Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
The traditional way that you would run UG at about your power level would be to use mana dorks (which you already have) to makeup the horizontal foundation of your board state. Than you are using them to ramp up into your payoff cards, and green is supposed to be making them relevant in a late board state environment, via things like overruns, wolfir, green gearhulk, edric, or garruk wildspeaker. Using tokens with ophidian payoff cards is more of a UW approach, though you could certainly cross it with green army in a can dudes or in UR.
The big advantage of blue is that you get soft counters to protect that board state, as well as being able to ramp into some of the bigger hard counters. Cryptic command being a big one, since you can also use it to alpha strike through.
I don't think that your UG tools are necessarily bad, I think its more that there is no loud signaling to drafters. In the old power cubes, something like opposition really makes it clear that you should be running UG or UW, as those were the color pairs you were most likely to be able to pick up an expansive board state with. Thats why I was suggesting edric, because it pretty clearly communicates that. Its kind of a counter-intuitive deck for some players, as I find, as the focus on soft interaction over hard interaction leaves them feeling uncomfortable, and the signals have to be very strong.
I forgot that the X spells in red are also good payoff cards for ramping, especially the sweepers, while library manipulation from the green cards helps that deck out a lot.
One thing for black that I noticed is that there is hardly any card draw, and one of the big issues with the B/W deck is that its light on library manipulation (compared with blue), and sometimes auto-losses to itself. Even if you're running a more assertive B/W deck, that tokens strategy tends to be clunky, and it plays more like a grindy aggressive midrange deck than a traditional aggro deck. It has time--and wants--some form of cheap card draw.
You probably want to add a copy of night's whisper, maybe phyrexian arena/underworld connections. The really light life pay also tends to signal a B/W junction, that can be tightened up with some of the incidental life gain cards in white.
I also think that promise of bunrei is an important card to look at as mechanically it fits very well in a B/W shell. Bitterblossom is another good card to look at, especially if you have a fair amount of incidental life gain localized in white. Both of those cards have also seen play in B/W decks in constructed formats, so there is strong subconscious signaling for your drafters to respond too.
Vamp tutor puts you down a card, the recruiters are bodies that cantrip via tutoring. Even if you have garbage pulls with them, mathematically the cards are just very strong. Once you put in some strong utility targets for them to grab, they really open things up, as they provide library manipulation to colors and archetypes that normally have to play TOL, hoping for the best.
The big issue with G/W (and why its so underdrafted) is that it has no real way to smooth out draws. You can come up with dozens of decks for it that look perfectly reasonable on paper (Pitches to force!) but no one plays them in practice because you pretty much auto-lose in ways no other color combination has to when the variance gods strike. Functionally, it has to overcome this problem or its garbage. The absolute only thing keeping the color pair together are its creature-centric library manipulation options. Cards like chord of calling, birthing pod, eldric evo and so forth.
The problem with the triple pod approach is that:
1. If players don't understand/aren't in the mood for/get pod in the wrong pack, your G/W decks fall apart.
2. If another G/x combination is the better pod deck, your G/W decks fall apart.
3. Outside of voice/finks, pod actually signals G/W quite badly. A card like chord of calling does a much better job at this, because G/W tends to build expansive (value based) board states. Chord is just a much easier card to support in a draft environment.
I won't hide my bias--I really dislike pod in cube, but even if we must keep three copies, I think we need to realize that its not really communicating G/W effectively for some reason, and make the appropriate adjustments. Maybe tighten up your creature-centric library manipulation options for those decks in a way that it more clearly communicates G/W. I would probably look at the aforementioned chord of calling (which is also great in UG).
One thing you could experiment with is running cards like woodland bellower and recruiter of the guard, alongside utility targets and white flicker effects. This lets them build a board state out of nothing, they can chain spell creatures, and gives them considerable library manipulation, all while applying pressure. Those cards also work very well with knight of the reliquary, which I find tends to be a G/W pick people tend to get excited about, and has good synergy with green cards like avenger of zendikar, or rampaging baloths.
I am like all stream of conscious in these posts.
The big advantage of blue is that you get soft counters to protect that board state, as well as being able to ramp into some of the bigger hard counters. Cryptic command being a big one, since you can also use it to alpha strike through.
I don't think that your UG tools are necessarily bad, I think its more that there is no loud signaling to drafters. In the old power cubes, something like opposition really makes it clear that you should be running UG or UW, as those were the color pairs you were most likely to be able to pick up an expansive board state with. Thats why I was suggesting edric, because it pretty clearly communicates that. Its kind of a counter-intuitive deck for some players, as I find, as the focus on soft interaction over hard interaction leaves them feeling uncomfortable, and the signals have to be very strong.
I forgot that the X spells in red are also good payoff cards for ramping, especially the sweepers, while library manipulation from the green cards helps that deck out a lot.
One thing for black that I noticed is that there is hardly any card draw, and one of the big issues with the B/W deck is that its light on library manipulation (compared with blue), and sometimes auto-losses to itself. Even if you're running a more assertive B/W deck, that tokens strategy tends to be clunky, and it plays more like a grindy aggressive midrange deck than a traditional aggro deck. It has time--and wants--some form of cheap card draw.
You probably want to add a copy of night's whisper, maybe phyrexian arena/underworld connections. The really light life pay also tends to signal a B/W junction, that can be tightened up with some of the incidental life gain cards in white.
I also think that promise of bunrei is an important card to look at as mechanically it fits very well in a B/W shell. Bitterblossom is another good card to look at, especially if you have a fair amount of incidental life gain localized in white. Both of those cards have also seen play in B/W decks in constructed formats, so there is strong subconscious signaling for your drafters to respond too.
Vamp tutor puts you down a card, the recruiters are bodies that cantrip via tutoring. Even if you have garbage pulls with them, mathematically the cards are just very strong. Once you put in some strong utility targets for them to grab, they really open things up, as they provide library manipulation to colors and archetypes that normally have to play TOL, hoping for the best.
The big issue with G/W (and why its so underdrafted) is that it has no real way to smooth out draws. You can come up with dozens of decks for it that look perfectly reasonable on paper (Pitches to force!) but no one plays them in practice because you pretty much auto-lose in ways no other color combination has to when the variance gods strike. Functionally, it has to overcome this problem or its garbage. The absolute only thing keeping the color pair together are its creature-centric library manipulation options. Cards like chord of calling, birthing pod, eldric evo and so forth.
The problem with the triple pod approach is that:
1. If players don't understand/aren't in the mood for/get pod in the wrong pack, your G/W decks fall apart.
2. If another G/x combination is the better pod deck, your G/W decks fall apart.
3. Outside of voice/finks, pod actually signals G/W quite badly. A card like chord of calling does a much better job at this, because G/W tends to build expansive (value based) board states. Chord is just a much easier card to support in a draft environment.
I won't hide my bias--I really dislike pod in cube, but even if we must keep three copies, I think we need to realize that its not really communicating G/W effectively for some reason, and make the appropriate adjustments. Maybe tighten up your creature-centric library manipulation options for those decks in a way that it more clearly communicates G/W. I would probably look at the aforementioned chord of calling (which is also great in UG).
One thing you could experiment with is running cards like woodland bellower and recruiter of the guard, alongside utility targets and white flicker effects. This lets them build a board state out of nothing, they can chain spell creatures, and gives them considerable library manipulation, all while applying pressure. Those cards also work very well with knight of the reliquary, which I find tends to be a G/W pick people tend to get excited about, and has good synergy with green cards like avenger of zendikar, or rampaging baloths.
I am like all stream of conscious in these posts.
