[500] CCC - Casual Champions Cube
- Thread starter ravnic
- Start date
While that card seems very good, I would like to try to keep the reanimation to be possible on turn 4. I anticipated that it would need that tempo to make it worthwhile cheating out something like a Black Dragon. Also, if you don't have a discard reward on your outlet, that gives you back a card (like looters do), you still want it to be good. The Eldest Reborn is a great value play itself, what I want, basically, is to make Zombify good.
The one card I am a little worried about isn't Life/Death, it's Victimize. Getting two fatties for the expense of one medium sized creature felt already very strong. It can be pretty broken if you manage to sac a 1/1 on turn three and get two 7-drops. That' a high roll of course, and time will tell, if it's average scenario is too much for the average opponent.
Another card that could work but is maybe a little too hard to enable is this one:
Threshold on turn ~4 seems to be quite the challenge and while some of your efforts of setting up the combo might incidentially also fill your your yard, I don't see this happening all that often. That being said, it stil costs 2 mana on turn 5 or so, so might be worth it.
On Persist, the nonlegendary clause might lead to feel bad moments. I wish it was just a 3-mana Zombify without the legendary clause.
The one card I am a little worried about isn't Life/Death, it's Victimize. Getting two fatties for the expense of one medium sized creature felt already very strong. It can be pretty broken if you manage to sac a 1/1 on turn three and get two 7-drops. That' a high roll of course, and time will tell, if it's average scenario is too much for the average opponent.
Another card that could work but is maybe a little too hard to enable is this one:
Threshold on turn ~4 seems to be quite the challenge and while some of your efforts of setting up the combo might incidentially also fill your your yard, I don't see this happening all that often. That being said, it stil costs 2 mana on turn 5 or so, so might be worth it.
On Persist, the nonlegendary clause might lead to feel bad moments. I wish it was just a 3-mana Zombify without the legendary clause.
I didn't read the whole thread, so sorry if it has been asked before. Is there a reason you omitted Eternal Witness?
I'm considering going much lower power and was browsing your list as an example, as you run Nightmare and I'd like to get to that power level. For some reason, I keyed in on EWit missing. Maybe due to the new GB Cat Witness in NEO.
I'm considering going much lower power and was browsing your list as an example, as you run Nightmare and I'd like to get to that power level. For some reason, I keyed in on EWit missing. Maybe due to the new GB Cat Witness in NEO.
I didn't mention EWit anywhere so far, but I thought about it. It wouldn't be too strong I guess. It used to be a little expensive (over 1€) and I feared it would outclass my pet card Gravedigger a bit too much, even for a green creature. I also try to limit the free etb value as much as possible while still enabling esper blink. If every creature nets you a card on etb, that results in a format not enjoyable for me.
I think I might be where I wanted to be with the artifact theme in my cube. It's an almost color agnostic subtheme that can be splashed into different decks. During my last paper draft, I almost had an artifact theme present in my mono 
deck, but during deckbuidling decided to go for a bigger focus on madness. But now I've drafted this beauty on CC.
https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/6202ec5a9fecbb10011083a0
It's basically a regular white wheenie deck splasing black, but it happened to have 8 artifacts naturally, which made Plating, Armix and Lodestone Golem good options. Although the Golem is good as a curve topper in low curve aggro anyway.
Next month I'll finally be able to get some more testing done with my newest iteration.
deck, but during deckbuidling decided to go for a bigger focus on madness. But now I've drafted this beauty on CC.https://cubecobra.com/cube/deck/6202ec5a9fecbb10011083a0
It's basically a regular white wheenie deck splasing black, but it happened to have 8 artifacts naturally, which made Plating, Armix and Lodestone Golem good options. Although the Golem is good as a curve topper in low curve aggro anyway.
Next month I'll finally be able to get some more testing done with my newest iteration.
So how strong/fun is Feldon in your cube? The card always seemed way too powerful for me to include but now I am interested. What has your experience with him been like? Does he lead to repetitive play patterns? I feel like reanimating something like Triskelavus each turn could end up being rather boring/oppressive.
He appeared only once on the battlefield so far, and he was totally fine. He's a bit too clunky to be unfair in an environment with mostly really fair EtBs. It's still a card you want to remove, but so far I feel like you don't die if you can't remove him for a couple turns or so. Wish I could tell you more.
There's this while category of cards that can produce infinite value when mana is not a bottleneck (players are out of cards to play) and then they might feel in some games like they are broken, but if there are enough of them, having mana sinks is just a fact of the environment and a good one at that, preventing players from not having anything to do late game and letting the cool engines surface. As Ravnic said, I think what determines if Feldon is "too good' is if there are many strong ETBs like Skinrender or Flametongue Kavu *times* how often cards are a scarce resource in relation to mana in your environment.
That's a very crisp and helpful evaluation. Thanks to both of your for your insights. I guess the three mana are a lot and the advantage is somewhat temporary (apart from ETBs). I might try Feldon then
Me, my girlfriend and two friends spent a few of last year's final hours doing a great four person draft and we had a blast. As this was the first draft with more than two people since me shrinking the cube back to 500 cards and the first session with DMU and BRO cards and all 18 Prismatic Vistas, it was very insightful too.
Mono White Lifegain 2-1 (5-4)
My girlfriend drafted her favorite archetype, now in mono white, and she was quite succesful with it. Her super synergistic deck managed to beat both of my buddys and just had to concede against my boardwipe filled rakdos deck. Undercover star of the deck was Arcanist's Owl, who had eleven targets without even trying hard to draft those (according to my gf). It also powered the devotion cards up.
Special moment: Daxos casually attacking as a 3/13!
Mono Green Ramp/Landfall 2-1 (5-3)
My old friend Sami drafting a mono color deck too shows me that it is really well supported. This guy might be the best limited player I know and his deck was, as usual, pretty nutty. He got all three 1-mana dorks and then went crazy with Lotus Cobra and Tireless Provitioner. Both Kamahl and Rhox proved again how strong they are, despite looking a little understattet by today's standards. In fact I just lost game three to hin because I wasted the two cards I had that could've answered the Rhoxfather.
Special moment: A huge Genesis Wave putting Kamahl, Zendikar's Roil, Crucible of Worlds and two lands, including a Vista onto the battlefield. Opponent was staring down dozens of trampling power suddenly after one spell.
Rakdos Wildfire 1-2 (4-5)
My draft was a little rough. Midway I saw both Wildfire and Destructive Force in a pack, picked one, wheeled the other and tried to go for it. Maybe it was a little late, but at least I got a bunch of Talismans and two additional boardwipes. I didn't go for blue because two other people had picked some blue cards early and black felt a little shallow in the draft pool. That being said, when it worked, my deck could feel really brutal. Starstorm was my MVP against the table wih fast, consistent decks.
Special moment: Casting Wildfire just to kill my own Perilous Myr and deal the final 2 damage to my opponent.
Mono Red Aggro 1-2 (3-5)
My buddy from middle school went for an extremely aggressive approach, as he often likes to do, and was the third mpno color deck at the table. With a good start, he was very hard to beat, but since he was a little short on 1- and 2-mana creatures, he couldn't execute his plan as consistently in every game.
This draft was very insightful. It's not like I've promoted drafting mono color before in a big way or anything, yet three people (that aren't me) with widly different experience levels felt like "yeah, that might be good way to victory!" And it was, with mono white and mono green been tied for the win.
I count that as a positive. It has to be seen if the focus on mono color support has become too mich, but I very highly doubt it, considering the success decks like Gruul madness or Esper blink had in the last few month.
Mono White Lifegain 2-1 (5-4)
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My girlfriend drafted her favorite archetype, now in mono white, and she was quite succesful with it. Her super synergistic deck managed to beat both of my buddys and just had to concede against my boardwipe filled rakdos deck. Undercover star of the deck was Arcanist's Owl, who had eleven targets without even trying hard to draft those (according to my gf). It also powered the devotion cards up.
Special moment: Daxos casually attacking as a 3/13!
Mono Green Ramp/Landfall 2-1 (5-3)
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My old friend Sami drafting a mono color deck too shows me that it is really well supported. This guy might be the best limited player I know and his deck was, as usual, pretty nutty. He got all three 1-mana dorks and then went crazy with Lotus Cobra and Tireless Provitioner. Both Kamahl and Rhox proved again how strong they are, despite looking a little understattet by today's standards. In fact I just lost game three to hin because I wasted the two cards I had that could've answered the Rhoxfather.
Special moment: A huge Genesis Wave putting Kamahl, Zendikar's Roil, Crucible of Worlds and two lands, including a Vista onto the battlefield. Opponent was staring down dozens of trampling power suddenly after one spell.
Rakdos Wildfire 1-2 (4-5)
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My draft was a little rough. Midway I saw both Wildfire and Destructive Force in a pack, picked one, wheeled the other and tried to go for it. Maybe it was a little late, but at least I got a bunch of Talismans and two additional boardwipes. I didn't go for blue because two other people had picked some blue cards early and black felt a little shallow in the draft pool. That being said, when it worked, my deck could feel really brutal. Starstorm was my MVP against the table wih fast, consistent decks.
Special moment: Casting Wildfire just to kill my own Perilous Myr and deal the final 2 damage to my opponent.
Mono Red Aggro 1-2 (3-5)
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My buddy from middle school went for an extremely aggressive approach, as he often likes to do, and was the third mpno color deck at the table. With a good start, he was very hard to beat, but since he was a little short on 1- and 2-mana creatures, he couldn't execute his plan as consistently in every game.
This draft was very insightful. It's not like I've promoted drafting mono color before in a big way or anything, yet three people (that aren't me) with widly different experience levels felt like "yeah, that might be good way to victory!" And it was, with mono white and mono green been tied for the win.
I count that as a positive. It has to be seen if the focus on mono color support has become too mich, but I very highly doubt it, considering the success decks like Gruul madness or Esper blink had in the last few month.
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So we did another 4-person draft, unchanged cube but a slightly new variation of our draft format. Instead of having 4 packs of 15, burning the last 4, I now changed it to 5 packs of 13, burning the last 4. This has the advantage, that you only see the pack you open a third time, and since the third pick from a pack usually is pretty meh anyway, I felt like that worked out better. In terms of synergy and overall quality, the decks seemed really close to what you get from a standard 8-person draft.
However, the draft and the games were amazingly fun.
Esper Artifacts 2-1 (5-3)
... and not only because I won this time. For the first time since the updates trying to make it more of a thing, I got to draft the artifact deck. It played like a sweet, proactive midrange deck. My plan of having Dockside Chef and Marionette Master as a way to combine artifacts with blacks sacrifice theme worked out very well, I definitely like this better than Armix. Patchwork Automaton was great on turn two, especially when followed up with two artifact spells on turn three it created quite a lot of pressure. But later, it was a bad topdeck. Mirrodin Besieged didn't have that problem, as you could still choose the phyrexian mode to loot away your lands. Love that card. With 15 artifacts and a few artifact token makers, the Juggernaut was also very solid.
Against the madness aggro deck, I lost my first game and then boarded five cards in, including a plains. However, most effective were my additions of Wall of Omens and Healer's Hawk. Especially the bird was incredible, I played him on turn one and then quickly started to put equipment on him. All these lifelink swings ensured that I became the beatdown very quickly.
The only round which I lost, after three close games, was against my girlfriend's dimir deck. It was just a little too evasive for me.
Rgu Madness Aggro 2-1 (5-4)
This time, it was my very experienced friend Sami who piloted the red aggressive deck. It was heavily leaning into discard synergies and splashed green for three cards as well as blue, just for wonder. It worked with his three vistas but he lost a game against me after keeping a hand he shouldn't and not getting a mountain before turn four.
MVP in his deck was Key to the City, from what I've seen at least. He often just used it to discard a card (pure upside) and make his Bloodrage Brawler or Embalmed Hydra unblockable. On the other hand, I don't think his blue splash was worth it. He only got Wonder online once, giving a couple of Rootwallas flying, and still lost against my Juggernaut. From a cube designer perspective, that's a plus, as Wonder is a card I have an eye on for potentially being too much of a power outlier. At least this draft showed, that it alone isn't worth a blue splash most likely.
Dimir Ninjatempo 1-2 (4-5)
My girlfriend's deck had two problems this time. One, it wasn't consistent enough, as it dipped into more grindy themes like the black sacrifice cards, stuff like Zulaport Cutthroatr or the Butler. Picking up a couple cheap equipment or just another aggressive 2-drop would've been better, as she also realized after loosing her first two rounds. Second, her mana base was awful. Just one or two Prismatic Vistas, which were definitely in the draft still, could've prevented a mulligan or two she had to take.
However, when it worked, the deck was powerful. My favorite combination was when she enchanted her Lantern Bearer with Nighthowler, turning it into a 6/6 flier. I had to use my removal spell on that, but then she enchanted the now-a-creature Nighthowler with Lantern's Lift, creating exactly the same 6/6 flier. A cute little switcheroo these two half creature, half aura cards are capable of.
Other notes: Nightveil Specter is mean and Okiba-Gang Shinobi still hits like a truck.
Simic Landfall 1-2 (3-5)
As I mentioned before, my friend Tobi usually likes to play red and/or white aggressive decks. But this time, he was motivated to try something new and went hard for the landfalls synergies after a second pick Tatyova. You could see that he was exploring new terrain with a couple cards not really belonging in there (most notably Jungle Lion) and Search for Tomorrow waiting in his sideboard the whole evening.
However, I'd call that try a huge success from a cube manager point of view. He drafted a new color combination, a new theme and played a different style than basically ever before in his young magic career, and he seemed to have loads of fun with it.
Magic moment: He was up against the madness aggro deck, the game went longer than you'd want as the aggro player, but it still looked like he was losing. However, with a turn ~5 Hedron Crab and a couple topdecked Prismatic Vistas he managed to steal the win from his opponent who already drew like 9 extra cards with Anje's Ravager.
Of course I would like to draft with a full pod of 8 sometimes, but I like that with 4 you can play against every other deck realistically. Also, this particular group is very harmonious. Three of the people I like to be with the most, and we all know each other for some years. My group shrank a little after I moved closer to where I actually came from, but the fun definitely didn't decline!
However, the draft and the games were amazingly fun.
Esper Artifacts 2-1 (5-3)
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... and not only because I won this time. For the first time since the updates trying to make it more of a thing, I got to draft the artifact deck. It played like a sweet, proactive midrange deck. My plan of having Dockside Chef and Marionette Master as a way to combine artifacts with blacks sacrifice theme worked out very well, I definitely like this better than Armix. Patchwork Automaton was great on turn two, especially when followed up with two artifact spells on turn three it created quite a lot of pressure. But later, it was a bad topdeck. Mirrodin Besieged didn't have that problem, as you could still choose the phyrexian mode to loot away your lands. Love that card. With 15 artifacts and a few artifact token makers, the Juggernaut was also very solid.
Against the madness aggro deck, I lost my first game and then boarded five cards in, including a plains. However, most effective were my additions of Wall of Omens and Healer's Hawk. Especially the bird was incredible, I played him on turn one and then quickly started to put equipment on him. All these lifelink swings ensured that I became the beatdown very quickly.
The only round which I lost, after three close games, was against my girlfriend's dimir deck. It was just a little too evasive for me.
Rgu Madness Aggro 2-1 (5-4)
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This time, it was my very experienced friend Sami who piloted the red aggressive deck. It was heavily leaning into discard synergies and splashed green for three cards as well as blue, just for wonder. It worked with his three vistas but he lost a game against me after keeping a hand he shouldn't and not getting a mountain before turn four.
MVP in his deck was Key to the City, from what I've seen at least. He often just used it to discard a card (pure upside) and make his Bloodrage Brawler or Embalmed Hydra unblockable. On the other hand, I don't think his blue splash was worth it. He only got Wonder online once, giving a couple of Rootwallas flying, and still lost against my Juggernaut. From a cube designer perspective, that's a plus, as Wonder is a card I have an eye on for potentially being too much of a power outlier. At least this draft showed, that it alone isn't worth a blue splash most likely.
Dimir Ninjatempo 1-2 (4-5)
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My girlfriend's deck had two problems this time. One, it wasn't consistent enough, as it dipped into more grindy themes like the black sacrifice cards, stuff like Zulaport Cutthroatr or the Butler. Picking up a couple cheap equipment or just another aggressive 2-drop would've been better, as she also realized after loosing her first two rounds. Second, her mana base was awful. Just one or two Prismatic Vistas, which were definitely in the draft still, could've prevented a mulligan or two she had to take.
However, when it worked, the deck was powerful. My favorite combination was when she enchanted her Lantern Bearer with Nighthowler, turning it into a 6/6 flier. I had to use my removal spell on that, but then she enchanted the now-a-creature Nighthowler with Lantern's Lift, creating exactly the same 6/6 flier. A cute little switcheroo these two half creature, half aura cards are capable of.
Other notes: Nightveil Specter is mean and Okiba-Gang Shinobi still hits like a truck.
Simic Landfall 1-2 (3-5)
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As I mentioned before, my friend Tobi usually likes to play red and/or white aggressive decks. But this time, he was motivated to try something new and went hard for the landfalls synergies after a second pick Tatyova. You could see that he was exploring new terrain with a couple cards not really belonging in there (most notably Jungle Lion) and Search for Tomorrow waiting in his sideboard the whole evening.
However, I'd call that try a huge success from a cube manager point of view. He drafted a new color combination, a new theme and played a different style than basically ever before in his young magic career, and he seemed to have loads of fun with it.
Magic moment: He was up against the madness aggro deck, the game went longer than you'd want as the aggro player, but it still looked like he was losing. However, with a turn ~5 Hedron Crab and a couple topdecked Prismatic Vistas he managed to steal the win from his opponent who already drew like 9 extra cards with Anje's Ravager.
Of course I would like to draft with a full pod of 8 sometimes, but I like that with 4 you can play against every other deck realistically. Also, this particular group is very harmonious. Three of the people I like to be with the most, and we all know each other for some years. My group shrank a little after I moved closer to where I actually came from, but the fun definitely didn't decline!
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i have enjoyed drafts of 4-6 the most out of all group sizes, it is challenging to design a cube for that size but you often find that that matters much less than the group itself being good folks. glad to see you had a fun draft!
To prevent myself from theory-crafting too much and replacing cards before they even had the chance to prove themselves, I came up with a hard rule. Comparable to what they do in football, I'm only allowed to get new playe-, uh, cards once in the summer and once in the winter. In particular, I determined January and Juli as the two months of change. Here is what I've changed in the past transfer period:
Out: Spectral Sailor
In:
In general, I like the sailor better. But I'm trying to make the small mill subtheme a little more real. And I really want to play Windrobber in my Abiding Grace decks.
Out: Innocent Blood
In:
Innocent Blood is a very cool looking magic card. But Blood Fountain will probably play better. And actually make main decks. Also, more smoothing is good.
Out: Reckless Waif
In:
Waif was just a placeholder until I've found the 1-drop I wanted. Did it.
Out: Mogg War Marshall
In:
Cut BCG when I removed the tribal theme, but I think I still like him better than the Marshall for tokens and aggro. Questionmark.
Out: Farseek
In:
Farseek wasn't great somehow. Not getting forests matters in this format and since my prismatic vista revolution it's been a strictly worse Rampanth Growth, since I cut the Bicycle lands to tutor up. And I feel like I have enough ramp anyway. So I'll use this slot to get a second cantrip into green.
Out: World Shaper
In:
I think this could be more generally playable with 18 Vistas?
Out: Nyx Weaver
In:
Have been looking for a Golgari card that works with selfmill and sacrifice. Has been discussed in Low Power Card Spotlight.
Out: Spectral Sailor
In:
In general, I like the sailor better. But I'm trying to make the small mill subtheme a little more real. And I really want to play Windrobber in my Abiding Grace decks.
Out: Innocent Blood
In:
Innocent Blood is a very cool looking magic card. But Blood Fountain will probably play better. And actually make main decks. Also, more smoothing is good.
Out: Reckless Waif
In:
Waif was just a placeholder until I've found the 1-drop I wanted. Did it.
Out: Mogg War Marshall
In:
Cut BCG when I removed the tribal theme, but I think I still like him better than the Marshall for tokens and aggro. Questionmark.
Out: Farseek
In:
Farseek wasn't great somehow. Not getting forests matters in this format and since my prismatic vista revolution it's been a strictly worse Rampanth Growth, since I cut the Bicycle lands to tutor up. And I feel like I have enough ramp anyway. So I'll use this slot to get a second cantrip into green.
Out: World Shaper
In:
I think this could be more generally playable with 18 Vistas?
Out: Nyx Weaver
In:
Have been looking for a Golgari card that works with selfmill and sacrifice. Has been discussed in Low Power Card Spotlight.
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i really like the new rule haha
Last weekend I finally got a draft done with more than two again. This time, we were five people, which of course is a bit of an akward number, but it wasn't that probematic. My girlfriend and I, we put up quite the buffet in the kitchen, so whoever had to sit out a round had time to test a dozen different dishes/snacks while watching. This way we actually almost got there with everyone playing out four rounds.
It was super fun but also a bit weird this time around. Everyone except the guy ending up in mono black started their draft in blue, so there was quite a fight over some cards going on.
Azorius Blink 4-0 (7-2)
I have this one friend who always complains during the draft process how he's not getting the cards he wants and needs for the deck, then ends up having a super synergistic and powerful deck. This time, he easily made first place. He only played a best of one against the mono black deck because we ran out of time.
Interesting note: Brago never connected only once the entire evening even though he was on the battlefield a lot. Galepowder Mage actually just played much, much better and is now on my watch list. It can just accumulate so much free value if it isn't answered immediately.
Temur Lands 3-1 (7-2)
I made the second place, really kinda close behind the blink deck which I lost 1-2 to. This deck was SO MUCH FUN. I was replaying Prismatic Vista twice a turn with Swordtooth and Crucible, was milling people with a turn five Hedron Crab, domed someone for X=12 with Disintegrate for the win, and I would've decked myself multiple times if it wasn't for the secret MVP Gurzigostrefilling my library with straight up gas again and again. Soratami Cloudskater was incredible once again, as usual.
Landfall cards are just really overperforming in this cube as well, which is cool because it means that a fringe card like Kazandu Nectarpod is actually very playable, but it also means that might have to cut Toggo at some point. He's so cool and funny, but repeatable removal without having to spend cards is kind of a red flag in this environment.
Wb Lifegain 1-1-2 (3-5)
My girlfriend drafted a variation of her favorite archetype once again. She was scrabbling for playables this time, because she also started heavily in blue as well. However, the ~19 card of the deck that weren't filler worked really well together. The lifegain deck can be a real trigger fest, but thankfully people die relatively quick to a giant Pridemate or an army of bats. This deck could've been a little more aggressive and needed maybe one more source of lifegain. Something like Leonin Vanguard would've improved it quite a bit.
Because of time troubles, she only played two games against the bant deck, going 1-1 there. I think this deck would've won the round if they could've played it out though.
Mono Black Sacrifice 1-3 (2-5)
My lesser experienced friend did a good job with his first attempt of mono black. If he would've had a little more luck and/or played Cadaver Imp and Barren Moor from the beginning, he could've performed much better. I actually kept this deck after the draft and beat my girlfriend piloting the winning blink deck a couple days later. I could've needed a little more sacrifice fodder maybe. I think something like the new Blightreaper Thallid could've improved the deck.
Noteworthy: People love the goofy 11/10 for four that is Daemogoth Titan. And it is really good as well when you can feed him.
WUg Spells/Tokens 0-1-3 (2-7)
This was the "new guy", an old friend of my girlfriend, but actually he was the person at the table with the most magic experience. However, he's mostly a commander player and he went into this draft with a premise of having fun and slamming card he likes, which is awesome. He firstpicked Talrand and was the one out of four who was actually stubborn enough to stick with this blue spells based game plan. His second pick was Battle Screech, which made him think white was the right color to pair with this. If he would've moved into red or black instead of white (and green), that would've worked out much better. He might have a lot of mtg experience, but he is lacking experience with my cube which he only drafted twice now. His deck this time was not only lacking fixing but also didn't have any way to answer a creature in play.
Noteworthy: I never expected to see Benalish Marshal and Shrewd Hatchling show up in the same deck
It was super fun but also a bit weird this time around. Everyone except the guy ending up in mono black started their draft in blue, so there was quite a fight over some cards going on.
Azorius Blink 4-0 (7-2)
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I have this one friend who always complains during the draft process how he's not getting the cards he wants and needs for the deck, then ends up having a super synergistic and powerful deck. This time, he easily made first place. He only played a best of one against the mono black deck because we ran out of time.
Interesting note: Brago never connected only once the entire evening even though he was on the battlefield a lot. Galepowder Mage actually just played much, much better and is now on my watch list. It can just accumulate so much free value if it isn't answered immediately.
Temur Lands 3-1 (7-2)
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I made the second place, really kinda close behind the blink deck which I lost 1-2 to. This deck was SO MUCH FUN. I was replaying Prismatic Vista twice a turn with Swordtooth and Crucible, was milling people with a turn five Hedron Crab, domed someone for X=12 with Disintegrate for the win, and I would've decked myself multiple times if it wasn't for the secret MVP Gurzigostrefilling my library with straight up gas again and again. Soratami Cloudskater was incredible once again, as usual.
Landfall cards are just really overperforming in this cube as well, which is cool because it means that a fringe card like Kazandu Nectarpod is actually very playable, but it also means that might have to cut Toggo at some point. He's so cool and funny, but repeatable removal without having to spend cards is kind of a red flag in this environment.
Wb Lifegain 1-1-2 (3-5)
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My girlfriend drafted a variation of her favorite archetype once again. She was scrabbling for playables this time, because she also started heavily in blue as well. However, the ~19 card of the deck that weren't filler worked really well together. The lifegain deck can be a real trigger fest, but thankfully people die relatively quick to a giant Pridemate or an army of bats. This deck could've been a little more aggressive and needed maybe one more source of lifegain. Something like Leonin Vanguard would've improved it quite a bit.
Because of time troubles, she only played two games against the bant deck, going 1-1 there. I think this deck would've won the round if they could've played it out though.
Mono Black Sacrifice 1-3 (2-5)
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My lesser experienced friend did a good job with his first attempt of mono black. If he would've had a little more luck and/or played Cadaver Imp and Barren Moor from the beginning, he could've performed much better. I actually kept this deck after the draft and beat my girlfriend piloting the winning blink deck a couple days later. I could've needed a little more sacrifice fodder maybe. I think something like the new Blightreaper Thallid could've improved the deck.
Noteworthy: People love the goofy 11/10 for four that is Daemogoth Titan. And it is really good as well when you can feed him.
WUg Spells/Tokens 0-1-3 (2-7)
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This was the "new guy", an old friend of my girlfriend, but actually he was the person at the table with the most magic experience. However, he's mostly a commander player and he went into this draft with a premise of having fun and slamming card he likes, which is awesome. He firstpicked Talrand and was the one out of four who was actually stubborn enough to stick with this blue spells based game plan. His second pick was Battle Screech, which made him think white was the right color to pair with this. If he would've moved into red or black instead of white (and green), that would've worked out much better. He might have a lot of mtg experience, but he is lacking experience with my cube which he only drafted twice now. His deck this time was not only lacking fixing but also didn't have any way to answer a creature in play.
Noteworthy: I never expected to see Benalish Marshal and Shrewd Hatchling show up in the same deck
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that temur deck looks like a blast!
glad to hear you had a good draft
glad to hear you had a good draft
I just checked and I only have 4 beasts at 500, with the ugly one being the cheapest lol. I had some other, like Beast Attack in the past, so it wouldn't be impossible to up the beast count. But it would be a lot of work and might not be worth it. If the activation cost was hybrid, I'd be more intrigued. I love hybrid.
But thanks for the suggestion
But thanks for the suggestion
)A Rakdos History
With this card from the new March of the Machine, I am pretty confident to finally have found my ideal rakdos sacrifice card. I've been trying to find something there for almost ten years and the requirements just got more difficult after I reduced my gold slots to only one per guild. I demanded the ideal card to work with artifacts too.
Now that I found it, I thought it would be fun to look back. Maybe somebody could profit or at least be entertained from my experiences.
~2013
Such a cool, fun card. But when your splashy 6-drop loses the game to a well-timed bounce spell, that's too risky for most environments.
~2013-2014
Lyzzie is a good card, I still enjoy her in my ravnica cube. But the fact that she can't really sacrifice white or green tokens hurt, and with few multicolored creatures, you almost never get the 2-for-1.
~2014
Another splashy 6-drop. It played okay, but it was a clunky 6-drop after all. For that investment, you'd want to sacrifice stuff at any time or repeatedly.
~2015-2016
Tymaret is cool because he's cheap and can recur himself, and it wasn't even that the activation costs were too much. But my sacrifice decks never really played that aggressive. Maybe if the aggro aristocrats approach would've been what my cube wanted, Tymaret would've stayed longer.
~2017-2018, 2021
The doggo was simple but pinging is strong and I liked him enough to even bring him back once for several months. It's mostly that I wanted more from my rakdos sac card than just be something to throw goblins into at some point.
~2019
Mayhem Devil is quite the beating. I cut him when rakdos sac became the deck to beat, sometimes spawning two good decks in one draft, and had to be dialed back a bit. It went together with Blood Artist who became Zulaport Cutthroat.
~2020
I wanted to try him, but cut him before he had been cast even once. To make sure I don't do stuff like that anymore, I only allow myself to make changes to my cube in january and july.
~2020-2021
Working with enchantments but not really with artifacts (or lands) was weird. I've never really liked how the card played and it also felt too weak for a gold card.
~2021-2022
Juri was another card that barely saw play. But also because people didn't pick him, I guess. He would probably be better nowadays that I'm cubing 18 fetches, but I think I prefer the play pattern of A (sacrifice fodder) + B (a strong sac outlet), the latter being rewarding enough that you don't need a C (cards that reward you for sacrificing to others). That doesn't mean I'm cutting Zulaport Cutthroat, it just means that I am cautious which and how many "Cs" I'm running. I decided it's not what I want in my only rakdos gold slot anyway.
~2022-2023
Here I tried to run (repeatable) sacrifice fodder in this slot instead of an outlet, and Lagomos played ... fine. He's not a bad card but his cool showcase version and the many words suggest something more impressive than the way he mostly plays: as a (slightly worse) muticolored variant of Reassembling Skeleton.
~ a different timeline
I was planning on testing this guy to expand this slot into an artifact payoff, but they spoiled the Stormclaw Rager before I got around to add the genius. This saves me a few pennies and my drafters a few seconds of reading, as the new card is so much cleaner.
That's all I remember. I guess I also tried Shambling Remains at some point, but I don't know wether that counts as an sacrifice card
With this card from the new March of the Machine, I am pretty confident to finally have found my ideal rakdos sacrifice card. I've been trying to find something there for almost ten years and the requirements just got more difficult after I reduced my gold slots to only one per guild. I demanded the ideal card to work with artifacts too.
Now that I found it, I thought it would be fun to look back. Maybe somebody could profit or at least be entertained from my experiences.
~2013
Such a cool, fun card. But when your splashy 6-drop loses the game to a well-timed bounce spell, that's too risky for most environments.
~2013-2014
Lyzzie is a good card, I still enjoy her in my ravnica cube. But the fact that she can't really sacrifice white or green tokens hurt, and with few multicolored creatures, you almost never get the 2-for-1.
~2014
Another splashy 6-drop. It played okay, but it was a clunky 6-drop after all. For that investment, you'd want to sacrifice stuff at any time or repeatedly.
~2015-2016
Tymaret is cool because he's cheap and can recur himself, and it wasn't even that the activation costs were too much. But my sacrifice decks never really played that aggressive. Maybe if the aggro aristocrats approach would've been what my cube wanted, Tymaret would've stayed longer.
~2017-2018, 2021
The doggo was simple but pinging is strong and I liked him enough to even bring him back once for several months. It's mostly that I wanted more from my rakdos sac card than just be something to throw goblins into at some point.
~2019
Mayhem Devil is quite the beating. I cut him when rakdos sac became the deck to beat, sometimes spawning two good decks in one draft, and had to be dialed back a bit. It went together with Blood Artist who became Zulaport Cutthroat.
~2020
I wanted to try him, but cut him before he had been cast even once. To make sure I don't do stuff like that anymore, I only allow myself to make changes to my cube in january and july.
~2020-2021
Working with enchantments but not really with artifacts (or lands) was weird. I've never really liked how the card played and it also felt too weak for a gold card.
~2021-2022
Juri was another card that barely saw play. But also because people didn't pick him, I guess. He would probably be better nowadays that I'm cubing 18 fetches, but I think I prefer the play pattern of A (sacrifice fodder) + B (a strong sac outlet), the latter being rewarding enough that you don't need a C (cards that reward you for sacrificing to others). That doesn't mean I'm cutting Zulaport Cutthroat, it just means that I am cautious which and how many "Cs" I'm running. I decided it's not what I want in my only rakdos gold slot anyway.
~2022-2023
Here I tried to run (repeatable) sacrifice fodder in this slot instead of an outlet, and Lagomos played ... fine. He's not a bad card but his cool showcase version and the many words suggest something more impressive than the way he mostly plays: as a (slightly worse) muticolored variant of Reassembling Skeleton.
~ a different timeline
I was planning on testing this guy to expand this slot into an artifact payoff, but they spoiled the Stormclaw Rager before I got around to add the genius. This saves me a few pennies and my drafters a few seconds of reading, as the new card is so much cleaner.
That's all I remember. I guess I also tried Shambling Remains at some point, but I don't know wether that counts as an sacrifice card
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Ho man if this ain't magic in a nutshell
I really enjoy long, self-reflective posts like this that talk about the history of Cube design, especially in the microcosm of one's own environment. I think you beautifully illustrate the frustration of needing something for an archetype but the perfect card not existing for 10+ years!A Rakdos History
With this card from the new March of the Machine, I am pretty confident to finally have found my ideal rakdos sacrifice card. I've been trying to find something there for almost ten years and the requirements just got more difficult after I reduced my gold slots to only one per guild. I demanded the ideal card to work with artifacts too.
Now that I found it, I thought it would be fun to look back. Maybe somebody could profit or at least be entertained from my experiences.
~2013
Such a cool, fun card. But when your splashy 6-drop loses the game to a well-timed bounce spell, that's too risky for most environments.
~2013-2014
Lyzzie is a good card, I still enjoy her in my ravnica cube. But the fact that she can't really sacrifice white or green tokens hurt, and with few multicolored creatures, you almost never get the 2-for-1.
~2014
Another splashy 6-drop. It played okay, but it was a clunky 6-drop after all. For that investment, you'd want to sacrifice stuff at any time or repeatedly.
~2015-2016
Tymaret is cool because he's cheap and can recur himself, and it wasn't even that the activation costs were too much. But my sacrifice decks never really played that aggressive. Maybe if the aggro aristocrats approach would've been what my cube wanted, Tymaret would've stayed longer.
~2017-2018, 2021
The doggo was simple but pinging is strong and I liked him enough to even bring him back once for several months. It's mostly that I wanted more from my rakdos sac card than just be something to throw goblins into at some point.
~2019
Mayhem Devil is quite the beating. I cut him when rakdos sac became the deck to beat, sometimes spawning two good decks in one draft, and had to be dialed back a bit. It went together with Blood Artist who became Zulaport Cutthroat.
~2020
I wanted to try him, but cut him before he had been cast even once. To make sure I don't do stuff like that anymore, I only allow myself to make changes to my cube in january and july.
~2020-2021
Working with enchantments but not really with artifacts (or lands) was weird. I've never really liked how the card played and it also felt too weak for a gold card.
~2021-2022
Juri was another card that barely saw play. But also because people didn't pick him, I guess. He would probably be better nowadays that I'm cubing 18 fetches, but I think I prefer the play pattern of A (sacrifice fodder) + B (a strong sac outlet), the latter being rewarding enough that you don't need a C (cards that reward you for sacrificing to others). That doesn't mean I'm cutting Zulaport Cutthroat, it just means that I am cautious which and how many "Cs" I'm running. I decided it's not what I want in my only rakdos gold slot anyway.
~2022-2023
Here I tried to run (repeatable) sacrifice fodder in this slot instead of an outlet, and Lagomos played ... fine. He's not a bad card but his cool showcase version and the many words suggest something more impressive than the way he mostly plays: as a (slightly worse) muticolored variant of Reassembling Skeleton.
~ a different timeline
I was planning on testing this guy to expand this slot into an artifact payoff, but they spoiled the Stormclaw Rager before I got around to add the genius. This saves me a few pennies and my drafters a few seconds of reading, as the new card is so much cleaner.
That's all I remember. I guess I also tried Shambling Remains at some point, but I don't know wether that counts as an sacrifice card
Past weekend, another draft happened. It was fun, as always (I LOVED my deck) but also a bit weird and confusing. You'll see when we come to the deck lists
White Weenie 3-0 (6-1)
Yeah, that's right, for the first two rounds (beating me and my very experienced friend Sami) my girlfriend played with only ten plains– accidently. It should not have worked, but she won and even got to turn Figure of Destiny into an 8/8. She also got a bit lucky with the matchups, but nonetheless, did very well.
The deck wasn't even perfect (no anthem effect and an unnecessary Soul Warden), yet it is the second win of mono white in four drafts with 4+ people this year. I'll keep an eye on wether it is a little too good.
BR Aristocrats 2-1 (4-2)
Showing a sweet, aggressive version of my cube's sacrifice theme (and maindecking three cards I was about to cut), Sami made the second place. He couldn't race the white aggro deck, which had just too much incidental lifegain, but beat the others 2-0.
I will still replace Lagomos with Stormclaw Rager. It's just cleaner designed and works with artifacts too. However, I am starting to doubt my planned cut of Gixian Infiltrator. Guy's really good.
Sultai Dredge 1-2 (3-5)
As if it wasn't obvious, this is the deck I drafted. I just love selfmill value piles like that. And it did work! I won the very first game of the evening against mono white with turbo selfmilling and then Lab Maniac + activate Merfolk Looter – I was already content at that point. Also did sweet stuff with Fauna Shaman and stuff like Wonder and Honored Hydra. Sadly, Gurzigost wasn't as great this time, since I didn't fill my gy that heavily in most games. I think that was also because of the matchups ...
With two very aggressive decks at the table, I had some troubles. In two rounds I boarded in Penumbra Spider, Bane of the Living and Prosperous Innkeeper. Still lost, but gave them a real fight at least!
I was also lacking removal with only the single Disfigure. I feel like that happens from time to time in my cube, maybe I should increase the density slightly?
4-color Artifacts 0-3 (1-6)
My less experienced buddy Tobi is still on his trial run, playing around with all the different themes and archetypes that are outside his red-white comfort zone. Besides his severe lack of removal, the list looks pretty good (he had a Toggo in the sideboard which he should've played). However, what you can't see: Before the draft we ate together and he made the mistake, to tell everyone what he was going to draft – lead to a bunch of weird moments before and in the draft lol.
He also said, that he was a little overwhelmed with it in game, but I guess that was mostly because he had never played with most of the cards in his deck before.
White Weenie 3-0 (6-1)
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Yeah, that's right, for the first two rounds (beating me and my very experienced friend Sami) my girlfriend played with only ten plains– accidently. It should not have worked, but she won and even got to turn Figure of Destiny into an 8/8. She also got a bit lucky with the matchups, but nonetheless, did very well.
The deck wasn't even perfect (no anthem effect and an unnecessary Soul Warden), yet it is the second win of mono white in four drafts with 4+ people this year. I'll keep an eye on wether it is a little too good.
BR Aristocrats 2-1 (4-2)
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Showing a sweet, aggressive version of my cube's sacrifice theme (and maindecking three cards I was about to cut), Sami made the second place. He couldn't race the white aggro deck, which had just too much incidental lifegain, but beat the others 2-0.
I will still replace Lagomos with Stormclaw Rager. It's just cleaner designed and works with artifacts too. However, I am starting to doubt my planned cut of Gixian Infiltrator. Guy's really good.
Sultai Dredge 1-2 (3-5)
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As if it wasn't obvious, this is the deck I drafted. I just love selfmill value piles like that. And it did work! I won the very first game of the evening against mono white with turbo selfmilling and then Lab Maniac + activate Merfolk Looter – I was already content at that point. Also did sweet stuff with Fauna Shaman and stuff like Wonder and Honored Hydra. Sadly, Gurzigost wasn't as great this time, since I didn't fill my gy that heavily in most games. I think that was also because of the matchups ...
With two very aggressive decks at the table, I had some troubles. In two rounds I boarded in Penumbra Spider, Bane of the Living and Prosperous Innkeeper. Still lost, but gave them a real fight at least!
I was also lacking removal with only the single Disfigure. I feel like that happens from time to time in my cube, maybe I should increase the density slightly?
4-color Artifacts 0-3 (1-6)
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My less experienced buddy Tobi is still on his trial run, playing around with all the different themes and archetypes that are outside his red-white comfort zone. Besides his severe lack of removal, the list looks pretty good (he had a Toggo in the sideboard which he should've played). However, what you can't see: Before the draft we ate together and he made the mistake, to tell everyone what he was going to draft – lead to a bunch of weird moments before and in the draft lol.
He also said, that he was a little overwhelmed with it in game, but I guess that was mostly because he had never played with most of the cards in his deck before.
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honestly shes got enough 1 drops that 10 land aggro is probably fine