A Keyword-Restricted Cube: Reduce Reuse Recycle

Lionfish

Lionfish

TLDR: Please theory-craft and give feedback on what would better balance my cube.
Updated to v1.1 here.

I've been doing cube design for the last 3 years without speaking up or sharing in any community. I only just found Riptidelab through the awesome Youtube videos and feel the forums here can help me with diagnosing issues with my lower-power cube (it has symptoms of drafts on rails).

My design restriction that initiated this project was that every card must contain at least one of the following keywords:
1. Draw
2. Discard
3. Token
4. Graveyard
5. Sacrifice

Synonyms of these keywords were accepted, such as "Surveil" (as its helper text uses the word graveyard).

From there, some of these themes can be found:
- Reanimate
- Self mill
- Mill
- Storm
- Aristocrats
- Ramp
- Artifacts kinda matter
- Spells
- Which card? (Discard)
+ other naturally occurring possibilities...

You'll notice that there are many fun cards I'm missing such as Drake Haven and Judith, the Scourge Diva. Truth be told, I've tried them and they ended up being too powerful and predictable, possibly because they are... overly enabled...? This is where I get stuck.

Please let me know if you have any advice or questions about my design choices. Thank you!

PS. I've also collated some key observations:
1. Myr Servitor is your Gravecrawler, Narcomoeba, Basking Rootwalla, neatly packaged into an artifact shell. It's a fun glue card at just the right power level.
2. In the same vein as above, I feel that Gate to the Afterlife // God-Pharaoh's Gift are individually at the baseline power level while rewarding acceptably if you manage to draft both.
3. Faith of the Devoted is an intentionally weaker drake haven in the same way Ghostly Pilferer is a clumsier looter il-kor.
4. I like the Food pay-offs because they cross with sacrifice/artifact pay-offs but the enablers let us down... I've considered breaking singleton for Witch's Oven and The Underworld Cookbook.
5. I am willing to break the keyword-based design restriction if it solves my issue. For example, adding 1-card-archetypes such as Torbran, Thane or Tetsuko would add a lot of depth. I'm just uncertain about how to design it well and how far to bend the rules.
 
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MilesOfficial

MilesOfficial

Sweet cube, very Riptide-core.

I really love the themes going on, I'm obsessed with my first drafted deck even if I was expecting to see a little more reanimation in there (even at Zombify power-level).

Will give more feedback in the morning but...I'm not all that hot on . I played with the card a lot when I first started playing and I get the idea, but it seems too anemic even for this list.
 
Nemo

Nemo

Myr Servitor and no Sage of Lat-Nam in sight. Honestly, when those two cards were both in Standard (8ED/MRD/CHK), I chump blocked with and sacrificed quite a few Myr Servitors to the sage. It was fun.
 
Zoss

Zoss

One issue I saw was the extreme gap between power outliers (i.e. Tarmogoyf, Mayhem Devil, and Recurring Nightmare on the one hand, Quakefoot Cyclops, Viridian Emissary, Fatestitcher and Carrion Grub). Normally, this is balanced (somewhat) by the former cards requiring synergy to maximize and the latter cards being more consistently good (at least in theory), but in a cube where you are going all-in on synergy removes that tension, making the power outliers the right things to take a higher percentage of the time.

That said, I like the cube a lot, and I think the Myr Servitors are a really fun solution to a variety of problems! I don't love that it helps the opponent because that's unexpected for Magic in 2024 and can be a weird tension for players, but leaning into that tension solves a lot of those issues. I think that you should make the Servitor the cube's profile pic tbh.
 
Nanonox

Nanonox

I’ve really enjoyed drafting the cube. These GY and bounceland focused formats are right up my alley. That said, Zoss is spot on: there are some serious power outliers that make drafting anything else look ridiculous.



Takes over the game in a repetitive way. I’d like to suggest these as possible replacements:



You keep the sacrifice component and the potential card advantage aspect. I particularly like the Conquest since it ties in with artifacts.



This seems very punishing in a bounceland format.



This is easily the best engine in the cube. It fits into almost any shell and is cheaper and better than other win conditions. I am happy to draft it when I can, but it stands out!
If you were to add another theme, it feels like you are close to having a spells matter archetype. A few classic payoffs and some more generic spells and you are there. It would help make Storm feel less isolated IMO.
 
Lionfish

Lionfish

Thank you everyone, this really helps!

1. Myr Servitors being anaemic
- I understand... In that case I'd be more inclined to reduce the power of the cube to reduce the gap. I think the servitors are supposed to be worse than your average 1 drop because of their flexibility and easy mana requirement. Sage of lat-nam, like orcish vandal would help Food as well; let me add that in!
- Regarding the helping opponent, I think 2 servitor decks being drafted will come up rarely enough that when it does happen it'll be an interesting meta!

2. On Tarmogoyf, Mayhem Devil, Recurring nightmare
- You're right, as with Drake Haven they're too easily enabled by this cube. At least for recurring nightmare, I thought it would be safe because the quality of the cards you recurse are low.
- I will cut goyf and swap Mayhem Devil for Juri, master of the revue. I think that's a good power reduction and is plus for aggro.
- I will swap recurring nightmare for victimize (my original set up) but I'd like to know more about why nightmare is OP when the recurred cards are low power.

3. Strip mine
- ah yes I wanted life from the loam and perennial behemoth to be more attractive while pushing aggro/supporting sacrifice... I worry tectonic edge is too low. Maybe land destruction isn't supposed to be.

4. Spells matter
- I think DRC fits very well but worry it's too strong. Testing will tell!
 
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Nanonox

Nanonox

When everything is low power, Recurring Nightmare is your best ETB for 3 mana. At a glance in your cube:



They will take over the game over time and in a repetitive way!
In a very fast cube where you are under strong pressure, you have less time to mess around doing nothing, which mitigates the power of Recurring Nightmare. But that isn’t the case for most cubes.
 
Lionfish

Lionfish

Okay, I've updated the list!

Added

Cut
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
Hey, cool cube. This thread you made was more suited to the Cube Blogs section so I moved it there and made the title of your cube blog much cleaner. If you want me to change it to something else let me know. :)
 
Brad

Brad

Adding commentary as I draft:
Nimble Obstructionist is super annoying to try to fetch against.

I always find that the OG duals have so little splash-cost attached to them. Not a fan, personally.

Picking Thragtusk feels really unfair at this power level.

There seems to be a lot of life gain off of Food. Can aggro compete?

I got Slogurk into Loam, but felt a lack of meaningful discard or big spells to take advantage of the extra lands. Bounce lands want the same kinds of payoffs.

Wheel of Fortune always feels fucked up to me because it changes the card economy of a fair game so drastically.

I just realized that my Sultai Red deck is actually every color thanks to fetch-dual.


Draft two:
I have Rielle plus Wheel of Fortune.

Ooh. Add Goblin Dark-Dwellers for the ETB draw 7 lol.

Niv Parun doesn't feel worth it because I can splash instead. 6 colored pips is a lot to ask of any cube, I think.

Song of Creation feels too scary to pick.

While splashing feels pretty easy off of OG duals, it's pretty sad to miss my dual and shock in a 2c deck.

Both drafts so far were "try to gain a ton of card advantage through discarding" and both felt forced to be that due to first picks.


Let's try another:
I started with Wonder and want to play an attacking deck, but a second pick Rielle feels like a power outlier that I have to take.

I've seen Balduvian Berserker twice and had zero interest in it. Maybe it's just me.

Thragtusk feeling like an auto-pick again. Easily splashed in a format with only 4 colors, too.

Auto-pick Wheel of Fortune again.

Got a somewhat aggressive Rielle Madness deck. I'd be scared to run into Foods, but they'd be scared to run into Rielle Wheel.



I like the density of Cycling. Feels like a lot of my deck could get churned through in the mid game. I'd like to see the inclusion of a few of the X-for-X draw-discard cards like Thirst for Various Things and Thrill of 1R-costs. These would make it easier to Loam up three lands and discard some for value. Same is true of bouncing a land to hand and pitching it for a potential spell. These would also help Myr Servitor.

Speaking of Myr Servitor, how about some cards that dump to the yard in green? Grapple with the Past, etc.

If I were you, I'd draft it myself like a dozen times. Sometimes I draft my own cube and see a card that felt smart conceptually, but it looks so out of place in the pack. There were a few cards I looked at and had zero interest in and there were a few cards I looked at and had to take.
 
Lionfish

Lionfish

Thanks everyone for your feedback - I've updated the cube to v1.1 to better support spells and improve the draft depth by breaking the keyword restriction for 10 cards (listed in the cube overview).

Here's my first draft since: Little bit of curious recon with wonderful Tetsuko going on here.

1710245425171.png
 
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