Dom Harvey
Contributor
¡ʞɔǝp ɥsɐlɟ ɐ uᴉ pooƃ ʎllɐǝɹ sɯǝǝs ʇᴉ ʇnq ʇᴉ ʍǝɹp ɹǝʌǝu I!
Dom's Stream of Consciousness
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
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Dom Harvey
Contributor
Have more time now and there's a Cube-a-thon this weekend where I might get to draft my list so I want to prepare some changes.
The Role of Black
I need to take another look at the black-based sacrifice deck. It's a strong, interesting, flexible deck that I want to keep as a backbone of the Cube, but there are so many tools for it that it's easy to give it unnecessary support at the expense of other decks. It crowds out 'normal' BR aggro, something not seen in my Cube in forever and would like to have. I also want to see how naturally it extends into other colours and if it can coexist with other possible subthemes like Madness or Zombies. What I need:
- Enough good 1-drops. Cryptbreaker might be vital here as a cheap, self-contained engine, but it incentivizes a move back towards Gravecrawler. That might not be so bad, though. Let's say I have 2 Bloodsoaked Champion, 2 Gravecrawler, a Cryptbreaker (maybe this is the one to double up, who knows) and 1/2 Carrion Feeders. That's a good base (cf. the Carnophage/Gravecrawler/Diregraf Ghoul/Champion/Sarcomancy/Lacerator package of Cubes that support black aggro) but I could use more. The issue in my Cube is that there are few red 1-drops and most of those don't fit in this deck (Monastery Swiftspear, Figure of Destiny). I already break my 'no Savannah Lions' rule for Zurgo, and I should extend that to Goblin Guide et al. Previous Cubes had 2/3 Rakdos Cackler, maybe that's the way to go?
- Enough good 2-drops! There are more than enough for the sac deck (Blood Artist, Mogg War Marshal, Skirsdag High Priest...) but almost none for traditional BR. Vampire Hexmage has some fun applications, is another good PW answer, and attacks better than your average 2/x. Heir of Falkenrath is fine. I was excited about Asylum Visitor but idk if it's good in practice? Knight of Infamy would be great if it didn't have protection; maybe I should run it anyway. Thrill-Kill Assassin is solid, attacking well even in the late game (and pitching to Force...). The in-your-face option is double Dark Confidant, which could be the answer. Bob is a bit out of place in my Cube but that's because I haven't supported decks like BR much. Bitterblossom and Pack Rat are great in any black deck.
Red makes a decent offer. Abbot of Keral Keep can be good but is Goblin Piker depressingly often. Lightning Mauler is great. Gore-House Chainwalker is functional but nobody is excited about it. I like Plated Geopede and Stormblood Berserker.
There are lots of options at RR and BB but it's hard to justify running many at the same time.
BR gives Grenzo and Tymaret, which has nice Zombie/sacrifice synergies and is just good by itself.
The universal 2-drop is Porcelain Legionnaire, which I still maintain is a good doubles candidate.
- At 3 there's no shortage of cards but should I throw a few bones to aggro?
Hellhole Flailer hits hard and gets better with all the pump effects. Shambling Remains sneaks in for the last points and can start recursion for Gravecrawler/Flamewake Phoenix(/Prized Amalgam?). I loved Lyzolda back in the day but it feels so clunky now (more so than Tymaret though?). Olivia, Mobilized for War is a really interesting card that I haven't got to see in action yet: you can set up ridiculous chains with Bloodghast, Gravecrawler, Vengevine, and so on, or just make your Rabblemaster even better.
For the sac outlets, there's:
1: Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer (suitable for combo sac decks or if a Vampires theme sneaks in somehow)
2: Bloodthrone Vampire (somehow feels worse than Husk even when the Zombie type isn't relevant despite the deck having a glut of 3s), Goblin Bombardment (verging on too good)
3: Flesh Carver (doubles as an outlet and a Traveler)
For the 'Doomed Travelers', there's:
2: Butcher Ghoul/Sultai Emissary/Carrier Thrall, Bloodghast, Hangarback Walker, Perilous Myr
3: Flesh Carver, Geralf's Messenger, Xathrid Necromancer (Humans crossover with GW), Ophiomancer
4: Murderous Redcap. Marsh Flitter
2: Mogg War Marshal (better than any equivalent but it needs to be in black too?)
3: Tuktuk the Explorer
4: Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Then you have the payoff cards. Living Death is a given for me. Puppeteer Clique, Sidisi UV, and many options in other colours (Voldaren Pariah is intriguing too) compete for a small number of slots; I also need finishers that can go in typical black decks. Liliana, Heretical Healer is solid but I have the 2 PW Lilianas and there are so many 3-drops. Scourge of Nel Toth and Distended Mindbender are very powerful. You also have more narrow, deck-specific cards like Haunted Dead.
Here's an example deck that makes good use of Zombie synergies:
You have a solid aggressive starts with resilient creatures and lots of combos:
- Haunted Dead + Scourge of Nel Toth/Gravecrawler/Prized Amalgam
- Phantasmal Image + Geralf's Messenger/Murderous Redcap
- Prized Amalgam + Gravecrawler/Scourge of Nel Toth/Geralf's Messenger/Murderous Redcap
- Apprentice Necromancer + Gisa and Geralf/Relentless Dead
- Apprentice Necromancer + Geralf's Messenger/Murderous Redcap
and some very scary draws:
- T1 Cryptbreaker, T2 activate discarding Gravecrawler, T3 activate discarding Amalgam, return Gravecrawler, return Amalgam
- T1 Carrion Feeder, T2 Skirsdag High Priest, T3 Bloodghast + sac to Feeder, play a land + return Bloodghast, activate High Priest
Building BG Graveyard Aggro
I've wanted to have a graveyard-centric aggro deck in BG for a long time, but I don't know how it should look. One problem is the loose overlap with the sacrifice deck and other decks in BG. If you're not careful, it's easy to end up with an incoherent mess that doesn't do anything well: Bloodghasts and Gravecrawlers lying around not doing anything, 'big' creatures that are already outsized by the time they come down. It's also not clear it's worth the effort: you can jump through hoops to get a 4/4 Grim Flayer, but is it that much better than Putrid Leech? Is Mindwrack Demon better than Desecration Demon/Abyssal Persecutor? Another problem is the lack of space in green: I already want to double up on half my green cards, and there are many more trying to get a foot in the door.
For now I'll sketch out some of the possible directions, and let your input guide me.
- Delirium: Grim Flayer and Mindwrack Demon, but Tarmogoyf is and always will be the best delirium card. Ishkanah is fine as a top-end card for slower builds. Traverse doesn't take much work so the play pattern is different but it's worth noting too.
With 2x fetchlands and more, land is fairly easy. These decks are creature-heavy and you can expect one to die early. Green's gravepulses make instant and/or sorcery a lot easier. Land/creature/instant/sorcery is the most common set, but you can move beyond it.
Bitterblossom, Nameless Inversion, and Boon Satyr cover two card types while helping an aggressive plan (Blossom isn't hitting the yard manually, but you're happy to have it in play). Artifact creatures (Spellskite, Solemn Simulacrum, Perilous Myr) are a boon for midrange delirium decks but mostly too slow here; exceptions include Porcelain Legionnaire, Molten-Tail Masticore, Hangarback Walker.
- Madness: Lotleth Troll andWild Mongrel Noose Constrictor are solid, but it drops off past that; Black is surprisingly shallow for discard outlets past Heir of Falkenrath unless you get into Stromkirk Condemned territory. The payoffs aren't the actual Madness cards (again, surprisingly few; sure, you can shove on Asylum Visitor but it's easy to hit the disjointed deck problem as above) but Vengevine, Scourge of Nel Toth, and so on.
- Reanimator: An idea I'm really curious about (and which bleeds into UB, still needing an identity). This is more 'reanimate Shriekmaw for value/Whisperwood Elemental a turn ahead of schedule' than 'T2 Woodfall Primus get rekt'
- Sticky threats: Apply early pressure, then use the Bloodghasts and Bloodsoaked Champions of the world to force damage through. Too often, those creatures are outclassed by the time they step into the ring, so you need ways to make them relevant: equipment, Rancor, Moldervine Cloak
- Delve: At cross-purposes with other graveyard synergies, but turbo-ing out a Tasigur or Tombstalker is a great way to get ahead on board; at a casual draft at a GP, someone went T1 Birds, T2 Commune with the Gods -> Tasigur against me
The Artifact Deck
Bringing this up because I expect Kaladesh to offer lots of new toys. The main structural concerns is a fundamental weakness against aggro-combo; what this deck really needs is a mini-Wurmcoil that can hold the ground and put the game away without being obnoxious.
What to Do with Blue?
This kind of ties into the previous point; hopefully 'artifacts matter' can solve this problem. Currently blue is a good supporting colour for various decks - spells matter, flash, graveyard, silly combo-ramp - but those don't overlap much so it feels like blue is multiple colours stapled together. It's hard to avoid it just being the good cards colour, but it usually dominates when it fills that role. If anyone has any idea for fixing it, ship them my way.
CubeTutor list revision to come after the weekend probably.
The Role of Black
I need to take another look at the black-based sacrifice deck. It's a strong, interesting, flexible deck that I want to keep as a backbone of the Cube, but there are so many tools for it that it's easy to give it unnecessary support at the expense of other decks. It crowds out 'normal' BR aggro, something not seen in my Cube in forever and would like to have. I also want to see how naturally it extends into other colours and if it can coexist with other possible subthemes like Madness or Zombies. What I need:
- Enough good 1-drops. Cryptbreaker might be vital here as a cheap, self-contained engine, but it incentivizes a move back towards Gravecrawler. That might not be so bad, though. Let's say I have 2 Bloodsoaked Champion, 2 Gravecrawler, a Cryptbreaker (maybe this is the one to double up, who knows) and 1/2 Carrion Feeders. That's a good base (cf. the Carnophage/Gravecrawler/Diregraf Ghoul/Champion/Sarcomancy/Lacerator package of Cubes that support black aggro) but I could use more. The issue in my Cube is that there are few red 1-drops and most of those don't fit in this deck (Monastery Swiftspear, Figure of Destiny). I already break my 'no Savannah Lions' rule for Zurgo, and I should extend that to Goblin Guide et al. Previous Cubes had 2/3 Rakdos Cackler, maybe that's the way to go?
- Enough good 2-drops! There are more than enough for the sac deck (Blood Artist, Mogg War Marshal, Skirsdag High Priest...) but almost none for traditional BR. Vampire Hexmage has some fun applications, is another good PW answer, and attacks better than your average 2/x. Heir of Falkenrath is fine. I was excited about Asylum Visitor but idk if it's good in practice? Knight of Infamy would be great if it didn't have protection; maybe I should run it anyway. Thrill-Kill Assassin is solid, attacking well even in the late game (and pitching to Force...). The in-your-face option is double Dark Confidant, which could be the answer. Bob is a bit out of place in my Cube but that's because I haven't supported decks like BR much. Bitterblossom and Pack Rat are great in any black deck.
Red makes a decent offer. Abbot of Keral Keep can be good but is Goblin Piker depressingly often. Lightning Mauler is great. Gore-House Chainwalker is functional but nobody is excited about it. I like Plated Geopede and Stormblood Berserker.
There are lots of options at RR and BB but it's hard to justify running many at the same time.
BR gives Grenzo and Tymaret, which has nice Zombie/sacrifice synergies and is just good by itself.
The universal 2-drop is Porcelain Legionnaire, which I still maintain is a good doubles candidate.
- At 3 there's no shortage of cards but should I throw a few bones to aggro?
Hellhole Flailer hits hard and gets better with all the pump effects. Shambling Remains sneaks in for the last points and can start recursion for Gravecrawler/Flamewake Phoenix(/Prized Amalgam?). I loved Lyzolda back in the day but it feels so clunky now (more so than Tymaret though?). Olivia, Mobilized for War is a really interesting card that I haven't got to see in action yet: you can set up ridiculous chains with Bloodghast, Gravecrawler, Vengevine, and so on, or just make your Rabblemaster even better.
For the sac outlets, there's:
1: Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer (suitable for combo sac decks or if a Vampires theme sneaks in somehow)
2: Bloodthrone Vampire (somehow feels worse than Husk even when the Zombie type isn't relevant despite the deck having a glut of 3s), Goblin Bombardment (verging on too good)
3: Flesh Carver (doubles as an outlet and a Traveler)
For the 'Doomed Travelers', there's:
2: Butcher Ghoul/Sultai Emissary/Carrier Thrall, Bloodghast, Hangarback Walker, Perilous Myr
3: Flesh Carver, Geralf's Messenger, Xathrid Necromancer (Humans crossover with GW), Ophiomancer
4: Murderous Redcap. Marsh Flitter
2: Mogg War Marshal (better than any equivalent but it needs to be in black too?)
3: Tuktuk the Explorer
4: Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Then you have the payoff cards. Living Death is a given for me. Puppeteer Clique, Sidisi UV, and many options in other colours (Voldaren Pariah is intriguing too) compete for a small number of slots; I also need finishers that can go in typical black decks. Liliana, Heretical Healer is solid but I have the 2 PW Lilianas and there are so many 3-drops. Scourge of Nel Toth and Distended Mindbender are very powerful. You also have more narrow, deck-specific cards like Haunted Dead.
Here's an example deck that makes good use of Zombie synergies:
 | | | | |
| ||||
| ||||
You have a solid aggressive starts with resilient creatures and lots of combos:
- Haunted Dead + Scourge of Nel Toth/Gravecrawler/Prized Amalgam
- Phantasmal Image + Geralf's Messenger/Murderous Redcap
- Prized Amalgam + Gravecrawler/Scourge of Nel Toth/Geralf's Messenger/Murderous Redcap
- Apprentice Necromancer + Gisa and Geralf/Relentless Dead
- Apprentice Necromancer + Geralf's Messenger/Murderous Redcap
and some very scary draws:
- T1 Cryptbreaker, T2 activate discarding Gravecrawler, T3 activate discarding Amalgam, return Gravecrawler, return Amalgam
- T1 Carrion Feeder, T2 Skirsdag High Priest, T3 Bloodghast + sac to Feeder, play a land + return Bloodghast, activate High Priest
Building BG Graveyard Aggro
I've wanted to have a graveyard-centric aggro deck in BG for a long time, but I don't know how it should look. One problem is the loose overlap with the sacrifice deck and other decks in BG. If you're not careful, it's easy to end up with an incoherent mess that doesn't do anything well: Bloodghasts and Gravecrawlers lying around not doing anything, 'big' creatures that are already outsized by the time they come down. It's also not clear it's worth the effort: you can jump through hoops to get a 4/4 Grim Flayer, but is it that much better than Putrid Leech? Is Mindwrack Demon better than Desecration Demon/Abyssal Persecutor? Another problem is the lack of space in green: I already want to double up on half my green cards, and there are many more trying to get a foot in the door.
For now I'll sketch out some of the possible directions, and let your input guide me.
- Delirium: Grim Flayer and Mindwrack Demon, but Tarmogoyf is and always will be the best delirium card. Ishkanah is fine as a top-end card for slower builds. Traverse doesn't take much work so the play pattern is different but it's worth noting too.
With 2x fetchlands and more, land is fairly easy. These decks are creature-heavy and you can expect one to die early. Green's gravepulses make instant and/or sorcery a lot easier. Land/creature/instant/sorcery is the most common set, but you can move beyond it.
Bitterblossom, Nameless Inversion, and Boon Satyr cover two card types while helping an aggressive plan (Blossom isn't hitting the yard manually, but you're happy to have it in play). Artifact creatures (Spellskite, Solemn Simulacrum, Perilous Myr) are a boon for midrange delirium decks but mostly too slow here; exceptions include Porcelain Legionnaire, Molten-Tail Masticore, Hangarback Walker.
- Madness: Lotleth Troll and
- Reanimator: An idea I'm really curious about (and which bleeds into UB, still needing an identity). This is more 'reanimate Shriekmaw for value/Whisperwood Elemental a turn ahead of schedule' than 'T2 Woodfall Primus get rekt'
- Sticky threats: Apply early pressure, then use the Bloodghasts and Bloodsoaked Champions of the world to force damage through. Too often, those creatures are outclassed by the time they step into the ring, so you need ways to make them relevant: equipment, Rancor, Moldervine Cloak
- Delve: At cross-purposes with other graveyard synergies, but turbo-ing out a Tasigur or Tombstalker is a great way to get ahead on board; at a casual draft at a GP, someone went T1 Birds, T2 Commune with the Gods -> Tasigur against me
The Artifact Deck
Bringing this up because I expect Kaladesh to offer lots of new toys. The main structural concerns is a fundamental weakness against aggro-combo; what this deck really needs is a mini-Wurmcoil that can hold the ground and put the game away without being obnoxious.
What to Do with Blue?
This kind of ties into the previous point; hopefully 'artifacts matter' can solve this problem. Currently blue is a good supporting colour for various decks - spells matter, flash, graveyard, silly combo-ramp - but those don't overlap much so it feels like blue is multiple colours stapled together. It's hard to avoid it just being the good cards colour, but it usually dominates when it fills that role. If anyone has any idea for fixing it, ship them my way.
CubeTutor list revision to come after the weekend probably.
The only acceptable mini-Wurmcoils that I can think of, and Precursor Golem may be pushing it.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
drafts done, fun had:
I proxied up the Zombie stuff and some other cards, including those I won't realistically own in paper (looking at you, Tabernacle). I ended up in black early and never looked back, building a very good sac deck; I was excited to test the theories laid out above:
Zombie Pod/Stax:
Other options: Life // Death, Garruk Relentless, Smokestack, Trading Post, Scourge of Nel Toth, Smallpox
I had the option of picking Murderous Redcap over Marsh Flitter, which would have helped more since I ended up light on removal. Garruk came in often to compensate for that and to provide a steady stream of threats against control. I wanted to MD Smokestack but it's weak against other aggressive decks (though people hate drafting those around here so YMMV).
The Gravecrawlers were noticeably better in this deck than Bloodsoaked Champion typically is. Obviously I had the perfect setup here, and the floor on Gravecrawler is lower, but the combo with Feeder/Husk was consistently incredible.
Ophiomancer was excellent, especially in conjunction with Carrion Feeder. A common issue with the sac deck is its poor defence: many of your creatures can't block and wouldn't block well if they could. Ophiomancer fixes that in a big way - it might be too good at it.
Birthing Pod was great here but I already had a good curve for it when I picked it up late. Maybe this is the role for it: a 'non-green' way to emulate a core function of green? Green can make do with Evolutionary Leap or Green Sun's Zenith or anything else; a UR or BW Birthing Pod deck offers more diversity.
Other decks:
GW Company:
The Loyal Retainers + Saffi + trigger combo was intentionally seeded in the Cube but I imagined it as an afterthought that would rarely come up; this deck was able to assemble it with scary consistency. It's a solid creature deck that's light on removal and one-drops but otherwise pretty close to what you want from this archetype.
Caller of the Claw is worth noting here: between double Company and Survival, playing a sweeper or getting involved in combat against this deck was very risky. Going off with Leap is sweet too
UW Control:
Boring but shows what the baseline control deck looks like. Arbiter was fun, and Drowner is about where a finisher should be. Maybe Meloku is too obnoxious? It's so sweet with landfall synergies though...
UWR Spells:
Not as cohesive as the elevator pitch version of this deck but lots of cool stuff nonetheless
This next one is an absolute delight, courtesy of Sam:
UG Titania:
Birdz Tribal:
From the other Cubes drafted, my decks:
Battlecruiser Cube:
I basically just drafted the equivalent of the deck from my Cube. This performed very well and was fun to play, showing that the concept has promise across many Cube formats.
Shards Cube:
I first-picked Darigaaz (should have taken Bit Blast instead), then took the best cards which - shockingly! - put me in Jund. Some of this deck's starts were a good reminder of why Jund dominated Standard for >6 months: Leech into Thrinax ended a few games on T3 by itself. Specifically, it reminded me just how good Putrid Leech is: even in graveyard-based aggro decks it's often better than Grim Flayer (to say nothing of Zombie synergies...). Not having to put any work into making your creature big is so good in an aggro deck.
I conveniently ended up with a Berserkers-style pump package with Rancor (which we all agreed afterwards was way too good for this power level), Swine, and Colossal Might. This set of matches really emphasized that pump is much better when you can consistently field large creatures in the early game: the pressure ensures that they can't use their removal selectively, and the large base size makes double strike/trample better when granted suddenly. If I want the Berserkers deck to work, I need stuff like Putrid Leech. I loved Abzan Aggro when it was in Standard, and high-powered Jund Aggro evokes the same feelings.
Zombie Pod/Stax:
| | | | |
| ||||
Other options: Life // Death, Garruk Relentless, Smokestack, Trading Post, Scourge of Nel Toth, Smallpox
I had the option of picking Murderous Redcap over Marsh Flitter, which would have helped more since I ended up light on removal. Garruk came in often to compensate for that and to provide a steady stream of threats against control. I wanted to MD Smokestack but it's weak against other aggressive decks (though people hate drafting those around here so YMMV).
The Gravecrawlers were noticeably better in this deck than Bloodsoaked Champion typically is. Obviously I had the perfect setup here, and the floor on Gravecrawler is lower, but the combo with Feeder/Husk was consistently incredible.
Ophiomancer was excellent, especially in conjunction with Carrion Feeder. A common issue with the sac deck is its poor defence: many of your creatures can't block and wouldn't block well if they could. Ophiomancer fixes that in a big way - it might be too good at it.
Birthing Pod was great here but I already had a good curve for it when I picked it up late. Maybe this is the role for it: a 'non-green' way to emulate a core function of green? Green can make do with Evolutionary Leap or Green Sun's Zenith or anything else; a UR or BW Birthing Pod deck offers more diversity.
Other decks:
GW Company:
| | | | |
| ||||
The Loyal Retainers + Saffi + trigger combo was intentionally seeded in the Cube but I imagined it as an afterthought that would rarely come up; this deck was able to assemble it with scary consistency. It's a solid creature deck that's light on removal and one-drops but otherwise pretty close to what you want from this archetype.
Caller of the Claw is worth noting here: between double Company and Survival, playing a sweeper or getting involved in combat against this deck was very risky. Going off with Leap is sweet too
UW Control:
| | | | | |
Boring but shows what the baseline control deck looks like. Arbiter was fun, and Drowner is about where a finisher should be. Maybe Meloku is too obnoxious? It's so sweet with landfall synergies though...
UWR Spells:
| | | | | |
| |||||
Not as cohesive as the elevator pitch version of this deck but lots of cool stuff nonetheless
This next one is an absolute delight, courtesy of Sam:
UG Titania:
| | | | | |
| |||||
Birdz Tribal:
| | | | | |
| |||||
From the other Cubes drafted, my decks:
Battlecruiser Cube:
| | | | | |
| |||||
I basically just drafted the equivalent of the deck from my Cube. This performed very well and was fun to play, showing that the concept has promise across many Cube formats.
Shards Cube:
| | | | | |
| |||||
I first-picked Darigaaz (should have taken Bit Blast instead), then took the best cards which - shockingly! - put me in Jund. Some of this deck's starts were a good reminder of why Jund dominated Standard for >6 months: Leech into Thrinax ended a few games on T3 by itself. Specifically, it reminded me just how good Putrid Leech is: even in graveyard-based aggro decks it's often better than Grim Flayer (to say nothing of Zombie synergies...). Not having to put any work into making your creature big is so good in an aggro deck.
I conveniently ended up with a Berserkers-style pump package with Rancor (which we all agreed afterwards was way too good for this power level), Swine, and Colossal Might. This set of matches really emphasized that pump is much better when you can consistently field large creatures in the early game: the pressure ensures that they can't use their removal selectively, and the large base size makes double strike/trample better when granted suddenly. If I want the Berserkers deck to work, I need stuff like Putrid Leech. I loved Abzan Aggro when it was in Standard, and high-powered Jund Aggro evokes the same feelings.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
So I'll look at artifacts after the whole Kaladesh spoiler is out, but for now blue is the 'miscellaneous cool stuff' colour. Let's start by doubling up on:
Jace is generally great and supports a lot of decks that need it:
- Looting for reanimation: all of the usual black stuff, Mizzix's Mastery, Feldon, Daretti, Body Double, Reveillark, Miraculous Recovery
- general GY synergies: Bloodghast/Gravecrawler/Prized Amalgam/Haunted Dead, Life from the Loam, Drownyard Temple, Genesis, delirium
- self-recursion: Grapple with the Past/Pulse of Murasa, Kolaghan's Command, Ojutai's Command, Profane Command, Collected Company, Unearth, Living Death, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Wretched Confluence
The most fun direction I've found for the non-creature decks is to focus on flashy, high-impact spells and playing them often. Jace couldn't be better for that, and the blue Gearhulk will help too.
- big spells: Living Death, Bituminous Blast, Prophetic Bolt, Collected Company, Cyclonic Rift, Mizzium Mortars, Fact or Fiction/Gifts Ungiven, Secure the Wastes, Sphinx's Revelation, Volcanic Offering, Cruel Ultimatum, Crush of Tentacles, See the Unwritten, Smallpox, Death Cloud, Primal's Command, Splendid Reclamation, Time Warp, Wildfire, Wheel of Fortune/Timetwister, Seasons Past
Arcane Savant is surely way too good but it might get one spin
Crush of Tentacles is fun, works well with: suspend (Cloudskate/AV/Search for Tomorrow?), Everflowing Chalice, Engineered Explosives, Mystical Tutor, Cloud of Faeries etc, Eternal Witness
Walk the Aeons is a good secondary Time Warp for the extra turns deck: it doesn't exile itself so you can Jace/Snapcaster it, and with Crucible/Loam and such you can often cast it every few turns
Time Spiral doesn't have an obvious home but maybe it doesn't need one? How about Timetwister?
Is Upheaval reasonable in a format without fast artifact mana?
I want to see if Mass Polymorph or Synthetic Destiny can work; it probably requires scaling the Cube's overall power level back a bit while adding some meaty top-end cards, but it seems worth it. If I do, Bribery looks more appealing.
Gifts Ungiven was my first love in Magic so I want to make it work; it's perfect with Jace, which is a good start. Has anyone tried Gifts Given recently?
I've always wanted Rewind to be good but I end up cutting it a lot
What other cool stuff is there?
Jace is generally great and supports a lot of decks that need it:
- Looting for reanimation: all of the usual black stuff, Mizzix's Mastery, Feldon, Daretti, Body Double, Reveillark, Miraculous Recovery
- general GY synergies: Bloodghast/Gravecrawler/Prized Amalgam/Haunted Dead, Life from the Loam, Drownyard Temple, Genesis, delirium
- self-recursion: Grapple with the Past/Pulse of Murasa, Kolaghan's Command, Ojutai's Command, Profane Command, Collected Company, Unearth, Living Death, Traverse the Ulvenwald, Wretched Confluence
The most fun direction I've found for the non-creature decks is to focus on flashy, high-impact spells and playing them often. Jace couldn't be better for that, and the blue Gearhulk will help too.
- big spells: Living Death, Bituminous Blast, Prophetic Bolt, Collected Company, Cyclonic Rift, Mizzium Mortars, Fact or Fiction/Gifts Ungiven, Secure the Wastes, Sphinx's Revelation, Volcanic Offering, Cruel Ultimatum, Crush of Tentacles, See the Unwritten, Smallpox, Death Cloud, Primal's Command, Splendid Reclamation, Time Warp, Wildfire, Wheel of Fortune/Timetwister, Seasons Past
Arcane Savant is surely way too good but it might get one spin
Crush of Tentacles is fun, works well with: suspend (Cloudskate/AV/Search for Tomorrow?), Everflowing Chalice, Engineered Explosives, Mystical Tutor, Cloud of Faeries etc, Eternal Witness
Walk the Aeons is a good secondary Time Warp for the extra turns deck: it doesn't exile itself so you can Jace/Snapcaster it, and with Crucible/Loam and such you can often cast it every few turns
Time Spiral doesn't have an obvious home but maybe it doesn't need one? How about Timetwister?
Is Upheaval reasonable in a format without fast artifact mana?
I want to see if Mass Polymorph or Synthetic Destiny can work; it probably requires scaling the Cube's overall power level back a bit while adding some meaty top-end cards, but it seems worth it. If I do, Bribery looks more appealing.
Gifts Ungiven was my first love in Magic so I want to make it work; it's perfect with Jace, which is a good start. Has anyone tried Gifts Given recently?
I've always wanted Rewind to be good but I end up cutting it a lot
What other cool stuff is there?
It's a no to upheaval from me.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Kaladesh cars:
Cataclysmic Gearhulk: I like it a lot, lots of 5s though
Fairgrounds Warden: I prefer Fiend Hunter for the Human subtypes and sac tricks even though it's relevantly harder to cast
Fumigate: Hallowed Burial is probably better for me because I have a ton of graveyard recursion and sticky threats, but I love that this exists
Refurbish: Most big artifacts I'd want to play are creatures so this is worse than Breath of Life most of the time. It looks nicer if I push the combo-centric artifacts like Alhammarret's Archive/Pyromancer's Goggles/Trading Post
Glint-Nest Crane: Augur of Bolas missed a lot and most blue decks have many more instants/sorceries than artifacts, but the stats on this are better and it's nice in the decks I alluded to just above to find those combo cards
Torrential Gearhulk: This is the blue finisher I've always wanted. An artifact with flash is already a good start, and the base case of flashing back Counterspell/Go for the Throat/Thirst for Knowledge is more than fine (cf. Draining Whelk!). The ceiling is very high: I have dreams of chaining Collected Company, Dig Through Time, Bituminous Blast, Fact or Fiction, Cryptic Command, Ojutai's Command, Kolaghan's Command, Pulse of Murasa, Prophetic Bolt, Wretched Confluence, Volcanic Offering...
Noxious Gearhulk: Not as obnoxious as Grave Titan and solid Welder payoff
Cathartic Reunion: Higher ceiling than Tormenting Voice but harder to use in a normal deck?
Chandra, Torch of Defiance: Blatantly pushed but I like that red has a marquee planeswalker and it does different things for different decks
Combustible Gearhulk: ugh, of course the colour that really wants a good artifact finisher gets a shitty punisher mechanic
Pia Nalaar: Maybe worse than Thopter Engineer but I find my Thopter Engineer decks rarely have big stuff to grant haste to? That might change with this set, but Pia could have more play to it.
Nissa, Vital Force: More deep/fun than Worldwaker but green 5s is one of the most overpopulated slots in my Cube
Verdurous Gearhulk: ditto, I love the idea of this with Hangarback Walker and such though. Will replace Silverheart in the irl list but might not stay long
Dovin Baan: w/e
Kambal, Consul of Allocation: kinda cool but black and white are both crowded at 3
Rashmi, Eternities Crafter: really needed to cost 3 somehow
Saheeli Rai: I think I was massively underrating this card. The +1 isn't impressive but in an aggro deck this triggers your Prowess cards, gets you closer to your midgame plays, slowly chips away at them, and soon gets out of range even if they can afford to attack it. The -2 sets up lots of lethal sequences. Even something like -2 on Abbot, reveal a spell, cast it and another spell, swing for 8+ is often enough; God forbid you copy a Hellrider or Rabblemaster. In midrange or control decks, having a rolled-up Clone that you can use for free negates the drawback of having to tap out for your big finish; I really hope I get to -2 on Primeval Titan
Aetherworks Marvel: Love the idea but surely too much work
Cultivator's Caravan: Hard to imagine what wants this (a chunkier RG deck?) but sure
Filigree Familiar: obv obv obv
Fleetwheel Cruiser: worth a try
Metalwork Colossus: I love it, it's terrible
Scrapheap Scrounger: I've doubled up on Porcelain Legionnaire before but this is good as a black/artifact 'hybrid' and is great in black aggro
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship: need to see this one in action but I'm optimistic
Smuggler's Copter: fantastic, might want 2
Sequestered Stash: haven't seen this mentioned, for good reason, but a self-mill land is intriguing
fastlands: the WR fastland could be a godsend, maybe BW too
Big picture:
- I was hoping for enough cheap artifact creatures to make an artifact aggro deck realistic. I don't think we're there yet unless I'm willing to go deep enough to support Toolcraft Exemplar/Inventor's Apprentice and such. I could be convinced.
- Likewise, the Welder deck didn't get everything it wanted. The Gearhulks are a nice start.
- Energy is a wonderful idea and Energy + Mana as a resource system sounds great, but with this implementation the payoff just isn't there.
Cataclysmic Gearhulk: I like it a lot, lots of 5s though
Fairgrounds Warden: I prefer Fiend Hunter for the Human subtypes and sac tricks even though it's relevantly harder to cast
Fumigate: Hallowed Burial is probably better for me because I have a ton of graveyard recursion and sticky threats, but I love that this exists
Refurbish: Most big artifacts I'd want to play are creatures so this is worse than Breath of Life most of the time. It looks nicer if I push the combo-centric artifacts like Alhammarret's Archive/Pyromancer's Goggles/Trading Post
Glint-Nest Crane: Augur of Bolas missed a lot and most blue decks have many more instants/sorceries than artifacts, but the stats on this are better and it's nice in the decks I alluded to just above to find those combo cards
Torrential Gearhulk: This is the blue finisher I've always wanted. An artifact with flash is already a good start, and the base case of flashing back Counterspell/Go for the Throat/Thirst for Knowledge is more than fine (cf. Draining Whelk!). The ceiling is very high: I have dreams of chaining Collected Company, Dig Through Time, Bituminous Blast, Fact or Fiction, Cryptic Command, Ojutai's Command, Kolaghan's Command, Pulse of Murasa, Prophetic Bolt, Wretched Confluence, Volcanic Offering...
Noxious Gearhulk: Not as obnoxious as Grave Titan and solid Welder payoff
Cathartic Reunion: Higher ceiling than Tormenting Voice but harder to use in a normal deck?
Chandra, Torch of Defiance: Blatantly pushed but I like that red has a marquee planeswalker and it does different things for different decks
Combustible Gearhulk: ugh, of course the colour that really wants a good artifact finisher gets a shitty punisher mechanic
Pia Nalaar: Maybe worse than Thopter Engineer but I find my Thopter Engineer decks rarely have big stuff to grant haste to? That might change with this set, but Pia could have more play to it.
Nissa, Vital Force: More deep/fun than Worldwaker but green 5s is one of the most overpopulated slots in my Cube
Verdurous Gearhulk: ditto, I love the idea of this with Hangarback Walker and such though. Will replace Silverheart in the irl list but might not stay long
Dovin Baan: w/e
Kambal, Consul of Allocation: kinda cool but black and white are both crowded at 3
Rashmi, Eternities Crafter: really needed to cost 3 somehow
Saheeli Rai: I think I was massively underrating this card. The +1 isn't impressive but in an aggro deck this triggers your Prowess cards, gets you closer to your midgame plays, slowly chips away at them, and soon gets out of range even if they can afford to attack it. The -2 sets up lots of lethal sequences. Even something like -2 on Abbot, reveal a spell, cast it and another spell, swing for 8+ is often enough; God forbid you copy a Hellrider or Rabblemaster. In midrange or control decks, having a rolled-up Clone that you can use for free negates the drawback of having to tap out for your big finish; I really hope I get to -2 on Primeval Titan
Aetherworks Marvel: Love the idea but surely too much work
Cultivator's Caravan: Hard to imagine what wants this (a chunkier RG deck?) but sure
Filigree Familiar: obv obv obv
Fleetwheel Cruiser: worth a try
Metalwork Colossus: I love it, it's terrible
Scrapheap Scrounger: I've doubled up on Porcelain Legionnaire before but this is good as a black/artifact 'hybrid' and is great in black aggro
Skysovereign, Consul Flagship: need to see this one in action but I'm optimistic
Smuggler's Copter: fantastic, might want 2
Sequestered Stash: haven't seen this mentioned, for good reason, but a self-mill land is intriguing
fastlands: the WR fastland could be a godsend, maybe BW too
Big picture:
- I was hoping for enough cheap artifact creatures to make an artifact aggro deck realistic. I don't think we're there yet unless I'm willing to go deep enough to support Toolcraft Exemplar/Inventor's Apprentice and such. I could be convinced.
- Likewise, the Welder deck didn't get everything it wanted. The Gearhulks are a nice start.
- Energy is a wonderful idea and Energy + Mana as a resource system sounds great, but with this implementation the payoff just isn't there.
I've been thinking about the artifact aggro deck as well.
The creatures:
Arcbound might be too deep.
The enablers:
Cute payoffs (Pauper Inspiration)
My worry is that these cards (especially the two new creatures) don't fit well in other strategies. They might require a much heavier artifact environment to be non-parasitic.
The creatures:
Arcbound might be too deep.
The enablers:
Cute payoffs (Pauper Inspiration)
My worry is that these cards (especially the two new creatures) don't fit well in other strategies. They might require a much heavier artifact environment to be non-parasitic.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
That's true, but aggro creatures are already parasitic to varying degrees and the versatility of artifacts helps somewhat. Ravager might be too deep as it stands but the card is great: it's iconic, interesting, and powerful. I'd love it if my Cube could get to the point where Ravager is viable.
The first step is to tie this into other aggressive strategies. Let's say you start with 2+ Bonesplitter, 2+ Porcelain Legionnaire, and at least one Smuggler's Copter. That gives you a solid aggro 'module' that can slot into any colour - even blue! Aggro decks - and pretty much every other deck - want creature lands, so double Mishra's Factory is easy. We can support this with:
- Creatures that bring artifacts with them: Thraben Inspector (2?), Bygone Bishop/Tireless Tracker, Splicers, Thopter Engineer/Pia Nalaar, Whirler Rogue/Pia & Kiran, Stoneforge Mystic, Trinket Mage, Tuktuk the Explorer, BR Daretti, Saheeli
- 'Free' artifacts: Sigil of Distinction, Mox Diamond, Mishra's Bauble/Urza's Bauble
- Equipment (/Fortifications!!): Sigil of Distinction, Adventuring Gear, Basilisk Collar, Skullclamp (...maybe not), Stoneforge Masterwork, Sylvok Lifestaff, Cranial Plating (this being 'better' than Bonesplitter is a good litmus test for how successful this theme is), Lightning Greaves, Mask of Memory, Mortarpod, Grafted Wargear, Swords (minus protection?), Bonehoard
- Cheap artifact creatures: Hangarback Walker, Signal Pest, Ethersworn Canonist, Steel Overseer, Arcbound Ravager, Perilous Myr, Phyrexian Revoker, Scrapheap Scrounger, Phyrexian Metamorph, Master of Etherium, Shardless Agent, Etched Champion, Metalworker, Fleetwheel Cruiser
- Assorted random artifacts: Chromatic Star, Pyrite Spellbomb, Sensei's Divining Top, Relic of Progenitus, Shrine of Loyal Legions, Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Key to the City, Hammer of Purphoros, Hall of Triumph/Spear of Heliod
- artifact lands, Borderposts
For explicit ties to other aggro decks, we have:
- Berserkers: if we have a lot of equipment and cheap, large creatures - Steppe Lynx/Plated Geopede come to mind - it's easy to one-shot with Temur Battle Rage/Ajani or just get in big hits with Gryff's Boon/Madcap Skills/Griffin Guide/Rancor
- Prowess: we want cheap artifacts; ties into Berserkers
- Humans: Inventor's Apprentice is a Human, the Thopter makes/Splicers are Humans, the Prowess creatures are Humans too
Easy access to artifact lands (by what mechanism?) is the obvious way to make this work.
The first step is to tie this into other aggressive strategies. Let's say you start with 2+ Bonesplitter, 2+ Porcelain Legionnaire, and at least one Smuggler's Copter. That gives you a solid aggro 'module' that can slot into any colour - even blue! Aggro decks - and pretty much every other deck - want creature lands, so double Mishra's Factory is easy. We can support this with:
- Creatures that bring artifacts with them: Thraben Inspector (2?), Bygone Bishop/Tireless Tracker, Splicers, Thopter Engineer/Pia Nalaar, Whirler Rogue/Pia & Kiran, Stoneforge Mystic, Trinket Mage, Tuktuk the Explorer, BR Daretti, Saheeli
- 'Free' artifacts: Sigil of Distinction, Mox Diamond, Mishra's Bauble/Urza's Bauble
- Equipment (/Fortifications!!): Sigil of Distinction, Adventuring Gear, Basilisk Collar, Skullclamp (...maybe not), Stoneforge Masterwork, Sylvok Lifestaff, Cranial Plating (this being 'better' than Bonesplitter is a good litmus test for how successful this theme is), Lightning Greaves, Mask of Memory, Mortarpod, Grafted Wargear, Swords (minus protection?), Bonehoard
- Cheap artifact creatures: Hangarback Walker, Signal Pest, Ethersworn Canonist, Steel Overseer, Arcbound Ravager, Perilous Myr, Phyrexian Revoker, Scrapheap Scrounger, Phyrexian Metamorph, Master of Etherium, Shardless Agent, Etched Champion, Metalworker, Fleetwheel Cruiser
- Assorted random artifacts: Chromatic Star, Pyrite Spellbomb, Sensei's Divining Top, Relic of Progenitus, Shrine of Loyal Legions, Winter Orb, Tangle Wire, Key to the City, Hammer of Purphoros, Hall of Triumph/Spear of Heliod
- artifact lands, Borderposts
For explicit ties to other aggro decks, we have:
- Berserkers: if we have a lot of equipment and cheap, large creatures - Steppe Lynx/Plated Geopede come to mind - it's easy to one-shot with Temur Battle Rage/Ajani or just get in big hits with Gryff's Boon/Madcap Skills/Griffin Guide/Rancor
- Prowess: we want cheap artifacts; ties into Berserkers
- Humans: Inventor's Apprentice is a Human, the Thopter makes/Splicers are Humans, the Prowess creatures are Humans too
Easy access to artifact lands (by what mechanism?) is the obvious way to make this work.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Ran a quick Sealed at the GP. Decks:
This was mine, it was great! Lots of Reveillark shenanigans occurred
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This was mine, it was great! Lots of Reveillark shenanigans occurred
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Dom Harvey
Contributor
It's not double because they can just target the same things. The card is annoyingly hard to parse in a 2-player context, and I've had players get confused by it.
It's in there because:
- I have a ton of utility lands so it's nice to have outs to them at a cost that doesn't feel oppressive (cf. Vindicate, which I plan to cut)
- I wanted a mono-red 'big spell' for Goggles/Gearhulk/Narset etc
- Red needs answers to big things
If you're the Aston I always assumed you were I don't know how we've never Cubed before.
It's in there because:
- I have a ton of utility lands so it's nice to have outs to them at a cost that doesn't feel oppressive (cf. Vindicate, which I plan to cut)
- I wanted a mono-red 'big spell' for Goggles/Gearhulk/Narset etc
- Red needs answers to big things
If you're the Aston I always assumed you were I don't know how we've never Cubed before.
Ah! Two interpretations and neither was correct. Still, that seems pretty strong, who didn't love casting Grip after all. I kind of want to try flashing it back with Torrential Gearhulk...
And yes, it's possible our paths have crossed before - I can't imagine there are too many Magic players called Aston out there. I mainly play at Axion but I don't go to many events any more.
And yes, it's possible our paths have crossed before - I can't imagine there are too many Magic players called Aston out there. I mainly play at Axion but I don't go to many events any more.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
...ok, it's very possible I've been subtly/not-so-subtly suggesting to the wrong Aston that he should Cube with me the whole time. That would explain a lot.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
More free time now so lots of Magic posts/writing on the agenda! First up:
2016 Cube Review:
- Oath of the Gatewatch was incredibly influential for Constructed and solid for Cube too. The big question is whether you want to include the colourless/Eldrazi cards or even acknowledge their existence. I like Matter Reshaper but it's not so unique that you can't get the effect elsewhere (cf. Treasure Keeper from the most recent set) and I have no interest in Reality Smasher. That basically leaves Eldrazi Displacer and Thought-Knot Seer, which are both excellent. I go back and forth on whether I want to put the effort in.
Beyond that: Chandra, Flamecaller was a big gain for Big Red (before being traded in for a younger model three sets later), as was Goblin Dark-Dwellers. Kalitas is the bulky midrange stabilizer/finisher black has wanted for ages. Sylvan Advocate is excellent and finally completing the creature land set was welcome too. I have an unhealthy fascination with Kozilek's Return even knowing how narrow it is. The gold cards are solid and there are some nice build-arounds in Crush of Tentacles and utility cards in Oath of Nissa/Pulse of Murasa.
- Shadows over Innistrad was... a bit underwhelming, now that I think about it? Some individual cards are really cool but the themes of the set weren't fleshed out enough. Specifically, the Madness thing never took off (I think they expected BR Vampires to be a Standard deck and it's seen exactly zero play). The Humans theme was fully fleshed out and we got a better Landfall card than anything in BfZ block in Tireless Tracker. Seasons Past is great too.
- Eldritch Moon, OTOH, is an absurd Magic set. I have way more playables listed for it than for either of the large sets this year. There's great support here for Delirium, Emerge, spells matter, and Zombies, and I like all of them. Escalate offers some decent modal spells. Splendid Reclamation makes me whir with invention in a way few other cards have. Emrakul is an amazing design because of/despite the havoc it wrought in Standard (which I still blame Marvel for primarily). Then there are generally deep and powerful cards like Liliana and Selfless Spirit.
- The Commander set, as always, had a lot of sweet cards that I don't quite know what to do with: Selfless Squire, Deepglow Skate, Frenzied Fugue, Grave Upheaval, Reyhan, Vial Smasher, Crystalline Crawler, Ash Barrens. Overall, not as good a haul as in previous years. The Partner trinket text is obnoxious (and I've already heard about 'Atraxa EDH' far too many times).
- Kaladesh is a home run from an art/flavour perspective. Energy is a sweet mechanic but, when it's parasitic, it's super-parasitic: you basically have to redesign your whole environment around it. The concept is good enough that it's worth trying, but that forces tough choices and finding the right power level.
Gearhulks are about right for a cycle like that though the green one pushes the envelope and the red one having a punisher effect (instead of ETB Erratic Explosion or similar) is incredibly frustrating. I was hoping this set would give enough tools to make a dedicated artifact strategy more viable in a normal Cube. It didn't, but...
- Aether Revolt might have. This feels like a set that either has 50 playables or 5 depending on how far you go to support it, which is completely in line with what I enjoy about Magic and want to see from design.
2016 Cube Review:
- Oath of the Gatewatch was incredibly influential for Constructed and solid for Cube too. The big question is whether you want to include the colourless/Eldrazi cards or even acknowledge their existence. I like Matter Reshaper but it's not so unique that you can't get the effect elsewhere (cf. Treasure Keeper from the most recent set) and I have no interest in Reality Smasher. That basically leaves Eldrazi Displacer and Thought-Knot Seer, which are both excellent. I go back and forth on whether I want to put the effort in.
Beyond that: Chandra, Flamecaller was a big gain for Big Red (before being traded in for a younger model three sets later), as was Goblin Dark-Dwellers. Kalitas is the bulky midrange stabilizer/finisher black has wanted for ages. Sylvan Advocate is excellent and finally completing the creature land set was welcome too. I have an unhealthy fascination with Kozilek's Return even knowing how narrow it is. The gold cards are solid and there are some nice build-arounds in Crush of Tentacles and utility cards in Oath of Nissa/Pulse of Murasa.
- Shadows over Innistrad was... a bit underwhelming, now that I think about it? Some individual cards are really cool but the themes of the set weren't fleshed out enough. Specifically, the Madness thing never took off (I think they expected BR Vampires to be a Standard deck and it's seen exactly zero play). The Humans theme was fully fleshed out and we got a better Landfall card than anything in BfZ block in Tireless Tracker. Seasons Past is great too.
- Eldritch Moon, OTOH, is an absurd Magic set. I have way more playables listed for it than for either of the large sets this year. There's great support here for Delirium, Emerge, spells matter, and Zombies, and I like all of them. Escalate offers some decent modal spells. Splendid Reclamation makes me whir with invention in a way few other cards have. Emrakul is an amazing design because of/despite the havoc it wrought in Standard (which I still blame Marvel for primarily). Then there are generally deep and powerful cards like Liliana and Selfless Spirit.
- The Commander set, as always, had a lot of sweet cards that I don't quite know what to do with: Selfless Squire, Deepglow Skate, Frenzied Fugue, Grave Upheaval, Reyhan, Vial Smasher, Crystalline Crawler, Ash Barrens. Overall, not as good a haul as in previous years. The Partner trinket text is obnoxious (and I've already heard about 'Atraxa EDH' far too many times).
- Kaladesh is a home run from an art/flavour perspective. Energy is a sweet mechanic but, when it's parasitic, it's super-parasitic: you basically have to redesign your whole environment around it. The concept is good enough that it's worth trying, but that forces tough choices and finding the right power level.
Gearhulks are about right for a cycle like that though the green one pushes the envelope and the red one having a punisher effect (instead of ETB Erratic Explosion or similar) is incredibly frustrating. I was hoping this set would give enough tools to make a dedicated artifact strategy more viable in a normal Cube. It didn't, but...
- Aether Revolt might have. This feels like a set that either has 50 playables or 5 depending on how far you go to support it, which is completely in line with what I enjoy about Magic and want to see from design.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Next on the docket are mini-primers for various archetypes I want to explore. The 'artifact deck' is a big one, but first:
+1/+1 Counters
+1/+1 Counters
+1/+1 Counters
Constructed analogues: Hardened Scales (KTK-BFZ Standard, Frontier)
The +1/+1 counters deck, which lets you waste everyone's time as you struggle to turn your dice-laden behemoths sideways, is a casual favourite and recent competitive breakout. With some new gifts from Kaladesh block and the Commander sets it can apply for a spot in a medium-power Cube.
This deck fits the aggro-combo definition given in the intro and certainly displays the useful properties of that archetype:
Early-game explosiveness
If you played against the Hardened Scales deck in Standard when it had its namesake card you know how brutal its starts can be. For a Cube you might not want cards like Hardened Scales that only fit in this deck but many of your best draws don't require these. Consider:
T1: Carrion Feeder
T2: Hangarback Walker for 1
T3: Rishkar, Peema Renegade; put counters on Feeder and Walker; tap Feeder to charge Walker
Carrion Feeder is rarely found in 'normal' Cubes but I know my audience and it's a favourite around these parts. Early reviews of Rishkar from the power-max crowd are very positive and I expect them to be even better here. Hangarback Walker, far from being narrow, is a universally good card in Cube and easily justified as a double if you're into that.
This start gives you a 2/2 Carrion Feeder, a 3/3 Hangarback Walker, and up to 6 mana next turn; if you like, you can sac Walker to make some Thopters and threaten an even larger Carrion Feeder.
When you add in the counter-specific cards, you get draws like:
T1: Experiment One
T2: Winding Constrictor triggering Evolve; Experiment One becomes a 3/3
T3: Avatar of the Resolute; it comes in with two counters, Evolve triggers and gives Experiment One two more counters
This has you attacking with a 5/5 on turn 3 with a 5/4 and a Hardened Scaleson legs ready net turn.
I stand by my view that these nut draws are more interesting from both sides than the usual Goblin Guide-Ash Zealot-Rabblemaster-Hellrider draw that defines aggro in Cube. You get the satisfaction of putting all the pieces together with amazing results and your deck is doing its thing in a unique way rather than rehashing the same aggro curve you've seen a hundred times.
Late-game power
Another big selling point for aggro-combo is that your cards aren't quickly made obsolete as the game continues. Hangarback Walker is designed to grow with the flow of the game; Avatar is perfectly good as a 3/2 on Turn 2 in an aggressive start and a game-ender as a 7/6 on Turn 6. Cards like Varolz and Reyhan let you get value from smaller creatures by moving your power around. It's common to have two or more 1-drops or 2-drops on the board which are all bigger than any of your opponent's midgame plays.
In-game decisions
The counters deck asks for more than basic combat math in one turn; you have to sequence your plays carefully and plan ahead with a vision of how all the pieces fit together including against possible removal. Just using cards mentioned already: Carrion Feeder asks whether you want to sacrifice your board presence for more damage; Experiment One and Avatar prompt a trade-off between sequencing normally and contorting your plays to make them larger; every turn Hangarback Walker asks for a mana that you don't always want to give up; Rishkar lets you scale up your mana production dramatically in future turns. With Varolz or Reyhan you have turns reminiscent of Arcbound Ravager turns in Robots which is known for being one of the hardest aggro decks - and hardest decks overall - to play optimally.
As a Cube designer the great thing about +1/+1 counters is that they are essentially evergreen as the game's only way to mark permanent changes in power/toughness. Highly promising mechanics like Energy are limited because they are only ever confined to one block, but counters can be found everywhere. Some blocks have a subtheme that explicitly cares about counters - Unleash/Scavenge in RTR, the tribal silliness in Lorwyn - and incidental support is sprinkled throughout other sets: Carrion Feeder was not designed as a 'card that's about counters' but is a star of the archetype.
This theme also finds support across all colours. The Abzan focus in KTK helped to centre it in those colours but blue has Graft/Evolve from Simic's two showings and I'm constitutionally required to mention Ion Storm. Even obscure themes intersect with it in useful ways: an Elves theme can enjoy Joraga Warcaller and Bramblewood Paragon or your Heroic theme offers an existing supply of counters.
Since this theme is rarely explored at this power level it's worth looking at candidates individually:
Carrion Feeder/Experiment One: Both excellent; I love that the key 1-drops for this deck are also important pieces for other themes I want to support (sac/Zombies and green aggro/Humans respectively). See also Cloudfin Raptor in blue
Hardened Scales/Winding Constrictor: We've had debates about Hardened Scales before; attaching it to a respectable body makes the effect that much better and easy to set up via creature tutors. It also lets you pile counters on to it rather than needing another creature to get going. The more general wording on Constrictor lets it help out a small Energy theme if you want one or random cards like Tumble Magnet and Meren
Hangarback Walker/Walking Ballista: These fill out your curve in the most important spots while giving you necessary reach later in the game. The only downside to these is that they can get poached by anyone in the draft, but for good reason
Reyhan, Last of the Abzan: A recent addition and a very important one. The rate on this is fine even if you have no other counter synergies in your deck; if you do, it becomes fantastic. Some of the most impressive combo finishes involve loading up Hangarback Walker/Walking Ballista using Reyhan and a sac outlet such as:
Varolz, the Scar-Striped/Yahenni, Undead Partisan/Flesh Carver: Crossover with the sacrifice/Aristocrats theme that's also popular in BG (see Mazirek too). Varolz can also load up Walker/Ballista (or just a Thopter or Den Protector or something) on its own
Rishkar, Peema Renegade: Another excellent card in a generic green deck, this offers flexibility by converting your primary resource - counters - into another resource - mana - that's always in demand. In particular Rishkar is great with Walker/Ballista on either side, adding another counter ahead of schedule or making high values of X realistic
Gyre Sage/Devoted Druid/Crystalline Crawler: More restricted conversion of counters -> mana
Animation Module: An odd duck with a ton of potential. The counters deck focuses on vertical growth and this is a unique source of horizontal growth that works in parallel and has sweet interactions with other key pieces. With Curse/Nissa you can tap out to double the size of your army every (/other) turn, with Carrion Feeder you can make an 'unkillable' 1/1 while growing your Feeder at will for 1 mana, and so on. It doesn't hurt to have a mana sink that can nudge a planeswalker towards its ultimate either
Curse of Predation/Nissa, Voice of Zendikar: You want a counters 'Anthem' and these are the obvious choices. Some here have cut Curse for being too good in general and it's even more obscene in this deck. I don't know if I agree, but Nissa seems to be better on every metric: more flexible, more skill-testing, useful in a wider range of decks, and creates less polarized draws
Oona's Blackguard/Abzan Falconer/Bramblewood Paragon: I'm less convinced that you need counters 'Lords': they tend to be quite swingy and only useful in this deck. Falconer is probably the best and helps to anchor the theme in white (and for me goes very nicely with Thalia's Lieutenant for a Human crossover)
Plaxcaster Frogling/Cytoplast Root-Kin: Graft is great and Root-Kin is the best 'Lord' of all: with Scales/Constrictor you get a 5/5 that puts an extra two counters on your whole team and can add counters whenever it moves them around. Also excellent with Nissa.
Mikaeus, the Lunarch: The best counters card in White, a Human, something you can fetch with Recruiter or Ranger or what have you, and ridiculous with Scales.
High Sentinels of Arashin/Gleam of Authority: Probably a bit too on-the-nose. Gleam is very narrow but ridiculous when it works; one of my favourite recent Standard decks was this:
Narnam Renegade/Greenwheel Liberator: Revolt is easy to turn on in fetchland-heavy Cubes and many of the cards listed here trigger it incidentally. Liberator might be too much work given how many good 2-drops there are in green but Renegade fills a key spot in the curve, doesn't need other counters-matter cards to be good, and can hold off attackers if your draw is slow
Young Wolf/Servant of the Scale: More 'specific' one-drops, only worth it if you're generally lacking one-drops or really want to push/signal the theme
Rakdos Cackler/Thrill-Kill Assassin: Solid aggressive cards that don't require green
Lotleth Troll/Dreg Mangler: Good graveyard(/Zombies?) crossover
Safehold Elite/Kitchen Finks/Puppeteer Clique/Glen Elendra Archmage/Murderous Redcap: Persist is famously strong with effects that grant counters; Finks and Archmage are in another league by themselves but Elite is worth trying. You can loop these infinitely with Metallic Mimic + a sac outlet. Watch out with Constrictor!
Abzan Ascendancy/Abzan Charm/Ghave, Guru of Spores: Going full Abzan opens up the Khans options but they probably aren't worth it
Phantom Centaur: This cycle is promising but only Centaur is really good enough and the protection is irksome
Managorger Hydra: Do you like counters?
Verdurous Gearhulk: This is on-theme for the counters deck the same way Umezawa's Jitte is on-theme for the artifact deck; speaking of which:
Steel Overseer/Arcbound Ravager: Apparently a team tested Hardened Scales Robots for the Modern PT (before deciding it was awful and just playing regular Robots instead, but still). If these can be made to work you have a delightful crossover between two themes that introduces artifact synergies to the colour pair least likely to enjoy them naturally. Overseer and Ravager are both amazing with Animation Module; can we get a Throne of Geth up in here?
Model decks:
Constructed analogues: Hardened Scales (KTK-BFZ Standard, Frontier)
The +1/+1 counters deck, which lets you waste everyone's time as you struggle to turn your dice-laden behemoths sideways, is a casual favourite and recent competitive breakout. With some new gifts from Kaladesh block and the Commander sets it can apply for a spot in a medium-power Cube.
This deck fits the aggro-combo definition given in the intro and certainly displays the useful properties of that archetype:
Early-game explosiveness
If you played against the Hardened Scales deck in Standard when it had its namesake card you know how brutal its starts can be. For a Cube you might not want cards like Hardened Scales that only fit in this deck but many of your best draws don't require these. Consider:
T1: Carrion Feeder
T2: Hangarback Walker for 1
T3: Rishkar, Peema Renegade; put counters on Feeder and Walker; tap Feeder to charge Walker
Carrion Feeder is rarely found in 'normal' Cubes but I know my audience and it's a favourite around these parts. Early reviews of Rishkar from the power-max crowd are very positive and I expect them to be even better here. Hangarback Walker, far from being narrow, is a universally good card in Cube and easily justified as a double if you're into that.
This start gives you a 2/2 Carrion Feeder, a 3/3 Hangarback Walker, and up to 6 mana next turn; if you like, you can sac Walker to make some Thopters and threaten an even larger Carrion Feeder.
When you add in the counter-specific cards, you get draws like:
T1: Experiment One
T2: Winding Constrictor triggering Evolve; Experiment One becomes a 3/3
T3: Avatar of the Resolute; it comes in with two counters, Evolve triggers and gives Experiment One two more counters
This has you attacking with a 5/5 on turn 3 with a 5/4 and a Hardened Scales
I stand by my view that these nut draws are more interesting from both sides than the usual Goblin Guide-Ash Zealot-Rabblemaster-Hellrider draw that defines aggro in Cube. You get the satisfaction of putting all the pieces together with amazing results and your deck is doing its thing in a unique way rather than rehashing the same aggro curve you've seen a hundred times.
Late-game power
Another big selling point for aggro-combo is that your cards aren't quickly made obsolete as the game continues. Hangarback Walker is designed to grow with the flow of the game; Avatar is perfectly good as a 3/2 on Turn 2 in an aggressive start and a game-ender as a 7/6 on Turn 6. Cards like Varolz and Reyhan let you get value from smaller creatures by moving your power around. It's common to have two or more 1-drops or 2-drops on the board which are all bigger than any of your opponent's midgame plays.
In-game decisions
The counters deck asks for more than basic combat math in one turn; you have to sequence your plays carefully and plan ahead with a vision of how all the pieces fit together including against possible removal. Just using cards mentioned already: Carrion Feeder asks whether you want to sacrifice your board presence for more damage; Experiment One and Avatar prompt a trade-off between sequencing normally and contorting your plays to make them larger; every turn Hangarback Walker asks for a mana that you don't always want to give up; Rishkar lets you scale up your mana production dramatically in future turns. With Varolz or Reyhan you have turns reminiscent of Arcbound Ravager turns in Robots which is known for being one of the hardest aggro decks - and hardest decks overall - to play optimally.
As a Cube designer the great thing about +1/+1 counters is that they are essentially evergreen as the game's only way to mark permanent changes in power/toughness. Highly promising mechanics like Energy are limited because they are only ever confined to one block, but counters can be found everywhere. Some blocks have a subtheme that explicitly cares about counters - Unleash/Scavenge in RTR, the tribal silliness in Lorwyn - and incidental support is sprinkled throughout other sets: Carrion Feeder was not designed as a 'card that's about counters' but is a star of the archetype.
This theme also finds support across all colours. The Abzan focus in KTK helped to centre it in those colours but blue has Graft/Evolve from Simic's two showings and I'm constitutionally required to mention Ion Storm. Even obscure themes intersect with it in useful ways: an Elves theme can enjoy Joraga Warcaller and Bramblewood Paragon or your Heroic theme offers an existing supply of counters.
Since this theme is rarely explored at this power level it's worth looking at candidates individually:
Carrion Feeder/Experiment One: Both excellent; I love that the key 1-drops for this deck are also important pieces for other themes I want to support (sac/Zombies and green aggro/Humans respectively). See also Cloudfin Raptor in blue
Hardened Scales/Winding Constrictor: We've had debates about Hardened Scales before; attaching it to a respectable body makes the effect that much better and easy to set up via creature tutors. It also lets you pile counters on to it rather than needing another creature to get going. The more general wording on Constrictor lets it help out a small Energy theme if you want one or random cards like Tumble Magnet and Meren
Hangarback Walker/Walking Ballista: These fill out your curve in the most important spots while giving you necessary reach later in the game. The only downside to these is that they can get poached by anyone in the draft, but for good reason
Reyhan, Last of the Abzan: A recent addition and a very important one. The rate on this is fine even if you have no other counter synergies in your deck; if you do, it becomes fantastic. Some of the most impressive combo finishes involve loading up Hangarback Walker/Walking Ballista using Reyhan and a sac outlet such as:
Varolz, the Scar-Striped/Yahenni, Undead Partisan/Flesh Carver: Crossover with the sacrifice/Aristocrats theme that's also popular in BG (see Mazirek too). Varolz can also load up Walker/Ballista (or just a Thopter or Den Protector or something) on its own
Rishkar, Peema Renegade: Another excellent card in a generic green deck, this offers flexibility by converting your primary resource - counters - into another resource - mana - that's always in demand. In particular Rishkar is great with Walker/Ballista on either side, adding another counter ahead of schedule or making high values of X realistic
Gyre Sage/Devoted Druid/Crystalline Crawler: More restricted conversion of counters -> mana
Animation Module: An odd duck with a ton of potential. The counters deck focuses on vertical growth and this is a unique source of horizontal growth that works in parallel and has sweet interactions with other key pieces. With Curse/Nissa you can tap out to double the size of your army every (/other) turn, with Carrion Feeder you can make an 'unkillable' 1/1 while growing your Feeder at will for 1 mana, and so on. It doesn't hurt to have a mana sink that can nudge a planeswalker towards its ultimate either
Curse of Predation/Nissa, Voice of Zendikar: You want a counters 'Anthem' and these are the obvious choices. Some here have cut Curse for being too good in general and it's even more obscene in this deck. I don't know if I agree, but Nissa seems to be better on every metric: more flexible, more skill-testing, useful in a wider range of decks, and creates less polarized draws
Oona's Blackguard/Abzan Falconer/Bramblewood Paragon: I'm less convinced that you need counters 'Lords': they tend to be quite swingy and only useful in this deck. Falconer is probably the best and helps to anchor the theme in white (and for me goes very nicely with Thalia's Lieutenant for a Human crossover)
Plaxcaster Frogling/Cytoplast Root-Kin: Graft is great and Root-Kin is the best 'Lord' of all: with Scales/Constrictor you get a 5/5 that puts an extra two counters on your whole team and can add counters whenever it moves them around. Also excellent with Nissa.
Mikaeus, the Lunarch: The best counters card in White, a Human, something you can fetch with Recruiter or Ranger or what have you, and ridiculous with Scales.
High Sentinels of Arashin/Gleam of Authority: Probably a bit too on-the-nose. Gleam is very narrow but ridiculous when it works; one of my favourite recent Standard decks was this:
Gleam-White Heroic
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Narnam Renegade/Greenwheel Liberator: Revolt is easy to turn on in fetchland-heavy Cubes and many of the cards listed here trigger it incidentally. Liberator might be too much work given how many good 2-drops there are in green but Renegade fills a key spot in the curve, doesn't need other counters-matter cards to be good, and can hold off attackers if your draw is slow
Young Wolf/Servant of the Scale: More 'specific' one-drops, only worth it if you're generally lacking one-drops or really want to push/signal the theme
Rakdos Cackler/Thrill-Kill Assassin: Solid aggressive cards that don't require green
Lotleth Troll/Dreg Mangler: Good graveyard(/Zombies?) crossover
Safehold Elite/Kitchen Finks/Puppeteer Clique/Glen Elendra Archmage/Murderous Redcap: Persist is famously strong with effects that grant counters; Finks and Archmage are in another league by themselves but Elite is worth trying. You can loop these infinitely with Metallic Mimic + a sac outlet. Watch out with Constrictor!
Abzan Ascendancy/Abzan Charm/Ghave, Guru of Spores: Going full Abzan opens up the Khans options but they probably aren't worth it
Phantom Centaur: This cycle is promising but only Centaur is really good enough and the protection is irksome
Managorger Hydra: Do you like counters?
Verdurous Gearhulk: This is on-theme for the counters deck the same way Umezawa's Jitte is on-theme for the artifact deck; speaking of which:
Steel Overseer/Arcbound Ravager: Apparently a team tested Hardened Scales Robots for the Modern PT (before deciding it was awful and just playing regular Robots instead, but still). If these can be made to work you have a delightful crossover between two themes that introduces artifact synergies to the colour pair least likely to enjoy them naturally. Overseer and Ravager are both amazing with Animation Module; can we get a Throne of Geth up in here?
Model decks:
BG Scales
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BG Robot Scales
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Dom Harvey
Contributor
^after three months I should probably get round to that
anyway, updates!
We found a local place that's convenient and free for Cubing so that's hopefully more regular now. The guy who has a lot of Cubes brought his latest creation, a mono-black Cube that was a rough draft but had a surprising amount of depth; mono-colour Cubes are worth exploring in more detail IMO. I drafted this (quick post-SB pic after the last match so MD was a bit different):
Highlight included using Extraplanar Lens (which I didn't realize was symmetrical when I originally MDed it...) and Crypt Ghast to Consume Spirit for 18
Then we drafted the de-powered powered Cube:
Black aggro isn't heavily supported in a lot of conventional Cubes and I had to pivot into a more midrange deck as I couldn't find more 1-drops or 2-drops. I only had time for one match but the deck was a ton of fun to play. Fleetwheel Cruiser massively overperformed.
=
Amonkhet is a really cool set that perfectly highlights the tough choices you have to make in Cube design nowadays. The power level has been dialed back a lot and most of the cards are cute but not cut out for a competitive format. The modal nature of the set - cycling, embalm, aftermath - is great but there are so many slow-but-grindy cards that there's no particular appeal to these. It feels like you could build a Battle Box or Peasant Cube almost entirely around Amonkhet cards and mechanics but the powered 360 crowd doesn't have much to work with.
That said, I'm eager to try a more laid-back environment where mechanics like these - morph comes to mind - have more room to breathe.
anyway, updates!
We found a local place that's convenient and free for Cubing so that's hopefully more regular now. The guy who has a lot of Cubes brought his latest creation, a mono-black Cube that was a rough draft but had a surprising amount of depth; mono-colour Cubes are worth exploring in more detail IMO. I drafted this (quick post-SB pic after the last match so MD was a bit different):
Highlight included using Extraplanar Lens (which I didn't realize was symmetrical when I originally MDed it...) and Crypt Ghast to Consume Spirit for 18
Then we drafted the de-powered powered Cube:
Black aggro isn't heavily supported in a lot of conventional Cubes and I had to pivot into a more midrange deck as I couldn't find more 1-drops or 2-drops. I only had time for one match but the deck was a ton of fun to play. Fleetwheel Cruiser massively overperformed.
=
Amonkhet is a really cool set that perfectly highlights the tough choices you have to make in Cube design nowadays. The power level has been dialed back a lot and most of the cards are cute but not cut out for a competitive format. The modal nature of the set - cycling, embalm, aftermath - is great but there are so many slow-but-grindy cards that there's no particular appeal to these. It feels like you could build a Battle Box or Peasant Cube almost entirely around Amonkhet cards and mechanics but the powered 360 crowd doesn't have much to work with.
That said, I'm eager to try a more laid-back environment where mechanics like these - morph comes to mind - have more room to breathe.
Angel of Sanctions: No easy comparison at that mana cost AFAICT (you have to go up to Admonition Angel/Angel of Serenity), this is good but white 5s are far too stacked
Cast Out: There are so many Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light effects in white that any unique feature draws my eye. Cycling is especially good as it's easy to have too many cards like this.
Devoted Crop-Mate: More likely to work than the failed Tethmos High Priest experiments of 2014. 'Reanimating cheap creatures' is starting to become its own sub-theme.
Gideon of the Trials: If the Gideon + Pacts decks in Modern/Legacy work it will be the first time ever a Gideon has done something interesting
Glory-Bound Initiate: Lots of potential especially with evasion; put O-Naginata on this thing
Regal Caracal: Angel of Invention takes it for now based on artifact/Recruiter synergies but this is sweet if you're bored of Cloudgoat Ranger/Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
Sacred Cat: Senator, you're no Doomed Traveler
Vizier of Deferment: This feels like a Commander card: looks cool, probably plays well, but I have no idea how it fits into an environment
Censor: Tilts people more than Miscalculation and cheaper to cycle!
Curator of Mysteries: Love it: stops you getting clogged with 4s, plays into various themes, a good poster-child for 'fair' reanimation
Drake Haven: Obviously I'm going to try it, even more excited about Faithless Looting/Firestorm now
Glyph Keeper: Great as a midrange threat but really poor at stabilizing. Also having the Kira text on an embalm creature that most people will use a piece of paper for is hilarious
Lay Claim: Replenish still won't work despite my best efforts, check in again next year
Vizier of Many Faces: Good at its job but is it better/more fun than Stunt Double, Clever Impersonator, etc?
Archfiend of Ifnir: What Doomwake Giant always wanted to be if you have a reliable outlet
Bone Picker: A fake 'payoff' card for the sac archetype that can be fine out of context; you can't run too many of these and idk if this is better than the others. Worth trying though, especially as that deck is mana-intensive and often clogs up the ground but can't break through directly
Bontu the Glorified: See above, competing against e.g. Liliana, Heretical Healer
Doomed Dissenter: I really like the Human/Zombie crossover stuff (cf. Angel of Glory's Rise) but the Human tribal cards want you to be centred in white and this is worse than Sultai Emissary/Butcher Ghoul otherwise
Dread Wanderer: Worse than Gravecrawler/Bloodsoaked Champion but nice for the militant singleton crowd
Liliana, Death's Majesty: This is the planeswalker I've been waiting for; I can't believe reanimation as a minus ability hasn't happened yet (Heretical Healer doesn't count!). Name overloading with Veil/Last Hope is a concern but otherwise this is a slam dunk for me and should give Solar Flare style a nice boost.
Plague Belcher: This entire post is an excuse to complain about the +1/-1 counter cancelling rule. Why can't I use this to reset Geralf's Messenger?!
Ahn-Crop Crasher: I haven't played Goblin Heelcutter in a while and this isn't obviously better
Bloodrage Brawler: If a discard-centric R/x deck is a thing - and the tools are there now IMO - this is a crucial piece. My goal is to pitch Flamewake Phoenix to this
By Force: Prefer Release the Gremlins (especially for using it on your own stuff)
Cartouche of Zeal: If you were playing Hammerhand (you weren't but maybe should!) and want to mislead your drafters with trinket text...
Combat Celebrant: sure
Flameblade Adept: idk how consistently you need to trigger this for it to be good, cf. Monastery Swiftspear? Menace is underrated though and the ability to Fireball someone with Firestorm or similar is cool
Harsh Mentor: Format-specific but with the type of red deck I want to build I worry that it's hurting you more than them most games
Hazoret the Fervent: Red has lots of good 4s and lots of semi-decent Hellbent payoffs, this is fine as a hard-to-remove finisher but Cube isn't really conducive to it
Heart-Piercer Manticore: This is sweet but isn't really a 'red' card
Sweltering Suns: Exile on Anger of the Gods is very relevant typically but if I try 'cycling/discard matters' this is going right in; this is exactly the kind of situational card that really wants cycling so you don't groan when you draw it against control
Channeler Initiate: In the proud tradition of mana creatures that make you work, not convincingly better/more fun than the others
Honored Hydra: It says a lot about power creep that Roar of the Wurm is hardly playable nowadays. It's nice that you can set this up with Survival or something though
Manglehorn: It's obvious if your format wants this over Reclamation Sage, not much more to say
Rhonas the Indomitable: This card is very very good if you support that kind of Stompy deck; this is what Temur/Ferocious always wanted
Vizier of the Menagerie: Already gave my heart to Oracle of Mul Daya, sorry
Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons: Lots of sweet synergies but it's so hard to connect with this if you don't have anything going already
Neheb, the Worthy: BUY YOUR DIDGERIDOOS NOW
Nissa, Steward of Elements: Perfect power level and gameplay, I look forward to wasting lots of mana/turns just to set up hits with this; yet another card that's fantastic with Brainstorm
Samut, Voice of Dissent: This is like a Robo-Rosewater creation that somehow found its way into the set
Wayward Servant: You need to go really hard on Zombies for this to be good unless you have e.g. Living Death
Insult // Injury: Could be sweet in the red discard deck as a psuedo-Berserk/Firebolt hybrid?
Reduce // Rubble: Good but not the type of UR deck I want to support
Cut // Ribbons: Playable as Flame Slash and great in BR so it's more tempting than the others
Hazoret's Monument/Oketra's Monument: I like the thought of going off with the red monument; the white one mostly just enables what white wants to do naturally
Canyon Slough: Everything I always wanted, the basic land types feel tacked on but the thought of cycling Eternal Dragon for one of these or Gushing one back and cycling it fills me with joy
Cast Out: There are so many Oblivion Ring/Banishing Light effects in white that any unique feature draws my eye. Cycling is especially good as it's easy to have too many cards like this.
Devoted Crop-Mate: More likely to work than the failed Tethmos High Priest experiments of 2014. 'Reanimating cheap creatures' is starting to become its own sub-theme.
Gideon of the Trials: If the Gideon + Pacts decks in Modern/Legacy work it will be the first time ever a Gideon has done something interesting
Glory-Bound Initiate: Lots of potential especially with evasion; put O-Naginata on this thing
Regal Caracal: Angel of Invention takes it for now based on artifact/Recruiter synergies but this is sweet if you're bored of Cloudgoat Ranger/Scion of Vitu-Ghazi
Sacred Cat: Senator, you're no Doomed Traveler
Vizier of Deferment: This feels like a Commander card: looks cool, probably plays well, but I have no idea how it fits into an environment
Censor: Tilts people more than Miscalculation and cheaper to cycle!
Curator of Mysteries: Love it: stops you getting clogged with 4s, plays into various themes, a good poster-child for 'fair' reanimation
Drake Haven: Obviously I'm going to try it, even more excited about Faithless Looting/Firestorm now
Glyph Keeper: Great as a midrange threat but really poor at stabilizing. Also having the Kira text on an embalm creature that most people will use a piece of paper for is hilarious
Lay Claim: Replenish still won't work despite my best efforts, check in again next year
Vizier of Many Faces: Good at its job but is it better/more fun than Stunt Double, Clever Impersonator, etc?
Archfiend of Ifnir: What Doomwake Giant always wanted to be if you have a reliable outlet
Bone Picker: A fake 'payoff' card for the sac archetype that can be fine out of context; you can't run too many of these and idk if this is better than the others. Worth trying though, especially as that deck is mana-intensive and often clogs up the ground but can't break through directly
Bontu the Glorified: See above, competing against e.g. Liliana, Heretical Healer
Doomed Dissenter: I really like the Human/Zombie crossover stuff (cf. Angel of Glory's Rise) but the Human tribal cards want you to be centred in white and this is worse than Sultai Emissary/Butcher Ghoul otherwise
Dread Wanderer: Worse than Gravecrawler/Bloodsoaked Champion but nice for the militant singleton crowd
Liliana, Death's Majesty: This is the planeswalker I've been waiting for; I can't believe reanimation as a minus ability hasn't happened yet (Heretical Healer doesn't count!). Name overloading with Veil/Last Hope is a concern but otherwise this is a slam dunk for me and should give Solar Flare style a nice boost.
Plague Belcher: This entire post is an excuse to complain about the +1/-1 counter cancelling rule. Why can't I use this to reset Geralf's Messenger?!
Ahn-Crop Crasher: I haven't played Goblin Heelcutter in a while and this isn't obviously better
Bloodrage Brawler: If a discard-centric R/x deck is a thing - and the tools are there now IMO - this is a crucial piece. My goal is to pitch Flamewake Phoenix to this
By Force: Prefer Release the Gremlins (especially for using it on your own stuff)
Cartouche of Zeal: If you were playing Hammerhand (you weren't but maybe should!) and want to mislead your drafters with trinket text...
Combat Celebrant: sure
Flameblade Adept: idk how consistently you need to trigger this for it to be good, cf. Monastery Swiftspear? Menace is underrated though and the ability to Fireball someone with Firestorm or similar is cool
Harsh Mentor: Format-specific but with the type of red deck I want to build I worry that it's hurting you more than them most games
Hazoret the Fervent: Red has lots of good 4s and lots of semi-decent Hellbent payoffs, this is fine as a hard-to-remove finisher but Cube isn't really conducive to it
Heart-Piercer Manticore: This is sweet but isn't really a 'red' card
Sweltering Suns: Exile on Anger of the Gods is very relevant typically but if I try 'cycling/discard matters' this is going right in; this is exactly the kind of situational card that really wants cycling so you don't groan when you draw it against control
Channeler Initiate: In the proud tradition of mana creatures that make you work, not convincingly better/more fun than the others
Honored Hydra: It says a lot about power creep that Roar of the Wurm is hardly playable nowadays. It's nice that you can set this up with Survival or something though
Manglehorn: It's obvious if your format wants this over Reclamation Sage, not much more to say
Rhonas the Indomitable: This card is very very good if you support that kind of Stompy deck; this is what Temur/Ferocious always wanted
Vizier of the Menagerie: Already gave my heart to Oracle of Mul Daya, sorry
Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons: Lots of sweet synergies but it's so hard to connect with this if you don't have anything going already
Neheb, the Worthy: BUY YOUR DIDGERIDOOS NOW
Nissa, Steward of Elements: Perfect power level and gameplay, I look forward to wasting lots of mana/turns just to set up hits with this; yet another card that's fantastic with Brainstorm
Samut, Voice of Dissent: This is like a Robo-Rosewater creation that somehow found its way into the set
Wayward Servant: You need to go really hard on Zombies for this to be good unless you have e.g. Living Death
Insult // Injury: Could be sweet in the red discard deck as a psuedo-Berserk/Firebolt hybrid?
Reduce // Rubble: Good but not the type of UR deck I want to support
Cut // Ribbons: Playable as Flame Slash and great in BR so it's more tempting than the others
Hazoret's Monument/Oketra's Monument: I like the thought of going off with the red monument; the white one mostly just enables what white wants to do naturally
Canyon Slough: Everything I always wanted, the basic land types feel tacked on but the thought of cycling Eternal Dragon for one of these or Gushing one back and cycling it fills me with joy
I enjoyed your thoughts on the new set and find I agree with most of what you say.
One thing I feel important to point out is that Harsh Mentor is one-sided! Makes it a sweet red 2 drop in my book.
One thing I feel important to point out is that Harsh Mentor is one-sided! Makes it a sweet red 2 drop in my book.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Have lots of thoughts that I'm too scatterbrained to write at up atm, but here's a draft of a list I'm working on:
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/68445
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/68445
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/68445
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/68445
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Scrubbed out of the GP last weekend, which wasn't surprising; I did get to Cube, which was! IRL list hadn't been updated properly but things still turned out well.
Eternal Dragon for Scattered Groves is adorable
This is the perfect example of a layered, interesting aggro deck with some bonus gambling on Windbrisk Heights and Booster Tutor (which was really fun, I'd definitely recommend trying it)
This deck's pilot is mad, a scientist, and a mad scientist, and he was really excited to play this deck. He spoke very highly of Shreds of Sanity - I'd put it in to support these red combo-control decks a while ago and didn't expect much from it, but it apparently did great work here chaining cards like Dig Through Time and Time Warp
(swapped some MD/SB cards to reflect how I'd build it but keeping some of the sweet stuff)
Contraband Kingpin gave an impressive audition in this deck - using it with Shrine to dig deep was great and the scry worked well with the cantrips. The 'play a bunch of artifacts into Balance' strategy made its occasional appearance; Balance has been remarkably fair and balanced in the last few drafts we've done
(didn't catch the lands but Crucible + BBE suggest fetches and I know his mana was fine in the match we played)
A fairly generic midrange deck with tons of card advantage; AFAIK, Pack Rat didn't ruin any games but it and Cryptbreaker let removal-heavy draws compete with the control and combo decks
A little clunky and light on interaction but a nice showcase of the creature shenanigans possible in G/x
And finally...
and one for the Mizzix's Mastery scrapbook:
I semi-forced the ramp/reanimator archetype but couldn't decide which of the sweet things I most wanted to test so, for science, I crammed them all in the same deck and made it work. On top of the usual Mastery silliness (Mastery for Nissa's Renewal or Wildfire is a common base case and always feels great; backdooring into an artifact/creature via Trash for Treasure or Breath of Life is cool too), I got to OHKO two opponents with Combustible Gearhulk into Emrakul despite sabotaging my chances of hitting it by playing many more than 40 cards. Seeing this deck in action solidified my commitment to red's strength as an engine/graveyard colour.
Some takeaways/observations:
- You'll notice that every deck has a lot of fixing and often a few spell lands (or scry/cycle lands). I love lands that do stuff, I have a lot of gold cards, it's good when people can cast their spells. Players were able to draft 3- or 4-colour decks if they put the effort in, adding a lot of variety to drafting and deckbuilding. I play a ton of lands and don't regret it!
- A solid range of decks is on display here. There's only one aggro deck, but it's a sweet one and most of the other players in my drafts shy away from pure aggro. Meanwhile you have classic midrange, control, creature combo, non-creature combo/ramp, and a few decks that defy easy classification
- Nothing felt too overpowered or hard to answer, but that may just be optimism based on a small sample size. My nut draw of T3 Trash -> Myr Battlesphere lost to a decent draw from the BW Aggro deck!
Overall I was very happy with the results and, even though my time is stretched much more thinly nowadays, I'm excited to post here more and get back to refining my Cube.
4C Flash
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Eternal Dragon for Scattered Groves is adorable
BW Aggro
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This is the perfect example of a layered, interesting aggro deck with some bonus gambling on Windbrisk Heights and Booster Tutor (which was really fun, I'd definitely recommend trying it)
UWR Spells
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[imgur]http://i.imgur.com/pkse6gj.jpg[/imgur]
This deck's pilot is mad, a scientist, and a mad scientist, and he was really excited to play this deck. He spoke very highly of Shreds of Sanity - I'd put it in to support these red combo-control decks a while ago and didn't expect much from it, but it apparently did great work here chaining cards like Dig Through Time and Time Warp
UG Crush
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(swapped some MD/SB cards to reflect how I'd build it but keeping some of the sweet stuff)
UWB Artifact Tokens
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Contraband Kingpin gave an impressive audition in this deck - using it with Shrine to dig deep was great and the scry worked well with the cantrips. The 'play a bunch of artifacts into Balance' strategy made its occasional appearance; Balance has been remarkably fair and balanced in the last few drafts we've done
BRg Value
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(didn't catch the lands but Crucible + BBE suggest fetches and I know his mana was fine in the match we played)
A fairly generic midrange deck with tons of card advantage; AFAIK, Pack Rat didn't ruin any games but it and Cryptbreaker let removal-heavy draws compete with the control and combo decks
Abzan Pod
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A little clunky and light on interaction but a nice showcase of the creature shenanigans possible in G/x
And finally...
Big Trashy Goggles Ramp
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and one for the Mizzix's Mastery scrapbook:
I semi-forced the ramp/reanimator archetype but couldn't decide which of the sweet things I most wanted to test so, for science, I crammed them all in the same deck and made it work. On top of the usual Mastery silliness (Mastery for Nissa's Renewal or Wildfire is a common base case and always feels great; backdooring into an artifact/creature via Trash for Treasure or Breath of Life is cool too), I got to OHKO two opponents with Combustible Gearhulk into Emrakul despite sabotaging my chances of hitting it by playing many more than 40 cards. Seeing this deck in action solidified my commitment to red's strength as an engine/graveyard colour.
Some takeaways/observations:
- You'll notice that every deck has a lot of fixing and often a few spell lands (or scry/cycle lands). I love lands that do stuff, I have a lot of gold cards, it's good when people can cast their spells. Players were able to draft 3- or 4-colour decks if they put the effort in, adding a lot of variety to drafting and deckbuilding. I play a ton of lands and don't regret it!
- A solid range of decks is on display here. There's only one aggro deck, but it's a sweet one and most of the other players in my drafts shy away from pure aggro. Meanwhile you have classic midrange, control, creature combo, non-creature combo/ramp, and a few decks that defy easy classification
- Nothing felt too overpowered or hard to answer, but that may just be optimism based on a small sample size. My nut draw of T3 Trash -> Myr Battlesphere lost to a decent draw from the BW Aggro deck!
Overall I was very happy with the results and, even though my time is stretched much more thinly nowadays, I'm excited to post here more and get back to refining my Cube.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Hour of Devastation/Commander 2017:
Adorned Pouncer: cats > dogs, fight me
Crested Sunmare: Maybe the life-gain payoff we always wanted? I didn't need convincing to play Courser of Kruphix/Scavenging Ooze
Hour of Revelation: My issue with Planar Cleansing is the effect, not the cost
Sunscourge Champion: I'm pushing reanimation in white so this is a perfect setup/bridge card
Nimble Obstructionist: great if generic
Supreme Will/Doomfall/Abrade: All great; Supreme Will is the best, but the others are more important. As I add more artifacts I want another removal spell for them that isn't narrow hate and, even though discard apparently ruins Magic, I want an all-purpose discard spell that can do other things and isn't just another Thoughtseize
Burning-Fist Minotaur: I like having more cheap beaters that play into graveyard synergies but idk if this is what I want
Earthshaker Khenra: An auto-include if you support red aggro in any capacity
Hour of Devastation: A big red sweeper that isn't an Earthquake variant is an important pick-up; I don't run many planeswalkers, but for people who do this is even more crucial. This is good redundancy in the Wildfire decks but also valuable for the typical UR control deck that can't afford to bin its lands on short notice
Neheb the Eternal: Cool design but I have nfi what to do with it
Hour of Promise: A Desert-centric environment sounds cool but this doesn't really compete with Primeval Titan
Ramunap Excavator: I've wanted this exact card for ages and I'm thrilled to play it
Bloodwater Entity: I suspect this isn't as good as I'd like in the average case but setting up Temporal Mastery et al is sweet
The Locust God: I love this; it's a strong and inevitable finisher in control that's fantastic with all of the draw/discard stuff I have going on (Jeskai Ascendancy! Memory Jar!)
The Scarab God: After seeing this dominate games in Modern as well as Standard, I'm convinced it's the UB finisher I've always wanted. I tried to make Havengul Lich work for a while and this is so much better. The Zombie trinket text is kinda offensive but also on-theme!
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh: Maybe this is just as obnoxious as Karn and I'm letting the mana cost blind me to that, but this is a super-splashy ramp target that should lead to fun endgames
Farm // Market, Claim // Fame, Driven // Despair: split cards are good idk
Hollow One: I have a ton of ways to play this for 1 mana and it's great for delirium etc
Endless Sands: I played this to good effect in Modern and this is a cool Blink-esque effect that isn't tied to any colour or strategy
Ifnir Deadlands/Shefet Dunes/Ipnu Rivulet/Ramunap Ruins: I'd put these in my decks but it's tough to justify spending a Cube slot on them
God-Pharaoh's Gift (+ Gate to the Afterlife as a two-for-one): This is the most exciting card in the set for me. It's the non-creature Welder target I always wanted, Gift by itself is a much sleeker Debtor's Knell (a favourite from 10 years ago) and, in a Cube defined by creature and graveard interactions, Gate + Gift is a worthwhile subgame that many decks can pursue
==
Bloodforged Battle-Axe: The appeal of Bonesplitter is its raw efficiency but this is worth a try in a slower format
Traverse the Outlands: Like Harvest Season, these super-ramp spells that depend on creatures are cool in theory but I have no clue how to make them work in practice
O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami: As someone who picked up the game during Kamigawa and has a nostalgic attachment to the block's lore, this card is really lazy and disappointing
Scalelord Reckoner: Still not enough Dragons to make it ~a thing~
Boneyard Scourge: ditto, for a brief moment I thought it endlessly returned itself but no such luck
Fractured Identity: A++
Kess, Dissident Mage: I love having a spells-matter finisher/payoff that I can play at any point without feeling embarrassed; curves really well into the powerful 5-drops in URx
Galecaster Colossus: Sweet card but locks them out too easily if unanswered and requires some work to get there. Maybe fine at 7 mana though
Izzet Chemister: Mizzix's Mastery is my current favourite thing so I really hope this is good enough; makes a good argument for Protect-the-Queen cards like Lightning Greaves
The tribal theme and more explicit multiplayer focus means this Commander batch is lighter on Cube hits than the others, which is a shame but I think I like Hour of Devastation more than most so the drought isn't too bad
Adorned Pouncer: cats > dogs, fight me
Crested Sunmare: Maybe the life-gain payoff we always wanted? I didn't need convincing to play Courser of Kruphix/Scavenging Ooze
Hour of Revelation: My issue with Planar Cleansing is the effect, not the cost
Sunscourge Champion: I'm pushing reanimation in white so this is a perfect setup/bridge card
Nimble Obstructionist: great if generic
Supreme Will/Doomfall/Abrade: All great; Supreme Will is the best, but the others are more important. As I add more artifacts I want another removal spell for them that isn't narrow hate and, even though discard apparently ruins Magic, I want an all-purpose discard spell that can do other things and isn't just another Thoughtseize
Burning-Fist Minotaur: I like having more cheap beaters that play into graveyard synergies but idk if this is what I want
Earthshaker Khenra: An auto-include if you support red aggro in any capacity
Hour of Devastation: A big red sweeper that isn't an Earthquake variant is an important pick-up; I don't run many planeswalkers, but for people who do this is even more crucial. This is good redundancy in the Wildfire decks but also valuable for the typical UR control deck that can't afford to bin its lands on short notice
Neheb the Eternal: Cool design but I have nfi what to do with it
Hour of Promise: A Desert-centric environment sounds cool but this doesn't really compete with Primeval Titan
Ramunap Excavator: I've wanted this exact card for ages and I'm thrilled to play it
Bloodwater Entity: I suspect this isn't as good as I'd like in the average case but setting up Temporal Mastery et al is sweet
The Locust God: I love this; it's a strong and inevitable finisher in control that's fantastic with all of the draw/discard stuff I have going on (Jeskai Ascendancy! Memory Jar!)
The Scarab God: After seeing this dominate games in Modern as well as Standard, I'm convinced it's the UB finisher I've always wanted. I tried to make Havengul Lich work for a while and this is so much better. The Zombie trinket text is kinda offensive but also on-theme!
Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh: Maybe this is just as obnoxious as Karn and I'm letting the mana cost blind me to that, but this is a super-splashy ramp target that should lead to fun endgames
Farm // Market, Claim // Fame, Driven // Despair: split cards are good idk
Hollow One: I have a ton of ways to play this for 1 mana and it's great for delirium etc
Endless Sands: I played this to good effect in Modern and this is a cool Blink-esque effect that isn't tied to any colour or strategy
Ifnir Deadlands/Shefet Dunes/Ipnu Rivulet/Ramunap Ruins: I'd put these in my decks but it's tough to justify spending a Cube slot on them
God-Pharaoh's Gift (+ Gate to the Afterlife as a two-for-one): This is the most exciting card in the set for me. It's the non-creature Welder target I always wanted, Gift by itself is a much sleeker Debtor's Knell (a favourite from 10 years ago) and, in a Cube defined by creature and graveard interactions, Gate + Gift is a worthwhile subgame that many decks can pursue
==
Bloodforged Battle-Axe: The appeal of Bonesplitter is its raw efficiency but this is worth a try in a slower format
Traverse the Outlands: Like Harvest Season, these super-ramp spells that depend on creatures are cool in theory but I have no clue how to make them work in practice
O-Kagachi, Vengeful Kami: As someone who picked up the game during Kamigawa and has a nostalgic attachment to the block's lore, this card is really lazy and disappointing
Scalelord Reckoner: Still not enough Dragons to make it ~a thing~
Boneyard Scourge: ditto, for a brief moment I thought it endlessly returned itself but no such luck
Fractured Identity: A++
Kess, Dissident Mage: I love having a spells-matter finisher/payoff that I can play at any point without feeling embarrassed; curves really well into the powerful 5-drops in URx
Galecaster Colossus: Sweet card but locks them out too easily if unanswered and requires some work to get there. Maybe fine at 7 mana though
Izzet Chemister: Mizzix's Mastery is my current favourite thing so I really hope this is good enough; makes a good argument for Protect-the-Queen cards like Lightning Greaves
The tribal theme and more explicit multiplayer focus means this Commander batch is lighter on Cube hits than the others, which is a shame but I think I like Hour of Devastation more than most so the drought isn't too bad
Neheb, the Eternal seems like a premier card in Wildfire decks. Being able to produce 4 mana after a Wildfire seems so backbreaking.
Dom Harvey
Contributor
Some big updates coming soon; for now I don't want the indignity of being pushed off Page 1 but, much more importantly, I got to Cube with Chris while I was in Toronto! Managed to 4-0 with this:
Custom Cards:
WB cycle land
fetchland that gets any basic
2 copies of a 2-mana Blasting Station (that only triggers off your stuff)
1B for a 1/1 Flying, ETB Entomb with Unearth 1B
1B Grafted Wargear that taps its bearer when it equips, Living Weapon
B Sorcery, mill top 3 then Disentomb a land/creature if it entered your GY this turn; Kicker 4 to return it to play instead
This deck was excellent and the customs added some fun new dimensions to it. Both Lilianas were outstanding; I haven't played with Defiant Necromancer in a while so I had forgot how strong it is as a payoff for sac-heavy decks. I had a ton of playables (including a Sun Titan that started on the bench but came in vs the grindy Abzan GY/planeswalker deck) so I was able to shift roles as necessary; I committed fully to the sac theme after wheeling the second 'Blasting Station'. I'm glad I got to meet Chris (and Lucas before he passed) and it was another great stop on an amazing trip. Canada <3
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Custom Cards:
WB cycle land
fetchland that gets any basic
2 copies of a 2-mana Blasting Station (that only triggers off your stuff)
1B for a 1/1 Flying, ETB Entomb with Unearth 1B
1B Grafted Wargear that taps its bearer when it equips, Living Weapon
B Sorcery, mill top 3 then Disentomb a land/creature if it entered your GY this turn; Kicker 4 to return it to play instead
This deck was excellent and the customs added some fun new dimensions to it. Both Lilianas were outstanding; I haven't played with Defiant Necromancer in a while so I had forgot how strong it is as a payoff for sac-heavy decks. I had a ton of playables (including a Sun Titan that started on the bench but came in vs the grindy Abzan GY/planeswalker deck) so I was able to shift roles as necessary; I committed fully to the sac theme after wheeling the second 'Blasting Station'. I'm glad I got to meet Chris (and Lucas before he passed) and it was another great stop on an amazing trip. Canada <3
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I'm like, 80% sure that's how infernal rite should be worded? It's supposed be a more restrictive Grapple with the Past that you can kick for a zombify (no target restrictions)