First budget cube

[Quirk]

Hi. I'm new.

I have put together a modest attempt at a cube with a collection of very cheap cards and cards I already owned. I haven't had the chance to get multiple friends together for a draft as yet though I have managed to draft a little bit two-player. I haven't done any other cube drafting except via MTGO. In short I lack the experience to know whether this is a mostly reasonable attempt or a terrible pile and I'd like a sanity check before inflicting this on others.

Any thoughts on the cube in general would be appreciated. However more specific opinions I'd like to gather are:
- Do green and black look viable as aggressive options?
- Does the balance of discard/reanimation spells/big things look sensible?
- Do any strategies look too overpowered or underpowered?
- Do any individual cards look unplayably bad/far too strong?
- What cheap cards would add interesting dimensions to what's there?

Cube is here:

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/40613

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

 

[safra]

I'd try to finish the Izzet Boilerworks cycle (i.e. ten lands w/ the same effect), they'll help smooth the decks it looks like your Cube wants to make. Your green is kinda rampy (but without much to ramp into?) and I'd curb that a little for some cheap aggro creatures. Experiment One, Skyshroud Elf and Strangleroot Geist are all good cheap options. Black aggro seems almost like mono-black aggro; if you pull back on the Mutilates and Bloodhusk Ritualists (nantuko shade rules, keep that, also despoiler)

Mind Shatter is bad and when it isn't it isn't fun either
one or two more kill spells in black, fatties in green, aggro one-drops in red and white might help diversify things
wait, Time Spiral??? huh



reanimator looks pretty interesting; i don't like Stone Rain here, i drafted a nice-looking Cruel Control deck:

Cruel Control from CubeTutor.com

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Land destruction and bounce lands sounds like such a feelbad nonbo for the environment. I also think you should switch the guild gates for either scrylands and or gainlands!

 

[Quirk]

Safra:
A couple of quick questions about cards I already have that might help.
Without picking anything else up: would Quirion Sentinel be viable as a green pseudo-1-drop? I know you can't play it on turn 1, but you can live the dream t2 with Burning-Tree Emissary into Quirion Sentinel and Dryad Militant - though it's almost strictly worse than BTE.
I have Living Hive as another green fatty kicking round, but omitted it on the basis that if it doesn't swing and connect, it dies without bringing any value. There's also Guardian of Cloverdell, but it seemed worse than Cloudgoat Ranger while costing more mana. I guess neither of those are quite good enough? I also envisaged Myr Battlesphere and Artisan of Kozilek as ramp targets for green.
In black, do you think Expunge or Last Gasp would be playable alternative kill spells?

I was a little worried (from MTGO cube experiences) that red aggro might prove a little too effective at closing out the game to let other decks shine. Are you thinking I should add more cards like Frenzied Goblin?

Rasmus:
Stone Rain is probably a mistake. I added it late, trying to give red some variety. There's more expensive LD in the cube as well though with Acidic Slime, Sylvan Primordial, Wildfire, Destructive Force - do you see any or all of those as being problematic as well? I would kind of like to try out a Wildfire package, but maybe it's just horrible with bouncelands.

Wrecking Ball is probably almost as bad as Stone Rain, hitting a bounceland t4 on the play.

 

[japahn]

It looks black aggro has just enough critical mass, but it's too black mana intensive, making it only really viable in the form of mono-black aggro. If you want it to be one of the archetypes, isolated from others, ignore the rest of the paragraph, though it usually ends up being weak when not combined with other colors. To address this, you could switch out some of Black Knight, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Despoiler of Souls and Grasp of Darkness for 1B creatures/spells. I also suggest Night's Whisper instead of Sign in Blood, even though it can't target the opponent.

Looking at the whole curve, black actually seems to be a loner color due to all the double colored casting costs. If this is intentional, alright - you can even add more cards that make it clear, like Nightmare, Lashwrithe, Dark Prophecy. But if you want it to mix with other colors better, it's best to switch some of them to single black mana costs.

Your black 4cc is really crowded. That's a good place to cut a few cards to smoothen up the lower part of the curve. You should increase a bit the density of 1-drops (Bloodsoaked Champion, Carnophage, Vampire Lacerator) and 2-drops (Oona's Prowler, Nezumi Cutthroat, Pain Seer, Blood Scrivener).

Green has a bunch of ramp, but not much aggro support. Thornscape Familiar and Thornscape Apprentice push you into Naya, Elves of Deep Shadow pulls you a bit towards Golgari, and they are really guild cards rather than green, so you are short on 1 and 2 drops in pure green. Many of the other 2-drops are defensive, so I'd swap some of them for more aggressive creatures like Heir of the Wilds, Garruk's Companion (or Avatar of the Resolute), Jungle Lion.

Overall, I think green is very, very focused on ramp and you could make space for aggro and still have a strong ramp theme. There also seems to be a sunburst theme (All Suns' Dawn, Etched Oracle) which is cool, but there is not enough payoff apart from running the fatties you sniped from other colors. To fix this, add a few big, scary creatures in guild sections, without double colored mana requirements. Also, you could switch the ramp more towards producing any color rather than producing G or fetching forests to push this theme.

Some short random observations:

• The dual lands are all slow. This pushes aggro to mono and mono plus splash, which might not be that interesting. Running some painlands instead of taplands/refuges would help with this.
• There are two Gigantiforms, I think that's not intentional.
• The Boros and Golgari Signets look kind of random, is there a reason you added those but not the others?
• You should add a Goblin Rabblemaster and/or Krenko, Mob Boss to go with all the other goblins.
• Quirion Sentinel looks bad without a lot of 1-drops.

 

[Quirk]

@japahn:
Yeah, black is quite the loner colour. I was finding it hard to come up with good options for black 2 drops which aren't absurdly thirsty for black mana - Gatekeeper of Malakir and Nantuko Shade are staples in much more powerful cubes, and it felt like I'd have a hard job making aggro viable without them. Of the four BB creatures, Black Knight probably does too little for the cost and is more replaceable I think. Spell-wise there are less black-intense options though, you're right.

I hadn't noticed quite how crowded the four drops were until you pointed it out. I guess Black's trending out of aggro into mid-range.

Thanks for pointing out the lack of payoff for proper five colour support - that theme definitely looks half-finished. Would e.g. a card like Woolly Thoctar fit this context, or were you thinking more along the lines of something like Ruric Thar?

On the observations:
- The dual lands are slow, but alas, this is so far very much a budget cube. Same goes for trying to find a cheap goblin lord. There's Mad Auntie in black, but stretching goblin tribal across colours seems awkward.
- Two Gigantiforms is actually deliberate, to allow kicker! While 9 mana for a pair of hasty 8/8s isn't quite Tooth and Nail I thought it might represent a reasonable ramp payoff.
- The idea of the signets was to support RW Wildfire style decks (I was attempting to run Razia's Purification but came to the suspicion it may just be bad and dropped it) and GB reanimation/ramp while keeping signet ramp off blue. That said, it's very dubious whether green needs any help.
- Point taken on Quirion Sentinel.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

If you want to see a very polished budget list I have one in my sig. As for black 2 drops, there are a ton of great options if you are budget:



The bouncelands are really good, and support a ramp strategy in green and blue with untap effects. There also are a lot of really +1 +1 counter options if you want to support a tribal theme.

 

[japahn]

Pain lands are pretty cheap, pretty much the only cheap duals that don't CIPT.

I should read the cards before I talk about them, didn't remember Gigantiform had a kicker mode.

If you want black to be the loner color, that's fine - there are a bunch of cards that will work well in this setup.



Reanimator is a tricky archetype to support. To make it a real archetype you need a few more reanimate cards and a lot more ways to put creatures in your graveyard. The trick is that black is kind of bad at it, but blue is great with looters and sift effects. I see you have Frantic Search, Sphinx of Lost Truths and Careful Consideration, which are great, though I feel you are missing like 2 or 3 to make the deck more reliable.


For sunburst payoff, I was thinking of fatties that double as finishers like Ruric Thar. Also, the new converge cards in BFZ look great:

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I think the trick to support aggressive decks with CIPT lands is to be aware that the entire format should be based around that. We've had fixing that is CIPT in retail and those formats have had aggressive decks so that CIPT means no more aggro is in my opinion just a cubing myth. I also suggest looking at some other cubes, there's grillos, there's also this one, the charm cube, that's a multicolor cube that runs a lot of pretty cheap cards that I think is awesome.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Brilliant Spectrum does not look great at all:

 

[japahn]

Strictly(ish) worse does not mean unplayable. That's a card that's bound to be left for 5-color ramp decks and addresses the biggest problem of ramp: running out of gas after spending cards with acceleration. But no, it's not a good card - just a tool to anchor people in 5-color.

About the CIPT, it's not that aggro is worse without "fast" duals. It's just that it tends to be monocolored, mono+splash or 2 colors without heavy req cards. 2+splash is never worth it then, and you're relying on other decks running lots of taplands and being one turn behind because of that. There are fewer back and forth games and more "stumped on mana, died" games.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The games are pretty great. One of the appeals of budget formats is that you get to run bouncelands, which solve most negative variance issues. The formats also slow down, so there tends to be more back and forth, with more time to draw out of poor draws.

For example, you dont have problems with ramp decks running out of steam due to spending cards to accelerate, because the ramp effects come from bouncelands and untap interactions, rather than narrow effects like kodama's reach.

 

[japahn]

I'm not saying "don't run any bouncelands" or even "don't run any CIPT duals". I'm saying "run fast duals too". It makes aggro decks more fun and less dependent on the opponent having a slow start to be effective.

 

[Quirk]

Thanks for the input, everyone. I've made some modifications based on your feedback.

I've got a complete set of bouncelands and lifelands now, and removed Mind Shatter, the lower-cost LD, and Bloodhusk Ritualist. I've boosted Green's aggro credentials a bit with the new landfall creatures from BFZ, Scythe Leopard and Snapping Gnarlid joining Plated Geopede and Makindi Sliderunner in red, and Call of the Herd. Symbotic Wurm provides a bit of fat, and I've also added Rude Awakening, which seems good with so many bouncelands. It's possible RG landfall wants more Evolving Wilds and Terramorphic Expanses, but I'll hold off until I've observed how things are with the current quantity of land ramp and bouncelands providing double land drops.

I don't feel blue needs any more reanimation help, given it already has two looters, Waterfront Bouncer, Frantic Search, Careful Consideration and Black's discard routes of Hidden Horror, Smallpox and Raven's Crime and the land-cyclers. Have added Nyx Weaver to help GB fill its graveyard. Green's still torn a bit between aggro and ramp, but hopefully less painfully so now.

http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/40613

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

I'm not saying "don't run any bouncelands" or even "don't run any CIPT duals". I'm saying "run fast duals too". It makes aggro decks more fun and less dependent on the opponent having a slow start to be effective.

The danger with introducing both tapped and untapped lands is that it makes the tapped land the wrong choice to take and creates this weird "two cubes in one" feel where you can get trapped into playing a worse deck by picking the wrong kind of cards, in this case the bounce lands. I'm pretty convinced that if you go for tapped lands you commit to that completely. No untapped fixing, no land destruction, fox only, final destination. It gives an angle for aggro to attack from, so there really shouldn't be a need to introduce some new paradigm for aggression to stay on top without untapped fixing simply because the tapped lands makes everyone slower.

 

[Quirk]

So there have been some more updates since:
No more echo:
Goblin Patrol > Frenzied Goblin
Keldon Vandals > Duergar Hedge-Mage

Found myself asking "is this really where I want to break singleton?"
Gigantiform > Garruk's Companion
Gigantiform > Vinelasher Kudzu

Just better cards:
Sleep > Fact or Fiction
Prohibit > Memory Lapse
Summoner's Bane > Dismiss
Ur-Golem's Eye > Hedron Archive
Thundersong Trumpeter > Curse of Shallow Graves

More in line with what the cube wants to do:
Commune with Nature > Commune with the Gods
Golgari Signet > Mind Stone
Fanning the Flames > Volcanic Geyser
Guul Draz Specter > Bloodthrone Vampire (someone drafted a RB sac deck on CubeTutor which could really have used one or two more effects of that type)
Dismantling Blow > White Sun's Zenith (I think the latter's more maindeckable, we'll see)

LD at 4 mana gone.
Goblin Ruinblaster > Hoarding Dragon

Boosting red late game, and trying a red Phoenix theme:
Scuttlemutt > Firewing Phoenix
Aladdin > Magma Phoenix
Halimar Depths > Feral Lightning

More early green:
Moroii > Avacyn's Pilgrim
Living Tsunami > Abzan Beastmaster

 

[Quirk]

So, taking stock of where I am:

I feel I want to fit some number of additional Evolving Wilds / Terramorphic Expanse in. They're good with the RG landfall theme and there doesn't look to be enough fixing at present. My first round of cuts is probably going to be round the duplicated effects of Mind Control / Persuasion, Mire Boa / River Boa, Kami of Ancient Law / Ronom Unicorn. I don't know what to cut in Black - I want to see how many of these cards actually play. There are a lot of Black four drops supporting a bunch of different themes. My reanimation package is mostly about that cost because I feel safer with reanimation not running out monsters on turn 2.

Red feels a bit flat. It's easy to build aggressive-looking red decks, but I've been scarred by enough games featuring MTGO Cube mono-R beatdown to not want Red to have a ton of redundancy for that plan, and the person I'm most likely to draft two-player with is bored by all Red's cards having the word "damage" on them. I've tried to give it its own graveyard matters theme, so I'll see how that plays out.

Broader themes I'm trying to support:
- Tokens with anthem effects: primarily white, a little red.
- Landfall: primarily green and red.
- Graveyard matters: green and blue have discard effects, red has some rebuyable creatures, black has a value reanimation suite and a couple of cards that pop out of the graveyard onto the battlefield.
- Wildfire control: artifact ramp, Wildfires, slow white control payoffs such as Hoofprints of the Stag, Shrine of Loyal Legions - and Guardian of the Guildpact.
- Draw-go: Plenty of instant action in blue. Green-blue has six flash creatures.
- Control more generally: Red is well equipped with sweepers. White has a couple also. Black has Mutilate and Infest.
- General aggro: everything but blue, which still has some tempo-based support cards. Red and White fairly standard pattern. Black slightly higher curve, more CA-focused. Green hopefully able to play a kind of landfall Stompy. (Maybe I need Quirion Ranger)...
- Crazy big mana: Dictate of Karametra, Cadaverous Bloom, bouncelands with untap spells serving as rituals. Magus of the Jar and Time Spiral helping the brokenness happen.

Little build-arounds:
Trading Post / Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient / Trinket Mage: artifact durdling.
Conjurer's Closet / Galepowder Mage: Blink effects (lots of unsummon effects also)

I find CubeTutor drafters building quite unexpected decks like RG ramp control and RB sacrifice, which are kind of neat, and I want to support these too, but right now I think I need to be making cuts in order to add fixing.

 

[japahn]

Did two drafts in CT, some things I noticed:

- Landfall cards are there, but the only support are bounce lands. Since landfall is a fast deck here, bouncelands kind of nonbo and combo at the same time, which is awkward. Cheap fetches (Evolving Wilds) worked great, though. Also, maybe you should base your ramp more on fetching lands than elves. Actually, landfall might be better if some of the weakest cards are cut and some more midrangey threats are added, so you have something to do with all those lands you dropped. Akoum Firebird, Grove Rumbler and Rampaging Baloths come to mind, but there are many options.
- Hidden Horror is really bad without a lot of graveyard interactions, and I only see some reanimator.
- Black aggro definitely does not have critical mass. I tried forcing it 3 times, failed all 3.
- Graveyard matters wants to be in all colors, but there is no critical mass for any of them. Try to focus it on 3?
- What does crazy big mana do with its crazy big mana?

 

[Quirk]

I think you may be right about Hidden Horror. Curving into a reanimation spell turn 4 is living the dream, but it's the worst topdeck imaginable later. Good call. Will cut it.

With regard to black aggro - I think you may have been impacted by my recently trying to reset the pick orders. Possibly you didn't get quite enough first time round and then the bots added your cards higher up the pick order and cut you out? I reset them again and got a fairly solid-looking Black pile: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/421300 and tried again for something less heavily black and got this: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubedeck/421314. However I'd agree there's certainly not enough depth to support two aggressive Black drafters. Perhaps Black's just trying to do too many things at once.

With 5 reanimation effects in Black among 53 cards, as well as 2 creatures that recur from the graveyard, I think it's clearly where the critical mass is clustered. For comparison, the most recent MTGO cube numbers 10 reanimation effects and 2 creatures that recur from the graveyard among 101 cards - a fairly similar ratio (I'm discounting planeswalker ultimates).

Crazy big mana can just burn you out with a Profane Command or Volcanic Geyser, or White Sun's Zenith for a million, or it can hardcast out something crazy like Reiver Demon or Artisan of Kozilek.