be de facto unconditional removal due to how they scale against the creature base. That is probably something to keep an eye on if you are looking to weaken spot removal to increase format diversity. Executioner's capsule also looks like an extremely powerful card.

3) With these sort of low power, creature focused formats, navigating board stalls is going to be important. Charge effects, exalted, mass board tapping effects, and intimidate are all viable approaches.

4) I'm not sure about nihil spellbomb because it is such a beating to the graveyard player. Whip of erebos might aggravate board stall situations and can feel very bomby at this power level.
Click to expand...


thanks these are great points. did not notice how many small creatures this thing ended up with. i think that makes the naginata pretty narrow.

you are definitely right about all the burn in red - there is a ton of it and it matches up well against almost everything. cutting back on it a little now.

intimidate seems less useful with so many artifact duders running around, but yeah i could see board stalls happening as it is now.

nihil spellbomb is one of the actual good baubles though! as a 1 of that might end up being a high pick it seems like a way to keep some shenanigans in check.

you might be right about the whip. i've never actually played with it. it is kind of a way to tie graveyard stuff in to artifact things though, in that it is itself an artifact. i suppose this is a pretty loose tie in and might not be worth it.
there is a lot of powerful things that can happen here though, so i'm not sure if whip is too strong or not. Just removed masticore for this reason but not sure exactly where to draw the line.
 
miles

miles

Chris Taylor said:
Is lithatog even good enough? I know with this many artifacts running around Atog is likely too fast, but there's got to be something beter than him, right?
Click to expand...


lithatog is pretty bad. atog himself might not be great, but it has potential at least. they need to complete the odyssey block cycle with enemy color pairs bc UR discard/sac artifacts would be ideal.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
lol...I completly forgot how bad intimidate would be here.

Masticores have actually been a lot worse here than I thought they would be. I'm not sure if thats something with the meta that is going to shift with time, but I really thought they were going to just come down and dominate, and that has not happened.

My only concern with whip is the sort of situation where a board stall forms. It just seems brutal to play against.

You can always just make the cube, and than write down a list of potential issues, and adjust from there. Its always hard to tell things just looking at a list, and its obvious you put a lot of thought into what you've put up.
 
Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
Ok, this might seem a bit counter intuitive, but bear with me.

One of the aspects of triple innistrad was that there was very little direct card draw. That was because, in that format, you were supposed to be exploiting the graveyard as a source of card advantage, and self-mill as a means to dig through your library. Because there was a scarcity of direct card draw, it created a vacuum, which was filled by self-mill and flashback. I've tried to stay relatively true to that design principle (no thirst for knowledge, compulsive research, or even deep analysis) and its had the desired effect of pushing people towards self-mill.

Now, I also run triple brainstorm, so I don't know exactly where the line falls; but if you should find people less willing to use baubles to dig or push into the yard, maybe put some of the direct blue card draw on the chopping block. I think careful study would probably be fine, but thirst might end up being a little bit too much pure value. Again, just something to keep an eye on in when watching actual drafts.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

I've been thinking of expanding my artifacts theme, so I came here. After looking again, I just wanted to remark that this cube is sweet.
 
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