The Penny Pincher Cube 2.0--Inventors' Fair

[Grillo_Parlante]

I had to be the one to do it, but we finally had a good (great!) loam deck.

We were running less than 8, so I of course got royally rng effed on fixing, but the shell was great, and being 2 colors made it more managable.

R/G Loam from CubeTutor.com

What made this different from the earlier iterations of loam deck, was that this wasn't a lands deck, it was a R/G value discard deck. Loam was an engine, that first and foremost, was in the deck to provide a source of value discard fodder. The other thing it was doing that was important, was making sure that the deck hit all of its land drops every turn, so that it could cast hellkite or convergence on schedule.

The other important component of the deck was all of the self-mill/baron components going on, that let it burn through its library to find its bombs, than recycle them back into the deck. Loaming shaman in particular was very good, since it offered selection, as was survive since you could mill it into the yard, making sure you didn't run the risk of decking yourself. In long games, you could just grind out pretty much any deck, by endlessly recycling your cards, after self-milling into a fat graveyard, finding all of the tools you needed to win in the process.

Magnivore was also amazing, basically being the abyss in a lot of situations.

Highlight of the night was beating a second sun deck by out grinding it, and using shuffle effects to dodge the second casting of sun. Very touch and go.

 

[ahadabans]

Sweet deck. I think Penny Pincher 2 has exceeded PP1 at this point, and you did it in a third of time? Really nice cube. I'm definitely stealing things from it.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Thanks, a lot of forum support when into that.

Feels like it wants +1 thought courier, and something to replace vortex, though nothing is really jumping out at me at the moment. Probably should run a small token maker in that slot.

The ninja package is probably too weak compared with what the rest of the meta is doing, but they are so popular I feel like I can't take them out.

I feel I would ideally want the format to be a little bit more pressure focused than it is. But just a touch, like if 3 runnable one drops appeared out of thin air, I could switch to a row of painlands, and probably have the perfect speed.

 

[Kirblinx]

Magnivore was also amazing, basically being the abyss in a lot of situations.

I still want to question what Magnivore is doing in the cube and how many Sorceries you need to make it function.

Every deck I have seen it in only runs like 4 sorceries, ant that doesn't seem like a large enough number for it to be worthwhile. You deck above only had 6 sorceries, which I would feel like is the absolute minimum I would want to be playing when playing Magnivore. I don't even understand how it was an 'Abyss' as I feel it would need to be at least a 4/4 for it to not be just trading with the rest of the cube.

I just want to hear more stories about it from your end, because everytime I see it is nothing but disappointment.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

You have to remember its all sorceries, not just the ones in your yard.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Before I go to bed, tonights winner was this turn 2 aggro deck.

UW Turn 2 aggro from CubeTutor.com

I've been talking more about some of the creative midrange decks we've been getting, but I should update everyone on how the aggro decks are doing. The basic formula for this style of aggro deck, is you need to run more beefy 2 drops to make up for the tempo loss by not curving out savannah lions. It seems like turn 2 threats should have 3-4 power, and thats enough of a base line to make up for the tempo loss you pay for not running savannah lions.

Once you have a turn 2 three or four power threat, its easier to just equipment to scale it up to something that can fight midrange threats, and because there are less ETBs running around on midrange threats, you're not getting buried in card advantage, and are playing against activated or triggered abilities on natively large bodies, which is much more reasonable to keep pace with.

Of course, evasive threats are the other angle, and a body of evasive threats also helps you makeup for tempo paid by not curving savannah lions on turn 1. Those types of curve out aggro decks generally get a faster start, but begin paying tempo around turns 3-4, when 2/1 or 2/2 bodies become irrelevent bricks. Cheap evasive threats don't have that problem, and can pull ahead in tempo at that point in the game.

This deck was fast, could quickly snowball dmg, and could punish awkward mana bases or mana screw. And the reason for that was that it could make up the lost tempo of not having a bunch of 1 drops, with larger 2 drops and evasive threats.

And thats the core of how these decks work.

Going to have to revist the exert mechanic, which seems like a strong limited aggro mechanic.
Thematically, this started as an artifact aggro deck, takes that core, and overlays it with a counters theme (collective effort!) as well as taking advantage of spell triggers from disruptive temp proc spells, or instant speed removal. Than if it needs to grind, it has recurssive spells to do that.

I do think that these types of decks in this type of format, really benefit from low cc matters cards, like the bishops and dusk//dawn, if no other reason than as signal pieces. If I were to run more 1 drops, it would be pushed cards that would entice players, effectively acting as further signal pieces.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Just wanted to make a few notes about white aggro.

I think the heroic mechanic as a whole was a failure in cube, but the proper way to set it up in cube is with prowess. Tempo proc effects triggering prowess at instant speed on aggro threats is very real way to construct an aggro deck.

Awkward mana makes colorless mana/artifacts better, and with these sort of CIPT mana bases, you can probably use artifacts as aggro signals to some extent, to get these sort of fused decks. If you want to see largely mono-colored aggro decks, this is probably a better approach than CC cards or devotion.

So, out of white, we have:

1. White artifact aggro.
2. Prowess spell Aggro (which is basically like a heroic deck that dosen't suck)
3. Go wide/token/anthem aggro

And the go wide stuff works nicely with the artifacts, things like shrine of loyal legion etc. Because prowess triggers off of artifact casts, it also triggers off of equipment, which is good for the tokens deck. So everything kind of meshes together nicely.

Collective effort has impressed me with the white counter lords, especially since it can also buff the go-wide cards. Wondering if I can't flesh out or focus better the white counters deck.

Decided to cut vortex, as its been a consistent underperformer, and giving this guy a try

WR Arty Aggro from CubeTutor.com

Looks promising I think

 

[Chris Taylor]

Prowess as "Heroic that doesn't suck" is probably my favorite analogy of late

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Remembered some things that I shouldn't have forgotten.

Added this fellow back in




Which I hadn't originally included, because he's basically black delver, and thought him maybe too strong. Kind of like how the 2 drops were able to replace a lot of the bad 1 drops with the aggro decks, you don't actually need 1 drop evassive threats like delver for tempo. 2 or even 3cc flyers are perfectly servicable.

The tempo deck is just earlyish evasive pressure + disruption, so you can get create these racing situations that you pull ahead on. The reason I didn't need a bunch of black 1 drops before in PP1, was because of cards like prowler, which made black aggressive decks as an archetype, more about evasion and tempo. Black actually has a pretty rich selection of cards like that, and dosen't need to run creature one drops if it dosen't wish to do so.

That was also part of why my ninjas were suffering in this environment, since you need a tempo deck to run them in.

With the better guild design and color balance the ninja/tempo deck seems to work out better. This is an interesting take on the ninja deck.

BW Ninjas from CubeTutor.com

I had just completly forgotten black tempo.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

My 2nd place aggro deck:

R/W Aggro from CubeTutor.com

I wanted to show a fairly low to the ground aggro deck in this format, that wasn't running card draw.
The deck was a little funny, because the deck had both grim lavamancer and spikeshot elder in the deck, and I know every once in a while we'll have a fight club of lavamancer vs. elder. I was a little worried about lavamancer being too good in this format, but spikeshot outperformed lavamancer the entire night. It was both more consistent throughout the course of games, and its ceiling was much higher.

Part of it is because the game texture for these aggro decks tends to be more dynamic. Even with an assertive deck like this, threats like figure of destiny, or student of warfare, give you more relevent long-term threats, at the cost of curve disruption, so they are kind of more turn 1.5 threats than turn 1 threats. You're going to go into an involved midgame, and probably late game, so there is less pressure to both ping and manage your curve development, which i.m.o is where lavamancer shines. Once you hit 6 mana, at a phase in the game where a deck like this is hungry for mana sinks, spikeshot really pulls ahead in terms of its abilty to impact the game.

Also, figure in a format like this, can legit swing games by max leveling. I had a couple games ended by a top deck figure in the late game, turning level 2 on the turn it was cast, and than the next turn swinging over as a giant 8/8 first striker, making a mockery of their pelakka wurm or whatever.

Bishop of rebirth was also a great value engine, and surprisingly good as an intimidating board presence. A 3/4 vigilence body is a solid sized body, with a great attack reward, to play combat trick games with, and this type of deck excells at combat trick games. I wish it had the synergy level of sun titan in terms of its trigger (ability to get enchantments/artifacts) but I appreciate how the toned down body worked to create more broad deck synergy.

The deck played like a grindy version of the goblins deck I am so fond of alluding too. Good aggro threats and pressure with several avenues for combo kills combined with the ability to control the board. Than couple that with a low land count, and you have stronger top decks when the game goes long. Add in a dash of graveyard card advantage, and you get a nasty aggro-combo deck, that can play the pocket midrange role when things go long.

Here was the winner, who vanguished me:

U/R Pressure Control from CubeTutor.com

Our matchup was very interactive, and the games were close and dynamic. I went 1-2 against him, with both losses being to him manaving to find invoke the firemind to burn me for exact, the turn before I killed him. So a little rng, but he earned the right to be alive to be able to make that play, so I can't be too salty. The deck is basically a counter-burn deck, so thats what its supposed to do, after all. He navigated some very tense turns, where he basically was given a puzzle that if he couldn't navigate he was going to die. Sadly, he managed to figure it out.

A couple things that worked out really well here. Once thing that I've been doing is kind of moving more obnoxious card effects, that a format still wants, to multi-color. This way its still in the format, but its kind of isolated, and won't become too repetitive. I can also use this to create color pair identity, since I know they will be highly picked, which makes the gold cards more exciting.

I know we've had some discussion about this, but i.m.o players want to be excited about gold card picks, and thats how they've been since they were introduced in ice age. With a fairely small cold section (30 cards) I would like to meet that expectation as much as possible.

So first up, is Maverick Thopterist, in for niv-mizzet. Mizzet was, unfortunaly, just a boring value card/finisher for the most part, though I suppose fine.

Thopterist is taking the place of a powerful role player from PP1, marshflitter. Here you have the obnoxious, board clogging ETB army-in-a-can effect, that you want for control or pressure-control decks to control the board with. But it dosen't result in everyone and their mother drafting some varient of UB.

At the same time, UR decks benefit more from the disposable blockers, since it gives their burn spells more range, which is the chief problem with UR control. The little red token makers, coupled with red's mini-overruns, also gives them damage burst potential, which works well in a counter-burn shell, and you get artifact synergy too.

Than the next card is invoke the firemind. I really dislike fireball effects, because they just end games out of nowhere and feel rng, but you kind of want that play to exist. With invoke, its still in the cube, but isolated to a guild, which should be a on a plan where X3CC works.

 

[notATrueEnd]

Wonderful thread you've got here. I've just finished reading it from front to back and it's given me a lot to chew on.
1. Where does the "Baron" deck get its name from?
2. How do you feel about Stonewright in this cube? It stuck out in my head as something that works well in an aggro deck that isn't useless when you draw it on turn 8. I don't know if it runs too close to how you feel about Fireball effects.
3. Oona's Prowler looks really spooky to me in a cube that can allow your opponent to take advantage of the discard so easily. How big of a concern is this for you?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Hey thanks.

The baron deck concept comes from magic pro Adrian Sullivan. He has a great article about the archetype here. It seems much easier in cube to make it G/x based, like the R/G loam deck I posted earlier, since most of those effects are green centered.

I don't really have any experience with stonewright, so its hard for me to comment. My instinct would be that lightning berserker would be the better version of that card? I dunno. Not sure I'm in the market for a card like that. I've thought about lightning mauler numerious times though. Haste or global haste seems really integral to red identity, just as ophidian effects seem really integral to blues.

Prowler is going to be good, i'm sure. It took me a long time to add it back in, but I wanted to notch up the format speed just a tad. Kind of excited to see what happens when that global discard has real remifications tbh.

 

[frostymoose]

I haven't played stonewright personally but I was impressed by it in - The twisted color pie cube I think?

I think it would be superior to lightning berserker in most cases and plays nicely with some cards in the penny cube: champion of lambholt, spikeshot elder, cultivator of blades, even any basic double strikers, first strikers, flyers

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Been meaning to post about the Baron deck identity in cube, and I've had a few illustrative drafts on cube tutor, so might as well dive in.

The original Baron articles focused on U/x control decks running triple gaea's blessing alongside looting or sifting cards. In cube, there is a wealth of green recycle effects, but limited access in blue or red. However, green has no looting or sifting.

This means the components for the deck are isolated. Red and Blue have the draw/discard effects, while green has the approprate recycle effects. The colorless section can help somewhat with the recycle effects via elixer, but space is tight there.

Because of this, the center of the baron deck in cube has to be green, so as far as baron is concerned, we're really talking about green based control decks. Furthermore, what we're really talking about is ramp-control, where we are trying to hit a big ramp-control finisher that takes over the game.

This is perfect for a baron deck, because ramp-control decks tend to have most of their board control tools slanted towards the top end, where cards like sandwurm convergence, the trisks/poppet, pelakka wurm, or god pharaoh's gift stabalize and control the game. This means they are prone to awkward hands and top decks, and need to sift away high CC choked hands, for cards more immediate for the moment, than recycle those board control pieces back into the deck.

Its the perfect place to have a baron deck localized, and its fine as long as its GU or RG (note for everyone looking for simic or gruul themes). The problem is, what happens when someone moves into another color.

BG artifacts from CubeTutor.com

There is a pentavus and bloodflies in the board. Here we are super light on spot removal, and early interaction, but look at that top end. Add in the bus and the flies, and you have enough tools to stabalize and control the board. The problem is there are no tools to ditch awkward draws for later points in the game. The deck would be a lot smoother if it was just ramping up to a bunch of board control pieces, and using sifters to prevent itself from getting rng screwed. Thats hard to do in a largely BG deck.

We can't quite get there with this pool, and it would be difficult to get there, though the drafters basic premise looks sound.

Or we have this

sultai recursive control from CubeTutor.com

Which gets there, but which somewhat awkwardly has to splash blue for careful consideration and looter.

So I think I have to think of this as the baron deck being a core G/x ramp-control deck, and as such it should have access to colorless sifting sources to facilitate it. So maybe:




And that does a couple things:

1. Provides an alternate way to run ramp decks and a basic skeleton for it. I know these decks can get obnoxious in alot of cubes as trite bomb slingers.
2. Provides a home for a baron deck.
3. Provides a basis for a slow GU deck, that dosen't require splashing for red. I know a lot of simic sections have problems with this. It expands simic out so its not just tempo.
4. Provides a further identity for gruul that isn't just dumb good midrange creatures beat.
5. Expands out greens identity in a way that feels smart but on flavor with the color pie.

 

[sigh]

Green-centric control is probably my favorite thing to have figured out for my format, its just super great. One of my drafters built a UG ramp-control recently and swept the table with it, and it was awesome. A key player was definitely deathgorge scavenger, which provided a critical life buffer while offering surgical grave hate / recycling unneeded cards from their yard. Looking at the deck again, it also makes me want to run urban evolution even more, because while Shardless was fine in the deck, hitting Evolution offa ramp would've been gas.

Key to the City is solid, def recommend trying it out. it's like a 'Pact of Jalum Tome' because it lets you keep mana open into their turn, and then can pay later on your turn.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Just remembered I run this card:



Which is a sifter kind of, and has been surprisingly high pick as a discard outlet.

Maybe I can cut that for tome.

Don't even know what else to cut for key ugh. Maybe I can get away with just tomb or key.

 

[sigh]

If you are replacing a creature slot (not that that means much), the Deal Broker Alfonzo mentioned is nice. Not having a cost associated with the looting is a major upside here. Not sure if you don't want draft shenanigans or something.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I kind of want to move away from a creature based looting effect. A lot of the time the decks that automaton was going into really wanted the discard effect, but than it gets killed, and that hurts the deck.

Plus I don't really like the draft shenanigans.

 

[sigh]

yeah that's perfectly fine; I think the Tome is probably a "safer" test subject, as it's a clean and simple effect/card. Whatever way the cookie crumbles, colorless looting will be a tradeoff. None of it is as good as on-color looting as of yet.

Something like Insidious Dreams might be an on-color discard effect in black that also admirably performs the tutoring role the deck likes. I know you've run it in some iterations of some cube or another. Might drown out some of the other cards you are trying to run, but it is a great effect for the deck.

 

[Dom Harvey]

How about Geier Reach Sanitarium or similar?

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Oh thats a spicy suggestion. You can even grab it with expo map.

Here is the card for reference

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

Dammit, I was gonna suggest the sanctum to you.

Of the two artifact suggestions the key has wider appeal I think. However the simic deck in particular wants nevs disc if possible which makes the artifact discard enablers slightly awkward.

Also liking shred memory as a tutor for gaeas blessing, and key to the city. You already have muddle, but that might be an interesting addition.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Dammit, I was gonna suggest the sanctum to you.

Of the two artifact suggestions the key has wider appeal I think. However the simic deck in particular wants nevs disc if possible which makes the artifact discard enablers slightly awkward.

Also liking shred memory as a tutor for gaeas blessing, and key to the city. You already have muddle, but that might be an interesting addition.

Thats a really strong argument for key > tome. I had completly forgot about muddle, and perhaps I should consider shred memory.

Looking over lands, besides the santarium, there is that vehicle that flips from xialian into conqueror's foothold...and than...bazaar of baghdad! They are really cautious about moving this ability into colorless.

I might just run the flipped foothold. It dodges niv's disk, and looks like a great utility land.

 

[astraedm]

Do we think that running the flipped foothold is too strong? I can't believe this didn't occur to me sooner.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Should be cool, don't see why it would be OP.

Have a couple draft decks to show off. Added some bonzo cards, but haven't updated all of the cards from the list in RL yet

Kirb was looking for a vore deck:

G/R Vore Burst from CubeTutor.com

Vore is kind of a red build around card, and with all of the aftermath cards its very trivial to boost its size. The hasty nature is on theme with a lot of what red is doing anyways, and if you want to shift a red package to support it even more, running some of the good red sorcery speed burn effects (of which struggle/survive compliments nicely) is nice synergy with a heavy vore hit, as are boosters like reckless charge, onward // victory, insult // injury. Vore can just murder people out of nowhere with cards like that.

If you want to run it in a more traditional R/U (spells matter?) tempo package (which is what people were doing in Kimigawa Rav Spiral standard) you would just run the best sorcery speed bounce you could, I suppose. Stuff like silent departure or eye to nowhere. Dunno, not really focused on pushing U sorceries.

Didn't mean to seem evasive before, but vore just seems on its face awesome in a shell like this with lots of instants that have the sorcery keyword tagged to the aftermath end, and which can double its power so easily. Its just so easy to grow.

B/R Ninja Cloud from CubeTutor.com

After upping the token maker density a little, the black ninjas are back with a vengence. This deck was heavy metal, using token makers or flyers to sneak ninjas over, than grow them to impressive size to create locks. A throat slitter enchanted by herald of torment is a pretty scary threat, hitting for 5 a turn, while taking over the board. The buffs also help keep the tokens relevent.

Oversold Cemetary is such an amazing black aggro card. It and death cloud are subtle reasons to stay low CC in black aggro, creating low resource situations, stressing removal suites, and creating black reach. If they expand resources to shut down your initial push, it just ends up fueling the cemetary for wave two. If you death cloud with cemetary out, it creates a low resource situation, that you're able to respond to better because your recurring creatures operate on such low mana counts. The bestow threats, unearth creatures, and war marshal often times create an instant aggro board after the sweeper, assuming that death cloud dosen't just kill them.

The token makers both are perfect for tossing ninjas, and breaking symmetry on those effects as well.

Really like thinking of black aggro as a pox/discard/rack deck in this vein. Its a nice combination that puts pressure on, before the op can top deck there way back to the resources they need to win.