[Design/Construction] The Bleed Cube

[Turillazzo]

Alright, that was a decent enough of a reply. Now for a package I would hope to see in this cube one day but is probably a little too strong:

I totally second this, except with Hex Parasite instead of the wall, as it seems to be less poisonous and have generally wider applications (especially if we go for a blue +1+1 theme).
Also thank you for Ludevic's Test Subject, I think I'll put it in my cube to help control and encourage blue mages to play Tezzeret's Gambit


Grillo, I approve of your "counters as protection" idea too, Undying Evil is a trick that I always want to play because it gives a BIG tempo edge if played correctly; sadly it doesn't work if the target comes with "natural" counters, so you're gonna have to jump through some hoops...

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

You're probably right about the rack. I feel like there should be some pressure on the hand though, to reward people for using their mana, and thought it should be specters + the rack. A lot of those blue options are good, and I should be able to run death's shadow.

I should probably be looking at pauper MBC for how a modern discard deck would function (I think its the only tier 1 deck in a format that focuses on discard other than thoughtseize). If I remember correctly, most of those 1990s era discard decks were based around hypnotic specter and disrupting scepter. I would probably be better off with value ETB cards like these:




Now, lets talk about chittering rats. That is the absolute mildest card I could use as a basis for a prison deck. You have to cast it at the right time, and its a creature, which means its easy to interact with. In isolation its just a solid tempo play for black.

So is prison just a completely irredeemable archetype with no place in the modern world? Or can it be both fun to play and play against. The only current tier 1 prison deck in a format that I can think of is stax, and I have no idea if people hate that deck or no.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, after giving it some thought, and after the prison thread, I have a better idea what I want. Instead of running prison archetypes that change the texture of a given game, I want the cube itself to feel like the prison, with escape in reach, but freedom only being obtainable by killing your opponent. Kind of like saw.

Spoiler

I took my own advice I listed out the ten guilds, and the first theme of the first color pair that I want to talk about is a U/B theme based off of pauper's old rats deck, ninjutsu creatures, and braids



Rats had strong control and tempo elements to it, and could attrit an opponent through unearth based recursion. I want to recreate this experience, where the player has to manage these painful effects in a way where it positively generates either card advantage or tempo for them. I've not decided where exactly I want to bring singleton, other than grim discovery and unearth.

Probably get more looter effects from blue eventually. Probably wants more cycling somewhere.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

So, I got to put together a nice unearth package, and I think I've finally found an environment where crypt champion can shine.

I was looking for some great unearth targets in blue, and stumbled across the perfect card



I broke singleton on grim discovery, as part of a counter weight to a R/G/w land destruction theme. I was looking at:





So I gave this some thought. The LD is mostly creature based, and requires a blink combo. This gets around having to dedicate lots of slots to LD, that is either too cheap or has bad late game applications. Grim discovery acts as a counter weight, as does eternal witness, tilling treefolk, life from the loam, and den protector. Maybe double up on riders, not sure. It depends on how much I want to see this in R/B (with small pox and value reanimation).

I'm still not sure on the final mana base, but I know I want a set of bouncelands and the pains. Cycling lands look really tempting here though.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think I am going to go x3 pain, x1 bounce, then in support run 5 colorless cycling lands, x2 radiant fountain, x1 quicksand, x1 barbarian ring, and x1 nomad stadium.

This lets me push painlands, while using bouncelands in conjunction with cycling lands and radiant fountain to recreate the experience of bouncing gainlands and scry lands. I want bouncelands because they provide a life efficent way to produce mana, and also all of their other benefits. They are vulnerable to LD, but that vulnerability can be offset by land recursive engines, thus creating a meta-game relationship.

To increase the hostility of the environment, I doubled up on some of the undercosted phyrexian mana creatures: porcelain legionnaire, spined thopter, moltensteel dragon, and thundering tanadon. To pressure people to actually play out phyrexian spells, rather than sit on them in hand, I added the same high impact discard I've been using in the penny pincher cube: persecute, hypnotic specter, and nightmare void.

Besides placing the players in hostile, constricting environments and challenging them to adapt, I also want to explore with a number of positional locks and soft locks.

I took some inspiration from Pauper's jund loam, but would like to explore a bit more the idea of using battlefield scrounger as an engine card to setup of locks with, as well as using tilling treefolk as part of a land recursion engine. You higher power folks would want to be using bow of nylea to create a similar relationship.

Tilling treefolk is, in a certain sense, a better card for cube than life from the loam because it adds to your board presence and can block. It offsets the impact of LD, works well with blink and value reanimation effects, retrace (worm harvest!), and can turn cycling lands or quicksand into a repeat source of card advantage.

Battlefield scrounger can setup all sorts of lock type effects when used in conjunction with self-mill effects. If you want to recreate a spider spawning or tight sight type deck, you can do this in a much more compact and less narrow package via scrounger + spider spawning (or worm harvest, scrounger + spider spawning). With a sac outlet, you can create a sort of soft lock with it and chittering rats (plus some card draw which goes TOL). In addition, you can try to just exhaust the opponent using it in conjunction with cards like howling mine and moment's peace.

I think these sorts of prison locks are fine, if you think of it like a martial arts match, where each opponent is trying to maneuver for a submission hold, and there are ways to try to get out of it.

I suppose in mtg terms its a bit like when an aggro deck tries to leverage perceived pressure to create tempo, but in this case its the threat of the the lock that is being used to enable an active, multi-faceted game.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Another option for LD is to go with a more catastrophe approach, where players sacrifice lands. That actually balances out better with bouncelands



I kind of like shaman and herder here because you can unearth them >.>

As for the ones that deal damage, prob would want higher CC spells so as to further encourage people to get their creatures out and play into the mana base. Pretty much narrows things down to x2 wildfire, or x1 wildfire, x1 destructive force.

In that world, bouncelands take on a post disaster ramp role, a bit like signets in power cube (but actually good for the environment).

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I was thinking about tangle wire, and was reminded that this card existed:



Which is effectively a creature based tangle wire, enabling a few decks.

R/W Tangle Wire



And how about white sacrifice effects?




And of course, this feeds into W/B yosei, combining reanimation effects and black sacrifice outlets or recursive outlets.

 

[Kirblinx]

All these updates are so hard to grok considering they are all out of the ordinary ideas. I want to try and give feedback but I have no idea how any of these archetypes are going to play, how it interacts with the cube and if it is going to be any fun.
I guess when you call it the 'bleed cube', everyone is going to have a bad time.

I just did a holiday cube draft (because I have no one to play with here ) and drafted some bad artifact deck. I just won my last game by weldering between Tangle Wire and Tidehollow Sculler, keeping their lands tapped and their best threat away. I felt miserable doing it. Maybe I am not as much of a sadist as I thought I was. If this is a solid archetype in this cube it probably isn't for me and I will be so grumpy on the other side of the table if they play me.

Also, one of the first themes you mentioned was RG Bloodthirst, but no cards have been added to the cube. Trying to different archetype maybe?

Also, the thing I remember most about Yosei was that it seemed to work well with this card while in standard. Silly memory. Those cards don't even seem that good together...

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Actually, you are providing the best feedback possible--honest feedback.

This is kind of an eccentric project, and difficult even for me to grok. I'm mostly just trying to find out to what extent prison is cubeable, where its fun, and brainstorming a bunch of (potentially) insane ideas. It may be that its just a terrible archetype, and banishing it for all time was one of NWO's design triumphs. To sort of get to the meat of the matter (and because I was getting lost as I hadn't been designing with a guild road map) I took out the bloodthirst cards and pingers for the time being, and wanted to focus on weeding out the prison archetypes.

So far I think we had a few posititive hits (I am kind of treating likes as votes):

1. The tempoish U/B, ninjutsu based rats deck
2. The smallpox and braids reanimation based deck
3. The graveyard based B/G "tight sight" or "spider spawning" self-mill deck.

Prison as a sort of tempo piece seemed to be viewed positively in other threads (I know I've seen good things written about tangle wire) so I thought maybe a yosei based deck could work. Though maybe this is too abusable, or too much of a hard lock. I could cut the tangle wires, just run yosei, and provide a slimmed down and focused blink package that would tun yosei into an engine piece. I could also include more exile effects to help counter her. Kind of still want to brew up some nonsense with welder.

Another interesting question is world queller vs. braids, cabal minion: is one more cubeable than the other? Is it the color or how easy it is to kill braids?

I also find it so interesting how unpopular R/G land destruction is, even with higher CC LD, and counter weights like tilling treefolk or life from the loam. Yet, at the same time the symmetrical land destruction of small pox is ok.