Vince's Playable Collection of Shiny Cards

[VincePendrell]

Spreadsheet | Cube Tutor | Visual Spoiler (CubeTutor might be out of date)

I've been working on this revamp of my cube on-and-off for the last two years or so, after a hiatus of about 2 years from Magic. I rarely get to play it nowadays, since it's much harder to get a spontaneous playgroup in Denmark than it was in Brazil, and I hate planning a draft a month in advance. Either way, here's some basics for my Cube:

• 645 Cards. Enough for 2 7-people drafts, plus a booster. This is a concession to the fact that it's hard to get full groups, and a hope that I actually manage to fire it twice at some point.
  • EDIT: The cube has been reworked to have 720 cards. With the 15-card test pool, that is enough for 2 full drafts + Lore Seeker.
• Power Level: Fast. Wurmcoil Engine is one of my favorite cards. I justify playing it by empowering aggro, and giving plenty of answers to mid-range. I've also tried reducing the amount of things that stop aggro or that turn the corner too fast, keeping aggro as an option for blue, and keep the mana curve very low.
• Duplicates! I break the singleton rule for cards that are central to some strategies that are better off by having more redundancy.
• Humans! I've been trying to give aggro decks some themes to build around. Almost a third of the creatures are humans, there's zombies in black, and there are some random synergy stapled to good cards that can be relevant (like Imperious Perfect and Rattlechains).
• Bundled picks. I've included two cards that are a Pick 1 Get 4 deal. These are cards that are too low-powered to be added as duplicates, demand redundancy, and are quirky build-around, synergy-oriented cards.
• No custom cards if I can avoid. I'm not a fan of custom cards, but Hour of Devastation broke my heart by not finishing the cycle of dual lands. This has been my only exception so far, and I made it very explicit that the cards are custom (see image below).
• One Spreadsheet to rule them all. CubeTutor doesn't allow me to make things as fast as I want, so I just use my custom spreadsheet, and export the list if I make substantial changes and upload to CubeTutor as a snapshot.

Spoiler: Custom Cards and Bundled Picks

I have no idea when I'll play with my cube again, but right now, I have the following in mind:
- I'd like to give green a more interesting identity.
- Maybe Cloudfin Raptor as a bundled pick, but not sure about the amount (either 2 or 3?)
- More things that use counters in green, black and blue?
- Whenever I can change an effect for a similar effect that ETB as a Human, that's a win. (like Aether Adept instead of Man-o'-war.)
- Green/White lacks an identity. Bant, Naya, Abzan and the other one looks more appealing.
- I should write something about the Test Pool and the Detachable Theme ideas.

 

[VincePendrell]

I noticed that I named the thread hinting to the amount of foils, but posted no picture. Oh, well. Instead, here's some speculative decklists I made to try out the bundled picks:

Artifacts


Mono Monument


I've pretty much started thinking about the bundled picks because I wanted Oketra's Monument in the Cube, but it wouldn't fit well with the Humans, but Squadron Hawks would be the perfect fit. After that, I just remembered that Myr Servitor looked cool.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

UR Jace Wildfire from CubeTutor.com

Drafted a UR wildfire deck. Tried to fit in a couple of cards that ramped me for a turn like Ral Zarek and Eldrazi Skyspawner to get a quicker Wildfire. Two pairs of jace's and ral zarek as permanents that stick around, as well as two good mana rocks.

I like how the proxies look with the sharpie and the sticker. Being a firm believer in sticking to 360 cards in cube to be able to properly tune it, and maybe run two 360-cubes that are very similar if one would want to run two parallel drafts. The benefit for this would be that you can guarantee that one draft will have for instance both Oketra's Monument and Squadron Hawk.

Fun to see a cube designer that completely embraces higher power level! I see a lot of old cube classics like Opposition, Sneak Attack and Recurring Nightmare. You say that you want to play fast, and I see that your curve looks pretty good and has a cmc around 2.9, so it looks like it should be able to play fast. I'm curious to hear though if cards like Opposition doesn't stifle faster decks and make things more of a grind?

Sweet cube!

 

[VincePendrell]

Drafted a UR wildfire deck. Tried to fit in a couple of cards that ramped me for a turn like Ral Zarek and Eldrazi Skyspawner to get a quicker Wildfire. Two pairs of jace's and ral zarek as permanents that stick around, as well as two good mana rocks.

I like how the proxies look with the sharpie and the sticker. Being a firm believer in sticking to 360 cards in cube to be able to properly tune it, and maybe run two 360-cubes that are very similar if one would want to run two parallel drafts. The benefit for this would be that you can guarantee that one draft will have for instance both Oketra's Monument and Squadron Hawk.

Fun to see a cube designer that completely embraces higher power level! I see a lot of old cube classics like Opposition, Sneak Attack and Recurring Nightmare. You say that you want to play fast, and I see that your curve looks pretty good and has a cmc around 2.9, so it looks like it should be able to play fast. I'm curious to hear though if cards like Opposition doesn't stifle faster decks and make things more of a grind?

Sweet cube!

Hey Rasmus, thanks for the comment! That's a nice looking Wildfire/Opposition deck you put together there

I know what you mean with keeping the cube lean at 360, but I'd rather have a larger size to add some variety. I lose a bit on consistency and reward knowing the list a bit more than I'd like, but it's a trade-off I'm willing to take. One thing that I did with my previous list was having a fixed amount of cards to seed into the boosters for each draft. I used this to test new cards (or put old cards in probation to see if they were too good or too bad for my environment) by making sure that players would be able to see, pick and play them. I've been thinking of having a variation on this, with 45 cards as a sort of "theme attachment", that I could seed into the boosters every draft to push some different archetypes, like an infect+energy+proliferate package, or an enchantment-matters package, etc.

About Opposition and friends, yeah, they can occasionally make the game go slower, but I think that there is more fun in playing with them then not. I really like these powerful cards that can be archetypes on their own if picked early, but are really hard to slot into the deck if they come in the third booster. I think Opposition is a good example of this. In addition, I try to make sure that there are many ways to try to answer the most powerful cards, either with removal or strategically.

 

[Chris Taylor]

I like that the title implies you're some kind of magpie

 

[VincePendrell]

I like that the title implies you're some kind of magpie

Actually...

 

[Chris Taylor]

Eggs near the foil lilianna. Brave man

 

[VincePendrell]

Adding two more bundled pick cards to the list:

One of my Myr Servitors got lost in the mail, so I'll have a placeholder for now. Also, I wanted an easier way to find the cards that need to be removed from the pool when starting a new draft, so I tried some options and I'm now using the silver markings in the corner.

Still no defined draft dates on the horizon

 

[VincePendrell]

Hell yeah! After so long, I finally got a quick cube draft out today. We were only four players, and played only two rounds, but it was a lot of fun. Two of the players are somewhat new to Magic, and they did pretty well for their first draft.

The results were:
2-0 Vince ( Jund with Infinite Kitchen Finks)
1-1 Giovani ( Humans and Gideons)
1-1 Alexandre ( Sultai Midrange)
0-2 Lucas ( Jeskai Prowess feat. Tinker)

Alexandre's Sultai Midrange

• I think it's missing a land from the picture.
• He also had Entomb for a possible turn-2 Exhume, but I don't think it got played.
• Didn't play the second copy of Experiment One (It's a Pick-1-Get-2 bundle).

Giovani's Humans and Gideons

• Giovani missed a few of the Flash interactions the first time around.
• He had the Pick-1-Get-4 Squadron Hawks, but they didn't make the cut.

Lucas' Jeskai Prowess

• Plateau is the Bicycle version.
• Lucas shortened the deck back to 40 cards after the first game.

Vince's Jund

• Started drafting a Natural Order deck, but soon noticed that was taken, so I spent half my first booster picking lands and figuring out what was open.
• In the second round, some picks after I got Lore Seeker, I used Agent of Acquisitions on a a 6-card booster to get Bloodbraid Elf and 5 other cards in my colors.
• Switched out a Mountain for a Swamp after the first match.
• Iterative Analysis named Staggershock for ridiculous value (4-to-1 card advantage is no joke), and Muzzio's Preparations named Kitchen Finks for infinite life with Nantuko Husk.
• I had Toxic Deluge and Pyroclasm for the creature matchups, and Kird Ape and Zurgo Bellstriker if I needed to go aggro.

Takeaways:

My infinite life combo happened twice on the second match. I'm not sure how esay this combo is to assemble. It might be a bit too easy. It's a three-card combo in draft, but a two-card combo during gameplay.
Maybe Muzzio's Preparations is too good with any Persist creature, plus a sacrifice engine. I currently have 2 persist creatures of note (Kitchen Finks and Murderous Madcap, but there's also Geralf's Messenger, Woodfall Primus, and Glen Elendra Archmage).
As for free sacrifice engines, the most are in black (Carrion Feeder, Bloodthrone Vampire, Nantuko Husk), but also red (Goblin Bombardment) and Rakdos (Falkenrath Aristocrat).
This might be too much redundancy, possibly to the point that you wouldn't pick Muzzio's Prep unless you are going for an infinite combo. I'll have to see how much I'm okay with this, but considering that it is the most powerful in colors that already have a lot of other stuff to do (black and red), it might be the case that it will get axed, even if all other conspiracies stay in the cube.
and conspiracies in general.
I haven't seen this card get played and generate less than 2 cards of advantage for each played game. The conspiracies that generate card advantage tend to be the most busted, but it is a theme among conspiracies that all of them generate a lot of value for not a lot of investment. I'll maybe remove all conspiracies and bring them back as seasonal thing, since there is still lots of fun gameplay in them, but they might tilt the balance a bit too much.

 

[whydirt]

Almost every conspiracy from the first set is close to P9 level of busted in a regular cube. The ones in CN2 are more narrow or require you to pay some mana, so aren't quite as powerful. So yeah, if you're not running a powered cube, I'd keep them on the sidelines except for special occasions.

 

[VincePendrell]

Two more weekends and two more drafts!
My group hasn't caught up with my win rate

March 3rd
2-0 Vince ( Stax feat. Baleful Strix)
1-1 Lucas ( Midrange)
1-1 Alexandre ( Tempo)
0-2 Giovanni ( Beatdown)

Vince's Stax

• Double Stroke for Hymn to Tourach. Came up at least once against Alexandre, in a game I almost lost.
• Ended up being the only player in Black. I was drafting 5-color Black until the last pack, when Braids and Smokestack were going around.
• Switched a Plains into a Swamp after the first game.
• Although I believe Recurring Nightmare to be possibly the best card in my cube list, it was the second worst card in my list, just next to Grafted Wargear, that I don't even remember drawing. It was a win-more versus Lucas in the last game.
• Speaking of playing against Lucas, I Strip Mined him out of game 1. Cleared his only plains and he only drew forests. Game 2 was intense: He had a turn-1 Land Tax, followed by some flying pressure that had me delaying land drops and Wastelanding my own City of Brass to keep on the Smokestack late-game plan. We talked about it and he could probably have won if he hadn't used Judge's Familiar against an early Duress.

Lucas' GW Midrange

• Almost played a Bant deck. I think he had a Glen Elendra's Archmage, plus some other stuff.
• Maybe added a Wastes after game 1 for Eldrazi Displacer, but not sure.
• Locked the ground pretty tight game 1 versus Giovanni, and finished with angels.

Alexandre's UR Tempo

• Accidentally Goblins Tribal.

Giovanni's RG Beatdown

• I just love the fact he was running the two Wild Mongrels, the two Oracle of Mul Daya effects, and had a werewolf subtheme going on.

March 10th
2-0 Vince ( 5-Color Sultai Good Stuff)
1-1 Guilherme ( Tokens)
1-1 Alexandre ( Aggro)
0-2 Lucas ( Bant Control)
Lucas was the true winner of the draft. We were almost cancelling the event, but he was so pumped for drafting, that he had his cousin (Guilherme) to substitute for Giovanni that couldn't make it that day, and he got us to draft even though he had a dilated eye exam in the morning, plus had to leave early to go to a wedding. Lucas ended up drafting with sunglasses, and conceded the last game to make it to the wedding.

Lucas' Bant Control

• I think he cut a ton of stuff from the picture before adding the basic lands, because I remember that we discussed something like running something like 5 islands, 4 forests, 1 plains. He definitely cut Sword of Light and Shadow, and I think Gnarlwood Dryad, but not sure what else.
• Never drew Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

Gui's BW Tokens Aggro

• This was Guilherme's first draft.
• I think he misheard when we told him to play about 23 non-lands and 17 lands. I just noticed today how many basics he was playing. I remember seeing Swords to Plowshares and Anguished Unmaking in his sideboard after we played, so there was definitely some playables that could've made the cut.

Alexandre's Boros Aggro

Vince's 5-Color Sultai

• Volcanic Island is the custom bicycle version.
• White was for Knight of the Reliquary and red was for Kessig Wolf Run.
• My deck had an accidental elves tribal element.
• Early Deathrite Shaman and Meren of Clan Nel Toth were the MVPs versus Alexandre's Boros Aggro in round one. The games were really close. Shoutout to Dark Confidant, that refused to kill me. I was down to 3 before I could stabilize with Deathrite and Meren.
• I got to Life from the Loam the cycling lands only once, and I had to return only a single card so my Knight of the Reliquary could block Guilherme's creatures.

Takeaways:

• Right now, I think black might be the best color by a good margin. It has a huge amount of first-pickable cards, and most are very versatile in the type of strategies they support.
• I know it has been my favorite color to draft lately. I've been telling my friends that they can probably hate-pick all black cards and I'll be left without a deck. Besides the past three drafts, other decks that I remember building before were BR Gravecrawler/Goblin Bombardment, Mardu Control, and BR Bloodghast/Goblin Bombardment.
• With that said, I feel that most of the power in black comes from synergy, and from how well it plays with the other color's themes.
• I'd much rather bump the other colors to become as interesting to draft as black, then simply chopping all of black's potential.
• Recurring Nightmare might be chopped in favor of something simpler, like Hell's Caretaker.
• Hymn to Tourach might be cut as well. It's good disruption and decent card advantage, but very boring for a card that is so good.

• My format feels a lot slower now that I have the cycling lands over the the original duals. This added to the fact that we've been drafting in 4 people made it so that midrange has been a lot better than usual. I don't think I'll roll back this change for now.
• These might also be reasons for why black is so favored right now.

• Some fringe archetypes need more support:
  • Artifacts lacks signaling and redundancy in the first pick and in the get-there department. I'm thinking of adding Tolarian Academy, Mishra's Bauble, returning Lotus Petal, and possibly adding support for RW artifacts-aggro. U/W or U/R Prowess is also an archetype I wanted to reinforce, so maybe this would help.
  • The cheat-into-play decks haven't been played in a long time. Natural Order, Tinker, Channel, Show and Tell, Sneak Attack and Reanimate strategies are meant to be hard to build, but maybe chopping two Eldrazi titans took a bit of the interest out of some of these strategies. I was thinking of adding an Emrakul, the Promised End as something that could fit these strategies.
  • I wanted UG Counters Beatdown to be a thing, but it needs more payoff and support cards.

 

[VincePendrell]

I absolutely forgot to post about the last two cube drafts I did in Brazil. Only got 4 players for one, and we did a 3-player Winston draft for the last one.

For these drafts, I had substituted most of the conspiracies for cards that I had with me (notably, Mishra's Bauble, Purphoros, God of the Forge and Borderland Marauder, that made main decks). I kept my 5 favorite conspiracies, and Backup Plan and Sentinel Dispatch showed up in the drafts.

First draft
2-0 Vince - Planeswalker Opposition (MVPs: Almost All Mana Elves of the list, Opposition)
1-1 Alexandre - Grixis Control (MVPs: Tinker, Snapcaster Mage)
0-1 Lucas () Not Sure (MVP: Dreaming about Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite)
0-1 André Reanimator Control (MVPs: Inkwell Leviathan, Baleful Strix)

Crap pictures:



Takeaways:

• Blue seems to be a very wide color, just as black. I like how wide blue can go right now, while still having decks play very differently.
• I think it's the first time in about a year that I didn't draft black in my cube.
• Games were extremely tight. One of my games dragged a bit after I managed to control the board and Armageddon with some mana dorks around, but even so, I was at a constant threat of just dying at any point. If André had drawn any removal earlier, it would've been his game.

Last (Winston) Draft
2-0 Alexandre Jund (MVP: Vizier of Menagerie value)
1-1 Vince Tokens and Glare of Subdual (MVP: Making the same deck twice in a day, but with different cards)
0-1 Lucas Abzan Midrange (MVP: misreading Chained to the Rocks)

Crap Pictures:


Takeaways:

• I finally lost a draft. Well done, Alexandre!
• Got to test the not-conspiracy cards, and I loved how it went. Overall, reducing the amount of conspiracies felt right.

Now that I'm back in Europe, I got to make a massive amount of changes to my list.
You can check the changes at my cube tutor page, or here:

Spoiler

Before these two drafts:
Hymn of the Wilds > Jeskai Elder
Sovereign's Realm > Purphoros, God of the Forge
Double Stroke > Borderland Marauder
Advantageous Proclamation > Nimble Mongoose
Power Play > Basking Rootwalla
Worldknit > Mishra's Bauble
Muzzio's Preparations > Urza's Bauble
Emissary's Ploy > Star Compass
Iterative Analysis > Crystal Vein

After these two drafts:
Electrolyze > Gelectrode
Grave Titan > Massacre Wurm
Recurring Nightmare > Hell's Caretaker
Vampire Hexmage > Erg Raiders
Makeshift Mannequin > Diabolic Servitude
Wake Thrasher > Jhessian Thief
Precinct Captain > Toolcraft Exemplar
Frontline Medic > Sram's Expertise
Goblin Ruinblaster > Priest of Urabrask
Nature's Lore > Farseek
Greenwheel Liberator > Rampant Growth
Song of the Dryads > Search for Tomorrow
Sudden Demise > Kindle
Trygon Predator > Bounding Krasis
Reyhan, Last of the Abzan > Dreg Mangler
Obstinate Baloth > Call of the Herd
Rattlechains > Gitaxian Probe
Nimble Obstructionist > Sorcerous Spyglass
Jace Beleren > Aether Vial
Aura of Silence > Dispeller's Capsule
Herald of Torment > Executioner's Capsule
Rhonas's Last Stand > Satyr Wayfinder
Rolling Earthquake > Pyrite Spellbomb
Dualcaster Mage > Hordeling Outburst
Torch Fiend > Dire Fleet Daredevil
Kokusho, the Evening Star > Noxious Gearhulk
Sword of Body and Mind > Chromatic Sphere
Sword of War and Peace > Chromatic Star
Pyroclasm > Terrarion

About the changes:

I took out most conspiracies of the cube with the exception of the following:

• Backup Plan - Absurdly powerful, but I like how it favors weird builds the most. Keeping it might be a mistake, as it is definitely stronger than a Sol Ring, but I'm OK with running it for now.
• Sentinel Dispatch - Free artifact/sacrifice/token seems to be ok. Doesn't seem to stop aggro enough.
• Unexpected Potential - I think this might be the best designed conspiracy. I could see this being as the only conspiracy played in a list.
• Brago's Favor - I only kept this because I couldn't think of a single card that was too good with it. Kindle might prove me wrong.
• Summoner's Bond - Haven't seen this being played yet, so I'm curious to see it used before making any decision.

I was not very fond of the more intense build-around conspiracies in my environment, and they didn't seem to interest my players at all. Right now, I'd rather use the slot with more support cards.

As you might now, I don't have a problem with running swords or other cards considered GRBS, but 5 might've been too much. The swords are not even that much powerful in my list, but that was another reason why I didn't want too many of them around, so I took out the ones I felt were the least interesting.

Black was the most powerful color in the cube, and Recurring Nightmare was the strongest card in black. It was also one of my favorite cards, so it was not an easy cut. I hope that Hell's Caretaker will be an imperfect replacement.
Grave Titan could be considered a first pick in many cubes, but in mine, it felt like it was a mid-pack pick and not a very interesting one. I substituted it by another control finisher.

I wanted to test this. Would be 200% better if it were a human, but I might have enough artifacts that it will be at least a 3/2 most of the time.



Deck thinning, grave filling, mana fixing, prowess triggers (most of them). I'm really looking forward to see how these are used. I'm already looking at supporting more artifacts aggro, delirium and threshold stuff, and these would possibly help.

Humans Aggro support for blue! And trying to solidify Prowess for U/W and U/R aggro decks. The rogue looks like it could be very underwhelming, but I'm interested to see how it plays.

vs 4x
The red mass removal wasn't looking very interesting and players were missing more burn spells to support red/X aggro. I've had some experience playing with a bundled 4xFlame Burst, which is pretty much the same card, and it lent to some interesting plays. Hopefully this will help all sorts of aggro, and make sure that the Wildfire decks keep their niche of red mass removal for red control decks.
Most of the other changes were just cards that I was not very impressed with, and I saw some upgrade potential, or just something that I wanted to check out.
Future plans:

I really want to cut one of each of these, but I haven't yet figured out what to add yet. Black has way too much redundancy in terms of small threats right now.

I was thinking of the possibility of going up to a full 735 cards list to support 2x 8-people drafts (plus Lore Seeker). If I do so, I'll definitely try and fit the Onslaught Cycle Lands in.

These are cards that I want to support, but I'm not really sure how to do so right now. Any suggestion is welcome.

 

[VincePendrell]

I'm on my way to increase the cube size to 735. I've made some changes to the list and included 45 cards with Dominaria coming out and I'm really enjoying how the cube is drafting at CubeTutor for now (even though the AI doesn't know how to prioritize anything). If you'd like to try out the new iteration of my cube, here it is:
http://www.cubetutor.com/draft/108121

I still have 45 more slots to fill, and I have to figure out what archetypes I want to supports with those slots, because I feel like I might be getting very close to a point that some glass cannon archetypes are unplayable (usually these are the cheat-into-play archetypes), and that aggro strategies might be losing some power. I will probably have to wait until I reestablish a draft group and get some play data before figuring out the remaining slots.

 

[VincePendrell]

My cube is finally up to 720 cards, and I got a draft rolling with my coworkers this Monday!

I'm going back to using a test pool, which is a pool of 15 cards that I'll make sure will be seeded into the packs for every draft. I used to do this some years ago, when I played more often, to get info quicker on the cards that I was unsure about. It's a great way to test new cards coming out, problem cards, cards that are being underpicked, or just to try out new and weird things (like the Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad and Black Lotus that I tried out this time). I have marked the sleeves for these cards so they are easy to be recognized and taken out of the pool between each draft (you might see the markings in some of the pictures.

Here is a snapshot of the list I used in CubeTutor: http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/110409
For more info on what is in the test pool, check my spreadsheet.

This draft was extremely surprising. I felt that most of the things that I've been trying to push with my latest changes happened all at once, and decks that I had been waiting to see for a while were finally built. Unfortunately, the matches took a really long time, so the results are not final. The decks and results are as follows:

2-0 Asger ( Eldrazi Ramp/Natural Order)
2-0 Vince ( Spells/Storm)
1-1 Brett ( Midrange/Recursion)
0-1 Paolo ( Birthing Pod Humans)
0-3 Paolo ( Opposition)

Paolo #1 's {U}{G} Opposition

Paolo was very low on creatures and high on cards that need creatures, but it was really good to see that Opposition decks aren't necessarily an "I Win" type of deck. The graveyard synergy I've been pulling for green was present in the Delirium/Threshold cards and, even though this deck wasn't the quickest to fill up the graveyard, it could control the game until these cards were active. The lack of threats make it hard to close games, though.

Paolo #2's {R}{W} Birthing Pod Humans

1 Plateau is the ETB tapped with Cycling

A humans deck like I've never seen before, and the first Birthing Pod deck I've seen someone built in my cube. Paolo managed to have a live Soulfire Grand master + Removal in his match to get rid of some of Asger's threats, while playing humans and using them with Pod to find Alesha and Feldon to keep bringing them back (or turning Sun Titan into Elesh Norn).

Brett's {B}{G} Midrange/Recursion

Brett was packing a lot of graveyard shenanigans and death triggers. He had some cards to make it more of a midrange version, like Rite of Belzenlok and Damnation.

Vince's{U}{R} Spells/Storm

At some point during the half of the first booster, Crow Storm came to me and I just noticed "Holy shit, I'm bulding a storm deck!". I managed to storm out only once with both Baubles, Remand and replay a Bauble, Delver and Crow Storm for 6. Never drew played the Black Lotus, never resolved Karn (got it FoWed versus Paolo), and used Strix only to discard for Thirst. This was also the first time that I picked Karn Liberated and couldn't see a reason to play it. The kindles were probably the biggest reason I managed to win any game, though.

Asger's {G}{W} Eldrazi Ramp/Natural Order

This is my favorite deck of this draft. Although I think a colorless source or two were missing, Asger packed quite a top end here, and managed to get down to the last 4 cards in his library versus Paolo #2. This was the first time I saw a Natural Order deck in my cube, so I felt 100% justified for including Ghalta in my list


I'll post about my initial impressions on some of the cards and strategies that got played and some overall thoughts about where my list is heading sometime later this week, since's getting pretty late here.

Playtest Notes:

Absolutely amazing card. Might eventually be recognized as one of the strongest creatures in Black. I'm planning on having this in my main list as soon as possible.


Good removal and card advantage. I might swap it in my test pool with To the Slaughter and compare how they perform. I am really fond of the delirium clause in To the Slaughter, but it has barely seen any play here.


It happened! I've been trying to add a subtle storm theme for my last updates and it seems like it can really work! Takes some very specific drafting, building and playing choices, but it goes nicely with all that UR is trying to do. Speaking of which:


Just as good as everyone was talking about. I thought 6 mana would be too much, but it plays well with a spell-matters control-ish gameplan.


Now that I've seen this playing a bit, the pick-1-get-4 Kindle is far better than I ever expected. I'm imagining that this would be an amazing pick even in a powered cube, since it basically gives you 4 removal spells for the price of one. For the next update, I'm most likely taking this out for Incendiary Flow, Lightning Strike, or another burn spell.


I'm really pleased with this card. Feels like a budget Craterhoof Behemoth. Not as good of a topdeck in a stalled board, but better Natural Order target. And also playable in your usual green ramp/midrange with little to no adjustments.


It feels like the access to colorless mana is dwindling with the increased cube size. I still want to try out Endbringer in my test pool, and have Boreal Druid in my main list, but I might need more ways to get colorless online. Maybe a couple more Evolving Wilds wouldn't be bad. (I ran 3 + Terramorphic Expanse at some point).


I'm starting to think that I will need to cut some cards for a third playset of fetch lands in my list.
Maybe it's just paranoia and me (mis)remembering the abundance of fixing my list had, but man, I could always have more mana fixing going around. I'm currently sitting at an average of 5.1 per person per draft (considering colorless fixing lands as well).
Fetch lands occupy 2 of my 7 multicolor lands slot, right now. 3 other slots are for duals, shocks and bicycles; then 2 that are filled depending on the color pair's usual strategies.
I think I'll have to play more often before I make a clear decision on this.


Black doesn't seem to be the defacto best color of the cube anymore. Hell's Caretaker is working fine as a fair Recurring Nightmare and, although I miss seeing them all the time, reducing the numbers of Gravecrawlers and Bloodghasts was for the best.

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

Hey Vince, any updates to your cube? Is your spreadsheet current?

 

[VincePendrell]

Hey Vince, any updates to your cube? Is your spreadsheet current?

Hey, fozzy! I'm literally just writing about the last draft that I played a couple of weeks ago and the changes that I'm thinking about for the next draft. It should be up in about 30 minutes to an hour (depending on how much I procrastinate between on deck-list and the other ).

The spreadsheet should be up-to-date with the exception of about 7 or so cards, with some changing from main list to test pool and vice-versa.

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

Awesome! I’m studying some of the different species of cubes here and yours seemed like a good example of a faster environment, with some explosiveness

 

[VincePendrell]

This are the decks for the draft we played at the office on August 22nd:

4-0 Vince ( Reanimator)
?-? Paolo #1 ( Aggro)
?-? Paolo #2 ( Aggro + Natural Order)
?-? Brett ( Aggro)
?-? Asger ( Control)

I lost the paper that I had with the notes of how many wins each player had. I'll update it if I find it again. What I can remember is that I went undefeated with a broken deck. I was the single player in black.

Vince's Reanimator

This deck became absolutely ridiculous. I first picked Wurmcoil Engine, into Necromancy, and then soon noticed that nobody else was picking black. I could've gone mono-black and be more of a control deck, and use the Karn Liberated that I picked quite high, but it seemed like blue would give me the last tools to play this as a combo deck. I just had to adjust my mulligans accordingly.
The delirium sub-theme worked wonderfully, with Mindwrack Demon being both a threat and fuel for the long game, and Cryptbreaker was just so much gas versus Asger, providing me the card advantage I needed, and forcing his hand with the mass removals.
I played More or Less only once, to change the delirium clause to 3 types against Brett to get rid of Gideon + token.
I should've probably have switched a swamp for a third island, but that was the only change that I'd do to this list. This might be as close to a perfect version of Reanimator as it can be within my cube, which makes me both proud and concerned.
View attachment 2065

Paolo's GW Aggro

Not sure about the land ratio here, or why Terminus was in the deck.
View attachment 2066

Paolo 2 RG Aggro-Order

View attachment 2067

Brett's RW Aggro

View attachment 2068

Asger's UG Control

I don't have much to say about each individual decklist. Overall, I'm happy with the diversity of decks. I think I disagree with about 2 or 3 cards in each deck list, though it seems like each player is still doing a lot of exploration, and there is still a lot of archetypes to be tried out.
, and all showed up last week, but in very different shapes. I'm thinking that I should try to cater more to these white aggro decks somehow, but I'm still not sure how.

List Changes:
-Blackcleave Cliffs +Sulfurous Springs
I need the Cliffs for modern, so I'm putting in a substitute that fits well with the aggro decks.

Talrand, Sky Summoner <-Test Pool-> Rise from the Tides
Both fill very similar roles, though Talrand is a much more fragile engine, and Rise from the Tides was proven to be a great finisher and build-around in the previous draft. I'm switching these two to test Talrand more closely, and guarantee a spot for Rise in the list.

Isareth the Awakener <-Test Pool-> Bone Picker
I think the correct cut for Isareth might be Drana, Liberator of Malakir instead, ince it fits so well in the curve, though Bone Picker hasn't done much, so I'm moving it to the test pool to see how much of a dud it is.

-Dance of the Dead
I wanted to cut a reanimator spell to reduce the consistency of the archetype, and this is the one that feels the most like a filler to any reanimator spell.

+Gather the Townsfolk
From the test pool to the main list. People seem to be having a good time with Raise the Alarm. This one fits better with my list, and I hope to see the Fateful Hour happen sometime in the future.

+Blood Artist(Test Pool)
I'm almost sure that this will substitute Erg Raiders very soon, though since the Gravecrawler+Goblin Bombardment was the best deck in the cube up to last year, I'm hesitant to just slam a card that makes it more redundant.

-More or Less(Test Pool) +Jeweled Amulet(Test Pool)
I got a taste for what More or Less does. It is not a broken card in your average deck, and I haven't seen any particular way to outright break it. It is a cute trick, but speaking of cute tricks, I think I want to try a chargeable Lotus Petal over this for now.
By the way, I highly recommend anyone that is fine with having some weird cards around to try out More or Less. It almost doesn't feel like an Un-card and it does at the same time.

-Virtus's Maneuver(Test Pool)+Siege Rhino(Test Pool)
Virtus's Maneuver is absolutely a great card, but I've seen myself far more interested in the build-around and the unique potential of To the Slaughter. Though I could see myself switching them around if I see that control has enough tools, and that midrange needs a bit of a push.
About Siege Rhino, I already know it is a good card. My question here is "is it good enough to encourage a three-color deck?", and if so, "is the three-color midrange deck fair in my list?". If the answers are both yes, than this guy is probably coming in the main list.

Other Notes:

I haven't seen these guys being played. It might be that these archetypes (Wx Aggro Artifacts, and GR Lands) are not signaled enough, or not interesting enough. Maybe seeing an early Wildfire effect would make it so that Multani and Crusher get more play, or maybe Crusher can get picked for a regular red aggro deck . So far, they have been lackluster. Teshar even more so, especially considering how good the 4-slot is for aggro decks, and how small it is for midrange.


People are picking these, and at least Memory Jar has been main-decked (although I don't think it was ever played). I will need a few more playthroughs to see what they do in the context of this cube.


They got played once each, which is a good sign. There is a high chance both (or at least pyromancer) gets included in the main list after a few more drafts.


I really wanted this guy to wheel this last draft, but it didn't happen. It is very likely that the time of the Psychatog in cubes has gone for years now. I'll probably cut it as soon as I figure something new I want to test.

 

[VincePendrell]

Awesome! I’m studying some of the different species of cubes here and yours seemed like a good example of a faster environment, with some explosiveness

I think it has been faster before I increased the size in one of my last big updates.
I don't know if there is any trick to keeping your environment fast, but here are some tips and tricks that I learned over time:

• Enforce a low curve and being aware of cards that block too well (Vampire Nighthawk comes to mind).
• Make it so that removal is at a premium and it is playable by everyone. Removal that costs too much won't be picked by aggro decks, and removal with card advantage will make control too strong.
• Removing slots from control and midrange cards and giving them to aggro cards helps. In particular, skimp on finishers for control decks. If you are at 360 cards, I don't think you need more than 1 or 2 control finishers per color (including your cheat-into-play creatures, if you are doing that too).
• It is very important to play with the consistency of your archetypes! If the deck is to good, cut some of it's engine to make it less likely to be present in it's best shape. I do this mostly when thinking of combo decks, like reanimator, show and tell, channel, etc. The Gravecrawler deck got the same treatment recently. On the other hand, I'm still looking forward to every human card that comes along.
• I remember going into lengths about some of my disagreements with people in this topic, so there might be some more points to be taken there.

I hope this is in any way useful.

EDIT: BTW, both the spreadsheet and the latest snapshot under my cubetutor account are up-to-date now!

 

[VincePendrell]

We drafted again this week, with only 4 players attending this time:

3-0 Vince ( Midrange)
1-1-1 Paolo ( Aggro)
1-2 Benno ( Aggro)
0-2-1 Brett ( Ramp and Things that Grow)

(It was getting late, so we decided to cut the third round in half, when Paolo and Brett where 1-1, and I was 1-0 over Benno.)

Vince's RGBW Midrange

• Had a weird first booster. First-picked Taiga, into Bloodbraid, Atarka's Command and Voltaic Brawler in the next picks. Added Black in the end of the first booster, and white at the end of the second one.
• The mana base of this deck was absolutely ridiculous. I would easily have access to 4 colors of mana by 2nd turn with Temple Garden + Badlands (or by 3rd turn, if I needed to cast Qasali). All fetches fixed for all colors, and I had an access to a total of 11 green and red sources, 8 black, and 6 white. This allowed me to play Wasteland with no concern of getting color-screwed.
• The removal spells were absolutely brutal. Most of them were also generating card advantage as well as pushing me ahead on board. Vampiric Tutor + Bonfire of the Damned was also a thing.

Paolo's BW Aggro

• The Leviathan-Reanimator plan worked at least once.
• Paolo bet on both Lingering Souls and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad going around twice in the second round, and that's when I got Lingering Souls and Benno went for the Sorin. I think Paolo had gotten a Bitterblossom, and not sure what else from this pack, but I think he should have gotten either one of these two as well.
• I think he modified the deck after playing me, and this is the list we see here. Some cards he had and took out: Umezawa's Jitte, Smuggler's Copter, Custodi Lich, Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed, Dragon Hunter, Mother of Runes, and Remorseful Cleric

Benno's WRBu Aggro

• This was Benno's first time drafting a cube, and it seems like he did a very synergistic aggro deck.
• Scrubland is the bicycle version.
• Benno had no way of activating the Colonnade, but he used it as blue fixing for casting Ice, which he told me was usually the most relevant mode during gameplay.
• Although it didn't happen, Lightning Berserker could combo with Anafenza, Bygone Bishop, and Thalia's Lieutenant.

Brett's UG Ramp and Things that Grow

• Brett managed a Channel + Ugin, the Spirit Dragon in the third turn versus Benno for a quick victory, but ended up losing the match 1-2.
• Skyship Plunderer was really good here, with so many counters everywhere. Makes me want to put Thrummingbirdin the list as well, for additional support for a UG counters deck.
• The matches against me were absolutely close, and I think I only won because of some minor mistakes. For instance, neither of us noticed that World Breaker and Multani could block my Lingering Souls tokens, until Brett noticed and blocked them, but I had enough damage left to alpha strike next turn and win.
• Brett mentioned that Talrand was not the best fit in this deck, since there was pretty much no instants and sorceries of note. He had picked Stoneforge Mystic + Batterskull, but ended up not playing either. Batterskull should probably have substituted Talrand here.
• Not sure if Crow Storm was ever drawn or played.

Playtest Notes:

All of these cards got used and proved their worth. I still want to see more applications for each before deciding on if they should be in the main list or not. Multani's reach was particularly relevant.

These did well, and I'm definitely moving them to the main list as soon as I figure out what to take out.

Doesn't seem like this card fits in my list at all. Although the effect is interesting, the 4-drop slot for white is extremely competitive. Triggering it is not trivial either. Overall, this had no impact at all since it was added.

I'm not making any changes to my main list for now, though I'm thinking of switching some cards in the test pool for the next draft: Teshar, Psychatog, and Bazaar of Baghdad are leaving. Thrummingbird is coming in, and I have to figure out what is in my to-test list that should go in.