General Ideas for a Necrotic Ooze Cube

[MusicalBen]

What would a Necrotic Ooze-centered cube look like?

EDIT: Perhaps like this?

Taking some inspiration from the 100 Ornithopters Cube, the goal would be to curate a draft experience in which Necrotic Ooze is the main star. To which a couple of rules: you must draft the copies of Necrotic Ooze and add them to your deck and winning the game should, excluding corner cases, involve the Ooze in some way.

I can think of five main categories for cards in such a cube:
1) Ways to get cards in the graveyard (discard, mill, etc.);
2) Ways to manipulate the graveyard and disrupt the opponent's combos: Scrabbling Claws, Purify the Grave, Rag Dealer, etc.
3) Ways to get more oozes – aside from the obvious ones, and taking advantage of the fact they're all the same: Infernal Tutor, Pack Hunt, Thrumming Stone, Mimeofacture, etc.;
4) Ways to destroy opposing oozes (interesting if dramatically symmetrical): Echoing Truth, Bile Blight, Maelstrom Pulse, etc.;
5) Finally, of course, the creatures to discard and fuel your ooze combo dreams.

Being a creature-centric cube, I suppose there would need to some restrictions so that you can't just draft good creatures with good activated abilities and have an ooze-less victory. Keeping casting costs exorbitant, value and color wise, is a natural way to both discourage this while also accessing interesting and unique abilities. However, many of the classic ooze-combo creatures can be found at lower or accessible costs, such as Pili-Pala, Devoted Druid, Walking Ballista... Thus, I wonder if restricting colored mana itself is another way to avoid most such decks: a la desert cube, you must draft your lands and colored multicolored mana sources, and are free to add swamps only. I'm leaning to this option, as it also fits with the general theme of Ooze only...

So, what would such a cube look like? What interesting and unique activated abilities would make for varied draft experience?

EDIT: Forgot to mention that one of the main factors that could make games very chaotic and unparsable is the fact that Necrotic Ooze checks both graveyards. The more I think about this, the more I wonder if it would be better with an errata, from "all graveyards" to "your graveyard."

 

[StrionicAdventurer]

Seismic Monstrosaur is the first card I thought of for this, and Elvish Aberration is another in the same vein. I agree that managing the power level of the rest of the creatures so that the Ooze remains the star of the show will be your biggest challenge. If I were trying to design this environment, I'd seriously consider avoiding all creatures at MV 1 or 2. Load up the cube with setup cards like Faithless Looting at that level, and then pile on creatures at MV 5+. Where else do you have an excuse to top-load your creature curve like that?

 

[Seeker]

OOZE ON FIRST



shame about Uchuulon being a free graveyard hoser
real shame about Biowaste Blob having Commander garbage on it instead of being a real card
real shame about Ooze Garden doing the exact opposite of what we want it to
and of course Slime Against Humanity is a no-go, that one needs its own cube

but I genuinely do think you could have a subtheme of "GB Ooze Aggro" if you had anthem effects more like Icon of Ancestry rather than Gaea's Anthem

e: if you're Sharpie-friendly don't forget Mitotic Ultimus
e2: shame there don't seem to be many Basalt Ravager/Skemfar Shadowmage style things to reward you for having "lots of Oozes"

 

[Karshtakavaar]

... Thus, I wonder if restricting colored mana itself is another way to avoid most such decks: a la desert cube, you must draft your lands and colored multicolored mana sources, and are free to add swamps only. I'm leaning to this option, as it also fits with the general theme of Ooze only...

Love the 'Only basic Swamps' idea. Rather than drafting lands for off-colour mana, what about having to use the Ooze for it? Plenty of dorks, maybe even some of the mana filters like Blood Celebrant/Abzan Devotee/Gravestone Strider, or true dorks like Blightsoil Druid and DRS.

As far as cards for the cube, Putrid Imp and Cabal Therapist were the first things that came to my mind.

 

[Seeker]

Ooh, speaking of the Thopter cube, let's talk Conspiracies! Thopter cube uses Echoing Boon to let you do cantrip/pump-spell things, but that's less important here. The card type was actively designed for a draft environment where you had multiples of an otherwise-crappy late pick (here's looking at you, Lizard Warrior, one of the unsung all-stars) - with the caveat being that they're all way better than they look. So be wary of that, I guess, but here's some stuff that might be interesting:

Assemble the Rank and Vile - this may, or may not, go infinite in some way with Warren Soultrader? If you can't possibly go infinite, that's a strike against it in my head. You want people to be tempted.
Hymn of the Wilds - a turn ahead on Oozes, in return for less interaction, but since Oozes actively want creatures anyway it's way less of a drawback.
Muzzio's Preparations - sure, Ooze aggro will take it, but this is intended for the Agatha's Soul Cauldrons and Triskelions of the world.
Secrets of Paradise - it's like you already have a Birds of Paradise in the graveyard, but one-sided! I have no idea if you'd ever actually want this.
Secret Summoning - I think this one's too good, but it might not be?
Summoner's Bond - This is what Secret Summoning wanted to be. The ability to guarantee you always draw a specific combo piece with your Ooze is really strong, but doesn't solve the fundamental problems of "have to break symmetry" and "opponent can have hate".
Unexpected Potential - Can someone draft the nonblack Ooze deck?! That's a dream to live.

totally unrelated have you seen Fain, the Broker. my god that's a lot of colons.

 

[MusicalBen]

totally unrelated have you seen Fain, the Broker. my god that's a lot of colons.

Me lost in a "t:creature o:":"" scryfall search sorted by descending mana value...

In any case, I've given some thought to this.

I'm leaning towards errata-ing Ooze to check your graveyard only. The truth is that Necrotic Ooze combos have a lot of redundancy: you need creatures that untap it, creatures that tap for mana, and the incessant varieties of +1/+1 or -1/-1 counter shenanigans, such as Morselhoarder. If Ooze checks for both graveyards, I'm afraid games will turn to anti-games, as you avoid placing anything on your graveyard until the final turn where you want to combo off.

Instead, I envision a game of Ooze-Cube to go more like this: you try to find your game pieces by filling your graveyard. You must balance this with disrupting key combo pieces from your opponent's graveyard and protecting your own.

Disrupting your opponent's plan comes in two ways, you either destroy oozes or remove combo pieces from the graveyard. Protecting your own gameplan is more interesting. You have to both attempt to draft for redundancy (multiple of the same effect) or pay the price of delaying your plan to protect essential cards:

Love the 'Only basic Swamps' idea. Rather than drafting lands for off-colour mana, what about having to use the Ooze for it? Plenty of dorks, maybe even some of the mana filters like Blood Celebrant/Abzan Devotee/Gravestone Strider, or true dorks like Blightsoil Druid and DRS.

I agree. I've given some thought to this a propos the many infinite mana combos available with Necrotic Ooze. The truth is that these are the least concerning combos, since their power depends heavily on the mana sinks in the cube. Forcing you to draft mana filters, specific lands, etc, that align with your wincon – if you're drafting the infinite mana deck – helps to structure some archetypes and color dependancy. I still like the idea of having some lands in the draft. Perhaps they lead to more interesting choices during the draft, instead of, after all, drafting creature cards that will ALWAYS go in your deck no matter what. In any case, yes: you must draft your color fixing, and mana-based wins require drafting around tricky mana requirements. Some cards I though about in this vein:



I think the important thing is to avoid the "any color" fixers, as they give you instant access to every color in every ooze.

OOZE ON FIRST

Absolutely, this should be the only 'normal magic' plan available. You still have to compete for the Necrotic Oozes, I love it. I actually think Uchuulon should be ok? If you're actively drafting this deck you're probably going to have a bad time anyway, as everyone around you is hyper-focused on degenerate combos. And with the amount of removal that focuses on creatures-with-the-same-name, getting rid of it and its copies should also not be a problem.

Funny, Elvish Aberration was the first card that came to my mind – my first magic purchase was the Max Attack theme deck from Scourge... It's perfect though, and the incidental forestcycling is one of the reasons why I don't want to totally discount the inclusion of draftable non-Swamp lands in the cube.

Ooh, speaking of the Thopter cube, let's talk Conspiracies!

I have... no idea how to evaluate these, I've actually never drafted with them before. Some though, look really tempting and, to be honest, silly, which fits the general tone of the project. Summoner's Bond is my favourite of the bunch.

I'll save other thoughts for later. I created a CubeCobra page, and I'll add cards little by little. Question: how many Oozes does the cube need? I added 50, because 100 seemed to much (i.e. it was an arbitrary number).

 

[Seeker]

I have... no idea how to evaluate these, I've actually never drafted with them before. Some though, look really tempting and, to be honest, silly, which fits the general tone of the project. Summoner's Bond is my favourite of the bunch.

Do be warned that they're really strong - think companions back before you had to pay 3 mana to get an extra card - so even the ones that seem almost blank are your free 41st card (obviously a 1/1 artifact even with defender is worth an entire card because Tinker etc but you get what I mean) - but they are not so strong that they shouldn't at least be considered.

Some cards I though about in this vein:

oh my god. it's happening. you found the cube that can play the most badass Magic: the Gathering card ever printed (art and flavor) despite him being stone unplayable in every imaginable case other than this

 

[Nanonox]

Could you have a your own GY Necrotic Ooze emblem at the start of the game? Maybe like an equipment with equip 2 (or whatever is fair). Or an activated ability on the emblem to give a creature Ooze text.

I'm not a fan of forcing people to draft and put cards into their decks which is why I'm looking at other ideas.