Card/Deck [MCD] Graveyard Hate

[CML]

so one of the tenets of my cube is that every card ought to be main-deckable; considering how much i love cards that go in multiple archetypes, and how much i love decks that try to do a bunch of things passably instead of a single linear thing obsessively (your decks are vendilion cliques, not tarmogoyfs!), this is a pretty low threshold.

anyway, i've always had a graveyard theme, and i love reanimator for value as another angle of attack in a versatile deck. however! a problem arose when i pushed the graveyard theme a little further next week, and things like crucible / wasteland and loam / crime became somewhat inexorable. now i like to reward drafters for putting together such sweet synergies, and i support the natural counterbalance to such strategies (aggro decks), but mid-range and control decks should have at least SOME recourse against these kinds of things.

the issue is that most graveyard hate falls into one of two categories: versatile and too bad, or narrow and too strong. examples of the former are loaming shaman, thraben heretic, and withered wretch; examples of the latter are leyline of the void, rest in peace, and surgical extraction. both categories perform important functions in constructed, but neither is at all appealing in cube -- nobody will ever play the former, and the latter will rot in sideboards until it's time to ruin and counter-ruin a game.

recently wizards has been printing cards that combine the flexibility of the first category with the power of the second category, and it seems pretty much all my cube's graveyard hate fits under this new header. here are the 7 cards i'm running (for ref.: my cube - http://cubetutor.com/viewcube/114 - is 405 cards):

stonecloaker
nezumi graverobber
scavenging ooze
noxious revival
primal command
jund charm
relic of progenitus

i love all these cards but i think 7 has got to be too few (there are at least 40 graveyard-oriented value cards) and i have no idea where and how to go beyond them. to make matters worse, none of them are the kind of cards i'd want duplicates of, jund charm and revival are often unplayed, and relic is pushing it as to main-deckability.

i love graveyard themes as a means to enrich the game, and i know lots of you (especially jason!) love them too. so how do you keep them in check? should i double up on some hate? am i missing some really obvious cards? should i include narrower and more powerful answers? am i being too dogmatic? what's worked for you?

 

[tomchaps]

I ran stonecloaker for a long time; before reanimator was even very good in my cube. I cut him for underperforming, but I'm considering putting him back in. How often does he save a creature and/or blank a graveyard trick?

 

[Jesse Hartman]

Ground Seal is decent because it draws a card and so is never a blank. I know that Faerie Macabre isn't sexy, but she's flexible which is important if you want your hate to be maindeckable.

If we're talking numbers, you noted that there are at least 40 graveyard-centric cards in the cube. This is arbitrary, but I would try keeping the GY card-to-hate ratio to around 4-1. If you feel like there aren't enough answers as things stand now, try bumping it up to 10. More than that seems excessive given the nature of limited deckbuilding, but that's purely conjecture.

I wouldn't bother with one of the hyper-narrow GY hosers like Leyline, RIP, etc. unless an archetype emerges that is extremely difficult to beat without that kind of answer. Nobody will want to maindeck them, and I don't think they are very fun to play with, even when they are keeping me from losing the game.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Consider Nihil Spellbomb, Offalsnout.

 

[Eric Chan]

Fantastic topic, Chris. This is a topic I wrestle with myself, as I try to enable graveyard shenanigans, reanimator strategies, and recursive aggro decks, while at the same time, allow other decks to keep the graveyard archetypes honest and make them play a fair game of Magic.

Deathrite Shaman is something you probably already run, and just forgot to include on your list. Pillar of Flame is a nice find by Jason that isn't going to blow anyone away on power level, but does the job all the same against the likes of Gravecrawlers and undying guys. (Doesn't help much against reanimator, though.) I've been considering Bojuka Bog for my utility land pile, but that's probably going too deep. Would Rakdos Charm be useful enough in a heavy gold cube like yours?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Well, I don't currently have a graveyard theme so much as I have a Gravecrawler theme. I gave some ideas here for Gravecrawler hate (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/cube-design-remodeling-part-two/), but they are mostly things that send creatures to exile/library instead of the Graveyard.

Maybe it's also worth questioning the "maindeckable cards only" mantra, or at least exploring.

If you really wanted to go deep we could pull a card from the Vintage meta:

 

[Jason Waddell]

There's also junk like this card:

 

[VincePendrell]

For additional grave hate, I have Withered Wretch. I don't think it is as bad as people try to make him. It is a good enough creature that happens to be friends with Gravecrawler. Nezumi Graverobber has been less impressive in my cube as it seems that he is a bit too hard to flip on average.

I also currently run Pillar of Flame and it is a neat enough card, as has been noted above. I used Magma Spray for a little while but targetting planeswalkers seemed better than instant speed.

There is also Samurai of the Pale Curtain, which was the premier grave-hate from Kamigawa era.

You could also try beating the cards while they are not in the graveyard. Pithing Needle is great against Wasteland (and more cards) and is always maindecked here, and you could also try Dissipate, Hinder and Syncopate for blue controlish decks to have some answers.

Graveyard-based strategies dominating may also be accounted for the fact that people just realized how powerful they were and didn't draft accordingly, so you can add just a couple of anti-grave cards and see how things work out in a couple of weeks, to if people are picking the right hate or hate-picking the right cards.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Another option is to go the Innistrad route: add even more graveyardy stuff, and by virtue any graveyard hate becomes less narrow as graveyard strategies take up a greater proportion of your design.

 

[CML]

tom: i also cut the 'cloaker and was surprised to hear its departure lamented, so i put it back in. i think even cube designers can get jaundiced views of the cube 'meta' due to personal card preference -- i like to draft zoo and mid-range green so stonecloaker is of course shit against me but in retrospect it was probably doing good work in the overall design.

jesse: i like seal and macabre actually. the 4-1 ratio sounds about right to me, even if it should be calibrated relative to the 'power' of the gy themes i think it's a good guideline.

dom: i'll try spellbomb (i think people get excited about a free card than a gray ogre), could this be part of a trinket mage package? something like explosives, pithing needle, relic, spellbomb, basilisk collar, hex parasite ...

eric: the first sentence perfectly describes what i'm going for, though if it makes you feel better wizards also has trouble finding the right balance. you're right i've got deathrite, my bad. pillar makes more sense in jason's cube (with its recursive 2/1's) than in mine (with its tyrants and praetors and hooves), where it would compare unfavorably to the not-present shock. rakdos charm is a sweet card as my group yearned for more reach, more artifact hate, more gy hate; unfortunately, nobody played it (i think this was a major impetus for my developing the 'every card main-deckable' theory). but! as for the bog, if it's going too deep to put it in the pile, then i too have gone too deep and not really considered the alternative powerful card is powerful.

jason: man i love jotun grunt but consider this. tarmogoyf is pretty bad in cube, and in modern, where graveyards fill much faster, jotun grunt is not all that close to being main-deckable while tarmogoyf is tarmogoyf. (i did once in a modo ptq side it in vs. living end, leading to an undefeated record against ceddy p.) do you think the 'every card main-deckable' trope is worth a thread?

[edit] vince: i could try wretch again, samurai i have tried (decent body!) but its inability to do anything but exile dead stuff is disappointing

all: i don't mean to shoot down the suggestions, it's just that i feel the kinds of cards we're discussing illustrate the initial problem and the difficulty in resolving it. sweet thread so far!

 

[Jason Waddell]

No worries about shooting down suggestions. I do it all the time too, but often a not-quite-right suggestions spurs additional thoughts, which is why I post stuff like Jotun Grunt regardless.

I think it's funny how different our assessments of Tarmogoyf are, but a lot of that is very context-dependent. Tarmo is a beast here.

Regarding maindeckability: retail drafts run okay with 24 slots dedicated to basic lands and junk cards. There's design space for narrower answer cards. Pillar of Flame and Condemn and Hallowed Burial etc. are often brought in from sideboards. Sometimes they are maindecked. I haven't put a lot of thought into this topic though, I just tend to be wary of hard-rules as they can close us off from useful design space.

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, no worries at all about shooting down suggestions. This is definitely a tough nut to crack. As Jason mentioned to me at one point, abusing the graveyard is completely orthogonal to the way a game of Magic is normally played, particularly in limited environments. Innistrad solved this problem by making the graveyard theme be central to all of the block's mechanics, but it's way harder for other draft formats to allow for interaction with an opponent's graveyard incidentally, without just dumping in a box of super narrow surgical tools.

Gaea's Blessing is another one I just thought of, but it falls under the category of narrow hoser.

If the graveyard interactions start getting out of control in my own cube, my last resort will be to start doubling up on versatile solutions like Scavenging Ooze.

 

[CML]

scavenging ooze DROOL. that card is disgustingly powerful though, like soon after its release caleb wrote an article praising it as 'the best creature of all time' which on one hand is ludicrous (better than stoneforge, ha!) but on the other hand it was at least in the discussion.

i actually disagree with you guys (eric & jason) that ISD was 'all about' abusing the graveyard, like the graveyard theme was pretty incidental to the limited format in comparison to OTJ, the development of flashback was half-baked, and i think i ended up loving ISD due to the sweet creatures, especially the flavorful-as-fuck humans. the influence of the set on constructed and cube lists seems to bear this out, but i could be wrong.

jason -- re. your comments on making gy hate by virtue less narrow, if only it worked this way for cube like as i've pushed the gy themes week by week, incrementally, now nearly to the point of saturation, i've been running up against the old 'not enough cards at singleton that do what you want them to do' problem that makes it impossible to support aggro at 720 / singleton, for example. this kind of problem leads to cube architects including absurdities like elite vanguard and jackal pup and wondering why 'nobody plays aggro when it's supported' -- i.e. i don't want to 'make people play jackal pup' just because it 'supports' a strategy. the kind of language designers use to justify these choices implicitly acknowledges that they warp their cubes to make 'em, 'supporting' aggro like a deadbeat relative!

is goyf really that good in your cube? like in the modo cube i remember he was always a 0/1, with our cubes being faster, more gy-oriented, more interactive, more aggressive etc. of course he'd be better (in the same way lavamancer is playable), but i'm surprised to read he's a house for you! i gotta try him, fun card

anyway times like this it's kinda early in the morning and i'm a bit hung over so i'm not gonna do great at reading or writing and it's time for a gatherer (oops, i mean magiccards.info) search. but then i was lazy and used google and holy shit mtgs is good for something after all (http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=426183 and http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=440080).

so far we have

stonecloaker
nezumi graverobber
scavenging ooze
noxious revival
primal command
jund charm
relic of progenitus
deathrite shaman
the mimeoplasm
symmetrical reanimation spells (reanimate, animate dead and friends)

for consideration:
withered wretch
skullsnatcher
identity crisis
flesh (flesh/blood)
entering (breaking/entering)
necromancer's covenant
identity crisis
loaming shaman
debtors' knell
dissipate
mimic vat
samurai of the pale curtain
more expensive symmetrical reanimation spells (puppeteer clique, ink-eyes, servant of oni)

not a lot to work with, as you can see.

anyone try breaking/entering, flesh/blood? how were they?

keep the suggestions coming, eventually we'll find something sweet.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Lol at Reanimate being "graveyard hate". The net effect of including reanimate in a cube is to need even more graveyard hate. Perhaps you can elaborate on what specific sorts of graveyard decks / effects are too powerful in your cube?

Goyf is very rarely smaller than a 3/4 here (land, creature, instant) and is often much larger ("oh shit, he's a 6/7?"). An outrageous proportion of my cube is < CMC 3, and Goyf more than carries his weight. He's not Dark Confidant, but who is?

 

[CML]

re reanimate: haha, exactly. subtlety, discrimination, discernment, and individual judgment are not really within the mtgs purview.

i was gonna say i love bob in cube precisely because he _isn't_ that good. (do you have figures for your cube's average cmc spellwise? mine is ((0*3 + 1*71 + 2*78 + 3*77 + 4*51 + 5*27 + 6*16 + 7*6 + 8*4 + 10*1) / 334) = 2.92 -- so far lower than the average cube, far higher than any constructed format) -- bob is a fun draft-around me card in cube, i was thinking our friend the goyf would be the same way

 

[Jungle Bus]

If you're the modifying sort, you could always take a few playable spells and add "you may exile a card from a graveyard" as a rider.

 

[Jason Waddell]

re reanimate: haha, exactly. subtlety, discrimination, discernment, and individual judgment are not really within the mtgs purview.

i was gonna say i love bob in cube precisely because he _isn't_ that good. (do you have figures for your cube's average cmc spellwise? mine is ((0*3 + 1*71 + 2*78 + 3*77 + 4*51 + 5*27 + 6*16 + 7*6 + 8*4 + 10*1) / 334) = 2.92 -- so far lower than the average cube, far higher than any constructed format) -- bob is a fun draft-around me card in cube, i was thinking our friend the goyf would be the same way

Deckstats says mine is 2.74, and that's counting stuff like Porcelain Legionnaire as 3 CMC and my two copies of Greater Gargadon as 10 CMC.

 

[Jason Waddell]

@CML, you might have missed it in my post, so I'll ask explicitly: Can elaborate on what specific sorts of graveyard decks / effects are too powerful in your cube?

The reason I ask is that a lot of the spells you mention will be utterly useless against many types of graveyard effects. Identity Crisis probably isn't something I'd want to side in against any graveyard-using deck in my cube (much less maindeck), but maybe your decks are different types of threats/engines.

 

[CML]

d'oh, sorry, was gonna put this in the last post. my good friend was briefly back in town and graced last week's cube with his presence. as i was loaming him he said two things:

1. the durdling is sweet but somewhat non-interactive (i.e. the time it takes to loam and stuff is tedious and the games end up being inelegant)
2. black is not great at doing much but reanimating

it's not so much that the strategies are oppressively powerful against other colors even, it's more that in order to be supported they're taking up a disproportionate amount of the black-card space. (though what else would black do? it can't really be warping the cube that badly if the alternative is gravecrawler-gbrand.dec.)

re identity crisis and friends, i'm just throwing shit up against the wall, i ask you for only the courtesy of shooting down my terrible ideas

 

[Chris Taylor]

Maybe Cremate? I dunno.
I love scavenging ooze. If wizards prints more cards like that I'm gonna be a happy boy. I love the flexability: he's key against graveyard based decks, but as a decent value guy against normal decks he's still great!

 

[Jason Waddell]

d'oh, sorry, was gonna put this in the last post. my good friend was briefly back in town and graced last week's cube with his presence. as i was loaming him he said two things:

1. the durdling is sweet but somewhat non-interactive (i.e. the time it takes to loam and stuff is tedious and the games end up being inelegant)
2. black is not great at doing much but reanimating

it's not so much that the strategies are oppressively powerful against other colors even, it's more that in order to be supported they're taking up a disproportionate amount of the black-card space. (though what else would black do? it can't really be warping the cube that badly if the alternative is gravecrawler-gbrand.dec.)

re identity crisis and friends, i'm just throwing shit up against the wall, i ask you for only the courtesy of shooting down my terrible ideas

I will say, I cut all Reanimation from black and gave it more of a recursive-aggro focus, and it's been a lot more fun to play with (opinion, obviously), and the overall power level is more on par with the rest of the cube. I'll probably put back in reanimator in some capacity (likely when I swing around to more of a graveyard focus), but maybe you could try giving black a different focus and seeing how it goes. One of the reasons people complain about the power level of black is that they have the color do a LOT of things poorly. There's really only so much design space in a limited environment, and my personal opinion is that it's best to do a couple things well for now, then do a different couple of things well later.

Also, you posted Identity Crisis in your list twice, which I found humorous.

 

[CML]

identity crisis: memento mori

reanimation is actually fun as a value thing, i remember telling you before that i'm of the opinion that you can include 1x of the best reanimation spells and all the best targets excl. g'brand and jin-g and still have a fun and balanced reanimation section. it gels well cross-color too. i'd be hesitant to cut it, i don't think it takes up that many slots (cubes have fatties, lilies, frantic searches anyway) but point taken that with black needing at least one removal option at every cmc, a bunch of 1cmc targeted discard, stuff like hymn etc. it's tough to cram anything more in.

what's your recursion section looking like these days? would it be possible to support this theme while keeping reanimator? could i keep it singleton?

sewer nemesis is turning out to be a thing like what in the world it's gigantic

 

[VincePendrell]

I'm not exactly sure what is the problem now. Is it all kind of reanimation strategies or mostly Crucible+Wasteland and Loam+Raven's Crime that are giving you trouble? You could try cutting both Wasteland and Raven's Crime if those are your main issue. I ran you cube through TappedOut about twice and always got something like a 4-color goodstuff/beatdown 18 land/15 playables with 13 stuff plus hatepicks and if people are drafting the same way, I guess Wasteland is no different than Strip Mine. You could try going for least consistent cards like Tectonic Edge or Dust Bowl and Wrench Mind.

 

[CML]

yep, the tappedout bots have a hard-on for blue cards and no love for lands at all, i dunno why -- i guess they're trying to spite me or something. decks here look more like the ones in the "3-0" thread (i'll post another one in a bit).

it's a hard problem for me to describe, but i think the non-reanimator graveyard stuff accounts for most of it (just thinking out loud here and above, reanimator seems both well-conceived and well-loved enough). my best guess as to why is that reanimated fatties are still just creatures, and huge creatures (a) are hilarious (b) can be killed and/or raced sometimes (c) hit the field and that's it. with indefinite recursion alla loam (though loam itself isn't much of a culprit) none of this is true; loam isn't all that splashy, you can keep dredging it and casting it over and over again, it gets tedious and durdly, and there are few ways of interacting with it outside a dedicated graveyard hoser. and yet it is mechanically interesting and requires careful-enough drafting and piloting to be of ample interest (as it is in legacy and modern).

it seems more and more apparent to me that i like 'loamy' things, but (a) these are tougher to integrate into the cube than just tossing in reanimate (b) this means that support i.e. cards like crime and assault are tougher sells, as they're narrower than OMG A TIDESPOUT, but it also means that these cards demand specific answers that may not lend themselves to cube inclusion due to their narrowness. if that makes sense.

crucible of worlds in particular seems problematic, playing with it makes me feel guilty and playing against it makes me feel hopeless, which is a foible of the modo cube i do not care to replicate.

edit: yeah i wanna cut wasteland but dlfkhjsdlfkhj some of these lands good god. how else to interact with them! and a bit of LD goes a long way towards a sweet cube. fulmy mage and plow under are a blast!!

one of the most memorable cube games included some kind of eternal witness / living death / corpse dance / evacuation loop that was painstakingly constructed by one of our players, the games were epic and required careful execution on his part and everything was very challenging and stimulating and it felt like decisions mattered. on the opposite end we have me filling my yard slowly but surely and trying to loam out another friend last week -- memorable for the opposite reason ;(

 

[VincePendrell]

Well, you could even try going the other way around including some mill strategies as counterbalance. (Like dumping your deck like that, don't you? So here is your whole deck in your graveyad then, good luck trying to draw a card, dude!) Again, mill is not a very easy to support archetype, so it comes with it's own problems.

On the loam problem, I am of the opinion that powerful decks that are hard to build and depend on a lot of player skill to be put together and played are okay to exist, so long as they are in fact hard to build, hard to play and not much better than any nicely build and well played deck should be (sneak/show/eureka is this type of deck in my cube). On the other hand, if the deck is eally annoying and noninteractive, you can always cut the culprits and make room for more interesting cards.