5 Life Microcube

[Aston]

https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/5lifemicrocube

I've been working on this for a bit, it's up to v 1.5 or so, and finally feel like it's in a place ready to post. Each player drafts 20 cards, builds an exactly 15 card deck (adding basics) and plays a game where they start on 5 life each. You don't lose from drawing from an empty deck, you just...don't have anything left. It's supposed to be hard to deal damage and you'll have to string together several cards or recycle a card a couple times in order to actually win, but there's no lifegain so the game will always head in one direction.

The first draft of the list had several 1 mana spells that dealt 1 damage which I thought would be fine, they'll be high picks, they'll be spread out among everyone. In practice one person took them all and was killing everyone else on turn 3 while they tried to set up looping Icatian Javelineer or whatever. I've now cut almost everything that deals 1 damage for less than three mana, with Bile Urchin and Magmakin Artillerist under intense scrutiny.

As I've said in the primer, I wasn't sure if this would really be a fun environment, but so far it's gone over pretty well. There's been some great situations - I've won by Animate Walling my Jungle Barrier, Twisted Imageing it and removing my opponent's single blocker for the one-shot; I've lost to an unstoppable Tomb Trawler that kept growing off a levelled Builder's Talent and looped Conjurer's Bauble; I've survived a Thumbscrews with 2 life left by repeatedly Junktrollering a Bandages.

It certainly can be a bit unbalanced and some decks really do struggle to win but it creates bizarre situations with cards you won't see anywhere else - never before have I stared down a Barbed Wire in terror or had to cut Plated Pegasus from a list for being brokenly good.

Any and all suggestions or feedback are welcome! It can be hard to find cards that are bad enough to go in as they are naturally languishing in obscurity and I know there are some Homelands superfans around here frothing at the bit to recommend Winter Sky.

 

[Miasmir]

I gave it a whirl. I hope Tomb of Urami is good. I'm probably playing way too many lands? Evaluating cards for this environment is kinda hard, which is probably a good thing. I looked at the test draft you did and I'm pretty sure my deck can't beat Steel Wall plus Fire Whip, which is pretty funny. The idea is good and there are some inspired card choices, like Thraben Gargoyle. I like how the ravnica bounce lands give you more mana per deck space.

The mirco environment seems like it should let you rely pretty strongly on called-shot combos. Coming from a frame of reference where I was trying to make reanimator reliably exist in a large cube, that's a pretty big change of perspective. I'm kinda jealous?

As for card recommendations, I don't know if I have any good ones, but the focus on walls reminded me of Glyph of Reincarnation which a small part of me has been hoping to make work since the 90s. (It works on your opponent's walls too!!)

 

[inscho]

What a fun format, and I adore the card pool. I will say it's hard to make suggestions without getting to see the decks in action. I'd love to see a draft report for this one to give some more insight to the environment plays out.

Has anyone used Barbarian Ring to success? Threshold seems like a high hurdle to clear in this format for the drawback of losing 20% of your life to tap for mana.. It feels a little too unlikely/corner-case to be an enticing incentive.

 

[Aston]

Not often, but it has happened a couple times across 6ish drafts. It's not easy but the reward really is worth working for, 2 damage for (effectively) 2 mana is the best rate of return in the cube by s mile.

I can type up a report of the most recent draft when I'm not posting from my phone.

 

[Aston]

As promised, a report from cube night on 8th September. This was my deck:



This was the first time I've seen Ageless Sentinels plus goad come together. I was excited to try it, Ageless Sentinels was one of my favourites when I started playing, so I was hoping it would work out well. I was only really missing an Animate Wall as a backup strategy, but Flamewright was also effective in that slot.

Round 1 I discovered the drawback with this plan, as my opponent was playing a red black deck that made it very difficult to actually goad anything. It was walls, Bile Urchin, and Brimstone Mage all the way down, and I think I lost the first game to Zap, Bile Urchin, and Goblin Cannon finishing me off. My opponent also had an Artist's Talent that was very threatening with his small pings so I had to spend my interaction dealing with that, and ran my Flamewright into Disfigure which would have been the only way I could keep up. I sideboarded out the goad package for Rath's Edge, Snubhorn Sentry and Bandage but I was still too slow and let Flamewright die to Disfigure when I could have been more patient and waited until I could play it with This Town Ain't Big Enough back up.

Round 2 was against a mono-red deck with Goblin Digging Team (my nemesis!). Fireslinger, Gibbering Fiend, Flamekin Spitfire, and a Roast I saw as interaction. Both games went the same way, Digging Team into 2 drop into Roast my blocker meant Fireeslinger could finish me off quickly. I think Fireslinger is a bit too easy of a win condition if you can reliably get ahead in life so I'm cutting it in the next update, maybe for Warmonger which is similar but much slower and has the risk factor if you fall behind yourself.

The last round I played the blue control mirror. This was a funny game, my opponent had Chronotog which is one of my favourite cards in the cube, but particularly vulnerable to being goaded. There was a recurring pattern where I would goad it to attack into a creature that could kill it like Expedition Lookout, my opponent would activate the ability, and I'd bounce it with This Town. However, until I could get Ageless Sentinels set up, the extra turn wasn't even that helpful. While we were playing, some other people were joking around about whether Time Walk would be a good card in the cube, and I said I'd taken two extra turns that game and I still wasn't winning! Even when I did manage to get Ageless Sentinels active, my opponent had Prismatic Strands to survive extra turns, all while recurring their own Icatian Javelineers to chip me down. The games in this match kind of blur together, I do remember my opponent conceded at the end but honestly I don't think I was that far ahead at the time.

I played a bonus match against Sultai Thumbscrews, which I've found to be a very funny card in this environment as it does kill quickly at the cost of you basically doing nothing else. Against me this was quite effective as I couldn't pressure my opponent very well to punish them for holding cards for Thumbscrews and my goad plan didn't work as again there were no good goad targets. I made the same sideboarding as round 1 and ended up in the situation I set out in the first post, I'd use Larder Zombie to get myself to no cards in deck quickly and recycle Bandage with Junktroller to prevent Thumbscrews from killing me. Then Flamewright and Rath's Edge could close things out over the next few turns.

The last two matches are the kind of gameplay I want for this cube with engines and counter-engines and lots of recycling of resources while the lifetotals slowly dwindle. It's really hard to balance any sort of direct damage, as I don't want players to be able to be completely complacent about having infinite time to set things up, with games ending on turn 3 or 4 because someone stumbled against a 1 drop 2 drop hand. I feel like I'm getting closer with each iteration though.