General Decks that have 3-0'd your cube

Lucre

Lucre

Yeah it really looks like CML took lands high and got all the multicoloured cards back, though his is the multicolour cube so what do I know.

I think my UW deck had another rune snag but damn did I feel like a jerk playing that. It's just frustrating plays stacked up. It really felt like you were always precariously perched on the edge of losing, trading 1-1 and drawing too much land until you stabilized. I could have really used a compulsive research but getting shelldock isle in the land draft made me really happy. AEtherling is pretty unreasonable.

I'm not a very good drafter but I decided to take lands a little later for enablers and artifacts I wanted and low and behold I ended up with a lot of mana rocks. 1st pick wayfarer's bauble cracked me up.

Denix was the real story that night, his weird aggro deck being an incredible departure for him (because he didn't draft it) we have proven in two drafts so far that random picks are at least as good as any drafter at the table. That was way too much fun.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Lucre said:
Denix was the real story that night, his weird aggro deck being an incredible departure for him (because he didn't draft it) we have proven in two drafts so far that random picks are at least as good as any drafter at the table. That was way too much fun.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that random pile o' cards (literally) forced Denix out of his comfort zone of midrangy value-packed durdle decks. I'm glad most people drafted a deck outside of their usual comfort zone last night, actually (welp, except for me, so I have no one but myself to blame for my 2-2 record).

Aetherling is pretty unbeatable in the slow decks mirror. Way better than I could've hoped for.

My favourite play of the night, when I was staring down Denix's six-power attacker (thanks to a Wargear grafted on) that had already hit me twice by turn four.

Me: Ramp into this turn four Thragtusk, gain five.
Denix: Land, Mark of Mutiny your Thragtusk, attack. Play this Jinxed Idol. Sac the tusk, get a beast. Here, have this statue!
Me: ...and here I thought I'd stabilized.
 
anotak

anotak

We agreed all guildgates came in untapped during this draft.
I first picked shard phoenix, this is probably the most fun I've had cubing yet.

I had 2 really close games:
In the finals game 1, I was at 1 and my opponent was at 2, and I controlled:
Journeyer's Kite, Gilded Lotus, Oblivion Stone, Staff of Nin, Sire of Insanity, Nyxathid
and my opponent had Precursor Golem in play and Kederekt Leviathan in his grave. So he swung out, activated o-stone and then activated staff and kite in response to bring him to 1 and get another land to thin, and then passed it back to me, and I managed to topdeck Anger.

In another game, I held off my opponent's creatures+Kessig Wolf Run with trading post lifegain and removal and blockers while having out journeyer's kite + staff of nin + countryside crusher activating every turn until the point where I had 3 cards left in library and I was at 3 life. He was at 17. He swung with his last creature, Nimble Mongoose and so I blocked with my 3/3 Countryside Crusher (it somehow had -1/-1 counters placed on it so it was back down to 3/3) and sac'd w/ Trading Post to return steel hellkite. I played my morbid Brimstone Volley eot bring him to 12. I had anger in my yard, and drew 2 of my last 3 cards. I played my topdeck'd lavamancer, and the hellkite swinging for 6. Ping with lavamancer and staff, for another 3, and another 3 during my upkeep, killing him just barely.

Rb Control









 
anotak

anotak

It is for budget reasons, I don't really like them. I am probably just going to proxy shocks and fetches soon rather than buy them. However, it is a much much better than I expected to play with so many tapped lands. I thought it'd be awful and unplayable but we've played with them just being gates most drafts and it hasn't been that bad. I particularly don't like the refuges.

But yeah, in this draft we tried them as scarslands. Last time they just came in entirely untapped. I didn't like scarslands honestly (and neither did the group), they were basically gates anyway most of the time.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
if you are a man you will like this one (60 cards because we only got 4 people because people are caring about standard)

theros takeaways:
spellheart chimera is just way too bad without a gazillion cantrips
nykthos is rather wonderful and has earned itself a slot in the funsies draft
i like giant green monsters

sometimes after a nice cube i put on some rachmaninov, eat a dispensary-made legal candy, get sentimental. i am fond of my playgroup. there are like 40 of us. i like that we are competitive and can beat wotc employees / 'the best player to never t8 a pt' in theros moneydraft. beautiful possibilities are unearthed with each passing cube. this game is by far the best go i've had at having a successful social life as an 'adult.' the cube is the centerpiece of it & it would not be as good without this site.

Red Sox, White People, Green Monsters









 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I passed Lucas a last pick Aetherling in pack two. I then watched as he systematically dismantled every unsuspecting opponent with it.

Oops.

Lucas's Superfriends










Because some rounds went to time, there was a second undefeated deck last night. This deck made the best use of Resto that I've seen in cube so far.

BW So Midrange It Hurts








 
Lucre

Lucre

I cannot get over how much I like the deck display!
I kinda hated my deck this week! It was like a real education in why people hate miracles. Tapout control was a good learning experience though, and so is playing planeswalkers without having any creatures.

I'm so confused by the ranger of eos in Will's deck! The week can be pretty accurately described as Black Midranged. I feel like everyone who drafted it put on a good show, but there didn't seem enough of it to go around properly. Great multicolour stuff just kept tabling for me, I guess the same can't be said for everyone else!
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I think the Terminus is your list was pretty innocuous, but then again, I didn't see whether you Bonfired anyone out of the water. Did you?

I'm confused by many things in Wilson's deck. But I will say that assembling a Baneslayer with boots is nigh unstoppable for any aggro deck.

Calvin pointed out an oddity of last night's draft: the four green drafters were all adjacent to one another, followed by the four white drafters sitting next to each other (of which I was smack dab in the middle). While we were fighting it out for those colours, you scooped up all of the sweet blue spells, while Wilson nabbed all of the black value bodies. Classic example of good signal reading on your parts!
 
D

DohBoy

Eric bullied me into signing up and replying this thread.

I'm not very good at magic so I wouldn't read too much into my decisions in drafting or playing. I put in Ranger of Eos in hopes that I can find both champions for a bit more card advantage. I figured drawing a bajillion cards would eventually find me the right card to win with. =P

I focused my deck on removal, card draw and then whatever random beefy creatures I saw. And since I knew I would be losing a lot of life due to card draw, I picked up whatever lifelink creatures/lands that I could find.
 
Lucre

Lucre

I think I would have trouble calling myself a white drafter, I had early fixing and so took all the wraths and w/x cards I felt I had unlocked. I was a blue drafter that thankfully scooped up every sweeper.

Bonfire was mean. Really it could have been any sweeper most of the time, but my deck was surprisingly inevitable for what looked like a pile of sorcery speed removal.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
was wondering what made that deck so amazing until i came across the two signets. SO GOOD
 
T

tomchaps

So, reading reports from here and elsewhere, it's clear that Aetherling is a monster. But is it fun? I like my control finishers to be a bit more fragile, frankly, and don't like one-card win conditions in blue. So, he's great, yes. Is he good for the health of your cube, though?

And holy crap, that BWR deck is full of great cards I've never seen before, like Galvanic Arc and Sandsower. I'll have to look at your cube more closely...
 
Lucre

Lucre

Schof:
Reminds me of the blind hunter + sky knight legionnaire + removal decks I would draft a lot of during classic ravnica.

tomchaps said:
So, reading reports from here and elsewhere, it's clear that Aetherling is a monster. But is it fun? I like my control finishers to be a bit more fragile, frankly, and don't like one-card win conditions in blue. So, he's great, yes. Is he good for the health of your cube, though?

And holy crap, that BWR deck is full of great cards I've never seen before, like Galvanic Arc and Sandsower. I'll have to look at your cube more closely...
Click to expand...

I actually had a long text message conversation with Eric when he decided to take out AEtherling. I 3-0'd our last two drafts with it in my deck and he saw it as a sign. I sort of liken it to a big expensive man land in the way I tended to play with it. It costs a lot of mana to get working, it's not vulnerable to my own cards and the threat of activation is not something to be taken lightly.

I'd also say it looks a little like a delayed gratification blue blaze.

Fascinating card. Interesting calls especially of you are behind with it on the table.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
I like AEtherling a lot, the kind of "win-con-less" control decks that used to dominate Standard are very hard to build in Cube, and unless you can pull it off then he's a far worse card than King Frosty (not to mention the other Titans). He's a different card but much harder to build around, too.

So more power to you if you can end up riding a 4/5 for 6 to victory.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
In the abstract, I agree that Aetherling is worse than Frost Titan, but where it became better in our drafts were in the games with gridlocked ground stall. Whereas the Titan might tap down a big butt and then get gang blocked, Aetherling just cruises along on the shoulder past all of the traffic and smacks for eight. That it can blow open stalemates so easily and effortlessly with no opportunity for interaction from the opponent is what gives me pause.

I'm reverting back to the vanilla Sphinx of Jwar Isle for the time being. It was the definition of unexciting in its last go-round, though, so that slot is still up in the air.
 
CML

CML

Contributor
gridlocked ground stall? stalemates? sounds like you have bigger problems than AEtherling my man
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Eh. It's complicated.

On the one hand, the speed of my cube is fast enough such that I'm pretty sure Shelldock Isle is more or less rubbish here. When it comes to the utility land draft, I tend to gravitate towards Halimar Depths or Faerie Conclave ahead of Shelldock, because games don't go long enough for the most part that I can count on getting my free card.

On the other, more than half of my regular playgroup consists of new and newish players, not all of whom have picked up on this. As you might expect, generic Good Stuff Midrange is what they end up drafting a good chunk of the time. So more than half of the field is jamming Cloudgoat Rangers against Melokus, and Bribery-ed up Myr Battlespheres versus Creakwood Liege armies. Meanwhile, Calvin is sneaking under this whole mess with his Lightning Maulers, I'm going over the top with Craterhoof Behemoth, and Lucas is mopping up the riff raff with his Day of Judgments.

Is there a problem? It's hard to say. It can be challenging to encourage people to experiment and to force themselves to break out of their comfort zones, without just outright telling them what to do. Before anyone in my group opens a single pack, I can probably predict what archetype half of them will be in, with about 80% accuracy. I'm curious to learn how other cube designers here help the beginners in their own respective groups improve, and move away from defaulting to good stuff midrange.

Now. How does any of this relate to Aetherling? It doesn't, really. I guess I was just trying to make a point that Aetherling is borderline too good in my cube environment, and it should come as no surprise that Frost Titan has already been removed from my relatively low-powered list. It might very well be that it's completely innocuous - heck, I've reincluded Jace, the Mind Sculptor for a couple drafts now, and the group consensus so far seems to be that he's Not Very Good, despite twenty fetchlands floating around, again because the speed at which aggro players can amass an army poses such a threat. But with all that said, I'm gonna bench Aetherling for a bit, and see what happens.
 
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