Can I turn this pile of cards into a cube?

[Hathaway]

Greetings and thanks for taking a look at this pile of cards hoping to one day be a cube. In the past, I have posted the experience of not really knowing what I wanted out of the cube, and seeing it morph into varied stacks of things that didn't quite work. The cube has sat in its previous state of 440 card, storm deck slammed in for no reason, and lots of pet cards I loved and nobody drafted. (Sorry, Pyromancer's Goggles. I tried.)

A few friends from work have been interested in drafting, and that has got me to update the list here and there, but what I really want now is to focus it into something I can be proud of, and that offers interesting drafts and avoids dull board states.

Here is the list: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/39758

I am dropping this original post to remind me to actually get to work anew on the project. I am hosting a draft this evening and plan to take notes of what is drafted and how each deck performs.

My goal is to have an environment that allows for many combinations of 2 color aggro decks alongside an equally varied mix of control lists. And of course, Wildfire and Birthing Pod and Tinker are adored by my drafters, so I want them to be competitive as well.

I will report back later with results and input from the drafters. Going into this evening, I want to see if anyone builds something that gets close to awesome but comes a few cards short. I want to see the drafters help bend the environment in the right direction.

That said, I would enjoy any feedback on the composition or draft experience of the cube. I have some rudimentary notes scribbled in the blog section on cubetutor.

A few parting notes:

I do not like planeswalkers. They ruined standard for me years ago, and I didn't enjoy them when I tried them in the cube. Too many players complaining of the dreaded feel bads.

I have removed the transform cards in an effort to simplify the list and avoid the players pulling the cards out of the sleeves so often during the actual draft.

Current budgetary restrictions do not allow the enemy fetch lands.

I feel like my gold section is wonky.

I feel like I need another payoff card or two for Tinker (maybe Mindslaver) and Reanimator (but what?).

The list again: http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/39758

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

This looks fine--very safe. Can't imagine you having an actively bad time running this list. Most of the cards and the configuration have been pretty heavily vetted by multiple players over a span of years.

Since you're running bouncelands, you really need to cut everything that can interact with them prior to turn 4 at the earliest, or capable of permanently bouncing them, or destroy/bounce them while adding a hasty body to the board, need to go. Its just game over if that happens for the bounceland player, so any cards like wasteland, strip mine, tradewind rider, avalanche riders, flickerwisp, riftwing cloudskate should be cut.

Otherwise the bouncelands should be cut, and probably replaced with painlands as a budget alternative.

 

[Hathaway]

I hadn't considered how awful getting your bounceland hit by Flickerwhisp would feel. Excellent point. Thanks. I will be swapping those two out, likely for the Temples. Control decks like scry 1, right?

 

[Hathaway]

Made a small change thanks to some insight offered here.

Out:

In:

Next on the thought experiment is how to get a few more payoff cards in the hands of the "weird" decks. I am looking at the following package in, but don't know what to cut.

To help enable the Loam deck.

Perhaps Hazoret could be a role player in reanimation decks as well? I don't want more than two of those cards though.

To help the ramp and Wildfire decks.

Are there any other...more fair-feeling targets for both strategies? Am I seeing overlap where it doesn't exist?

As far as the reanimation decks, I'm not sure what they need that isn't oppressive or un-fun. Maybe...something like: Maybe that's too good?

I also want to get in for the Tinker and Welder decks. Is fair-ish?

Basically, I want to get some cards in that feel spicy without being the fun police. That's a job for the red deck.

Has anyone had good luck with for the Pod deck? And ramp as well, I guess?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I would probably hold-off on these further swaps until you get some reps in with the current cube. Right now you have a reasonable pool of well-vetted cards--excepting the land destruction cards--that are reasonably close to a similar power band. As it is, about 85% of the format should just click, which is a fine place to be in terms of having a baseline for refining things. A lot of the narrow strategies should either be cut, or structured in a way where they hurt the overall cube experience in the least harmful way possible, but can still occasionally encourage niche strategies.

A lot of these other cards are all over the place in terms of power level and format context, and really it would be better to get a feeling for what you have, and what issues may or may not exist, before adding in cards that may be overly niche, overly dedicating resources to niche strategies, or increasing cube space to cards that are too powerful or underpowered.

 

[Hathaway]

Thanks for the input, Grillo. I get caught up in wanting to fix everything at once, often without drafting between changes.

I saw you make this comment on another cube, "I suggest running something similar to this for about 6ish months, keeping track of what guild/wedge/shards are over performing or under performing, and making sure that as people grow into the format, that they aren't over focusing on certain gameplay elements, at the exclusion of gameplay elements you want to be prominent in the format. At the end of that 6 months, you'll probably find lots of things that are annoying you, and than you can refine from there. This is a really healthy position to be in."

It seems like the right kind of advice for me to print out and put in the box my cube is housed in. Slow down, enjoy the cube, keep good notes of what is winning and what is being ignored or under-drafted, and reassess after several more sessions.

You mentioned that the land destruction cards might be out of place. Is that just experience talking or am I over-valuing keeping aggro decks at the forefront? On a related note, I was looking at running a few titans as big dudes, but they seem too good for my environment.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Its more that the LD is something of an unknown entity, so its hard to comment on. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily good or bad, it just makes it the part of the list most capable of back-firing. Looking over most of the rest of it, I can say with some confidence that the format should click very well, just because most of those cards have literally years of cross format evaluation going into them.

If we're drawing mostly off of a meta-cube experience, the LD cards don't seem to have survived very well across the collective body of cube lists. This leads me to believe there is something potentially wrong with the way they work out in practice. I'm also generally against aggro design thats predicated on exploiting the game's un-fun negative variance: it can end up being a double-edged sword, that enriches the competitiveness of the aggro decks, at the expense of overall format fun. Alternately, cards like stone rain also might just be bad, because they don't add anything to the board, or deal damage, and turn 3 on the draw might be too late.

They might have a place, but they could be more sophisticated cards that should be included reactively as a format need. Or they could just be bad cube cards. Hard to say.

 

[Hathaway]

I have got a few 4 player drafts in over the last few weeks, unfortunately, my notes were terrible. Here's what I have, followed by a few questions.

Draft one:

RG aggro 2-1
WB Humans 2-1
UGr ramp 1-2
UB control 1-2

Draft two:

UR spells/tempo 3-0
Bur control 2-1
GU ramp 1-2
RG midrange 0-3

Draft three:

WGU goodstuff 3-0
BG Stax 2-1
RG midrange 1-2
UB control 0-3

The UB control decks didn't seem to have solid finishers, the 0-3 list should have probably cut some weaker cards and splashed red or green. The 1-2 list had Upheaval and 'tog but just got wrecked. I'm wondering if removing them both for Rise from the tides and Ancient Excavation isn't better. The bant list was goodstuff.dec and likely the result of no one else in a similar plan. The biggest complaints from the drafters was that mana fixing felt thin and that reanimator didn't have interesting payoff cards. One guy took Life From the Loam early and was disappointed with it.

With that in mind, a question: how many lands should I have in the cube? I'm currently at 41, and would need another 13 to get to 15%.

Thinking about adding:

Another set of allied color fetch lands
Borborygmos Enraged for RG ramp and graveyard strategies.
Ramunap Excavator to help LftL.
Recruiter of the Guard because I love toolbox style tutors.
The Gitrog Monster to help out the Rock style deck and give Life From the Loam more friends.
Vampiric Tutor for more top of library manipulation (thinking about miracles) and another cheap interesting Tutor.
Knight of the Reliquary to push WG little kid decks.
Approach of the Second Sun because it looks like a fun mini-game. But is it too good/bad?

RG aggro doing fine without Kird Ape which is interesting. I'm thinking about cutting the cycling lands and swapping some of the under-drafted cards around. I picked up a stack of madness cards, but think I may instead just put in Supreme Will for Circular Logic and [INSERT INTERESTING BURN SPELL] for Fiery Temper.

Shout out to a few friends who donated stacks of fetchlands and the above listed cards and a few hundred more to help the cube.

 

[sigh]

I run 54 fixing lands or so at 400, so I don't think you need to go quite that high. But I do notice that several of your lands are not fixing lands, so your effective fixing count is lower, at 38/360, or 10.5%. I'd say at least 45/360 fixing lands would be a refreshing boost to fixing count. 48 (adding a full cycle) would get you 13.3% . Also good. I could see Rishadan Port going to help free up a little space. You already have that double fetch/shock baseline, so I'd probably not go deeper on that. Maybe painlands?

Upheaval is a bonkers card. It losing probably has to do with how well they can get ahead on mana? Not sure. It's a card I definitely think can be replaced, as it has high not-fun potential. Rise from the Tides seems fun.

This cube seems like it'd be compatible with cycling lands in the BLB. I've tried it to decent success so far, and it helps Life from the Loam step out of the shadows all on it's own, without being unfair.

 

[Hathaway]

This cube seems like it'd be compatible with cycling lands in the BLB. I've tried it to decent success so far, and it helps Life from the Loam step out of the shadows all on it's own, without being unfair.

I don't mean to sound thick, but what is the BLB?

 

[sigh]

No worries, I should have typed it out. That's the basic land box.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

How many cycling lands do you run in the basic land box?

 

[sigh]

How many cycling lands do you run in the basic land box?

I run this cycle:

I think like 4 or 5 of each? Don't exactly remember how many. But around that many has been plenty enough for everyone so far.

 

[Hathaway]

Does giving everyone access to them favor the slower decks? It seems like it would, as the aggro strategies want to use all their mana on turns one through four. Right? I defer to you, I have no experience with this idea.

Do you put cycling lands in the BLB (look at me being hip) instead of, or in addition to, a utility land draft? That's something I was considering in the future, but I really want to sort out the cube first.

In other news, I feel like there are several "pet projects" in my cube. These are cards that I want to do well, but no one drafts on purpose. I had Pyromancer's Goggles in for a while, but it went undrafted so I cut it. Current cards in this category include:

Tinker (which includes pieces like Thopter Spy Network and Sharding Sphinx
Profane Command
Phyrexian Reclamation
Wildfire though it comes together as part of a RG ramp deck. Maybe cut one copy?
Edric, Spymaster of Trest just never sees play.
Jeskai Ascendancy has seen play once, and the drafter said after that going UR spells would have been better.
Fiery Temper and Circular Logic as signposts for cycling/madness, but it isn't supported.
Compulsion seems like a generic good card for UB but has been underwhelming. Thinking of going to Riddleform instead.

I am working on a revision that will add a few more fixing lands and swap some of the under-drafted cards and decks around.

 

[Chris Taylor]

If you wanna add some more fixing but think that 50 is too much, maybe add a few 5 color lands?
Or a few "Painland of Choice" type cards if you can't find colorless fixing lands on the level you want

I've also got the enemy cycling lands shopped up if you want those (My solution to everything is more customs)

Spoiler

 

[sigh]

Does giving everyone access to them favor the slower decks? It seems like it would, as the aggro strategies want to use all their mana on turns one through four. Right? I defer to you, I have no experience with this idea.

Do you put cycling lands in the BLB (look at me being hip) instead of, or in addition to, a utility land draft? That's something I was considering in the future, but I really want to sort out the cube first.

In other news, I feel like there are several "pet projects" in my cube. These are cards that I want to do well, but no one drafts on purpose. I had Pyromancer's Goggles in for a while, but it went undrafted so I cut it. Current cards in this category include:

Tinker (which includes pieces like Thopter Spy Network and Sharding Sphinx
Profane Command
Phyrexian Reclamation
Wildfire though it comes together as part of a RG ramp deck. Maybe cut one copy?
Edric, Spymaster of Trest just never sees play.
Jeskai Ascendancy has seen play once, and the drafter said after that going UR spells would have been better.
Fiery Temper and Circular Logic as signposts for cycling/madness, but it isn't supported.
Compulsion seems like a generic good card for UB but has been underwhelming. Thinking of going to Riddleform instead.

I am working on a revision that will add a few more fixing lands and swap some of the under-drafted cards and decks around.

I don't think it's overall helped slow decks vs. fast decks in my format. They are monocolor etb tapped lands, which can give the aggro deck some opportunity while the slower deck sets up. My aggro decks also are generally hyper aggro either.

I don't have a ULD, so can't speak to that. I could see them being a cheap pick there instead of BLB inclusion.

I'd have to spend more time investigating "pet" cards, but I have a feeling they may be starved for a deck to utilize them? What I mean is they should be pet decks not pet cards. Fixing should help a couple, like Ascendancy. Others might just need some tender loving care. Also if your playgroup is averse to trying build-arounds, that's a consideration only you can really gauge.