Min/Max Midrange Cube Experiment

[Grillo_Parlante]

List Link here.

Super long post incoming, will break it into a couple of parts.

I don't know if you guys remember this article, which framed the notion of "midrange" cubes, which our forums' design predominantly consist of.

A midrange cube is one where there are few narrow cards. Not only is every card high power but it is also typically broad in application or at least a mainstay in a tier one archetype. There are some very good reasons to build a cube in this way. It makes drafting much more interesting and much more skillful. Each pack will have more playables and more contested cards, your final pool will have more build options. Further more the midrange cubes tend to give the most interactive games, epic sagas with mental things happening on both sides of the board.

With a lot of the changes that new sets have released, I was wondering what a really min/maxed midrange cube might look like, as a thought exercise. So much has been released in new sets, what would it be like if everything was just distilled in a list, as purely as possible: no singleton breaks, no ULD, no multi-picks, and a focus on A + B archetype design, rather than thematic sprinkling. Would it be possible to largely get around the problems that give rise to the need for those sorts of invasive changes? Or have the addition of new cards to the population largely solved them?

Here is the list I came up with, trying to be fairly conservative as possible with the card picks. But lets start with the basics.

I. Power Level

We ended up just south of titans in terms of peak power, with the gearhulks and avenger of zendikar being the apex I was comfortable with.

The problem with the titans was that when I went to start working on archetype relationships, they were just the most boring cards ever, and because they were just pure power, offered nothing to tie a color together with its pair.

For example, sun titan was just a good card, while emeria shepherd is similar, but her landfall ability suggests a landfall theme, that can be best exploited via green ramp. Especially in these sorts of powerful formats, its nice to be able to use mechanics to signal relationships.

There still are some fairely high power cards though, the most questionable of which are:



Both of these cards are ridiculous, and surely would be eventually replaced, but they are so common (especially sower for some reason) in these types of formats, and do a reasonably good job at archetype pointing, that I felt compelled to include them. There are also a few odd cards which are really too good, such as control magic, and whose spot on the curve would probably be moved around.

There are a few oddities, however:



I actually think the two bushwhackers have been criminally underrated even in these types of lists, but am aware they aren't established cards, and are more common in lower power formats.

Hammer is a medium card, that would never normally be in a list like this, but we will get to that. Its really the first sign that the list would be happier slightly lower power than it is.

Jori en, I am convinced is not that good here, and would have to be replaced (same with tymaret). Finding good multi-color cards that fit a cube is just very hard, and a process of trial and error.

Saproling burst is actually very good, and i.m.o. a hidden gem. Its still a very strong card that can kill people out of nowhere, even in these types of formats, and the fact that its an enchantment which is graveyard bound (and can go there at will) makes it a great synergy card.

If I had gone a little lower power, I think the archetype relationships would be stronger, but I felt I would be losing too much of the essence of a traditional "Ripetide style midrange cube" if I went much lower. Not running any titans is already a concession of sorts.

A few oddities, I have that niv disk in there because a bunch of you guys were running one (is that to provide an odd colorless sweeper to control decks that might need it?)

The vehicles were a huge help. Usually I like to have 1-2 dumb 4-5cc colorless beaters for random midrange decks on the hunt for that, but obviously in these types of formats those types of cards are terrible due to the poor economy of how they trade with cheap bounce or removal.

The vehicles gave me an odd way around that, while also helping on another avenue with cards at risk of sitting around like mesmeric fiend or grim flayer. Its such a beating at this power level not being able to run toughness upping green buffs in green, as most of the handful of viable equipment only buffs power. That was probably the most clever update.

Have some colorless mana rocks in the list: filling out the artifact section was hard, and I think the control decks (certainly the UR wildfire decks) appreciate some poor way to gain mana superiority. I feel this is right, though the numbers might be off.

My last note, is you will notice an aversion to running planeswalkers in the gold section. This is for two reasons:

1. Running planeswalkers in the gold section usually results in people overly going into 3 color decks, which I dislike. I am trying to focus on guild relationships, not wedge/shard relationships here.
2. The multi-color section has more important things to be doing (as you will see).

II. Mana Base

So, the first big topic, is being singleton based, there is no x2 shock, x2 fetch foundation, and of course no ULD to be found. Instead we have x1 fetch, x1 shock, x1 ABU dual, x1 manland megacycle. The ABU duals can, of course, be almost anything: theros temples, or the new fastlands (probably ideal) until WOTC is so kind to finish the battleland cycle (!!!!!). This would be an interesting way to see how even this fairly minor change in setup would impact things in a Jasonesque cube (WILL MAD PROPHET BE RIGHT!!? STAY TUNED) and the results certainly reverberated throughout the rest of the cube's design. It really is a slight change in posture that changes the entire experience (as will happen when you play with mana bases).

If we will remember, while there was a lot going on behind the x2 fetch, x2 shock structure, one of those things was the notion that aggro decks needed excellent mana because they would inevitably be a three color affair, hunting for rakdos cacklers from the bottom of the packs, the decks ultimately the cobbled together shells of whatever low cc dainties the midrange or control players deemed them worthy of having. The aggro player would bravely rush across the board in the early turns, their little army doomed to ultimate obsolescence, in dire need of consistent, powerful curve outs, before assembling burn for a (hopeful) kill procured by their parasitic little armies of 2/1s eating up a little under a 1/5 of any given color they inhabited.

And of course, once you grant aggro decks such superb mana, this translates into what control or midrange players can build, making it easier for them to run 3-4 color mana bases, which makes it somewhat challenging to keep archetypes feeling distinct if you haven't planned shard/wedge identities, making the entire thing overly susceptible to good stuffing. Not that this has to happen, but its the challenge posed to the designer, which they sometimes fail, sometimes pass.

And of course, because of the amount of space pure fixing takes up, it means there are only 10 slots for everything else, which means you don't have enough room for utility lands, which is solved by the innovation of an entire second draft. The whole thing was actually much more of a mess 3 years ago, since the manland megacycle had not yet been completed, and the theory was to include 3ish wastelands in those remaining 10 slots, but needless to say there was not much room for good solid utility lands in the original structure.

Another major effect is that very smooth mana means that the format has an easier time getting to that expande selection of powerful cards capable of threatening to win the game on their own, speeding game pacing up, and obseleting slightly less efficient synergy cards. In some spots this largely unravels color pairings (the second hint the list probably wants to be slightly lower power).

But if the aggro concerns can be largely fixed, and we're ok of having more color pair rooted decks, and since we have the manland cycle completed, than maybe we can compact things down somewhat.

And that worked out really quite well--better than I expected. I'll address aggro in a bit, but to summerize:

1. By working out A + B archetypes pairings (and no singleton breaks), the 50 card colored sections actually become much more reasonable to design in terms of space at 360. It was actually quite easy to find room for 1-3 good colored mana requiring utility lands in those sections, and when you think of it, that organization actually makes a ton of sense: when is volrath's stronghold not going to go into a black deck, for instance. This is also beneficial with some of the better colors (blue) as it changes the focus from the usual array of good stuff draw/counters/bounce into something different; as well as helping with some of the more exasperating colors to fill out (white), resulting in more balance and less chaff overall (I felt).

2. In addition, as I've said before, its rather difficult to find even 3 solid gold cards that support a good A + B archetype design. As a result, this was another solid place to tuck away utility lands, which again, makes a lot of sense: in what world is gavony township not going to go into a selesnya deck?

In total I have 7 solid utility lands tucked into the colored or multi-colored sections of the cube, which both makes more sense as regards they end up in and how they are used, while also largely eliminating the need to have an entire secondary draft to ensure the existence of appropriate mana sinks. I also feel that the 7 utility lands present, represent some of the best, and most fun.

Finally, you have 10 additional slots to work with in the lands section proper. After some drafts proper, I turned these into ubiquitous fixers until I achieved a density I was comfortable with, as well as the LD trio of ghost quarter, wasteland, and tec. edge.

From the perspective of a functioning, congruent cube, I felt it eliminated the major argument for a ULD, as the mana sink utility lands and manlands were present in the density needed to prevent dead turns.

Their are some cons, however, for the more eccentric:

1. Overly narrow or low power utility lands didn't make the cut: no room for cathedral of war, for example.

2. Obviously, multi-pick setups for cards that can't exist naturally in the format go dead (e.g. cloudpost).

3. Redundant fixing goes away. While I feel the 5-7 extra slots in the lands section brings the format more than up to functioning, if you have your heart set on running an additional megacycle of lands (bounce, tri-lands, or temples) this is going to be disappointing.

As for the decks themselves, I feel that it became overall much harder to run three colors. I'm normally pretty conservative with my mana bases when I first draft a format, so I'm sure three color decks are easier than I am giving them credit, but I feel the format would be rooted in 2 color decks with a splash. Aggro decks are almost always going to have to be two colors, unless you are splashing for some higher end 4 drop.

Also, its worth noting that in draft the shock and ABU duals do feel more parasitic than they normally do, as they are no longer able to rely on fetchs to enable odd 3rd or 4th color splashes.

I feel this is a pretty significant take away, given some of the recent conversation we've had on the forum.

This is good as regards combating good stuff, great if you want to make the format more accessible and streamlined, but raises some challenges in aggro design, as welll as heightend demands on color intergration.

I came up with a few solutions, that I think overall were reasonable.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

III. Aggro Space

Overall, I think the aggro decks get passing marks, but this is mostly due to new printings, that plug some pretty big holes. Obviously hard to tell before play testing, but there are some promising indicators. This is probably the only spot where its tempting to break singleton, but I don't think its actually necessary, and I think a reasonable argument could be made thats its better to resist the urge to singleton break.

1. First, the 1 drop aggro sections aren't actually much smaller than you would expect. This is partly due to some clever use of the multi-color section to save space. I utterly hate parasitic one drops, though a certain number of them seem acceptable (say 1-3 per section), and the ones selected have been done mostly for staying power or utility.

In the multi-color section we have the following cards:



Note: I am leaving out kird ape and loam lion, which of course, could also be ran.

Figure and warden are the two most significant, as they represent valuable, non-parasitic one drops, that grow with the game. The rest support two drop density (important but less important), in their respective aggro strategies, and three of them are subtype zombie, so as to avoid overfilling the black section with unwanted zombie cards to support the now singleton gravecrawler.

The end result is that you're hitting pretty close to the numbers of the singleton breaking version of these formats, while being more space efficient. The one giant glaring exception is black, which we must talk about.

2. A shift in posture.

In the penny cube, there are no black aggressive one drops, yet I found black can be a fine aggressive color. The answer to this seeming unsolvable conundrum is less rooted in the slower speed of the format, and more in the way that black attacks:



It turns out that small evasive beaters are really good. In fact, evasion almost entirely closes the power gap with midrange or control decks, as it completely gets around the aggro problem of its threats becoming obsolete as the game progresses: the pressure can't suddenly be shut off by the midrange player merely deploying their own threats.

By shifting the focus on evasion and explosive reach plans, rather than trying to generate consistent curves outs on turns 1-4, you get both longer, more satisfying games, and you get to reduce some of the more parasitic cards in aggro's arsenal, down to the minimal core.

Basically, we divide our aggressive decks into two categories, the U/x variety, which revolve mostly around evasion from flying (or flying + trample in UG green's case) backed up by blue interaction/disruption, in what are effectively tempo decks. They are maybe a little bit slower in putting an opponent under pressure, starting turns 2-3, but are very tough to stall out.

For some reason, the U based "flyers" decks have traditionally been removed from discussions about aggressive strats, even though they are very much aggressive decks and very good. Right off the bat, this addresses slightly over half of all possible aggro pairs.

Than we have non-blue aggressive combinations, which are fine with putting ok early pressure on the ground, but than shift towards either growing their threats, attacking from the air, or converting their threats into burst damage.

Under that paradigm, we don't need:
1. A density of parasistic aggro drops
2. Really good mana so aggro decks can pivot around the draft plugging strategic holes

Which means if this works, we again have a more space efficient cube, more generally applicable cards, and a more streamlined design.

Its a small shift in posture, with huge repercussions, that first requires us to just let go of constructed aggro norms, and accept that we're never going to be able to guarentee consistent curve outs, regardless of what we do. Once you do that, than singleton breaks on mana or aggro drops become optional rather than required, and the whole cube gets the choice of becoming more streamlined and accessable.

3. Effects on Black Aggro.

While white, red, and (yes really) green can very easily adapt to this due to the excellent quality of their 1 and 2 drops, black has an awkward time of it, due to the phrase "cannot block."

The traditional gravecrawler package, counting bloodghast, has you running anywhere from 5-6 creatures (10-12%) of your black section for exactly one deck, making them extremely parassitic to a degree greater than other aggro early drops. Gravecrawler itself compounds the issue, because it requires a density of zombies to even function, and really wants low cc zombies, This naturally makes it want more copies of itself and/or singleton breaks on carrion feeder.

Even here, at one copy, crawler casts a shadow on the other aggro pairs, by requiring two drop zombies in the guilds, as well as a preference for skinrender in the black 187 creature slot, and the copy of relentless dead.

I'm ok with having a couple parasitic black early drops, because they are taking up only a small amount of space in this configuration, and I feel that the net benefit of providing a few more sources of very early pressure, outweighs a fairly small space investment. This is because the rest of the section is shifted towards disruption and reach. Traditionally, the focus of black aggro was always mana and hand disruption, and recent printings, in conjunction with some older gems, have provided some solid tools, to consider revisiting the concept,




This soft disruption fills a similar role to spell pierce or force spike in the U/x aggressive decks, capitalizing on the somewhat removal light nature of cube decks, to expand the window with which early game board additions can stay relevant. Efficient black removal, helps remove blockers capable of slowing the offense.

The disruption pieces are more reasonable in limited, where they tend to not always be cast on curve, unlike in constructed.





Taking a cue from its U/x aggressive brethren, the shift is towards slightly higher cc flying and intimidate creatures backed up by soft disruption. This is more in line with the grindy more midrange nature of these cubes, where cards have to retain relevance longer.

Gone are the bad black sacrifice outlets, though black still has a number of temporary sac. outlets. The color can go to red for strong sac. effects, green for mana dorks to ramp out its 3cc threats, or white for more mana disruption and evasive flying threats.

In addition, the new vehicles means that any stalled ground forces can retain some teeth, when coupled with equipment:





Welcome to the world of consistent, disruption backed, pressure, shifting to grindy aggro, building to one explosive turn.

This brings us to a spot where breaking singleton on black early drops is again optional, rather than required.

4. Green Aggro

One of the big gaps that used to exist was the lack of reasonable green aggressive cards, which pretty much required excellent mana so an aggro player could pivot around if they ever accidently went into green.

Thats not really the case anymore:




You can now go into a G/x deck, and providing the card population has that baseline of early reasonable pressure in other colors, be perfectly fine. Again, more evidence that the mana singleton breaks are more optional now than required.

III. Color Pairing

I just wanted to comment a little bit on color pairings, and the effects power level has on these A + B pairings. I'm pretty sure the list wants to be slightly lower power than it is.

Blue is, of course, utterly absurd, and seriously threatens the viability of any non-U slower deck strategy. I'm sure this is part of the benefit of really good fixing, as slow decks really need blue (or at least black) to be competitive, as those are the only real sources of good CA.

But outside of that giant balancing issue, I put some real effort into tightening up several of the historic problem guilds, most notably, G/R, which comes up light in most peoples CT deck lists for several excellent reasons.

1. When these decks become slower or more controlling, its just very easy for them to splash because of green. Their identity is usually so shallow, that there is no compelling reason to stay within the pair.

2. Traditionally, there were no green aggro 1 drops, so that route was cut off.

Well not a disaster, at this current power level, the result were disappointing. G/R's best identity is as a lands color or buff color, rooted in the interaction (at this power level) between red's symmetrical LD wildfire series of cards, and green's ramp and loam effects.

Thats a pretty light relationship, especially when you consider that it still suggests we should be splashing blue. The neatest way to tighten it up would be:



...which dies to wildfire and at this power level you can't just simply run moldervine cloak or elephant guide to pump her defense.

I still added her, and included a fair amount of land sacrifice effects in red and green (hence the hammer), but stopped short in some cases, because I figured it just wasn't worth it to go too deep. Its just too much negative synergy here, and the logical solution isn't really available at this power level.

In addition, the real solution would be to depower blue somewhat (along with the rest of the cube), than include:




Which gives us the strong relationship we want, and of course with a somewhat less punishing turn cycle, we can run somewhat slower lands cards like



since the land durdle strategy just doesn't get ran over in that setup.

I mean, its not terrible the way it is, but I do think the power level of the cube is getting in the way of fleshing out the gameplay of some of these color combinations, with really good fixing being an enabler to work around it.

IV. Other Singleton Breaks

I've covered all of the traditional singleton breaking points. The only thing I would add is that with the printing of



It actually isn't necessary to break singleton on birthing pods, so I have that relationship shown here. Your green "weird creature tutor" decks are perfectly viable with:




Bringing this back into the optional but not required category.

V. Conclusion.

So, in conclusion, I'm a little surprised that newer printings made the cube in this streamlined style as feasible as it was. Certainly a far cry from three years ago, where huge parts of the basic format structure were missing, and singleton breaking was a requirement rather than an option.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

For anyone brave enough to get through both pages:

U/G tempo from CubeTutor.com

Pretty much everything that I endlessly complain about not existing in other cubes.

We've got the mana dorks that can get buffed to retain their realvence, and also make normally clunky counterspells like cryptic and mystic snake easier to hold mana up for, while adding to your board.

Than you've got some soft counters to keep removal off your threats, coupled with some decent library manipulation and card draw.

G/W aggro from CubeTutor.com

Nice having the green one drops, here is a pretty little aggro deck. It has selfless spirit, mother of runes, reveillark, promise of bunrei, and valorous stance to disrupt spot removal/sneak damage in.

A lot of its threats will grow and scale into the midgame, have flying, or carry that mana tax ability.

I drafted a few B/W decks, because that tends to be a combination I worry about

B/W stax from CubeTutor.com

B/W aggro from CubeTutor.com

The evasive tokens coupled with equipment and vehicles is the reach/pressure plan, and seems to be the core of the deck (not gravecrawler). Thats pretty much how these decks should be being designed. Of course, the small ground pounders do benefit from being able to use equipment or the vehicles, and both them and the tokens are capable of overwhelming a removal suite.

If the game bogs down, you have some card draw, tutors, and sifting abilities to manage card flow and stay in the game.

Still not sure if smokestack is a real card in cube.

R/G Aggro from CubeTutor.com

This looks surprisingly real, if a bit plain. This is kind of mono red aggro that really wants to end the game with saproling burst.

 

[Chriskool]

I think the list link is missing in OP (or i am blind).

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Reposted the hyperlink at the top of the page.

Went into a B/R deck list night:

B/R aggressive from CubeTutor.com

Feels like B/R is a card off, and the "big rakdos" deck should be rethought first. The old rakdos decks were just gravecrawler decks, and some sort of greater focus should replace that. Value discard, I think, is probably where it wants to be?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Tinker with it some more, made some more swaps tinkering with the R/B decks. Pretty happy with how things are going.

Out



In




Basically, the more I'm forced to think about color pair relationships, the more distinct the pairs become, and the cube trends towards more specialized relationships than just generic good cards.

Looking for R/B relationships in the gold section, I remembered new olivia, who is about perfect. She is a powerful flying threat at a mana cost that can work either in the aggressive layout I have worked on, or in a slower midrange deck. Came up with this interesting deck after some swaps:

B/R midrange from CubeTutor.com

Why didn't I think of this before? With falkenrath aristocrat and kalitas there are strong midrange sacrifice outlets: much of the black section seems to have accidentally ended up being vampires.

The self-discard cards actually work very well with two of red's biggest card advantage engines:




Self discard fits very well within a B/R midrange shell, as you can use value discard to break symmetry on solid midrange cards like:





Which provide a nice source of pressure on U decks, hopefully closing the power gap somewhat, as well as being able to fit within a lower CC more aggressive shell:




Dark confident might have to go though, due to the average cc of these aggressive decks moving towards 2-3. I also think gravecrawler isn't really wanted in the list anymore.

Probably can afford to cut zurgo bellstriker now, and am not sure about having both dragon whisperer and scourge wolf in the red two drops: a few practice drafts will probably result in one or the other being cut, as the mana is tough.

Really missing how in lower power formats you have ready access to buffs: though not being able to regularly manipulate power and toughness.

I think that the B/W decks are about right:

B/W tokens from CubeTutor.com

I like scarhide because it is a buff, maybe need to consider the other bestow flyer in black.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Made the big jump, cut crawler for:



Which should work really well in all of the aggro iterations due to it functioning as an evasive threat, P/T buff, and evasion buff: especially in an aggressive G/B deck.

Really unhappy with the limited selection of toughness boosting buffs overall. R/G in particular has a lot of cards that would strongly benefit from being able to increase toughness.

Even the counter cards are largely disappointing, due to how slow they are, and the equipment selection is terrible in this role. Right now the best green buff is wolfir, silverheart, making him effectively uncuttable, but I am uncomfortable adding verdurous gearhulk. Two copies of that effect feels oppressive, and gearhulk is very strong. I also added bow of nylea. Though I really don't like the card, its the only reasonable option at that point on the curve to grow threats.

I really want at least one more good green perma buff, and I cannot find one that feels power level appropriate. It seems to be a battle between:



Not sure which one is stronger.

I started giving thought to blue combinations, namely UR. UR was pretty wretched in the first draft of the cube, being effectively nothing more than a good stuff color pair, combining blue evasive pressure, draw, counters and permanent manipulation with red burn that could be either stockpiled to win out of nowhere, or to control the board.

Very basic, and dull, and the only spice came from the /yawn worthy kiki-pestermite/exarch/zealous conscripts combo.

Control decks were always going to be a problem in this type of format. There is just not much in the way of rational reasons why someone should prefer focusing on reactive CA based strategies, when you can be both exerting potentially game winning pressure while generating CA. You all know the dead horse.

Ideally, there would be some sort of mana superiority mechanism (either signets or bouncelands) but thats pretty much an impossibility given the operating goals. There are, however, some reasonable mana rocks, but which should maybe be fleshed out with something higher power like a coalition relic, rather than the miserable darksteel ingot sitting there now. This seems like one of those spots where its ok to push the power threshold a bit, and I opted to make that switch.

As for U/R itself, the other major issue with control decks is removal focused: specifically matching removal with threats, or removal being blanked by ETB card advangage or sticky aggressive creatures. In the penny cube, cards like archaeomancer and mnemonic wall went a long way addressing those issues, by artificially increasing the density of removal at a control deck's disposal.

R/U is uniquely suited to take this approach:





Also added an array of blue madness and flashback cards to complement all of this.

Actually spell clone effects I think are too narrow to be included in a list, but the ones selected are modal in nature, covering a variety of situations. Most of them also want higher mana totals, which is fitting for a control deck, but the combination of evasion, pressure and reach, means that it can move between being very aggressive or being very controlling in build. Goggles certainly looks much more reasonable when alongside other cards looking to do similar things.

Mastery is pretty questionable, as the floor looks inconsistent, and the overload total maybe a bit tough to reach.

I also took this opportunity to depower blue slightly with more synergestic or narrow cards, though its still miles better than every other color.

There is still kiki-mite/angel, for the moment.

I cut one of the wildfires/burning of xinye. The pair really isn't sweeper focused, which I like, as I kind of hate sweepers in these style cube. They just end up being a removal piece, and the power level of creatures is so high in these formats that basically no one ever drafts around removal.

Also wanted to point out that there are effectively no spell based edicts or threaten effects. Threaten effects just end up being glorified burn spells, while I'm finding edicts horrible, as they effectively scale into dead removal as the game progresses. They have to at least be attached to a body.

 

[Dom Harvey]

Drafted a few decks; lots of fun stuff going on, but I worry that the power band with the Emeria Shepherd-style cards is still too wide. It's helped a lot by the lack of blisteringly fast aggro, but if the other midrange options are equally powerful but cheaper and less conditional, they still won't see their day in the sun

How about Moldervine Cloak or Boar Umbra?

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

How does savagery play? It looks really good: at the perfect spot on the curve to power up red threes badly looking for buffs, like stromkirk occultist.

I'm assuming that cloak isn't good enough, because it often isn't, even in lower power formats. Does anyone play with boar umbra? Part of what makes this tricky is that I want to run cards that kind of have some pedigree at this power level, and this makes the second green aura hard to pin down.

These seem to be the choices:




The main issue with all of those, when we start talking about power level, is that with the reasonably efficient removal I still have in the format, all of them can be blanked by removal. The advantage of wolfir or gearhulk (or druid's familiar) is that you at least get left with a consolation prize, but like I said, I think gearhulk takes us in an unwanted direction.

I'm pretty sure, however, familiar isn't making lists because the consolation prize of a 2/2 is so bad, though its better than all of the others in that scenario.

Opinions? I put savagery in for now.


Sheppard might be bad: there is still quite a bit of little power level calibrations I have to make (especially blue). Part of the issue is that I started with a lot of traditional cards that were more or less vetted by you folks three years ago, and I still want the core of the format to consist of those vetted strategies and cards. You know, keep it midrange, keep it a riptide experiment. Thats why I have eldritch evolution, birthing pod, and chord of calling in the list, rather than just scrapping them.

I do still have to turn my attention to G/W decks. Right now there is a decent value theme, and the pod cards seem to fit best there, but part of why I included Sheppard originally was that I was thinking G/W landfall, but the density for that up the curve (at this power level) is not very good. There are some combinations I am holding back on, because I am assuming they more or less build themselves.

For example:

zenmotor's draft of Riptide Midrange Cube on 12/11/2016 from CubeTutor.com

Also, really liked that UR deck:

UR Spells from CubeTutor.com

That just looks great. Really think fact or fiction is too strong for what I want in blue, and probably will change that to gifts ungiven, as it has a fair amount of synergy with about a million things going on in the cube.

I'm kind of imagining that this will end up being slightly north of sigh's in terms of power level, but pay for that with somewhat less archetype depth.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Some interesting updates, regarding the mana conversation we were having earlier.

1. Mana Bases

Looking over the draft lists, there was tremendous variance in mana bases:

Questionable fixing for a very cool aggressive R/G list

R/G Beats from CubeTutor.com

Terrible fixing for an otherwise excellent B/W tokens list

B/W tokens from CubeTutor.com

Superb fixing for a U/B list

UB Control from CubeTutor.com

While I am happy with the quality of the underlying non-U lists, I am really unhappy with the fixing. Its terrible to put a drafter in a position where they by default have a bad deck, regardless of the quality of the rest of their picks, because of weak access to fixing, and that was happening a bit too much.

If you recall, we were running x1 shock, x1 fetch, x1 ABU dual, x1 manland, for 40 fixing lands total, or 11% of the list. That density, in an 8 person draft, was really making it difficult to draft shard/wedge decks, and creating something of a bell curve effect where some draft decks were just not seeing sufficient fixing.

I already have good utility and manland density, so most of the remaining 10 slots in the lands section were going to fixing lands anways: cards like city of brass, tendo ice bridge, and evolving wilds. The problem with these cards, is that they represent the floor on a fairly wide power band present in the lands. No one actually wants evolving wilds in a format like this, so its not terrible difficult to get a sequence of packs that make you overly dependent on these bottom tier land picks for fixing, which you will probably pass in packs 1 or 2.

This is how these odd 1-2 fixing decks were coming about.

Because 40 fixing lands weren't enough, much of the remaining 10 slots (60%) had been eaten up by these low power fixers, and only 4 slots were being used on actual, colorless producing, utility lands.

These cards were mutavault, tec. edge, wasteland, and ghost quarter.

Because there is no gravecrawler anymore and I already have 12 manlands elsewhere in the cube, I don't need mutavault for anything so that can be cut. This just leaves the 3 LD lands.

If you'll recall, I was having an issue with the artifact section, where I was just basically running filler because there was nothing the cube really wanted. I cut filigree familiar (laughably underpowered for this format), palladium myr, and oddball everlasting chalice, and replaced them with colorless producing tech edge, wasteland, and ghost quarter.

Than I added in the complete cycle of the newly finished check lands, bringing fixing up to 50/50, or 13% in lands, which is incidentally much nearer to the Karsten mark.

So, no ULD, but I have:

50 total mana fixing lands, at 13%
20 total utility lands, at 5%
8 non-manland utility lands, at 2%
12 manlands, at 3%

Really threading a needle here, and of course the additional 10 lands opens the cube up quite a bit for shard/wedge interactions.

2. Multi-Color

Some clever accounting also opens up the multi-color section. I have 30 total multi-color cards in that section, however, I've artificially boosted that percentage, by playing with card floors and ceilings.

30 total multi-color cards, at 8%
10 lands with color fixing floors, and multi-color activation, at 3%
8 mono colored creatures with hybrid activated abilities, at 2%

This gives me an effective 48 card multi-color section (13.6%), even though I am just devoting 8% space to multi-color cards.

The one part of the fate reforged rare/mythic cycle not to make it was:



who is just horrifyingly underpowered.

I have



Living in the selesnya section, because the floor is so bad, she needs multi-color activations to even function, and I am presuming this will mostly be a selensnya card.

I have to make a similar decision about:



Whose floor as a 3/2 first striker for 3 is very bad.

3. Other Notes

I think I've murdered all of the generically good sub 3cc blue cards that make lazy first picks: no phantasmal image, no vend. clique.

Added serendib efreet, crush of tentacles, torrent elemental, and Shu Yun, the silent tempest.

Emeria Shepperdlooks better now.

One thing, when I draft a deck now, I have an overabundance of playables a reasonable degree of the time, which suggests the color pairs are overly focused on their respective strategies, and have some room to breath. I probably have about 5-10% of each color, that I can begin diverting away to slightly more narrow cards, that can lead a drafter to 2-3 different sub themes.

Also I think I can cut one of the bushwhackers, as I don't think we need two mini-overrun effects in this list.

Need a replacement for dark confidant. Trying death cloud as one of the odd sub theme cards I have space for, as indicated above.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thoughts on this deck?

R/W Aggro from CubeTutor.com

Legion Loyalist and Iroas was in the pool. Is it overly dependent on the strategy of bum rushing turns 1-3, than stock piling burn?

There isn't a lot of burn in the list: its trying to be resilient to sweepers, do damage where it may, than ending with an overrun alpha strike. It actually doesn't look that bad on the curve out, though maybe I want that loyalist?

R/W aggro look reasonable?

 

[Toan]

Somewhat unrelatedly, I feel like Stingscourger should be approached as a 3.5 drop creature, or a 2-drop sorcery. In decks like these which really want the body, you're very rarely playing it on turn 2.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Made a bunch of small tweeks to open the list up.

Here is the type of final product I am ultimately going for:

B/G/r Token Attrition from CubeTutor.com

Started out with a bunch of generic good card picks, the list started to deepen by the end of the first pack, and began to specialize substantially in pack 2. Lots of distinct splashes from green and black and red, that exist due to their various color pair identities, and here they synergize in interesting ways to make something unique.

So seperating the colors strategies out to where they were before they junctioned in the list, they started:

I. Board Growth and Gruul overruns.
1. Green elves, providing foundational ramp, but also cheap small bodies begging to be made relevant late.
2. Green token strategies, originally intended to be coupled with red and white
3. Red mini-overrun effects, originally intended to be coupled with green or white
4. Tutor pieces that improve with board growth
5. Green +1 +1 counter effects to provide horizontal growth to small bodies, and grow low toughness creatures we want to connect with.




If we were to divide these out into their original guilds, we have the board development portions originally part of selesnya identity (without the white) intended to solidify board position, and the mini overrun effects originally intended for gruul or boros intended to pressure.

They've blended together here to represent a shard relationship, a Naya portion of the deck (without the white), focused on growth and pressure.

But than, we have the black portion of the deck.

II. Golgari Attrition and lands
1. Green elves and tokens provide a way to provide sacrifice fodder or break symmetry on black resource destruction effects.
2. Green has ways to convert black's resource destruction effects into an immediate advantage.
3. Green elves and occasional mana rocks let the list function with lower mana totals, breaking symmetry on land sacrifice effects.
4. Foundational black reanimation pieces require sacrifice fodder to work, which they can get from green tokens or elves.
5. Black attrition pieces are more expensive and attract removal, making them want both ramp and reanimation to maximize their time in play.
6. Green actively benefits from cards being sent to the yard via attrition, and can grow low toughness threats that need to connect to find critical graveyard spells.




Again, if we divide these out into their original relationships, we have parts of the midrangey G/R lands decks, and strong elements from the GB value reanimation deck.

And those are fine, but what really pushes the list over the top and takes it to a new level are these cards:




So we have another shard relationship (this time without the red elements) in the form of GBR, or Jund, except this shard relationship is deeper than jund's usual boring value generation approach, and is more interested in sacrificing lands for value, as part of an overall resource constriction strategy, that it is better positioned to deal with due to greens tokens and mana dorks.

III. Junctioning Shards

What makes the list nice, is that it can take these two different shards, and (taking advantage of the newly improved fixing) junction them together in a 3 color list. It can do this because:

1. The GW and GR pairs wants tokens to power its base strategy of overrunning
2. The BG pairs wants tokens to power a base strategy of value creature reanimation, while the slower GR pair wants to power a base strategy of value land recursion.
3. Both strategies can take advantage of mana elves
4. There are a few odd, slightly narrow cards, in the list that encourage this junction.

The end result is the exact type of cube deck that I want to see every time, and the type that is the most fun to play. Instead of being a linear focused strategy (e.g. aggro/value grind), this one can pivot tremendously with the game state, between being pressure focused to reactive. It can play towards an explosive, combo-esque overrun turn, or it can use its reanimation pieces to play a slow prison-esque constriction of the board state. You even have something of a toolbox with the synergistic chord, to let you chart your path.

Really diverse macro level ways to play it, keep things fresh and challenging regardless of which side of the table you are on, and it feels like it has more of a personal stamp to it, both in the way its designed, as well as the way its going to be piloted.

Going to be hard to do that with the rest of the cube, but basically, am looking to:

1. Provide a basic good stuff skeleton (elves, etb creatures, mana rocks, efficient removal, sweepers, tutors, fixing). Not go overboard on this (which is the mistake I think power maxing makes).

2. Develop a base strategy for each color pair, based off of that good stuff skeleton, where each color has part of the puzzle, but needs to look at a second color to really cement it (A+B design).

3. Start promoting distinct shard or wedge relationships in the cube, where two color combinations can benefit from a third (A+B+C design).

4. Provide junction points for those wedge or shards to begin to bleed in a way that seamlessly complement one another, despite coming from different strategic places.

Like here, where we have two different shards that both want tokens, but one for a proactive reason, and the other for a reactive reasons, and than providing them the tools to seamlessly meld them together if they so wish, to creative a list more dynamic than either part could be separately.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

As I continue on with my bloggy posts: wanted to add a few things that happened with the above tweaks that I think are maybe helpful.

1. Ratched down some of the removal CC. Stressing this again, no one really drafts around removal in these types of formats, so removal first off has to be able to curve well, so it doesn't end up bumbling up against more interesting cards that actually do give a deck identity. A lot of the interesting or synergy based red burn spells, in particular, clump up around 3cc, which is really bad for any base red deck: if you're aggro or aggro-control this kills your curve, and if you're control, this now competes with the generally more expensive 2-3cc stabilizing creatures that you build your defense around.

This is an argument in favor of running lightning bolt (despite being an otherwise uninteresting burn spell), as it takes a ton of pressure off of curve requirements, and keeps you from running too many duplicate lightning strike effects at the 2cc slot.

I had a similar problem when looking at blue-black control, which often wanted to curve early removal up to feed its graveyard, to in turn fuel the mid-game spell recursion that would give it the removal density to take it through the late game.

2. Added more lifegain. I think for control to really function, it needs to either artificially slow the game down to manufacture the turns it needs to obtain mana superiority, or be directly given mana superiority tools (in the form of signets or bouncelands, format depending). Since this type of format precludes either of those, I think control identity is going to revolve, to some extent, on access to lifegain tools to effectively remove a turn or two of pressure, so it can build its manabase. That being said, I think control will always have a control-pressure focus, because its ability to control the game is just so curtailed.

3. I think this type of cube has three broad shard/wedge identities that define play style (pillars?), and this is a pattern that I've noticed cross formats. Need to pay attention to these shard/wedge trends, in order to see how best to allow interesting junctions and balance them.

a. You have your U based strategies, which generate direct card advantage usually with evasive pressure. Broadly, this is with sometimes the cube's focus being more on white or on red depending on the population. The classic 1994 "the deck" model, where we are basically coupling good draw, with good spot removal, and than adding a NWO twist via evasive pressure and maybe sweepers. Modern cantrips make these decks consistent.

b. You have your GB based value reanimation strategies, which generate indirect card advantage via recurring ETB creatures that also provide pressure, to grind out the game. Broadly, this is though the secondary colors can change depending on the population. This is very much an NWO creation, that combines the best ETB creatures with the best reanimation or creature recursion spells and the best spot removal it can find. Green's creature tutors and new generation cantrips help make these decks consistent.

This can get busted if blue is too strong, because the BUG wedge no longer has to make compromises between these two strategies, and gains strong removal, bombs, as well as two forms of CA coupled with the best smoothers. Ideally, these decks would be

c. You have your RWG burst damage aggro decks, that want to provide early game pressure with small or mid-sized bodies, but produce massive amounts of mid or late game pressure with horizontal pump/overruns or vertical pump/creature growth protected by soft disruption. These are aggro-combo decks, and gain consistency via R/W's 3cc creature tutors that help them get their combo assembled, or via green creature tutors.

Ideally, I would also have a sort of aggressive, attritiony, almost prison-like mardu clustering around but that doesn't quite feel like its prominent enough yet.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Few more updates, this is chugging along.

Did some major surgery on the black section, streamlining out the curve and the number of cards that had at the 2 and 3cc slot.

Big thank you to B8r for this deck:

Br Midrange Token Value Reanimator Stax from CubeTutor.com

Just let your eyes drop down that 3cc slot: no wonder its nearly mono-black. A few practice drafts into BW give me an overabundance of options, suggesting over focus, and a practice draft of BR felt too unfocused, suggested a lack of identity.

Did a little research into how the stax decks were being setup, and added some of the staple cards, while streaming out black 1s. Also came across a post by Safra in the big rakdos thread, and it reminded me that this is basically an aggro deck with some utility creatures at the 3 slot, that grinds out card advantage by having their creatures self-reanimate, alongside burn and death triggers.




This whole episode got me thinking how nice the delve spells are, as well as modal spells in general, as they let you adjust the CCs to avoid clumping. The three cc slot has been really competitive in this format.

maybe one of those becomes a carrion feeder, but I rather like sarcomancy because you can sac it to braids, and there are delirium cards hanging around. At least three 2 power creatures in this section feels like enough 1 drops for aggressive decks, and they are all reasonable, so the additional two are kind of there to make crawler happy. Feeder was never a successful card in any of the cubes I ran it in, however, due to how parasitic it was.

Hymn becomes blackmail, to move things down the curve. Ophiomancer I actually like quite a bit, because its both reasonable on offense, defense, and you can sac the token to pox effects.

sinkhole becomes smallpox.

Necromancer same deal, works with champion of the parish (which works with blood soaked champion) and is anti-sweeper protection.

bloodghast is in for relentless dead, which is somewhat disappointing, but ghast is less mana intensive, and the deck has to be able to operate on reduced mana totals.

Red added back in goblin sharpshooter and a few dash and unearth cards, and had forgotten about this guy:



Who I actually quite like as an overrun effect for these decks.

The other big change was that I got to thinking about the big decks and how frustrating it was how little identity they had.

Their whole thing seems to be "angry earth" or something, with big titanic resource depleting spells, such as:




Which are all I think I can run at this power level, the higher level cards being Armageddon (which I still want to run?) and balance.

That generates card advantage through land recursion or getting ahead on mana development




The problem is that this reduces your only real CA engines into loam and crucible, which is a bit light. In a higher powered format we could maybe run the absurdity that is land tax and be happy, but thats not an option for this format. But I remember alfonso suggesting:




for my gy cube...which, both look pretty amazing in general. These are basically 1-2cc draw spells in white that thin your deck and make sure you hit your land drops. Tithe especially, because its an instant, you can fire off in response to a fetch activation, which seems insane.

Gift of estates is basically a land tax activation, which is really good in itself.

This gives me a RWG core lands package that looks something like this





With the boom // bust and cataclysm both being good in the aggro decks that overlap this section.

I can actually imagine a R/W/G deck building itself up around that type of mass removal, essentially using green and white land tutors as draw spells.

Than you also have various support spells, including




And for the gifts and tithe, which pad the hand I cut that origins black d-tutor in favor of demonic collusion. This might be too slow though, seeing how pressure focused these formats are.

Also, I broke down and added treasure cruise because UR is just a glorified burn deck and needs something like that.

Bant as a shard I haven't really explored: thinking maybe their vertical spell growth creatures? That kind of doubles into temur.

 

[sigh]

The only problem I have with Tithe effects is that they search for plains. That's such an annoying restriction! It makes it harder to splash them, nearly impossible, even. You need a critical mass of white sources to both hit the spell early (ideally) and find all the possible targets the spell can find. The requirements get even more stringent with multiple in one deck.

Maybe that's ok if you make white a more dominant color in the archetype, but I've found Green is just so, so good at interacting with lands in general...

I noticed that you don't have

Which has been one of the anchors of the archetype for me.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thanks added elder. Would it be horrific to run Armageddon?

I think I'll leave tithe in, but maybe cut gifts of estates. Tithe just seems really reasonable to me.

Scourge Devil's already doing work in its intended capacity

B/G/r tokens from CubeTutor.com

Just looks super fun. B/G army in a can dudes that its reanimation pieces want anyways works so eloquently, especially here with dread return, and a synergistic combo finish from devils to play towards, rather than being forced to play only a linear grind fest. Those mini-overruns really open up these types of lists.

Not really happy with UR though. Looked at some non-riptide cubes/forums and it seems very good stuffy, with maybe kiki-mite.

Kind of imagining the small version being a glorified burn deck with spell triggers, but not sure how I want to scale that up. Its basically going to be pressure control/midrange (like everything else), but kind of want it doing something more specialized. Maybe need to look at this artifact theme other people have been running.

Not sure exactly how I want to link together

 

[sigh]

I think Tithe is the most sericeable of the (non-busted) Tithe effects. I like that it still works even when "off". Gift of Estates is very all-in, but I can still lay of the land with Tithe in a pinch. Tempted to try it in my own list.

The one time I had a wonky 4+ color deck come together, it was something like (color-adjusted for your list):

Basically control-combo with a heavy focus on absolute mana superiority. Goal was to get to obscene amounts of mana and then go for the 1-2 turn burn win. green for mana, white for mana and removal, blue for setup, red for the kill. I have no idea how easy this is to actually curate, or it kinda just has to organically come together?

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

A no vote to Armageddon here.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Its maybe a little bit too inconsistent, on the other hand maybe we're just talking about fork effects + x spells as a kill condition in a ramp deck.

Added in the artifact sub theme, and came up with:

U/R control from CubeTutor.com

Thats more fun than depending on wildfire or kiki-mite, or the other various good stuff piles I see on other forums.

Note that imperial recruiter can grab either draining whelk or body double, which is quite nice.

I added niv-mizzet in, because collective defiance + niv mizzet sounds fun. I don't think its appropriate for this format, but it occurred to me that red wheel of fortune effects coupled with black underworld dream effects might be an interesting BR midrangy combo deck.

 

[sigh]

My sample deck concept is (was) definitely inconsistent, at least more than "normal", though it did secure the most player kills of any deck that night . Part of why I think that decks of >3 colors are hard to plan for or guide your players to, at least on purpose. Most legitimate four color decks are happy accidents or a crazy brainchild, both of which are hard to plan for.

URw deck looks sweet, pretty much everything I'd expect to go for in that color pair while drafting: sorta a turbo-delver style control deck

Edit: another no vote for Armageddon from me. Less "angry earth" and more "angry players" imo. And I think Cataclysm provides a nominally similar role in a much more interesting way.

 

[B8R]

Hey Grillo, interested in any of these?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Added a bunch of b8r's suggestions, though metallurgic summoning kind of scares me.

My sample deck concept is (was) definitely inconsistent, at least more than "normal", though it did secure the most player kills of any deck that night . Part of why I think that decks of >3 colors are hard to plan for or guide your players to, at least on purpose. Most legitimate four color decks are happy accidents or a crazy brainchild, both of which are hard to plan for.

URw deck looks sweet, pretty much everything I'd expect to go for in that color pair while drafting: sorta a turbo-delver style control deck

Edit: another no vote for Armageddon from me. Less "angry earth" and more "angry players" imo. And I think Cataclysm provides a nominally similar role in a much more interesting way.

I think its still really solid if you think of it as a fork deck, which is really where you want to be in UR anyways. Forked removal spells give you a way to compete in terms of card advantage in a world where every aggro deck and midrange deck is jammed with ways to negate removal. It also makes it where the burn spells can scale into the mid or late game to keep pace with accelerated threats. As the game goes on, the spot removal or mass removal pieces become gradually more lethal until become win conditions unto themselves. Green becomes a natural way to get around the problem of lacking mana superiority. Really kind of an exciting control deck to support in these formats.

Argument to run a couple of the super cheap red spot spells




since the few fork effects that effectively cantrip tend to be costly




Added a few significant cards for the archetype





On top of the devil's play thats already there--debating if I should add a second red X spell.

I also like how you can use daretti to recur the U and R gearhulks.

Also added:




Because...well..riptide.

One other spicy edition that I think is new for the forum



I remember in 2007 when this was a combo card with brine elemental. Here you can combo it with eternal witness or mnemonic wall and time warp to go infinite. Alternately, primal command to deny OP anymore draw steps for the rest of the game. Probably some other stupid combos, but I can't think of any atm.

 

[StormEntity]

I'm pretty certain it doesn't actually go infinite with Time Warp and Eternal Witness, though it could certainly be an interesting inclusion for other reasons. If it went infinite with Eternal Witness I suspect we'd all be using it as a sweet Conjurer's Closet type effect.