The Dandy Cube (Chris Taylor's Cube)

[Suicufnoc]

Seems like it would be a litttlle less oppressive than Baneslayer

 

[anotak]

that card owns

 

[Chris Taylor]

New Old Patch!

Spoiler

Out:




In:




And the following:

As well, these cards have recived slight changes:

Added Graft 1

got a new name (Was Shepherd of the Lost)

got a new art (It's old art is now on keeper of secrets)

And lastly this got 1 mana cheaper and -1/-1

 

[Chris Taylor]

So for reference Eric I'm unsure of how to manually resize linked images (if that's at all possible).

Thoughts on my changes:

• I had a host of artifact beaters at different CMCs, but they've been changed to iron golems as nobody ever needs the help at any other cost. We'll see if this is too many, but my instincts tell me no
• The search for a non utility green 3 drop continues
• Black is getting some lifegain and some better utility creatures. I know adding a black baneslayer angel is kind of solving a problem with a hammer, but we'll see how it plays. Another possible angle was to add "Gain 1 life" riders onto a few spells, or add a few extort cards. This issue is ongoing.
• I finally got fed up with it and made blue 2 drops. Coralhelm commander was a fine man, but he doesn't really do what I want them to be doing. Cloudfin raptor might not be the 1 drop blue needs, we'll have to see.
• Bitterblossom got cut for being too good. Such are the sacrifices I need to make to not have naturalize be in my cube.
• Mana Leaks are swapping to Condescends because scry is awesome and X counters may not be as shit as previously believed. More news at 11.
• +1/+1 counter theme is going. While the dudes are fine, I've found that every card with proliferate on it was too low powered for my environment, and making new ones proved difficult and not rewarding enough.
• BIG upheaval (heh) in blue: Lots of traditionally good cards going, and a few possible GRBS leaving as well. Neither Treachery or Upheaval really represent the type of environment I'm trying to cultivate (man I'm on fire today), so they left. Some of the sweeter blue cards are leaving because blue's curve is seriously out of wack, and while repulse is an amazing card, it helps blue decks where they don't really need the help.
• Firebolt has proved to be the best helper card for the UR spells deck bar none, so I'm trying out another and seeing if Silent Departure preforms similarly.

 

[Eric Chan]

• I like the colourless one-drop Savannah Lions! I guess Magic has come a long way, but they don't feel overpowered in the slightest.
• I feel like Field Researcher could use a slight drawback, a la Silvergill Adept, so that control decks don't just snap him up as a cheap Sea Gate Oracle. Maybe the Cooperfauss errata of revealing any blue creature?
• I prefer Phantasmal Bear to Cloudfin Raptor, especially in multiples. But I suppose you have a minor counter theme...
• I'm resigned to green having really good fours and fives, and non-existent threes. Just means that jumping from two to four mana is more important than going from one to three, making the third turn the critical turn rather than the second.
• As much as I wanted to like it, Silent Departure is pretty bad. Repulse is a heckuva card, though!

 

[anotak]

young archivist looks broken honestly, but have fun

Eric, iron golem was a local's idea who otherwise just doesn't design magic cards

 

[ahadabans]

young archivist looks broken honestly, but have fun

I agree with Anotak.

But I will say your custom cards look amazing. Very nice work on those. And I'm a fan of many of them.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I'm experimenting more and more with cards that WotC would never ever print. Lost Shepard is about half the CC he's supposed to be in actual magic.

Young Archivist couldn't ever see print in an actual set because that's a storm player's wet dream: Helps set me up, makes going off easier and takes 1 off my lethal storm count whenever it attacks. But here, where it's sometimes better and sometimes worse than looter il-kor, I think it stands a chance.

Field Researcher is really a product of my firm belief that elvish visionary really sucks balls unless you put in work for him to draw you more than one card (Either by sliding him, or something deeper like wirewood symbiote shenanigans), which my cube has next to none of.

Also: turns out I forgot the artist credit on Field Researcher. Updates Incoming

 

[anotak]

the visionary in my cube is also ground seal

 

[Chris Taylor]

W00! Back from Draft!

Notes:

• I shoulda payed more attention to you guys: Young Archivist cost U, was supposed to cost U1. Not sure what I should do about that, because...
• ...Cloudfin raptor is kinda bad The "Baseline" for evolve creatures is if they trigger once, and U 1/2 flying is not playable
• Silent Departure is really bad. I played 12 games with the card and never once flashed it back. (Sidenote: my cube is fast now. Like real fast!)
• Runechanter's Pike really lost it's home once blue got a pile of creatures so it could play with the big boys. Between making it good again and making a different equipment, I think I'll add a new equipment. That may change down the line.
• Second Blood artist is leaving. Eric, you were totally right. That card is super backbreaking! Maybe if it only triggered for your creatures?
• Ghor-Clan Rampager is the only effect in my cube that gives a boost of 4 power or more, and MAN does it show! He got bloodrushed maybe once tonight when he didn't take the defender into bolt range.

Play of the night:
His Board: Experiment one (one counter), Cloudfin Raptor (one counter), Strangleroot Geist and another 2/1
My Board: fresh Elspeth, Knight Errant and her token
Play Domri Rade, fight strangleroot and my token. Undying Triggers, Double Evolve, swing for 10

the visionary in my cube is also ground seal

It's the 2 power I'm finding carries the card, not the utility. Field Researcher was totally fine tonight for reference

 

[Eric Chan]

Yep, Cloudfin Raptor is pretttttttty mediocre. Now if you want a 2/2 for one, on the other hand...

 

[Suicufnoc]

Here's a slightly weaker Young Archivist (if you ignore the hybrid part )

 

[Changling Bob]

...Cloudfin raptor is kinda bad The "Baseline" for evolve creatures is if they trigger once, and U 1/2 flying is not playable

Maybe I'm wrong, but evolving once is probably only baseline if you're not going deep on evolving. There's a reason there's a 4/2 evolve in that set.

And having said that and looked, I need some more 4 power/toughness mans in green.

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

I can't find the thread where you were looking for black two drops, but was thinking about:



?

 

[Chris Taylor]

I like the regular good mode, but man is that the worst topdeck ever

Interesting find!

 

[Chris Taylor]

So, patch incoming, and I need your help:

Are there any sweet blue cards I'm missing? It's the section I'm most out of touch with at the moment, and I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting

 

[Chris Taylor]

Patch Notes!

In:

Spoiler

Out:

Spoiler

• Eric, I hate to say it but among the current card pool, delver and cloudfin raptor are kinda inferior to Phantasmal Bear as a blue creature deck anchor. I still think he's awful though.
• With this patch I wanted to dial my themes back a bit, let the format breathe, and reintroduce some cool cards that have fallen by the wayside in my efforts to push various decks. A smattering of token cards are coming back in, and I guess it'll be up to my drafters weather there's a deck there or not.
• Daring Skyjek has replaced spirit of the labyrinth for now. Spirit definitely did work, but I kinda want people to actually cast those brainstorms. As well, there's a few colorless ways to draw cards now, so it has a real downside as well.
• I'm cutting down on the number of creatures across the board in order to get the non-aggro decks some time/space to breathe.

I'm still a bit unsure of what to do with blue. The control deck has been fine, and flourishing despite the recent cutting of some of the more powerful things it could do like treachery, and some of the more resilient win conditions like AEtherling have left as well. You could also say there's midrange, but I'd say that midrange is an old seattle saying for "man who draft shitty curve".

I'm continuing to experiment with other directions to take blue, this time making it the anchor color for the flicker deck, assisted by a some additional juicy targets (another mulldrifter doesn't hurt) and a few of the custom cards. This does necessitate the inclusion of some army in a can creatures, but I'll keep an eye on how much board stalls come up and adjust accordingly.

Black is starting to assist blue in this new flicker idea with some ETB triggers of it's own, and pushed raise dead creatures to help with all the trading I'm anticipating you'll need to do.

In red, wildfire is coming back, along with a few red control elements. There's also a fire diamond in the artifacts being added, but we'll see just how horrible a mana rock has to get before control decks won't pick it.

Green is getting my first triplicate custom card in an effort to include both a ramp spell and some card filtering for the green based decks. My green section has a real "use every part of the buffalo" feel right now, and the decks usually do a lot of card filtering, but little drawing.

Lastly, I've added quite a few (admittedly rushed) pieces of equipment to fill the void left by cutting all the swords, jitte, and now the second grafted wargear (man that card is insane). We've long bemoaned the vast gulf between batterskull and leonin scimitar, and what I'm trying to do here is fill that gap. Please yell at me if you think I've failed ^_^

 

[Eric Chan]

nooooo Experiment One nooooooooo

I.. like Phantasmal Bear. I even ran two of him at one point. That was a bit much, though. Didn't I tell you Cloudfin Raptor sucked?

If you don't run middling fare like Smash to Smithereens and Torch Fiend, I highly support trimming the Wargears. Much like Swords for midrange, they get out of a control in a hurry when you don't pack artifact hate.

Moment of Heroism seems really meh in a relatively high-powered environment like yours. I'd rather just see Swift Justice.

Aww, Student of Warfare is a really fun one-drop. On that note, how come Savannah Lions is still in...? You already have double Dryad Militant, along with your custom artifact version.

I think you need way, way more signets to support Wildfire. I count nine in your list? You might want ~13 to make sure there's enough to go around.

 

[Chris Taylor]

nooooo Experiment One nooooooooo

I.. like Phantasmal Bear. I even ran two of him at one point. That was a bit much, though. Didn't I tell you Cloudfin Raptor sucked?

If you don't run middling fare like Smash to Smithereens and Torch Fiend, I highly support trimming the Wargears. Much like Swords for midrange, they get out of a control in a hurry when you don't pack artifact hate.

Moment of Heroism seems really meh in a relatively high-powered environment like yours. I'd rather just see Swift Justice.

Aww, Student of Warfare is a really fun one-drop. On that note, how come Savannah Lions is still in...? You already have double Dryad Militant, along with your custom artifact version.

I think you need way, way more signets to support Wildfire. I count nine in your list? You might want ~13 to make sure there's enough to go around.

Hey, I wanted to try raptor. And I admit, sometimes it was awesome. But a lot can go wrong.

The single wargear has been fine if powerful. Bounce is still really punishing, as are flicker effects, and the card can't go on manlands for the control punishing trifecta. But the second was usually too powerful, especially since (for some reason) someone always got both.

It's the size bonus on moment I'm excited about, we'll see if that ends up being good enough.

I haven't updated the notes to reflect custom card changes yet (many imagez, wow) but the additional artifact savannah lions are leaving. Student is fun, but he has a very white specific home and I'm finding more and more how bad echo is, and how he 99% of the time just has echo. Maybe he'll come back one day.

You're right about the mana rocks. Part of how I do my patching is I have cards slated to go out, and cards slated to go in, and excel counts both and tells me if I'm even. Everything was ready to go, and I realized I hadn't touched the artifacts, which still had 5 placeholders and no mana rock changes whatsoever

I'm right now contemplating which rocks to use actually. I kinda want to draft a few times and see if the control players take fire diamond. If they don't then I know it's something the wildfire drafter can wheel, which is a great asset for this deck. If they do, I don't know if we can go derpier and I may need to up the density super high.

I'm also wondering how I want to do the fixing rocks: Jason brought up a good point in the dak fayden article that he prefers the guild-agnostic versions like sphere of the suns and coldsteel heart over more directed ones like boros signet. Now coldsteel heart has it's own problems and I think sphere of the suns is introducing tension where there really doesn't need to be, but maybe there's something else I can jam a million copies of. Maybe 13 mind stones is the direction I wanna go

 

[Chris Taylor]

okay, fuck the 20 images per post limit. right in the behind. These links take a while to amass, and it doesn't go back to editing after you hit submit. It clears it.

Anyone have a problem with any of these equipment?

Heres what came in:

 

[Chris Taylor]

And here's what came out:

Spoiler

 

[Jonas]

With the cost on Ethereal Grasp, I think it looks like it should be sorcery speed, not just on your own turn, I'd set the cost at least to 2 or something for that, when you can save your critters from everything except wraths. The equipments look pretty nice though.

 

[Suicufnoc]

Shephard has an H in it by the way, unless thats intentional.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Shephard has an H in it by the way, unless thats intentional.

Nope, I am just bad at spelling
The only thing that Magic Set Editor doesn't spellcheck is the name

 

[ahadabans]

Lost Shephard is awesome. I'd totally play that. Envenomed Blade too.

Really great work on these custom cards. The art is sweet.