Graveyard morph cube

[David Bohlander]

I'm working on a small cube (250 cards) designed to be drafted by two or four people. I want games to both have a high level of mystery by liberally using both morph and manifest cards, but I also want to push using the graveyard as a resource and its own dynamic zone.
I'm concerned that some of the cool things you can do with manifest won't actually happen all that often (cool things top out at manifesting into Phyrexian Dreadnought or Eater of Days and slide down to popping up morph creatures like Fathom Seer and Master of Pearls for their cheap casting costs rather than their morph costs)
I'm also concerned that with such a tight list I'm having to cut cards I think are neat because they don't sync with the themes. I don't want a dry cube that's only interesting as an intellectual exercise.
Click here for the cube list. Below I'll outline what I'm trying to do in each color.

White
White has flyers, White has tokens (some of which fly), White likes enchantments.
White has a small life gain theme. Would it be interesting to push this or is White already doing enough?
White can do a little flickering to flip up morphs and manifest cards cheaply.
Some of my least favorite card choices are the cards with threshold. But with fewer flashback cards, I wanted White and Green to have other interesting things going on in their graveyards.

Blue
Blue has flyers, Blue has the most morphs, Blue has prowess.
I added a few scry cards to Blue to push manifest. If you're rocking Eater of Days, you're probably going to want to be in Blue.
My only concern with Blue is that it's very full. But it's mostly very full because it has so many morph cards.

Black
Black likes throwing stuff in the graveyard. Black has the most delve cards and likes to sacrifice creatures.
I'm concerned that Black is too shallow. All it's really doing is throwing stuff in its graveyard for its own benefit. It gets a lot of different benefits from this, but it's still a lot of the same.
I wonder if a bit more self mill and reanimation would give Black some more depth, but I don't want to saddle it with uncastable junk, either.

Red
Red has the most flashback (though it's only just ahead of Black). Red has prowess. Red plays nicely with Black's sacrifice and Blue's many instants and sorceries.
Red also can produce and spend a lot of mana through its Flamekin.
Red has cool creatures that can hit its opponents in the face hard. I rather like Red here, but I'd like it to play well with all some other colors better. I'm not really sure what a Red/Green or Red/White deck looks like other than "random aggressive dudes."

Green
Green likes tokens. Green likes enchantments. Green likes its tokens to mostly be Saprolings.
Green also is cool with bringing stuff back from its graveyard. I think I'd like it to do a bit more of that.
Green is also stuffed. I want Hooded Hydra in there, but I'm not sure what to cut.
Also, do Green's creatures feel big enough?
Does Green feel different enough from White? The two colors are similar in themes, but while White has flying, Green just has Thallids and a bit of graveyard recursion.

White-Blue
The deck here is probably U/W skies. You could maybe do a morph control deck with Frontline Strategist plus the pickles combo.

White-Black
This probably skews to Black's sac strategy, with White's tokens adding fuel to Black's sacrifice engine.

White-Red
As mentioned above, other than random dorks, I'm not sure what deck is White-Red

White-Green
This could be G/W tokens or an enchantment heavy build. Maybe even a hybrid.

Blue-Black
Strange that I don't have a strong vision for this ally pair. Maybe they're inspired by Psychatog and go control with a graveyard focus?

Blue-Red
It's a spell-heavy Jeskai-inspired deck.

Blue-Green
Unsure what you'd build here. Maybe keep focusing on morph. The combination could draw a ton of cards.

Black-Red
Sac heavy with a bunch of death at your critters and burn to the face. Totally a creature-focused control deck.

Black-Green
Another strong sac deck. This one focused on Thallids.

Red-Green
Big creatures smash face? It's a problem with this color combination in general, and this cube list doesn't avoid it.

Any thoughts and feedback are appreciated. This is my second cube, and while good games are my first goal, I also want to keep this one on the budget end and favor interesting interactions over single powerful cards.

Thanks for any help.

 

[spicewitch]

If you want manifest to happen (and want it not to feel bad) you need creatures that replicate a spell effect, so that manifest decks can have most of the cards in their deck be creatures. Creatures that sacrifice themselves, tap, or spend mana are better than EtB creatures for this purpose. For instance; sigiled starfish is an excellent card to manifest, Augury Owl is not. The starfish can take the place of a scry/looter/cantrip spell that you would otherwise want in a more creature-light deck, and the option to have it as a 2/2 early and become a Scryonnastick when 2/2 isn't beefy enough is an interesting one.

From a quick skim, I'd say your green section is packed to the brim with creatures that are great when played directly to the battlefield, but too pricey for too little benefit for players to flip them up when manifested.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I would recommend actual stifle if cards like eater of days are to be found. Phyrexian Dreadnaught might have to leave, but you can easily replace him with another huge downside fatty. I don't think manifest is a hugely reliable plan A, especially if plan B is....cast it? o.O

Also if there were ever a cube where I wanted multiple brainstorms, manifest is a huge reason.
also maybe scrylands?

 

[David Bohlander]

I'd bounced Augury Owl vs. Sigiled Starfish off each other in my head and chose a deeper scry rather than repeatable scry. I hadn't though about it as "enter the battlefield" vs. "tap."
The Khans life-gain lands first got the nod as low-power mana fixing, but the extra utility of the scrylands upping the power level of the cube a bit.
I'm trying to keep the power level on the lower end.
Phyrexian Dreadnought is totally staying for at least a few drafts. The excitement factor is high enough that I want to risk it being a dumb useless card most of the time. Casting it, though, might not be awful in Black/Red.
I'll also have to look at Stifle. It's good at stopping morph triggers, too. Maybe I'll swap it out for Dismiss.

 

[Chris Taylor]

My only worry is that you keep talking about this cube having a lower power level, but stiflenaught is a legacy deck
I mean it's not in yet, but...

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I would cut the akroma, its very bomby.

This cube also very badly wants



I would run probably 2-3 of them, to support some kind of U/B combo deck with cards like soulflayer, living death and cloudform.

Another sweet card to run is mindshrieker.

Since you are going to be running flicker effects for the morphs anyways, you could make flicker more of a theme.

 

[David Bohlander]

Finally had a chance to draft the cube -- three two-person drafts. It was interesting, and I got trounced each match -- which is not what usually happens.
Ahead of the draft I made one change to what I outlined in the original post. I mentioned I felt Green and White had a lot of overlap and I wanted to differentiate the colors a bit more. I think Mystic Enforcer led me down a bad path. I left him in, but I moved the rest of the Threshold card out of White and into Black. It gives Black another reward for its self-discard and self-mill.
Favorite play from this cube so far: I attacked with a manifest creature enchanted with Lightform and my opponent discarded Wonder to his Patrol Hound to give it both first strike and flying so it could block my dude and wreck me.
The cube has powerful plays, but it all feels a bit more like a limited experience.

 

[Modin]

I like the idea! With megamorph coming up in the next set there will be plenty of 3 mana 2/2s available
Looking through your list Moonlight Bargain looks interesting, but the lifeloss is real. Have you considered Bitter Revelation in its stead?
One thing that might go very well with all the morphs might be Battlemages. Have you considered those?

 

[David Bohlander]

I thought about Bitter Revelation. I was favoring the instant speed of Moonlight Bargain because of the value of keeping mana up when you have morphs in play, but black is really the lightest on morphs and the heaviest on delve, so perhaps getting the one-mana discount by using Bitter Revelation while also having saving a bit on life is worth it.
I hadn't considered the battlemages. I also never really thought of them going well with morphs. Modin, could you explain more why my you think they'd work well together?

 

[Modin]

Well. Morphs are bascially cards that give you the option to cast play them as 2/2s with an added bonus(flipping them up later). Battlemages work kinda similar but the other way around. They are 3 mana 2/2s that give you the option to invest more mana right away for an added bonus. In a normal environment 3 mana 2/2s suck, so the primary option fo just casting a battlemage is not what you want to do. In a format full of morphs however, they at least give you the option of trading with a morph. It's possible that their powerlevel is still too low for your environment though.

 

[David Bohlander]

Thanks for expanding on the, Modin. I get what you're talking about.
I think they might be a little too underpowered still, but I'm also wondering if I have too many two-drops in the cube. It wasn't a problem in the first three drafts: Morphs were being played and were fine, but I'll keep an eye on it.
The matchup that was the biggest blowout was when I was trying to play a blue-based morph deck that splashed white and green against U/W fliers. The morphs just spent too much time durdling while the U/W deck played a bunch of two-powered creatures and then pitched Wonder in its 'yard.