I don't see any reason why anyone would need threee of ANY card in cube besides Pod and maybe Rune Snag effects. Personally, I think most of the aggro one drops we all used to run three of are now fine as just two ofs.
General Decks that have 3-0'd your cube
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
I have one triple card. Brainstorm. Because blue 1's are shit and brainstorm is just that useful in pretty much everything that can run it.
I would agree though that tripling up on a lot of these other cards is just making cube more like constructed. Not really what I'm after. IMO, there is such thing as too much consistency.
I would agree though that tripling up on a lot of these other cards is just making cube more like constructed. Not really what I'm after. IMO, there is such thing as too much consistency.
I think the quality of the current suite of one drops give you enough material to support a theme without going overboard. It was an experiment, but 3 delvers ended up with one player, I got two champs and you know how the Rdw deck looked. Probably it'll be fine as just two offs
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Zombish Aggro
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Cruel Sadist doesn't have a tap symbol for the first ability and says "once per turn as a sorcery". Pretty much a perfect card, love the design, feels black, nice one drop, highly recommended.
Firestorm is so much fun.
I was liking this deck well enough, but in the second round my deck fizzled with my opponent at 10 and I won anyway thanks to topdecking burn and it felt dumb. Nimble Mongoose sucks and it won't work in this cube ever, so I'll put Obstinate Baloth in the spot to give green another out to this sort of line.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Pft cards suck anyways
Like what is there that is remotely like Carrion feeder? Viscera seer kinda sucks
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I say if it stops people running shit like Jackal Pup now that firedrinker Satyr exists, go for it.
Also:
Trust me, there's reasons for plenty of cards
Has anyone tried multiple Aether Vials? That seems like a card which might benefit.
yes, and it's still a Constructed card. Pod at least only asks for a couple dudes of each cost, Vial wants you to fill your entire deck with three-drops or oops it doesn't work anymore. I'd squadron it over running multiple slots.
I run three Pods and it's been fine, but I tried tripling up on Brainstorm and even it felt excessive. If this more defined format is for you guys then I say go for it! Don't pretend it doesn't constrain possible turn ones and impose more restrictions on newbie drafters though.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
1 drops are still just too shitty to run them "honestly". Look at how thin the selection is in the average powermax cube. Drafters looking for one drops need to take basically whatever they find because there aren't enough of them for them to be picky and many of them just suck. Lets face it, 2/1s for 1 suck and have for a long time. One toughness is just a huge liability, dying to blocks from every random token and mana elf, getting 2for1ed by every fire // ice and arc trail, getting picked off by every pinger, its too much. WotC realized it and now prints 2/1s with relevant upsides to make up for their level of liability. If your cube is built to handle 2/1s that repeatedly come back to life, then cards like savannah lions really don't have a role in your list that is tuned to handle much stronger threats. And without cards like those to fill at slots, you really need multiples or custom cards to fill the holes and give drafters actual choices.
Budget Cube Night
... Ruined by me, Lucas!
So I'm trying to remember what the games were like, I bet they were hella samey as you'd expect! Fuck I drew half my deck most games and even lost a game to decking!
Oh goodness Brago caught a lot of flack with me this tournament but it was often giving me the value keeping me in the game while I drew cards that were becoming redundant like my 5 wraths or lands.
Drafting was probably the most interesting part of this deck. I went in knowing the fixing was a set of life lands and trilands and I tried to keep myself open. I think my first pick was a UG lifeland and my 2nd was the Naya triland and my third pick was Phantom Centaur. Look where I ended up!
Round one was against a mardu deck with a lot of hand disruption and hard to block guys, it had a lot of flooding problems and the pilot made a few bad attacks, but I certainly tried to make a couple impossible blocks, and hence sequenced my spells quite incorrectly. Punt city really! I did get to do something pretty sweet regarding casting a fact or fiction in response to a duress.
Round Two was as tough as nails! Green black midranged! Highly attrition based and wrath resistant. Grim Haruspex and Blood Artist were rough customers! Living Death combined with Lotleth Troll and Wild Mongrel was wild too, but I got to cycle a dragon into play twice! Rancor was absolutely this dude's MVP. Totes Martial Coup'd for 12 dudes and lost lol!
Round Three was less exciting than I hoped. Boros Aggro kept me light headed and wary, but golly did it feel one sided. His draws never seemed to have enough pressure to make use of my slow moments. I caught Myles with a Plumeveil vs his Prophetic Flamespeaker, he was saving his 2nd red for post combat and it probably cost him the game not to be able to blow me out with first strike.
This deck did not have the amount of pressure or velocity I like out of my control decks, but it could generate a lot of value and it had enough relevant plays to make up for the moments it was super redundant. Hundred Hands was super cute, Fact or fictions were usually hilarious and god damn was it nice to play with Eternal Dragon again.
... Ruined by me, Lucas!
NO FUN
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So I'm trying to remember what the games were like, I bet they were hella samey as you'd expect! Fuck I drew half my deck most games and even lost a game to decking!
Oh goodness Brago caught a lot of flack with me this tournament but it was often giving me the value keeping me in the game while I drew cards that were becoming redundant like my 5 wraths or lands.
Drafting was probably the most interesting part of this deck. I went in knowing the fixing was a set of life lands and trilands and I tried to keep myself open. I think my first pick was a UG lifeland and my 2nd was the Naya triland and my third pick was Phantom Centaur. Look where I ended up!
Round one was against a mardu deck with a lot of hand disruption and hard to block guys, it had a lot of flooding problems and the pilot made a few bad attacks, but I certainly tried to make a couple impossible blocks, and hence sequenced my spells quite incorrectly. Punt city really! I did get to do something pretty sweet regarding casting a fact or fiction in response to a duress.
Round Two was as tough as nails! Green black midranged! Highly attrition based and wrath resistant. Grim Haruspex and Blood Artist were rough customers! Living Death combined with Lotleth Troll and Wild Mongrel was wild too, but I got to cycle a dragon into play twice! Rancor was absolutely this dude's MVP. Totes Martial Coup'd for 12 dudes and lost lol!
Round Three was less exciting than I hoped. Boros Aggro kept me light headed and wary, but golly did it feel one sided. His draws never seemed to have enough pressure to make use of my slow moments. I caught Myles with a Plumeveil vs his Prophetic Flamespeaker, he was saving his 2nd red for post combat and it probably cost him the game not to be able to blow me out with first strike.
This deck did not have the amount of pressure or velocity I like out of my control decks, but it could generate a lot of value and it had enough relevant plays to make up for the moments it was super redundant. Hundred Hands was super cute, Fact or fictions were usually hilarious and god damn was it nice to play with Eternal Dragon again.
CML
Contributor
with the exception of gravecrawler (and carrion feeder) i think i disagree. this certainly used to be true but damn have they printed a lot of cube cards lately. i mean, i like my double deathrite and a couple others, but so many of these triplicates (seeker of the way etc.) seem so heavy-handed in the same vein of "if wizards is obviously pushing theme X it probably isn't going to be that much better and the deckbuilding decisions will be duller."
breaking singleton has been great! i will always judge "people" who run Frenzied Goblin in their powermax Cubes. but past a certain point some duplicates are abstractly undesirable. basically we need their inclusion to enable more themes than it excludes "variety" and when you're cutting unplayables from your Cube that's zero-risk good design, but it's also obvious to the point where we could just move past it and back and forth about something more interesting.
i propose this sample 1-drop section without any other duplicates, and i think is reasonable for a high-powered cube 495 cards or fewer. bear in mind most cubes on here are smaller than mine and many are also lower-powered and you can include even more weird and marginal cards.
I feel like it isn't hard to make an environment where 2/1s are pretty decent. Even as the game rolls out. One good trick is to make sure that every colour besides green doesn't have a lot of creatures that completely outclass a 2/1 attacker or blocker without being rather a dog to removal. If some dunderhead is tapping down for some 3/3+ on their turn sitting pretty, and you can efficiently remove their guy, attack and play another attacker you feel quite ahead. Another element of this is not having shite removal and being able to refresh cards quickly. I don't usually feel too bad after I compulsive research and play two 2/1s if the designers are giving me some faith in the value of my cards.
You shouldn't just evaluate the weenies, look at how many huntmaster of the fells type things you are playing and how many cards each of these medium cost guys are worth against decks playing a lot of small creatures.
CML
Contributor
if youre saying that singleton makes for more replay value, sure, i guess i agree, except it makes me uncomfortable because the modo cube
Hmmm, I think I'm in Camp FSR on this one. Mardu Woe-Reaper, Dragon Hunter, Gnarled Scarhide, and Firedrinker Satyr aren't exactly making waves in standard, and this is the lowest powered constructed format that I can remember in years. Elite Vanguard has been bad since the day it was printed, and has only gotten worse in the years since. A 2/1 for 1, while giving you a fine rate on mana, tends to be worth less than a card. Aggro decks, more than any other, value consistency in their draws, and having mediocre one drops in their opener that get brick walled by turn three can sometimes be the difference between a tight win and a blowout loss. My tack has been to break singleton liberally, especially in the one drop space, and then scale back if it proves to be too repetitive or oppressive. Having four Gravecrawlers was way over the line, but by comparison, three Champion of the Parish have been relatively tame, as white weenie isn't close to a top tier archetype.
I would say that, unless midrange is completely absent from your cube environment, you should probably be staying away from the 2/1's for 1. It's too easy for them to be unwittingly outclassed by any number of creatures in every colour, from your value black threes to your chunky green bodies to your cantripping blue durdles, and everything in between. Further, all of the weenies mentioned above not only don't cut the mustard in constructed, but weren't superstars in their respective limited formats, either. I doubt that they would suddenly become appealing in the move over to cube, which tends to play out like a hybrid limited/constructed environment.
I would say that, unless midrange is completely absent from your cube environment, you should probably be staying away from the 2/1's for 1. It's too easy for them to be unwittingly outclassed by any number of creatures in every colour, from your value black threes to your chunky green bodies to your cantripping blue durdles, and everything in between. Further, all of the weenies mentioned above not only don't cut the mustard in constructed, but weren't superstars in their respective limited formats, either. I doubt that they would suddenly become appealing in the move over to cube, which tends to play out like a hybrid limited/constructed environment.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
He's not really making a 2/1 for 1 argument though. There is a decent assortment of one drops now that either grow vertically, recur, offer utility, or have evasion. The list he provided I don't think is exhaustive, and like he mentioned, it even becomes broader once you move down the power spectrum. This is a good trend.
yeah I was only addressing the one argument. One drops are a rough thing in a tonne of formats, but I think that it's important to look at the other parts of your cube and not just them when making your evaluations. Of course this is all subjective, you put importance on the gameplay and nostalgia you value. They can argue about 1 drops till the cows come home for all I care, but I'll interact with the arguments I have insight on : )
I guess I'm closer to CML's side in the actual argument because I hate it when I'm in a deck that is too top or mid heavy without having proactive or reactive ways to use it's extra mana. Being stuck with a lot of 3s in your deck makes your cheaper spells feel really valuable, and they are just more interesting to a greater variety of decks. Finding ones and twos that control decks want can be tricky, but I think in recent times things have been getting better. I also find I take a lot of SB high power vs cost vanillas in control decks because they often trade up, the added pressure can be sweet in the mirror and they are usually easy to cast around a draw spell or counter.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Aggro based on 2/1s places some really unhealthy restrictions on what you can do in your Cube; either you have to remove cards/archetypes that are too clunky to compete with the perfect aggro curve (but which maybe could deal with 'just' a parade of strong creatures starting on turn 2/3), or you have to cut back on cards that are intrinsically good against 2/1s (tokens, Butcher Ghoul, dividable damage).
Anyway, more decks! From a 6-man earlier today:
Highlight: Cartel Aristocrat + Puppeteer Clique + other stuff in play. Hero plays Zealous Conscripts, sacs Clique to steal Saffi from Villain's GY and go infinite
Highlight: casting a spell
my haphazard concoction, featuring Ice:
Highlight: Using Nykthos to power out Dictate of Heliod mid-combat, triggering Seeker/Shu Yun/Exemplars and giving Exemplars double strike; using Meloku to get another Nykthos activation to pick up all my lands with Dictate in play
Anyway, more decks! From a 6-man earlier today:
WBR Aristocrats
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Highlight: Cartel Aristocrat + Puppeteer Clique + other stuff in play. Hero plays Zealous Conscripts, sacs Clique to steal Saffi from Villain's GY and go infinite
5C UG
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Highlight: casting a spell
my haphazard concoction, featuring Ice:
Wu Prowess/Blink
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Highlight: Using Nykthos to power out Dictate of Heliod mid-combat, triggering Seeker/Shu Yun/Exemplars and giving Exemplars double strike; using Meloku to get another Nykthos activation to pick up all my lands with Dictate in play
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Ew... That 5C UG build looks gross! How are you going to lose with that deck?
Double finks sounds pretty nutty
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
Enchanted Zoo
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Customs
Oakheart Dryads (2/2 puts +1/+1 counters)
Forgeborn Oreads (1/1 costs
)Undying Rage (costs
)Pretty awesome deck to pilot. Replenish was nuts here with all of the enchantment creatures and stormbind/fauna shaman. This deck could change gears dramatically in games and with sideboarding it could even change its identity to a fair degree. Monastery Mentor is pretty nutty and might not really have a place here. Grinding people out with stupid engines based on Mark of Fury is such a cheap thrill. Garruk Relentless is a decent card, but not as omfg awesome as the powermax cubers say it is, I wouldn't put it in the top half of the green cards in my list.