The Simian Cube

[Chingonman]

Hello one and all! I come to you this day with my very own Simian Cube.

360 cards
Unpowered
Not Singleton
Custom cards

This cube was started in August 2015 originally as a pauper cube inspired by Adam Styborski's cube. From there I expanded it to a peasant and slowly to the version I have in my Cube Tutor page. I started this cube with literally 0 cards owned. A LOT of mistakes were made in the making of this cube but I have had a lot of fun putting it together. Currently I have a dirt poor land base consisting of the Tarkir life lands sharpied to make "duals".



Also I have my Evolving Wilds sharpied so the lands don't enter the battlefield tapped.

This gives the cube a super aggressive mana base that allows for 3 or even 4 color decks easily (4 colors are a bit of a stretch though). Lands are quite high picks since they allow decks to be more consistent with little to no drawback and since there is no life loss from fetching slower control decks have game against the overall aggro nature of the cube. I tried to make the cube have good board interaction and creature trading though I have received some comments that my removal is a bit light.

I would appreciate any feedback you guys have on my list. At the time of writing I am mostly concerned about the white section, since I feel it is not as attractive as other colors because of lack of flashy cards (I only put in cards that I actually own). However I have tried to give it a boost by having some really powerful cards. But suggestions on any portion of the cube or individual card selections are welcome.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my post and list.

 

[Kirblinx]

I had a rather large writeup and I lost it all.

I don't really want to do it all again so here is a smaller version of what I had taken 20 minutes to write before...

I decided to go in blind and draft your cube. Here was the first pack I was greeted with:

First point was, what is Autumn's Veil even doing here? It does almost literally nothing and something like Vines of Vastwood would work in 80% of the same scenarios and actually do something when not in one of those rare positions.

The black in this pack looked abnormally strong as I would probably first pick any of them over the rest of the pack. This happens with variance, but took it as a sign to go Black. Pack Rat is just way too broken. Considering you are running Shock, I assumed the removal would be average at best and I can just drop him on turn 2 and win the game.

So I ended up in a decent looking UB control deck with more creatures than normal, but I guess that is due to your minimal removal, I hadn't checked the list yet. The deck I really wanted to talk about was my next draft where I did my patented GoodStuff draft taking bombs and fixing and ended up with this beast:

4 Colour Walker Midrange from CubeTutor.com

I don't know if I could leave a game without feeling really dirty about it all. There are so many cards in this deck that can win all by themselves: Mirror Entity, Consecrated Sphinx, Pack Rat, all the 'walkers... If they use their minimal amount of removal on one of them I can just play the next one and a couple of turns later just beat them.

So I checked out the list and saw there was a decent amount of removal, a surprising lack of sweepers, especially in the two places I would expect to see them, white and black. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing as it means decks like the one above need to rely on creatures to save the walkers instead of making them over-extend and then sweep the board for easy card advantage.
Need to have more drafts to see how the decks some together and more of a feeling for how they play.

Also, I enjoyed the pile of evolving wilds, seems like a cool idea. Was pretty funny seeing a pack with 3+ evolving wilds in it though. With the wilds and duals, the bouncelands seem a little out of place. I don't really know why, maybe I can just used to the penny pincher cube where they can bounce ETB effect lands. Just feels strange next to all the untapped fixing.

I will go through the list in more detail and throw up some question marks on cards (like Autumn Veil) to get your justification on.
My question before then is how often have you played with this cube so far? What style of decks have won the most that you are aware of?

 

[Chingonman]

Thanks for taking the time to take a look at the cube!

Some of those lists seem to be a result of the poor AI rating of the cube like that 4 colors draft. The cube is drafted about once a week at a local store, though it has picked up from when I started the project. People were skeptic about cubing etc etc. I used to get about a game every 2 or sometimes 3 weeks.

I do concede that there are probably cards that are not the best choices. Youthful Knight.... So I'm pretty open about card choices. Autumn's Veil is there as a green counterspell so that big powerful creatures can remain in play or actually see the table or as a Time Walk to get another swing.

As for decks that have been wining lately Rakdos aggro is pretty good, Naya Zoo (and I've yet to add Kird Ape), Bant control seem to have traction (though that's when Jace, Memory Adept was still in the cube.....ehm....) I once won a cube with Selesnya aggro with Wolfbriar Elemental and Tribal Forcemage and the after mentioned 4 color control decks. One thing that I like is that even control decks (or as control as you can get in this cube) don't blow other decks completely out of the water. They have to earn their wins against the early pressure. Sometimes that Sphinx just gets there to watch you die.

I've played Pack Rat 3 times in the cube. It's a good enough card to make me go black if I'm not in it but I have been surprised how much it DOESN'T take over the game. A lot of the time its just 3 2/2's. In earlier versions it did just take over the game but lately it's just been a solid value creature.

Hope that gives you some insight on how the cube has been operating and thanks for all the suggestions!

 

[Chingonman]

So back after a BIG update (Conspiracy 2). I have been steadily getting more cards and upping the power of the cube. The biggest change this has caused in the games has been, in a word; tension. Games are very high stakes now because even though I do not run moxes or the like the relative power of the cube is very high. I have also lowered my land fixing by having my "super fetches" scaled back to 10. This is a recent response to adding the Take the throne conspiracies as they are in a trial run. I worry that perhaps it feels too much like a lottery since there are only 2 fixing conspiracies in the cube. The have created a good draft dynamic so as of right now I will keep them. This cube has evolved with time from a very Riptide cube with some very extreme mana ideas (wich worked worderfully) to a tension oriented matched cube with very powerful cards. One of the things that I have noticed is that aggro seems to do just fine even in an enviroment of giant cards as an aggro deck will often win drafts. Eternal masters definetly helped a lot to bring in power and a greater sense of identity to my colors. If anyone is interested in me explaining more take a look at the cube and ask away. I am a wiser cube designer every draft I run lol.

Also Elspeth, Sun's Champion was a mistake of Memory Adept proportions, but you probably don't need me to tell you that. What was I thinking.

 

[Chingonman]

I finally bought a Tarmogoyf and a Berserk. I am currently accepting ketchup packet donations to go with my ramen noodle diet for the week.

 

[Chingonman]

Update.

I removed duplicates from the cube after hearing no end to the whining. Some colors made it out better than others. Blue almost did not care. Red and green certainly laughed. Black lost a lot of its early creature engine so it mostly got pushed back to turn 2. Id really like some input into this since I fear it will cripple some of blacks early identity. The hardest cut BY FAR was champion of the Parish. Kaladesh cannot come soon enough for a new white quality 1 drop.

Also I finally found some hard to get common and uncommon artifacts and updated them.

The conspracies have proven to be an awesome addition so I expanded them by a fair percentage. This is a little reckless since Im not really sure of the possible effects.

What does the lab think?

 

[Alfonzo Bonzo]

You've still got two Rakdos Cacklers in your cubelist.

Do you really need that many one drops? You've got a very high proportion of creatures to spells. Might be better trying to work out how you think aggro should compete/win and then build accordingly.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Tell your drafters to stop complaining

 

[Chingonman]

Well aggro has a design advantage in my cube just through saturation. So combat is a must in my cube. The only real combo interaction is reanimator and it and control decks need creature to interact on the table in case their plan gets busted.
Since aggro is so integral in the cube my worries were that pushing black to later turns (with worse options) would just make midrange srategies too good. I have notice green getting noticably better in draft runs.
I guess the silver lining is that there aren't a too many midrange cards to begin with, maybe Im wrong.

 

[Chingonman]

I must add that this worry also extends to white since the non duplicates cube has less redundancy in its Main aggro, hence less power.